Month: August 2020

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama – home to “Space Camp” – faced permanent closure as COVID-19 forced the internationally popular science and technology center to turn students and visitors away. But as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, an online campaign to “Save Space Camp” is providing a lifeline to get through the pandemic. 
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Some U.S.-based users of WeChat are suing President Donald Trump in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the U.S. to the hugely popular Chinese messaging app.The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump’s executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its U.S. users’ freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.“We think there’s a First Amendment interest in providing continued access to that app and its functionality to the Chinese-American community,” Michael Bien, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said Saturday.Trump on August 6 ordered sweeping but vague bans on transactions with the Chinese owners of WeChat and another popular consumer app, TikTok, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy.The twin executive orders — one for each app — are expected to take effect September 20, or 45 days from when they were issued. The orders call on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who is also named as a defendant in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance lawsuit, to define the banned dealings by that time.It remains unclear what the orders will mean for the apps’ millions of users in the U.S., but experts have said the orders appear intended to bar WeChat and TikTok from the app stores run by Apple and Google. That would make them more difficult to use in the U.S.“The first thing we’re going to seek is a postponement of the implementation of the penalties and sanctions – a reasonable period of time between explaining what the rules are and punishing people for not complying with them,” Bien said.TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Saturday saying it plans to mount a legal challenge against the executive order that President Trump issued against the popular video app.WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is less well-known than TikTok to Americans without a connection to China.Mobile research firm Sensor Tower estimates about 19 million U.S. downloads of the app. But it is crucial infrastructure for Chinese students and residents in the U.S. to connect with friends and family in China and for anyone who does business with China.Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto have said WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.Even so, the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance complaint argued that losing access to the app would harm millions of people in the U.S. who rely on it, noting it is the only app with an interface designed for Chinese speakers.“Since the executive order, numerous users, including plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions,” according to the complaint. 
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Video app TikTok said Saturday it will challenge in court a Trump administration crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned platform, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.As tensions soar between the world’s two biggest economies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance — effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the app to a U.S. company.”To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” TikTok said in a statement.”Even though we strongly disagree with the administration’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good faith to provide a constructive solution,” it said.”What we encountered instead was a lack of due process as the administration paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”ByteDance said in a separate statement that the suit would be filed on Monday, U.S. time.TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. It has been downloaded 175 million times in the U.S. and more than a billion times around the world.Trump claims TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.The company has said it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump’s crackdown as political.The U.S. measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.Trump and ChinaTrump has increasingly taken a confrontational stance on China, challenging it on trade, military and economic fronts.Shortly after Trump announced his moves against TikTok this month, the United States slapped sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader over the Chinese security clampdown after last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations.Microsoft and Oracle are possible suitors for TikTok’s U.S. operations.Reports have said Oracle — whose chairman Larry Ellison has raised millions in campaign funds for Trump — was weighing a bid for TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The Trump administration has also given ByteDance a 90-day deadline to divest in TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.The measures move away from the long-promoted American ideal of a global, open internet and could invite other countries to follow suit, analysts told AFP previously.”It’s really an attempt to fragment the internet and the global information society along U.S. and Chinese lines, and shut China out of the information economy,” Milton Mueller, a Georgia Tech professor and founder of the Internet Governance Project said previously. 
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Facebook’s India chief said Friday the social media giant denounces hate and bigotry in the wake of a controversy sparked by a media report alleging it failed to remove hate-speech posted by members linked to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party over fears of damaging its business in the country.   
 
“We’ve made progress on tackling hate speech on our platform, but we need to do more,” Facebook India’s managing director Ajit Mohan said in an online post that denied any bias.  
 
Facebook executives have been ordered to appear before a parliamentary panel to answer questions on how the company regulates content in the country.  
 
The company is under scrutiny after an Aug. 14 Wall Street Journal report quoted unnamed former and current Facebook executives saying a senior public policy executive had “opposed applying hate-speech rules” to a BJP legislator and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups linked with the BJP although they had been flagged by staff.  
 
The Journal report referred specifically to T. Raja Singh, a BJP legislator in the southern Telangana state, who in Facebook posts and public appearances had said that mainly Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar should be shot, called Muslims traitors, and threatened to raze mosques.
The newspaper reported that staff members policing the platform flagged the posts in March this year as violating the company’s hate speech rules but were told punishing violations by politicians from India’s ruling party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country.  
 
India is Facebook’s biggest market by number of users – it has over 300 million users, more than in any other country.  FILE – Indian commuters pass a poster of a Facebook ad campaign, in Bangalore, India, March 22, 2018.”Over the last few days, we have been accused of bias in the way we enforce our policies. We take allegations of bias incredibly seriously, and want to make it clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in any form,” Mohan, wrote in his online post.
 
“The decisions around content escalations are not made unilaterally by just one person,” the post said. “The process comes with robust checks and balances,” it said.  
 
He said the platform will remove content posted by public figures in India when it “violates our Community Standards.”
 
Platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp have become primary campaigning tools for the BJP and other political parties – with the spread of smartphones in the country the reach of social media has expanded exponentially. In particular, the spectacular rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in India is partly credited to sophisticated digital campaigns by the party.
 
The Journal report has triggered a political storm, with the opposition Congress Party accusing the social media company of favoring the BJP and the party denying allegations of preferential treatment.
 
In the wake of the newspaper report, Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted that “BJP & RSS control Facebook & Whatsapp in India. They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate.” “RSS” refers to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist organization often called the BJP’s ideological parent.  
 
In a reference to Gandhi’s tweet, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, told a press conference that “losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP.”
 
After the Journal report turned the spotlight on how the social media giant regulates political content in India, a parliamentary panel on information technology has summoned Facebook executives on Sept. 2 to question them about prevention of misuse of social and online news media platforms. Facebook has not commented on the parliamentary summons.  
 
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The World Health Organization is concerned by the rapid increase and spread of the deadly Ebola virus in remote, densely forested areas of Equateur province in the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.Health officials report 100 people in DRC have been infected with Ebola in fewer than 100 days, killing nearly half or 43 of those who have contracted this highly contagious disease.   
 
The WHO says the virus is continuing to spread and is already in 11 of the province’s 17 health zones. This is of particular concern because of the difficulty of reaching affected communities in the geographically vast area.  
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says there currently is a delay of about five days from the onset of symptoms to when an alert about a suspected case is raised.
    
“This is concerning because the longer a patient goes without treatment, the lower their chances of survival, and the longer the virus can spread unseen in communities. The situation has been further complicated by a strike by health workers, which is affecting activities including vaccination and safe burials,” Tedros said.  
    
Health care workers in Mbandaka, Equateur’s provincial capital, recently went on strike in protest over allegedly unpaid wages. After promises by the government to investigate, the strike reportedly now has ended.   
 
Nevertheless, money remains a central problem in the fight to combat this epidemic disease, especially as COVID-19 resources are draining funds away from Ebola operations. Tedros says the operation is seriously underfunded.
    
“There continues to be an urgent need for increased human resources and logistics capacity to support an effective response across an ever-expanding geographical area, and to help health officials identify cases earlier. The government of DRC has developed a plan that needs about $40 million U.S.  We urge partners to support this plan,” Tedros said.  
    
This latest Ebola outbreak, DRC’s 11th, was declared in DR Congo’s Equateur province on June 1, just as the previous outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces was winding down. That outbreak, the largest in the country’s history, infected 3,481 people and killed nearly 2,300. 
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The head of the World Health Organization says he hopes the coronavirus pandemic will end in less than two years – less time than it took to stop the 1918 Spanish flu. Speaking Friday at his regular briefing in Geneva, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is easier for a virus to spread today than 100 years ago because “we are more connected now.” However, he said, “at the same time, we have also the technology to stop it and the knowledge to stop it.”  FILE – Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 30, 2020.”So we have a disadvantage of globalization, closeness, connectedness but an advantage of better technology,” Tedros said. He said the key to stopping the virus is for countries around the world to “pool our efforts.” Several European countries have been reporting new surges of COVID-19 cases.  The French health ministry on Friday reported 4,586 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours. That follows a record the previous day for the number of post-lockdown infections. Spanish authorities Friday reported more than 3,000 new infections for the fourth day running, while officials in Madrid advised residents in areas with a high level of coronavirus cases to stay at home. People queue for tests outside Federica Montseny primary health care center during the coronavirus pandemic in Madrid, Spain, Aug. 20, 2020.Britain said Friday it plans to start regular, population-wide testing for COVID-19 by the end of the year to help suppress the spread of the virus. The country has the highest death toll in Europe, with more than 41,000 fatalities. In Germany, officials warned Friday against travel to the Belgian capital of Brussels because of its high rate of coronavirus infections. United StatesIn the United States, Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic after criticism from Trump’s Democratic election challenger Joe Biden at this week’s Democratic National Convention. “We lost 22 million jobs in the course of this coronavirus pandemic. But because of the solid foundation that President Trump poured of less taxes, less regulation, more American energy, more free and fair trade, we’ve seen 9 million Americans already go back to work,” Pence told CBS This Morning. Biden said Thursday in his acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic convention that “after all this time the president still does not have a plan” to fight the virus.  Biden said his plan would include a national mask-wearing mandate and immediate rapid testing results. He also called for increased manufacturing of medical supplies in the United States. A man disinfects the Cuemanco canal pier in Xochimilco, a network of canals and floating gardens that is one of Mexico City’s top tourist attractions, during its reopening amid the new coronavirus pandemic, Aug. 21, 2020.He told a Geneva briefing that Mexico was testing about three people per 100,000, compared with about 150 tests per 100,000 people in the United States. Mexico had nearly 544,000 cases of the virus Friday and more than 59,000 deaths, according to the tally conducted by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The Philippines reported 4,786 new infections Friday, bringing its total case count to 182,365.  It also recorded 59 deaths, increasing its death tally to 2,940.  “The infectiousness has increased because the strain has evolved,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said Friday. Megan Duzor contributed to this report.
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A recently approved rapid saliva test for COVID-19 is already being used on college campuses across the United States. Also called spit tests, they produce results in less than 24 hours, cost about $10, and are less invasive than the standard swab that is placed deep into the nose.Faster, Easier COVID-19 Test Approved as US Testing Rates Fall A Yale-developed, NBA-funded test uses saliva to detect the coronavirusYale University School of Public Health in Connecticut partnered with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association in June, the school said, to devise the test, called SalivaDirect.“Direct saliva testing can address bottlenecks of time, cost and supplies,” said Dr. Martin Burke, a chemistry professor who helped design a saliva test at the University of Illinois in collaboration with Yale University.  “Once somebody is infected, the amount of virus in their system can rise very rapidly. Unless we have a test that can give them results very quickly, by the time somebody finds out they are infected, they will have spread the virus,” said Rebecca Lee Smith, a professor of pathobiology on the Illinois University website.  “The faster we can notify people, the faster we can stop the spread,” Smith said.COVID-19 Infections Rising Among Young People on US University Campuses Although many colleges and universities offer comprehensive reopening plans with mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines, research shows virus would still roam throughout campuses, causing complicationsAt the University of South Carolina, officials say they will test thousands of students and employees daily for COVID-19, with no limit on frequency. The simpler test is advised for those without symptoms. Those with flu-like symptoms like fever are advised to get a nasal swab test. Colleges and universities across the U.S. have grappled with how to teach classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infected younger people have been less impacted by the virus than older people but are seen as asymptomatic spreaders.Screen College Students for COVID Every 2 Days, Researchers Advise  Residential students could be healthier than online students, study saysNow that the fall semester for many U.S. schools is under way, school officials are seeking ways to manage the spread of infection while maintaining curriculum. While many initially said they would bring students back to campus for classes, and many students have moved back to their college towns, more and more are going to online-only programs. Contributing to the academic effort to control the pandemic, Davidson College in North Carolina created the College Crisis Initiative, which tracks coronavirus cases, university responses, and subsequent innovation. Of nearly 3,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., 784 are conducting classes primarily online, 584 are primarily in person, 460 are a hybrid or combination of the two, and 718 remain undecided, according to Davidson.  
 
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The U.S. National Weather Service is predicting that two storm systems in and around the Caribbean Sea will strengthen and could both be hurricanes next week in the Gulf of Mexico.The National Hurricane Center reports Tropical Storm Laura formed early Friday just northeast of the Lesser Antilles, and by last report, was 280 kilometers east of the northern Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.This satellite image released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Tropical Storm Laura in the North Atlantic Ocean, Aug. 21, 2020.The Washington Post reports Laura is the earliest forming “L” named storm on record, beating out Tropical Storm Luis, which formed Aug. 29, 1995. The season has already featured the earliest-forming C, E, F, G, H, I, J and K storms on record.Meanwhile, further to the west, in the southern Caribbean, forecasters are watching Tropical Depression 14, which they say will strengthen into Tropical Storm Marco later Friday.Forecasters say both storms are likely to move into the Gulf of Mexico and become hurricanes by early next week. If they do, it will be the first time two hurricanes are in the gulf at the same time in the satellite era.Some computer models say both hurricanes could hit the southern United States at roughly the same time, or could interact with each other in some way, depending on their size.Tropical storm warnings have been issued in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the northern Leeward Islands and the southeast Bahamas, where tropical storm conditions from Laura could arrive as early as Friday night.Tropical Depression 14 is expected reach the eastern Yucatan coast by midday Saturday, where tropical storm warnings are in effect. It is forecast to move into the south-central Gulf of Mexico by Sunday afternoon. 
 
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President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow him to block critics from his personal Twitter account. The administration said in a high-court filing Thursday that Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account with more than 85 million followers is his personal property and blocking people from it is akin to elected officials who refuse to allow their opponents’ yard signs on their front lawns. “President Trump’s ability to use the features of his personal Twitter account, including the blocking function, are independent of his presidential office,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in urging the justices to review the case. The federal appeals court in New York ruled last year that Trump uses the account to make daily pronouncements and observations that are overwhelmingly official in nature. It held that Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint. A decision about whether even to hear the case is not likely before the November election. The case grew out of a challenge brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which sued on behalf of seven individuals blocked by Trump after criticizing his policies. Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said the justices should decline to take up Trump’s appeal. “This case stands for a principle that is fundamental to our democracy and basically synonymous with the First Amendment: government officials can’t exclude people from public forums simply because they disagree with their political views,” Jaffer said in a statement. The administration argued in its appeal that the Supreme Court, not lower courts, “should decide where to draw the line between the President’s personal decisions and official conduct.” The pace of the case was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic as well as Trump’s decision to ask the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling by a three-judge panel. The court refused to do so by a 7-2 vote in March. Two Trump appointees, Judges Michael H. Park and Richard J. Sullivan, were the only members of the court to side with the president. The Supreme Court extended its deadline to file an appeal from 90 days to 150 days when it shut the building to the public and abandoned in-person meetings in favor of telephone conferences because of the virus outbreak. 
 
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Every day, like clockwork, to-do lists for those protesting against Belarus’ authoritarian leader appear in the popular Telegram messaging app. They lay out goals, give times and locations of rallies with business-like precision, and offer spirited encouragement. “Today will be one more important day in the fight for our freedom. Tectonic shifts are happening on all fronts, so it’s important not to slow down,” a message in one of Telegram’s so-called channels read Tuesday. “Morning. Expanding the strike … 11:00. Supporting the Kupala (theater) … 19:00. Gathering at the Independence Square.”  The app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unprecedented mass protests that have rocked Belarus since Aug. 9, when election officials announced President Alexander Lukashenko had won a landslide victory to extend his 26-year rule in a vote widely seen as rigged.  Peaceful protesters who poured into the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities were met with stun grenades, rubber bullets and beatings from police. The opposition candidate left for Lithuania — under duress, her campaign said — and authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians with almost no access to independent online news outlets or social media and protesters seemingly without a leader.  Opposition supporters rally to protest against disputed presidential election results on Independence Square in Minsk, Aug. 20, 2020.That’s where Telegram — which often remains available despite internet outages, touts the security of messages shared in the app and has been used in other protest movements — came in. Some of its channels helped scattered rallies to mature into well-coordinated action. The people who run the channels, which used to offer political news, now post updates, videos and photos of the unfolding turmoil sent in from users, locations of heavy police presence, contacts of human rights activists, and outright calls for new demonstrations — something Belarusian opposition leaders have refrained from doing publicly themselves. Tens of thousands of people across the country have responded to those calls.  In a matter of days, the channels — NEXTA, NEXTA Live and Belarus of the Brain are the most popular — have become the main method for facilitating the protests, said Franak Viacorka, a Belarusian analyst and non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.  “The fate of the country has never depended so much on one (piece) of technology,” Viacorka said.  Charges of fomenting mass riots In the days following the vote and the subsequent internet outage, NEXTA Live’s audience shot from several hundred thousand followers to over 2 million. Its sister channel NEXTA has more than 700,000 followers. Belarus of the Brain’s following grew from almost 170,000 users in late June to over 470,000 this week.  Their influence in a nation of 9.5 million is hard to underestimate, and authorities have taken notice and are pursuing those behind the channels.  Last week, officials opened a criminal probe into NEXTA and its founder, 22-year-old blogger Stepan Putilo, on charges of fomenting mass riots — an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Blogger Igor Losik, who founded Belarus of the Brain, was arrested before the election, but the channel continues to operate.  “We have indeed become the bullhorn of the situation that is unfolding in Belarus right now,” Putilo, who is Belarusian but lives in Warsaw, Poland, said in a recent interview with Lithuanian news outlet Delfi. “We have become the voice of this revolution, but by no will of our own. It just happened.” Putilo first created NEXTA — which is pronounced NEKH-ta and means “somebody” in Belarusian — as a YouTube channel in 2015, when he was just 17. His profile rose last year when his 30-minute video about the country’s iron-fisted leader, “Lukashenko. Criminal Records,” was viewed almost 3 million times. A court in Belarus declared the film extremist, but it is still available on YouTube. Putilo turned to Telegram in 2018. His two channels focused mostly on Belarusian politics. His team received thousands of messages from users sending in photos, videos and news items each day and posted the most newsworthy, taking pride in often sharing information from sources inside the government or law enforcement.  After the demonstrations began, thousands of messages turned into hundreds of thousands, and the underground operation now appears inundated. In response to a request from The Associated Press for an interview, NEXTA editor-in-chief Roman Protsevich wrote: “Sure, it’s possible, but the question is when. …” — and then stopped responding.  Putilo hasn’t responded to requests for comment.  Piercing ‘information blackout’When the protests began, the NEXTA channels were often the first places anywhere on the internet to carry grisly pictures of police violently clashing with demonstrators. This week, they were filled with videos of workers protesting at industrial plants.  Journalists in Belarus have praised the channels for breaking news — but note that traditional media also played an important role.  “Telegram channels did help to pierce the information blackout, but I have to say that it wasn’t just them,” said Andrei Bastunets, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. “Telegram channels (run by bloggers) played a mobilizing, an organizing role, while more balanced information could be found on Telegram channels of media outlets.”  Social media platforms have played major roles in previous uprisings, including in the Arab Spring, anti-government protests in Hong Kong and demonstrations against racial injustice in the United States.  But, since 2016, when Russia was accused of using Facebook and other platforms in an effort to influence or interfere in the U.S. election, many have seen social media in a more dystopian light, said Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House.  “What’s happening in Belarus right now is kind of a reminder that actually social media can be used in a positive way from a democratic perspective,” Kundnani said. Protesters in the streets echoed his sentiment.  “Telegram channels and websites that don’t belong to our government are the main source of information today as we cannot at all rely on state media,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk on Wednesday evening. “It’s a Telegram revolution.”  
 
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