Month: September 2022

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the Twitter whistleblower who is warning of security flaws, privacy threats and lax controls at the social platform, will take his case to Congress Tuesday. 

Senators who will hear Zatko’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee are alarmed by his Twitter allegations at a time of heightened concern over the safety of powerful tech platforms. 

It’s Zatko’s second Capitol Hill appearance, and in some ways a 21st-century echo of his first. In 1998, he testified before a Senate panel along with fellow members of a hacker collective who warned about the security dangers of the then-emerging internet age. 

Zatko, a respected cybersecurity expert, was Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year. He brought the stunning allegations to Congress and federal regulators, asserting that the influential social platform misled regulators about its cyber defenses and efforts to control millions of “spam” or fake accounts. 

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the panel, has said that if Zatko’s claims are accurate, “they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world.” 

Musk battle

Zatko’s accusations are also playing into billionaire tycoon Elon Musk’s battle with Twitter. The Tesla CEO is trying to get out of his $44 billion bid to buy the company; Twitter has sued to force him to complete the deal. The Delaware judge overseeing that case ruled last week that Musk can include new evidence related to Zatko’s allegations in the high-stakes trial set to start October 17. 

The allegation that Twitter engaged in deception in its handling of automated “spam bot” accounts is at the core of Musk’s attempt to back out of the Twitter deal. 

At the same time, many of Zatko’s claims are uncorroborated and appear to have little documentary support. In a statement, Twitter has called Zatko’s description of events “a false narrative.” 

Also Tuesday, Twitter’s shareholders are scheduled to vote on the company’s pending buyout by Musk. The vote is something of a formality given that the deal is on hold while the court case plays out. But if the measure passes as expected, it would pave the way for a Musk takeover should Twitter prevail in court. 

Zatko also filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among his most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of a 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures in place to protect the security and privacy of its users. 

The SEC is questioning Twitter about how it counts fake accounts on its platform. Twitter uses counts of its presumably real users to attract advertisers, whose payments make up about 90% of its revenue. The “spam bots” have no value to advertisers because there’s no person behind them. 

San Francisco-based Twitter has an estimated 238 million daily active users worldwide. The company says it removes 1 million spam accounts daily. 

‘Egregious deficiencies’

Zatko’s 84-page complaint alleges that he found “extreme, egregious deficiencies” on the platform, including issues with “user privacy, digital and physical security, and platform integrity/content moderation.” 

It accuses CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior executives and board members of making “false and misleading statements to users and the FTC” about these issues. Twitter denies those claims and has said that Zatko was fired in January for “ineffective leadership and poor performance.” Zatko’s attorneys say the performance claim is false. 

Twitter also hinted that Zatko’s complaint might be designed to bolster Musk’s legal fight with the company. Twitter called Zatko’s complaint “a false narrative” that is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and lacks important context.” 

News of Zatko’s complaint surfaced August 23, almost two months before the Twitter-Musk trial is scheduled to begin. One of Zatko’s attorneys has said “he’s never met Elon Musk. Doesn’t know Elon Musk. They know people in common.” 

The company also says it has significantly tightened security since 2020. 

Among Zatko’s specific allegations: 

— The company had such poor cybersecurity that it easily could have been exposed to outside attacks or attempts to siphon off its internal data. 

—The company lacked effective leadership, with its top executives practicing “deliberate ignorance” of pressing problems. Zatko described former CEO Jack Dorsey as “extremely disengaged” during the last months of his tenure, to the point where he wouldn’t even speak during meetings on complex issues. Dorsey stepped down in November 2021. 

—That Twitter knowingly allowed the government of India to place its agents on the company payroll, where they had “direct unsupervised access” to highly sensitive data on users. It makes a parallel but less detailed accusation that Twitter took funding from unidentified Chinese entities who may have gained access enabling them to access the identities and sensitive data of Chinese users who secretly use Twitter, which is officially banned in China. 

Better known by his hacker handle “Mudge,” Zatko, 51, first gained prominence in the 1990s. He was the best-known member of the Boston-based collective L0pht, which pioneered ethical hacking, embarrassing companies including Microsoft for poor security. His work raised awareness in the computing world that forced such major companies to take security seriously. He co-founded the consultancy @Stake, which was later acquired by Symantec. 

Zatko later worked in senior positions at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Google. He joined Twitter at Dorsey’s urging in late 2020, the same year the company suffered an embarrassing security breach involving hackers who broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls, including Musk, attempting to scam their followers out of bitcoin. 
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In an executive order signed Monday, President Joe Biden announced steps by his administration to bolster the “bioeconomy” in the United States, a classification that covers research and development across a broad swath of products, including medical supplies, sustainable new fuels and food, as well as technologies meant to help fight climate change.

The order comes barely a month after Biden signed a major piece of legislation, the CHIPS Act, meant to supercharge U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, an area in which the U.S. has lost its once-dominant global position.

The effort to boost the U.S. biotech sector further underscores the administration’s apparent belief that deeper engagement by the federal government with domestic manufacturing operations is necessary to preserve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

In a briefing over the weekend, administration officials made it clear that the administration’s push to bring more U.S.-based biotechnology manufacturing online comes as a response to other countries — particularly China — investing heavily in the sector.

Administration officials stressed that biotechnology-based products and “biomanufacturing” present a promising alternative to many current products — fuel, plastics and other materials — that are currently made using the byproducts of carbon-laden petrochemicals.

Order text

The executive order reads, in part, “It is the policy of my Administration to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security.”

It continues, “Central to this policy and its outcomes are principles of equity, ethics, safety, and security that enable access to technologies, processes, and products in a manner that benefits all Americans and the global community and that maintains United States technological leadership and economic competitiveness.”

Caution urged

Among the Biden administration’s promises in the executive order is a vow to “substitute fragile supply chains from abroad with strong chains at home.” But not everyone agrees that a government effort to manipulate the supply chain is the smartest strategy for the long run.

“Government can play a role in funding basic research, university labs and the rest, but when it starts micromanaging supply chains, you end up with more fragile supply chains than robust ones,” Scott Lincicome, a director for general economics and trade at the Libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, told VOA.

Similarly, he said, government decisions to privilege “onshore” production over foreign producers can be dangerous.

“There’s nothing wrong with domestic manufacturing, but as we’ve learned throughout the pandemic, there’s a big problem with putting all of your eggs in one basket, either all foreign or all domestic,” Lincicome said.

“While onshoring can insulate you from foreign shocks, it makes you far more vulnerable to domestic shocks,” he added. “And in the process, it makes you poorer and weaker overall. The best approach is to have a very open, diverse global supply chain with domestic networks, foreign suppliers, and a very light government touch on trade, investment, talent and the rest.”

Multiple aims

The executive order lays out a number of areas in which the Biden administration plans to flex the federal government’s muscle, including the domestic manufacturing of biotechnology products. The aim is to encourage both the creation of domestic manufacturing facilities, as well as the supply chains of fuel and raw materials needed to operate them.

The administration also promises to help create markets for biotechnology products by increasing mandatory purchasing requirements for federal agencies.

In addition, the executive order proposes to push more funding into research and development and to provide innovators support in the form of federal data that helps identify unmet needs. Other efforts will include job training programs, streamlined regulatory approval of new products, and cooperative programs with international partners.

Mending fences

The administration’s push to help U.S. biotechnology firms could go some way toward mending fences with the industry, which was angered by elements of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Biden recently signed into law.

The IRA, for the first time, allows Medicare, the government health insurance program for senior citizens, to bargain with pharmaceutical firms over the prices of some prescription drugs. Many in the industry strongly opposed the measure, claiming it would reduce incentives to innovate.

The executive order comes less than a week after the Biotechnology Innovation Organization sent a letter to the administration requesting it to “take additional steps to foster the development and deployment of pioneering technologies that will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural supply chains to build a stronger, more resilient, and environmentally sustainable economy.”

Biden signed the order before traveling to Boston, where he was scheduled to tout the results of the infrastructure bill he signed last year, which pumped federal money into a wide array of construction projects.

Also on Monday, Biden named Renee Wegrzyn, a biotechnology executive, to head the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The announcement came as part of a discussion of Biden’s “moonshot” initiative to drive new research on treatments for cancer.
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President Joe Biden on Monday urged Americans to come together for a new “national purpose” — his administration’s effort to end cancer “as we know it.”

At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Biden channeled JFK’s famed moonshot speech 60 years ago, likening the space race to his own effort and hoping it, too, would galvanize Americans.

“He established a national purpose that could rally the American people and a common cause,” Biden said of Kennedy’s space effort, adding that “we can usher in the same unwillingness to postpone.”

Biden hopes to move the U.S. closer to the goal he set in February of cutting U.S. cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years and to dramatically improve the lives of caregivers and those suffering from cancer. Experts say the objective is attainable — but with adequate investments.

The president called his goal of developing treatments and therapeutics for cancers “bold, ambitious, and I might add, completely doable.”

In his speech, Biden called on the private sector to make drugs more affordable and data more regularly available. He ticked off medical advancements possible with focused research, funding and data.

And he spoke of a new federally backed study that seeks evidence for using blood tests to screen against multiple cancers — a potential game-changer in diagnostic testing to dramatically improve early detection of cancers.

Danielle Carnival, the White House coordinator for the effort, told The Associated Press that the administration sees huge potential in the commencement of the blood diagnostic study on identifying cancers.

“One of the most promising technologies has been the development of blood tests that offer the promise of detecting multiple cancers in a single blood test and really imagining the impact that could have on our ability to detect cancer early and in a more equitable way,” Carnival said. “We think the best way to get us to the place where those are realized is to really test out the technologies we have today and see what works and what really has an impact on extending lives.”

In 2022, the American Cancer Society estimates, 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed and 609,360 people will die of cancer diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank cancer as the second-highest killer of people in the U.S. after heart disease.

The issue is personal to Biden, who lost his adult son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer. After Beau’s death, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which dedicated $1.8 billion over seven years for cancer research and was signed into law in 2016 by President Barack Obama.

Obama designated Biden, then vice president, to run “mission control” on directing the cancer funds as a recognition of Biden’s grief as a parent and desire to do something about it. Biden wrote in his memoir Promise Me, Dad that he chose not to run for president in 2016 primarily because of Beau’s death.

Despite Biden’s attempts to hark back to Kennedy and his space program, the current initiative lacks that same level of budgetary support. The Apollo program garnered massive public investment — more than $20 billion, or more than $220 billion in 2022 dollars adjusted for inflation. Biden’s effort is far more modest and reliant on private sector investment.

Still, he’s tried to maintain momentum for investments in public health research, including championing the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), modeled after similar research and development initiatives benefiting the Pentagon and intelligence community.

On Monday, Biden announced Renee Wegrzyn as the inaugural director of ARPA-H, which has been given the task of studying treatments and potential cures for cancers, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases. He also announced a new National Cancer Institute scholars’ program to provide funding to early-career scientists studying treatments and cures for cancer, with a focus on underrepresented groups and those from diverse backgrounds.

The president was joined by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK who is now the U.S. ambassador to Australia. And he was expected to speak later in the day at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.

Experts agree it’s far too early to say whether these new blood tests for finding cancer in healthy people will have any effect on cancer deaths. There have been no studies to show they reduce the risk of dying from cancer. Still, they say setting an ambitious goal is important.

Carnival said the National Cancer Institute study was designed so that any promising diagnostic results could be swiftly put into widespread practice while the longer-term study — expected to last up to a decade — progresses. She said the goal was to move closer to a future where cancers could be detected through routine bloodwork, potentially reducing the need for more invasive and burdensome procedures like colonoscopies, and therefore saving lives.

Scientists now understand that cancer is not a single disease, but hundreds of diseases that respond differently to different treatments. Some cancers have biomarkers that can be targeted by existing drugs that will slow a tumor’s growth. Many more targets await discovery.

“How do we learn what therapies are effective in which subtypes of disease? That to me is oceanic,” said Donald A. Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “The possibilities are enormous. The challenges are enormous.”

Despite the challenges, he’s optimistic about cutting the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years.

“We can get to that 50% goal by slowing the disease sufficiently across the various cancers without curing anybody,” Berry said. “If I were to bet on whether we will achieve this 50% reduction, I would bet yes.”

Even without new breakthroughs, progress can be made by making care more equitable, said Dr. Crystal Denlinger, chief scientific officer for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a group of elite cancer centers.

And any effort to reduce the cancer death rate will need to focus on the biggest cancer killer, which is lung cancer. Mostly attributable to smoking, lung cancer now causes more cancer deaths than any other cancer. Of the 1,670 daily cancer deaths in the United States, more than 350 are from lung cancer.

Dr. Michael Hassett of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said Biden’s goal to reduce cancer deaths could be met by following two parallel paths: one of discovery and the other making sure as many people as possible are reaping the advantages of existing therapies and preventive approaches.

“If we can address both aspects, both challenges, major advances are possible,” Hassett said.
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Jeff Bezos’ rocket company suffered its first launch failure Monday. No one was aboard, only science experiments. 

The Blue Origin rocket veered off course over West Texas about a minute after liftoff. The capsule’s launch abort system immediately kicked in, lifting the craft off the top. Several minutes later, the capsule parachuted onto the remote desert floor. 

Blue Origin’s launch commentary went silent when the capsule catapulted off the rocket, later announcing: “It appears we’ve experienced an anomaly with today’s flight. This wasn’t planned.” 

The mishap occurred as the rocket was traveling nearly 700 mph (1,126 kph) at an altitude of about 28,000 feet (8,500 meters). There was no video shown of the rocket — only the capsule — after the failure occurred. The rocket usually lands upright on the desert floor and then is recycled for future flights; clearly, that did not happen this time. 

Launch commentator Erika Wagner said the capsule managed to escape successfully, with the webcast showing it reaching a maximum altitude of more than 37,000 feet (11,300 meters). Thirty-six experiments were on board, half sponsored by NASA. 

“Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed,” the company tweeted later. 

No further details were provided. 

It was the 23rd flight for the New Shepard program, named after the first American in space, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard. The same kind of rocket and capsule have been used to carry paying passengers on 10-minute rides to the edge of space. It was the ninth flight for this rocket. 

Its most recent passenger flight was just last month. Bezos was on the first New Shepard crew last summer. Altogether, Blue Origin has carried 31 people to the edge of space. The company’s headquarters is in Kent, Washington. 

 
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When Emmanuel Obeng-Dankwa is worried about making rent on his New York City apartment, he sometimes holds off on filling his blood pressure medication. 

“If there’s no money, I prefer to skip the medication to being homeless,” said Obeng-Dankwa, a 58-year-old security guard. 

He is among a majority of adults in the U.S. who say that health care is not handled well in the country, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll reveals that public satisfaction with the U.S. health care system is remarkably low, with fewer than half of Americans saying it is generally handled well. Only 12% say it is handled extremely or very well. Americans have similar views about health care for older adults. 

Overall, the public gives even lower marks for how prescription drug costs, the quality of care at nursing homes and mental health care are being handled, with just 6% or less saying those health services are done very well in the country. 

“Navigating the American health care system is exceedingly frustrating,” said A. Mark Fendrick, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design. “The COVID pandemic has only made it worse.” 

More than two years after the pandemic’s start, health care worker burnout and staffing shortages are plaguing hospitals around the country. And Americans are still having trouble getting in-person medical care after health centers introduced restrictions as COVID-19 killed and sickened millions of people around the country, Fendrick said. 

In fact, the poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, nearly 8 in 10, say they are at least moderately concerned about getting access to quality health care when they need it.

Black and Hispanic adults in particular are resoundingly worried about health care access, with nearly 6 in 10 saying they are very or extremely concerned about getting good care. Fewer than half of white adults, 44%, expressed the same level of worry. 

Racial disparities have long troubled America’s health care system. They have been abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Black and Hispanic people dying disproportionately from the virus. Black and Hispanic men also make up a disproportionately high rate of recent monkeypox infections.

Fifty-three percent of women said they are extremely or very concerned about obtaining quality care, compared to 42% of men. 

While Americans are united in their dissatisfaction with the health care system, that agreement dissolves when it comes to solutions to fix it. 

About two-thirds of adults think it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, with adults ages 18 to 49 more likely than those over 50 to hold that view. The percentage of people who believe health care coverage is a government responsibility has risen in recent years, ticking up from 57% in 2019 and 62% in 2017. 

Still, there’s not consensus on how that coverage might be delivered. 

About 4 in 10 Americans say they support a single-payer health care system that would require Americans to get their health insurance from a government plan. More, 58%, say they favor a government health insurance plan that anyone can purchase. 

There also is broad support for policies that would help Americans pay for the costs of long-term care, including a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance for people 65 or older.

Retired nurse Pennie Wright, of Camden, Tennessee, doesn’t like the idea of a government-run health care system. 

After switching to Medicare this year, she was surprised to walk out of her annual well-woman visit, once fully covered by her private insurance plan, with a $200 bill. 

She prefers the flexibility she had on her private insurance plan. 

“I feel like we have the best health care system in the world, we have a choice of where we want to go,” Wright said. 

A majority of Americans, roughly two-thirds, were happy to see the government step in to provide free COVID-19 testing, vaccines and treatment. Roughly 2 in 10 were neutral about the government’s response. 

The government’s funding for free COVID-19 tests dried up at the beginning of the month. And while the White House says the latest batch of recommended COVID-19 boosters will be free to anyone who wants one, it doesn’t have money on hand to buy any future rounds of booster shots for every American. 

Eighty percent say they support the federal government negotiating for lower drug prices. President Joe Biden this summer signed a landmark bill into law allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The move is expected to save taxpayers as much as $100 billion over the next decade. 

“Medication costs should be low, to the minimum so that everyone can afford it,” said Obeng-Dankwa, the Bronx renter who has trouble paying for his medication. “Those who are poor should be able to get all the necessary health they need, in the same way someone who also has the money to pay for it.”
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An army of computer programmers scattered across the globe is set to attempt one of the biggest software upgrades the crypto sector has ever seen this week to reduce its environmentally unfriendly energy consumption.

Developers have spent years working on a more energy-efficient version of the ethereum blockchain, a digital ledger that underpins a multibillion-dollar ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, digital tokens (NFTs), games and apps.

Ethereum — the second most important blockchain after bitcoin — burns through more power each year than New Zealand.

Experts say the changeover, expected to take place between Tuesday and Thursday, would slash energy consumption by more than 99%.

Enthusiasts hope a greener ethereum will spur wider adoption, particularly as a way of enabling banks to automate transactions and other processes.

But so far the technology has been used largely to create speculative financial products.

The ING bank said in a recent note that the switchover might help ethereum gain acceptability among policymakers and regulators.  

“This in turn may provide a boost to traditional financial institutions’ willingness to develop ethereum-based services,” the bank said.

The switchover, dubbed “the merge,” will change the way transactions are logged.

At the moment, so-called crypto miners use energy-guzzling rigs of computers to solve puzzles that reward them with new coins — a system known as “proof of work.”

The new system will get rid of those miners and their computer stacks overnight.

Instead, “validators” will have to put up 32 ether (worth about $55,000) — ethereum’s cryptocurrency — to participate in the new “proof of stake” system where they earn rewards for their work.

But the merge process will be risky.

Blockchain company Consensys called it a “monumental technological milestone” and the biggest update to ethereum since it was launched in 2015.

Critics have questioned whether such an upgrade will pass off without incident, given the sector’s history of instability.

Ethereum went offline in May for three hours when a new NFT project sparked a surge in buyers that overwhelmed the network.

Several exchanges and crypto companies said they would halt transactions during the merge process.

The upgrade also faces a possible rebellion from crypto mining companies whose business will be severely damaged.

They can try to hijack the process or create a “fork,” basically a smaller blockchain that would continue with the old mechanism.

And even if the “merge” is successful, ethereum will still face major hurdles before it can be more widely adopted.

For example, it is expensive to use and the update will not reduce fees.

And the wider crypto sector is beset by wildly fluctuating prices, security flaws and an array of scams.

Crypto lawyer Charles Kerrigan from the firm CMS told AFP that ethereum was “decentralized and complicated” and had not yet been tested enough for governments and banks to get onboard.

“There have been questions about how easily it could deal with upgrades of the type that traditional software vendors provide to customers,” he said. “A successful merge will answer those questions.”
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A global search for alternative sources to Russian energy in light of the war in Ukraine has refocused attention on smaller, easier-to-build nuclear power stations, which proponents say could provide a cheaper, more efficient alternative to older model mega-plants.

U.K.-based Rolls-Royce SMR says its small modular reactors, or SMRs, are much cheaper and quicker to get running than standard plants, delivering the kind of energy security that many nations are seeking. France already relies on nuclear power for a majority of its electricity, and Germany kept the option of reactivating two nuclear plants it will shut down at the end of the year as Russia cuts natural gas supplies.

While Rolls-Royce SMR and its competitors have signed deals with countries from Britain to Poland to start building the stations, they are many years away from operating and cannot solve the energy crisis now hitting Europe.

Nuclear power also poses risks, including disposing of highly radioactive waste and keeping that technology out of the hands of rogue countries or nefarious groups that may pursue a nuclear weapons program.

Those risks have been accentuated following the shelling around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, which has raised fears of potential nuclear disaster.

In the wake of the war, however, “the reliance on gas imports and Russian energy sources has focused people’s minds on energy security,” Rolls-Royce SMR spokesman Dan Gould said.  

An SMR’s components can be built in a factory, moved to a site in tractor trailers and assembled there, making the technology more attractive to frugal buyers, he said.

“It’s like building Lego,” Gould said. “Building on a smaller scale reduces risks and makes it a more investible project.”  

SMRs are essentially pressurized water reactors identical to some 400 reactors worldwide. The key advantages are their size — about one-tenth as big as a standard reactor — the ease of construction and the price tag.

The estimated cost of a Rolls-Royce SMR is $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion, with an estimated construction time of 5 1/2 years. That’s two years faster than it took to build a standard nuclear plant between 2016 and 2021, according to International Atomic Energy Agency statistics. Some estimates put the cost of building a 1,100-megawatt nuclear plant at between $6 billion and $9 billion.  

Rolls-Royce aims to build its first stations in the U.K. within 5 1/2 years, Gould said. Similarly, Oklahoma-based NuScale Power signed agreements last year with two Polish companies — copper and silver producer KGHM and energy producer UNIMOT — to explore the possibility of building SMRs to power heavy industry. Poland wants to switch from polluting, coal-powered electricity generation.  

Rolls-Royce SMR said last month that it signed a deal with Dutch development company ULC-Energy to look into setting up SMRs in the Netherlands.  

Another partner is Turkey, where Russia is building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant on the southern coast. Environmentalists say the region is seismically active and could be a target for terrorists.

The introduction of “unproven” nuclear power technology in the form of SMRs doesn’t sit well with environmentalists, who argue that proliferation of small reactors will exacerbate the problem of how to dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

“Unfortunately, Turkey is governed by an incompetent administration that has turned it into a ‘test bed’ for corporations,” said Koray Dogan Urbarli, a spokesman for Turkey’s Green Party.

“It is giving up the sovereignty of a certain region for at least 100 years for Russia to build a nuclear power plant. This incompetence and lobbying power make Turkey an easy target for SMRs,” said Koray, adding that his party eschews technology with an “uncertain future.”

Gould said one Rolls-Royce SMR would generate nuclear waste the size of a “tennis court piled 1-meter high” throughout the plant’s 60-year lifetime. He said initially, waste would be stored on site at the U.K. plants and would eventually be transferred to a long-term disposal site selected by the British government.

M.V. Ramana, professor of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia, cites research suggesting there’s “no demonstrated way” to ensure nuclear waste stored in what authorities consider to be secure sites won’t escape in the future.

The constant heat generated by the waste could alter rock formations where it’s stored and allow water seepage, while future mining activities could compromise a nuclear waste site’s integrity, said Ramana, who specializes in international security and nuclear energy.

Skeptics also raise the risks of possibly exporting such technology in politically tumultuous regions. Gould said Rolls-Royce is “completely compliant” with U.K. and international requirements in exporting its SMR technology “only in territories that are signatories to the necessary international treaties for the peaceful use of nuclear power for energy generation.”

Ramana said, however, there’s no guarantee nations will follow the rules.  

“Any country acquiring nuclear reactors automatically enhances its capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that every SMR could produce “around 10 bombs worth of plutonium each year.”  

Rolls-Royce SMR could opt to stop supplying fuel and other services to anyone flouting the rules, but “should any country choose to do so, it can simply tell the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop inspections, as Iran has done, for example,” Ramana said.

Although spent fuel normally undergoes chemical reprocessing to generate the kind of plutonium used in nuclear weapons, Ramana said such reprocessing technology is widely known and that a very sophisticated reprocessing plant isn’t required to produce the amount of plutonium needed for weapons.
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Voice-operated smartphones are aiming at a vast yet widely overlooked market in sub-Saharan Africa — the tens of millions of people who face huge challenges in life because they cannot read or write.

In Ivory Coast, a so-called “Superphone” using a vocal assistant that responds to commands in a local language is being pitched to the large segment of the population — as many as 40 percent — who are illiterate.

Developed and assembled locally, the phone is designed to make everyday tasks more accessible, from understanding a document and checking a bank balance to communicating with government agencies.

“I’ve just bought this phone for my parents back home in the village, who don’t know how to read or write,” said Floride Jogbe, a young woman who was impressed by adverts on social media.

She believed the 60,000 CFA francs ($92) she forked out was money well spent.

The smartphone uses an operating system called “Kone” that is unique to the Cerco company, and covers 17 languages spoken in Ivory Coast, including Baoule, Bete, and Dioula, as well as 50 other African languages.

Cerco hopes to expand this to 1,000 languages, reaching half of the continent’s population, thanks to help from a network of 3,000 volunteers.

The goal is to address the “frustration” illiterate people feel with technology that requires them to be able to read or write or spell effectively, said Cerco president Alain Capo-Chichi, a Benin national.

“Various institutions set down the priority of making people literate before making technology available to them,” he told AFP.

“Our way skips reading and writing and goes straight to integrating people into economic and social life.”

Of the 750 million adults around the world who cannot read or write, 27 percent live south of the Sahara, according to UN figures for 2016, the latest year for which data is available.

The continent also hosts nearly 2,000 languages, some of which are spoken by tens of millions of people and are used for inter-ethnic communication, while others are dialects with a small geographical spread.

Lack of numbers or economic clout often means these languages are overlooked by developers who have already devised vocal assistants for languages in bigger markets.

Twi and Kiswahili

Other companies investing in the voice-operation field in Africa include Mobobi, which has created a Twi language voice assistant in Ghana called Abena AI, while Mozilla is working on an assistant in Kiswahili, which has an estimated 100 million speakers in East Africa.

Telecommunications expert Jean-Marie Akepo questioned whether voice operation needed the platform of a dedicated mobile phone.

Existing technology “manages to satisfy people”, he said.

“With the voice message services offered by WhatsApp, for example, a large part of the problem has already been solved.”

Instead of a new phone, he recommended “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.

The Ivorian phone is being produced at the ICT and Biotechnology Village in Grand-Bassam, a free-trade zone located near the Ivorian capital.

It came about through close collaboration with the government. The company pays no taxes or customs duties and the assembly plant has benefited from a subsidy of more than two billion CFA francs.

In exchange, Cerco is to pay 3.5 percent of its income to the state and train around 1,200 young people each year.

The company says it has received 200,000 orders since launch on July 21.

Thanks to a partnership with French telecommunications giant Orange, the phone will be distributed in 200 shops across Ivory Coast.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a disaster emergency Friday in a bid to accelerate efforts to vaccinate residents against polio after the virus was detected in wastewater samples taken in four counties. 

Hochul’s executive order followed the discovery of the virus last month in samples from Long Island’s Nassau County, bordering the New York City borough of Queens. Earlier this year the virus was found in samples from Rockland, Orange and Sullivan counties, all north of the city.  

In July, the first confirmed case of polio in the United States in nearly a decade turned up in an adult in Rockland County, according to the state health department. 

“On polio, we simply cannot roll the dice,” State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett said in a statement. “If you or your child are unvaccinated or not up to date with vaccinations, the risk of paralytic disease is real.” 

Polio can cause irreversible paralysis in some cases, but it can be prevented by a vaccine first made available in 1955. While there is no known cure, three injections of the vaccine provide nearly 100% immunity. 

People of all ages are under threat, though the virus primarily affects children age 3 and younger.  

Officials urged inoculations for unvaccinated adults and children as young as 2 months, and they advised that vaccinated people receive a lifetime booster dose. 

Hochul’s declaration authorizes paramedics, midwives and pharmacists to administer polio vaccinations, among other steps, to accelerate inoculation rates. The order also directs health care providers to update the state with data on immunizations. 

The state of emergency will stay in effect until October 9. Health officials set a goal of getting 90% of residents vaccinated. 

The state health department warned that people in New York City and Rockland, Orange, Sullivan and Nassau counties are at the highest risk.  

Orange County has the lowest vaccination rate of the counties of concern with less than 59% being immunized, according to the state health department. 
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NASA’s moon mission suffers another setback, this time delaying a test launch for at least a few weeks. Plus, a look back at the first color images of Mars, and we wish a very happy birthday to a TV space pioneer. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.  
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The introduction of a nationwide mental health hotline has increased the numbers of people calling for help in the United States and the need for more counselors to answer their calls. For VOA, Svitlana Prystynska has this story from the Western state of Colorado. Camera – Vladimir Petruniv.
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A new malaria vaccine developed by Britain’s University of Oxford is 80% effective in preventing infection, according to trial results published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal. Scientists say it represents a huge breakthrough that has the potential to save millions of lives and eventually eradicate the disease.

The vaccine, named R21/Matrix-M, had already shown encouraging trial results after three primary doses. Maintaining that immunity has always been a big challenge and the latest trial shows that a booster dose is effective, explained Professor Adrian Hill, the director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and co-author of The Lancet paper. 

“The technology has been complex to develop because we need very strong antibody responses to get protection against malaria and those antibodies, like all responses, decline over time,” Hill told VOA. 

“One of the worries was that this would be short-term protection and only last for a few months. That’s definitely not the case with the data we’re releasing today,” Hill said. “And indeed, 80% efficacy in the second year of follow up after a booster dose is really very encouraging in that respect.” 

The latest phase II trial involved 450 children between 5 and 17 months old, recruited from the Nanoro region in Burkina Faso. The results show a higher strength booster dose was 80% effective in preventing malaria infection. No serious side effects were seen. 

“This is a parasite we’re trying to vaccinate against. It’s not a virus. It’s got thousands of genes. [So it’s] complex to design a vaccine,” Hill said. “Over 100 have been in clinical trials and this looks like the best data so far. So we’re excited.” 

The Serum Institute of India, which has produced billions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, is producing the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine. It has signed an agreement to rapidly scale up production if the vaccine receives World Health Organization (WHO) approval in coming months. 

“We’re trying to do something similar with malaria, to produce a low-cost vaccine — a few dollars a dose — and to manufacture that really upscale so we can get 100 million doses or more out there as soon as possible,” Hill told VOA. 

Malaria killed an estimated 627,000 people in 2020, the most recent available data. The majority are children under five years old in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The WHO approved the first-ever malaria vaccine in October of last year, called RTS,S. But R21 may offer even greater hope, said Hill. 

“A vaccine with high efficacy like this should be able to save hundreds of thousands of lives a year and ultimately millions of lives over the next decade or so,” he said. “After we get a vaccine rolled out for that very vulnerable population, we’ll be looking at a travelers’ vaccine and then we’ll be looking at a vaccine that could actually eliminate regionally and eradicate globally this terrible disease.” 

Results from the ongoing phase III trial involving 4,800 children are due later this year and it’s hoped that mass production and rollout can begin in 2023, following WHO approval. 
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