While technological revolution is changing much of the world, there are still areas that have seen only very small benefits, or none at all. There, people still live without electricity, clean water and basic healthcare. At a competition recently held in Washington, innovators presented affordable new devices, specially designed to help improve the lives of the world’s poorest. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Month: June 2017
Scientists have developed a skin patch that may soon take the “ouch” out of being vaccinated.
Every year, in the United States, less than half of the adults who should get a flu vaccine actually get the shot. That’s a problem because while most people tend to think of influenza as a mild disease, the infection can be deadly, especially in the elderly, young children and people with compromised immune systems.
To help raise that percentage researchers have developed a self-administered skin patch to protect against seasonal influenza as well as a shot. Researchers who developed the vaccine patch said it has a lot of advantages over an injection.
Nadine Rouphael was principal investigator of the patch at Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia where she’s a professor of infectious diseases. “The patch looks more like a Band Aid, like a nicotine patch, and then it has multiple very small needles that contain, in this case, influenza vaccine. Those microneedles completely dissolve into the skin and there will be no sharp waste afterwards,” said Rouphael.
The flu vaccine is currently administered by an injection into the muscle of the upper arm. It is painful and can leave some redness and swelling, which is why an estimated 60 percent of adults do not get immunized against seasonal flu.
In the first human clinical trial of the patch at Emory’s Hope Clinic, 100 participants aged 18-49, tested the effectiveness of the vaccine patch.
The trial, reported in the journal The Lancet, took place in June 2015. None of the participants had received a flu vaccine during the previous influenza season. The participants were divided into four groups. In one group the patch was administered by a health care provider, in the second it was self-administered by each participant, a third group received the vaccine via injection and a fourth group got a placebo.
Rouphael said the patch, whether it was put on the skin by a health care provider or by the participants, was as safe and effective as the intramuscular injection. Side effects were limited to mild redness and swelling that lasted for a few days. More importantly, the researchers found the immune responses were present in both the patch group and those who received the injection six months later, meaning they offered comparable protection.
Rouphael added the participants who used the patch liked it. “We do have a lot of people who are typically scared of needles and they were more prone or more excited as being part of this clinical trial so they could try the microneedle instead.”
The patch would only have to be put on the skin for a few minutes and then thrown away. Rouphael said 70 percent of those who received the patch in the trial indicated they would prefer it over an injection.
Because it does not need refrigeration, Rouphael said the patch could be bought off a store shelf or mailed to patients. The fact that it is painless, said Rouphael, means more people are likely to get vaccinated against the seasonal flu virus. The patch’s manufacturer, Global Center for Medical Innovation in Atlanta, is investigating using the device for other vaccines, including for measles, mumps and rubella.
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Businessman Pankaj Jain is so worried about the impending launch of a new sales tax in India that he is thinking of shutting down his tiny textile factory for a month to give himself time to adjust.
Jain is one of millions of small business owners who face wrenching change from India’s biggest tax reform since independence that will unify the country’s $2 trillion economy and 1.3 billion people into a common market.
But he is simply not ready for a regime that from July 1 will for the first time tax the bed linen his 10 workers make, and require him to file his taxes every month online.
On the desk in his tiny office in Meerut, two hours drive northeast of New Delhi, lay two calculators. Turning to open a metal cabinet, he pulled out a hand-written ledger to show how he keeps his books.
“We will have to hire an accountant – and get a computer,” the thickset 52-year-old told Reuters, as a dozen ancient power looms clattered away in the ramshackle workshop next door. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government says that by replacing several federal and state taxes, the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) will make life simpler for business.
To drive home the point, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has appeared in a promotional video in which he weaves a cat’s cradle between the fingers of his hands – symbolizing
India’s thicket of old taxes. With a flourish, the tangle is gone and Bachchan proclaims: “One nation, one tax, one market!”
Not so simple
By tearing down barriers between India’s 29 states, the GST should deliver efficiency gains to larger businesses. HSBC estimates the reform could add 0.4 percent to economic growth.
Yet at the local chapter of the Indian Industries Association, which groups 6,500 smaller enterprises nationwide, the talk is about how to cope in the aftermath of the GST rollout.
“In the initial months, there may be utter confusion,” said chairman Ashok Malhotra, who runs one firm that manufactures voltage stabilizers and a second that makes timing equipment for boxing contests.
A big concern is the Indian GST’s sheer complexity – with rates of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent, and myriad exceptions, it contrasts with simpler, flatter and broader sales taxes in other countries.
The official schedule of GST rates runs to 213 pages and has undergone repeated last-minute changes.
“Rubber goods are taxed at 12 percent; sporting goods at 18 percent. I make rubber sporting goods — so what tax am I supposed to pay?” asks Anurag Agarwal, the local IIA secretary.
Grace period?
The top government official responsible for coordinating the GST rollout rebuts complaints from bosses that the tax is too complex, adding that the IT back-end that will drive it – crunching up to 5 billion invoices a month – is robust.
“It is a technological marvel, as well as a fiscal marvel,” Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia told Reuters in an interview.
The government will, however, allow firms to file simplified returns for July and August. From September they must file a total of 37 online returns annually – three each month and one at the year’s end – for each state they operate in.
One particular concern is how a new feature of the GST, the input tax credit, will work. This allows a company to claim refunds on its inputs and means it should only pay tax on the value it adds.
The structure will encourage companies to buy from suppliers that are GST-compliant, so that tax credits can flow down a supply chain.
That spells bad news for small firms hesitating to shift into the formal economy. The government estimates smaller companies account for 45 percent of manufacturing and employ more than 117 million people.
Adhia played down the risk of job losses, however, saying this would be offset by new service sector jobs.
Demonetization 2.0
The prospect of disruption is drawing comparisons with Modi’s decision last November to scrap high-value bank notes that made up 86 percent of the cash in circulation, in a bid to purge illicit “black money” from the system.
The note ban caused severe disruption to India’s cash-driven economy and slammed the brakes on growth, which slowed to a two-year low in the quarter to March.
“It could throw the business out of gear – it can affect your volumes by at least 30 percent,” said the head of one large cement company in the Delhi region.
Back in Meerut, Pankaj Jain worries that hiring an accountant and charging 5 percent GST on his bedsheets could eat up to two-thirds of his annual profits of 400,000-500,000 rupees ($6,210-$7,760).
“I know my costs will go up, but I don’t know about my income,” he said. “I might even have to shut up shop completely and go into trading.”
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European regulators fined Google a record 2.42 billion euros ($2.72 billion) for abusing its dominance of the online search market in a case that could be just the opening salvo in Europe’s attempt to curb the company’s clout on that continent.
The decision announced Tuesday by the European Commission punished Google for unfairly favoring its own online shopping recommendations in its search results. The commission is also conducting at least two other probes into the company’s business practices that could force Google to make even more changes in the way it bundles services on mobile devices and sells digital advertising.
Even so, Europe’s crackdown is unlikely to affect Google’s products in the U.S. or elsewhere. But it could provide an opportunity to contrast how consumers fare when the company operates under constraints compared with an unfettered Google.
The fine immediately triggered debate about whether European regulators were taking prudent steps to preserve competition or overstepping their bounds to save companies being shunned by consumers who have overwhelmingly embraced an alternative.
Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s top antitrust regulator, said her agency’s nearly seven-year investigation left no doubt something had to be done to rein in Google.
“What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation,” Vestager told reporters Tuesday.
The fine was the highest ever imposed in Europe for anti-competitive behavior, exceeding a 1.06 billion euros penalty on Silicon Valley chip maker Intel in 2009.
The penalty itself is unlikely to leave a dent in Google’s finances. Parent company Alphabet Inc. has more than $92 billion (82 billion euros) in cash, including nearly $56 billion (50 billion euros) in accounts outside of the U.S.
The findings in Europe contrasted sharply with those reached by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in a similar investigation of Google completed in 2013. The FTC absolved Google of any serious wrongdoing after concluding that its search recommendations did not undermine competition or hurt consumers.
Leading up to that unanimous decision, though, some of the FTC’s staff sent a memo to the agency’s commissioners recommending legal action because Google’s “conduct has resulted – and will result – in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets,” according to a memo inadvertently released to The Wall Street Journal two years ago.
Google’s misbehavior in Europe boiled down to its practice of highlighting its own online shopping service above those of its rivals. Merchants pay Google for the right to show summaries of their products in small boxes displayed near the top of search results when someone seems to be interested in a purchase.
Meanwhile, Google lists search results of its biggest rivals in online shopping on page 4 – and smaller rivals even lower, based on the calculations of European regulators. That’s a huge advantage for Google when 90 percent of user clicks are on the first page.
Google says consumers like its shopping thumbnails because they are concise and convenient.
The commission’s decision “underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, wrote in a blog post.
Europe’s investigation did not present any concrete evidence that consumers had been financially damaged by Google’s online shopping tactics, said Ibanez Colomo, a law professor at the London School of Economics.
“The only harm being alleged here is that competing services have suffered a decrease in traffic coming from Google,” Colomo said on a call organized by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech lobbying group.
Alphabet is mulling an appeal of Tuesday’s penalty, but even if that is filed, the Mountain View, California, company will still only have 90 days to comply with an order to stop favoring its own links to online shopping. If it does not, Alphabet faces more fines of up to 5 percent of its average daily revenue worldwide. That would translate into roughly $14 million (12 million euros), based on Alphabet’s revenue during the first three months of the year.
Rather than comply, Google could shut down its shopping service in Europe.
If that happens, “it will mean consumers in Europe are going to be worse off than consumers in the rest of the world,” predicted David Balto, a consumer advocate and antitrust expert who formerly served as the FTC’s policy director. “Consumers rarely benefit when bureaucrats put their thumbs on the economic scales to tip them one way or the other.”
Google’s critics applauded the EU for standing up to the company after the FTC backed down.
“Some may object to the EU moving so aggressively against U.S.-based companies, but these authorities are at least trying to deal with some of the new competitive challenges facing our economy,” said the News Media Alliance, a group representing U.S. newspapers whose revenue has plunged as more advertising flowed to Google during the past decade.
Other antitrust experts believe the fine levied on Google means European regulators are more likely to rein in other U.S. technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix as they win over more European consumers at the expense of homegrown companies.
“We already have been in an information trade war,” said Larry Downs, who studies antitrust issues as project director at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy. “But I think it just went from being a cold war to a hot war with Europe.”
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Computers around the world were locked up and users’ files held for ransom in a cyberattack Tuesday that paralyzed some hospitals, government offices and major multinational corporations.
Here’s a look at how malware and ransomware work and what people can do if they fall victim to attacks.
What is malware and ransomware?
Malware is a general term that refers to software that’s harmful to your computer, says John Villasenor, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ransomware is a type of malware that essentially takes over a computer and prevents users from accessing data on it until a ransom is paid, he says.
How does your computer become infected with ransomware?
In most cases, the software infects computers through links or attachments in malicious messages known as phishing emails.
“The age-old advice is to never click on a link in an email,” said Jerome Segura, a senior malware intelligence researcher at Malwarebytes, a company based in San Jose, California, that has released anti-ransomware software. “The idea is to try to trick the victim into running a malicious piece of code.”
The software usually is hidden within links or attachments in emails. Once the user clicks on the link or opens the document, their computer is infected and the software takes over.
But some of the major ransomware attacks recently, including last month’s WannaCry and the one spreading Tuesday, borrowed leaked National Security Agency code that permits software to spread quickly within an organization’s network.
How ransomware works
“Ransomware, like the name suggests, is when your files are held for ransom,” said Peter Reiher, a UCLA professor who specializes in computer science and cybersecurity. “It finds all of your files and encrypts them and then leaves you a message. If you want to decrypt them, you have to pay.”
The ransomware encrypts data on the computer using an encryption key that only the attacker knows. If the ransom isn’t paid, the data is often lost forever.
When the ransomware takes over a computer, the attackers are pretty explicit in their demands, Segura says. In most cases, they change the wallpaper of the computer and give specific instructions telling the user how to pay to recover their files.
Most attackers demand $300 to $500 to remove the malicious ransomware; the price can double if the amount isn’t paid within 24 hours. The demand in Tuesday’s attack was $300 per computer, according to security researchers.
Law enforcement officials have discouraged people from paying these ransoms.
How to avoid these attacks
The first step is being cautious, experts say. Users should also look for malicious email messages that often masquerade as emails from companies or people you regularly interact with online. It’s important to avoid clicking on links or opening attachments in those messages, since they could unleash malware, Villasenor says.
But Villasenor says there is “no perfect solution” to the problem.
Users should regularly back up their data and ensure that security updates are installed on your computer as soon as they are released. Up-to-date backups make it possible to restore files without paying a ransom.
WannaCry and Tuesday’s attack exploited vulnerabilities in some versions of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft has released software patches for the security holes, although not everyone has installed those updates.
Even so, the new malware appears to have a backup spreading mechanism, so that even if some computers were patched, they can still be hit if one or more machines in a network weren’t patched.
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed an energy revolution marked by surging U.S. exports of oil and natural gas.
Trump cited a series of steps the administration has taken to boost energy production and remove government regulations that he argues prevent the United States from achieving “energy dominance” in the global market.
“Together, we are going to start a new energy revolution — one that celebrates American production on American soil,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the U.S. is on the brink of becoming a net exporter of oil, gas and other energy resources.
The self-proclaimed “energy week” follows similar policy-themed weeks on infrastructure and jobs.
At the White House, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the administration is confident officials can “pave the path toward U.S. energy dominance” by exporting oil, gas and coal to markets around the world, and promoting nuclear energy and even renewables such as wind and solar power.
“One of the things we want to do at [the Department of Energy] is to make nuclear energy cool again,” Perry said.
The focus on energy began at a meeting between Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with U.S. natural gas exports part of the discussion. Trump is expected to talk energy Wednesday with governors and tribal leaders, and he will deliver a speech Thursday at the Energy Department.
Arctic, Atlantic drilling
Trump signed an executive order in April to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, reversing restrictions imposed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump has also pushed to revive U.S. coal production after years of decline. Coal mining rose by 19 percent in the first five months of the year as the price of natural gas edged up, according to Energy Department data.
U.S. oil and gas production have boomed in recent years, primarily because of improved drilling techniques such as fracking that have opened up production in areas previously out of reach of drillers.
A report released in January by the Energy Information Administration said the country is on track to become a net energy exporter by 2026, although the White House said Tuesday that net exports could top imports as soon as 2020.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also focused on energy as he addressed the Western Governors’ Association in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana.
Zinke said increased offshore drilling could provide more than enough revenue to offset an $11.5 billion maintenance backlog in national parks.
“There’s a consequence when you put 94 percent of our offshore off limits. There’s a consequence of not harvesting trees. There’s a consequence of not using some of our public lands for creation of wealth and jobs,” he said.
Despite Trump’s withdrawal from the global Paris climate accord, Perry said the U.S. remains committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. He called nuclear power a key element to fight climate change.
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A boycott imposed by four Arab nations that accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism is squeezing the tourism sector, and Doha’s hotels, which would normally be full in the Eid al-Fitr holiday, have seen steep falls in their occupancy rates.
A Reuters survey of five major hotels found average occupancy was around 57 percent at the start of the Eid festival on Sunday, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, when friends and families eat and pray together and take holidays.
“We’re usually packed with Saudis and Bahrainis, but not this year,” a staff member at a five-star hotel said.
But Qatar’s official news agency QNA cited officials and managers in the hotel sector reporting hotel occupancy over the holiday period stood at more than 95 percent and denied reports of lower rates.
“They pointed to high tourist flows from the Sultanate of Oman and the State of Kuwait and a significant increase in demand from domestic tourism,” QNA said.
Free night at some hotels
QNA said an offer by some hotels to offer guests staying two nights at hotels a third night free had helped win high occupancy and that the sector has shown its ability to “diversify away from traditional markets.”
Aviation analyst Will Horton estimated Hamad International Airport, one of the Middle East’s busiest, would handle 76 percent as many flights in early July compared with the same period last year, a loss of about 27,000 passengers a day.
The airport said in a statement Tuesday that it had experienced a “very busy” Eid period with 580,000 passengers passing through between June 19 and June 25. It did not give comparative figures for last year’s Eid.
Visitors from the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council usually account for almost half of all visitors to Qatar. So a decision by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and transport ties on June 5 hit traffic hard.
“Doha in early July, assuming the restrictions remain, will have less capacity than a year ago — a confronting figure for a region where every month sets year-on-year records,” said Horton, senior analyst at Australia’s CAPA Centre for Aviation.
There is no breakthrough in sight for the crisis, in which the four Arab nations issued an ultimatum to Doha to close Al Jazeera television, curb ties with Iran, shut a Turkish base and pay reparations. A defiant Doha has denied accusations of supporting terrorism and says the demands are unrealistic.
Airport losses
Hundreds of weekly flights to and from Qatar have already been canceled because of the dispute. Hamad airport stands to lose fees paid by airlines and passengers, as well as terminal revenue from duty free shops and restaurants.
Air links suspended by the four Arab states represented around 25 percent of flights by state-owned Qatar Airways, one of the region’s big three carriers.
Qatar Airways, whose hub is Hamad airport, said on Tuesday that 510,949 of its passengers had traveled through the airport in the past seven days. It did not give comparative figures.
Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker had said on June 14 the majority of its operations had not been affected by restrictions imposed by the four Arab states.
Elsewhere in the tourist sector, hotels, restaurants and other facilities have had to find new sources of services and goods — in some cases, at higher cost — because of the boycott, said Rashid Aboobacker, senior director at TRI Consulting in Dubai.
“A substantial drop in visitor arrivals is likely to force hotel and real estate developers to re-evaluate their strategies and priorities, potentially causing delays to some of the ongoing [tourism] projects,” he said.
Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup organizing committee has said sanctions have not affected preparations for the tournament, and that alternative sources for construction materials have been secured.
Qatar has said 46,000 rooms will be available to host fans by the time of the World Cup. In March, it had 119 hotels with 23,347 rooms, according to the tourism authority.
Developing business and leisure tourism is part of Qatar’s drive to develop its economy away from reliance on oil and gas revenue.
Doha aims to raise the tourism sector’s contribution to GDP to 5.2 percent by 2030 from around 4.1 percent now, while raising the number of people employed by nearly 70 percent to 127,900.
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A quarter-century-old project to repopulate the steppes of Mongolia with wild horses was kept alive as four animals made the long trip back to their ancestral home from the Prague Zoo.
Driven to extinction in their homeland in the 1960s, the Przewalski’s horses survived in captivity before efforts began to re-introduce them to the arid desert and mountains along Mongolia’s border with China.
Zoos organized the first transport to Mongolia of the strong, stocky beasts in 1992.
For the past decade, Prague Zoo has been the only one continuing that tradition and it holds the studbook of a species whose ancestors – unlike other free-roaming horses such as the wild mustangs of the United States – were never domesticated.
The zoo completed its seventh transport last week, releasing four mares born in captivity in the Czech Republic, Germany and Denmark in the Gobi desert. They will spend the next year in an enclosed area to acclimatize before being freed.
“All the mares are looking very well, they are not hobbling, they are calm, eating hay and trying to test the taste of the new grass,” Prague Zoo veterinarian Roman Vodicka said after making observations a few days after the release.
Prague has released 27 horses in total and officials estimate around 190 are now back in the wild in the Gobi B park, where the most recent arrivals were sent.
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A new exhibition will examine the overlapping worlds of two figures bound together by history on different sides of the Atlantic — King George III and President George Washington.
Britain’s Royal Archives and the U.S. Library of Congress said on Wednesday that a new “Two Georges” exhibit, to be first shown in Washington in 2021, would tap into the libraries’ rich sources of historic knowledge to find parallels and contrasts between the two men.
A venue in Britain has yet to be decided.
“Linked and then ultimately separated by empire, the two Georges offer a distinctive perspective on this vital historical period,” the institutions said in a statement.
The first president of the United States and one of its founding fathers lived from 1732 to 1799. Washington is believed to have earned the respect of George III, his rival, who lived from 1738 to 1820 and was defeated in the American War of Independence.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Tuesday that the United States and the European Union should have a free trade agreement, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for work on such an accord to resume.
President Donald Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from an agreement with nations around the Pacific, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the fate of a proposed trade deal with the EU has been less clear. Merkel vowed recently not to give up on that accord, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Ross told a conference in Berlin attended by Merkel that the U.S. had made a “conscious decision not to walk away from TTIP” when it ditched the Pacific accord. That, he said, signaled Washington’s receptiveness to trade negotiations with Europe.
“I stand before you tonight to say this in a more explicit fashion: We, as major trading partners of each other, should have a free trade agreement,” Ross said. He addressed the event, organized by a group linked to Merkel’s party, by video link after canceling a trip to Berlin on short notice.
“In contrast to the behavior of some other nations, the relatively small number of trade disputes between our countries augurs well for the enforceability of any such agreement,” Ross added.
The Trump administration sees “little point in negotiating treaties that will not be honored,” he said. “We believe that we have in Europe a good counterparty with whom we have had, and will continue to have, productive discussions that benefit all.”
He didn’t specify when talks should be held on an accord.
Merkel, speaking after Ross, said that “we should resume work on a trade agreement between the EU and the United States.”
“The multitude of problems that arise … can only be dealt with in structured trade negotiations with each other,” she said.
The Trump administration’s “America First” approach to trade has caused widespread concern in Europe and beyond. Trump also has criticized Germany for its sizeable trade surplus with the United States.
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The Force was with George Lucas on Tuesday as the Los Angeles City Council moved with lightsaber speed to clear the way for a $1.5 billion Museum of Narrative Art the Star Wars creator plans to build down the road from his alma mater.
After hearing from Lucas himself, the council voted 14-0 to approve an environmental impact report and other requirements for the museum’s construction adjacent to the University of Southern California.
“For a very brief time I actually grew up here,” said Lucas, who earned a degree in film from USC. “That’s where I learned movies. That’s where I learned my craft. Basically where I started my career was in school here.”
Lucas said his museum won’t just focus on movies, however, but on the entire history of narrative storytelling, from the days of cave painting to digital film.
“I realized that the whole concept of narrative art has been forgotten,” he told the council.
With Tuesday’s approval, plans are to break ground in Exposition Park, south of downtown, as early as this year and open the museum to the public in 2021. The city says the project will cost taxpayers nothing because Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, are footing the bill.
“It is the largest private gift in our city, in our state or in our nation’s history,” said Councilman Curren D. Price Jr., whose district takes in the park.
It will feature all forms of narrative storytelling, said the museum’s president, Don Bacigalupi. He said its exhibits will include story boards, costumes, props and various other elements that went into making Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and other classic films.
And, yes, there will be plenty of cool Star Wars stuff there, too.
“Everything from Luke Skywalker’s first lightsaber to Darth Vader’s costume and helmet,” said Bacigalupi.
The Lucas-Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones films also will be represented.
Interactive programs
Numerous interactive programs for children, film students, academics and others will be offered.
Lucas said he hopes the museum will serve as inspiration to people of all ages, but especially to children, encouraging them to create a better world.
Popular art, he said, is the glue that holds people together, that teaches them that while we may have differences, we have similar aspirations.
In addition to USC, the Museum of Narrative Art will be within close proximity to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center and the California African American Museum.
Although Lucas’ affection for USC is clear — he and his foundation have given the school tens of millions of dollars over the years — it was once assumed he’d put his museum in his hometown of San Francisco. Or if not there, then his wife’s hometown of Chicago.
But when it came time to clear away all the bureaucratic hurdles, it was Los Angeles that prevailed.
“I wanted to put it in my hometown. They said no. Mellody wanted to put it in her hometown. They said no. We were both basically heartbroken,” Lucas said.
“And then we said, ‘All right, let’s clear the boards and find a place that really wants it.’ ”
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In a frank and heartfelt speech, U2 bassist Adam Clayton thanked his bandmates of four decades for their support during his treatment and recovery for alcohol abuse years ago, and then joined them for a rollicking rendition of a few hits.
“We have a pact with each other,” said Clayton, 57, who was receiving an award from MusiCares, the charity arm of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. “In our band, no one will be a casualty. We all come home, or none of us come home. No one will be left behind. Thank you for honoring that promise, and letting me be in your band.”
He ended by quoting lyrics that Bono, U2’s frontman, had written when the band was starting out: “If you walk away, walk away, I will follow.” At that, his bandmates came out to join him, performing “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” “Vertigo” and, fittingly, “I Will Follow.”
The evening at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square also featured performances by rapper Michael Franti, Jack Garratt, reggae singer Chronixx, Macy Gray, and the Lumineers, who are currently appearing with U2 on their “Joshua Tree” tour.
‘I had to leave it behind’
Clayton was introduced by British record producer Chris Blackwell as someone who “lived through addiction and came out the other side, and has been courageous enough to admit it.”
Taking the stage, the bassist quipped: “I’m not used to achieving anything on my own.”
Turning serious, he said: “I’m an alcoholic, addict, but in some ways that devastating disease is what drove me towards this wonderful life I now have. It’s just that I couldn’t take my friend alcohol. At some point I had to leave it behind and claim my full potential.”
He said part of the reason he had a hard time quitting drinking was that “I didn’t think you could be in a band and not drink. It is so much a part of our culture.”
It was Eric Clapton, he said, who finally told him he needed help.
“He didn’t sugarcoat it. He told me that I needed to change my life and that I wouldn’t regret it,” Clayton said. He credited another friend, the Who’s Pete Townshend, for visiting him in rehab, where he “put steel on my back.”
As for his bandmates, Clayton said, “I was lucky because I had three friends who could see what was going on and who loved me enough to take up the slack of my failing. Bono, the Edge, and Larry [Mullen] truly supported me before and after I entered recovery, and I am unreservedly grateful for their friendship, understanding and support.”
Access to treatment
Clayton received the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award for his support of the MusiCares MAP Fund, which offers musicians access to addiction recovery treatment.
Arriving at the theater earlier, he told reporters the fund was especially important given the current epidemic of opioid addiction. “MusiCares … really provides funding for a lot of people to look into those things and find help,” he said.
He added that his bandmates had been supporting him for 40 years.
“You know, I guess they loved me before I knew how to love myself,” he said. “So it’s really important that they share this with me.”
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Tech enthusiasts may be drawn to HoloLens, the head-mounted holographic computer from Microsoft, but company executives say businesses also should consider how it can help improve their bottom line.
The wearable device allows users to interact with holograms using their gaze and simple hand gestures. Virtual interfaces are superimposed onto the immediate environment, combining the real world with a digital one. It’s a form of mixed reality that Microsoft executives say offers more than just entertainment value — it can be put to work in business scenarios.
“We’re seeing mixed reality broadly as a new kind of dimension, literally, of how we’re going to interact with information,” said Greg Sullivan, director of communications for the Windows and devices group at Microsoft.
Companies like German elevator maker Thyssenkrupp have begun experimenting with HoloLens. In a promotional video, an elevator repairman dons a HoloLens headset to begin a work order. The computer assesses the repair situation and displays holographic guidance, along with the ability to conference in an associate located remotely.
The associate can interact within the repair technician’s virtual workspace, “She can sit in her office in Germany and scale her expertise literally around the world … see what they’re seeing, guide them and even ink on their display,” Sullivan said.
WATCH: High-tech HoloLens in Action
Cirque de Soleil
Data visualization is another potential use for HoloLens.
“You can walk around the 3-dimensional representation of that data and it gives you powerful new insights, because as humans, we live in a 3-D world and we understand things better … if we interact with them in three dimensions,” Sullivan said.
That can be useful for creative industries. At Microsoft’s recent “Build” conference for software developers, set designers from Cirque de Soleil demonstrated how holographic versions of their theater sets allowed them to plan ahead. Team members wearing HoloLens could walk around and interact with true-to-scale holograms of their set designs, even inserting virtual avatars of real-life performers.
Architecture and engineering
Other industries that utilize 3-D modeling, like architecture and engineering, potentially can benefit from holographic computing, too. Trimble, a company specializing in GPS technologies, developed an application for HoloLens that allows architects and contractors to manipulate 3-D holographic designs and models in real-life environments, such as construction sites.
“You can have multiple people sharing an experience in mixed reality, look at a digital version of the project … and then make those changes in real time and all see them, and then go ahead and move right into production much, much quicker,” said Sullivan. “The efficiencies that are gained are really profound.”
Chris Silva, research director at Gartner, agrees. “3-D models in health care, extremely complex design documents … they’re a natural fit for something like HoloLens, where stepping into the data really can help get the job done better,” Silva said.
Big investment
But like many new technologies, HoloLens’ price tag initially may deter widespread adoption. The device retails for $3,000 for a developer edition and $5,000 for a business edition that comes bundled with enterprise applications.
“The biggest risk is making an investment in this technology and not having a plan for how it gets used,” Silva said. “These are devices that are two, maybe even three, times the cost of the average laptop, and much more expensive than a mobile device. They’re new, and therefore the organizations aren’t always sure how they’re going to use them.”
Silva recommends that companies take a pilot approach to the technology by introducing it to a single group, picking one process to improve upon and analyzing the subsequent results.
Microsoft’s long-time presence on office desktops means HoloLens eventually could transform everyday workspaces.
“When we look at the average worker model, where this type of technology starts literally replacing people’s monitors on their desks, somebody like Microsoft is well positioned to capture that,” Silva said. “They can plug HoloLens into the way they’re doing business today.”
Overall, Silva is excited for future developments in the mixed reality space.
“This is definitely the next frontier of mobile devices … this could be the next thing that replaces the desktop PC, the iPad, the smartphone in your pocket.”
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Facebook announced Tuesday that it now has more than 2 billion users.
Facebook, which was a social website available only to Harvard University students when it was launched in 2004, has recently been criticized for giving extremist groups an easy way to disseminate content over the internet.
CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the “Facebook community” after Tuesday’s announcement and defended the social media website, saying that he was proud of the role his company was playing in connecting people around the world.
Facebook’s user base is bigger than the population of any single country, and of six of the seven continents. It represents more than a quarter of the world’s 7.5 billion people.
The company uses its huge size advantage to lure advertisers, offering them targeted marketing capabilities based on its data about users. The number of advertisers topped 5 million in April, the company said.
Facebook’s growth has increasingly come from outside the United States, Canada and Europe. Three years ago, those regions accounted for 38 percent of users; in the first quarter of this year, the figure was about 30 percent.
To increase penetration rates in developing nations, Facebook has introduced stripped-down versions of its apps that use less data, and it has been developing solar-powered drones to extend internet connectivity around the planet.
This report contains information from Reuters and AP.
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Professional football players are still not getting properly checked for concussions, despite a pledge by the sport’s governing body. That was obvious from a review of footage from the games in FIFA’s 2014 World Cup, the international men’s football championship held every four years.
The review, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that out of 81 head collisions there were only 12 assessments that fit the minimum requirements.
Co-author Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, told VOA, “There were only two collisions [where] I could be happy and confident that a proper assessment was actually done.”
According to the 2012 Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport, of which FIFA was a signatory, players showing any sign of concussion should immediately be withdrawn from play and assessed by a health care professional on the sideline. But players in the World Cup only received that full assessment 15 percent of the time.
More than half of the time, an assessment was done on the field or by a referee or another player. And 26 percent of the time, they received no assessment at all, despite showing as many as three signs of concussion. Those symptoms include being slow to get up, disorientation, obvious disequilibrium, unconsciousness, seizure-like movements, and head clutching.
The impact of concussions can accumulate over years and may lead to trouble with memory, attention, depression, anxiety, and early onset dementia. In rare cases, repeated blows to the head over a short period of time, even mild ones, can lead to death.
A concussion ignored
There was obviously something wrong with Christoph Kramer during the final game of the World Cup. The German player was struck on the side of his head by a shoulder and thrown to the ground. Following a brief assessment on the pitch, he was returned to play, despite showing at least three signs of concussion. After 13 minutes of strange, confused behavior, he was removed from the game.
A referee later told the Gazzetta dello Sport, “Shortly after the blow, Kramer came to me asking: ‘Ref, is this the final?’” The referee told teammates, but Kramer continued to play.
“Had he been injured to his knee and couldn’t walk there would be no doubt that he would have been taken off,” Cusimano said, “so why are we treating people with brain injuries any different than people who have, say, a leg injury?”
In response, FIFA soon created a policy to allow referees to stop play for as long as three minutes, so that players can receive an on-pitch assessment by health care personnel. But it is only at the discretion of the referee. This is not enough for Cusimano. He points out it was an on-pitch assessment that failed to catch Kramer’s apparent concussion, and it takes at least seven minutes to properly diagnose the condition. So he wants to see mandatory assessments on the sidelines, just as the 2012 Consensus advises.
‘Whole world is watching’
FIFA declined a request to speak with VOA, but shared a written statement highlighting their recent rule change, and their participation in the most recent International Consensus Conference on Concussion.
“Protecting the health of football players is and will remain a top priority in developing the game,” it said.
Researchers decided to analyze the World Cup because of the size of the audience. Over a billion people tuned in. That means that the World Cup provides an opportunity to set an example for how to handle concussions. They hope that better policy at the premier sporting event might not just protect those playing in the World Cup, but those playing in little leagues too.
“The whole world is watching,” said Dr. Cusimano. “FIFA has all the ability to do this properly.”
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Imagine going to the doctor and getting a cooking lesson! That’s what happens at a doctor’s practice near Washington D.C. Dr. Yum Pediatrics is half doctor’s office, with waiting area and exam rooms, half kitchen. Food is an important part of her approach to treatment.
In the exam rooms, she explains to her patients and their parents the crucial importance of eating nutritious meals. In the kitchen, she shows them how to prepare those meals.
Dr. Fernando’s goal is to help children establish good eating habits and inspire families to prepare nutritious meals with the ingredients they have in hand.
Food for good health
Fernando has seen first-hand the connection between what kids eat and their well-being.
“In the first glance, you think of diet-related illnesses, mainly just pediatric obesity, and it’s true that 30 percent of kids in our community and nationwide are obese. And that’s a pretty staggering number,” she says, adding, “but as I paid more attention to a lot of the symptomology that I was seeing in kids who even weren’t obese or overweight, I was seeing that those symptoms often traced back some way to the diet.”
To help change that, the pediatrician co-authored a book, Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater: A Parent’s Handbook. She also started a blog and a website.
“I simply posted recipes on that website and when I would see patients in the office and felt like I didn’t have enough time to go over the nutrition topics with them I would point them to that website.”
In 2012, she went a step further, co-founding the Dr. Yum Project. She developed a curriculum that preschool teachers can use to introduce nutrition lessons in their classrooms. Inside her practice, Fernando leads cooking classes.
Cooking with your doctor
Young patients, their parents and members of the community are invited to cook with Dr. Fernando and her team. They try different recipes and use different tools that make cooking an easy, fun everyday experience.
“Maybe it’s using our menu planners to see how they can make meal planning easy for them,” Fernando explains. “Maybe it’s using budget-friendly recipes to figure out how to eat really healthy on a budget. Maybe it’s our baby food options so that they can see how they can feed their babies the same food they’re eating.”
Yara Esquivel, a working mother of two, has been taking cooking classes with Dr. Yum for more than three years. “Even my husband and I are eating better because we’re making sure the kids are eating better,” she says.
Almost all of the ingredients used in the cooking classes come from the clinic’s garden.
“As part of our classes, we really want to create a playful experience around feeding and eating,” Fernando says. “We also want to create a rich sensory experience. So taking kids out to the garden where they can grow food, plant food and harvest it and bring it to the kitchen, then cook it with their own hands, it really inspires them and makes it easier for them to accept new foods because they’re invested in it.”
Delicious, Healthy Meals Made Easy
Dr. Yum co-founder, Heidi DiEugenio, says all the recipes are taste-tested and posted online. “Every single recipe is tasted by our families and we have the real feedback from some families, parents and kids about the food. We tagged all those recipes, making it very easy for them to find.”
The ultimate goal of this project is to change the culture around kids’ food.
“There is a lot going in the media, kinds of advertising and things going around that say kids food, like ‘lunchables,’ kids like processed food, kids wouldn’t eat fresh carrots, they would eat Doritos,” DiEugenio says. “You have to remember that these messages are out there because those companies are trying to make money. But it’s not necessarily the case. It’s a matter of being able to be patient with your kids, you have to learn how to try new foods all the time.”
The Dr. Yum team hopes to inspire pediatricians around the country to start cooking lessons to help families enjoy real, nutritious meals.
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Doctors encourage their patients to eat a healthful diet, and often give them tips on how to do that. But a pediatrician in Spotsylvania, Virginia, is doing even more. Dr. Nimali Fernando is showing her young patients and their parents how to eat healthy by offering them a variety of cooking classes, from baby food for parents to cooking with preschoolers and older kids. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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EU antitrust regulators fined Google $2.7 billion Tuesday for unfairly boosting search results for its online shopping service.
The European Union said Google began efforts in 2008 to boost the service now known as Google Shopping by making its results show up higher in search results, while demoting the search results of rival companies.
The result, according to regulators, was the most highly ranked rival services appeared on average on the fourth page of the results, an area few consumers ever reach.
EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google has created many innovative products, but in this case abused its market dominance in internet searches.
Google said it will review the EU decision as it considers an appeal to the decision.
“When you shop online, you want to find the products you are looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products. That is why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both,” Kent Walker, a Google senior vice president, said in a statement.
Vestager said Google denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate, and denied European consumers a genuine choice of service.
In addition to the fine, Google is required to give rival comparison shopping services equal treatment, and the company must explain how it will accomplish that.