Day: October 3, 2018

North Korea Said to Have Stolen a Fortune in Online Bank Heists

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests have stopped, but its hacking operations to gather intelligence and raise funds for the sanction-strapped government in Pyongyang may be gathering steam.

U.S. security firm FireEye raised the alarm Wednesday over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries. It says the group is still operating and poses “an active global threat.”

It is part of a wider pattern of malicious state-backed cyber activity that has led the Trump administration to identify North Korea — along with Russia, Iran and China — as one of the main online threats facing the United States. Last month, the Justice Department charged a North Korean hacker said to have conspired in devastating cyberattacks, including an $81 million heist of Bangladesh’s central bank and the WannaCry virus that crippled parts of Britain’s National Health Service.

DHS offers warning

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of the use of malware by Hidden Cobra, the U.S. government’s byword for North Korea hackers, in fraudulent ATM cash withdrawals from banks in Asia and Africa. It said that Hidden Cobra was behind the theft of tens of millions of dollars from teller machines in the past two years. In one incident this year, cash had been simultaneously withdrawn from ATMs in 23 different countries, it said.

North Korea, which prohibits access to the world wide web for virtually all of its people, has previously denied involvement in cyberattacks, and attribution for such attacks is rarely made with absolute certainty. It is typically based on technical indicators such as the Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses that identify computers and characteristics of the coding used in malware, which is the software a hacker may use to damage or disable computers.

But other cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press that they also see continued signs that North Korea’s authoritarian government, which has a long track record of criminality to raise cash, is conducting malign activity online. That activity includes targeting of financial institutions and crypto-currency-related organizations, as well as spying on its adversaries, despite the easing of tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

“The reality is they are starved for cash and are continuing to try and generate revenue, at least until sanctions are diminished,” said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike. “At the same time, they won’t abate in intelligence collection operations, as they continue to negotiate and test the international community’s resolve and test what the boundaries are.”

North Korea attacks continue

CrowdStrike says it has detected continuing North Korean cyber intrusions in the past two months, including the use of a known malware against a potentially broad set of targets in South Korea, and a new variant of malware against users of mobile devices that use a Linux-based operating system.

This activity has been taking place against the backdrop of a dramatic diplomatic shift as Kim Jong Un has opened up to the world. He has held summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and with President Donald Trump, who hopes to persuade Kim to relinquish the nuclear weapons that pose a potential threat to the U.S. homeland. Tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have dropped and fears of war with the U.S. have ebbed. Trump this weekend will dispatch his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, to Pyongyang for the fourth time this year to make progress on denuclearization.

But North Korea has yet to take concrete steps to give up its nuclear arsenal, so there’s been no let-up in sanctions that have been imposed to deprive it of fuel and revenue for its weapons programs, and to block it from bulk cash transfers and accessing to the international banking system.

FireEye says APT38, the name it gives to the hacking group dedicated to bank theft, has emerged and stepped up its operations since February 2014 as the economic vise on North Korea has tightened in response to its nuclear and missile tests. Initial operations targeted financial institutions in Southeast Asia, where North Korea had experience in money laundering, but then expanded into other regions such as Latin America and Africa, and then extended to Europe and North America.

In all, FireEye says APT38 has attempted to steal $1.1 billion, and based on the data it can confirm, has gotten away with hundreds of millions in dollars. It has used malware to insert fraudulent transactions in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT system that is used to transfer money between banks. Its biggest heist to date was $81 million stolen from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016. The funds were wired to bank accounts established with fake identities in the Philippines. After the funds were withdrawn they were suspected to have been laundered in casinos.

Cyber attacks an alternative 

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said in a report Wednesday that North Korea’s cyber capabilities provide an alternative means for challenging its adversaries. While Kim’s hereditary regime appears to prioritize currency generation, attacks using the SWIFT system raise concerns that North Korean hackers “may become more proficient at manipulating the data and systems that undergird the global financial system,” it says.

Sandra Joyce, FireEye’s head of global intelligence, said that while APT38 is a criminal operation, it leverages the skills and technology of a state-backed espionage campaign, allowing it to infiltrate multiple banks at once and figure how to extract funds. On average, it dwells in a bank’s computer network for 155 days to learn about its systems before it tries to steal anything. And when it finally pounces, it uses aggressive malware to wreak havoc and cover its tracks.

“We see this as a consistent effort, before, during and after any diplomatic efforts by the United States and the international community,” said Joyce, describing North Korea as being “undeterred” and urging the U.S. government to provide more specific threat information to financial institutions about APT38’s modus operandi. APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat.

Large Chile bank hacked

The Silicon Valley-based company says it is aware of continuing, suspected APT38 operations against other banks. The most recent attack it is publicly attributing to APT38 was against of Chile’s biggest commercial banks, Banco de Chile, in May this year. The bank has said a hacking operation robbed it of $10 million.

FireEye, which is staffed with a roster of former military and law-enforcement cyberexperts, conducted malware analysis for a criminal indictment by the Justice Department last month against Park Jin Hyok, the first time a hacker said to be from North Korea has faced U.S. criminal charges. He’s accused of conspiring in a number of devastating cyberattacks: the Bangladesh heist and other attempts to steal more than $1 billion from financial institutions around the world; the 2014 breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment; and the WannaCry ransomware virus that in 2017 infected computers in 150 countries. 
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Meet Farmers of  Future: Robot

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He’s heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he’s strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own.

Sure, Angus is a robot. But don’t hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO.

To Alexander, Angus and other robots are key to a new wave of local agriculture that aims to raise lettuce, basil and other produce in metropolitan areas while conserving water and sidestepping the high costs of human labor. It’s a big challenge, and some earlier efforts have flopped. Even Google’s “moonshot” laboratory, known as X, couldn’t figure out how to make the economics work.

After raising $6 million and tinkering with autonomous robots for two years, Alexander’s startup Iron Ox says it’s ready to start delivering crops of its robotically grown vegetables to people’s salad bowls. “And they are going to be the best salads you ever tasted,” says the 33-year-old Alexander, a one-time Oklahoma farmboy turned Google engineer turned startup CEO.

Iron Ox planted its first robot farm in an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in San Carlos, California, a suburb located 25 miles south of San Francisco. Although no deals have been struck yet, Alexander says Iron Ox has been talking to San Francisco Bay area restaurants interested in buying its leafy vegetables and expects to begin selling to supermarkets next year.

The San Carlos warehouse is only a proving ground for Iron Ox’s long-term goals. It plans to set up robot farms in greenhouses that will rely mostly on natural sunlight instead of high-powered indoor lighting that sucks up expensive electricity. Initially, though, the company will sell its produce at a loss in order to remain competitive.

During the next few years, Iron Ox wants to open robot farms near metropolitan areas across the U.S. to serve up fresher produce to restaurants and supermarkets. Most of the vegetables and fruit consumed in the U.S. is grown in California, Arizona, Mexico and other nations. That means many people in U.S. cities are eating lettuce that’s nearly a week old by the time it’s delivered.

There are bigger stakes as well. The world’s population is expected to swell to 10 billion by 2050 from about 7.5 billion now, making it important to find ways to feed more people without further environmental impact, according to a report from the World Resources Institute.

Iron Ox, Alexander reasons, can be part of the solution if its system can make the leap from its small, laboratory-like setting to much larger greenhouses.

The startup relies on a hydroponic system that conserves water and automation in place of humans who seem increasingly less interested in U.S. farming jobs that pay an average of $13.32 per hour, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of U.S. farmworkers planting and picking crops aren’t in the U.S. legally, based on a survey by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The heavy lifting on Iron Ox’s indoor farm is done by Angus, which rolls about the indoor farm on omnidirectional wheels. Its main job is to shuttle maturing produce to another, as-yet unnamed robot, which transfers plants from smaller growing pods to larger ones, using a mechanical arm whose joints are lubricated with “food-safe” grease.

It’s a tedious process to gently pick up each of the roughly 250 plants on each pallet and transfer them to their bigger pods, but the robot doesn’t seem to mind the work. Iron Ox still relies on people to clip its vegetables when they are ready for harvest, but Alexander says it is working on another robot that will eventually handle that job too.

Alexander formerly worked on robotics at Google X, but worked on drones, not indoor farms. While there, he met Jon Binney, Iron Ox’s co-founder and chief technology offer. The two men became friends and began to brainstorm about ways they might be able to use their engineering skills for the greater good.

“If we can feed people using robots, what could be more impactful than that?” Alexander says.

 

                 
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Putin Hopes Europe Will Resist US Pressure on Germany Pipeline

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday strongly defended a prospective Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline as economically feasible and voiced hope that European Union nations will be able to resist U.S. pressure to thwart the project.

U.S. officials have warned that Washington could impose sanctions on the undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The U.S. and some EU nations oppose it, warning it would increase Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. The U.S. is also interested in selling more of its liquefied natural gas in Europe.

Speaking Wednesday after talks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in St. Petersburg, Putin noted that Bulgaria caved in to pressure and dumped the Russian South Stream pipeline.

He added that he hopes that “Europe as a whole won’t look like Bulgaria and won’t demonstrate its weakness and inability to protect its interests.”

“Russia always has been and will remain the most reliable supplier,” Putin said, adding that the Russian gas supplied via pipelines is significantly cheaper than U.S. liquefied gas. “Supplies come directly from Yamal in Siberia. There are no transit risks.”

It would be “silly and wasteful” if Europe opts for a more expensive option, hurting its consumers and its global competitiveness, Putin charged.

Ukraine, which has served as the main transit route for Russian gas supplies to Europe, has strongly opposed the Russian pipeline, fearing that it would leave its pipeline empty. The two ex-Soviet neighbors have been locked in a bitter tug-of-war after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Kurz spoke in support of Nord Stream 2 but also emphasized the importance to continue supplies via Ukraine.

“It’s very important that Ukraine’s interests as a key transit country be upheld,” he said.

Putin has previously pledged to consider the continuation of gas supplies via Ukraine if it settles a commercial dispute with Russia over previous gas supplies.
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Irish Regulator Opens Facebook Data Breach Investigation

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Ireland’s data regulator has launched an investigation of Facebook over a recent data breach that allowed hackers access 50 million accounts which could potentially cost Facebook more than $1.6 billion in fines.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said Wednesday that it will look into whether the U.S. social media company complied with European regulations that went into effect earlier this year covering data protection.

It’s the latest headache for Facebook in Europe, where authorities are turning up the heat on dominant tech firms over data protection. Last month, European Union consumer protection chief Vera Jourova said that she was growing impatient with Facebook for being too slow in clarifying the fine print in its terms of service covering what happens to user data and warned that the company could face sanctions.

The commission said in a statement that it would examine whether Facebook put in place “appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security and safeguarding of the personal data it processes.”

The commission said earlier this week the number of EU accounts potentially affected numbered less than 5 million.

Ireland, which is Facebook’s lead privacy regulator for Europe, is moving swiftly to investigate the U.S. tech company since the breach became public on Friday.

Facebook said Friday attackers gained the ability to “seize control” of user accounts by stealing digital keys the company uses to keep users logged in. They could do so by exploiting three distinct bugs in Facebook’s code.

The company said it has fixed the bugs and logged out the 50 million breached users — plus another 40 million who were vulnerable to the attack — in order to reset those digital keys. Facebook said it doesn’t know who was behind the attacks or where they’re based. Neither passwords nor credit card data was stolen. At the time, the company said it alerted the FBI and regulators in the U.S. and Europe.

Facebook on Wednesday didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Facebook has faced a tumultuous year of security problems and privacy issues . News broke early this year that a data analytics firm once employed by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly gained access to personal data from millions of user profiles. Then a congressional investigation found that agents from Russia and other countries have been posting fake political ads since at least 2016. In April, Zuckerberg appeared at a congressional hearing focused on Facebook’s privacy practices.

The European Union implemented stronger data and privacy rules, known as General Data Protection Regulation, in May.

The case could prove to be the first major test of GDPR. Under the new rules, companies could be hit with fines equal to 4 percent of annual global turnover for the most serious violations. In Facebook’s case, that could amount to more than $1.6 billion based on its 2017 revenues.

The new rules also require companies to disclose any breaches within 72 hours. The commission said Facebook informed it that its internal investigation is continuing and that it is taking actions to “mitigate the potential risk to users.”
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7-Year-Old Toy Reviewer on YouTube Becomes Toy Himself

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Seven-year-old Ryan drew millions of views reviewing toys on YouTube. Now, he’s become a toy himself.

Walmart is selling action figures in his likeness, putty with his face on the packaging and other toys under the Ryan’s World brand. It’s a bet that kids, who are spending more time tapping tablets, will recognize Ryan from YouTube and want the toys he’s hawking.

The new line may also help Walmart lure former Toys R Us shoppers, as many chains make a play for those customers ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The first-grader, who’s been making YouTube videos for three years, has become a major influencer in the toy industry. The clips typically show him unboxing a toy, playing with it and then waving goodbye to viewers. His most watched video, in which Ryan hunts for large plastic eggs, has more than 1.5 billion views.

Toys featured in the videos can see a spike in sales, says Jim Silver, editor of toy review site TTPM.com. “Ryan is a celebrity,” he said. “Kids watch his videos. He’s entertaining.”

So much so that toymakers have paid Ryan and his parents to feature their products. Forbes magazine estimated that the Ryan ToysReview YouTube channel brought in $11 million last year, but his parents, Shion and Loann, declined to confirm that number or give any financial details about Ryan’s deals. They also do not give their last name or say where they live for privacy and safety reasons.

Ryan’s path from reviewer to tiny toy mogul started last year when his parents signed with Pocket.watch, a two-year-old company that works with several YouTube personalities to get their names on clothing, books and other products. Ryan is the first with a product line because of his large audience, Pocket.watch says.

Last month, Walmart started selling Ryan’s World bright-colored slime for $4, 5-inch Ryan action figures for $9 and french fry-shaped squishy toys for $18. The retailer is the exclusive seller of some of the line, including T-shirts and stuffed animals.

Whether kids will want them “all comes down to the toy,” says Silver, adding that hits are made on the playground, where youngsters show off their toys and tell others about it.

What Ryan does have is a built-in audience. A video of him searching the aisles of Walmart for Ryan’s World toys has nearly 10 million views in a month, and his YouTube page has more than 16 million subscribers. Anne Marie Kehoe, who oversees Walmart’s toy department, says a couple of thousand people showed up to a recent appearance at an Arkansas store just to see a kid “jumping around and acting crazy.”

Ryan, in a phone interview, says a lot of those people wanted his picture. He then left the phone call to play.

His parents, who stayed on the line, say Ryan spends about 90 minutes a week recording YouTube videos. They say he helped with the creation of some of the toys, like when he asked for an evil twin version of himself for a figurine.

“I’m always amazed at the point of view Ryan has,” said his dad, Shion.

Chris Williams, Pocket.watch’s founder and CEO, sees Ryan as a franchise, like how “Nickelodeon looks at SpongeBob.”

But unlike a cartoon sponge, Ryan will grow up. Williams says he expects the products to evolve with Ryan’s taste. And Ryan’s parents agree, saying they’re prepared to follow his interests as he gets older, like to video games.

“We can change,” Shion said.
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Chelsea Clinton Fights Cyberbullying by Answering Trolls

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Chelsea Clinton says she’s naturally an optimist and despite enduring name-calling from the time she was a child, she chooses to answer insults — even on Twitter — with kindness and respect.

“Cyberbullying is a huge challenge across our country. I think we need those of us with platforms to not ignore the trolls, not to become consumed by them, but to shine a light and say here’s how you can respond where you’re calmly defending yourself but you’re also showing it’s not OK and you’re not degrading your own humanity in doing that,” the 38-year-old mother of two said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

It’s one of several messages in her new book, “Start Now! You Can Make a Difference,” released this week. In it, Clinton encourages children to make a positive change in the world by educating themselves and taking action. The book focuses on preserving the environment, helping save animals, staying healthy and putting an end to bullying.

“Start Now!” is Clinton’s fourth children’s book. Her role as an author is one of several that Clinton juggles, including motherhood, being vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation and teaching at Columbia University. Her latest book was inspired by the notion that age doesn’t matter when it comes to activism.

“I’ve always believed that you’re never too young or too old to make a difference. And then when I became a mom, I think I felt that even more keenly because all of a sudden I had, you know, first Charlotte and then Aidan, these little people in the world, I wanted the world to be a healthier, more equitable, more just safer place for them than previous generations,” she said.

Making the world a safer place, in Clinton’s eyes, also means abolishing bullying.

It’s a topic Clinton knows only too well, enduring brutal criticism of her looks when she was growing up in the White House (“Saturday Night Live” did a skit poking fun at her at the time). There were also those who targeted her because she was the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

“So when I was confronted directly — even as a child — and people would say awful things to me, I would say, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t feel that way. I don’t think I’m ugly or born in sin or the family dog or that my parents should have aborted me or you know that like we all should be dead,’” she recalled. “I mean these are all things that people said to me when I was a kid and they were always said by much older people.”

Decades later, the taunts still come — these days via social media. At first Clinton ignored them, but recently she started to speak up.

“I started to worry that by ignoring it, it wasn’t depriving the trolls of oxygen, it was maybe taken as kind of implicit — not endorsement — but that I was somehow OK with that language and that behavior,” she said. “And I think particularly being a parent now I never want my kids or any kid to think that that’s OK.”

She added: “And I do think even if you don’t agree with me politically it’s never OK to attack me personally in the same way, like if I don’t agree with you politically it’s never OK for me to attack you personally, and so I want my children to see their mom standing up for respect and kindness and to know that that is not a sign of weakness.”

Clinton pointed to a recent mention of her family that came from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as he defended himself against sexual assault allegations in a combative hearing on Capitol Hill. He said allegations against him came from Democrats seeking revenge over the Clintons; Kavanaugh was an investigator for Kenneth Starr, who led the probe of then-President Bill Clinton that led to his impeachment.

While Clinton had already opposed Kavanaugh — in part over concerns about abortion rights — when he mentioned her family, her feelings were cemented.

“I thought, ‘Oh goodness like judge Kavanaugh, I don’t even think I knew who you were until you were nominated.’ So clearly we were looming larger in your mind than at least you were looming in mine,” she said. “But even if he’d gone after a former Republican president or a current Republican senator or politician I would feel the same way, that that kind of blatant partisanship should be disqualifying.”

While Clinton worked for her mother during the 2016 presidential campaign, she’s hoping the people who pick up “Start Now!” will be Democrats and Republicans.

“And I hope that children whose families come from across the political spectrum would read this book and then think about how to channel whatever kind of their political values are … into issues that they care about.”

 
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Child Advocates File FTC Complaint Against Facebook Kids’ App

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Children’s and public health advocacy groups say Facebook’s kid-centric messaging app violates federal law by collecting kids’ personal information without getting verifiable consent from their parents.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and other groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to investigate Facebook’s Messenger Kids for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.

The complaint says the app does not meet COPPA requirements because it doesn’t try to ensure that the person who sets up the kids’ account and gives consent to have their data collected is the actual parent. In fact, the groups say, someone could set up a brand new, fictional account and immediately approve a kid’s account without proving their age or identity.

Facebook said Wednesday it hasn’t yet reviewed the complaint letter. The company has said it doesn’t show ads on Messenger Kids or collect data for marketing purposes, though it does collect some data it says is necessary to run the service.

But the advocacy groups say the privacy policy of Messenger Kids is “incomplete and vague” and allows Facebook to disclose data to third parties and other Facebook services “for broad, undefined business purposes.”

Facebook launched Messenger Kids last December on iOS and has since expanded to Android and Amazon devices and beyond the U.S. to Mexico, Canada and elsewhere. It is aimed at children under 13 who technically cannot have Facebook accounts (although plenty of them do).

Though the company says it has received a lot of input from parents and children’s development experts in creating the app, groups such as the CCFC have been trying to get Messenger Kids shut down since it launched.
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Newer Contraception Tries to Engage Men

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Newer birth control for men is beginning to fill the gap between the traditional condoms and sterilization.

One new technology involves inserting a hypodermic needle into the scrotum. It is said to decrease libido.

For men, contraception had remained fairly stagnant for the past century, primarily limited to condoms (85 percent effective when used correctly) and vasectomy, which is usually permanent. New methods are trying to move beyond centuries-old contraception applications, and some younger men say they are enthusiastic about the prospects.

But they want them to be safe.

“Contraceptives are necessary regardless of which partner is using them,” said Shane Sullivan, a senior at Colgate University in New York. But, “I’m adverse to solutions that may induce side effects.”

But as with contraception for women, methods free of side effects are hard to come by.

Nestorone-Testosterone is a hormonal birth control gel for men that’s been in the making for more than a decade. The gel is applied to the arms and shoulders every day and works to shut down hormones responsible for sperm production. But because it drops testosterone levels, reported side effects include a low libido or problems with ejaculation.

Meanwhile, scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland have developed a daily birth control pill called DMAU. It lowers testosterone and sperm production, which decreases the likelihood of pregnancy, according to a study by the University of Washington Medical Center and at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California.

All participants who tried DMAU noted some weight gain and a decrease of high-density lipoproteins (HDL, “good” cholesterol responsible for healthy cardiovascular functioning).

“Despite having low levels of circulating testosterone, very few subjects reported symptoms consistent with testosterone deficiency or excess,” said the study’s senior investigator, professor of medicine Stephanie Page at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“DMAU is a major step forward in the development of a once-daily ‘male pill,’” Page said. “Many men say they would prefer a daily pill as a reversible contraceptive, rather than long-acting injections or topical gels, which are also in development.”

Contraceptives such as Vasalgel block the vas deferens, or the tubes through which sperm travel, with the injection of a gel into the scrotum. The Indian developer of Vasalgel licensed it to non-profit company Parsemus Foundation in the U.S., which focuses its development on innovative but neglected pharmaceutical advances.

Vasalgel can last a few months to a few years. It has shown minimal adverse impacts and the developer calls it the “IUD for men” because it is non-hormonal.

Robert McLachlan, professor of men’s health at Monash University in Melbourne, found another injectable option for men. McLachlan designed an intramuscular shot delivered in the buttocks, increasing testosterone, which greatly reduces sperm production.

The most common side effects for the injectable hormonal contraceptive included acne, injection site pain, mood disorders, and an increased libido.

In a survey conducted with 134 young adults aged 18-27, of which 61 were male, their average likelihood of supporting male contraceptives was 8.6 on a scale from 1 to 10, (1 being the least likely and 10 being the most like to support.) Of all the respondents, 29 percent were quick to note that hormonal contraceptives for women already include the side effects that some of the newer drugs would present for men.

Brennan Sullivan, a 24-year-old research assistant from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) noted the impact a male-dominated medical field has on women. He emphasized that “male contraceptives should not be seen as equivalent to female birth control,” and explained how many scientists have not considered these biological differences between men and women when developing medications.

Ahead of Food and Drug Administration approval for oral contraceptives for women in 1960, couples relied on withdrawal and condoms to prevent pregnancy. Soon, women on the early forms of the Pill began to complain of side effects that included hormone imbalance, weight gain, acne, and mood changes because of high estrogen levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC), nearly 30 percent of users stopped oral contraceptives, and dosage was modified to balance contraception with user tolerance.

Despite successful findings and trials, the pharmaceutical industry thinks there is a relatively small market for male contraceptives, so it may be a while before these drugs actually hit the shelves. McLachlan noted the industry was “involved in this research until about five years ago and both the big companies that were involved — one pulled out [of research] about a decade ago.”

“Seeing as they’re the same side effects as most female birth control options, it’s not too bad,” said Pavan Devraj, a sophomore at the University of Georgia.

Jameson Carter, a research assistant at the Library of Congress, also expressed support.

“I think this stuff has to start somewhere. I understand it won’t be as convenient as just using a condom, given the side effects. I’d try it.”

Some men see birth control as an opportunity to be equally accountable for contraception.

“Men should absolutely engage in the same difficult choices that women do if they choose to engage in sexual activity,” said Mishka Naiker, 22 and a recent graduate from the University of Alabama. “Women are biologically more responsible for the existence and welfare of a child, even though the creation of a fetus takes both a man and a woman. That is the only time the responsibility is honestly 50/50.”

Wazir Hossain, a 24-year-old recent graduate from the University of Georgia, agrees and says it’s great for men to “have some form of control over the outcome of a situation and hold themselves accountable.”

Computer programmer Kaden Weaver, 23, expressed concerned about potential side effects.

“I am fully supportive of male contraceptive options similar to birth control, but… I feel as though things with these side effects don’t belong in the human body. ”

That attitude is not embraced in all parts of the world. The responsibility for family planning routinely falls to women, and contraception is not accessible to an estimated 214 million women in developing countries, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute.
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Smart Mirrors May Motivate You to Get Off the Couch

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Finding the motivation to get in shape can be difficult, but a new category of smart mirrors won’t let users off the hook. Tina Trinh reports.
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Trade Pact Clause Seen Deterring China Deal with Canada, Mexico

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

China’s hopes of negotiating a free trade pact with Canada or Mexico were dealt a sharp setback by a provision deep in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that aims to forbid such deals with “non-market” countries, trade experts said on Tuesday.

The provision specifies that if one of the current North American Free Trade Agreement partners enters a free trade deal with a “non-market” country such as China, the others can quit in six months and form their own bilateral trade pact.

The clause, which has stirred controversy in Canada, fits in with U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to isolate China economically and prevent Chinese companies from using Canada or Mexico as a “back door” to ship products tariff-free to the United States.

The United States and China are locked in a spiraling trade war that has seen them level increasingly severe rounds of tariffs on each other’s imports.

Under the clause, the countries in the updated NAFTA, renamed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), must notify the others three months before entering into such negotiations.

Derek Scissors, a China scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the provision gave the Trump administration an effective veto over any China trade deal by Canada or Mexico.

If repeated in other U.S. negotiations with the European Union and Japan, it could help isolate Beijing in the global trading system.

“For both Canada and Mexico, we have a reason to think an FTA with China is a possibility. It’s not imminent, but this is a very elegant way of dealing with that,” Scissors said.

“There’s no China deal that’s worth losing a ratified USMCA,” Scissors added.

After months of bashing its Western allies on trade, the Trump administration is now trying to recruit them to join the United States in pressuring China to shift its trade, subsidy and intellectual property practices to a more-market driven focus.

Beijing has demanded that the World Trade Organization recognize it as a “market economy” since its WTO accession agreement expired in December 2016, a move that would severely limit Western trade defenses against cheap Chinese goods.

But the United States and European Union are challenging the declaration, arguing that Chinese state subsidies fueling excess industrial capacity, the exclusion of foreign competitors and other practices are signs it is still a non-market economy.

Canadian Sovereignty Questioned

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, seeking to diversify Canada’s export base, held exploratory talks with China on trade in 2016, but a launch of formal negotiations has failed to materialize.

Tracey Ramsey, a legislator for Canada’s left-leaning New Democrats, said in the House of Commons on Tuesday that the clause was “astonishing” and a “severe restriction on Canadian independence.”

“Part of Canada’s concessions in this deal was to include language that holds Canada hostage to the Americans if we decide to trade with another country,” Ramsey said. “Why did the Liberal (Party) give the go-ahead for the U.S. to pull us into their trade wars?”

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau downplayed the provision, arguing it was not significantly different from NAFTA’s clause that allows any member to leave the pact in six months’ time for any reason.

“It is largely the same. It recognizes though that the non-market economy is of significant importance as we move forward. But I don’t think it’s going to make a material difference in our activities,” Morneau told a business audience.

Mexico’s business community sided with the Trump administration in endorsing the pact.

“We are associating ourselves with countries that promote market freedom and that promote free trade in the world, free trade under equal circumstances,” said Juan Pablo Castañon, head of the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE), which represented Mexico’s private sector during the NAFTA trade talks.
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Study: Half of ‘Last Jedi’ Haters Were Bots, Trolls, Activists

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

How much did movie fans hate “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”? Perhaps not as fiercely as social media might suggest, according to a U.S. academic study which found that half of negative tweets about the 2017 movie came from bots, trolls or political activists, some of whom may be Russian.

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” which focused on aging Jedi Luke Skywalker’s reluctance to be drawn back into the battle against the dark side in the sci-fi saga, prompted criticism online after its December 2017 release.

Many lashed out at key roles given to women and actors of color in the movie, while others were dismayed at the apparent death of Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.

The Disney movie took $1.3 billion at the global box-office, compared to $2 billion for 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

A study by University of Southern California (USC) research fellow Morten Bay, released on Monday, analyzed the language, Twitter handles and IP addresses of more than 1,200 tweets sent to “Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson’s Twitter handle in the seven months after the film’s release.

“Overall, 50.9 percent of those tweeting negatively was likely politically motivated or not even human,” Bay wrote. He said they appeared to be using the debate around “The Last Jedi” “to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality.”

“A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls,” Bay added in the paper, called “Weaponizing the Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation.”

Disney did not respond to a request for comment on the research but Johnson said on Twitter that the overall findings were “consistent with my experience online.”

“This is not about fans liking or not liking the movie – I’ve had tons of great talks with great fans online and off who liked and disliked stuff, that’s what fandom is all about. This is specifically about a virulent strain of online harassment,” Johnson tweeted on Tuesday.

Bay compared his findings to other studies around attempts to influence Americans through social media platforms.

Bay said the likely objective was to increase “media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society.”

A U.S. Senate panel has been examining reported Russian efforts to influence U.S. political public opinion before and after the 2016 election of President Donald Trump.
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Mexican, Canadian Steel Lobbies Urge Fix to US Tariff Dispute

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Mexico and Canada on Tuesday urged their governments to resolve a tariff dispute with the United States before signing a new trilateral trade deal that was unveiled this week.

In late May, the Trump administration announced tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports, prompting quick retaliation from top trading partners including Canada and Mexico.

Late on Sunday, the United States and Canada reached a deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), complementing an accord the Trump administration brokered with Mexico, the third member of NAFTA, in late August.

Mexican steel producers association Canacero welcomed the new trade pact, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but said it viewed “with concern” the ongoing steel dispute and the “serious situation” it created for the industry.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs would remain in place for Canada and Mexico until they “can do something different like quotas, perhaps.”

In a statement, Canacero said it supported efforts to find a solution to the impasse before the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada signed USMCA, which officials say could happen at a G20 summit at the end of November.

If no solution can be found, Mexico should put tariffs on U.S. steel to level the playing field, Canacero said.

Mexico has already slapped tariffs on U.S. pork, bourbon, motor boats and other products. Canada has levied tariffs on a range of U.S. imports, including steel and aluminum.

Joseph Galimberti, president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, said he expected Canada’s government to continue to support the industry after the USMCA breakthrough.

“There is clearly an opportunity to constructively engage the United States between the achievement of a deal in principle and the ratification or signature of that deal,” he said.

Canada is the top exporter of steel and aluminum to the United States. The United Steelworkers of Canada adopted a less conciliatory tone after the new trade deal was announced, calling it a “sell-out” for Canadian workers.

Mexican officials have said they hope the steel and aluminum dispute can be resolved before USMCA is signed.

Since the tariff row broke out, Mexican steel exports to the United States had fallen 30 percent on average, Canacero said.
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Puny Dwarf Planet, Named ‘Goblin,’ Found Far Beyond Pluto

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

A scrawny dwarf planet nicknamed “the Goblin” has been discovered well beyond Pluto.

A round frozen world just 186 miles (300 kilometers) across, the Goblin was spotted by astronomers in 2015 around Halloween, thus its spooky name. But it wasn’t publicly unveiled until Tuesday following further observations with ground telescopes.

Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, one of the astronomers who made the discovery, said the Goblin is on the small end for a dwarf planet. It is officially known as 2015 TG387 by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

This is the third dwarf planet recently found to be orbiting on the frigid fringes of our solar system.

Goblin’s orbit is extremely elongated — so stretched out, in fact, that it takes 40,000 years for it to circle the sun.

At its most distant, the Goblin is 2,300 times farther from the sun than Earth. That’s 2,300 astronomical units, or AU. One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun, or roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

At its closest, the Goblin is 65 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 65 AU. Pluto, by comparison, is approximately 30 to 50 AU.

Sheppard, along with Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo and the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, spotted the Goblin in October 2015 when it was relatively nearby — around 80 AU.

The two other dwarf planets are Sedna, discovered in 2003, which is about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across, and 2012 VP113, about 310 miles (500 kilometers). They were found by some of the same astronomers.

Thousands — even a million — more such objects could be way out there orbiting in the so-called Inner Oort Cloud, according to the researchers. They’re in hot pursuit of them, as well as a potentially bigger-than-Earth planet known as Planet 9, or Planet X, believed by some scientists to be orbiting at a distance of hundreds of AU.

“These objects are on elongated orbits, and we can only detect them when they are closest to the Sun. For some 99 percent of their orbits, they are too distant and thus too faint for us to observe them. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Sheppard said in an email.

Sheppard said the faraway objects are “like bread crumbs leading us to Planet X.”

“The more of them we can find, the better we can understand the outer solar system and the possible planet that we think is shaping their orbits — a discovery that would redefine our knowledge of the solar system’s evolution,” he said in a statement.
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Disaster Undoes Hard-won Progress for Indonesian Port City

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Palu, the Indonesian city devastated by an earthquake, tsunamis and mudslides, has strived to transform itself into a major trading hub, but the city’s buildings and other infrastructure were no match for the triple whammy that has left more than 1,200 people dead. 

The disasters that struck late Friday left the city’s port in ruins, its lone gantry crane atilt in the water. Its airport terminal was a sea of shattered glass and broken ceiling panels. A seven-story, 4-year-old hotel lay flat on its side. Its biggest bridge disintegrated, its picturesque yellow arches mangled in the mud. 

Ringed by coconut, coffee and cocoa farms, over the past two decades Palu has acquired modern shopping malls, hotels and other amenities to suit its ambitions. Poverty has fallen from nearly a third of its 380,000 residents to under one in 10, local officials say. 

A national blueprint calls for developing Palu as part of the “Sulawesi Economic Corridors” — a plan to attract investment and build up trade and commerce in a region that has remained somewhat isolated since the days of the ancient spice trade.  

Given how seismically active the area is — the Palu-Koro fault runs right through the city — it’s been a race against the odds. Historical records show the area has been hit by tsunamis — triggered by powerfully destructive earthquakes — at least seven times in the past two centuries. 

It’s unclear what standards were required, or enforced, in the construction of Palu’s modern buildings.

It’s an issue for all of Indonesia, an archipelago that sits square on the Pacific Ring of Fire. 

Teddy Boen, an expert on earthquake-resistant engineering who has consulted with foreign governments and international organizations, has been researching the problem for a half-century.

“From 50 years ago until today, there is similar damage. Somebody is not doing their job,” he said in a phone interview. “The codes are complete. The manuals are complete. The political will is not there.” 

The collapse of a mezzanine floor inside the Jakarta Stock Exchange in January that injured dozens of people underscores the extent of the problem, even in Indonesia’s capital.

After a tsunami in 2004 killed 230,000 people in Indonesia and elsewhere across Asia, it became apparent that in many communities, sturdy mosques and other strong buildings dating back to colonial times were the only structures still standing while newer structures often crumbled. 

In Palu, the Arkam Babu Rahman “floating mosque” on the city’s waterfront was pushed off-kilter by Friday’s tsunamis, while its worship halls remained intact. But a bigger, 20-year-old structure topped by a heavy dome was gutted as the debris-laden water swept through. 

Few of the buildings in Palu’s suburbs of Petobo, Biromaru and Bala Roa could withstand the sideways mudslide that engulfed those communities in expanses of oozing quicksand.  

Indonesia’s disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the soil there had liquefied and that authorities believed hundreds of people may have been buried in the mud. In Bala Roa, the ground violently heaved up and then sank in places, trapping many people under their wrecked homes. 

Traditional homes with thatched or tin roofs cannot withstand tsunamis or storm surges from typhoons but pose much less of a risk of severe damage even if they do collapse in an earthquake. Many homes built recently are hybrids, combining traditional styles with unreinforced masonry and tile roofs too heavy for the structures when they are shaken by quakes. 

The rush to rebuild after a disaster involves cutting corners, rather than fortifying buildings to prevent future calamities.

“Now, they say, build back better, build back better, but they do the same thing again,” Boen said. “The earthquake comes, they made the same mistakes and people get killed again.”
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Tokyo Fishmongers Mourn and Protest Closure of Famous Fish Market

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Takako Arai’s earliest memories are of Tsukiji, playing hide-and-seek with her brother in the concrete maze of Tokyo’s sprawling fish market. Years later, she now runs the family’s seafood stall that sells mackerel and yellowfin tuna.

Arai and hundreds of other fish traders are reluctantly packing up and preparing to leave Tsukiji this week for a gleaming new $5 billion market on reclaimed land farther from central Tokyo.

“I feel torn. I grew up here and I feel like we’re losing so much of our history by leaving this place,” said Arai, 45.

The 83-year-old market, a popular tourist attraction, is a warren of shops and warehouses where small turret trucks zip around laden with ice-filled boxes of fish. But city officials say it has become dilapidated and unsanitary.

Many fishmongers want to stay in the area where they also live. They worry about contaminated soil at the new site in Toyosu, and the difficult commute to the new market.

More than 80 percent of Tsukiji fish traders are opposed to the move, said a survey by a group fighting the relocation.

In a last-ditch bid to delay the move, 56 traders sued the city of Tokyo last month, seeking a temporary injunction. They have asked the court to rule before Tsukiji closes on Saturday.

If there are no delays, business will resume at the new Toyosu market on Oct. 11, but traders worry their customers will not follow them.

Arai, whose family have been fish traders for 95 years, said buyers have already told her the new site is inconvenient.

“They say they’re going to buy from other markets nearer to their restaurants,” she said. “What can I say? They’re business people too.”

Fewer customers will make it hard to recoup the hundreds of thousands of dollars each fish trader expects to pay for the move, including replacing freezers and refrigerators.

Some 300 fishmongers and activists voiced their anger during a protest at Tsukiji last Saturday, chanting “Toyosu No No No,” and waving banners saying “Stop the Relocation!”

Tourists visiting one of Tokyo’s most famous landmarks paused in the rain to join the chants.

“We finally made Tsukiji a famous brand and now they’re trying to destroy it,” said Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns one of Japan’s largest sushi chains, Sushi Zanmai.

His gravelly voice rising as he wept, Kimura recalled opening his first sushi restaurant in Tsukiji 17 years ago in a bid to draw tourists and revive the market. Kimura is famous for his winning bids at the market’s New Years auction, where in 2013 he paid a record $1.76 million for a bluefin tuna.

“They have no compassion. That’s it,” Kimura told Reuters. “These bureaucrats have forgotten that human beings live here. It’s all about money for them.”

Final days

The relocation plan has been delayed many times since it was conceived 17 years ago. In 2016, toxic substances were found in soil and groundwater at Toyosu, once home to a gas plant.

Tokyo spent an extra 3.8 billion yen ($33.5 million) to dig hundreds of wells to pump out groundwater.

In July, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike declared the new site safe after experts signed off on additional cleanup measures, but some fish traders remain skeptical.

An official with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Tsukiji had long supported the city’s residents with its lively market, but it was important for that tradition to continue in a new location with better sanitary conditions.

The old Tsukiji site will provide temporary parking for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and eventually become a tourist center.

Tsukiji feels like a village with its own medical clinics, a bank, library and shops, but with some 40,000 workers and tourists passing through on its busiest days.

In its final days, the market is still a frenzy of activity.

Men unload, sort, pack and display thousands of cartons of white boxes filled with fresh fish and seafood trucked in from ports across Japan.

During the early morning auctions, traders use hand signals to buy and sell fish.

The day’s catch is typically carted to a hangar where traders sell their seafood to buyers strolling down the chaotic cobblestone walkways under large store signs.

Koji Amano, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, started working at Tsukiji after dropping out of high school. Now 47, he and two brothers manage a stall specializing in bluefin tuna, or “maguro,” considered the king of sushi.

As he filleted a hulk of tuna with a sword-like knife, Amano was resigned to Tsukiji’s fate.

“They’re determined to move us out,” he said. “So there’s not much we can really do to stop them.”
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‘Mad Men’ Creator Returns to Identity Theme With ‘The Romanoffs’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is back with a new television series, but while this one is set far from the 1960s world of advertising, he says the themes are much the same.

The Romanoffs features eight contemporary drama stories about people who believe they are descendants of the Russian royal family, and a handful of Mad Men actors, including Christina Hendricks and John Slattery.

Released on Amazon on Oct. 12, it is Weiner’s first television venture since winning nine Emmys for Mad Men, whose tale of restless and conflicted American ad executive Don Draper ended in 2015.

Weiner, who created, wrote and directed The Romanoffs, says the series looks at questions of identity, and nature versus nurture.

“But even though my work is viewed that way, I really wanted to do a show that was entertaining,” Weiner said of the show at its premiere in London on Tuesday.

The Romanoffs is set in seven countries, and each self-contained episode has a different cast, including Diane Lane, Corey Stoll, Paul Reiser, Isabelle Huppert and Marthe Keller.

Weiner said he was attracted to the story because of what the Romanoff name says about current notions of celebrity and fame. The Russian imperial dynasty ruled for 300 years until the 1917 Russian Revolution, when 18 of them were killed and more than 40 remaining members fled abroad.

“It’s a time when we’re wondering why we used to be great,” he said. “Part of my fascination with the Romanoffs was that it [royalty] still has so much prestige.”

Early reviews for The Romanoffs, which will roll out on a weekly basis on Amazon, have been mixed. Variety called it “ambitious,” Rolling Stone said the episodes had “moments of brilliance amid unchecked sprawl,” and IndieWire called it “shallow and self-indulgent.”
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Unilever Tops List of Food and Drink Firms Tackling Forced Labor

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever topped a list on Tuesday ranking how well food and drink companies tackle the risk of forced labor in their supply chains, ahead of Kellogg Company and Coca-Cola.

Most of the 38 companies assessed in a study by KnowTheChain, an online resource for business, had improved their practices since 2016.

But the average score was 30 out of 100, the report said, suggesting all companies need to step up action to ensure ethical production.

“Forced labor remains a major problem in the production of popular food and beverage products,” Kilian Moote, project director for KnowTheChain, said in a statement.

“Progress for workers is not moving fast enough. Companies across the board must do better to make demonstrable improvements for workers.”

About 25 million people globally were estimated to be trapped in forced labor in 2016, according to the International Labor Organization and rights group Walk Free Foundation.

From tea pickers on isolated estates to laborers on remote cocoa farms, agricultural workers tend to be harder to reach than those in factories, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation, said KnowTheChain.

Growing demand for fuel, food and raw materials is also pushing agricultural work into more remote rural areas, putting workers at greater risk, it added.

Agriculture production tends to involve seasonal or temporary work and much of it is quota based, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation or wage theft, KnowTheChain said.

Although many of the 38 companies had policies and commitments relating to forced labor in place, it said the majority did not provide evidence of those policies in practice.

They appeared to be taking “little or no action” to listen to or empower workers across supply chains, the report added.

Unilever, whose 400 brands include Lipton tea, Magnum ice cream, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Colman’s mustard, retained its top spot since the first food and beverage report in 2016, scoring 69 out of 100, ahead of Kellogg at 66 and Coca-Cola 62.

Meat company WH Group, which owns the world’s largest pork business, and packaged foods company Almarai scored zero.

Neither were immediately available for comment.

The report looked at areas including worker recruitment processes, efforts to source raw materials responsibly, monitoring and grievance mechanisms.
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Hardy Brings Out Marvel’s Darker Side in ‘Venom’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

In the new movie Venom, British actor Tom Hardy plays an investigative journalist whose body is invaded by an alien with violent instincts who feeds on a diet of human flesh.

It is a darker tale from the Marvel Comics superhero universe than what audiences have seen in recent films such as the Avengers series released by Walt Disney Co.

“His version of doing good is just eating,” Hardy said of Venom. “The world is an all-you-can-eat buffet, and human beings are on the menu, so that’s not great for humanity as your hero.”

The story is a Jekyll-and-Hyde tale where Hardy’s journalist character, Eddie Brock, tries to keep Venom’s bad behavior under control.

Venom is being released by Sony Pictures, which owns rights to several Marvel characters that are not owned by Disney.

Hardy said Venom has similarities to several classic monster movies.

“There’s an element of original Ghostbusters, a slightly ’80s retro vibe to it, which I enjoyed, and a bit of Teen Wolf and American Werewolf in London vibe to it,” Hardy said.

The star said he also received input from his 10-year-old son on how to play the role.

“My son’s a massive fan of Marvel and Venom, and he was very clear about what I can and can’t do,” Hardy said at the movie’s red-carpet premiere, adding, “It’s very odd, being told what to do by your son who’s 10 and him being right.”

Venom co-stars fellow British actor Riz Ahmed as villainous corporation owner Carlton Drake and Michelle Williams as Brock’s former girlfriend. It is the first time Oscar-nominated Williams has starred in a superhero movie.

Venom was created by comic book writer Todd McFarlane, who invented the new character after he struggled to draw Spider-Man.

“Venom is a byproduct of me wanting to draw a blue-and-red Spider-Man costume,” McFarlane said. “Thirty years later, you’ve got a big movie!”
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