Scientists say they have new ways of tracking where clothing, medicines and other items are made, making it harder for unscrupulous businesses to sell items that don’t work or violate laws. The new tools are made possible by using machine learning to profile the unique DNA combinations of invisible microbes that vary from place to place. This technology was highlighted at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, as VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports.
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Month: May 2019
The Mariana Trench, at 11,000 meters, is the deepest part of Earth. But even at these depths, 11 kilometers below the ocean surface, one explorer found both new species and leftover plastic that we throw away. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The U.S. Commerce Department may soon scale back restrictions on Huawei Technologies after this week’s blacklisting made it nearly impossible for the Chinese company to purchase goods made in the United States, a
department spokeswoman said Friday.
The Commerce Department may issue a temporary general license to allow time for companies and people who have Huawei equipment to maintain reliability of their communications networks and equipment, the spokeswoman said.
The possible general license would not apply to new transactions, according to the spokeswoman, and would last for 90 days.
A spokesman for Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Commerce Department on Thursday added Huawei to a list of entities that are banned from doing business with U.S. companies without licenses.
The entities list identifies companies believed to be involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.
Potential beneficiaries of the temporary license could include internet access and mobile phone service providers in thinly populated places such as Wyoming and eastern Oregon that purchased network equipment from Huawei in recent years.
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Wildfires are often discovered by aircraft pilots, drivers or spotters in observation towers. Increasingly, remote sensors — on the ground, in the air and on board satellites — are alerting authorities when fires break out, and experts say technology will increasingly be a part of the future of firefighting.
A blaze that raged last August in a canyon near Los Angeles threatened vital communications links. Remote cameras gave firefighters crucial information to save the installations, said Troy Whitman of Southern California Edison, an electric utility company.
Whitman serves as a liaison with firefighting agencies, and he shares information from a new camera network that Edison installed throughout much of its service area. Those 13 million hectares are challenging, he said, “mountains, deserts, very remote areas where fires may not be detected for minutes, sometimes even days in the forest if it’s a lightning strike.”
Electronic lookouts
More than 100 cameras provide a view of 60 percent of the company’s service area in Southern and Central California. More cameras are on their way, all monitored in an operations center in suburban Los Angeles, where remote spotters watch computer monitors and meteorologists track weather data from remote sensing stations.
Fires up and down the U.S. West Coast are getting fiercer, and 10 of California’s 20 most destructive blazes have occurred since 2015.
A California report last month, “Wildfires and Climate Change,” said the state’s fire season has become nearly year-round, and one-quarter of the California’s population lives in fire-prone areas.
“Climate is changing,” said Brian Chen, who manages Edison’s wildfire mitigation efforts. “We’ve had many years of drought leading up to this, which has caused millions of trees across the state to die or be weakened because of disease,” he added. “We’ve also had a history of fire suppression policy, which has not kept our forests healthy,” he said.
More residents are also living closer to wilderness areas, in places like Paradise, a once idyllic northern California town destroyed by wildfire in November. At least 85 people died and 14,000 homes were destroyed by the so-called Camp Fire, which investigators announced Wednesday was sparked by the transmission lines of another utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.
At least half of the state’s most destructive 20 fires have been caused by power lines or electrical equipment, and spread because they started in isolated areas that were difficult for firefighters to reach. California fire officials say electrical mishaps account for a smaller proportion of all wildfires, and blame others on careless debris burning, out-of-control campfires, arson or smoking.
Southern California Edison is upgrading its infrastructure, replacing bare transmission lines with insulated cables. Pacific Gas and Electric also plans to install new cameras and weather stations. Both companies face lawsuits over recent wildfires, and Pacific Gas and Electric filed for bankruptcy in January, facing billions of dollars in claims.
Destructive fires are also tracked by NASA, the U.S. space agency, which also monitors the health of our planet using “aircraft observations … from manned aircraft and unmanned aircraft,” said Vince Ambrosia of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He says the main focus today, however, is on satellite data retrieved by NASA and its partners, including the European Space Agency, and shared with the public and global firefighters.
The information helps before, during and after a wildfire.
“We can do active fire detection,” said Natasha Stavros of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We can also do observations of the type of vegetation that’s there,” she said, assessing moisture content and how readily vegetation will burn.
She says an instrument called GEDI has been sent to the International Space Station to measure levels of biomass, the trees and brush that provide fuel for fires, by monitoring how forests store and release carbon. Other satellites track the height of flames and the spread of smoke and other pollutants.
Airborne and space-based sensors provide real-time data, and NASA and its partner agencies have built a “long-term collection library … going back to the 1980s to look at transitioning stages of wildfires throughout our last 50 years or so,” Ambrosia said.
Experts say that fire is part of nature’s ecosystem, but fire season is getting longer and fires more intense, and remote sensing helps firefighters deal with the challenge. The last month’s California report on wildfires recommends increased use of advanced imaging from the air and space, artificial intelligence to enhance data analysis, and a more comprehensive approach to fire prevention and response.
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Bogged down in a sprawling trade dispute with U.S. rival China, President Donald Trump took steps Friday to ease tensions with America’s allies: lifting import taxes on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum and delaying auto tariffs that would have hurt Japan and Europe.
By removing the metals tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump cleared a key roadblock to a North American trade pact his team negotiated last year. As part of Friday’s arrangement, the Canadians and Mexicans agreed to scrap retaliatory tariffs they had imposed on U.S. goods, according to four sources in the U.S. and Canada who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement.
In a joint statement, the U.S. and Canada said they would work to prevent cheap imports of steel and aluminum from entering North America. China has long been accused of flooding world markets with subsidized metal, driving down world prices and hurting U.S. producers.
Some in Washington were urging Trump to take advantage of the truce with U.S. allies to get even tougher with China.
China is our adversary,'' said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.Canada and Mexico are our friends. The president is right to increase pressure on China for their espionage, their theft of intellectual property and their hostility toward the rule of law. The president is also right to be deescalating tension with our North American allies.”
Earlier Friday, the White House said Trump was delaying for six months any decision to slap tariffs on foreign cars, a move that would have hit Japan and Europe especially hard.
Trump still is hoping to use the threat of auto tariffs to pressure Japan and the European Union into making concessions in trade talks. “If agreements are not reached within 180 days, the president will determine whether and what further action needs to be taken,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
Trade weapon
In imposing the metals tariffs and threatening the ones on autos, the president was relying on a rarely used weapon in the U.S. trade war arsenal — Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — which lets the president impose tariffs on imports if the Commerce Department deems them a threat to national security.
But the steel and aluminum tariffs were also designed to coerce Canada and Mexico into agreeing to a rewrite of North American free trade pact. In fact, the Canadians and Mexicans did go along last year with a revamped regional trade deal that was to Trump’s liking. But the administration had refused to lift the taxes on their metals to the United States until Friday.
The new trade deal — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — needs approval of the legislatures in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Several key U.S. lawmakers were threatening to reject the pact unless the tariffs were removed. And Canada had suggested it wouldn’t ratify any deal while the tariffs were still in place.
Trump had faced a Saturday deadline to decide what to do about the auto tariffs.
Taxing auto tariffs would mark a major escalation in Trump’s aggressive trade policies and likely would meet resistance in Congress. The United States last year imported $192 billion worth of passenger vehicles and $159 billion in auto parts.
Legitimate use?
“I have serious questions about the legitimacy of using national security as a basis to impose tariffs on cars and car parts,” Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Friday. He’s working on legislation to scale back the president’s authority to impose national security tariffs under Section 232.
In a statement, the White House said that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has determined that imported vehicles and parts are a threat to national security. Trump deferred action on tariffs for 180 days to give negotiators time to work out deals but threatened them if talks break down.
In justifying tariffs for national security reasons, Commerce found that the U.S. industrial base depends on technology developed by American-owned auto companies to maintain U.S. military superiority. Because of rising imports of autos and parts over the past 30 years, the market share of U.S.-owned automakers has fallen. That has caused a lag in research and development spending that is “weakening innovation and, accordingly, threatening to impair our national security,” the statement said.
The market share of vehicles produced and sold in the U.S. by American-owned automakers, the statement said, has declined from 67% in 1985 to 22% in 2017.
But the statistics don’t match market share figures from the industry. A message was left Friday seeking an explanation of how Commerce calculated the 22%.
In 2017, General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and Tesla combined had a 44.5% share of U.S. auto sales, according to Autodata Corp. Those figures include vehicles produced in other countries.
It’s possible that the Commerce Department didn’t include Fiat Chrysler, which is now legally headquartered in the Netherlands but has a huge research and development operation near Detroit. It had 12% of U.S. auto sales in 2017.
The Commerce figures also do not account for research by foreign automakers. Toyota, Hyundai-Kia, Subaru, Honda and others have significant research centers in the U.S.
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Herman Wouk, the versatile, Pulitzer Prize winning author of such million-selling novels as “The Caine Mutiny” and “The Winds of War” whose steady Jewish faith inspired his stories of religious values and secular success, died on Friday at 103.
Wouk was just 10 days shy of his 104th birthday and was working on a book until the end, said his literary agent Amy Rennert.
Rennert said Wouk died in his sleep at his home in Palm Springs, California, where he settled after spending many years in Washington, D.C.
Among the last of the major writers to emerge after World War II and first to bring Jewish stories to a general audience, he had a long, unpredictable career that included gag writing for radio star Fred Allen, historical fiction and a musical co-written with Jimmy Buffett.
He won the Pulitzer in 1952 for “The Caine Mutiny,” the classic Navy drama that made the unstable Captain Queeg, with the metal balls he rolls in his hand and his talk of stolen strawberries, a symbol of authority gone mad. A film adaptation, starring Humphrey Bogart, came out in 1954 and Wouk turned the courtroom scene into the play “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”
Other highlights included “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” which Wouk and Buffett adapted into a musical, and his two-part World War II epic, “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance,” both of which Wouk himself adapted for a 1983, Emmy Award-winning TV miniseries starring Robert Mitchum. “The Winds of War” received some of the highest ratings in TV history and Wouk’s involvement covered everything from the script to commercial sponsors.
Wouk (pronounced WOKE) was an outsider in the literary world. From Ernest Hemingway to James Joyce, major authors of the 20th century were assumed either anti-religious or at least highly skeptical. But Wouk was part of a smaller group that included C.S. Lewis, Chaim Potok and Flannery O’Connor who openly maintained traditional beliefs. One of his most influential books was “This Is My God,” published in 1959 and an even-handed but firm defense of Judaism.
For much of his life, he studied the Talmud daily and led a weekly Talmud class. He gave speeches and sermons around the country and received several prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from the Jewish Book Council. During his years in Washington, the Georgetown synagogue he attended was known unofficially as “Herman Wouk’s synagogue.”
Jews were present in most of Wouk’s books. “Marjorie Morningstar,” published in 1955, was one of the first million-selling novels about Jewish life, and two novels, “The Hope” and “The Glory,” were set in Israel.
Wouk had a mixed reputation among critics. He was not a poet or social rebel, and shared none of the demons that inspired the mad comedy of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Even anthologies of Jewish literature tended to exclude him. Gore Vidal praised him, faintly, by observing that Wouk’s “competence is most impressive and his professionalism awe-inspiring in a world of lazy writers and TV-stunned readers.”
But Wouk was widely appreciated for the uncanniness of his historical detail, and he had an enviably large readership that stayed with him through several long novels. His friends and admirers ranged from Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin to Nobel laureates Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel. President Ronald Reagan, in a 1987 speech honoring 37 sailors killed on the USS Stark, quoted Wouk: “Heroes are not supermen; they are good men who embody — by the cast of destiny — the virtue of their whole people in a great hour.”
Wouk was well remembered in his latter years. In 1995, the Library of Congress marked his 80th birthday with a symposium on his career; historians David McCullough, Robert Caro, Daniel Boorstin and others were present. In 2008, Wouk received the first ever Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction. He published the novel “The Lawgiver” in his 90s and at age 100 completed a memoir. Wouk’s longevity inspired Stephen King to title one story “Herman Wouk is Still Alive.”
The son of Russian Jews, Wouk was born in New York in 1915. The household was religious — his mother was a rabbi’s daughter — and devoted to books. His father would read to him from Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish writer. A traveling salesman sold his family the entire works of Mark Twain, who became Wouk’s favorite writer, no matter how irreverent on matters of faith.
“I found it all very stimulating,” Wouk, in a rare interview, told The Associated Press in 2000. “His work is impregnated with references to the Bible. He may be scathing about it, but they’re there. He’s making jokes about religion, but the Jews are always making jokes about it.”
Wouk majored in comparative literature and philosophy at Columbia University and edited the college’s humor magazine. After graduation, he followed the path of so many bright, clever New Yorkers in the 1930s: He headed for California, where he worked for five years on Fred Allen’s radio show.
If war had not intruded, he might have stuck to comedy sketches. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer in the Pacific. There, he received the writer’s most precious gift, free time, and wrote what became his first published novel, the radio satire “Aurora Dawn.”
“I was just having fun. It had never occurred to me write a novel,” he said.
By the time “Aurora Dawn” came out, in 1947, Wouk was married and living in New York. His novel was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and he would soon publish “City Boy,” a coming-of-age story highly influenced by Twain.
In 1951, Wouk released his most celebrated novel, “The Caine Mutiny.” It sold slowly at first but eventually topped best-seller lists and won a Pulitzer. For a time, Wouk was compared to other World War II novelists: Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, James Jones.
But his next book looked into domestic matters. Wouk spoke often of his concern about assimilation and this story told of an aspiring Jewish actress whose real name was Marjorie Morgenstern. Her stage name provided the novel’s title, “Marjorie Morningstar.”
“My agent was absolutely appalled,” Wouk said. “He submitted it to the editor of a women’s magazine and the editor said, `Herman Wouk has destroyed himself. He’s a man who writes big, sweeping dramas about men in action. Then he writes about this girl and nothing happens. He should burn this book and forget it.”‘
But like “The Caine Mutiny,” the novel sold millions and was made into a movie, starring Natalie Wood. (Wouk eventually bought Wood’s former home in Palm Springs). He was famous enough to appear on the cover of Time magazine, even as some Jews complained his book perpetuated stereotypes and critics complained he was too old-fashioned, too accepting of authority.
Captain Queeg, for example, may be a villain in popular culture, but “The Caine Mutiny” was not “Catch-22.” Wouk was just as hard on the officers who rebelled against Queeg. The “crux” of the story, Wouk wrote in his journal, was that the “mutiny was a mistake” and the crew should have stood by its leader, however flawed.
Over the years, Wouk responded to criticism in two ways: He didn’t judge the characters in his stories, but tried to tell the truth; and whether he really challenged authority depended on what you thought needed challenging.
He believed that among writers, anti-conformity was a kind of conformity. “It seems curious,” he wrote in “Aurora Dawn,” “that life `as it really is,’ according to modern inspiration, contains a surprising amount of fornication, violence, vulgarity, unpleasant individuals, blasphemy, hatred, and ladies’ underclothes.”
Wouk knew others didn’t share his views. Both “This Is My God” and “The Will to Live On” took a similar approach to “Mere Christianity” and other works by C.S. Lewis. They preached not to the converted, but to the curious. They anticipated arguments about religion and tried their best to answer them.
His books followed no proven formula. They were all personal, from the works on religion to “Inside, Outside,” an autobiographical novel he considered his favorite.
“I’m not out front as a figure, and that suits me,” he told the AP. “I love the work and it’s the greatest possible privilege to say, `Here are these books that exist because I had to write them.’ The fact that they were well received is just wonderful.”
In 1945, Wouk married Betty Sarah Brown, who also served as his agent. They had three sons — Nathaniel, Joseph and their eldest, Abraham, who drowned in 1951, a death that left Wouk with “the tears of the scar of a senseless waste.”
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Norman Rockwell is considered one of America’s most beloved and influential artists, painting scenes of ordinary Americans at work, at play and at war, capturing simple yet compelling details that illuminated everyday life in the country.
Helping tell America’s story
Most Americans became familiar with his work through his hundreds of cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, the most widely circulated weekly magazine in America during the first half of the 20th century. Rockwell painted his first illustration for the magazine in 1916 at the age of 22, and considered the Post to be the “greatest show window in America” for an illustrator.
Over the next 47 years, another 320 Rockwell images would appear on its cover, and hundreds of his other illustrations were featured in popular publications over a career that spanned six decades.
Four Freedoms
Among Rockwell’s most enduring works is a series of four paintings titled Four Freedoms, inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union address to Congress on January 6, 1941.
In his speech, Roosevelt talked about his “Four Freedoms” ideals… the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear; principles that make up the cornerstones of democracy, which he believed people the world over had a right to enjoy.
Democracy for all
FDR presented the idea that these were principles worth fighting for, as war was being waged against other democracies across the continents in the eastern hemisphere. Eleven months later, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States joined the war.
Rockwell’s interest in interpreting FDR’s Four Freedoms was born out of a quest to do more for the war effort. He spent seven months using his own observations and life experiences to create his own version.
The iconic paintings were the highlight among many other Rockwell works on display at a recent exhibit in ‘The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum.’
“Freedom of speech and worship, freedom from fear and want, are ideals as powerful today as they were for Americans who fought in World War II,” museum director John Wetenhall said. “At a time and in a federal city where the true meaning of these values has become contested in the world of partisan and identity politics, it behooves us all to reflect back to when these very freedoms were in peril: ideals so powerfully embodied in Rockwell’s unforgettable icons.”
Enduring ideals
The exhibit, “Enduring ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms,” was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts — where the paintings are permanently housed — to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Rockwell’s four paintings.
“Rockwell’s Four Freedoms are among the most recognizable images in American history,” says Stephanie Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum. “They are reminders of the profound influence of visual imagery on the human imagination, and portray FDR’s timeless ideals in real world terms, reminding us that we, too, are heirs to these cherished values.”
“This exhibition focuses on a significant aspect of Rockwell’s art at a time when he was at the height of his career, during the 1930s Depression era and the World War II period, when magazines like The Saturday Evening Post provided both information and entertainment to a vast audience,” she added.
Those interpretations became a national sensation in early 1943 when they were first published in The Saturday Evening Post.
“Roosevelt’s words and Rockwell’s artworks soon became inseparable in the public consciousness, with millions of reproductions bringing the Four Freedoms directly into American homes and workplaces.”
Civil rights, social issues
The exhibit is the first comprehensive traveling exhibition devoted to Rockwell’s depiction of the president’s Four Freedoms, and also a rare opportunity to see other iconic works, including wartime paintings and posters, and his later artworks that addressed social issues such as civil rights and the Vietnam war.
Also on display were the objects and artifacts that are depicted in his paintings, such the jacket worn by Rockwell’s model Carl Hess in his Freedom of Speech painting and the white dress worn by Ruby Bridges on her first day of school. Young Ruby was the first African American child to attend an all-white school in New Orleans, Louisiana, and had to be escorted to school by four U.S. Marshals every day throughout the school year because of the threats against her.
Modern interpretations
The exhibition also includes works by contemporary artists offering their own perspective on freedom. One powerful example is Maurice “Pops” Peterson’s Freedom from What? which plays off of Rockwell’s Freedom from Fear illustration. It depicts a modern-day African-American couple putting their children to bed while looking over their shoulder as if for possible threats from the outside world.
“It is our hope that Norman Rockwell’s enduring paintings will inspire a new generation of students, citizens, future leaders and elected officials to embody these human values in their life’s work,” said Laurie Norton Moffatt, director and CEO of the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Now closed in Washington, the next stop for “Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms” exhibit will be at Caen Memorial Museum, Normandy, France starting June 4 and closing October 27, 2019.
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Her owners say Grumpy Cat, whose sourpuss demeanor became an internet sensation, has died at age 7.
Posting on social media Friday, Grumpy Cat’s owners wrote that she experienced complications from a urinary tract infection and “passed away peacefully” Tuesday “in the arms of her mommy.”
Her owners said “Grumpy Cat has helped millions of people smile all around the world — even when times were tough.”
The cat’s real name was Tarder Sauce, and she rose to fame after her photos were posted online in 2012. She had more than 2 million followers on Instagram and more than 1 million on Twitter.
Her website says her grumpy look was likely because she had a form of dwarfism.
Owner Tabatha Bundesen founded Grumpy Cat Limited, and the cat made numerous appearances, including commercials.
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The United States must show sincerity if it is to hold meaningful trade talks, China said on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically raised
the stakes with a potentially devastating blow to Chinese tech giant Huawei.
China has yet to say whether or how it will retaliate against the latest escalation in trade tension, although state media has taken an increasingly strident tone, with the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily publishing a front-page commentary that evoked the patriotic spirit of past wars.
China’s currency slid to its weakest in almost five months, although losses were capped after sources told Reuters that the central bank would ensure the yuan did not weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level in the immediate term.
The world’s two largest economies are locked in an increasingly acrimonious trade dispute that has seen them level escalating tariffs on each other’s imports in the midst of negotiations, adding to fears about risks to global growth and knocking financial markets.
Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about state media reports suggesting there would be no more U.S.-China trade talks, said China always encouraged resolving disputes between the two countries with dialog and consultations.
“But because of certain things the U.S. side has done during the previous China-U.S. trade consultations, we believe if there is meaning for these talks, there must be a show of sincerity,” he told a daily news briefing.
The United States should observe the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, and they must also keep their word, Lu said, without elaborating.
On Thursday, Washington put telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, one of China’s biggest and most successful companies, on a blacklist that could make it extremely difficult for the telecom giant to do business with U.S. companies.
That followed Trump’s decision on May 5 to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, a major escalation after the two sides appeared to have been close to reaching a deal in negotiations to end their trade battle.
‘Wheel of destiny’
China can be expected to make preparations for a longer-term trade war with the United States, said a Chinese government official with knowledge of the situation.
“Indeed, this is an important moment, but not an existential, live-or-die moment,” the official said.
“In the short term, the trade situation between China and the United States will be severe, and there will be challenges. Neither will it be smooth in the long run. This will spur China to make adequate preparations in the long term.”
The impact of trade friction on China’s economy is “controllable,” the state planner said on Friday, pledging to take countermeasures as needed, Meng Wei, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC), told a media briefing.
The South China Morning Post, citing an unidentified source, reported that a senior member of China’s ruling Communist Party said the trade war with the United States could reduce China’s 2019 growth by 1 percentage point in the worst-case scenario.
Wang Yang, the fourth-most senior member of the Communist Party’s seven-member Standing Committee, the top decision-making body, told a delegation of Taiwan businessmen on Thursday that the trade war would have an impact but would not lead to any structural changes, the paper said, citing an unidentified source who was at the meeting.
One company that says it has been making preparations is Huawei’s Hisilicon unit, which purchases U.S. semiconductors for its parent.
Its president told staff in a letter on Friday that the company had been secretly developing back-up products for years in case Huawei was one day unable to obtain the advanced chips and technology it buys from the United States.
“Today, the wheel of destiny has turned and we have arrived at this extreme and dark moment, as a super-nation ruthlessly disrupts the world’s technology and industry system,” the company president said in the letter.
The letter was widely shared on Chinese social media, gaining 180 million impressions in the few hours after it was published on the Weibo microblogging site.
“Go Huawei! Our country’s people will always support you,” wrote one Weibo user after reading the letter.
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A record number of 8.34 million university graduates are set to enter the Chinese job market this summer amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Observers say that as China’s export-dependent economy braces for more hits from tariff hikes, which U.S. President Donald Trump recently imposed, the country’s job markets will be tighter for everyone including fresh graduates.
And the impact of a job mismatch among college graduates has long weighed on their actual employment rate at only 52% this year, according to a recent survey.
That means more than 4 million graduates will soon join the ranks of those unemployed, although many of them may opt to pursue higher education, the survey found.
Tightening job market
“Graduate employment has always been problematic in China. Given the current situation with the trade war, I think we should expect it to be even more so this year,” said Geoffrey Crothall, spokesperson at China Labor Bulletin.
“And there’s always been a mismatch between the expectations of graduates, the reality of the job markets and particularly the expectations of employers,” he added.
Graduates will either take longer to find a job or settle with one that has lower pay or poor career prospects, Crothall said.
Making matters worse, the number of job opportunities in China is on the wane as China tries to move away from labor-intensive industries, said Wang Zhangcheng, head of the Labor Economics Institute at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.
“The transformation of industrial structure and the U.S.-China trade war [is making the situation worse]. Also, China’s economy no longer grows at a fast pace. Instead, it has matured with mid- to low-paced growths. Under such circumstances, the demand for labor has declined,” Wang said.
“Plus, many jobs have been replaced by robots as a result of the development of artificial intelligence in the past two years. That surely adds pressure on job seekers,” he added.
Fewer jobs, more seekers
A recent report by Renmin University of China (RUC) and career platform Zhaopin.com found that the number of job seekers in China grew 31% year-on-year in the first quarter – the highest growth in workers since 2011 — while the number of job vacancies shrank by 11% at the same time.
China’s job market prosperity index has dropped to a record low since 2014, it concluded.
However, the latest available state statistics paint a slightly different picture.
Official data showed that China’s surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.2% in March, down 0.1 percentage points from February.
Analysts described the country’s job markets as “stable overall” although the surveyed unemployment rate in 31 major cities went up 0.1 percentage points month-on-month, to 5.1% in March – the highest since late 2016.
Still, China’s State Council has made “saving jobs” one of its top policy priorities since late last year, offering incentives for firms with no or few layoffs and subsidies for internships or on-the-job training.
And college graduates remain a focal point of the council’s employment stabilization plan, along with migrants and laid-off workers.
Distorted graduate employment
China used to boast a graduate employment rate of more than 90% as universities rushed graduates to sign so-called “tripartite employment agreements” with potential employers.
Any refusal may risk their chances of thesis defense or diplomas.
Such agreements are nonbinding on the employers to offer jobs, but distort the overall graduate employment rate, which has allowed universities to attract new students – a fraud that the Ministry of Education now forbids.
In a recent notice, the ministry has disallowed universities from withholding graduates’ degree certificates if they refuse to sign such agreements.
In spite of the ban, graduates still complain about “being forcefully employed.”
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, one user wrote, “Our school still forces you to sign the agreements. The career adviser calls every day, pulling a long face.”
Another student from Rizhao Polytechnic in Shandong province noted, “Those who have signed the agreements have completed their thesis defense while many of us who haven’t signed the agreements can do nothing but wait.”
One user urged that unless the government writes the ban into law and imposes penalties, no universities would comply.
Job mismatch
Another cause of concern for graduate employment is the long-standing mismatch between the knowledge and skills students have acquired from years of studies in universities, and the private sector’s actual job requirements, professor Wang said.
Given the shifts of production paradigms and “widening structural gaps in labor forces allocations, many of our universities have set up professional courses which may not keep up with the changing [requirements] of the labor markets. That leads to the scenario that many graduates may not find the right career fit for their skills,” the professor said.
As a solution, the education ministry has encouraged universities to focus on fundamentals by providing multifaceted cultivation of talents, so graduates leaving school will meet what different jobs require.
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Juhyun Lee contributed to this report.
SEOUL — As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his trade battle with China, one of the hardest-hit countries could be South Korea.
Asia’s fourth-largest economy, South Korea is especially vulnerable to the tariff war because of its reliance on foreign trade — in particular, exports to its two biggest trading partners: China and the United States.
After U.S.-China trade talks broke down, Trump last week raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and threatened to do so with $300 billion more. China retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods.
The trade war escalation, which rattled markets and threatened to hold back global growth, comes at an especially bad time for South Korea, whose economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter.
“South Korea is particularly vulnerable,” says Xu Xiao Chun, an economist who monitors South Korea for Moody’s Analytics. “It’s not inconceivable that you could see a second consecutive quarter of contraction of GDP, which would make it a technical recession.”
Trade war exacerbates tech woes
As the world’s leading producer of memory chips that go into consumer electronics, such as cellphones and computers, South Korea benefited from years of rapid and consistent growth in the global smartphone market.
But global demand for smartphones has plateaued. That, combined with a slowdown in China and sluggish global growth, has hurt South Korea’s export-driven economy.
In April, South Korea’s exports declined for the fifth consecutive month, falling 2% compared to the same period a year earlier.
“South Korea’s economy was already going down the wrong path… but the latest escalation in the trade war really puts a spanner (obstacle) in the works,” Xu said.
South Korea was always likely to be hurt by the U.S.-China trade war just by virtue of its proximity to China, its biggest trading partner and top export destination.
South Korea’s exports to China could be cut by about $1.3 billion a year, said An Sung-bae with the state-run Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
But the U.S.-China tariffs also pose a more specific threat to South Korea’s crucial semiconductor industry.
Here’s how it works:
South Korea sends semiconductors to China, where they are placed into smartphones and other electronics. China then ships many of those assembled products to the United States.
Trump’s tariffs could drastically raise the price of those electronics. For example, the cost of an iPhone XS could go up by around $160 if Trump follows through on all his tariff threats, one analyst at Morgan Stanley estimated.
Those higher prices would result in fewer shipments of electronics from China to the United States. Which means South Korea would be selling a lot fewer semiconductors to China.
That could put a major dent in South Korea’s economy, since semiconductors make up nearly half of its total shipments to China.
“Companies that mainly target the Chinese market will suffer… and the South Korean export business relies heavily on the Chinese market,” said Mun Byung-Ki, a senior researcher at the Korea International Trade Association.
A bright spot?
But some analysts say the situation may not be that dire. One reason: even if South Korean exports to China decline, it may make up the gap by shipping more products to the United States — a situation that could potentially provide a major boom for South Korea’s tech industry.
Alex Holmes, a Singapore-based analyst at Capital Economics, says that already may be happening. Though South Korea’s overall export numbers are suffering, its shipments to the United States are growing, he says.
That’s particularly the case for Korean electronics that fall under U.S. tariffs. Those tariffed goods have well out-performed non-tariffed items, Holmes says, “which suggests that U.S. companies have already switched suppliers as a result of tariffs.”
The increased shipments to the United States almost cover the equivalent hit South Korea has taken as a result of the tariffs, Holmes adds.
Manufacturing shift?
The tariffs could also have a long-term impact on manufacturing in Asia, as companies shift their production bases away from China as a way to shield themselves from the trade war.
A growing number of Asian companies, including some South Korean memory chipmakers, have already begun shifting their manufacturing centers to fast-growing and cheaper countries in Southeast Asia.
“If South Korea wants to find cheaper factories in say Vietnam or one of the ASEAN countries, it could make its money back or potentially even grow more than it would have if it relied on Chinese manufacturing,” Xu said. “But those sort of actions take a lot of time, a lot of capital, and there is a lot of risk involved.”
With no end in sight to the U.S.-China trade tensions, it’s a pattern that could be repeated, threatening China’s reputation as a low-cost production base.
“The knock-on effect of this trade war will be to locate a lot more production capabilities in other countries in Asia,” Xu said.
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As anticipation builds for the next-generation mobile communications or 5G, security has become a heated topic. The U.S. government has launched an unprecedented campaign urging countries to ban one of the key makers of equipment for the new network, China-based telecom titan Huawei. But Huawei is vowing to refuse to assist any country in spying and even claims it would rather go out of business. VOA’s Bill Ide recently visited the company’s headquarters in China’s southern city of Shenzhen.
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I.M. Pei, the versatile, globe-trotting architect who revived the Louvre with a giant glass pyramid and captured the spirit of rebellion at the multi-shaped Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has died at age 102.
Pei’s death was confirmed Thursday by Marc Diamond, a spokesman for Pei’s New York architectural firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.
Pei’s works ranged from the trapezoidal addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to the chiseled towers of the National Center of Atmospheric Research that blend in with the reddish mountains in Boulder, Colorado.
His buildings added elegance to landscapes worldwide with their powerful geometric shapes and grand spaces. Among them are the striking steel and glass Bank of China skyscraper in Hong Kong and the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing. His work spanned decades, starting in the late 1940s and continuing through the new millennium. Two of his last major projects, the Museum of Islamic Art, located on an artificial island just off the waterfront in Doha, Qatar, and the Macau Science Center, in China, opened in 2008 and 2009.
Pei painstakingly researched each project, studying its use and relating it to the environment. But he also was interested in architecture as art — and the effect he could create.
“At one level my goal is simply to give people pleasure in being in a space and walking around it,” he said. “But I also think architecture can reach a level where it influences people to want to do something more with their lives. That is the challenge that I find most interesting.”
Pei, who as a schoolboy in Shanghai was inspired by its building boom in the 1930s, immigrated to the United States and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He advanced from his early work of designing office buildings, low-income housing and mixed-used complexes to a worldwide collection of museums, municipal buildings and hotels.
He fell into a modernist style blending elegance and technology, creating crisp, precise buildings.
His big break was in 1964, when he was chosen over many prestigious architects, such as Louis Kahn and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, to design the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston.
At the time, Jacqueline Kennedy said all the candidates were excellent, “But Pei! He loves things to be beautiful.” The two became friends.
A slight, unpretentious man, Pei developed a reputation as a skilled diplomat, persuading clients to spend the money for his grand-scale projects and working with a cast of engineers and developers.
Some of his designs were met with much controversy, such as the 71-foot faceted glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris. French President Francois Mitterrand, who personally selected Pei to oversee the decaying, overcrowded museum’s renovation, endured a barrage of criticism when he unveiled the plan in 1984.
Many of the French vehemently opposed such a change to their symbol of their culture, once a medieval fortress and then a national palace. Some resented that Pei, a foreigner, was in charge.
But Mitterrand and his supporters prevailed and the pyramid was finished in 1989. It serves as the Louvre’s entrance, and a staircase leads visitors down to a vast, light-drenched lobby featuring ticket windows, shops, restaurants, an auditorium and escalators to other parts of the vast museum.
“All through the centuries, the Louvre has undergone violent change,” Pei said. “The time had to be right. I was confident because this was the right time.”
Another building designed by Pei’s firm — the John Hancock Tower in Boston — had a questionable future in the early 1970s when dozens of windows cracked and popped out, sending glass crashing to the sidewalks, during the time the building was under construction.
A flurry of lawsuits followed among the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., the glass manufacturer, and Pei’s firm. A settlement was reached in 1981.
No challenge seemed to be too great for Pei, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which sits on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Pei, who admitted he was just catching up with the Beatles, researched the roots of rock `n’ roll and came up with an array of contrasting shapes for the museum. He topped it off with a transparent tent-like structure, which was “open — like the music,” he said.
In 1988, President Reagan honored him with a National Medal of Arts. He also won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1983, and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, 1979. President George H.W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992.
Pei officially retired in 1990 but continued to work on projects. Two of his sons, Chien Chung Pei and Li Chung Pei, former members of their father’s firm, formed Pei Partnership Archiitects in 1992. Their father’s firm, previously I.M. Pei and Partners, was renamed Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.
The museum in Qatar that opened in 2008 was inspired by Islamic architectural history, especially the 9th century mosque of Ahmed ibn Tulun in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. It was established by the tiny, oil-rich nation to compete with rival Persian Gulf countries for international attention and investment.
Ieoh Ming Pei (pronounced YEE-oh ming pay) was born April 26, 1917, in Canton, China, the son of a banker. He later said, “I did not know what architecture really was in China. At that time, there was no difference between an architect, a construction man, or an engineer.”
Pei came to the United States in 1935 with plans to study architecture, then return to practice in China. However, World War II and the revolution in China prevented him from coming back.
During the war, Pei worked for the National Defense Research Committee. As an “expert” in Japanese construction, his job was to determine the best way to burn down Japanese towns. “It was awful,” he later said.
In 1948, New York City real estate developer William Zeckendorf hired Pei as his director of architecture. During this period, Pei worked on many large urban projects and gained experience in areas of building development, economics and construction.
Some of his early successes included the Mile High Center office building in Denver, the Kips Bay Plaza Apartments in Manhattan, and the Society Hill apartment complex in Philadelphia.
Pei established his own architectural firm in 1955, a year after he became a U.S. citizen. He remained based in New York City. Among the firm’s accomplishments are the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Pei’s wife, Eileen, who he married in 1942, died in 2014. A son, T’ing Chung, died in 2003. Besides sons Chien Chung Pei and Li Chung Pei, he is survived by a daughter, Liane.
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The Afrobytes and Viva Tech conferences in Paris this week have provided an opportunity to look at the progress that high-tech startups have made in Africa, where fundraising is booming.
According to Partech Africa, a venture capital firm, 146 startups in 19 African countries raised $1.16 billion for African digital entrepreneurs in 2018. Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa received 78% of the total funding, with Egypt close behind.
In French-speaking Africa, Senegal is the leading hub with $22 million raised in four deals. Compared with their Anglophone peers, Africa’s Francophone countries operate in smaller markets, and lack capital and mentors.
A key: Seeking advice
Marieme Diop, a venture capital investor at Orange Digital Ventures, said that “unfortunately in Francophone Africa, it is not in our DNA. People who succeed in business or in electing positions do not necessarily reach back to help their peers to show them how to be successful. In the Anglophone world, it is a must for anyone who wants to start something: seeking advice. So the gap is not only financial” between the regions.
Africa is seen by many as the next frontier for venture capital, with its booming population and mobile-first economy. That’s why Google, Facebook and PayPal participated in Paris in Afrobytes 2019.
“We do not want people globally to see African high-tech as an exotic stuff,” said Afrobytes CEO Ammin Youssouf. “We want to be heard and talk about AI, blockchain, what is happening in Silicon Valley, because it has an impact on us. We already have brilliant minds in Africa, especially in tech, to have those conversations.”
Unlike the global trend, where men dominate the high-tech industry, women are leading the movement in Africa.
“Actually, what we see in the statistics is that women’s involvement and participation on in the African continent is much higher than what you would find in New York, for example, or San Francisco,” said Ben White, chief executive officer of venture capital platform VC4Africa, who has been supporting startups on the continent for more than 10 years. “I think it is an advantage. It also means having women investors who are very sensitive to gender-related questions and can also ensure that the system we are building is inclusive.”
Governments’ role
Governments in Africa are trying to regulate the activity and even support the sector. Forty Senegalese startups last November secured a total of $2 million in government funding. But some experts say governments lack the skills needed to pick good investments.
Kenza Lahlou, co-founder and managing partner at Outlierz Ventures, said the public sector “should not invest [in startups]. States should build funds of funds. We have that in Morocco in partnership with the World Bank. The government started Innov Invest, to invest in local venture capitalist funds, to lower the risk for local funds.”
With a population expected to reach 1.4 billion people by 2021, and a continent that will put about 1 billion smartphones into use within two years, Africa is a promising area for the world’s leading high-tech and telecom companies.
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Oregon is spending $40 million to dramatically expand the federal free breakfast and lunch program, ensuring that more than 60 percent of its 400,000 public school students will be included, the only statewide effort in the country
Oregon is spending $40 million to dramatically expand its federal free breakfast and lunch program, ensuring that more than 60 percent of its 400,000 public school students will be included, the largest statewide effort in the country.
The program is based on providing free meals to any child whose family lives at up to three times the poverty level, which is $75,000 for a family of four.
New tax package
The meals expansion program is tucked away in a new tax package for schools, a sweeping $1 billion annual investment explicitly dedicated to boosting student performance. It will be paid for through a new half a percent tax on business.
Chicago and New York City are among some major cities that offer free breakfast and lunch to all students, but this is the only statewide program according to Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon.
“Hungry kids don’t think about education nearly as much as having something in their stomach,” said Sen. Arnie Roblan, a Democrat from Coos Bay who helped craft the legislation.
Oregon will allow 761 schools to provide free lunch and breakfast to approximately 345,000 students.
One in seven households is “food insecure,” according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy , meaning that families have trouble putting food on the table and often don’t know where they’ll get their next meal.
At least 174,000 children have limited access to food, more than the population of Oregon’s second largest city, Eugene.
Hunger-Free Kids Act
At least 62% of students attend a school with high federal poverty rates. These schools can get federal assistance to provide free meals to all their students no matter their income levels under the 2011 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a policy championed by former first lady Michelle Obama.
But even though these schools may qualify for assistance, not all of them take advantage of it because of low federal reimbursement rates. The reimbursement rate is different for each school, depending on the school’s poverty level.
Schools with lower reimbursement rates often choose to provide free meals only to students living about two times above the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that would require an income up to $50,000.
Around a third of food insecure students in Oregon, however, live above that poverty threshold meaning they’re ineligible for free meals under the federal program, according to data from Feeding America .
Tim Sweeney, a superintendent in Oregon’s impoverished South Coast, said that his district runs a deficit because it chooses to take on the cost of feeding all its students. Many students are completely dependent on schools for food, he said.
But even with federal assistance, it costs around $25,000 a year to provide free breakfast and lunches, money Sweeney said could have gone to textbooks.
“Poverty is a huge deal here and so many students rely on schools to provide them with food and a warm place for shelter,” he said. “Food service may not be a winning game, but we know it means the world to these kids.”
Gov. Brown signs package
Gov. Kate Brown signed the school funding tax package, but it’s likely to be referred to the voters to decide in 2020, thanks to Oregon’s robust referendum process.
Republicans, who make up the minority of the Legislature, sought to block the package by refusing to show up to the Capitol to vote, shutting down all business for a week. They returned Monday at which point the measure was swiftly approved.
Although the tax package was partisan, Roblan says this is the one provision that was never up for debate.
“This is a big buy for our state,” he said. “But there was no hesitation. This is the right thing to do.”
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More than 150 years after Victor Hugo’s classic novel, a French film titled Les Miserables gives a gritty, modern view of the Paris suburbs where Jean Valjean first met Cosette.
Ladj Ly’s Les Miserables, which premiered Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, contains no singing or romance, but rather a tough, The Wire-like street-level portrait of the Parisian banlieue of Montfermeil. It’s the same neighborhood where Ly, 37, grew up and still lives.
Ly says he made his movie as “an alarm bell” for the plight of kids growing up in neighborhoods like Montfermeil.
For the past 20 years, we've said things are not going well. We have the impression no one's listening,'' said Ly.I wanted to address a message to Emmanuel Macron, the president of the republic. It’s important for him to see the film.”
For 20 years now, we have been yellow vests,'' he added, referring to the continuing protests by working-class French.We’ve been demanding our rights for the past 20 years. We’ve had to cope with police violence for over 20 years.”
Les Miserables, which is competing for the top Palme d’Or prize in Cannes, shows the Paris suburbs as a combustible powder keg, where neighborhood gang leaders and overanxious police are in a constant dance. Much of Ly’s film revolves around the kids growing up in the housing projects.
In 2015, the Paris banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois exploded in riots that put an international spotlight on the lives of immigrants and French-Africans in the areas surrounding Paris.
One shouldn't forget that three-fourths of the people who live in these housing estates are French,'' said Ly.Now we have the impression that there are different classifications of citizenship. But we’re just French, full stop. So accept us as French, full stop.”
Other recent films have sought to capture the reality of the banlieues, including La Haine and Dheepan, which won the Palme d’Or in 2015.
Les Miserables, Ly’s feature directing debut, drew largely strong reviews in Cannes for its muscular genre work and passionate social commentary.
“One century later, misery, abject poverty is still present in these housing estates,” Ly said.
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Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms on display at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum.
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A Tesla Model S involved in a fatal crash with a semitrailer in Florida March 1 was operating on the company’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system, federal investigators have determined.
The car drove beneath the trailer, killing the driver, in a crash that is strikingly similar to one that happened on the other side of Florida in 2016 that also involved use of Autopilot.
In both cases, neither the driver nor the Autopilot system stopped for the trailers, and the roofs of the cars were sheared off.
The crash, which remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, raises questions about the effectiveness of Autopilot, which uses cameras, long-range radar and computers to detect objects in front of the cars to avoid collisions. The system also can keep a car in its lane, change lanes and navigate freeway interchanges.
Tesla has maintained that the system is designed only to assist drivers, who must pay attention at all times and be ready to intervene.
In a preliminary report on the March 1 crash, the NTSB said that preliminary data and video from the Tesla show that the driver turned on Autopilot about 10 seconds before the crash on a divided highway with turn lanes in the median. From less than eight seconds until the time of the crash, the driver’s hands were not detected on the steering wheel, the NTSB report stated.
“Neither the preliminary data nor the videos indicate that the driver or the ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist System) executed evasive maneuvers,” the report stated.
The Model 3 was going 68 miles per hour when it hit the trailer on U.S. 441, the report said. Jeremy Beren Banner, 50, was killed.
Tesla said in a statement Thursday that Banner did not use Autopilot at any other time during the drive before the crash. Vehicle logs show that he took his hands off the steering wheel immediately after activating Autopilot, the statement said.
Tesla also said it’s saddened by the crash and that drivers have traveled more than 1 billion miles while using Autopilot. “When used properly by an attentive driver who is prepared to take control at all times, drivers supported by Autopilot are safer than those operating without assistance,” the company said.
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