Each January, the city of Harbin in northern China becomes an icy wonderland as it hosts the largest ice and snow festival in the world. In Harbin, temperatures can drop as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius. The annual festival, in its 35th year, draws millions of visitors to activities like hockey, a photography contest and an ice and snow painting exhibition. VOAs Deborah Block tells us about the ice sculpting competition, which features fantastic carvings by artisans from around the world.
…
Day: January 12, 2019
Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley’s tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports.
…
Cancer in your esophagus, the tube that runs from your throat to your stomach, is one of the most frequently reported and a leading cause of cancer deaths around the world. Most cases are reported in developing countries. Early esophageal cancer typically causes no symptoms. However, its chemical markers are present in the earliest stage. A new device being tested in England takes advantage of that to allow early detection of esophageal and other types of cancer. Faith Lapidus reports.
…
Lin-Manuel Miranda reprised his lead role in the hit musical “Hamilton” Friday night to start a two-week run in Puerto Rico expected to raise thousands of dollars for artists and cultural groups struggling in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
The audience giggled, hooted, clapped and tapped their feet throughout the performance as Miranda took the stage for the first time since his last appearance in the Broadway version in July 2016, when he played the role of U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton.
“I have never felt anything like that,” he said of the crowd’s energy, adding that singing the song “Hurricane” was a challenge.
“It was very hard to sing that here in Puerto Rico because you know better than I what it is to survive a hurricane. I feel like I’m going back to Maria a little bit every time I sing it,” he said.
Diverting hurricane funds
After the two-hour show, Miranda spoke with reporters, who peppered him with questions about how the White House was exploring diverting money for border wall construction from a range of accounts, including using some of the $13.9 billion allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers after last year’s deadly hurricanes and floods.
“I think that’s absolutely monstrous,” Miranda said as he apologized that he didn’t have further comment. “It’s the first time I’m hearing that. I’ve been a little busy.”
It’s the first time in nine years that Miranda has performed in Puerto Rico. Opening night drew more than 1,000 people who bought tickets ranging from $10 to $5,000.
The crowd gave Miranda a standing ovation before the show even started, and during the curtain call he wiped away tears and wrapped himself in a large Puerto Rican flag as he briefly addressed the crowd in Spanish and English.
Audience members transfixed
During the show’s intermission, accountant Zoraida Alvira sat absorbed as she read the three-page synopsis since she struggles a bit with English. It was the first time she had seen a musical and was transfixed.
“Here in Puerto Rico we are not too exposed to theater, let alone musicals,” she said as she praised the performance. “I didn’t move, and I’m a fidgety person.”
Alvira, like several other Puerto Ricans who attended opening night, snapped up her ticket thanks to a lottery launched by “Hamilton” organizers who are selling 275 tickets for every performance at $10 each.
Among those expected to attend the show in upcoming days are several federal lawmakers visiting the U.S. territory for the weekend to learn more about reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Maria, which caused more than $100 billion in damage when it hit Sept. 20, 2017.
Even people who didn’t have tickets showed up at the venue.
“This is a very important moment for Puerto Rico right now,” said Vivian Rodriguez, a student who lives in Puerto Rico but is from New York. She noted that Friday is Hamilton’s birthday, and she said Puerto Rico has suffered from what she described as its “colonial” status.
Change of venue
“Hamilton” was initially going to be staged at the University of Puerto Rico from Jan. 8 to 27, but producers announced in December that it was moving to the Centro de Bellas Artes following the threat of protests by university employees upset over enrollment changes at the island’s largest public university.
The change forced some people on the U.S. mainland to forgo their Hamilton tickets because they were unable or could not afford to change their airline tickets to accommodate the show’s new dates. Others were upset when they did not hear back from the agency responsible for reassigning new dates for previously purchased tickets.
“It has been such a nightmare for me,” said Myla Ruiz, who lives in the northern coastal town of Toa Baja and had gotten tickets for the original opening night.
Her husband is now unable to go because he will be on a work trip, and then she struggled to get a response from the agency selling the tickets. She is now reluctantly attending the show’s last night.
“I’m originally from New York, so I’m a huge fan of Broadway,” she said. “This to me is huge. There’s nothing like Broadway here. When they said this was coming, it’s all I’ve been talking about.”
The show also drew the attention of Jimmy Fallon, whose “Tonight Show” will air its Jan. 15 episode from Puerto Rico with Miranda and the new touring cast.
Miranda, composer and creator of “Hamilton,” won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for the musical.
…
NBC News announced its professional divorce agreement with Megyn Kelly late Friday, ending an association with the former Fox News Channel star whose attempt to become a network morning television star as part of the “Today” show floundered.
Terms were not disclosed. Kelly was in the second of a three-year contract that reportedly paid her more than $20 million a year.
She’s been off the air since October after creating a furor by suggesting that it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween, and exit negotiations had dragged for two months over the holidays. Even before the controversial commentary, her future was considered limited at NBC News.
“The parties have resolved their differences, and Megyn Kelly is no longer an employee of NBC,” the network said in a statement Friday night.
NBC says she’ll be replaced in the third hour of the “Today” show by anchors Craig Melvin, Al Roker, Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones.
Her tenure was also a failure for NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack, who lured her from Fox News Channel with the type of big-money contract that was once standard in television news but now is less so with financial constrictions and less viewership.
#MeToo media leader
In a sense, Kelly was caught in a no-woman’s land: some at NBC were suspicious of her because of the Fox News background, while her former audience at Fox resented her for tough questioning of Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail.
While at Fox, her accusations of unwanted sexual advances by the network’s late chief executive, Roger Ailes, helped lead to his firing.
She made news at NBC when interviewing women who accused Trump of inappropriate behavior and spoke with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and others, as well as women who say they were harassed on Capitol Hill. The episode with Trump accusers had more than 2.9 million viewers, one of her biggest audiences on the network.
Time magazine, which honored “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year in 2017, cited Kelly as the group’s leader in the entertainment field.
But tough segments on accusations against former NBC anchor Matt Lauer didn’t win her friends internally, as did her public call for Lack to appoint outside investigators to look into why the network didn’t air Ronan Farrow’s stories about Harvey Weinstein and allowed Farrow to take his story to The New Yorker.
Unclear what’s next
When those stories began to fade, Kelly had trouble attracting an audience in the soft-focus world of morning television. She also briefly hosted an evening newsmagazine that didn’t catch on with viewers.
It’s not immediately clear what’s next for Kelly. NBC would not comment Friday on whether the separation agreement allows her to write about her experiences at the network.
There’s no non-compete clause, meaning Kelly is free to seek other television work if she wants to.
…
Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX will reduce its workforce by about 10 percent of the company’s more than 6,000 employees, it said on Friday.
The company said it will “part ways” with some of its manpower, citing “extraordinarily difficult challenges ahead.”
“To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space based
Internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company. Either of these developments, even when attempted separately, have bankrupted other organizations,” a spokesman said in an email.
In June, Elon Musk fired at least seven people in the senior management team leading a SpaceX satellite launch project, Reuters reported in November. The firings were related to disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites.
SpaceX’s Starlink program is competing with OneWeb and Canada’s Telesat to be the first to market with a new satellite-based internet service.
The management shakeup involved Musk bringing in new managers from SpaceX headquarters in California to replace a number of the managers he fired in Seattle.
Last month, SpaceX launched its first U.S. national security space mission, when a SpaceX rocket carrying a U.S. military navigation satellite blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral.
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that SpaceX was raising $500 million, taking its valuation to $30.5 billion.
The Hawthorne, California-based company had earlier outlined plans for a trip to Mars in 2022, to be followed by a manned mission to the red planet by 2024.
Another Elon Musk company, electric car maker Tesla Inc , said in June it was cutting 9 percent of its workforce by removing several thousand jobs across the company in cost reduction measures.
The United States on Friday signaled it would not bow to the European Union’s request to keep agriculture out of planned U.S.-EU trade talks, publishing negotiating objectives that seek comprehensive EU access for American farm products.
The objectives, required by Congress under the “fast-track” trade negotiating authority law, seek to reduce or eliminate EU tariffs on U.S. farm products and break down non-tariff barriers, including on products developed through biotechnology, the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office said.
Agricultural issues were among the major sticking points in past negotiations for a major U.S.-EU trade deal, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), before talks were shelved after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington on Wednesday that the 28-country bloc could not negotiate on agriculture in a new, more limited set of negotiations expected to start this year.
“We have made very clear agriculture will not be included,” Malmstrom told reporters after meeting Lighthizer, adding that the two sides had not yet agreed on the scope of the talks.
Trump and EU president Jean-Claude Juncker agreed last July to re-launch negotiations to cut tariffs on industrial goods, including autos, and also discuss ways for Europe to buy more U.S. soybeans.
Trump told Juncker that he would refrain from levying threatened 25-percent tariffs on EU-produced cars and auto parts, which he is considering imposing worldwide on national security grounds.
Trump has long complained about Europe’s 10-percent import tariff on autos. The U.S. passenger car tariff is only 2.5 percent, although U.S. tariffs on pickup trucks and other commercial trucks are 25 percent.
The U.S. negotiating wish list does not specifically mention autos, but pledges to seek duty-free market access for U.S. industrial goods that eliminate non-tariff barriers such as “unnecessary differences in regulation.”
USTR’s decision to push for a full-fledged trade negotiation on agricultural goods follows a hearing in December at which U.S. farm, food and beverage groups argued for their products to be included.
Influential lawmakers such as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa farmer, have warned they might not support an EU deal that did not include agriculture. Now that the U.S. objectives have been published, the USTR may be ready to formally launch negotiations in as little as 30 days.
But the EU’s own negotiating mandates on industrial goods and regulatory cooperation need to be cleared by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, and approved by member states, and it is unclear how long that process will take.
The United States had a $151 billion goods deficit with the EU in 2017, despite two-way annual trade of about $1.1 billion. USTR also said it will seek commitments by Europe not to impose duties on any digital downloads of U.S. software, movies, music and other products nor any rules that restrict cross-border data flows or require data localization, USTR said.
In an objective aimed at Europe’s efforts to tax products and services from U.S.-based internet giants, including Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook and Amazon.com, USTR said it would seek a “guarantee that these products will not face government-sanctioned discrimination based on the nationality or territory in which the product is produced.”
…
Researchers say there’s a new calf among the population of critically endangered killer whales that live in the waters between Washington state and Canada.
Ken Balcomb, founding director of the Center for Whale Research, told The Seattle Times that staff first saw the calf Friday at the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
He said the youngster looks healthy, but survival rates for baby orcas are only about 50 percent.
The whales have been starving amid a dearth of salmon. Vessel noise and pollution have complicated their plight. No calf born in the last three years has survived.
One whale drew international attention when she carried her dead calf on her head for 17 days last summer.
Two other orcas are known to be sick, and researchers fear they could die within months.
…
In the latest blow to the International Olympic Committee’s efforts to rid itself of scandal, marketing head Tsunekazu Takeda is being investigated for alleged corruption related to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Takeda, who is also the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, was placed under formal investigation for “active corruption” on Dec. 10, France’s financial crimes office said Friday.
French investigators are in the midst of a years-long and wide-ranging probe into sports corruption that is looking, among other things, at the bidding contests for the 2020 Olympics and other major sports events.
Takeda’s career in Olympic circles has ticked almost every box, starting with representing Japan in equestrian competition at the 1972 Munich Games and 1976 Montreal Games.
As the head of the IOC’s marketing commission since 2014, Takeda has overseen the signing of sponsorship deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including new partnerships with Alibaba, Intel and Allianz.
In a statement issued Friday by the Japanese Olympic Committee, Takeda denied any wrongdoing. The JOC said he was in Tokyo but gave no further details.
“The case is causing tremendous concern among the people who are supporting the Tokyo Games, but I will continue to cooperate in the investigation in order to clear any suspicion of me,” Takeda said.
The IOC ethics commission was scheduled to meet later Friday in Lausanne, Switzerland. Takeda could be provisionally suspended from Olympic duty, or offer to step aside during the investigation.
“The IOC ethics commission has opened a file and will continue to monitor the situation,” the IOC said in a statement. “Mr. Takeda continues to enjoy the full presumption of innocence.”
The preliminary charge of active corruption against Takeda announced by the National Financial Prosecutors office was first reported on Friday by French newspaper Le Monde. The preliminary charge means the investigating magistrate has determined there are serious grounds for suspicion but has not yet ruled on whether to pursue a prosecution.
Secret deals suspected
Le Monde said the magistrate overseeing the probe, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, suspects the IOC vote for Tokyo in 2013 was swayed by secret deals that secured the backing of IOC members from Africa for the Japanese capital over Istanbul and Madrid.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike told Japan’s NHK television she was “very surprised and puzzled” but declined to speculate how it might affect the Tokyo Olympics.
“I just got the initial report on this, so I don’t have sufficient information,” she said.
Le Monde reported French investigators suspect Takeda of authorizing the payment of bribes. French financial prosecutors are looking at two payments, totaling 1.8 million euros ($2 million), made on either side of the IOC vote in September 2013 to a Singapore company, Black Tidings, Le Monde said.
French prosecutors have linked Black Tidings to Papa Massata Diack, one of the sons of Lamine Diack, who presided over the IAAF from 1999 to 2015.
Lamine Diack, who had huge influence on African voters in Olympic contests, is also under investigation in France on corruption-related charges and allegations that he, his son and others were involved in blackmailing athletes and covering up failed drug tests. The 85-year-old Diack has had to turn in his passport and is not allowed to leave the country.
His son is believed to be in Senegal. France has issued a wanted notice for him via Interpol.
‘No such illegal activity’
Takeda, who is a distant relative of the Japanese imperial family but does not have royal status, said he was cooperating with French investigators. He said the money paid by the bid committee is a legitimate cost for the service provided by the Black Tidings under the consultancy contract between the two sides. He also said he did not know Lamine Diack.
“I have explained [to the French authorities] that there was no such illegal activity tantamount to bribery,” Takeda said.
Takeda was leading Tokyo’s second straight bid for the Summer Games, after losing in the 2016 Olympics race to Rio de Janeiro. French prosecutors are also investigating Rio officials and IOC members for alleged financial wrongdoing in 2009 linked to Papa Massata Diack.
The Japanese Olympic Committee said it has conducted its own internal investigation and found no illegality involved in all payments made by the Japanese bid committee at the time.
The organizers of the 2020 Olympics referred questions to the JOC.
In Takeda’s Olympic career, he has led a national Olympic committee, been a vice president of an Olympic sport’s governing body (equestrian), a chef de mission for Olympic teams, a sports director for a Winter Olympics (Nagano in 1998), a Summer Games bid leader, an IOC member since 2012, and now chair of one of the most financially significant IOC panels.
Takeda also works closely with Sheikh Ahmad of Kuwait, the influential IOC member who has stepped aside from the IOC while awaiting trial in Geneva this year in a fraud case unrelated to Olympic business. Takeda is a board member of the global group of Olympic committees, known as ANOC, and the Olympic Council of Asia, both led by the Kuwaiti sheikh.
…
The latest gadgets want even greater access to your lives.
This week’s CES tech show in Las Vegas was a showcase for cameras that can livestream the living room, a bathroom mirror that captures your face to offer beauty tips and a gizmo that tracks the heartbeat of an unborn child.
These features can be useful — or at least fun — but they all open the door for companies and people working for them to peek into your private lives. Just this week, The Intercept reported that Ring, a security-camera company owned by Amazon, gave employees access to some customer video footage.
You’ll have to weigh whether the gadgets are useful enough to give up some privacy. First, you have to trust that companies making these devices are protecting your information and aren’t doing more than what they say they’re doing with data. Even if a company has your privacy in mind, things can go wrong: Hackers can break in and access sensitive data. Or an ex might retain access to a video feed long after a breakup.
“It’s not like all these technologies are inherently bad,” says Franziska Roesner, a University of Washington professor who researches computer security and privacy.
But she said the industry is still trying to figure out the right balance between providing useful services and protecting people’s privacy in the process
Amazon’s video feeds
As with other security cameras, Ring’s can be mounted outside the front door or inside the home to give you a peek, through an app, of who’s there. But the Intercept said the Amazon-owned company was also allowing some high-level engineers in the U.S. to view customers’ video feeds, while others in the Ukraine office could view and download any customer video file.
In a statement, Ring said some Amazon employees have access to videos that are publicly shared through the company’s Neighbors app, which aims to create a network of security cameras in an area. Ring also says employees get additional video from users who consent to such sharing.
At CES, Ring announced an internet-connected video doorbell that fits into peepholes for apartment dwellers or college students who can’t install one next to their doors. Though it doesn’t appear Ring uses facial recognition yet, records show that Amazon recently filed a patent application for a facial-recognition system involving home security cameras.
Living room livestream
It’s one thing to put cameras in our own homes, but Alarm.com wants us to also put them in other people’s houses.
Alarm’s Wellcam is for caretakers to watch from afar and is mostly designed to check in on aging relatives. Someone who lives elsewhere can use a smartphone to “peek in” anytime, says Steve Chazin, vice president of products.
The notion of placing a camera in someone else’s living room might feel icky.
Wellcam says video isn’t recorded until someone activates it from a phone and video is deleted as soon as the stream stops. Chazin says such cameras are “becoming more acceptable because loved ones want to know that the ones they care about are safe.”
Just be sure you trust whom you’re giving access to. You can’t turn off the camera, unless you unplug it or cover it up with something.
Bathroom cameras
French company CareOS showcased a smart mirror that lets you “try on” different hairstyles. Facial recognition helps the mirror’s camera know which person in a household is there, while augmented-reality technology overlays your actual image with animation on how you might look.
CareOS expects hotels and salons to buy the $20,000 Artemis mirror — making it more important that personal data is protected.
“We know we don’t want the whole world to know about what’s going on in the bathroom,” co-founder Chloe Szulzinger said.
The mirror doesn’t need internet to work, she said. Even if it is connected, all data is stored on a local network. The company says it will abide by Europe’s stronger privacy rules, which took effect in May, regardless of where a customer lives. Customers can choose to share their information with CareOS, but only after they’ve explicitly agreed to how it will be used.
The same applies for the businesses that buy and install the mirror. Customers can choose to share some information — such as photos of the hair cut they got last time they visited a salon — but the businesses can’t access anything stored in user profiles unless users specifically allow them to.
Bodily data
Some gadgets, meanwhile, are gathering intimate information.
Yo Sperm sells an iPhone attachment that tests and tracks sperm quality. To protect privacy, the company recommends that users turn their phones to airplane mode when using the test. The company says data stays on the phone, within the app, though there’s a button for sharing details with a doctor.
Owlet, meanwhile, plans to sell a wearable device that sits over a pregnant belly and tracks the heartbeat. The company’s privacy policy says personal data gets collected. And you can choose to share heartbeat information with researchers studying stillbirths.
Though such data can be useful, Forrester analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo warns that these devices aren’t regulated or governed by U.S. privacy law. She warns that companies could potentially sell data to insurance companies who could find, for instance, that someone was drinking caffeine during a pregnancy — potentially raising health risks and hence premiums.
…