The last time humans were on the moon was in 1972. Now NASA is preparing to set foot back on the moon in 2025, if all goes as scheduled. VOA’s Alexander Kruglyakov spoke with the crew that will take part in the first of those missions: a planned flight around the Moon in November 2024.
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Month: April 2023
A growing number of state legislatures are considering bans on cosmetics and other consumer products that contain a group of synthetic, potentially harmful chemicals known as PFAS.
In Vermont, the state Senate gave final approval this week to legislation that would prohibit manufacturers and suppliers from selling or distributing any cosmetics or menstrual products in the state that have perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, as well as a number of other chemicals.
The products include shampoo, makeup, deodorant, sunscreen, hair dyes and more, said state Sen. Terry Williams, a Republican, and member of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare.
“Many known toxic chemicals are used in or found as contaminants in personal care products, including PFAS, lead and formaldehyde,” Williams said in reporting the bill to Senate colleagues.
California, Colorado and Maryland passed similar restrictions on cosmetics that go into effect in 2025. Other proposals are under consideration in Washington and Oregon while bills have also been introduced in Illinois, Rhode Island and Georgia.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, studies have linked PFAS exposure to increased cancer risk, developmental delays in children, damage to organs such as the liver and thyroid, increased cholesterol levels and reduced immune functions, especially among young children.
Like in Colorado and California, the proposed Vermont crackdown on PFAS — known as “forever chemicals” for their persistence in the environment — goes beyond cosmetics. The bill, which now must be considered by the Vermont House, would extend the ban to apparel, including outdoor apparel for severe wet conditions, athletic turf, clothing, ski wax and textiles, including upholstery, draperies, towels and bedding that intentionally contain PFAS. The bill has been referred to a House committee and the chairwoman said Friday that she’s not sure if the panel will get to it this session. The legislation gives various timelines for the phaseouts.
“We must stop importing dangerous chemicals like PFAS into our state so we can prevent the harms they are causing up and down the supply chain — from their production and use to their disposal,” Lauren Hierl, executive director of Vermont Conservation Voters, said in a statement.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first federal limits on the chemicals in drinking water, saying the protection will save thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses, including cancer. The chemicals had been used since the 1940s in consumer products and industry, including in nonstick pans, food packaging and firefighting foam. Their use is now mostly phased out in the U.S., but some still remain. Pressure is also growing to remove PFAS from food packaging.
A study by University of Notre Dame researchers released in 2021 found that more than half the cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada were awash with a toxic industrial compound associated with serious health conditions.
Researchers tested more than 230 commonly used cosmetics and found that 56% of foundations and eye products, 48% of lip products and 47% of mascaras contained fluorine — an indicator of PFAS.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says on its website that there have been few studies of the presence of PFAS in cosmetics, and the ones published found the concentration is at very low levels.
The Personal Care Products Council, which represents the cosmetics industry, says in 2020 it supported California legislation to phase out certain ingredients, including 13 PFAS in cosmetics, and identical legislative language in Maryland the following year. The group called for states to pass uniform laws to avoid confusion.
As for bans on apparel containing the chemicals, the American Apparel & Footwear Association supports the bill passed unanimously in the Vermont Senate and appreciates that amendments were made to align with phase-out timelines in existing PFAS restrictions in California and New York, said Chelsea Murtha, AAFA’s director of sustainability, in a statement.
The Outdoor Industry Association, based on Colorado, said overall it supports the Vermont bill, also noted the current version more closely matches the timeline for compliance with California’s.
“We are also appreciative of the exemption for outdoor apparel severe wet conditions until 2028, as our industry is diligently working to move toward non-regrettable alternatives that will not compromise consumer safety or the quality of the product,” said association President Kent Ebersole in a statement.
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Dust off your eclipse glasses: It’s only a year until a total solar eclipse sweeps across North America.
On April 8, 2024, the moon will cast its shadow across a stretch of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, plunging millions of people into midday darkness.
It’s been less than six years since a total solar eclipse cut across the U.S., from coast to coast. That was on August 21, 2017.
If you miss next year’s spectacle, you’ll have to wait 20 years until the next one hits the U.S. But that total eclipse will be visible only in Montana and the Dakotas.
Here’s what to know to get ready for the 2024 show:
Where can I see it?
Next year’s eclipse will slice a diagonal line across North America on April 8, which falls on a Monday.
It will start in the Pacific and first reach land over Mexico around 11:07 a.m. local time, NASA predicts. Then, it’ll cross over into Texas and move across parts of the Midwest and Northeast in the afternoon.
All in all, it will hit parts of 13 U.S. states: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Cities in its path include Dallas; Little Rock, Arkansas; Indianapolis; Cleveland and Buffalo, New York.
Parts of Canada, including Quebec and Newfoundland, will also get a glimpse before the eclipse heads out to sea in the early evening.
A total eclipse will be visible within a 115-mile-wide swath — the path of totality. Outside that path, you can still see a partial solar eclipse, where the moon takes a bite out of the sun and turns it into a crescent shape.
Total eclipses happen about every 18 months, but a lot of times they cross over remote areas where few people see them.
What happens during an eclipse?
Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, blocking the sun’s light from reaching us.
Even though the moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth, said University of Colorado astronomer Doug Duncan. So when the orbits line up just right, the little moon can block out the whole sun. Those who are standing in the right spots will experience totality: when the moon casts its shadow over the landscape.
“In just seconds, you go from bright, bright daylight to like the middle of the night,” said Debby Brown, who saw her first total eclipse in 2017 with Duncan in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
“The stars are out. All of a sudden, all the animals are quiet,” said Brown, of Arlington, Virginia.
During the 2024 eclipse, totality will stretch to around four and a half minutes — almost twice as long as in 2017.
What’s the best spot?
To catch the full eclipse experience, planning ahead is key, Duncan said. Weather could be a big factor since the eclipse is coming in the spring, when conditions are unpredictable. That’s why Duncan selected Texas for his eclipse tour next year, where the odds of clear skies are better.
Your choice also depends on what kind of experience you’re looking for, said Bob Baer, who’s coordinating eclipse plans at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Carbondale — in the crossroads of both the 2017 and 2024 eclipse paths — will hold a viewing event at the school’s stadium again. It’s a big group experience, Baer said: “The last 20 minutes before totality, the stadium gets as loud as a football game.”
But you can find events of all different flavors planned along the eclipse path: luxury cruises in Mexico, music festivals in Texas, farm camping in Arkansas, planetarium visits in upstate New York.
“The goal, at the end of the day, is to get as many people outside as possible, looking up during totality,” said Dan Schneiderman, who is helping the Rochester Museum and Science Center plan events.
You’ll want to grab eclipse glasses to see the partial phases before and after totality, Schneiderman added. Looking at the partially covered sun without protection can cause serious eye damage.
Brown and her husband are planning to join Duncan’s eclipse tour in Austin. Her first eclipse experience flew by.
“I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy this even longer,” Brown said. “To be able to just lean into the moment.”
What other eclipses are coming up?
The U.S. will get some eclipse action ahead of the big event in 2024. There will be an annular eclipse — when the sun isn’t completely covered but appears like a ring of fire in the sky — later this year, on October 14.
The path of that eclipse will cross from Oregon down through California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Later this month, there will be a rare hybrid eclipse, which switches between a total and an annular eclipse at different points along its path. But few people will see it. The April 20 eclipse is mostly over the Indian Ocean and crosses over only a few slivers of Australia and Southeast Asia.
With a 20-year gap until the next total solar eclipse in the U.S., Duncan says it will be worth it to be in the path of totality next year. He’s witnessed 12 total eclipses so far.
Seeing a partial eclipse — even if it’s 90% covered — means “you missed all the good stuff,” he said.
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China feels it has the “right to redefine the global world order,” Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei told AFP on Wednesday ahead of the opening in London of his first design-focused exhibition.
The show at the Design Museum features hundreds of thousands of objects collected by the Chinese artist since the 1990s, from Stone Age tools to Lego bricks, and draws on his love of artifacts and traditional craftsmanship.
The son of a poet revered by former communist leaders, Ai, 65, is perhaps China’s best-known modern artist and helped design the famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium for Beijing’s 2008 Olympics.
But he fell out of favor after criticizing the Chinese government, was imprisoned for 81 days in 2011 and eventually left for Germany four years later.
Among the artifacts in the new exhibition are thousands of fragments from Ai’s porcelain sculptures, which were destroyed when the bulldozers moved in to dismantle his studio in Beijing in 2018.
In launching the show, Ai said he believed China was “not moving into a more civilized society, but [had] rather become quite brutal on anybody who has different ideas.”
“Tension between China and the West is very natural,” added the artist, who has lived in Europe since 2015.
“China feel they have their own power and right to redefine the global world order,” he said. “They think China can become an important factor in changing the game rules, basically designed by the West world.”
And he said that even though Europe had been relatively peaceful for 70 years, there were many problems, including much less concern for “humanity” and threats to “freedom of speech.”
The objects to go on display include 1,600 Stone Age tools, 10,000 Song Dynasty cannon balls retrieved from a moat, and donated Lego bricks that the artist began working with in 2014 to produce portraits of political prisoners.
The exhibition will also feature large-scale works installed outside the exhibition gallery.
They include a piece titled “Colored House” featuring the painted timber frame of a house that was once the home of a prosperous family during the early Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).
Exhibition curator Justin McGuirk said the things Ai had been collecting over the years represented “a body of evidence about different histories, different cultural moments in China’s history [that] maybe have been forgotten or not thought about enough.”
“Ai Weiwei always makes something out of destruction and plays on the idea of construction,” he added.
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The push to legally restrict children’s access to social media in the United States is gaining steam. So far, however, researchers say there are both negative and positive aspects of minors using the platforms, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out.
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Cyclone Freddy killed hundreds of people in February and March as it pummeled Madagascar, Malawi, and Mozambique. While the long-running storm’s victims were mostly in Malawi, floodwaters in Mozambique have created a fresh threat there from cholera. Cases have nearly doubled in one week to 19,000 amid a shortage of facilities, many of which were badly damaged by the cyclone, especially in the worst-hit province of Zambezia.
The neighborhood of Icidua, on the outskirts of Quelimane city in Mozambique’s central Zambezia province, has reported the highest number of cholera cases.
Most here lived in flimsy huts made of mud or bamboo that were flattened by the cyclone’s up to 215 kilometer per hour winds.
The local health center’s building is no longer stable, so doctors and nurses work outside under the shade of trees.
Mothers lined up patiently this week with their children for cholera treatment in one of the few wards that survived the storm.
The clinic’s director José da Costa Silva says the staff are working at high risk as the roof could collapse at any minute.
“Cholera cases are increasing, and the health center does not have the capacity to treat everybody. Most patients are referred to the provincial hospital,” he said.
The outbreak is not confined to Quelimane city.
The U.N. says more than 19,000 cases have been confirmed across eight of Mozambique’s 10 provinces.
The World Health Organization’s office has called it the worst cholera outbreak in Mozambique for 20 years.
At Quelimane Provincial Hospital, the director general of Mozambique’s National Health Institute this week addressed health workers in a packed room under a torn roof with two gaping holes.
Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr. tells the workers the cholera outbreak is getting more serious by the day.
Confirmed cases in Quelimane district alone have reached about 600 a day, he says, but the real number could be as high as 1,000.
“The disease is not localized to one neighborhood, it’s everywhere,” he said. “It can only be fought with a local chlorine water treatment product called ‘Certeza,’ but supplies are stretched and there aren’t enough people to distribute the bottles.”
Every day, volunteers collect crates of Certeza from outside the hospital and drive to neighborhoods like Icidua, where they walk from house to house, distributing bottles.
Each one should last a family for a week, but demand is massively outstripping supply as the cholera spreads.
For many Mozambicans still recovering in the cyclone’s wake, cholera is just one of many problems.
Outside the village of Nicoadala, about 300 people live in a makeshift camp of tarpaulin huts on a road next to a flooded field.
Their villages and fields are still under water, forcing them to fish in flooded rice paddies to survive.
Sixty-four-year-old Joaquina Bissane says she had to reach the camp by canoe after her village was submerged.
“Cholera is less of a problem here than malaria, as the damp and heat has turned these flatlands into a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” she said. They have received no support from the government, so they are supporting each other.
The World Food Program estimates the cyclone’s floodwaters destroyed 215,000 hectares of crops in Mozambique.
Seventy-year-old farmer Inácio Abdala says his family’s home and fields were among those destroyed.
He says they eat one day and don’t eat the next as they lost everything in the floods. Even the schools are flooded, so their children can’t go to school.
Even after the floods subside, saltwater brought inland by the cyclone may have damaged much of the soil.
Freddy hit just before the main harvest and officials say it will take months, or even years, for farmlands to fully recover — long after they hope to bring the cholera outbreak under control.
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Cambodian communities in California organized a parade and cultural festival ahead of this month’s solar new year. For VOA, Genia Dulot has our story from Long Beach.
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For many people in the U.S. holidays mean enormous lawn decorations. But generally, these decorations coincide with Western holidays. Now, some Muslim families are finding unique ways to celebrate Ramadan. VOA’s Dhania Iman reports. Videographer: Andri Tambunan
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Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February.
China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons.
Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.”
Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year.
Investing in self-reliance
The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology.
China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled.
Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.
“China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad.
“I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.”
The conflict has prompted warnings the world might split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation.
“The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.”
U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong, and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes, and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses.
Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next-generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant.
China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies.
EV batteries as leverage
Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said.
Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan.
“China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.”
On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.”
Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details.
The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons.
Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes.
To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies.
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U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence (AI) is dangerous, but underscored that technology companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public.
Biden told science and technology advisers that AI could help in addressing disease and climate change, but it was also important to address potential risks to society, national security and the economy.
“Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” he said at the start of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. When asked if AI was dangerous, he said, “It remains to be seen. It could be.”
Biden spoke on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrendered in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn actor.
Biden declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges.
The president said social media had already illustrated the harm that powerful technologies can do without the right safeguards.
“Absent safeguards, we see the impact on the mental health and self-images and feelings and hopelessness, especially among young people,” Biden said.
He reiterated a call for Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to put limits on personal data that technology companies collect, ban advertising targeted at children, and to prioritize health and safety in product development.
Shares of companies that employ AI dropped sharply before Biden’s meeting, although the broader market was also selling off on Tuesday.
Shares of AI software company C3.ai Inc. were down 24%, more than halving a four-session winning streak of nearly 40% through Monday. Thailand security firm Guardforce AI GFAI.O fell 29%, data analytics firm BigBear.ai BBAI.N was down 16% and conversation intelligence company SoundHound AI SOUN.O was down 13% late on Tuesday.
AI is becoming a hot topic for policymakers.
The tech ethics group Center for AI and Digital Policy has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to stop OpenAI from issuing new commercial releases of GPT-4, which has wowed and appalled users with its human-like abilities to generate written responses to requests.
Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has urged society to pause as it considers the ramifications of AI.
Last year the Biden administration released a blueprint “Bill of Rights” to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.
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Life on our planet faced a stern test during the Cryogenian Period that lasted from 720 million to 635 million years ago when Earth twice was frozen over with runaway glaciation and looked from space like a shimmering white snowball.
Life somehow managed to survive during this time called “Snowball Earth,” and a new study offers a deeper understanding as to why.
Fossils identified as seaweed unearthed in black shale in central China’s Hubei Province indicate that habitable marine environments were more widespread at the time than previously known, scientists said Tuesday. The findings support the idea that it was more of a “Slushball Earth” where the earliest forms of complex life — basic multicellular organisms — endured even at mid-latitudes previously thought to have been frozen solid.
The fossils date from the second of the two times during the Cryogenian Period when massive ice sheets stretched from the poles toward the equator. This interval, called the Marinoan Ice Age, lasted from about 651 million to 635 million years ago.
“The key finding of this study is that open-water — ice-free — conditions existed in mid-latitude oceanic regions during the waning stage of the Marinoan Ice Age,” said China University of Geosciences geobiologist Huyue Song, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Our study shows that, at least near the end of the Marinoan ‘Snowball Earth’ event, habitable areas extended to mid-latitude oceans, much larger than previously thought. Previous research argued that such habitable areas, at best, only existed in tropical oceans. More extensive areas of habitable oceans better explain where and how complex organisms such as multicellular seaweed survived,” Song added.
The findings demonstrate that the world’s oceans were not completely frozen and that habitable refuges existed where multicellular eukaryotic organisms — the domain of life including plants, animals, fungi and certain mostly single-celled organisms called protists — could survive, Song said.
Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The first single-celled organisms arose sometime during roughly the first billion years of the planet’s existence. Multicellular organisms arrived later, perhaps 2 billion years ago. But it was only in the aftermath of the Cryogenian that warmer conditions returned, paving the way for a rapid expansion of different life forms about 540 million years ago.
Scientists are trying to better understand the onset of “Snowball Earth.” They believe a greatly reduced amount of the sun’s warmth reached the planet’s surface as solar radiation bounced off the white ice sheets.
“It is widely believed that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels plummeted just prior to these events, causing the polar ice caps to expand and hence more solar radiation reflected back to space and the polar ice caps expanded further. And the Earth spiraled into Snowball Earth conditions,” Virginia Tech geobiologist and study co-author Shuhai Xiao said.
Seaweed and fossils of some other multicellular organisms were identified in the black shale. This seaweed — a rudimentary plant — was a photosynthetic organism living on the seafloor in a shallow marine environment lit by sunlight.
“The fossils were preserved as compressed sheets of organic carbon,” China University of Geosciences paleontologist and study co-author Qin Ye said.
Multicellular organisms including red algae, green algae and fungi emerged before the Cryogenian and survived “Snowball Earth.”
The Cryogenian freeze was much worse than the most recent Ice Age that humans survived, ending roughly 10,000 years ago.
“Compared to the most recent Ice Age, glacier coverage was much more extensive and, more importantly, much of the ocean was frozen,” Xiao said.
“It is fair to say that the ‘Snowball Earth’ events were significant challenges to life on Earth,” Xiao added. “It is conceivable that these ‘Snowball Earth’ events could have driven major extinctions, but apparently life, including complex eukaryotic organisms, managed to survive, attesting to the resilience of the biosphere.”
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Farmers and Silicon Valley technologists are collaborating to make agriculture more efficient and productive. Michelle Quinn reports on the ag technology being developed and what is to come.
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The digital divide is one of the biggest challenges to education in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations says nearly 90% of students lack access to household computers, and 82% to the internet. In Kenya, the aid group TechLit Africa aims to change that by building scores of computer labs. Juma Majanga reports from Mogotio, Kenya.
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An exhibition currently on display in Poland uses virtual reality to show the level of destruction Russia’s war has brought on Ukraine. For some visitors, the VR videos that can be viewed at the “Through the War” display have been overwhelming. Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw. Daniil Batushchak.
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Australia said Tuesday it will ban TikTok on government devices, joining a growing list of Western nations cracking down on the Chinese-owned app due to national security fears.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the decision followed advice from the country’s intelligence agencies and would begin “as soon as practicable”.
Australia is the last member of the secretive Five Eyes security alliance to pursue a government TikTok ban, joining its allies the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have made similar moves.
Dreyfus said the government would approve some exemptions on a “case-by-case basis” with “appropriate security mitigations in place”.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that the app — which boasts more than one billion global users — could be used to hoover up data that is then shared with the Chinese government.
Surveys have estimated that as many as seven million Australians use the app — or about a quarter of the population.
In a security notice outlining the ban, the Attorney-General’s Department said TikTok posed “significant security and privacy risks” stemming from the “extensive collection of user data”.
China condemned the ban, saying it had “lodged stern representations” with Canberra over the move and urging Australia to “provide Chinese companies with a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment”.
“China has always maintained that the issue of data security should not be used as a tool to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power and unreasonably suppress companies from other countries,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.
‘No-brainer’
But Fergus Ryan, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said stripping TikTok from government devices was a “no-brainer”.
“It’s been clear for years that TikTok user data is accessible in China,” Ryan told AFP.
“Banning the use of the app on government phones is a prudent decision given this fact.”
The security concerns are underpinned by a 2017 Chinese law that requires local firms to hand over personal data to the state if it is relevant to national security.
Beijing has denied these reforms pose a threat to ordinary users.
China “has never and will not require companies or individuals to collect or provide data located in a foreign country, in a way that violates local law”, the foreign ministry’s Mao said in March.
‘Rooted in xenophobia’
TikTok has said such bans are “rooted in xenophobia”, while insisting that it is not owned or operated by the Chinese government.
The company’s Australian spokesman Lee Hunter said it would “never” give data to the Chinese government.
“No one is working harder to make sure this would never be a possibility,” he told Australia’s Channel Seven.
But the firm acknowledged in November that some employees in China could access European user data, and in December it said employees had used the data to spy on journalists.
The app is typically used to share short, lighthearted videos and has exploded in popularity in recent years.
Many government departments were initially eager to use TikTok as a way to connect with a younger demographic that is harder to reach through traditional media channels.
New Zealand banned TikTok from government devices in March, saying the risks were “not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment”.
Earlier this year, the Australian government announced it would be stripping Chinese-made CCTV cameras from politicians’ offices due to security concerns.
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Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell the business, the firm said in a statement Tuesday.
The California-based company said last week it was laying off 85% of its employees — around 675 people — to reduce expenses due to its inability to secure sufficient funding.
Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure.
The company had organized the mission with the UK Space Agency and Cornwall Spaceport to launch nine satellites into space.
On Tuesday, the firm said “it commenced a voluntary proceeding under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code… in order to effectuate a sale of the business” and intended to use the process “to maximize value for its business and assets.”
Last month, Virgin Orbit suspended operations for several days while it held funding negotiations and explored strategic opportunities.
But at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, CEO Dan Hart told employees that operations would cease “for the foreseeable future,” US media reported at the time.
“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said in the company statement on Tuesday.
“We believe that the cutting-edge launch technology that this team has created will have wide appeal to buyers as we continue in the process to sell the Company.”
Founded by Branson in 2017, the firm developed “a new and innovative method of launching satellites into orbit,” while “successfully launching 33 satellites into their precise orbit,” Hart added.
Virgin Orbit’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down 3% at 19 cents on Monday evening.
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After an extensive warmup, the dance students break into groups. The most experienced children — from 12 to 16 years old — show off complex jazz-funk and hip-hop routines to songs like K7’s “Come Baby Come.”
Outside the technical college hosting the class, snow falls over the mostly abandoned and heavily damaged city. Russian forces who occupied Izium were driven out in September, but the area is still laden with bombs and other explosives. Most families fled and haven’t returned.
During the occupation, the dance team didn’t practice, and all academic schools were closed. Water and electricity were cut off as Ukraine fought bitterly to win back the city. Remaining families had little to do but wait for the violence to end.
“In the first days of occupation, we spent our time counting the falling shells,” explained Ivan Pustelnik, a 12-year-old dancer in black sweatpants and kneepads. After seven years of training, he is a veteran of Izium’s dance team. “In one day, we counted 400 strikes.”
As the months of war dragged on, families tried to get back to a somewhat normal life, added Olesya Bilyaga, the dance coach.
“We knew Russia was in charge at that time,” she says. “But we always considered ourselves Ukrainian and waited for Ukraine to come back.”
Ukraine did come back, taking this strategic city and restoring a key supply line to their forces on the front lines. Some families began to rebuild their damaged homes.
“After Ukraine returned to Izium, water came back and we could clean the apartment,” said Milana Tytarenko, a 10-year-old student who started dance classes a month ago.
She speaks in a quick, stoic voice and wears a bright pink shirt that says “Chief Happiness Officer” in small, white letters.
“It was hard to live under Russia because our windows were covered with plastic sheets,” she said.
At that time, there was no point in repairing windows that would break again in the next inevitable blast, she said.
But some damage cannot so easily be fixed, added Bilyaga.
“If you watch the children in dance class, you can see which ones stayed during the occupation,” she explained. “You can see the trauma on their faces.”
After her dance class, Tytarenko’s face grows pale as she remembers the time, and those she lost.
“My grandpa. My grandma,” she said. She continues listing relatives as her eyes glaze with tears and her voice fades to silence.
Moving on
Before the war, the Izium dance team was competitive, winning medals in regional, national and international meets. Most of the dancers fled with their families, but some have come back. About 30% of the original members are now dancing again.
“This summer we are going to Odesa,” said Pustelnik, the 12-year-old boy with seven years of training.
He described what he expects to be a dance conference that includes a friendly competition in the southern port city.
“My teacher will choreograph a solo for me,” he adds, appearing just a little bit excited.
Dance classes began again in December, and they are still among the very few activities Izium children can do outside their homes with other children. School is online and almost all community facilities are damaged or destroyed.
A nearly hundred-year-old theater that used to host the dance classes, concerts and a library is now damaged beyond use. Blown out windows are covered with fraying plastic tarps, and shattered glass litters the floor. An explosion of index cards that catalogued the library books is scattered throughout the facility.
The books were packed into a storage room by Russian soldiers, locals say, but they were destroyed when the room caught fire after a bombing.
“We are going to rebuild the theater one day,” said Bilyaga, the dance coach. “But the municipality doesn’t have the money right now.”
For now, dance classes continue at the technical college, which is also starting to host their students in person for some classes, some of the time.
In the class, after the more experienced dancers demonstrate their routines, younger and newer students spread out on the dance floor. In brightly colored leotards, sweats and sneakers, the children learn a combination of stomping, clapping and twisting. Some dance with abandon, others focus on getting the steps right.
The war in Ukraine seems far from over, with both sides gearing up for spring battles after a long, brutal winter. Many people died, and neither side gained much ground.
But dancers in Izium say the fighting is now barely in earshot and they hope it will never return to their city. The nearest battle zone is now at least 60 kilometers away, which for children in Izium, seems far away.
“Not long ago we heard shelling,” said Alona Gurova, an 11-year-old who recently began dancing after a friend told her it was fun. “But it was a long way off.”
Oleksandr Babenko contributed to this report.
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As bloody, stalemated battles in Ukraine grind on, young dancers in the eastern city of Izium are training again, hoping to resume competition despite the destruction of their theater. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Izium, Ukraine. Camera: Yan Boechat.
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