The United States is a land of opportunity for many immigrants. But some who come to the US often face big hurdles. The challenges can be especially great for immigrant women trying to succeed in male dominated careers in STEM fields: for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. VOA spoke with three Afghan women, all of whom prove that where there is a will, there’s usually a way. Zheela Noori went to Silicon Valley to find out what drives them. Freshta Azizi narrates.
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Month: May 2018
Here’s a little known fact to sink your teeth into — Did you know that George Washington’s second inaugural speech contained only 135 words? It’s not because America’s first president had nothing to say. Tooth historians say it’s because the president was wearing new dentures, making it difficult for him to speak. Searching for other toothy morsels from history, our reporter Maxim Moskalkov went to the National Dentistry Museum in Baltimore to learn more.
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Young boys who were forced to beg on the streets for Islamic teachers have turned their suffering into art, as they join more than 1,000 artists showing their work at Africa’s biggest and oldest biennale art exhibition in Senegal this month.
Some 50,000 child beggars known as talibe live in religious schools called daaras in the West African nation, according to rights groups, who say some were trafficked from neighboring countries and many are beaten and abused.
“Being in the daara was like being in prison,” read one caption for an image of a sorrowful eye peering through a row of fingers. “My friend’s hands represent the feeling of being locked up.”
All of the photographs in the “Look at me” exhibition – which is part of the Dakar Biennale, known as Dak’Art, founded in the 1990s – were taken by and of street children living in a nearby shelter run by Samusocial, a charity.
Most children who come through the shelter are former talibe, while others escaped forced labor or family disputes, said Samusocial, which provides medical care and shelter while attempting to reunite them with their families.
“For me, the color red is like pain,” said another caption, describing a photograph of a boy, known as D.D., wrapped in a colored cloth. “I put it in the background because it’s in the past.”
In plastic sandals and bright T-shirts, the boys walked down the street together to visit the exhibition. They gazed wide-eyed at the photos printed larger than they are.
“I am happy,” said D.D., 16, who worked in a sewing shop for several years where he was regularly beaten. “I didn’t expect to see this,” he said of his photograph.
Samusocial often uses art and music to help the children build confidence and open up, said director of operations Isabelle Diouf.
“These children need beautiful things. It takes them out of the realities of the street a little and makes them want to move forward,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Spanish photographer Javier Acebal, who worked with the children on the exhibit, said he hopes it will change viewers’ perceptions of beggars.
“When you’re walking down the street you think you know about these children, but in fact you know nothing,” he said. “They say they want to be like normal kids. I hope people start to think about that.”
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The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are investigating Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political data firm embroiled in a scandal over its handling of Facebook Inc user information, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have sought to question former Cambridge Analytica employees and banks that handled its business, the newspaper said, citing an American official and others familiar with the inquiry.
Cambridge Analytica said earlier this month it was shutting down after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees resulting from reports the company harvested personal data about millions of Facebook users beginning in 2014.
Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, have prompted multiple investigations in the United States and Europe.
The investigation by the Justice Department and FBI appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, the Times said.
Investigators have contacted Facebook, according to the newspaper.
The FBI, the Justice Department and Facebook declined to comment to Reuters. Former officials with Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available to comment.
Cambridge Analytica was created around 2013, initially with a focus on U.S. elections, with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, the New York Times has reported. Bannon left the White House on August 2017.
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Most U.S. insurance companies have not adapted their strategies to address the dangers of climate change, making them likely to raise rates or deny coverage in high-risk areas, said a study released Tuesday.
With predictions of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season approaching, thousands of people could be unable to afford insurance protection or lose it altogether, said the Canadian research study published in the British Journal of Management.
Scientific consensus holds that climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather, from hurricanes to flooding. Last year, three record hurricanes struck the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Yet insurance and reinsurance companies overwhelmingly continue to treat storms as “anomalous rather than correlated to climate change,” the study said.
“Insurers that ignore climate change will not put away enough money to cover their claims. To recoup those losses, they’ll have to raise rates or pull coverage from high-risk areas,” said lead author Jason Thistlethwaite, an assistant professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo.
They will face whopping payouts associated with disasters, he said.
So long, coverage
“When this shift happens, thousands of people will lose coverage or it will be unaffordable,” he said.
Insured losses hit an all-time high between 2004 and 2014, according to a 2015 analysis by reinsurer Swiss Re.
Insurance companies use reinsurance to minimize their risk.
But in 2015, only 3 percent out of a sample of 178 U.S. property insurers and reinsurers were taking into account climate change in corporate governance, underwriting and investment, the study found.
However, the number of companies factoring in climate change in at least one area of operation doubled to about three dozen from 2012 to 2015, it said.
With storm-related payouts soaring, insurance companies may go out of business or lose investors, Thistlethwaite said.
A shrinking insurance market will drive up costs to consumers, he said.
The researchers analyzed insurers in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Washington and New Mexico.
Less than a month away, the Atlantic hurricane season has been predicted to be “above average” by Colorado State University meteorologists. The season runs from June 1 to November 30.
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DJ Khaled has reason to be grateful – he’s been nominated for a leading six trophies for the BET Awards.
The nominations for next month’s ceremony were announced Tuesday night. Among the awards Khaled was nominated for include album of the year for “Grateful” and video of the year for “Wild Thoughts” which featured Rihanna and Bryson Tiller.
Other top nominees include Migos and SZA, both of whom were nominated for four awards.
Bruno Mars, Drake, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Cardi B, and Chris Brown are also up for key awards.
Recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Kendrick Lamar is among the nominees for best album, and he’s got competition from himself, for his “Black Panther” soundtrack.
The blockbuster is also nominated for best movie along with “Girls Trip” and “Wrinkle in Time,” among other films. Tiffany Haddish is nominated for best actress along with the likes of Issa Rae and Lupita Nyong’o, while Michael B. Jordan faces off against Chadwick Boseman and more for best actor.
Venus and Serena Williams are among the nominees for sportswoman of the year while LeBron James and Steph Curry are among the sportsman of the year nominees.
The BET Awards will air live on BET on June 24 from Los Angeles.
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Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth — err, game.
Henry David Thoreau wrote those words — most of them — in his seminal book, “Walden.” They make up the objective of a video game that seeks to translate his exploits in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, into a playable digital reality.
“Walden, a Game” is adapted from the book and launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4. It has been available on computers for almost a year.
“Obviously it’s an odd or unique idea for a game,” said Tracy Fullerton, who conceived the idea and led the team that created it at the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab.
Fullerton told The Associated Press that “Walden” is one of her favorite books, and she thinks its meaning — a tale of escaping technology to appreciate nature — is topical today.
“It seemed to be a kind of game that he was playing,” Fullerton said. So she created one to mimic it.
Fullerton acknowledges the irony of trumpeting nature in a video game but said she hopes the game will be more contemplative than others.
Players drop in with a half-built cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. From there, they can essentially decide everything they do over eight seasons (Thoreau thought a year was better divided into eight parts than four), which takes six hours of real time.
They can finish building the house and toil in the fields, or they can venture out into 70 acres of virtual nature.
The objective is to find the right balance between survival — players can’t die, but they can faint — and fulfillment. As players seek more inspiration from nature, interacting with animals and trees, the actual game world becomes more colorful and more physically beautiful, Fullerton said.
The team at USC spent more than a decade creating the game, she said. Team members consulted literature and history experts to ensure the accuracy of its portrayals, and the game’s sound designer recorded all of its audible elements in the real Walden woods.
It’s available for free for teachers, and a curriculum is available online, but Fullerton said the game’s primary purpose is entertainment.
Joseph Simpson, a software developer from Ohio, said he reads Walden every year and discovered the game while reading about Fullerton.
“I immediately, without hesitation, bought it and started playing it,” he said. Simpson said the essence of the book has been implemented into the game in a way that doesn’t corrupt it with too many objectives or missions.
“I may not have to read Walden this year because I can play the game,” he said.
Experts on the textual version of “Walden” also were intrigued.
Robert Hudspeth, a former president of the Thoreau Society and an English professor at the Claremont Graduate University in California, said he has heard of the game but hasn’t played it.
“I will say, however, that anything that might spark an interest in Thoreau’s writing is welcome,” Hudspeth said. “If playing a game stimulates the players to go to the books, then I’m all for it!”
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Mexico’s central bank said Tuesday that it was creating a cybersecurity unit, following a hack on a domestic payments system at the end of April that affected Mexican banks.
The central bank said in a notice in the government’s daily gazette that the new unit would design and issue guidelines on information security for the country’s banks, which are supervised by the central bank.
Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon Carrillo said Monday that the country had seen an unprecedented attack on payment system connections and that he hoped that measures being taken would stop future incidents.
The attack on Mexican banks is similar to one of the biggest-ever known cyber heists, when thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, said Fermin Gonzalez, head of forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mexico.
“Perhaps, some financial institutions perceived the attacks in Bangladesh as something very distant,” he said, adding that some Mexican banks may not have invested in sufficient security measures.
“But criminals look for vulnerability and once they see it they are going to exploit it.”
The central bank has not identified which banks were hit by the cyberattack or detailed how much thieves were able to wire out to bogus accounts in other banks.
A source close to the government’s investigation said more than 300 million had been siphoned out of banks, but it was not clear how much had subsequently been taken out in cash withdrawals.
Bank Grupo Financiero Banorte said Tuesday it does not expect the attack to hit financial results.
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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday rejected any plan by President Donald Trump to ease restrictions on China’s ZTE Corp, calling the telecommunications firm a security threat and vowing not to abandon legislation clamping down on the company.
Trump on Monday had defended his decision to revisit penalties on ZTE for flouting U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, in part by saying it was reflective of the larger trade deal the United States is negotiating with China.
“I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week.
The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange for easing the ban on selling components to ZTE.
“They are basically conducting an all-out assault to steal what we’ve already developed and use it as the baseline for their development so they can supplant us as the leader in the most important technologies of the 21st century,” Rubio said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Asia policy.
Trump had taken to Twitter on Sunday with a pledge to help the company, which has suspended its main operations, because the penalties had cost too many jobs in China. It was a departure for a president who often touts “America First” policies.
The Commerce Department in April found ZTE had violated a 2017 settlement created after the company violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and banned U.S. companies from providing exports to ZTE for seven years.
U.S. companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.
Cybersnooping?
The suggestion outraged members of Congress who have been pressing for more restrictions on ZTE. Some U.S. lawmakers have alleged equipment made by ZTE and other Chinese companies could pose a cyber security threat.
”Who makes unilateral concessions on the eve of talks after you’ve spent all this time trying to say, correctly in my view, that the Chinese have ripped off our technology?” Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, told Reuters.
Wyden, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, was one of 32 Senate Democrats who signed a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump of putting China’s interests ahead of U.S. jobs and national security.
The company has denied wrongdoing.
Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday he did not expect lawmakers would seek to remove a ban on ZTE technology from a must-pass annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress.
“I confess I don’t fully understand the administration’s take on this at this point,” Thornberry said. “It is not a question to me of economics, it is a question of security.”
Another Republican, Senator John Kennedy, defended Trump, saying the president’s approach is part of a larger set of negotiations with China.
“He didn’t get up one day and go, ‘I think I’ll change my mind on ZTE.’ I think it’s part of a larger issue, and part of a larger set of negotiations,” Kennedy told reporters.
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Mexico’s economy minister said that he saw diminishing chances for a new North American Free Trade Agreement ahead of a Thursday deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the current U.S. Congress.
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Republican-controlled Congress would need to be notified of a new NAFTA deal by Thursday to give lawmakers a chance of approving it before a newly elected Congress takes over in January.
“It is not easy. We do not think we will have it by Thursday,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told broadcaster Televisa on Tuesday.
But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a more upbeat tone, telling reporters in Calgary a few hours later, “There is very much an eminently achievable outcome … and we are very close.”
“We are going to continue to remain optimistic,” said Trudeau. He met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday and discussed the possibility of bringing NAFTA talks to a “prompt conclusion.”
Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada have been in intense talks since last month to try to reach a deal before U.S. congressional elections in November. Mexico’s presidential vote on July 1 also complicates the process.
“We will keep negotiating, and in the moment that we have a good negotiation, we can close the deal … independent of which Congress (the current or new) that will vote on it,” said Guajardo.
Mexico’s peso sank to its weakest level in over a year on Tuesday, and the country’s benchmark stock index fell about 1 percent to its lowest since early April.
Guajardo said the talks could be concluded before or just after the July 1 vote.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is leading polls to win the presidential race, and his pick for economy minister, Graciela Marquez, said last month his administration would be willing to accept a deal struck before the election.
If that is not possible, she said it would be better to complete the negotiation after the next government takes office at the start of December. Guajardo said the next government’s team would need to be involved in any talks after July 1.
Guajardo said negotiators were getting close to reaching a deal on rules for the auto sector under NAFTA.
However, talks still faced the hurdles of U.S. demands for a sunset clause that would allow NAFTA to expire if it is not renegotiated every five years, and the elimination of settlement panels for trade disputes.
More flexibility was needed for a deal, Guajardo said. Kenneth Smith, the chief Mexican negotiator at the talks, said that for Mexico there were no deadlines.
Irrespective of the Thursday deadline mentioned by Ryan,there was still time to ratify anew NAFTA this year, Smith told broadcaster Enfoque Noticias.
Hanging over the talks is Trump’s threat to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on its trade partners. Mexico and Canada have been spared so far, although the latest exemption for them will run out at the end of May.
Smith said his government would retaliate with equivalent measures “immediately” if tariffs or quotas were imposed.
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Venezuela’s state-run oil firm PDVSA has bought nearly $440 million worth of foreign crude and shipped it directly to Cuba on friendly credit terms — and often at a loss, according to internal company documents reviewed by Reuters.
The shipments are the first documented instances of the OPEC nation buying crude to supply regional allies instead of selling them oil from its own vast reserves.
Venezuela made the discounted deliveries, which have not been previously reported, despite its dire need for foreign currency to bolster its collapsing economy and to import food and medicine amid widespread shortages.
The open-market oil purchases to subsidize one of Venezuela’s few remaining allies underscores its increasing global isolation and the disintegration of its energy sector under socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
The purchases came as Venezuela’s crude production hit a 33-year low in the first quarter — down 28 percent in 12 months.
Its refineries are operating at a third of capacity, and its workers are resigning by the thousands.
PDVSA bought the crude for up to $12 per barrel more than it priced the same oil when it shipped to Cuba, according to prices on internal documents reviewed by Reuters. But Cuba may never pay cash for the cargoes because Venezuela has long accepted goods and services from Cuba in return for oil under a pact signed in 2000 by late presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
PDVSA, the Venezuela government and the Cuba government did not respond to requests for comment.
Venezuela’s government has previously said it only imports oil to blend with its own tar-like crude to improve quality and create an exportable product, or to feed its refinery in Curacao. But hundreds of PDSVA documents examined by Reuters detailing imports and exports, dated from January 2017 to May of this year, show the company is now buying crude at market prices to deliver to allies — in shipments that never pass through Venezuela.
Sanctions
The subsidized deliveries are aimed at maintaining political support from Cuba, one of a dwindling group of Venezuela allies, according to diplomats, politicians and PDVSA executives.
“Maduro is giving away everything he can because these countries’ backing, especially from Cuba, is all the political support he has left,” said a former top Venezuelan government official who declined to be identified.
Late Tuesday, a leader of the political opposition to Maduro, Henrique Capriles, reacted to Reuters’ disclosure of the oil shipments to Cuba by tweeting: “Venezuelans are suffering the worst crisis without food or medicine, our oil is about to be seized due to PDVSA’s debts, and they continue irresponsibly
Caracas has come under increasing international pressure as the United States, the European Union and Canada have sanctioned Venezuela for what they see as Maduro’s attempts to cement a dictatorship.
As Venezuela spends on oil imports, it has imported less of everything else its citizens desperately need. Venezuela’s spending on non-oil imports plunged from nearly $46 billion in 2011 to $6 billion in 2017, according to Venezuela Central Bank data and Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based economic research organization.
The oil PDVSA procured for Cuba was Russian Urals crude, the documents show, a variety well-suited for Cuban refineries constructed from Soviet-era equipment.
PDVSA bought the crude from Chinese, Russian and Swiss firms — not for cash, but a pledge that PDVSA would deliver other oil shipments later, the documents show.
That adds to Venezuela’s already towering debts of oil to state-owned firms in Russia and China, which together have extended Venezuela’s government more than $60 billion in oil-for-loan deals that have propped up its budget amid declining exports and lower oil prices.
“It’s nonsense to import oil to keep subsidized exports flowing,” said Ecoanalitica President Asdrubal Oliveros.
Petro-diplomacy
Venezuela’s socialist government has long used oil for domestic and international political ends, subsidizing goods and services at home and currying favor across the region with oil deliveries on generous terms.
Venezuela’s oil supply arrangements have helped soften international political censure of Maduro’s government.
The Organization of American States (OAS), which includes most Western Hemisphere nations, last year took up a motion seeking to pressure Venezuela to hold free elections, liberate political prisoners and declare a humanitarian crisis.
The effort was defeated when 12 countries that have received regular oil shipments from Venezuela in recent years — about a third of the OAS membership — opposed it or refused to vote.
Eventually, the OAS passed a watered-down motion urging free and fair elections.
Venezuela has avoided formal OAS condemnation “thanks to the support of the bloc of Caribbean nations that have benefited from its subsidized oil and development programs for years,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said on April 30 during a talk at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.
Most of those countries are members of Venezuela’s Petrocaribe trade pact, launched in 2005, which has granted up to 16 Caribbean and Central American states with oil supplies on favorable terms.
OAS President Luis Almagro declined to comment through press office representative Monica Reyes.
El Salvador’s Economy Minister, Luz Estrella Rodriguez, said Petrocaribe and other pacts promoted by Venezuela had played an important role in her country’s development.
“Our country is very grateful,” she said. “The government of El Salvador, of course, is a friend and an ally of the Venezuelan government.”
El Salvador refused to vote last year on the OAS motion to condemn Venezuela.
Venezuela also supplied fuel last year to Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Dominica, the documents show.
In total, members of oil trade pacts with Venezuela last year received at least 103,000 bpd of crude and refined products from PDVSA, the documents show, or about 6 percent of Venezuela’s exports.
Falling output, shrinking imports
The falling output of Venezuela’s refineries has also left the country increasingly dependent on fuel imports to meet domestic consumption.
The internal PDVSA data reviewed by Reuters shows Venezuela last year purchased some 180,000 barrels per day of foreign crude and refined products from PetroChina, Rosneft, Lukoil, Reliance Industries and other suppliers, 17 percent more than in 2016.
Those companies did not respond to requests for comment.
The purchases totaled more than $4 billion, according to PDVSA records.
Last year, total oil-industry purchases, including equipment and services, consumed 45 percent of Venezuela’s total import spending, up from 13 percent in 2011, Ecoanalitica data shows.
Energy imports totaled $5.4 billion out of $11.9 billion.
The resulting scarcity of food, medicine and employment has caused thousands of citizens to flee Venezuela. The pay of PDVSA workers now can’t cover the barest essentials because of the collapse of its currency, the bolivar.
“A worker’s salary is not even enough for a box of eggs,” said Hector Bertis, a PDVSA worker and union leader. “We go to the bank, and they give us 10,000 bolivars — less than what a transportation fare costs.”
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Senate Democrats are mounting a last-ditch campaign to preserve so-called “net neutrality” that has prevented certain content or users from being slowed on the internet in the United States — an effort most Republicans say is misguided and counterproductive.
On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s December decision to repeal Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from favoring certain users or material. All 49 Democrats and one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, back the resolution in the 100-member chamber.
“All [net neutrality] does is protect the openness of the internet to competitors across the country,” said Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats. “I believe this resolution will restore us to a place where small businesses will be able to compete and blossom and prosper.”
Added Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “Net neutrality is our 21st century right, and we will fight to protect it. Eighty-three percent of Americans, in polling, say they want to protect net neutrality.”
Republicans insist they, too, believe in net neutrality, but want to safeguard it by crafting forward-looking legislation rather than re-imposing an outdated regulatory structure.
“Democrats have decided to take the issue of net neutrality and make it partisan,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota said. “Instead of working with Republicans to develop permanent net neutrality legislation, they’ve decided to try to score political points with a partisan resolution that would do nothing to permanently secure net neutrality.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Trump appointee, defended the commission’s decision at a recent telecommunications conference in Washington, saying antiquated and heavy-handed federal internet regulation slows innovation and discourages investment in cyberinfrastructure.
“If you want something to operate like a slow-moving utility [company], there is no better way to ensure that than by regulating it as such,” Pai said. “[The American people] want more access, they want competition. They want the internet to be better and faster and cheaper.”
The FCC chairman added that federal regulators retain the ability to crack down on any unfair practices regarding internet access, and that service providers are required to disclose whether they slow any content or offer paid so-called “fast lanes.”
Such assurances have not satisfied more than 20 U.S. states that sued to prevent the FCC’s decision from going into effect June 11. In Washington, Democrats say small-business owners are worried they will be at a disadvantage in reaching new customers if net neutrality disappears.
“It’s all about having equal access to the internet,” King said, pointing to Certify, a small Web-based company in Portland, Maine, as an example of what is at stake. “One hundred fifty employees. It has two million users around the globe — that’s because of the power of the internet. We don’t want that business to be choked off by a large competitor who can pay preferential rates [for internet access].”
America’s largest internet service providers have said they will not engage in “throttling” — dramatically slowing down certain content — once the new FCC rules go into effect next month.
The net neutrality resolution could pass in the Senate 50-49, given the absence of Arizona Republican John McCain. From there, it faces significant hurdles. Passage is seen as less likely in the Republican-led House of Representatives, and President Donald Trump is unlikely to sign a bill overriding a decision backed by the FCC chairman he selected.
Even so, Democrats see an opportunity to highlight an issue of concern to many Americans ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
“This vote will allow senators to show once and for all where everyone stands on #NetNeutrality,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted.
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Bill Cosby will be sentenced September 24 — five months after he was convicted of sexual assault.
Judge Steven O’Neill set the date on Tuesday. Cosby’s lawyers had asked to delay sentencing until December.
Cosby turns 81 in July and is likely to face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Cosby has been a prisoner in his suburban Philadelphia mansion since the April 26 conviction. That’s the home where jurors concluded he drugged and molested a former Temple University athletics administrator in January 2004.
O’Neill ordered Cosby outfitted with a GPS monitoring bracelet and said he needs permission to leave, and only to meet with lawyers or go to the doctor.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, as Constand has done.
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Twitter Inc on Tuesday revised its strategy for fighting abusive internet trolls,” saying it would use behavioral signals to identify harassers on the social network and then limit the visibility of their tweets.
San Francisco-based Twitter, known for freewheeling discussions since it was founded in 2006, has been trying to rid itself of harassment out of concern that personal attacks were driving people away.
Twitter’s rules already prohibit abuse, and it can suspend or block offenders once someone reports them. Users can also mute people they find offensive.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Twitter now would try to find problematic accounts by examining behavior such as how frequently people tweet about accounts that do not follow them or whether they have confirmed their email address.
Tweets from those accounts will appear lower in certain areas of the service, such as search results or replies to tweets, even if the tweets themselves have not been found to violate any rules.
“We want to take the burden of the work off the people receiving the abuse or the harassment,” Dorsey said in a briefing with reporters. Past efforts to fight abuse “felt like Whac-A-Mole,” he added.
Tweets will not be removed entirely based on behavioral signals, Dorsey said.
In tests the new approach resulted in a 4 percent decrease in abuse reports originating from search results and an 8 percent decrease in abuse reports from the conversations that take place as replies to tweets, according to the company.
Most abuse comes from a small number of accounts that have an outsized impact, said Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president for trust and safety.
Social media firms including Twitter and Facebook are under pressure to remove bullies, many of whom target women and minorities. Many women cannot express themselves freely on Twitter without fear of violence, Amnesty International said in a report in March.
Reducing abuse could also help Twitter’s business. If more people sign up and spend time on the service, marketers may buy more ads on it.
Dorsey said that Twitter’s 336 million monthly active users should expect a series of other changes over the next several months as the company explores ways to encourage tweets that are more civil.
In March, Twitter sought proposals from academics and others to help gauge the “health of public conversations.” Dorsey said the company is reviewing 230 submissions it received.
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Tom Wolfe, an early practitioner of “new journalism” who captured the mood and culture of America across five decades with books including “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” “The Right Stuff” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” died
on Tuesday at the age of 87, his agent said.
Wolfe, who had a knack for coining phrases such as “radical chic” and “the me decade,” died of an unspecified infection in a New York City hospital on Monday, his agent, Lynn Nesbit, said in a phone interview.
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The Dutch government is phasing out the use of anti-virus software made by Russian firm Kaspersky Lab amid fears of possible spying, despite vehement denials by the Moscow-based cybersecurity company.
The Dutch Justice and Security ministry said in a statement late Monday the decision had been taken as a “precautionary measure” in order “to guarantee national security.”
But Kaspersky Lab, whose anti-virus software is installed on some 400 million computers worldwide, said Tuesday it was “very disappointed” by the move.
The firm, which is suspected by US authorities of helping the Kremlin’s espionage efforts, also announced Tuesday that it was moving its core infrastructure and operations to Switzerland.
“Our new center in Switzerland will strengthen the proven integrity of Kaspersky Lab’s products, [and] significantly improve the resilience of our IT infrastructure to any trust risk — even theoretical ones,” the Russian company said in a statement.
Last year, the US federal government removed Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors, weeks after senior US intelligence agency and law enforcement officials expressed concerns about the safety of its software.
The Netherlands fears Kaspersky’s anti-virus software is “deep in systems” and any abuse could “pose a major security risk.”
Dutch officials also voiced concern that under Russian law companies such as Kaspersky are “required to cooperate with the Russian government.”
But the company hit back saying “Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage or offensive cyber efforts” and adding it was “being treated as guilty merely due to geopolitical issues.”
It said it would try to arrange a meeting soon with the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism to discuss the situation.
Dutch intelligence officials have increasingly warned however that they fear the Kremlin is trying to hack into Dutch companies and manipulate elections here.
“Russia has an active offensive cyber program focusing on the Netherlands and vital Dutch interests,” the ministry warned, adding it had therefore concluded there was a risk of “digital espionage and sabotage.”
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Britain’s Prince Harry, who is sixth in line to the throne, and American Meghan Markle, who is best known for her former role in the TV drama Suits, are due to marry this Saturday in Windsor, England.
For many fans, it is a fairy-tale romance and Meghan breaks the mold of the demure princess, says British royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams.
“Meghan is an American biracial divorcee who is an activist, a feminist and former actress. Those were credentials that might well have barred her from marrying a senior member of the royal family only a relatively short time ago. Now they are being positively welcomed,” he said.
In Britain, the day has added significance for many who watched a 12-year-old Harry grieve at the funeral of his mother, Princess Diana. The prince, now 33, cites her as his inspiration for the charitable work that he and Meghan will continue as a couple.
“She’s been an activist for much of her life,” Fitzwilliams said of Meghan. “This is taking the role to a new level and she can lobby at the very top.”
However, that lobbying has a limit. Some fear Meghan’s outspoken nature may not go over well in the gilded corridors of a royal dynasty where politics is taboo.
“The royal family does things quietly, with dignity,” said Thomas Mace-Archer-Mills, a self-styled royal obsessive and founder of the British Monarchist Society, “and that’s what we count on them for. So it’s going to be very difficult for her to really curtail her activism. And we’ve seen a few stumbles here and there as she’s been acclimating to royal life.”
Meghan and Harry met in 2016, reportedly in Canada, although the full details surrounding their early romance remain hazy. The couple announced their engagement last November in the gardens of London’s Kensington Palace, where Harry was raised by Diana and Prince Charles, alongside his older brother, William.
For Britons, the wedding will mark a particularly happy milestone for Harry, said Fitzwilliams.
“This will be the royal wild child who has developed beyond levels that perhaps we thought he would.”
The death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash scarred a nation and deprived two young boys of their devoted mother. In recent years, Harry has described the mental trauma of the funeral.
“It was an extraordinary experience,” Fitzwilliams said. “There is no doubt that he’s had some deeply troubling times. The army has made him, and also it’s very important to remember his commitment to charity.”
Those twin passions have seen Harry serve in Afghanistan and champion charitable causes around the world, including the Sentebale charity for young people affected by AIDS and the Invictus Games for wounded servicemen and women. Both he and Meghan have spoken of their desire to build on that work.
While it may take some time for Meghan to adjust to life in the royal family, she’s already laying down a few domestic ground rules, according to Mace-Archer-Mills.
“She’s brought a California lifestyle to Britain,” he said. “She’s slimming him down, she’s putting him on [diet of] shakes, eating less meat. What Brit do you know that doesn’t like meat?”
It is the tale of the royal wild child tamed by the American star. While millions will tune in for the wedding, many more will watch with fascination in the coming years as the new couple make their way in the world.
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Britain’s Prince Harry, sixth in line to the throne, and American Meghan Markle, best known for her former role in the TV drama “Suits,” are due to marry Saturday (May 19) in Windsor, England. For many fans, it is a fairy-tale romance as a former American actress becomes a princess; and the marriage also breaks many of the unspoken conventions of the British royal family. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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