More than 4,000 exhibitors from 155 countries are in Las Vegas this week for the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the year’s biggest conventions for companies to show off their latest technology. Michelle Quinn got a look at some of the products that are hoping to make a splash.
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Month: January 2019
Giving Up Gas: China’s Shenzhen Switches to Electric Taxis
One of China’s major cities has reached an environmental milestone: an almost entirely electric-powered taxi fleet.
The high-tech hub of Shenzhen in southern China announced at the start of this year that 99 percent of the 21,689 taxis operating in the city were electric. Last year, it still had 7,500 gasoline-powered taxis on the roads. A few can still be found, but electric ones far outnumber them.
The metropolis of 12.5 million is the second to achieve this feat in China and the largest. The northern China city of Taiyuan, with a population of 4.3 million, has had only electric taxis since 2016.
Shenzhen “has taken the lead among major Chinese cities,” said Cui Dongshu, the secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association.
Shenzhen’s bus fleet has been all-electric since 2017. It’s one of 13 pilot cities promoting alternative-energy public transport to cut smog and develop the alternative energy industry, the Shenzhen Municipality Transport Committee said.
Beijing and other Chinese cities are served by legions of electric scooters, bicycles and three-wheeled delivery vehicles that help reduce emissions – and sometimes startle pedestrians with their near-silent operation.
Shenzhen’s 20,000-plus electric taxis will reduce carbon emissions by about 850,000 tons a year, the city’s transport committee said. However, the all-electric initiative doesn’t include Uber-like ride-hailing and ride-sharing services, which are popular in China.
Providing places to recharge taxis has been a big hurdle since Shenzhen rolled out its first 100 electric cabs in 2010. Cui praised the city for its network of about 20,000 public charging stations, which he said should be enough to meet most of the demand.
The electric taxis are equipped with an on-board terminal that tells drivers where taxis are in short supply, such as the airport, train station or other locations. It also clearly displays the fare and the taxi’s route, which the Shenzhen transport committee said would help prevent drivers from overcharging or taking a roundabout route.
Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, is home to Huawei Technologies and a host of other Chinese technology companies.
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Burundian Entrepreneur Develops Line of Cosmetics to Prevent Malaria
Some 435-thousand people died of malaria in 2017, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in Burundi has developed a line of cosmetics that keep mosquitos, which carry malaria, at bay. More from Arash Arabasadi.
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Burundian Entrepreneur Develops Line of Cosmetics to Prevent Malaria
Some 435-thousand people died of malaria in 2017, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in Burundi has developed a line of cosmetics that keep mosquitos, which carry malaria, at bay. More from Arash Arabasadi.
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Zimbabwe’s Hospitals Turn Away Patients as Doctors’ Strike Drags On
Hospitals in Zimbabwe are turning away patients as a strike by doctors enters its sixth week. There is no end in sight to the strike, as President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government says it cannot meet the doctors’ demands.
The Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Zimbabwe’s largest treatment center, is largely empty as a doctors’ strike that began December 1 drags on.
Sixty-nine-year-old Kasirina Zibveka had a lung infection in September, according to her medical records. After numerous tests were done, it was confirmed that her right lung had gone bad and needed to be removed.
But by then, doctors were on strike. She was discharged December 13 and was told to return Monday for the ailing lung to be removed. But with the strike unresolved, that did not happen.
Her daughter, Margret Chikoti, says the family has paid for her treatment, but only nurses are attending to her mother.
“We have no idea what is really happening to her since December 13,” she said. “All we see is her discharging some blood stained stinking fluids [through a hole pierced by nurses under her right breast]. What is happening inside her body? Is it getting worse? We just give her painkillers and use ointment to clean her wound. We hope that their negotiations [doctors and government] bear fruit and they return to work.”
Doctors held a meeting Monday and resolved to remain on strike until their demands are met. The doctors want the government to equip hospitals with modern technology, sufficient medicine and protective clothing for doctors.
They also want to be paid in U.S. dollars instead of Zimbabwe’s depreciating currency, known as bondnotes.
“We will not accept the money that they are refusing. We want the money that buys,” Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association Vice President Marambire Sinaravo Jongwe said this to his members. “We are very understanding people, we are very lenient to our government. They are just trying to ignore us, they are very insincere to doctors. But yet we are saving the public, the general of Zimbabwe. For our patients we care, the government does not care.”
The doctors also say they do not want to prescribe drugs that are not in stock, a practice that forces patients to seek out black market drugs.
The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe has warned about such drugs being fake, expired and unsafe to use.
The government, meanwhile, said last week it is not in a position to pay doctors or any civil servants in U.S. dollars.
Officials say they have imported medicines and are now stocking hospitals. But with doctors still on strike, that news might not be enough to help patients like Kasirina Zibveka.
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US Expresses Optimism About Trade Talks with China
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said there is “a very good chance” that the United States and China will reach a trade agreement.
Ross told CNBC he is hopeful such a deal would address “all the key issues.”
Working-level trade talks between the United States and China began Monday in Beijing with negotiators for the world’s two biggest economies trying to resolve tariff disputes that have roiled world markets in recent weeks.
In a sign the meeting was off to a good start, China’s economic czar, Vice Premier Liu He, dropped by the talks on Monday to encourage the negotiators.
While Chinese officials expressed optimism at the start of the two-day talks, Beijing at the same time complained about the sighting of the U.S.S. McCampbell, a warship, in what it said were Chinese waters near disputed islands in the South China Sea.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China had made “stern complaints” with the United States about the sighting of the destroyer, but the trade talks went ahead as scheduled.
There was no immediate U.S. response to the Chinese complaint.
Few details have emerged from the trade talks, which are scheduled to run through Tuesday.
The trade talks are the result of an agreement last month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to stop the tit-for-tat tariff conflict between the two countries for 90 days starting on New Year’s Day.
Trump said last week, “I think we’ll have a deal with China.”
Lu said the two countries have agreed to hold “positive and constructive” discussions.
“From the beginning we have believed that China U.S. trade friction is not a positive situation for either country or the world economy,” Lu said. “China has the good faith, on the basis of mutual respect and equality, to resolve the bilateral trade frictions.”
The talks are occurring as Chinese growth — 6.5 percent in the July-to-September period — fell to its lowest point in a decade. There are concerns that U.S. growth, 3.4 percent in the third quarter, is also slowing even as the country’s unemployment rate remains nearly at a five-decade low.
Even so, Lu said, “China’s development has ample tenacity and huge potential. We have firm confidence in the strong long-term fundamentals of the Chinese economy.”
The United States has long complained about access to the vast Chinese market and Beijing’s demands U.S. companies reveal their technology advances.
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Chinese Scientist Criticized for Risking ‘Gene-edited’ Babies’ Lives
A leading geneticist who ran the conference where a Chinese scientist said he had made the world’s first “gene-edited” babies condemned him on Monday for potentially jeopardizing lives and having no biology training.
Robin Lovell-Badge, organizer of the November 2018 event where China’s He Jiankui made his controversial presentation, described him as a rich man with a “huge ego” who “wanted to do something he thinks will change the world.”
He Jiankui, associate professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, sparked an international scientific and ethical row when he said he had used a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls born in November.
He could not be immediately reached to respond to Lovell-Badge’s comments. Chinese authorities are investigating him and have meanwhile halted this kind of research.
In videos posted online and at the conference, He said he believed his gene editing would help protect the girls from infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Lovell-Badge, a professor and gene expert at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute who led the organizing committee for the November Human Genome Editing Summit at Hong Kong University, said it was impossible to know what He had actually done.
“If it’s true (that he edited the genomes in the way he says) then it is certainly possible that he has put the children’s lives at risk,” he told journalists in London. “No-one knows what these mutations will do.”
Lovell-Badge said he originally invited He to the conference after hearing in scientific circles that he was “up to something.” Lovell-Badge hoped that asking He to interact with specialists would encourage him to “control his urges.”
“Pretty much everyone he talked to had said to him: ‘Don’t do it,'” he said. “But clearly it was all too late.”
Lovell-Badge said he learned of He’s claims on the eve of the conference, and had an emergency meeting with him.
“He thought that he was doing good, and that what he was doing was the next big thing,” Lovell-Badge said. But he had “no basic training in biology” and the experiments he said he had carried out “ignored all the norms of how you conduct any clinical trial or clinical experiment.”
“He should certainly be stopped from doing anything like this again,” he said.
Lovell-Badge said he had not heard from He since early December, but understood he was in Shenzhen in a guarded apartment during the probe.
Chinese authorities and institutions, as well as hundreds of international scientists, have condemned He and said any application of gene editing on human embryos for reproductive purposes was against the law and medical ethics of China.
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After a Tame Globes, Is a Less-Charged Awards Season Ahead?
The Golden Globe Awards looked like it had gone entirely back to frothy, bubbly business as usual, until Regina King did the impossible: She got the orchestra to stop playing her off. Not even Lady Gaga had that much power.
King used her platform on stage accepting the supporting actress award for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” to shed a light on Time’s Up x 2, the second year iteration of the legal defense fund founded in the wake of the sexual misconduct revelations that shook Hollywood.
“We understand that our microphones are big and we’re speaking for everyone,” she said before pledging that every project she produces for the next two years will have at least 50 percent of women working on it. “And I challenge anyone out there who is in in a position of power, not just in our industry, in all industries, I challenge you to … stand with us in solidarity and do the same.”
It would be one of the rare show-stopping moments of the night. After last year’s Golden Globes were host to such a powerful display of female solidarity, in which top actresses walked the carpet in all-black alongside prominent activists in support of Time’s Up and #MeToo, this year, statements were no longer collective. They were individual.
A few actresses, Gina Rodriguez and Rachel Brosnahan among them, wore Time’s Up x 2 ribbons on the carpet; Patricia Clarkson said that her “Sharp Objects” director Jean-Marc Vallee “demanded everything of me except sex which is exactly how it should be in our industry”; Glenn Close implored women to “find personal fulfillment” and follow their dreams; Co-host Sandra Oh got emotional saying she said yes to hosting so that she could, “Look out on this audience and witness this moment of change”; And Emma Stone even shouted out an apology from the audience for playing a part-Asian character in “Aloha.”
Sunday’s Globes could be a sign that awards shows in general are going to return to business as usual: The occasional snide political remark (Christian Bale thanking Satan for inspiration playing Dick Cheney, or positing that Mitch McConnell might be a good “uncharismatic” role to play next, adding an expletive), or showbiz joke (Oh and Andy Samberg saying in unison that “one lucky audience member will host the Oscars!”).
Harrison Ford presented the directing award and did not, as Natalie Portman did last year, note that all the nominees were men (again). Patricia Arquette, who three years ago called for equal pay while accepting her supporting actress Oscar, kept her speech to standard HFPA, fellow nominee and producer thanks (albeit with two F-bombs). And following two years of show-stealing Cecil B. DeMille award speeches from Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges brought the honor back to earth with a heartfelt, nostalgic and, interestingly wide-ranging vamp about everything from Peter Bogdanovich and the Coen brothers to geodesic domes. Even Carol Burnett, as the first-ever recipient of an award named after her, stayed in the past as well, speaking about how her show would never get made today.
As for the winners, while the choices of the 88-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association has no direct relation to the nearly 8,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a win on a stage of the Golden Globes doesn’t go unnoticed, and Oscar nomination voting began Monday. Some probably didn’t need a bounce, like Olivia Colman’s win for “The Favourite,” or “Shallow” winning best original song. Some did, like Glenn Close who upset Lady Gaga with her best actress drama win for “The Wife” and gave one of the best speeches of the night. And two divisive-for-different-reasons films got high-profile boosts winning the top film awards and key acting awards: The Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which won over “A Star Is Born”) and the inspired-by-a-true-story Jim Crow-era South road trip movie “Green Book.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was not well-received by critics, who pointed out its factual inaccuracies and music biopic trappings, but resonated with audiences (it’s made over $743 million worldwide to date), and its awards profile is growing. “Green Book,” meanwhile, went from winning the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival to being scrutinized for its racial politics.
“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly also got the orchestra to back off, but, in his case it was so that he could talk about his film.
“This story gave me hope and I wanted to share that hope with you,” Farrelly said on stage. “If Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga can find a common ground so can we.”
Both pleased enough crowds and HFPA voters, despite the backlash, to win out over “A Star Is Born,” a film that everyone, wrongly, presumed would dominate Sunday night.
But everyone loves an underdog, and now, it’s “A Star Is Born’s” turn to find its way back to the top.
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After a Tame Globes, Is a Less-Charged Awards Season Ahead?
The Golden Globe Awards looked like it had gone entirely back to frothy, bubbly business as usual, until Regina King did the impossible: She got the orchestra to stop playing her off. Not even Lady Gaga had that much power.
King used her platform on stage accepting the supporting actress award for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” to shed a light on Time’s Up x 2, the second year iteration of the legal defense fund founded in the wake of the sexual misconduct revelations that shook Hollywood.
“We understand that our microphones are big and we’re speaking for everyone,” she said before pledging that every project she produces for the next two years will have at least 50 percent of women working on it. “And I challenge anyone out there who is in in a position of power, not just in our industry, in all industries, I challenge you to … stand with us in solidarity and do the same.”
It would be one of the rare show-stopping moments of the night. After last year’s Golden Globes were host to such a powerful display of female solidarity, in which top actresses walked the carpet in all-black alongside prominent activists in support of Time’s Up and #MeToo, this year, statements were no longer collective. They were individual.
A few actresses, Gina Rodriguez and Rachel Brosnahan among them, wore Time’s Up x 2 ribbons on the carpet; Patricia Clarkson said that her “Sharp Objects” director Jean-Marc Vallee “demanded everything of me except sex which is exactly how it should be in our industry”; Glenn Close implored women to “find personal fulfillment” and follow their dreams; Co-host Sandra Oh got emotional saying she said yes to hosting so that she could, “Look out on this audience and witness this moment of change”; And Emma Stone even shouted out an apology from the audience for playing a part-Asian character in “Aloha.”
Sunday’s Globes could be a sign that awards shows in general are going to return to business as usual: The occasional snide political remark (Christian Bale thanking Satan for inspiration playing Dick Cheney, or positing that Mitch McConnell might be a good “uncharismatic” role to play next, adding an expletive), or showbiz joke (Oh and Andy Samberg saying in unison that “one lucky audience member will host the Oscars!”).
Harrison Ford presented the directing award and did not, as Natalie Portman did last year, note that all the nominees were men (again). Patricia Arquette, who three years ago called for equal pay while accepting her supporting actress Oscar, kept her speech to standard HFPA, fellow nominee and producer thanks (albeit with two F-bombs). And following two years of show-stealing Cecil B. DeMille award speeches from Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges brought the honor back to earth with a heartfelt, nostalgic and, interestingly wide-ranging vamp about everything from Peter Bogdanovich and the Coen brothers to geodesic domes. Even Carol Burnett, as the first-ever recipient of an award named after her, stayed in the past as well, speaking about how her show would never get made today.
As for the winners, while the choices of the 88-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association has no direct relation to the nearly 8,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a win on a stage of the Golden Globes doesn’t go unnoticed, and Oscar nomination voting began Monday. Some probably didn’t need a bounce, like Olivia Colman’s win for “The Favourite,” or “Shallow” winning best original song. Some did, like Glenn Close who upset Lady Gaga with her best actress drama win for “The Wife” and gave one of the best speeches of the night. And two divisive-for-different-reasons films got high-profile boosts winning the top film awards and key acting awards: The Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which won over “A Star Is Born”) and the inspired-by-a-true-story Jim Crow-era South road trip movie “Green Book.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was not well-received by critics, who pointed out its factual inaccuracies and music biopic trappings, but resonated with audiences (it’s made over $743 million worldwide to date), and its awards profile is growing. “Green Book,” meanwhile, went from winning the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival to being scrutinized for its racial politics.
“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly also got the orchestra to back off, but, in his case it was so that he could talk about his film.
“This story gave me hope and I wanted to share that hope with you,” Farrelly said on stage. “If Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga can find a common ground so can we.”
Both pleased enough crowds and HFPA voters, despite the backlash, to win out over “A Star Is Born,” a film that everyone, wrongly, presumed would dominate Sunday night.
But everyone loves an underdog, and now, it’s “A Star Is Born’s” turn to find its way back to the top.
…
Mexico Fuel Theft Crackdown Sparks Shortages, Puts Govt. on Defensive
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that his crackdown against fuel theft was yielding positive results, even as the intervention sparked severe fuel shortages in parts of the country and long lines of angry motorists.
In a bid to eliminate years of mounting theft, state oil firm Pemex has changed its distribution, triggering shortfalls in at least six states, including Guanajuato, a major car-making hub in central Mexico.
Guanajuato’s state government said that less than one third of the state’s gas stations were open on Monday.
Lopez Obrador told a news conference the government had not established a date for when operations would return to normal, but stressed that supply was not in danger.
“We are changing the whole distribution system, that’s the reason for the shortage. We have enough gasoline,” he said.
Mexican television showed long lines of drivers waiting to fill up in central states as well as Jalisco in the west and Tamaulipas in the north.
Years of fuel theft by criminal groups and others by tapping pipelines and stealing tanker trucks has led to losses totaling billions of dollars for public coffers.
Lopez Obrador’s government has ordered the armed forces to intervene in Pemex’s facilities, including one refinery.
“The supply will normalize, and at the same time we are going to guarantee that fuel is not stolen,” said Lopez Obrador, who took office in December. “We have seen a reduction in theft like never before … but we still have work to do.”
Guanajuato’s governor Diego Sinhue told local radio that of the state’s 415 gas stations, only 115 were open. In Leon, Guanajuato’s biggest city with a population of more than 1.5 million, only 7 of 196 stations were open on Sunday, he said.
“Fuel is becoming a serious problem,” said Sinhue, a member of the opposition center-right National Action Party (PAN). “People are really angry about this shortage.”
Sinhue said the army had informed him it had taken control of the state’s Salamanca refinery on Monday morning. There, members of the armed forces were monitoring tankers going in and out of the facility, as well as the pressure of pipelines.
Energy Minister Rocio Nahle offered an apology on Mexican radio for the shortages. Asked when the problem would be fixed, she said it was in the process of being “normalized.”
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Sam Elliott Honored at Hollywood ‘Footprints’ Ceremony
Veteran actor Sam Elliott imprinted his hands and feet in cement on Hollywood Boulevard on Monday, as “A Star is Born” co-stars Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper shook off Golden Globes disappointment to join in honoring the 74-year-old’s long career.
Known for his lanky physique, thick mustache and languid drawl, Elliott reflected on his life’s work and the joy of acting, telling reporters: “The people you work with, the community… and feeling like you’re doing something that makes a difference to somebody” made it all worthwhile.
“A Star is Born” may have struck out at the Golden Globes the night before, picking up just one trophy for best song, but Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were all smiles as they came to show their support for Elliott, who plays Cooper’s elder brother in the film.
Dressed in a striking sky-blue trench coat, Gaga, 32, shared an Instagram story as she received a kiss on her forehead from Elliott.
“So excited to be here for Sam Elliott’s hand & footprint ceremony,” she wrote, adding a series of heart emojis.
The trio later shared a heart-warming embrace, as Cooper hailed the “iconic mark” Elliott had on films.
Elliott got his start with minor roles in late 60s Westerns such as “The Way West” (1967) and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but it wasn’t until the 1980s that his career took off in a big way in the “Mask” and “Road House.”
He received the first of his two Golden Globe nomination for TV film “Conagher,” where he played the titular role and starred alongside his wife Katharine Ross.
Elliott also has two primetime Emmy nominations, with other notable works, including “Gettysburg” and “The Big Lebowski,” and is a regular on current Netflix series “The Ranch.”
While he wasn’t nominated at the Golden Globes, industry magazine Variety reported the actor seems poised to land his first Oscar nomination for what it called his “tender performance” in “A Star is Born.”
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Iguanas Reintroduced to Santiago Island in Galapagos
A group of more than 1,400 iguanas have been reintroduced to an Ecuadoran island in the Galapagos archipelago around two centuries after they disappeared from there, authorities said on Monday.
The Galapagos land iguanas from North Seymour Island were freed onto Santiago Island as part of an ecological restoration program, the National Galapagos Park authority said in a statement.
The last recorded sighting of iguanas in Santiago Island had been made by British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1835.
“Almost two centuries later, this ecosystem will once again count on this species through the restoration initiative,” said the park authority.
Its director, Jorge Carrion, said the iguanas became extinct due to the introduction of predators such as the feral pig, which was eradicated in 2001.
The program is also aimed at protecting the population of iguanas on North Seymour, said to number around 5,000, where food is limited.
“The land iguana is a herbivore that helps ecosystems by dispersing seeds and maintaining open spaces devoid of vegetation,” said Danny Rueda, the park authority’s ecosystems director.
The Galapagos archipelago, some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the Ecuador coast, contains unique wildlife and vegetation, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
But it has one of the most fragile ecosystems in the world.
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Amazon Emerges as Most Valuable US Firm Amid Market Turmoil
Amazon has eclipsed Microsoft as the most valuable publicly traded company in the U.S. as a see-sawing stock market continues to reshuffle corporate America’s pecking order.
The shift occurred Monday after Amazon’s shares rose 3 percent to close at $1,629.51 and lifted the e-commerce leader’s market value to $797 billion. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s stock edged up by less than 1 percent to finish at $102.06, leaving the computer software maker’s value at $784 billion.
It marks the first time Amazon has held the top spot and ends Microsoft’s brief return to the pinnacle after it surpassed Apple in late November.
The repositioning has been triggered by mounting concerns that the Trump administration’s trade war with China and rising interest rates will bog down the worldwide economy. If that were to happen, it’s likely to slow the growth of companies in technology and other industries that generate a substantial chunk of their revenue outside the U.S.
That’s one reason most technology stocks are well off their peaks. Amazon, for instance, remains 21 percent below its high reached in September when the company’s stock value stood above $1 trillion. Apple was worth even more back then, but its stock has plunged by 37 percent since early October to erase about $400 billion of its market value.
Apple confirmed some of investors’ worst fears last week when it warned that disappointing demand for iPhones, especially in China, caused its revenue for its most recent quarter to fall well below the projections of its management and industry analysts.
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Home Items Get Smarter and Creepier, Like It or Not
One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you change channels.
Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.
With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry.
“It’s decentralized surveillance,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based digital privacy advocate. “We’re living in a world where we’re tethered to some online service stealthily gathering our information.”
Yet consumers seem to be welcoming these devices. The research firm IDC projects that 1.3 billion smart devices will ship worldwide in 2022, twice as many as 2018.
Companies say they are building these products not for snooping but for convenience, although Amazon, Google and other partners enabling the intelligence can use the details they collect to customize their services and ads.
‘Smart’ features
Whirlpool, for instance, is testing an oven whose window doubles as a display. You’ll still be able to see what’s roasting inside, but the glass can now display animation pointing to where to place the turkey for optimal cooking.
The oven can sync with your digital calendar and recommend recipes based on how much time you have. It can help coordinate multiple recipes, so that you’re not undercooking the side dishes in focusing too much on the entree. A camera inside lets you zoom in to see if the cheese on the lasagna has browned enough, without opening the oven door.
As for that smart toilet, Kohler’s Numi will respond to voice commands to raise or lower the lid — or to flush. You can do it from an app, too. The company says it’s all about offering hands-free options in a setting that’s very personal for people. The toilet is also heated and can play music and the news through its speakers.
Kohler also has a tub that adjusts water temperature to your liking and a kitchen faucet that dispenses just the right amount of water for a recipe.
For the most part, consumers aren’t asking for these specific features. After all, before cars were invented, people might have known only to ask for faster horses. “We try to be innovative in ways that customers don’t realize they need,” Samsung spokesman Louis Masses said.
Whirlpool said insights can come from something as simple as watching consumers open the oven door several times to check on the meal, losing heat in the process.
“They do not say to us, ‘Please tell me where to put [food] on the rack, or do algorithm-based cooking,”‘ said Doug Searles, general manager for Whirlpool’s research arm, WLabs. “They tell us the results that are most important to them.”
Samsung has several voice-enabled products, including a fridge that comes with an app that lets you check on its contents while you’re grocery shopping. New this year: Samsung’s washing machines can send alerts to its TVs — smart TVs, of course — so you know your laundry is ready while watching Netflix.
Other connected items at CES include:
- a fishing rod that tracks your location to build an online map of where you’ve made the most catches;
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a toothbrush that recommends where to brush more;
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a fragrance diffuser that lets you control how your home smells from a smartphone app.
These are poised to join internet-connected security cameras, door locks and thermostats that are already on the market. The latter can work with sensors to turn the heat down automatically when you leave home.
‘Being spied on’
Chester said consumers feel the need to keep up with their neighbors when they buy appliances with the smartest smarts. He said all the conveniences can be “a powerful drug to help people forget the fact that they are also being spied on.”
Gadgets with voice controls typically aren’t transmitting any data back to company servers until you activate them with a trigger word, such as “Alexa” or “OK Google.” But devices have sometimes misheard innocuous words as legitimate commands to record and send private conversations.
Even when devices work properly, commands are usually stored indefinitely. Companies can use the data to personalize experiences — including ads. Beyond that, background conversations may be stored with the voice recordings and can resurface with hacking or as part of lawsuits or investigations.
Knowing what you cook or stock in your fridge might seem innocuous. But if insurers get hold of the data, they might charge you more for unhealthy diets, warned Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. He also said it might be possible to infer ethnicity based on food consumed.
Manufacturers are instead emphasizing the benefits: Data collection from the smart faucet, for instance, allows Kohler’s app to display how much water is dispensed. (Water bills typically show water use for the whole home, not individual taps.)
The market for smart devices is small, but growing. Kohler estimates that in a few years, smart appliances will make up 10 percent of its revenue. Though the features are initially limited to premium models — such as the $7,000 toilet — they should eventually appear in entry-level products, too, as costs come down.
Ditching the ‘dumb’
Consider the TV. “Dumb” TVs are rare these days, as the vast majority of TVs ship with internet connections and apps, like it or not.
“It becomes a check-box item for the TV manufacturer,” said Paul Gagnon, an analyst with IHS Markit. For a dumb one, he said, you have to search for an off-brand, entry-level model with smaller screens — or go to places in the world where streaming services aren’t common.
“Dumb” cars are also headed to the scrapyard. The research firm BI Intelligence estimates that by 2020, three out of every four cars sold worldwide will be models with connectivity. No serious incidents have occurred in the United States, Europe and Japan, but a red flag has already been raised in China, where automakers have been sharing location details of connected cars with the government.
As for TVs, Consumer Reports says many TV makers collect and share users’ viewing habits. Vizio agreed to $2.5 million in penalties in 2017 to settle cases with the Federal Trade Commission and New Jersey officials.
Consumers can decide not to enable these connections. They can also vote with their wallets, Stephens said.
“I’m a firm believer that simple is better. If you don’t need to have these so-called enhancements, don’t buy them,” he said. “Does one really need a refrigerator that keeps track of everything in it and tells you you are running out of milk?”
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Fast Cars, Rickety Bridges as ‘The Grand Tour’ Returns
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May return for a third season of their thrill-seeking motor show “The Grand Tour,” with plenty of fast cars and stunning scenery they hope will take viewers’ minds off the real world.
The Amazon program follows the presenters as they test out all sorts of cars around the world, and this season sees them travel to Colombia and Mongolia.
“There’s a refugee crisis and politics going on left, right and center,” Clarkson said in an interview. “It’s quite nice to sit down to just go ‘thank God we can just park that for five minutes and watch these three fat old imbeciles falling over and catching fire’ because that’s what entertainment supposed to do, take your mind off the horrors of everyday life.”
The series launched in 2016, re-uniting the three former presenters of the BBC’s “Top Gear,” a program Clarkson was dropped from after he attacked a production staff member.
“Driving (Formula One racing driver) Jim Clark’s Lotus 25 was an amazing experience,” Hammond said when asked about the show’s highlights.
“That, plus in Colombia getting over the biggest, tallest, most rickety bridge you’ve ever seen in your life in a massive pickup truck. It was not a highlight doing it but getting off the bridge at the other side was.”
The third season of “The Grand Tour” debuts on Jan. 18 on Amazon Prime Video, the online retailer’s subscription service.
A fourth series has already been announced.
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‘Black Panther,’ ‘A Star Is Born’ Get Writers Guild Nominations
The scripts for Black Panther and A Star Is Born are among the five films that have been selected to compete for best adapted screenplay at the Writers Guild of America Awards. The two blockbusters will compete against BlacKkKlansman, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and If Beale Street Could Talk.
The writers guild also on Monday announced its nominees for best original screenplay, including Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade, Alfonso Cuaron for Roma, Adam McKay for Vice, as well as the scripts for A Quiet Place, co-written by John Krasinski, and Green Book.
Documentary scripts nominated include Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 and Lauren Greenfield’s Generation Wealth.
Winners will be announced at concurrent ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles on Feb. 17.
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Outlandish Claims at Indian Scientific Gathering Spark Outcry
A group representing Indian scientists say they will screen speakers at their yearly meeting more carefully after several made outlandish claims during their lectures.
“We have decided that all the people, even the top scientists who want to interact with anybody at the Science Congress, would be asked to submit their abstracts, not to deviate … and we will place one of our members there as a moderator,” Indian Science Congress general secretary Premendu Mathur said Monday.
One speaker at the just-completed congress doubted the findings and achievements of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.
Another insisted the people of ancient India had airplanes and missile technology, carried out stem-cell research, and created test tube babies.
Scientists in several Indian cities held silent demonstrations and carried signs to protest the speeches and the damage that such claims can do.
“This is very harmful for the growth of scientific temper because these ideas are being propagated through the Science Congress which gives it reproducibility,” retired professor Dhruba Mukhopadhyay said.
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‘RBG,’ ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’ Get Directors Guild Nominations
Popular documentaries about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Fred Rogers have each snagged another key nomination from the Directors Guild of America.
The DGA announced its five documentary selections Monday including RBG, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? as well as the climbing documentary Free Solo, Three Identical Strangers, about triplets who meet as adults, and Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
The guild also announced a slew of nominations in scripted television. Donald Glover received his second nomination for Atlanta, and Bill Hader his first for Barry. Jason Bateman was nominated for an episode of Ozark, and Ben Stiller for Escape at Dannemora.
Both Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino received separate nominations for episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Winners will be announced Feb. 2.
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Modi Plans Job Quotas for Less Well-Off Indians as Election Nears
India’s cabinet on Monday backed proposals to reserve 10 percent of government jobs for Indians outside the higher income brackets, a plan the main opposition party suggested was an attempt by the government to lure back voters as an election nears.
The initiative is expected to mainly benefit the upper echelons of India’s centuries-old Hindu caste system, which has traditionally been a core voter base for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Modi must call a national election by May and was dealt a setback in December when the BJP lost power to the opposition Congress party in three states, its biggest defeat since he took office in 2014.
Two BJP sources said the quota plan would benefit people from other religions not covered by existing affirmative action — the reason why lower caste Hindus and India’s indigenous tribes were excluded from it.
According to the government bill, the recipients must also be classed as “economically weak,” which the sources said was defined as anyone with annual income below 800,000 rupees ($11,500) and owning fewer than five acres of land.
In 2017, the average income in India was $1,939.60, according to the World Bank.
The states the BJP lost included Rajasthan, one of four — the others being Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana — in which upper caste land-owning farming communities have held large protests in recent years demanding quotas for government jobs.
More broadly, Modi has been criticized for failing to deliver jobs for young people and better conditions for farmers.
“The … Modi government has suddenly woken up to the woes of [the] economically poor, facing imminent defeat in the 2019 elections,” Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said of the quota plan.
“Creating reservations in jobs may just prove to be one more ‘Jumla’ [gimmick] for the purpose of election promises.”
Ashwini Kumar Choubey, junior health minister and a BJP member, welcomed the proposal, calling it “historic.”
Caste system
Hindus, who account for about four-fifths of India’s 1.3 billion people, were traditionally grouped into thousands of castes, whose membership is determined by birth.
The lower castes have faced various forms of discrimination including segregation and social boycotts.
There have been attempts to reduce caste-related inequality, and the country has had many lower caste leaders, including current president Ram Nath Kovind.
But introducing quotas for lower castes has always been a contentious issue and has led to violent protests, though India’s income levels and expenditure patterns remain largely linked to caste.
The government is expected to submit the quota bill to the lower house of parliament on Tuesday. Modi’s BJP has a majority there, but not in the upper house.
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Bolivian Bees Under Threat from Coca Pesticides
High up in the Bolivian cloud forest, a woman tends to her bees, smoker in hand, working from hive to hive under a canopy of leaves to delicately gather panels of honeycomb. It’s a bucolic scene that experts say won’t last, for the bees are dying.
The culprit — as in so many other cases across the world — is pesticide. The difference in Bolivia is that pesticide use, along with the coca plantations it is being used to protect, is on the rise.
Environmentalists and beekeepers like Rene Villca say the bee population is being decimated by massive and intensive use of chemical pesticides to protect the region’s biggest cash crop.
Here in the idyllic Nor Yungas region north of the cloud-high capital La Paz, the pesticides are taking a toll on Villca’s hives.
“Of the 20 hives I have, 10 are producing normally and 10 are not.”
On another part of the mountain where Nancy Carlo Estrada tends to her bees, a canopy of protective netting around her head, Exalto Mamami wades through a waist-high coca plantation, pumping out liquid pesticide from a canister on his back, face covered with a long cloth against harmful blowback from the spray.
He is all too aware of the pesticide’s toxicity, but has other priorities.
“We use pesticides because the pests eat through the coca leaves and this affects our income. The plants can dry out and that way we as coca farmers lose out economically,” said Mamani.
The sale of coca leaves — the base component of cocaine — is legal in this part of Bolivia. They are sold openly for traditional use in the local towns. It is chewed, used for making teas, and in religious and cultural ceremonies.
According to the latest survey by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Bolivia has 24,500 hectares under coca cultivation, an increase of 7.0 percent in a year. The government is collaborating with the UNODC in alternate development programs but despite this, between 35 and 48 percent is destined for cocaine production.
Coca cultivation expanding
On the steep slopes of the region’s valleys, the lush forest is pockmarked with small plots of coca arranged in terraces.
“The area of coca cultivation has expanded and the native forest has been reduced to alarming levels,” said Miguel Limachi, an entomologist at La Paz’s San Andres University.
Limachi says the expansion of coca cultivation has helped to destroy other plants that provide a natural defense against the coca-leaf pests, particularly the Tussock Moth.
In other parts of the Andes, the pale moth has been used as a biological weapon against coca cultivation.
“A monoculture is more at risk from pests or fungi because there is no longer native vegetation — there are no natural controllers,” Limachi explained. “And then more pesticides are used in higher concentrations.”
Harmful organophosphates in the pesticides mean the bees — “a social insect and extremely organized,” according to Limachi — become disorganized, and less able to feed and care for larvae.
In recent years across the globe, bees have been mysteriously dying off from “colony collapse disorder” blamed party on pesticides, but also on mites, viruses and fungi.
The danger of increased pesticide use in the Bolivian highlands is that they “remain in the soil, on the surface of the plants and obviously contaminate all the organisms present — both the growers themselves, their children and their families, and the wildlife,” Limachi told AFP.
Pesticides are also used to protect other crops in the country such as coffee plantations and some tropical fruits.
‘Growers have no choice’
For Exalto Mamani, there is no other option but to use pesticides.
“Many of the coca growers are aware that we are affecting the environment with these chemicals, but we have no other alternative because the coca supports us and gives us the economy to support our family,” he said.
He says climate change has meant coca leaf pests are on the increase.
Limachi agrees that climate change has played a role in reducing bee populations.
“Very dry years and other years that have too much rain change the availability of flowers from which the bees use to feed the hives,” he said.
Other human factors also play a role, he said.
“Electromagnetic pollution, the emission of cellular waves, microwaves, radios, television…all that can affect their communication and the operation of the hive because they interrupt processes such as food collection, care of the larvae or cleanliness of the colony,” said Limachi.
On the lush steep slopes around Coroico, beekeeper Villca has no doubt about the immediate threat to his bees.
“We hope that the coca producers realize the value of this golden insect,” he said.
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Report: Biggest Estuary in US Hit Hard by Pollution
Heavy rains that brought additional pollution downstream last year contributed to the first decline in a decade to the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay, according to a report released Monday.
The bay’s health grade sank from a C-minus in 2016 to a D-plus in the 2018 State of the Bay, a biennial report issued by the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The bay scored a 33 out of a possible 100 after scientists measured 13 indicators in three categories, including pollution, habitat and fisheries. The report cited record rains last year that brought large amounts of pollutants downstream, mostly from Pennsylvania, but also from other regions.
“Simply put, the bay suffered a massive assault in 2018,” said Will Baker, the group’s president. “The bay’s sustained improvement was reversed in 2018, exposing just how fragile the recovery is.”
Beth McGee, a senior scientist at the foundation, which has released the report on the bay’s health since 1998, also highlighted the effect of the rains, which washed enormous amounts of debris from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania south into Maryland waters and into the nation’s largest estuary.
“While some indicators improved or stayed the same, scores for the bay’s two systemic pollutants — nitrogen and phosphorous — decreased substantially, reflecting increased loads caused by the high rainfall in 2018 and above average loads in 2017,” McGee said. “The score for water clarity also dropped — another casualty of the record rain.”
Still, Baker highlighted good news as well. Bay grasses remain intact, and recent studies have shown an improving trend in the long term for underwater dead zones, which are low-oxygen conditions that can suffocate underwater life and shrink habitat.
“The good news is there are signs the bay is developing a resilience that may help it overcome long-term damage caused by record storms and rainfall which dump polluted runoff into our waters,” Baker said.
Water goals needed
Baker said the bay is facing some of the most serious challenges ever seen. The Susquehanna River, which supplies about half of the bay’s fresh water, is “severely polluted,” Baker said, and pollution attached to sediment that once stayed largely behind the Conowingo Dam is no longer trapped behind the dam’s walls.
Stormwater runoff from urban and suburban areas continue to be a source of growing pollution, Baker said, and he criticized President Donald Trump’s policies affecting the environment and denial of climate change.
To improve the bay’s health, Baker said jurisdictions in the bay’s watershed, including Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, must meet clean water goals set for 2025.
“Second, the Trump administration must stop trying to eliminate environmental laws and regulations that have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support, and third climate change must be addressed now,” Baker said.
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Tesla Breaks Ground on Shanghai Factory
Tesla broke ground Monday on a new factory for its electric cars in China, the first of its factories to be located outside the United States.
Chief Executive Elon Musk appeared at a ceremony alongside local officials on the outskirts of Shanghai to mark the start of the project. He said the goal is to finish initial construction by summer and start production by the end of the year.
Tesla will build its Model 3 vehicles at the site and says it hopes to eventually have a production capacity of 500,000 vehicles per year. The factory is wholly owned by Tesla, a departure from usual Chinese policy for foreign businesses.
The new factory comes as the United States and China negotiate trade issues that have led each side to impose higher tariffs on the other’s goods, including the automotive sector.
By having a factory in China, Tesla will not have to worry about consumers there facing higher prices on cars imported from the United States.
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