U.S. senators Thursday continued a bipartisan rebuke of President Donald Trump’s punitive trade strategy, one day after an overwhelming vote asserting a congressional role in the imposition of tariffs for national security reasons. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Capitol Hill, where anti-tariff sentiment is strong but not universal.
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Month: July 2018
A Look at Euro-Russian Energy Deal Opposed by Trump
President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany’s involvement in a natural gas pipeline deal with Russia launched a tense two days of NATO meetings in Brussels — but it also may have set the tone for the U.S. leader’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart Monday in Helsinki.
In a taut exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, Trump said Nord Stream 2 — an offshore pipeline that would deliver gas to Germany directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea — leaves the Western military alliance’s largest and wealthiest European member “totally controlled” by and “captive to” Russia.
“We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but [Germany is] paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that’s very inappropriate,” Trump told Stoltenberg.
According to the U.S. leader, Germany “got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”
As Europe’s biggest natural gas consumer, Germany relies on Russia for roughly half of its gas imports, which account for 20 percent of its current energy mix, according to London-based Marex Spectron group. The International Energy Association projects German natural gas demand to increase by 1 percent in the next five years, as Berlin continues phasing out its nuclear power plants by 2022.
Expanding upon the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been transporting gas from Russia to Germany along the same Baltic Sea route since 2011, Nord Stream 2, currently slated for completion by 2019, would roughly double Russia’s export volume.
Trump says the $11 billion, 800-mile pipeline expansion linking Russia and Germany would give Moscow greater geopolitical leverage over Europe at a time of heightened international tensions, an opinion in keeping with that of his his immediate predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and former President George W. Bush, who opposed Nord Stream 1.
The administrations have long pushed for Germany, Europe’s largest energy consumer, to buy American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to overtake a sector of the market long dominated by Russian distribution routes that run through Ukraine.
Poland and Lithuania, who are among Nord Stream 2’s most vociferous European critics, have built LNG terminals that would stand to profit from an American takeover of the market. But other former Soviet satellite nations — such as Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia — have long warned that a growing reliance on Russian energy not only compromises European security, but rewards Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other campaigns to destabilize the European Union.
There have been numerous price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv over natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, whose pipelines serve other European nations. In 2009, a disagreement between the two nations cut natural gas supplies to Western Europe in the middle of winter, leaving many without heat.
Nord Stream 2, they argue, will not only deprive land-transit countries such as Poland and Ukraine of billions in annual transit fees, it will also give Russia a way to penalize Eastern European foes without sacrificing lucrative deals further to the west.
According to Atlantic Council energy expert Agnia Grigas, Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU’s official energy security strategy, which calls on EU nations to diversify energy sources, distributors and routes.
“If Nord Stream 2 is built, Germany would be the EU country most exposed to dubious Russian influence,” Grigas recently reported. “Moscow already has a track record of relying on German businesses and lawmakers to advance its own strategic goals. For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, large German companies with considerable business ties with Russia were among the harshest critics of Western sanctions against Moscow.”
As a private project backed by energy giants such as Shell — a British-Dutch multinational — Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, along with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, Nord Stream 2 is also being financed by private firms from Austria, France and Britain, but not by German tax funds.
In responding to Trump’s Wednesday tirade against Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she knew all too well from her childhood in the East what it is like to live under Soviet control. But she said energy deals with Russia do not make 21st-century Berlin beholden to Moscow.
“I am very happy that today we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that, we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions,” she said.
Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, a longtime friend of Putin, has championed the Nord Stream enterprise since just before being voted out of office in 2005. He soon went on to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, a consortium for construction and operation of the submarine pipeline, eventually going on to become chairman of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company.
In March, European politicians increased calls for sanctions against the ex-chancellor for representing Russian interests, though his name has yet to appear on any lists of individuals targeted for sanctions.
Despite repeated U.S. warnings that companies involved in the deal also risk being slapped with sanctions, Nord Stream 2 is scheduled for completion next year.
This story originated in VOA’s Russian service.
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US to Appeal Approval of AT&T Acquisition of Time Warner
The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it would appeal a federal judge’s approval of AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner.
The Justice Department opted in June not to seek an immediate stay of the court’s approval of the merger, allowing the merger to close on June 14. The department still had 60 days to appeal the decision.
The government’s court filing did not disclose on what ground it intended to challenge the approval.
AT&T and the Justice Department did not immediately comment.
AT&T shares fell 1 percent after the bell.
The merger, announced in October 2016, was opposed by President Donald Trump. AT&T was sued by the Justice Department but won approval from a judge to move forward with the deal in June following a six-week trial.
Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the tie-up between AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses and Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law.
The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.
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Saudi Prince Alwaleed Pledges Support for Crown Prince’s Reforms
Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was detained for three months in an anti-corruption campaign under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pledged support on Thursday for the young leader’s program of sweeping reforms.
“I was honored to meet with my brother HRH the Crown Prince and to discuss economic matters and the private sector’s future &; role in #Vision2030 success,” he tweeted with a photograph of the royal cousins embracing in front of a desk.
It is the first publicly disclosed meeting between the two men since the anti-corruption crackdown was launched in November.
“I shall be one of the biggest supporters of the Vision through @Kingdom_KHC &; all its affiliates,” Prince Alwaleed added, referring to his international investment company.
Vision 2030 is Prince Mohammed’s scheme to wean the world’s top crude exporter off oil revenues and open up Saudis’ cloistered lifestyles. The corruption sweep alarmed the Saudi business community as well as international investors the kingdom is courting to support the reforms.
Prince Alwaleed, the kingdom’s most recognised business figure, was freed in January after being held at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel along with scores of royals, senior officials and businessmen, most of whom reached financial settlements with the authorities.
He said in March he had cut a deal but declined to disclose the details. He said he was in discussions with the Public Fund, the sovereign wealth fund chaired by the crown prince, about making joint investments inside the kingdom. He previously told Reuters that he was innocent and expected to keep full control of his firm.
In the absence of more information, speculation has run rampant about whether Prince Alwaleed secured his freedom by forfeiting part of his fortune — once estimated by Forbes magazine at $17 billion — or stood up to authorities and won.
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UK Nears Decision to Buy Boeing AWACS Planes, Sources Report
Britain’s government is nearing a decision to buy four to six surveillance planes built by U.S. aerospace giant Boeing, sources familiar with the plans said Thursday — a move that could stir a growing debate over U.K. and European defense jobs.
The contract to replace its six aging E-3D Sentry airborne early warning (AWACS) planes with a fleet of Boeing E-7 Wedgetail jets would, if confirmed, be worth over $1 billion.
But the decision, which could be announced in coming weeks, is likely to anger some U.K. lawmakers who have called for a full competition, and may also spark formal protests by European defense companies keen for the business.
Airbus, which is said to be teaming up with Sweden’s Saab to offer an alternative, is anxious to try to prevent the deal being awarded without a competition and does not rule out mounting a legal challenge, a person close to the matter said.
A spokesman for Britain’s defense ministry said, “We tender contracts competitively wherever appropriate. It is too early to comment further at this time.” Boeing and Airbus had no immediate comment.
The decision over whether to order the equipment from the United States or to look to continental Europe reflects broader divisions over Britain’s external relations after it leaves the European Union, with thousands of high-tech jobs at stake.
U.S. President Donald Trump, whose support is vital as Britain seeks to forge new trade deals outside the European Union, extolled the benefits of buying from U.S. arms firms including Boeing after a NATO summit on Thursday.
But Airbus, which recently clashed with the U.K. government over delays in negotiating Brexit, is expected to defend a European solution based on its A330 jetliner and Saab’s Erieye radar and will argue Boeing trade actions put U.K. jobs at risk.
“It would mean the U.K. is no longer a trustworthy place to do business,” a person close to the company said.
The chairman of the British parliament’s defense committee this month posted a letter dated June 26 to the procurement minister, arguing that open competition would save money.
Boeing’s supporters say the E-7A planes — based on the 737 jetliner and already in use by Australia, South Korea and Turkey — would speed delivery to the UK military, which had deferred purchases to devote resources to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Boeing is willing to offer U.K. firms a significant share of work on the program, one of the sources said. It would fly 737 jetliners to the U.K. and allow firms there to do work needed to turn them into airborne surveillance and command assets.
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Lost Luggage Finds New Homes — At Bargain Prices
Suspiciously cheap diamonds, jeans for a dollar and a pair of skis for next to nothing are all bargains that can be found at a store in a small Alabama town that sells are the contents of lost airline baggage. Every year airline companies lose about 20 million suitcases, and while most of them do find their way back to their owners, thousands of bags are never picked up. As Daria Dieguts found out, some of these lost items end up at the lost baggage store in Alabama.
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From Mutton Soup to Pelmeni Dumplings: Football Fans Experience Russian Gastronomy
From mutton soup to caviar to veal tongue, Russian gastronomy is now being enjoyed by football fans from around the world who are in Russia for the World Cup. We get more from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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Fingerprinting Technology Could Save Endangered Pangolins
Pangolins are the world’s most illegally trafficked animal. Eight species of the elusive mammals are found in Africa and Southeast Asia, but as many as 300 are poached every day, destined for markets in Vietnam and China, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales believed to have medicinal properties. Researchers in the UK are hoping to deter pangolin poaching with fingerprint technology that’s designed to identify poachers and bring them to justice. VOA’s Julie Taboh explains.
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First Test-Tube Baby Born 40 Years Ago This Month
Forty years ago this month, the first test-tube baby was born in what is now called in vitro fertilization. British baby Louise Brown was born July 25, 1978. She’s married now with two children who were born naturally. A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London is showcasing the anniversary and the technological advances achieved through in vitro fertilization. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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India Tops List of Most Dangerous Country for Women in Reuters Survey
India has emerged as the most dangerous country in the world for women, according to a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The survey is a repeat of one conducted by the foundation in 2011, which rated India as the fourth most dangerous country for women, after Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. The survey is not well received by the Indian government or field experts who have raised questions about the survey’s methodology. Ritul Joshi has more from New Delhi.
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Pacific Leaders Sign on to Australian Internet Cabling Scheme, Shutting Out China
Pacific nations Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have signed on to a joint undersea internet cable project, funded mostly by Australia, that forestalls plans by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to lay the links itself.
Wednesday’s pact comes as China pushes for influence in a region Australia views as its backyard, amid souring ties after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last year accused Beijing of meddling in Canberra’s affairs.
Australia will pay two-thirds of the project cost of A$136.6 million ($100 million) under the deal, signed on a visit to Brisbane by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.
“We spend billions of dollars a year on foreign aid and this is a very practical way of investing in the future economic growth of our neighbors in the Pacific,” Turnbull told reporters about the deal.
The project, for which Australian telecom firm Vocus Group Ltd is building the cable, will link the two nations to the Australian mainland, besides connecting the Solomons capital Honiara with the archipelago’s outer islands.
For years, Western intelligence agencies have worried over Huawei’s ties to the Chinese government and the possibility that its equipment could be used for espionage.
Australia, which is poised to ban Huawei from its domestic 5G mobile network on the advice of its intelligence services, raised “concerns” that scuppered a Huawei offer for cabling to the Solomons, Houenipwela has previously told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Huawei has said it was never informed of any security problems with its planned cables for the Solomons, where Chinese activity has attracted additional attention, as it is one of six countries in the Pacific to maintain ties with Taiwan.
China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own and has never renounced the use of force to bring under its control what it sees as a wayward province.
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McMaster to Release Book in 2020
President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster has signed a book deal.
Battlegrounds will cover the retired lieutenant general’s 34-year military career and his time in the Trump administration.
The book is expected to be released in 2020, when Trump is expected to run for a second term in office.
McMaster had a tumultuous one year on Trump’s staff. He was picked to replace Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign after it was revealed that he’d lied about his dealings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
McMaster resigned in March and was replaced by John Bolton.
The book is expected to take a harsher view of the administration than books by former Trump staffers Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci.
Publisher Harper Collins released a statement by McMaster in which he said he was “looking forward to researching and writing about the greatest challenges to the free world and how we can work together with like-minded nations to seize opportunities, defeat threats to security and preserve our way of life.”
Battlegrounds will be the second book by McMaster, who in 1997 wrote Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.
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Lip Gloss Boss: Kylie Jenner To Be Youngest Self-Made Billionaire
Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is on track to become the youngest self-made billionaire in the United States thanks to the booming cosmetics company she launched two years ago, Forbes magazine reported Wednesday.
Jenner, 20, half-sister of Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, debuted Kylie Cosmetics in 2016 with $29 lip kits containing matching lipstick and lip liner, and has since sold more than $630 million worth of makeup.
Forbes valued her company at nearly $800 million, and said Jenner owns 100 percent of it.
Adding millions from TV programs, endorsements and after-tax dividends from her company, Forbes said Jenner was “conservatively” worth $900 million. Another year of growth would make her the youngest self-made billionaire ever, male or female, the magazine said.
Jenner first grabbed the spotlight as part of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians reality TV show with her mother and siblings. Forbes estimated that Kim Kardashian, who has her own cosmetics, clothing and mobile games lines, is worth $350 million.
In an interview with Forbes, Jenner credited social media for helping drive her success.
“Social media is an amazing platform,” she said. “I have such easy access to my fans and my customers.”
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In Purge, Twitter Removing ‘Suspicious’ Followers
Social networking platform Twitter announced Wednesday it will be removing accounts it had deemed suspicious from user’s follower counts, as part of a recent push to promote accuracy on the website. This could reduce the number of “followers” of some of the website’s most popular users, including politicians and celebrities.
The website had locked accounts of users where Twitter “detected sudden changes in account behavior,” such as sharing misleading links, being blocked by a large number of accounts that account had interacted with, or a large number of unsolicited replies to other users’ tweets, Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote. The accounts are locked, preventing one from logging in and using the account until the account’s owner verified their use.
Wednesday’s change will remove these locked accounts from users’ follower counts, which are visible on a user’s account page and often are used as a barometer of an individual’s sway on the website, which 336 million users log into every month, according to USA Today.
Gadde wrote that while the average Twitter user will see their follower count drop only by about four, popular accounts could see a more dramatic drop in the number of their followers.
In the wake of reports that Russia had used fake accounts platform to help sow discord in the American public in the lead-up and aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pledged in March 2018 to help clean up the website.
And on Friday, The Washington Post reported that Twitter had suspended more than a million accounts a day in recent months — upward of 70 million in the months of May and June 2018 alone.
“I wish Twitter had been more proactive sooner,” Sen. Mark Warner [D-Virginia] the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Post. “I’m glad that — after months of focus on this issue — Twitter appears to be cracking down on the use of bots and other fake accounts, though there is still much work to do.”
Following the Post’s report, U.S. President Donald Trump, who often was the recipient of support from Russian-linked accounts, posted this tweet:
One such Twitter account suspended in 2017, @TEN_GOP, purporting to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party, had its tweets shared on the platform by Trump White House officials such as Kellyanne Conway and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
In February 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian influence in the Trump campaign and the 2016 election, named the account in an indictment, alleging it was one of many on social media that “primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”
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Transgender Miss Universe Contender Speaks Up for Trans Kids
The first transgender woman to compete in the global Miss Universe pageant wants to make history as a role model for trans children around the globe — no matter whether she wins or not the top beauty title.
The 26-year-old Angela Ponce beat 20 other contestants in the Miss Universe Spain gala on June 29, qualifying for the global round of the pageant, which has allowed transgender participation since 2012.
The location and dates for this year’s contest have yet to be announced. But Ponce is already planning to use it as a platform to draw attention toward high rates of suicide among trans teenagers, as well as legal codes that still discriminate against them around the world.
“If my going through all this contributes to the world moving a little step forward, then that’s a personal crown that will always accompany me,” Ponce told The Associated Press at the offices of the Miss Universe franchise in central Madrid.
The Spanish capital has just wrapped up its 2018 week-long pride celebrations, whose main theme was a call for equality and greater visibility for people with non-binary gender identity. Rights campaigners marching last Saturday welcomed the World Health Organization’s recent move to take trans identities off the official list of mental health disorders, but highlighted discrimination faced by transgender people of all ages, including employment discrimination.
A study published last year by the European transgender group TGEU found that 77.5 percent of 885 transgender people over 16 years old polled in Georgia, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Sweden had considered taking their own lives and that 24.5 percent of respondents had made at least one attempt.
Ponce said she had suffered discrimination before as a model, being rejected for fashion events or shoots once designers or organizers discovered she had undergone a sex reassignment procedure.
But in those moments, she said her life motto — “To be the best is not an option, is a must” — gave her strength.
She said her experience growing up in a “loving and supporting family” but without any role models in a small town in southern Spain, near Sevilla, can be a useful story for others.
“My parents never had to go to school to demand any changes in attitudes, I did it myself,” Ponce said, highlighting how she would meet aside with every new teacher and tell them: “Whatever name appears in the roll call, you should call me Angela.”
The 1.77-meter (5 foot, 11 inch) model’s career took off after she won a provincial beauty award in 2015, reaching new heights last month with the Miss Universe pageant.
“I closed my eyes,” she said, recalling the victory. “All I wanted was to feel how they put on the crown because I was aware that it was a historical moment.”
In 2012, 23-year-old Jenna Talackova was banned from Canada’s Miss Universe pageant for not being a “naturally born” female. The organization — run at the time by now U.S. President Donald Trump — changed the regulations after she threatened legal action. Talackova made it to the shortlist in Canada, but didn’t win entry to the international contest.
Six years later, Ponce says that transphobia remains a global problem, even in Spain, a country she sees as a pioneer in the protection of LGBT rights.
After Ponce’s victory in the Spanish beauty title, she received hundreds of messages of support on social media, but also some criticism — even from some feminist, gay or transgender users who decried beauty pageants in general as objectification.
“We can’t be hypocritical,” said Ponce, rejecting the charges and describing her victories as success for all transgender people. “Beauty is used to sell everything around us, and beauty can also help us spread a message of equality.”
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Chinese Find Suggests Human Relatives Left Africa Earlier
Stone tools recovered from an excavation in China suggest that our evolutionary forerunners trekked out of Africa earlier than we thought.
Until now, the oldest evidence of human-like creatures outside Africa came from 1.8 million-year-old artifacts and skulls found in the Georgian town of Dmanisi. But the new find pushes that back by at least 250,000 years.
“It’s absolutely a new story,” said archaeologist Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who did not participate in the study. “It means that early humans were getting out of Africa way earlier than we ever realized.”
That exit came long before our own species, Homo sapiens, even appeared. The researchers believe the tools were made by another member of the Homo evolutionary group.
The items included several chipped rocks, fragments and hammer stones. The 96 artifacts were dug up in an area known as the Loess Plateau, north of the Qinling mountains, which divide the north and south of China.
Some of them were as old as 2.1 million years, according to the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
“We were very excited,” said Zhaoyu Zhu, a professor at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, who led the field work. “One of my colleagues suddenly noticed a stone embedded in a steep outcrop. After a short while, more artifacts were found — one after another.”
The tools were distributed throughout layers of dirt, suggesting our unidentified ancient relatives came back to the same site over and over, possibly following animals to hunt. Researchers also found bones of pigs and deer, but were not able to provide proof that the tools were used for hunting.
Some experts not involved in the research think that the findings need to be taken with caution.
“I am skeptical,” said Geoffrey Pope, an anthropologist from William Paterson University in New Jersey. “I suspect this discovery will change very little.”
The problem, he said, is that sometimes nature can shape stones in a way that they look as if they were manufactured by hand. Scientists know, for example, that rocks smashed together in a stream can acquire sharp edges.
But Sonia Harmand, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York, disagrees.
“This could be, frankly, one of the most important [archaeological] sites in the world,” said Harmand, who studies stone tools.
your ads here!US Soon to Leapfrog Saudis, Russia as Top Oil Producer
The U.S. is on pace to leapfrog both Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s biggest oil producer.
The latest data released by the Energy Information Administration shows U.S. output growing again next year to 11.8 million barrels a day.
Linda Capuano, who heads the agency, says that would make the U.S. the world’s No. 1 producer.
The director of the International Energy Agency, a group of oil-consuming countries, made a similar prediction in February.
Russia and Saudi Arabia pumped more crude than the U.S. last year.
Production is booming in U.S. shale fields because of newer techniques such as fracking and horizontal drilling.
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Nigeria’s Buhari Says He Will Soon Sign Up to African Free Trade Pact
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday the country will soon sign up to a $3 trillion African free trade zone.
Nigeria is one of Africa’s two largest economies, the other being South Africa. Buhari’s government had refused to join a continental free-trade zone established in March, on the grounds that it wishes to defend its own businesses and industry.
The administration later said it wanted more time to consult business leaders.
“In trying to guarantee employment, goods and services in our country, we have to be careful with agreements that will compete, maybe successfully, against our upcoming industries,” Buhari told a news conference during a visit by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“I am a slow reader, maybe because I was an ex-soldier. I didn’t read it fast enough before my officials saw that it was all right for signature. I kept it on my table. I will soon sign it.”
The continental free-trade zone, which encompasses 1.2 billion people, was initially joined by 44 countries in March. South Africa signed up earlier this month.
Economists point to the continent’s low level of intra-regional trade as one of the reasons for Africa’s enduring poverty and lack of a strong manufacturing base.
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Facebook Faces First Fine in Data Scandal Involving Cambridge Analytica
Facebook will be facing its first fine in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the social media platform allowed the data mining firm to access the private information of millions of users without their consent or knowledge.
A British government investigative office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), fined Facebook 500,000 pounds, or $663,000 – the maximum amount that can be levied for the violation of British data privacy laws. In a report, the ICO found Facebook had broken the law in failing to protect the data of the estimated 87 million users affected by the security breach.
The ICO’s investigation concluded that Facebook “contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information,” the report read. It also found that the company failed to be transparent about how people’s data was harvested by others on its platform.
Cambridge Analytica, a London firm that shuttered its doors in May following a report by The New York Times and The Observer chronicling its dealings, offered “tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior,” according to a March Times report.
“New technologies that use data analytics to micro-target people give campaign groups the ability to connect with individual voters,” Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement. “But this cannot be at the expense of transparency, fairness and compliance with the law.”
The firm, which U.S. President Donald Trump employed during his successful 2016 election campaign, was heavily funded by American businessman Robert Mercer, who is also a major donor to the U.S. Republican Party. Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon was also employed by the firm and has said he coined the company’s name.
Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower within the firm, told the Times in March that the firm aimed to create psychological profiles of American voters and use those profiles to target them via advertising.
“[Cambridge Analytica’s leaders] want to fight a culture war in America,” Wylie told the Times. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”
While this is the first financial penalty Facebook will be facing in the scandal, the fine will not make a dent in the company’s profits. The social media giant generated $11.97 billion in revenue in the first quarter, and generates the revenue needed to pay the fine about every 10 minutes.
Denham said the company will have an opportunity to respond to the fine before a final decision is made. Facebook has said it will respond to the ICO report soon.
“As we have said before, we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015,” said Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, in a statement. “We have been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office in their investigation of Cambridge Analytica, just as we have with authorities in the U.S. and other countries.”
The statement from the ICO also announced that the office would seek to criminally prosecute SCL Elections Ltd., Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, for failing to comply with a legal request from a U.S. professor to disclose what data the company had on him. SCL Elections also shut down in May.
“Your data is yours and you have a right to control its use,” wrote David Carroll, the professor.
The ICO said it would also be asking 11 political parties to conduct audits of their data protection processes, and compel SCL Elections to comply with Carroll’s request.
Further investigations by agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, and Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, are under way. In April, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before a U.S. Senate committee to testify on the company’s actions in the scandal.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” Zuckerberg told U.S. lawmakers in prepared remarks in April. He also said, “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry.”
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Coffee and Conservation: Mozambique Tries Both on a Mountain
At Mozambique’s Mount Gorongosa — where farmers are being encouraged to grow coffee in the shade of hardwood trees, both to improve their own lot and to restore the forest — there is a point beyond which visitors are told not to go.
The problem: Base camps of Mozambique’s main opposition force sit on the cloud-shrouded mountain, a redoubt that was the scene of military incursions and civilian flight in the last few years. There were times when managers of the coffee-and-conservation project couldn’t go anywhere near the mountain because of the conflict, or had to walk up because the opposition had blocked the road with logs to prevent the military bringing up equipment.
With a lull in tension, they are pushing ahead with plans to plant more coffee and trees on a mountain that captures rainfall and supplies the rivers sustaining people and wildlife living around its base.
It is among the more complex conservation efforts in southern Africa, a bid to convince farmers to abandon old-slash-and-burn methods of farming and commit to the longer-term yield of coffee on the same plots, while maintaining government support for a project in an area that harbors an opposition militia.
The threat of drought and climate change also loom over a project driven by the idea that human development and ecological restoration must work in concert if there is any hope for both to succeed.
“We’ve had huge troubles working here,” said Quentin Haarhoff, a veteran farmer of coffee around Africa who doesn’t let hard realities sap his optimism.
Haarhoff acts for a non-profit group founded by American philanthropist Greg Carr that is collaborating with Mozambique’s government to rehabilitate Gorongosa National Park, a rich ecosystem whose animals are recovering after war and poaching. To do that, the thinking goes, the poor people around the park’s edges must become stakeholders in their natural heritage rather than remain spectators to the occasional tourist influx, as was the case under the Portuguese colonial rulers who left in 1975.
Scientists settled on coffee as an alternative tool in a broader restoration plan for the mountain because the 90 hardwood trees planted for every hectare (2.5 acres) of coffee provide shade that the crop needs to thrive. A sustainable mosaic of cultivation and natural forest is envisioned, and farmers are encouraged to cultivate bananas, pineapples and other crops amid coffee plantations, providing fertilizer for the coffee from falling foliage.
“The bulk of the nutrition of the coffee plant comes from a very, very shallow layer of soil which we never want to disturb,” said Haarhoff, a white farmer from Zimbabwe who lost his coffee plantation during often violent land seizures there nearly two decades ago.
“What we’re doing essentially here by growing these other crops is restoring the natural hydrology of the soil here. It’s turning into a sponge,” he said.
“Now things are easier and calmer. We can cultivate,” said Randinho Faduco, a coffee farmer who is benefiting from a truce between the Renamo (the Portuguese acronym for Mozambican National Resistance) opposition group and the ruling Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) party. A post-colonial civil war between the two adversaries killed up to one million people and ended in 1992, though disputes over power flared into violence as recently as 2016.
Designed to help hundreds of families on and around Mount Gorongosa, the coffee project is supported by Carr’s foundation, the Norwegian government and the Global Environment Facility, a group of 183 countries, international institutions and other entities. The annual budget is expected to expand to between $1 million and $2 million.
The rainforest of Mount Gorongosa, whose highest peak is 1,863 meters (6,112 feet), is home to pygmy chameleons and other rare species.
The mountain, a source of traditional creation stories, is under severe pressure from the rampant, corruption-fueled deforestation across Mozambique that supplies a foreign market, primarily China. Scientists estimate that it has lost about 40 percent of its original forest since 1970, though they are designing a reforestation program that respects open grasslands found naturally in the area and that contain plant species such as the protea shrub, with its distinctive large flower.
Mozambique isn’t a coffee producer on a par with African industry giants such as Ethiopia and Uganda, and production goals at Gorongosa are relatively modest. About 40 hectares (100 acres) of arabica coffee plants are in the ground; farmers plan to plant another 100 hectares (250 acres) this year and a total of about 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) over the next decade, all in areas that are being farmed or were farmed in the past. The first harvest comes four years after planting, and each hectare yields 2 to 3 tons of coffee beans.
Coffee experts from Brazil, the world’s biggest producer, have traveled to Gorongosa to offer their insights. Machinery from Colombia, another top producer, is installed near the mountain to transform freshly picked red coffee berries into green beans prior to export. It would be better to put the equipment closer to the coffee fields, but another eruption of political violence could force operators to abandon it in a hurry.
Gorongosa coffee is already on sale at the gift shop at the wildlife park’s Chitengo lodge. One possible market is Portugal, where the Gorongosa name enjoys colonial-era mystique.
Portugal’s Sonae business group welcomes the idea of environmental sustainability and is looking to introduce Gorongosa coffee as a “premium brand,” said group chairman Paulo Azevedo, who was struck by Mount Gorongosa’s natural beauty during a trip there.
“It really sort of takes you away from our current modern civilization,” Azevedo said.
There is a sense of urgency about plans to restore rainforest on the mountain, where deforestation continues.
“It poses a serious threat to the system as a whole and to specific species in particular,” said Marc Stalmans, science director at Gorongosa National Park. “We can’t be unconcerned.”
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Video Shows Moment of Clooney Crash, Actor Thrown in Air
Actor George Clooney slammed his motorbike into an oncoming car that turned suddenly into his lane Tuesday and was thrown several meters (yards) in the air on the Italian island of Sardinia, according to video of the crash.
“He is recovering at his home and will be fine,” Clooney spokesman Stan Rosenfield told The Associated Press in an email.
Surveillance video of the crash, apparently taken by a fixed security video, was obtained late Tuesday by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. It shows a blue Mercedes veering into oncoming traffic apparently to turn into a residential compound near Olbia. The video shows what is reported as Clooney’s scooter crashing into the car while another scooter alongside him manages to veer around it.
Clooney is thrown over the front of his bike and up in the air before landing on the asphalt, where the car driver and other witnesses come to help.
The John Paul II hospital in Olbia confirmed Clooney was treated there and released after a few hours.
Local media representatives who gathered at the hospital said the Oscar-winning actor-director left in a van through a side exit.
The newspaper La Nuova Sardegna said the 57-year-old Clooney was heading to a film set when the accident happened at a curve in the road near the entrance to the Costa Corallina residential compound in the province of Olbia.
An oil stain and police paint remained on the road. Photographs taken by someone passing the scene showed the car’s front right bumper damaged and Clooney’s bike on its side.
Clooney reportedly was in Sardinia filming a television miniseries adapted from Joseph Heller’s World War II novel “Catch-22.”
He has been staying at a lush, gated rental villa in the high-end Puntaldia neighborhood on Sardinia’s northeastern coast, which overlooks the Tyrrhenian Sea. Staff at the home declined to comment.
Clooney is a frequent visitor to Italy. He has a home on Lake Como and was married in Venice in 2014 to the British human rights attorney Amal Clooney.
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Prince Harry, Meghan Mobbed by Royal Fans on Dublin Tour
Hundreds of well-wishers turned out to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry and his wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, as they made their first overseas walkabout Wednesday in Dublin.
Students and tourists flocked to the Irish capital’s Trinity College, screaming and shouting to greet the royal couple, who were on their first official trip abroad as a married couple.
Soccer was a hot topic, with England playing Croatia later Wednesday in the semi-final World Cup match. Harry asked the crowd: “Are you all cheering for England?” and chatted away with university students about soccer.
Earlier, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as they are formally known, met with Irish President Michael D. Higgins at his official residence.
When asked by a reporter if “football was coming home” — a reference to England’s chances of winning the World Cup — Harry triggered laughter when he answered with a grin: “Most definitely.”
The royal couple also visited the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the scene of the Bloody Sunday massacre committed by British troops against civilians in 1920.
Harry said Tuesday that he hoped to take the opportunity to reflect on the “difficult passages” in the history between Britain and Ireland.
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