YouTube to Block Comments on Most Videos Showing Minors
YouTube said Thursday it will disable user comments on a broad array of videos featuring children to thwart “predatory behavior” after revelations about a glitch exploited for sharing of child pornography.
The Google-owned video sharing service announced further steps to crack down on inappropriate comments a week after an investigation showing how comments and connections on child porn were being displayed alongside innocuous videos.
“We recognize that comments are a core part of the YouTube experience and how you connect with and grow your audience,” YouTube said in a posted message to creators.
“At the same time, the important steps we’re sharing today are critical for keeping young people safe.”
YouTube said that during the past week it has suspended comments on tens of millions of videos to prevent users from exploiting of the software glitch for nefarious purposes.
“These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months,” YouTube said.
“Over the next few months, we will be broadening this action to suspend comments on videos featuring young minors and videos featuring older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior.”
A small number of video creators will be allowed to keep comments enabled, but will be required to carefully moderate commentary and to deploy software tools provided by YouTube, according to Google.
YouTube accelerated the release of an improved “classifier” that it said will detect and remove twice the number of policy-breaking comments by individuals.
‘Wormhole’
A YouTube creator last week revealed what he called a “wormhole” that allowed comments and connections on child porn alongside videos.
Shortly thereafter, YouTube deleted many comments and blocked some accounts and channels showing inappropriate comments.
Matt Watson, a YouTube creator with some 26,000 subscribers, revealed the workings of what he termed a “wormhole” into a pedophile ring that allowed users to trade social media contacts and links to child porn in YouTube comments.
The post by Watson sparked a series of news reports and boycotts of YouTube ads from major firms.
The incident raised fears of a fresh “brand safety” crisis for YouTube, which lost advertisers last year following revelations that messages appeared on channels promoting conspiracy theories, white nationalism and other objectionable content.
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Musical Virtuoso Previn Dies at 89
Musical virtuoso Andre Previn, who mastered almost every type of genre, died Thursday at 89.
His manager gave no cause of death in making her announcement.
The Berlin-born Previn was a child prodigy, but his family fled Hitler’s Germany when he was 9 years old.
They eventually settled in Hollywood, where Previn launched his career orchestrating scores for films. His work can be heard gracing the soundtracks of such musicals as My Fair Lady, Porgy and Bess, and Gigi.
While working in Hollywood, Previn became enamored with jazz, but may be best remembered as a classical composer and conductor, serving as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. He also led the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Houston and Pittsburgh symphonies.
Throughout his career, Previn won four Oscars and 10 Grammys.
Previn was married five times, including to actress Mia Farrow, with whom he adopted three children.
One of them, a Korean orphan named Soon-Yi, created a scandal when she married Farrow’s then-boyfriend, film director Woody Allen.
Previn once said he would like to drive over Allen with a steamroller.
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Lady Gaga: Bradley Cooper Duet Was Acting, Not Love
It was acting, not love, when Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper sang a duet Sunday at the 91st Academy Awards.
Gaga discussed the emotional performance of “Shallow” from their film “A Star Is Born” during an appearance Wednesday on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live .” The duet led online posters to say the stars are in love.
The artist rolled her eyes and called social media “the toilet of the internet,” saying it has hurt pop culture.
Gaga said, “Yes, people saw love and guess what, that’s what we wanted you to see.”
Gaga says it was a love song in a love story and they had “worked all week on that performance.”
She said, “I guess we did a good job. Fooled ya!”
Gaga brought her Oscar for “Shallow” to the show.
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Swiss Study Shows Language Learning During Sleep
A new study suggests you can learn language while you sleep.
Researchers from Switzerland’s University of Bern say they discovered people were able to learn new language words during deep levels of sleep. Results of the study that recently appeared in the publication Current Biology and other studies suggest the same findings.
The research group was led by Katharina Henke, a professor at the University of Bern and founder of the school’s Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory. The group carried out experiments on a group of young German-speaking men and women.
During normal sleep, human brain cells are alternately active and inactive. The Swiss experiments centered on periods of slow-wave peaks or deep sleep called “up-states,” which the researchers say are the best moments for sleep learning.
Researchers observed individuals in a controlled environment and recorded brain activity as pairs of words were played for the study subjects. One word in the pair was a real German word. The other was a made-up foreign word.
Each word pair was played four times with the order changed each time. The goal was to create a lasting memory link between the false word and the German word that individuals could identify when awake.
When the subject woke, they were presented with the false language words – both by sight and sound. They were tested on the false words played during sleep.
During this part of the experiment, some subjects had their brain activity recorded by magnetic imaging technology to measure brain activity when subjects were answering questions.
Results of the study found that a majority of subjects gave more correct answers about the sleep-learned words than would be expected if they had only guessed. Researchers said memory was best for word pairs presented during slow-wave peaks during sleep.
The researchers say more study is needed to support their findings. However, the experiments provide new evidence that memories can be formed and vocabulary learning can take place in both conscious and unconscious states.
your ad hereThai Lawmakers Approve Controversial Cybersecurity Act
Thailand’s legislature has passed a cybersecurity bill that would allow authorities access to people’s personal information without a court order.
The Cybersecurity Act addresses computer hacking crimes, but activists fear it will allow the government sweeping access to people’s personal information.
The National Legislative Assembly, which passed the bill in its final reading Thursday by a vote of 133-0, was appointed by the junta that came to power after a 2014 coup. It becomes law when published in the Royal Gazette.
The cybersecurity bill allows state officials to seize, search, infiltrate, and make copies of computers, computer systems and information in computers without a court warrant if an appointed committee sees it as a high-level security threat, and relevant courts can later be informed of such actions.
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Ice Castles Turn US Farmland Into Winter Wonderland
On a clear, frigid night in a courtyard made of walls of ice, Bruce McCafferty and his young son stand mesmerized, bathed in the pulsating rainbow light emanating from a series of stout ice formations.
McCafferty and his son Dougie have come out to Ice Castles in North Woodstock, New Hampshire, a collection of ice tunnels, caverns and a 97-foot (30-meter) ice slide that cover an acre (half a hectare) of farmland that some have said are like something out of the movie “Frozen.”
The winter wonderland, one of six in North America, is built from scratch when the cold conditions allow the ice to sprout from the barren ground.
Other parks are located in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; Excelsior, Minnesota; Dillon, Colorado; Midway, Utah; and Edmonton, Alberta. This year, the attractions will stand until early March in most locations.
At the center of the New Hampshire attraction stand six ice structures that are nearly four feet tall (more than a meter tall) and are lit from within by colored lights.
“It’s quite magical isn’t it?” McCafferty said. “It’s an amazing creation. I’d really like to know how they actually built it.”
The attraction starts small in December, when the site’s lead builder Matt Pasciuto and his team set up icicle farms: metal racks that are sprayed with water to allow icicles to grow on them overnight. The icicles are then harvested by “ice artists,” who place them around more than 70 sprinklers.
“Once we turn the sprinklers on, the water starts freezing to those icicles, making them grow together, bigger and bigger and thicker and thicker,” Pasciuto said. “We grow the castle about two to three feet [a half-meter to one meter] at a time.”
Within a few weeks, the icicles have managed to cover the entire park, and some reach heights of 20 feet (six meters).
On a recent sunny day, the massive ice walls shined with a glacial blue hue. After the sun went down, the castles seemed to burst with colors thanks to LED lights embedded in the ice. The astonishing visuals are complemented by a synchronized fantasy soundtrack playing throughout the venue.
The attraction, which moved to this year from neighboring Lincoln, draws tens of thousands of visitors each season.
“When the movie `Frozen’ came out, that was a huge boost because now everyone says, ‘Oh, we get to see an actual ice castle,'” Pasciuto said.
Three years ago, Adam Schellinger started bringing his girlfriend on annual dates to the Ice Castles in New Hampshire, a three-hour drive from their hometown of Brooklyn, Connecticut. On last year’s visit, Schellinger got down on one knee and popped the question. The crowd immediately began cheering. The couple was married in September.
“When I proposed, it was blue, and then it went to purple,” recalled Schellinger, who returned for a visit with his wife Ashley a couple weeks ago. “It was just awesome — a great backdrop for sure.”
After a mild start to the winter, the weather in New Hampshire this year has mostly cooperated with only a few days with above-freezing temperatures. But that isn’t always the case, according to Melissa Smuzynski, public relations director for Ice Castles. She said some locations occasionally have had to cut their seasons short due to warmer winters but that “we haven’t noticed a long-term pattern over the years of our seasons becoming shorter.”
But Pascuito says he dreads the warmer days.
“The last couple of years we’ve had some really bad warm spells in February where it gets to 60 degrees [Fahrenheit, 15 degrees Celsius]. This is New Hampshire — that shouldn’t happen,” he said. “We love the cold. We want a nice long winter.”
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Popular Fur-Trimmed Parkas a Boon for Trappers, Not for Coyotes
Those fur-trimmed parkas so common on city sidewalks have become a boon to backwoods trappers.
Coyote fur pelts are in big demand to provide the lush, silvery or tawny-tinged arcs of fur on the hoods on Canada Goose coats and their many global imitators. A good western coyote, prized for its silky, light-colored fur, can fetch more than $100. The top price at a recent Colorado auction hit $170, a 40 percent increase from four years ago.
“Coyotes are hot,” said John Hughes, a longtime buyer at J and M Furs in Roundup, Montana, “and it’s all due to the trim trade.”
Fur market
Late fall and early winter are the prime trapping time, when coyote coats are at their fullest, but a lot of the selling happens in late winter. Fur is sold at big auction houses in Canada, by individual fur buyers across North America and at local auctions near where the animals roam. At one such auction in a VFW hall in the upstate New York town of Herkimer, tables were piled high with the furs of hundreds of muskrats, beavers, fishers, mink, red fox, gray fox, otters, bobcats and coyotes.
“They like the white-belly coyotes, something like this, the whiter belly,” said John Rutherford, a trapper and hunter, showing a lush, long-haired coyotes.
Fur experts say the uptick in coyote demand began with Canada Goose parkas, with their distinctive Arctic Circle patch, a brand that went big in 2013 when model Kate Upton famously wore one over her bikini on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue. Over the years, more celebrities and their fashion-conscious followers began donning the parkas, which now can retail for more than $1,000 each.
“Canada Goose is always the name that people relate to, but there are so many other brands that make similar coats,” said Mark Downey, CEO of Fur Harvesters Auction Inc. of North Bay, Ontario. “Basically, it’s just a coyote trim ruff that goes around the hood of all those kinds of coats.”
Downey suspects the bull market for coyote will continue. North American Fur Auctions was similarly optimistic in a November web posting, saying the trim business continues to be in full fashion with Canada Goose being the major taker.
Toronto-based Canada Goose did not respond to requests for comment.
Trappers face competition
The hot market for coyotes comes as trappers deal with recent economic slumps in China and Russia, competition from ranched fur and the intense ire of animal welfare activists, who consider the popular steel leg-hold traps particularly cruel.
Coyote trappers see themselves as sportsmen helping control populations of a ubiquitous animal often considered a nuisance. Coyotes have been spotted from the streets of Los Angeles to Manhattan’s Central Park. Farmers view them as chicken poachers, and suburban residents see them as threats to their pets.
To trappers, coyotes are one of the few money-making animals, along with bobcats and a few others.
“It is the one bright spot in most of the country,” said Dave Linkhart, of the National Trappers Association.
Hughes will pay trappers an average of $75 to $105 and as much as $120 for a western coyote. He sells to operations that create trim strips, which sells to garment makers.
“The coyotes that we have here in Montana are probably the best coyotes in the world for trim,” Hughes said. “They’re heavy, so the hair stands up for the trim, and they’re pale.”
Western coyotes scarce
He handles an average of 10,000 coyotes annually, though the numbers are down for western coyotes this year. Some blame early-season snow in Canada and the western United States, which made it harder for trappers to get out. Others believe there are simply fewer western coyotes this winter.
Either way, Downey said, “there’s not enough western coyotes to go around,” increasing demand on eastern coyotes, which tend to have coarser fur.
At the Herkimer auction, eastern coyotes tended to sell for $19 to $46. Rutherford made more than $200 for seven coyote furs.
“Coyotes are going to move,” he said. “Good-quality coyotes are going to sell. “
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Sculptures Add to the Attraction of Outdoor Ice Rink
Water turns to ice when it gets cold enough, and that physical state change turns a splashing summertime fountain in front of one of Washington’s museums into a smooth surface for skaters. Valdya Baraputri takes us to the Sculpture Garden Ice Rink.
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US-China Trade Talks ‘Not Close’
The top U.S. trade official said Wednesday that a new trade agreement with China is not yet close to being completed. State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports from Washington on the latest in the talks and how U.S. concerns over high-tech issues remain a key point of friction. VOA Mandarin reporter Yihua Lee contributes.
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How ‘Completely Avoidable’ Measles Cases Continue to Climb
The U.S. has counted more measles cases in the first two months of this year than in all of 2017, and part of the rising threat is misinformation that makes some parents balk at a crucial vaccine, federal health officials told Congress Wednesday.
Yet the vaccine is hugely effective and very safe — so the rise of measles cases “is really unacceptable,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health.
The disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, which means it was not being spread domestically. But cases have been rising in recent years, and 2019 is shaping up to be a bad one.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing bemoaned what’s called “vaccine hesitancy,” meaning when people refuse or delay vaccinations.
“These outbreaks are tragic since they’re completely avoidable,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky.
“This is a public health problem for which science has already provided a solution,” agreed Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
WATCH: Measles on the Rise Around the World
Here are some questions and answers about measles:
Q: How dangerous is measles?
A: Measles typically begins with a high fever, and several days later a characteristic rash appears on the face and then spreads over the body. Among serious complications, 1 in 20 patients get pneumonia, and 1 in 1,000 get brain swelling that can lead to seizures, deafness or intellectual disability.
While it’s rare in the U.S., 1 or 2 of every 1,000 children who get measles dies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Q: How does it spread?
A: By coughing or sneezing, and someone can spread the virus for four days before the telltale rash appears, Fauci warned.
The virus can live for up to two hours in the air or on nearby surfaces. Nine of 10 unvaccinated people who come into contact with someone with measles will catch it. Fauci called it “one of the most contagious viruses known to man.”
Q: How widespread is measles?
A: In the U.S., the CDC has confirmed 159 cases so far this year in 10 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. That compares to 372 cases last year, and 120 in 2017.
But measles is far more common around the world. The World Health Organization said measles claimed 110,000 lives in 2017. The WHO says there’s been a 30 percent increase in measles cases in recent years. Unvaccinated Americans traveling abroad, or foreign visitors here, can easily bring in the virus.
For example, a huge outbreak in Madagascar has caused more than 68,000 illnesses and 900 deaths since September. But you don’t need to go as far as Madagascar, common tourist destinations like England, France, Italy and Greece had measles outbreaks last year, noted CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier. Nearly 83,000 people contracted measles in Europe in 2018, the highest number in a decade.
Q: How many U.S. children are vulnerable?
A: Overall about 92 percent of U.S. children have gotten the combination vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella, known as the MMR vaccine. Two shots are required, one around the first birthday and a second between age 4 and 6. Full vaccination is 97 percent effective at preventing measles.
But the CDC says 1 child in 12 doesn’t receive the first dose on time, and in some places vaccination rates are far lower than the national average. For example, an outbreak in Washington state is linked to a community where only about 80 percent of children were properly vaccinated.
Q: Is the vaccine safe?
A: Yes, said Fauci and Messonnier, who point to decades of use by millions of children each year — and who made sure their own children were vaccinated.
In the late 1990s, one study linked MMR vaccine to autism but that study was found to be a fraud, and Fauci said later research found no risk of autism from the vaccine.
Still, misinformation about MMR safety is widespread. Fauci said the solution isn’t to criticize people who have no way to know what’s false. Instead, “we need to education them to show them what the evidence is.”
Q: Why isn’t everyone vaccinated?
A: Some people can’t be immunized for medical reasons, including infants and people with weak immune systems, and most states allow religious exemptions. But while vaccination against a list of contagious diseases is required to attend school, 17 states allow some type of non-medical exemption for “personal, moral or other beliefs,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In Washington state, lawmakers are debating ending that personal or philosophical exemption, as are several other states. California ended a similar exemption in 2015 after a measles outbreak at Disneyland sickened 147 people and spread across the U.S. and into Canada.
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Congo Ebola Center Set on Fire After Armed Attack
Armed assailants attacked an Ebola treatment center in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, setting off a fire and becoming embroiled in an extended gun battle with security forces, health officials said.
The identity and motive of the assailants were unclear. Aid workers have faced mistrust in some areas as they work to contain an Ebola outbreak.
Dozens of armed militia also regularly attack civilians and security forces in eastern Congo’s borderlands with Uganda and Rwanda, which has significantly hampered the response to the disease.
The health ministry said in a statement that 38 suspected Ebola patients and 12 confirmed cases were in the center at the time of the attack. Four of the patients with confirmed cases fled and are being looked for, it said.
None of the patients who have been accounted for were injured, nor were any staff members, the ministry added.
French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the center together with the ministry, condemned the “deplorable attack” and said its efforts were focused on the immediate safety of patients and staff.
The attack in the city of Butembo was the second in Congo’s Ebola-hit east this week. On Sunday unidentified assailants set fire to a treatment center in the nearby town of Katwa, killing a nurse.
The current Ebola outbreak, first declared last August, is the second deadliest of the hemorrhagic fever since it was discovered in Congo in 1976. It is believed to have killed at least 553 people so far and infected over 300 more.
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On World Polar Bear Day Climatologists Sound the Alarm
Wednesday marked World Polar Bear Day – an annual opportunity for conservationists to shed light on the status of the largest and most carnivorous member of the bear family. As VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports, climate change is threatening polar bear habitat and the very future of the species in the wild.
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TikTok Fined in US for Illegally Gathering Children’s Data
The fast-growing, Chinese-owned video sharing network TikTok agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to U.S. authorities to settle charges that it illegally collected personal information from children, officials said Wednesday.
The Federal Trade Commission said the penalty for the social network, which had been known as Musical.ly, was the largest ever in a children’s privacy investigation.
The social network, which has been surging in popularity with young smartphone users and taking over from rivals like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, failed to obtain parental consent from its underage users as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, FTC officials said.
The operators of TikTok “knew many children were using the app, but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.
No tolerance for lawbreakers
“This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law.”
TikTok claimed 500 million users worldwide last year, making it one of the most popular worldwide apps.
Owned by China’s ByteDance, it expanded its reach in the U.S. with the merger with Musical.ly.
Teens have been flocking to the service, which allows them to create and share videos of 15 seconds.
According to the FTC, the company required users to provide an email address, phone number, username, first and last name, a short biography, and a profile picture.
The consumer protection regulator said 65 million accounts have been registered in the United States.
Officials said the company knew that many of its users were under 13 and should have taken greater precautions.
“In our view, these practices reflected the company’s willingness to pursue growth even at the expense of endangering children,” said a statement from FTC Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.
“The agency secured a record-setting civil penalty and deletion of ill-gotten data, as well as other remedies to stop this egregious conduct.”
Suggestive content
TikTok has faced criticism around the world for featuring sexually suggestive content inappropriate for children.
TikTok said in a statement it would create a “separate app experience” for younger users with additional privacy protections as part of its agreement with regulators.
“It’s our priority to create a safe and welcoming experience for all of our users, and as we developed the global TikTok platform, we’ve been committed to creating measures to further protect our user community — including tools for parents to protect their teens and for users to enable additional privacy settings,” the statement said.
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Meet Elon Tusk: Tesla Chief Changes Twitter Display Name
Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk changed his Twitter display name to “Elon Tusk” in another late-night flurry of tweets on Wednesday, which also promised news from his electric carmaker Tesla Inc later this week.
In a series of tweets to his 25 million followers following charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, Musk accused the regulator of failing to read Tesla’s annual reports and said its oversight was “broken”.
On Wednesday, he changed his display name and added an elephant tag.
Social media platforms have featured a number of memes involving wordplay around Musk’s name this week.
He also promised Tesla would have “news” at 2 p.m. California time on Thursday. The company, deep in debt as it ramps up production of its popular Model 3 sedan, is due to repay a $920 million convertible bond a day later.
Musk had promised last year to have his public statements vetted by the company’s board, as part of a settlement with the SEC that headed off demands for him to resign as Tesla CEO.
Tesla did not immediately respond to request for comment.
your ad hereMalawi Vaccinates Young Girls Against Cervical Cancer
Malawi officials say the country has the world’s highest rate of cervical cancer, but only two oncologists serving the nation of 17 million people. In an effort to reduce cervical cancer deaths, the government has rolled out a massive vaccine campaign against the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer.
The immunization project follows a pilot effort in two districts between 2013 and 2015.
The campaign is run with funding from the Global Alliance on Vaccines and is expected to reach 1.5 million girls between the ages of 9 and 14 across the country.
The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, is among organizations implementing the project.
“The disease starts when you engage in sexual behavior and contract a virus we call human papilloma virus that causes cancer slowly, over time,” said Steve Macheso, an immunization specialist for UNICEF in Malawi. “So we are trying to catch the girls early before their sexual debut so that when even they contract human papilloma virus, the virus does not cause cancer when they grow up.”
Other organizations supporting the effort are the World Health Organization and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
Health experts say cervical cancer causes the largest number of cancer deaths among women in Malawi.
“For the whole Malawi, we are talking about close to 3,600 new cases every year. And over 2,000 of these women die from this kind of cancer every year. This is the highest number of cervical cancer cases in the world,” said Dr. Leo Masamba, one of only two oncologists in Malawi.
Masamba says results of the HPV vaccination effort will not be felt for decades.
“In between, whilst we are waiting for those 10 to 30 years, there will still be quite a lot of cervical cancer cases coming from people that have already been infected with HPV now. We need to make sure that treatments are still available, and other interventions like palliative care is still available,” Masamba said.
Loveness Kalanda is happy that her 9-year-old daughter will be vaccinated.
“I wish if it was possible, government should have considered vaccination for us older women because this disease is not selective,” she said, adding that she wished there were another way to protect older women from the disease.
Jonathan Chiwanda, the national cancer coordinator in the Ministry of Health, told reporters in the capital, Lilongwe, that measures are in place to tackle the disease.
“All along we have been doing surgeries, we have been offering chemotherapy. We have also been giving antiretroviral drugs with help from remission for the Kaposi sarcoma (type of cancer),” he said.
In addition, he said, the government will soon open its first-ever cancer center in Lilongwe, which will be offering radiotherapy and other treatment to patients.
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Michael Jackson Brothers Say Accusers’ Film Neglects Facts
The family of Michael Jackson had a feeling the years-old child molestation allegations against the pop superstar would resurface at some point. So they say they weren’t entirely surprised to learn that a forthcoming HBO documentary would feature two of his accusers.
“I thought, ‘Oh here we go again,’” Jackson’s oldest brother Jackie Jackson said Tuesday of the moment he learned of “Leaving Neverland” while on tour in Australia. “That’s the first thing we said,” Jackie Jackson said during an interview with The Associated Press seated next to his brothers Tito, Marlon and his nephew, Taj.
The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a standing ovation , will starting Sunday air the abuse allegations of two men , Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who had previously denied Jackson molested them and supported him to authorities and in Robson’s case, very publicly.
“It was going to be the 10-year anniversary,” Taj Jackson said, referring to his uncle’s June 2009 death. “I remember a year ago I was like, ’This is too appetizing for the media. They’re going to do something. This is the time when everyone comes out of the woodwork, the same cast, the same characters that have been discredited throughout the years. They have a platform now to talk about Michael Jackson.”
It was the latest and most public pushback from the family and Jackson estate, which have repeatedly denounced the documentary in recent weeks through written statements, a lawsuit , and letters to HBO and Britain’s Channel 4, which plan to air the film. HBO announced Wednesday that it will air a special on Monday night in which Oprah Winfrey also interviews Robson and Safechuck.
Their central criticism has been the film’s failure to talk to family members or other defenders of Jackson, whom they insist never molested a child.
The brothers said they would have answered the allegations had the filmmakers asked them.
“Oh, we definitely would have come and talked to them about the situation … to protect our brother,” Tito Jackson said. “He’s not here no more. He’s passed, and, we’re his brothers, we’re supposed to do this.”
Marlon Jackson added, “I look at it as yes, you’re protecting your brother, but you’re telling the truth, and we want people to understand the truth. And I do not understand how a filmmaker can make a documentary and not want to speak to myself or some of the other families that were at Neverland.”
The documentary’s director Dan Reed has repeatedly defended his film, which uses only the voices of Robson, Safechuck and their families.
“It’s the story of these two families and not of all the other people who were or weren’t abused by Michael Jackson,” Reed told the AP the day after the film’s premiere. “People who spent time with him can go, ‘he couldn’t possibly be a pedophile.’ How do they know? It’s absurd.”
Robson, 36, and Safechuck, 40, both came forward as adults, first via 2013 lawsuits and later in the documentary, to talk about the alleged abuse, which Robson says started when he was 7, Safechuck when he was 10.
Both had previously told authorities there had been no abuse, with Robson testifying in Jackson’s defense at the 2005 molestation trial that ended with the superstar’s acquittal.
Jackson family members say they were especially stunned to first hear such allegations coming from Robson, a noted choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears and ’N Sync. Many Jacksons, including Taj, had known Robson and his family since he was a child. Robson had dated Jackie Jackson’s daughter for over seven years.
“I was like ’No that can’t be Wade Robson not the same guy that I knew, They must have got the names wrong,” Taj Jackson said. “Wade was the most adamant person when it came to 2005 and the trial. He was their first defense witness. He was the star witness. He was adamant that nothing ever happened.”
Taj Jackson said he remembers thanking Robson the day he testified, and Robson responding that it was the least he could do for Michael.
“To see that 180, it feels like the biggest backstab that you could possibly feel,” he said.
The film acknowledges and discusses the men’s initial denials of abuse. Both say they experienced trauma that emerged as adults when they started to accept what happened to them.
No one in the Jackson family has any memory of meeting Safechuck. They have focused their criticism on Robson, whose allegations, they say, have coincided with financial problems. They say in particular that being denied a job with a Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil show prompted him to change his story.
Robson has said it had no bearing on the allegations, and that he actually removed himself from the Cirque du Soleil show because he was having nervous breakdowns. Those prompted him to talk to his therapist for the first time about the abuse.
The men’s lawsuits have been thrown out on technical grounds, but are on appeal.
The Jackson estate’s lawsuit , filed last week, alleges “Leaving Neverland” violates a 1992 contract agreeing the channel would not disparage Jackson in the future. HBO called the lawsuit a desperate attempt to undermine the film.
Jackson’s family urged those inclined to watch “Leaving Neverland” to look deeper into the situation.
“That’s all we’re worried about is just facts,” Marlon Jackson said. “The facts, which are public record, tell a totally different story than what this documentary talks about.”
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Parkinson’s Drug Trial Offers Glimmer of Hope for Brain Cells
An experimental drug could offer hope for restoring damaged brain cells in Parkinson’s patients, scientists said on Wednesday, although they cautioned that a clinical trial was not able to prove the treatment slowed or halted the neurodegenerative disease.
The trial involved delivery of a protein therapy directly into the brains of Parkinson’s patients. Scientists said some brain scans revealed “extremely promising” effects on damaged neurons of those who received the treatment.
“The spatial and relative magnitude of the improvement in the brain scans is beyond anything seen previously in trials,” said Alan Whone, a Parkinson’s specialist at Britain’s Bristol University who co-led the trial.
Researchers said the therapy warranted further investigation even though it failed to demonstrate improvement of symptoms in patients who received it when compared to others given a placebo.
“The primary outcome was disappointing,” Whone told reporters at a briefing in London.
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease that affects around one percent to two percent of people over age 65. It causes tremors, muscle stiffness and movement and balance problems. Although some medicines can improve symptoms, there is no cure or treatment that can slow progression of the disease.
This trial involved 41 patients who all underwent robot-assisted surgery to have tubes placed into their brains.
That allowed doctors to infuse either the experimental treatment – called Glial Cell Line Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) – or a placebo directly to the affected brain areas. GDNF is made by privately-held Canadian biotech firm MedGenesis Therapeutix.
Half of the patients were given monthly GDNF infusions and half received monthly placebo infusions. After nine months, all participants were offered the GDNF infusions for a further nine months.
Results showed some signs of improvements, Whone said, but there was no significant difference between the treatment and placebo groups. He said this was in part due to the sizeable placebo effect in this trial.
The placebo effect has been known to confound clinical trials of treatments for conditions involving the brain, boosted by patients’ expectations that a potential treatment will work.
But the brain scan results suggested the drug might be starting to reawaken damaged brain cells. After nine months, there was no change in the scans of patients who received a placebo, but those who got GDNF showed major changes in a key area of the brain affected by the disease.
Whone said this suggested GDNF could be “a means to possibly reawaken and restore” brain cells that are gradually destroyed in Parkinson’s.
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Scientists Study Tiny Creatures With Big Impact on the Ocean
It’s not just human workers who commute each day. Millions of tiny creatures that form the base of the ocean food chain migrate in giant swarms each night. They go up and down – from deep waters to the surface to feed, then back to the depths as dawn breaks. Scientists are looking at how this vertical commute affects the ocean, which is a key regulator of climate by storing and transporting heat, carbon, nutrients and freshwater around the world.
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Dining Out? This App Will Help You Find a Quiet Restaurant
When it comes to dining out, the noisiness of a restaurant can ruin an otherwise good meal. But a crowdsourcing app is helping diners choose where to eat based on noise levels. Tina Trinh reports.
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First Iranian-American Woman to Win Oscar Turns to Iran-Themed Films
The first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar, Rayka Zehtabchi, says she wants to build on Sunday’s triumph of her documentary about menstruation by producing several films with Iran-related themes.
“I’m very interested in telling Iranian stories as well as women’s stories,” the 25-year-old Los Angeles-based filmmaker told VOA Persian in a Skype interview on Monday. “I was raised in Southern California pretty much my whole life, but the older I get, the more I feel like I connect with and learn about my Iranian culture.”
WATCH: Rayka Zehtabchi discusses being connected to her culture
Zehtabchi won the award for best documentary short at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood for “Period. End of Sentence.” The Netflix-produced film is about women in rural India fighting the stigma surrounding menstruation by manufacturing sanitary pads to enable adolescent girls to stay in school while managing their periods.
Los Angeles high school students inspired the film by raising money to buy pad-making machines for the villagers of Hapur district, 90 kilometers east of the Indian capital, New Delhi. “Just seeing that there are these young people who care so deeply about this cause that is affecting women all over the world, and being a young woman myself, I felt compelled to jump on board,” Zehtabchi said.
Zehtabchi directed the film and shared the Oscar with American producer Melissa Berton.
Iranian-born British-American actress Nazanin Boniadi congratulated Zehtabchi on Twitter for being the first Iranian-American woman to achieve such a feat.
Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi, on being first Iranian-American Oscar winner
“It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d be the first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar, but I feel absolutely incredible,” said Zehtabchi, the daughter of Iranian immigrants to the United States. “My dad passed away three years ago from lung cancer, and I wish he could have been there to see it, because he would have been very proud,” she added as her voice filled with emotion.
Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi, on her family’s journey to U.S.
The filmmaker said one of her next productions will be a narrative feature about her family’s journey to the United States in the early 1990s. “I’m very interested in exploring the immigrant experience and how it could be devastating but also hilarious at times, being a foreigner in a new country and having to learn how to assimilate.”
Zehtabchi said she also is working on feature version of a 2016 short film that marked her directorial debut, “Madaran.” Based on a true story about an Iranian mother who must decide whether to end or spare the life of her only son’s killer at his execution, the original film qualified for Oscar contention in the Live Action Short category that year.
Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi’s message to other young Iranian women
Asked for her message to other young women of Iranian origin who have cheered her success, she said: “You are strong and you are beautiful and you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”
This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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Underprivileged Children Find a Spot in Prestigious Literary Magazine
A library run by a volunteer group in New Delhi’s largest slum resettlement colony is helping underprivileged teenagers become writers. Some have had their stories published in India’s best-known Hindi language literary magazine as well as in other publications. For VOA, Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi.
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Noise-weary New York Ponders a Gentler, European-style Siren
If two New York City lawmakers get their way, the long, droning siren from police cars, fire trucks and ambulances that has been part of the city’s soundtrack for generations — WAAAAAhhhhhhh — would be replaced by a high-low wail similar to what’s heard on the streets of London and Paris — WEE-oww-WEE-oww-WEE-oww.
Their reasons for the switch: The European-style siren is less shrill and annoying and contributes less to noise pollution.
“I’ve been hearing from constituents complaining that the current sirens in New York are a high-pitched, continuous noise — a nuisance,” says Helen Rosenthal, an Upper West Side Democrat and one of the sponsors of the proposal.
Noise is consistently among the most frequent complaints to the city’s hotline, with many calls about the loud sirens that blare 24/7, wake people from their slumber and cause dogs to howl in unison.
“Europeanizing” New York sirens would not change the decibel level — still topping out at roughly 118 — but would lower the frequency and thus make the sirens less shrill but still ear-catching enough to grab attention.
“The alternating high-low siren required by this legislation is not as piercing,” adds co-sponsor Carlina Rivera, a Manhattan Democrat.
If approved in a council vote — which has yet to be scheduled — the legislation would require sirens on all emergency vehicles to transition within a two-year period.
Buzz about the bill even made it to last week’s NBC “Saturday Night Live,” where a “Weekend Update” anchor joked that with the European-style siren, “You can spend your ride in the ambulance pretending you have universal health care.”
City council members are looking closely at the experience of the city’s Mount Sinai Health System, which already uses the two-tone siren in its 25 ambulances that make about 100,000 trips a year. The switch was made last year after decades of complaints from residents of the Upper East Side home of the hospital complex.
At community board meetings, Mount Sinai’s Emergency Medical Services Director Joseph Davis played various siren options to find out which one locals preferred.
“People hated them all,” Davis said, “but the `high-low’ was least intrusive. It didn’t have that piercing sound.”
Davis, a 40-year EMS veteran who suffers from hearing damage that he blames on repeated exposure to sirens, said the change was simple and cost effective: All it took was reprogramming the electronic box in each vehicle, which comes preloaded with seven different sounds with names such as “Wail,” “Yelp” and “Piercer.”
In fact, many ambulances, fire trucks and police cars are equipped with alternate sirens and horns that they can employ in certain situations, such as in traffic when cars and pedestrians just won’t get out of the way. They include short blips and the “Rumbler” low-frequency, vibrating siren aimed at motorists who may otherwise be unable to hear higher frequencies.
For some Manhattanites, any change in the city’s daily siren song would be welcomed.
“I always have to cover my ears with my hands when a siren-blaring ambulance passes,” says Louise Belulovich, a Manhattan attorney. “If I’m carrying packages and unable to, then what is an annoying experience becomes a painful one.”
But Linda Sachs, a longtime resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side who lives near one of the Mount Sinai hospitals that uses the new European siren, doesn’t think the change is for the good. She prefers the old New York standard.
“The old sirens never woke me up, but these make me shudder,” Sachs says, adding that she understands city lawmakers are attempting to do something about noise pollution. “But the old sound wasn’t as obnoxious.”
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Using One Germ to Fight Another When Today’s Antibiotics Fail
Bacteria lodged deep in Ella Balasa’s lungs were impervious to most antibiotics. At 26, gasping for breath, she sought out a dramatic experiment — deliberately inhaling a virus culled from sewage to attack her superbug.
“I’m really running out of options,” said Balasa, who traveled from her Richmond, Virginia, home to Yale University for the last-resort treatment. “I know it might not have an effect. But I am very hopeful.”
Pitting one germ against another may sound radical, but it’s a sign of a growing global crisis. Increasingly people are dying of infections that once were easy to treat because many common bugs have evolved to withstand multiple antibiotics. Some, dubbed “nightmare bacteria,” are untreatable. Now scientists are racing to find novel alternatives to traditional antibiotics, a hunt that is uncovering unusual ways to counter infection, in unusual places.
One possible treatment tricks bacteria out of a nutrient they need to survive. Others rev up the immune system to better fend off germs.
And viruses called bacteriophages — discovered a century ago but largely shelved in the West when easier-to-use antibiotics came along — are being tried in a handful of emergency cases.
“People’s frustration with antibiotic resistance boiled over,” said Yale biologist Benjamin Chan, who travels the world collecting phages and receives calls from desperate patients asking to try them. “We’re more appreciative of the fact that we need alternatives.”
Nature’s bacterial predator, each phage variety targets a different bacterial strain. Originally used to treat dysentery in the early 20th century, today Chan looks in places like ditches, ponds, and, yes, sewage treatment plants for types that attack a variety of human infections.
“The best places are often really dirty places, because we’re dirty animals,” he said.
Chan saw hope for Balasa in a lab dish covered in brownish bacterial goo.
Balasa has a genetic disease called cystic fibrosis that scars her lungs and traps bacteria inside, including a superbug named Pseudomonas aeruginosa. A daily dose of inhaled antibiotics kept the infection in check until last fall, when the drugs quit working. A last-ditch IV antibiotic wasn’t helping much either.
Chan grew a sample of Balasa’s bacteria from her phlegm. Then came the key test: He dripped several pseudomonas-targeting phages into the grimy dish — and clear circles began appearing as the viruses consumed the bugs around them.
But would what worked in the lab really help Balasa’s lungs?
Bugs outpacing drugs
At least 23,000 Americans die every year as a direct result of an antibiotic-resistant infection, and many more die from related complications, according to a 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC plans an updated count, but other research has estimated the toll could be seven times higher.
And while there are no good counts in much of the world, one often-cited British report said unless solutions are found, by 2050 up to 10 million people globally could be dying from drug-resistant infections, slightly more than die from cancer today.
Yet few new antibiotics make it to market, and many major drug companies have ended antibiotic research, seeing little profit in medicines that germs will soon outsmart. A recent report found just 11 traditional antibiotics being studied to treat any of the World Health Organization’s list of worst bugs, with no guarantee they’ll work.
And while some people are more at risk — those getting surgery, or cancer chemotherapy, for example — “antibiotic resistance is a problem essentially for everyone,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health.
“Over the next several years, all indicators seem to point to the fact that this is going to get worse and worse,” he added.
Looking for bugs’ weak spots
Finding alternatives means “figuring out what the vulnerabilities of infecting bacteria are. What do they need to cause an infection?” said Dr. Pradeep Singh of the University of Washington.
Singh and fellow UW lung specialist Dr. Christopher Goss zeroed in on iron, a nutrient vital for bacterial growth. It turns out that bugs can’t always tell the difference between iron and a chemically similar metal named gallium. Gallium doesn’t nourish and knocks other systems out of whack, Goss said.
For two small studies, the researchers recruited cystic fibrosis patients who had antibiotic-resistant pseudomonas in their lungs but weren’t openly sick. The patients received a five-day infusion of a gallium-based drug. Over the next few weeks, their lung function improved, enough that next-step studies are being planned.
“It just seems like a proactive way of destroying bacteria,” said study participant Tre LaRosa, 24, of Cincinnati. His sister died of cystic fibrosis and while his own CF is under control, he worries that one day a resistant infection will flare. “I can’t do anything to prevent that. Antibiotic resistance I think is one of the least talked about and most significant concerns.”
Spurring the immune system
Fauci envisions doctors one day vaccinating people a few weeks before, say, a planned knee replacement to guard against catching a staph infection in the hospital.
Sixteen experimental vaccines are in development to target various infections, according to a recent presentation to a presidential advisory council on resistant germs.
Particularly promising, Fauci says, are lab-engineered “monoclonal antibodies” designed to home in on specific bugs. In one set of studies, researchers are giving experimental antibodies to ventilator patients who have bacteria building up that could trigger pneumonia.
Harnessing viruses for the best attack
In Virginia, Balasa learned of another cystic fibrosis patient helped by Yale’s phage experiments and asked to try, hoping to postpone the last option for CF, a lung transplant.
Phages work very differently than traditional antibiotics. Like a parasite, the virus infiltrates bacterial cells and uses them to copy itself, killing the bug as those copies pop out and search for more bacteria. Once the infection’s gone, the virus dies out. Because each phage only recognizes certain bacteria, it shouldn’t kill off “good bugs” in the digestive tract like antibiotics do.
Bacteria evolve to escape phages just like they escape antibiotics, but they generally make trade-offs to do so — such as losing some of their antibiotic resistance, said Yale evolutionary biologist Paul Turner.
For example, some phages recognize bacteria by a pump on their surface that deflects antibiotics. As the phages kill those bugs, the bacteria rapidly evolve to get rid of that surface pump — meaning survivors should be susceptible to antibiotics again.
“It’s reviving an arsenal of drugs that are no longer useful,” Turner said.
Yale’s first test case was an 82-year-old man near death from a heart implant teeming with untreatable pseudomonas. Chan purified a phage from a Connecticut lake that he’d matched to the patient’s germs, and with emergency permission from the Food and Drug Administration, doctors squirted it into the wound. The man’s infection disappeared.
Then doctors at the University of California, San Diego, saved a colleague who’d been in a months-long coma, using an IV mixture of several phages that target a superbug named Acinetobacter baumannii.
Doctors and families began calling both centers seeking emergency care, even as formal studies are being planned to try to prove phages’ value.
“There’s an incredible opportunity here,” said Yale pulmonologist Dr. Jon Koff. “But with that you have to have the appropriate amount of skepticism,” with careful testing to tell when it might help.
Last month, Balasa became Yale’s eighth patient, inhaling billions of phages over seven days.
Almost immediately, she was coughing up fewer bacteria. It took a few weeks for her to feel better, though, and during that time she switched briefly to some antibiotics she’d previously given up. Without a formal study it’s hard to know, but Chan’s tests suggest phages killed much of her predominant pseudomonas strain and made the survivors sensitive again to a course of those antibiotics.
Balasa called that “a very big success for me,” and was able to quit her antibiotics. She didn’t notice additional improvement after a second round of phages, aimed at different strains.
“The true test,” Balasa said, “is how long I can go without using any antibiotics again.”
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Mobile World Congress Overshadowed by Huawei 5G Spying Standoff
Robots, cars, drones and virtual-reality gaming sets connected by cutting-edge 5G networks are among the thousands of futuristic gadgets on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
While there is much excitement over how 5G will transform our everyday lives, the conference is overshadowed by the standoff between the United States and Beijing over the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which the U.S. says could be used by the Chinese government for espionage.
Some U.S. cities and parts of Asia are already operating 5G mobile networks. They offer speeds of over a gigabyte per second and low latency — in other words, practically instant connections with no delay.
Experts say that opens up whole new fields of connectivity, from new generations of virtual reality gaming and communication, to remote robotic surgery.
The technology promises to transform not only the mobile phone in your pocket — but also the world around us, says Paul Triolo of the Eurasia Group, who spoke to VOA from the conference.
“The really key aspects of 5G, like some of the low latency communications and massive sensor, massive machine-to-machine communications, that’s more about industry and industrial uses. And that gets into thing like critical infrastructure so you’re going to have a lot more non-personal or industrial data flying around and that really has people concerned. For example, military forces in countries like the U.S. will also leverage large parts of the commercial network,” said Triolo.Chinese firm Huawei is a big presence at the Mobile World Congress and a big player in 5G network technology.
Washington has banned the company from 5G rollout in the United States, citing Chinese legislation requiring companies to cooperate with the state — raising fears Huawei 5G networks overseas could be used as a ‘Trojan horse’ to spy on rivals.
Attending the Mobile World Congress Tuesday, the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Secretary for Cyber Policy Robert L. Strayer urged allies to do the same.
“We will continue to engage with these governments and the regulators in these countries to educate them about what we know and keep sharing the best practices for how we can all successfully move to next generation of technology. I´ll just say there are plenty of options in the West,” Strayer told reporters.
Huawei’s management has said the company would never use ‘back doors’ for espionage — and the Chinese government has dismissed the accusations.
Australia, New Zealand and Japan have followed Washington’s lead and restricted Huawei’s involvement in 5G. Europe remains undecided — but the industry needs clarity, said analyst Paul Triolo.
“The European community in particular and also the U.S. have to clarify what these policies mean, what a ban would mean or what some kind of a partial ban would mean, if there’s really a middle ground that can be found here.”
Vodafone’s CEO Nick Read told the Barcelona conference that banning Huawei could set Europe’s 5G rollout back another two years.
The eye-catching gadgets show the potential that 5G networks are about to unleash. But the question of who controls those networks, and the data they carry, looms large over this futuristic world.
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