Day: August 16, 2017

Catch Solar Eclipse Online or on TV

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Ronald Dantowitz has been looking forward to Monday’s solar eclipse for nearly 40 years.

An astronomer who specializes in solar imaging, he’s been photographing eclipses for more than three decades, and will be using 14 cameras to capture the August 21 event.

The cameras have solar filters to capture the eclipse in its partial phases, along with custom modifications that can photograph the corona and light wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye, allowing scientists to view and study the sun’s temperature and composition in a way only possible during a total eclipse, he said.

Dantowitz, who is based at Dexter Southfield School in Brookline, Massachusetts, is lending his expertise to NOVA’s Eclipse Over America, airing at 9 p.m. EDT Monday on PBS. That hourlong special, which will incorporate his images, is among extensive coverage planned on TV and online of the first solar eclipse to cross the United States in 99 years.

Still, witnessing totality — when the sun is completely obscured by the moon — is best done with the naked eye, not a camera, Dantowitz said, adding that the total eclipse is safe to view without special lenses. (NASA warns that, except for the totality period, looking directly at the sun is unsafe; the only safe way to look directly at an uneclipsed or partly eclipsed sun is through special solar filters, or “eclipse glasses.”)

“Enjoying totality by eye is more rewarding,” he said. “There is much to see: stars during the daytime, the million-degree solar corona, and seeing the sun blacked out during the daytime.

“I have been waiting almost 40 years for this eclipse, and although I will be operating 14 cameras during totality, I will certainly take a moment to gaze at the eclipse the same way people have done for thousands of years: with wonder.”

For those not in the 14 states in the eclipse’s “path of totality,” here’s a look at some of the viewing opportunities online and on TV:

 

— Eclipse of the Century: In partnership with Volvo, CNN plans two hours of livestreaming, 360-degree coverage accessible in virtual reality through Oculus and other VR headsets beginning at 1 p.m. EDT. Accompanying television coverage will include reporting from Oregon, Missouri, Tennessee and South Carolina.

 

— Eclipse Over America: The PBS science series NOVA is planning a quick turnaround on its eclipse documentary premiering Monday. Senior executive producer Paula S. Apsell said Eclipse Over America, which delves into why eclipses occur and what scientists can learn from them, will incorporate images of the event from across the country shot earlier that day with Dantowitz’s high-tech cameras.

 

— Great American Eclipse: The Science Channel will broadcast its live coverage from Madras, Oregon, from noon to 4 p.m. EDT, with commentary from educators and astronomers from the Lowell Observatory.

 

— The Great American Eclipse: David Muir will anchor ABC’s two hours of live coverage, with correspondents reporting from viewing parties across the country. NBC also plans live coverage, with Lester Holt hosting special reports at 1 and 2 p.m. EDT featuring correspondents reporting from Oregon, Illinois, Wyoming and South Carolina. Shepard Smith will break into typical broadcasting on Fox News Channel from noon to 4 p.m. EDT to update viewers on the eclipse and introduce footage from NASA and observatories around the country.

 

— Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA: NASA will offer hours of coverage online and on NASA Television beginning at noon Eastern. It plans livestreaming of the eclipse beginning at 1 p.m. EDT with images from satellites, research aircraft, high-altitude balloons and specially modified telescopes.

 

— The Total Solar Eclipse: The Weather Channel is kicking off its live coverage at 6 a.m. EDT and continuing throughout the day with dispatches from seven locations along the “path of totality.”
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Emma Stone Tops Forbes’ List of Highest-paid Actresses

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Fresh off winning her first Oscar, actress Emma Stone ousted Jennifer Lawrence on Wednesday to claim the top spot on Forbes’ 2017 list of the world’s highest-paid actresses.

Stone, 28, who won best actress for her role as a struggling actress in “La La Land,” made $26 million in pre-tax earnings, according to Forbes’ calculations over a 12-month period from June 2016 to June 2017.

She outpaced Jennifer Aniston, 48, who came in at No. 2 this year with earnings of $25.5 million, with residual income still coming in from the television sitcom “Friends” and endorsement deals with brands such as SmartWater and Emirates Airline.

Lawrence, 27, who topped the Forbes list for two consecutive years, dropped to No. 3 this year with earnings of $24 million, almost half of her prior year’s earnings of $46 million.

The actress, who has spoken out on equal pay for women in Hollywood, saw her earnings dip this year after the conclusion of the “Hunger Games” franchise, but continues to make money from movie deals and an endorsement deal with fashion brand Christian Dior.

Forbes compiles its annual celebrity earnings lists from box office and Nielsen data, as well as from interviews with industry insiders.

The top-10 list also includes Charlize Theron, Emma Watson and Melissa McCarthy. Forbes said no stars from Asia made the cut this year.

Forbes said the cumulative total earned by the world’s top ten highest-paid actresses — $172.5 million — was down 16 percent from the previous year.

Last year, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson topped Forbes’ list of highest-paid actors at $64.5 million, more than double the amount made by Stone this year. Forbes is expected to release its list of top-earning male actors later this week.

 

 
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Study: Simple Therapy Eases Effects of Violence Against Women

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

An intervention based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was found to be more effective than traditional therapy in helping women struggling with depression or anxiety after experiencing gender-based violence, research shows. It is estimated that more than a third of women around the world have been exposed to such violence, which includes rape, sexual assault and intimate partner violence.

The intervention, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help anyone facing adversity, had already been proven effective for Pakistanis struggling emotionally after exposure to terrorism.

Psychologist Richard Bryant at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, developed the program with colleagues there and others from WHO and the World Vision Institute. To test its effectiveness, 421 women in Nairobi, Kenya, were treated with either five sessions of the CBT program administered by a lay health care worker, or were referred to area health care centers for standard treatment administered by nurses.

The nurses had four more years of education than the lay workers, who had no previous experience with mental health care. A program simple enough for lay volunteers to administer is important in areas with little mental health infrastructure.

Reducing symptoms

The study, published Tuesday in PLOS Medicine, found that women who received the CBT treatment showed 20 percent fewer anxious and depressive symptoms five weeks after the end of treatment than the control group, and 45 percent fewer than they did before treatment. Following this work, WHO will begin distributing the treatment more broadly to areas with little mental health infrastructure.

“The vast majority of people in the world don’t get access to evidence-based care for mental health problems,” Bryant told VOA. “So there really is, from a global mental health perspective, an urgent need to have a different way of thinking about how we deliver care. And we can’t be relying on specialists.  We can’t be relying on lengthy sessions, lengthy treatment durations. We can’t be relying on systems that require long trainings to upskill people.”

CBT was developed in the 1970s. Unlike psychoanalysis, which aims to reveal the historical, root causes for a patient’s problems, cognitive behavioral therapists work to reveal thoughts and behaviors that currently contribute to a patient’s troubles.

Bryant said this particular intervention was designed to be as easy to administer as possible, and focuses on changing behavior. The WHO treatment coaches patients to be active, engage in social networks, and problem solve. Bryant said much of the cognitive side of CBT was left out, not only to make it easier to train practitioners, but also to make the intervention shorter. That allows treating more people with less money. Traveling to treatment can be expensive and dangerous in many places, and missing work is costly, so a treatment that requires fewer sessions is beneficial to patients.

Avoiding stigma

One challenge in helping people who have been exposed to gender-based violence is finding them. Rape and abuse carry a heavy stigma, and it can be dangerous for women to speak out.

Consequently, the program wasn’t advertised as being about gender-based violence. Researchers instead looked for women experiencing anxiety and depression. However, during treatment, they found that four out of five participants had experienced some form of gender-based violence — most often from an intimate partner.

“Really, I think what this tells us is that when you go to many of these settings where we know that gender-based violence and other forms of violence are so prevalent, you can actually assist these people — alleviate many of their mental health problems in an effective way — without actually creating the problems of identifying them and exacerbating the social stigma,” Bryant said.

Since the completion of the study in 2015, 1,400 volunteer counselors in Kenya have been trained in CBT, and 3,500 women have received the treatment.

Researchers in Australia have been leaders in CBT, Bryant said. In the early 2000s, researchers at Australian National University developed MoodGYM, free software that allows anyone with an internet connection to receive online CBT treatment at any time.

Numerous studies have shown that patients who complete internet-delivered CBT fare as well as those who receive treatment in person. However, those self-administering CBT without external encouragement are much less likely to complete a full course of treatment.
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Reverence for Robots: Japanese Workers Treasure Automation

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Thousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs, and boxed at dizzying speeds — 1,500 a minute, to be exact — on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo.

Nary a soul is in sight in this picture-perfect image of Japanese automation.

The machines do all the heavy lifting at this plant run by Asahi Breweries, Japan’s top brewer. The human job is to make sure the machines do the work right, and to check on the quality the sensors are monitoring.

“Basically, nothing goes wrong. The lines are up and running 96 percent,” said Shinichi Uno, a manager at the plant. “Although machines make things, human beings oversee the machines.” 

The debate over machines snatching jobs from people is muted in Japan, where birth rates have been sinking for decades, raising fears of a labor shortage. It would be hard to find a culture that celebrates robots more, evident in the popularity of companion robots for consumers, sold by the internet company SoftBank and Toyota Motor Corp, among others.

Japan, which forged a big push toward robotics starting in the 1990s, leads the world in robots per 10,000 workers in the automobile sector — 1,562, compared with 1,091 in the U.S. and 1,133 in Germany, according to a White House report submitted to Congress last year. Japan was also ahead in sectors outside automobiles at 219 robots per 10,000 workers, compared with 76 for the U.S. and 147 for Germany.

‘Lifetime employment’

One factor in Japan’s different take on automation is the “lifetime employment” system. Major Japanese companies generally retain workers, even if their abilities become outdated, and retrain them for other tasks, said Koichi Iwamoto, a senior fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.

That system is starting to fray as Japan globalizes, but it’s still largely in use, Iwamoto said.

Although data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show digitalization reduces demand for mid-level routine tasks — such as running assembly lines — while boosting demand for low- and high-skilled jobs, that trend has been less pronounced in Japan than in the U.S.

The OECD data, which studied shifts from 2002 to 2014, showed employment trends remained almost unchanged for Japan.

That means companies in Japan weren’t resorting as aggressively as those in the U.S. to robots to replace humans. Clerical workers, for instance, were keeping their jobs, although their jobs could be done better, in theory, by computers.

That kind of resistance to adopting digital technology for services also is reflected in how Japanese society has so far opted to keep taxis instead of shifting to online ride hailing and shuttle services.

‘Human harmony with machines’

Still, automation has progressed in Japan to the extent the nation has now entered what Iwamoto called a “reflective stage,” in which “human harmony with machines” is being pursued, he said.

“Some tasks may be better performed by people, after all,” said Iwamoto.

Kiyoshi Sakai, who has worked at Asahi for 29 years, recalls how, in the past, can caps had to be placed into machines by hand, a repetitive task that was hard not just on the body, but also the mind.

And so he is grateful for automation’s helping hand. Machines at the plant have become more than 50 percent smaller over the years. They are faster and more precise than three decades ago.

Gone are the days things used to go wrong all the time and human intervention was needed to get machines running properly again. Every 10 to 15 minutes, people used to have to go check on the products; there were no sensors back then.

Glitches are so few these days there is barely any reason to work up a sweat, he added with a smile.

Like many workers in Japan, Sakai doesn’t seem worried about his job disappearing. As the need for plant workers nose-dived with the advance of automation, he was promoted to the general affairs section, a common administrative department at Japanese companies.

“I remember the work being so hard. But when I think back, and it was all about delivering great beer to everyone, it makes me so proud,” said Sakai, who drinks beer every day.

“I have no regrets. This is a stable job.”
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Cruise Breaks Ankle in Stunt; ‘Mission’ Film Goes on Hiatus

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Tom Cruise broke his ankle while performing a stunt on the set of the upcoming Mission: Impossible 6, causing production on the film to go on hiatus while the actor recovers, Paramount Pictures said in a statement Wednesday.

Paramount, a unit of Viacom, said the action movie, from one of its biggest franchises, remains on schedule to open on July 27, 2018.

Cruise, 55, who is known for doing his own stunts, was seen in a video on celebrity news website TMZ trying to jump between the roofs of two high-rise buildings and landing hard against a wall during filming in London at the weekend. He was later seen limping off the set.

“During production on the latest Mission: Impossible film, Tom Cruise broke his ankle while performing a stunt. Production will go on hiatus while Tom makes a full recovery,” Paramount said. “Tom wants to thank you all for your concern and support and can’t wait to share the film with everyone next summer.”

Paramount did not say how long production would be delayed.

Hollywood trade paper Variety said filming could be halted anywhere from six weeks to three months while Cruise recovers.

Variety said the actor also injured his hip.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, in which Cruise reprised his role as agent Ethan Hunt, made more than $680 million at the worldwide box office in 2015, according to movie tracker BoxOfficeMojo.com

Cruise has carved out a career as one of Hollywood’s top-earning and longest-running action stars, much of it built on his reputation for doing his own stunts, including swinging around a Dubai skyscraper and hanging off a plane as it taxied down a runway and took off.

“I just don’t sleep, I just keep going,” he told Reuters in 2015 while promoting Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.

Mission: Impossible 6 director Christopher McQuarrie told Britain’s Empire magazine in an interview posted Wednesday that the production schedule would be rearranged to shoot around Cruise while he recovers.

McQuarrie said that he did not know how long the immediate hiatus would be and that there were still seven or eight weeks left of filming.
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Television Gets its Own Festival in New York’s Tribeca

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

The organizers of New York’s annual Tribeca Film Festival are launching a standalone television event to recognize the vast and varied content now available on broadcast, cable and streaming platforms.

Organizers said on Wednesday the inaugural three-day Tribeca TV Festival will take place on Sept. 22-24 in New York, and is aimed at bringing new shows and returning favorites to the public.

The lineup for the festival includes screenings and celebrity talks for the return of comedy Will & Grace, the upcoming season premieres of dramas Queen Sugar, Designated Survivor and Gotham, and the world premiere of Look But With Love, a virtual reality series about life in Pakistan.

More than 400 scripted TV shows are currently produced every year in the United States across traditional broadcast and cable networks and services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, leading to what has been dubbed a “golden age of television.”

“Ten years ago, we wouldn’t have needed a TV festival. Now, with the change in the TV landscape, both the quality and quantity of shows, it makes sense,” actor Robert De Niro, who co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 to rejuvenate lower Manhattan, said in a statement.

De Niro is among a plethora of Oscar-winning stars, including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Michael Douglas who are making waves on the small screen.

De Niro is competing in September for his first Emmy Award for his role as disgraced financier Bernard Madoff in HBO television film The Wizard of Lies.
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National Air and Space Museum Ready for Thousands to View Eclipse

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

For the first time in a century all 50 states will get to witness at least a partial eclipse. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington to learn what preparations are underway for viewing this spectacular display of nature.
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Researchers Developing New Test for Lyme Disease

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Diagnosing if a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult, but scientists are developing a new way to do it early — using a “signature” of molecules in patients’ blood.

It’s still highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool just might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately than today’s standard test, researchers reported Wednesday. And it could tell the difference between two tick-borne diseases with nearly identical early symptoms.

“Think about it as looking at a fingerprint,” said microbiology professor John Belisle of Colorado State University, who helped lead the research.

Lyme disease is estimated to infect 300,000 people in the U.S. every year. Lyme-causing bacteria are spread by blacklegged ticks — also called deer ticks — primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, although their range is spreading. Lyme typically starts as a fever, fatigue and flu-like symptoms — often but not always with a hallmark bull’s-eye rash — and people usually recover quickly with prompt antibiotics. But untreated, Lyme causes more serious complications, including swollen joints and arthritis, memory and concentration problems, even irregular heartbeat.

Yet today’s best available test often misses early Lyme. It’s considered no more than 40 percent accurate in the first few weeks of infection. It measures infection-fighting antibodies the immune system produces. Those take a while to form, making the test more useful a month or more after infection sets in than when people first start feeling ill.

“We are trying our best to come up with something to help the diagnosis in the very early stages of this infection,” said microbiologist Claudia Molins of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who teamed with Belisle to develop a new test. “Our goal really is to try to fill that gap.”

Checking for a marker

The new approach essentially looks for a biochemical fingerprint that shows the body is beginning to respond to an infection, long before antibodies mobilize. It’s based on cellular metabolism, subtle changes in the kind and amount of small molecules that cells produce, such as sugars and amino acids and fats.

First, Belisle and Molins found a signature — specific changes in those metabolites — that enabled them to distinguish between blood from Lyme patients and from healthy people.

The tougher hurdle: Could the tool also tell the difference between Lyme and a disease with very similar symptoms? To tell, they compared a mysterious Lyme look-alike called Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness, or STARI.

 

STARI is spread by a different tick, the Lone Star tick, which is found widely throughout the East and Southeast, areas that overlap with the Lyme-carrying blacklegged ticks. STARI involves a round rash and other symptoms similar to those of early Lyme, and is treated with the same antibiotic — but it’s not caused by the same bacteria. In fact, scientists don’t yet know the cause of STARI, and there’s no test for it. The only way to identify STARI is to definitively rule out other ailments.

Using carefully stored blood samples from people determined to have either Lyme or STARI, Belisle and Molins found biomarkers that could tell the two diseases apart. Using those markers to study additional blood samples, they concluded their tool was 82 percent accurate in determining early Lyme — far better than today’s standard, Molins said.

The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Creating a test will take several more years of research, Molins said. First, the team is turning its sophisticated metabolic-measuring techniques into a test that standard laboratories could use. Then, with next spring’s tick season, researchers will start a new round of testing.
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Afghan Migrant ‘Little Picasso’ Offered Serbian Citizenship

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Serbia offered a 10-year-old migrant from Afghanistan, who has been nicknamed “Little Picasso” because of his talent for painting, and his family citizenship on Wednesday, after they spent eight months in a refugee camp while seeking to reach Switzerland.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic made the offer to Farhad Nouri, which also included a job for his father, upon meeting the five-member family in his office. Nouri’s drawings and photographs were put on display last week in what was also a charity event to raise money for a Serbian boy recovering from brain tumor surgery.

Nouri and his family left their home in Afghanistan two years ago. Upon their arrival in Serbia, Nouri joined art classes organized by aid groups, and his talent soon turned him into a local celebrity.

“I know for how long you have travelled and that you want to go to Switzerland,” Vucic said. “But if you decide to stay, we will give you the citizenship now.”

The family is among some 5,000 migrants who have been stranded in Serbia after fleeing wars and poverty in their homelands. They have been unable to move on toward Western Europe, which has sought to curb the influx of migrants.
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Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils After CEOs Quit in Protest

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

U.S. President Donald Trump continues to face a barrage of criticism for his contention that both white supremacists and counterprotesters were to blame for the deadly violence that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Wednesday, the president announced that he had dissolved two business advisory committees composed of top American corporate executives, after at least seven CEOs announced they were resigning from the councils because of his remarks.

Trump said that “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople … I am ending both. Thank you all!” A day ago, Trump had branded those quitting the panels as “grandstanders” and said they could be easily replaced with more corporate leaders.

In announcing her resignation from Trump’s manufacturing jobs initiative before he disbanded it, Campbell’s Soup CEO Denise Morrison said: “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville. I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point.”

Former GOP presidents

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Washington, D.C., that he condemns the “hate and violence” displayed on Saturday in Charlottesville, adding, “There is just simply no place for that in our public discourse.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speaking at an event in Miami, Florida, said, “In no way can we accept [or] apologize for racism, bigotry, hatred, violence, and those kind of things that too often arise in our country.”

Also Wednesday, two former U.S. presidents, George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the last two Republicans elected to the White House before Trump, said in a joint statement, “America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms.”

 

The two former presidents added, “As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights,” a reference to Thomas Jefferson, one of the country’s Founding Fathers. “We know these truths to be everlasting because we have seen the decency and greatness of our country.”

President Trump’s remarks have been roundly criticized by a broad range of U.S. leaders, including top Republican party officials and business executives. U.S. military commanders spoke out against racism following the death in Charlottesville.

Not welcome in Phoenix

Trump announced Wednesday he will hold a campaign rally next week in Phoenix, Arizona, but the city’s mayor said that while the president has the right to stage the event, he hopes Trump will delay the visit.

“I am disappointed that President Trump has chosen to hold a campaign rally as our nation is still healing from the tragic events in Charlottesville,” Mayor Greg Stanton said. “If President Trump is coming to Phoenix to announce a pardon for former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, then it will be clear that his true intent is to enflame emotions and further divide our nation.”

Arpaio was convicted last month in a federal court for disobeying a judge’s order to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. Trump said in an interview this week he was considering pardoning Arpaio, who was one of the speakers at last year’s Republican National Convention where the now-president accepted the party’s nomination for the November election.

‘Many sides’ to blame

As the violence unfolded last Saturday, Trump initially blamed it on “many sides.” By Monday, he condemned the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the racist Ku Klux Klan for their role in the unrest.

But at a news conference Tuesday, Trump reverted to his initial assessment of the violence that killed one woman and wounded 19 others when a Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump said. “And I have no doubt about it.” He said there were “fine people” among the white nationalists and counterprotesters at the rally 160 kilometers southwest of Washington.

David Duke, the one-time Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, immediately praised Trump’s remarks, saying, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists.”

Watch: Republicans Join Democrats in Denouncing Trump Comments on Charlottesville

U.S., global reaction

Key Republicans took immediate offense at Trump’s contention there was equivalency in who was to blame for the hours of street violence, as demonstrators squared off with makeshift clubs, engaged in fistfights and fired bursts of chemical irritants at each other.

“We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan. “This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

Senator Marco Rubio, defeated last year by Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich, who also lost to Trump in 2016, said, “The president of the United States needs to condemn these kind of hate groups. This is about the fact that now these folks are apparently going to go other places and they think that they had some sort of a victory.”

Senate Democratic leader Senator Charles Schumer said, “When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you’re doing it very, very wrong. Great and good American presidents seek to unite, not divide. Donald Trump’s remarks clearly show he is not one of them.”

Watch: Charlottesville’s Far-right Rally Evokes Europe’s Dark Past

Trump’s remarks also drew a rebuke from an ally, British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May said, “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them. I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”
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Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils After CEO Resignations

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

U.S. President Donald Trump continues to face a barrage of criticism for his contention that both white supremacists and counterprotesters were to blame for the deadly violence that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Wednesday, the president announced that he had dissolved two business advisory committees made up of top American corporate executives, after at least seven CEOs announced they were resigning from the councils because of his remarks.

Trump said that “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople … I am ending both. Thank you all!” A day ago, Trump had branded those quitting the panels as “grandstanders” and said they could be easily replaced with more corporate chieftains.

In announcing her resignation from Trump’s manufacturing jobs initiative before he disbanded it, Campbell’s Soup CEO Denise Morrison said, “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottestville. I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point.”

Also Wednesday, two former U.S. presidents, George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the last two Republicans elected to the White House before Trump, said in a joint statement, “America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms.”

The two former presidents added, “As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights,” a reference to Thomas Jefferson, one of the country’s Founding Fathers. “We know these truths to be everlasting because we have seen the decency and greatness of our country.”

President Trump’s remarks have been roundly criticized by a broad range of U.S. leaders, including top Republican party officials, U.S. military commanders and business executives. 

As the violence unfolded last Saturday, Trump initially blamed it on “many sides.” By Monday, he condemned the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the racist Ku Klux Klan for their role in the unrest.

But on Tuesday, at a news conference in his Trump Tower skyscraper in New York, Trump reverted to his initial assessment of the violence that killed one woman and wounded 19 others when a Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump said. “You look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it.” He said there were “fine people” among the white nationalists and counterprotesters at the rally 160 kilometers southwest of Washington.

David Duke, the one-time Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, immediately praised Trump’s remarks, saying, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists.”

U.S., global reaction

But key Republicans took immediate offense at Trump’s contention there was equivalency in who was to blame for the hours of street violence, as demonstrators squared off with makeshift clubs, engaged in fist fights, and fired bursts of chemical irritants at each other.

The leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, said, “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

Senator Marco Rubio, defeated last year by Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich, who also lost to Trump in 2016, said, “The president of the United States needs to condemn these kind of hate groups. This is about the fact that now these folks are apparently going to go other places and they think that they had some sort of a victory.

“There is no moral equivalency between the KKK, the neo-Nazis, and anybody else,” Kasich said. “Anybody else is not the issue. These folks went there to disrupt.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Senator Charles Schumer, said, “When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you’re doing it very, very wrong. Great and good American presidents seek to unite, not divide. Donald Trump’s remarks clearly show he is not one of them.”

Trump’s remarks also drew a rebuke from an ally, British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May said, “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them. I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”

Earlier this week, the German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the white nationalists at the rally. Her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said “there was outrageous racism, anti-Semitism and hate in its most despicable form to be seen, and whenever it comes to such speech or such images it is repugnant.”

He said the rally was “completely contrary to what the chancellor and the German government works for politically, and we are in solidarity with those who stand peacefully against such aggressive extreme-right opinions.”
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Ireland Rejects EU’s Demand to Collect Billions From Apple

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Ireland’s finance minister rejected the European Commission’s demand that it retroactively collect 13 billion euros in taxes from Apple, saying this was not Dublin’s job in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper.

In the interview, extracts from which the FAZ published on Wednesday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said the tax rules from which Apple benefited had been available to all and not tailored for the U.S. technology giant. They did not violate European or Irish law, he added.

“We are not the global tax collector for everybody else,” the paper quoted him as saying. The European Commission last year ruled that Apple paid so little tax on its Ireland-based operations that it amounted to state aid.
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Canada Approves First Cryptocurrency Sale in Property Rights Shake-Up

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Canadian financial regulators have approved the public sale of a new digital currency in the country’s first official endorsement of money created independently of the government or central banks, company officials said on Wednesday.

Produced with digital encryption techniques, cryptocurrencies like Montreal-based impak Coin allow users to create their own money supply – with potentially significant impacts for how wealth and property rights are controlled.

Impak Coin has already raised more than C$1.5 million ($1.18 million) for the new currency and plans to launch an Initial Coin Offering – or a public sale of the digital money – this month.

By allowing people to create a new currency, the project aims to reduce the power of big banks in determining how property rights are managed and money is created, said Paul Allard, chief executive of impak Finance, the social enterprise behind the project.

“It is up to communities to decide how to manage a currency, it is not only for the government to decide,” Allard told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

‘No need for government’

Throughout modern history governments have had control over how money is created and the power to enforce contracts and determine how goods and services are transferred.

Cryptocurrencies – through blockchain, the information storage and database system they use – have challenged that power, said Simon Trimborn, a professor at the Free University of Berlin who studies digital networks.

“The link between cryptocurrencies and individual property rights is the information storage and transaction system behind cryptocurrencies, the blockchain,” Trimborn told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It is a database which can guarantee property rights while there is no need for relying on a company or government.”

Contracts are made digitally between peers and transactions are often conducted without government oversight, reducing the state’s power over the market.

The move by financial authorities to approve the sale of the digital money means “confidence and trust for investors”, said Jean-Philippe Vergne, a professor at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, who studies cryptocurrencies.

“We are observing a profound change in the nature of capitalism,” Vergne told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “For the first time we have a technology that allows us to remove intermediaries such as government or central banks.”

Digital impact

Impak Finance hopes to raise up to C$10 million from its first sale of coins. Users who buy the new currency will be able to spend it via a mobile wallet connected to their phones.

More than 500 businesses have signed up to accept the new currency when it launches, Allard said.

He expects that will grow into the thousands as the project develops a “critical mass” of users, leading to more buyers and sellers making transactions.

Users will be able to exchange impak coins for traditional money which will be credited to their accounts after an initial waiting period in order to stop speculators from causing volatility in the currency’s value, Allard said.

Impak Finance will initially keep 40 percent of the money invested in the new currency as reserves in order to have cash on hand if users want to exchange it for traditional money.

Only businesses adhering to social and environmental standards are able to use the currency, said Allard, who hopes consumers interested in ethical purchasing will be attracted to the plan.

The “impact economy” – a small but growing sector that seeks to put the achievement of social good at the center of business – is expected to grow by more than 15 percent next year in North America, Allard said.

New type of property

Impak Finance will be entering a crowded market of new digital currencies, analysts said.

Following the growth of bitcoin, the most well known cryptocurrency, there are now more than 1,000 similar digital currencies being traded over the internet, said Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University in the United States.

Most of these new digital offerings, however, are used for speculation – investors hoping the currency will gain popularity and then rise in value – rather than buying and selling tangible goods and services, Narayanan said.

“People are trying to get the state out of money and various forms of property,” Narayanan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “regulators and law enforcement are trying to adapt to a new technological development.”

($1 = 1.2707 Canadian dollars)

 
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US Trade Envoy Says NAFTA Has ‘Failed’ Americans

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade official laid down a hard negotiating line for revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement on Wednesday, saying that major changes were needed to slash U.S. trade deficits and boost U.S. content in autos.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said NAFTA had “failed many, many Americans” and Trump was not interested in merely tweaking the 23-year-old pact, and would seek major changes that would increase North American and U.S. content for autos and strong labor standards.

“We need to ensure that the huge trade deficits do not continue and we have balance and reciprocity. This should be periodically reviewed,” Lighthizer said in opening remarks at NAFTA negotiations in Washington. “The rules of origin, particularly on autos and auto parts, must require higher NAFTA content and substantial U.S. content.”
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SpaceX Dragon Delivers Scientific Bounty to Space Station

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

A SpaceX shipment arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday, delivering a bonanza of science experiments.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule pulled up following a two-day flight from Cape Canaveral. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer used the space station’s hefty robot arm to grab the Dragon 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Pacific, near New Zealand.

The Dragon holds 3 tons of cargo, mostly research. The extra-large science load included a cosmic ray monitor, a mini satellite with cheap, off-the-shelf scopes for potential military viewing, and 20 mice for an eye and brain study.

A variety of ice cream — including birthday cake flavor — was also stashed away in freezers for the station’s six-person crew. Astronaut Randolph Bresnik turns 50 next month.

“Congratulations on a job well done,” Mission Control radioed from Houston. “You guys have just won yourselves some fresh food.”

Fischer said he was honored to catch the 12th Dragon contracted by NASA, the last one under the original agreement with more on the way under new deals. It’s a testament to the commercial space effort, which “has become a pillar of support” to NASA, he said.

“The crew stands ready to rock the science like a boss,” Fischer said, giving a rundown on the research inside the Dragon’s “belly.”

It’s enough for more than 250 experiments in the coming months, he noted.

“Need to get back to work. We’ve got a Dragon to unload,” Fischer told Mission Control.

SpaceX is one of NASA’s two prime shippers for station supplies. Orbital ATK is the other; its next delivery is in November from Wallops Island, Virginia. The two companies have taken over the cargo hauls formerly handled by NASA’s now-retired space shuttles.
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Egypt Archaeologists Discover Tombs Dating Back 2,000 Years

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Egypt’s antiquities ministry says that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating back more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period.

The discovery was made in the Nile Valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-Kamin al-Sahrawi.

Tuesday’s statement by the ministry says the unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period.

One of the tombs has a burial shaft carved in rock and leads to a chamber where anthropoid lids and four sarcophagi for two women and two men were found. Another tomb contains two chambers; one of them has six burial holes, including one for a child.

Excavation work for the third tomb is still underway.
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Daniel Craig Announces Return as James Bond

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Daniel Craig will return for a fifth go-around as James Bond.

 

The actor confirmed reports he would reprise his role as the suave British spy for “Bond 25” during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night.

 

The announcement is a reversal for Craig, who told Time Out London in 2015 he’d rather slash his wrists than do another Bond film.

 

Craig chalks up that comment as “a stupid answer” and tells Colbert he “couldn’t be happier” to return to the role.

 

Craig breathed new life into the Bond franchise when he took over as 007 for 2006’s “Casino Royale.”

 

“Bond 25” hits theaters in November 2019.
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Trump Goes After Amazon, Again

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

President Donald Trump is renewing his attacks on e-commerce giant Amazon, and he says the company is “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”

 

Trump tweets that “towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!”

The president has often criticized the company and CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

 

Many traditional retailers are closing stores and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. But the company has been hiring thousands of warehouse workers on the spot at job fairs across the country. Amazon has announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.

Trump has in the past tweeted that Amazon was not paying “Internet taxes.” But it’s unclear what he meant by that. Amazon.com collects state sales taxes in all 45 states with a sales tax and the District of Columbia, according to their website. State governments have sought to capture sales taxes lost to internet retailers, though they have struggled with a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that retailers must have a physical presence in a state before officials can make them collect sales tax.

 

The issue arose recently in South Carolina, which has pursued legal action to recoup tax revenue it says it’s owed. This summer, the state Department of Revenue filed a case with the Administrative Law Court, alleging that Amazon had failed to collect taxes on third-party merchant sales.

 

Third-party merchant sales involve items that can be bought on Amazon.com, but the company acts solely as a middleman between buyers and sellers. Amazon processes the payments and offers other support to the parties involved.

 

The state claims that Amazon owes the state $12.5 million in taxes, penalties and interest from first quarter of last year alone, according to the complaint obtained by The Associated Press.

 

For years, the Seattle company fought against collecting sales taxes from its customers. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, South Carolina was among 10 states that initially gave Amazon a temporary tax reprieve in exchange for jobs and investment, voting in 2011 to give the company until the beginning of 2016 before the state levied taxes.

 

According to the conference, that deal made South Carolina the last state to collect among those where officials cut similar deals with Amazon. The company promised to create at least 2,000 full-time jobs and invest $125 million by Dec. 31, 2013. It opened two distribution centers in the state.

 

Amazon did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

 

 
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