Month: June 2017

Vaccine-like Drug Lowers ‘Bad’ Cholesterol

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

A drug that acts like a vaccine has been shown to lower “bad” cholesterol or LDL and reduce the amount of fatty plaque that can lead to heart attacks. The drug rallies the immune system against a molecule that contributes to atherosclerosis. 

The drug, called AT04A, is a form of immunotherapy that targets an enzyme, called PCSK9, that contributes to the formation of harmful plaque in coronary arteries.

In studies of mice fed fatty, Western-style diets putting them at risk for heart disease, researchers showed that AT04A reduced the total amount of cholesterol by 53 percent and shrank atherosclerotic plaques by 64 percent, according to Oliver Siegel, who is with the Austrian pharmaceutical company AFFiRiS. 

“More importantly in the mice, we have seen a very significant reduction in development of those plaques, said Siegel. “As a result, we believe the reduction of LDL which we have seen before would translate into a clinical benefit, i.e. reduction of plaque that would otherwise reduce inflammation that would otherwise be the cause of heart attack potentially.”

AT04A was able to rally the immune system to produce antibodies that blocked the PCSK9 enzyme in the circulation of mice during the study.

The study was published in European Heart Journal.

The immunotherapeutic approach, according to Siegel, is similar to, but not a vaccine per se in the sense that it doesn’t target bacteria and viruses, just the harmful enzyme.

In an accompanying editorial in the journal, Ulrich Laufs of Saarland University in Germany and Brian Ference of the University of Bristol noted that in people taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, including AT04A, there may be an increased risk of patients developing diabetes.

But Siegel said nothing like that has cropped up so far in studies of the compound. 

The authors of the editorial wrote in the short term, having a long-acting, cholesterol lowering drug may far outweigh the slight risk of new onset diabetes.

Currently, many people with high levels of cholesterol take daily medication that drives down “bad” LDL cholesterol; but, Siegel says compliance is less than ideal.

“What a few studies have shown is that patients, who…have already had a heart attack, have a relatively low adherence or compliance rate and we would imagine that patients who didn’t have a heart attack would have an even lower compliance rate,” said Siegel.

Fatty plaques that develop in the heart vessels can choke off the flow of blood, causing a heart attack. If a piece of plaque breaks off and travels to the brain, it can cause stroke.  Diseases of the coronary arteries are a leading cause of illness and death worldwide.

Siegel said the shot under the skin would have to be given once a year like an immunization.

Early human clinical trials testing the compounds safety are nearly completed, and Siegel hopes to have a cholesterol-lowering, clot-busting drug on the market in the next few years. 
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As South Korea Seeks Reconciliation With the North, What’s in it for the US?

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

As South Korea’s new leadership works toward easing long strained inter-Korean relations, U.S. experts are eyeing the country’s conciliatory overtures to the Kim Jong Un regime, worried that a possible resumption of the Kaesong Industrial Complex could provoke discord with the Trump administration.

Shortly after South Korean President Moon Jae-in named Cho Myoung-gyun to be his North Korea point man on June 13, Cho, who played a key role in launching the now-stalled economic cooperation project, told reporters, “Operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex should be restored. I will speak after thoroughly looking into the details.” 

That statement caused a flurry of criticism in Washington, with many analysts saying reviving activities at the complex possibly could hurt Washington-Seoul relations and diminish their alliance coordination. Seoul closed the complex in February 2016 as punishment for the regime’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

“Reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex is very problematic from Washington’s perspective,” Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who specializes in North Korea, told VOA’s Korean Service.

Launched in 2004 to enhance cooperation between the two Koreas, the jointly run industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the border, has reportedly provided $100 million a year in wages to 54,000 North Korean workers and contributed almost $2 billion in trade for Pyongyang.

Terry said any conciliatory action that translates into significant financial benefits for Pyongyang contradicts Washington’s North Korea policy, which is focused on thwarting the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program by severing all possible revenue streams that fund it. 

“We don’t know where the money is going,” Terry said. “It could be contributing to North Korea’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) missile program. There is no evidence that it’s not.”

Thomas Countryman, who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, said restarting Kaesong’s activities would not only reward Kim for the continued provocations, but also throw cold water on international efforts.

“It would be inconsistent with the [U.N. Security Council] resolutions if not in the letter, then in the spirit,” Countryman said. “There is simply no way that [South Korea] could convince China to have a strict enforcement of the U.N. resolutions, if South Korea is reopening a complex that provides tens of millions of dollars of hard currency every year to the North Korean regime.” 

Formerly the Obama White House coordinator for arms control and WMD, Gary Samore of the Belfer Center at Harvard University said Seoul should be more strategic and use Kaesong as a bargaining chip in response to or as part of a deal with Pyongyang to take steps toward limiting and eventually eliminating its nuclear activities.

“It would be a big mistake to resume the Kaesong Industrial Park without getting something in return,” Samore said. “So if Kim Jong Un agrees to some limits on nuclear and missile activity — for example, a freeze on testing — then I think one response that [South Korea] could make would be to resume the Kaesong Industrial Park, with the understanding that the facility would be suspended if Kim Jong Un resumed nuclear and missile testing.”

Negotiations on Pyongyang’s nuclear program have been in limbo for almost a decade, with Washington and Seoul ratcheting up economic pressure and a stubborn Pyongyang persisting with weapons development. But since Moon took office last month, he appears to be easing conditions for talks with the North.

“I make it clear that we will open dialogue without a precondition” should North Korea stop launching missiles and testing nuclear devices, Moon said Thursday at an event marking the 2000 inter-Korean summit.

But when President Donald Trump’s top diplomat Rex Tillerson led a U.N. Security Council special meeting in April, he rejected negotiations with Kim, saying North Korea “must take concrete steps to reduce the threat that its illegal weapons programs pose to the U.S. and our allies before we can even consider talks.” Those steps would be dismantling its nuclear and missile programs.

Moon Chung-in, South Korea’s special presidential advisor for foreign and security affairs, commented at an event in Washington Friday that his president proposed “scaling down” the Washington-Seoul joint military drills if North Korea “suspends its nuclear and missile activities.”

The State Department downplayed the significance of the comments.

“We understand these views are the personal views of Mr. Moon and may not reflect official ROK govern policy,” said Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs spokesperson Alicia Edwards in an email to VOA.

A senior official at the South Korean presidential office said the advisor did not coordinate with the president’s office on the proposal.

This report originated on VOA Korean.
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DC United’s Star Goalie a Muslim Who Balances Faith with Football

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Ramadan is Islam’s holy month. It is a time of reflection honoring the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. It is also a month of fasting during which able-bodied Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, which poses unique challenges for professional athletes. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington
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UN: Early Weather Forecasts Key to Saving Lives in Drought

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

With droughts set to become more frequent due to global warming, delivering timely, long-term weather forecasts to farmers in the developing world will be key to limiting damage and saving lives, the head of the U.N. food agency said on Monday.

Droughts have killed more than 11 million people worldwide since 1900 and now affect double the land area than in 1970, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Developing countries are the most exposed, with their agricultural sectors shouldering 80 percent of all damage caused by drought, FAO says.

Better access to reliable weather data and early warning systems could help farmers in rural areas get ready to endure long spells of no rain, said FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva.

“Most of the times poor rural communities in developing countries don’t even know that a drought is about to strike,” he told a conference at the FAO headquarters in Rome.

Measures such as planting resistant crops and building water reservoirs can greatly reduce the impact of droughts, but international responses too often focus on emergency relief, said Graziano da Silva.

“People die because they are not prepared to face the impacts of the drought – because their livelihoods are not resilient enough,” he said.

In Rome, FAO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) signed an accord to increase cooperation in the face of climate change, improving agro-meteorological services to help small farmers prepare for droughts.

WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas said weather forecast accuracy had greatly increased in recent years thanks developments in satellite, computing and scientific research.

“Weather forecasts are not anymore a joke, they are something you can very much rely on,” he told the conference.

Know-how related to long-term forecasts and prediction of major climate events like El Nino had to be shared between rich and poor countries, he added.

The last El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, subsided in 2016 and was linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods.
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Study: Few Opioid-addicted Youth Get Standard Treatment Medication

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Only 1 in 4 teens and young adults with opioid addiction receive recommended treatment medication despite having good health insurance, according to a study that suggests doctors are not keeping up with the needs of youth caught up in the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history.

 

“Young people may be dying because they are not getting the treatment they need,” said Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who wrote an editorial published with the study Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

 

Researchers looked at records for nearly 21,000 patients ages 13 to 25 from one large insurance carrier, UnitedHealthcare.

 

All were diagnosed with opioid addiction, but only 27 percent were given buprenorphine or naltrexone during 2001-2014, years when addiction was soaring.

 

“The take-home message for parents is: If you have a child struggling with opioid addiction, understand that there are medications that support and sustain recovery,” said study author Dr. Scott Hadland of Boston Medical Center.

 

Hadland was following a hunch when he began the study last year. In his practice, he was seeing more young people addicted to opioids. Many already had been through multiple treatment programs and they told him they’d never before been offered treatment medication.

 

Doctors must become more comfortable treating addiction with medications, Hadland said, noting that buprenorphine and naltrexone are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

 

Buprenorphine is given daily as a pill or film that dissolves under the tongue. It costs about $100 a month. Doctors need special training and a government waiver to prescribe it. A common version of buprenorphine is Suboxone.

 

Vivitrol is a brand-name version of naltrexone. It’s a shot given once a month and can be used only with patients who have completely detoxed from opioids. It costs about $1,000 per month.

 

The drugs work slightly differently, but both can ease cravings while patients work on addiction issues in counseling.

 

In the study, females, blacks and Hispanics were even less likely to receive the medications than males and whites. It’s unclear why, but unequal access to care or doctor bias could be to blame.

 

“The treatment gap is bad for everybody and even worse for certain subgroups,” Hadland said. “Even though all the youth in our sample had access to high-quality health insurance, they may not have had equal access to high-quality addiction care.”

 

Hadland and his colleagues plan to study access to treatment medications for youth from low-income families covered by government health insurance programs such as Medicaid.
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NASA Telescope Finds 10 More Planets That Could Have Life

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

NASA’s planet-hunting telescope has found 10 new planets outside our solar system that are likely the right size and temperature to potentially have life on them, broadly hinting that we are probably not alone.

 

After four years of searching, the Kepler telescope has detected a total of 49 planets in the Goldilocks zone. And it only looked in a tiny part of the galaxy, one quarter of one percent of a galaxy that holds about 200 billion of stars.

 

Seven of the 10 newfound Earth-size planets circle stars that are just like ours, not cool dwarf ones that require a planet be quite close to its star for the right temperature. That doesn’t mean the planets have life, but some of the most basic requirements that life needs are there, upping the chances for life.

 

“Are we alone? Maybe Kepler today has told us indirectly, although we need confirmation, that we are probably not alone,” Kepler scientist Mario Perez said in a Monday news conference.

 

Outside scientists agreed that this is a boost in the hope for life elsewhere.

 

“It implies that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars are not rare,” Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who was not part of the work, said in an email.

 

The 10 Goldilocks planets are part of 219 new candidate planets that NASA announced Monday as part of the final batch of planets discovered in the main mission since the telescope was launched in 2009. It was designed to survey part of the galaxy to see how frequent planets are and how frequent Earth-size and potentially habitable planets are. Kepler’s main mission ended in 2013 after the failure of two of its four wheels that control its orientation in space.

 

It’s too early to know how common potentially habitable planets are in the galaxy because there are lots of factors to consider including that Kepler could only see planets that move between the telescope vision and its star, said Kepler research scientist Susan Mullally of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

 

It will take about a year for the Kepler team to come up with a number of habitable planet frequency, she said.

 

Kepler has spotted more than 4,000 planet candidates and confirmed more than half of those. A dozen of the planets that seem to be in the potentially habitable zone circle Earth-like stars, not cooler red dwarfs.

 

Circling sun-like stars make the planets “even more interesting and important,” said Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution, who wasn’t part of the Kepler team.

 

One of those planets — KOI7711 — is the closest analog to Earth astronomers have seen in terms of size and the energy it gets from its star, which dictates temperatures.

 

Before Kepler was launched, astronomers had hoped that the frequency of Earth-like planets would be about one percent of the stars. The talk among scientists at a Kepler conference in California this weekend is that it is closer to 60 percent, he said.

 

Kepler isn’t the only way astronomers have found exoplanets and even potentially habitable ones. Between Kepler and other methods, scientists have now confirmed more than 3,600 exoplanets and found about 62 potentially habitable planets .

 

“This number could have been very, very small,” said Caltech astronomer Courtney Dressing. “I, for one, am ecstatic.”
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US Energy Chief: Carbon Dioxide Not Prime Driver of Warming

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Monday he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with mainstream scientific consensus but in line with the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

Asked on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” whether carbon emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, Perry said no, adding that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”

 

Perry’s view is contrary to mainstream climate science, including analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The EPA under President Donald Trump recently removed a web page that declared “carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.”

 

Taking down the web page came after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, appearing on “Squawk Box” in March, said “there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact” of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on the planet.

 

“So, no, I would not agree that [carbon dioxide] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said.

 

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, organized by the United Nations, calls carbon dioxide the biggest heat trapping force, responsible for about 33 times more added warming than natural causes.

 

The panel’s calculations mean carbon dioxide alone accounts for between 1 and 3 degrees warming, said MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel.

 

Perry, like Pruitt, rejected the scientific consensus on climate change.

 

“This idea that science is just absolutely settled and if you don’t believe it’s settled then you’re somehow another Neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective,” he said.

 

Being a skeptic about climate change issues is “quite all right,” Perry added, saying skepticism is a sign of being a “wise, intellectually engaged person.”

 

Recently, The Associated Press sent Pruitt’s comments to numerous scientists who study climate. All seven climate scientists who responded said Pruitt was wrong and that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of global warming.

 

Perry, in his TV appearance Monday, said there should not be a debate about whether the climate is changing or if humans have an effect on the climate. Instead, he said the debate should be on “what are the policy changes that we need to make to affect that?”

 

NASA and NOAA reported in January that earth’s 2016 temperatures were the warmest ever. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century, “a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere,” the agencies said in a joint statement.

 

Earlier this month, Trump announced he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The agreement signed by 195 nations in 2015 aims to decrease global carbon emissions in an effort to head off the worst predicted effects of global warming, including worsening storms, catastrophic droughts and city-drowning sea level rise.

 

The Trump administration has also moved to roll back or delay numerous rules approved by the Obama administration to cut pollution from mining operations, oil and gas wells and coal-fired power plants.
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Coroner: Cocaine Among Drugs Found in Carrie Fisher’s System

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Carrie Fisher’s autopsy report shows the actress had cocaine in her system when she fell ill on a plane last year, but investigators could not determine what impact the cocaine and other drugs found in her system had on her death.

 

The report released Monday states Fisher may have taken cocaine three days before the Dec. 23 flight on which she became ill. She died four days later.

 

It also found traces of heroin, other opiates and MDMA, which is also known as ecstasy, but that they could not determine when Fisher had taken those drugs. The findings were based on toxicology screenings done on samples taken when the “Star Wars” actress arrived at a Los Angeles hospital.

 

Coroner’s officials ruled Fisher died from sleep apnea and a combination of other factors. A news release issued Friday mentioned drugs were found in Fisher’s system, but it did not provide details.

 

Monday’s full report contains a detailed explanation of the results, such as why investigators believe Fisher took cocaine at least three days before her flight.

 

“At this time the significance of cocaine cannot be established in this case,” the report states.

 

It also states that while heroin is detectable in the system for a briefer period of time, investigators could not determine when Fisher took it or the ecstasy. Toxicology tests also found other opiates in Fisher’s system, including morphine, although the report states the morphine could have been a byproduct of heroin.

 

“Ms. Fisher suffered what appeared to be a cardiac arrest on the airplane accompanied by vomiting and with a history of sleep apnea. Based on the available toxicological information, we cannot establish the significance of the multiple substances that were detected in Ms. Fisher’s blood and tissue, with regard to the cause of death,” the report states.

 

Among the factors that contributed to Fisher’s death was buildup of fatty tissue in the walls of her arteries, the coroner’s office said last week.

 

A phone message left for Fisher’s brother, Todd, was not immediately returned.

 

Todd Fisher said Friday he was not surprised that drugs may have contributed to his sister’s death.

 

“I would tell you, from my perspective that there’s certainly no news that Carrie did drugs,” Todd Fisher said. He noted that his sister wrote extensively about her drug use, and that many of the drugs she took were prescribed by doctors to try to treat her mental health conditions.

 

Fisher long battled drug addiction and mental illness. She said she smoked pot at 13, used LSD by 21 and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 24. She was treated with electroshock therapy and medication.

 

“I am not shocked that part of her health was affected by drugs,” Todd Fisher said.

 

He said his sister’s heart condition was probably worsened by her smoking habit, as well as the medications she took.

“If you want to know what killed her, it’s all of it,” he said.
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Tech Titans Gather at White House to Modernize Government

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced he wants to see up to $1 trillion of tax savings over the next decade by a “sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology.”  

Trump told the American Technology Advisory Council in the White House State Dining Room that “we’re embracing big change, bold thinking and outsider perspectives to transform government and make it the way it should be and at far less cost.”

A slew of high-tech heavyweights, some of whom have criticized President Donald Trump’s policies, huddled at the White House on Monday as the administration kicked off its “technology week.”

The chief executive officers of 18 companies held meetings with White House and other Trump administration officials to generate ideas to attempt to transform and modernize government services.

“In addition to the trillion in cost we can take out, probably we can add another two trillion [dollars] on the numerator in terms of digital business by getting the public and the private sector in full cooperation under your administration,” Bill McDermott, the CEO of enterprise software company SAP, told Trump.  

Also speaking to the group, one of the world’s most successful venture capitalists, John Doerr, contended that there is also a “trillion dollars of value locked up in government databases. The Kleiner Perkins chairman told the president that “if you set the data free the entrepreneurs are going to do the rest.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the world’s largest online shopping retailer, recommended government, for its transformation, “use commercial technologies whenever possible” to save taxpayers’ money. He also said it was impossible to overstate that investment is needed in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The CEO of cloud computing company VMware, Pat Gelsinger, echoed that, saying “we deeply believe that we need to be planting those seed corns for our children and grandchildren.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also agreed, saying increasing competitiveness could be achieved through government spending in research. And the native of India told the president the United States should maintain an “enlightened immigration policy,” noting he was the beneficiary of such a policy.   

The corporate leaders at the table with the president on Monday cumulatively represented more than $3.5 trillion in market value, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

“Today we’ve assembled a very impressive group of leaders from the private sector and are putting them to work here today to work on some of the country’s biggest challenges that will make a very meaningful difference to a lot of its citizens,” White House senior advisor Jared Kushner said as the White House kicked off the day of meetings.

Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, says the goal is to “work to modernize the government’s technology infrastructure.”

There is outside skepticism about whether the president’s goal – at least in monetary terms – can be achieved.

“I do not understand how or where that trillion-dollar number comes from,” veteran Silicon Valley engineer Leslie Miley told VOA. “There is no basis for that claim so, as an engineer, I would not believe it until I saw a breakdown.”

The sprawling federal government maintains more than 6,000 data centers, some of the systems stretching back more than a half century.

The Department of Defense is still using floppy disks in some of its computer systems, Kushner noted.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Trump that computer coding should be a required subject in every public school and that “the U.S. should have the most modern government in the world, and today it doesn’t.”

“Tim Cook is right, we should,” Miley, who has worked at Apple, Google, Slack and Twitter, told VOA. “However, with key leadership positions in the government unfilled, it’s going to be difficult getting a strategy in place and executed.”

Monday’s White House event included working sessions over four hours focused on citizen services, cloud computing, analytics, cybersecurity, big data, purchasing and contract reform, talent recruitment and retraining, government and private sector partnerships, H1-B Visas and future trends, according to a White House official.

Other prominent administration participants included Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert, Office of Management  and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and three cabinet secretaries: Steven Mnuchin of Treasury, John Kelly of Homeland Security and Wilbur Ross of Commerce.

 

Other participating Silicon Valley chief executives included Eric Schmidt of Alphabet (parent company of Google), Brian Krzanich of Intel, Steven Mollenkopf of Qualcomm, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe and Ginni Rometty of IBM.

Several of those attending on Monday also were at a similar meeting Trump convened last December before his presidential inauguration.

Notably absent from this second meeting was Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who recently quit as an outside economic advisor to the president in protest of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
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US Top Court Hands Chevron Victory in Ecuador Pollution Case

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to Chevron Corp. by preventing Ecuadorean villagers and their American lawyer from trying to collect on an $8.65 billion pollution judgment issued against the oil company by a court in Ecuador.

The justices turned away an appeal by New York-based lawyer Steven Donziger, who has spent more than to two decades trying to hold Chevron responsible for pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest, of lower court rulings blocking enforcement in the United States of the 2011 judgment.

While not disputing that pollution occurred, San Ramon, California-based Chevron has said it is not liable and that Donziger and his associates orchestrated the writing of a key environmental report and bribed the presiding judge in Ecuador.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan barred enforcement of the judgment in 2014, citing the corruption used to obtain it. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld Kaplan’s decision, citing “a parade of corrupt actions” by Donziger and his associates, including coercion and fraud, culminating in the bribe offer.

The 2nd Circuit found that Chevron’s $8.646 billion judgment debt was “clearly traceable” to corrupt conduct by the legal team representing the villagers from the area affected by the pollution.

The lengthy legal battle with Chevron has been waged in several countries and was documented in “Crude,” a 2009 documentary film. The plaintiffs have said they plan to continue efforts to enforce the judgment in other countries, regardless of the outcome in the United States.

The saga was drawn extensive media attention over the years, with a succession of reporters given tours by both sides of the affected sites on the edge of the Amazonian jungle near the town of Lago Agrio. The plaintiffs also touted the backing of several celebrities including actors Mia Farrow and Danny Glover.

Donziger and representatives of residents of the Lago Agrio region have sought to force Chevron to pay for water and soil contamination caused from 1964 to 1992 by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001. Chevron has said a 1998 agreement between Texaco and Ecuador absolved it of further liability.

Donziger’s crusade began to unravel when Chevron noticed a deleted scene in the “Crude” documentary, released in 2009, showing Donziger working with supposedly neutral experts in preparing a report for the Ecuadorean court.

Chevron was then able to get access to out-takes and other material related to the documentary via court order. Chevron cited this evidence when it filed its lawsuit in 2011 seeking to block enforcement of the judgment, saying Donziger’s actions violated U.S. anti-racketeering law.

Donziger has also tried to enforce the judgment in Canada, Brazil and other countries where Chevron operates.

 
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US Supreme Court Limits Where Companies Can be Sued

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday tightened rules on where injury lawsuits may be filed, handing a victory to corporations by undercutting the ability of plaintiffs to bring claims in friendly courts in a case involving litigation over the Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. blood-thinning medication Plavix.

The justices, in an 8-1 ruling, threw out a lower court decision allowing hundreds of out-of-state patients who took Plavix to sue the company in California. State courts cannot hear claims against companies that are not based in the state when the alleged injuries did not occur there, the justices ruled.

The court last month reached a similar conclusion in a separate case involving out-of-state injury claims against Texas-based BNSF Railway Co.
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Google Outlines Steps to Fight Extremist Content

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Google says it is stepping up its efforts to identify and remove videos related to terrorism and violent extremist content, particularly on its YouTube platform.

“While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies,” Google said, “the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now.”

First, the company says it’s increasing its use of technology to identify videos that contain extremist messages. It added that it has used “video analysis models” to find and assess more than 50 percent of the terrorism-related content that has been removed in the past six months.

“We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new ‘content classifiers’ to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content,” the company said.

The company acknowledges that technology can’t fully solve the problem, so it is also adding 50 expert NGO’s to its YouTube Trusted Flagger program. Flaggers, the company said, can better identify the difference between violent propaganda and news and that they are more than 90 percent accurate. Google says it already works with 63 organizations as part of the program.

Google said it will also be taking a “tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies.” It said videos that “contain inflammatory religious or supremacists content” will appear with a warning. People will not be able to make money off them, or to comment on or endorse them.

“That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find,” Google wrote. “We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.”

In a fourth step, Google said it will “expand its role in counter-radicalization efforts” through what it calls the “Redirect Method.”

“This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining,” Google wrote, in reference to Islamic State. “In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages.”

The steps were first published in an opinion piece Sunday on the Financial Times website and can now be found on a Google blog.

Google’s steps follow a recent Facebook announcement that the social media giant is using artificial intelligence to combat terrorist content.

Earlier this year, the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report critical of organizations like Google and Facebook. The anti-hate group said the companies “have done little to counter the use of their platforms to spread hateful, false “information,” from conspiracy theories accusing various minority groups of plotting against America to websites promoting Holocaust denial and false “facts” about Islam, LGBT people, women, Mexicans and others.”
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BRICS Meeting Highlights Climate Change, Trade, Terrorism

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Climate change, trade and terrorism were highlighted Monday at a Beijing meeting of foreign affairs officials from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known collectively as the BRICS nations.

The five nations are seeking to further align their views on key issues at a time when President Donald Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from multilateral arrangements such as the Paris climate accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China in the coming year would look to “expand with more broad and wide-ranging cooperation in areas such as trade and commerce and investment.”

Together the BRICS countries account for roughly 40 percent of the world population and 20 percent of the global economy. All five countries are members of the G20, although their economic prospects have declined somewhat amid crises in Brazil and South Africa and the effect of sanctions lodged against Russia by the West.

South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane pointed to climate change as a major concern.

“There is one climate and for future generations we must employ every effort at our disposal to reverse the effects of climate change,” she said.

Nkoana-Mashabane also pointed to the need to form joint efforts to fight terrorism, sentiments reflected by Vijay Kumar Singh, an Indian External Affairs official.

“It is important to enhance BRICS security in counterterrorism matters,” Singh said.

Leaders of the five nations are due to meet for a summit in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen in September.
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Little-known Koepka Wins US Open Golf Championship

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Little-known American golfer Brooks Koepka won the 117th U.S. Open championship Sunday for his first major title at the age of 27. He’d only won one previous tournament on the PGA Tour.

Koepka tied for the best score in relation to par in the history of the U.S. Open with a 16-under 272 for the four rounds on the par 72 course. His margin of victory was four shots over two golfers who tied for second place — Brian Harman, also from the U.S., and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama.

“It’s definitely a special moment,” Koepka said shortly after completing his final round of 5-under-par 67. “The way I putted this week was unbelievable. . . What I’ve done this week is amazing.”

Koepka pulled away on the closing holes by making a difficult save of par on the 13th hole, then sinking birdie putts on the 14th, 15th and 16th holes.

The Florida native said he received lots of encouragement and advice from friends and family Saturday night, ahead of the final round, and that he felt very confident in his game. And he said he knew where he stood throughout the final round because there were very clear leader boards at each hole.

“I just tried to get as low as I could (on each hole) and stay focused,” Koepka said.

This year’s tournament was played at Erin Hills, an 11-year-old course less than an hour’s drive from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A U.S. Open had never been held in that north central state before.

While more players than usual broke par at a U.S. Open, many of the world’s best golfers failed to make the halfway cut after Friday’s second round. In fact, it was the first time since the world rankings were created in 1986 that the top three ranked golfers in the world missed the cut.

They are defending champion and world No. 1 Dustin Johnson of the United States, No. 2 Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and No. 3 Jason Day of Australia. It was McIlroy who also shot 16-under-par in winning his U.S. Open title at Congressional Country Club outside Washington in 2011.
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Hundreds of Thousands Gather at Brazil Gay Parade

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo for one of the world’s largest gay pride parades.

 

The revelers have packed the city’s Paulista Avenue before Sunday’s parade. Some are helping hold up a gigantic rainbow-colored flag symbolizing LGBT rights.

 

Organizers say they expect 3 million people to participate in the city’s 21st annual gay pride parade.

The parade this year focuses on secularism and the idea that no religion is law regardless of people’s individual beliefs.

 

Claudia Regina is president of the gay rights group organizing the parade.

 

She says on the event’s official Facebook page that “our main enemies today are religious fundamentalists” and says some groups insist on condemning LGBT people and “removing rights that we have already obtained.”
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With Whole Foods, Amazon on Collision Course With Wal-Mart

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. bought online retailer Jet.com for $3 billion last year, it marked a crucial moment — the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, after years of ceding e-commerce leadership to arch rival Amazon, intended to compete.

On Friday, Amazon.com Inc. countered. With its $14 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc., the largest e-commerce company announced its intention to take on Wal-Mart in the brick-and-mortar world.

The two deals make it clear that the lines that divided traditional retail from e-commerce are disappearing and sector dominance will no longer be bound by e-commerce or brick-and-mortar,  but by who is better at both.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods also brings disruption to the $700 billion U.S. grocery sector, a traditional area of retailing that stands on the precipice of a ferocious price war.

German discounters Aldi and Lidl are battling Wal-Mart, which controls 22 percent of the U.S. grocery market, with each vowing to undercut whatever price the others offer.

The stakes are highest for Wal-Mart. Amazon’s move aims at the heart of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant’s business — groceries, which account for 56 percent of Wal-Mart’s $486 billion in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31. With the deal, Whole Foods’ more than 460 stores become a test bed with which Amazon can learn how to compete with Wal-Mart’s 4,700 stores with a large grocery offering that are also within 10 miles (16 km) of 90 percent of the U.S. population.

Amazon is expected to lower Whole Foods’ notoriously high prices, enabling it to pursue Wal-Mart’s customers. The push comes as Wal-Mart is headed in the opposite direction — going

after Amazon’s higher-income shoppers with a recent string of acquisitions of online brands such as Moosejaw and Modcloth and on Friday, menswear e-tailer Bonobos.

Wal-Mart may be ready. In preparation for the grocery price war, Wal-Mart in recent months has cut grocery prices, improved fresh food and meat offerings, modernized shelving and lighting

in its grocery aisles, and expanded its online grocery pickup service.

Marc Lore, the Jet.com founder who now runs Wal-Mart’s e-commerce business after selling a startup to Amazon, told Reuters in an interview that Amazon’s move does not change Wal-Mart’s game plan. “We’re playing offense,” he said.

Wal-Mart is offering curbside pickup of online grocery purchases at 700 locations, with 300 more planned by year end.

It also is testing same-day fresh and frozen home delivery from 10 of its stores. “We see an opportunity to do a lot more of that,” Lore said.

Roger Davidson, who oversaw Wal-Mart’s global food procurement and now is president of Oakton Advisory Group, said the deal will reduce Wal-Mart’s brick-and-mortar advantage.

“I think this acquisition is a concern,” he said.

Some industry observers say Amazon will find it difficult to use Whole Foods to pull away Wal-Mart shoppers because the two stores appeal to different customers. But Michelle Grant, head of retailing at market research firm Euromonitor, said Amazon could use an obscure part of the Whole Foods portfolio — Whole Foods 365 — to lure Wal-Mart shoppers.

Whole Foods 365 offers private-label goods and lower prices than typical Whole Foods stores, and is targeted at younger, value-conscious shoppers. Amazon could provide the financial

capital and tactical ability to build that into something big.

“That [Whole Foods 365] may become a big problem for Wal-Mart,” Grant said.

Amazon, which reported $12.5 billion in cash and equivalents and a free cash flow of $10.2 billion in the year ended March 31, has plenty to spend. Wal-Mart reported $6.9 billion in cash

and equivalents and $20.9 billion in free cash flow at its year ended Jan. 31.

Brittain Ladd, a former senior manager at Amazon who worked on its brick-and-mortar strategy, said Amazon will use Whole Foods to test concepts for the grocery store of the future.

Ladd, who left Amazon in March, said Amazon will seek to eliminate checkout lines by using technology that automatically scans goods as customers add them to their shopping carts. It

will select merchandise based on Amazon’s vaunted customer data, and potentially expects the use of technology to change prices during the course of a day.

Amazon declined comment on competition with Walmart but spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement the company has no plans to cut jobs or use technology in development at its

Seattle Amazon Go store to automate jobs of cashiers.

Ladd, who helped with AmazonFresh’s global expansion and now is a supply chain consultant, said an Amazon-owned Whole Foods also likely will offer in-car pickup of online purchases, and

home delivery from Whole Foods stores, add pharmacies and showcase Amazon devices inside the stores.

“Amazon will reduce prices and change the assortment of products carried in Whole Foods stores to attract a larger customer base,” said Ladd. “Kroger and Wal-Mart will be impacted as their customers will defect to Amazon.”
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Reports: Beyonce Gives Birth to Twins in L.A.

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

U.S. singer Beyonce has given birth to twins in Los Angeles, several celebrity news websites reported Saturday, citing unidentified sources.

Beyonce, 35, and rapper and music producer Jay Z, also have a 5-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy.

E! News, citing multiple unidentified sources, reported the birth and that Jay Z and Blue Ivy were seen at a Los Angeles area hospital Thursday. Us Weekly, also citing multiple unidentified sources, reported that the couple welcomed twins earlier this week.

“Bey and Jay are thrilled and have started sharing the news with their family and closest friends,” one unidentified source told PEOPLE.

Reuters could not verify the reports. A representative for Beyonce did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The celebrity news websites did not provide additional details, such as the date and time the twins were born or the sex of the infants.

Pregnancy announced on Instagram

The “Lemonade” singer, one of the most powerful women in the music business, announced the pregnancy on her Instagram account in February along with an image of her posed in lingerie and caressing a noticeable baby bump.

The announcement got more than 8 million “likes” in the first 24 hours to become the “most-liked” Instagram ever.

The R&B singer performed live at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles two weeks later, proudly displaying her swelling belly in a motherhood-themed show. She has since posted numerous pictures of her bare baby bump on her social media accounts.

The birth of Blue Ivy caused a paparazzi storm in 2012, with New York’s Lenox Hill hospital shutting down part of its maternity wing to accommodate music’s royal couple.

Rumor of marital trouble

News of the pregnancy came less than a year after the release of Beyonce’s 2016 album “Lemonade,” in which she appeared to address long-standing rumors of trouble in her eight-year marriage.

The lyrics of several songs spoke about being cheated on, and regretting being married. But Beyonce made clear in the final tracks of the album and in music videos featuring Jay-Z that she had decided to stay in the relationship.

The couple have never addressed the rumors publicly.
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3-D-Printed Architecture Looks to the Past for Inspiration

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

The soaring cathedrals of Europe seem to defy gravity. But 3-D architects are taking a page from the ancient masters to form their new creations. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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