The next robot you see may have more in common with climbing pea plants than people. Faith Lapidus explains how plants are inspiring a scientific team at Stanford University to develop the next generation of robots.
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Month: April 2018
On Witness Stand, Accuser Calls Bill Cosby a ‘Serial Rapist’
The first accuser to testify at Bill Cosby’s retrial described the comedian as “a serial rapist” Wednesday, stunning the courtroom as she parried with his lawyers.
In her second day on the witness stand, Heidi Thomas, a Colorado music teacher, told jurors she came forward with her allegations in early 2015 to support other women who have accused Cosby, not for the attention his lawyers say it brought her.
Thomas had testified that Cosby knocked her out with wine and forced her to perform oral sex in 1984 in Reno, Nevada.
She rejected a defense lawyer’s insinuation that she would do anything to help the comedian’s chief accuser, Andrea Constand.
“You’ve made it very clear that you want to help Andrea Constand, haven’t you?” Kathleen Bliss asked.
“I want to see a serial rapist convicted,” Thomas replied.
Thomas is one of five additional accusers who say the comedian drugged and attacked them long before he met Constand, a former Temple University women’s basketball administrator who alleges Cosby gave her pills and then violated her in 2004. He says the encounter with Constand was consensual.
Prosecutors are lining up the additional accusers to make the case that Cosby, once revered as “America’s Dad,” was a Hollywood predator who is only now facing a reckoning after allegedly assaulting Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home.
The women also could help prosecutors insulate Constand from the defense’s contention that she is a “con artist” who preyed on Cosby’s vulnerability after the 1997 killing of his son, Ennis, and then framed him to score a big payday via a $3.4 million civil settlement.
Thomas was a 24-year-old aspiring actress when her agent arranged for Cosby to give her acting tips. She testified that Cosby gave her the wine as they rehearsed a scene in which she portrayed a drunken woman.
She said she remembered feeling sick and wondering, “How did I get here?”
Thomas rebuffed a defense suggestion that she was seeking a share of the spotlight and trying to profit off her experiences. Under cross examination, she told jurors that many of the more than a dozen interviews she gave after going public stemmed from her work to extend the statute of limitations for sex crimes. Thomas has teamed with other Cosby accusers to lobby for longer statutes of limitations, including a successful effort to double Colorado’s to 20 years.
Court opened Wednesday with the defense successfully arguing that jurors should hear about another accuser’s criminal past so they can fully assess her credibility.
Cosby lawyer Jaya Gupta told the judge that Chelan Lasha’s 2007 guilty plea for making a false report to Arizona law enforcement “bears on her veracity.”
State law bars talk of witness convictions more than a decade old, but Gupta argued that Lasha’s conviction should be an exception since her allegations against Cosby date to 1986.
The judge ruled that Cosby’s lawyers can bring it up.
The former model and aspiring actress said she was immobilized and unable to speak as Cosby assaulted her after giving her a pill he described as an antihistamine. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, said the defense is trying to smear Lasha.
The defense has urged jurors to ignore the other accusers, calling their allegations irrelevant to the charges involving Constand, who turned 45 on Wednesday.
Thomas once sent a Facebook message to Constand.
“I just wanted her to know that everything that was being said about her and about us, that there was somebody out there who knew she was telling the truth,” Thomas testified.
Cosby, 80, is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. His first trial last year ended in a hung jury.
As they began building their case against Cosby, prosecutors chose Thomas as their first substantive witness.
On Tuesday, Thomas testified that she blamed herself for what happened, thinking she must have said or done something that led Cosby to believe she would be open to his advances. She never told her agent or her parents about the alleged assault.
“I was pretty sure whatever I did was my fault,” Thomas testified, adding: “I was just going to move on. And I did.”
Under cross examination, Thomas testified that she chronicled her trip to Reno in a scrapbook and recorded a cassette tape at the home where she had the encounter with Cosby. She said she wanted to recount the trip for her mother and agent but destroyed it years later after seeing a psychiatrist.
It made no mention of the alleged assault, Thomas said, because she had planned to give it to her mom.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and Thomas have done.
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Facebook CEO Says Regulation of Internet Sector ‘Inevitable’
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday the internet sector will need some form of regulation.
After weathering heated questions from two Senate panels, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg returned to Capitol Hill Wednesday to face more questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the social media platform’s transparency and user privacy.
Zuckerberg said it “is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation” of internet companies, an idea that has been floated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
While it is not clear what that regulation would look like, lawmakers have said they want better protections after data breaches affected tens of millions of users.
Zuckerberg cautioned lawmakers to be careful about what they propose, as larger companies like Facebook have more resources to comply with regulations than smaller ones.
In Senate testimony Tuesday, he promised to submit proposals for regulating social media companies and work with lawmakers to craft legislation.
Zuckerberg was called to testify on Capitol Hill this week after news emerged that the personal data of some 87 million Facebook users had been harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, a British voter profiling company that U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016.
The CEO said his data was included in the personal information that ended up in hands of Cambridge Analytica.
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg promised to better protect Facebook users. The social media mogul spoke with pride about Facebook’s ability to connect people for the common good but admitted the company has not been proactive in safeguarding its users from misuse of data or those sowing malign messages.
“I started Facebook, I run it. And I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg said.
Earlier this week, Facebook began notifying 87 million users, most of them in the United States, whose personal data may have been mined by Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg pledged Facebook will scrutinize and, when necessary, block other firms from gaining access to the platform and empower its 2.2 billion users to wall off their apps from third parties.
Senators also sought assurances that Facebook and other social media platforms are blocking fake profiles originating in Russia that spread divisive messages to sow discord during and after the 2016 U.S. election.
“We will be verifying the identity of any advertiser who’s running a political ad,” Zuckerberg said. “And we’re also going to do that for [Facebook user] pages … that will make it significantly harder for Russian interference efforts or other inauthentic efforts to spread misinformation through the network.”
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy noted that misuse of Facebook extends far beyond the United States, saying that Facebook has been used to spread hate speech against Burma’s Rohingya minority.
“Recently U.N. investigators blamed Facebook for playing a role in inciting possible genocide in Myanmar, and there has been genocide there,” Leahy said.
“We’re working on this,” Zuckerberg responded. “We’re hiring dozens of more Burmese language content reviewers. Because hate speech is very language-specific, it’s hard to [detect] it without people who speak the local language, and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically.”
Facebook faces a backlash from some consumer groups. Members of #DeleteFacebook gathered outside Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill.
“We knew that they had your data, but the extent of what is being breached is a concern for me. What do they know about my children and my grandchildren?” said a woman who identified herself as Alison.
Lawmakers pledged to hold separate hearings focusing on Cambridge Analytica in the near future.
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Solar Surge Threatens Hydro Future on Mekong
Thousands of megawatts of wind and solar energy contracts in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia have been signed, seriously challenging the financial viability of major hydropower projects on the river, an energy expert told a water conference last week.
Buoyed by a recent Thai government decision to delay a power purchase deal with a major mainstream Mekong dam, clean-energy proponents and economists told the third Mekong River Commission summit that the regional energy market was on the cusp of a technological revolution.
Brian Eyler, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit in Washington dedicated to enhancing global peace and security, said 6,000 megawatts’ worth of wind and solar contracts had been signed in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos in the last six months.
He said that in January 2017, he and his colleagues had suggested that more solar and wind energy projects be incorporated into Cambodia’s power development plan, the prospect of which had been “basically off the table” at the time. “In a year’s time, Cambodia has entirely restructured its energy sector” to emphasize solar projects in the country, “and if Cambodia’s doing it, you can bet that the other countries are doing it as well.”
Two gigawatts of wind and solar projects were announced in Vietnam in February and March alone according to a spreadsheet provided by the Stimson Center.
Hyunjung Lee, senior energy economist at the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia Energy Division, said technologies such as wind and solar power were “going to hit the region very significantly, in my view.”
“The atmosphere in the region has been changed,” she said, even in just the past year. “We see a lot of development can happen in solar and wind in the region,” though more integrated approaches were needed.
Lee said the ADB was working to set up a Regional Power Coordination Center that would mimic a highly successful project in southern Africa to create an efficient, integrated regional market.
Impact on river system
A six-year Mekong River Commission Council study on development plans for the Mekong, which was the focus of the summit, suggested catastrophic impacts upon the health of the river system if all planned hydropower dams — 11 mainstream projects and more than 100 on tributaries — were built.
In a January report, the International Renewable Energy Agency found that the cost of electricity generated by solar facilities that supply utilities had fallen by 73 percent from 2010 to 2017, and the cost was forecast to be cut in half again by 2020.
At that price trajectory, the cost of solar power would fall below that of hydropower by 2020, long before many planned Mekong dams go online.
Global solar capacity grew 32 percent, adding 94 gigawatts in 2017, while renewables across the board increased by 8.3 percent, the IREA survey of 15,000 data points found. Renewables and solar grew faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world, while the amount of hydropower commissioned across the globe was the lowest in a decade.
Wang Wenling, an assistant professor at Yunnan University’s Institute of International Rivers and Eco-Security, said she had just seen firsthand how far the price of solar technology had plummeted on a recent trip to North Carolina in the United States.
“I was super surprised how their solar power production cost per unit is actually cheaper than hydropower. I don’t know how they make it — it’s almost impossible for me — but their cost is only about 15 percent of the cost in China,” she said.
“So I think we have a lot of alternatives and it needs to be considered,” she said.
Some participants, particularly from Laos and Cambodia, remained skeptical of the technology.
“I think we need some more figures,” said a Cambodian member of the audience, raising concerns about stability. “We also think about some figure for the comparison between the occupation of the land of hydropower with solar energy.”
Attractive idea for Cambodia
Jake Brunner, program coordinator for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the figures for solar were particularly attractive in Cambodia, where land remained relatively cheap, while energy demand was high in neighboring southern Vietnam.
“We calculated that if you took one 10,000-hectare economic land concession in Cambodia, for example, and you made some very conservative assumptions, you could generate about 3 gigawatts, which is pretty close to Cambodia’s entire national consumption,” he said.
Land is a particularly sensitive issue in Cambodia, where rights group Licadho says more than half a million people have been affected by land conflicts.
Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Natural Heritage Institute, told the summit his organization had researched a solar photo-voltaic alternative for Cambodia that didn’t require any land at all.
Instead of building the massive planned Sambor dam on the Mekong, a “no dam alternative” study commissioned by the Cambodian government had recommended placing solar cells on the existing reservoir of the Lower Sesan II dam in Stung Treng.
“The advantage of integrating solar arrays on a hydropower reservoir that already exists is that you can use the unoccupied space on the reservoir without any land use conflicts whatsoever,” he said. “And, of course, the reservoir storage acts as a battery, essentially, to backstop the intermittent nature of the solar generation.”
Such a project could be cost-competitive and go online much more quickly than a hydropower dam, with 100 megwatts deployable in year, he said.
Floating solar projects are being developed around the world, including in China, where an enormous 150-megawatt installation on a lake that used to be a deserted coal mine is expected to go online in May, powering 15,000 homes.
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Zuckerberg Vows to Step Up Facebook Effort to Block Hate Speech in Myanmar
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday his company would step up efforts to block hate messages in Myanmar as he faced questioning by the U.S. Congress about electoral interference and hate speech on the platform.
Facebook has been accused by human rights advocates of not doing enough to weed out hate messages on its social-media network in Myanmar, where it is a dominant communications system.
“What’s happening in Myanmar is a terrible tragedy, and we need to do more,” Zuckerberg said during a 5-hour joint hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee.
More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security crackdown last August.
United Nations officials investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said last month that Facebook had been a source of anti-Rohingya propaganda.
Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said in March that social media had played a “determining role” in Myanmar.
“It has … substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict … within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” he said.
Zuckerberg said Facebook was hiring dozens more Burmese-language speakers to remove threatening content.
“It’s hard to do it without people who speak the local language, and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically,” he said, adding that Facebook was also asking civil society groups to help it identify figures who should be banned from the network.
He said a Facebook team would also make undisclosed product changes in Myanmar and other countries where ethnic violence was a problem.
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Farmers Fret Over Trump’s Trade Tactics
The increasing trade tensions between the United States and China has rattled farmers in the American heartland, the place where many of the products on which China seeks to impose a tariff are produced. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, those farmers, once supportive of President Trump, are increasingly wary about his stance on global trade, and ultimately, how it will impact their bottom line.
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DC Water Utility Goes Underground to Divert Raw Sewage
Dumping sewage into a local river is common practice in some of America’s older cities. With the benefits of modern engineering, cities like Washington D.C. will soon be able to divert hundreds of millions of liters of raw sewage every day to wastewater treatment plants instead of a river. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Zuckerberg Apologizes for Data Breach, Promises Change
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill for the first time Tuesday, answering lawmakers’ concerns about the social media giant’s failure to protect the private information of as many 87 million users worldwide from Trump-affiliated political firm Cambridge Analytica. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from a key day in the internet privacy debate on Capitol Hill.
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IMF Chief Warns Global Trade In Danger Of "Being Torn Apart"
The head of the International Monetary Fund is warning that the global trading system is in danger of being “torn apart.”
In a speech prepared for delivery in Hong Kong Wednesday, Christine Lagarde urged nations to “steer clear of protectionism.” That may be a reference to Washington’s recent moves to slap large tariffs on imported steel and other products. China responded by raising tariffs on U.S.-made products, beginning a cycle that some experts warn could escalate further into a trade war.
Lagarde says trade has far more benefits than costs and has credited unfettered global trade for helping drastically cut the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty over the past few decades. Lagarde and other experts say everyone loses trade wars, particularly the 800 million people around the world who, the World Bank says, remain mired in dire poverty.
While Lagarde’s comments are implied criticism of the Trump administration, she also urged nations, presumably including China, to do a better job of protecting intellectual property. President Trump and many foreign businesses operating in China have complained that they are pressured to turn over technology secrets to Chinese partner companies in exchange for access to the huge Chinese market. She also urged economic reforms, including ending policies that unfairly favor state-owned enterprises.
Lagarde says the global economy is experiencing a strong upswing, and says now is the time for nations to make economic reforms such as opening up the service sector in developing economies, and doing more to use digital technology to improve the way governments deliver public services. She warns that economic reform has new urgency because of the rising uncertainties growing out out trade tensions, uncertain geopolitics and rising fiscal and financial risks.
Lagarde’s speech comes just before next week’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, where top economic and financial leaders and experts from around the world will gather to seek solutions to problems in banking, trade, deficits and many other topics.
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IMF Chief Warns Global Trade in Danger
The head of the International Monetary Fund is warning that the global trading system is in danger of being “torn apart.”
In a speech prepared for delivery in Hong Kong Wednesday, Christine Lagarde urged nations to “steer clear of protectionism.” That may be a reference to Washington’s recent moves to slap large tariffs on imported steel and other products. China responded by raising tariffs on U.S.-made products, beginning a cycle that some experts warn could escalate further into a trade war.
Lagarde says the benefits of trade far outweigh the costs and has credited unfettered global trade for drastically reducing the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty. Lagarde and other experts say everyone loses in trade wars, particularly the 800 million people around the world who, the World Bank says, remain mired in poverty.
While Lagarde’s comments implied criticism of the Trump administration, she also urged nations, presumably including China, to do a better job of protecting intellectual property. President Trump and many foreign businesses operating in China have complained that they are pressured to turn over technology secrets to Chinese partner companies in exchange for access to the huge Chinese market. She also urged economic reforms, including ending policies that unfairly favor state-owned enterprises.
Lagarde says the global economy is experiencing a strong upswing, and says now is the time for nations to make economic reforms such as opening up the service sector in developing economies, and doing more to use digital technology to improve the the delivery of government public services. She warns that economic reform is more urgent now because of the growing uncertainties arising from trade tensions, uncertain geopolitics and rising fiscal and financial risks.
Lagarde’s speech comes ahead of next week’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, where top economic and financial leaders and experts from around the world will gather to seek solutions to problems in banking, trade, deficits and many other topics.
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US Lawmakers Demand Changes at Facebook After Data Breaches
After weathering heated questions from two Senate panels, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg returns to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to face more questions from a House committee about the social media platform’s transparency and user privacy.
Lawmakers want better protections after data breaches that affected tens of millions of users.
“There was clearly a breach of consumer trust and a likely improper transfer of data,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.
“It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said moments later.
Senators demanded action from the Facebook CEO.
“If you and other social media companies do not get your act in order, none of us are going to have any privacy,” the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, Bill Nelson of Florida, said. “If Facebook and other online companies will not or cannot stop the privacy invasions, then we are going to have to — we, the Congress.”
Zuckerberg was called to testify after news emerged that the personal data of millions of Facebook users had been harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, a British voter profiling company that U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016.
Zuckerberg promised to better protect Facebook users. The social media mogul spoke with pride about Facebook’s ability to connect people for the common good but admitted the company has not been proactive in safeguarding its users from misuse of data or those sowing malign messages.
“I started Facebook, I run it. And I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg said.
Earlier this week, Facebook began notifying 87 million users, most of them in the United States, whose personal data may have been mined by Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg pledged Facebook will scrutinize and, when necessary, block other firms from gaining access to the platform and empower its 2.2 billion users to wall off their apps from third parties.
Senators also sought assurances that Facebook and other social media platforms are blocking fake profiles originating in Russia that spread divisive messages to sow discord during and after the 2016 U.S. election.
“We will be verifying the identity of any advertiser who’s running a political ad,” Zuckerberg said. “And we’re also going to do that for [Facebook user] pages … that will make it significantly harder for Russian interference efforts or other inauthentic efforts to spread misinformation through the network.”
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy noted that misuse of Facebook extends far beyond the United States, saying that Facebook has been used to spread hate speech against Burma’s Rohingya minority.
“Recently U.N. investigators blamed Facebook for playing a role in inciting possible genocide in Myanmar, and there has been genocide there,” Leahy said.
“We’re working on this,” Zuckerberg responded. “We’re hiring dozens of more Burmese language content reviewers. Because hate speech is very language-specific, it’s hard to [detect] it without people who speak the local language, and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically.”
Until now, social media companies have been largely self-regulating. Several senators said Congress must consider steps to protect users of the platforms.
“What do we tell our constituents, given what’s happened here, why we should let you self-regulate?” South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham asked.
“My position is not that there should be no regulation,” Zuckerberg said. “I think the real question, as the internet becomes more important in people’s lives, is: What is the right regulation?”
The Facebook CEO promised to submit proposals for regulating social media companies and work with lawmakers to craft legislation.
Facebook faces a backlash from some consumer groups. Members of #DeleteFacebook gathered outside Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill.
“We knew that they had your data, but the extent of what is being breached is a concern for me. What do they know about my children and my grandchildren?” said a woman who identified herself as Alison.
Lawmakers pledged to hold separate hearings focusing on Cambridge Analytica in the near future.
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Apple Adds Isaac Asimov Sci-fi Series to TV Development List
Isaac Asimov’s influential “Foundation” science fiction novels about the collapse and resurgence of a galactic empire are heading to Apple as a television drama series, a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
The series is the latest step the iPhone maker has taken to acquire original programming as it seeks to rival more established outlets such as Netflix Inc, Time Warner’s HBO and Amazon.com’s Amazon Studios.
It is unclear when Apple’s shows will be released, and where viewers will be able to see them. The company has not said if it will distribute them through its own iTunes Store, where it sells shows and films by other companies, or on another platform.
David S. Goyer, screenwriter of blockbusters “The Dark Night” and “Batman Begins,” and Josh Friedman, the writer of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 sci-fi adaptation “War of the Worlds,” have been charged to bring Asimov’s work to the TV screen.
Hollywood’s attempts over the past two decades to bring the Russian-American author and scientist’s saga of humans living on planets scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy to either television or the big screen have so far never come to fruition.
The “Foundation” series began as several short stories published between 1942 and 1950, and was later developed into a trilogy of novels published from 1951 to 1953. It won a Hugo Award, the top awards for science fiction and fantasy writing, in 1966 as best all-time series, the only time the award has been handed out.
Apple has already ordered two seasons of a drama about a morning TV program starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, as well as a remake of Spielberg’s 1980 sci-fi anthology series “Amazing Stories.”
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Experts Warn Prescription, Over-the-Counter Drugs Polluting World’s Rivers
The world’s rivers and fresh water systems are full of pollution from prescription and over-the-counter drugs and it is taking a toll on the environment and wildlife, experts say.
Scientists meeting Tuesday in Vienna said if no action is taken, the problem will increase by 65 percent by 2050.
The drugs include painkillers, hormones, anti-depressants and antihistamines.
Much of it ends up in the waters through human and animal waste because only small amounts are filtered out in treatment plants or absorbed into the ecosystem.
The drugs have caused sex charges in fish and amphibians and one type of anti-inflammatory drug has driven vultures in India close to extinction.
U.N. experts have also said medicines in the environment are helping create drug-resistant bacteria.
Some experts say that technology is not enough to tackle the problem and that a substantial reduction on a dependence on drugs is also needed.
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Number, Severity of Brain Injuries Raises Dementia Risk
A large study offers more evidence of a link between traumatic brain injuries and dementia later in life, with repeated injuries and severe ones posing the greatest danger.
Researchers analyzed 36 years of health records of 2.8 million people in Denmark, where a national health system makes it possible to explore connections in a far-reaching way.
Overall, the risk was small. About 95 percent of people who suffered a brain injury never developed dementia.
But a single severe brain injury increased the risk of later dementia by 35 percent compared with a person who never had brain trauma. A mild brain injury increased the risk by 17 percent. Each additional brain injury added to the danger.
Overall, the risk of dementia was 24 percent higher for people with a traumatic brain injury compared with people without one. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Lancet Psychiatry. A study of 3.3 million people in Sweden earlier this year showed similar results.
Despite the size of the studies, they won’t settle scientific questions – or social debate – about brain injuries from sports, war, car crashes or domestic violence.
Scientists know that a blow to the head can damage brain cells, but they don’t know exactly how that might lead to later cognitive problems, said lead researcher Dr. Jesse Fann of University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
This kind of study can’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship, but researchers tried to eliminate the possible effect of age, gender, marital status and health, including depression. And they looked at other types of trauma, such as broken bones, and found that brain injuries were more closely tied to dementia.
In a commentary in the journal, Dr. Carol Brayne of University of Cambridge’s medical school in England wrote that improvements in care mean more people are surviving brain injuries, making it crucial to understand more about their long-term effects.
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US Federal Reserve Proposes New Capital Rules for Banks
The Federal Reserve on Tuesday proposed new rules that could allow some large banks to reduce the amount of capital they must hold as a cushion against a future economic shock.
The proposal may clear the way for some large banks to reduce their capital levels in the future, but the largest firms on Wall Street are not likely to get such relief, the Fed said.
The proposal is expected to reduce bank paperwork and also make it easier for regulators to monitor the health of banks, said Randal Quarles, the top Fed official in charge of regulations.
“Our regulatory measures are most effective when they are as simple and transparent as possible,” Quarles, the Fed vice chairman for supervision, said in a statement.
The Fed said the proposed changes were likely to somewhat increase the amount of capital required for the 30 largest banks known as GSIBs, or global systemically important banks.
The measures should modestly decrease the amount of capital required for banks smaller than the GSIBs, the Fed said.
“No firm is expected to need to raise additional capital as a result of this proposal,” the Fed said in a statement.
Banks and other stakeholders will have 60 days to comment on the proposal, which is likely to take effect next year, said the Federal Reserve.
The new capital standards would be the first reform of capital standards conceived after the decade-old financial crisis.
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Russian Retailers Warned of Price Increase After Ruble Tumbles
Russian retailers warned of price increase after ruble tumbles
European electronic and household goods manufacturers have warned Russian retailers of a possible 5 to 10 percent rise in prices after the ruble tumbled this week due to U.S. sanctions, retailers said on Tuesday.
Eldorado, which operates over 400 stores in Russia, said the hikes may mean it has to adjust its retail prices.
“Suppliers have already started warning of a possible 5-10 percent adjustment in prices,” a spokesperson for Eldorado told Reuters, adding that the warnings had primarily come from European manufacturers that do not produce goods in Russia.
A spokesperson for M.Video, which operates a network of 424 stores, also said that some of its suppliers had told them of plans to raise prices by between 5 and 10 percent.
The ruble fell sharply on Monday as investors took fright after a new round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow, targeting officials and businessmen around Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The ruble extended its losses on Tuesday, shedding over 3 percent of its value against the dollar, as investors continued a sell-off of assets fueled by fears that Washington could impose more sanctions and a realization that Russian credit and market risks had substantially increased.
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US Lawmakers Demand Changes of Facebook’s CEO
U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday demanded better personal data protection at Facebook, whose CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, weathered heated questions from two Senate panels over data breaches affecting tens of millions of users of the mammoth social media platform.
“There was clearly a breach of consumer trust and a likely improper transfer of data,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.
“If you and other social media companies do not get your act in order, none of us are going to have any privacy,” the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, Bill Nelson of Florida, said. “If Facebook and other online companies will not or cannot stop the privacy invasions, then we are going to have to — we, the Congress.”
Zuckerberg was called to testify after news emerged that the personal data of millions of Facebook users had been harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, a British voter-profiling company that President Donald Trump’s campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016.
WATCH: Zuckerberg Takes Responsibility for Inadequately Protecting User Data
Zuckerberg repeatedly has apologized and promised to make amends, and did so again on Capitol Hill. The social media mogul spoke with pride about Facebook’s ability to connect people for the common good, but he admitted the company had not been proactive in safeguarding its users from misuse of data or those sowing malign messages.
“It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said. “I started Facebook, I run it. And I’m responsible for what happens here.”
Earlier this week, Facebook began notifying 87 million users, most of them in the United States, whose personal data might have been mined by Cambridge Analytica.
Zuckerberg pledged that Facebook would scrutinize and, when necessary, block other firms from gaining access to the platform and empower its 2.2 billion users to wall off their apps from third parties.
Senators also sought assurances that Facebook and other social media platforms are blocking fake profiles originating in Russia that spread divisive messages to sow discord during and after the 2016 U.S. election.
“We will be verifying the identity of any advertiser who’s running a political ad,” Zuckerberg said. “And we’re also going to do that for [Facebook user] pages … that will make it significantly harder for Russian interference efforts or other inauthentic efforts to spread misinformation through the network.”
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy noted that misuse of Facebook extends far beyond the United States, saying that Facebook has been used to spread hate speech against Burma’s Rohingya minority.
“Recently U.N. investigators blamed Facebook for playing a role in inciting possible genocide in Myanmar, and there has been genocide there,” Leahy said.
“We’re working on this,” Zuckerberg responded. “We’re hiring dozens of more Burmese language content reviewers. Because hate speech is very language-specific, it’s hard to [detect] it without people who speak the local language, and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically.”
Until now, social media companies have been largely self-regulating. Several senators said Congress must consider steps to protect users of the platforms.
“What do we tell our constituents, given what’s happened here, why we should let you self-regulate?” South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham asked.
“My position is not that there should be no regulation,” Zuckerberg said. “I think the real question, as the internet becomes more important in people’s lives, is: What is the right regulation?”
The Facebook CEO promised to submit proposals for regulating social media companies and work with lawmakers to craft legislation.
Facebook faces a backlash from some consumer groups. Members of #DeleteFacebook gathered outside Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill.
“We knew that they had your data, but the extent of what is being breached is a concern for me. What do they know about my children and my grandchildren?” said a woman who identified herself as Alison.
Zuckerberg is to testify before a House panel Wednesday.
Lawmakers pledged to hold separate hearings focusing on Cambridge Analytica in the near future.
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Turkish Currency Hits Record Lows Over Fears of Overheating Economy
The Turkish lira Tuesday hit another historic low against the U.S. dollar amid growing financial market concerns that the Turkish economy is overheating.
With elections on the horizon, the government is stoking economic growth. The latest figures saw growth running at over 7 percent, making Turkey one of the fastest-growing economies in the developed world.
But international investors are becoming increasingly alarmed at the cost of such growth, with double-digit inflation and a surge in imports widening Turkey’s current account deficit (the difference between imports and exports).
“Investors are disappointed by the fact the government is pushing growth even faster, rather than addressing the imbalances that show up, such as high inflation and wide current account deficit.” said economist Inan Demir of Nomura banking.
“Some people say this: ‘Too much growth is not a good thing,’ ” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech Monday aimed at challenging financial critics. “Why? Because they are jealous. It is nothing else.”
In another move aimed at defying critics, Erdogan also announced a new $34 billion economic stimulus package. Much of Turkey’s rapid growth has been achieved by the government injecting billions of dollars into the economy.
Erdogan further challenged international markets by renewing his strong opposition to increasing interest rates, which orthodox economic theory demands to protect a falling currency.
“If there isn’t an increase in interest rates, the likelihood will be the lira will continue to depreciate,” warned Demir. “More or less, the lira will remain at the mercy of global sentiment. It’s extremely difficult to draw a line where the depreciation stops on its own.”
Since the start of the year, the lira has fallen over 7 percent against the dollar.
Reports on Simsek
Last week, the lira fell heavily amid reports that Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek had resigned after a heated telephone conversation with Erdogan over interest rate policy.
Analysts suggest that Simsek, who is responsible for the economy, is key to maintaining the confidence of financial markets in Turkey, having formerly worked for international investment bank Goldman Sachs. According to Ankara sources, Simsek withdrew his resignation only after intense government pressure.
But with presidential and general elections upcoming in 2019, a booming economy is seen as key to Erdogan and his ruling AKP Party’s re-election chances.
“He [Erdogan] knows the way to win the election is by improving the economic situation,” wrote newspaper columnist and presidential insider Abdulkadir Selvi in Monday’s Hurriyet. “That is why he declared 2018 as the year of performance, growth and employment.”
Analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners asked, “What is left with AKP’s vision? Ten years ago, it was a big-tent party. It talked about human rights, modern democracy advancement, a humane society. Now, there is only mega-construction projects left and economic growth. So, if they stop stimulating the economy, economic growth will immediately fall off the cliff, and they will have no chance to win in a fair election.”
But a plummeting currency brings its own economic risks. Experts warn that heavy currency decreases usually undermine consumer confidence, leading invariably to a fall in consumption, and ultimately hitting growth.
A more imminent threat faced by Turkey is debt. Turkish companies’ short-term foreign exchange debt stands at $220 billion.
“We hear more and more companies requesting loan restructuring from the banks,” Demir said. “In the coming days as the lira depreciates further, more and more companies will find it more difficult to meet their foreign currency obligations with an overwhelming Turkish cash flow.”
Banks under scrutiny
In the past few weeks, two of Turkey’s largest companies have sought to restructure nearly $12 billion in bank loans. Turkish banks are now facing increasing scrutiny over their corporate loan exposure and how many of their loans are still performing.
“Clearly there is an understanding between [Turkey’s] regulatory authorities, the banks and major companies that the system must go on,” Yesilada said. “It’s in nobody’s interest to declare these loans nonperforming or the borrowers bankrupt, so everything looks good. But nothing is being sustained, to be perfectly honest.”
Turkish banking stocks have fallen heavily in the past few months and are now trading at nine-year lows. Most analysts claim, despite growing financial pressures, that the integrity of the banking system still remains strong.
But the same analysts warn that banks may curtail future lending, which would likely affect growth. Demir predicts Erdogan and his government’s dash for growth could ultimately become self-defeating.
“If the insistence on pro-growth measures continues, and investors become more and more concerned about the external financing requirements and sell liras, the pro-growth measures may actually turn out to be counterproductive, because the weaker lira could hurt company balance sheets, forcing more of them to seek a restructuring of their loans, and forcing them to cut back on investment and generating new employment,” Demir said.
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Gazprom Says Gas Transit via Ukraine to Europe May Fall to 10-15 bcm per Year
Future Russian gas transit flows through Ukraine to Europe may be between 10 and 15 billion cubic metres per year, Alexei Miller, head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, said on Tuesday, which is a significant decline from current levels.
Miller issued his comments after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the planned new Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany could not go ahead without clarity on Ukraine’s role as a transit route for gas.
“We have never raised an issue about abandoning the Ukrainian transit. However, the Russian resource base has been moving northward and there won’t be the same resources in the central gas transportation corridor as it was in the past,” Miller said in a statement.
“That’s why a certain transit could still be in place, in the amount of 10-15 bcm per year, but the Ukrainian side has to explain the viability of the new transit contract,” he said.
He did not give a time frame for when the transit could be 10-15 bcm a year.
Ukraine has been a key route for carrying Russian gas to Europe where it supplies around a third of gas needs, but Moscow and Kiev have clashed frequently over energy.
Last year, the transit amounted to more than 93 bcm, while Gazprom’s total exports to Europe and Turkey reached an all-time high of 194 bcm.
Last year, Ukraine earned around $3 billion in Russian gas transit fees.
Gazprom said last month it would terminate its gas contracts with Ukraine after it lost a court case, escalating a dispute which had left Ukraine struggling to stay warm and which the European Union said could threaten gas flows to Europe.
A Stockholm arbitration court ordered Gazprom in February to pay more than $2.5 billion to Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz – a ruling meant to conclude a long legal battle that has run alongside Ukraine’s broader political stand-off with Russia.
Gazprom wants to bypass Ukraine as an export route and plans to build two more undersea gas pipelines to Europe: TurkStream to Turkey and Nord Stream 2 to Germany.
Eastern European and Baltic states fear Nord Stream 2, planned to run through the Baltic Sea, could increase reliance on Russian gas and undermine Ukraine’s role as a gas transit route.
The plans for the pipelines were given new impetus after relations between Moscow and Kiev plunged as Russia-leaning president Viktor Yanukovich fled Ukraine in 2014 following street protests and a pro-Moscow revolt subsequently flared in eastern Ukraine.
The current deal between Russia and Ukraine on gas purchases and transit expires at the end of 2019 and Kiev has been worrying about losing its transfer fees for shipping the Russian gas westwards to Europe.
your ads here!Campaigners Call for Ban on Killer Robots
The group known as the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots says fully autonomous lethal weapons that can strike selected targets are no longer within the realm of science fiction. The coalition says it wants pre-emptive action taken to ban them. Government experts will spend the next two weeks discussing the issue at a meeting of the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
The Campaign to stop Killer Robots – a coalition of 65 non-government organizations – says the world is running out of time to prevent these systems from becoming a dangerous reality.
Campaign co-founder Richard Moyes warns the world is moving closer to situations where machine intelligence, instead of humans, may make life and death decisions on the battlefield.
“We need humans involved in these processes and it needs to be a substantial engagement that allows sort of human ethical judgment and human moral engagements with the decision about the use of force…From my perspective, I think there is a real risk in thinking that violence and killing people can ever be a really clean business,” said Moyes. “I think…we should be very wary about thinking that machines and computers can solve that.”
Campaign co-founder Mary Wareham tells VOA autonomous weapons systems with decreasing levels of human control are currently in use and development by six countries – the United States, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia and Britain. She says the U.S. is the most advanced.”
“I think all of them have commented that these weapons systems, the fully autonomous weapons systems, lethal autonomous weapons systems, do not exist yet,” said Wareham. “That is the common refrain that we hear in the room; but, there is acknowledgement that this is the direction that it could head in.”
Human Rights Watch – a founding member of the campaign – has said previously that precursors to killer robots include armed drones.
The campaign says the government experts have made some progress in identifying key issues of concern regarding autonomy in weapons systems. It says 22 countries are calling for a ban on fully autonomous weapons and many others agree some human control must be retained over future weapons systems.
The activists say they are heartened by the increasing number of countries that have expressed interest in negotiating a new international law on killer robots. The campaign says it wants member states to conclude a legally binding treaty “prohibiting the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons systems by the end of 2019.”
your ads here!Congo’s Talented Artists Struggle for Recognition at Home, Abroad
The art scene in the Democratic Republic of Congo is vibrant and flourishing, but talented local artists still struggle for international recognition. VOA’s Anita Powell takes us to the studios of some of Kinshasa’s top talents, including 25-year-old art sensation Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga.
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Zuckerberg Apologizes for Data Breach Before Congressional Testimony
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify publicly Tuesday before a group of U.S. senators after apologizing for the way his company handled data for millions of users.
He is due to appear before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Commerce Committee, and on Wednesday will go before House lawmakers.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said users “deserve to know how their information is shared and secure,” and that he wants to explore with Zuckerberg ways to balance safety with innovation.
Zuckerberg met privately with lawmakers in Washington on Monday and released written testimony saying the social media network should have done more to prevent itself and the data of its members from being misused.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg said.Zuckerberg was called to testify after news broke last month that personal data of millions of Facebook users had been harvested without their knowledge by Cambridge Analytica, a British voter profiling company that U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign hired to target likely supporters in 2016.
WATCH: Video report on Facebook Data Breach
Cambridge Analytica connection
Prior to 2016, Facebook allowed a British researcher to create an app on Facebook on which about 200,000 users divulged personal information that was subsequently shared with Cambridge Analytica. The number of affected Facebook users multiplied exponentially because the app also collected data about friends, relatives and acquaintances of everyone who installed it.
Cambridge Analytica said it had data for 30 million of Facebook’s 2.2 billion users.
On Capitol Hill, U.S. lawmakers signaled they want action, not just contrition, from social media executives.
“If we don’t rein in the misuse of social media, none of us are going to have any privacy anymore,” the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, Bill Nelson of Florida, told reporters after meeting privately with Zuckerberg Monday.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced it is starting to notify tens of millions of users, most of them in the United States, whose personal data may have been harvested by Cambridge Analytica.
New cyber firewalls
The social media giant is also empowering all its users to shut off third-party access to their apps and is setting up cyber “firewalls” to ensure that users’ data is not unwittingly transmitted by others in their social network.
For years, Congress took a largely “hands-off” approach to regulating the internet. Some analysts believe that is about to change after the Facebook data breach, as well as a cascade of revelations about Russian cyber-meddling.
“At this point in time, it’s really up to Congress and the federal agencies to step up and take some responsibility for protecting privacy, for regulating Facebook as a commercial service which it clearly is,” Marc Rotenberg, president of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, told VOA. “We’ve gone for many years in the United States believing that self-regulation could work — that Facebook and the other tech giants could police themselves, but I think very few people still believe that.”
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