Amid concerns about Russian hacking and online influence, Russian technology firm NtechLab has won a prize awarded by the United States intelligence community. VOA’s Moscow Bureau visited NtechLab to ask its general director about the award, the technology, and concerns about privacy.
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Day: November 23, 2017
If you’re a fan of the Mayflower II, here’s something that will float your boat.
A year after craftsmen embarked on an ambitious effort to restore the rotting replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, the work “is going really great,” project manager Whit Perry says.
Britain built the vessel and sailed it to the U.S. as a gift of friendship in 1957. Usually it’s moored in Plymouth Harbor, where more than 25 million people have boarded it over the past six decades. But over the years, the elements, aquatic organisms and insects took their toll.
It’s now in dry dock at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport, getting a $7.5 million makeover in time for 2020 festivities marking the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing.
The Associated Press caught up with Perry, director of maritime preservation and operations at Plimoth Plantation , for a progress report.
AP: You’re 12 months into a 2-year project involving major structural repairs to America’s most beloved boat. Any unpleasant surprises?
Perry: Not really. I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress we’re making right now. We’ve had some major milestones since we began on Nov. 3, 2016. We have more than 100 new frames and floor timbers inside in the hold. Now we’re actually going to start the planking process on the outside of the ship, which is very exciting.
AP: So nothing’s bugging you? This time last year, on top of water damage and dry rot, you had beetles chewing through the bottom of the boat.
Perry: Ah, yes, the wharf borer beetle. No, that’s been a minor issue. We did find evidence of (Teredo worms). This is a mollusk that can grow up to three feet long and eats through wood. On the bottom of the keel, there’s something called a “worm shoe” — a 4-inch-thick piece of wood that runs the whole length of the ship. It lets the worms have a field day but not get into the main structure of the boat. That’s where we found evidence of worms. The ship itself is OK.
AP: The shipyard’s live webcam is pretty cool, but it’s hard to tell how many people are involved and what they’re doing. Can you tell us what we can’t see?
Perry: There are 20 people working on the Mayflower II at any one time. They’re working regular shifts, but we’re paying a little overtime so they don’t feel like they have to put down their tools if they’re in the middle of something. There are small teams working all over the ship. As we take things apart, we’re fixing anything with a question mark now, while we have the chance.
AP: Sea water actually preserves a wooden ship like this one. What happens when it’s on dry land for so long? Is that bad for a boat?
Perry: It can be. We’re very proactive in spraying the boat with salt water and an antifungal agent. As we put the ship back together, we try to keep the humidity up with misters so it doesn’t dry out too much. We also have to leave a little play on the new planking beneath the waterline so it doesn’t buckle when the ship returns to the water and the wood starts to swell. It’s not an exact science.
AP: In 2020, the eyes of the world will be on Plymouth. Sounds like you’re confident the ship will be ready?
Perry: It’s all going really great. We’re on budget and we’re on schedule. The ship will leave Mystic Seaport by late spring or early summer of 2019. And I’ve got to say, sailing the Mayflower II back to Plymouth is going to be quite a spectacle. Seeing the ship back under sail is going to be a beautiful sight.
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Some information technology companies are growing so concerned about not find enough digital talent that they’re training their own.
IBM, Amazon and Microsoft all now have apprenticeship programs that pay workers learning on-the-job while they build IT skills. The programs cost companies tens of thousands of dollars per trainee.
IBM Vice President Joanna Daly says the apprenticeship program the tech giant started last month will help fill the several hundred vacant early-career IT jobs in the U.S. Rhode Island-based Carousel Industries executive Tim Hebert says the company’s apprentices are loyal and stay for years.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median pay last year for computer and information technology occupations was about $83,000, compared to $37,000 for all jobs.
Fur trappers are asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit from wildlife advocates who want to block the export of bobcat pelts from the United States.
Attorneys for trapping organizations said in recent court filings that the lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service infringes on the authority of state and tribal governments to manage their wildlife.
The plaintiffs in the case allege the government’s export program doesn’t protect against the accidental trapping of imperiled species such as Canada lynx.
More than 30,000 bobcat pelts were exported in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available, according to wildlife officials. The pelts typically are used to make fur garments and accessories. Russia, China, Canada and Greece are top destinations, according to a trapping industry representative and government reports.
Federal officials in February concluded trapping bobcats and other animals did not have a significant impact on lynx populations.
The Fish and Wildlife Service regulates trade in animal and plant parts according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, which the U.S. ratified in 1975.
The advocates’ lawsuit would “do away with the CITES export program,” according to attorneys for the Fur Information Council of America, Montana Trappers Association and National Trappers Association.
“They are seeking to interfere with the way the States and Tribes manage their wildlife, by forcing them to limit, if not eliminate, the harvesting of the Furbearers and at the very least restrict the means by which trapping is conducted,” attorneys Ira Kasdan and Gary Leistico wrote in their motion to dismiss the case.
Bobcats are not considered an endangered species. But the international trade in their pelts is regulated because they are “look-alikes” for other wildlife populations that are protected under U.S. law.
Critics of the government export program argue the government review completed in February did not look closely enough at how many lynx trappers inadvertently catch in traps set for bobcats or other furbearing species.
Pete Frost, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the fur industry’s move to throw out the case “seeks to deprive citizens of their right to court review of the federal pelt export program.”
Between 2.3 million and 3.6 million bobcats lived in the U.S., with populations that were stable or increasing in at least 40 states, according to a 2010 study from researchers at Cornell University and the University of Montana.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade marched, rolled and soared in traditional style Thursday as police went all-out to secure it in a year marked by attacks on outdoor gathering spots.
With new faces and old favorites in the lineup, the Americana extravaganza made its way through 2 ½ miles (3.22 kilometers) of Manhattan on a cold morning.
“The crowds are still the same, but there’s a lot more police here. That’s the age we live in,” Paul Seyforth said as he attended the parade he’d watched since the 1950s.
“Not a lot’s changed — the balloons, the bands, the floats — and that’s the good thing,” said Seyforth, 76, who’d flown in from Denver to spend his 50th wedding anniversary in New York and see this year’s parade.
The televised parade was proceeding smoothly, though about midway through, a gust of wind on a largely calm day blew a candy-cane balloon into a tree branch, and it popped near the start of the route on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. No one was injured.
In 2005, one of the parade’s signature giant balloons caught a gust, hit a Times Square lamppost and injured two people. The candy cane was smaller than the giant balloons.
Timothy McMillian and his wife, their 9-year-old daughter and his in-laws started staking out a spot along the route at 6:30 a.m. They’d come from Greensboro, North Carolina, to see in person the spectacle they’d watched on TV for years.
McMillian, a 45-year-old schoolteacher, booked a hotel months ago, but he started to have some concerns about security when a truck attack on a bike path near the World Trade Center killed eight people on Halloween.
“With the event being out in the open like this, we were concerned,” he said. “But we knew security would be ramped up today, and we have full confidence in the NYPD.”
Authorities say there is no confirmation of a credible threat to the parade, but they were taking no chances after both the truck attack and the October shooting that killed 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival.New York Police Department officers with assault weapons and portable radiation detectors were circulating among the crowds, sharpshooters were on rooftops and sand-filled city sanitation trucks were poised as imposing barriers to traffic at every cross street. Officers also were escorting each of the giant balloons.
The mayor and police brass have repeatedly stressed that visitors shouldn’t be deterred. And Bekki Grinnell certainly wasn’t.
“When your kid from Alaska is marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, you come,” said Grinnell, whose daughter was marching with the band from Colony High School in Palmer, Alaska. Grinnell said she wasn’t worried about security because of the police presence: “I think we’re in a safe spot.”
Other paradegoers also showed their appreciation for police: The NYPD marching band and a group of mounted officers got some of the biggest cheers from spectators lined up as many as 15 deep along barricades. Among other crowd favorites: as did the SpongeBob SquarePants balloon.
The 91st annual parade featured new balloons including Olaf from the Disney movie “Frozen” and Chase from the TV cartoon “Paw Patrol” will be among the new balloons Thursday, along with a new version of the Grinch of Dr. Seuss fame.
Smokey Robinson, The Roots, Flo Rida and Wyclef Jean were among the stars celebrating, along with performances from the casts of Broadway’s “Anastasia,” ″Dear Evan Hansen” and “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The lineup included a dozen marching bands, as well as the high-kicking Radio City Music Hall Rockettes — and, of course, Santa Claus.
“This is my favorite thing ever,” musician Questlove told The Associated Press as he got ready to ride the Gibson Guitars float with his bandmates in The Roots and late-night host Jimmy Fallon of “The Tonight Show,” where The Roots are the house band. Questlove said being in the parade is “probably my favorite perk” of the job.
“To go from being a spectator to being up here, it’s kinda cool,” he said.
Added singer-songwriter Andy Grammer as he got on the Homewood Suites float: “It’s kind of like being at the center of Thanksgiving.”
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George Avakian, a Russian-born jazz scholar and architect of the American music industry who produced essential recordings by Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and other stars has died at age 98.
Avakian’s daughter, Anahid Avakian Gregg, confirmed that her father died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan. No further details were immediate available.
Avakian, an executive at Columbia Records and Warner Bros. among other labels, helped popularize such consumer standards as liner notes, the long-playing album and the live album.
Few could claim as many milestones as Avakian, who started out as an Ivy League prodigy rediscovering old jazz recordings and became a monumental industry figure and founder of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, presenters of the Grammys. Through the artists he promoted and the breakthroughs he championed, Avakian helped shape the music we listen to and the way we listen to it.
“The innovations Avakian brought or helped bring to the recording industry are so fundamental and taken for granted today that most people under the age of 70 would find it hard to imagine there was ever a time when they didn’t exist,” DownBeat magazine declared in presenting Avakian a lifetime achievement award in 2000.
His contributions date back to the late 1930s, when he was an undergraduate at Yale and a jazz fan frustrated by the limited availability of his favorite music. He wrote to numerous companies and finally convinced Decca to let him compile “Chicago Jazz,” widely regarded as the first jazz album and among the first jazz records to include liner notes, written by Avakian.
“Decca said in essence, `We don’t know quite what jazz in those cities is about but you seem to know so why don’t you go ahead and produce them,”’ Avakian told JazzWax in 2010.
Avakian was soon working on new and old music, documenting and making history, and jazz’s stature was changing from popular entertainment to art. He prepared a series of reissues at Columbia that featured recordings by Armstrong, Ellington and Bessie Smith and helped launch the inclusion of alternate takes of individual songs. He produced the classic “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy” and one of Dave Brubeck’s most popular albums, “Dave Digs Disney.” He also signed up Davis for Columbia and co-produced “Miles Ahead,” the 1957 album that began Davis’ collaborations with arranger Gil Evans and established him as among the first jazz superstars of the post-World War II era.
“I saw him as the best trumpet ballad player since Louis Armstrong,” Avakian told The Wall Street Journal in 2005.
The music business was rapidly changing in the 1940s and `50s, thanks in part to Avakian. Columbia was the industry leader in issuing classical recordings as albums and Avakian, as head of Columbia’s pop division, oversaw the landmark 1948 release of 100 long-playing records for pop and jazz. Featuring Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and other artists, they were pressed on vinyl that was thinner than the traditional 78 rpm “shellac” records and played at what became the standard speed, 33 1-3 rpm.
In the 1950s, Avakian supervised two historic live recordings: “Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall 1938” and “Ellington at Newport.” The Goodman concert, released in 1950, was among jazz’s first double albums, first live albums and first to sell a million copies. “Ellington at Newport,” featuring a sensational 27-chorus solo by tenor saxophone player Paul Gonsalves on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” captured the 1956 performances that revived the middle-aged Ellington’s career.
Avakian’s other achievements ranged from producing Bob Newhart’s Grammy-winning debut “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” and Sonny Rollins’ comeback album “The Bridge” to managing Keith Jarrett and teaching, at Columbia University, one of the first courses on jazz. In 1958, he was among the founders of the recording academy, which in 2009 presented him a Trustees Award for lifetime achievement. His other honors included an advocacy award from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Commandeur des Arts et Lettres from France and the Soviet Union’s highest honor, the Order of Lenin.
Avakian, essentially retired from the music industry since the 1970s, was a breeder of race horses in recent years, notably the champion pacer President Ball. Avakian was married to the violinist Anahid Ajemian, with whom he had three children. She died on June 13, 2016, at age 92.
He was born in 1919 in the Russian city of Armavir, the child of wealthy Armenians who fled from the civil war that followed the 1917 revolution. Once settled with his family in New York, Avakian fell in love with jazz listening to the radio, on low volume, so his parents wouldn’t know he was still awake. When he entered Yale, jazz was still a relatively new and popular genre and few sensed it had lasting value.
Avakian was barely out of his teens when he met Armstrong. While at Yale, he helped unearth tracks from Armstrong’s foundational Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions from the 1920s. After serving in the infantry during World War II, when Avakian was based in the Philippines, he was hired by Columbia and was soon back in touch with Armstrong.
“Louis remains the artist I most admired and most enjoyed recording, by a distinct though relatively narrow margin,” Avakian told JazzTimes in 2000, “narrow because it was also an enormous pleasure working with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Mahalia Jackson, Erroll Garner, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck and a host of others who were not just great artists, but among the best friends I have ever had.”
The Bollywood film Padmavati, a period epic depicting the story of a 14th century Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler, was one of the year’s most awaited movies.
But the film’s producers have indefinitely delayed its release amid fierce protests and violent threats by right-wing Hindu groups who charge the movie distorts history and depicts a romantic scene between Muslim king Alauddin Khilji and Padmavati, the Hindu queen, who historians say is fictional.
A regional legislator of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced a $1.5 million reward to behead the heroine, actress Deepika Padukone, and acclaimed Bollywood filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The group spearheading the protests, Rajput Karni Sena, has attacked a cinema that showed the film’s trailer, threatened to cut off the heroine’s nose and vowed to block the film.
The violent protests have raised questions about an assault on the right of artistic and creative expression and concerns that Hindu fringe groups have been emboldened with the Hindu nationalist BJP in power.
The filmmakers have repeatedly said the protesters should watch the movie before concluding that it hurts Hindu sentiment and denied that it depicts a romantic scene between the Muslim ruler Alauddin Khilji and Padmavati – the rumor that fanned the protests.
Those arguments have cut no ice: the opponents insist that the film will hurt the honor of Rajputs, a warrior caste of North India for whom Padmavati is a symbol of pride and honor.
While the BJP government in New Delhi has distanced itself from the controversy, several leaders of BJP-ruled states have joined the chorus of protest with three chief ministers announcing the movie will not be screened in their states. “We believe in freedom of speech and expression, but any foul play with our great culture is not tolerated,” said the chief minister of Gujarat state, Vijay Rupani.
Political analyst Satish Misra with the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi questions why authorities have not acted against those threatening violence. “It is the government’s responsibility to keep the environment secure so that people can be creative, whether it is poetry or filmaking,” he said.
Historians have been taken aback by claims that the film distorts history and point out that there is no clear evidence that Padmavati existed.
They say she became the stuff of folklore after she was extolled in a 16th century Sufi epic poem, “Padmavat,” as a beautiful queen who committed “Jauhar,” a medieval practice in which women of royal households walked into funeral pyres to avoid being taken captive.
But their repeated assertions have made no impact on the Karni Sena, whose members belong to the caste claiming its lineage from queen Padmavati.
“Am I a ghost? I’m a descendant. Then how can anyone even question the existence of our family?” said the group’s head, Lokendra Singh Kalvi.
Earlier this year the group vandalized the sets during the film’s shooting and assaulted the director.
Puzzled by the outcry over the movie, historian Rana Safvi said people have stopped investigating. “They just like to believe whatever they have heard. Venting their anger at a filmmaker or maybe a story teller, or a writer, these are very easy targets, soft targets,” she said.
Protests over books, films and writings which Hindu or Muslim groups find offensive are not new in India. American Indologist Wendy Doniger’s book, “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” was pulled off the shelves in 2014 by a publishing house after protests by a Hindu right-wing group. Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” is banned in India since many Muslims consider it blasphemous.
Political analysts say the controversy has assumed larger-than-life proportions because it erupted ahead of a string of crucial state elections, when caste and identity politics always come into sharper focus.
But Misra said the raging debate over the Bollywood film has reinforced perceptions that fringe Hindu groups have gained a bigger voice with the BJP in power both in New Delhi and in as many as 18 states.
“Today India is speaking in voices of caste and narrow political interests because this controversy had nothing to do with historical facts. It [such controversies] has been happening in the past also, but it is growing,” he said.
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People who drink three to four cups of coffee a day are more likely to see health benefits than harm, experiencing lower risks of premature death and heart disease than those who abstain, scientists said on Wednesday.
The research, which collated evidence from more than 200 previous studies, also found coffee consumption was linked to lower risks of diabetes, liver disease, dementia and some cancers.
Three or four cups a day confer the greatest benefit, the scientists said, except for women who are pregnant or who have a higher risk of suffering fractures.
Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed drinks worldwide. To better understand its effects on health, Robin Poole, a public health specialist at Britain’s University of Southampton, led a research team in an “umbrella review” of 201 studies based on observational research and 17 studies based on clinical trials across all countries and all settings.
“Umbrella reviews” synthesize previous pooled analyses to give a clearer summary of diverse research on a particular topic.
“Coffee drinking appears safe within usual patterns of consumption,” Pool’s team concluded in their research, published in the BMJ British medical journal late on Wednesday.
Drinking coffee was consistently linked with a lower risk of death from all causes and from heart disease. The largest reduction in relative risk of premature death is seen in people consuming three cups a day, compared with non-coffee drinkers.
Drinking more than three cups a day was not linked to harm, but the beneficial effects were less pronounced.
Coffee was also associated with a lower risk of several cancers, including prostate, endometrial, skin and liver cancer, as well as type 2 diabetes, gallstones and gout, the researchers said. The greatest benefit was seen for liver conditions such as cirrhosis of the liver.
Poole’s team noted that because their review included mainly observational data, no firm conclusions could be drawn about cause and effect. But they said their findings support other recent reviews and studies of coffee intake.
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Wolves were once so plentiful in the abundant forests that would become Oregon that the earliest settlers gathered from far and wide to discuss how to kill them.
Those “wolf meetings”in the 1840s, spawned by a common interest, eventually led to the formation of the Oregon territory, the precursor for statehood in 1859.
Today, Oregon’s statehood is secure, but the future of its wolf population once more hangs in the balance. Wolves have returned after decades, and this time, humans are having a much more contentious discussion about what to do with them.
It’s a political debate playing out against the backdrop of a rapidly growing wolf population, a jump in wolf poaching and demands from ranchers and hunters who say the predators are decimating herds and spooking big game.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will vote in January on whether to adopt a new wolf management plan that could eventually open the door for a wolf hunt for the first time since bounty hunting wiped out wolves in the state 70 years ago. Idaho, which has a much larger population of the animals, allows wolf hunting.
Conservationists worry the plan will erode recent progress, particularly given a rash of unsolved poaching cases and an uptick in state-sanctioned wolf killings in response to wolf attacks on livestock. They are adamantly opposed to wolf hunting and say the population is a long way from supporting it.
The species lost its endangered status under Oregon law two years ago — when the population hit 81 wolves — and is no longer federally protected in the eastern third of the state. Wolves, which were wiped out in the continental U.S. in all but a slice of Minnesota, also are rebounding in other Western states, prompting similar debates about human co-existence.
Oregon wildlife officials have killed or authorized the killing of 14 wolves since 2009, including 10 in the past two years, and 12 more have been poached, including eight since 2015, according to state wildlife officials.
“When we had zero wolves 10 years ago, and now when we have 112 wolves, that’s certainly a success story — but we’re not done,” said Rob Klavins, a wolf specialist with Oregon Wild, a conservation organization. “Can you imagine if there were only 81 known elk in the state of Oregon, or if there were 81 salmon? We wouldn’t think of delisting them.”
Early explorers noted wolves were “exceedingly numerous” in what would become Oregon, and the so-called wolf meetings that led to the region’s first civic government established a bounty for wolves in 1843 that paid $3 per hide. The state later took over the bounty and offered $20 per wolf in 1913 — the equivalent of nearly $500 today.
The last bounty payment was recorded in 1947, and the wolf vanished from Oregon for decades.
In the mid-1990s, wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho, and in 1999, a lone wolf wandered into northeastern Oregon. It was trapped and returned to Idaho.
Two more were found dead in Oregon in 2000. But the first definitive proof wolves had returned to the state came in 2007, when a wolf was found shot to death. The following year, a wolf nicknamed Sophie by conservationists gave birth to the first litter of pups born in Oregon in decades.
Last year, state biologists counted 112 wolves in the northeastern and southwestern corners of the state — and they believe that is an undercount.
Wolf conflicts with ranchers have risen and, for the first time, an elk hunter this month reported killing a wolf in self-defense.
That wolf was previously unknown to biologists, and the case has become a flashpoint in the fight over wolves. A local prosecutor declined to press charges, prompting 18 conservation groups to petition Gov. Kate Brown to intervene without success.
Ranchers who run cattle and sheep in northeastern Oregon also believe there are more wolves than officially documented – and say they are paying the price.
Todd Nash, head of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, estimates he’s lost $50,000 in dead calves and in herds that are underweight from being too spooked to graze properly.
The state requires ranchers to prove wolves have killed two animals or killed one and attempted to kill three others before it will consider killing a wolf to protect livestock. The ranchers also must show they have tried other deterrents, such as special fencing and flashing lights.
The state killed four wolves this summer and authorized a rancher to kill one more, but Nash said it’s almost impossible to prove most cases because the wolves eat the carcasses or drag them away. Ranchers in his area are fed up because the bulk of Oregon’s wolves live in just a few remote counties where he says abundant cattle make easy prey.
Killing a few wolves “does nothing but infuriate the conservation folks, and it doesn’t serve to placate the ranchers because they know it’s not going to do any good,” Nash said.
Yet the fact that Oregonians are debating when and how to kill wolves at all is incredible given the predators didn’t exist here a decade ago, said Derek Broman, carnivore coordinator with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.
As the point person on the upcoming wolf management plan, he hears from dozens of competing interests on what to do with wolves.
“It wasn’t all that long ago that people were worried about wolves blinking out and there just being a handful of them,” Broman said.
“Wolves are so contentious, and there’s a lot of baggage that comes with them — but there’s also a lot of interest, which is nice.”
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The Federal Communications Commission formally released a draft of its plan to kill net-neutrality rules, which equalized access to the internet and prevented broadband providers from favoring their own apps and services.
Now the question is: What comes next?
‘Radical departure’
The FCC’s move will allow companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to charge internet companies for speedier access to consumers and to block outside services they don’t like. The change also axes a host of consumer protections, including privacy requirements and rules barring unfair practices that gave consumers an avenue to pursue complaints about price gouging.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says his plan eliminates unnecessary regulation. But many worry that his proposal will stifle small tech firms and leave ordinary citizens more at the mercy of cable and wireless companies.
“It would be a radical departure from what previous (FCC) chairs, of both parties, have done,” said Gigi Sohn, a former adviser to Tom Wheeler, the Obama-era FCC chairman who enacted the net neutrality rules now being overturned. “It would leave consumers and competition completely unprotected.”
During the last Republican administration, that of George W. Bush, FCC policy held that people should be able to see what they want on the internet and to use the services they preferred. But attempts to enshrine that net-neutrality principle in regulation never held up in court – at least until Wheeler pushed through the current rules now slated for termination.
Pai’s proposals stand a good chance of enactment at the next FCC meeting in December. But there will be lawsuits to challenge them.
More details
The formal proposal reveals more details of the plan than were in the FCC’s Tuesday press release. For instance, if companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon decide to block a particular app, throttle data speeds for a rival service or offer faster speeds to companies who pay for it, they merely need to disclose their policies for doing so.
The FCC also says it will pre-empt state rules on privacy and net neutrality that contradict its approach. Verizon has noted that New York has several privacy bills pending, and that the California legislature has suggested coming up with its own version of net neutrality rules should the federal versions perish.
The plan would leave complaints about deceptive behavior and monitor privacy to the Federal Trade Commission, which already regulates privacy for internet companies like Google and Facebook.
Best behavior
Broadband providers are promising to be on their best behavior. Comcast said it doesn’t and won’t block, throttle or discriminate against lawful content. AT&T said that “all major ISPs have publicly committed to preserving an open internet” and that any ISP “foolish” enough to manipulate what’s available online for customers will be “quickly and decisively called out.” Verizon said that “users should be able to access the internet when, where, and how they choose.”
Some critics don’t put much weight on those promises, noting that many providers have previously used their networks to disadvantage rivals. For example, the Associated Press in 2007 found Comcast was blocking some file-sharing. AT&T blocked Skype and other internet calling services on its network on the iPhone until 2009.
But others suggest fear of a public uproar will help restrain egregious practices such as blocking and throttling. “I’m not sure there’s any benefit to them doing that,” said Sohn. “It’s just going to get people angry at them for no good reason. They don’t monetize that.”
Fast lanes, slow lanes
Sohn, however, suggests there’s reason to worry about more subtle forms of discrimination, such as “paid prioritization.” That’s a term for internet “fast lanes,” where companies that can afford it would pay AT&T, Verizon and Comcast for faster or better access to consumers.
That would leave startups and institutions that aren’t flush with cash, like libraries or schools, relegated to slower service, said Corynne McSherry, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. In turn, startups would find it harder to attract investors, Sohn said.
Michael Cheah, general counsel of the video startup Vimeo, said broadband companies will try to lay groundwork for a two-tiered internet – one where cash-strapped companies and services are relegated to the slow lane. To stay competitive, small companies would need to pony up for fast lanes if they could – but those costs would ultimately find their way to consumers.
The view is different at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank funded by Google and other established tech companies. Doug Brake, a telecom policy analyst at the foundation, said there’s little chance broadband companies will engage in “shenanigans,” given how unpopular they already are with the public.
Brake likewise played down the threat of internet fast lanes, arguing that they’ll only be useful in limited situations such as high-quality teleconferencing. Like the FCC, he argued that antitrust law can serve to deter “potentially anticompetitive” behavior by internet providers.
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The former face of China’s “Great Firewall,” Lu Wei, has become the first “tiger” to come under the Communist Party’s corruption investigation since President Xi Jinping began his second term last month.
Analysts say the graft probe into Lu’s corruption practices is widely believed to be legitimate and long overdue.
But Lu’s downfall has highlighted the simmering discontent among the country’s netizens, many of whom have been frustrated with tougher internet regulations imposed by him.
It has also made a mockery of so-called Xi Praise, a flattery culture centering on the building of the Xi cult, analysts add.
Graft probe
Late Tuesday, China’s top anti-corruption agency announced on its website that 57-year-old Lu, who formerly served as deputy chief of the party propaganda department, has been detained in an internal graft probe.
Along with six of his colleagues and family members, Lu was reportedly taken away by investigators late last week.
Lu, who served as the head of China’s cyberspace administration between 2013 and 2016, was the key person in implementing Xi’s cyberspace policies.
In that role, he wielded great power over what the country’s 730 million internet users could access and acted as the gatekeeper for foreign technology companies seeking to enter the Chinese market.
Because of that, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2015.
Just a cat
But his political career ended when he was stripped of the title as China’s internet censor and was replaced by Xu Lin, a Xi protégé, in June 2016.
“Actually, he ceased to be a tiger long ago. He’s not a fly, but he’s now just a cat instead of a tiger because he already lost his power in June 2016,” Hong Kong-based China watcher Willy Lam told VOA.
In one of its two other statements, China’s anti-graft body Wednesday explained why Lu became the first tiger under graft investigation after the party’s 19th National Congress.
The cyberspace administration with Lu at the helm was found to have not been staunch enough in executing Xi’s instructions, lacked political responsibility and integrity while being operated by a network of small circles, the statement said.
‘Offenses of bygone’
The other statement warned not to “expect [criminal] offenses of bygone will be bygone today, lessons learned from the fall of Lu Wei.”
No details about Lu’s corruption offenses were revealed.
Chinese media reported that investigators would be mainly looking into corruption charges against Lu during the period when he worked for state-run Xinhua News Agency from 1991 and 2011.
Media speculation is also rife that Lu had angered Xi when the top leader discovered that the former internet censor had hired foreigners to masquerade as CEOs of multinational tech companies attending the World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, in 2014.
Xi praise
But Lam said that Xi, who he said is a “macromania,” has no one but himself to blame for the trend of Xi Praise, a flattery culture in Chinese politics.
“This is the art of survival in the Chinese empire, so to speak. The officials have to be seen as bending forward and backward to please Xi Jinping,” Lam said.
But Li Datong, managing director of Freezing Point, a weekly that reported on all aspects of contemporary life in China, said Xi Praise is an act of self-deception.
“If Xi Jinping knows how to surf on the Internet, he will see from a bevy of [online] chat rooms that many [netizens] not only made fun of him, but also lashed out at Xi Cult. It’s a game for government officials themselves to play,” Li said.
Discontent with internet controls
Chinese internet users, however, are happy to see Lu go, venting their frustrations over Internet controls.
But on Wednesday, a report in the state-run Global Times pointed out, “while news of Lu’s removal has made a buzz on the internet, his corruption investigation isn’t aimed at addressing dissatisfaction expressed by a minority of people over tighter internet controls. Neither is it a signal that internet controls will be re-evaluated as some have expected.”
Li said netizens are aware of the fact that the country’s internet controls won’t be eased following Lu’s downfall.
“Everybody knows that there won’t be a change of policy. But they are still happy to see the executioner [Lu], who has done all evils, being taken down. [Internet] policies are national policies, which won’t be easily revised as a result of personnel reshuffle,” Li said.
On Thursday, Lu Wei was the top-trending topic on freeweibo.com, a website that captures censored social media posts. On SINA Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, online comments posted by users in response to news reports were mostly erased.
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A startup is making fuel from waste coffee grounds to power some of London’s buses. VOA’s Steve Baragona reports.
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This weekend, TV viewers across America will again be watching advertisements sponsored by major tobacco companies, but quite different from the ones pulled from the airwaves nearly 50 years ago. Instead of attractive people enjoying a smoke, these ads will lay out in plain text and narration the dangers of using tobacco. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Goodbye, Moon. We don’t need you anymore.
The Earth’s night skies are getting brighter. A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, finds the Earth’s artificially lit outdoor areas grew by 2.2 percent per year from 2012 to 2016.
Light pollution is actually worse than that, according to the German-led team of researchers.
The measurements used in the study come from an imaging sensor on a polar-orbiting weather satellite that can’t detect the color blue generated by the new and increasingly popular LED lights, which means some light is missed by the sensor.
Overall, 79 countries, mostly in Asia, South America and Africa, experienced a growth in nighttime brightness. Sixteen countries, including areas of conflict such as Syria and Yemen, witnessed a decrease, and 39 countries, including the U.S., stayed the same.
“Artificial light is an environmental pollutant that threatens nocturnal animals and affects plants and microorganisms,” the study said.
Light pollution has been known to have adverse effects on all living creatures. People’s sleep can be marred, in turn affecting their health. The migration and reproduction of birds, fish, amphibians, insects and bats can be disrupted, and plants can have abnormally extended growing periods.
Co-author of the study, Franz Holker of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, said things are at the critical point.
“Many people are using light at night without really thinking about the cost,” Holker said. Not just the economic cost, “but also the cost that you have to pay from an ecological, environmental perspective.”
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A former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor pleaded guilty Wednesday to seven counts of sexual assault. He has been accused of molesting and sexually abusing more than 100 women and girls, including three Olympic gold medalists. The case of former doctor Larry Nassar reveals serious failings on the part of the authorities who seemingly did little to protect the girls from a known predator. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has this report.
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