A Big Build-Up to a Big Drop: The Times Square New Year’s Ball
An estimated 1 million people will pack New York City’s Times Square to watch the huge, brilliantly lighted, crystal ball drop to signal the start of the new year. It is an American New Year’s tradition that goes back more than a century. As VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports, lot of work goes into making sure that ball lights up the sky in spectacular fashion, exactly on time.
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Young Libyan Women Play for Equal Rights on the Soccer Field
Young women looking to play the world’s most-popular sport have a place all their own in Libya. An all-girls soccer academy in the capital looks to break societal norms in the Muslim majority country that frown upon women wearing shorts or competing on the same fields as men. But it is not without criticism that coaches turn constructive. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Nigeria Targets 26M People in Yellow Fever Campaign
Nigeria’s campaign to vaccinate more people against yellow fever appears to be making headway. The government is partnering with the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF to immunize more than 26 million people. It is the second phase of Nigeria’s preventive campaign after a yellow fever outbreak in September 2017. Timothy Obiezu has more from Abuja.
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New Year’s Eve Ball Drop to Honor Journalism
A group of journalists will usher in the New Year Monday in New York City’s Times Square as the time-honored tradition of the annual ball drop recognizes journalism and free speech.
Leading American reporters and editors will be on stage just before midnight to push the button that begins the countdown to the New Year.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 53 journalists were killed on the job in 2018 and another 251 were imprisoned around the world.
In another first, New York police will use a drone to monitor the crowds. The camera-carrying drone will be added to the arsenal of more than 1,200 fixed video cameras that will be deployed by the police.
The security plan also includes road closures, thousands of uniformed and plainclothes officers, sharpshooters on rooftops of surrounding buildings and the sealing of manhole covers.
On Sunday, officials did a test run of the 544-kilogram ball sliding down a pole. This year’s ball will feature 2,688 crystal triangles and is backlit with LED lights capable of producing a number of colors and patterns.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that the city expecting “up to 2 million people in Times Square itself” for the celebration.
your ad hereNASA Probe to Make History New Year’s Day
NASA scientists are getting a very special New Year’s Day gift. The New Horizons spacecraft is moving into unexplored space beyond Neptune to investigate objects so far out in our solar system they can hardly be seen by telescope. As VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports, the trip far out in space may help scientists figure out how the solar system was created.
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Tiny Tracking Devices Help Protect Endangered Species From Poaching
A French technology company has created a tiny tracking device to combat poaching. The tracker is smaller, lighter and cheaper than previous methods, such as radio collars. The creators say the technology can also allow those in remote villages to share information on the internet regardless of language or literacy barriers. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Elections, Films Help Effort to Ban Gay Conversion Therapy
Activists urging more states to ban gay conversion therapy for minors are expecting major gains in 2019, thanks to midterm election results and the buzz generated by two well-reviewed films.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have already enacted laws prohibiting licensed therapists from trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation. Leaders of a national campaign to ban the practice are hopeful that at least four more states — Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and New York — will join the ranks in the upcoming legislative sessions.
“We’d be disappointed if we don’t get those this year — they’re overdue,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of the groups campaigning to impose bans in all 50 states.
The campaign has gained momentum in recent months thanks to the national release of two films dramatizing the experiences of youths who went through conversion therapy — The Miseducation of Cameron Post and the higher-profile Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe.
Joining ‘in droves’
Sam Brinton of the Trevor Project, another of groups leading the ban campaign, said thousands of people have signed up to assist the effort since Boy Erased was released on Nov. 2.
“They’re recognizing this is still a problem and joining our campaigns in droves,” said Brinton, a child of Baptist missionary parents who has written about agonizing conversion therapy sessions experienced as an adolescent in Florida.
Brinton recalls being bound to a table by the therapist for applications of ice, heat and electricity.
Just four days after the Boy Erased release came the midterm elections, which altered the partisan political dynamic at several statehouses and boosted prospects for conversion therapy bans.
In three of the states now being targeted, previous efforts to enact a ban gained some bipartisan support but were thwarted by powerful Republicans. In Maine, a bill was vetoed last year by GOP Gov. Paul LePage. In New York and Colorado, bills approved in the Democratic-led lower chambers of the legislature died in the Republican-controlled state senates.
In January, however, a Democrat will succeed LePage as Maine’s governor, and Democrats will have control of both legislative chambers in New York and in Colorado, where gay Gov.-elect Jared Polis is believed eager to sign a ban.
A lead sponsor of the New York ban bill, Democratic Sen. Brad Hoylman, predicted passage would be “straightforward” now that his party controls the Senate.
“For a lot of my colleagues, they consider conversion therapy to be child abuse,” he said.
Outlook in Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, both legislative chambers voted last year in support of a ban but were unable to reconcile different versions of the measure before adjournment. Chances of passage in 2019 are considered strong, and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who was re-elected, is viewed as likely to sign such a measure given his strong support for LGBT rights.
More Republican governors like Baker are getting behind the bans, reflecting activists’ belief that opposition to conversion therapy is increasingly bipartisan.
Bills proposing bans are pending or anticipated in several GOP-controlled legislatures, including Florida, Ohio and Utah. LGBT activists are particularly intrigued by Utah because of the possibility that the powerful Mormon church, which in the past supported conversion therapy, might endorse a bill to ban the practice for minors.
In Florida, the proposed ban faces long odds in the legislature in 2019, but activists note that about 20 Florida cities and counties have passed local bans — more than in any other state.
In Ohio, supporters of a bill that would ban conversion therapy for minors realize they have an uphill fight in a legislature with GOP supermajorities.
Still, Sen. Charleta Tavares, a Columbus Democrat, believes her proposal got “new legs” in November. That’s when the state board overseeing counselors, social workers, and marriage and family therapists warned the 40,000 professionals it regulates that anyone found practicing conversion therapy on LGBT patients could lose his or her license.
“I am glad to see that our state boards are carrying this movement, regardless of the inaction by our General Assembly,” Tavares said.
For now, LGBT activists are not seeking to ban conversion therapy for adults. A gay California legislator, Evan Low, withdrew a bill he introduced earlier this year that would have declared conversion therapy a fraudulent practice and banned commercial use of it for adults and minors. Some opponents had threatened to sue to block the bill, saying it would jeopardize free speech and free exercise of religion.
Model for movie
Low says he may try again after revising his bill. If so, his arguments could be bolstered by input from John Smid, the real-life model for the Boy Erased character who ran a coercive conversion therapy program.
For years, Smid was director of Tennessee-based Love in Action, a ministry that operated such a program. Smid left the organization in 2008. He subsequently renounced the concept that sexual orientation could be changed and apologized for any harm he had caused. In 2014, he married his same-sex partner, with whom he lives in Texas.
Smid recently cooperated with a law firm as it compiled a report about Love in Action for the Washington-based Mattachine Society, which studies past instances of anti-LGBT persecution.
One of the report’s co-authors, Lisa Linsky, said Smid depicted Love in Action as “a complete and utter failure,” with none of its participants actually changing sexual orientation.
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Anti-Government Protests in DR Congo’s North Kivu Province Hamper Response to Ebola Epidemic
The World Health Organization says violent protests in DR Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu Province are hampering efforts to control the spread of the Ebola virus. Protests erupted Thursday in response to the government’s decision to delay presidential elections in the region until March.
The World Health Organization reports anti-government protests in the towns of Beni and Butembo in North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are having a serious impact on the Ebola response operation. It says critical field work is being disrupted; including vaccinations, contact tracing, and checking on people who have been potentially exposed to the deadly virus.
WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic says an Ebola transit center in Beni was attacked, frightening people waiting for test results and the staff caring for them. He tells VOA the violence is an unfortunate setback to Ebola control efforts, which have been progressing.
“All gains that we have made so far in fighting Ebola in North Kivu are at risk because of this violence… And, in recent weeks, we were quite optimistic about Beni city because we have seen some decrease in numbers. However, now again with this surge in violence, we may again lose these gains,” said Jasarevic.
Latest figures from the DRC Ministry of Health put the number of Ebola cases at 593, including 359 deaths — a fatality rate of 60 percent. Another 203 people reportedly have recovered from Ebola.
The outbreak in North Kivu was declared five months ago on August 1. More than 1,000 health workers from the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and other agencies are on the ground trying to stop the disease from spreading.
Jasarevic says a lot of work lies ahead before the epidemic can be brought under control. For that to happen, he says, it is important that health workers have access to the population and that their security is assured.
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Social Media’s Year of Falling From Grace
Silicon Valley has enjoyed years of popularity and growing markets.
But 2018 has been rocky for the industry.
Data breaches, controversies over offensive speech and misinformation — as well as reports of foreign operatives’ use of their services — have left many people skeptical about the benefits of social media, experts say.
Worries about social media in Congress meant tech executives had to testify before committees several times this year.
“2018 has been a challenging year for tech companies and consumers alike,” said Pantas Sutardja, chief executive of LatticeWork Inc., a data storage firm. “Company CEOs being called to Congress for hearings and promising profusely to fix the problems of data breach but still cannot do it.”
WATCH: Social Media’s Year of Falling From Grace
An apology tour
Facebook drew the most scrutiny. The social networking giant endured criticism after revelations that its lax oversight allowed a political consulting firm to exploit millions of its users’ data.
In the spring, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, went on what was dubbed “an apology tour” to tell users that the company would do a better job of protecting their data.
The California firm faced other problems when data breaches at the site compromised user information. Other sharp criticism hit Facebook when false reports on its site sparked violence in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Using social media to sow division
“Are America’s technology companies serving as instruments of freedom?” asked Kevin McCarthy, R-California and the House Majority Leader during a congressional hearing. “Or are they serving as instruments of manipulation used by powerful interests and foreign governments to rob the people of their power, agency, and dignity?”
Adding to concerns, the year saw new revelations of foreign operatives using social media to secretly spread divisive and often bogus messages in the U.S. and worldwide.
“It doesn’t matter to whose benefit they were operating,” said Walt Mossberg, a former tech columnist with the Wall Street Journal. “What bothers people here is that a foreign country, using our social networks, digital products and services that we have come to feel comfortable in … has come in and used that against us.”
Tech workers stand up
In addition to data privacy and misinformation, online speech became a big issue this year. Under pressure, social media companies like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook’s Instagram tightened restrictions on the kinds of speech they tolerate on their sites.
Tech workers pressed managers about their company’s government contracts, and Google workers staged a worldwide walkout over the treatment of female colleagues.
The issue of user data has led some companies such as LatticeWork, a data storage firm, to create new ways for users to protect their data and themselves. Playing off people’s concerns about data, LatticeWorks markets its products as a way to “bring your data home.”
#DeleteFacebook?
What’s unclear however is whether concerns about personal data and tech company decisions will spur users to leave these services. Facebook revelations prompted some like Mossberg to give up Facebook and its other services such as Instagram. He wants federal law to limit U.S. internet firms collection and use of user data.
“Governments and citizens of countries around the world need the right to regulate them without closing down free speech,” he said. “And that’s tricky.”
Some congressional members have vowed to pass a federal data privacy bill in the coming year, something that tech firms say they support.
But whether new regulations build trust in digital services remains to be seen.
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2018: A Year of Climate Catastrophes and Controversies
The five hottest years on record have all taken place this decade, and it looks like 2018 will join their ranks. This year showcased the hazards of climate change, while showing how far the world is from confronting it. VOA’s Steve Baragona looks back on a year of climate catastrophes and controversies.
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Social Media’s Year of Falling From Grace
For firms like Facebook and Google, 2018 brought more scrutiny of their handling of data breaches and online speech. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports that may mean new rules and more regulation in the future.
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Norman Gimbel, Prolific Songwriter, Dies at 91
Norman Gimbel, an Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist, has died at the age of 91.
The prolific songwriter is perhaps best known for writing the lyrics of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and the English lyrics for “The Girl From Ipanema.”
Gimbel, along with his collaborator Charles Fox, won the Song of the Year Grammy in 1973 for Roberta Flack’s version of “Killing Me Softly.” Years later, The Fugees scored a hit with a hip-hop version of the song.
He also penned the English lyrics for one the world’s most recorded tunes, “The Girl From Ipanema,” which won the Grammy for record of the year in 1965.
Gimbel also wrote the English lyrics for Michel Legrande’s music for the film “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” starring Catherine Deneuve.
He shared an Oscar for original song with David Shire for “It Goes Like It Goes,” from the film “Norma Rae, starring Sally Field.
Gimbel and Fox also worked together on Jim Croce’s “I Got A Name,” released the day after Croce died in a plane crash, Sept. 20, 1973.
Gimbel and Fox also shared their talents with television productions, including writing the theme songs for “Happy Days” and “LaVerne and Shirley.”
Gimbel’s son Tony told The Hollywood Reporter that his father died Dec. 19 at his home in Montecito, California.
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Conservationists Continue Fight Against Poachers, Climate Change
The world’s wildlife remains under increasing pressure because of human encroachment, the effects of climate change and — especially — poaching. It is estimated that the global wildlife trafficking market is worth up to $23 billion. Conservationists are fighting back to save some of the most endangered species we have left. Faith Lapidus reports.
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UK Honors Cave Rescue Divers, Twiggy, Monty Python’s Palin
British divers who rescued young soccer players trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand are among those being recognized in Britain’s New Year’s Honors List, along with 1960s model Twiggy and Monty Python star Michael Palin.
Twiggy, a model who shot to stardom during the Beatles era, will become a Dame — the female equivalent of a knight — while Palin, whose second career has seen him become an acclaimed travel documentary maker, receives a knighthood.
Jim Carter, who played the acerbic Mr. Carson in “Downton Abbey,” was also recognized, as was filmmaker Christopher Nolan, director of “Inception” and “Dunkirk,” and best-selling author Philip Pullman, creator of the Dark Materials trilogy.
The list released Friday also named 43 people who responded quickly to the extremist attacks in Manchester and London in 2017.
The honors process starts with nominations from the public, which are winnowed down by committees and sent to the prime minister before the various honors are bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II or senior royals next year.
The 92-year-old monarch has increasingly called on her children and grandchildren to hand out the coveted awards.
Divers
Divers Joshua Bratchley, Lance Corporal Connor Roe and Vernon Unsworth will be made Members of the Order of the British Empire for their roles in the risky Thai cave rescue last summer.
Four other British cave divers will receive civilian gallantry awards for their roles in the thrilling rescue of 12 boys and their coach, who were trapped in the cave for more than two weeks.
Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, the first to reach the stranded children and their coach, have been awarded the George Medal, while Christopher Jewell and Jason Mallinson received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.
Twiggy
Twiggy, whose modeling career lasted for decades, burst on the London Mod scene as one of the original “It” girls. She earned worldwide fame by 17 and went on to a career in theater and films.
“It’s wonderful, but it makes me giggle,” said Twiggy, 69, whose real name is Lesley Lawson. “The hardest thing has been keeping it a secret.”
Michael Palin
Palin’s knighthood recognizes his contribution to travel, culture and geography. He said the news had not sunk in yet but noted “I have been a knight before, in Python films. I have been several knights, including Sir Galahad.”
“I don’t think it will (sink in) until I see the envelopes addressing me as Sir Michael Palin,” said the 75-year-old.
your ad hereStudy: Migrants to Affluent Nations May Be Healthier Than Natives
International migrants who relocate to high-income countries to work, study or join family members are less likely to die prematurely than people born in their new homelands, a research review suggests.
For the analysis, researchers examined data from 96 studies with mortality estimates for more than 15.2 million international migrants in 92 countries.
Overall, migrants were about 30 percent less likely to experience premature death from all causes than other people in the general populations of the countries where they moved, the analysis found.
“Migrants to rich countries have lower rates of death due to most major disease areas compared to the general population,” said lead study author Robert Aldridge of University College London in the U.K.
“We know from U.N. data that the majority of migrants to these rich countries tend to be moving for work or study,” Aldridge said by email.
About 258 million people worldwide reside outside their countries of birth, accounting for more than 3 percent of the world’s population, researchers note in The Lancet.
In many high-income nations, public perception that migrants place an undue burden on society in general and on health resources in particular has led to restrictions on migrants’ access to care, the authors write.
But the current analysis suggests that, if anything, migrants may use fewer health resources than native-born residents, Aldridge said by email.
Diseases, external causes
The only causes of death that were more common among migrants were infectious disease and external causes like homicide, the analysis found.
Immigrants were 28 percent more likely to die of external causes and more than twice as likely to die of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV than people who were born in their adopted homelands.
However, immigrants were less likely to die from a variety of other causes including heart disease, digestive disorders, endocrine or circulatory problems, mental health disorders, cancers or diseases of the respiratory or nervous systems.
Both men and women appeared to have a longevity advantage after migration. Male immigrants were 28 percent less likely to die prematurely from all causes than native-born men, while female immigrants were 25 percent less likely to die prematurely.
The vast majority of the studies in the analysis focused on migration to high-income countries, not on refugees or asylum seekers. Researchers also excluded studies from their analysis that focused just on migrants with serious or chronic health problems or just on maternal and infant health outcomes.
It may be, however, that migrants in the study were healthier than people in their native countries who didn’t migrate, said Anjali Borhade, director of the Disha Foundation in Gurugram, India, and co-author of an editorial accompanying the study.
“Educated migrants have better sources of income and being healthy doesn’t affect their choice to migrate,” Borhade said by email. “Also, educated migrants have better living or working conditions and their health status is similar to the host populations, both for risks as well as outcomes.”
Infectious disease and homicide deaths may be higher among migrants than other people in the general population because of unfavorable conditions immigrants face at work and in their new communities, Borhade added. That’s because many young, relatively healthy migrants may take low-paying and dangerous jobs and only be able to afford housing in subpar conditions.
“Hazardous jobs and low living conditions increase their risk of dying due to external causes and infectious diseases,” Borhade said. “However, since migrants are healthier to begin with, their mortality due to other causes might be lower.”
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Revered Israeli Writer Amos Oz Dies at 79
Renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz, a passionate peace advocate whose stirring memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness became a worldwide bestseller, died Friday at age 79, his daughter said.
Fania Oz-Salzberger said on Twitter that her father had died and offered thanks to “those who loved him.”
“My beloved father, Amos Oz, a wonderful family man, an author, a man of peace and moderation, died today peacefully after a short battle with cancer,” she wrote.
Tributes poured in for Oz, including from Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, who called his death “a loss for us all and for the world.”
While Oz’s writing is widely acclaimed, he is perhaps equally known as one of the earliest and most forceful critics of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands captured in the Six-Day War of 1967.
In recent years, Oz spoke out against the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shunning official Israeli functions abroad in protest at what he called the “growing extremism” of his country’s government.
Netanyahu on Friday celebrated Oz as “among the greatest writers from the state of Israel.”
“Despite our diverging views on numerous issues, I have deeply appreciated his contribution to the Hebrew language and the revival of Hebrew literature,” the premier said in a statement released by his office.
Oz was described as a “literary great” by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.
“A tale of love and light and henceforth, great darkness,” he wrote on Twitter.
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Zuckerberg Sees ‘Progress’ for Facebook After Tumultuous Year
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that the world’s biggest social network has “fundamentally” changed to focus on securing its systems against manipulation and misinformation.
Capping a tumultuous year marked by data protection scandals and government probes, Zuckerberg said he was “proud of the progress we’ve made” in addressing Facebook’s problems.
“For 2018, my personal challenge has been to focus on addressing some of the most important issues facing our community — whether that’s preventing election interference, stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation, making sure people have control of their information, and ensuring our services improve people’s well-being,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“We’re a very different company today than we were in 2016, or even a year ago. We’ve fundamentally altered our DNA to focus more on preventing harm in all our services, and we’ve systematically shifted a large portion of our company to work on preventing harm.”
He said Facebook now has more than 30,000 people “working on safety” and invests billions of dollars in security.
Misuse of data
Zuckerberg’s comments come at the close of a year when Facebook was roiled by revelations about the misuse of personal data by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 U.S. election and on data sharing with business partners.
But he said the questions around Facebook are “more than a one-year challenge” and that the California giant was in the process of “multiyear plans to overhaul our systems.”
“In the past we didn’t focus as much on these issues as we needed to, but we’re now much more proactive,” he said.
The comments follow a message from Zuckerberg in January, before many of Facebook’s troubles emerged, when he outlined his goals of stemming abuse and hate and foreign interference, among other things, on the network used by more than 2 billion people.
“My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues,” Zuckerberg said in January.
Artificial intelligence
In Friday’s message, Zuckerberg enumerated a series of steps taken over the past year, including fact-checking partnerships, advertising transparency and artificial intelligence to remove harmful content.
He added that Facebook’s systems were also being retooled with the aim of helping “improve people’s well-being,” based on research it conducted.
The research, he said, “found that when people use the internet to interact with others, that’s associated with all the positive aspects of well-being. … But when you just use the internet to consume content passively, that’s not associated with those same positive effects.”
One of the changes aims to reduce “viral videos” that are shared across the Facebook platform.
“These changes intentionally reduced engagement and revenue in the near term, although we believe they’ll help us build a stronger community and business over the long term,” Zuckerberg said.
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NASA Spaceship Closes in on Distant World
NASA’s unmanned New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on its historic New Year’s flyby target, the most distant world ever studied, a frozen relic of the solar system some 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away.
The cosmic object, known as Ultima Thule, is about the size of the U.S. capital, Washington, and orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond the dwarf planet, Pluto.
The spacecraft’s closest approach to this primitive space rock comes Jan. 1 at 12:33 a.m. ET (0533 GMT).
Until then, what it looks like and what it is made of remain a mystery.
“This is a time capsule that is going to take us back four and a half billion years to the birth of the solar system,” said Alan Stern, the principal investigator on the project at the Southwest Research Institute, during a press briefing Friday.
A camera on board the New Horizons spacecraft is currently zooming in on Ultima Thule, so scientists can get a better sense of its shape and configuration — whether it is one object or several.
“We’ve never been to a type of object like this before,” said Kelsi Singer, New Horizons co-investigator at the Southwest Research Institute.
About a day prior, “we will start to see what the actual shape of the object is,” she said.
The spacecraft entered “encounter mode” on Dec. 26, and is “very healthy,” added Stern.
Communicating with a spacecraft that is so far away takes six hours and eight minutes each way — or about 12 hours and 15 minutes round trip.
New Horizons’ eagerly awaited “phone home” command, indicating if it survived the close pass — at a distance of just 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) — is expected Jan. 1 at 10:29 a.m. (1529 GMT).
Until then, the New Horizons spacecraft continues speeding through space at 32,000 miles (51,500 kilometers) per hour, traveling almost a million miles per day.
And NASA scientists are eagerly awaiting the first images.
“Because this is a flyby mission, we only have one chance to get it right,” said Alice Bowman, missions operations manager for New Horizons.
The spacecraft, which launched in 2006, captured stunning images of Pluto when it flew by the dwarf planet in 2015.
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50th-Anniversary Woodstock Event Set for 2019
Fifty years after the Woodstock music festival became one of the watersheds of hippie counterculture, an anniversary event will take place in August 2019 on the same field north of New York City.
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts announced a three-day festival of “music, culture and community” that will celebrate “the golden anniversary at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock festival.”
The Bethel Woods Center, a nonprofit that now owns the 37-acre (15-hectare) field that was the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, said in a Facebook posting Thursday that the Aug. 16-18 festival will be a “pan-generational event.”
It will feature live performances from prominent and emerging artists across multiple genres and decades, as well as talks from leading futurists and tech experts. The festival is a joint venture with concert promoters Live Nation.
Details of performers, tickets and other participants will be announced at a later date, the Bethel Woods Center said.
The August 1969 Woodstock festival, billed as “three days of peace and music,” is regarded as one of the pivotal moments in music history and 1960s counterculture.
Over three sometimes-rainy days, more than 30 acts — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Band, and the Grateful Dead — performed around the clock to a 400,000-strong audience, most of whom watched for free and camped onsite in the mud. The festival was documented in the 1970 film Woodstock, which won an Oscar.
Although it was known as Woodstock, the festival actually took place in Bethel, some 70 miles (110 km) south of the village of Woodstock in upstate New York. Bethel is 90 miles (144 km) north of New York City.
“Fifty years ago, people gathered peacefully on our site inspired to change the world through music,” Darlene Fedun, chief executive of the Bethel Woods Center, said in a statement announcing the 50th-anniversary event.
“We remain committed to preserving this rich history and spirit, and to educating and inspiring new generations to contribute positively to the world through music, culture, and community,” Fedun added.
The Bethel Woods festival is not affiliated with Michael Lang, a promoter of the 1969 festival, who has also spoken of plans to organize a 50th-anniversary event but has yet to make any announcement. Woodstock anniversary festivals were also held in 1994, 1998 and 1999.
Many of the 1969 Woodstock artists are now dead. Surviving musicians who are still performing into their 70s include Joan Baez, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, and David Crosby, Neil Young, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
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US Army Looks for a Few Good Robots, Sparks Industry Battle
The U.S. Army is looking for a few good robots. Not to fight — not yet, at least — but to help the men and women who do.
These robots aren’t taking up arms, but the companies making them have waged a different kind of battle. At stake is a contract worth almost half a billion dollars for 3,000 backpack-sized robots that can defuse bombs and scout enemy positions. Competition for the work has spilled over into Congress and federal court.
The project and others like it could someday help troops “look around the corner, over the next hillside and let the robot be in harm’s way and let the robot get shot,” said Paul Scharre, a military technology expert at the Center for a New American Security.
The big fight over small robots opens a window into the intersection of technology and national defense and shows how fear that China could surpass the U.S. drives even small tech startups to play geopolitics to outmaneuver rivals. It also raises questions about whether defense technology should be sourced solely to American companies to avoid the risk of tampering by foreign adversaries.
Regardless of which companies prevail, the competition foreshadows a future in which robots, which are already familiar military tools, become even more common. The Army’s immediate plans alone envision a new fleet of 5,000 ground robots of varying sizes and levels of autonomy. The Marines, Navy and Air Force are making similar investments.
“My personal estimate is that robots will play a significant role in combat inside of a decade or a decade and a half,” the chief of the Army, Gen. Mark Milley, said in May at a Senate hearing where he appealed for more money to modernize the force.
Milley warned that adversaries like China and Russia “are investing heavily and very quickly” in the use of aerial, sea and ground robots. And now, he added, “we are doing the same.”
Such a shift will be a “huge game-changer for combat,” said Scharre, who credits Milley’s leadership for the push.
The promise of such big Pentagon investments in robotics has been a boon for U.S. defense contractors and technology startups. But the situation is murkier for firms with foreign ties.
Concerns that popular commercial drones made by Chinese company DJI could be vulnerable to spying led the Army to ban their use by soldiers in 2017. And in August, the Pentagon published a report that said China is conducting espionage to acquire foreign military technologies — sometimes by using students or researchers as “procurement agents and intermediaries.” At a December defense expo in Egypt, some U.S. firms spotted what they viewed as Chinese knock-offs of their robots.
The China fears came to a head in a bitter competition between Israeli firm Roboteam and Massachusetts-based Endeavor Robotics over a series of major contracts to build the Army’s next generation of ground robots. Those machines will be designed to be smarter and easier to deploy than the remote-controlled rovers that have helped troops disable bombs for more than 15 years.
The biggest contract — worth $429 million — calls for mass producing 25-pound robots that are light, easily maneuverable and can be “carried by infantry for long distances without taxing the soldier,” said Bryan McVeigh, project manager for force projection at the Army’s research and contracting center in Warren, Michigan.
Other bulkier prototypes are tank-sized unmanned supply vehicles that have been tested in recent weeks in the rough and wintry terrain outside Fort Drum, New York.
A third $100 million contract — won by Endeavor in late 2017 — is for a midsized reconnaissance and bomb-disabling robot nicknamed the Centaur.
The competition escalated into a legal fight when Roboteam accused Endeavor, a spinoff of iRobot, which makes Roomba vacuum cleaners, of dooming its prospects for those contracts by hiring a lobbying firm that spread false information to politicians about the Israeli firm’s Chinese investors.
A federal judge dismissed Roboteam’s lawsuit in April.
“They alleged that we had somehow defamed them,” said Endeavor CEO Sean Bielat, a former Marine who twice ran for Congress as a Republican. “What we had done was taken publicly available documents and presented them to members of Congress because we think there’s a reason to be concerned about Chinese influence on defense technologies.”
The lobbying firm, Boston-based Sachem Strategies, circulated a memo to members of the House Armed Services Committee. Taking up Endeavor’s cause was Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat — and, like Bielat, a Marine veteran — who wrote a letter to a top military official in December 2016 urging the Army to “examine the evidence of Chinese influence” before awarding the robot contracts.
Six other lawmakers later raised similar concerns.
Roboteam CEO Elad Levy declined to comment on the dispute but said the firm is still “working very closely with U.S. forces,” including the Air Force, and other countries. But it’s no longer in the running for the lucrative Army opportunities.
Endeavor is. Looking something like a miniature forklift on tank treads, its prototype called the Scorpion has been zipping around a test track behind an office park in a Boston suburb.
The only other finalist is just 20 miles away at the former Massachusetts headquarters of Foster-Miller, now a part of British defense contractor Qinetiq. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The contract is expected to be awarded in early 2019.
Both Endeavor and Qinetiq have strong track records with the U.S. military, having supplied it with its earlier generation of ground robots such as Endeavor’s Packbot and Qinetiq’s Talon and Dragon Runner.
After hiding the Scorpion behind a shroud at a recent Army conference, Bielat and engineers at Endeavor showed it for the first time publicly to The Associated Press in November. Using a touchscreen controller that taps into the machine’s multiple cameras, an engineer navigated it through tunnels, over a playground-like structure and through an icy pool of water, and used its grabber to pick up objects.
It’s a smaller version of its predecessor, the Packbot, which was first used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002 and later became one of soldiers’ essential tools for safely disabling improvised explosives in Iraq. Bielat said the newer Scorpion and Centaur robots are designed to be easier for the average soldier to use quickly without advanced technical training.
“Their primary job is to be a rifle squad member,” Bielat said. “They don’t have time to mess with the robot. They’re going to demand greater levels of autonomy.”
It will be a while, however, before any of these robots become fully autonomous. The Defense Department is cautious about developing battlefield machines that make their own decisions. That sets the U.S. apart from efforts by China and Russia to design artificially intelligent warfighting arsenals.
A November report from the Congressional Research Service said that despite the Pentagon’s “insistence” that a human must always be in the loop, the military could soon feel compelled to develop fully autonomous systems if rivals do the same. Or, as with drones, humans will still pull the trigger, but a far-away robot will lob the bombs.
Said P.W. Singer, a strategist for the New America Foundation think tank: “China has showed off armed ones. Russia has showed them off. It’s coming.”
your ad hereCybersecurity Law: Vietnam Will Censor Internet, Not Close Websites
Expect to get caught if you post anti-government material on the internet in Vietnam or take a phishing trip. From 2019 authorities can build evidence against you from material provided by email services and social media networks including Facebook. Yet the country, mindful of its role in the emerging digital economy, won’t close down websites the way China does.
Vietnam has long walked a thin line between a free internet as part of its economic growth and resistance against what market research firm IDC’s country manager Lam Nguyen calls “digital disasters.” The country is getting testier toward online dissent at the same time.
A draft Cybersecurity Law decree to take effect Jan. 1 after 18 months in the making will help the communist government reach these goals by ordering service providers to do some of its surveillance work.
Despite objections from Google and Facebook, global social media as well as email and e-commerce providers may be asked to store data in Vietnam, according to the Cybersecurity Law. Alternately, they can self-censor, turn over customer profiles and delete certain content, Nguyen said.
“It’s like saying OK, as an online service provider with Vietnam users, you do collect data about such users and their online activities, but you are letting users use your platform or services for unlawful activities, so please come to the front of the line (so) that we can keep an eye out for you,” said Yee Chung Seck, partner with the Baker McKenzie law firm in Ho Chi Minh City.
Catching up in cybersecurity
According to a United Nations index, Vietnam ranked 101 out of 165 countries in exposure to cyberattacks.
“Vietnam has been historically weak when in it comes to cybersecurity,” cyber intelligence analyst Emilio Iasiello wrote in a commentary for the Cyber Research Databank.
Domestic websites were hit by more than 6,500 malware or phishing attacks in the first eight months of 2018, Viet Nam News reports.
Vietnam does not block the websites of foreign internet services that could spread objectionable content. Vietnam, like much of Asia, is trying to develop a digital economy, but unlike China it lacks easy-to-control homegrown alternates to the major Silicon Valley internet firms.
“Obviously, the business and user communities are more likely hoping to avoid censorship of the internet outright, due to the growing digital commerce economy and also wanting a platform where freedom of expressions and opinions are allowed,” Nguyen said.
A digital economy gives Vietnam an opportunity to resolve “big issues in its economic development,” the deputy minister of industry and trade was quoted saying in June. The manufacturing-reliant economy has grown 6 to 7 percent per year since 2012.
About 70 percent of Vietnam’s 92 million people use the internet, with 53 million on social media sites.
Protest from multinational internet content providers
After Vietnam’s National Assembly approved the Cybersecurity Law in June, 17 U.S. congressional representatives sent a letter to Google and Facebook. They urged both to avoid storing data in Vietnam, to establish “transparent guidelines” on content removal and to publish the number of requests for removal.
Facebook, Google and other foreign internet companies said earlier this month via a lobbying group that requirements to localize data would hobble investment and economic growth in Vietnam. The law also requires firms with more than 10,000 local users to set up local representative offices.
Facebook said for this report it “remains committed to its community in Vietnam and in helping Vietnamese businesses grow at home and abroad.”
Internet providers also worry the cybersecurity law gives “too much power” to Vietnam’s police ministry and lacks “due process,” Nguyen said. Authorities, they fear, could “seize customer data” and expose a provider’s users, partners or employees to arrest, which goes against privacy protection policies, he said.
Fear among online activists
Vietnam is looking to the cybersecurity law as well to control public criticism of government activity, activist bloggers believe. A string of Vietnamese bloggers was arrested in 2016 and 2017.
Authorities will be able to collect user names, profiles and data on their friends, media reports and analysts say.
“This law threatens and further curbs freedom to information, infringes (on) personal privacy, and will be certainly used as a tool to give more power to police force, which violates rights, even on behalf of the court on judging on the use of internet,” Hanoi-based internet blogger and human rights activist Nguyen Lan Thang said.
Vietnamese activists leaned heavily on internet media to spread information about what they considered slow government reaction to a mass fish die-off in 2016. They use it now to decry corruption.
“The Cybersecurity Law will have a huge impact on Vietnam’s dissidents and online activists. It will be a tool to silence dissidents, social commentators, and activists in general,” said Vu Quoc Ngu, a writer in Hanoi and director of the non-profit Defend the Defender.
Vu Pham, Michelle Quinn of VOA contributed to this report.
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Instagram ‘Back to Normal’ After Bug Triggers Temporary Change to Feed
Facebook Inc’s photo-sharing social network Instagram said on Thursday it has fixed a bug that led to a temporary change in the appearance of its feed for a large number of users.
The bug led to a small test being distributed widely, the company said. As part of the test, some users had to tap and swipe their feed horizontally to view new posts, similar to its Stories feature.
The momentary change sparked a widespread outrage among users on Twitter, with several comparing it to Snapchat’s unpopular redesign.
“The Instagram update is so trash it’s worse than the Snapchat update,” @samfloresxo tweeted.
The redesigned Snapchat app has struggled to attract more users since its roll-out last year and newer versions have been criticized for being too confusing.
In response to a tweet, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri apologized for the confusion and said, “that was supposed to be a very small test that went broad by accident.”
“We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal,” Instagram said in an emailed statement.
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Pluto Explorer Ushering in New Year at More Distant World
The spacecraft team that brought us close-ups of Pluto will ring in the new year by exploring an even more distant and mysterious world.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will zip past the scrawny, icy object nicknamed Ultima Thule soon after the stroke of midnight.
One billion miles beyond Pluto and an astounding 4 billion miles from Earth (1.6 billion kilometers and 6.4 billion kilometers), Ultima Thule will be the farthest world ever explored by humankind. That’s what makes this deep-freeze target so enticing; it’s a preserved relic dating all the way back to our solar system’s origin 4.5 billion years ago. No spacecraft has visited anything so primitive.
“What could be more exciting than that?” said project scientist Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins University, part of the New Horizons team.
Lead scientist Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, expects the New Year’s encounter to be riskier and more difficult than the rendezvous with Pluto: The spacecraft is older, the target is smaller, the flyby is closer and the distance from us is greater.
New horizons
NASA launched the spacecraft in 2006; it’s about the size of a baby grand piano. It flew past Pluto in 2015, providing the first close-up views of the dwarf planet. With the wildly successful flyby behind them, mission planners won an extension from NASA and set their sights on a destination deep inside the Kuiper Belt. As distant as it is, Pluto is barely in the Kuiper Belt, the so-called Twilight Zone stretching beyond Neptune. Ultima Thule is in the Twilight Zone’s heart.
Ultima Thule
This Kuiper Belt object was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. Officially known as 2014 MU69, it got the nickname Ultima Thule in an online vote. In classic and medieval literature, Thule was the most distant, northernmost place beyond the known world. When New Horizons first glimpsed the rocky iceball in August it was just a dot. Good close-up pictures should be available the day after the flyby.
Are we there yet ?
New Horizons will make its closest approach in the wee hours of Jan. 1 — 12:33 a.m. EST. The spacecraft will zoom within 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of Ultima Thule, its seven science instruments going full blast. The coast should be clear: Scientists have yet to find any rings or moons around it that could batter the spacecraft. New Horizons hurtles through space at 31,500 mph (50,700 kph), and even something as minuscule as a grain of rice could demolish it. “There’s some danger and some suspense,” Stern said at a fall meeting of astronomers. It will take about 10 hours to get confirmation that the spacecraft completed — and survived — the encounter.
Possibly twins
Scientists speculate Ultima Thule could be two objects closely orbiting one another. If a solo act, it’s likely 20 miles (32 kilometers) long at most. Envision a baked potato. “Cucumber, whatever. Pick your favorite vegetable,” said astronomer Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins. It could even be two bodies connected by a neck. If twins, each could be 9 miles to 12 miles (15 kilometers to 20 kilometers) in diameter.
Mapping mission
Scientists will map Ultima Thule every possible way. They anticipate impact craters, possibly also pits and sinkholes, but its surface also could prove to be smooth. As for color, Ultima Thule should be darker than coal, burned by eons of cosmic rays, with a reddish hue. Nothing is certain, though, including its orbit, so big that it takes almost 300 of our Earth years to circle the sun. Scientists say they know just enough about the orbit to intercept it.
Comparing flybys
New Horizons will get considerably closer to Ultima Thule than it did to Pluto: 2,220 miles versus 7,770 miles (3,500 kilometers vs. 12,500 kilometers). At the same time, Ultima Thule is 100 times smaller than Pluto and therefore harder to track, making everything more challenging. It took 4 { hours, each way, for flight controllers at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, to get a message to or from New Horizons at Pluto. Compare that with more than six hours at Ultima Thule.
What’s next
It will take almost two years for New Horizons to beam back all its data on Ultima Thule. A flyby of an even more distant world could be in the offing in the 2020s, if NASA approves another mission extension and the spacecraft remains healthy. At the very least, the nuclear-powered New Horizons will continue to observe objects from afar, as it pushes deeper into the Kuiper Belt. There are countless objects out there, waiting to be explored.
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Tourism Group Gives Funds to Reopen Liberty Bell for 3 Days
Tourists in Philadelphia for the holidays will be able to see the Liberty Bell this weekend despite a partial federal government shutdown that closed many national parks throughout the country.
Most of the buildings in the Independence National Historic Park including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center have been shuttered since Saturday morning because of the partial shutdown.
That was bad news for tourists and the city of Philadelphia, which sees the second highest attendance at the Liberty Bell during the weekend before New Year’s Day annually.
Officials at VISIT PHILADELPHIA, a tourism and marketing group, say they’re giving the park $32,000 to open Friday, Saturday and Sunday to let in the estimated 25,000 people who had planned to see the Liberty Bell this weekend.
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