Corn and soybeans are the most profitable crops for American farmers each year. While many rotate these two crops season to season, the ongoing trade dispute with China is affecting even routine decisions for farmers as they head to the fields this spring to plant. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from the Midwest state of Illinois.
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Month: April 2019
Thousands flocked to remember the life of Nipsey Hussle at a packed memorial service Thursday that provided mourners with a deeper appreciation of Ermias Asghedom, the man behind the up-and-coming hip-hop persona.
Some of people who knew Hussle best, from his actress-fiancee Lauren London, dear friend Snoop Dogg and his mother shared their most personal stories about the rapper during the three-hour service in Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The 21,000-seat venue hosted its first celebrity funeral since Michael Jackson’s in 2009, ending with a montage of videos of the rapper set to his song, “Dedication.”
Hussle’s casket, draped in the flag of his father’s native country, Eritrea in East Africa, then embarked on a 25-mile tour of the city, drawing thousands to the streets to catch a glimpse of the recently anointed hometown hero.
Police kept an eye on the crowd, which appeared largely peaceful. At one point, people sat atop a police car spray-painted with the words: “Nips in Paradise.”
Family, friends share memories
London shared a text message sent she sent the rapper in January calling him “my turn up and my church.” She spoke about learning so much from being in his presence as her provider and protector, but turned sad at the thought of their son being unable to remember his dad.
“My pain is for my 2-year-old,” she said.
After the service, she revealed a fresh tattoo of Hussle on her forearm, writing in an Instagram post that “Real Love Never Dies” and that from now on “When you see me, you will always see him.”
Hussle’s mother, Angelique Smith, spoke calmly about her being in “perfect peace” and “happy and complete” despite her son’s death. She declared: “Ermias was a legacy.”
She called him a “superhero” who wasn’t afraid to lead, recounting a story about Ermias at age 9 running down the middle of the street to flag down a firetruck to extinguish her car’s engine that went under flames. Miraculously, the car still ran.
“We’re burning but not destroyed,” Smith said.
Snoop Dogg talked candidly about Hussle being a visionary and meeting him for the first time.
“Most rappers when they push up on Snoop Dogg with a mixtape, this is their line: ‘Ahh, dawg, listen to my music. I can make you a million dollars,’” Dogg said. “Nipsey’s line was, ‘Hey homie, listen to my music. Just give it a listen.’ That’s it? No record deal? You don’t want to get put on? So to me, he had vision to know and understand that I don’t want to be handed out nothing. I’m going to come and get mine.”
Killed in his neighborhood
Hussle was shot to death March 31 while standing outside The Marathon, his South Los Angeles clothing store, not far from where the rapper grew up.
Eric R. Holder Jr., who has been charged with killing Hussle, has pleaded not guilty. Police have said Holder and Hussle had several interactions the day of the shooting and have described it as being the result of a personal dispute.
At least one of the rapper’s wishes came true Thursday. In his 2016 song “Ocean Views,” he rapped about having a Stevie Wonder song played at his funeral. The legendary singer took the stage to perform “Rocket Song,” one of Hussle’s favorites.
Earlier in the ceremony, a montage of photos featuring the rapper from infancy, childhood and adulthood, with fellow rappers, his family and London, were shown to the crowd, set to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
Hussle’s children also appeared onstage to pay tribute. London’s son with rapper Lil Wayne, Cameron Carter, said days after Hussle died, he had a dream in which he saw the rapper.
“I realized Ermias told me what heaven was like. He told me it was paradise,” Cameron said.
Cameron then told the audience that Hussle would look at him through the window at times and say “respect.” Cameron then asked the crowd to say “respect” in unison, and the crowd sent the word booming through the arena.
Mixtapes sold out
For a decade, Hussle released much sought-after mixtapes that he sold out of the trunk of his car, helping him create a buzz and gain respect from rap purists and his peers. His said his stage name, a play on the 1960s and ’70s rhyming standup comic Nipsey Russell, was given to him as a teen by an older friend because he was such a go-getter — always hustling.
He charged $100 for his 2013 mixtape “Crenshaw,” scoring a cash and publicity coup when Jay-Z bought 100 copies for $10,000.
Last year, Hussle hit new heights with “Victory Lap,” his critically acclaimed major-label debut album on Atlantic Records that made several critics’ best-of lists. The album debuted at No. 4 on Billboard’s 200 albums charts and earned him a Grammy nomination.
But the rapper was also a beloved figure for his philanthropic work that went well beyond the usual celebrity “giving back” ethos. Following his death, political and community leaders were quick and effusive in their praise.
Hussle recently purchased the strip mall where The Marathon is located and planned to redevelop it, part of Hussle’s broader ambitions to remake the neighborhood where he grew up and attempt to break the cycle of gang life that lured him in when he was younger.
Hussle’s brother, Samiel Asghedom, talked about how Hussle would assemble parts to build his first computer, but became emotional about his brother leaving his “heart and soul” on the popular intersection of Crenshaw and Slauson Avenue.
“Bro, you made the world proud,” he said.
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As scientists get better at sifting through our past, more and more variations of human beings are turning up in archaeological digs. In the early 2000s there was the discovery in Indonesia of a tiny hominid called Flores man, this week an archaeologist says he has found the remains of another human cousin buried in a Philippine cave. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos on Thursday challenged retailers to hike their minimum wages to $16 an hour, prompting a comeback from Walmart Inc which asked its rivals to pay taxes.
“Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage,” the billionaire entrepreneur said in a letter to shareholders. “Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us.”
The online retailer raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour for U.S. employees from November, giving in to critics of poor pay and working conditions at the company.
Some critics have said the hike was insufficient and note that Amazon paid zero U.S. federal income tax on more than $11 billion in profits before taxes in 2018, and received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government.
Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, responded to Bezos by tweeting, “Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?”
Walmart, which has raised its minimum wage twice since 2015, pays an entry wage of $11 per hour. CEO Doug McMillon has said Walmart’s average U.S. hourly wage is $17.50 including bonuses based on store performance, and excluding health care benefits.
The two retailers, which are fierce rivals, rarely go after one another other publicly.
Amazon’s wage hike came as U.S. unemployment was at a near two-decade low, with retailers and shippers competing for hundreds of thousands of workers for the all-important holiday shopping season.
Bezos said in his letter that the wage hike has benefited more than 250,000 Amazon employees and over 100,000 seasonal employees who worked during the last holiday season at Amazon sites in the United States.
Amazon’s third-party sales in 2018 accounted for 58 percent of total sales, up from 56 percent in 2017, Bezos said.
Amazon has said that it pays all the required taxes in every country where it operates, including $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years.
“Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits remain modest given retail is a highly competitive, low-margin business,” according to recent Amazon statements.
Walt Disney Co on Thursday said its new family-friendly streaming service will cost $7 monthly or $70 annually with a slate of exclusive TV shows and movies from some of the world’s most popular entertainment franchises in a bid to challenge the digital dominance of Netflix.
The ad-free monthly subscription called Disney+ is set to launch on Nov. 12 and in every major global market over time, the company said. In addition to Disney films and TV shows, it will feature programming from the Marvel superhero universe, the “Star Wars” galaxy, “Toy Story” creator Pixar animation and the National Geographic channel.
The company said it has struck deals with Roku Inc and Sony Corp to distribute Disney+ on streaming devices and console gaming systems and expects it to be widely available on smart televisions, tablets, and other outlets by launch.
Disney kicked off its presentation to Wall Street analysts at its Burbank, California, headquarters on Thursday with a video that demonstrated the breadth of its portfolio, showing clips from dozens of classic TV shows and movies from “Frozen” and “The Lion King” to “Avatar” and “The Sound of Music.”
Executives said they see opportunities to take its ESPN+ sport streaming video service to Latin America and are looking into international expansion of its Hulu streaming video business, which offers movies and shows targeted to adults.
The entertainment giant is trying to transform itself from a cable television powerhouse into a leader of streaming media. Chief Executive Bob Iger in February called streaming the company’s “No. 1 priority.”
Wall Street has pinned high hopes on the new service, which analysts expect would cost about $7.50 monthly and lure about 7.2 million U.S. subscribers in 2020 and 13.66 million by 2021, according to a poll of analysts conducted by Reuters.
The digital push is Disney’s response to cord-cutting, the dropping of cable service that has hit its ESPN sports network and other channels, and the rise of Netflix Inc. The Silicon Valley upstart has amassed 139 million customers worldwide since it began streaming 12 years ago.
The Mouse House, as Disney is known, will join the market at a time when audiences are facing a host of choices, and monthly bills, for digital entertainment. Apple Inc, AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia and others plan new streaming services. To bolster its potential digital portfolio, Disney recently purchased film and TV assets from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and gained prized properties such as “Avatar.”
In a January regulatory filing, Disney reported losses of more than $1 billion for streaming-related investments in Hulu and technology company BAMtech.
Disney had been supplying new movies such as “Black Panther” and “Beauty and the Beast” to Netflix after their runs in theaters but ended that arrangement this year to feed its own streaming ambitions. The company estimated it is foregoing $150 million in licensing revenue this fiscal year by saving programming for its own platforms.
The Disney+ programming will draw in part from Disney’s deep library of classic family films. It also will include exclusive original content such as a live-action “Star Wars” series called “The Mandalorian,” a show focused on Marvel movie villain Loki, and animated “Monsters at Work,” inspired by hit Pixar movie “Monsters Inc.”
Some new Disney movies, such as a “Lady and the Tramp” remake, will go directly to the Disney+ app. Other new releases will appear on Disney+ after their run in theaters and after the cycle out of the home video sales window, executives have said.
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SpaceX launched its second supersized rocket and for the first time landed all three boosters Thursday, a year after sending up a sports car on the initial test flight.
The new and improved Falcon Heavy thundered into the early evening sky with a communication satellite called Arabsat, the rocket’s first paying customer. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in use today, with 27 engines firing at liftoff — nine per booster.
Eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed two of the first-stage boosters back at Cape Canaveral, side by side, just like it did for the rocket’s debut last year. The core booster landed two minutes later on an ocean platform hundreds of miles offshore. That’s the only part of the first mission that missed.
“What an amazing day,” a SpaceX flight commentator exclaimed. “Three for three boosters today on Falcon Heavy, what an amazing accomplishment.”
Launch from Apollo pad
The Falcon Heavy soared from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, using the same pad that shot Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago and later space shuttle crews.
Prime viewing spots were packed with tourists and locals eager to catch not just the launch but the rare and dramatic return of twin boosters, accompanied by sonic booms. The roads were also jammed for Wednesday night’s launch attempt, which was scuttled by high wind.
Because this was an upgraded version of the rocket with unproven changes, SpaceX chief Elon Musk cautioned in advance things might go wrong. But everything went exceedingly well. SpaceX employees at company headquarters in Southern California cheered every launch milestone and especially the three touchdowns.
“The Falcons have landed,” Musk said in a tweet that included pictures of all three boosters.
Tesla Roadster still in orbit
Musk put his own Tesla convertible on last year’s demo. The red Roadster, with a mannequin, dubbed Starman, likely still at the wheel, remains in a solar orbit stretching just past Mars.
The Roadster is thought to be on the other side of the sun from us right now, about three-quarters of the way around its first solar orbit, said Jon Giorgini, a senior analyst at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
A couple dozen ground telescopes kept tabs on the car during its first several days in space, but it gradually faded from view as it headed out toward the orbit of Mars, Giorgini added.
The Roadster could still look much the same as it did for the Feb. 6, 2018, launch, just not as shiny with perhaps some chips and flakes from the extreme temperature swings, according to Giorgini. It will take decades if not centuries for solar radiation to cause it to decompose, he said.
Air Force mission next
SpaceX plans to launch its next Falcon Heavy later this year on a mission for the U.S. Air Force. The boosters for that flight may be recycled from this one.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine last month suggested possibly using a Falcon Heavy, and another company’s big rocket, to get the space agency’s Orion capsule around the moon, minus a crew, in 2020. But the preferred method remains NASA’s own Space Launch System mega rocket, if it can be ready by then.
Bridenstine said everything is on the space table as NASA strives to meet the White House’s goal of landing astronauts back on the moon by 2024.
NASA’s Saturn V rockets, used for the Apollo moon shots, are the all-time launch leaders so far in size and might.
SpaceX typically launches Falcon 9 rockets. The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of those single rockets strapped together.
Until SpaceX came along, boosters were discarded in the ocean after satellite launches. The company is intent on driving down launch costs by recycling rocket parts.
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Uber Technologies Inc. has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said Thursday in its initial public offering filing.
The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the company, which was started in 2009 after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night.
The filing underscores the rapid growth of Uber’s business in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.
$3B loss from operations
The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to “increase significantly in the foreseeable future” and it “may not achieve profitability.” Uber lost $3.03 billion in 2018 from operations, excluding one-off gains.
The S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, which include ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018. This was up 33.8 percent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 percent a year earlier.
Uber in 2018 had revenue of $11.3 billion, up around 42 percent over 2017, again below the 106 percent growth in the prior year.
Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion but did not specify the size of the IPO. Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.
Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion.
Uber will follow Lyft Inc. in going public. Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 on Thursday, 15 percent below its IPO price set late last month, a development that has sent chilling signals to other tech startups looking to go public.
Adverse events
After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a road show, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29. The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May.
Uber faces questions about how it will navigate any transition toward self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but also as possibly disrupting its business model.
One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates. Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber’s business model to become profitable.
In addition to answering questions about the company’s finances, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years.
Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 from Expedia Inc. to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted as CEO.
Uber said in its filing its ridesharing position in the United States and Canada was “significantly impacted by adverse publicity events” and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies.
A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days.
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Hunter-gatherers in the Amazon sought in court on Thursday to stop Ecuador’s government from auctioning their land to oil companies, as tension mounts over the future of the rainforest.
In a lawsuit seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation — which could set a precedent for other tribes opposed to drilling — the Waorani said the government did not properly consult them in 2012 over plans to auction their land to oil companies.
“We live on these lands and we want to continue to live there in harmony. We will defend them. Our fight is that our rights are respected,” said Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader of the 2,000-strong Waorani.
“Our fight is not just a fight about oil. This is a fight about different ways of living — one that protects life and one that destroys life,” said Nenquimo, from Pastaza province in the eastern Amazon.
Ecuador’s energy and environment ministries, the respondents in the case, and the nation’s hydrocarbons secretary were not immediately available to comment.
When President Lenin Moreno met Waorani leaders last year to hear their concerns, he said it was important to have a dialog and reach a consenus.
Tensions have simmered between indigenous communities and oil companies in Ecuador since Texaco — now Chevron — began operations in the Amazon in the 1960s.
Key step
Ecuador is pushing to open up more rainforest and develop its oil and gas reserves in the hope of improving its sluggish economy and cutting its high fiscal deficit and foreign debt.
The constitution gives the government the right to develop energy projects and extract minerals on any land, regardless of who owns it, but requires that communities are consulted first and are properly informed about any projects and their impact.
Laws to regulate the consultation process have yet to be introduced, although the court case could push the government to do this, said Brian Parker, a lawyer with campaign group Amazon Frontlines, which is supporting the Waorani.
“The lawsuit is to ensure that the processes enshrined in the constitution are carried through to guarantee the Waorani rights to prior consultation and their rights to territory,” said Parker, who is based in Ecuador.
“The fact that the Waoroni have a chance in court to be able to plead their case is in itself a very important step,” he said, adding that a court victory would provide an “invaluable precedent” for other indigenous Amazonian tribes.
The government announced last year that it had divided swaths of forest up into blocs for auction, one of which — bloc 22 — covers the Waorani’s ancestral lands, raising the specter of pollution and an end to their way of life.
Present for hearing
Hundreds of Waorani and other indigenous peoples arrived in Ecuador’s eastern city of Puyo to witness the court hearing, which is expected to include several days of oral testimony from Waorani leaders, with a decision in the next few weeks.
Ecuadorians voted last year to give broad backing to limits on oil production and mining in environmentally sensitive areas, among other issues.
In two landmark cases in 2018, local courts sided with indigenous communities who said the government had failed to inform them before designating their land for mineral exploitation.
The Costa Rica based Inter-American Court of Human Rights also ruled in 2012 that Ecuador had violated its Sarayaku Amazonian community’s right to prior consultation before drillers started exploration on their lands in the late 1990s.
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An Israeli spacecraft lost contact with Earth moments before it was to land on the moon and crashed late Thursday, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar mission.
The spacecraft lost communication with ground control as it was making its final descent to the moon. Moments later, the mission was declared a failure.
“We definitely crashed on surface of moon,” said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries. He said the spacecraft was in pieces scattered at the planned landing site.
Engine shut down
Doron said that the spacecraft’s engine turned off shortly before landing. By the time power was restored, he said the craft was moving too fast to land safely. Scientists were still trying to figure out the cause of the failure.
One of the inertial measurement units failed. And that caused an unfortunate chain of events we're not sure about,'' he said.The engine was turned off. The engine was stopped and the spacecraft crashed. That’s all we know.”
The incident occurred in front of a packed audience that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was broadcast live on national television.
The small robotic spacecraft, built by the nonprofit SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, had hoped to match a feat that has been achieved only by the national space agencies of three countries: the U.S., Russia and China.
If at first you don't succeed, try try again,'' Netanyahu said. He vowed to put an Israeli spacecraft on the moonintact” in the next two years.
Scientists, who were giddy with excitement only seconds earlier, were visibly distraught, and celebrations at viewing centers across the country were dashed.
President Reuven Rivlin hosted dozens of youngsters at his official residence. The children, some wearing white spacesuits, appeared confused as the crash unfolded.
We are full of admiration for the wonderful people who brought the spacecraft to the moon,'' Rivlin said.True, not as we had hoped, but we will succeed in the end.”
Launched in February
The failure was a disappointing ending to a 6.5 million-kilometer (4 million-mile) lunar voyage, almost unprecedented in length, that was designed to conserve fuel and reduce price.
The spacecraft hitched a ride on the SpaceX Falcon rocket, launched from Florida in February. For the past two months, Beresheet traveled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit.
The U.S. space agency NASA broadcast the landing attempt live on its dedicated TV channels, as well as online.
“While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress,'' he added.I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore, and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements.”
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Lin Feng contributed to this report
WASHINGTON — A senior official in the U.S. Department of State said Wednesday the security concerns the government has raised related to Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE extend to all companies headquartered in China, saying they are effectively “under direction” of the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s very important to distinguish how Western democracies operate relative to their private sector companies and vendors, and how the Chinese government operates with its companies,” Ambassador Robert L. Strayer, deputy assistant secretary for Cyber and International Communications and Information Policy, said during a conference call with reporters.
Chinese companies don’t have the ability to mount a legal challenge to directives from the government, he said.
“They don’t have the ability to go to court,” he said. “They’re basically under direction — what we call extra-judicial command — of the Communist Party of China … to take actions, when requested by the government. There’s not the same rule of law that we consider a part of our daily lives and all of our business dealings in Western democracies.”
Strayer has been the point person in the Trump administration’s effort to block Chinese firms, and Huawei in particular, from participating in the global rollout of 5G mobile communications technology, insisting that Chinese law requires the companies to cooperate with Beijing’s intelligence services.
Strayer and other officials have warned that Chinese telecommunications firms could give Beijing intelligence services secret “back-door” access to sensitive communications networks, or that in a crisis, they could disrupt communications on command.
His comments were among the administration’s most comprehensive justification for trying to block Huawei’s entry into the U.S. and European 5G markets.
The push has included warnings that the United States may restrict the kind of intelligence it shares, even with close allies, if Washington is not satisfied that communications networks are secure.
To this point, the U.S. has failed to produce hard evidence of Huawei or ZTE engaging in espionage for the Chinese government. However, both firms have been charged with theft of intellectual property from rival companies, and Huawei has been charged with conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Huawei and ZTE have consistently denied they ever have or will act as an arm of Chinese intelligence services.
Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s 74-year-old founder and president, recently told the BBC that to do so would be economic suicide.
“Our sales revenues are now hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “We are not going to risk the disgust of our country and our customers all over the world because of something like that. We will lose all our business. I’m not going to take that risk.”
Samm Sacks, cybersecurity policy and China digital economy fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “The reality is the Communist Party of China uses the law selectively as an instrument as it sees fit.”
“What does worry me is this hypothetical situation of what Huawei would be employed to do by the Chinese government,” she told VOA. “I think we have to look at what Huawei as a commercial company needing to succeed in global markets have in its interest. And I’d say right now, it’s not in its interests to use those vulnerabilities. But that could change in another scenario.”
The U.S. effort so far has achieved only limited success in its efforts to get allies to impose blanket restrictions on the use of equipment made by Huawei and ZTE in cutting edge, high-speed, next-generation infrastructure. However, Strayer said that as countries around the world begin looking closely at the risks, he believes an eventual ban on the two firms’ products is inevitable.
He cited a recent analysis of Huawei equipment by government investigators in the United Kingdom, which found myriad security flaws and engineering deficiencies in devices meant to support the rollout of 5G in that country. In Germany, he said, a set of strict security standards under consideration would amount to a de facto ban on Chinese-made 5G equipment.
The proposed German standards would require that telecommunications systems “be sourced from trustworthy suppliers whose compliance with national security regulations and provisions for the secrecy of telecommunications and for data protection is assured.”
Given the legal requirement that Chinese companies assist the intelligence services —and keep that assistance secret — “It’s hard to see how Chinese technology would meet that standard for protection of data,” he said.
Strayer said the U.S. is encouraging all countries to consider similar regulations.
“We have encouraged countries to adopt risk-based security frameworks,” Strayer said. “And we think that a rigorous application of those frameworks, if they include supply chain security risk and the consideration of the relationship between a 5G vendor and their government, will lead, inevitably, to the banning of Huawei and ZTE.”
In his remarks Wednesday, Strayer focused on the issue of 5G infrastructure, but at times broadened his critique of Chinese government policies to encompass all firms based in China that deal with sensitive technology.
“We think it’s very important that countries deploying 5G networks consider the relationship between a foreign government, where a vendor is headquartered, and the companies themselves and that country,” he said. “When we look at the Chinese laws, relative to intelligence and national security, those allow the Chinese government to direct the actions of companies for their national interest of China, as well as require that companies to maintain secrecy, about the actions they’ve taken at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He also echoed a common complaint from Western countries that Chinese government policies provide advantages to domestic firms that give them an unfair competitive advantage when they move into international markets.
“The Chinese government, through state-owned banks and other sources, has provided in some cases zero percent interest, 20-year loan offers, which are not commercially reasonable,” he said. “That kind of unfair playing field is not one that Western technology should have to compete with. It should be a level playing field for technology vendors.”
In addition, he said, government-supported “cross subsidization” allows Chinese firms another avenue by which they can undercut the prices of Western firms.
“They can get large profits on what they sell into the Chinese market, which they largely have under their control through the government, and then use those subsidies to then offer lower prices in our markets in the West.”
One group in the United States who is not enjoying the low national unemployment rate is 18- to 24-year-old young adults who lack higher education, according to a new report.
For them, the unemployment rate is 17 percent, according to recent research by the Brookings Institution. By comparison, the unemployment rate for the general population was 3.8 percent in March.
“In theory, the path to employment providing financial security in adulthood is simple: finish high school, enroll in and complete college or training that is affordable and a good fit, gain some work experience along the way, and launch a career,” wrote Brookings’ Martha Ross and Natalie Holmes in their report. “Meet the millions of young adults who are out of work.”
The report characterized the younger unemployed as bilingual Karina, 19, who graduated high school recently and is considering continuing her studies; single-mom Monica, 23; Juan, 20, who attends community college and has worked seasonal jobs; 19-year-old Stephanie who left state university after a year because of financial concerns; Matt, 24, who has an associate’s degree but who lost his job at a car dealership when the business closed; and Amy, 22, who has a bachelor’s and volunteers as a tutor.
Ross and Holmes described the young unemployed in relation to education:
18 to 21 year olds with a high school diploma or less (37% of total out of work youth)
22 to 24 year olds with a high school diploma or less (25%)
18 to 21 year olds with at least some education beyond high school (17%)
22 to 24 year olds with at least some education beyond high school (15%)
22 to 24 year olds with bachelor’s degrees (6%)
In the first group, three-quarters live with their parents or grandparents “in modest circumstances,” sharing a median family income of $40,000. “They have limited connection to the work world, as only 30 percent worked in the past year, and less than half (45 percent) are looking for work. Relatively small shares are in school (8 percent) or have children (11 percent).” Nearly 40 percent live below the poverty line.
Seventy percent had a high school diploma.
The second group “are the least likely of all the groups to live with their parents (57 percent), and the most likely to have children (24 percent).” Their median family income of $36,000, the lowest among the groups, put 43 percent of them below the poverty line. One-third worked in the past year, less than half were looking for work, and only 2 percent were enrolled.
Sixty-six percent had a high school diploma.
In the third group, more than 90 percent have some college but no degree. (Of these unemployed, 8 percent have an associate or bachelor’s degree.) Fifty-one percent are in school, and 72 percent seek work. Nearly half (43 percent) worked in the past year. Three out of four live with parents or grandparents with low to moderate incomes, almost 30 percent live below the poverty line with a median family income of $54,000.
Ninety-two percent had some college.
In the fourth group, about one in four earned an associate or bachelor’s degree, but two-thirds of them live with parents or grandparents in a household with a median family income of $52,000. They are the second most likely of the groups to be in school (27 percent), to have children (16 percent), to be seeking work (62 percent), and to have worked in the past year (44 percent). One in three live below the poverty line.
Seventy-nine percent had some college, 14 percent had an associate degree, and 8 percent had a bachelor’s degree.
Among the fifth and last group, nearly half (47 percent) worked in the past year, and 58 percent are looking for work. Two-thirds live with their parents who have a median family income of $92,000, considerably higher than other groups. Only one in four lives below the poverty line, however, which could reflect that they are early in their career, when earnings are typically lower, or perhaps a deeper level of disadvantage.
All in that group had attained a bachelor’s degree.
English ability among all groups was not a persistent problem, Brookings reported, with 9 percent of the 2.3 million young people out of work reporting limited English skills. Hispanics dominated the groups of lower education out of work. Whites dominated the higher education out of work groups.
The gender split was not wide in any group.
“This path does not appear to work equally well for all, particularly in light of the effects of the Great Recession and the declining rates of employment among teens and young adults since about 2000,” the authors wrote.
The arched stone-built hall in Jerusalem venerated by Christians as the site of Jesus’ Last Supper has been digitally recreated by archaeologists using laser scanners and advanced photography.
The Cenacle, a popular site for pilgrims near Jerusalem’s walled Old City, has ancient, worn surfaces and poor illumination, hampering a study of its history.
So researchers from Israel’s Antiquities Authority and European research institutions used laser technology and advanced photographic techniques to create richly detailed three-dimensional models of the hall built in the Crusader era.
The project helped highlight obscure artwork and decipher some theological aspects of the second-floor room, built above what Jewish tradition says is the burial site of King David.
“We managed, in one of the… holiest places in Jerusalem, to use this technology and this is a breakthrough,” Amit Re’em, Jerusalem district archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told Reuters of the project, which began in 2016.
Re’em pointed to reliefs of what he described as the symbols of the “Agnus Dei,” a lamb that is an emblem of Christ, and the “Lion of Judah” on keystones in the hall’s vaulted ceiling.
“It tells the story of this room,” Re’em said. “It delivers the message of the Last [Supper] Room, Christ as a Messiah, as victorious, as a victim — and the lion, the lion is a symbol of the Davidic dynasty. They combine together in this room.”
Some archaeologists have questioned whether the room is the actual venue of the Last Supper, the final meal which the New Testament says Jesus shared with disciples before his crucifixion.
Ilya Berkovich, a historian at the INZ research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who worked on the project, said the endeavor opens “incredibly new horizons” with enormous potential.
Dutch ASML said on Thursday it had been the victim of corporate espionage in 2015 involving employees from countries including China but said it had not been the target of any “national conspiracy.”
ASML said the perpetrators took “large files” on memory sticks from its Silicon Valley software subsidiary that develops software for machine optimization. It said it had since taken action to make such theft much more difficult.
Following publication of a story in Dutch daily newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) that said ASML had been struck by Chinese espionage, the company took issue with that label. “The suggestion that we were somehow victim of a national conspiracy is wrong,” CEO Peter Wennink said in a statement.
“We resent any suggestion that this event should have any implication for ASML conducting business in China. Some of the individuals (involved) happened to be Chinese nationals,” he added.
The Dutch company welcomed a Sino-European agreement earlier this week, which promised that Beijing would no longer force foreign companies to share sensitive know-how when operating in China.
“Can we prudently do business in China? Yes of course. This was a rotten apple,” ASML said in an earlier statement.
ASML is the dominant maker of lithography systems, used to trace out the circuitry of semiconductor chips.
Its sales to China more than doubled to 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in 2018 as Beijing drives growth of its domestic semiconductor industry, now accounting for about a sixth of ASML’s total sales.
California case
The FD story was based in part on ASML sources and in part on documents from the Santa Clara, California Superior Court that showed six former ASML employees, all with Chinese names, breached their employment contract by sharing information on ASML software processes with a company called XTAL Inc.
The FD reported that XTAL, which makes electrical design automation for semiconductor systems, is a subsidiary of a China-based company called Dongfang Jingyuan, which it said in turn has ties to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
In its reaction, ASML said XTAL’s funding came from “South Korea and China.” It said the aim of the theft was to create a competing product and sell it to an existing ASML customer in South Korea.
The company confirmed the FD’s report that the court had awarded ASML $223 million in damages.
“It is unclear to what extent these damages can be collected from the now bankrupt company XTAL,” ASML said.
ASML shares slipped 1.5 percent by 1210 GMT to the bottom of a flat European technology index.
ASML’s major customers include Samsung of South Korea, TSMC of Taiwan and Intel of the United States.
The Dutch intelligence agency has included warnings in its annual threat assessments for the past several years, saying that China is targeting tech companies in the Netherlands, as it does in other countries, for intellectual property theft.
In a reaction, the intelligence agency AIVD said it could not comment on individual cases.
“In a broader sense, the greatest threat of economic espionage comes from China,” it said in an email to Reuters. “The Netherlands is an attractive target, other countries are interested in our information in science and technical expertise.”
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Amazon challenged its retail rivals to raise their wages and improve benefits, saying the competition will help everyone.
CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a letter to shareholders Thursday that as Amazon grows, so does the size of its “failed experiments.”
He said Amazon is willing to continue to take risks and learn from its failures, while simultaneously supporting successful areas of its business like its third-party sellers and retail locations.
Bezos named the Fire phone as a failure, but Echo and Alexa as successes.
He also touted third-party sales of $160 billion and Amazon Go stores, saying Amazon is “excited about the future.”
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The world will need new breakthroughs to tackle the growing threat of climate change. Whoever comes up with them stands to make a lot of money. And the places where those entrepreneurs do business will reap the benefits. Greentown Labs outside Boston, Massachusetts, wants to play a major role in spawning new clean technology. VOA’s Steve Baragona went to have a look.
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Scientists have been monitoring what black holes do to the space around them for decades. Their immense gravity warps time and space in a way that Albert Einstein predicted and that researchers can see. But they’ve never seen a black hole until now. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Author Charles Van Doren, who will forever be associated with one of the biggest scandals in U.S. history, has died of natural causes at 93.
Van Doren was an obscure college professor in 1956 when he became a contestant on the television quiz show Twenty-One. The show offered big cash prizes for answering very difficult multipart questions.
During 14 weeks on Twenty-One, Van Doren defeated opponent after opponent, winning $129,000 before finally losing.
Tall, handsome and self-effacing, Van Doren became a national hero, appearing on magazine covers, television shows and radio programs, and receiving huge amounts of fan mail and even marriage proposals.
Rigged show
But what the audience did not know was that Twenty-One was a rigged show. Van Doren and nearly every other contestant were given the questions and answers ahead of each broadcast and coached on how to give answers in a hesitant and entertaining manner to build suspense and tension.
When the cheating was revealed in 1958, Van Doren strongly denied his appearances were scripted until he confessed all in a dramatic appearance before Congress, which was investigating the matter.
The humiliated and ashamed Van Doren was fired from his teaching job, dropped by the television networks, and became the punch line of jokes.
Van Doren and dozens of other contestants and producers were convicted of lying before a grand jury and were given suspended sentences.
Private life
Van Doren returned to private life, living in a small New England village, writing books and articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and refusing all interviews and big money to tell his story.
He never publicly talked about the scandal until the 1994 film Quiz Show put him back in an unwanted spotlight.
Van Doren finally broke his silence in a 2008 New Yorker magazine article, calling his participation in the TV fraud “foolish, naive, prideful and avaricious.”
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Deadly floods in the U.S. that bear the fingerprints of climate change are prompting an exodus of workers from the Midwest, the world’s biggest professional social network, LinkedIn, said Wednesday.
The website, on which millions of U.S. workers maintain profiles, said data showed a spike in members changing their work location from areas flooded last month to cities in the Southwest and on the West Coast.
“When you look at the most real-time data that we have, and that’s our ‘job starts’, we’ve seen those come down quite a bit in the cities that have been hit,” said Guy Berger, chief economist at LinkedIn.
The finding emerged from a LinkedIn analysis of user-generated data. LinkedIn users can share their location and job information — such as when they start a new job — on their profile.
Hiring rates tracked through the platform dropped across the Midwest, LinkedIn said in its April U.S. workforce report, published Monday.
Omaha, Nebraska, and Fargo, North Dakota, registered among the most extreme decreases in hiring rates at nearly 8 and 14 percent respectively, it said.
The findings were based on the more than 155 million profiles of U.S. workers that are listed on the site, the company said.
The U.S. labor force — employed and unemployed people — totaled 163 million people last month, according to the Department of Labor.
Climate change had a hand in the record floods that have damaged crops and drowned livestock along the Missouri, Red and Mississippi rivers, especially in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, scientists have said.
Fargo was also among communities impacted, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
LinkedIn’s workforce report said that it has noticed “migration trends” following other natural disasters, such as Hurricane Irma, which hit the U.S. East Coast in 2017.
Workers would likely move to such cities as Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix and Seattle, largely due to their proximity, affordability and growing economies, Berger predicted.
It was unclear how permanent the retreat of workers from Midwest areas that were recently flooded would prove to be, Berger said.
But a repeat of extreme weather events could lead to “a sustained bleed of talent,” he said.
A handful of American cities, from Duluth, Minnesota, to Cincinnati, Ohio, have begun promoting themselves as future havens for U.S. climate migrants as climate change is predicted to cause intense natural disasters elsewhere.
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