Day: November 12, 2017

Venezuela Sets Foreign Debt Meeting for Monday Afternoon

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Venezuela’s foreign debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Monday at the government’s “White Palace” in downtown Caracas, the finance minister said on Saturday.

“Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting,” Simon Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA but is on a U.S. sanctions list for alleged corruption, said in a Tweet.

Foreign investor sources had said Zerpa and committee head Tareck El Aissami, who is Venezuela’s vice president but also on a U.S. blacklist for alleged drug traffickers, would probably sit out the meeting to allay any fears about meeting them.

But Saturday’s exhortation by Zerpa, and the location of the meeting right opposite the Miraflores presidential palace, appear to indicate the meeting will not be a low-profile affair.

Socialist leader Nicolas Maduro’s move a week ago to summon bondholders for talks about “restructuring” and “refinancing” some $60 billion in bonds has spooked markets worried Venezuela is heading for a default amid U.S. financial sanctions.

President Donald Trump’s measures against the Maduro administration, which it accuses of being a “dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela’s 30 million people through corruption and incompetence, effectively bar U.S. banks from rolling over the country’s debt into new bonds.

Venezuela did, however, appear to be honoring its most recent debt payment: a $1.2 billion payment due on a bond from state oil company PDVSA. Two investors told Reuters they had finally received payment, albeit delayed.

It is unclear how widespread investor participation in Monday’s meeting in Caracas will be. U.S.-based creditors are not prohibited from attending the meeting, but are barred from dealings with officials like Zerpa and El Aissami.
…

more

Controversial Da Vinci Is New York Auction Season Star

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

What is the only Da Vinci painting on the open market worth? A Russian billionaire believes he was swindled when he bought it for $127.5 million. This week he’ll find out if he was right.

“Salvator Mundi,” a painting of Jesus Christ by the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci circa 1500, is the star lot in New York’s November art auctions that will see Christie’s and Sotheby’s chase combined art sales of more than $1 billion.

It goes under the hammer at Christie’s on Wednesday evening, something of an incongruous lot in the postwar and contemporary sale, which attracts the biggest spenders in the high-octane world of international billionaire art collectors.

The auction house, which declines to comment on the controversy and identifies the seller only as a European collector, has valued the painting at $100 million.

“Look at the painting, it is an extraordinary work of art,” said Francois de Poortere, head of the old masters department at Christie’s. “That’s what we should focus on.”

But the price will be closely watched — not just as one of fewer than 20 paintings by Da Vinci’s hand accepted to exist, but by its owner Dmitry Rybolovlev, the boss of soccer club AS Monaco who is suing Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in that city-state.

Rybolovlev, who spent an eye-watering $2.1 billion on 37 masterpieces purchased through Bouvier over a decade, accuses Bouvier of conning him by hundreds of million dollars by overcharging him on a string of deals, and pocketing the difference.

At the heart of the court battle is “Salvator Mundi,” which has been exhibited at The National Gallery in London.

Bouvier bought the Da Vinci at Sotheby’s for $80 million in 2013. He resold it within days to the Russian tycoon, for $127.5 million, netting a $47.5 million profit. Bouvier denies any wrongdoing.

The painting’s rarity is difficult to overstate. For years it was presumed to have been destroyed.

Long believed to have been a copy, before eventually being certified as authentic, it fetched a mere 45 pounds ($60 in today’s money) in 1958 before disappearing again for decades. It emerged only in 2005 when it was purchased from a US estate.

All other known paintings by Da Vinci are held in museum or institutional collections.

“For auction specialists, this is pretty much the Holy Grail,” Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of Christie’s Americas postwar and contemporary art department, has said. “It doesn’t really get better than that.”

 A Ferrari on the block

Christie’s has sought to emphasize Da Vinci’s inestimable contribution to art history by hanging “Salvator Mundi” next to Andy Warhol’s “Sixty Last Suppers” — which depicts Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” 60 times over, also on sale with a $50 million estimate.

Pablo Picasso holds the world record for the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction. His “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in New York in 2015.

Other highlights being offered by the auction house are “Contraste de formes,” a 1913 Fernand Leger valued at $65 million and “Laboureur dans un champ” by Van Gogh, painted from the window of a French asylum in 1889 and valued at $50 million.

Sotheby’s, whose May sales languished behind Christie’s, says it has more than 60 works making their auction debuts this week.

Chief among them is Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of George Dyer,” valued at $35-45 million, and which it says is appearing in public for the first time in 50 years. Bacon painted the work in 1966 during his passionate relationship with Dyer.

Two other such triptychs are in museums, while an additional two have been offered at auction in recent years.

Sotheby’s other star lot is a 1972 Warhol “Mao,” exhibited in Berlin, Turin and Paris, and now back in public view for the first time since 1974. It has been given an estimate of $30-40 million.

Each of the other 10 “Mao” paintings of the same size are in prestigious public and private collections, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Sotheby’s calls it one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.

And for the first time, the house has added a rare automobile to an art auction, offering Michael Schumacher’s Grand Prix-Winning Ferrari for upwards of $4 million on Thursday. But is it a work of art?

“No, it’s not,” said Gregoire Billault, senior Sotheby’s vice president, of the sleek, low-slung, fire-engine red vehicle. “But it’s… the very best racing car ever sold at an auction.”

 

 
…

more

Emirates Airlines Orders 40 Boeing 787s in $15B Deal

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Emirates Airlines agreed to buy 40 Boeing 787-10s in a deal worth more than $15 billion.

The purchase was announced Sunday at the Dubai Air Show by the largest airline in the Middle East.

Deliveries of the wide-body, twin-engine planes are set to begin in 2022.

Boeing’s website says the aircraft typically carries 330 passengers with a range of 11,900 kilometers.  

The manufacturer says the 787 is 25 percent more fuel-efficient than the aircraft it replaces.

Also, Azerbaijan Airlines announced a $1.9 billion deal for more 787s, five to carry passengers and two more to haul freight.
…

more

Dubai Air Show Opens With Emirates’ $15.1B Boeing Buy

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The biennial Dubai Air Show opened Sunday with hometown long-haul carrier Emirates making a $15.1 billion buy of Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners, as the world’s biggest defense companies promoted their weapons amid heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Other airlines also are taking part, but missing from the trade show this year is one of the region’s largest long-haul carriers, Qatar Airways, amid diplomatic fallout between Qatar and four Arab nations.

 

The Boeing announcement came after a several hours of delays by Emirates amid rumors of a possible Airbus sale involving its A380 aircraft, a major workhorse for the airline. Journalists asked Emirates CEO and Chairman Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum about Boeing’s European competitor Airbus, specifically its A350.

 

Boeing vs. Airbus

“We were comparing two apples,” he said, but found that the Boeing 787 is “the best option” for Emirates. Delivery begins in 2022.

 

The sale comes as the Qatar dispute is now in its fifth month with no resolution in sight. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar in June over its ties with Iran and its support of Islamist groups, accusing the small Gulf state of supporting extremists, charges it denies. The Arab quartet cut direct flights with Qatar and closed their airspace to Qatari aircraft.

 

Qatar Airways previously had played a big role in the Dubai Air Show, reserving a large pavilion and displaying its latest aircraft to visitors.

Private suites on board

At the start of the air show, Dubai-based Emirates, the Middle East’s largest carrier, unveiled new, state-of-the-art, first class private suites.

 

In an industry first, passenger suites in the middle aisle without windows will be fitted with “virtual windows” relaying the sky outside via fiber optic cameras on the plane. There’s also a video call feature in the suites that connects passengers to the cabin crew, as well as temperature control and various mood lighting settings. 

 

Emirates President Tim Clark declined to say how much a ticket in the 40 square-foot (3.7-square-meter) private suite will cost. The private suites will be available on the airline’s Boeing 777.

 

In previous years, major Mideast carriers have flexed their spending power at the Dubai Air Show, including $140 billion in new orders announced in 2013 before the collapse of oil prices. Prices have rebounded recently to around $60 a barrel.
…

more

Pair, Linked by Face Transplant, Finally Meet

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Standing in a stately Mayo Clinic library, Lilly Ross reached out and touched the face of a stranger, prodding the rosy cheeks and eyeing the hairless gap in a chin she once had known so well.

“That’s why he always grew it so long, so he could try to mesh it together on the chin,” she told Andy Sandness, as he shut his eyes and braced for the tickle of her touch on new nerve endings in the face that had been her husband’s.

Sixteen months after transplant surgery gave Sandness the face that had belonged to Calen “Rudy” Ross, he met the woman who had agreed to donate her high school sweetheart’s visage to a man who lived nearly a decade without one.

First meeting

The two came together last month in a meeting arranged by the Mayo Clinic, the same place where Sandness underwent a 56-hour surgery that was the clinic’s first such transplant. With her toddler Leonard in tow, Ross strode toward Sandness, tears welling in her eyes as they tightly embraced.

Ross had fretted before the meeting, fearful of the certain reminders of her husband, who took his own life. But her stress quickly melted away: Without Calen’s eyes, forehead or strong cheeks, Sandness didn’t look like him, she told herself.

Instead, she saw a man whose life had changed through her husband’s gift, newly confident after 10 years of hiding from mirrors and staring eyes.

“It made me proud,” Ross said of the 32-year-old Sandness. “The way Rudy saw himself … he didn’t see himself like that.”

Two men, similar tale

Sandness and Calen Ross lived lives full of hunting, fishing and exploring the outdoors before their struggles consumed them, 10 years and hundreds of miles apart.

Sandness put a rifle below his chin in late 2006 in his native Wyoming and pulled the trigger, destroying most of his face. Ross shot himself and died in southwestern Minnesota a decade later.

By then, Sandness had receded from contact with the outside world, ashamed of his injuries — surgeries to rebuild his face had left him a quarter-sized mouth, and his prosthetic nose frequently fell off.

Hope first came in 2012 when the Mayo Clinic started exploring a face transplant program and again in early 2016 when he was wait-listed for the procedure.

Ross had agreed to donate her husband’s lungs, kidneys and other organs to patients. Then LifeSource, a Midwestern nonprofit organization that facilitates organ and tissue donations, broached the idea of a donation for a man awaiting a face transplant at the clinic.

Ross and Sandness’ ages, blood type, skin color and facial structure were such a near-perfect match that Sandness’ surgeon, Dr. Samir Mardini, said the two men could have been cousins.

Ross consented, despite her hesitation about someday seeing her husband’s face on a stranger. Eight months pregnant at the time, she said one reason to go forward was that she wanted the couple’s child to one day understand what his father did to help others.

Simple tasks treasured

More than a year after a surgery that took a team of more than 60 medical professionals, Sandness is finding a groove in everyday life while still treasuring the simple tasks he lost for 10 years, such as chewing a piece of pizza.

He’s been promoted in his work as an oilfield electrician and is expanding his world while still prizing the anonymity that comes with a normal face.

“I wouldn’t go out in public. I hated going into bigger cities,” he said. “And now I’m just really spreading my wings and doing the things I missed out on — going out to restaurants and eating, going dancing.”

Life with a transplanted face takes work, every day. Sandness is on a daily regimen of anti-rejection medication. He’s constantly working to retrain his nerves to operate in sync with his new face, giving himself facial massages and striving to improve his speech by running through the alphabet while driving or showering.

“I wanted to show you that your gift will not be wasted,” Sandness told Ross.

​Like family now

Mardini and the rest of Sandness’ medical team have delighted in seeing their patient and friend open up since the procedure, going out of his way to talk with strangers whose gaze he once hid from.

“It turns out Andy is not as much of an introvert as we thought,” Mardini said. “He’s enjoying these times, where he’s missed out on 10 years of his life.”

Ross and Sandness say they feel like family now. They plan to forge a stronger connection, and Sandness said he’ll contribute to a trust fund for Leonard’s education.

On the day of their meeting, the boy stared curiously at Sandness at first. But later, he walked over and waved to be picked up. Sandness happily obliged.

For Ross, just meeting Sandness felt like a huge release, a way to get past a year filled with grieving, funeral planning, childbirth and gut-wrenching decisions about organ donations.

“Meeting Andy, it has finally given me closure,” she said, her voice choking as it trailed off. “Everything happened so fast.”
…

more

Exhibition Details Indigenous Massacres in Australia

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

For the first time, a museum in Australia is telling the stories of the massacres by colonists of indigenous people from an Aboriginal perspective. Thousands of First Nation people are believe to have been killed by white settlers until the 1940s, but much of that history is yet to be uncovered.

Near the city of Portland is the site of the oldest known massacre of indigenous people in the Australian state of Victoria. 

There was tension in the early 1830s between European settlers, who had set up a whaling station, and a local Aboriginal tribe over a whale carcass. The precise details of the confrontation have been hard to establish, but 60 to 200 First Nation people were killed in what is known as the Convincing Ground massacre.

The killings are part of a series of stories being told in a new exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Called “Black Day, Sun Rises, Blood Runs,” the multimedia show is included in the museum’s Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Center.

Indigenous stories

The stories are told by indigenous people who have been filmed at the sites of several massacres.

Officials say the testimony tries to fill gaps in the documentation of the killings contained in court proceedings, newspaper reports and Aboriginal records.

Curator Genevieve Grieves says the exhibition contains valuable historical information.

“We are going quite deeply into six narratives that include massacre, they include resistance, they include the native police, who were used against Aboriginal people in Victoria and other parts of the country,” she said, “And we are really doing that through first-person voice. So we are just talking to people connected to those spaces and so we have got what is on the historical record, but also what is contained in memory as well, in indigenous memory and, indeed, in non-indigenous memory as well.”

Grieves says this is the first time a new permanent exhibition at an Australian museum has detailed the stories of the massacres from an indigenous perspective.

Thousands massacred

According to the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, about 1,200 indigenous people in Victoria state died in 40 massacres from the 1830s to the 1850s. Academics say that armed white settlers or farmers would ambush Aboriginal camps in the night or early morning.

In July, an online map marking the massacres of Aboriginal clans across Australia’s colonial frontier was launched. It detailed more than 150 sites where violent attacks against indigenous groups took place in eastern Australia following the arrival of European settlers in the late 1700s.
…

more

West Virginia Mine Sites Touted for Agriculture Potential

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

West Virginia could produce profitable niche crops grown on reclaimed mine sites.

At least that’s what Nathan Hall, president of Reclaim Appalachia envisions.

Hall spoke about uses for reclaimed sites at the West Virginia Good Jobs Conference last Tuesday at Tamarack. The goal of the conference is to bring together entrepreneurs, funders, local community leaders and government agencies to trade ideas, provide mentorship and support entrepreneurs in southern West Virginia.

Reclaim’s first operational site is next to the Buck Harless Wood Products Industrial Park in Holden, a property owned by the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority.

Former miners

Reclaim and Refresh Appalachia have partnered to develop an active commercial agroforestry site, which is on about 50 acres of land that was mined and reclaimed in the late 1990s, managing crops including blackberries, hazelnuts, lavender and pawpaws. The site also has animals including chickens, hogs, goats and honeybees, which are managed with “rotational grazing techniques.”

Hall said he first started work on the Mingo County site early last year. The business has five full time crew members and one crew chief. Of those six employees, four are former coal miners.

According to Reclaim’s website, the organization intends to replicate the model on more mined properties and on a larger scale.

“With any post surface mine landscape, this model works well,” Hall said. “It’s especially suited to areas where it’s not feasible to turn into a big shopping center or a golf course.”

Long-term approach

Hall said the model is designed to be long term and said sites like these may not see profit until a few years down the road.

“This approach is never profitable in year one or even year two,” he said. “It’s more of a three-five year horizon to get into the black. A lot of agricultural investments like this are longer term.

“With animals, you have to establish a breeding stock. It takes some time before you’re able to send animals to slaughter,” Hall said. “And with perennial plants, it takes a year of establishment to get fruit, sometimes three to four years. We are looking at this as a longer-term investment but this is a pretty common way to invest in projects you see on the West Coast and the Northeast. A lot of investors know this is not a quick turnaround.”

However, down the road, Hall said he envisions West Virginia as being primary producers of niche produce on the East Coast.

“If we produce enough at a low cost and upgrade to high value products, move it six to nine hours away, there is a huge amount of ways to use these lands in ways that we’ve barely started to scratch the surface,” he said.

Crops, animals for rocky soil

Hall mentioned the possibility of products including lavender or grapes — plants that can thrive in the rocky soil.

“You could even have things like goat meat, which is something you don’t think about as something to eat in this area,” Hall said. “There are huge markets for it, maybe not here but the conditions are great for these sites.”

Hall spoke about some of the struggles with using these sites including the rocky terrain itself.

“You think about nice farmland where there is this loose, fluffy, brown soil you can almost scoop your hand into,” he said. “This soil, you can’t get a shovel to go more than 2 inches. The only thing that can survive is something with a shallow breeding system.”

Controlling invasive species

Another issue is invasive species of plants that were planted for reclamation. However, Hall said animals including goats and hogs can eat the shrubby plants while also adding nutrients to the soil.

“I’m a fan of high-intensity rotational grazing,” he said. “You have people out there tending fences and maintaining the animals and the site regularly. It has a more diversified income. And there is a benefit to the land through manure and reducing unwanted vegetation. You can eventually replant to better quality pastures if you do rotational.”

He said stacking systems including orchards and animals have been efficient in maintaining the land along with adding a larger labor force.

“You have the animals in between the orchard growth keeping the areas maintained,” he said. “It’s benefiting the roots and the trees. You’re also able to sell the meat and eggs while harvesting fruit and berries.”

Not the first attempt

Hall isn’t the first or the only person to grow crops on reclaimed mine sites. Hall mentioned one in particular back in the 1990s in Kentucky where there was a hog farm on a former mine site.

“There are a lot of activity in these spaces,” he said. “We are more focused on stacking systems and having this multifaceted approach. Other folks want one piece. It’s an interesting time to be involved. We can learn from each other and grow a new sector of the economy.”
…

more

Pakistani Fashion Scores in India Despite Tense Bilateral Relations

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Despite 70 years of tense relations between India and Pakistan, the two countries share a passion for each other’s movies, food and fashion trends. Take the example of palazzos, a popular Pakistani type of pants that are all the rage in India. VOA Urdu’s Ritul Joshi reports from Delhi that the trend started after a new Indian TV channel started broadcasting Pakistani dramas.
…

more

Californian, Who Identifies as Non-binary: ‘I Am Who I Am’

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Thanks to a new law, California residents who do not identify as either male or female can choose a third option on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. VOA’s Genia Dulot spoke with a Berkeley resident who is that third option, known as non-binary.
…

more

ANYmal Has Four Legs, Good Balance, and Batteries Included

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Prepare to be amazed … and possibly terrified. Engineers in Zurich have created a four-legged robot that may one day do labor that is dangerous for humans. It’s also equipped with thermal cameras, which means the “ANYmal” may one day keep an eye on you. Arash Arabasadi reports.
…

more

US Again Raising Beef for Chinese Consumers

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Ranchers in the Midwestern U.S. state of Nebraska are raising beef for tables in China, reopening trade suspended more than a decade ago during concerns over mad cow disease. From Nebraska, VOA reporter Abby Sun tells us how U.S. beef producers are changing to meet Chinese food-safety requirements.
…

more

Legionnaires Sickens 12 in California, Including 9 at Disneyland

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Disneyland has shut down and decontaminated two cooling towers following an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that sickened 12 people, nine of them guests or employees at the theme park in Anaheim, county health officials said Saturday.

One of the three cases of the respiratory illness not linked to Disneyland was fatal in an individual who had additional health issues, said Jessica Good of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

The chief medical officer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Pamela Hymel, said in a written statement that after learning of the Legionnaires’ cases, park officials ordered the cooling towers treated with chemicals to destroy the bacteria and shut them down.

Cooling towers provide cold water for various uses at Disneyland and give off a vapor or mist that could have carried the Legionnella bacteria.

Disneyland, which opened in 1955 and attracts tens of thousands of visitors a day, is owned by The Walt Disney Co.

Hymel said that local health officials had assured them that there was no longer any risk to guests or employees of the park.

There was no information on the condition of the remaining 11 victims because of patient confidentiality laws.

Good said an investigation of the Legionnaires’ cluster discovered that the 12 people sickened by the serious lung disease had traveled to, lived in, or worked in Anaheim during September.

Ten of the victims, who ranged in age from 52 to 94, were hospitalized.

Legionnaires’ disease can cause potentially fatal respiratory illness and pneumonia. Older people and those with health issues are particularly at risk.

According to the Orange County health agency, Legionella is becoming more common in the United States and in Orange County, where 55 cases have been reported through October 2017, compared with 53 for all of 2016 and 33 in 2015.

Symptoms develop two to 10 days after exposure, the OCHCA said, and include fever, chills, cough, muscle aches and headaches. It is treated with antibiotics, which can improve symptoms and shorten the length of illness.

The disease is not contagious.
…

more

Cambodian Netizens Face New Risks as Government Tightens Online Controls

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

In Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, the rapid improvement in internet connectivity and availability of affordable smartphones has been a great leveler.

Many of its roughly 15 million urban and rural inhabitants have gained, in a short time, access to mobile internet and social media, which provide relatively free communication and independent, nongovernment sources of information.

Some tech-savvy Cambodian activists, like Ngeth Moses, began to harness the internet to foster social change years ago.

Ngeth Moses, head of the Media/ICT Unit with the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights in Phnom Penh, has campaigned online through social media platforms for political freedom and human rights causes.

Ngeth Moses has also trained dozens of members of NGOs and youth organizations on how to use online campaigning and online expression platforms, such as Open Cyber Talk.

In the past year or so, however, the optimism among activists about the positive impact of greater internet access has given way to growing fears as the Cambodian government stepped up efforts to curtail online freedom of expression and political opposition.

“I’m more cautious now before posting or commenting [on] anything political online,” Ngeth Moses said, because of the growing state scrutiny of online content and the increase in reprimands or arrests of netizens.

At the same time, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have actively raised their online profile ahead of the national elections next year in an attempt to reach millions of new social media users.

Tightening online control

In early 2016, a new law increased the government’s authority over the telecommunications industry to include “overbroad surveillance powers” that pose “a threat to the privacy of individual users,” according to the U.S. think tank Freedom House.

The law includes punishments for several offensives, among them a prison term of seven to 15 years for threatening “national security,” a charge that the local human rights group Licadho said is vague and open to political abuse.

A pending cybercrime law is also raising concerns about legal limits on what users are allowed to post on the internet.

In 2016, the court used an older law to punish online dissent when it sentenced university student Kong Raiya to 18 months in prison for incitement over a Facebook post that criticized the CPP.

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been increasingly targeted over online statements.

Senator Hong Sok Hour was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly posting false documents on Facebook in 2016. On October 25, King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned him at Hun Sen’s request.

Last month, a 20-year-old fruit vendor was arrested in western Cambodia and reportedly charged with incitement and public insult for Facebook posts said to defame Hun Sen and the Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk.

“The situation of internet freedom in Cambodia is of increasing concern,” said Ramana Sorn, who coordinates the Protecting Fundamental Freedoms Project of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, adding that the government’s technological ability to collect the communications and social media data from individual users has expanded exponentially.

“In the current political climate, social media users must be keenly aware of the risks related to what they are posting and sharing on Facebook and other web platforms,” Ramana Sorn said.

Nop Vy, media director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, echoed these concerns, saying, “Human rights and social workers who are using the social media platforms feel insecure in communicating and publishing their information.”

​Government plays down concerns

Government spokesmen told VOA Khmer that the activists’ criticism was overblown and that prosecutions over online content concerned only those who defamed others or posed genuine threats.

“We need those multiple opinions, but we do not want those insulting or organizing any subversive campaigns against other people’s reputations — they will face legal consequences,” said Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers.

“Only those having a hidden agenda are concerned about it,” CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said. “Those who have nothing to hide, they need not worry about being surveilled or monitored.”

The rising online repression comes, however, amid a nationwide crackdown on political opposition and independent media ahead of the July 2018 national elections.

On September 3, CNRP Chairman Kem Sokha was arrested and charged with treason.

Hun Sen announced the CNRP would be dissolved, and many party members, including deputy party leader Mu Sochua, have fled Cambodia since the first week of October, fearing arrest.

Also in September:

The 24-year-old independent English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily closed after receiving a $6 million tax bill;
The Phnom Penh office of U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia Khmer-language news broadcaster was closed;
Local FM radio stations were ordered to stop carrying the Khmer news broadcasts by RFA and the Voice of America; some independent FM stations were shut down;
And the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute was expelled after years of operation. 

This crackdown, seen as the worst in 20 years, prompted widespread international condemnation and threats of action from the European Union and the United States, but Cambodia, which relies on China’s political support and largesse, appears unmoved.

​Greater access to information

Despite the broad crackdown, millions of Cambodians are now on Facebook and connected through digital communications apps, sometimes encrypted.

Experts said any repressive government will find it hard to check the spread of independent information that can inform the public of politically sensitive issues.

In 2015, internet/Facebook became the main information channel for Cambodians, with 30 percent of netizens using it to access information, surpassing the more state-controlled TV (29 percent) and radio (15 percent), according to an Asia Foundation report.

The improved access to online information “often wakes people up and makes [them] more likely to be critical of the government,” said Mike Godwin, an internet freedom expert and a senior fellow with the U.S.-based R Street Institute.

“In fact, efforts to suppress [online] dissent probably will not work as well as they had hoped because they may have the effect of awaking citizens to their unhappiness,” he said.

When popular political analyst Kem Ley was assassinated last year, his funeral march in the capital, Phnom Penh, drew hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom reportedly learned of the event through online messages and posts that quickly went viral.

Cambodia’s capacity and effort to control online content, however, are still less than those of its mainland Southeast Asian neighbors, according to Freedom House, which ranked the country on its 2016 Freedom on the Internet Index as “partly free.”

​Strongman seeks ‘likes’

Amid the tightening government control on online dissent, Hun Sen and his CPP have sought to expand their social media use to reach out to the public ahead of the national elections next year. In 2013 elections, the CPP narrowly beat the CNRP in a disputed result.

The 65-year-old strongman has urged officials to use Facebook, and he has presented a warm, revitalized image on his Facebook page, which he began in 2015 and has 8.5 million followers. Some photos show him driving passenger cars, attending family outings and frequently exercising.

Some researchers have said that the Cambodian government has formed a nationwide program with “cyberunits” run at local levels, which spread countless pro-CPP messages, denounce the opposition and attack government criticism on social media.

Ngeth Moses, the tech-using activist, said the CPP’s recent embrace of social media only belied the worsening freedom of expression in Cambodia, as could be seen in the controls exercised over pro-CPP Facebook pages. 

“Commenters on the prime minister’s [Facebook] page have been followed and if these comments contained inappropriate words, there were people who got the commenters to apologize,” he said. “On the surface, the internet freedom in Cambodia looks better than in some other countries in ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], but in practice it is not.”
…

more

Bots Battle for Ball, and Globe, in Robot Olympiad

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

The World Robot Olympiad, being held in Costa Rica this weekend, shows human athletes still have little to worry about: Sweat and glory do not compute well when relegated to faceless automatons.

But the same may not be true for workers, especially those in menial or transport activities where robots are steadily taking over. Think factory assemblers and sorters, or even self-driving cars.

Some of the technology behind the robot revolution could be seen in the Olympiad, which gathered more than 2,500 people from more than 60 countries in a vast hall on the outskirts of Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose — the first time the event, now in its 14th year, has been held in the Americas.

Pint-sized robots packed with sensors and rolling on plastic wheels showed their football skills by battling rivals on miniature soccer fields.

Others rolled across tables seeking out blocks of certain colors and sizes to grab and place within demarcated zones.

It was all more than child’s play for the contestants representing their countries, aged from 6 to adult.

“It’s so difficult,” said Hassan Abdelrahem Alqadi, 17, from the United Arab Emirates.

“We have to do it in the system and make the robot take the color and go to the pieces that we want. So it’s very difficult,” he said.

The teen, who hopes to be a mechanical engineer in the oil industry, admitted he had picked up tips from watching other competitors’ practice sessions. He and other tech-savvy youngsters crowded around dozens of tables — computers or robots in their hands — to observe.

Environmental theme

At one table, a group of Australian teens fine-tuned their contraptions trying to win possession of a palm-sized transparent “soccer” ball containing a sensor. The robots were able to detect the ball, grab it while fending off rivals, and protect the goal area.

Being at the Olympiad, surrounded by equally bright peers from around the world, was eye-opening for the teens.

“We’ve never been to an international competition before, so it’s a new experience. I can really only compare it to the competitions we’ve had in Australia — in Australia, we’ve done pretty well,” said Tiernan Martin, 13.

The competition over the weekend was being judged in several age categories, as well as in the football, university and open tournaments.

This year, the environment was the overriding theme — an area in which Costa Rica is at the forefront.

Thus, robots had to show their usefulness in sustainable tourism (identifying protected areas), carbon neutrality (planting trees) and clean energy (seeking out the best places to set up wind turbines.

Robots ‘help humanity’

Costa Rica’s science and technology minister, Carolina Vasquez Soto, told AFP her country won the right to host the Olympiad — hitherto held mostly in Asia — “for the participation we’ve had in sustainability, because we are contributing to that with more and bigger resources.”

On the larger question of what robots and artificial intelligence now represent for human workers, the national organizer for the World Robot Olympiad, Alejandra Sanchez, was upbeat.

While some see robots as a threat to jobs, she said she saw them as an opportunity.

“I think it’s really good. It’s good they replace human beings in some tasks. But we are not being discarded — we’re changing the functions for human beings,” she said.

“Before, a human being was the one painting cars, for example. Now we have a robot painting vehicles and a human being controlling the robot. … So, it’s a personal opinion, but I believe robots are here to stay, and here to help humanity.”
…

more

Venezuela’s Misery Could Worsen With Debt Default

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Luber Faneitte has lung cancer but there’s no medicine to treat it. She cannot make ends meet. Crime is rampant in her neighborhood.

And she fears that if Venezuela defaults on its $150 billion debt, which is considered likely, things will get worse.

Faneitte, 56, lives on the 18th story of a decrepit building in downtown Caracas. In her fridge there is only water. Meat is a luxury of the past because of inflation that the International Monetary Fund projects will hit 2,300 percent in 2018.

“We get by on grain, and that is just when we can get it. We make a kilo last two or three days,” Faneitte told AFP.

She is on disability from her job as a civil servant and survives on a pittance, equivalent to $8.70 per month.

She depends on food the government sells once a month at subsidized prices to offset the shortages of just about everything.

Last time she brought home two kilos (4.4 pounds) of beans, a kilo of rice, two liters (quarts) of cooking oil, a kilo of powdered milk and four kilos of flour.

But it went fast. Faneitte lives with a daughter and four grandkids. They all depend on her income.

Cendas, an NGO that monitors the cost of living in this oil-rich but now destitute nation, says that in September it took six times the minimum wage to provide for the average family.

Although she has nothing to cook, Faneitte leaves the gas stove running to save on matches.

The faucet drips, day and night. But she has no money to fix it, and water service — like that from other utilities — is practically given away by the government.

‘Hungrier’ and needier

Politically, the idea of Venezuela declaring default is seen as offering a possible short-term boost for widely unpopular President Nicolas Maduro, who has his eye on elections next year.

As oil prices are down — petroleum accounts for 96 percent of the country’s hard-currency revenue — Venezuela has cut down on imports to save money for debt service, worsening the seemingly endless shortages of basics, even such items as soap and toilet paper.

If Maduro declares default, it would free up money to buy imports, do election campaigning and thereby ease the risk of street protests.

But analysts say the long-term impact of defaulting would be disastrous. Venezuela would be mired in lawsuits by creditors and see its assets frozen abroad, said Alejandro Grisanti of the consultancy Ecoanalitica.

Maduro has said he wants to refinance and restructure Venezuela’s debt. But the idea of default is seen as looming.

“I don’t know if that is what Venezuela needs to open its eyes,” said Faneitte. “What I do know is that we are going to go hungrier and be more in need.”

She does not know how things got so bad but she certainly is feeling the effects.

Agonizing choice

She gave up chemotherapy in January because of the acute shortage of medicine to treat her cancer.

She made that tough decision after struggling for years over whether to buy food or treat her disease.

Doctors say she needs chemo. But instead she prepares a homemade concoction of liqueur, honey and aloe vera.

“I leave it outside for two days, then I take a spoonful in the morning and another at night. I think I breathe much better when I take it,” she said.

Faneitte has been a smoker since age 15. She struggles to breathe when she talks or walks. She has had three heart attacks.

She recalls sarcastically how the late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez once complained that poor people in his country were reduced to eating dog food.

“I want to eat that again,” said Faneitte.

Crime is yet another woe. There is no internet in her neighborhood because thieves have stolen all the cables.

Her apartment building is pocked with bullet holes from shootouts among rival gangs. That violence forced her to move the beds in her apartment away from the windows.

“I am resigned,” she said, “to whatever God wants.”
…

more