The Jerusalema Dance Challenge, a South African internet craze, is sweeping the African continent.As the Jerusalema spreads across Africa, in Zimbabwe, the wildlife is joining in. Staff at Zimbabwe’s Wild is Life sanctuary for rescued wildlife have seen their online dance video with elephants, giraffes and other animals go viral.The song “Jerusalema,” by South African DJ and record producer Master KG and vocalist Nomcebo, went viral during the coronavirus lockdown.Dancers, both professional and amateur, began posting their performances to the song online – including with some wildlife. Roxy Danckwerts, the founder of Wild is Life, said they used their phones to record the video.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Roxy Danckwerts, founder of Wild is Life, is seen in at a computer, in Harare, Zimbabwe, Sept. 23, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Danckwerts said she hopes it will help support Zimbabwe’s wildlife tourism industry.South African tourist Phillipa Meek said she decided to visit the Wild is Life center with her friend Ben Fowler after seeing the video online.South African tourist Phillipa Meek says she decided to visit the Wild is Life center in Harare after seeing the video online, Sept. 23, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)”I have been watching a few of the Jerusalema videos, and the Wild is Life one was absolutely amazing. With all the animals and baby elephants, they were so cute, the giraffes and all the spirit in the video was absolutely fantastic, and I thought it was one of the best Jerusalema videos that is out there and it really encouraged me, because I am from South Africa, to come here and I just see it for myself,” Meek said.Like much of Africa, Zimbabwe’s tourism industry has been suffering since the pandemic began in March. But even before the pandemic, Zimbabwe struggled to attract visitors.Godfrey Koti, the spokesman for the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, said the pandemic has brought the industry worldwide to “ground zero” and it is time for Zimbabwe to take off.Godfrey Koti, spokesman for Zimbabwe’s Tourism Authority says he wants to see tourism’s contribution to the country’s GDP increase from the current 8% to between 15%-18%, for a total $5 billion, in Harare, Sept. 23, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)”And we are starting with domestic tourism, making sure that everything is in place from a domestic perspective. For us to be successful, we need a sound domestic product, then we can go to the region and effectively send it to the international market and increase our arrivals, thereby increasing our contribution to the GDP, which is currently at 8%. We are looking at maybe between 15% and 18% and obviously, this will give us a very healthy $5 billion contribution to the fiscus,” Koti said.Zimbabwe has seen triple-digit inflation, adding to the country’s economic problems. Tourism is one of the industries Zimbabwe hopes will revive the country’s struggling economy.
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Month: September 2020
Facebook’s highly anticipated independent oversight board, a group that will be empowered to overrule the company’s leadership on issues pertaining to the platform’s content moderation decisions, plans to launch in October, just in time for the November U.S. presidential election.The board was created by Facebook after the platform was criticized for its handling of problematic content, most recently a backlash over its decision to take no action in response to posts from U.S. President Donald Trump containing misinformation about mail-in voting and inflammatory language directed toward the Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests that erupted over the summer.Other platforms that contain user-generated content, such as Twitter, have taken measures to combat misinformation online, including attaching fact-checking warning labels to posts.Facebook has not yet announced whether the board will hear cases related to the election. Representatives from the company said that the board did not consider cases involving Trump’s posts in its preliminary hearings. Reviewing removed postsMembers of the oversight board will review appeals only over posts that Facebook has taken down initially, instead of taking into consideration content that the company leaves up. It will also deal only with individual posts that fall under the areas where Facebook exercises editorial control.Content that is regulated by Facebook includes algorithms that shape how much distribution a post receives, taking down or leaving up Facebook groups, pages, and events, and whether to leave specific pieces of content up on the site.The board has been harshly criticized for starting by reviewing appeals concerning posts that were taken down, which experts say will have little impact on addressing problems like misinformation and hate speech that are rampant on the platform. Critics say that the long-awaited board has not moved fast enough to curb these issues before the election. Prioritizing casesAccording to the board’s website, the criteria for the prioritization of cases has not been decided and is being debated by the board’s 20 members. While tens of thousands of cases are expected to be presented to the board, leaders say that the board will take only a small number of cases each year, most likely in the “tens or hundreds.”Board members include lawyers, academics, journalists and policy experts from around the world, who collectively speak 27 different languages and represent having lived in 29 different countries.Preparation leading up to the board’s launch includes educating members on Facebook’s community standards, international human rights law and receiving technical training on case management rolls that will allow members to receive and consider appeals.
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A new study released this week describes how binge drinking — consuming too much alcohol, too fast — affects the brain, leading to anxieties and other cognitive issues.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines binge drinking as a man consuming five or more drinks in about two hours; four drinks for a woman. The CDC reports the habit is growing problem in the United States, especially among young people, with 1 in 6 adults binge drinking about four times a month.Previous research examined the long-term effects of binge drinking on the brain, but this latest study, published Tuesday in the journal Science Signaling, focused specifically on immediate effects of binge drinking on the brain.To do this, the researchers from the University of Porto in Portugal gave an alcohol solution to mice, equivalent to 10 days of binge drinking, which spurred immune cells in mice brains to destroy the synapses — or connections — between neurons, leading to anxiety and other cognitive issues.University of Porto researcher João Relvas, co-author of the study, said in an interview, “Even for a short period of time, excessive drinking is likely to affect the brain, increasing the level of anxiety, a relevant feature in alcohol abuse and addiction.”Dangers of alcohol ‘underestimated’Relvas said further studies in humans could reveal the exact drinking patterns that spark synaptic dysfunction. But for now, Relvas cautioned that people should pay attention to their intake and follow public health guidelines on drinking in moderation.”The dangers of alcohol drinking, especially amongst the younger population, have been widely underestimated and excessive alcohol drinking is socially relatively well tolerated,” Relvas said.He said studies like theirs should help increase public awareness and education among people young and perhaps change the way society looks at alcohol consumption.Dietary guidelines determined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture define moderate drinking as up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men.
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A group of Apple Inc.’s critics, including Spotify Technology SA, Match Group Inc. and “Fortnite” creator Epic Games, have joined a nonprofit group that plans to advocate for legal and regulatory action to challenge the iPhone maker’s App Store practices. Apple charges a commission of between 15% and 30% for apps that use its in-app payment system and sets out extensive rules for apps in its App Store, which is the only way Apple allows consumers to download native apps to devices such as the iPhone. Those practices have drawn criticism and formal legal complaints from some developers. FILE – Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during an announcement of new products at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., June 4, 2018.The Coalition for App Fairness, structured as a nonprofit based in Washington and Brussels, said it plans to advocate legal changes that would force Apple to change. Beyond Epic, Match and Spotify, other members include smaller firms such as Basecamp, Blix, Blockchain.com, Deezer, and Tile, along with developers from Europe, including the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe and Protonmail. Epic is suing Apple over antitrust claims in a U.S. federal court in California, while Spotify has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in the European Union. Sarah Maxwell, a representative for the group, declined to comment on how much funding the Coalition for App Fairness has raised and from whom. Apple declined to comment but on Thursday unveiled a new section of its website explaining the benefits of its approach, saying it had blocked 150,000 apps last year for privacy violations. It says App Store fees fund the creation of developer resources such as 160,000 technical documents and sample code to help developers build apps. Mike Sax, founder of The App Association, a group sponsored by Apple, said in a statement that the new coalition’s “big brands do not speak for the thousands of app makers that are the foundation of the app economy.”
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on preexisting medical conditions Thursday, amid a global pandemic and growing uncertainty about the future of protections guaranteed by the Obama-era health law his administration is still trying to overturn.In a visit to swing state North Carolina, the president sketched out what aides called a “vision” for quality health care at affordable prices, with lower prescription drug costs, more consumer choice and greater transparency. The president also signed another executive order to try to end surprise medical bills.But while the Trump administration has made some progress on its health care goals, the sweeping changes he promised as a candidate in 2016 have eluded him. Democrats are warning Trump would turn back the clock if given another four years in the White House, and they are promising coverage for all and lower drug prices.Legislation unlikelyThe clock has all but run out in Congress for major legislation on lowering drug costs or ending surprise bills, much less replacing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.Bill-signing ceremonies on prescription drugs and medical charges were once seen as achievable goals for Trump before the election. No longer.Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said one of Trump’s executive orders would declare it the policy of the U.S. government to protect people with preexisting conditions, even if the ACA is declared unconstitutional. However, such protections are already the law, and Trump would have to go to Congress to cement a new policy.On surprise billing, Azar said the president’s order would direct him to work with Congress on legislation, and if there is no progress, move ahead with regulatory action. However, despite widespread support among lawmakers for ending surprise bills, the administration has been unable to forge a compromise that steers around determined lobbying by a slew of affected interest groups.Health care consultant and commentator Robert Laszewski said he was particularly puzzled by Trump’s order on preexisting conditions.”For more than 20 years we debated ways to protect people from preexisting conditions limitations,” said Laszewski. Former President Barack Obama’s landmark legislation finally established protections, he said.How will it work?”So, after 20 years of national public policy debate and hard-fought congressional and presidential approval, how does Trump conclude he can restore these protections, should the Republican Supreme Court suit overturn them, with a simple executive order?”Health care represents a major piece of unfinished business for Trump.Prescription drug inflation has stabilized when generics are factored in, but the dramatic price rollbacks he once teased have not materialized.And the number of uninsured Americans had started edging up even before job losses in the economic shutdown to try to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Various studies have tried to estimate the additional coverage losses this year, but the most authoritative government statistics have a lengthy time lag. Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said his best guess was “several million.”Meanwhile, Trump is pressing the Supreme Court to invalidate the entire Obama health law, which provides coverage to more than 20 million people and protects Americans with medical problems from insurance discrimination. The case will be argued a week after Election Day.The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has added another layer of uncertainty. Without Ginsburg, there is no longer a majority of five justices who previously had voted to uphold the ACA.Democrats’ messagingDemocrats, unable to slow the Republican march to Senate confirmation of a replacement for Ginsburg, are ramping up their election-year health care messaging. It is a strategy that helped them win the House in 2018. Former Vice President Joe Biden has said he wants to expand the Obama law and add a new public program as an option.A recent Kaiser Foundation poll found Biden had an edge over Trump among registered voters as the candidate with the better approach to making sure everyone has access to health care and insurance, 52% to 40%. The gap narrowed for lowering costs of health care: 48% named Biden, while 42% picked Trump. The scramble to deliver concrete accomplishments on health care comes as Trump is chafing under criticism that he never created a Republican alternative to Obamacare with 40 days to go before the election.Trump has repeatedly insisted his plan is coming.”We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks,” Trump said in a July 19 interview. He told reporters in August that it would be introduced “hopefully, prior to the end of the month.”During a televised town hall earlier this month in Pennsylvania, Trump again insisted he had a plan — but refused to share its details or explain why he waited more than three years to unveil it.”I have it all ready, and it’s a much better plan for you,” he said.
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The space weather forecasts for the sun could threaten how this report is both broadcast and watched. The next crew of the International Space Station moves closer to launch, and an asteroid the size of a school bus just missed hitting the Earth. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Helsinki Airport is getting creative when it comes to operating safely in the age of COVID-19. Beginning this week, travelers arriving at Finland’s busiest international airport will have the opportunity to take a voluntary coronavirus test that takes 10 seconds and is entirely painless — but it’s not the test that is unusual, rather, it’s who is conducting it.The new state-funded pilot program uses coronavirus-sniffing canines to detect the presence of the virus within 10 seconds with shocking accuracy. Preliminary results from the trial show that the dogs, who have been used previously to detect illnesses such as cancer and malaria, were able to identify the virus with nearly 100% accuracy.FILE – Sniffer dog Miina, being trained to detect the coronavirus from the arriving passengers’ samples, works in Helsinki Airport in Vantaa, Finland, Sept. 15, 2020.Many of the dogs were able to detect the coronavirus long before a patient developed symptoms, something even laboratory tests fail to do.After passengers arrive at Helsinki from abroad and have collected their luggage, they are invited to wipe their necks with a cloth to collect sweat samples that are then placed into an intake box. In a separate booth, a dog handler places the box alongside several cans containing various scents and the canine goes to work.Researchers have yet to identify what it is exactly the dogs sniff when they detect the virus, but a preliminary study published in June found there was “very high evidence” that the sweat odors of a COVID-19-positive person were different from those who do not have the virus. This is key, as dogs are able to detect the difference thanks to their sharp sense of smell.If the dog flags the sample as positive, the passenger is directed to the airport’s health center for a free PCR virus test.While there have been instances that an animal contracts the coronavirus, dogs do not seem to be easily infected. There is no evidence that dogs can pass the virus on to people or other animals.Sniffer dogs Valo, left, and E.T., who are trained to detect the coronavirus disease from the arriving passengers’ samples, sit next to their trainers at Helsinki Airport in Vantaa, Finland, Sept. 22, 2020.Scientists in other countries, such as France, Germany and Britain, are engaging in similar research, but Finland is the first country in Europe to put dogs to work to sniff out the coronavirus.Finnish researchers say that if the pilot program proves to be effective, dogs could be used to quickly and efficiently screen visitors in spaces such as retirement homes or hospitals to help avoid unnecessary quarantines for health care workers.Representatives from the University of Helsinki, who are conducting the trial, said Finland would need between 700 and 1,000 specially trained coronavirus-sniffing dogs in order to cover schools, malls and retirement homes. For broader coverage, even more trained animals— and their trainers— would be required.
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Scientists at the U.S. space agency NASA say a small asteroid – roughly the size of a bus – passed close to Earth on Thursday, flying just 22,000 kilometers above the surface, within the orbit of geostationary satellites that ring the planet. While the proximity to Earth might raise alarm, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California said even if the asteroid had entered the earth’s atmosphere, it almost certainly would have broken up and become a bright meteor.The asteroid, known as 2020 SW, is about five to ten meters wide and was first discovered on September 18 by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. NASA Plans to Land First Woman on the Moon in 2024Lunar landing will be America’s first since 1972NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) — part of the JPL — then did follow-up observations and confirmed its orbital trajectory, ruling out any chance of impact.CNEOS director Paul Chodas says an object this size, this close to earth, is not uncommon. He says, “In fact, asteroids of this size impact our atmosphere at an average rate of about once every year or two.”After passing the Earth, the asteroid will continue its journey around the Sun, not returning to Earth’s vicinity until 2041, when NASA says it will make a much more distant flyby.The space agency says they believe there are over 100 million small asteroids like 2020 SW, but they are hard to discover unless they get very close to Earth.In 2005, Congress assigned NASA the goal of finding 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids that are about 140 meters or larger in size. These larger asteroids pose a much greater threat if they were to impact, and they can be detected much farther away from Earth, because they’re simply much brighter than the small ones. Chodas says NASA’s asteroid surveys are getting better all the time, and the agency now expects to find asteroids the size of 2020 SW a few days before they come near Earth.
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Sir Harold Evans, the charismatic publisher, author and muckraker who was a bold-faced name for decades for exposing wrongdoing in 1960s London to publishing such 1990s best-sellers as “Primary Colors,” has died, his wife said Thursday. He was 92.
His wife, fellow author-publisher Tina Brown, said he died Wednesday in New York of congestive heart failure.
A vision of British erudition and sass, Evans was a high-profile go-getter, starting in the 1960s as an editor of the Northern Echo and the Sunday Times of London and continuing into the 1990s as president of Random House. Married since 1981 to Brown, their union was a paradigm of media clout and A-list access.
A defender of literature and print journalism well into the digital age, Evans was one of the all-time newspaper editors, startling British society with revelations of espionage, corporate wrongdoing and government scandal. In the U.S., he published such attention-getters as the mysterious political novel “Primary Colors” and memoirs by such unlikely authors as Manuel Noriega and Marlon Brando.
He was knighted by his native Britain in 2004 for his contributions to journalism.
He held his own, and more, with the world’s elite, but was mindful of his working class background: a locomotive driver’s son, born in Lancashire, English, on June 28, 1928. As a teen, he was evacuated to Wales during World War II. After serving in the Royal Air Force, he studied politics and economics at Durham University and received a master’s in foreign policy.
His drive to report and expose dated back to his teens, when he discovered that newspapers had wildly romanticized the Battle of Dunkirk between German and British soldiers.
“A newspaper is an argument on the way to a deadline,” he once wrote. He was just 16 when he got his first journalism job, at a local newspaper in Lancashire, and after graduating from college he became an assistant editor at the Manchester Evening News. In his early 30s, he was hired to edit the Daily Echo and began attracting national attention with crusades such as government funding for cancer smear tests for women.
He had yet to turn 40 when he became editor of the Sunday Times, where he reigned and rebelled for 14 years until he was pushed out by a new boss, Rupert Murdoch. Notable stories included publishing the diaries of former Labour Minister Richard Crossman; taking on the manufacturers of the drug Thalidomide, which caused birth defects in children; and revealing that Britain’s Kim Philby was a Soviet spy.
“There have been many times when I have found that what was presented as truth did not square with what I discovered as a reporter, or later as an editor, learned from good shoe-leather reporters,” he observed in “My Paper Chase,” published in 2009. “We all understand in an age of terrorism that refraining from exposing a lie may be necessary for the protection of innocents. But ‘national interest’ is an elastic concept that if stretched can snap with a sting.”
Meanwhile, the then-married Evans became infatuated with an irreverent blonde just out of Oxford, Tina Brown, and soon began a long-distance correspondence — he in London, she in New York — that grew intimate enough for Evans to “fall in love by post.” They were married in East Hampton, New York, in 1981. The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee was best man, Nora Ephron was among the guests.
With Brown, Evans had two children, adding to the two children he had with his first wife.
Their garden apartment on Manhattan’s exclusive Sutton Place became a mini-media dynasty: He the champion of justice, rogues and belles lettres, she the award-winning provocateur and chronicler of the famous — as head of Tatler in England, then Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and as author of a best-selling book about Princess Diana.
Evans emigrated to the U.S. in 1984, initially serving as editorial director of U.S. News & World Report, and was hired six years later by Random House. He published William Styron’s best-selling account of his near-suicidal depression, “Darkness Visible,” and winked at Washington with “Primary Colors,” a roman a clef about then-candidate Bill Clinton that was published anonymously and set off a capitol guessing game, ended when The Washington Post unmasked magazine correspondent Joe Klein.
Evans had a friendly synergist at The New Yorker, where Brown serialized works by Monica Crowley, Edward Jay Epstein and other Random House authors. A special beneficiary was Jeffrey Toobin, a court reporter for The New Yorker who received a Random House deal for a book on the O.J. Simpson trial that was duly excerpted in Brown’s magazine.
Evans took on memoirs by the respected — Colin Powell — as well as the disgraced: Clinton advisor and alleged call girl client Dick Morris. He visited Noriega’s jail cell in pursuit of a memoir by the deposed Panamanian dictator. In 1994, he risked $40,000 for a book by a community organizer and law school graduate, a bargain for what became former President Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”
Evan’s more notable follies included a disparaged, Random House-generated list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century, for which judges acknowledged they had no ideal how the books were ranked, and Brando’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me.”
As Evans recalled in “My Paper Chase,” he met with Brando in California, first for dinner at a restaurant where the ever-suspicious actor accused Evans of working for the CIA. Then they were back at Brando’s Beverly Hills mansion, where Brando advocated for Native Americans and intimated that he had sex with Jacqueline Kennedy at the White House.
After a follow-up meeting the next afternoon — they played chess, Brando recited Shakespeare — the actor signed on, wrote what Evans found a “highly readable” memoir. He then subverted it by kissing CNN’s Larry King on the lips, “stopping the book dead in its tracks,” Evans recalled.
Evans left Random House in 1997 to take over as editorial director and vice president of Morton B. Zuckerman’s many publications, including U.S. News & World Report and The Atlantic, but stepped down in 2000 to devote more time to speeches and books.
More recently, he served as a contributing editor to U.S. News and editor at large for the magazine The Week. In 2011, he became an editor-at-large for Reuters. His guidebook for writers, “Do I Make Myself Clear?”, was published in 2017.
“I wrote the book because I thought I had to speak up for clarity,” he told The Daily Beast at the time. “When I go into a cafe in the morning for breakfast and I’m reading the paper, I’m editing. I can’t help it. I can’t stop. I still go through the paper and mark it up as I read. It’s a compulsion, actually.”
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U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has begun late-stage human trials of a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. Dr. Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, told reporters Wednesday that 60,000 participants have begun receiving the vaccine across 215 locations in the United States, as well as internationally in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa. Dr. Stoffels said Johnson & Johnson moved into the late-stage trial after seeing positive results from its combined Phase 1 and 2 trials in the U.S. and Belgium. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the fourth potential coronavirus vaccine undergoing large-scale Phase 3 testing in the United States, joining Moderna, AstraZeneca and a joint effort by Pfizer and German-based BioNTech. All four efforts are being developed under the Trump administration’s President Donald Trump walks past a U.S. map of reported coronavirus cases as he departs following a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news briefing at the White House in Washington, July 23, 2020.Speaking to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Stephen Hahn said those decisions will be made by career FDA scientists following the agency’s “rigorous expectations for safety and effectiveness.” The FDA and other federal scientific and regulatory agencies have seen their credibility diminished by constant administration efforts to revise their reports and guidelines to maintain Trump’s views about the nature of the pandemic. The United States is leading the world in both the number of total COVID-19 cases with over 6.9 million, and fatalities, at almost 202,000. The United States and many other nations are experiencing a surge of new coronavirus cases, prompting many to reimpose a set of strict lockdowns first ordered at the outset of the pandemic. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday in a televised address that the nation’s four largest provinces have entered a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re on the brink of a Fall that could be much worse than the Spring,” Prime Minister Trudeau warned. Canada has seen an average of 1,123 new cases daily over the past week, compared with an average of 380 new cases a day in mid-August. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that the country is returning to a full lockdown effective Friday, and lasting for two weeks as its infection rate spirals out of control. Schools, entertainment venues and most businesses will be closed, while restaurants will be limited to delivering food. Residents will be required to stay within 500-1,000 meters of their homes, except for work and shopping for food and medicine, while outdoor gatherings will be strictly limited to 20 people.
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President Donald Trump met with nine Republican state attorneys general on Wednesday to discuss the fate of a legal immunity for internet companies after the Justice Department unveiled a legislative proposal aimed at reforming the same law. Trump met with attorneys general from Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Also Wednesday, the Justice Department, which is probing Google for potential breaches of antitrust law, held a call with state attorneys general’s offices to preview a complaint to be filed against the search and advertising giant, perhaps as soon as next week, according to two sources familiar with the matter. It is normal for the department to seek support from state attorneys general when it files big lawsuits. Critics have accused Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., of breaking antitrust law by abusing its dominance of online advertising and its Android smartphone operating system as well as favoring its own businesses in search. The White House said the legal immunity discussion involved how the attorneys general can utilize existing legal recourses at the state level—in an effort to weaken the law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability over content posted by users. After the meeting, Trump told reporters he expects to come to a conclusion on the issue of technology platforms within a short period. It was not immediately clear what conclusion he was referring to. He said his administration is watching the performance of tech platforms in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election. “In recent years, a small group of powerful technology platforms have tightened their grip over commerce and communications in America,” Trump said. “Every year countless Americans are banned, blacklisted and silenced through arbitrary or malicious enforcement of ever-shifting rules,” he added. Trump, who himself frequently posts on Twitter, said Twitter routinely restricts expressions of conservative views. Earlier on Wednesday, the Justice Department unveiled a legislative proposal to reform Section 230. It followed through on Trump’s bid earlier this year to crack down on tech giants after Twitter Inc. placed warning labels on some of Trump’s tweets, saying they have included potentially misleading information about mail-in voting. The Justice Department’s proposal would need congressional approval and is not likely to see action until next year at the earliest. Unless the Republicans win control of the House of Representatives and maintain control of the Senate in the November elections, any bill would need Democratic support. The Justice Department proposal primarily states that when internet companies “willfully distribute illegal material or moderate content in bad faith, Section 230 should not shield them from the consequences of their actions.” It proposes a series of reforms to ensure internet companies are transparent about their decisions when removing content and when they should be held responsible for speech they modify. It also revises existing definitions of Section 230 with more concrete language that offers more guidance to users and courts. It also incentivizes online platforms to address illicit content and pushes for more clarity on federal civil enforcement actions. The Internet Association, which represents major internet companies including Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Google, said the Justice Department’s proposal would severely limit people’s ability to express themselves and have a safe experience online. The group’s deputy general counsel, Elizabeth Banker, said moderation efforts that remove misinformation, platform manipulation and cyberbullying would all result in lawsuits under the proposal.
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The United Nations and Britain will co-host a global climate summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement, the world body said Wednesday.The announcement came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping told the U.N. that the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter would peak emissions in 2030 and attempt to go carbon neutral by 2060, a move hailed by environmentalists.”We have champions and solutions all around us, in every city, corporation and country,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.”But the climate emergency is fully upon us, and we have no time to waste. The answer to our existential crisis is swift, decisive, scaled-up action and solidarity among nations.”The world remains off-track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which scientists say is crucial to prevent runaway warming that would leave vast swaths of the planet inhospitable to life.”In light of this urgency, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will co-host a landmark global event convening global leaders … to rally much greater climate action and ambition,” the statement said.Session on ThursdayThe two were to address the issue at a climate round-table meeting hosted by Guterres on Thursday.National governments will be invited to present more ambitious and high-quality climate plans at the summit, which would involve government leaders, as well as the private sector and civil society.According to the U.N., the December 12 summit is intended to increase momentum ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 26) to be held in Glasgow in November 2021.Recent data show greenhouse gas concentrations reaching record levels, worsening extreme events such as unprecedented wildfires, hurricanes, droughts and floods.
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Fans disappointed once by the delayed release of superhero movie Black Widow are now disappointed twice after The Walt Disney Co. again pushed back the opening on Wednesday.Starring Scarlett Johansson, the spy thriller was scheduled to debut on November 6 and was among the last movies expected to open in 2020. But as movie theaters remain closed in many areas because of the pandemic, fans will now have to wait until May 7, 2021, according to Disney.Fans who were anticipating the latest annual Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster had mixed reactions to the Black Widow delay.’Money hungry’Some, like Twitter user @KpHeaney, applauded the move, tweeting that “this is the right decision” because “there are certain films which cry to out to be seen on big screen. This is one of them.”Others saw Disney making a money play. “You would think with all what’s happening they’d help the people out [and] let us stream the movies but they’re money hungry, they keep on delaying movies,” tweeted @RyanH1904.A number of highly anticipated movies have been delayed in part, according to FILE – Concessions workers stock bins with popcorn and other treats as an AMC theater opens for some of the first showings since it shut down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aug. 20, 2020, in West Homestead, Pa.Elsewhere in the U.S., AMC Entertainment and Cineworld Plc’s Regal Cinemas have reopened but “haven’t seen huge business,” according to Variety.Because the Marvel movie universe is interconnected, delaying Black Widow meant pushing back release dates for other Marvel offerings such as Eternals and Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.Eternals is now scheduled to open on November 5, 2021, rather than February 12, 2021; Shang Chi is moving from May 7, 2021, to July 9, 2021.Accent on safetyEternals star Kumail Nanjiani tweeted, “There’s a pandemic. Nothing is more important than health & lives. I can’t tell [people] to go to a movie theater until I feel safe going to one.”Beyond the Marvel franchise, the pandemic is also delaying West Side Story, Steven Spielberg’s first foray into movie musicals. Originally scheduled to open on December 18, 2020, it will now be a holiday season release on December 10, 2021.In the meantime, film lovers can look forward to the animated Pixar movie Soul that Disney still plans to release in theaters on November 20. The Empty Man, a horror release from the former 20th Century Fox, is moving up from December to October 23.
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TikTok asked a U.S. judge on Wednesday to block a Trump administration order that would require Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google to remove the short video-sharing app for new downloads starting Sunday. A federal judge in San Francisco on Saturday issued a preliminary injunction blocking a similar Commerce Department order from taking effect Sunday on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat app. U.S. officials have expressed serious concerns that the personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use the app was being passed on to China’s Communist Party government. FILE – People walk past a WeChat Pay sign at the Tencent company headquarters, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, Aug. 7, 2020.On Saturday, the Commerce Department announced a one-week delay in the TikTok order, citing “recent positive developments” in talks over the fate of its U.S. operations. TikTok said the restrictions “were not motivated by a genuine national security concern, but rather by political considerations relating to the upcoming general election.” TikTok said if the order is not blocked, “hundreds of millions of Americans who have not yet downloaded TikTok will be shut out of this large and diverse online community — six weeks before a national election.” TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said on Monday it will own 80% of TikTok Global, a newly created U.S. company that will own most of the app’s operations worldwide. ByteDance added that TikTok Global will become its subsidiary. Oracle Corp and Walmart Inc have agreed to take stakes in TikTok Global of 12.5% and 7.5%, respectively. On Monday, Oracle said ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok would be distributed to ByteDance’s investors, and that the Beijing-based firm would have no stake in TikTok Global. On Saturday, ByteDance, Walmart and Oracle said they reached an agreement that would to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States after President Donald Trump said he had blessed the deal. Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 14 giving ByteDance 90 days to relinquish ownership of TikTok.
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A weakened Beta continued its slow trek across several Southern states on Wednesday, bringing rainfall to parts of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi after having flooded homes and roadways in Texas. Houston began drying out on Wednesday after some parts of the metro area got nearly 14 inches (35.6 centimeters) of rain over the last three days, according to the National Weather Service. Flooding from heavy rain prompted around 100 water rescues on city roadways. Preliminary reports showed at least 11 structures were flooded in the city limits. “It’s not nearly as bad as it could have been,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. By Wednesday morning, Beta was 60 miles (97 kilometers) west of Lake Charles, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 30 mph (48 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was moving east-northeast at 9 mph (14 kilometers). Flash flood warnings were issued Wednesday for parts of Louisiana, where up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain had fallen and up to 4 more inches could fall on top of that, the Weather Service said. The southwestern corner of Louisiana is still recovering after getting pounded by Hurricane Laura last month. FILE – Remnants of the half-destroyed mobile home of James Townley, who is living in the standing half, are seen in Lake Charles, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, Aug. 30, 2020.Rainfall of 3 to 5 inches (7 to 12 centimeters) was expected on Wednesday and into early Thursday in parts of Central Mississippi, with some areas possibly getting up to 7 inches (17 centimeters). Beta, which made landfall late Monday as a tropical storm just north of Port O’Connor, Texas, is the first storm named for a Greek letter to make landfall in the continental United States. Forecasters ran out of traditional storm names last week, forcing the use of the Greek alphabet for only the second time since the 1950s. Beta was the ninth named storm that made landfall in the continental U.S. this year. That tied a record set in 1916, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Parts of the Alabama coast and Florida Panhandle were still reeling from Hurricane Sally, which roared ashore Sept. 16, causing at least two deaths. FILE – Flooding due to Hurricane Sally is seen in Pensacola, Florida, Sept. 16, 2020.Meanwhile, post-Tropical Cyclone Teddy made landfall in Canada on Wednesday morning near Ecum Secum, Nova Scotia, with maximum sustained winds near 65 mph (104 kph). It was located about 150 miles (241 kilometers) northeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, around midday Wednesday, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (96 kph). It was expected to dissipate by Thursday.
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The rows of lettuce, microgreens and herbs that Himanshu Aggarwal and his mother grow in an enclosed room in a busy New Delhi market began flourishing six months ago, just when the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold in India.Himanshu Aggarwal grows lettuce, microgreens and herbs in an 800-square-foot enclosed room in New Delhi. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)It was not the best of times. A day after the Aggarwals launched their hydroponic venture, 9Growers, India declared a stringent lockdown, making them nervous about how they would sell their freshly plucked greens amid the pandemic.Surprisingly, the situation helped grow their business. Worried about contracting the virus, people began to focus increasingly on healthful foods, and at the same time, shops became willing to stock their produce.Pratibha Aggarwal helped her son launch the venture 9Growers. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)”Vendors were open to having good produce, specially during lockdown. They were not even getting basic necessities, and we were giving them fresh produce harvested on the same day,” said Himanshu Aggarwal, 24, who was inspired to take up hydroponic farming after seeing the quality of fruits and vegetables during a trip to Europe. “Even our best produce could not match theirs. So I thought about how to achieve the same standards for a small community, and hydroponics seemed the answer.”Amid growing demand for fresh farm produce without pesticides, young entrepreneurs in Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are turning their attention to hydroponic farming, where plants grow without soil and are fed mineral nutrients through water. Using much less water than conventional procedures do, hydroponics has won attention as a sustainable farming method in several countries, such as the Netherlands.Some in Delhi have opted to put up their ventures in poly houses on the city’s outskirts. Others are doing it in the heart of the city, in residential or commercial areas, where the plants grow in laboratory-like conditions under artificial light that simulates sunlight. Most of the young entrepreneurs learned about it on the internet and through trials and experiments in their homes.The hydroponic farm is situated on the top floor of a building. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Aggarwal’s plants thrive on the top floor of a small building in an 800-square-foot room. Accessed through an electronics store, the unlikely space transports a visitor from the honking cars and traffic snarls to the surreal sight of the 18 varieties of lettuce and other leafy greens thriving in vertical panels in one of Delhi’s most crowded markets.“We are giving them everything they want — temperature, air quality, humidity. We are monitoring all the aspects for them so that they give the best result,” Aggarwal said.The appeal of greens growing in a clean, germ-free environment has grown during the pandemic as people focus more on eating healthful foods, according to shop owners. While the higher cost is a barrier for some, high-income consumers in cities are increasingly willing to pay the price for fresh produce.Boxes of hydroponic greens are displayed among other vegetables. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)In an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, Mohinder Pal Singh, who stocks the hydroponic greens, said he gets repeat orders from customers who try them out. “Due to COVID, a lot of people have switched to greens to boost immunity. People have also become very conscious of eating nutritious food,” he said. “So sale of such produce is increasing.”The owner of a fruit-and-vegetable shop in a Delhi market says hydroponic produce is selling amid rising demand for healthful food amid the pandemic. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Optimistic about the growing demand for local produce in cities, some entrepreneurs are scaling up their businesses. Rohit Nagdewani, the founder of farmingV2, plans to expand to other cities — his seven farms in Delhi produce about 2,500 kilograms of hydroponic produce every month. “People are becoming increasingly aware of the source of the food and how many hands it is exchanging, so there is a big future in hydroponics, where supplies reach within a few hours of harvesting,” Nagdewani said. “All that is fueling demand. That is why I have put my entire savings into it,” he said with a laugh.For another Delhi-based entrepreneur, Raghav Varma, 30, the inspiration to turn to city farming came during a visit to the hill state of Uttarakhand, where he saw hydroponic produce being grown for export. Back home, his experiments showed that he was able to grow a 300-gram head of lettuce in a small ice cream container on his windowsill. “It was really fresh and crunchy because it is grown in water. So I thought this was an amazing way to produce food for urban dwellers,” said Varma, who has co-founded Farmstacks.A customer looks at a box of microgreens. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)However, the entrepreneurs admit that consumer awareness about hydroponics needs to be raised. To do that, Varma allows people to choose the greens they want to grow for their own use at a small community farm in Delhi.Most of the entrepreneurs do not have a farming background; Varma was a digital marketing executive, Aggarwal a corporate employee, and Nagdewani started his career as an automotive journalist.They are proud of their new calling. “ ‘Urban farmer’ is actually a very good tag. It’s a new profession, I would say, and it gives us a sense that we are back to our roots from where we started,” Aggarwal said with a smile.
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Pope Francis once again used his weekly general audience Wednesday at the Vatican to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and urged the world’s leaders to remember all segments of society as they fight the coronavirus and work to rebuild world economies. Speaking before a limited group of masked faithful in a Vatican courtyard, Francis said everyone has something to contribute as the world attempts to emerge from this crisis But, he said, society’s leaders must respect and promote “the intermediate or lower levels” of society. People attend Pope Francis’ weekly general audience at the San Damaso courtyard, at the Vatican, Sept. 23, 2020.He added that multinationals and pharmaceutical companies do not have all the answers. “The largest financial companies are listened to rather than the people or the ones who really move the economy,” Pope Francis said Wednesday. “Multinational companies are listened to more than social movements. Putting it in everyday language, they listen more to the powerful than to the weak.” The pope called for an inclusive rethink of the economic, social and political structures of the global economy that he says have showed weakness during the health crisis. Francis has long insisted on the need to involve society’s most marginal groups — the indigenous, the poor and the elderly — in making decisions about their own future. “Let’s think about the cure for the virus; the large pharmaceutical companies are listened to more than the health care workers employed on the front lines in hospitals or in refugee camps. This is not a good path,” said Pope Francis.The pope next week is expected to release an encyclical on fraternity and solidarity in the post-COVID world.
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Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it has launched the final stage of a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine trial the company hopes will determine if the vaccine is safe and effective by the end of the year or early next year.The company said 60,000 volunteers are participating in the trial in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa.A number of other coronavirus vaccines in the U.S. and other countries already are in final-stage testing, including those developed by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.Many vaccine specialists question whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will cut corners to get final approval from President Donald Trump, who has consistently presented a testing timeline that is shorter than experts say is acceptable to fully test the candidates.President Trump, who has predicted a vaccine will be available by the November 3 presidential election, pushed again Wednesday for accelerated approval of a vaccine, tweeting the FDA “must move quickly!”U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told reporters this week, however, that “We want to do everything we can without sacrificing safety or efficacy.”The Washington Post reported Wednesday the FDA, in an effort to promote transparency, will disclose details of a more stringent standard for a vaccine to receive emergency authorization, diminishing the chances of a vaccine approval before election day.Even if the FDA allowed the emergency use of a vaccine by the end of the year, limited supplies of the vaccine would first be administered to vulnerable groups such as health care workers.Unlike other experimental coronavirus vaccines in late-stage testing in the U.S., which require two shots, J&J’s requires only one. Approval of a single-shot vaccine would simplify distribution of millions of doses compared with leading rivals.
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