Day: December 29, 2017

Cambodia Filmmakers Face ‘Taxing’ Times

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

The launch of Angelina’s Jolie’s Khmer language feature “First They Killed My Father” promised to deliver a much needed shot of exposure and enthusiasm into the arm of Cambodia’s emergent film industry.

Instead of using the spotlight to springboard their productions though, leading Cambodian filmmakers are fearing a proposed tax enforcement drive could kill the industry entirely.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture called filmmakers to a meeting in October to discuss the planned imposition of taxes on filmmakers.

The clampdown echoes a broader push by the country’s General Department of Taxation to transition from an opaque and dysfunctional system of negotiated tax to a more sustainable government revenue base.

But the idea an industry struggling to stay afloat can shoulder the implementation of full tax compliance is unrealistic, said Motion Picture Association of Cambodia president Chhay Bora.

“If the taxes are to be implemented [now],risk in the film industry will occur,” he said. “I think not less than 80 percent of production houses will close down because it is a heavy burden to them.

“All the artists will lose their job,” he added. ‘The technical team will no longer be in the film industry. Perhaps it will be the same as what happened in the 2000s.”

Cambodia’s film industry experienced a brief resurgence in the early 2000s fuelled by surging nationalist tensions with Thailand but with little support or direction interest soon fell away.

About seven years into a second boom, filmmakers have now been informed of just under a dozen taxes they are obligated to pay from pre-production to screening that cover monthly production incomes, cast and crew salaries.

They are also in the firing line for taxes on equipment rental, studio rental, full time staff, revenue from screening, annual VAT and withholding tax.

Bora, the director of feature films 3.50, which delved into the deplorable world of the virginity trade, and Lost Loves, the story of a mother fighting for her family’s survival under the Khmer Rouge, believes good cinema has a critical role to play in Cambodian society .

“It has influence in promoting culture, literature, and sending other educational messages,” he said, adding the art-form also brings national prestige.

In recent years Cambodian films have garnered some notable attention on the world stage with features such as Davy Chou’s Diamond Island and Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture gracing Cannes and the Oscars.

Their success has helped inspire a new generation of filmmakers and slowly the quality of productions is lifting.

International distribution remains extremely rare though, confining most Cambodian filmmakers to a handful of theaters across the country that screen films on average just 26 times — or for about two weeks.

Filmmakers and distributors have told VOA cinemas commonly take a cut of 55 percent from these limited ticket sales.

Rampant copyright violation has made web based sales effectively pointless with most filmmakers outright refusing to do it or exhausting every other possible alternative first before risking illegal downloads.

As a result the production of serious feature films is far from a lucrative enterprise with local Cambodian attempts rarely managing to break even. Instead the filmmakers work largely for exposure.

Salaries are low and work scarce forcing freelance crew members to rely on a few jobs a year while supplementing their incomes through menial jobs, such as driving Tuk Tuks.

Huy Yaleng, 38, rode the wave of the first cinema resurgence in the early nineties at the start of his career and felt the pain of having to turn to TV execs as cinemas shut their doors, reopening as pubs and restaurants.

“The industry has just recovered in the past few years, as we all can see that we are not strong enough to make profit yet,” he said.

Huy said his latest thriller “Psychotic” had once again failed to turn a profit and vowed to throw in the towel if his upcoming feature “The Witch” brought no return again.

“I am worried. I have put my love into film for my entire life, and now it has problems,” Huy said. “I haven’t made any profit yet, but in my mind I told myself to continue because I love it and vow to serve this industry till the end. We will try until the end.”

The proposal to apply 10 percent salary tax to crew members along with taxes on other subcontractors such as those providing transportation or catering is particularly onerous, Chhay said, because their inability to pay left the burden with the production house.

Worse, such taxes would be backdated to the time each production house registered itself — leaving filmmakers struggling to break even with huge retrospective tax bills.

So he is leading the push for a 10-year tax holiday for the entire industry.

Pok Bora, Acting Director of the Film and Cultural Diffusion Department, said that request had been forwarded to higher authorities in the government but no decision had been made.

“The immediate solution by the Ministry of Economy [and Finance], is to offer a tax break until the end of 2018 for the Withholding Tax on cinema screening,” he said.

The government had also created a National Arts Support and Development Fund in June 2016 — only available to registered productions that fulfilled tax obligations.

“Therefore, there is a need to emphasize on tax reforms to make sure that the funds go to the right production,” he said.

Chea Sopheap, executive director of the Bophana Audio Visual Resource Center, said solutions to the industry’s financial woes hinged on research and clear understanding.

“So the best way is to have a good discussion, good study in order to find a balance between cinemas, film productions and the government,” he said.
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Facebook, Twitter Threatened With Sanctions in Britain

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Social media giants Facebook and Twitter could face sanctions in Britain if they fail to be more forthcoming in providing details about Russian disinformation campaigns that used their platforms in the run-up to last year’s Brexit referendum, the chairman of a British parliamentary inquiry committee warned.

The companies have been given until January 18 to hand over information.

Damian Collins, chairman of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee in the British parliament, which is looking into Russian fake news’ efforts, criticized both companies earlier this month, accusing them of stonewalling the parliamentary investigation. But he has now warned they risk being punished and he says his committee is exploring what sanctions could be imposed on Facebook and Twitter.

“What there has to be then is some mechanism of saying: if you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, then there has to be some sort of sanction against you,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

He dubbed the lack of cooperation by the social media firms as “extraordinary.”

“They don’t believe that they have any obligation at all to initiate their own investigation into what may or may not have been happening, he said. “They’ve not done any of that work at all.”

Parliamentary committees do not have the power in their own right to impose sanctions on erring companies. But British officials have expressed interest in punishing social media companies for failing to take action to stop their platforms from being exploited by agitators, whether they are working for foreign powers or non-state actors such as the Islamic State terror group.

In September in New York at the annual general assembly meeting of the United Nations, British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed frustration with social media companies, saying they must go “further and faster” in removing extremist content and should aim to do so within two hours of it appearing on their sites.

“This is a major step in reclaiming the internet from those who would use it to do us harm,” she said.

The prime minister has repeatedly called for an end to “safe spaces” on social media for terrorists. And British ministers have called for limits to end-to-end encryption, which prevents messages from being read by third parties if they are intercepted.

British lawmakers and ministers aren’t the only ones considering ways to sanction social media firms that fail to police their sites to avoid them from being used to spread fake news or being exploited by militants. This month, Germany’s competition authority accused Facebook of violating European data protection regulations by merging information collected through WhatsApp and Instagram with Facebook user accounts.

Collins has written twice to the social media firms requesting information about suspected Russian fake news campaigns in the weeks and months before Britons voted in June 2016 on whether to retain membership in the European Union, Britain’s largest trading partner.

In a letter to Twitter, he wrote: “The information you have now shared with us is completely inadequate. … It seems odd that so far we have received more information about activities that have taken place on your platform from journalists and academics than from you.”

In response to parliamentary requests for information about Russian interference in the EU referendum, including details of accounts operated by Russian misinformation actors, the social media firms passed on copies of the details they provided to Britain’s Electoral Commission, which is probing advertising originating from Russian actors during the lead up to the Brexit vote.

Facebook said only $0.97 had been spent on Brexit-related ads seen by British viewers. Twitter claimed the only Russian spending it received was $1,000 from the Russian state-owned broadcaster RT.

Russia has been accused of meddling in recent elections in America, France and elsewhere and of running disinformation campaigns aimed at poisoning political discourse in the West and sowing discord with fake news.

In November, Prime Minister May accused Vladimir Putin’s government of trying to “undermine free societies” and “planting fake stories” to “sow discord in the West. “Russia has denied the allegations.

Three days before Christmas, Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, sparred with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, over the issue of alleged Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum.

During his trip to Moscow, the first visit by a British foreign secretary to the Russian capital for five years, Lavrov denied at a joint press conference that the Kremlin had sought to meddle, saying Johnson himself had previously said there was “no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.” Johnson corrected Lavrov, saying: “Not successfully, is what I said.”

So far the evidence of a major Russian social media effort during the Brexit referendum remains thin, and at least not on the alleged scale seen, according to investigators, during the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

An investigation by the New York Times found that “Russian agents … disseminated inflammatory posts that reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service” ahead of the U.S. presidential vote.

In January 2017, the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence concluded: “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.”

In October 2017, researchers at the City University of London found a “13,500-strong [Russian] Twitter bot army,” was present on the social media site around the time of the referendum.

Bot accounts post content automatically. Those accounts in the month prior to the Brexit vote posted a total of 65,000 tweets about the referendum with a slant towards the leave campaign, according to City University researchers.

But a subsequent study by the University of California, Berkeley, and Swansea University in Wales unearthed more pro-Brexit Russian bot accounts, tracking over 150,000 of them.
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Beijing May Be Starting to Win Its Battle Against Smog

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Beijing may have turned a corner in its battle against the city’s notorious smog, according to Reuters calculations, and environmental consultants say the Chinese government deserves much of the credit for introducing tough anti-pollution measures.

The Chinese capital is set to record its biggest improvement in air quality in at least nine years, with a nearly 20 percent change for the better this year, based on average concentration levels of hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5.

The dramatic change, which has occurred across North China, is partly because of favorable weather conditions in the past three months but it also shows that the government’s strong-arm tactics have had an impact.

The Reuters’ estimates show that average levels of the pollutants in the capital have fallen by about 35 percent from 2012 numbers, with nearly half the improvement this year.

“The improvement in air quality is due both to long-term efforts by the government and short-term efforts this winter,” said Anders Hove, a Beijing-based energy consultant. “After 2013, the air in summers got much cleaner, but winter had not shown much improvement. This year is the first winter improvement we’ve seen during this war on pollution.”

Government officials this week signaled they were confident they were starting to get on top of the problem.

“The autumn and winter period is the most challenging part of the air pollution campaign. However, with the intensive efforts all departments have made, we believe the challenge is being successfully overcome,” Liu Youbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told reporters Thursday.

Still a long way to go

But environmental experts say that while they are optimistic, it may be too early to celebrate.

“The turning point is here but we cannot rule out the possibility we can turn back,” said Ranping Song, developing country climate action manager for the World Resources Institute. “We need to be cautious about challenges and not relax now that there have been improvements. There are lots of issues to be solved.”

And while China has scored an initial victory over smog, it still has to reverse public opinion outside China on its air quality.

New York-based travel guidebook publisher Fodor’s advised tourists in mid-November in its “No List” for 2018 to shun Beijing until the city’s anti-pollution campaign had reduced the “overwhelming smog.” Fodor’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Beijing there is certainly plenty of room for further progress as average air quality is still significantly worse than the World Health Organization’s recommendations.

And the region still sees bouts of heavy smog. On Friday afternoon, the U.S. embassy’s website said Beijing’s air was “very unhealthy” and the city issued a pollution alert Thursday.

Embassy monitoring

The Reuters calculations showing the improvement were based on average hourly readings of PM2.5 concentrations at the United States Embassy in Beijing from April 8, 2008 to Dec. 28, 2017.

The data was compiled from figures from the U.S. embassy’s air monitoring website, as well as data provided by AirVisual, a Beijing company that analyses air quality data.

The data from the embassy, though not fully verified or validated, is the only set available for PM2.5 levels in the capital over that time period. AirVisual provided the hour-by-hour air pollution data from the embassy for recent months.

PM2.5 levels are the most closely monitored because they account for the majority of air pollutants in China and can be harmful to the body when breathed.

Beijing’s air was actually worse in the first nine months of this year than in the same period last year, but PM2.5 concentrations from October to Dec. 28 this year were nearly 60 percent lower than last year, the Reuters figures show.

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Huang Wei said that less than half of the improvement is due to favorable weather — particularly stronger northerly winds and low humidity — with the government’s policies behind most of the change.

The Chinese government launched a winter smog “battleplan” in October for 28 northern cities that called for strict rules on emissions during the winter heating months when pollution typically worsens.

The authorities also sought to make sure that Beijing wasn’t too polluted during October’s Communist Party congress, which is only held once every five years, at which Xi Jinping consolidated his power as the nation’s leader. Some of the more-polluting businesses in and around the capital were told to shut down for a period before and during the gathering.

The plan for the winter months included switching millions of households and some industrial users to natural gas from coal for their heating and some other needs. There were also mandated cuts in steel production by up to 50 percent in some of the areas surrounding the city.

Contrast with India

Beijing’s improving air quality stands in stark contrast to India’s capital New Delhi, where pollution has steadily become worse over the past few years, and is now well above Beijing’s.

China’s improvement, and deterioration in some other countries, means China is now not among the 10 worst countries for pollution in the world anymore, according to at least one measure.

“At the national level, India tops the index rankings, followed by Bangladesh and Thailand,” said Richard Hewston, global head of environment and climate change at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which measures 198 countries for air quality.

Beijing’s clean-air campaign hasn’t been without its challenges.

The government this year botched the switch from coal to natural gas, leading to recent widespread shortages of gas, soaring liquefied natural gas prices, leaving some residents freezing in their homes and some factories shuttered.

There is also a wider economic cost. Growth in industrial output, especially in northern China, has slowed because of the pollution crackdown, economists say, and the prices of some key commodities, from LNG to copper, have risen.

Some of those who had been benefiting from the poor air quality by selling air filtration products have been taking a hit.

“Overall demand in China is down. … Some companies have 100 million yuan [$15.35 million] in unsold inventory this year as a result of the improved air quality,” said Liam Bates, CEO of Beijing-based Kaiterra, which makes air filters and air quality monitoring products.

“We haven’t seen huge impact because we’re expanding heavily overseas. While the air in China is getting better, the air in India is much, much worse and we just opened our India office,” he said.
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Brands Map ‘Invisible’ Shoemakers in South India

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

When the 55-year-old woman stood up to speak at a meeting of shoemakers in south India earlier this month, she was seeing her employers for the first time.

She told them about the decades she had spent hunched up in her home, repeatedly pulling a needle through tough leather as she sewed shoe uppers, the meager income she earned, her failing eyesight and the wounds on her hands.

For manufacturers and brands, her story was a revelation.

The meeting brought women workers, manufacturers, charities and brands face-to-face for the first time in a bid to map the role of homeworkers – an “invisible workforce” in a global supply chain making high-end shoes – and improve conditions.

“It was a historical meeting in that sense,” said Annie Delaney of the Australian RMIT School of Management, who has documented the condition of homeworkers and attended the meeting a fortnight ago in Vellore in Tamil Nadu.

“Homeworkers described their reality. It was a powerful experience for not just the women but also for the manufacturers and brands who were meeting them for the first time.”

There are hundreds of thousands of women from poor, marginalized families who work for cash — stitching, embroidering and weaving at home to put the finishing touches to products that are sold globally, campaigners said.

Most of them are not recognized as formal workers so have no access to social security or fair wages.

Vellore district in Tamil Nadu is the hub of a growing industry in India producing leather footwear for export. In 2016, India exported 236 million pairs of shoes — up from 206 million in 2015, according to the World Footwear Yearbook.

It also has one of the highest concentrations of homeworkers in India – largely women hand-stitching uppers of leather shoes.

Identifying homeworkers​

While factories in the area employ people at higher salaries to assemble the shoes, manufacturers find it cheaper to outsource the labor-intensive process of stitching uppers to women who work from home, using middlemen, campaigners said.

The meeting saw Britain-based Pentland Brands – the first company to map homeworkers in its supply chain – share their interventions with other participating brands including UK-based Clarks and the Switzerland-based AstorMueller Group, according to a stakeholder who attended the closed-door meeting.

None of the companies were immediately available to comment.

Pentland, with annual sales of USD $3 billion across 190 countries, owns sports, outdoor and fashion brands including Berghaus and Speedo, and holds a majority stake of JD Sports.

Since 2016, Pentland has worked with nonprofit groups Cividep in India and Homeworkers Worldwide to identify homeworkers making shoes for them and is at present mapping their pay and hours worked to ensure better wages.

No one from Pentland was immediately available to comment on the initiative, which according to their website aims to provide direct employment to homeworkers, better training and to work with suppliers for sustainable improvement of labor conditions.

Cheap labor

Campaigners say homeworkers are paid by the piece and the exact number of hours they work are not tracked.

The women are paid less than $0.14 per pair of shoes, which are sold in Britain for between $60 and $140, according to a 2016 report by Cividep India and British nongovernment organizations Homeworkers Worldwide and Labor Behind the Label.

The report highlighted how the industry relies on homeworkers who earn less than the minimum wage, lack legal rights, and suffer from chronic headaches and body pain.

“Homeworkers have been under the radar for a long time,” Delaney said. “A start was made in Vellore to collaborate and ensure they get their dues.”
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Trump Targets Amazon in Call for Postal Service to Hike Prices

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

President Donald Trump returned to a favorite target Friday, saying that the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon.com more money to ship the millions of packages it sends around the world each year.

 

 Amazon has been a consistent recipient of Trump’s ire. He has accused the company of failing to pay “internet taxes,” though it’s never been made clear by the White House what the president means by that.

 

In a tweet Friday, Trump said Amazon should be charged “MUCH MORE” by the post office because it’s “losing many billions of dollars a year” while it makes “Amazon richer.”

Amazon lives and dies by shipping, and increasing rates that it negotiated with the post office, as well as shippers like UPS and FedEx, could certainly do some damage.

 

In the seconds after the tweet, shares of Amazon, which had been trading higher before the opening bell, began to fade and went into negative territory. The stock remained down almost 1 percent in midday trading Friday.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The Post, as well as other major media, has been labeled as “fake news” by Trump after reporting unfavorable developments during his campaign and presidency.

 

He has labeled Bezos’ Post the, “AmazonWashingtonPost.”

The Seattle company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. A spokeswoman for the Postal Service said, “We’re looking into it.”

 

Between July and September, Amazon paid $5.4 billion in worldwide shipping costs, a 39 percent increase from the same period in the previous year. That amounts to nearly 11 percent of the $43.7 billion in total revenue it reported in that same period.

 

In 2014, Amazon reached a deal with the Postal Service to offer delivery on Sundays.

 

Trump has also attacked U.S. corporations not affiliated in any way with the news media.

 

Just over a year ago, he tweeted “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”

 

Shares of Boeing Co. gave up almost 1 percent when trading opened that day, but recovered.

 

Several days later, and again on Twitter, he said that Lockheed-Martin, which is building the F-35 fighter jet, was “out of control.”  Its shares tumbled more than 5 percent, but they too recovered.  

 

The Postal Service has lost money for 11 straight years, mostly because of pension and health care costs. While online shopping has led to growth in its package-delivery business, that hasn’t offset declines in first-class mail. Federal regulators moved recently to allow bigger jumps to stamp prices beyond the rate of inflation, which could eventually increase shipping rates for all companies.

 

Amazon has taken some steps toward becoming more self-reliant in shipping. Earlier this year it announced that it would build a worldwide air cargo hub in Kentucky, about 13 miles southwest of Cincinnati.

 

Shares of Amazon.com Inc. slipped less than 1 percent Friday morning to $1,178.69. The Seattle company’s stock is up more than 57 percent this year and surpassed $1,000 each for the first time in April.
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New Robot Teaches Autistic Adults to Navigate Office Politics

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Autism is on the rise in many developed countries, and the reasons why are still unclear. But more autistic children mean that, one day, more autistic adults will be entering the workforce. A new robot is trying to help these workers navigate the emotional elements on the job. VOA’s Bronwyn Benito narrates this report by Kevin Enochs.
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Teen from Ghana Becomes First Black Woman on US Olympic Speedskating Team

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Maame Biney, a 17-year-old from Ghana, will be the first African-American woman to represent the U.S. on the speedskating short track team at the 2018 Winter Olympics Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. VOA’s Salem Solomon visited her where she first started skating in a local ice rink in Reston, Virginia, and has this story.
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Photography Project Helps Fight Stereotypes of Africa

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

A new book just hit the bookstores in Europe and the U.S. that tries to show life in Africa beyond the stereotypes and misconceptions infused in Western media. Africa 54’s Zoe Leoudaki has the details
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Floral Art Welcomes Visitors to the Met Museum

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

The drawings and paintings on the walls and sculptures on display are not the only art to see at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Floral arrangements are designed to complement the exhibits and time of season. VOA Russian Service reporter Elena Wolf takes us behind the scenes at the Met to meet a third generation florist whose creates masterpieces every week. VOA’s Bob Leverone narrates the report.
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Philippines Preps Economy for Bumper Year in 2018 

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Officials in the Philippines, one of Asia’s fastest growing economies, are planning a series of economic stimulus measures in 2018 to ease poverty and compensate for a lag in foreign investment.

Manila is building $169 billion in infrastructure, such as railways and an airport terminal, while toying with legal changes that would let foreigners own larger shares of localized businesses.

​Tax reform

In another major step, President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law this month the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion act. Tax revenue would pay for infrastructure and social services.

The idea is to create jobs and bring in foreign investment. Those outcomes would help sustain economic growth while giving the government funds to ease poverty that afflicts about a quarter of the population of 102 million.

“As the country builds for the future, there is the developing (of) social capital,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila.

“Developing social capital eventually means these are your health, technical skills and education that are needed by individuals,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of the package.”

​Infrastructure and taxes

The World Bank forecasts 6.7 percent growth in the Philippine economy this year followed by 6.8 percent in 2018 and 2019. Much of the growth comes from overseas remittances, a boom in call-center jobs and consumption.

A cornerstone of Duterte’s economic policies is the “Build, Build, Build” program to replace decayed infrastructure through 2022 by adding the likes of railways and expressways.

By 2019, a small airport three hours north of Manila will open a new terminal to ease congestion in the capital, for example.

Officials hope new infrastructure will entice foreign factory investment that’s now deterred in part by transportation delays. Foreign investment makes up less than 3 percent of the economy now, lagging Asian peers such as South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The tax law signed by Duterte on December 19 is expected to generate $1.8 billion in revenues in its first year. It exempts tax payments for people earning less than the equivalent of $5,005 per year while shifting payment burdens to wealthier people and vehicle owners.

Congress received a bill in 2016 that would lower corporate taxes by 2 percentage points per year until they drop from today’s 30 percent, among Southeast Asia’s highest, to 20 percent.

“I think the way they are going about overhauling the tax code is clearly something that is somewhat path-breaking,” said Rahul Bajoria, a regional economist with Barclays in Singapore.

“They’re looking to tax the right set of individuals,” he said. “It kind of makes sense, and if they’re able to do the same with the corporate tax code, that would be a pretty significant achievement because the tax base itself is quite small.”

The government is also eyeing monetary policy changes to keep inflation in check, economists believe.

And in November Duterte told the National Economic and Development Authority Board to work on easing restrictions on foreign participation in certain industries where ownership is restricted.

Foreign companies, a potential provider of factory jobs for Filipinos, have held back investments because of those restrictions.

​Roadblocks

The government aims to cut poverty from 26 percent to 17 percent by 2020, according to the Ministry of Finance. But snags in the proposed economic measures could limit the jobs or funding needed to reach that goal, some fear.

Timelines for new infrastructure, which is paid in part by foreign aid, is catching attention now given the country’s budget deficit, Ravelas said. 

“What people are looking at now is how fast they are going to push the spending,” he said.

Infrastructure spending has grown from 5 percent of GDP in 2016 to about 7.45 percent now because of the surge in infrastructure construction.

But that program contributed to a 234.9 billion peso ($4.7 billion) budget deficit in the first 10 months of this year, 9 percent more than in the same period of 2016.

Economists still say Duterte is doing more than previous presidents to overhaul the economy and reduce poverty.

But past Philippine presidents have tried the same, particularly with infrastructure spending and tax reform, with little to show, said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the Bagong Alyansang Makabaya alliance of left-wing Philippine organizations.

His alliance advocates land reform instead of the government’s “neoliberal” policies.

“Previous presidents have had their own versions of the same economic stimulus programs, which did not really raise the livelihood of the ordinary folks, but it did contribute to making economic statistics look a little better,” Reyes said.
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Trump Administration Rescinds Rules for Drilling on Public Land

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands, government officials announced Thursday.

The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied mainly in the West, where most federal lands are located. Companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, which pumps pressurized water underground to break open hydrocarbon deposits.

The rules to be rescinded Friday were supposed to take effect in 2015, but a federal judge in Wyoming blocked them at the last minute. In September, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver declined to rule in that case because the Trump administration intended to rescind the rules.

Industry praise

The long-awaited change drew praise from industry groups including the Washington, D.C.-based Independent Petroleum Association of America and Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, which sued to block the rules.

They claimed the federal rules would have duplicated state rules, putting unnecessary and expensive burdens on petroleum developers.

“States have an exemplary safety record regulating fracking, and that environmental protection will continue as before,” Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said in a release.

Fracking and water

Fracking has been so successful in boosting production over the past decade it has become almost synonymous with oil and gas drilling. In many areas, it would be rare nowadays for a gas or oil well to not be fracked.

The process requires several million gallons of water each time. Environmentalists say the potential risks to groundwater require regulation.

“Fracking is a toxic business, and that’s why states and countries have banned it. Trump’s reckless decision to repeal these common-sense protections will have serious consequences,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an email.
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Actress Rose Marie of ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ Fame Dies at 94

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Actress and comedienne Rose Marie, who grew up from a child superstar to become a television comedy legend, died Thursday in Hollywood at 94.

She spent her entire life as a star, and was one of the last surviving entertainers whose career spanned all media — vaudeville, records, movies, Broadway, radio and television.

Born Rose Marie Mazetta in New York, she began singing on the vaudeville stage when she was 3 years old, billed as Baby Rose Marie.

With her naturally husky voice, many in the audience insisted she was not a child but a small adult dressed up in children’s clothes.

She soon became one of the country’s best-known child entertainers with her own radio show, touring in vaudeville, and singing in early sound films.

She dropped the “Baby” from her billing as she grew into a teenager, and continued to perform in nightclubs and make records.

Rose Marie became a household name again in 1961 when she began playing comedy writer Sally Rogers on television’s Dick Van Dyke Show — a hugely popular situation comedy that ran five years.

Her character was a wise-cracking single woman constantly on the lookout for a husband, using jokes to hide her loneliness.

She kept her persona of a man-hungry single woman as a panelist on game shows, including her long run as a regular on Hollywood Squares.

Rose Marie never retired. In the months before she died, she appeared in person during the screening of her autobiographical documentary film Wait for Your Laugh.

Throughout her career, Rose Marie was nominated for three Emmys and received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2001.
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WHO to Recognize Gaming Disorder as Health Issue

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The World Health Organization is set to recognize gaming disorder as a serious mental health issue.

In its 11th International Classification of Disease, a diagnostic manual to be published next year, the U.N. health agency defines gaming disorder as a “persistent or recurrent” disorder that can cause “significant impairment” to the gamer’s life, including to family, education, work and friends.

The agency says the disorder is characterized by giving increasing priority to gaming, on and offline, over other aspects of everyday life.

Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, told CNN that the entry on the disorder “includes only a clinical description and not prevention and treatment options.”

According to a report released in 2016 by the gaming industry, 63 percent of U.S. households include a gamer who, on average, has been playing video games for 13 years.

The increasing popularity of video gaming became evident in the past three years when 50 U.S. colleges established varsity gaming teams, with scholarships, coaches and game analysts.

However, some countries, such as China and South Korea already consider the internet and gaming to be addictions and have created boot-camplike treatment facilities.
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Apple Apologizes After Outcry Over Slowed iPhones

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Facing lawsuits and consumer outrage  after it said it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries, Apple Inc is slashing prices for battery replacements and will change its software to show users whether their phone battery is good.

In a posting on its website Thursday, Apple apologized over its handling of the battery issue and said it would make a number of changes for customers “to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions.”

Apple made the move to address concerns about the quality and durability of its products at a time when it is charging $999 for its newest flagship model, the iPhone X.

Battery prices lowered

The company said it would cut the price of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29 for an iPhone 6 or later, starting next month.

The company also will update its iOS operating system to let users see whether their battery is in poor health and is affecting the phone’s performance.

“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” Apple said in its posting. “We apologize.”

On Dec. 20, Apple acknowledged that iPhone software has the effect of slowing down some phones with battery problems. Apple said the problem was that aging lithium batteries delivered power unevenly, which could cause iPhones to shutdown unexpectedly to protect the delicate circuits inside.

Lawsuits filed

That disclosure played on a common belief among consumers that Apple purposely slows down older phones to encourage customers to buy newer iPhone models.

While no credible evidence has ever emerged that Apple engaged in such conduct, the battery disclosure struck a nerve on social media and elsewhere. Apple on Thursday denied that it has ever done anything to intentionally shorten the life of a product.

At least eight lawsuits have been filed in California, New York and Illinois alleging that the company defrauded users by slowing devices down without warning them. The company also faces a legal complaint in France, where so called “planned obsolesce” is against the law.
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