Month: June 2017

New Life on Freedom Fighter Harriet Tubman’s Maryland Trail

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Beside a quiet stream on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a 19th century brick house that once served as a way station on the Underground Railroad can bring present-day visitors to tears as they gaze at the path where escaped slaves made their way to freedom.

 

The Jacob and Hannah Leverton house is among 36 sites along the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway. The 125-mile route has been getting fresh attention in recent months as the nation and the world take more notice of Tubman’s heritage as a hero of freedom.

Tubman, who escaped from slavery in antebellum Maryland to become a leading abolitionist, helped other slaves escape by guiding them north on the Underground Railroad and served as a Union spy during the Civil War.

 

“It’s hard to identify with George Washington, unless you’re an older white male. But when it comes to Tubman, there’s so many ways that people of all backgrounds and races … can find something that they can see in themselves that she has carried forward or she held herself,” says Kate Larson, an author and historian who has written about Tubman and worked as a consultant on the byway.

 

Fresh Attention

 

The famed Underground Railroad conductor is drawing admiration from new generations.

 

Plans to put her on the $20 bill have received prominent attention, stirring debate about the representation of old white historic figures on the nation’s currency and the lack of women and minorities.

This year, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of American History and Culture in Washington acquired a rare photograph of Tubman in her late 40s.

 

In March, the $21 million Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opened, not far from her Maryland birthplace.

 

Long Road

 

The designated sites and nearby landscapes offer a comprehensive look into Tubman’s life and journeys along the Underground Railroad, an informal network that helped escaping slaves evade capture and reach free states such as nearby Pennsylvania.

 

After about 18 years of planning, the first stops along the byway were designated in 2013 to coincide with the centennial of Tubman’s death.

“This is just an opportunity for the world to know that Harriet has been a major part of our history in the United States of America,” said Victoria Jackson-Stanley, the first black woman elected mayor of Cambridge, the county seat, not far from where Tubman was born and raised a slave. “She’s a local home girl, as I like to say, but she’s an icon for freedom.”

 

Television Revival

 

Tubman was featured recently in “Underground,” a WGN television drama about the Underground Railroad.

 

Actress Aisha Hinds, who played Tubman, attributes the abolitionist’s increasing prominence partly to the divided times of the present.

 

“I feel like, contextually, what we’re living now is sort of a modern day manifestation and articulation of the times that Harriet Tubman was living and the obstacles that she transcended,” Hinds said at a conference on Tubman in Cambridge, Maryland.

 

Meanwhile, an HBO movie with Viola Davis starring as Tubman is in the works, based on Larson’s book, “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero.”

 

Act of Defiance

 

The site of Tubman’s first known act of defiance against slavery is one of the most popular stops on the Tubman byway.

 

The Bucktown Village Store has been restored at a rural crossroads believed to be where Tubman refused a slave owner’s orders to help him detain another slave. When the other slave ran, the owner grabbed a 2-pound weight and threw it at him, hitting Tubman on the head and causing an injury that would trouble her for the rest of her life.

The inside still looks like a 19th century shop. The owners have some Tubman-related items, including a newspaper advertising a reward for Tubman and two of her brothers. Susan Meredith, who owns the site with her husband, says people have been stopping more frequently since the visitors’ center opened nearby.

 

“We see people from all over the world that come to see and step in the place that she was in,” Meredith says.

 

Still Developing

 

Some areas with significant links to Tubman’s early life are neither open to the public nor designated on the byway but could one day be purchased by the state. Some related sites have inconsistent hours, depending on when property owners are home, and are still developing under the added attention.

 

The Jacob and Hannah Leverton home, which is on the byway, offers mixed signals. A sign with the words “Private Drive” and “No Trespassing” stands at the foot of the drive, next to an interpretive marker that designates it as a byway stop.

Still, Michael McCrea, who bought the house in the mid-1980s, is enthusiastic about the byway and accommodates visitors, even though the sign remains.

 

“It’s fine,” he says, mentioning that visitors have been undeterred by the sign to get a closer look.

 

McCrea has shown people around the property. Some have cried, he says, while others solemn rub the bricks of the house.

 

“They just can’t believe that it’s here,” McCrea says.
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Berry, Rodriguez Speak Out on Diversity, Hollywood

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Halle Berry, the only black woman to ever win a best actress Oscar, said her 2002 win turned out to be meaningless, and Fast and Furious star Michelle Rodriguez warned she might quit the action movie franchise unless filmmakers “show some love for women.”

Their comments proved a reality check for women in Hollywood on Wednesday, even as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it invited 298 more women to join its ranks in a bid to improve diversity at the organization behind the Oscars.

Berry in 2002 won the best actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball, becoming the first black woman to do so. Fifteen years on, she remains the only woman of color to get the honor.

“Wow, that moment really meant nothing. It meant nothing. I thought it meant something, but I think it meant nothing,” she told Teen Vogue editor Elaine Welteroth in a video interview at the Cannes Lion festival released late Tuesday.

Berry said she reached that troubling conclusion in 2016 when all 20 of the Oscar acting nominees were white, sparking the #OscarsSoWhite backlash.

“I was profoundly hurt by that, and saddened by that,” Berry said, adding that it had prompted her to want to start directing and producing to make more opportunities for actors of color.

Ready to quit

Elsewhere, Rodriguez, who plays Vin Diesel’s love interest in five of the eight Fast and Furious box office hits, suggested she was prepared to quit her role as tough street racer Letty Ortiz over the portrayal of women.

“F8 [the eighth film] is out digitally today,” she wrote on her Instagram account Tuesday above a montage of photos from the film. “I hope they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one or I just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise.”

It’s not the first time Rodriguez has spoken out.

In an interview in May with Entertainment Weekly, she said women in action films should have “more female camaraderie, [and have] women do things independently outside of what the boys are doing — now that is truly the voice of female independence.”

The Fast and Furious franchise has taken in more than $5 billion at the box office worldwide since 2001, and two more films are planned for release in 2019 and 2021.
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Auto Industry Groups Urge Caution in Changing NAFTA Origin Rules

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Auto industry trade groups said on Wednesday that tightening the rules of origin in the North American Free Trade Agreement could be disruptive and hurt the competitiveness of U.S., Mexican and Canadian auto plants.

Their testimony at a public hearing ahead of NAFTA renegotiations, expected to start Aug. 17, contrasted sharply with frequent comments from U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that the trade pact’s local content rules are an area that needs strengthening to avoid being used as a “back door” for Chinese auto parts.

‘Strikes the right balance’

Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, said the current NAFTA 62.5 percent local content requirement was working just fine and “strikes the right balance” for encouraging local manufacturing investment and keeping the industry’s costs competitive.

Blunt, whose group represents Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler urged a “very cautions and careful” approach for any origin rule changes and discussed the affects of stricter enforcement.

“It could make us less competitive as compared to our international peers and affect our ability to export,” Blunt said.

“It could deny us access to supply chains which would drive up costs and could affect sales and ultimately employment within the industry.”

Don’t want outsiders to benefit

Ross has said that NAFTA’s rules of origin need tightening to avoid producers  from outside the region to benefit from tariff-free access to the U.S. market. He also has noted that vehicles now have many new electronic components that were not contemplated when the pact was negotiated in the early 1990s.

But Blunt disputed that the origin rules were allowing China to benefit from NAFTA in a major way, arguing that Chinese components make up less than six percent of the value of North American-built vehicles.

His comments were seconded by representatives of other groups, including the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA), representing parts makers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes Detroit and foreign automakers building vehicles in the United States, and the Association Global Automakers, a group that represents international automakers that sell into the U.S. market.

Not opposed to review

Leigh Merino, senior director of regulatory affairs for MEMA, said auto components and subsystems in particular depend on complex “ecosystem” of diverse parts suppliers and small changes to this “can be extremely disruptive.”

Nonetheless, the trade groups said that they were not opposed to examining ways to improve the rules.

The NAFTA hearings, which allow industry groups and companies to express views on the U.S. negotiating objectives for the talks are expected to conclude on Thursday.

 
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Taiwan Activist Urges Crackdown Against Floating Sweatshops

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Three videos from a mobile phone that described the beatings of an Indonesian crewman aboard a Taiwan-flagged vessel led Allison Lee to find her role as an advocate for those afflicted: migrant fishermen.  

Lee, the co-founder of the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union, was recognized by the United States for safeguarding the rights of foreign fishermen working in Taiwan.  

 

In accepting her award in Washington on Tuesday, she made one appeal: to end slavery on the open sea.

To know the path from ocean to consumers’ dinner plates is to know the story of floating sweatshops, Lee told VOA on Tuesday.  

“Migrant fishermen are vulnerable to exploitation,” she said.

State Department award

Flanked by President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, Lee was one of the eight men and women to receive “Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery Award” at the State Department, where the 2017 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released.

Lee is the first Taiwan citizen to receive the honor.  

Migrant workers aboard Taiwan-flagged fishing vessels that operate in international waters are not covered by the so-called Labor Standards Act, the laws governing employer and employee rights. Therefore, they do not benefit from Taiwan’s minimum-wage regulations regarding overtime pay, Lee said.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen reaffirmed her government’s pledge to battle against human trafficking.

“Taiwan is committed to working with all stakeholders to fight human trafficking,” Tsai tweeted.  

For eight consecutive years, Taiwan has been ranked in the “Tier 1” category, the best ranking in the human-trafficking report.

While acknowledging Taiwan’s “serious and sustained efforts,” Washington urged Taipei to increase efforts to prosecute and convict traffickers under the anti-trafficking law.

‘Vigorously investigate’ infractions

The State Department also urged Taiwan to “vigorously investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute the owners of Taiwan-owned or -flagged fishing vessels that allegedly commit abuse and labor trafficking on board long-haul fishing vessels.”

The TIP Report is a symbol of the U.S. moral and legal obligation to combat tragic human rights abuses and as well as to advance human dignity around the world, said Susan Coppedge, the U.S. Ambassador-at-large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

“Tier 1 countries meet the minimum standards to combat trafficking, but that’s just the minimum. They don’t rest on their laurels, so to speak,” Coppedge told VOA on Tuesday.

“They need to continue their efforts to combat trafficking, and one of the areas where Taiwan can make additional progress is in labor trafficking,” she added.

On January 15, 2017, the Act for Distant Water Fisheries took effect in Taiwan amid growing pressure on Taiwan’s seafood industry to crack down on modern-day slavery and abuses for migrants working on the island’s fishing vessels.

Lee told reporters that being a Christian gave her strength to withstand the pressure from government officials and the industry.
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Creator of Paddington Bear, Michael Bond, Dies at 91

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

The writer who created the beloved children’s character Paddington Bear has died.

Michael Bond was 91. His publisher said he died Tuesday after a brief illness.

There are few children who do not recognize and love Paddington and his trademark rain hat and coat and suitcase.

Bond created Paddington in 1956 after spotting a teddy bear sitting alone in a London shop.

In his first adventure, “A Bear Called Paddington,” the character was described as a stowaway from “darkest Peru” who showed up at London’s Paddington train station wearing a sign saying “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”

Since his debut, Paddington has sold more than 35 million books in 40 languages, starred in movies and on television.

Shooting on a new Paddington film wrapped up this week.

Bond once said children are drawn to Paddington because of his “vulnerability.”
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Fed Approves Dividend, Buyback Plans of All 34 Biggest Banks

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The Federal Reserve has given the green light to all 34 of the biggest banks in the U.S. to raise their dividends and buy back shares, judging their financial foundations sturdy enough to withstand a major economic downturn.

It was the first time in seven years of annual “stress tests” that every bank assessed by the Fed won approval for its capital plans. All have at least $50 billion in assets.

The Fed on Wednesday announced the results of the second round of its annual stress tests. Those allowed to raise dividends or repurchase shares include the four biggest U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

Capital One’s plan only got conditional approval and it has six months to revise it. But the bank was still allowed to return profits to shareholders.

After the results were made public, the banks quickly jumped in with announcements of dividend boosts and share buyback plans. They included a doubling of Citigroup’s dividend, a 60 percent dividend increase by Bank of America and a 12 percent hike for JPMorgan.

Capital One, because of its conditional status, opted to keep its dividend at its current level but is planning a share repurchase.

The second part of the seventh yearly checkup tested the banks to determine if their current plans for paying out capital to shareholders would still allow them to keep lending if hit by another financial crisis and severe recession.

Results show strength

With the 34 banks holding more than three-quarters of total assets of all U.S. financial companies, the results showed strength in an industry that nearly toppled the financial system — and has recovered handily nearly nine years on from the 2008-09 crisis. Banks large and small across the U.S. received hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to prop them up during the financial meltdown.

Now the banks have a total of about $1.2 trillion in capital reserves as of the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of $750 billion over the beginning of 2009, in the depths of the crisis, according to the Fed. They are expected to pay out to shareholders nearly 100 percent of their net revenue over the next four quarters, compared with 65 percent in the same period last year.

“They can now more freely pay out dividends and buy back stock without worrying whether they are resilient in a financial crisis,” said David Wright, a managing director at Deloitte who formerly worked on bank supervision at the Fed.

The results may not be an explicit seal of approval for the banks by the Fed, but that’s the conclusion that can be drawn, Wright said.

“I don’t think they [the Fed] are quite ready to declare victory, though,” he added. “Some of the smaller firms still struggled to identify risks and there is more work to be done. But I think we are at, or close to, the summit.”

Fed Gov. Jerome Powell said in a statement the Fed’s assessment of banks’ capital plans in light of their reserves “has motivated all of the largest banks to achieve healthy capital levels, and most to substantially improve their capital planning processes.”

The financial industry has seized on the strong showing to buttress its assertion that regulations it sees as excessive should be rolled back. After the crisis that plunged the U.S. into the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s, banking industry profits have been steadily rising and banks have been lending more freely. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have taken major steps this year toward easing the financial rules that came in under the Dodd-Frank law enacted by Democrats and President Barack Obama in response to the crisis.  

Worst-case scenario

Wednesday’s announcement on the second round of the tests followed last week’s initial results. There, the regulators determined that the 34 big banks are adequately fortified with capital buffers to withstand a severe U.S. and global recession and continue lending.

The Fed’s most extreme hypothetical scenario in this year’s tests envisions the U.S. economy falling into a deep recession causing the stock market to plunge about 40 percent. Under that scenario, unemployment — now at a 16-year low of 4.3 percent — climbs to at least 10 percent, while home prices drop 25 percent and commercial real estate prices tumble 30 percent.

The Fed said the 34 big banks would sustain $383 billion in loan losses under the most dire scenario. That’s down from $526 billion in losses for 33 banks last year. Even with $383 billion in losses, all the banks would still together hold a high-quality capital ratio of 9.2 percent, far above the 4.5 percent minimum and showing improvement from last year’s 8.4 percent. Capital ratios are an industry measure of how strong a cushion a bank holds against unexpected losses.

The dividend increases and share buyback plans are important to ordinary investors, and to banks. The banks know that their investors suffered big losses in the crisis, and they are eager to reward them. Some shareholders, especially retirees, rely on dividends for a portion of their income. For the banks, raising dividends can drive up their share prices and make their stock more valuable to investors.

But raising dividends is costly, and regulators don’t want banks to run down their capital reserves, making them vulnerable in another recession. Buybacks also are aimed at helping shareholders. By reducing the number of a company’s outstanding shares, earnings per share can increase.

CIT was added this year to the banks tested by the Fed. They are: Ally Financial, American Express, BancWest, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, BB&T, BBVA Compass, BMO Financial, Capital One, Citigroup, Citizens Financial, Comerica, Deutsche Bank, Discover, Fifth Third, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Huntington Bancshares, JPMorgan, KeyCorp, M&T, Morgan Stanley, MUFG Americas Holdings, Northern Trust, PNC, Regions Financial, Santander Holdings, State Street, SunTrust, TD Group, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and Zions Bancorp.
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Volcanic Rock Stoves Cook Food – and Protect Forests – in Uganda

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Cooks at a community kitchen in Kampala’s Nakasero Hill business district are preparing a traditional breakfast of green bananas in offal sauce using a very untraditional means of cooking – volcanic rocks.

It’s a method that some are hoping will take off across Africa, to help protect forests and improve the lives of women.

“Rocks for fuel is a reprieve to all women in Africa,” said Susan Bamugamire, one of the 55 cooks in the community kitchen set up by city authorities in the Wandegeya Market shopping mall to help feed local workers.

“Save for the high cost of purchasing and installing it, the special cookstove is something every woman will crave to have in her kitchen,” she said, saying it would largely free women from having to seek out firewood, charcoal or kerosene.

But cost is an issue in a country where a third of the population live on $1.90 or less a day and even small domestic stoves are priced at $100.

The stoves use heat-holding volcanic rocks broken down to the size of charcoal. The rocks are heated using starter briquettes and then remain hot for hours with the help a fan blowing a continuous flow of air over them.

According to Rose Twine, the director of Eco Group Limited – the Kampala-based company that produces the stoves – the main aim is to provide an efficient form of cooking energy that is user friendly and good for the environment.

“It pains me when I see people cut down trees, some of them indigenous and decades old, just for the sake of making charcoal or firewood,” said Twine.

“It is now good that we can talk of an alternative,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The volcanic rocks can be repeatedly heated for up to two years with the aid of the fan, which is solar-powered and needs very little energy. Any surplus solar power produced can be used to light the house, run a radio and charge mobile phones, Twine said.

Alternatively, the fan can be run off mains electricity if the owner’s home or business is connected to the power grid, she said.

It is the cost of the fan, battery and solar panel that push up the stove’s production cost, pushing it out of reach of most people in Uganda.

“We can only achieve the environmental benefits of these stoves if they are made affordable for poor Ugandans who desperately need them,” said David Illukol, a senior mechanical research engineer at the government-run Uganda Industrial Research Institute.

“All we need is further research on how to reduce the costs of production, and perhaps [on] maintaining them,” the engineer said in an interview.

Despite the cost, more than 4,500 individuals and institutions in Uganda – including schools – are now using the stoves, according to Eco Group Limited.

The Kampala city authority has installed 230 of the stoves at Wandegeya Market where Bamugamire and her colleagues rent the premises from the government.

Protecting Trees

There are plans for the stoves to be used in other parts of the continent too.

Twine’s company began exporting them to Rwanda this year, and plans to take them to Kenya and Somalia as well.

An umbrella group of more than 1,000 climate organizations and networks – the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance – wants to spread the cooking method across Africa, according to its secretary general Mithika Mwenda.

Volcanic rocks have the potential to become a key cooking method for East Africa and perhaps the entire continent, engineer Illukol said.

They are a largely environmentally friendly form of cooking because – unlike charcoal, kerosene, gas and firewood – they do not emit climate-changing gases and produce no smoke at all, he said.

About 94 percent of Ugandan households use firewood or charcoal for cooking, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

Only 20 percent of households had access to electricity in 2014, and most of those connected to the grid rarely use electricity for cooking because of the high costs involved, the statics bureau said.

Demand for wood for fuel has put pressure on Uganda’s shrinking forests.

The country had some 3 million hectares of tropical forests under government control at the beginning of the 20th century.

But by 1999, tropical forest cover had fallen to about 730,000 hectares or 3.6 percent of Uganda’s land area, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“If we can stop using firewood and charcoal completely, then we will have saved a huge volume of wood that is used for fuel every year, and that is good for our environment,” said Illukol.
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America’s Cup Foiling Technology Set to Fly Beyond Racing Boats

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

From water taxis that “fly” on hydrofoils to aircraft wings and cutting-edge car steering wheels, the America’s Cup has produced technology with potential far beyond its “foiling” catamarans.

With their focus on carbon fiber and aerodynamics, the teams that fought for the America’s Cup attracted partners including planemaker Airbus and automotive groups BMW and Land Rover who were keen to learn from them.

One area where this is likely to have an impact is in harnessing “foiling” technology, where the America’s Cup boats “fly” above the water on foils, cutting water resistance.

“Foiling in small electric boats will most likely appear on rivers in major cities. We are just at the beginning of the foiling adventure,” Pierre Marie Belleau, head of Airbus Business Development, who managed its partnership with Larry Ellison’s Oracle Team USA, told Reuters.

The space-age catamarans used in the 35th America’s Cup, which ended in victory for Emirates Team New Zealand this week, can sail at maximum speeds of 50 knots (92.6 kilometers per hour) and have more in common with flying than sailing.

For Jaguar Land Rover, which sponsored British sailor Ben Ainslie’s attempt to win the cup, the relationship is a strategic one with a focus on technology and innovation.

“We don’t just get our logo onto a sail,” Mark Cameron, the company’s Experiential Marketing Director, said by telephone, adding that the carmaker would be providing more designers to help Land Rover BAR with technology for their next campaign.

Land Rover produced a special steering wheel for Ainslie to use in the America’s Cup, with in-built gear shift paddles that allowed him to adjust the catamaran’s “flight” levels.

The relationship is similar between BMW and Oracle Team USA, with the German automaker focused on areas including the electronics in the wheel used by skipper Jimmy Spithill, the development of carbon fiber used to make the boat and its components, and the aerodynamic testing.

“We like to think of ourselves more as a partner than a sponsor. We have a very strong carbon fiber relationship,” Ian Robertson, who is the BMW management board member responsible for sales and brand, told Reuters between races.

“This is a dynamic sport that is developing fast. … It’s moving quickly just like the car industry is moving quickly. It’s all changing,” Robertson said.

Plane sailing?

The America’s Cup catamarans use similar aerodynamics and load calculations to power their wings as commercial aircraft, which has led some skippers such as Spithill to become pilots.

Airbus is now considering applying the design and method of Oracle’s foils to the tips of aircraft, Belleau said, adding that this would need a two- to four-year certification process and require it to change its production method.

Airbus has also created a new generation of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) microchips that were originally developed for the wings of its test aircraft and then adapted on board the Oracle boat to measure the wind speed and direction at all points on its almost 25-meter-high wing sail.

The sensors make it easier to tell if the wing sails are set efficiently, as wind speed and direction can vary from the top to bottom of the 25-meter wing of the America’s Cup boats — technology that could become standard in the marine leisure industry to replace less reliable wind instruments.

“I would be very surprised if this MEMS technology does not become standard in order to replace the classic anemometer,” Belleau said.

The Airbus A350-1000, one of Airbus’ twin-aisle, wide-body jetliners, is also flying every day using new instrumentation developed through the partnership.

Oracle used Airbus’ 3D printing and manufacturing process to produce stronger and lighter parts that Airbus has started to use on aircraft to replace titanium and aluminum.

“In 10 years from now … this technology will spread and will be on all the sailing boats in the market,” Belleau said. “In addition to the sporting competition, there is still this technological competition. … The story is not finished.”
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Red-hot Iceland Keeps Some Investors Out in the Cold

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Iceland spent nearly a decade trying to keep foreign money in the country after a financial collapse, now it is trying to keep some of it out.

The economy is booming again and hedge funds and other foreign investors want exposure to a surging tourism sector, banks, property, infrastructure and the soaring krona currency.

Most capital controls from the 2008 banking crisis were lifted in March, allowing money to flow in and out of the country more freely.

But with over 20 financial crises since 1875 and warnings from economists about the risk of overheating again, the government is being cautious.

It has left in place restrictions making it prohibitively expensive to buy government bonds which offer returns of 4.5 percent, the highest of any developed economy.

On Monday, the central bank took another step to try and break the cycle of boom and bust on the isolated North Atlantic island, clamping down on derivatives and other avenues it was worried were being used to bet on the krona.

“There are a bunch of people I know who would love to put money into Iceland but they simply can’t because of restrictions on the inflows,” said Mark Dowding, who runs a hedge fund at BlueBay Asset Management and bought into the Icelandic government bond market in 2015, before the central bank rules were introduced.

The government is preparing other steps to make Iceland less attractive — a contrast to other economies recovering from crisis which have welcomed inflows of money.

The government is preparing to raise taxes for the tourism industry which has been growing at 20 to 25 percent a year as foreigners flock to its volcanoes, glaciers and geysers. It is also considering a currency peg for the krona.

Opportunities

Iceland offers other exciting investment opportunities.

Growth of more than 6 percent is forecast this year and the krona is up 20 percent versus both the dollar and euro over the last 12 months.

The central bank has cut interest rates four times in the last year and analysts say it would need to cut further if it wants to slow the rise of the currency. That could further stimulate the economy.

“Once every decade or two, I come across a market overseas which is most attractive and is worth considering,” said Gervais Williams, a portfolio manager at London-based Miton Group. “That last happened in 1995 in Ireland, and Iceland is the market I now like.”

Cumulative net capital inflows have gone from almost nothing to 150 billion crown ($1.45 billion) in two years.

New cars sales are at the highest in 10 years, Marriott will open Iceland’s first five-star hotel next year. Data center firms are also moving in as the climate and cheap geothermal energy cut the costs of cooling huge server stacks.

A potential float of Arion Bank, the domestic arm that emerged from the collapsed Kaupthing bank, meanwhile is expected to lead to a surge of new foreign money into the stock market which currently lists just 17 firms.

Several hedge funds — Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, Taconic Capital Advisors and Attestor Capital — bought stakes in Arion privately, after the bulk of capital controls were lifted earlier in the year.

On the back of the shifts, London and Iceland-based fund firm GAMMA Capital Management launched its first two funds — including one hedge fund — for foreign investors in November last year after requests from abroad.

“We have been getting a lot of interest … but investing in Iceland brings a lot of hurdles, so we created a simple conduit,” said Hafsteinn Hauksson, economist at GAMMA. Both funds have more than doubled in size this year, he said.

Red hot

Nevertheless, there are concerns that Iceland could overheat again.

The International Monetary Fund said in a report last week that there was a need for “vigilance with regards to credit growth and the real estate sector, labour market tightening and wage increases.”

It called for capital inflows to be managed carefully.

Iceland has a history of spectacular booms and bust.

The head of Iceland’s central bank regularly describes its 2007-2008 banking bust — when the top-three banks, Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki collapsed under heavy debts — as “the third-biggest bankruptcy in the history of mankind.”

A 2015 report by Bank of Iceland economists noted that this was not Iceland’s first financial crisis.

“In fact, over a period spanning almost one and a half century [1875-2013], we identify over twenty instances of financial crises of different types,” it said. “Recognizing that crises tend to come in clusters, we identify six serious multiple financial crisis episodes occurring every fifteen years on average.”

The report said the crises typically involved a sudden collapse in the currency and capital inflows.

Glacier bonds

Wary of its history and nervous that the end of capital controls would bring a wave of foreign money, the central bank brought in a rule in May 2016 forcing buyers of its bonds to park additional money in a low interest account.

That costly “special reserve ratio” arrangement has meant foreign investment in Icelandic debt has dropped close to zero.

Along with repeated interest rate cuts, it has taken some of the steam out of the crown over the last month.

“In the current domestic and global circumstances, the risk of excessive and volatile carry-trade type capital inflows was becoming significant,” a central bank spokesman said of why the measure was brought in.

Monday’s decision to scale back some exemptions aimed to make it harder for foreign investors to bet on the krona.

Those exemptions had made it possible to conduct carry trades by issuing krona-denominated bonds — nicknamed Glacier bonds — and entering derivatives contracts with domestic banks.

“Experience has shown that capital inflows in connection with foreign issuance of krona-denominated bonds [Glacier bonds] could weaken monetary policy,” the central bank said.

Iceland also still has controls in place that prevent proceeds from the sale of pre-crisis bonds leaving the country unless the investor signs up to the terms of the central bank’s buyback arrangement, which offer a punitive exchange rate.
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A Decade Ago, Apple’s iPhone Transformed the World

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

In the two years leading up to June 29, 2007, when Apple’s iPhone went on sale, company co-founder Steve Jobs and a select team were hard at work secretly designing what would become a global game changer. 

The initiative even had a code name, “Project Purple.” By all accounts, the project was pained. 

Inside a secure room, a collection of super smart techies, ate, slept, worked way beyond the typical eight hour day, fought and, at times overthought, the design of this new slick mobile device.

​Before that day, flip phones, Blackberries and even the occasional pager were commonplace.

Pay phones were rarer still.

Photo gallery: America’s love affair with the ever-evolving phone

Ten years later, Jobs is no longer with us, having passed away in 2011.

But most of the public is hunched over a hand-held device, iPhone or not, accessing the internet, watching videos on demand, and conducting mobile banking. 

Time magazine published the final public video appearance of Jobs before he died after a 10-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Apple, of course, is still redesigning, and hopefully improving upon, that first, innovative cell phone.

Later this year, the iPhone 8 will be released amid much speculation and apparent premature leaks. 
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‘Petya’ Computer Virus Spreads From Ukraine to Disrupt World Business

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

A new cyber virus spread from Ukraine to wreak havoc around the globe on

Wednesday, crippling thousands of computers, disrupting ports from Mumbai to Los Angeles and halting production at a chocolate factory in Australia.

The virus is believed to have first taken hold on Tuesday in Ukraine where it silently infected computers after users downloaded a popular tax accounting package or visited a local news site, national police and international cyber experts said.

More than a day after it first struck, companies around the world were still wrestling with the fallout while cybersecurity experts scrambled to find a way to stem the spread.

Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said it was struggling to process orders and shift cargoes, congesting some of the 76 ports around the world run by its APM Terminals subsidiary.

U.S. delivery firm FedEx Corp said its TNT Express division had been significantly affected by the virus, which also wormed its way into South America, affecting ports in Argentina operated by China’s Cofco.

The malicious code locked machines and demanded victims post a ransom worth $300 in bitcoins or lose their data entirely, similar to the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.

More than 30 victims paid up but security experts are questioning whether extortion was the goal, given the relatively small sum demanded, or whether the hackers were driven by destructive motives rather than financial gain.

Hackers asked victims to notify them by email when ransoms had been paid but German email provider Posteo quickly shut down the address, a German government cybersecurity official said.

Ukraine, the epicenter of the cyber strike, has repeatedly accused Russia of orchestrating attacks on its computer systems and critical power infrastructure since its powerful neighbor annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

The Kremlin, which has consistently rejected the accusations, said on Wednesday it had no information about the origin of the global cyberattack, which also struck Russian companies such as oil giant Rosneft and a steelmaker.

“No one can effectively combat cyber threats on their own, and, unfortunately, unfounded blanket accusations will not solve this problem,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

ESET, a Slovakian company that sells products to shield computers from viruses, said 80 percent of the infections detected among its global customer base were in Ukraine, with Italy second hardest hit with about 10 percent.

Eternal blue

The aim of the latest attack appeared to be disruption rather than ransom, said Brian Lord, former deputy director of intelligence and cyber operations at Britain’s GCHQ and now managing director at private security firm PGI Cyber.

“My sense is this starts to look like a state operating through a proxy … as a kind of experiment to see what happens,” Lord told Reuters on Wednesday.

While the malware seemed to be a variant of past campaigns, derived from code known as Eternal Blue believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), experts said it was not as virulent as May’s WannaCry attack.

Security researchers said Tuesday’s virus could leap from computer to computer once unleashed within an organization but, unlike WannaCry, it could not randomly trawl the internet for its next victims, limiting its scope to infect.

Bushiness that installed Microsoft’s latest security patches from earlier this year and turned off Windows file-sharing features appeared to be largely unaffected.

There was speculation, however, among some experts that once the new virus had infected one computer it could spread to other machines on the same network, even if those devices had received a security update.

After WannaCry, governments, security firms and industrial groups advised businesses and consumers to make sure all their computers were updated with Microsoft security patches.

Austria’s government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said “a small number” of international firms appeared to be affected, with tens of thousands of computers taken down.

Security firms including Microsoft, Cisco’s Talos and Symantec said they had confirmed some of the initial infections occurred when malware was transmitted to users of a Ukrainian tax software program called MEDoc.

The supplier of the software, M.E.Doc denied in a post on Facebook that its software was to blame, though Microsoft reiterated its suspicions afterwards.

“Microsoft now has evidence that a few active infections of the ransomware initially started from the legitimate MEDoc updater process,” it said in a technical blog post.

Russian security firm Kaspersky said a Ukrainian news site for the city of Bakhumut was also hacked and used to distribute the ransomware to visitors, encrypting data on their machines.

Corporate Chaos

A number of the international firms hit have operations in Ukraine, and the virus is believed to have spread within global corporate networks after gaining traction within the country.

Shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, which handles one in seven containers shipped worldwide, has a logistics unit in Ukraine.

Other large firms affected, such as French construction materials company Saint Gobain and Mondelez International Inc, which owns chocolate brand Cadbury, also have operations in the country.

Maersk was one of the first global firms to be taken down by the cyberattack and its operations at major ports such as Mumbai in India, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Los Angeles on the U.S. west coast were disrupted.

Other companies to succumb included BNP Paribas Real Estate, a part of the French bank that provides property and investment management services.

“The international cyberattack hit our non-bank subsidiary, Real Estate. The necessary measures have been taken to rapidly contain the attack,” the bank said on Wednesday.

Production at the Cadbury factory on the Australian island state of Tasmania ground to a halt late on Tuesday after computer systems went down.

Russia’s Rosneft, one of the world’s biggest crude producers by volume, said on Tuesday its systems had suffered “serious consequences” but oil production had not been affected because it switched to backup systems.
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UN: Terrorists Using ‘Dark Web’ in Pursuit of WMDs

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

The U.N.’s disarmament chief warned Wednesday that terrorists and non-state actors are using the so-called dark web to seek the tools to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction.

“The global reach and anonymity of the dark web provides non-state actors with new marketplaces to acquire dual-use equipment and materials,” U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

The dark web is a part of the internet that requires special software to access and allows users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable, making it appealing to criminals, terrorists and pedophiles.

Nakamitsu said that dual-use items are complicating their efforts to address the risks posed by WMD.

“We must keep in mind that many of the technologies, goods and raw materials required for developing weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery derive from legitimate commercial applications that benefit many people,” she said. Nakamitsu added that it is important to strike the right balance between collective security and commercial opportunity with preventing proliferation.

Weapons of mass destruction include nuclear, chemical, radiological and biological weapons.

“While there are still significant technical hurdles that terrorist groups need to overcome to effectively use weapons of mass destruction, a growing number of emerging technologies could make this barrier easier to cross,” Nakamitsu said.

In addition to the dark web, she said the use of drones and 3-D printers by non-state actors are also growing concerns. Nakamitsu urged intensified international cooperation to make it harder for terrorists and criminals to illegally traffic sensitive materials.

Chemical weapons

Terrorists have already used poison gas in at least one deadly attack.

In Syria, Islamic State used mustard gas on civilians in the town of Marea in August 2015, according to a U.N.-authorized investigation last year. (The same investigators also concluded that the Syrian government carried out at least two chemical weapons attacks on civilians living in rebel-controlled areas in 2014 and 2015.)

“The use by non-state actors of chemical weapons is no longer a threat, but a chilling reality,” Joseph Ballard, a senior official with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told council members.

Ballard said the OPCW is working to enhance the security of the global supply chain of dual-use materials and technologies, including working with international customs officials. He said the organization also works closely with the international chemical industry, to ensure that toxic chemicals do not fall into the wrong hands.
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Head of Top US University for the Deaf Visiting Africa

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The first-ever deaf woman leader of a U.S. university for deaf students is touring Africa, hoping to learn and to teach institutions here how to provide for hearing-impaired students. In South Africa, an estimated one-fifth of the disabled population is hard of hearing. Anita Powell shares a portion of her interview with Gallaudet University President Roberta Cordano.
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Samsung Investing $380M in Newberry, Creating 950 Jobs

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Samsung is investing $380 million in South Carolina to manufacture home appliances, creating an estimated 950 jobs over the next three years.

State and company officials said Wednesday that Samsung is locating in the former Caterpillar plant in Newberry. Production is expected to start early next year.

 

The company says “premium home appliances” made in Newberry will include washing machines.

 

An event was to be held later Wednesday to celebrate the announcement.

 

Samsung Electronics America CEO Tim Baxter says the investment represents the South Korean company’s commitment to expanding its U.S. operations.

 

Samsung already operates a call center in Greenville County employing 800 people.

 

Gov. Henry McMaster says Samsung’s decision will “change the very fabric of the Newberry community.”

 

Rural Newberry County is home to fewer than 40,000 people.

 

 
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Cairo Airport to Screen Passengers from Sudan for Cholera

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Egypt’s Cairo airport has started screening passengers arriving from Sudan for signs of cholera because of a reported outbreak there, the head of airport quarantine said Wednesday.

Similar measures are already carried out in the Cairo airport for people arriving from Yemen due to an epidemic there.

“The number of doctors and health monitors in arrival halls has increased to monitor the flights and examine passengers coming from infected areas,” Head of Airport Quarantine Medhat Qandil said.

Qandil said any suspected cholera cases would be isolated and sent to hospitals. Even if passengers do not show symptoms, their details will be recorded so they can be monitored by Egyptian health authorities, he said.

Sudan’s government has not officially declared a cholera outbreak, reporting instead on cases of “Acute Watery Diarrhea,” the World Health Organization (WHO) told Reuters.

On June 1, the United States embassy in Sudan’s capital Khartoum said there were confirmed reports of cholera in some areas of Sudan, including the greater Khartoum area, that have resulted in fatalities.

Between August 2016 and June 23, 2017, a total of 19,666 suspected cases of “Acute Watery Diarrhea” were reported in Sudan, including 355 deaths, the WHO said. The outbreak affects 12 out of 18 of Sudan’s states.

“The rainy season usually lasts from in June to August and may exacerbate the situation if no adequate preventative interventions can be implemented in time,” a WHO spokesman said.

Neighboring South Sudan has been experiencing a cholera outbreak since mid-2016, according to WHO information.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that a major cholera outbreak in Yemen may have reached its halfway mark as a massive emergency response has begun to curb its spread two months into the epidemic.

The WHO is responding to Sudan’s cholera outbreak by supporting health workers, running education campaigns and distributing medical supplies.
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Kenya’s New HIV Treatment Offers Hope for Patients

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Kenya is set to be the first African country to introduce better HIV treatment for people living with the disease that causes AIDS. In partnership with the Kenyan government, UNITAID and the World Health Organization have introduced a generic first-line drug for people living with HIV. 

 

Speaking at a news conference in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, Dr. Peter Kimuu, the head of health policy and planning at the Ministry of Health, said this new first-line drug, known as Dolutegravir (DTG), has few side effects and patients living with HIV are less likely to develop resistance.

“DTG offers better tolerability, fewer adverse drug reactions, fewer drug to drug interactions and higher genetic barrier to resistance,” he said.

 

UNITAID

One of the key partners in the initiative is UNITAID, a global health initiative working to end Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV/AIDS epidemic.

 

UNITAID donated approximately 148,000 bottles of DTG to Kenya’s Health Ministry, which will cover about one percent of the patients living with HIV in the country.

 

Robert Matiru, the director of operations at UNITAID, told VOA the economic and health benefits of the new line of treatment will go a long way in ensuring key populations get much needed treatment.

 

“When you bring a product that is cheaper to make, that is of higher efficacy, meaning better treatment outcomes of course you’re going to realize saving and savings are so critical in this day and age because as we know funding is constrained and in some cases declining,” he said.

 

According to Kenya’s Health Ministry about one-and-a-half million people are living with HIV. The introduction of the new generic first-line drug will be an added arsenal in the fight against the scourge.

 

Speaking to VOA at the launch of the new drug, Dr. Martin Sirengo, the head of the National Aids & STI control Programme (NASCOP), was upbeat about the new line of treatment. However, he says challenges still exist.

 

“We have a challenge in the sense that DTG is not available commercially to the scale that we can start everyone on it,” he said. “It’s a new drug so the manufacturing is yet to catch up that’s why we are starting small, number two we have moved the treatment from where we used to combine different pills into a regiment into what we call a fixed dose combination pill, which is basically a tablet containing three drugs. DTG is a single drug so we have to formulate the regiment with other two drugs.”

 

Living with HIV

Daugthie Ogutu, the executive director at African Sex Workers Alliance, an organization that addresses human and health rights violations against sex workers, has been living with HIV for the last fifteen years.

Ogutu has been on Dolutegravir (DTG) for three months. She says the difference between this new line of treatment, compared to the old one, is the diminished side effects that go along with taking the medication.

 

“The side effects are significantly less. I haven’t experienced any side effects using it and I think that’s just my experience but you know with treatment it differs from patient to patient but what I can attest to is that the side effects of this one if I compare with the side effects I had with Efavirenz, whereby I had a loss of weight, loss of appetite, I became severely anemic and that became basically my condition,” said Ogutu. “I haven’t been able to experience that with this new drug. So I think it’s a plus that we are now changing to medication that’s being used in developed countries.”

 

However Ogutu, whose organization African Sex Workers Alliance, has membership in 30 African countries, argues that more focus should be shifted to adherence.

“There’s a challenge and even for those living with HIV, adherence sticking to your drugs and finishing your drugs,” said Ogutu. “There’s a lot more that still needs to be done around providing psycho social support for people living with HIV and I think we are losing it in all this conversation around prevention and I think it should be a slogan in this year’s World Aids Day ‘People living with HIV lives matter.'”

 

According to the World Health Organization, more than 18 million people globally were receiving antiretroviral treatment. Dolutegravir (DTG) is set to be introduced in two other early adopter countries, Nigeria and Uganda. 
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Global Cyberattack Hits Indian Port

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

A global cyberattack disrupted operations Wednesday at India’s largest container port, adding to the headaches of governments and businesses affected by so-called ransomware code that takes a user’s data hostage until the victim agrees to pay for its release.

The problems at Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai involved a terminal run by Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk.  The company had said Tuesday as the attack was spreading largely in Europe and the United States that the malicious code was affecting terminals “in a number of ports.”

Australia’s Cyber Security Minister Dan Tehan told reporters Wednesday that officials have not yet confirmed the same computer virus was responsible for ransomware attacks on two Australian companies, but that “all indications would point to” that being the case.

Ukraine targeted first

Banks, government offices and airports in Ukraine were among the first to report the cyberattack.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko tweeted a photo of his black computer screen, saying the government’s headquarters had been shut down.

Other international firms that reported being affected include America’s Merck pharmaceutical company, Russia’s Rosneft oil giant, British advertising giant WPP and French industrial group Saint-Gobain.

“We confirm our company’s computer network was compromised today as part of global hack. Other organizations have also been affected,” Merck said on Twitter.

A U.S. National Security Council spokesman said the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other agencies are “working with public and private, domestic and international partners to respond to this event and provide technical information for prevention and remediation.”

“Individuals and organizations are discouraged from paying the ransom as this does not guarantee access will be restored,” the spokesman added.

Ransom demands 

Europol’s European Cybercrime Center has told anyone affected by Tuesday’s attack to report the crime to national police and encouraged them not to pay any ransom requested by hackers.

“What is interesting about this particular case is that the email system that is supposed to be used to deposit the Bitcoin ransoms has actually been disabled, so the hackers in this case may not get what they bargained for,” Cedric Leighton, who operates his own crisis management consultancy, told VOA.

WATCH: Related video report

 

Eternal Blue

The computer virus used in the attack includes code known as Eternal Blue, a tool developed by the NSA that exploited Microsoft’s Windows operating system and which was published on the internet in April by a group called Shadow Brokers.  Microsoft released a patch to protect systems from the exploit in March.

A similar ransomware attack last month named “WannaCry” affected computer systems in 150 countries.

Tim Rawlins, director of the Britain-based cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, says these attacks continue to happen because people have not been keeping up with effectively patching their computers.

“This is a repeat WannaCry type of outbreak and it really comes down to the fact that people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on, the very simple premise of patching your systems,” Rawlins told VOA.

WATCH: Ransomeware basics facts
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Experts: Global Cyberattacks to Increase

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

International business in the United States and Europe, as well as Ukrainian state institutions, were among those affected by cyberattacks on Tuesday. The virus locked digital files and demanded payment for help to restore access to them. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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