Facebook Takes Down Vast Iran-Led Manipulation Campaign
Facebook said Thursday it took down hundreds of “inauthentic” accounts from Iran that were part of a vast manipulation campaign operating in more than 20 countries.
The world’s biggest social network said it removed 783 pages, groups and accounts “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran.”
The pages were part of a campaign to promote Iranian interests in various countries by creating fake identities as residents of those nations, according to a statement by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook.
The announcement was the latest by Facebook as it seeks to stamp out efforts by state actors and others to manipulate the social network using fraudulent accounts.
“We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Gleicher said.
“We’re taking down these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they post. In this case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.”
The operators “typically represented themselves as locals, often using fake accounts, and posted news stories on current events,” including “commentary that repurposed Iranian state media’s reporting on topics like Israel-Palestine relations and the conflicts in Syria and Yemen,” Gleicher said.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review linked these accounts to Iran.”
The operation dating back to as early as 2010 had 262 pages, 356 accounts, and three groups on Facebook, as well as 162 accounts on Instagram and were followed by about two million users.
Facebook said the fake accounts were part of an influence campaign that operated in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, U.S., and Yemen.
Facebook began looking into these kinds of activities after revelations of Russian influence campaigns during the 2016 U.S. election, aimed at sowing discord.
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US Researchers Looking For Long Lasting Ebola Vaccine
The World Health Organization reports that more than 700 people have been sickened with Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And now, neighboring countries of South Sudan and Rwanda are bracing for the virus to spread. But, half a world away, U.S. researchers are hoping to develop a new, long-lasting vaccine against Ebola. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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King Tut Tomb Restored to Prevent Damage From Visitors
The tomb of Egypt’s famed boy pharaoh, King Tutankhamun, has undergone restoration to help minimize damage by tourists.
The work, done by the Getty Conservation Institute after years of research and officially presented Thursday, aims to minimize scratches, dust damage and microbiological growth from breath and humidity brought in by tourists.
The nearly intact tomb of King Tut, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, located on the west bank of the Nile River in Luxor.
For many, King Tut embodies ancient Egypt’s glory, because his tomb was packed with the glittering wealth of the 18th Dynasty, which ruled from 1569 to 1315 B.C.
your ad hereNearly Half of US Adults Have Heart or Blood Vessel Disease
A new report estimates that nearly half of all U.S. adults have some form of heart or blood vessel disease, a medical milestone that’s mostly due to recent guidelines that expanded how many people have high blood pressure.
The American Heart Association said Thursday that more than 121 million adults had cardiovascular disease in 2016. Taking out those with only high blood pressure leaves 24 million, or 9 percent of adults, who have other forms of disease such as heart failure or clogged arteries.
Measuring the burden of diseases shows areas that need to improve, the heart association’s chief science and medical officer, Dr. Mariell Jessup, said in a statement.
High blood pressure, which had long been defined as a top reading of at least 140 or a bottom one of 90, dropped to 130 over 80 under guidelines adopted in 2017. It raises the risk for heart attacks, strokes and many other problems, and only about half of those with the condition have it under control.
Being diagnosed with high blood pressure doesn’t necessarily mean you need medication right away; the first step is aiming for a healthier lifestyle, even for those who are prescribed medicine. Poor diets, lack of exercise and other bad habits cause 90 percent of high blood pressure.
The report is an annual statistics update by the heart association, the National Institutes of Health and others.
Other highlights:
Heart and blood vessel disease is linked to 1 of every 3 deaths in the United States and kills more Americans than all forms of cancer and respiratory diseases like pneumonia combined.
Certain groups have higher rates than others; 57 percent of black women and 60 percent of black males.
Coronary heart disease, or clogged or hardened arteries, caused 43 percent of cardiovascular deaths in the U.S., followed by stroke (17 percent), high blood pressure (10 percent) and heart failure (9 percent).
Apple Busts Facebook for Distributing Data-Sucking App
Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use.
In doing so, Apple closed off Facebook’s efforts to sidestep Apple’s app store and its tighter rules on privacy.
The tech blog TechCrunch reported late Tuesday that Facebook paid people about $20 a month to install and use the Facebook Research app. While Facebook says this was done with permission, the company has a history of defining “permission” loosely and obscuring what data it collects.
“I don’t think they make it very clear to users precisely what level of access they were granting when they gave permission,” mobile app security researcher Will Strafach said Wednesday. “There is simply no way the users understood this.”
He said Facebook’s claim that users understood the scope of data collection was “muddying the waters.”
Facebook says fewer than 5 percent of the app’s users were teens and they had parental permission. Nonetheless, the revelation is yet another blemish on Facebook’s track record on privacy and could invite further regulatory scrutiny.
And it comes less than a week after court documents revealed that Facebook allowed children to rack up huge bills on digital games and that it had rejected recommendations for addressing it for fear of hurting revenue growth.
For now, the app appears to be available for Android phones, though not through Google’s main app store. Google had no comment Wednesday.
Apple said Facebook was distributing Facebook Research through an internal-distribution mechanism meant for company employees, not outsiders. Apple has revoked that capability.
TechCrunch reported separately Wednesday that Google was using the same privileged access to Apple’s mobile operating system for a market-research app, Screenwise Meter. Asked about it by The Associated Press, Google said it had disabled the app on Apple devices and apologized for its “mistake.”
The company said Google had always been “upfront with users” about how it used data collected by the app, which offered users points that could be accrued for gift cards. In contrast to the Facebook Research app, Google said its Screenwise Meter app never asked users to let the company circumvent network encryption, meaning it is far less intrusive.
Facebook is still permitted to distribute apps through Apple’s app store, though such apps are reviewed by Apple ahead of time. And Apple’s move Wednesday restricts Facebook’s ability to test those apps — including core apps such as Facebook and Instagram — before they are released through the app store.
Facebook previously pulled an app called Onavo Protect from Apple’s app store because of its stricter requirements. But Strafach, who dismantled the Facebook Research app on TechCrunch’s behalf, told the AP that it was mostly Onavo repackaged and rebranded, as the two apps shared about 98 percent of their code.
As of Wednesday, a disclosure form on Betabound, one of the services that distributed Facebook Research, informed prospective users that by installing Facebook Research, they are letting Facebook collect a range of data. This includes information on apps users have installed, when they use them and what they do on them. Information is also collected on how other people interact with users and their content within those apps, according to the disclosure.
Betabound warned that Facebook may collect information even when an app or web browser uses encryption.
Strafach said emails, social media activities, private messages and just about anything else could be intercepted. He said the only data absolutely safe from snooping are from services, such as Signal and Apple’s iMessages, that fully encrypt messages prior to transmission, a method known as end-to-end encryption.
Strafach, who is CEO of Guardian Mobile Firewall, said he was aghast to discover Facebook caught red-handed violating Apple’s trust.
He said such traffic-capturing tools are only supposed to be for trusted partners to use internally. Instead, he said Facebook was scooping up all incoming and outgoing data traffic from unwitting members of the public — in an app geared toward teenagers.
“This is very flagrantly not allowed,” Strafach said. “It’s mind-blowing how defiant Facebook was acting.”
your ad hereChicago Police Still Looking for Video of Attack on Actor
Detectives have recovered more surveillance footage of “Empire” actor Jussie Smullett walking in downtown Chicago before and after he says he was attacked by two masked men, but they still haven’t found video of the attack, a police spokesman said Thursday.
Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said there are hundreds of surveillance cameras in the area, which is home to many high-end hotels and restaurants, and that the hope is that detectives will be able to piece them together to capture most if not all of Smollett’s trip from a Subway restaurant to his apartment at about 2 a.m. Tuesday, when Smollett said the attack occurred.
Guglielmi said piecing together the private and public surveillance video is tedious work that is made more difficult by the fact that the time stamps on various cameras may not be in sync, meaning detectives have to figure out the exact times of events.
“It’s like putting together a puzzle,” he said.
Guglielmi also said police have recovered video that shows the 36-year-old actor walking into his apartment, but that he hasn’t seen it and doesn’t know if Smollett appeared to be in any distress when he arrived home.
He said that Smollett and his manager told detectives they were talking on the phone at the time of the attack, but that Smollett declined to turn over his phone records to the detectives, who routinely ask for such information during criminal investigations.
Meanwhile, police are hoping to identify and talk to the two people who were walking in the area at the time of the attack and whose images police released to the public late Wednesday. Guglielmi stressed that the people are not considered suspects and that police want to question them because they were in the vicinity and might have information that could be useful to the investigation.
Smollett, who is black and gay and plays the gay character Jamal Lyon on the hit Fox television show, said the men beat him, subjected him to racist and homophobic insults, threw an “unknown chemical substance” on him and put a thin rope around his neck before fleeing. Smollett returned to his apartment afterward and his manager called police from there about 40 minutes later, Guglielmi said.
When officers arrived, the 36-year-old actor had cuts and scrapes on his face and the rope around his neck that he said had been put there by his assailant. According to Guglielmi, Smollett later went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital after police advised him to do so.
Reports of the attack drew a flood of outrage and support for Smollett on social media. Some of the outrage stemmed from Smollett’s account to detectives that his attackers yelled that he was in “MAGA country,” an apparent reference to the Trump campaign’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
The FBI is investigating a threatening letter targeting Smollett that was sent last week to the Fox studio in Chicago where “Empire” is filmed, Guglielmi said. The FBI has declined to comment on the investigation.
Guglielmi said Wednesday that detectives, who are investigating the allegations as a possible hate crime, have looked at hundreds of hours of surveillance video from that section of the Streeterville neighborhood. But he said they still needed to collect and view more in the hopes of finding footage of the attack or of the men who match Smollett’s description of the suspects.
In addition to his acting career, Smollett has a music career and is a noted activist, particularly on LBGTQ issues. Smollett’s representative said his concert scheduled for Saturday in Los Angeles will go on as planned. Smollett has not spoken publicly about the attack, but his representative told The Associated Press on Wednesday night that the actor “is at home and recovering.”
Now in its fifth season, the hourlong drama “Empire” follows an African-American family as they navigate the ups and downs of the record industry. Smollett’s character is the middle son of Empire Entertainment founder Lucious Lyon and Cookie Lyon, played by Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, respectively.
Chicago has one of the nation’s most sophisticated and extensive video surveillance systems, including thousands of cameras on street poles, skyscrapers, buses and in train tunnels.
Police say the cameras have helped them make thousands of arrests. In one of the best-known examples of the department’s use of the cameras, investigators in 2009 were able to recreate a school board president’s 20-minute drive through the city, singling out his car on a succession of surveillance cameras to help them determine that he committed suicide and had not been followed and killed by someone else, as his friends speculated.
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WHO: Cervical Cancer Preventable, Can Be Eliminated
Ahead of World Cancer Day (February 4), the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for accelerated action to eliminate cervical cancer, a preventable disease that kills more than 300,000 women every year.
Cervical cancer ranks among leading causes of death for women worldwide. Nine in 10 deaths occur in poor and middle-income countries. The disease is caused by the human papillomavirus and is transmitted through sexual contact.
The WHO says cervical cancer can be cured if the infection is diagnosed and treated at an early stage. But, as with some ailments in life, prevention is the best cure. And, in the case of cervical cancer, an effective vaccine is available that can prevent the disease when given to girls between the ages of nine and 14.
The WHO’s Immunization Program technical officer, Paul Bloem, says the vaccine is widely administered in rich countries. While countries with the highest burden of cervical cancer in Africa and Asia are lagging behind, he says progress is being made.
“In countries, such as Rwanda, a trailblazer in Africa, that reaches over 90 percent since five, six years. Bhutan, that reaches also 90 percent of its girls. Malaysia, that reaches 97 percent of its girls. So, there are some extremely good examples that show that this vaccine is accepted and can be delivered in low-income settings,” he said.
Bloem says four countries in Africa – Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Senegal – introduced the vaccine last year. He says 11 more countries in Africa and Asia will start using it next year.
Princess Nothemba Simelela, WHO Assistant Director-General for Family, Women, Children and Adolescents, says a big problem in developing countries is the lack of skilled people to test and diagnose cervical cancer in women.
She says that women in remote, rural areas often have difficulty reaching clinics where they can be tested and treated for the disease. But she told VOA there are strategies governments can employ to overcome that.
“We can have mobile outreach clinics. Sometimes, what you have is days on which women can be called or young girls can be brought in, specifically to get this attention,” she said.
Simelela says another strategy that governments can employ is to use school health programs. For instance, she says, Rwanda and South Africa bring the vaccine into the schools where access is available to the largest number of girls in the age groups that need to be reached.
your ad hereSurvey: 2018 ‘Worst Year Ever’ for Smartphone Market
Global smartphone sales saw their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 isn’t much better, new surveys show.
Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 percent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year.
“Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.
“Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, (South) Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.”
Reith said the market has been hit by consumers waiting longer to replace their phones, frustration around the high cost of premium devices, and political and economic uncertainty.
The Chinese market, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 percent drop, according to IDC’s survey, which was released Wednesday.
IDC said the top five smartphone makers have become stronger and now account for 69 percent of worldwide sales, up from 63 percent a year ago.
Samsung remained the number one handset maker with a 20.8 percent share despite an eight percent sales slump for the year, IDC said.
Apple managed to recapture the number two position with a 14.9 percent market share, moving ahead of Huawei at 14.7 percent, the survey found.
IDC said fourth-quarter smartphone sales fell 4.9 percent – the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
“The challenging holiday quarter closes out the worst year ever for smartphone shipments,” IDC said in its report.
A separate report by Counterpoint Research showed similar findings, estimating a seven percent drop in the fourth quarter and four percent drop for the full year.
“The collective smartphone shipment growth of emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and others was not enough to offset the decline in China,” said Counterpoint associate director Tarun Pathak.
your ad hereDoga — Doing Yoga With Your Dog
Some people take their pet dogs everywhere they can. One place where they are always welcome is at doga — yoga classes for dogs and humans. While the pet parents get into their yoga poses, like downward-facing dog, their pups get petted and held. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to a doga class in Alexandria, Virginia, where people and pups are having a good time.
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James Ingram, Grammy-winning R&B Singer, Dead at 66
James Ingram, the Grammy-winning singer who launched multiple hits on the R&B and pop charts and earned two Oscar nominations for his songwriting, has died, according to a close associate. He was 66.
Debbie Allen, an actress-choreographer and frequent collaborator with Ingram, announced his death on Twitter on Tuesday. Attempts by The Associated Press to confirm his death with Ingram’s family or representatives have been unsuccessful.
Ingram was born February 16, 1952 in Akron, Ohio.
Wins Grammy for ‘One Hundred Ways’
He appeared on Quincy Jones’ 1981 album, “The Dude,” which earned him three Grammy nominations and one win for best R&B male vocal performance for “One Hundred Ways.”
In a statement Tuesday, Jones called Ingram his “baby brother.”
“With that soulful, whisky sounding voice, James Ingram was simply magical … every beautiful note that James sang pierced your essence and comfortably made itself at home,” Jones said. “But it was really no surprise because James was a beautiful human being, with a heart the size of the moon. James Ingram was, and always will be, beyond compare.”
In 1983 Ingram released his debut album, “It’s Your Night,” which included the hit “Yah Mo Be There.” The song, which featured Michael McDonald, became a Top 20 hit on the Billboard pop charts and won the Grammy for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal.
Reached top of pop charts
Ingram also reached the top of the pop charts twice with the songs “I Don’t Have the Heart” and “Baby, Come to Me,” a duet with Patti Austin. “Somewhere Out There,” Ingram’s collaboration with Linda Ronstadt from the 1986 film “An American Tail,” reached No. 2 on the pop charts.
Ingram was also a talented songwriter: Alongside Jones, he co-wrote Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing),” earning him a Grammy nomination for best R&B song. Ingram scored Oscar nominations for best original song with “The Day I Fall In Love” from “Beethoven’s 2nd” and “Look What Love Has Done” from “Junior.”
Both tracks also competed for best original song at the Golden Globes.
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Study: E-cigs Beat Patches, Gums in Helping Smokers Quit
A major new study provides the strongest evidence yet that vaping can help smokers quit cigarettes, with e-cigarettes proving nearly twice as effective as nicotine gums and patches.
The British research, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, could influence what doctors tell their patients and shape the debate in the U.S., where the Food and Drug Administration has come under pressure to more tightly regulate the burgeoning industry amid a surge in teenage vaping.
We know that patients are asking about e-cigarettes and many doctors haven't been sure what to say,'' said Dr. Nancy Rigotti, a tobacco treatment specialist at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study.I think they now have more evidence to endorse e-cigarettes.”
At the same time, Rigotti and other experts cautioned that no vaping products have been approved in the U.S. to help smokers quit.
Top cause of preventable death
Smoking is the No. 1 cause of preventable death worldwide, blamed for nearly 6 million deaths a year. Quitting is notoriously difficult, even with decades-old nicotine aids and newer prescription drugs. More than 55 percent of U.S. smokers try to quit each year, and only about 7 percent succeed, according to government figures.
Electronic cigarettes, which have been available in the U.S. since about 2007 and have grown into a $6.6 billion-a-year industry, are battery-powered devices that typically heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor.
Most experts agree the vapor is less harmful than cigarette smoke since it doesn’t contain most of the cancer-causing byproducts of burning tobacco. But there is virtually no research on the long-term effects of the chemicals in the vapor, some of which are toxic.
At the same time, there have been conflicting studies on whether e-cigarettes actually help smokers kick the habit. Last year, an influential panel of U.S. experts concluded there was only “limited evidence” of their effectiveness.
In the new study, researchers tracked nearly 900 middle-age smokers who were randomly assigned to receive either e-cigarettes or nicotine replacement products, including patches, gums and lozenges. After one year, 18 percent of e-cigarette users were smoke-free, versus 9.9 percent of those using the other products.
“Anything which helps smokers to avoid heart disease and cancer and lung disease is a good thing, and e-cigarettes can do that,” said Peter Hajek, study co-author and an addiction specialist at Queen Mary University of London.
More rigorous
The study was more rigorous than previous ones, which largely surveyed smokers about e-cigarette use. Participants in this experiment underwent chemical breath testing.
Smokers in the e-cigarette group received a $26 starter kit, while those in the nicotine-replacement group received a three-month supply of the product of their choice, costing about $159. Participants were responsible for buying follow-up supplies.
“If you have a method of helping people with smoking cessation that is both more effective and less costly, that should be of great interest to anyone providing health services,” said Kenneth Warner, a retired University of Michigan public health professor who was not involved in the study.
Several factors may have boosted the results: All the participants were recruited from a government smoking-cessation program and were presumably motivated to quit. They also received four weeks of anti-smoking counseling.
The researchers didn’t test e-cigarettes against new drugs such as Pfizer’s Chantix, which has shown higher rates of success than older nicotine-based treatments.
Funding for the study came from the British government, which has embraced e-cigarettes as a potential tool to combat smoking through state-run health services. Some of the authors have been paid consultants to makers of anti-smoking products.
Long-term questions
U.S. health authorities have been more reluctant about backing the products, in part because of the long-term effects are unknown.
“We need more studies about their safety profile, and I don’t think anyone should be changing practice based on one study,” said Belinda Borrelli, a psychologist specializing in smoking cessation at Boston University.
The American Heart Association backed e-cigarettes in 2014 as a last resort to help smokers quit after trying counseling and approved products. The American Cancer Society took a similar position last year.
An editorial accompanying the study and co-written by Borrelli recommended e-cigarettes only after smokers have tried and failed to quit with FDA-approved products. Also, doctors should have a clear timeline for stopping e-cigarette use.
Borrelli noted that after one year, 80 percent of the e-cigarette users in the study were still using the devices. Nine percent of the participants in the other group were still using gums and other nicotine-replacement products.
No vaping company has announced plans to seek FDA approval of its products as a quit-smoking aid. Winning such an endorsement would require large studies that can take years and cost millions of dollars.
The FDA has largely taken a hands-off approach toward vaping. It has not scientifically reviewed any of the e-cigarettes on the market and has put off some key regulations until 2022. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has said he doesn’t want to over-regulate an emerging industry that could provide a safer option for adult smokers.
The delay has come under intense criticism amid an explosion in teenage vaping, driven chiefly by devices like Juul, which resembles a flash drive. Federal law prohibits sales to those under 18, but 1 in 5 high school students reported vaping last year, according to a government survey. It showed teenage use surged 78 percent from 2017 to 2018.
Tank vs. cartridge
Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids noted that the British study used so-called tank-based e-cigarettes, which allow users to customize their flavors and nicotine levels. Those devices have largely been overtaken in the U.S. by Juul and similar devices that have prefilled nicotine cartridges, or pods. Any benefit of e-cigarettes depends on the individual product and how it is used, he said.
It is a fundamental mistake to think that all e-cigarettes are alike,'' Myers said.And in the absence of FDA regulation, a consumer has no way of knowing if the product they are using has the potential to help them or not.”
Myers’ group is one of several anti-smoking organizations suing the FDA to immediately begin reviewing e-cigarettes.
Ian Armitage was skeptical about e-cigarettes as a way to stop smoking, saying he tried vaping several years ago but gave it up after experiencing twitching and shakes from nicotine withdrawal.
I tried it for a whole month, but it just wasn't doing it for me,'' said Armitage, an audio-visual technician in Washington.I still wanted a cigarette afterward.”
Armitage, who has smoked for 15 years, said he also tried nicotine patches but found they irritated his skin.
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Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Buys Her ‘Ritz Tower’ Painting
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has purchased the American artist’s “Ritz Tower” painting, a rare work of her take on a New York skyscraper, the museum announced this week.
Officials at the Santa Fe, New Mexico, museum said it bought the 1928 piece in October from a private collector but declined to say how much it cost.
Last year, the museum sold three of the artist’s lesser works for $19.5 million to add to its acquisition fund.
The slender painting is one of O’Keeffe’s rare depictions of skyscrapers in New York City.
Throughout the 1920s, O’Keeffe lived in New York with her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
Work fills museum gap
O’Keeffe created the image after her male peers discouraged her from painting New York subjects. “The men decided they didn’t want me to paint New York … They told me to ‘leave New York to the men.’ I was furious!” O’Keeffe said years later.
Museum curator Ariel Plotek said the work fills a hole in its collection since O’Keeffe painted few New York skyscraper scenes.
“It is a dynamic, glamorous portrayal,” Plotek said. “O’Keeffe effectively rendered the spirit of the city by making it a night scene teeming with energy. She used the bright punches of electric light, the soaring architecture, and the glow of the moon to great effect.”
Painting will be on view March 1
Ritz Tower will be on view in the museum’s galleries beginning on March 1.
Wisconsin-born O’Keeffe, known for her modernist and surreal images of the American Southwest, lived and painted for decades in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
She died in Santa Fe in 1986.
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Drought Threatens Thousands of Flamingo Chicks in S. Africa
Rescuers are moving hundreds of dehydrated lesser flamingo chicks from their breeding ground at a drought-stricken South African dam to a bird sanctuary in Cape Town, to save them from death by starvation and lack of water.
Their birthplace, Kamfers Dam in the Northern Cape, is one of only three breeding grounds for the famously pink birds in southern Africa, the other two being in Namibia and Botswana, according to researcher Katta Ludynia.
The rescued chicks take three to four months to fledge, and it is not yet clear whether they will eventually be released back into the wild in Cape Town or transported back hundreds of kilometers to their home in Kimberley, she said.
“There are still several thousand birds breeding in the dam in areas that still have water,” said Katta Ludynia, research manager at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB). “It now depends on the water levels whether these birds will pull through.”
Ludynia said the sanctuary was caring for around 550 chicks, most of them dehydrated when they arrived Monday after having been abandoned by parents who went off in search of food.
The chicks are being moved to the sanctuary by plane and road.
SANCCOB is one of several centers across South Africa caring for around 2,000 chicks that were rescued from the dam.
Although it hosts the biggest population of lesser flamingoes in southern Africa, Kamfers Dam, north of Kimberley, is often dry and depends mainly on rainwater. It also gets some water from a sewerage works that releases water into its wetlands.
“The dam in Kimberley is so important because it is manageable, so we can secure the water level there. That might be the only site the flamingos can breed in southern Africa, if the drought continues in other areas,” Ludynia said.
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‘Life-Threatening’ Temperatures Shock Even Routinely Cold US Cities
Millions of Americans are experiencing temperatures so cold that a burst of wind could cause frostbite within minutes — conditions that have caused the suspension of regional train service, work and school schedules, and even production of television and stage shows.
The National Weather Service said Wednesday some 25 million people will face temperatures that cause near-instant frostbite in New England (the northeastern United States) and the Midwest — states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan.
In Chicago, Amtrak canceled train service, and even federal mail delivery was suspended in many areas to protect the mail carriers, whose motto declares they deliver mail in almost any weather condition.
In some cities, bus service has been suspended because the cold can cause mechanical difficulties.
The governors of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have declared states of emergency.
With the wind chill, it was minus 32 degrees Celsius (minus 26 degrees Fahrenheit) in North Dakota on Tuesday and minus 52 degrees in parts of Minnesota. The high temperature in Minneapolis on Wednesday is forecast to be minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the city of Chicago, renowned for its tough winters, the temperature Thursday is expected to dip near the record low of negative 32.8 degrees Celsius.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is calling the weather “life-threatening.” Transit buses with nurses on board will be dispatched across the city to serve as emergency warming shelters for the homeless.
Churches throughout Detroit are also keeping their doors open for anyone who has no home and needs a place to keep warm.
At least four weather-related deaths have been reported.
The cold air will stretch from the Midwest to the East Coast and as far south as parts of Florida.
Meteorologists blame the weather on a breakup of the polar vortex — cold temperatures above the North Pole are being pushed south across North America because of a blast of desert heat from North Africa.
Global warming
Reacting to the weather, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday “What the hell is going on with Global Waming? (sic) Please come back fast. We need you!”
It is unclear if the president was joking.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to climate science and information, tweeted, “Winter storms do not prove global warming is not happening.”
The agency said severe snowstorms may be more likely in a warmer climate because of the increased moisture in the atmosphere.
NOAA denies any connection between the president’s comment and its social media posting.
“We routinely put this story out at these times,” the agency said in a statement. “Our scientists weren’t responding to a tweet.”
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Trapped in Gaza, Star of Sundance Documentary Misses Film Festival
A new documentary called Gaza is hitting the screens at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this week, providing a colorful glimpse of life in the blockaded Hamas-ruled territory. But one of its main subjects, Gaza actor and playwright Ali Abu Yaseen, won’t be attending the gathering due to the very circumstances depicted in the film.
Abu Yaseen had hoped to make his first-ever trip to the U.S. to take part in the festival. But the continued closure of Gaza’s border with Egypt, and Hamas’ bureaucratic inefficiency, made it impossible for him to reach Cairo in time to receive a visa from the American Embassy needed to travel to Utah.
After missing Tuesday’s premiere, Abu Yaseen has all but given up hope of reaching Utah on time. The film’s final screening is Saturday.
“I’m seething with indignation,” he said in an interview at his home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. “The dream that I had for the past three months has all but collapsed.”
Gaza, a 90-minute film, is among 12 contestants in the World Cinema Documentary competition at Sundance. Directed by award-winning Irish film makers Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell, the work takes a look at everyday life in Gaza, from wars and their traumas to young people’s pastimes and aspirations.
Plays written by Abu Yaseen and stage performances by his students appear in the film.
Abu Yaseen, one of Gaza’s most famous entertainers, said the film shows that Gazans “can sing, present an important theater and smile in the face of the unjust world.”
“The bizarre, wonderful fantasy of Gaza was our message of love to the world, which sees Gaza as Tora Bora,” Abu Yaseen said, referring to the stronghold of Taliban extremists in Afghanistan.
Closed borders
Israel and Egypt sealed their borders with Gaza after the Islamic militant Hamas group seized power there in 2007 following bloody fighting against forces of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah. Abbas’ Western-backed Palestinian Authority has controlled parts of the West Bank since then.
Over the past decade, Hamas and Israel fought three devastating wars, and repeated attempts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah have all but faltered. Gaza’s economy is in tatters, electricity is supplied for half the day at best, tap water is undrinkable and the threat of renewed fighting with Israel is constant.
The blockade has made it virtually impossible for most Gazans to travel abroad. Israel allows only small numbers of Gazans, usually humanitarian cases, to exit through its Erez crossing. Instead, the vast majority of Gazan travelers must exit through Egypt, which only opens the border a few days a month.
Abu Yaseen said he was thrilled to receive an invitation to Sundance in December. Just as he was applying for a travel permit early this month, Egypt unexpectedly closed the border crossing for three weeks. Without notice, Egypt suddenly opened the crossing this week, giving Abu Yaseen little time to get to Cairo, receive a visa and board a flight to Utah.
More powerful than ‘a million bullets’
On Tuesday evening, he learned that his name was not on the list cleared by Hamas to travel.
“I don’t know how the system works here. There is something wrong,” he said, directing his anger at Hamas. “They should have pleaded with me to travel and represent Palestine because this film is more important than 1,000 or a million bullets.”
Iyad al-Bozum, spokesman for Hamas’ Interior Ministry, said he was unaware of Abu Yaseen’s case, but noted that the crossing can only handle a small fraction of applicants. He said 15,000 Gazans are currently in urgent need to travel, while only 200 can make it out on a single day when the crossing is working.
“There are patients who died in Gaza waiting to travel. There are students who missed their scholarships, and there are people whose residency permits in outside countries expired,” he said. “This is disaster for every Palestinian in Gaza.”
In 2017, the Palestinian Authority regained partial control of the Rafah border crossing in a deal with Hamas. But on Jan. 6, just when Abu Yaseen and a freelancer who worked on the film registered to travel to Cairo, the Palestinian Authority withdrew from the crossing to protest what it called Hamas’ “abuses and harassment.” The border only reopened Tuesday, under Hamas control for the first time in two years.
Abu Yaseen had one of his works participating in a major film festival in Cairo 25 years ago, calling the experience a “great achievement.” But he said that appearing at Sundance would have been “the most memorable of all.”
Speaking in a videotaped Skype interview from the festival, McConnell, the co-director, said the voices of Abu Yaseen and the freelance production assistant, Fady Hossam, would have been “hugely powerful here in Utah.”
“Who better to explain that than Gazans themselves? So, it’s disappointing,” McConnell told The Associated Press from Park City.
Abu Yaseen has visited Europe, but has never been to America. He was excited for the trip and was reading about Utah, learning, for example, that it’s almost half the size of Iraq. On his laptop, he flipped through pictures of snowcapped hills, canyons and lakes from the state. A longtime fan of Robert Redford, Abu Yaseen mostly regrets having lost the opportunity to meet the Sundance founder in the flesh.
Now that he realized he won’t make it to Utah, Abu Yaseen picked up his oud, the Middle Eastern stringed instrument, and played and sang a tune by Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife, starting with “they stopped me at the border, asking for my I.D.”
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A Virtual Human Teaches Negotiating Skills
Whether it’s haggling for a better price or negotiating for a higher salary, there is a skill to getting the most of what you want. Researchers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are conducting research on how a virtual negotiator may be able to teach you the art of making a good deal. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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The Old Man and the Play: Friend Keeps Word to Hemingway
When the 1958 film adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea” hit theaters, Ernest Hemingway happened to be in New York City to watch the World Series and invited his close friend A.E. Hotchner to go see the movie with him.
“About 12 or 13 minutes after we sat down, he turns to me and says, ‘Ready to go?”’ Hotchner said in a recent interview at his Connecticut home. The 101-year-old author and playwright recalls them walking out and taking off down the sidewalk, Hemingway ranting the whole time that the star Spencer Tracy was totally miscast, that he looked like a fat, rich actor trying to play a fisherman.
“He said, ‘You know, you write a book that you really like and then they do something like that to it, and it’s like pissing in your father’s beer’,” Hotchner said. (Hemingway reserved this particular turn of phrase for a handful of hated adaptations of his work, he said.)
Later that night, sitting at Toots Shor’s restaurant – a hangout frequented by Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Gleason and Marilyn Monroe – Hemingway urged Hotchner to do his own adaptation someday. Hotchner said he promised he would try.
More than 60 years later, Hotchner has kept his word. His stage adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” a brief novel published in 1952 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, premieres at the newly renovated Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse on Feb. 1.
“It wasn’t until I became an old man myself that I really got to a version that could transport itself beyond the book,” he said.
Hotchner should be the perfect candidate to take the novel to the stage: he fished with Hemingway in Cuba, went to bullfights with him in Spain, hunted with him in Idaho and wrote the 1966 best-selling biography “Papa Hemingway.”
He also helped edit Hemingway’s bullfighting classic “The Dangerous Summer.” He often served as his agent and adapted several stories for television, including “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Killers” and “The Battler,” which led to his first meeting with Paul Newman. (The two became best friends and neighbors and started the “Newman’s Own” food company together. But that’s another story).
“Somehow that pledge to him haunted me, because he died not too long after that. For years I would think about “The Old Man and The Sea.” But I never could think in my head how you could take this very personal book, because the old man is really Hemingway himself, which is really a literary work,” he said. “How do you bring that to life on the stage?”
He tried maybe 10 times over the years to adapt it, starting drafts only to scrap them, until his latest effort.
To help reel the project in, he enlisted his son Tim Hotchner to collaborate on it and help transform his draft into what will run in Pittsburgh through Feb. 17.
“I’ve lived with Hemingway’s ghost for my whole life and there was something very profound about this story, even though it’s very simple,” said Tim Hotchner, 47, a documentary filmmaker and writer. “And to have a 101-year-old father who’s still going out for his marlin, and hopefully coming back with better results, there are a lot of themes that really resonate.”
Tim Hotchner also saw the project as a way to re-examine the work with a modern lens: to look at what it means to be a man in the world and to look at the environment.
To make “The Old Man and the Sea” accessible on stage, the Hotchners crafted a kaleidoscope of the tale, and mined the text for a new approach. The boy has a bigger role, and Hemingway himself is a character, as is a cellist who evokes the moods of the play throughout.
It stars Tony Award-winning actor Anthony Crivello as Santiago, the aging fisherman, David Cabot as Hemingway and Gabriel Florentino as the boy, Manolin. Cellist Simon Cummings will perform original music for the show. The play is being directed by Ronald Allan-Lindblom.
Getting the draft to the stage happened unusually fast, as a result of a collaboration with New York City-based RWS Entertainment Group.
The Hotchners’ agent passed along the script to Joe Christopher, who heads up RWS’s theatrical division, who took it with him on vacation in June.
“I don’t know if it was because I literally read it while I was lying on the beach, but I could viscerally see the show working,” he said. He told RWS CEO Ryan Stana it would be the chance of a lifetime to work with someone who had been side-by-side with Hemingway.
The Pittsburgh Playhouse was looking for a new work to launch its first season in its renovated theater and Stana, an alumna of Point Park University, floated the idea to the school.
”In less than 24 hours, they were in,” he said.
The production is unique in that students at Point Park University are working on the show alongside professionals in all aspects from set design to ticket sales. It’s something Stana sees as a circular moment – youth helping bring to life the work of a centenarian playwright.
The entire show was put together in six months.
At 101, A.E. Hotchner is sharp, funny and surprisingly energetic. During a four-hour interview at his home, he needed only a 10-minute break to get a glass of water. Last year, his Depression-era detective novel “The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom” was published and he’s still writing daily. His routine: breakfast, write, lunch, write, nightly news, dinner, gin and tonic, and maybe a movie.
As for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he’s satisfied with having finally followed through on a half-century-old promise to his friend, and he’s pleased with how it turned out.
“This is going to be a version that Hemingway would never have walked out on,” he said.
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Apple Opens New Chapter Amid Weakening iPhone Demand
Apple hoped to offset slowing demand for iPhones by raising the prices of its most important product, but that strategy seems to have backfired after sales sagged during the holiday shopping season.
Results released Tuesday revealed the magnitude of the iPhone slump – a 15 percent drop in revenue from the previous year. That decline in Apple’s most profitable product caused Apple’s total earnings for the October-December quarter to dip slightly to $20 billion.
Now, CEO Tim Cook is grappling with his toughest challenge since replacing co-founder Steve Jobs 7 years ago. Even as he tries to boost iPhone sales, Cook also must prove that Apple can still thrive even if demand doesn’t rebound.
It figures to be an uphill battle, given Apple’s stock has lost one-third of its value in less than four months, erasing about $370 billion in shareholder wealth.
Cook rattled Wall Street in early January by disclosing the company had missed its own revenue projections for the first time in 15 years. The last time that happened, the iPod was just beginning to transform Apple.
”This is the defining moment for Cook,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives. “He has lost some credibility on Wall Street, so now he will have to do some hand-holding as the company enters this next chapter.”
The results for the October-December period were slightly above the expectations analysts lowered after Cook’s Jan. 2 warning. Besides the profit decline, Apple’s revenue fell 5 percent from the prior year to $84 billion.
It marked the first time in more than two years that Apple’s quarterly revenue has dropped from the past year. The erosion was caused by the decline of the iPhone, whose sales plunged to $52 billion, down by more than $9 billion from the previous year.
The past quarter’s letdown intensified the focus on Apple’s forecast for the opening three months of the year as investors try to get a better grasp on iPhone sales until the next models are released in autumn.
Apple predicted its revenue for the January-March period will range from $55 billion to $59 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had been anticipating revenue of about $59 billion.
Investors liked what they read and heard, helping Apple’s stock recoup some of their recent losses. The stock gained nearly 6 percent to $163.50 in extended trading after the report came out.
“We wouldn’t change our position with anyone’s,” Cook reassured analysts during a conference call reviewing the past quarter and the upcoming months.
The company didn’t forecast how many iPhones it will sell, something Apple has done since the product first hit the market in 2007 and transformed society, as well as technology.
Apple is no longer disclosing how many iPhones it shipped after the quarter is completed, a change that Cook announced in November. That unexpected move raised suspicions that Apple was trying to conceal a forthcoming slump in iPhone sales – fears that were realized during the holiday season.
Cook traces most of Apple’s iPhone problems to a weakening economy in China, the company’s second biggest market behind the U.S. The company is also facing tougher competition in China, where homegrown companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi have been winning over consumers in that country with smartphones that have many of the same features as iPhones at lower prices.
Although a trade war started by President Donald Trump last year has hurt China and potentially caused some consumers there to boycott U.S. products, many analysts believe the iPhone’s malaise stems from other issues too.
Among them are higher prices – Apple’s most expensive iPhone now costs $1,350 – for models that aren’t that much better than the previous generation, giving consumers little incentive to stop using the device they already own until it wears out. Apple also gave old iPhones new life last by offering to replace aging batteries for $29, a 70 percent discount.
”The upgrade cycle has extended, there is no doubt about that,” Cook conceded.
Apple is banking that investors will realize the company can still reap huge profits by selling various services on the 1.4 billion devices running on its software.
That’s one reason why Cook has been touting the robust growth of Apple’s division that collects commissions from paid apps, processes payments, and sells hardware warranty plans and music streaming subscriptions. Apple Music now has more than 50 million subscribers, second to Spotify’s 87 million streaming subscribers through September.
Apple is also preparing to launch a video streaming service to compete against Netflix, though Cook said he wasn’t ready to provide details Tuesday.
The company’s services revenue in the past quarter climbed 19 percent from the prior year to $10.9 billion – more than any other category besides the iPhone.
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Some Journalists Wonder If Their Profession Is Tweet-Crazy
If Twitter is the town square for journalists, some are ready to step away.
That’s happening this week at the online news site Insider — by order of the boss. Reporters have been told to take a week off from tweeting at work and to keep TweetDeck off their computer screens. The idea of disengaging is to kick away a crutch for the journalists and escape from the echo chamber, said Julie Zeveloff West, Insider’s editor-in-chief for the U.S.
Addiction to always-rolling Twitter feeds and the temptation to join in has led to soul-searching in newsrooms. Some of it is inspired by the reaction to the Jan. 19 demonstration in Washington involving students from a Covington, Kentucky, high school, which gained traction as a story primarily because of social media outrage only to become more complicated as different details and perspectives emerged.
Planning for Insider’s ban predated the Covington story, West said.
She often walks through her newsrooms to find reporters staring at TweetDeck. Her goal is to encourage reporters to find news in other ways, by picking up the telephone or meeting sources. An editor will make sure no news is being missed.
Twitter “isn’t the place where most people find us,” she said. “Reporters place this outsized importance on it.”
The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle called Twitter the “crystal meth of newsrooms.” He dates his moment of disillusionment to the Republican national convention in 2012. In the section reserved for reporters, he noticed many watching TweetDeck feeds instead of listening to speeches from the podium or stepping away to talk to delegates.
“Twitter offers an endless stream of faux events,” Von Drehle wrote in a column this past weekend. “Fleeting sensations, momentary outrages, ersatz insights and provocative distortions. ‘News’ nuggets roll by like the chocolates on Lucy’s conveyer belt.”
Since Twitter is irresistible to journalists who have the smart-aleck gene — probably the majority — a newsroom quip or instant observation is now writ large.
Knee-jerk reactions
The Covington story uniquely played to Twitter’s faults. Early video that depicted Covington student Nick Sandmann staring down Native American activist Nathan Phillips spread rapidly across social media and many people rushed to offer their takes. An event that may have otherwise gone unnoticed instantly became a story by virtue of its existence online.
Yet when a wider picture emerged of what happened, in some respects quite literally from the view of a wider camera lens, a story that seemed black and white became gray. Some of the early opinions became embarrassing and were quietly deleted. But since there’s no such thing as a quiet deletion when people are watching online, the incident became fodder for another outbreak of partisan warfare.
The episode led Farhad Manjoo, a columnist for The New York Times, to declare Twitter “the world’s most damaging social network.”
In a column, he said he plans to stifle the urge to quickly type his opinion on every news event and suggested others follow his lead. Between mistakes and overly provocative opinions, too much can go wrong for journalists on Twitter, he said in an interview.
“In order to be good on Twitter, you have to be authentic,” he said. “But authenticity is also dangerous. It leads people to make assumptions about you. It can go bad in different ways.”
‘Overboard on Twitter’
Perhaps it’s inevitable at a time that Twitter needs to be constantly monitored because it is one of the president of the United States’ favorite forms of communications, but Manjoo said too often reporters spend more time in the virtual world than the real one.
“The way the media works now, we’ve just gone overboard on Twitter,” he said.
Days after Covington, some news outlets proved his point by writing stories about NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s interview with Sandmann that were nothing but collections of Twitter comments about how she did. Some tweeters thought Guthrie was too hard on him. Some thought she was too soft. Simply by nature of the forum, few who thought it was just right bothered posting.
Media experts wary of Twitter quitters said a distinction between the platform and how people use it should not be lost.
“I really don’t think it’s so hard to avoid commenting on a moving story when the facts are not clear,” said Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor.
Leaving Twitter means cutting off a valuable news source since many newsmakers use the venue to make announcements, he said. It’s also an equalizer in giving access to a virtual town square to people who might otherwise be overlooked, said news consultant Jeff Jarvis.
“Journalists should be looking for every possible means to listen better to the public,” Jarvis said. “If you cut yourself off, it’s ridiculous.”
New approach
Some have done that, or tried. Manjoo’s colleague at the Times, White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, wrote last July about how she was stepping back from Twitter after nearly nine years and 187,000 tweets.
“The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs, with no end in sight,” she wrote. “It is a place where people who are unquestionably upset about any number of things go to feed their anger, where the underbelly of free speech is at its most bilious. Twitter is now an anger video game for many users.”
Haberman predicted she would eventually re-engage with Twitter but in a different way. She’s back; she tweeted five times and retweeted links six times by 10 a.m. Tuesday. She’s up to 194,000 tweets and has a following of more than a million people. She declined a request for an interview about how the experience changed her.
Kelly Evans was an early Twitter user at The Wall Street Journal and then at CNBC, where she’s a news anchor. She found it a valuable place to get ideas, and to connect with readers, viewers and fellow journalists.
But she realized in the summer of 2016 that it was taking up too much of her personal time with little contribution to her professional life. She publicly signed off and has kept to her pledge for the most part. She says now she doesn’t regret it.
Evans admits she may have missed some story tips, but questions the reliability of much that is on Twitter.
“I feel more healthy and I feel like I’m able to do my job better,” she said.
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John Malkovich to Play Disgraced Movie Mogul in New Mamet Play
Actor John Malkovich will take the starring role in a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet about a disgraced Hollywood studio head, a story he said was written partly in reaction to the scandal engulfing film producer Harvey Weinstein.
Speaking to BBC Radio on Tuesday, Malkovich described “Bitter Wheat,” which opens in London in the summer, as “a black farce about a very badly behaved movie mogul,” who he said was “not particularly” Weinstein. The producer will go on trial in New York in May on charges of sexually assaulting two women.
“It’s a great deal about that business and a great deal about how people in that business, in positions say as studio heads have behaved really for more or less a century now. So many of them were so notoriously badly behaved,” he said.
“The idea…maybe started as reaction to all the news that came out last year, in particular about Harvey Weinstein but actually about many many people, some of whom were also higher ups in various studios. I think David kind of took the idea from there and went with it.”
More than 70 women, mainly young actresses and others working in film, have accused Weinstein, 66, of sexual misconduct, including assault, dating back decades.
Weinstein, who pleaded not guilty after his arrest last May, has denied all the accusations, saying any sexual encounters were consensual.
The scandal helped kick off the #MeToo movement, in which dozens of powerful men in Hollywood and beyond have been accused of sexual misconduct.
“Of course it might upset people who’ve experienced the kind of treatment that the play contains and shows and describes and that we watch but what can I do about that?” Malkovich said.
“I am sure a lot of people will laugh and a lot of people will be upset and a lot of people may not like it. Personally I think it’s a terrific piece of writing.”
Malkovich, most recently seen on screens in Netflix thriller “Bird Box” and on British television as legendary detective Hercule Poirot in “The ABC Murders”, said he met Weinstein when making 1998 drama “Rounders” but “didn’t really have any connection with him”.
In “Bitter Wheat”, the 65-year-old actor will play Barney Fein, described in a press release as “a bloated monster- a studio head, who, like his predecessor, the minotaur, devours the young he has lured to his cave.
“His fall from power to shame is a mythic journey which has been compared to ‘The Odyssey’ by people who claim to have read that book.”
Mamet, known for plays such as “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” has written about sexual misconduct before, namely in “Oleanna” about a female student and her professor.
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Study: Climate Change Linked to ‘Arab Spring’ Mass Migration
For the first time, scientists have linked climate change to the mass migration flows that followed the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East a few years ago.
According to scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, water shortages and droughts contributed to the Arab Spring conflicts, particularly in Syria, which remains mired in a civil war.
“People started not being able to produce agricultural production, and that was the start of migration from the rural areas to urban areas, which were already quite crowded. And the resources in the urban areas were also scarce. So with that kind of tension, fighting for limited resources, and on top is the ethnic polarization in Syria. So, it’s sort of all that combination,” said Raya Muttarak, of the University of East Anglia in Britain. She co-authored a report on the subject.
The researchers used United Nations’ data on asylum applications and conflict-related deaths. They combined this with data on drought and rainfall, plus other variables like population size and measures of democracy and ethnic diversity. All the figures were combined in a mathematical model.
“So, let’s look at how climate affects the probability of conflict. And once we estimate that we use the number that we got from that to estimate the next step. So, the countries that experience conflict from climate variation — are they likely to send out the refugee flows or not?” explained Muttarak.
She said that climate change would not cause conflict and subsequent asylum-seeking flows everywhere.
“The effect of climate on migration, through conflict, is quite specific to certain time periods and to certain countries. So, climate-induced conflict, it’s a bit more likely in a country with a medium level of democracy.”
The results of this study are specific to the western Asia region. However, researchers say they hope the study will contribute to the global debate on how migration flows will be affected by increasingly severe climate change.
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US Needs Assist from Allies to Curb China’s Theft of Advanced Technology
Senior U.S. officials and experts say the United States needs to rally allies to pressure China stealing advanced technology through cyber espionage. At the same time, key American lawmakers are questioning the readiness and capacity of the U.S. to counter such threats.
The renewed push comes after U.S. federal prosecutors pressed criminal charges against the world’s largest telecommunications company — China’s Huawei Technologies — its chief financial officer and several subsidiaries for alleged financial fraud and theft of U.S. intellectual property.
Huawei denies the charges. Beijing denies its government and military engage in cyber-espionage, saying the U.S. allegations are fabricated.
“The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.”
The Trump administration, however, said Washington is deeply concerned about the potential of Beijing using Chinese technology firms to spy on the U.S. and its allies.
“China’s pursuit of intellectual property, sensitive research and development plans, and the U.S. person data remains a significant threat to the United States government and the private sector,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told lawmakers at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Tuesday.
Other officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation Christopher Ford, advocate for a global coalition against Chinese technology-transfer threats.
At another hearing, experts said threats that Huawei poses to supply chains and critical infrastructure are “absolutely real.”
“We need defensive measures and we need to invest in our own technologies as well, and we need to be cooperating with allies and partners,” said Ely Ratner, who was deputy national security advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden.
“We know that the Huawei leadership has members of the Communist Party within it, and the company has a long and deep relationship with both PLA and the Ministry of State Security in China. And of course is subject to Chinese law and their new National Intelligence law which gives the government the right to use the networks and data as they wish,” added Ratner at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby warned that China may gain “economic, informational, and blackmail” leverage over other countries through data collected by companies such as Huawei.
“This dissolves or corrodes the resolve in these countries potentially to stand up to Chinese potential coercion,” Colby told senators.
“We need to be able to form a network that is sufficient and cohesive to stand up to these Chinese threats,” he added.
Bipartisan senators have been pushing for the creation of a White House office to fight China’s state-sponsored technology theft and defend critical supply chains.
“China and other nations are currently attempting to achieve technological and economic superiority over the United States through the aggressive use of state-directed or state-supported technology transfers,” said Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) who introduced a bill to fight China’s technology threats earlier this month.
“A national response to combat these threats and ensure our national security has, to date, been hampered by insufficient coordination at the federal level,” added Warner and Rubio in a statement.
Under the bill, the Office of Critical Technologies & Security would coordinate with federal and state regulators, the private sector, experts and U.S. allies to ensure that every available tool is being utilized to safeguard the supply chain and protect emerging dual-use technologies.
The case has provoked strong reactions in China.
Lew Mon-hung, a Hong Kong-based businessman and analyst, says China should fight back in U.S. courts.
Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (China’s political advisory legislative body), says that China should trust the U.S.’s rule of law and resort to legal measures to clear Huawei’s name.
“When the US government filed these charges, China’s government, Huawei, or the Chinese public, should use legal means to solve legal problems,” he said. “Since Huawei has abundant financial resources, and since the Chinese government has the largest foreign currency reserve in the world, why don’t they just hire the best American lawyers? They can build a strong team of lawyers against this case and fight a legal battle.”
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Climate Change Link to Arab Spring’ Mass Migration
The mass migration flows that followed the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East were partly caused by climate change, according to new research. Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria say that in certain circumstances, climate conditions can lead to conflict, which drives increased migration. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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As Arctic Chill Hits US, Trump Again Casts Doubt on Climate Change
A Tuesday tweet from a U.S. government scientific agency seems relatively innocuous: “Winter storms do not prove global warming is not happening.”
The message from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is devoted to climate science and information, includes a link citing research that severe snowstorms may be even more likely in a warming global climate because higher ocean temperatures appear to create more moisture.
Many are viewing Tuesday’s post as a rebuttal to President Trump’s tweet late Monday noting an approaching deep freeze for the American Midwest and asking “What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic). Please come back fast, we need you.”
A polar vortex has returned this week to the Midwest bringing extremely low temperatures that could break records.
NOAA denies any connection between the president’s comment and its social media posting.
“We routinely put this story out at these times,” the agency said in a statement. “Our scientists weren’t responding to a tweet.”
Most scientists say there is little valid research to counter the prevailing view climate change is real and note research also demonstrates that with global warming there will be more frequently extreme temperatures at both ends of the thermometer.
With a forecast of icy roads around the nation’s capital, one item of unanimous consent throughout the Trump administration Tuesday is non-emergency federal workers – just two days back on the job after a record-long shutdown – could leave early because of the weather.
“Employees of Federal offices in the Washington, D.C., area are authorized for early departure,” according to a notice from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. “Employees should depart 2 hours earlier than their normal departure times and may request unscheduled leave to depart prior to their staggered departure times.”
The notification is intended, in part, to alleviate congestion on streets that could soon become hazardous.
The ability of a mere dusting of snow or sheets of ice on roadways and sidewalks to create pandemonium in the U.S. center of power frequently puzzles those who have migrated to this part of the country from harsher winter climates.
A January 2016 snowstorm paralyzed the region, although only 2.5 centimeters of snow fell on Washington, D.C. roadways. There were hundreds of traffic accidents and many motorists abandoned their vehicles on highways after untreated roads became impassible with black ice.
The mess and lack of preparedness prompted a public apology by the mayor of Washington, D.C.
Muriel Bowser was taking no such chances on Tuesday, three years after the so-called Snowzilla (not to be confused with the area’s December 2009 Snowpocalypse).
Mayor Bowser, on Tuesday announced she had requested an additional $1 million from the city’s contingency fund “to cover higher costs than anticipated for salt/de-icing as a result of Winter Storm Gia.”
The city also issued a hypothermia alert, which will keep shelters open during daylight hours so the estimated 7,000 homeless people in Washington will have a warm and safe place to stay.
A member of Congress from Utah, as government employees began packing up early in the afternoon, on Tuesday threw his own virtual snowball at the threat of another approaching winter storm appearing to panic politicians, bureaucrats and lobbyists inside the Beltway.
“People in DC love to show how tough they are and call their opponents ‘snowflake,’” wrote Congressman Ben McAdams on Twitter. “Unless the weather forecast includes snowflakes, and then they cancel meetings, leave work early and buy all of the bottled water at the grocery store. Snowflakes.” He then tossed a promotional hashtag for a top winter recreational activity in his state that includes the Wasatch Mountain range: #SkiUtah.
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ePUMB skype chat
