Day: October 16, 2018

Earnings Reports Send US Stocks Higher

Major U.S. stock markets made strong gains Tuesday as strong earnings reports encouraged investors.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 547.87 points, or 2.2 percent, to close at 25,798.42. The Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 59.13 points, or 2.2 percent, to 2,809.92 with all 11 sectors finishing higher. The Nasdaq composite, home to many tech stocks, jumped 214.75 points, or 2.9 percent, to 7,645.49.

New U.S. economic data showing gains in job openings and industrial production also helped buoy prices.

Tuesday’s Dow gain marked a sharp turnaround from some recent trading sessions, when worries about rising interest rates sent stock market indexes down steeply.

Those concerns also pushed down the value of European stocks, but the major indexes in France, Germany and Britain also posted gains Tuesday. 

 

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Cosmonaut Describes Aborted Soyuz Launch

Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin says the force he felt during a Soyuz emergency landing last week was like having a concrete block on his chest.

Ovchinin and U.S. astronaut Nick Hague spoke separately Tuesday about their frightening experience when an unknown mishap caused their Russian Soyuz to abort its mission 60 kilometers (37 miles) above Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft was on its way to the International Space Station when the emergency lights flashed in the cabin just minutes into the flight.

“There was no time to be nervous because we had to work,” Ovchinin told Russian television. “We had to go through the steps that the crew has to take and prepare for emergency landing … so that the crew is still functioning after landing.”

Ovchinin recalled being violently shaken from side by side as the crew cabin separated from the rocket, followed by a force seven times stronger then gravity as the cabin plunged through the atmosphere, followed by the shock of the parachutes yanking open.

Back home in Houston, Hague told the Associated Press, “We knew that if we wanted to be successful, we needed to stay calm and we needed to execute the procedures in front of us smoothly and efficiently as we could.”

Hague said he and Ovchinin were hanging upside down when the cabin landed back on Earth. They shook hands and cracked jokes.

Neither man was hurt, and an investigation is under way to find out why the rocket failed.

Hague said he is disappointed to be back home instead of walking in space, but he’s happy to be reunited with his wife and their two young sons, and is ready to fly again as soon as NASA gives him the word.

“What can you do? Sometimes you don’t get a vote,” Hague told the Associated Press. “You just try to celebrate the little gifts that you get, like walking the boys to school this morning.”

This was the first aborted Soyuz launch in more than 30 years.

The Russian spacecraft has been the only way to send replacement crews to the International Space Station since NASA retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011.

Two private U.S. companies — Boeing and SpaceX — are working on a new generation of shuttles.

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America’s Favorite Pastime Won’t Surprise You

You could say baseball has struck out as America’s favorite pastime, because Americans would apparently rather watch TV than head to the ballpark.

Most Americans prefer to fill their spare time watching television than doing just about anything else, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Nearly 80 percent of people living in the United States are watching TV on any given day. Television viewing swallows up more than half of all the time Americans spend on sports and leisure activities, according to data from the BLS’s American Time Use Survey.

From 2013 to 2017, people 15 and older spent about 2 hours and 46 minutes a day watching TV — 55.2 percent of their total spare time — when they could have been doing pretty much anything else they wanted.

That TV time includes watching recorded TV shows, live programming, DVDs, and streaming content on TVs, computers, and portable devices. It does not include time spent watching a film in a movie theater.

Men watch about a half-hour more TV than women each day.

Older people and the unemployed watch the most TV, while parents with small children watch the least. Older people and the unemployed spent the most time watching TV. Americans over the age of 65 are the nation’s biggest couch potatoes. They spend the most time — 4 and a half hours per day — in front of the tube.

TV watching also varies by geography. Residents in the American South are among the nation’s most ardent TV viewers. People living in several of the Rocky Mountain states and in the Northeast tend to watch the least.

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Keur Khaleyi Brings Traditional Senegalese Dance to Baltimore

In West Africa, like in other parts of the continent, dancing is an important part of the daily life and traditions. And in Baltimore Maryland, a multi-generational family is performing Senegalese and other West African dances. The Von Hendricks dance in local and national festivals. They recently started a school to teach the moves to others. Faith Lapidus narrates for VOA’s Faiza Elmasry.

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Future RX for Pain Relief May Include Magnets

The traditional way for doctors to treat certain illnesses has been to prescribe medications. But as technology advances, researchers are working on new ways of treating symptoms that do not require drugs. One promising possibility: using tiny magnetic particles to treat pain. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee visited one lab at the University of California, Los Angeles to find out how they work.

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Anna Burns Wins Booker Prize with Troubles Tale ‘Milkman’

Anna Burns won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday with Milkman, a vibrant, violent story about men, women, conflict and power set during Northern Ireland’s years of Catholic-Protestant violence.

Burns is the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the 50,000-pound ($66,000) prize, which is open to English-language authors from around the world. She received her trophy from Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a black-tie ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.

Milkman is narrated by a young woman dealing with an older man who uses family ties, social pressure and political loyalties as weapons of sexual coercion and harassment. It is set in the 1970s, but was published amid the global eruption of sexual misconduct allegations that sparked the #MeToo movement.

“I think this novel will help people to think about MeToo, and I like novels that help people think about current movements and challenges,” said philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who chaired the judging panel. “But we think it’ll last — it’s not just about something that’s going on in this moment.

“I think it’s a very powerful novel about the damage and danger of rumor,” he added.

Burns beat five other novelists, including the bookies’ favorites: American writer Richard Powers’ tree-centric eco-epic The Overstory and Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, the story of a slave who escapes from a sugar plantation in a hot-air balloon.

The other finalists were U.S. novelist Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, set in a women’s prison; Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, a verse novel about a traumatized D-Day veteran; and 27-year-old British author Daisy Johnson’s Greek tragedy-inspired family saga Everything Under.

Founded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Americans have been eligible since 2014, and there have been two American winners — Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in 2016 and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo in 2017.

A third consecutive American victor would have revived fears among some U.K. writers and publishers that the prize is becoming too U.S.-centric. But Appiah said neither the nationality nor the gender of the authors was a factor in the judges’ deliberations.

“If we had been drifting towards thinking that one of the men on the list was the best one, I wouldn’t have said ‘No, guys, we’re going to get in trouble for this’ — any more than if we’d been drifting towards an American,” he said. “We picked the one … most deserving of the prize.”

The Man Booker is always subject to intense speculation and lively betting, and has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Hilary Mantel.

It’s likely to bring a big boost to Burns, who is 56 years old and has published two previous novels, but is hardly a household name.

Milkman appears on the printed page as a continuous torrent with few paragraph marks, which has led some to label it experimental and challenging. But Appiah said the vivid, distinctive Belfast language in Burns’ book was “really worth savoring.”

“If you’re having difficulty, try reading it out loud,” he said. “The pleasure of it really has to do with the way that it sounds.

“It’s challenging in the way a walk up (mount) Snowdon is challenging. It’s definitely worth it, because the view is terrific when you get to the top.”

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USA Gymnastics Interim CEO Resigns

Former Congresswoman Mary Bono has announced she is resigning as interim president and chief executive officer of USA Gymnastics after just five days on the job.

“My withdrawal comes in the wake of personal attacks that left undefended, would have made my leading USAG a liability for the organization,” Bono said in a statement Tuesday.

Bono’s selection to lead USA Gymnastics had almost immediately come under fire by several high-profile gymnasts, including Olympic gold-medal winners Simone Biles and Aly Raisman.

Raisman objected to the choice of Bono, pointing out the former GOP lawmaker’s association with a law firm that advised USAG during the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.

Both Biles and Raisman were among the hundreds of girls and young women molested by the physician.

“My teammates & I reported Nassar’s abuse to USAG in 2015,” wrote Raisman. “We now know USOC (the U.S. Olympic Committee) & lawyers at Faegre Baker Daniels (Bono’s firm) were also told then, yet Nassar continued to abuse children for 13 months!? Why hire someone associated with the firm that helped cover up our abuse?”

Nassar is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to federal child pornography charges and state charges of sexual abuse.

“Survivors, current gymnasts, families, coaches, gymnastics community & fans deserve better,” Raisman wrote Monday.

Biles, meanwhile, took issue with Bono’s response to Nike’s advertising campaign featuring former American football player Colin Kaepernick, who was the first to kneel during the playing of the national anthem to draw attention to injustice, social inequality and police brutality.

Bono posted a photo of herself blacking out a Nike logo on a golf shoe. Biles tweeted in response: “mouth drop … don’t worry, it’s not like we needed a smarter usa gymnastics president, or any sponsors or anything.”

Bono’s departure is another blow for USA Gymnastics, which has struggled to rebuild in the aftermath of the Nassar scandal.

Bono served as U.S. Representative from Southern California for 15 years. She won her first term in a special election to fill the vacancy left by the death of her husband, former pop star and lawmaker Sonny Bono.

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Google to Charge for Apps on Android Phones in Europe

Google says it will start charging smartphone makers to pre-install apps like Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps on Android handsets sold in Europe, in response to a record $5 billion EU antitrust fine.

The U.S. tech company’s announcement Tuesday is a change from its previous business model, in which it let phone makers install its suite of popular mobile apps for free on phones running its Android operating system.

It’s among measures the company is taking to comply with the July ruling by EU authorities that found Google allegedly abused the dominance of Android to stifle competitors, even as it appeals the decision.

The company will also let phone makers install rival versions of Android, the most widely used mobile operating system.

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US Employers Post Record Number of Open Jobs in August

U.S. employers posted the most jobs in two decades in August, and hiring also reached a record high, fresh evidence that companies are desperate to staff up amid solid economic growth.

Job openings rose a slight 0.8 percent to 7.14 million, the highest on records dating back to December 2000, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That is also far more than the 6.2 million of people who were unemployed that month.

The number of available jobs has swamped the number of unemployed for five straight months. Hiring has been solid, which has pushed down the unemployment rate to a nearly five-decade low of 3.7 percent. Strong demand for workers when so few are out of work.

President Donald Trump celebrated the report on Twitter, tweeting: “Incredible number just out… Astonishing! It’s all working!” Trump added that the stock market was “up big” and referenced “Strong Profits.”

Yet so far, pay raises have been modest. Average hourly earnings rose 2.8 percent in September compared with a year earlier. That’s much higher than several years ago, but below the roughly 4 percent gain that is typical when unemployment is so low.

It’s a sharp turnaround from the Great Recession and its aftermath. In 2009, there were as many as six unemployed workers for each available job. Now, that number has fallen below one.

Employers hired roughly 5.8 million people in August, the report showed. That is also the most on record, but that increase partly reflects population growth. The percentage of the workforce that found jobs in August ticked up to 3.9 percent from 3.8 percent in July. That matched an 11-year high first reached in May.

Job openings rose in August in professional and business services, which include mostly higher-paying positions in engineering, accounting and architecture, as well as temporary help. Postings in that category have jumped 27 percent from a year ago.

Construction firms are also desperate for workers, posting 298,000 open jobs. That’s nearly 39 percent more than a year ago. Job openings also increased in finance and insurance and health care.

Openings fell in August from the previous month in manufacturing, retail, and slipped slightly in hotels and restaurants.

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Huawei Launches New flagship Phones in Bid to Keep No. 2 Spot

Huawei unveiled new flagship smartphones with novel smart camera and video features on Tuesday, as it seeks to sustain momentum among price-conscious consumers.

The Chinese company, which overtook Apple this year to become the No. 2 smartphone maker by units – behind South Korea’s Samsung (005930.KS) – introduced its Mate 20 phone series using Leica camera technology.

Huawei’s new premium phone line-up has four models available around the world, expect in the United States where sales are effectively banned over whispered national security concerns.

The new line-up includes the Mate 20, with list prices ranging from 799-849 euros ($925-$983), depending on memory configuration.

The fuller-featured Mate 20 Pro, is priced as low as 799 pounds at some UK retailers and list priced at 849 pounds or 1,049 euros across Europe. A comparable iPhone X Max from Apple costs 1,099 pounds in the UK.

The new phones include a new ultra-wide angle lens, as well as a 3x telephoto lens and a macro that shoots objects as close as 2.5 centimeters (1 inch).

Mate P20 models take advantage of artificial intelligence features built into Huawei’s own Kirin chipsets.

Features available to Mate 20 users include being able to isolate human subjects and desaturate the colors around them in order to highlight people against their backgrounds.

Huawei incorporates bigger light-sensing chips than rival phones to take better pictures in low-light conditions.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said that in a highly commoditized smartphone market of look-alike phones, Huawei is managing to differentiate itself with camera and personalization features.

“With the Mate 20, Huawei is setting the bar for what users can expect from photography using a smartphone,” Cozza said.

The Chinese phone maker managed to surpass Apple to take the No. 2 spot in the second quarter, industry data shows, despite being effectively excluded from the U.S. market.

However, Apple commanded 43 percent of the premium market and a lion’s share of profits, CounterPoint Research estimated.

“Huawei is clearly ticking all the key boxes needed to displace rivals – and not just Android-powered rivals,” said Ben Wood, research chief of mobile industry consulting firm CCS Insight.

Wood said Huawei’s move to match Apple iPhone’s characteristic swipe gestures and face unlock features on its Mate 20 Pro could, in theory, make it easier for committed Apple buyers to switch, although he said that was unlikely near term.

“But it’s clear that Huawei has an eye on the future and is ready to take share from Apple if the time comes that a loyal iPhone owner decides to try something else,” he said.

The new premium phone line-up from the world’s biggest telecom equipment maker includes four models, the Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro, Mate 20 X, with a 7.2 inch display screen, and a Porsche Design limited edition phone.

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Pippa Middleton Gives Birth to Baby Boy

Pippa Middleton, the sister of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, has given birth to a baby boy.

A spokeswoman for Middleton and her husband James Matthews said Tuesday that their first baby had been born the day before.

 

Kensington Palace says that Prince William and Kate are “thrilled for Pippa and James.”

 

The new baby will be a cousin to William and Kate’s three children – George, 5, Charlotte, 3, and 5-month-old Louis.

 

The baby was born on the day the palace announced that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, are expecting their first child.

 

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Literary Group Sues Trump, Alleges Free Speech Stifling

In the three years that Donald Trump rocketed from candidate to president, the PEN American Center has criticized him as a bully, an autocrat, a user of hate speech and an enemy of free expression. It has published studies, organized petitions and established a Press Freedom Incentive Fund.

Now the literary and human rights organization, which includes thousands of authors and journalists, is taking a more direct step: PEN is suing the president.

 

In a suit filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan, the center, also known as PEN America, alleges that “official acts” by Trump have “violated the First Amendment and his oath to uphold the Constitution.” PEN cites such examples as reports that Trump was meddling in the proposed merger of AT&T and CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s anger (The Justice Department has sought to block the merger).

 

The suit also notes Trump’s comments on Washington Post owner and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Trump, unhappy with the Post’s coverage, has threatened antitrust action against Amazon and suggested raising its shipping costs. According to the Post, he has pressured U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rates. (Last week, the United States Postal Service proposed some hikes for 2019, among them increases which would affect Amazon. Shipping costs have been raised several times over the past decade).

 

“President Trump has First Amendment rights and is free to criticize the press vehemently, but he is not free to use the power and authority of the United States government to punish and stifle it,” the complaint reads.

 

An email sent to a White House spokeswoman shortly before the suit was filed was not immediately returned.

 

In an interview this week with The Associated Press, PEN chief executive officer Suzanne Nossel said that Trump had moved beyond harsh [and legally protected] rhetoric such as “fake news” and “enemy of the people.”

 

“There is widespread concern that the president is actually extracting reprisals on the media for coverage he considers unfavorable,” she said.

 

PEN is asking that Trump be enjoined from “directing or ordering any officer, employee, agency, or other agent or instrumentality of the United States government to take any action against any person or entity with intent to retaliate against, intimidate, or otherwise constrain speech critical of him or his Administration.”

 

The organization seeks no money beyond “costs, including attorneys’ fees,” and other “relief as the Court deems just and proper.”

 

Trump has been sued thousands of times over past the few decades, and shortly before taking office agreed to pay $25 million in a settlement over fraud allegations against the now-defunct Trump University. He also has been sued as president, including on First Amendment grounds.

 

Last month, a federal court in Cincinnati ruled that protesters at a Trump rally in March 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky, could not sue him for inciting violence, finding nothing incriminating in his remarks. Earlier this year, the Knight First Amendment Institute sued Trump and his communications team for blocking several people from the president’s Twitter account. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where PEN’s suit was filed Tuesday, ruled in May that blocking Twitter critics violated the First Amendment.

 

“We wouldn’t be filing this lawsuit if we didn’t think it would be meritorious,” said David A. Schulz, co-director of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, a Yale Law School program serving as co-counsel with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Protect Democracy on the lawsuit. “There is so much evidence of the president’s motives.”

 

One issue for PEN might be how the organization and its members have been affected by President Trump, what is known as legal standing. Kristy Parker of Protect Democracy said that “PEN’s members, especially those who are journalists covering current affairs, are indeed directly affected by the President’s retaliatory acts and credible threats because they are forced to work in an atmosphere where they could be punished by the President for their speech.”

 

Nossel added that PEN was not yet “actively asking” Bezos or CNN or other media outlets to join the lawsuit.

 

“Media organizations are focused on covering the news objectively and providing the essential transparency and accountability that is the work of a free press,” she said. “Every organization has to make their own determination of how best to play their role in this environment. That media organizations might determine to focus on journalism should not mean that the President’s violations go unchallenged by those affected by them.”

 

 

 

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Check-in With Facial Recognition Now Possible in Shanghai

It’s now possible to check in automatically at Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport using facial recognition technology, part of an ambitious rollout of facial recognition systems in China that has raised privacy concerns as Beijing pushes to become a global leader in the field.

Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport unveiled self-service kiosks for flight and baggage check-in, security clearance and boarding powered by facial recognition technology, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Similar efforts are underway at airports in Beijing and Nanyang city, in central China’s Henan province.

Many airports in China already use facial recognition to help speed security checks, but Shanghai’s system, which debuted Monday, is being billed as the first to be fully automated.

“It is the first time in China to achieve self-service for the whole check-in process,” said Zhang Zheng, general manager of the ground services department for Spring Airlines, the first airline to adopt the system at Hongqiao airport. Currently, only Chinese identity card holders can use the technology.

Spring Airlines said Tuesday that passengers had embraced automated check-in, with 87 percent of 5,017 people who took Spring flights on Monday using the self-service kiosks, which can cut down check-in times to less than a minute and a half.

Across greater China, facial recognition is finding its way into daily life. Mainland police have used facial recognition systems to identify people of interest in crowds and nab jaywalkers, and are working to develop an integrated national system of surveillance camera data.

Chinese media are filled with reports of ever-expanding applications: A KFC outlet in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, where it’s possible to pay using facial recognition technology; a school that uses facial recognition cameras to monitor students’ reactions in class; and hundreds of ATMs in Macau equipped with facial recognition devices to curb money laundering.

But increased convenience may come at a cost in a country with few rules on how the government can use biometric data.

“Authorities are using biometric and artificial intelligence to record and track people for social control purposes,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “We are concerned about the increasing integration and use of facial recognition technologies throughout the country because it provides more and more data points for the authorities to track people.”

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Iconic ‘Black Power’ Salute at Olympics Marks 50th Anniversary

It’s the 50th anniversary of the iconic moment when two African American Olympic athletes raised their fists in defiance to bring attention to racial oppression in back home. It happened at their medal award ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. VOA’s Mariama Diallo examines the significance of the moment in history.

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EgyptAir Pulls Magazine After Drew Barrymore Article

Egyptian officials say EgyptAir has removed the latest edition of its in-flight magazine over a contentious article it published, purportedly based on an interview with American actress Drew Barrymore.

They say the carrier had agreed with its publisher, Al-Ahram advertising agency, to stop printing more copies of the October issue of the magazine, Horus, and pull the ones already placed onboard the fleet’s aircraft.

 

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media.

 

Earlier this month, EgyptAir said Al-Ahram is to blame for Horus’ content and specifically for the Barrymore article, which was riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. It described Barrymore as “being unstable in her relationships” and quoted her as saying that motherhood was “the most important role” of her life.

 

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