Month: March 2018
Tommy Mcilhon is a college student and enjoys attending large music festivals around the United States. The latest event he has attended is the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Texas. Besides thinking about music, he thinks about the mass shootings in crowds over the last few years.
“It does cross my mind every time I go to a show or large size or anything like that, that something like that could happen because it is a concern that is possible.” Mcilhon added, “It makes me more aware of what’s going on around me. I pay more attention to the people around me.”
Being more alert does not mean being more afraid, many SXSW attendees said.
“If I look around, are there cops around? Are there guardrails up? Do they have exit signs that are clearly posted? But does it ever deter me from going somewhere? No,” said Marilyn Sitorus, festival attendee from New York.
WATCH: First Responders Learn Lessons from Mass Shootings, Acts of Terror
Season for festivals
SXSW is one of many large festivals, fairs and outdoor concerts that will be taking place in the U.S. as the weather warms.
First responders, such as police and paramedics, are preparing to make such events more secure. The mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas last year and the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando are not the only events on the minds of Austin police officers.
“There have been some incidents around the globe and around the country where vehicles have been used as weapons in crowds, so we do have a lot of intersections that we’re using vehicles to block, and we also use dump trucks to block some of these intersections,” said Ely Reyes, assistant chief of police of the Austin Police Department.
In addition to police officers in uniform at the festival, there are also undercover officers that keep watch over the event. Festival attendees have special badges that are scanned before they can enter a venue.
Prepared for the unexpected
If something catastrophic were to happen, paramedics are also prepared with portable mini hospitals on wheels.
“So we deploy medics on Polaris Rangers and motorcycles because they’re able to access the patient” and then move them to a waiting ambulance, said Wesley Hopkins, division chief for Austin Travis County EMS.
The Polaris Rangers are vehicles that look like miniature two-seat Jeeps with a cargo bed in the back for first aid supplies and a stretcher. They can get patients from inside a crowded environment to an ambulance nearby quickly.
“In context of mass shootings, whether it be the Las Vegas incident or the Pulse night club shooting, we know that having medics at a forward position so that they’re able to treat patients immediately so that we can be proactive as opposed to reactive and access those patients very quickly,” Hopkins said.
Tools onsite also help reduce the number of people who need to go to a hospital.
“So we set up basically a mini emergency room. It’s complete with shelter, water, power, we do a Wi-Fi network that’s kind of a higher band so that we’re able to monitor patients with an EKG or cardiac monitor.” Hopkins added, “The patient collection point allows us to treat patients on site. A lot of those patients will never see the emergency room.”
First responders say after every mass shooter event or act of terrorism, they learn from it and try to improve on security. Attendees are also becoming more security smart.
“Now it’s raising a lot more awareness that people are taking (paying) attention to it which is very important, and I can only see things getting better from here,” Mcilhon said.
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Spring has arrived in the United States, and that means the start of the busy festival season. Large crowds are expected to gather at fairs, festivals and outdoor concerts around the country. Given the recent spate of mass shootings and acts of terror in crowded areas, first responders say they are busy preparing to make sure they are ready for almost any eventuality. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Austin, Texas, to look at how first responders there handle security.
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Facebook is coming under intense criticism following reports that information from 50 million users was gathered by a voter data firm. Lawmakers are demanding answers, and Facebook stock has lost about $35 billion in its value. Michelle Quinn reports on the threats the company faces.
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U.S. Federal Reserve officials voted to raise the central bank’s benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percent this week, signaling perhaps three or more rate hikes this year as economic conditions improve. But as Mil Arcega reports, rising rates mean higher borrowing costs for consumers, many who have yet to see a significant increase in wages.
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Several pieces of the ancient Dead Sea scrolls are on public display for the first time. Two of them are at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as part of an exhibit on life in biblical times. Another small fragment is being highlighted at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block.
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A British tech company is using donated human heart tissue to replicate the “beating” action of heart muscle to aid preclinical testing of new drugs. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Silicon Valley is less than 3% black, with an even smaller numbers of Africans. The race gap is actually much larger than the gender gap, and it’s growing. Join us for a live screening of “Beyond the Unicorn,” a VOA documentary about the issue, followed by a Q&A session from Silicon Valley, the capitol of the U.S. technology sector.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is expected at any time to fire a salvo directly at China in what could escalate into a full-scale trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Trade actions against China, partly in response to the theft and improper transfer of American technology to Chinese companies, are expected to be announced by Trump as soon as Thursday. His schedule includes a midday signing of a memorandum “targeting China’s economic aggression.”
On the anticipated eve of the measures, U.S. officials spoke to reporters about their monthslong investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 of Beijing’s trade practices.
China has long been considered by many in the international community to have contravened fundamental principles of global trade, despite joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.
There have been a “number of specific failings by China to live up to its WTO obligations,” said an official of the U.S. Trade Representative in a Wednesday background briefing for reporters.
The briefing and other comments not for attribution by officials are seen as clear signals the administration, in response to an Aug. 14 memo by Trump, intends to use the Section 301 trade tool.
The last time it was wielded was by the Clinton administration against Japan to pry open that country’s automotive sector.
‘Ripping off’
China has been “ripping off” the United States, Trump has emphasized numerous times in public remarks during which he has harshly criticized his predecessors for not doing anything about it.
According to published reports, Trump is expected to impose tariffs, valued at tens of billions of dollars, on a number of Chinese products. Sources say that in addition to tariffs, restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States are likely as a response to Beijing using state funds and enterprises under the government’s control to purchase intellectual property here.
Trump in January hit the Chinese-dominated solar panel and cell industry with tariffs. Earlier this month, he launched global tariffs on steel and aluminum (from which Canada and Mexico were quickly given indefinite exemptions), a move China’s commerce ministry said it “strongly opposed.”
U.S. Trade Representative officials on Wednesday declined to specify what new actions will be taken, but they did not disagree that an announcement is expected as soon as Thursday.
“We’re getting very close,” said a USTR official speaking to reporters on condition of not being named. “The president will have the final say.”
Bracing for an anticipated harsh reaction from China, the official noted, “We recognize the potential gravity of the situation here.”
Depending on the severity of the measures taken by Trump, stock markets in Asia and elsewhere could be roiled, according to market analysts.
Trade groups representing American retail giants, such as Walmart, and tech companies, including Apple, warn that sweeping tariffs would raise prices for consumers in the United States and might not do much to reduce the trade deficit.
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U.S. congressional leaders have reached a deal on a $1.3 trillion spending bill as a budget deadline looms.
Lawmakers now have until midnight Friday to approve it and prevent the year’s third government shutdown. Passage of the massive bipartisan effort seems certain.
The bill, which will keep the government funded until the end of September, has President Donald Trump’s support, the White House said in a statement released Wednesday.
“The president had a discussion with (House) Speaker (Paul) Ryan and (Senate) Leader (Mitch) McConnell, where they talked about their shared priorities secured in the omnibus spending bill,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Deadline late Friday
The bill will give Trump a huge budget increase for the military, including a 2.4 percent pay raise for military personnel.
It also will include a measure strengthening the federal background check system for gun purchases.
WATCH: Federal Budget Explainer
The “Fix NICS” measure would provide funding for states to comply with the existing National Instant Criminal Background Check system and penalize federal agencies that don’t comply.
It also will include money to improve school safety, including money for training school officials and law enforcement officers on how to identify signs of potential violence and intervene early, installing metal detectors and other steps to “harden” schools to prevent violence.
GOP aides said that Trump will win $1.6 billion for a wall and physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Trump would be denied a far larger $25 billion request for multiyear funding for the project.
To the Democrats’ disappointment, the bill makes no mention of protections for so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
No insurer subsidies
It also won’t provide subsidies to health care insurers who cut costs for low-earning customers. And it won’t have federal payments for carriers to help them afford to cover their costliest clients.
Both parties touted the $4.6 billion in total funding to fight the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic and a record $3 billion increase for medical research at the National Institutes of Health.
The House is expected to vote on the bill by Thursday, followed quickly by the Senate, to meet Friday’s midnight deadline.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a rare television interview Wednesday that Facebook clearly made a mistake in its part in an illegal data collection scandal.
“This was a major breach of trust. I am really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data,” he told CNN.
Zuckerberg did not elaborate on what mistake Facebook made, but he promised to check all apps and do a full forensic audit.
He also told CNN he is sure someone is trying to meddle in the upcoming November midterm U.S. congressional elections. He said Facebook is “really committed” to stop anyone from interfering in the elections through Facebook, including upcoming votes in Brazil and India.
WATCH: Facebook Under Fire for Data Misuse
Since 2015
Facebook disclosed on Friday that it has known since 2015 that British researcher Aleksandr Kogan illegally shared users’ information with a research firm, after collecting that data legally through an application for a personality quiz. The research firm is alleged to have illegally used the data of an estimated 50 million Facebook users to build profiles for U.S. political campaigns, including the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Facebook has been criticized for failing to alert its users to the incident in 2015. Wednesday was the first time Zuckerberg publicly addressed the issue.
Included in his statement was a timeline of events that said Facebook demanded in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica delete all improperly acquired data. He said last week he learned from news outlets that the company may not have deleted the data, despite providing certification of having done so.
Cambridge Analytica has denied that it kept the data. One Facebook executive in charge of security is reportedly leaving the firm as a result the matter.
Zuckerberg said the incident amounted not only to a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook but also “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.”
New safeguards
The Facebook founder outlined new precautions his social media platform will take to protect user data in future: identifying any other application developers found to have misused personal data, restricting the types of data available to developers, and ending their access to a user’s data if the user has not used the app in the past three months. He also said Facebook will make it easier for users to revoke apps’ permission to use their data, by putting the tool at the top of a user’s news feed.
Within an hour of its posting, Zuckerberg’s message had garnered more than 32,000 “likes” or other reactions and had been shared more than 10,000 times. User comments varied from fan club-style expressions of support to bitter complaints about Zuckerberg’s failure to speak sooner.
While controversy has swirled, Facebook’s stock value has taken a significant hit. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days.
Questions about regulation
The probe over Cambridge Analytica is just the latest flashpoint around Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and comes as the company faces questions about how it should be regulated and monitored going forward.
With its more than 2 billion monthly users and billions of dollars in profit, Facebook has become a powerful conduit of news, opinion and propaganda, much of it targeted at individuals based on their own data. The social media site and investigators have found that Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook to spread disinformation and propaganda.
In recent months, the company, along with YouTube and Twitter, has changed some of its practices to reduce the power of automated accounts and propaganda. Facebook has said it would hire 10,000 security employees.
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The U.S. and the European Union are set to engage in a new round of talks to resolve trade disputes, including those over U.S.-proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
“We have agreed to launch immediately a process of discussion with President Trump and the Trump administration on trade issues of common concern, including steel and aluminum, with a view to identifying mutually acceptable outcomes as rapidly as possible,” a joint U.S.-E.U. statement said Wednesday.
The announcement was made after talks in Washington between Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and E.U. Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s announced tariffs on aluminum and steel imports are scheduled to take affect later this week.
Washington already temporarily exempted Canada and Mexico from the tariffs during talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in congressional testimony Wednesday the administration is currently discussing tariff exemptions with Argentina, Australia and Brazil.
Lighthizer also told lawmakers he expected a decision soon from Trump on tariffs on imports from China, which Washington accuses of stealing U.S. intellectual property.
The Trump administration’s aggressive actions on trade issues have triggered alarm among legislators in the president’s own Republican Party and among industry groups who say the tariffs exposes the U.S. to higher prices and potential trade wars.
Top officials of the U.S. central bank raised the key interest rate slightly Wednesday, amid strong job gains and moderate economic growth.
The rate is one-quarter of a percentage point higher, putting it in a range between 1.5 and 1.75 percent.
WATCH: Fed Signals at Least Three More Rate Hikes in 2018
Federal Reserve officials said that is still “accommodative,” meaning it is still fairly low, compared to the average rate during the past few decades. Fed officials said they will probably raise interest rates a few more times this year if the economy continues along its current path.
The Federal Reserve tries to manage the economy to maximize employment and keep prices stable.
The bank slashed interest rates nearly to zero during the financial crisis in 2008 to stimulate economic growth. However, economists say keeping rates too low for too long could push inflation up fast enough to damage the economy.
While inflation is below the 2 percent rate the Fed thinks is best for the economy, the bank said inflation seems likely to rise a bit.
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Maryam Durrani is a typical American teenager with a wild imagination and a knack for telling stories about dungeons, dragons, kingdoms and young girls.
She wrote her first book in longhand at the age of 13. Later, after learning about a website called wattpad, an online community where readers and writers can discover new user-generated content, Durrani uploaded her stories to get feedback from readers.
“On one of my works, I received over a half a million reads. People are still reading it. I can see their votes and reads and comments on my work,” Durrani said.
To date, Durrani’s unpublished novel “Doubled Elements” has received more than 700,000 views on wattpad. Positive reader feedback prompted the young author to self-publish and sell her books.
Now 18, Durrani credits much of her writing success to her parents. Her father, Irfan Durrani, helped get her books published while her mother fostered her passion for literature.
“When she was in kindergarten, I gave her a journal with a pen and asked her to write in it to express her feelings and I think her writing journey began from there,” said Zainab Durrani, Maryam’s mother.
But the teenager soon tired of reading books with traditional storylines, which often revolve around a male hero who saves the day. So she decided to change things a bit, creating characters that would appeal to young girls.
“I wanted to write about someone that I could look up to,” Durrani said. “And that is where I came up with the idea for the main character. She is a warrior, a general…she can do anything she wants. And she is powerful. I wanted to write about a role model for me and other girls.”
Her parents are proud of Durrani’s accomplishments as a writer, but they are especially proud that their daughter, who wears a Muslim headscarf, has become a role model for young girls, including those like her who wear the hijab.
Durrani says she didn’t realize she was viewed as a role model until she visited her sister’s private Muslim school.
“I had so many fans there,” she said. “Apart from my online readers, I could see my fans in real life there. So, I kind of felt like I was writing for them now. I was giving them a character or a person to look up to. A strong female role model for them.”
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Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland to address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on customers, according to internal documents seen by Reuters.
Kaspersky is setting up the center in response to actions in the United States, Britain and Lithuania last year to stop using the company’s products, according to the documents, which were confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The action is the latest effort by Kaspersky, a global leader in anti-virus software, to parry accusations by the U.S. government and others that the company spies on customers at the behest of Russian intelligence. The U.S. last year ordered civilian government agencies to remove the Kaspersky software from their networks.
Kaspersky has strongly rejected the accusations and filed a lawsuit against the U.S. ban.
The U.S. allegations were the “trigger” for setting up the Swiss data center, said the person familiar with Kapersky’s Switzerland plans, but not the only factor.
“The world is changing,” they said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal company business. “There is more balkanisation and protectionism.”
The person declined to provide further details on the new project, but added: “This is not just a PR stunt. We are really changing our R&D infrastructure.”
A Kaspersky spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents reviewed by Reuters.
In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said: “To further deliver on the promises of our Global Transparency Initiative, we are finalizing plans for the opening of the company’s first transparency center this year, which will be located in Europe.”
“We understand that during a time of geopolitical tension, mirrored by an increasingly complex cyber-threat landscape, people may have questions and we want to address them.”
Kaspersky Lab launched a campaign in October to dispel concerns about possible collusion with the Russian government by promising to let independent experts scrutinize its software for security vulnerabilities and “back doors” that governments could exploit to spy on its customers.
The company also said at the time that it would open “transparency centers” in Asia, Europe and the United States but did not provide details. The new Swiss facility is dubbed the Swiss Transparency Centre, according to the documents.
Data review
Work in Switzerland is due to begin “within weeks” and be completed by early 2020, said the person with knowledge of the matter.
The plans have been approved by Kaspersky Lab CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky, who owns a majority of the privately held company, and will be announced publicly in the coming months, according to the source.
“Eugene is upset. He would rather spend the money elsewhere. But he knows this is necessary,” the person said.
It is possible the move could be derailed by the Russian security services, who might resist moving the data center outside of their jurisdiction, people familiar with Kaspersky and its relations with the government said.
Western security officials said Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, exerts influence over Kaspersky management decisions, though the company has repeatedly denied those allegations.
The Swiss center will collect and analyze files identified as suspicious on the computers of tens of millions of Kaspersky customers in the United States and European Union, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters. Data from other customers will continue to be sent to a Moscow data center for review and analysis.
Files would only be transmitted from Switzerland to Moscow in cases when anomalies are detected that require manual review, the person said, adding that about 99.6 percent of such samples do not currently undergo this process.
A third party will review the center’s operations to make sure that all requests for such files are properly signed, stored and available for review by outsiders including foreign governments, the person said.
Moving operations to Switzerland will address concerns about laws that enable Russian security services to monitor data transmissions inside Russia and force companies to assist law enforcement agencies, according to the documents describing the plan.
The company will also move the department which builds its anti-virus software using code written in Moscow to Switzerland, the documents showed.
Kaspersky has received “solid support” from the Swiss government, said the source, who did not identify specific officials who have endorsed the plan.
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When Nestle executive Stephan Canz attended the German school in Nairobi in the early 1980s, it was surrounded by lush coffee farms.
Today, the trees have long since been uprooted and replaced by a shopping mall and upmarket homes, driving a sharp drop in
production of Kenya’s premium beans.
“The coffee has disappeared,” said Canz, who co-manages Swiss-based Nestle’s partnerships with coffee farmers globally. “You have to go almost to the slopes of Mount Kenya to find coffee.”
Kenya accounts for just 1 percent of the global crop, but its high-quality arabica beans are sought-after for blending with other varieties.
Alarmed by a steep drop in the country’s production, Nestle, which buys 10 percent of the world’s coffee and has the leading packaged coffee business, is working with farmers to guarantee its supplies.
In a $1 million project, begun in 2010, it says it is boosting bean production and quality.
Mary Wanja, with 350 coffee trees on her plot in rural Kirinyaga at the foot of Mount Kenya, is one of more than 40,000 of Kenya’s 600,000 coffee farmers participating in the project.
She harvested 1,200 kg of coffee last year, double the previous year, and saw her annual earnings rise to 100 shillings ($0.99) per kg, from 70 shillings.
“We are planting more trees so we can harvest more,” she said, standing amid newly planted seedlings provided by the Nestle project, which she joined three years ago.
Multiplier effect
Since Kenya’s production peaked at 129,000 tonnes in 1988/89 it has dropped steadily due to poor management and global price swings. Farmers have switched crops or sold their land.
Nestle, which is counting on growth in its coffee business as it overhauls its business to improve performance, works with a local milling and marketing company, Coffee Management Services (CMS), to train farmers regularly on fertilizer application, pest and disease control. It provides seedlings for farmers wishing to plant more.
“People didn’t know how and when to apply fertilizer properly. Nestle has taught us a lot,” said William Njeru, a farmer who harvested 7,600 kg last year, up from around 1,200 kg a year before he joined the project five years ago.
“If we can have other partners who are doing what Nestle is doing, the multiplier effect on productivity in Kenya can be very high,” said Peter Kimata, deputy head of Nestle’s partner CMS.
A half hour drive up the road from his office sits an abandoned coffee factory with rusting machinery.
Farmer Moses Wachira says it was closed in 2013 after its management embezzled farmers’ money. That forced 500 farmers to start selling their coffee to brokers who offer lower prices.
“These problems are causing production to fall because nobody watches to ensure managers do not misappropriate farmers’ money,” said the white-bearded farmer.
Kenya’s harvest fell 12 percent in the 2016/17 season to 40,700 metric tonnes, according to government data.
Government efforts to revive the sector have faltered. Last year, a judge stopped the government from acting on the recommendations of an official report on ways to boost coffee production after farmers claimed they were not consulted.
Some Kenyan farmers will miss out on expanding the crop to meet 2-3 percent annual growth in global demand for coffee, according to Nestle, as consumers discover new ways of consuming coffee, including capsules and cold brews.
Demand for coffee is also growing locally.
In Kenya, cafe chain Java, owned by Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj, opened its first shop in 1999 and has grown to 68 retail outlets, as an emerging middle class and young professionals develop a taste for lattes and mocha.
“The coffee has to come from somewhere,” said Canz.
French commuters face major train service disruptions on Thursday due to an unexpectedly large walkout by railway workers angry at the government’s plans to shake up the state-owned and highly indebted SNCF rail company.
Labor unions said last week they would launch rolling strikes in early April, but France’s transport minister said many were planning to join a wider day of public service protests on Thursday, reducing rail services by 50 percent.
“There will ultimately be serious disruption tomorrow,” Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne said.
Unions are on a collision course with the government over its plans for the biggest shake-up of SNCF (Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer) since the nationalization of the railways in the 1930s. Among the government’s plans are the trimming of benefits received by SNCF’s 260,000 employees and a cut in its 45 billion euro ($56 billion) debt.
The showdown was due to start with strikes two days a week over three months from April 3. It is shaping up as the biggest test of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency since the 40-year-old came to power last May on a promise of sweeping economic reforms.
Thursday’s stoppages are not part of the programmed rolling strikes. They are being organized to dovetail with a day of demonstrations by civil servants and public service employees opposed to plans to change the retirement system.
Minister Borne said the stoppages would halve regional rail services nationally and that high-speed TGV connections between major cities would be cut to 40 percent of normal levels.
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When you are watching a television show and see someone get their heart shocked back into a rhythm, you will see their entire body rise up in the air. That’s what happens when a defibrillator is used, because the shock is that powerful. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists are now working on better, more effective, and less-shocking ways to get a heart to start beating once again.
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