Month: April 2018

Here We Go Again: ABBA Records First New Songs in 35 Years

Mamma Mia! The members of ABBA announced Friday that they have recorded new material for the first time in 35 years.

The Swedish pop supergroup said it had recorded two new songs, including one titled “I Still Have Faith in You.”

The news was announced in an Instagram statement from Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog.

ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo” and had a sequin-spangled string of hits including “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me” before splitting up in 1982.

The band’s statement said the members reunited to plan a virtual tour featuring digital avatars, and decided to go back into the studio.

ABBA said “it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyous experience!”

“I Still Have Faith in You” is due to be performed by the group’s holograms in a December TV special broadcast by the BBC and NBC. There was no word on when the second track will be released.

Ulvaeus revealed earlier this month that digitally created virtual band members — “Abbatars” — would perform in a television show in 2018, followed by a tour in 2019 or 2020.

The band members have performed together just once since the 1980s, at a private party in 2016, and have long said they will never tour live together again.

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Anti-harassment Campaign Unrolled for Cannes Film Festival

Participants at the Cannes Film Festival will be given fliers warning “Proper Behavior Required” as part of an anti-sexual harassment campaign at the May 8-19 event.

The top women’s rights official for the French government announced Friday that she reached a deal with Cannes organizers for the campaign. It will include written warnings urging appropriate behavior and a hotline for victims and witnesses to report abuse.

Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs Marlene Schiappa noted that Cannes is one of the places where disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein allegedly raped and harassed women.

Schiappa’s office says the French government is urging other upcoming festivals and events to join the effort.

Film festivals have been soul-searching since the Weinstein scandal, rewriting codes of conduct and redoubling gender equality efforts.

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Alabama Museum Seeks to Change American Narrative About Race

She had traveled to Alabama all the way from California to be here for this moment.

She had managed to stay dry in a torrential downpour that would have forced many others away. Had somehow beat the odds, got in line early, and secured one of the sold-out opening day tickets for access to The Legacy Museum.

So it was a surprise to Isoke Femi that the hardest thing for her to manage were the words to describe what she had just witnessed.

“My experience in there… is so painful,” she said exiting the exhibit.

Site of slave warehouse

Built on the site of a slave warehouse in downtown Montgomery, once the epicenter of the slave trade in the United States, in a town that at one time was the capital of the Confederacy, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is filled with visual exhibits that serve as a catalyst for understanding what many blacks in the United States have historically endured.

“Five-thousand blacks were lynched between 1880 and 1940,” said civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was an early supporter of the museum and the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a new memorial that sits on a grassy, six-acre hill overlooking Montgomery.

It is the first memorial and museum of its kind in the United States, tackling subjects such as racial terrorism and lynching.

Founded by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization working in marginalized and impoverished communities, the group hopes the Memorial and The Legacy Museum will help change the national narrative about race.

“We must face the truth of our origins,” Jackson told VOA in an exclusive interview immediately following his own trip through the museum in its opening hours. “We are a post-genocidal, post-slavery, post-Jim Crow society.”

​Facing the past

But not a post-racial society, says Mark Potok, former senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, who spent much of his career tracking hate groups in the United States.

“It is white people in this country, and in the South in particular, who are so averse to facing the past squarely,” he said.

Potok says racism and bigotry, particularly in Alabama, which now hosts this museum and memorial, are not yet consigned to the history books.

“It’s worth remembering that 15 years ago, a very short time ago, the majority of white people in Alabama voted to keep segregated schools in the state constitution,” Potok said.

Jackson says it’s not just Alabama.

“And even today … 200 attempts to get federal anti-lynching legislation has not passed,” he said.

Speaking to the impact of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, he hopes “this will give us a deeper narrative … and we will seek to become better. At the end of the day, we must educate and enlighten us. Not make us get behind more barriers.”

Change at the ballot box

The biggest barrier in Jackson’s mind today is the one keeping people from the ballot box.

“There are 4 million blacks in the South unregistered to vote,” he said.

Mark Potok agrees with Jackson, and believes the best way to bridge the racial divide in the United States is to vote.

“You know, it’s not beating up white supremacists on the streets of Charlottesville,” he said. “It is really changing the people who represent us.”

Isoke Femi, still reeling from her walk through the images and displays that deal with powerful and uncomfortable truths long avoided, sees hope in the crowds around her.

“The love it took to do this, the commitment, the courage, and the fact that everybody is here that it’s not just something that black people are coming to. Everybody is here. And even if they can’t find the words … they want the healing of America.”

In that healing, Jesse Jackson hopes there is also a lesson.

“We must learn to live together,” he said. “And that is one of the great challenges of our past.”

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Beautycon’s Social Media Stars Redefine Gorgeousness

For some people, makeup isn’t just about the latest shade of lipstick or eye shadow. It’s about empowerment.

Just ask the fans at Beautycon, a recent two-day event in New York that showcased more than 100 makeup and beauty brands, along with speaker panels featuring social media stars whose expertise is all things beauty.

At Beautycon, the spotlight wasn’t on supermodels or fashion editors, but everyday people who have used social media to upend the industry. With online fans numbering in the millions, these Instagram and YouTube influencers are charting a path into a once exclusive field and forcing insiders to rethink conventional notions of beauty.

“I figured out a way to express myself through social media and through my platform and just share my individuality,” said Irene Kim, a Korean-American social media influencer who spoke on a panel, “Niche is the New Norm.”

“Beauty is limitless,” Kim said. “It’s whatever you want to do and how you want to express yourself.”

Mecca Iman is a makeup enthusiast who agrees.

“It’s deeper than just, how it looks, it’s how you feel,” she said.

Democratization of beauty

“There’s no longer a publisher who’s dictating what is beauty or what does health and well-being mean,” said Moj Mahdara, CEO of Beautycon Media. “Now you have a generation of young people who are creators creating that dialogue for a consumer, but that consumer is really their friend — their friend, their fan, it’s a two-way conversation.”

Iman teared up during a meet-and-greet session with social media star Raye Boyce. Boyce, who’s better known by her online handle, “ItsMyRayeRaye,” posts instructional makeup and beauty videos on YouTube and currently has 1.8 million subscribers.

“She’s just so relatable and so cool and then the makeup that she does, I learn from her. I learn so much from her,” Iman said.

Major brands take note

Boyce recently partnered with CoverGirl to promote the company’s cosmetics on her social media channels. She was also given the opportunity to visit the research and development labs of Coty, the parent company of CoverGirl and other consumer beauty brands like Clairol, Rimmel and Max Factor.

“I feel like them listening to us, they’re trying to understand the space,” Boyce said.

Nabela Noor, a beauty influencer with 749,000 Instagram followers and counting, has partnered with companies like Sally Hansen, Benefit and e.l.f. Cosmetics.

“The reason why I wanted to do what I’m doing is because I wasn’t seeing anyone else like me,” said the plus-sized, Muslim Bangladeshi-American. “I wasn’t seeing myself represented on television, in the media. I thought, if I’m not seeing it happen, I’m going to make it happen for myself,” she added.

“By being online and being myself and being proud of who I am, I’ve been able to help people feel good about themselves,” she said.

Tokyo Stylez, originally from Nebraska, calls himself “one of the others’“ or an “alien.” The flamboyant hairstylist started posting his wig creations on Instagram, and now works with artists like Nicki Minaj, Beyonce and Rihanna.

“People really support what I do, they trust my vision, they trust my judgment on things. So if I say, ‘Go do this’ they really go do it, which is amazing,” said Tokyo, who also commands upward of $900 per person for all-day workshops where he teaches his hair techniques. “I just do me, and it works for me,” he said.

Beauty from the inside out

Self-acceptance is a key theme for the demographic that marketers have dubbed Generation Z, the post-millennial group born in the mid-90s to mid-2000s who are well-versed with consumer technology. A section of Beautycon entitled “B-Well” focused on health and well-being, with vendors hawking probiotic beverages, vitamins and healthy snacks.

“Beauty is both inside and out, and how you treat your insides and your mental health and your physical health and your spirituality is all a part of how you foster beauty,” Mahdara said. “I think the industries around health and well-being and beauty are colliding into one and will be a very big movement moving forward.”

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EU Moves to Further Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides

European Union countries backed a proposal Friday to extend a partial ban on the use of insecticides known as neonicotinoids that studies have shown are harmful to bees.

The full outdoor ban will be on the use of three active substances: imidacloprid, developed by Bayer CropScience; clothianidin, developed by Takeda Chemical Industries and Bayer CropScience; as well as Syngenta’s thiamethoxam.

“All outdoor uses will be banned and the neonicotinoids in question will only be allowed in permanent greenhouses where exposure of bees is not expected,” the European Commission said in a statement.\

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The Store Where Everything Is Made in America

From T-shirts, socks and toys to knives and lanterns, a store in upstate New York takes pride in only selling goods that are made in America. Olga Loginova from VOA’s Russian service talked to the store owner about his business, which emerged after the 2008 financial crisis.

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Consumers Close Wallets, Trim US 1st Quarter Growth

The U.S. economy likely slowed in the first quarter as growth in consumer spending braked sharply, but the setback is expected to be temporary against the backdrop of a tightening labor market and large fiscal stimulus.

Gross domestic product probably increased at a 2.0 percent annual rate, according to a Reuters survey of economists, also held back by a moderation in business spending on equipment as well as a widening of the trade deficit and decline in investment in homebuilding.

Those factors likely offset an increase in inventories. The economy grew at a 2.9 percent pace in the fourth quarter. The government will publish its snapshot of first-quarter GDP Friday at 8:30 a.m. 

Don’t lose sleep

The anticipated tepid first-quarter growth will, however, probably not be a true reflection of the economy, despite the expected weakness in consumer spending. First-quarter GDP tends to be soft because of a seasonal quirk. The labor market is near full employment and both business and consumer confidence are strong.

“I would not lose sleep over first-quarter GDP, there is the residual seasonality issue,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “Overall the economy is doing very well and will continue to do well this year and into 2019.”

Economists expect growth will accelerate in the second quarter as households start to feel the impact of the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion income tax package on their paychecks. Lower corporate and individual tax rates as well as increased government spending will likely lift annual economic growth to the administration’s 3 percent target, despite the weak start to the year.

Federal Reserve officials are likely to shrug off weak first-quarter growth. The U.S. central bank raised interest rates last month in a nod to the strong labor market and economy, and forecast at least two rate hikes this year.

Minutes of the March 20-21 meeting published earlier this month showed policymakers “expected that the first-quarter softness would be transitory,” citing “residual seasonality in the data, and more generally to strong economic fundamentals.”

Consumer spending lackluster

Economists estimate that growth in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, braked to below a 1.5 percent rate in the first quarter. That would be the slowest pace in nearly five years and follows the fourth quarter’s robust 4.0 percent growth rate.

Consumer spending in the last quarter was likely held back by delayed tax refunds and impact of tax cuts. Rebuilding and clean-up efforts following hurricanes late last year probably pulled forward spending into the fourth quarter.

“Our new consumer survey found that 37 percent of consumers thought they didn’t get any extra income from the tax cut or did not know what to do with it,” said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. “It is possible this means that there is a lag in the consumer response to tax cuts.”

Business spending

Business spending on equipment is forecast to have slowed after double-digit growth in the second half of 2017. The expected cooling in equipment investment partly reflects a fading boost from a recovery in commodity prices. Economists expect a marginal impact on business spending on equipment from rising interest rates and more expensive raw materials.

“While we do not expect rising rates to crush equipment spending, a slowdown nevertheless appears in store,” said Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Higher interest rates will hurt at the margin.”

Investment in homebuilding is forecast to have declined in the first quarter after rebounding in the October-December period. Government spending probably contracted after two straight quarterly increases. Spending is, however, expected to rebound in the second quarter after the U.S. Congress recently approved more government spending.

Trade was likely a drag on GDP growth for a second straight quarter after royalties and broadcast license fees related to the Winter Olympics boosted imports.

With consumer spending slowing, inventories probably accumulated in the first quarter. Inventory investment is expected to have contributed to GDP growth after subtracting 0.53 percentage point in the fourth quarter.

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Amazon Delivers Profits, a $20 Prime Hike, NFL Games

Amazon.com Inc. more than doubled its profit Thursday and predicted strong spring results as the world’s biggest online retailer raised the price for U.S. Prime subscribers, added U.S. football games and touted its cloud services for business.

The results showed the broad strength of the company, which has been expanding far beyond shipping packages, the business that has drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The forecast beat expectations on Wall Street, sending shares up 7 percent to a new record in afterhours trade and adding $8 billion to the net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and largest shareholder.

Seattle-based Amazon is winning business from older, big box rivals by delivering virtually any product to customers at a low cost, and at times faster than it takes to buy goods from a physical store. It is expanding across industries, too, striking a $130 million deal to stream Thursday night games for the U.S. National Football League online and working to ship groceries to doorsteps from Whole Foods stores nationwide.

Sales jumped 43 percent to $51.0 billion in the quarter, topping estimates of $49.8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Prime now $119

Prime, Amazon’s loyalty club that includes fast shipping, video streaming and other benefits, has been key to Amazon’s strategy. Its more than 100 million members globally spend above average on Amazon.

The company announced Thursday it will increase the yearly price of Prime to $119 from $99 for U.S. members this spring.

The fee hike is expected to add a windfall to Amazon’s subscription revenue, already up 60 percent in the first quarter at $3.1 billion.

“We do feel it’s still the best deal in retail,” Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said on a call with analysts. He said the number of items Prime members can get within two days had grown fivefold since the last price increase four years ago.

Advertising and the cloud

Despite the surge in shopping, Olsavsky gave credit for Amazon’s $1.6 billion profit last quarter to two younger businesses: advertising and Amazon Web Services.

Revenue from third-party sellers paying to promote their products on Amazon.com was an unusually large bright spot during the quarter, with sales in the category, which includes some other items, growing 139 percent to $2.03 billion. This included $560 million from an accounting change.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), which handles data and computing for large enterprises in the cloud, won new business and saw its profit margin expand. It posted a 49 percent rise in sales from a year earlier to $5.44 billion, beating estimates.

Amazon remains the biggest in the space by revenue, and its stock trades at a significant premium to cloud-computing rival Microsoft Corp.

Amazon’s shares have also outperformed the S&P 500, rising 30 percent this year as of Thursday’s market close, compared with the S&P’s less than 1 percent decline.

More workers, spending

Notorious for running on a low profit margin, Amazon has still reaped rewards for shareholders as it has bet on new services like voice-controlled computing and has expanded across continents and industries.

Global headcount was up 60 percent from a year earlier at 563,100 full-time and part-time employees, thanks to a hiring spree and an influx of workers from Whole Foods Market.

The company plans to increase its video content spending this year, Amazon’s Olsavsky said, with a prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” in the works. The third quarter will also see extra spending to prepare for the busy holiday season.

Amazon is working with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Berkshire Hathaway Inc to determine how to cut health costs for hundreds of thousands of their employees.

And it is expanding its retail footprint outside the United States, particularly in India. Amazon’s international operating loss grew 29 percent to $622 million in the first quarter.

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Mexico Economy Minister Says NAFTA Revamp Talks ‘Not Easy’

Much remains to be done before a new North American Free Trade Agreement is reached, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Thursday, tempering hopes for a quick deal as ministers met in Washington for a third successive day.

Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada have been working constantly for weeks to clinch a deal, but major differences remain on contentious topics such as autos content.

Complicating matters, the Trump administration has threatened to impose sanctions on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum on May 1 if not enough progress has been made on NAFTA.

President Donald Trump, who came into office in January 2017 decrying NAFTA and other international trade deals as unfair to the United States, has repeatedly threatened to walk away from the agreement with Canada and Mexico, which took effect in 1994.

“It is going, it’s going, but not easy — too many things, too many issues to tackle,” Guajardo told reporters after a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Now under way for eight months, the talks to revamp the accord underpinning $1.2 trillion in trade entered a more intensive phase after the last formal round of negotiations ended in March with ministers vowing to push for a deal.

Lighthizer is due to visit China next week, and when asked if a deal was possible before the USTR left, Guajardo said: “It will depend on our abilities and creativity. We are trying to do our best, but there are still a lot of things pending.”

Although Washington is keen for an agreement soon to avoid clashing with a July 1 Mexican presidential election, the three NAFTA members remain locked in talks to agree on new rules governing minimum content requirements for the auto industry.

Still, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland rejected the notion that discussion of the so-called rules of origin for the automotive sector was holding up the process.

“I would very much disagree with the characterization of the autos conversation as being log-jammed,” she said as she entered the USTR offices. “This is a week when very good, significant progress is being made on rules of origin for the car sector.”

Freeland said she would skip a planned visit to a NATO summit in Brussels on Friday, and vowed to stay in Washington for “as long as it takes.” Guajardo, too, said he was ready to remain in Washington this week for more talks.

Disagreements

The three sides are also trying to settle disagreements over U.S. demands to change how trade disputes are handled, to restrict access to agricultural markets and to include a clause that would allow a country to quit NAFTA after five years.

Bosco de la Vega, head of Mexico’s National Agricultural Council, the main farm lobby, said he believed the three would be able to reach an agreement on agricultural access.

But the auto sector rules were still contentious, he added.

“It’s the most important issue there,” he said, adding that he had earmarked May 10 as the deadline for a quick deal.

Separately, Canada on Thursday unveiled details of how it plans to prevent the smuggling of cheap steel and aluminum into the North American market in a bid to avoid the U.S. tariffs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced the plan last month, said Ottawa would hire 40 new trade officers to probe complaints, including those related to steel and aluminum.

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Fossil Footprints Capture Prehistoric Sloth Hunt

A prehistoric sloth hunt is frozen in time in footprints preserved in the New Mexico desert, according to new research.

It’s an extremely rare find that authors say could revolutionize our understanding of how ancient humans interacted with large animals.

It also may shed light on whether our ancestors drove the giant ground sloth to extinction.

Footprints in footprints

In the gypsum sediments of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument, scientists found more than 100 prints dating back approximately 10,000 to 15,000 years.

The footprints seem to show humans stalking giant ground sloths, animals that could reach the size of an elephant. The creatures went extinct around the end of the last Ice Age, at roughly the same time as humans arrived on the scene.

In some of the prints, the humans walked in the sloth tracks, even though the stride of a giant sloth was longer than that of a human. One human appears to draw near a sloth on tip-toe.

Where the human tracks approach the sloth tracks, the animal suddenly changes direction. The researchers found what they call “flailing circles,” rounded heel prints and knuckle and claw prints where it looks like the animal reared up on its hind legs to defend itself with its front limbs.

Risky hunting

Hunting an animal the size of a giant sloth, with long arms and sharp claws, “would have come with huge amounts of risk,” said Bournemouth University geology professor Matthew Bennett, senior author of the research, published in the journal Science Advances. 

“If you were chasing a small rabbit or something, [there’s] little risk associated,” he added. “But going head to head with a sloth, the chances are that you might come off badly.”

With the newly discovered footprints, “we can begin to understand how they did it,” Bennett said.  “That gives us a better understanding whether we are guilty or not” of hunting the animals to extinction.

“It is very rare, if not unique, to see unequivocal evidence of human interactions with large vertebrates based on tracks,” said retired University of Colorado Denver paleontology professor Martin Lockley, who was not involved with the new research.

“There are only a handful of ancient human footprint sites in North America, making this one of the best,” he added.

The authors say there are likely more tracks to be found at the White Sands site.

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US Comedian Bill Cosby Convicted of Sexual Assault

U.S. comedian Bill Cosby was convicted Thursday of drugging and molesting a one-time friend in 2004, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The 80-year-old Cosby now faces up to 10 years in prison for each of three counts of aggravated assault after a Pennsylvania jury convicted him of an attack on Andrea Constand, now 45. At the time of the assault, she was an administrator for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby’s alma mater.

Cosby, best known as the lovable dad on his 1980’s television hit The Cosby Show, was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women after a two-week trial, not quite a year after another jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges and a mistrial was declared.

Cosby stared straight ahead when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating 14 hours over two days.

But moments later Cosby lashed out at District Attorney Kevin Steele, calling the prosecutor an “asshole” after he asked that Cosby be immediately jailed because he might flee. The judge, however, decided Cosby could remain free pending sentencing.

A Cosby defense attorney said the entertainer continues to believe he did nothing wrong. “The fight is not over,” the lawyer said.

WATCH: Cosby accusers react moments after guilty verdict

In the retrial, unlike in the first trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from five women who said that Cosby, married for 54 years, drugged and violated them.

One of them, through tears, asked him, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”

Constand told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends.” She testified that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized, unable to resist or say no.

Cosby’s conviction came in one of the first celebrity sexual-assault cases of the MeToo era in the U.S., in which dozens of powerful men in the corporate world, the film industry, media circles and academia have been accused by women of years of repeated behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct.

Cosby’s first trial ended just before women leveled a flood of accusations against the rich and famous, including powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, television anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, and Senator Al Franken. Many of the men apologized for their misconduct, some resigned from their jobs, and others were fired.

In all, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual assaulting them over several decades.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represented one of the women who testified against Cosby, said, “We’re very, very happy and proud of the result. Women were finally believed. And we thank the jury for that.”

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Global Study Finds 44 Genetic Risk Factors for Major Depression

International scientists have identified 44 genetic variants that can increase the risk of developing major depression and found that all humans carry at least some of them.

The new findings could help explain why not everyone treated with antidepressants sees their condition improve, the scientists said, and point the way towards new medicines.

In the largest study of its kind, scientists also found that the genetic basis for depression is shared with other psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and that a number of the variants are linked to the targets of antidepressant drugs.

Major depression affects around 14 percent of people worldwide and is the biggest contributor to long-term disability in the general population. Yet only about half of patients respond well to existing treatments.

“The new genetic variants discovered have the potential to revitalize depression treatment by opening up avenues for the discovery of new and improved therapies,” said Gerome Breen of King’s College London, who worked on the research team.

The study was a global effort, with data covering more than 135,000 patients with major depression and around 344,000 controls as comparisons.

“This study has shed a bright light on the genetic basis of depression, but it is only the first step,” said Cathryn Lewis, another King’s College London expert who worked on the study.

“We need further research to uncover more of the genetic underpinnings, and to understand how genetics and environmental stressors work together to increase risk of depression.”

 

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EU Piles Pressure on Social Media Over Fake News

Tech giants such as Facebook and Google must step up efforts to tackle the spread of fake news online in the next few months or potentially face further EU regulation, as concerns mount over election interference.

The European Commission said on Thursday it would draw up a Code of Practice on Disinformation for the 28-nation EU by July with measures to prevent the spread of fake news such as increasing scrutiny of advertisement placements.

EU policymakers are particularly worried that the spread of fake news could interfere with European elections next year, after Facebook disclosed that Russia tried to influence U.S. voters through the social network in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. election. Moscow denies such claims.

“These [online] platforms have so far failed to act proportionately, falling short of the challenge posed by disinformation and the manipulative use of platforms’ infrastructure,” the Commission wrote in its strategy for tackling fake news published on Thursday.

“The Commission calls upon platforms to decisively step up their efforts to tackle online disinformation.”

Advertisers and online platforms should produce “measurable effects” on the code of practice by October, failing which the Commission could propose further actions, including regulation “targeted at a few platforms.”

Companies will have to work harder to close fake accounts, take steps to reduce revenues for purveyors of disinformation and limit targeting options for political adverts.

The Commission, the EU’s executive, will also support the creation of an independent European network of fact-checkers and launch an online platform on disinformation.

Tech industry association CCIA said the October deadline for progress appeared rushed.

“The tech industry takes the spread of disinformation online very seriously…when drafting the Code of Practice, it is important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to address this issue given the diversity of affected services,” said Maud Sacquet, CCIA Europe Senior Policy Manager.

Weaponizing fake news

The revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica – which worked on U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign – improperly accessed the data of up to 87 million Facebook users has further rocked public trust in social media.

“There are serious doubts about whether platforms are sufficiently protecting their users against unauthorized use of their personal data by third parties, as exemplified by the recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica revelations,” the Commission wrote.

Facebook has stepped up fact-checking in its fight against fake news and is trying to make it uneconomical for people to post such content by lowering its ranking and making it less visible. The world’s largest social network is also working on giving its users more context and background about the content they read on the platform.

“The weaponization of online fake news and disinformation poses a serious security threat to our societies,” said Julian King, EU Commissioner for security. “The subversion of trusted channels to peddle pernicious and divisive content requires a clear-eyed response based on increased transparency, traceability and accountability.”

Campaign group European Digital Rights warned that the Commission ought not to rush into taking binding measures over fake news which could have an effect on the freedom of speech.

King rejected any suggestion that the proposal would lead to censorship or a crackdown on satire or partisan news.

“It’s a million miles away from censorship,” King told a news conference. “It’s not targeting partisan journalism, freedom of speech, freedom to disagree, freedom to be, in some cases, a bit disagreeable.”

Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip said there had been some debate internally over whether to explicitly mention Russia in the fake news strategy.

“Some people say that we don’t want to name just one name. And other people say that ‘add some other countries also and then we will put them all on our list’, but unfortunately nobody is able to name those others,” the former Estonian prime minister said.

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A Possible Malaria Vaccine Poisons the Anopheles Mosquito

Scientists in Kenya believe they have discovered a new way to combat malaria. As Faith Lapidus reports, a common medication, already used to treat a host of illnesses, makes people’s blood poisonous to the anopheles mosquito, which spreads the deadly disease.

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Macy Debuts Modest Clothing Line by Muslim Designer

An American German-Catholic woman who converted to Islam decided to design modest clothes after she couldn’t find them in stores. Macy’s, the nationwide department store, is now carrying her designs on its website. But some people’s idea of fashion options is being viewed by others as condoning the repression of women. In her first television interview, designer Lisa Vogl talks about why she designed her fashion line. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.

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Macy’s Muslim Clothing Line Sparks Ire of Women’s Rights Activists

The freedom to wear whatever you want is taken for granted here in the U.S. But some people’s idea of fashion options is being viewed by others as condoning the repression of women.  In her first television interview, a U.S. designer of Muslim clothing explains her why she designed her line. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.

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Facebook’s Rise in Profits, Users Shows Resilience 

Facebook Inc. shares rose Wednesday after the social network reported a surprisingly strong 63 percent rise in profit and an increase in users, with no sign that business was hurt by a scandal over the mishandling of personal data.

After easily beating Wall Street expectations, shares traded up 7.1 percent after the bell at $171, paring a month-long decline that began with Facebook’s disclosure in March that consultancy Cambridge Analytica had harvested data belonging to millions of users.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal, affecting up to 87 million users and prompting several apologies from Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, generated calls for regulation and for users to leave the social network, but there was no indication advertisers immediately changed their spending.

“Everybody keeps talking about how bad things are for Facebook, but this earnings report to me is very positive, and reiterates that Facebook is fine, and they’ll get through this,” said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Company. His firm holds about 73,000 shares in Facebook.

Facebook’s quarterly profit beat analysts’ estimates, as a 49 percent jump in quarterly revenue outpaced a 39 percent rise in expenses from a year earlier. The mobile ad business grew on a push to add more video content.

Facebook said monthly active users in the first quarter rose to 2.2 billion, up 13 percent from a year earlier and matching expectations, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company reversed last quarter’s decline in the number of daily active users in the United States and Canada, saying it had 185 million users there, up from 184 million in the fourth quarter.

Resilient business model

The results are a bright spot for the world’s largest social network amid months of negative headlines about the company’s handling of personal information, its role in elections and its fueling of violence in developing countries.

Facebook, which generates revenue primarily by selling advertising personalized to its users, has demonstrated for several quarters how resilient its business model can be as long as users keep coming back to scroll through its News Feed and watch its videos.

It is spending to ensure users are not scared away by scandals. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner told analysts on a call that expenses this year would grow between 50 percent and 60 percent, up from a prior range of 45 percent to 60 percent.

Spending on security

Much of Facebook’s ramp-up in spending is for safety and security, Wehner said. The category includes efforts to root out fake accounts, scrub hate speech and take down violent videos.

Facebook said it ended the first quarter with 27,742 employees, up 48 percent from a year earlier.

“So long as profits continue to grow at a rapid rate, investors will accept that higher spending to ensure privacy is warranted,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

It has been nearly two years since Facebook shares rose 7 percent or more during a trading day. They rose 7.2 percent on April 28, 2016, the day after another first-quarter earnings report.

Net income attributable to Facebook shareholders rose in the first quarter to $4.99 billion, or $1.69 per share, from $3.06 billion, or $1.04 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts on average were expecting a profit of $1.35 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Total revenue was $11.97 billion, above the analyst estimate of $11.41 billion.

Some details secret

The company declined to provide some details sought by analysts. It has not shared the revenue generated by Instagram, the photo-sharing app it owns, and it declined to provide details about time spent on Facebook. Facebook also owns the popular smartphone apps Messenger and WhatsApp.

Tighter regulation could make Facebook’s ads less lucrative by reducing the kinds of data it can use to personalize and target ads to users, although Facebook’s size means it could also be well positioned to cope with regulations.

Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google together dominate the internet ad business worldwide. Facebook is expected to take 18 percent of global digital ad revenue this year, compared with Google’s 31 percent, according to research firm eMarketer.

The company said it was increasing the amount of money authorized to repurchase shares by an additional $9 billion. It had initially authorized repurchases up to $6 billion.

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US House Moves to Reverse Order to Aid Salmon

The U.S. House approved a bill Wednesday that would reverse a federal judge’s order to spill more water from four Pacific Northwest dams to help migrating salmon reach the Pacific Ocean.

The bill, approved 225-189, would prevent any changes in dam operations until 2022. It was sponsored by Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, both of Washington state. 

They say the four Snake River dams provide hydropower, flood control and other benefits while already allowing record salmon runs.

 “We are recognizing the role dams play in the Northwest and that dams and fish can co-exist,” McMorris Rodgers, the fourth-ranking House Republican, said after the vote.

Critics, however, blame the giant dams, built in the 1960s and 1970s, for killing wild salmon, an iconic species in the Northwest. Environmentalists have pushed to remove the dams to aid salmon recovery.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

“I urge my colleagues in the Senate to come forward and support our dams,” Newhouse said.

Once one of the greatest salmon fisheries in the world, the Columbia-Snake river system now has more than a dozen endangered salmon runs.

Democrats have argued that on-going studies of the dams, including whether they should be removed, must go forward.

The four dams — Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite — span the Snake River between the Washington cities of Pasco and Pullman. Together they produce about 4 percent of the region’s electricity.

Proposals to remove the dams have percolated in the Northwest for decades, and have devolved into a largely partisan issue with Democrats generally on the side of fish and Republicans for keeping the dams.

The government has spent some $15 billion over the decades to increase salmon runs, with mixed results.

In March 2017, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon of Portland, Oregon, ordered the dams to increase spillage beginning this spring. Federal agencies estimated that increasing spill from early April to mid-June would cost ratepayers $40 million in lost power revenues this year.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld Simon’s order.

The dams operate under a plan to protect salmon created by a collaboration of federal agencies, states and Indian tribes during the Obama administration.

Simon found the plan does not do enough. He ruled a new environmental study is needed and it must consider the option of removing the dams. He also wrote that wild salmon were in a “precarious” state.

McMorris Rodgers countered that the number of salmon returning from the ocean to spawn is high.

“We have been in court now for 20 years,” McMorris Rodgers said.

The House bill would delay changes to the 2014 plan for dam operations until 2022, she said.

“The experts … should be the ones deciding how to best manage this system,” Newhouse said. “Not a judge in Portland, Oregon.”

Northwest RiverPartners, which represents a group of river users, hailed the bill as good news for salmon.

Salmon “will continue to benefit from protections that are already working,” director Terry Flores said.

But environmental groups were dismayed by the bill.

“This legislation ensures that we continue on the same costly, ineffective path that has seen continued declines in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest,” the environmental groups said in a joint press release.

The bill “would push salmon closer to extinction,” they contend.

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Scientists: Uranus Smells Like Rotten Eggs

It’s a punchline that sends every 12-year-old boy into a fit of giggles. Now it has been proven to be true. Uranus stinks!

Scientists using a huge telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano found the seventh planet from the sun is surrounded by clouds made up of hydrogen sulfide, the gas that smells like rotten eggs and bad flatulence.

The study by scientists from the California Institute of Technology, University of Oxford and the University of Leicester was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus’ clouds they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions,” Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford wrote.

Not that they would live long enough to sniff it. “Suffocation and exposure in the negative 200 degrees Celsius atmosphere made of mostly hydrogen, helium and methane would take its toll long before the smell,” Irwin wrote.

Despite previous observations by ground telescopes and the Voyager 2 spacecraft, scientists had failed to determine the composition of Uranus’ atmosphere.

The new data was obtained by using a spectrometer on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. It should help scientists better understand the formation of Uranus and other outer planets.

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Study: Farming Legacy a Factor in Present-Day Behavior

A customer from Beijing and one from Hong Kong walk into Starbucks. A chair blocks the path between the counter and their seats. Who of the two moves the chair?

It’s not a joke. It’s a psychology experiment, designed to test the long-lasting imprints of a culture’s agrarian past.

A new study in the journal Science Advances says that over thousands of years, rice farmers in southern China have evolved a culture of interdependence not found in northern, wheat-growing parts of the country. 

The authors say those influences persist even in China’s modern, relatively wealthy cities, among people who have never farmed. And they show up in how people behave in their daily lives — even as they navigate their local coffee shop.

Rice theory

The study found people were much less likely to move the Starbucks chair in southern China, where rice has been the staple crop for thousands of years, than those in the wheat-farming north.

According to what the researchers call the “rice theory of culture,” growing rice demands more cooperation than growing most other crops. Neighbors in rice-farming villages have to coordinate when they will flood and drain their paddies, for example.

And since rice requires about twice as much labor as wheat, rice-growing villagers often share the workload.

Over the centuries, people developed “folkways and habits of thoughts and behavior norms that, once they’re established, you’re not even thinking, ‘I’m doing this because I’m a rice farmer.’ If you’re thinking about it at all, you’re thinking about it as, ‘I’m doing this because I’m a good person. Because that’s how I was raised. Because that’s what they talk about in school,’ ” said psychologist Andrew Ryder at Concordia University in Montreal, who was not part of the research team.

Moving the chairs

To test their theory, University of Chicago psychologist Thomas Talhelm and colleagues went to Starbucks in five cities: Beijing and Shenyang in the wheat-growing north; and Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong in the rice-growing south.

They chose the Western coffee chain for its uniformity, introducing fewer variables in the environment that might complicate the results.

Researchers put two chairs a hip’s width apart in high-traffic aisles and watched how customers got past them.

In southern China, almost everyone squeezed through them. Just 6 percent moved a chair.

In the north, on the other hand, 16 percent were chair-movers.

“Previous research has found that when people in independent cultures like the United States encounter a problem, they’re more likely to want to change the environment to solve that problem,” Talhelm said. “But when people in interdependent cultures like Japan encounter problems, they’re more likely to try to fit [themselves] into the environment.”

Moving the chair rather than squeezing past it suggests a more independent mindset, he said.

The study also found northerners were more likely than southerners to sit alone: There were about 10 percent more singletons in northern Starbucks shops compared with southern ones during the week, and about 5 percent more on weekends.

Modernization

Talhelm said the findings go against the common theory that “as areas become more wealthy, more modernized [and] more urbanized, people become more individualistic or more Western.”

Even in Hong Kong, among the wealthiest, most modern and most urban cities in China, chair-movers were rare and few people sat alone.

“People’s farming legacies seem to be more important than GDP in explaining their behavior,” he added.

The researchers also checked population density, age, gender, climate and disease presence. Nothing explained the results as well as the rice versus wheat split.

The findings fit with a different type of study Talhelm and colleagues did that tested students on measures of thinking style. They found the same cultural differences between rice-growing regions and wheat-growing regions, even among students from rice-growing or wheat-growing regions of the same county.

The rice theory had been “floating around for quite a long time,” Ryder said, but “I think people hadn’t even necessarily expected that it would be all that testable.” 

Now, he noted, several studies from different approaches are converging on the same results. 

And, he added, it’s an important reminder that China is not a cultural monolith. No country is.

“Get away from ‘one country equals one culture,’ ” he said.

Next, Talhelm is testing the theory in India, another country with a rice/wheat split. 

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YouTube Overhauls Kids’ App

YouTube is overhauling its kid-focused video app to give parents the option of letting humans, not computer algorithms, select what shows their children can watch.

The updates that begin rolling out April 26, 2018, are a response to complaints that the YouTube Kids app has repeatedly failed to filter out disturbing content.

Google-owned YouTube launched the toddler-oriented app in 2015. It has described it as a “safer” experience than the regular YouTube video-sharing service for finding “Peppa Pig” episodes or watching user-generated videos of people unboxing toys, teaching guitar lessons or experimenting with science.

Failure of screening system

In order to meet U.S. child privacy rules, Google says it bans kids under 13 from using its core video service. But its official terms of agreement are largely ignored by tens of millions of children and their families who don’t bother downloading the under-13 app.

Both the grown-up video service and the YouTube Kids app have been criticized by child advocates for their commercialism and for the failures of a screening system that relies on artificial intelligence. The app is engineered to automatically exclude content that’s not appropriate for kids, and recommend videos based on what children have watched before. That hasn’t always worked to parents’ liking — especially when videos with profanity, violence or sexual themes slip through the filters. 

Updates give parents option

The updates allow parents to switch off the automated system and choose a contained selection of children’s programming such as Sesame Street and PBS Kids. But the automated system remains the default.  

“For parents who like the current version of YouTube Kids and want a wider selection of content, it’s still available,” said James Beser, the app’s product director, in a blog post Wednesday. “While no system is perfect, we continue to fine-tune, rigorously test and improve our filters for this more-open version of our app.”

Beser also encouraged parents to block videos and flag them for review if they don’t think they should be on the app. But the practice of addressing problem videos after children have already been exposed to them has bothered child advocates who want the more controlled option to be the default. 

Cleaner, safer kids’ app

“Anything that gives parents the ability to select programming that has been vetted in some fashion by people is an improvement, but I also think not every parent is going to do this,” said Josh Golin, director of the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “Giving parents more control doesn’t absolve YouTube of the responsibility of keeping the bad content out of YouTube Kids.”

He said Google should aim to build an even cleaner and safer kids’ app, then pull all the kid-oriented content off the regular YouTube — where most kids are going — and onto that app. 

Golin’s group recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether YouTube’s data collection and advertising practices violate federal child privacy rules. He said advocates plan to meet with FTC officials next week.

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WHO Joins Urgent Call to Stop Malaria’s Resurgence

The World Health Organization is joining a worldwide call to stop a resurgence of malaria that threatens much of the progress made over the past decade. To mark World Malaria Day, WHO is pushing for urgent action – and money – to get the global fight against this ancient scourge back on track.

For many years, World Malaria Day has been a cause for celebration, but not this year.  World Health Organization data show that starting in 2016  progress has been at a standstill and hopes of ending the global epidemic by 2030 are slipping away.

Watch: Fears Grow Over Malaria Resurgence, London Summit Urges Global Action

Director of WHO’s Global Malaria Program, Pedro Alonso, says some of the gains made in reducing the number of cases and deaths in countries across all regions of the world are being reversed.

“As a consequence, we now have about 260 million cases of malaria every year, in excess of 440,000 deaths every year…13:52…History has told us very clearly that when we stop making progress, it is not that we just stand still, but we go backwards and then malaria comes back, and comes back with a vengeance,” Alonso said. 

About 90 percent of all malaria cases and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.  Children under the age of five, pregnant women and patients with HIV-AIDS are most at risk.

Alonso says global political commitment must be renewed and donors and affected countries must increase the financial resources needed to successfully tackle malaria. 

“And, we need new and improved tools to prevent, diagnose and treat malaria,” Alonso said. “Our sense is that with the resources available today and with the tools we have today, we have seen the limit of what can be achieved.”  

The issue of malaria’s resurgence came up on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in London this month, where Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates  who has invested billions of dollars in fighting malaria  pledged yet another one billion dollars to the effort.

WHO estimates $5.5 billion are needed each year to wage a successful global fight against malaria.  However, only about half that amount has been pledged.

Vector control is the main way to prevent and reduce the spread of malaria.  Alonso says better insecticides, better insecticide-treated mosquito nets as well as better drugs are essential in combating the disease.

 

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