09/08/2018 | UPONSOFT

Osaka Claims Women’s US Open Title After Williams’ Meltdown

By Uponent | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Naomi Osaka became Japan’s first Grand Slam singles champion after she thumped Serena Williams 6-2 6-4 in a controversial U.S. Open final on Saturday, with the American suffering a mesmerizing meltdown after being handed a code violation.

It was drama-filled conclusion to a final that was rich with story lines but will now go down as one of the most controversial Grand Slam finals of all time.

There was much riding on the match for both women, with Osaka bidding to become the first man or woman from Japan to win a Grand Slam singles title and Williams poised to equal Margaret Court’s record of 24 major titles.

In the end it was Osaka making history, but on a day of bizarre events her victory will be a only footnote to what is sure to go down as one of the most infamous matches ever played at Flushing Meadows.

The chaotic finish filled with screaming, tears and jeers cast a cloud over what should have been Osaka’s shining moment.

Standing on the podium, waiting to be handed her trophy and a winner’s check for $3.8 million, Osaka heard only boos as an angry crowd took out their frustration on Portuguese chair umpire Carlos Ramos, who stood to the side.

“I know everyone was cheering for her and I’m sorry it had to end like this,” said Osaka. “It was always my dream to play Serena in the U.S. Open finals. … I’m really grateful I was able to play with you.”

Coach’s signals

With Osaka in control of the match after taking the first set, Ramos sent Williams into a rage when he handed the 23-time Grand Slam champion a code violation in the second game of the second set after he spotted the American’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, making some hand signals from the player’s box.

A string of bad behavior followed from Williams and she went on to incur a point penalty for smashing her racket before being slapped with a game penalty after she launched into a verbal attack against Ramos, accusing him of being “a liar” and “a thief for stealing a point from me.”

The game penalty put Osaka 5-3 up and the 20-year-old Japanese kept her cool to pull off the win.

Mouratoglou later admitted he had been coaching, but in another strange twist an unrepentant Williams continued to deny she had received any advice and was instead a victim of sexism.

“He [Ramos] alleged that I was cheating, and I wasn’t cheating,” said Williams. “I’ve seen other men call other umpires several things.

“I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of stuff.

“For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark.”

Almost lost in the chaos was a fearless and cool display from Osaka.

Before Williams’ meltdown, Osaka had already put the 36-year-old under rarely seen pressure.

Osaka had given Williams plenty of respect but no other concessions as she grabbed the early break on a double fault by her idol for a 2-1 first set lead she would not let go.

Playing on tennis’ biggest stage in her first Grand Slam final, the significance of the moment did not faze Osaka, while Williams, contesting her 31st major final, looked unsteady.

Previous incident

Williams’ implosion was not a totally unfamiliar sight for tennis fans, who watched a similar meltdown nine years earlier at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Playing the semifinals against Kim Clijsters, Williams flew into a rage after a line judge called her for a foot fault, leaving a match point down to the Belgian.

Williams launched into an expletive-laced rant at the official. She waved her racket in the lineswoman’s direction and then shook a ball in her clenched fist as she threatened to “shove it down” her throat.

Organizers fined her $10,500 at the end of the tournament for her unsportsmanlike behavior, and she was later fined an additional $175,000 and put on probation for two years by the Grand Slam Committee.

Williams could face further sanctions for her actions on Saturday against Osaka; the Women’s Tennis Association said in a statement that it would be looking into the incident.

“There are matters that need to be looked into that took place during the match,” said the WTA. “For tonight, it is time to celebrate these two amazing players, both of whom have great integrity.”
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Mexican Drama ‘Roma’ wins Venice for Cuaron, Netflix

By Uponent | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, bringing Netflix its first major festival victory to seal the online streaming company’s reputation as a big name in arthouse movies.

Roma, named after the neighborhood in Mexico City where writer-director-cinematographer Cuaron grew up, is a Spanish-language drama that critics almost unanimously described as “shimmering” because of its luscious black-and-white cinematography.

At a festival where only one of the 21 films selected to compete for the Golden Lion was directed by a woman, Roma was one of several that focused almost exclusively on female characters — in this case, Cuaron’s mother and the two maids who helped bring him up.

Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy called it “an immersive bath in some of the most luxuriantly beautiful black-and-white images you’ve ever seen” and a huge change from the Sandra Bullock adventure Gravity which won Cuaron his Oscar in 2014.

The win is important for Netflix as it seeks to position itself as a major force in film, after it boycotted the Cannes festival in May because of French rules that ban simultaneous streaming of films shown in cinemas.

Another one of its movies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a comedy-western written and directed by the Coen brothers, won best screenplay.

Runner-up

The Favourite, which, like Roma has a strong female focus, won the runner-up Grand Jury Prize, and its star, Olivia Colman, received the Volpi Cup for best actress for her uproarious portrayal of England’s Queen Anne.

Willem Dafoe won the award for best actor for his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in the biopic At Eternity’s Gate.

Jennifer Kent, the only female director in the main competition, won the Special Jury Prize for The Nightingale, a revenge thriller set in 1825 in Australia whose male lead, Baykali Ganambarr, won for best up-and-coming actor/actress.

Dedicating the award to the indigenous people of Tasmania, whose brutal treatment by the British is explicitly played out in the film, Kent said in her acceptance speech: “The feminine force is the most powerful and healing force on the planet so I hope and I’m confident that next year, and the year after, and the year after, we’ll see more and more women inhabiting this

space.”
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Flush From End of Bailout, Greek PM Announces Tax Breaks

By Uponbiz | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Business

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Saturday unveiled plans for tax cuts and pledged spending to heal years of painful austerity, less than a month after Greece emerged from a bailout program financed by its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund.

Tsipras, who faces elections in about a year, used a keynote policy speech in the northern city of Thessaloniki to announce a spending spree that he said would help fix the ills of years of belt-tightening and help boost growth.

But he said Athens was also committed to sticking to the fiscal targets pledged to lenders.

“We will not allow Greece to revert to the era of deficits and fiscal derailment,” he told an audience of officials, diplomats and businessmen.

Tsipras promised a phased reduction of the corporate tax to 25 percent from 29 percent from next year, as well as an average 30 percent reduction in a deeply unpopular annual property tax on homeowners, rising to 50 percent for low earners.

He also said a pledge to maintain a primary budget surplus at the equivalent of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product could be achieved without further pension cuts, and that he would discuss this with the European Commission.

The government had been expected to announce further pension cuts next year — a deeply controversial measure in a country where high unemployment means that pensioners are occasionally the primary family earners. It is also a group that has been targeted for cutbacks more than a dozen times since 2010.

The leftist premier said he would also reinstate labor rights and increase the minimum wage. And he said the state would either reduce or subsidize social security contributions for certain sections of the workforce.
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Trump: Apple Can Avoid Tariffs by Shifting Production to US

By Uponsil | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

President Donald Trump concedes that some Apple Inc. products may become more expensive if his administration imposes “massive” additional tariffs on Chinese-made goods, but he says the tech company can fix the problem by moving production to the U.S.

“Start building new plants now. Exciting!” Trump said Saturday in a tweet aimed at the Cupertino, California, company.

This week, Apple said that a proposed additional round of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports would raise prices on some of its products, including the Apple Watch and the Mac mini.

The company is highly exposed to a trade war between the U.S. and China. It makes many of its products for the U.S. market in China, and it also sells gadgets including the iPhone in China, making them a potential target for Chinese retaliation against the Trump tariffs.

Trump tweeted Saturday that “Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China — but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive,” if the company made its products in the U.S. instead of China.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has not announced plans to move manufacturing from China to the U.S.

‘Tax on U.S. consumers’

In its letter this week to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Apple said that “because all tariffs ultimately show up as a tax on U.S. consumers, they will increase the cost of Apple products that our customers have come to rely on in their daily lives.”

The company said tariffs would hit “a wide range of Apple products,” including computers, watches, adapters, chargers and tools used in its U.S. manufacturing, repair and data centers. Apple said the tariffs would raise the cost of its U.S. operations and put it at a disadvantage to foreign rivals.

The White House has accused China of stealing U.S. intellectual property and forcing American companies to share their technology with Chinese companies. The tariffs would pressure China to stop that behavior, the administration has said. Apple said “it is difficult to see” how tariffs would advance the government’s goal.

The presidential tweet was the latest salvo in a dispute between the Trump administration and companies that fear tariffs will hurt their business.

The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports from China, mostly equipment and material used by manufacturers. CEO Tim Cook said in July that those measures had no effect on Apple. The company is concerned, however, about the Trump administration’s proposal to add 25 percent duties on another $200 billion in Chinese goods, including a wider assortment of consumer-related items.
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Officials: 2 Health Scares at US Airports Tied to Mecca Pilgrims

By Uponsci | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Science

Two major health scares at U.S. airports involving inbound flights are related to pilgrims returning from the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which ended in late August, U.S. health officials said on Friday.

On Wednesday, U.S. health officials sent an emergency response team with mobile diagnostic equipment to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after they were told that more than 100 passengers aboard an Emirates airlines flight from Dubai were experiencing flu-like symptoms.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director for the division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters in a telephone interview that health officials evaluated nearly 549 passengers at the airport, and sent a total of 11 people to a local hospital for more testing.

Ten people were tested for a battery of respiratory viruses and bacteria in hopes of ruling out serious pathogens that could present a public health threat.

Two of them tested positive for an especially virulent type of influenza A virus, and one of the two, who was gravely ill with pneumonia, was co-infected with another respiratory virus, Cetron said. A third person tested positive for a cold virus.

All three had taken part in the Hajj, which this year drew some 2 million people to Mecca, Cetron said.

Seven crew members, who boarded the flight in Dubai and were not at the pilgrimage, tested negative for a number of respiratory infections of public health concern, Cetron said. The next day, two flights arriving in Philadelphia from Europe were screened by medical teams after 12 passengers reported flu-like symptoms. One of them had visited Mecca for the Hajj.

Cetron said health officials in New York had been prepared to quarantine a large group of sick passengers in an area at the airport. From a total of 11 passengers taken to hospital for evaluation, 10 were tested for respiratory symptoms; one showed signs of food poisoning.

“It was a much smaller incident. That’s not uncommon,” Cetron said. “Often the incoming information from multiple sources can be exaggerated beyond what we really find.”

All 10 patients with respiratory symptoms tested negative for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS, a highly infectious and deadly respiratory infection that was first identified in the Middle East in 2012.

The CDC was not alerted in advance about the two flights that landed in Philadelphia from Paris and Munich, but several travelers had complained of illness, triggering a “medical review” of 250 passengers from those flights, a spokesman said.

Twelve passengers were found to have sore throats and coughs, and one also tested positive for the flu, a CDC spokesman confirmed.

The responses were part of a well-rehearsed network of public health officials trained to identify and contain pathogens as U.S. airports and ports of entry, Cetron said.

“Our most critical issue was to rule several respiratory illnesses of urgent public health significance,” Cetron said.

Cetron said the CDC monitors databases to track outbreaks of infectious disease that could post a treat in the United States. Although unlikely, MERS was definitely a concern that the team needed to rule out, he said.

“That was a low-probability, high consequence event that we wanted to rule out,” he said.

The CDC said in a statement that the cases were a reminder that flu season is coming, and urged all U.S. citizens six months or older to get a flu shot by the end of October.
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Trump Says US, Japan Have Begun Talks on Trade

By Uponbiz | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Business

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday the United States and Japan have begun discussion over trade, saying that Tokyo “knows it’s a big problem” if an agreement cannot be reached, and that India has also asked to start talks on a trade deal.

“We’re starting that,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “In fact Japan has called us … they came last week.”

“If we don’t make a deal with Japan, Japan knows it’s a big problem,” he added.

Later in a speech in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Trump said:

“India called us the other day. They said we’d like to start doing a trade deal. First time.”

“They wouldn’t talk about it with the previous administrations. They were very happy with the way it was,” he said without giving further details.

Trump, who is already challenging China, Mexico, Canada and the European Union on trade issues, has expressed displeasure about his country’s large trade deficit with Japan, but had not asked Tokyo to take specific steps to address the imbalance.

On Thursday, though, CNBC reported he had told a Wall Street Journal columnist he might take on trade issues with Japan, causing the dollar to slip against the yen. The White House said Trump would push for fair trade.

“The president has been clear that he will fight to promote free, fair, and reciprocal trade with countries around the world, including Japan, that impose a range of restrictions on U.S. market access,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement.

“The United States and Japan have been in close contact on ways to address such barriers, including through the U.S.-Japan Economic Dialogue.”
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China’s August Trade Surplus With US Hits Record $31 Billion

By Uponbiz | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Business

China’s trade surplus with the United States reached a record $31 billion in August, despite hefty tariffs recently imposed on Chinese goods.

The news of the surplus came just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose another $267 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports, which would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.

The potential tariffs would come on top of punitive levies on $50 billion in Chinese goods already in place as well as another $200 billion that Trump says “could take place very soon.”

He told reporters traveling with him to Fargo, North Dakota “behind that, there’s another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want.”

“That changes the equation,” he added.

Such a move would subject virtually all U.S. imports from China to new duties.

The president’s comments Friday came one day after a public comment period ended on his proposal to add duties on $200 billion of Chinese imports.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday the Trump administration would evaluate the public comments before making any decisions on the new proposed tariffs.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office received nearly 6,000 comments during seven days of public hearings on the proposal.

The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.

It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cyber theft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.

China has retaliated to the U.S. tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese imports with an equal amount of import taxes on U.S. goods. It has also threatened to retaliate against any potential new tariffs. However, China’s imports from the United States are $200 billion a year less than American imports from China, so it would run out of room to match U.S. sanctions.
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‘Just Do It:’ Nike’s Latest Ad Campaign Gets Political

By Uponent | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

On the 30th anniversary of Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan, the apparel and footwear company announced a new endorsement deal and ad starring former NFL player Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick’s decision to kneel in protest of police brutality during the national anthem at NFL games has sparked controversy across the country, with the fallout further blurring the line between sports and politics in the United States. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has more.
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Converting Body Heat Into Electricity To Power Sensors

By Uponsil | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

The number of wearable technologies that use sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being – is on the rise. All of them – need an electric charge or a battery source to operate, but a handful of researchers are trying to take batteries out of the equation. At the Texas A&M University in College Station, researchers are doing just that – looking at ways to use our own body heat to power all those sensors. Elizabeth Lee takes a look at the emerging new technology.
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Body Heat Converted Into Electricity Powers Health Sensors

By Uponsil | 09/08/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

There has been an increasing number of wearable technologies that have health sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being. Many of these devices need to be charged or are battery-powered.

A handful of researchers want to take batteries out of the equation and instead, use waste body heat and convert that into useful electricity to power sensors.

“The average person is something like an 80-watt light bulb,” said Jamie Grunlan, Texas A&M University’s Linda & Ralph Schmidt ’68 Professor in Mechanical Engineering.

Grunlan and his team of researchers are working on using the waste heat the body gives off and converting that into useful electricity. The idea is to create printable, paintable thermoelectric technology that looks like ink and can coat a wearable fabric, similar to dyeing colors onto cloth. Once a person wears the fabric, devices such as health sensors can be powered.

“Our coating coats every fiber within that textile, and so what’s drawing it is simply that textile needs to just be touching the heat source or be close enough to the heat source to be feeling the heat source,” Grunlan said.

Military and sporting goods companies have applications for this type of technology because there is not a large battery pack worn on the body that could be a cause of injury if the person would fall.

“They would love to power health sensors off of body heat and then wirelessly transmit that data to wherever,” Grunlan explained. “You’d like to know if somebody had a concussion or was dehydrated or something like that while it’s happening in real time.”

As a person generates heat, the temperature outside is colder than what’s against the body. The temperature differential generates a voltage.

The goal is to design technology that can get one volt or up to 10 percent efficiency and beyond. So, for example, a researcher would try to get eight watts from a person who is generating 80 watts.

The ingredients in this thermoelectric recipe include carbon nanotubes, polymers and a carbon material called graphene, which is a nanoparticle.

Researchers are trying to perfect the recipe of this ink-like material.

“The one voltage is realistic, but how much material do we need to get that one voltage because we need as little as possible?” said Carolyn Long, a Ph.D. graduate student at Texas A&M.

“So, different polymers, different amounts of the multi-walled or double-walled nanotubes, adding the graphene, which order it needs to go in exactly to create the best pathway for the electrons for the thermoelectric material,” said Long of the various experiments she and her lab mates have conducted.

The aim is to create a product that can be mass produced.

“It will happen. It’s not will it happen. It’s when. Is it a year, or is it five years?” Grunlan said.

That will depend on how much funding and manpower is available to make this technology a reality.
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