Day: April 24, 2018

James Comey’s Tell-all Book Sells 600,000 Copies in First Week

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Fired FBI director James Comey’s memoir that details his private meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump sold some 600,000 copies in all formats in its first week, its publisher said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of best-selling political books.

Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” has so far outpaced Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir “What Happened” and journalist Michael Wolff’s behind-the-scenes White House expose “Fire and Fury” in opening week sales, according to industry figures.

Publisher Flatiron Books, a division of privately-owned Macmillan, said it has printed more than 1 million copies of Comey’s book, which has made national headlines.

Flatiron did not say whether the first week sales were global or limited to the United States.

Comey has been on a media blitz, sitting for numerous television and radio interviews, while also on a book tour that has seen him appear before sold-out audiences of more than a thousand.

The book has drawn Trump’s ire as Comey compared the president to a mob boss who stresses personal loyalty over the law and has little regard for morality or truth.

Trump dismissed Comey in May last year while the FBI was investigating allegations Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and Trump’s campaign.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion.

“A Higher Loyalty,” which is billed as Comey’s thoughts on leadership, was atop Amazon.com’s bestseller list for several weeks before its release.

Clinton’s “What Happened” sold more than 300,000 copies, including hardcover, e-book, CD and digital audio, in its first week after publication in September 2017, according to CBS Corp-owned publisher Simon & Schuster.

Wolff’s portrayal of a disorganized West Wing filled with strife and aides questioning the president’s fitness to lead debuted in January with some 28,000 in sales.

Higher-than-expected demand led Macmillan imprint Henry Holt & Co to order up 2.1 million copies in its first week.

Wolff’s book has sold nearly 975,000 print copies, and Clinton’s memoir has sold some 511,000 total print copies, according to NPD BookScan.
…

more

Foy: ‘Crown’ Pay Gap Issue ‘Definitely Opened My Eyes’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Claire Foy says the controversy over her pay for the Netflix series The Crown has changed her approach to Hollywood.

“It definitely opened my eyes to a lot. And I certainly won’t be naïve about those things,” Foy said in an interview Monday in Las Vegas. “It’s really opened my eyes about what I am allowed to have an opinion about, and what I’m allowed to stand up for myself about. And I think that’s really changed my approach to myself and other women in this industry. It’s been only a positive thing — even though, embarrassing.”

A producer disclosed last month that Foy, who starred as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, was paid less than Matt Smith, who played Prince Philip, because Smith was better known.

The gender pay gap has become a big issue in Hollywood after revelations that many female stars have been paid less than their male counterparts. Foy and Smith are being replaced by older performers in the next season of the show.

Foy was in Las Vegas promoting The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which completed filming this month. It’s based on the fourth book in Stieg Larsson’s popular Millennium series revolving around hacker Lisbeth Salander, previously been played in movies by Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara.

Foy said she hadn’t sought their blessing before beginning her work.

“I mean, we are all actresses. We all know the game. I don’t doubt for a second that those two incredible actresses don’t both hate me and also … ”

Director Fede Alvarez interjects that he did, indeed, get Rapace’s blessing.

“I met her at the premiere of her last movie and we got introduced and I told her what I was doing and she really wished us good luck and she knew you were doing it,” he said.

“You got her blessing? Did you? He never told me this,” Foy said, laughing. “Oh, well there you go. One down! One to go.”

The 34-year-old actress says she exercised intensively to play the character — and got a new hair style.

“I got an undercut, which is something that I never thought I would have in my life. Which is great! Then all her tattoos and just how she moves and the clothes that she wears. I loved being her every day, actually. It was very liberating thing,” Foy said. “Because I didn’t have to worry about being attractive or being liked or any of that nonsense that women quite often have to wake up every day thinking how does the world see me? And it was really nice to wake up and just be like, like this. What you see is what you get. I quite enjoyed that.”

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is set for release in November.
…

more

EPA Proposes to Bar Use of Confidential Data in Rulemaking

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule Tuesday that would stop it from relying on scientific research underpinned by confidential data in its making of regulations.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt billed the measure as a way to boost transparency for the benefit of the industries his agency regulates. But scientists and former EPA officials worry it will hamstring the agency’s ability to protect public health by putting key medical and industry data off limits.

“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Pruitt told a gathering at the EPA.

“It’s going to be able to be analyzed by those in the marketplace, and those that watch what we do can make informed decisions about whether we’ve drawn the proper conclusions or not,” said Pruitt, who has been pursuing President Donald Trump’s mission to ease the regulatory burden on business.

The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back.

Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA’s often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted.

But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.

“Other government agencies also use studies like these to develop policy and regulations, and to buttress and defend rules against legal challenges. They are, in fact, essential to making sound public policy,” former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Janet McCabe, former assistant administrator for air and water, wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times last month.

The new policy would be based on proposed legislation spearheaded by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who denies mainstream climate change science.

Emails obtained through a public records request last week showed that Smith or his staff met with Pruitt’s staff in recent months to craft the policy. Those emails also showed that Pruitt’s staff grappled with the possibility the policy would complicate things for the chemicals industry, which submits reams of confidential data to EPA regulatory programs.
…

more

‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Returns to Television, Darker and More Chilling

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

“The Handmaid’s Tale” returns to television this week with its chilling portrait of a near future where women are turned into second-class citizens seeming even darker and more prescient than ever.

That’s not by chance. As the Emmy-winning series moves away from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel, it delves further into how the United States moved from democracy into a fictional totalitarian state called Gilead.

Here, pollution has caused widespread infertility, women are forbidden to read, cannot control money, and people spy on each other.

“We began Season 1 feeling we cannot let Margaret Atwood down,” said Warren Littlefield, one of the show’s executive producers. “Then right after the [2016 presidential] election, as this pre-Gilead Trump administration unfolded, we felt the responsibility that we can’t let down America.

“We are storytellers, but our world that we depict is relevant and the themes are more relevant than ever before,” Littlefield added.

Season 2 starts on Wednesday on streaming platform Hulu, resuming immediately where Season 1 ended last June, with the pregnant Offred (Elisabeth Moss) taken away to face punishment for an act of mass rebellion by a group of handmaids in Gilead.

Pre-Gilead flashbacks show the undermining of human and civil rights, where women need their partner’s consent to get birth control, are pressured to be stay-at-home mothers, and gay people lose legal protections to face persecution.

It also gives viewers a first, terrifying glimpse of the book’s polluted colonies, where infertile or dissident women are sent to live in concentration camp-like conditions.

“There is a lot that we draw upon from the world we are living in,” Littlefield said. “The series tried to dramatize some of the human rights issues that we are experiencing in the world and understand, ‘How did that happen?'”

Season 1 premiered in April 2017 but production started long before Hillary Clinton lost her bid to become the first woman in the White House and Donald Trump was elected U.S. president.

The TV series, striking for its handmaids dressed in red capes and white face-obscuring bonnets, won awards in its first season.

Canadian author Atwood remains as a consultant and producer as the second season moves beyond her book, which became one of the top 10 best-selling novels of 2017.

“Margaret is probably the biggest cheerleader for go, move, do not fear going past the book,” Littlefield said.
…

more

Iceland’s Reykjavik Tops Index for Green City Getaways

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Iceland’s small, snowy capital, Reykjavik, has been crowned the greenest

city for travelers, with the most green space per head of 50 cities surveyed, a travel agency said Tuesday.

Auckland in New Zealand came in second, followed by the Slovakian capital Bratislava and Sweden’s Gothenburg, with Sydney in Australia taking fifth place in the Green Cities Index published by TravelBird, a Dutch online holiday provider.

“Many popular city destinations around the world have made significant strides towards both preserving and manufacturing green spaces,” Fiona Vanderbroeck, chief traveler officer at TravelBird, said in a statement. “We aim to inspire travelers to see city trips differently — inviting them to connect with nature whilst also enjoying the vibrancy, culture and liveliness they look for in a city.”

The United Nations estimates that by 2050 more than two-thirds of the world will live in urban areas and has called for a radical rethink of urban planning.

Green spaces cool down cities, encourage physical activity and can provide stress relief, increase social interaction and improve mental well-being, the World Health Organization says.

The index analyzed mapping data from 50 popular city break destinations, evaluating the types and number of green spaces such as parks, golf courses, meadows, vineyards and farms. It found that coastal Reykjavik, home to about 120,000 people, has 410 square meters (4,413 square feet) of

greenery per inhabitant, boosted by its large national parks.

At the other end

Tokyo was the least green city, followed by Turkey’s Istanbul, Athens in Greece, Lyon in France and Chile’s Santiago, all with less than 8 square meters of greenery per resident.

Edinburgh ranked the greenest city in Britain, and Washington D.C., and Los Angeles came tops in the United States.

Cities are taking steps to improve their green credentials — banning diesel vehicles, using zero-emission buses and setting tougher air pollution limits — to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
…

more

Malaria on Rise in Crisis-hit Venezuela, WHO Says

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Malaria is spreading rapidly in crisis-hit Venezuela, with more than an estimated 406,000 cases in 2017, up roughly 69 percent from a year before, the largest increase worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) said

Tuesday.

Venezuelan migrants fleeing the economic and social crisis are carrying the mosquito-borne disease into Brazil and other parts of Latin America, the U.N. agency said, urging authorities to provide free screening and treatment regardless of their legal status to avoid further spread.

“In the Americas, it’s not just Venezuela. We’re actually reporting increases in a number of other countries. Venezuela, yes this is a significant concern, malaria is increasing and it’s increasing in a very worrying way,” Pedro Alonso, director of WHO’s global malaria program, told a news briefing.

Venezuela is slipping into hyperinflation with shortages of food and medicines during a fifth year of recession that President Nicolas Maduro’s government blames on Western hostility and falling oil prices.

Venezuelan officials reported 240,613 malaria cases in 2016, many in the gold-mining state of Bolivar bordering Guyana, with an estimated 280 deaths, according to the WHO.

‘Massive increase’

The 2017 estimate has leaped to 406,000 cases — five times higher than in 2013.

“What we are now seeing is a massive increase, probably reaching close to half a million cases per year. These are the largest increases reported anywhere in the world,” Alonso said.

A lack of resources and ineffective anti-malaria campaigns were to blame, he said. WHO and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) are working with Venezuelan authorities to address the situation, he added.

“We are seeing, indeed because of population movement, cases among Venezuelan migrants appearing in other countries — Brazil certainly, but also in Colombia, in Ecuador and in a number of other places,” Alonso said.

“What this calls for is renewed effort by the countries surrounding Venezuela to ensure adequate diagnosis and treatment free for whoever shows up at medical services,” he said.

The global campaign against the life-threatening disease has stalled for the first time in a decade, with a reversal of gains made in some countries, the WHO said last November.

Malaria infected around 216 million people in 91 countries in 2016, killing 445,000, with 90 percent of cases and fatalities in sub-Saharan Africa, it said.
…

more

Flying Taxi Start-Up Hires Designer Behind Modern Mini, Fiat 500

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Lilium, a German start-up with Silicon Valley-scale ambitions to put electric “flying taxis” in the air next decade, has hired Frank Stephenson, the designer behind iconic car brands including the modern Mini, Fiat 500 and McLaren P1.

Lilium is developing a lightweight aircraft powered by 36 electric jet engines mounted on its wings. It aims to travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour, with a range of 300 km on a single charge, the firm has said.

Founded in 2015 by four Munich Technical University students, the Bavarian firm has set out plans to demonstrate a fully functional vertical take-off electric jet by next year, with plans to begin online booking of commuter flights by 2025.

It is one of a number of companies, from Chinese automaker Geely to U.S. ride-sharing firm Uber, looking to tap advances in drone technology, high-performance materials and automated driving to turn aerial driving – long a staple of science fiction movies like “Blade Runner” – into reality.

Stephenson, 58, who holds American and British citizenship, will join the aviation start-up in May. He lives west of London and will commute weekly to Lilium’s offices outside of Munich.

His job is to design a plane on the outside and a car inside.

Famous for a string of hits at BMW, Mini, Ferrari, Maserati, Fiat, Alfa Romeo and McLaren, Stephenson will lead all aspects of Lilium design, including the interior and exterior of its jets, the service’s landing pads and even its departure lounges.

“With Lilium, we don’t have to base the jet on anything that has been done before,” Stephenson told Reuters in an interview.

“What’s so incredibly exciting about this is we’re not talking about modifying a car to take to the skies, and we are not talking about modifying a helicopter to work in a better way.”

Stephenson recalled working at Ferrari a dozen years ago and thinking it was the greatest job a grown-up kid could ever want.

But the limits of working at such a storied carmaker dawned on him: “I always had to make a car that looked like a Ferrari.”

His move to McLaren, where he worked from 2008 until 2017, freed him to design a new look and design language from scratch: “That was as good as it gets for a designer,” he said.

Lilium is developing a five-seat flying electric vehicle for commuters after tests in 2017 of a two-seat jet capable of a mid-air transition from hover mode, like drones, into wing-borne flight, like conventional aircraft.

Combining these two features is what separates Lilium from rival start-ups working on so-called flying cars or taxis that rely on drone or helicopter-like technologies, such as German rival Volocopter or European aerospace giant Airbus.

“If the competitors come out there with their hovercraft or drones or whatever type of vehicles, they’ll have their own distinctive look,” Stephenson said.

“Let the other guys do whatever they want. The last thing I want to do is anything that has been done before.”

The jet, with power consumption per kilometer comparable to an electric car, could offer passenger flights at prices taxis now charge but at speeds five times faster, Lilium has said.

Nonetheless, flying cars face many hurdles, including convincing regulators and the public that their products can be used safely. Governments are still grappling with regulations for drones and driverless cars.

Lilium has raised more than $101 million in early-stage funding from backers including an arm of China’s Tencent and Atomico and Obvious Ventures, the venture firms, respectively, of the co-founders of Skype and Twitter.    

 
…

more

Facebook Rules at a Glance: What’s Banned, Exactly?

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Facebook has revealed for the first time just what, exactly, is banned on its service in a new Community Standards document released on Tuesday. It’s an updated version of the internal rules the company has used to determine what’s allowed and what isn’t, down to granular details such as what, exactly, counts as a “credible threat” of violence. The previous public-facing version gave a broad-strokes outline of the rules, but the specifics were shrouded in secrecy for most of Facebook’s 2.2 billion users.

Not anymore. Here are just some examples of what the rules ban. Note: Facebook has not changed the actual rules – it has just made them public.

Credible violence

Is there a real-world threat? Facebook looks for “credible statements of intent to commit violence against any person, groups of people, or place (city or smaller).” Is there a bounty or demand for payment? The mention or an image of a specific weapon? A target and at least two details such as location, method or timing? A statement to commit violence against a vulnerable person or group such as “heads-of-state, witnesses and confidential informants, activists, and journalists.”

Also banned: instructions on “on how to make or use weapons if the goal is to injure or kill people,” unless there is “clear context that the content is for an alternative purpose (for example, shared as part of recreational self-defense activities, training by a country’s military, commercial video games, or news coverage).”

Hate speech

“We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics – race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some protections for immigration status,” Facebook says. As to what counts as a direct attack, the company says it’s any “violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation.” There are three tiers of severity, ranging from comparing a protected group to filth or disease to calls to “exclude or segregate” a person our group based on the protected characteristics. Facebook does note that it does “allow criticism of immigration policies and arguments for restricting those policies.”

Graphic violence

Images of violence against “real people or animals” with comments or captions that contain enjoyment of suffering, humiliation and remarks that speak positively of the violence or “indicating the poster is sharing footage for sensational viewing pleasure” are prohibited. The captions and context matter in this case because Facebook does allow such images in some cases where they are condemned, or shared as news or in a medical setting. Even then, though, the post must be limited so only adults can see them and Facebook adds a warnings screen to the post.

Child sexual exploitation

“We do not allow content that sexually exploits or endangers children. When we become aware of apparent child exploitation, we report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with applicable law. We know that sometimes people share nude images of their own children with good intentions; however, we generally remove these images because of the potential for abuse by others and to help avoid the possibility of other people reusing or misappropriating the images,” Facebook says. Then, it lists at least 12 specific instances of children in a sexual context, saying the ban includes, but is not limited to these examples. This includes “uncovered female nipples for children older than toddler-age.”

Adult nudity and sexual activity

“We understand that nudity can be shared for a variety of reasons, including as a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause, or for educational or medical reasons. Where such intent is clear, we make allowances for the content. For example, while we restrict some images of female breasts that include the nipple, we allow other images, including those depicting acts of protest, women actively engaged in breast-feeding, and photos of post-mastectomy scarring,” Facebook says. That said, the company says it “defaults” to removing sexual imagery to prevent the sharing of non-consensual or underage content. The restrictions apply to images of real people as well as digitally created content, although art – such as drawings, paintings or sculptures – is an exception.

 
…

more

Summer Movie Preview: Hollywood Roars Back into Action

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Summer starts early this year in Hollywood with the potentially record-breaking release Thursday of Avengers: Infinity War, and the marquee Marvel superheroes couldn’t be coming at a better time.

The box office for the year is down nearly three percent, and the industry is looking to redeem itself after last summer, which, despite hits like Wonder Woman, had its worst performance in more than a decade. Although all studios are embracing the year-round blockbuster schedule and massive hits can emerge in any month, like Black Panther in February, It in September and Star Wars in December, with work and school vacations, nothing can beat the summer’s potential.

This summer movie-going season, which typically runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, could get things back on track. Two of the most profitable franchises have major films on the slate. The Walt Disney Company and Marvel have Avengers: Infinity War (April 27) which some experts are predicting will score the biggest opening of all time, and Universal Pictures is releasing the sequel to the fifth-highest domestic earner of all time, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, on June 22.

And as with every summer, there are more than a handful of sequels and familiar brands coming to theaters, including: Deadpool 2 (May 18); Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25); The Incredibles 2 (June 15); Sicario: Day of the Soldado (June 29); The First Purge (July 4); Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 6); Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (July 13); The Equalizer 2 (July 20); Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! (July 20); and Mission: Impossible — Fallout (July 27).

But Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz whose new book The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies, examines the current state of the industry, notes that while the big, franchise, tent-pole films are always the highest-grossing and that films like Jurassic World 2 and Avengers: Infinity War will be sure-fire hits, oversaturation is possible too. 

“People do like to see the big franchise tent-pole films,” Fritz said. “But even if the studios make more of them, people are not going to more movies. The more of them there are, the more they are competing for the same box office dollars and as a result you see more flops.”

According to Box Office Mojo, in 2017, movie ticket sales were at a 25-year low, and competition for audience attention is only intensifying. Netflix has a whole slate of summer films too, from an Adam Sandler and Chris Rock comedy (The Week Of, April 27) to the WWII-set adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This year, too, has shown a concentration of box office dollars on just a few films — Black Panther, Fritz noted, accounted for 23 percent of the ticket sales in the first three months of the year.

And it is at least part of the reason why many studios are touting the diversity of their slates beyond the spectacle of superheroes and blockbusters.

“Today, it’s even more important that there is a wide variety of films out there, films that are provocative, that are thrilling, that obviously are entertaining and that you’re presenting them in new and exciting ways,” said Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution. “We have right now a theater-going audience who is discerning and I think we need to keep that in mind with everything we put forth.”

Universal has Jurassic World and Mamma Mia! sequels, sure, but it is also releasing Dwayne Johnson’s action-thriller Skyscraper and its indie arm Focus Features has films like the dark dramedy Tully (May 4), with Charlize Theron, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (Aug. 10) and documentaries about Mr. Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor, June 8) and Pope Francis (May 18).

Warner Bros., home of Wonder Woman, Batman and the other DC Comics superheroes, doesn’t even have a major DC film on the slate this summer (aside from the animated Teen Titans GO! To the Movies, July 27). Instead, its slate boasts films like the star (and female)-driven Ocean’s 8, with Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna and others, comedies like Tag (June 15) and Life of the Party (May 11), and an adaptation of the popular book Crazy Rich Asians (Aug. 17).

“The business just gets spread out over 12 months,” said Warner Bros. domestic distribution president Jeff Goldstein. “It’s not about one particular season and for a studio, it’s about opportunistically dating your movies in a way to maximize your box office on any given film.”

Beyond Ocean’s 8 there are a number of gender-flipped reboots and bawdy female-led comedies, like Overboard (May 4) with Anna Faris, the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake The Hustle (June 29) with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, Book Club (May 18) with Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, and The Spy Who Dumped Me (Aug. 3) with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon.

And action fans can look forward to Mark Wahlberg as an intelligence officer trying to smuggle a police officer out of the country in Mile 22 (Aug. 3) and Jason Statham fighting a shark in The Meg (Aug. 10).

Audiences thirsting for more unconventional fare may just have to look a little deeper for the potential hidden gems, like Uncle Drew (June 29), a comedy about an aging basketball team competing in a street tournament, with Lil Rel Howery, Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O’Neal, and Hereditary (June 8), a trippy horror about the strange things that start happening when a family’s matriarch dies.

Sundance breakouts coming this summer include Eighth Grade (July 13) from comedian Bo Burnham, which follows an eighth-grade girl around her last week of middle school, Blindspotting (July 20) about a police shooting in Oakland, and Sorry to Bother You (July 6) also Oakland-set, but with a quirkier sci-fi edge.

There’s the almost too-strange-to-be-true The Happytime Murders (Aug. 17) from Brian Henson and starring Melissa McCarthy, where puppets and humans co-exist and a private eye takes on the case of a puppet on puppet murder.

And then there’s Hotel Artemis, the directorial debut of Iron Man 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce. It’s an original action-thriller about a hospital for criminals set in a dystopian, near-future Los Angeles with a star-studded cast including Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown and Jeff Goldblum that Global Road Entertainment is releasing on June 8. Pearce said there was no way he could have gotten it made in the studio system.

“Hopefully this is a rallying cry. It’s not a sequel, it’s not based on a comic. It’s not a reboot. It’s its own eccentric and hopefully loveable beast of a movie,” Pearce said.

“I think what we’ve seen in the last year is movies with real personality are actually what an audience is crying out for, whether that’s tiny movies that made good like Get Out or taking the superhero blockbuster like Thor: Ragnarok and essentially making a quirky New Zealand comedy out of it,” he said. “I think there’s a real appetite for something that’s just a little different and a little less cookie-cutter.”
…

more

Cambridge Analytica Fights Back on Data Scandal

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Cambridge Analytica unleashed its counterattack against claims that it misused data from millions of Facebook accounts, saying Tuesday it is the victim of misunderstandings and inaccurate reporting that portrays the company as the evil villain in a James Bond movie.

Clarence Mitchell, a high-profile publicist recently hired to represent the company, held Cambridge Analytica’s first news conference since allegations surfaced that the Facebook data helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica’s parent, also claims that the company has links to the successful campaign to take Britain out of the European Union.

“The company has been portrayed in some quarters as almost some Bond villain,” Mitchell said. “Cambridge Analytica is no Bond villain.”

Cambridge Analytica didn’t use any of the Facebook data in the work it did for Trump’s campaign and it never did any work on the Brexit campaign, Mitchell said. Furthermore, he said, the data was collected by another company that was contractually obligated to follow data protection rules and the information was deleted as soon as Facebook raised concerns.

Mitchell insists the company has not broken any laws, but acknowledged it had commissioned an independent investigation is being conducted. He insisted that the company had been victimized by “wild speculation based on misinformation, misunderstanding, or in some cases, frankly, an overtly political position.”

The comments come weeks after the scandal engulfed both the consultancy and Facebook, which has been embroiled in scandal since revelations that Cambridge Analytica misused personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook accounts. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. congressional committees and at one point the company lost some $50 billion in value for its shareholders.

Details on the scandal continued to trickle out. On Tuesday, a Cambridge University academic said the suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica lied to British lawmakers investigating fake news.

Academic Aleksandr Kogan’s company, Global Science Research, developed a Facebook app that vacuumed up data from people who signed up to use the app as well as information from their Facebook friends, even if those friends hadn’t agreed to share their data.

Cambridge Analytica allegedly used the data to profile U.S. voters and target them with ads during the 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump. It denies the charge.

Kogan appeared before the House of Commons’ media committee Tuesday and was asked whether Cambridge Analytica’s suspended CEO, Alexander Nix, told the truth when he testified that none of the company’s data came from Global Science Research.

“That’s a fabrication,” Kogan told committee Chairman Damian Collins. Nix could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kogan also cast doubt on many of Wylie’s allegations, which have triggered a global debate about internet privacy protections. Wylie repeated his claims in a series of media interviews as well as an appearance before the committee.

Wylie worked for SCL Group Ltd. in 2013 and 2014.

“Mr. Wylie has invented many things,” Kogan said, calling him “duplicitous.”

No matter what, though, Kogan insisted in his testimony that the data would not be that useful to election consultants. The idea was seized upon by Mitchell, who also denied that the company had worked on the effort to have Britain leave the EU.

Mitchell said that the idea that political consultancies can use data alone to sway votes is “frankly insulting to the electorates. Data science in modern campaigning helps those campaigns, but it is still and always will be the candidates who win the races.”
…

more

WhatsApp Raises EU Minimum Age Ahead of New Data Privacy Law

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Facebook Inc, is raising its minimum age from 13 to 16 in Europe to help it comply with new data privacy rules coming into force next month.

WhatsApp will ask European users to confirm they are at least 16 years old when they are prompted to agree to new terms of service and a privacy policy provided by a new WhatsApp Ireland Ltd entity in the next few weeks.

It is not clear how or if the age limit will be checked given the limited data requested and held by the service.

Facebook, which has a separate data policy, is taking a different approach to teens aged between 13 and 15 in order to comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law.

It is asking them to nominate a parent or guardian to give permission for them to share information on the platform, otherwise they will not see a fully personalized version of the social media platform.

But WhatsApp, which had more than 1.5 billion users in January according to Facebook, said in a blog post it was not asking for any new rights to collect personal information in the agreement it has created for the European Union.

“Our goal is simply to explain how we use and protect the limited information we have about you,” it said.

WhatsApp, founded in 2009, has come under pressure from some European governments in recent years because of its end-to-end encrypted messaging system and its plan to share more data with its parent, Facebook.

Facebook itself is under scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers around the world since disclosing last month that the personal information of millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, setting off wider concerns about how it handles user data.

WhatsApp’s minimum age of use will remain 13 years in the rest of the world, in line with its parent.

GDPR is the biggest overhaul of online privacy since the birth of the internet, giving Europeans the right to know what data is stored on them and the right to have it deleted.

Apple Inc and some other tech firms have said they plan to give people in the United States and elsewhere the same protections and rights that Europeans will gain.

European regulators have already disrupted a move by WhatsApp to change its policies to allow it to share users’ phone numbers and other information with Facebook to help improve the product and more effectively target ads.

WhatsApp suspended the change in Europe after widespread regulatory scrutiny. It said on Tuesday it still wanted to share the data at some point.

“As we have said in the past, we want to work closer with other Facebook companies in the future and we will keep you updated as we develop our plans,” it said.

Other changes announced by WhatsApp on Tuesday include allowing users to download a report detailing the data it holds on them, such as the make and model of the device they used, their contacts and groups and any blocked numbers.

“This feature will be rolling out to all users around the world on the newest version of the app,” it said.

The blog post also points to safety tips on the service, such as the ability to block unwanted users, and delete and report spam.
…

more

Music Streaming Revenues Surge and Investors Like the Beat

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Online streaming services such Spotify and Apple Music have become the recording industry’s single biggest revenue source, overtaking physical sales of CDs and digital downloads for the first time, a trade group said on Tuesday.

The rapid growth in streaming music services in recent years has led to a recovery in the fortunes of the global recorded music industry, which enjoyed its third year of positive revenue growth, according to a report by industry body IFPI.

Figures released in IFPIs Global Music Report 2018 show total recording music revenues for 2017 rose to $17.3 billion, up 8.1 percent from the previous year.

Improving finances have led to a tentative re-evaluation of the music industry by stock market investors, who had shied away from the struggling media category for much of the past decade due to a wave of piracy by users and major technology shifts.

Just in the past month, streaming music subscription leader Spotify of Sweden held a record-setting public stock offering. France’s Vivendi, the owner of Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label, said last week it was mulling an IPO.

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), which attracts three-quarters of China’s booming music streaming market, has been reported by The Wall Street Journal to be eyeing a listing later in 2018. TME is controlled by internet giant Tencent .

Industry leaders say the growing adoption of paid music streaming services is enabling the market to reach new regions of the world while helping weaning a generation of music fans away from free or pirated music.

“We estimate that only half the worlds population lives in a thriving music environment and we want to bring the streaming revolution to all of it,” Stu Bergen, from Warner Music Group, told reporters in London.

During the 15 years ending in 2014, music sales plunged by 40 percent to $14.3 billion after music file-sharing services such as Napster ravaged sales of CDs while the rise of download services like Apple iTunes failed to offset those declines.

IFPI – The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry – charts the recent recovery to the rise of streaming music. It said there were 176 million users of paid streaming subscription services in 2017.

Streaming subscriptions in 2017 accounted for 38 percent of recorded music revenue, up from 29 percent in 2016. The streaming business expanded 41 percent, offsetting a 5 percent decline in physical sales and a 20 percent drop in download revenue.

Despite these improving finances, revenues for 2017 are still only 68.4 percent of the markets peak in 1999, IFPI said.

Latin America and China saw the biggest market growth, with a rise in overall music revenue of 17.7 percent and 35.3 percent respectively. The United States, Japan, Germany, Britain and France are the world’s top five music markets by revenue. Brazil ranked No.9 and China was No.10 in 2017, IFPI said.

IFPI renewed calls for governments to tackle the “value gap” between the value created by some digital platforms such as Google’s YouTube for their use of music and what they pay those creating and investing in it. Rival Facebook has been gearing to launch its own music video sharing service.

“Things are looking good but there’s a structural fault in the system. Until we fix it, it will always be a struggle, said IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore.

Ed Sheeran ranked as the top global recording artist overtaking Drake, who slipped to No. 2 and Taylor Swift who ranked third, according to the IFPI.
…

more

Tibetan Refugees in India Protect Language and Culture

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Although Migmar Tsering crossed the border into India when he was just six-years-old, he remained closely connected to his Tibetan culture and language at the school for Tibetan refugees in the hill town of Mussoorie where he studied.

Now as principal of TCV Day School Samyeling in the Indian capital, 29-year-old Tsering, and his staff ensure that the more than 100 children of Tibetan refugees enrolled here imbibe Tibetan culture just as he did.

“They advise [the children] about Tibetan situation not related with political  we have beautiful country, we have good language, we have a good identity, we have good religion,” he said.

Led by teachers dressed in the Tibetan traditional dress, the chuba, young kids learn to write the script and chant nursery rhymes translated in Tibetan.  And the noisy chatter as they run around and play is in their native language.

Amid fears that six decades of Chinese rule has resulted in Tibetan traditions being lost and its culture being assimilated into Chinese, the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama has frequently stressed the need to safeguard Tibetan culture. And as the Tibetan Exile Administration marks 60 years since the Dalai Lama fled to India, analysts say this goal has met with more success than the political struggle to gain autonomy for Tibet.

The heart of that effort is about 70 schools run by the Tibetan exile administration in India, which is home to the world’s largest Tibetan refugee community. After the Dalai Lama fled to India following the 1959 failed uprising against Chinese rule, New Delhi allowed the setting up of separate Tibetan settlements and schools where a third generation of Tibetan refugees now study.

These schools emphasize learning in Tibetan until grade three. Teacher Sonam Choedon at the Tibetan school in the Indian capital points out that Beijing has sharply scaled back the teaching of languages spoken by ethnic minorities.

“In Tibet, now Tibetan language, Chinese they are suppressing, even in class they are not allowed to talk in Tibetan,” she said. “So to preserve our language here in exile, especially in school, everything we try to convert in Tibetan only.”

All subjects from science to math and environmental studies are taught in Tibetan in the junior classes. A reading room is not just stacked with books translated into Tibetan  children sit on the floor to peruse the books placed on low desks in keeping with Tibetan tradition. In an adjoining room, young girls and boys play music on traditional Tibetan instruments.

“With the unparalleled support from India we have from the ashes of destruction revived Tibetan civilization, rebuilt Tibetan Buddhism, revived Tibetan culture, and preserved and promote Tibetan identity in India,” Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of the Tibetan exile administration, said recently at a “Thank You India” event held to observe 60 years of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India.

The effort has made its mark. In Majnu-ka-Tilla, the Tibetan settlement where the New Delhi school is located, prayer flags are strung across a central square, maroon-robed monks light candles inside a Buddhist temple, old and young come to turn a prayer wheel and Tibetan food is commonly available. Nearby Tibetan handicrafts made by those who know the craft are sold.

However challenges lie ahead as a younger generation growing up in India gets restless and many look for opportunities overseas where Tibetans are more dispersed. The number of refugees coming to India has also slowed to a trickle.  

Still hopes are high in the Tibetan exile community that those educated and brought up in India will carry the Tibetan influence and tradition with them outside.

Twenty-three-year-old Tenzin Dekong migrated to Australia in 2014 with her family. In India recently on holiday, she said she misses the Tibetan ambience in communities like Majnu-ka-Tilla. But the culture she assimilated as she grew up and studied in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, remains strongly with her.

“I am very sad that I can’t see Tibet, but through the elder stories and through our teachers, when we learn Tibetan subjects we learn a lot of histories and I do really feel very connected with Tibetan cultures and I do have some imagination how Tibet looks like surrounded by all mountains, all the monastery,” she said.

At his most recent appearance at the event to mark his 60 years in India, the Dalai Lama again stressed the importance of saving Tibetan culture. “We are not demanding separation from China but the Tibetan people should have the autonomy to preserve their culture, language, environment and religion,” he said.

And many like principal Tsering, hope one day to carry the cultural roots they are so carefully nurturing in India to the homeland they fled or never saw. “We have truth, one day we go back to Tibet, I just believe that,” he said.
…

more

Nano-Drops Bring Simple Eye Fix into View

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The path to sharper vision has gone from glasses to contact lenses to laser correction… and now, to eye drops. Faith Lapidus has details of the latest development.
…

more

Commission on Fragile States Says Paradigm Shift Needed to Stabilize Poor Countries

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

A new report by Britain’s Growth and Development Commission offered a mix of both good and bad news for poor countries: some of the countries in the report have achieved middle income status, and places once plagued by conflict and instability have shown signs of improvement. But the report also notes that the number of people living in what it calls “fragile states” is growing. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo takes a look at the commissions findings.
…

more

China Tech Firms Pledge to End Sexist Job Ads

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Chinese tech firms pledged on Monday to tackle gender bias in recruitment after a rights group said they routinely favored male candidates, luring applicants with the promise of working with “beautiful girls” in job advertisements.

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report found that major technology companies including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent had widely used “gender discriminatory job advertisements,” which said men were preferred or specifically barred women applicants.

Some ads promised candidates they would work with “beautiful girls” and “goddesses,” HRW said in a report based on an analysis of 36,000 job posts between 2013 and 2018.

Tencent, which runs China’s most popular messenger app WeChat, apologized for the ads after the HRW report was published on Monday.

“We are sorry they occurred and we will take swift action to ensure they do not happen again,” a Tencent spokesman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

E-commerce giant Alibaba, founded by billionaire Jack Ma, vowed to conduct stricter reviews to ensure its job ads followed workplace equality principles, but refused to say whether the ads singled out in the report were still being used.

“Our track record of not just hiring but promoting women in leadership positions speaks for itself,” said a spokeswoman.

Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of search engine Google, meanwhile said the postings were “isolated instances.”

HRW urged Chinese authorities to take action to end discriminatory hiring practices.

Its report also found nearly one in five ads for Chinese government jobs this year were “men only” or “men preferred.”

“Sexist job ads pander to the antiquated stereotypes that persist within Chinese companies,” HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement.

“These companies pride themselves on being forces of modernity and progress, yet they fall back on such recruitment strategies, which shows how deeply entrenched discrimination against women remains in China,” she added.

China was ranked 100 out of 144 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Gender Gap Report, after it said the country’s progress towards gender parity has slowed.
…

more

Banderas Plays Picasso, a Complex Hometown Hero, in ‘Genius’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Antonio Banderas, who shares his birthplace with Pablo Picasso, decided it finally was time to portray his hometown hero. But he leaves it to viewers of National Geographic’s drama series “Genius: Picasso” to reconcile the artist’s revelatory work with his treatment of the women who helped inspire it.

 

The actor had passed on two other chances to play Picasso, intimidated by the prospect of playing the man he calls a “huge figure” from their shared birthplace of Malaga, Spain. Learning more about the titan of 20th-century painting, who died in 1973 at age 91, made the mature Banderas cautious for other reasons.

 

“I started realizing he was not just complicated but mysterious, because of what he did as an artist and because of his life. There were so many opinions of him, some of them good and some bad, his behavior with art and with women and his friends,” Banderas said.

 

But he was impressed by the first season of “Genius” from executive producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, with Geoffrey Rush playing Albert Einstein, and decided this was the time to take Picasso’s complex story and paintbrushes in hand, literally.

 

“I wanted to be familiar with all the tools, brushes and oils and acrylics and everything. I bought canvasses and starting painting” to prepare for the role, he said, although he counts himself only a dedicated novice.

 

Howard said he had no reservations that Banderas the actor, if not painter, was up to the task in the 10-part series that debuted at 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

 

“It took us a while to settle on Picasso as the next ‘Genius,’ but once we did Antonio’s name was immediately thrown into the mix, and everyone agreed he would be perfect for the role,” Howard said. “He put in an incredible amount of work to bring the artist to life on-screen and I think he has delivered an exceptional performance that we’re all very proud of.”

 

A convincingly prosthetics-aged Banderas plays Picasso in his later years, with Alex Rich as the youthful artist. Those co-starring as Picasso’s lovers and muses are Samantha Colley as photographer Dora Maar; Poppy Delevingne as Marie-Therese Walter, and Clemence Poesy as the artist Francoise Gilot, now 96, who left him after a decade and two children.

 

It was Gilot who, in her 1964 memoir, quoted Picasso as saying, “For me, there are only two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.” A Paris Review column about a 2017 exhibition of Picasso artwork and memorabilia related to his daughter Maya (born to mistress Walter during his marriage to first wife Olga Khokhlova) was headlined: “How Picasso Bled the Women in His Life for Art.”

 

Picasso married second wife Jacqueline Roque when he was 79 and she was 27, and they remained together until his death, with Roque his inspiration for that prolific final period. Banderas said that much of Picasso’s work was deeply intertwined with the women who shared his life.

 

“When he was upset with Dora Maar, for example, you could tell how he painted her. He kind of made her a monster,” he said. “Without those women around him, the pieces of Picasso, it would be a completely different story.”

 

His relationships didn’t always start or stop cleanly, the actor said, and there was “something of them that always was kept in the soul of Picasso.”

 

The artist’s colleagues had reason to be wary of his brilliance: They would hide their own works from him because they knew he could improve on whatever style he saw, Banderas said. There is also a cloudy chapter in which Picasso refuses to sign a petition to save French poet Max Jacob (played by T.R. Knight) from a Nazi internment camp, claiming it would hurt his close friend’s cause. Jacob died in the camp in 1944.

 

How an artist’s conduct influences the perception of his art, or its acceptance, has particular currency, with the careers of some top creative lights derailed or sullied by a range of alleged sexual misconduct. In Picasso’s case, women were willing partners and research uncovered no evidence of physical abuse, said Banderas.

 

But there was betrayal and abandonment.

 

“I don’t think the goal of the show is to celebrate someone,” executive producer Ken Biller told TV critics. “The goal of the show is to explore a very complex, complicated individual and all of the people around him. This is the stuff of drama. We are not sugarcoating Picasso.”

 

How did Banderas weigh Picasso’s genius against his character?

 

“I don’t want to be the morality judge, because that can be difficult to do. We can do that from our time. But if we go back in time, how can you do that for a man born in 1881,” Banderas said. “The audience has the opportunity to go in one direction or another as we tell the story. But me, as an interpreter, I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it.”
…

more

Michigan Water Activist, 6 Others Win Environmental Prize

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

A woman who played a key role in exposing the lead-tainted water disaster in Flint, Michigan, is among seven people from around the world to be awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots environmental activism.

 

LeeAnne Walters was repeatedly rebuffed by Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration, even as she confronted regulators with bottles of brown water that came from her kitchen tap. Finally, with critical help from a Virginia Tech research team and a local doctor, it was revealed in 2015 that Flint’s water system was contaminated with lead due to a lack of treatment.

Walters, a mother of four, “worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring justice to not only her immediate family but all residents of Flint,” the Goldman Environmental Foundation said Monday in announcing this year’s winners.

 

The prize was created in 1989 by the late San Francisco philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman. Winners are selected from nominations made by environmental organizations and others. The prize carries a $200,000 award.

 

In Flint, thousands of home water lines are being replaced due to the lead crisis. The city’s water quality has improved since it stopped using the Flint River as its source after 18 months, although there are many concerns about lead that was ingested, especially by children.

 

The other winners are:

Francia Marquez of Colombia, who rallied other women to vigorously oppose gold mining in the Cauca region.
Claire Nouvian of France, who successfully campaigned against deep-sea fish trawling.
Makoma Lekalakala and Liz McDaid of South Africa, who fought to stop a nuclear plant deal between their country and Russia.
Manny Calonzo of the Philippines, who led an effort to ban lead paint.
Khanh Nguy Thi of Vietnam, who used scientific research to discourage dependency on coal-fired power.

…

more