Month: October 2018

French FinMin: Eurozone not Prepared Enough to Face New Crisis

Posted on by Coeco

There is no risk of contagion from Italy’s budget crisis in the European Union but the euro zone is not prepared enough to face a new economic crisis, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told daily Le Parisien on Sunday.

The European Commission rejected Italy’s draft 2019 budget earlier this week for breaking EU rules on public spending, and asked Rome to submit a new one within three weeks or face disciplinary action.

“We do not see any contagion in Europe. The European Commission has reached out to Italy, I hope Italy will seize this hand,” he said in an interview.

“But is the eurozone sufficiently armed to face a new economic or financial crisis? My answer is no. It is urgent to do what we have proposed to our partners in order to have a solid banking union and a euro zone investment budget.”

Eurozone officials have said that Rome’s unprecedented standoff with Brussels seems certain to delay the reform process and probably dilute it for good.

Le Maire also said French banks with branches in Italy had issued corporate and household loans totaling 280 billion euros ($319 billion).

“This sum is manageable but substantial,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Istanbul to Unveil New Airport, Seeks to be World’s Biggest

Posted on by Coeco

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held plenty of grand opening ceremonies in his 15 years at Turkey’s helm. On Monday he will unveil one of his prized jewels — Istanbul New Airport —

a megaproject that has been dogged by concerns about labor rights, environmental issues and Turkey’s weakening economy.

Erdogan is opening what he claims will eventually become the world’s largest air transport hub on the 95th anniversary of Turkey’s establishment as a republic. It’s a symbolic launch, as only limited flights will begin days later and a full move won’t take place until the end of the year.

 

Tens of thousands of workers have been scrambling to finish the airport to meet Erdogan’s Oct. 29 deadline. Protests in September over poor working conditions and dozens of construction deaths have highlighted the human cost of the project.

 

Istanbul New Airport, on shores of the Black Sea, will serve 90 million passengers annually in its first phase. At its completion in ten years, it will occupy nearly 19,000 acres and serve up to 200 million travelers a year with six runways. That’s almost double the traffic at world’s biggest airport currently, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson.

 

“This airport is going to be the most important hub between Asia and Europe,” Kadri Samsunlu, head of the 5-company consortium Istanbul Grand Airport, told reporters Thursday.

 

The airport’s interiors nod to Turkish and Islamic designs and its tulip-shaped air traffic control tower won the 2016 International Architecture Award. It also uses mobile applications and artificial intelligence for customers, is energy efficient and boasts a high-tech security system.

 

All aviation operations will move there at the end of December when Istanbul’s main international airport, named after Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is closed down. Ataturk Airport now handles 64 million people a year. On the Asian side of the city, Sabiha Gokcen Airport handled 31 million passengers last year. It will remain open.

 

Erdogan is expected to announce the official name of the new airport, part of his plan to transform Turkey into a global player.

 

Turkish Airlines will launch its first flights out of the new airport to three local destinations: Ankara, Antalya and Izmir. It will also fly to Baku and Ercan in northern Cyprus.

 

Nihat Demir, head of a construction workers’ union, said the rush to meet Erdogan’s deadline has been a major cause of the accidents and deaths at the site that employs 36,000 people.

 

“The airport has become a cemetery,” he told The Associated Press, describing the pressure to finish as relentless and blaming long working hours for leading to “carelessness, accidents and deaths.”

 

The Dev-Yapi-Is union has identified 37 worker deaths at the site and claimed more than 100 dead remain unidentified.

 

Turkey’s Ministry of Labor has denied media reports about hundreds of airport construction deaths, saying in February that 27 workers had died at the site due to “health problems and traffic accidents.” It has not commented since then.

 

Airport workers in September began a strike against poor working conditions, including unpaid salaries, bedbugs, unsafe food and inadequate transport to the site. Security forces rounded up hundreds of workers and formally arrested nearly 30, among them union leaders. The company said it was working to improve conditions.

 

Megaprojects in northern Istanbul like the airport, the third bridge connecting Istanbul’s Asian and European shores and Erdogan’s yet-to-start plans for a man-made canal parallel to the Bosporus strait are also impacting the environment. The environmental group Northern Forests Defense said the new airport has destroyed forests, wetlands and coastal sand dunes and threatens biodiversity.

 

These projects are spurring additional construction of transportation networks, housing and business centers in already overpopulated Istanbul, where more than 15 million people live. Samsunlu, the airport executive, said an “airport city” for innovation and technology would also be built.

 

The five Turkish companies that won the $29 billion tender in 2013 under the “build-operate-transfer” model have been financing the project through capital and bank loans. IGA will operate the airport for 25 years.

 

Financial observers say lending has fueled much of Turkey’s growth and its construction boom, leaving the private sector with a huge $200 billion debt. With inflation and unemployment in Turkey at double digits and a national currency that has lost as much as 40 percent of its value against the dollar this year, economists say Turkey is clearly facing an economic downturn.

 

Despite those dark financial clouds, the airport consortium hopes the world’s growing aviation industry will generate both jobs and billions of dollars in returns.

 

“Istanbul New Airport will remain ambitious for growth and we will carry on mastering the challenge to be the biggest and the best. That’s our motto,” Samsunlu said.

 

 
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Author Ntozake Shange of ‘For Colored Girls’ Fame Dies

Posted on by Corts

Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed theater piece is the 1975 Tony Award-nominated play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,” died Saturday, according to her daughter. She was 70.

Shange’s “For Colored Girls” describes the racism, sexism, violence and rape experienced by seven black women. It has been influential to generations of progressive thinkers, from #MeToo architect Tarana Burke to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. After learning of Shange’s death, Nottage called her “our warrior poet/dramatist.”

Embodies the ‘struggle of black women’

Savannah Shange, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said Saturday that her mother died in her sleep at an assisted living facility in Bowie, Maryland. She had suffered a series of strokes in 2004.

“She spoke for, and in fact embodied, the ongoing struggle of black women and girls to live with dignity and respect in the context of systemic racism, sexism and oppression,” Savannah Shange said.

“For Colored Girls” is an interwoven series of poetic monologues set to music, Shange coined the form a “choreopoem” for it, by African-American women, each identified only by a color that she wears.

Shange used idiosyncratic punctuation and nonstandard spellings in her work, challenging conventions. One of her characters shouts, “i will raise my voice / & scream & holler / & break things & race the engine / & tell all yr secrets bout yrself to yr face.”

It played more than 750 performances on Broadway, only the second play by an African-American woman after “A Raisin in the Sun,” and was turned into a feature film by Tyler Perry starring Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington and Janet Jackson.

Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, she went on to graduate from Barnard College and got a master’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her father, Dr. Paul T. Williams, was a surgeon. Her mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work. She later assumed a new Zulu name: Ntozake means “She who comes with her own things” and Shange means “She who walks like a lion.”

Plays, poetry, teaching

“For Colored Girls” opened at the Public Theater in downtown Manhattan, with Shange, then 27, performing as one of the women. The New York Times reviewer called it “extraordinary and wonderful” and “a very humbling but inspiring thing for a white man to experience.” It earned Shange an Obie Award and she won a second such award in 1981 for her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” at the Public Theater.

Shange’s other 15 plays include “A Photograph: A Study of Cruelty” (1977), “Boogie Woogie Landscapes” (1977), “Spell No. 7” (1979) and “Black and White Two Dimensional Planes” (1979).

Her list of published works includes 19 poetry collections, six novels, five children’s books and three collections of essays. Some of her novels are “Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo” (1982) and “Some Sing, Some Cry,” with her sister, Ifa Bayeza. Her poetry collections include “I Live in Music” (1994) and “The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family” (2004). She appeared in an episode of “Transparent” and helped narrate the 2002 documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.”

She worked with such black theater companies as the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco; the New Freedom Theater in Philadelphia; Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey; St. Louis Black Rep; Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota; and The Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Texas.

Shange taught at Brown University, Rice University, Villanova University, DePaul University, Prairie View University and Sonoma State University. She also lectured at Yale, Howard, New York University, among others.

In addition to her daughter and sister, Shange is survived by sister Bisa Williams, brother Paul T. Williams, Jr. and a granddaughter, Harriet Shange-Watkins.
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Los Angeles Marks American Tradition with ‘Pumpkin Nights’

Posted on by Corts

Traditionally, the U.S. turns to all things pumpkin as Halloween approaches at the end of October. Coffeeshops sell pumpkin spiced lattes, grocery stores offer pumpkin-scented paper towels, and markets, porches, even the White House are all decorated with carved pumpkins. One California city decided to celebrate the spookiest night of the year with its own pumpkin craze: pumpkin nights! Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Rare Horse Breed Revived for Choctaw Nation

Posted on by Corts

A stallion in southwest Mississippi is bringing the first new blood in a century for a line of horses brought to America 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadors. The stallion was bred by Choctaw Indians, who were later forced out of their ancestral homelands. Faith Lapidus has the story.
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Teen’s Program Could Improve Pancreatic Cancer Treatment

Posted on by Cobiz

Pancreatic cancer treatment could become more advanced with help from 13-year-old Rishab Jain. He’s created a tool for doctors to locate the hard-to-find pancreas more quickly and precisely during cancer treatment. The teen recently won a prestigious young scientist award for his potentially game-changing idea. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Marie Antoinette Jewels on Display in New York Before Sotheby’s Auction

Posted on by Corts

Pearls, diamonds and history one of the most beautiful and historic jewelry collections will go to auction in November when Marie Antoinette’s jewels will be sold at Sotheby’s in Geneva. But for now, the breathtaking royal jewels are on display in New York. VOA’s Evgeny Maslov looked at a collection that hasn’t been seen in public for more than 200 years. Anna Rice narrates his story.
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China to Give Pakistan ‘Grant’ as UAE Mulls $6B in Aid

Posted on by Coeco

China plans to provide an unspecified financial “grant” to Pakistan while the United Arab Emirates is actively considering Islamabad’s request for a fiscal relief package of up to $6 billion to help the country deal with a looming balance-of-payments crisis, Chinese and Pakistani officials say.  

News of the anticipated financial aid came days after Prime Minister Imran Khan secured more than $6 billion in immediate financial support from Pakistan’s close ally, Saudi Arabia, during an official visit to Riyadh. 

Pakistan urgently needs foreign currency to shore up its depleting reserves of less than $8 billion, which is barely enough for servicing its debt and paying import bills. 

Khan’s nascent government, which took office two months ago and has inherited a debt-ridden national economy, estimates the country urgently needs about $12 billion to fulfill domestic and external liabilities. 

Khan is to travel to Beijing Nov. 2-5 on his first official visit to the country, where he is scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping and his Chinese counterpart. 

Chinese diplomats in Islamabad have announced ahead of Khan’s visit that it will result in “good news” in terms of securing financial assistance for Pakistan. 

“During the visit of the prime minister, we will provide, hopefully, a grant to the Pakistani government. Please look forward to the outcome of this visit. There will be more good news to follow,” said Deputy Chinese Ambassador Lijian Zhao, when asked whether Beijing would provide Khan financial assistance similar to the package the Saudis have pledged. He declined to speculate on the size of the grant. 

Under the Saudi deal, Riyadh will deposit $3 billion in the coming days with the central State Bank of Pakistan for one year, as balance-of-payments support. Additionally, Saudi Arabia will export oil to Islamabad worth more than $3 billion on a deferred-payment basis over the next three years. 

Khan’s government has rejected reports of any conditions attached to the Saudi aid package. 

Federal Minister Haroon Sharif, chairman of the Board of Investment, said Saturday that the Pakistani government had formally submitted a financial request to a visiting UAE delegation similar to what Saudis have pledged. The Gulf state, he noted, is one of the biggest oil suppliers to Pakistan. 

The minister told local Dunya TV the UAE delegation “positively” noted the Pakistani request and has promised to return with possible options in the next few days.

“It is expected to be a good package. I am unable to share the figures, but I think it would more or less be similar to the one Saudi Arabia has announced [for Pakistan],” said Sharif, who accompanied Khan during his visit to Saudi Arabia and will be part of the Pakistani delegation traveling to China. 

​IMF bailout plan 

In addition to pushing friendly countries to provide fiscal relief, Khan’s government has also turned to the International Monetary Fund to seek a bailout package. Formal talks are scheduled to begin in Islamabad on Nov. 7. Pakistan has taken advantage of repeated IMF bailouts in the past several decades. 

Analysts say the Saudi financial package and expected aid from both China and the UAE will most likely boost Pakistan’s negotiating position and may mean the country will require a smaller IMF arrangement. 

During Khan’s visit to Beijing, officials said the two countries would sign “many agreements” to boost trade and investment ties and launch the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is the flagship of Xi’s global Road and Belt Initiative. 

The two sides will sign a framework for launching industrial cooperation under CPEC and increasing Pakistani exports to China. 

CPEC, Khan’s visit to China 

The United States has persistently expressed concerns about the Chinese infrastructure and connectivity initiative, saying they are burdening partner nations like Pakistan with debt. The U.S. also criticized a lack of transparency about the terms of contracts under the infrastructure initiative and consequent effects on the economy, said Henry Ensher, acting deputy assistant secretary of state. 

He acknowledged in a speech in Washington this month the importance of China-led initiative. “But that role ought to be done, ought to be played in accordance with usual rules about the transparency and accountability so that people in countries that cooperate with China can see clearly what they are signing up for,” Ensher said. 

U.S. officials have already cautioned the IMF about entering into an arrangement with Pakistan, citing CPEC loans as a main factor for the country’s debt crisis and suspecting the IMF money would be used to pay back China. 

Islamabad and Beijing have vehemently rejected Washington’s assertions as “misplaced” and “irrelevant.” Both countries acknowledge Chinese loans under CPEC are just over 6 percent of Pakistan’s total domestic and external debts of about $95 billion.  

Since launching CPEC in 2013, China has invested $19 billion in Pakistan, building or upgrading its transportation network and power plants and putting into operation the key Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. 

The mega-project is expected to bring more than $62 billion to Pakistan in Chinese investment by 2030, ultimately linking Gwadar to the landlocked western Chinese region of Xinjiang and giving Beijing the shortest secure access to international markets. 

“We are building these projects totally based on mutual consultation and also mutual sharing. … Definitely, there is no private interest or unilateral interest from the Chinese side. We believe all the projects are mutually beneficial,” Yao Jing, Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, told reporters at the sprawling Chinese Embassy on Friday.  
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Somali Medical Pioneer Continues Battle to Stop FGM

Posted on by Cosc

When she was a young girl, Edna Adan Ismail’s mother and grandmother circumcised her in a traditional ceremony while her father, a doctor, was away.

That evening, he returned home, enraged at what had happened. “What have you done?” he asked Ismail’s mother and grandmother. Cutting the young girl, he said, was “haraam” — a sin.

She was only seven or eight, but Ismail knew what had happened was wrong. The event, and her father’s reaction, would have a lasting impact.

Medical trailblazer

Years later, Ismail followed in her father’s footsteps, pursuing a career in medicine. She studied abroad and became a pioneer in health care in Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia.

 

In 1965, the World Health Organization made Ismail the first Somali appointed to a senior civil servant position. She spent decades with the organization working in Somalia, Somaliland and Djibouti, and caring for patients from across the Horn of Africa, many of whom were refugees.

 

In 1976, Ismail attended a health conference in Sudan that changed her next steps. Ismail, then a director in Somaliland’s Ministry of Health, had traveled with a team of doctors to learn about developments in the field.

 

At the conference, Ismail heard, for the first time, people in a Muslim country openly discuss the harm caused by female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation, or FGM.

For Ismail, the discussions were a revelation. Back home, talking about FGM, let alone its harms, was taboo.

 

But Ismail knew there was another way. In England, where Ismail studied and practiced medicine, women weren’t subjected to FGM, and they gave birth with few complications.

 

But Ismail didn’t believe the practice could be stopped in Somaliland, where she had returned in 1961 as the country’s first qualified nurse and midwife.

 

“I saw the difficulties, and the tears, and the lacerations, and the fistulas,” Ismail said. “This created in me this anger about this damage.”

 

Ismail knew the practice was wrong. But she couldn’t break through the silence.

 

That changed after the Sudan conference, where doctors, nurses and midwives discussed the physical and psychological toll of the traditional practice. They shared steps that health care workers could take to lessen suffering. They made FGM defeatable.

 

Ismail knew she could do more. She returned home and co-founded a group to eradicate the procedure. She also began speaking up.

 

“I was the first person who publicly spoke about the harmful effects of female circumcision,” Ismail told VOA in a recent studio interview in Washington. The practice, she added, “is the most harmful thing that can happen to a girl.”

 

‘Little girls are still being cut’

 

Ismail retired in 1997 and built a hospital a year later in Hargeisa, Somaliland, with her personal savings. The facility opened in 2002. “It was a natural thing to do,” Ismail said.

Doctors and nurses at the facility, also a teaching hospital, treat patients from Somaliland, Somalia and Ethiopia. As a center for learning and caring, the hospital is “a symbol of what we need to do in our countries,” Ismail said. “I’m so privileged and so happy that I could also influence so many others and be an example for others to come back,” she added.

 

After retirement, Ismail contributed in other ways, in 2003, she became Somaliland’s foreign minister, a post she held until 2006. Now in her 80s, Ismail continues to direct the hospital.

 

But she knows there’s work left to do. “Little girls are still being cut,” she said.

 

Often, it’s women — mothers, grandmothers, aunts — directly responsible for FGM, which 200 million women and girls alive today have experienced, the World Health Organization estimates.

 

But men have a vital role to play in stopping the practice. “Fathers must come into it,” Ismail said, “the same way my father objected.”

 

Legal mechanisms must also be used, Ismail said. Countries where FGM rates remain high have, in some cases, passed laws banning at least the most severe forms of the procedure, but enforcement is key.

 

Fathers should be taken to court if their daughters are harmed, Ismail said, forcing all parts of society to face the issue. “It’s a battle that needs to be fought by both men and women — and communities and governments — together.”

 

At her own hospital, Ismail has seen progress. In 2002, 98 percent of the women who delivered babies had experienced FGM. That number had fallen to 76 percent several years later.

 

But Ismail isn’t satisfied. “Zero percent is what we want,” she said.

 
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Chilean Youths with Down Syndrome Create Gourmet Goodies

Posted on by Cosc

A group of Chilean youths with Down syndrome are gaining important life skills as they learn to plant, grow and sell their own fresh vegetables, and create delicious marmalades and preserves, which they sell for profit. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Plant Fibers Make Stronger Concrete

Posted on by Cobiz

It may surprise you that cement is responsible for 7 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s because it takes a lot of heat to produce the basic powdery base of cement that eventually becomes concrete. But it turns out that simple fibers from carrots could not only reduce that carbon footprint but also make concrete stronger. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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20 Years After His Murder, Matthew Shepard Laid to Rest in National Cathedral

Posted on by Corts

A little more than 20 years after he was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, the remains of Matthew Shepard were laid to rest Friday at Washington’s National Cathedral. Shepard was openly gay, and the aftermath of his brutal killing helped drive change in the United States to include sexual orientation when prosecutors press hate crime charges. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington.
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Megyn Kelly’s Show Canceled After Blackface Remarks

Posted on by Corts

Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News Channel personality who made a rocky transition to softer news at NBC, was fired from her morning show Friday after triggering a furor by suggesting it was OK for white people to wear blackface at Halloween.

“‘Megyn Kelly Today’ is not returning,” NBC News said in a statement. The show occupied the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” program, a time slot that will be hosted by other co-anchors next week, the network said.

NBC didn’t address Kelly’s future at the network. But negotiations over her exit from NBC are underway, according to a person familiar with the talks who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Kelly, said in a statement that she “remains an employee of NBC News and discussions about next steps are continuing.” He did not elaborate.

$20 million a year

Kelly is in the second year of a three-year contract that reportedly pays her more than $20 million a year.

The show’s cancellation came four days after she provoked a firestorm for her on-air comments about blackface as a costume.

“But what is racist?” Kelly said Tuesday. “Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”

Critics accused her of ignoring the ugly history of minstrel shows and movies in which whites applied blackface to mock blacks as lazy, ignorant or cowardly.

Kelly apologized to fellow NBC staffers later in the day and made a tearful apology on her show Wednesday. She did not host new episodes of “Megyn Kelly Today” as scheduled Thursday and Friday.

Awkward start at softer news

Kelly, 47, made her debut as a NBC morning host in September 2017, taking over the 9 a.m. slot at “Today” and saying she wanted viewers “to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear and maybe a little hope to start your day.” She did cooking demonstrations and explored emotional topics. 

 

She largely floundered with that soft-news focus, and a pair of awkward and hostile interviews with Hollywood figures Jane Fonda and Debra Messing backfired. Kelly briefly found more of a purpose with the eruption of the #MeToo movement.

She made news when interviewing women who accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior and spoke with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and others, as well as women who say they were harassed on Capitol Hill.

Time magazine, which honored “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year, cited Kelly as the group’s leader in the entertainment field. The episode with Trump accusers had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of her biggest audiences.

Lower ratings

But strains continued behind the scenes. Kelly last month publicly called for NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack to appoint outside investigators to look into why the network didn’t air Ronan Farrow’s stories about Weinstein and allowed Farrow to take the material to The New Yorker.

And her ratings have been consistently down from what “Today” garnered in the 9 a.m. hour before Kelly came on board. In its first year, Kelly’s show averaged 2.4 million viewers a day, a drop of 400,000 from the year before.

The latest controversy may have tipped the balance. Both NBC’s “Nightly News” and “Today” did stories on her blackface comment, and weatherman Al Roker said Kelly “owes a big apology to people of color across the country.”

A former corporate defense attorney, Kelly made her name at Fox News discussing politics in prime time. During the first GOP debate in 2015, she asked Trump about calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” Trump later complained about her questions, saying, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

Fox News baggage

Although Kelly may have attempted a fresh start at NBC, she couldn’t always escape her baggage.

Many of her former Fox News Channel viewers were upset by her perceived disloyalty in leaving and her clashes with Trump during the campaign. At the same time, her former association with Fox caused some NBC colleagues and viewers to regard her with suspicion.

While at Fox, Kelly cultivated a reputation for toughness and a willingness to challenge conservative orthodoxy. Her private testimony about former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes’ unwanted sexual advances a decade ago helped lead to Ailes’ firing.

She also created controversy with her stance on race. In 2013, while an anchor at Fox, Kelly addressed the ethnicity of Santa Claus by saying: “For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.”
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Q&A: Facebook Describes How It Detects ‘Inauthentic Behavior’

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook announced Friday that it had removed 82 Iranian-linked accounts on Facebook and Instagram. A Facebook spokesperson answered VOA’s questions about its process and efforts to detect what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior” by accounts pretending to be U.S. and U.K. citizens and aimed at U.S. and U.K. audiences.

Q: Facebook’s post says there were 7 “events hosted.” Any details about where, when, who?

A: Of seven events, the first was scheduled for February 2016, and the most recent was scheduled for June 2018. One hundred and ten people expressed interest in at least one of these events, and two events received no interest. We cannot confirm whether any of these events actually occurred. Some appear to have been planned to occur only online. The themes are similar to the rest of the activity we have described.

Q: Is there any indication this was an Iranian government-linked program?

A: We recently discussed the challenges involved with determining who is behind information operations. In this case, we have not been able to determine any links to the Iranian government, but we are continuing to investigate. Also, Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has shared their take on the content in this case here.

​Q: How long was the time between discovering this and taking down the pages?

A: We first detected this activity one week ago. As soon as we detected this activity, the teams in our elections war room worked quickly to investigate and remove these bad actors. Given the elections, we took action as soon as we’d completed our initial investigation and shared the information with U.S. and U.K. government officials, U.S. law enforcement, Congress, other technology companies and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Q: How have you improved the reporting processes in the past year to speed the ability to remove such content?

A: Just to clarify, today’s takedown was a result of our teams proactively discovering suspicious signals on a page that appeared to be run by Iranian users. From there, we investigated and found the set of pages, groups and accounts that we removed today.

To your broader question on how we’ve improved over the past two years: To ensure that we stay ahead, we’ve invested heavily in better technology and more people. There are now over 20,000 people working on safety and security at Facebook, and thanks to improvements in artificial intelligence we detect many fake accounts, the root cause of so many issues, before they are even created. We’re also working more closely with governments, law enforcement, security experts and other companies because no one organization can do this on its own.

Q: How many people do you have monitoring content in English now? In Persian?

A: We have over 7,500 content reviewers globally. We don’t provide breakdowns of the number of people working in specific languages or regions because that alone doesn’t reflect the number of people working to review content for a particular country or region at any particular time.

Q: How are you training people to spot this content? What’s the process?

A: To be clear, today’s takedown was the result of an internal investigation involving a combination of manual work by our teams of skilled investigators and data science teams using automated tools to look for larger patterns to identify potentially inauthentic behavior. In this case, we relied on both of these techniques working together.

On your separate question about training content reviewers, here is more on our content reviewers and how we support them.

Q: Does Facebook have any more information on how effective this messaging is at influencing behavior?

A: We aren’t in a position to know.
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Equities’ Slide Sends Bonds Higher, Dents Greenback

Posted on by Coeco

Stock markets around the world tumbled Friday while U.S. Treasury prices rose along with demand for safer bets as better-than-expected U.S. economic data did little to ease anxiety over disappointing corporate profits and trade wars.

Wall Street closed above its session lows, but earnings reports from Amazon.com and Alphabet, issued late Thursday, rekindled a rush to dump technology and other growth sectors.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 1.19 percent. The global index went 13.7 percent below its Jan. 26 record close and clocked its fifth straight week of consecutive losses for the first time since May 2013.

With equities whip-sawing each day in reaction to the last big earnings beat or miss, investors braced for more volatility through the remainder of the U.S. earnings season and ahead of the Nov. 6 U.S. midterm congressional elections.

“Once the elections and earnings are out of the way we’ll have a calmer market but not necessarily a big move up,” said Ernesto Ramos, portfolio manager for BMO Global Asset Management in Chicago.

“Investors are anxious about 2019 earnings. They know 2018 is going to be phenomenal,” he said. “There’s been a lot of panic selling. One of the things you don’t want to do is buy or sell based on emotion. … The volatility is incredible.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 296.24 points, or 1.19 percent, to 24,688.31; the S&P 500 lost 46.88 points, or 1.73 percent, to 2,658.69; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 151.12 points, or 2.07 percent, to 7,167.21.

There was some support from data that showed third-quarter U.S. economic growth slowing less than expected as a tariff-related drop in soybean exports was partially offset by the strongest consumer spending in nearly four years.

But while U.S. Treasury yields initially rose after the data, stock market volatility caused them to reverse course and fall to a three-week low.

Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 15/32 in price to yield 3.0793 percent, from 3.136 percent late Thursday.

The U.S. dollar slid alongside stocks after rising to a two-month high in morning trade after the GDP data.

The dollar index fell 0.35 percent, with the euro up 0.28 percent to $1.1406.

Doubt grew about whether the U.K. and the European Union can clinch a Brexit deal. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Friday that Brexit talks were on hold because Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet was not close enough to agreement on how to proceed.

The Japanese yen strengthened 0.52 percent versus the greenback at 111.83 per dollar, while sterling was last trading at $1.2834, up 0.15 percent on the day.

European and Asian stocks had led the way lower. The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.77 percent and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped one percent, hitting its lowest level since February 2017.

Bear markets — a price drop of 20 percent or more from recent peaks — have increased across indexes and individual stocks since the start of this year.

Oil prices rose Friday, supported by expectations that sanctions on Iran would tighten global supplies, but futures posted a weekly drop as a slump in stock markets and concerns about trade wars clouded the fuel demand outlook.

U.S. crude settled at $67.59 per barrel, up 0.4 percent, and Brent settled up 1 percent to $77.62 on the day.

Spot gold added 0.2 percent to $1,233.95 an ounce.
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Study: Online Attacks on Jews Ramp Up Before Election Day

Posted on by Cobiz

Far-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates and others ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections, according to a report released Friday by a Jewish civil rights group.

The Anti-Defamation League’s report says its researchers analyzed more than 7.5 million Twitter messages from Aug. 31 to Sept. 17 and found nearly 30 percent of the accounts repeatedly tweeting derogatory terms about Jews appeared to be automated “bots.”

But accounts controlled by real-life humans often mount the most “worrisome and harmful” anti-Semitic attacks, sometimes orchestrated by leaders of neo-Nazi or white nationalist groups, the researchers said.

“Both anonymity and automation have been used in online propaganda offensives against the Jewish community during the 2018 midterms,” they wrote.

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros was a leading subject of harassing tweets. Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew demonized by right-wing conspiracy theorists, is one of the prominent Democrats who had pipe bombs sent to them this week.

The ADL’s study concludes online disinformation and abuse is disproportionately targeting Jews in the U.S. “during this crucial political moment.”

“Prior to the election of President Donald Trump, anti-Semitic harassment and attacks were rare and unexpected, even for Jewish Americans who were prominently situated in the public eye. Following his election, anti-Semitism has become normalized and harassment is a daily occurrence,” the report says.

The New York City-based ADL has commissioned other studies of online hate, including a report in May that estimated about 3 million Twitter users posted or re-posted at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in English over a 12-month period ending Jan. 28. An earlier report from the group said anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in the previous year had reached the highest tally it has counted in more than two decades.

For the latest report, researchers interviewed five Jewish people, including two recent political candidates, who had faced “human-based attacks” against them on social media this year. Their experiences demonstrated that anti-Semitic harassment “has a chilling effect on Jewish Americans’ involvement in the public sphere,” their report says.

“While each interview subject spoke of not wanting to let threats of the trolls affect their online activity, political campaigns, academic research or news reporting, they all admitted the threats of violence and deluges of anti-Semitism had become part of their internal equations,” researchers wrote.

The most popular term used in tweets containing #TrumpTrain was “Soros.” The study also found a “surprising” abundance of tweets referencing “QAnon,” a right-wing conspiracy theory that started on an online message board and has been spread by Trump supporters.

“There are strong anti-Semitic undertones, as followers decry George Soros and the Rothschild family as puppeteers,” researchers wrote.
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Facebook Removes 82 Iranian-Linked Accounts

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook announced Friday that it has removed 82 accounts, pages or groups from its site and Instagram that originated in Iran, with some of the account owners posing as residents of the United States or Britain and tweeting about liberal politics.

At least one of the Facebook pages had more than one million followers, the firm said. The company said it did not know if the coordinated behavior was tied to the Iranian government. Less than $100 in advertising on Facebook and Instagram was spent to amplify the posts, the firm said.

The company said in a post titled “Taking Down Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Iran” that some of the accounts and pages were tied to ones taken down in August.

“Today we removed multiple pages, groups and accounts that originated in Iran for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram,” the firm said. “This is when people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing.”

Monitoring online activity

Facebook says it has ramped up its monitoring of the authenticity of accounts in the runup to the U.S. midterm election, with more than 20,000 people working on safety and security. The social media firm says it has created an election “war room” on the campus to monitor behavior it deems “inauthentic.”

Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy for Facebook, said that the behavior was coordinated and originated in Iran.

The posts appeared as if they were being made by citizens in the United States and in a few cases, in Britain. The posts were of “politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the president, and immigration.”

In terms of the reach of the posts, “about 1.02 million accounts followed at least one of these Pages, about 25,000 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and more than 28,000 accounts followed at least one of these Instagram accounts.”

A more advanced approach

The company released some images related to the accounts. 

An analysis of 10 Facebook pages and 14 Instagram accounts by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab concluded the pages and accounts were newer, and more advanced, than another batch of Iranian-linked pages and accounts that were removed in August.

“These assets were designed to engage in, rather than around, the political dialogue,” the lab’s Ben Nimmo and Graham Brookie wrote. “Their behavior showed how much they had adapted from earlier operations, focusing more on social media than third party websites.”

And those behind the accounts appeared to have learned a lesson from Russia’s ongoing influence campaign.

“One main aim of the Iranian group of accounts was to inflame America’s partisan divides,” the analysis said. “The tone of the comments added to the posts suggests that this had some success.”

Targeting U.S. midterm voters

Some of the accounts and pages directly targeted the upcoming U.S. elections, showing individuals talking about how they voted or calling on others to vote.

Most were aimed at a liberal audience.

“Proud to say that my first ever vote was for @BetoORourke,” said one post from an account called “No racism no war,” which had 412,000 likes and about half a million followers.

“Get your ass out and VOTE!!! Do your part,” said another post shared by the same account.

U.S. intelligence and national security officials have repeatedly warned of efforts by countries like Iran and China, in addition to Russia, to influence and interfere with U.S. elections next month and in 2020.

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who is a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Facebook’s decision to pull down the questionable pages and accounts and share the information with the public is critical to “keeping users aware of and inoculated against such foreign influence campaigns.”

“Facebook’s discovery and exposure of additional nefarious Iranian activity on its platforms so close to the midterms is an important reminder that both the public and private sector have a shared responsibility to remain vigilant as foreign entities continue their attempts to influence our political dialogue online,” Schiff said in a statement.

But not all the Iranian material was focused on the U.S. midterm election.

“These accounts masqueraded primarily as American liberals, posting only small amounts of anti-Saudi and anti-Israeli content,” the Digital Forensic Research Lab said.

A number of posts also took aim at U.S. policy in the Middle East in general. One post by @sut_racism, accused Ivanka Trump of having “the blood of Dead Children on Her Hands.”

Still, the analysts said many of the posts also contained errors that gave away their non-U.S. origins. For example, in one post talking about the deaths of U.S. soldiers in World War II, the account’s authors used a photo of Soviet soldiers.

Michelle Quinn contributed to this report.
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US Stocks Plunge, Then Recover Some Ground Friday

Posted on by Coeco

U.S. stock market indexes fell sharply in Friday’s early trading, but saw losses ease later in the day. 

At one point the S&P 500 and the Dow were down by two percent or more, while the NASDAQ was off by 3.5 percent at one point. 

Investors worried about faltering growth, rising interest rates, trade tensions, and weak profit outlook for major tech firms, including Amazon and Google’s parent company.

By afternoon, losses moderated with the S&P off by 1.3 percent, the Dow down six-tenths of a percent, and the NASDAQ sliding 1.9 percent. 

Key European indexes dropped about one percent.Earlier in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was off a bit more than one percent, while Japan’s Nikkei moved down four-tenths of a percent.

The market turbulence comes at the same time as U.S. unemployment is low, and reports show growth and consumer confidence are strong.
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US Economy Grew at Strong 3.5 Percent Rate in 3rd Quarter

Posted on by Coeco

The U.S. economy grew at a robust annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September quarter as the strongest burst of consumer spending in nearly four years helped offset a sharp drag from trade. 

The Commerce Department said Friday that the third quarter’s gross domestic product, the country’s total output of goods and services, followed an even stronger 4.2 percent rate of growth in the second quarter. The two quarters marked the strongest consecutive quarters of growth since 2014.

The result was slightly higher than many economists had been projecting. It was certain to be cited by President Donald Trump as evidence his economic policies are working. But some private economists worry that the recent stock market declines could be a warning signal of a coming slowdown.

The GDP report along with next week’s unemployment report for October are the last major looks at the economy before voters go to the polls in the mid-term elections.

For this year, economists are projecting the momentum built up should result in growth of 3 percent, the best annual showing in 13 years. But they believe the impact of Trump’s trade war with China and rising interest rates will slow growth in 2019 to around 2.4 percent, with a further decline to under 2 percent in 2020.

“I think we will see a significant slowdown, in part because economic growth has been raised to an artificially high level by the tax cuts,” said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at SS Economics in Los Angeles.

Trump in recent weeks has accelerated his attacks on the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates, contending that the higher rates by slowing the economy will work against his efforts to speed up growth through the $1.5 trillion tax cut package Trump got Congress to pass last year.

“Every time we do something great, he raises interest rates,” Trump said in an interview this week with the Wall Street Journal in which he again said he viewed the Fed as the “biggest risk” facing the economy “because I think interest rates are being raised too quickly.”

The central bank has raised rates three times this year and signaled it will raise rates one more time this year and expect to raise rates three times in 2019. Those moves are being made to ensure that tight labor markets, with unemployment at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent, and strong growth don’t trigger unwanted inflation.

The GDP report Friday was the government’s first of three reviews of overall economic activity for the July-September period.

The report showed that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, surged at an annual rate of 4 percent in the third quarter, even better than the 3.8 percent gain in the second quarter and the best showing since last 2014.

Trade, which had boosted second quarter growth by 1.2 percentage points, shaved 1.8 percentage points off growth in the third quarter. Exports, which had surged at a 9.3 percent rate in the second quarter, fell at a 3.5 percent rate in the third quarter. Analysts had forecast this turn-around, saying it reflected the surge in exports of goods such as soybeans in the spring as producers tried to beat the higher tariffs being imposed by China in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs.

Another big swing factor in the third quarter was business restocking of their shelves. Inventories had trimmed 1 percentage point off growth in the second quarter but boosted growth by 2 percentage points in the third quarter.

Housing continued to be a drag, falling for a third straight quarter. Business investment, which had surged at an 8.7 percent rage in the second quarter, slowed to a small 0.8 percent gain the third quarter.
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Sources: Honda Mulls Moving US-Bound Fit Production to Japan

Posted on by Coeco

Honda Motor Co is considering shifting production of its U.S.-bound Fit subcompact cars to Japan from Mexico in a few years, partly due to a new North American trade agreement, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters.

Fit cars for export to the United States are now made at Honda’s auto plant in Celaya, Mexico. The Celaya plant also makes HR-V sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for the U.S. market.

A Honda spokesman said the company had not made any decisions on Fit production.

The new trilateral deal, which replaces the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is set to raise the minimum North American content for cars to qualify for duty-free market access to 75 percent from 62.5 percent.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants the deal to shrink the U.S. trade deficit by curbing imports into the United States and boosting production of foreign-branded vehicles there.

But the terms of the trade deal reduce Honda’s incentive to produce the Fit in Mexico for the U.S. and European markets, said the sources, one of whom has direct knowledge of the plan and the other who was briefed on it.

They declined to be identified as the matter was still confidential.

In addition, they said, U.S. consumers are increasingly shifting to SUVs, making it more advantageous for the Mexico plant to build those, rather than subcompacts.

One of the sources said if Honda decides to shift production, it would come when the company launches its next Fit model in the next few years.
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Most Popular Halloween Candy in Each US State

Posted on by Corts

Americans are expected to spend about $9 billion on Halloween this year as they buy costumes, decorations, greeting cards and candy for the annual Oct. 31 event.

The National Retail Federation estimates that more than 175 million Americans are planning to participate in Halloween activities this year, spending about $3.2 billion on costumes, $2.7 billion on decorations, and $2.6 billion on candy.

Bulk candy dealer CandyStore.com looked through 11 years of data to come up with the favorite Halloween candy in each U.S. state.

Overall, Skittles, M&M’s and Snickers top the list.

Americans who plan on buying candy for Halloween are expected to spend an average of $27 for the sweet treats. Trick-or-treaters in Oregon might be among the luckiest kids in America because giving out full-sized candy bars has become the norm in the northwest state.

The bulk candy dealer also came up with a list of the worst Halloween candy Candy corn, Tootsie Rolls and Smarties make the list.

The most popular costumes for kids include princess, superhero and Batman. Adults are partial to witch, vampire and zombie looks.

And even America’s pets are getting into the action. Pet owners plan to dress their little animal friends as pumpkins, hotdogs and bumblebees, according to the National Retail Federation.
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‘Hunter Killer’ Depicts 21st Century Naval Warfare

Posted on by Corts

Since the 20th century, submarine movies have reflected the times. World War II gave rise to nerve-wracking thrillers such as the German “Das Boot.” Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” and “Crimson Tide” in the 1990s introduced the perilous nuclear submarines of the Cold War. Now, “Hunter-Killer,” is the latest entry from filmmaker Donovan Marsh. It focuses on perils at sea and the delicate balance of power in the Post-Cold War era. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with lead actor Gerard Butler.
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