While many people have office jobs, working inside an office is not for everybody. And these days in the U.S. more people are turning to gig work — temporary jobs that allow them to work from home, hold multiple jobs and have flexible hours. More gig workers are now using smartphone apps to find jobs that set them free of office work. VOA’s Mykhailo Komadovsky spent time with one gig worker in Washington.
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Month: April 2019
The world has a love-hate relationship with plastic: It’s as convenient as it is problematic. Because it degrades incredibly slowly, plastic waste pollutes the oceans and endangers wildlife. But for sturdy, cheap and sterile packaging, we simply lack good alternatives. A London startup wants to change that, with some help from lobsters. Markus Meyer-Gehlen reports.
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Office buildings require a lot of maintenance, and much of that work needs to be done outside the building. There are windows to clean and potential structural problems to identify. The work, which calls for scaffolding built from the ground or a platform suspended from the roof, is dangerous and expensive. But soon drones may be doing all that work for us. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Nearly 700 people possibly exposed to measles at two Los Angeles universities are still quarantined three days after health officials ordered the precautions to contain the spread of the highly contagious disease.
A spokesman for California State University, Los Angeles, said Saturday that 106 staff members and 550 students have been told to stay at home and avoid contact with others.
Thirty students and employees from the University of California, Los Angeles, remain quarantined.
Those under quarantine were possibly exposed to a person with measles on each campus earlier this month.
Many people have been cleared after proving their immunity with medical records or tests.
The quarantines mark one of the most sweeping efforts by health officials to contain the nation’s measles outbreak, where cases have reached a 25-year high.
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Switzerland’s top prosecutor defended his handling of a high-profile investigation into soccer corruption on Saturday amid scrutiny of closed-door meetings he has held with FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Michael Lauber, who faces re-election by parliament in June as attorney general, has described two meetings with Infantino as ways to help coordinate his investigation, which treats the global soccer body as a victim rather than a suspect.
But media reports of a third confidential meeting prompted a preliminary investigation by the watchdog that oversees Lauber’s agency. The head of the watchdog said this week that Lauber had denied any other such meetings as attorney general.
In an interview with SRF radio, Lauber conceded that there must have been a third meeting that he could not recall.
“We assume based on internal documents we have seen — diary entries and SMS texts — that it took place,” he said, but insisted this would not derail his bid for re-election.
“I reject accusations of lying or keeping silent and I see no reason to withdraw my candidacy,” he said, noting that Infantino was at no time a target of the FIFA probe.
Lack of records criticized
The watchdog found no fault with Lauber for meeting Infantino in what it calls a complex case, but criticized him for not properly documenting meetings that could one day become subject of lawsuits. Its probe could lead to disciplinary proceedings against Lauber.
Lauber’s office has been investigating several cases of suspected corruption surrounding Zurich-based FIFA after it filed a criminal complaint in November 2014, when the soccer body’s president was Sepp Blatter.
FIFA has the status of a private plaintiff in the probe into suspected breach of trust, fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. Lauber’s office is conducting around 25 criminal investigations alongside 15 foreign law enforcement agencies.
More than 40 entities and individuals have been charged by U.S. prosecutors in connection with the FIFA investigation. Lauber’s office has filed no charges yet in the case.
In a statement, FIFA said it was interested in the outcome of the investigations and was keen for those who damaged the organization to be held to account.
“The fact that the FIFA president met the general prosecutor in open circumstances and in full transparency to discuss these matters is simply an illustration of FIFA’s willingness to cooperate and to assist the Office of the Attorney General with its work,” it said.
FIFA said Infantino, who also did not recall a third meeting with Lauber, and other senior FIFA officials were willing to meet authorities in Switzerland and other countries as many times as necessary until the investigations wrap up.
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Pakistani health officials say the country has suspended a nationwide anti-polio campaign after a health worker and two policemen escorting vaccination teams were killed in separate attacks across the country in less than a week.
Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio is still endemic. The other two are Afghanistan and Nigeria.
But militant threats and deep-rooted superstition have spurred many parents to refuse to vaccinate their children.
Officials say unidentified gunmen targeted polio workers and police assigned to protect them in three separate attacks this past week, in the heavily rural western regions bordering Afghanistan, before fleeing.
Saturday’s decision to halt the campaign against the crippling disease comes after two new polio cases were reported in the country’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
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In these days, when so much of the news is of fighting and mistrust, it’s nice to hear a story of care and compassion between two groups who are not known to be friends. Here’s Faith Lapidus.
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All too often what looks like haze is actually tiny particles in the air that are so small you can breathe them in, and they can be dangerous. Now a group of citizen scientists with help from the National Science Foundation is creating a network of sensors that could warn people when the air they breathe turns bad. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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More than 1,000 students and staff members at two Los Angeles universities were quarantined on campus or sent home this week in one of the most sweeping efforts yet by public health authorities to contain the spread of measles in the U.S., where cases have reached a 25-year high.
By Friday afternoon, two days after Los Angeles County ordered the precautions, about 325 of those affected had been cleared to return after proving their immunity to the disease, through either medical records or tests, health officials said.
The action at the University of University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University, Los Angeles, which together have more than 65,000 students, reflected the seriousness with which public health officials are taking the nation’s outbreak.
Those under the quarantine were instructed to stay at home and avoid contact with others, though it wasn’t clear how those orders might be enforced or what penalties violators might face.
“Measles actually kills people. So we have to take that really seriously,” said Dr. Armand Dorian, chief medical officer at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital.
Measles cases climb
The number of measles cases in the U.S. has climbed to nearly 700 this year, including five in Los Angeles County and 38 altogether in California. The surge is blamed largely on parents not getting their children vaccinated because of misinformation about the supposed dangers.
Cal State-LA reported 875 students, staff, faculty and visitors were placed under quarantine after possibly being exposed to measles earlier this month. About 250 had been cleared by Friday after proving they are immune to the disease.
At UCLA, 129 students and faculty were quarantined. All but 46 had been cleared by Friday.
Cal State-LA is primarily a commuter school, while many UCLA students live on campus. Some UCLA students were provided a quarantine area to stay in, university officials said, though they gave no details. Only one person remained there Friday.
Those covered by the quarantine were singled out based on their possible exposure to either an infected UCLA student who had attended classes in two buildings over three days earlier this month, or a person with measles who visited a Cal State-LA library on April 11, officials said.
Given the amount of time a person can remain contagious, officials said the quarantine would end at UCLA on Tuesday and at Cal State-LA on Thursday.
Lawmakers take action
Around the country, lawmakers in California, New York, Washington state and Oregon have responded to the outbreak by moving to crack down on exemptions to vaccinating children. On Friday, President Donald Trump urged everyone to get vaccinated.
Most of the cases are centered in two ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, one in Brooklyn, the other in suburban Rockland County.
In Rockland County, officials declared a state of emergency and at one point tried to bar unvaccinated children from schools and other public places, but a judge overturned the order.
Authorities ordered mandatory vaccinations earlier their month in the affected Brooklyn neighborhoods and threatened fines of $1,000. City officials said earlier this week that 12 people had been issued summonses.
Measles usually causes fever and an all-over rash but in a small number of cases can lead to deadly complications such as pneumonia and swelling of the brain.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the vaccine for everyone older than 1 year, except for people who had the disease as children. Those who have had measles are immune.
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More than 900 students and staff members at two Los Angeles universities were quarantined on campus or sent home this week in one of the most sweeping efforts yet by public health authorities to contain the spread of measles in the U.S., where cases have reached a 25-year high.
By Friday afternoon, two days after Los Angeles County ordered the precautions, about 200 of those affected had been cleared to return after proving their immunity to the disease, through either medical records or tests, school officials said.
The action at the University of University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University, Los Angeles, which together have more than 65,000 students, reflected the seriousness with which public health officials are taking the nation’s outbreak.
Those under the quarantine were instructed to stay at home and avoid contact with others, though it wasn’t clear how those orders might be enforced or what penalties violators might face.
“Measles actually kills people. So we have to take that really seriously,” said Dr. Armand Dorian, chief medical officer at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital.
Measles cases climb
The number of measles cases in the U.S. has climbed to nearly 700 this year, including five in Los Angeles County and 38 altogether in California. The surge is blamed largely on parents not getting their children vaccinated because of misinformation about the supposed dangers.
Cal State-LA reported 656 students and staff still under quarantine, while UCLA said it had fewer than 50.
Cal State-LA is primarily a commuter school, while many UCLA students live on campus. Some UCLA students were provided a quarantine area to stay in, university officials said, though they gave no details. Only one person remained there Friday.
Those covered by the quarantine were singled out based on their possible exposure to either an infected UCLA student who had attended classes in two buildings over three days earlier this month, or a person with measles who visited a Cal State-LA library on April 11, officials said.
Given the amount of time a person can remain contagious, officials said the quarantine would end at UCLA on Tuesday and at Cal State-LA on Thursday.
Lawmakers take action
Around the country, lawmakers in California, New York, Washington state and Oregon have responded to the outbreak by moving to crack down on exemptions to vaccinating children. On Friday, President Donald Trump urged everyone to get vaccinated.
Most of the cases are centered in two ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, one in Brooklyn, the other in suburban Rockland County.
In Rockland County, officials declared a state of emergency and at one point tried to bar unvaccinated children from schools and other public places, but a judge overturned the order.
Authorities ordered mandatory vaccinations earlier their month in the affected Brooklyn neighborhoods and threatened fines of $1,000. City officials said earlier this week that 12 people had been issued summonses.
Measles usually causes fever and an all-over rash but in a small number of cases can lead to deadly complications such as pneumonia and swelling of the brain.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the vaccine for everyone older than 1 year, except for people who had the disease as children. Those who have had measles are immune.
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Uber Technologies Inc., the world’s largest ride-hailing company, plans an initial public offering that values the company lower than the startup’s insiders had hoped, between $80.5 billion and $91.5 billion.
The valuation, outlined in a regulatory filing Friday, is less than the $120 billion that investment bankers told Uber last year it could fetch, and closer to the $76 billion valuation it attained in a private fundraising round in 2018.
This reflects the poor stock performance of its smaller rival Lyft Inc. following its IPO last month. Lyft shares ended trading Thursday down more than 20 percent from their IPO price, amid investor skepticism over its path to
profitability.
Lyft completed its IPO at a valuation of $24.3 billion, which corresponded to around 11 times its 2018 revenue. By comparison, the top end of Uber’s valuation target is around eight times revenue last year.
“We believe that recent price reductions for both Uber and Lyft may be indicative of investor hesitance to invest in highly capital-intensive, deeply unprofitable and untested business models at this late stage of the economic cycle,” PitchBook analyst Asad Hussain said.
In the filing, Uber set a target price range of $44 to $50 per share for its IPO. The company will sell 180 million shares in the offering to raise up to $9 billion, with a further 27 million sold by existing investors for as much as $1.35 billion.
Reuters reported this month that the combined value of Uber shares sold in the IPO would be around $10 billion.
The Uber IPO would rank as the largest in the United States since that of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in 2014.
Road show
The updated public filing comes as Uber begins its 10-day investor road show, in which management will pitch Uber to public markets investors.
Uber executives kicked off the IPO road show in New York on Friday. They will host an investor presentation in London on Monday, before returning to the United States for visits to New York a second time, Boston, San Francisco and the Midwest.
Uber expects to price the IPO on May 9 and then begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange the following day, people familiar with the matter have said.
Of the stock being sold in the IPO by existing Uber investors, 6.86 million shares are from Uber co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, meaning the two men could jointly pocket $343 million if the IPO prices at the top end of its current range.
Uber will face a host of questions from investors, including when it will turn a profit, how it will navigate the transition to autonomous vehicles, and whether its business model can support higher driver costs from minimum wage rules.
Underscoring the company’s ability to generate revenue but also the scale of its losses, Uber reported in the filing a net loss attributable to the company for the first quarter of 2019 of around $1 billion on sales of roughly $3 billion.
“When it comes to Uber, we believe there are still questions over the current car-sharing model, the economics of which are not immediately or obviously attractive for sustainable, long-term investment,” Mark Hargraves, head of Framlington Global Equities, wrote in a note.
Uber also said PayPal had agreed to purchase $500 million of stock in a private placement at the price the IPO eventually settles at. The two companies also said they were extending an existing partnership to “explore future commercial payment collaborations.”
This is similar to when Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal invested $500 million in Snapchat owner Snap Inc., around the time of the latter’s IPO in 2017.
Conservative valuation
Two other IPOs this month, those of online scrapbook company Pinterest Inc. and video conferencing company Zoom Video Communications Inc., have performed much better than Lyft.
Uber, however, has chosen to still value itself conservatively. One advantage Uber will likely seek to emphasize to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it does business, and the fact that it operates
around the world.
Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber’s business model to become profitable.
Unlike Lyft, Uber also has a restaurant delivery business, Uber Eats, which generated $1.5 billion in revenue last year and competes with the likes of Grubhub Inc. and DoorDash.
During Uber’s IPO road show, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi will be also tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the company’s 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.
The Uber IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Foxconn Technology Group officials are talking about making changes to the contract signed in 2017 that was based on constructing a larger display screen manufacturing facility than is now proposed.
But neither side is giving details. So how might the deal be changed? And what’s at stake for each side?
Here are five areas to watch as talks continue, based on interviews with people familiar with the Foxconn deal and others like it:
Jobs: It makes sense that Foxconn would want to open up the deal because it appears unlikely to meet the original jobs targets, said Bob O’Brien, president of U.S.-based Display Supply Chain Consultants, which tracks the global flat-panel industry.
Foxconn already came up well short of its first-year target of 260 jobs, costing it $9.5 million in tax credits. This year’s jobs goal has doubled to 520, and the 2020 goal — when Foxconn says production will begin — is nearly 2,000 jobs.
Starting in 2027, it must have at least 10,400 workers to qualify.
It makes sense that Foxconn would want to renegotiate to lower the threshold to qualify, O’Brien said.
The current contract awards Foxconn up to $1.5 billion in tax credits if it hires 13,000 people by 2023 making an average salary of $53,875.
Alan Yeung, Foxconn’s leader for strategy in the U.S., this week suggested there’s no way to predict whether Foxconn will meet the jobs target.
“Who has the crystal ball to predict if 13,000 jobs will be created by the year 2032? Esp in April `19,” he tweeted. Yeung later told reporters Foxconn remained committed to hiring 13,000 people.
“We’re not changing the deal … especially the 13,000 jobs,” he said.
Size of factory: Foxconn could get another $1.35 billion in tax credits if it spends $9 billion on capital investments, primarily building construction and the purchasing of machinery and equipment.
The original contract has Foxconn building what’s called a Generation 10.5 facility. But Foxconn now plans to build a Generation 6 plant, which will make smaller display screens for cellphones and other devices.
Opponents have said that wording referring to a Generation 10.5 plant puts the entire contract in jeopardy if Foxconn builds a different-sized factory.
But Evers, in an interview, discounted that concern.
“I think that we’re past that point and I don’t think anybody would have ever called them out and say we’re going to negate this deal because of that,” Evers said.
Level of credits: While Foxconn may want to lower minimum job-creation numbers to get credits, the state may want to make the benefits less generous.
The credits for job creation and capital investment are much richer than for most economic development projects, a point that critics repeatedly point to as a fault with the contract.
Foxconn is currently eligible for a 15% capital investment credit for expenditures on land and buildings, more than the typical 10%. It’s eligible for a 17% credit on wages, more than double the usual 7%.
Wisconsin went with the larger incentive payments because of the enormous promised scale of the project, which was projected to have massive ripple effects across the state’s economy. President Donald Trump heralded it as the “eighth wonder of the world” and said it was a sign of a resurgence in American manufacturing.
But with the scale of the project reduced, and hiring numbers in question, there will be pressure on the state to lower its commitment.
Changes in leadership: The project has been in flux almost from the moment it began. The election of Foxconn critic Evers as governor, followed by the announcement earlier this month that Foxconn CEO Terry Gou plans to run for president of Taiwan, has added uncertainty.
Gou was personally involved in the Wisconsin deal, traveling to the state multiple times to negotiate with then-Gov. Scott Walker and his administration and meet with Trump.
There are more changes to come. In September, Evers will be able to appoint a new leader to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which wrote the contract.
New requirements: Renegotiating the contract would give Evers a chance to insert new environmental safeguards, but those would come at a cost that Foxconn would surely want to mitigate elsewhere. Evers could also attempt to put in place new requirements forcing Foxconn to do business with Wisconsin companies and hire workers from the state. The state may also want to include protections for local communities, which have already spent about $190 million on the project, O’Brien said.
To me it's a partnership and we're going to be working together to solve it,'' Evers said.I suppose at some point in time we might not agree and then it becomes somewhat of a negotiation. But I truly believe that the changes that are made will be reasonable to all sides. Of course, you go in knowing it might not be.”
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President Donald Trump urged Americans Friday to get vaccinated against measles, amid an outbreak of the highly contagious virus in the U.S. that has forced two U.S. universities to quarantine hundreds of students, faculty members and other employees.
Trump told reporters at the White House citizens “must get their shots” to protect themselves against the virus that was deemed eradicated in the U.S. nearly 20 years ago.
There were nearly 700 cases in 22 states, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported Wednesday, the highest level in 25 years. The CDC partially attributed the surge to misinformation about the safety of the measles vaccine.
The beginning of the outbreak has been traced to Orthodox Jews who contracted the disease while traveling overseas. The cases have been concentrated in a small number of states, including New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Washington.
Cases also have been confirmed in California, where public health officials ordered dozens of people to be quarantined Tuesday at the University of California at Los Angeles and California State University, Los Angeles following an exposure to the virus earlier this month. Los Angeles County public health officials said some people may have to be quarantined up to one week until proof of immunity is established.
The CDC recommends vaccinations for everyone over a year old, except those who contracted measles as children and have since become immune.
The vaccine, which first became available in the 1960s, is considered safe and effective by most public health experts.
Sunshine and Santana: Both will be welcome sights on the second day of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
There have been some disappointments in the run-up to the 50th annual Jazz Fest. Both the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac had to cancel for health reasons. Storms then delayed Thursday’s opening, though not for long: By closing time, fans were two-stepping in the mud and a huge crowd was on hand for Earth, Wind & Fire.
Among them was Zack Buda, 25, of Manhattan who came to New Orleans with his parents, Scott and Hillary Buda, and their friends, Amy and Jamie Bernstein of Brooklyn.
“They’re exposing me to the music of their time,” said Buda, who used binoculars for a better view of the stage.
Friday’s forecast called for warm, dry weather for the dozens of acts playing on 10 stages, with Santana closing out a main stage in the evening.
Other highlights include high school choirs raising spirits in the Gospel Tent, Grammy winner Terence Blanchard at the WWNO Jazz Tent and home-grown R&B artist P.J. Morton, known for his solo work and his keyboarding with Maroon 5.
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Marvel Studios superhero spectacle “Avengers: Endgame” hauled in a record $60 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices during its Thursday night debut,
distributor Walt Disney Co said.
Global ticket sales for the film about Iron Man, Hulk and other popular characters reached $305 million for the first two days, Disney said.
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As Notre Dame Cathedral burned, a posting on Facebook circulated – a grainy video of what appeared to be a man in traditional Muslim garb up in the cathedral.
Fact-checkers worldwide jumped into action and pointed out the video and postings were fake and the posts never went viral.
But this week, the Sri Lanka government temporarily shut down Facebook and other sites to stop the spread of misinformation in the wake of the Easter Sunday bombings in the country that killed more than 250 people. Last year, misinformation on Facebook was blamed for contributing to riots in the country.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others are increasingly being held responsible for the content on their sites as the world tries to grapple in real time with events as they unfold. From lawmakers to the public, there has been a rising cry for the sites to do more to combat misinformation particularly if it targets certain groups.
Shift in sense of responsibility
For years, some critics of social media companies, such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, have accused them of having done the minimum to monitor and stamp out misinformation on their platforms. After all, the internet platforms are generally not legally responsible for the content there, thanks to a 1996 U.S. federal law that says they are not publishers. This law has been held up as a key protection for free expression online.
And, that legal protection has been key to the internet firms’ explosive growth. But there is a growing consensus that companies are ethically responsible for misleading content, particularly if the content has an audience and is being used to target certain groups.
Tuning into dog whistles
At a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on white supremacy and hate crimes, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, a Texas Democrat, questioned representatives from Facebook and Google about their policies.
“What have you done to ensure that all your folks out there globally know the dog whistles, know the keywords, the phrasing, the things that people respond to, so we can be more responsive and be proactive in blocking some of this language?” Garcia asked.
Each company takes a different approach.
Facebook, which perhaps has had the most public reckoning over fake news, won’t say it’s a media company. But it has taken partial responsibility about the content on its site, said Daniel Funke, a reporter at the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute.
The social networking giant uses a combination of technology and humans to address false posts and messages that appear to target groups. It is collaborating with outside fact-checkers to weed out objectionable content, and has hired thousands to grapple with content issues on its site.
Swamp of misinformation
Twitter has targeted bots, automatic accounts that spread falsehoods. But fake news often is born on Twitter and jumps to Facebook.
“They’ve done literally nothing to fight misinformation,” Funke said.
YouTube, owned by Google, has altered its algorithms to make it harder to find problematic videos, or embed code to make sure relevant factual content comes up higher in the search. YouTube is “such a swamp of misinformation just because there is so much there, and it lives on beyond the moment,” Funke said.
Other platforms of concern are Instagram and WhatsApp, both owned by Facebook.
Some say what the internet companies have done so far is not enough.
“To use a metaphor that’s often used in boxing, truth is against the ropes. It is getting pummeled,” said Sam Wineburg, an education professor at Stanford University.
What’s needed, he said, is for the companies to take full responsibility: “This is a mess we’ve created and we are going to devote resources that will lower the profits to shareholders, because it will require a deeper investment in our own company.”
Fact-checking and artificial intelligence
One of the fact-checking organizations that Facebook works with is FactCheck.org. It receives misinformation posts from Facebook and others. Its reporters check out the stories then report on their own site whether the information is true or false. That information goes back to Facebook as well.
Facebook is “then able to create a database now of bad actors, and they can start taking action against them,” said Eugene Kiely, director of FactCheck.org. Facebook has said it will make it harder to find posts by people or groups that continually post misinformation.
The groups will see less financial incentives, Kiely points out. “They’ll get less clicks and less advertising.”
Funke predicts companies will use technology to semi-automate fact-checking, making it better, faster and able to match the scale of misinformation.
That will cost money of course.
It also could slow the internet companies’ growth.
Does being more responsible mean making less money? Social media companies are likely to find out.
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Social media companies such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are not legally responsible for the content that users upload to their sites. That legal protection has been key to their explosive growth, but there is a growing consensus that companies must do more to root out misleading content. Michelle Quinn reports, the companies may be taking action in the hope of avoiding stricter government regulation.
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“Avengers: Endgame” marks the culmination of Marvel’s superhero universe since its first “Iron Man” film in 2008. Critics have hailed the three-hour movie as a super spectacle and a befitting ending, harkening back to the beginnings of the Avengers franchise. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with critics and industry insiders about the significance of the film, about its franchise and the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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