Facebook on Wednesday pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia over payments to media organizations.Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company was willing to support news media while reiterating its concerns about mandated payments.”Facebook is more than willing to partner with news publishers,” Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a compromise with Australian officials. “We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies function — informing and empowering citizens and holding the powerful to account.”Clegg defended the U.S. social media giant in a blog post titled “The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia.”The social media platform came under fire after it blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the controversy was a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and news publishers.’Free referrals’News groups share their stories at the social network or make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons designed into websites, Clegg noted.Facebook drove some 5.1 billion such “free referrals” to Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian dollars, according to Clegg.”The assertions — repeated widely in recent days — that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false,” Clegg said. “We neither take nor ask for the content for which we were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price.”Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally proposed in Australia, “Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multinational media conglomerates under an arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between publishers and Facebook.”He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country, “we erred on the side of overenforcement” and acknowledged that “some content was blocked inadvertently” before being restored.
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Day: February 24, 2021
Bruce Springsteen was fined $500 Wednesday after the rock ‘n’ roll legend pleaded guilty to a charge of consuming alcohol at a federally run New Jersey beach in November, and prosecutors dropped drunk driving and reckless driving charges.
Springsteen, 71, who has made his home state of New Jersey and its shore scene a staple of his career of more than 50 years, entered his plea in an online arraignment before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Anthony R. Mautone in Newark.
Appearing on an online hearing, Springsteen admitted to downing two shots of tequila on November 14 at Sandy Hook beach, part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area, where alcohol consumption is prohibited.
Mautone also imposed $40 in court fees on the rock star, who said he would pay the $540 total immediately.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Baker said the government was dropping the driving-while-intoxicated and reckless driving charges because it did not believe it could meet its burden of proving them in court.
Springsteen initially had pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
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The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team.
Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-meter) parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric to know how the parachute was oriented during descent. Turning it into a secret message was “super fun,” he said Tuesday.
Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday’s landing, according to Clark. They waited until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference Monday.
It took just a few hours for space fans to figure it out, Clark said. Next time, he noted, “I’ll have to be a little bit more creative.”
“Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center’s walls. The trick was “trying to come up with a way of encoding it but not making it too obvious,” Clark said.
As for the GPS coordinates, the spot is 10 feet (3 meters) from the entrance to JPL’s visitor center.
Another added touch not widely known until touchdown: Perseverance bears a plaque depicting all five of NASA’s Mars rovers in increasing size over the years — similar to the family car decals seen on Earth.
Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promises more so-called hidden Easter eggs. They should be visible once Perseverance’s 7-foot (2-meter) arm is deployed in a few days and starts photographing under the vehicle, and again when the rover is driving in a couple weeks.
“Definitely, definitely should keep a good lookout,” he urged.
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The U.S. government has determined that a one-shot COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson is safe and offers partial protection against the disease.In an analysis released Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the vaccine was about 66% effective during global trials in preventing moderate to severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.The American company said last month that nearly 44,000 people participated in the trial. Its effectiveness was between 66% and 72% in the United States, 57% in Latin America and in South Africa, where a new variant of the virus has spread.Data Inconclusive on Efficacy of Moderna Vaccine Against COVID-19 VariantsMore clinical evidence is needed to know whether the two-dose regimen of the vaccine protects against the coronavirus variants, experts sayAlthough the vaccine’s effectiveness appears less robust than Moderna’s and Pfizer’s, the results pave the way for final government approval for emergency use of a third vaccine that is easier to administer. The FDA analysis also said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could help accelerate vaccinations because, unlike the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, two doses are not required. Israel Starts to Reopen as Study Shows Pfizer Vaccine Works Study suggests vaccines are even better than clinical trials showedAn FDA panel of independent experts meet on Friday to decide whether to approve the vaccine. The FDA then weighs whether to authorize it, as it did before approving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. A final decision is expected within days.The addition of a third vaccine to combat the coronavirus pandemic could provide a boost to vaccination drives throughout the U.S. that have been slowed by inclement weather and other logistical issues, as the COVID-19 death toll topped 500,000 earlier this week.Even if the FDA grants final approval for the Johnson & Johnson product, U.S. vaccine supplies are not expected to increase significantly in the immediate future. Only a few million doses are expected to be ready for shipping in the first week after approval. The company told Congress earlier this week it hopes to provide 20 million doses by the end of next month and 100 million by summer.So far, around 45 million Americans have received one dose of the previously approved vaccines, and nearly 20 million have received the second dose for full protection. The World Health Organization and European countries are also considering the vaccine from the American health care company that plans to produce about 500 million doses worldwide by the end of the year.
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Solar energy is a natural fit for sun-drenched Southern Africa, its proponents say. The only problem: Not enough panels to meet soaring demand. VOA’s Anita Powell looks at one company spinning sunshine into energy. Camera: Zaheer Cassim
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China’s state media reported Wednesday the country’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft has entered a temporary “parking orbit’ around the planet Mars, where it will stay for about three months before attempting to land a rover on the surface.China National Space Administration (CNSA) said the spacecraft executed a maneuver to adjust its orbit early Wednesday Beijing time.
The Tianwen-1 probe includes an orbiter, a lander and a rover, and while in orbit, the space agency said the probe will be mapping the planet’s surface and collecting additional data, particularly about the prospective landing site for the rover.
China Probe Becomes Second in Two Days to Reach Mars China’s space agency says goal is to have Tianwen-1 probe land rover on planet’s surface The deputy chief designer of the probe, Tan Zhiyun, told China Central Television (CCTV) the Tianwen-1 will take pictures of the prospective landing zone and judge the topography and potential for dust storms and other factors that will help scientists prepare for a safe landing in May or June.
The spacecraft began orbiting Mars on Feb. 10 after a roughly seven-month journey from Earth. An orbiter from the United Arab Emirates arrived one day earlier, and last week, the U.S. space agency NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the planet.
All three of the missions were launched in July to take advantage of the close alignment between Earth and Mars that happens only once every two years.
Tianwen-1 represents the most ambitious mission yet for China’s secretive, military-linked space program that first put an astronaut in orbit around Earth in 2003 and last year brought moon rocks back to Earth for the first time since the 1970s. China was also the first country to land a spacecraft on the little-explored far side of the moon in 2019.
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Police on Wednesday sought to determine what caused Tiger Woods to swerve off a Southern California road in his sport utility vehicle, colliding with a tree and rolling down a hillside in a crash that left the golf great seriously injured.
Woods, 45, was pried from the wreckage by rescue crews and rushed by ambulance from the scene of the Tuesday morning crash outside Los Angeles to nearby Harbor-UCLA Medical Center suffering what his agent described as “multiple leg injuries.”
A statement posted on Woods’ official Twitter account on Tuesday night said he had undergone a “long surgical procedure” to his lower right leg and ankle and was “awake, responsive and recovering in his hospital room.”
pic.twitter.com/vZitnFV0YA— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) February 24, 2021Compound fractures of his tibia and fibula – the two bones of his leg below the knee – were stabilized with a rod, and screws and pins were used to stabilize additional injuries to his foot and ankle, Dr. Anish Mahajan, chief medical officer of Harbor-UCLA, said in the tweet.
Mahajan also said that trauma to the muscle and other soft tissue of the leg “required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies responding to the wreck found no immediate indication that Woods had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs before losing control of his vehicle shortly after 7 a.m.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva, however, said the golf star, who was “lucid” following the accident, appeared to have been going faster than normal for a downhill, curving stretch of road known by locals to be hazardous. Weather was not considered a factor.
Video footage from the scene showed Woods’ dark gray 2021 Genesis sport utility vehicle badly crumpled and lying on its side near the bottom of the hillside, its windows smashed.
The damaged car of Tiger Woods is towed away after he was involved in a car crash, near Los Angeles, California, Feb. 23, 2021.Woods’ injuries were not life-threatening, the sheriff said, but sports commentators were already speculating that the crash could end the career of the greatest golfer of his generation.
Woods is the only modern professional to win all four major golf titles in succession, taking the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship in 2000 and the Masters title in 2001, a feat that became known as the ‘Tiger Slam’.
But he has suffered years of injuries and undergone multiple surgeries on both his back and knees.
Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 6 MB480p | 8 MB540p | 11 MB720p | 24 MB1080p | 44 MBOriginal | 123 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioWoods, one of the world’s most celebrated sports figures, was the sole occupant of the car when it crashed near the suburban communities of Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes, the sheriff’s department said.
The vehicle veered across the center divider of the road into an opposite traffic lane, striking a roadside curb, and a tree as it careened over an embankment, and “there were several rollovers” before the SUV came to rest, Villanueva said.
Woods hosted the PGA tour’s Genesis Invitational at the Riviera Country Club over the weekend but did not compete due to his back injuries. The wrecked sport utility vehicle bore the Genesis Invitational name on its doors.
He was seen at the Rolling Hills Country Club on Monday with actress Jada Pinkett Smith, retired basketball star Dwyane Wade and comedian David Spade.
Golf Digest reported Woods had been shooting a TV show segment in which he was giving on-course instruction to the three celebrities and was due to resume filming on Tuesday.
Woods held the top spot in golf’s world rankings for a record total of 683 weeks, winning 14 major championship titles from 1997 to 2008. His 15 major titles stand second only to the record 18 won by Jack Nicklaus.
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Ghana has received the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s global vaccine-sharing program. A flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine arrived Wednesday in the capital, Accra, according to a joint statement from WHO and UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The vaccines were manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. The vaccines sent to Ghana were purchased through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, an initiative launched by WHO in cooperation with Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries. The project purchases vaccines with the help of wealthier countries and distributes them equitably to all countries. U.S. President Joe Biden pledged $4 billion to the COVAX program last week. WHO announced in December that COVAX has secured agreements for nearly two billion doses of several “promising” vaccine candidates.A pack of AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines is seen as the country receives its first batch of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines under COVAX scheme, in Accra, Feb. 24, 2021.A new variant of the novel coronavirus recently discovered in the western U.S. state of California is more contagious than other versions, according to two new preliminary studies. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco discovered the new variant, called B.1.427/B.1.429, as they were tracking the possible spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in Britain last year. The team found B.1.427/B.1.429 had become the predominant variant in the state after testing virus samples collected from across the state between September of last year and January. The UCSF team says people infected with the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant produced a viral load twice as large as that of other variants, which may make them more contagious to others. The new variant is also more likely to cause severe illness, “including increased risk of high oxygen requirement,” and is at least partially resistant to antibodies that could combat and neutralize it. In the other study, researchers found the variant has spread rapidly throughout San Francisco’s historic Mission District neighborhood, increasing from 16% of all confirmed COVID-19 infections tracked in November to 53% of infections by January. Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist who led the UCSF study, said the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant should be designated “a variant of concern” that merited further investigation. As more Americans are vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says new guidelines for vaccinated people will be coming “soon” from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci addresses the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Jan.21, 2021.“I believe you’re going to be hearing more of the recommendations of how you can relax the stringency of some of the things, particularly when you’re dealing with something like your own personal family when people have been vaccinated,” Fauci told CNN. Some changes for those vaccinated have already been published. For example, people who have been vaccinated do not need to quarantine if they come in contact with an infected person. The supply of vaccines is expected to grow as manufacturers say they will increase production, the U.S. based cable news network CNBC reported. In written congressional testimony, Pfizer’s Chief Business Officer John Young said the company plans to double its output to 13 million doses per week by mid-March. Moderna hopes to deliver 40 million doses per month by April. The supply could be further bolstered by Johnson & Johnson’s new one-shot vaccine, which is expected to be reviewed Thursday.
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The number of people going hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Central America has been battered by an economic crisis. New data released by the U.N.’s World Food Program showed nearly 8 million people across the four countries are experiencing hunger this year, up from 2.2 million in 2018. “The COVID-19-induced economic crisis had already put food on the market shelves out of reach for the most vulnerable people when the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota battered them further,” Miguel Barreto, WFP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. He was referring to two hurricanes that hit Central America in November. “We’re eating the little food that people give to us,” said Marina Rosado, 70, who along with her son and grandchildren live along a boulevard in the Honduran city of Lima that was inundated by flooding last year. The storms that destroyed their home were the latest blow pushing the family further into hunger, Rosado said, after pandemic-related restrictions limited their ability to collect bottles and cans in the streets to sell to recycling companies. The WFP also noted that 15% of those surveyed by the organization in January 2021 said that they were making concrete plans to migrate — nearly double the percentage in 2018.
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Golfer Tiger Woods suffered injuries in a single-car crash early Tuesday in California. Esha Sarai has more.Produced by: Esha Sarai
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