Day: July 15, 2017

Women in Silicon Valley Take on Harassment

Sweat rolled down the faces of women dressed in super hero costumes at the recent noon SoulCycle class in San Mateo, California.

 

Despite the thumping beat of the music, this was no routine workout. These Silicon Valley women were cycling as a protest, part of a response to an array of claims of gender inequity brought to light in recent months.

 

Travis Kalanick, the former chief executive of Uber, resigned from the company he co-created after women complained about the ride-hailing firm’s culture.

 

More recently, two prominent male venture capitalists left their roles after women complained about sexual harassment they experienced. Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal and Dave McClure of 500 Startups also stepped down after a New York Times article earlier this month described incidents of his sexual misconduct.

 

The controversies threaten to cast a shadow over a unique part of the U.S. tech industry – the startup ecosystem.

 

“There’s no glass ceiling when you start your own business,” shouted Tim Draper, a prominent venture capitalist and organizer of the event, before the cycling began. He wore a red cape and a Spider Man shirt. “You can paint it any color you want.”

 

The room cheered.

 

The venture capital industry, which finances startups, is predominantly run by men. Some Silicon Valley women say they have faced harassment when they sought financing.

   

“You pitch your idea and they go, ‘Oh that’s really interesting,’ and more like they were setting up dates,” said Wendy Dent, founder and chief executive of Cinemmerse, which makes an app for smartwatches.

 

Dent, a former model-turned tech entrepreneur, says she faced harassment during conversations with a would-be advisor. She struggled over how to respond.

 

“What was I going to do, go the police and say he sent me this email?” she said.

 

The willingness of more women to publicly come forward, including posting their experiences on social media, is making an impact, say some industry veterans. In the case of Uber, a female engineer went online to detail her experience, which included being propositioned by someone on her team. It was the financial backers of the firm who ultimately pressed for the ousting of the CEO.  

 

“We can use things like social media now, not just the courts, to communicate what we’re all seeing within the industry,” said Kate Mitchell, a venture capitalist.  

 

At the SoulCycle rally, Miranda Wang, chief executive of BioCellection, said attitudes about women in the industry are slowly changing.

 

“What we are doing now,” she said, “is making it something people have more awareness of.”

 

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At First Denied Visas, Afghan Girls Robotics Team Arrives in US

Afghanistan’s all-girl robotics team has arrived in the U.S. for a competition after President Donald Trump personally intervened to allow them into the country.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul had denied visas for the girls earlier this month for unknown reasons.

However, VOA’s White House bureau chief, Steve Herman, reported Wednesday that Trump granted the girls what is known as a parole — reversing the earlier decision to bar them from the U.S. — that will allow them to come to Washington for 20 days.

A student team from Gambia also was granted visas last week after initially being rejected.

The president of FIRST Global, which organized the robotics competition, is former Democratic congressman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Joe Sestak.  He thanked the White House and the State Department for clearing obstacles to the Afghan and Gambian students’ travel to the United States. Teams from all 157 countries that have entered the competition now will be taking part, he added.

The three-day robotics competition begins Sunday in Washington.

FIRST Global Challenge holds the yearly contest to build up interest in science, technology, engineering and math across the world.

The group says the focus of the competition is finding solutions to problems in such fields as water, energy, medicine and food production.

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Dead Fish Prompt Pakistan Drinking Water Tests

Authorities in Pakistan’s capital are investigating the water in the city’s main reservoir after tons of dead fish were found in a lake on the city’s outskirts. 

 

Police officer Imran Haider says Saturday samples of water and dead fish from Rawal Lake have been collected and sent for forensic testing after a complaint received from the capital’s fisheries department.

 

According to Haider, Mohammad Sadiq Buzdar of the fisheries department said there has been an increasing number of dead fish in the lake since monsoon rains began three days earlier. 

 

Police and the fisheries department have not yet issued any alert regarding the situation.

 

Rawal Dam is one of two that enable water reservoir lakes for the capital.

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Crowdsourcing App Helps Blind Find Their Bus Stop

Imagine being lost and unable to find the nearest bus stop.

Now imagine looking for that same bus stop as a person who is blind.

“If there are no sighted people available to guide you,” said Luiza Aguiar, executive director of Perkins Solution. “You are out of luck.”

Someone with blindness typically relies on a smartphone’s voiceover and GPS functions to help them get around, but there’s a big catch: Devices with GPS usually get people within 30 feet of their final destination.

“But that last 30 feet, when you are blind, is the last 30 feet of frustration, because you can’t get to your precise goal,” Aguiar said.

Crowdsourcing the solution

To address the problem, Perkins Solutions, a division of the Boston-based Perkins School for the Blind, has built a technological solution, the BlindWays app, which Aguiar recently showed off at the New York Times’ “Cities for Tomorrow” conference. The iPhone app is assisting the blind and visually impaired in Boston, guiding them to the nearest bus stop.

Crucial to the app’s usefulness is help from the sighted. They are invited to also download the app and become contributors, reporting landmarks near a transit stop — a fire hydrant, a bench, a tree.

The landmarks offer tactile clues for the blind user. For example, they can include specific descriptions such as “thick metal pole” or “thin square pole.”

Through the public crowdsourcing, contributors have provided these sorts of clues for 5,200 of Boston’s 7,800 bus stops.

Expanding to other cities

The app’s creators want to replicate their efforts in other cities with Los Angeles and San Francisco governments having expressed interest, Aguiar said.

The app gives back a degree of independence and autonomy to blind users. 

“Not having to rely on, you know, more segregated types of transportation, that’s really what visually impaired people want,” Aguiar said.

BlindWays’ crowdsourcing model is one that Aguiar believes will be part of a larger trend in technologies that help the blind and visually impaired, especially since almost everyone has a smartphone these days.

“We’re all getting more and more used to living in a mobile world and therefore, we could contribute anywhere and anytime to help a colleague or somebody in our community,” Aguiar said. “It’s a powerful model for us, I think we’re going to see more.”

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Indonesia Limits Encrypted App, Threatens to Ban It

Indonesia says it’s blocking web versions of the encrypted Telegram instant messaging app and will block the app completely if it continues to be a forum for radical propaganda and violent militants.

 

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said in a statement Friday evening that it has asked internet companies in the world’s most populous Muslim nation to block access to 11 addresses that the web version is available through.

 

It said “this blocking must be done” because many channels in the service are used to recruit Indonesians into militant groups and to spread hate and methods for carrying out attacks including bomb making.

 

Samuel Pangerapan, the director general of informatics applications at the ministry, said they are preparing for the complete closure of Telegram in Indonesia if it does not develop procedures to block unlawful content.

 

The measures against Telegram come as Southeast Asian nations are stepping up efforts to combat Islamic radicalism following the capture of the southern Philippine city of Marawi by IS-linked militants. 

 

Nearly two months after the initial assault, Philippine forces are still battling to regain complete control of the city. Experts fear the southern Philippines could become a new base for IS, including Indonesian and Malaysian militants returning from the Middle East, as an international coalition retakes territory held by IS in Syria and Iraq.

 

But the government move has sparked a public outcry in Indonesia, with Twitter and Facebook exploding with negative comments and some people reporting they were unable to access the web.telegram.org domain. Indonesians are among of the world’s biggest users of social media. 

 

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

 

Suspected militants arrested by Indonesian police recently have told authorities that they have communicated with fellow members of their group via Telegram and received orders and directions to carry out attacks through the app, including from Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian with the Islamic State group in Syria accused of orchestrating several attacks in the past 18 months.

 

Founded in 2013 by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, Telegram is a free messaging service that can be used as a smartphone app and on computers through a web interface or desktop messenger. Its strong encryption has contributed to its popularity with those concerned about privacy and secure communications in the digital era but also made it useful to militant groups and other criminal elements. 

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Uber, Lyft Bankrupting Cab Drivers and Their Lenders

Ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft have been so disruptive to New York City’s taxi industry, they are causing lenders to fail.

 

Three New York-based credit unions that specialized in loaning money against taxi cab medallions, the hard-to-get licenses that allow the city’s traditional cab fleet to operate, have been placed into conservatorship as the value of those medallions has plummeted.

 

Just three years ago, cab owners and investors were paying as much as $1.3 million for a medallion. Now they are worth less than half that, and some medallion owners owe more on their loans than the medallions are worth.

Like subprime loans

 

“You’ve got borrowers who are under water. This is just like the subprime loan crisis,” said Keith Leggett, a credit union analyst and former senior economist at the American Bankers Association.

LOMTO Federal Credit Union, which was founded by taxi drivers in 1936 for mutual assistance, was placed into conservatorship by the National Credit Union Administration on June 26 “because of unsafe and unsound practices.”

 

New York City has the nation’s largest taxi industry, with more than 13,000 medallions.

Value went up, then down

 

Marcelino Hervias bought his medallion in 1990 for about $120,000 and thought its value would hit $2 million by the time he was ready to retire.

 

Instead, the 58-year-old said he owes $541,000 and is driving 12 to 16 hours a day to make ends meet.

While some medallions are held by large owners with fleets, owning a single medallion was long seen as a ticket to the middle class for immigrants like Hervias, who is from Peru.

 

Many of them now owe more on their medallion loans than they originally paid for the medallions because they used their equity in the medallion for a home, a child’s education or other expenses.

 

Other medallion owners tell similar stories.

 

Constant Granvil bought his medallion for $102,000 in 1987 and said he now owes more than $300,000 to his lender. He could have sold the medallion for two or three times that a few years ago, “but I said no, I’m not going to sell it,” said Granvil, who is 76. “And then I got caught.”

 

The value of Granvil’s medallion is hard to pinpoint because 2017 sale prices have varied from the $200,000s to the $500,000s depending on whether lenders are willing to finance the purchase. 

 

Meanwhile, Granvil, who no longer drives because of poor health and uses a broker to hire a driver, said he is facing threats from the lender, Melrose Credit Union, to foreclose on not just his medallion, but also his house.

Level playing field

Supporters of the yellow cab industry have sued and pushed for city legislation to try to level the playing field between taxis and ride-hailing apps, which they say enjoy advantages like not paying a public transportation improvement surcharge that’s levied on yellow cabs and not having to outfit a percentage of cars with disabled-access features.

 

City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, called this week for a panel to investigate the fall in medallion values. 

 

According to a Morgan Stanley report, there were 11.1 million yellow cab trips in the city in April 2016, compared with 4.7 million Uber trips and 750,000 Lyft trips. The 11.1 million taxi rides were 9 percent fewer than the April 2015 number.

 

Some observers believe that the yellow cab’s market share will continue to shrink and that the value of a medallion won’t recover.

 

“This is a commodity that has been fundamentally disrupted,” said Leggett, who has written about medallion loans in his online newsletter Credit Union Watch. “I don’t see the value of the medallions getting close to what they were.”

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One More Republican Defection Would Doom Senate Health Care Bill

President Donald Trump turned up the heat Friday on fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate to pass a bill dismantling the Obamacare law, but with their retooled health care plan drawing fire within the party even one more defection would doom it.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has planned for a vote next week on revised legislation, unveiled on Thursday, and he has his work cut out for him in the coming days to get the 50 “yes” votes needed for passage. Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin and cannot afford to lose more than two from within their ranks because of united Democratic opposition, but two Republican senators already have declared opposition.

“After all of these years of suffering thru Obamacare, Republican Senators must come through as they have promised,” Trump, who made gutting Obamacare one of his central campaign promises last year, wrote on Twitter from Paris, where he attended Bastille Day celebrations.

The top U.S. doctors’ group, the American Medical Association, on Friday called the new bill inadequate and said more bipartisan collaboration is needed in the months ahead to improve the delivery and financing of health care. Hospital and medical advocacy groups also have criticized the bill.

“The revised bill does not address the key concerns of physicians and patients regarding proposed Medicaid cuts and inadequate subsidies that will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage,” AMA President Dr. David Barbe said, referring to the government insurance program for the poor and disabled.

A major test for McConnell’s legislation expected early next week is an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which last month forecast that the prior version of the bill would have resulted in 22 million Americans losing insurance over the next decade.

A day after that CBO analysis was issued, McConnell postponed a planned vote on the legislation because of a revolt within his own party, including moderates and hard-line conservatives.

While the bill’s prospects may look precarious, the same could have been said of health care legislation that ultimately was passed by the House of Representatives. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called off a vote in March in the face of a rebellion involving the disparate factions of the party, but managed to coax enough lawmakers to back it and engineered narrow approval on May 4.

Vice President Mike Pence sought to shore up support among the nation’s governors at a meeting in Rhode Island, but a key Republican governor, Ohio’s John Kasich, came out strongly against the revised bill, saying its Medicaid cuts were too deep and it does too little to stabilize the insurance market.

Alternative options

If the current Senate legislation collapses, some lawmakers have raised the possibility of seeking bipartisan legislation to fix parts of Obamacare but leaving intact the structure of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare. “There are changes that need to be made to the law,” Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told MSNBC, citing “a bipartisan appetite to tackle this issue.”

Moderate Susan Collins and conservative Rand Paul already oppose the revised Senate bill. Other Republican senators have either expressed concern or remained noncommittal, including Rob Portman, Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito, John McCain, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Cory Gardner, Todd Young and Thom Tillis. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy floated an alternative plan.

The new version was crafted to satisfy the Republican Party’s various elements, including moderates worried about Americans who would be left without medical coverage and hard-line conservatives who demand less government regulation of health insurance.

Insurance groups balk

A provision championed by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and aimed at attracting conservatives would let insurers sell cheap, bare-bones insurance policies that would not have to cover broad benefits mandated under Obamacare.

But two major health insurance groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, called on McConnell to drop the Cruz proposal, saying it would undermine protections for pre-existing medical conditions, raise insurance premiums and destabilize the individual insurance market.

The bill retained certain Obamacare taxes on the wealthy that the earlier version would have eliminated, a step moderates could embrace. But it kept the core of the earlier bill, including ending the expansion of Medicaid that was instrumental in enabling Obamacare to expand coverage to 20 million people, and restructuring that social safety-net program.

John Thune, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said in order to complete work on the bill by the end of next week, Senate leaders would have to try to formally begin debate Tuesday or Wednesday, a move that requires a majority vote.

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Ick-free and Ready for Dip: Portland Touts Revived River

Portland is well-known as a tree-hugging, outdoorsy city, but the river that powers through its downtown has never been part of that green reputation.  

 

For decades, residents have been repulsed by the idea of swimming in the Willamette River because of weekly sewage overflows that created a bacterial stew.

 

Now, the recent completion of a $1.4 billion sewage pipe has flushed those worries — and the river once shunned by swimmers is enjoying a rapid renaissance.

The city has partnered with a civic group called the Human Access Project to entice residents into the Willamette this summer with a roster of public swimming events and a flood of announcements that the river, finally, is safe for human use. The campaign is aimed at reversing the impact of decades of public health warnings in an eco-savvy city with a hard-earned green reputation.

The push mirrors efforts to revive ailing rivers in other U.S. cities, from the Charles River in Boston — where occasional city-sanctioned swimming started in 2013 — to the concrete-lined Los Angeles River, where efforts have been underway in recent years to reverse decades of environmental damage along an 11-mile (18-kilometer) stretch.

City’s largest public space

 

In Portland, the movement has clearly found its moment.

 

The river is the city’s largest public space, but less than 5 percent of the city’s footprint has access to the waterfront, said Willie Levenson, who heads the Human Access Project and is working closely with Portland to expand swimming options.

 

Beaches in other communities along the river attract crowds, but swimmers in downtown Portland have nowhere to dive in despite increasing demand. Since the completion of the sewage control project in 2011, swimmers have been congregating on a floating esplanade for bikers and runners and sneaking onto city docks reserved for fire boats.

 

“We cannot pretend that swimming isn’t happening in downtown Portland anymore. It’s a livability issue, and Portland cares about livability,” Levenson said. “It’s time for our community to stop making jokes about our river and start digging in and looking to make a difference.”

Mayor a willing partner

The Human Access Project has been working for several years to generate interest in the Willamette and has found a willing partner in new Mayor Ted Wheeler.

This week, a new beach with lifeguards and safety ropes opened on the city’s south waterfront, within walking distance of hipster-friendly cafes and shops.

An inner tube river parade planned by the Human Access Project for this weekend is expected to attract several thousand participants, and members of a river swim group cross the Willamette several times a week in fluorescent green swim caps bearing the name River Huggers.

 

 Wheeler, himself a swimmer, laid out a multipoint plan for increasing access to the river earlier this year and plans to swim the river later this month with 500 residents in the inaugural “mayoral swim.” The city hopes to open two more beaches in coming years, install floating docks along the riverbank and place public restrooms, picnic benches, umbrellas and showers on site.

In a recent state-of-the-city address, Wheeler even spoke of one day eliminating Interstate 5 where it snakes along the Willamette’s east bank to improve river access.

 

“We have a chance to reshape the face of our city,” he said. “I also believe we have a chance to reshape our spirit.”

Warnings are now few, fair between

 Portland’s relationship with the Willamette River hasn’t always been easy to navigate.

 

For decades, the river was considered a watery highway, and industrial pollution severely contaminated its waters. This winter, after a 16-year wait, federal environmental officials released a plan to clean a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch near its confluence with the Columbia River in a project that will take decades of work and billions of dollars.

But in the heart of Portland, the primary problem has been human excrement. Residents grew accustomed to seeing near-weekly warnings about water quality during the winter rainy season, where even one-tenth of an inch (2.5 millimeters) of rain could trigger overflows.

Now, the city issues just a handful of warnings in winter and none during the peak swimming months of July and August, said Diane Dulken, spokeswoman for Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services. Testing at sites where people are already using the river show the water is safe, she added.

“We are really making a push to publicize our weekly testing because there is absolutely still a public perception out there, ‘I will not go in the river.’”

Swimmer takes a chance

On a recent blazing afternoon, Portland resident Alex Johnson was ready to take the city at its word.

 

The 24-year-old swim teacher and lifeguard began diving into the Willamette with the River Huggers swim group this month.

 

On this day, he joined 30 others as they swam from the Hawthorne Bridge to the Morrison Bridge — through Portland’s bustling business district — and back in the 70-degree (21 Celsius) water. Teenagers lounged like harbor seals on a nearby dock and jet skis zipped by as the swimmers completed the more than half-mile (0.8-kilometer) journey.

“I’ve heard stories that it’s pretty polluted. It tastes a little funny, but it is river water,” Johnson said. “It’s a huge resource, and we don’t take advantage of it — and it feels great.”

 

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‘Live Aid’ Concert for Ethiopia Marked Use of Celebrity in Responding to World Crisis

“Don’t go to the pub tonight,” Irish pop musician Bob Geldof pleaded in the months leading up to Live Aid, the world’s biggest concert that took place on two continents, included 72 rock bands, and raised an estimated $125 million to feed starving Ethiopians caught in a historically severe famine.

“Please, stay in and give us the money,” Geldof said 32 years ago. “There are people dying now, so give me the money.”

The pictures of skeletal and dazed, malnourished children gathering in Ethiopian camps set up by aid agencies were alarming. In a 1984 report, BBC broadcaster Michael Buerk described the scene as “the closest thing to hell on Earth.”

​Geldof went to see for himself. In 1984, he organized “Band Aid,” writing and recording the single “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” and ended up raising about $10 million in famine relief.

The song also became a hit in the United States, prompting “We Are the World,” a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie.

Inspired by the success of Band Aid and with no end in sight to the famine, Geldof decided to expand the project, coming up with a total rethink on charitable giving.

Why not, he asked himself, turn to his circle of wealthy rock ‘n’ roll pop stars to perform in a worldwide fundraising concert?

​It was the 1980s; it was the era of cable music channel MTV; digital entertainment didn’t exist. Given all that, Geldof’s vision was astoundingly ambitious — in fact, seemingly impossible.

The event was held on July 13, 1985, simultaneously in London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, raising more than $104 million that day. According to Billboard, an unprecedented 1.9 billion people watched the event live on television. Among the acts: Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, Madonna, Phil Collins, Sting, U2, Dire Straits, The Cars. The list goes on and on.

​Aftermath

The emotional high of Live Aid — its newness, its success in raising so much money to help the starving in Ethiopia — did not come without criticism.

Several reports, including an investigation by Spin magazine and The Daily Mail newspaper, claimed some of the money intended to feed the hungry ended up in the hands of Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Geldof denied all the accounts.

“Produce one shred of evidence, one iota of evidence, and I promise you I will professionally investigate it,” Geldof is quoted in the Mail report. “I will sue the Ethiopian government, who were the rebels at the time, if there is any money missing, for that money back now.”

 

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