Kenyans Sweep Titles in 121st Boston Marathon
Geoffrey Kirui of Kenya won the 121st Boston Marathon on Monday, leading a sweep for his nation of the men’s and women’s divisions.
Kirui pulled away from three-time U.S. Olympian Galen Rupp with 2 miles (3 kilometers) to go in the 26.2-mile (42 km) run to take the title in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds. Rupp was 21 seconds back, and Suguru Osako of Japan placed third, 51 seconds behind the winner.
“In my mind, I was sure that one day I would win this race,” said the 25-year-old Kirui, competing in his third marathon. “To come here to Boston, I knew I was going to face my colleagues who have run many times here. … I knew I would challenge some of the champions who have been competing here.”
Edna Kiplagat won the women’s race in 2 hours, 21 minutes, 52 seconds for the Kenyan sweep. Rose Chelimo of Bahrain was runner-up, 59 seconds back, and American Jordan Hasay was another 9 seconds behind to take third place.
Ethiopians swept the titles last year. Kenyans had won either the men’s or women’s race every year since 1991 before being shut out in 2014 and again last year.
Temperatures were much warmer than normal this year, with the thermometer hitting 79 degrees (26 C) at the 20-kilometer mark.
Americans dominated the men’s division with six runners placing in the top 10.
“It’s so exciting to see Americans being competitive here,” said Rupp, the Olympic bronze medalist who was making his Boston debut. “It’s a real exciting time. And it’s awesome to see American distance running on the upswing and being competitive in these races.”
“American distance running is looking good today,” said sixth-place finisher Abdi Abdirahman, a Somali immigrant and Arizona resident who is a four-time Olympian. “We have the podium for both men and women, so the future is great.”
It was the first time since 1991 that two U.S. women had finished in the top four, with Desi Linden placing fourth.
Earlier Monday, Boston city officials announced plans for memorials to mark the sites near the finish line where two bombs exploded during the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others.
Two brothers who immigrated from Russia, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were identified as the perpetrators. Tamerlan was killed during a shootout with police four days after the twin explosions that came 12 seconds apart. Dzhokhar remains in a federal prison after being sentenced to death.
…
US Psychologist Goes beyond Headlines, Tells Refugees’ Stories
After nine attempts to sneak across the border between Syria and Turkey, with an indescribable amount of fear and painful near-death experiences, 31-year-old Mustafa Hamed finally found a home in Germany, where he is working hard to piece together his life.
“The most important thing is you are lost here. So you have to find a new job, new friends — you have to find a new life,” Hamed said. “So this is a new start for me.”
His priority right now is mastering the language. His dream is to work in journalism. As he works hard to achieve this dream, he constantly struggles with a nightmare — the memory of his days in Aleppo.
“The clashes started in Aleppo in, maybe, 2012,” he recalled. “You can imagine, it was daily and you can hear every night bombing someplace near you — maybe for just two kilometers [away]. The electricity was cut down for a long time. You have to wait for 7 or 8 hours just to charge your phone.”
Resetting their lives
Psychologist and researcher Kenneth Miller, in his book War Torn: Stories of Courage, Love and Resilience, recounts Hamed’s story, among many others from Guatemala, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka.
During his more than 25 years of working with war victims, Miller noticed that the majority of what has been written about war focuses on soldiers. He wanted to draw attention to what’s missing from the conversation: the experience of civilians. In his book, he shares dozens of stories of people he met and worked with in many places around the world.
One of the most compelling stories is from Samad Khan, an Afghan who became a refugee in the 1980s, during his country’s war against the Soviets. Khan participated in Miller’s research in Afghanistan. In one of the counseling sessions on dealing with painful experiences, Khan shared a traumatic memory.
“He was driving a pickup truck with his sister’s family in the back, up a steep, winding mountain road and the road was controlled by the Mujahedeen, the freedom fighters,” Miller said. “They stopped him at one point and asked him to show his papers. So he stopped the car, and got out to show them his papers, but he realized he had forgotten to set the hand brake. He watched in horror as the truck spiraled off the side of the mountain and tumbled hundreds of feet down to the valley below. He had to go down to retrieve the bodies and bring them back to Kabul for burial.”
Overcoming tragedies
However, when Miller met him, Khan was a life-loving community leader. “I said, ‘How did you get over this? You seem to be doing so well now!’ He said it was a combination of the power of his faith and he also had a tremendous support of his extended family and friends,” Miller explained. “They got him through. I tell his story because this is something that recurs in the book, in every country that I worked in, that we are more alike than we are different. His story also captures something that we’ve seen in a lot of refugee communities, which is war, of course, can be devastating, but we’re built to heal. If the conditions are supportive, safe and stable, people have a remarkable capacity to be resilient and to heal.”
When the environment is safe and supportive, Miller says, refugees not only survive painful experiences, but they can thrive.
He tells another story, based on his experience in Guatemala:
“I got adopted by this one family while I was living in the camp for a year. This family fled when they heard about a massacre in a neighboring village where about 370 people were killed. They spent two months hiding in the mountains in the rainy season. They finally came down on the Mexican side of the border and found their way in to the refugee camp. This young fellow, Emilio, had developed a combination of trauma and severe shock. After a couple of days of traditional prayers and use of herbs, he healed. I think more than anything what really helped him heal was this tremendous love and support of his family. He has become a vibrant young professional musician, he became a refugee in Canada, who is doing wonderfully well.”
The social media effect
Miller says he hopes sharing these stories can help raise awareness about refugees’ situations.
“One of the biggest predictors about whether the refugees become severely depressed or adapt successfully is the extent to which they’re either made to feel welcome, given language and the material resources to get a new start, or whether they encounter a lot of discrimination. The more people feel marginalized and discriminated, of course, the harder it is for them to integrate, and the harder it is for them to heal,” he said.
One point Miller raises is the effect of social media. He says these tools can be helpful in raising awareness about the plight of refugees, but they also can be harmful if they’re used to spread misconceptions.
He points to images shared on social media of Syrian refugees on Lesbos, Greece. “When you see this father holding his two children and weeping and just arriving safely after crossing the sea, it mobilizes people and brings them to want to help, do something to counter this. Now, on the other hand, you also see social media being used to spread rumors and lies about refugees. Social media can spread tremendous fear, and that has serious consequences. It gets people turned back. It causes great harm.”
Miller says he also hopes these stories can inspire refugees and help them discover the inner strength they need to survive and start anew.
…
Facebook Hosts Developers at F8 Conference
Facebook’s annual developer conference F8 kicks off this week in San Jose, California, at a time when the social network giant faces more competition in the United States and around the globe.
Developers from Brazil, France, India and Mexico are to gather Tuesday and Wednesday at F8, looking for new tools and features for Facebook’s biggest products — its flagship social network, Instagram, the mobile photo sharing service; and WhatsApp, the instant messaging service Facebook acquired in 2014.
Facebook is expected to show new features for all its main products and woo developers and businesses to make greater use of its services. It’s a technical gabfest, but one that Facebook executives use to unveil new features and talk about the firm’s future. The name of the conference — F8 — comes from Facebook’s tradition of hosting eight-hour hackathons.
While thousands are expected to gather at a convention center in downtown San Jose, elsewhere, in more than 45 cities worldwide, developers will meet to watch Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s opening speech Tuesday morning. The challenge Facebook faces is two-fold — to find more users, and give them more to do.
With 1.9 billion users, Facebook is coming up against the natural limits of its growth. It already reaches more than 20 percent of the 7 billion people on the planet. In the U.S., Canada and Europe, its user growth has been somewhat flat for several years. Competitors such as Snapchat, whose parent company Snap recently went public, are popular with teens and 20-somethings.
“There are no more users to tap into in mature countries,” said Brian Blau, research vice president at research firm Gartner. That leaves the rest of the world, where Facebook continues to grow quickly.
Facebook has worked through an initiative called internet.org to expand global connectivity through programs such as Aquila, a solar-powered drone that delivers wi-fi, and Free Basics, which offers access to websites and other services. While the company said last year that it has helped connect more than 40 million people worldwide, Facebook has stumbled in some of these efforts, such as in India.
Ads
Facebook’s other big challenge is to deliver more services and features to its existing users so they spend more time during the day in Facebook’s world and, therefore, see more advertisements.
To that end, the conference’s events include sessions on advertisements, games, virtual reality and augmented reality, mixing the digital and virtual realms.
Messenger
One thing Facebook will likely focus on is offering developers more features for Messenger, its homegrown messaging service, Blau said. The company may decide to allow Messenger, which already has more than 1.2 billion users, to be more independent from Facebook itself, competing against big global messaging systems such as Kik, WeChat, Line and others.
“If you think about it, Facebook’s mission has always been around community and communication and online social activities,” Blau said. “And providing communication to people who don’t have that is a way to do it.”
…
Second Immune Cell Found to Harbor HIV During Treatment
The challenge of finding a cure for AIDS may have gotten harder. Scientists have discovered another cell in the body where HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — hides from therapy designed to suppress it to undetectable levels in the blood.
The cells — called macrophages — are part of the immune system and are found throughout the body, including in the liver, lungs, bone marrow and brain. After other immune cells have done their job of destroying foreign invaders, these large white blood cells act as the cleanup crew. They surround and clean up cellular debris, foreign substances, cancer cells and anything else that is not essential to the functioning of healthy cells. In addition, they apparently can harbor HIV.
A new target
While antiretroviral drugs can drive the AIDS virus down to virtually undetectable levels, scientists know if therapy is interrupted, an HIV infection can come roaring back. That’s because of a viral reservoir that until now has been thought only to inhabit immune system T-cells — the cells that are attacked and destroyed by the AIDS virus. Much research is dedicated to trying to find ways to eradicate the T-cell reservoir.
This may mean researchers must find ways to eliminate HIV from macrophages, as well.
The finding was published in Nature Medicine by researchers in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
Investigators demonstrated in a mouse model that in the absence of humanized T-cells, antiretroviral drugs could strongly suppress HIV in macrophages. However, when the therapy was interrupted, the virus rebounded in one-third of the mice. This, say researchers, is consistent with persistent infection in the face of drug therapy.
Researchers say their work demonstrates that any possible therapies must address macrophages in addition to T-cells to eradicate viral reservoirs. Investigators say they now have more information pointing to the complexity of the virus, and that targeting the viral reservoir in T-cells in the blood will not necessarily work with tackling HIV persistence in macrophages, which reside in tissues and are harder to observe.
Senior author Victor Garcia said it’s possible there are other HIV reservoirs still to be discovered.
The lead author of the study, Jenna Honeycutt, called the discovery “paradigm changing” in the way scientists must now try to eliminate persistent infection in HIV-positive individuals.
Investigators say their next step is to figure out what regulates HIV persistence in infected macrophages. They are also interested in finding HIV interventions that completely eradicate the AIDS virus from the body.
…
Prince Harry Shares Emotional Struggles after Diana’s Death
It is an image those who saw it will never forget: Prince William and Prince Harry — just boys, really — walking silently behind their mother’s cortege as the world mourned Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
Now Harry has revealed for the first time that losing his mother when he was only 12 left him in emotional turmoil for 20 years, filling him with grief and rage he could only manage after he sought counseling.
Breaking sharply with the royal tradition of maintaining a stoic silence about mental health, the 32-year-old prince told The Daily Telegraph in an interview published Monday that he had nearly suffered multiple breakdowns since his mother’s death.
It was by far the most frank interview of Harry’s life and gives the public a much fuller view of Harry and the inner turmoil he suffered growing up in the public eye after losing his mother.
He told the newspaper he “shut down all his emotions” for nearly 20 years and had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions.”
He describes a long, painful process of refusing to face his sense of loss that only came to an end when he was in his late 20s and sought professional counseling to cope with the pressures and unhappiness.
“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” he said of his teens and 20s, a period in which he embarked on a successful military career but also occasionally attracted unwanted headlines, notably for being photographed playing “strip billiards” in Las Vegas.
In the interview, Harry said he had at times felt “on the verge of punching someone” and had taken up boxing as an outlet for the aggression he felt.
He said the long suppression of his grief eventually led to “two years of total chaos.”
He said he was pretending that life was great until he started counseling and faced his problems head on.
“All of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with,” he said.
Along with his brother Prince William and sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge, Harry has worked with a charity that promotes mental health. They have argued that mental health problems must be given the same priority as other illnesses and should be spoken about openly and without stigma.
Harry has also worked extensively with wounded veterans and has organized the Invictus Games to foster international sporting competition for injured or ill service personnel and veterans.
Harry told interviewer Bryony Gordon, who has written extensively about her own struggles with depression and other issues, that he is in a “good place” now, and praised William for helping him seek help after many years of suffering in silence.
He credited counseling with helping him recover.
“I’ve now been able to take my work seriously, been able to take my private life seriously as well, and been able to put blood, sweat and tears into the things that really make a difference and things that I think will make a difference to everybody else,” he said.
Harry has also formed a romantic relationship with American actress Meghan Markle and in November took the unusual step of chastising the press for harassing her.
Harry and William have both been wary of press coverage, in part because of the way photographers shadowed their mother’s every move.
your ad here
Scientists Research the Brain in an Effort to Stop Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s disease was first identified 200 years ago, but so far, there is no cure. Most people have the disease for many years before it’s diagnosed, making it too late for effective treatment. So scientists are focusing on research in an effort to stop the disease before symptoms appear. VOA’s Deborah Block has more during Parkinson’s awareness month in the United States.
…
Quakeproofing Old Buildings
Traditionally built houses in old Europe are vulnerable to earthquakes, which again was demonstrated last August when a 6.2 magnitude quake devastated an area in central Italy. Italian engineers are researching ways to minimize the damage. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…
Between the U.S. and Mexico: What Migrants Left Behind
An art exhibition in New York highlights undocumented immigrants and the items they left behind while crossing hostile desert territory from Mexico into the United States. The show, called State of Exception, stems from the University of Michigan’s Undocumented Migration Project, and it uses only discarded objects. Celia Mendoza reports on these traces of human migration from the New School’s Parsons School of Design.
…
Environment, Politics and ‘The Godfather’ on Tribeca Film Fest Menu
After a turbulent U.S. presidential election and a rollercoaster start to President Donald Trump’s administration, this year’s Tribeca film festival will come with a statement.
Environmental, political and social issues all feature strongly in the 200-strong selection of feature films, documentaries, television shows and immersive installations on offer during the April 19-30 festival.
Co-founder Jane Rosenthal said choices for the 16th festival included themes of the environment “and the fact we are an open society and everyone is welcome here.”
“Artists can express things sometimes that no politician can,” Rosenthal told Reuters Television.
Films about food waste, the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline and the endangered white rhino are among a dozen projects linked to Earth Day, which falls in the middle of the festival on April 22.
A retrospective documentary about Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez, who was at the center of a 2000 custody and immigration battle; a documentary on maverick political operative Roger Stone; and “Copwatch,” about the U.S. citizens who film police activity and arrests, are just some of the offerings tackling social and political issues.
On a lighter note, the festival will open next Wednesday with a documentary about record producer Clive Davis – the man behind the success of singers like Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson.
The closing weekend sees a 45th anniversary reunion and screening of the cast and director of Oscar-winning Mafia movie “The Godfather” and its 1974 sequel “The Godfather: Part II.”
Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall are all expected to join a conversation after the April 29 screenings.
The Tribeca film festival was founded in 2002 by De Niro and Rosenthal to revitalize lower Manhattan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
your ad hereWill Robots Replace Human Drivers, Doctors and Other Workers?
The impact of automation on U.S. jobs is open to debate. Robots have displaced millions of manufacturing workers, and automation is getting cheaper and more common, raising concerns it will eventually supplant far more workers in the services sector of the economy, which includes everything from truck driving to banking.
University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor Ed Hess says we are just starting to see automation’s impact. “It is going to be broad and it is going to be deep,” he said, adding that “tens of millions” of jobs could be at risk.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared already.
While some politicians blame trade for the job losses, most economists say automation is mainly to blame as robots do routine factory tasks previously done by humans.
Hess calls self-driving cars and trucks a threat to millions of human jobs, and says fast-food workers are also vulnerable, as companies install electronic kiosks to take restaurant orders. McDonalds says displaced workers will be reassigned to other tasks.
The professor says research shows nearly half of U.S. jobs could be automated, including retail store clerks, doctors who scan X-rays for disease, administrative workers, legal staffers, and middle managers.
Future of jobs
Starting more than a century ago, advancing technology changed the United States from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy. Displaced farm hands eventually found factory work, but the transition took years. This new transition may also take a time because, Hess says, “We’re not going to anywhere produce the number of jobs that we automate.”
But 50 years of experience in banking shows that while automation may change the industry, it does not necessarily end jobs for humans.
The first Automatic Teller Machines, or ATMs, were installed 50 years ago, and there are now 420,000 in the United States. International Monetary Fund analysis shows the number of human tellers did not drop, but rose slightly.
“Humans were doing mostly service and routine types of tasks that could be converted into more automated tasks,” Tremont Capital Group’s Sam Ditzion said. But “the humans then became far more valuable in customer service and in sales in these branches.”
In a Skype interview, Ditzion said that while automation can be “scary,” the oversight of ATMs created new kinds of work for “tens of thousands of people.”
Automation grows
A report by Redwood Software and the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) says surging investment and falling prices will help robotics grow.
Redwood’s software handles business processes that are repetitive, rule-bound and tedious.
CEBR Economist David Whitaker says as growing fleets of robots take over mundane tasks, higher productivity could bring higher wages for some human workers. He says people who want to stay employed must hone skills that robots can’t handle, such as unpredictable work or the need for an emotional human connection.
One example, according to Alex Bentley of Blue Prism software, is a program that helps law firms examine visa applications. The robot enters data but gets help from a human partner with problems such as missing information. Bentley says some human jobs have been lost, but in other cases displaced workers move within the firm to new work, particularly jobs that are “customer-centric.”
U.S. Senator Chris Coons says Germany and other nations use training programs to help their citizens get and keep jobs in a changing economy. The Democrat says America’s competitors invest six times what the U.S. does in skills development and workforce training, while Washington has slashed funding for such programs. Coons and a Republican colleague, Senator Thom Tillis, are seeking more help for schools, companies, workers and government agencies operating programs to upgrade the workforce.
New opportunities
While workers need to make some changes, philosopher and professor Ed Freeman of UVA’s Darden School of Business says companies also need to rethink their basic purpose. He says businesses must do more than just maximize value for shareholders.
“I need red blood cells to live,” he said. “It doesn’t follow that the purpose of my life is to make red blood cells. Companies need profits to live, it doesn’t follow that the purpose of a company is to make profits. We have to think through this idea about what purpose is in business.”
Freeman says he is “optimistic” because many jobs, such as creating applications for smartphones that would have been unimaginable a few years ago, are creating thousands of opportunities. He is also encouraged by his many students who, he says, bring new ideas, passion and energy to the task of starting businesses that will create new kinds of jobs.
Freeman is convinced that the problem isn’t the tsunami of lost jobs, it is the lack of “really good ideas” for creating a safety net for people who will lose jobs to automation.
Many experts worry about growing levels of automation — particularly advanced forms known as artificial intelligence — hurting employment for U.S. workers.
But U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says it will be “50 or 100 years” before artificial intelligence takes American jobs. In an interview with Mike Allen of AXIOS, Mnuchin said, “I think we are so far away from that, [it is] not even on my radar screen.”
…
Fruit Flies Help Unlock Genetic Secrets of Parkinson’s
Researchers in Britain have shown that genetic manipulation can prevent or slow the symptoms of Parkinson’s, in the inherited form of the disease. That’s a minority of Parkinson’s patients, but the researchers are learning more about what causes nerve cells in the brain to die. Faith Lapidus reports.
…
From Wi-Fi to Li-Fi
Wi-Fi is very simply a way to send information via short-range radio. That can be a problem, though, when a lot of people are using the same open network at the same time. But a relatively new technology using light bulbs could help relieve that overwhelmed Wi-Fi network. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Lady Gaga Will Make History as Female Headliner at Coachella
Lady Gaga will make history when she performs at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival this weekend, marking a decade since a solo woman has been billed as a headliner on the prestigious musical stage.
Beyonce had been slated to headline the festival in Indio, California, but backed out because she’s pregnant with twins. Bjork was the last solo female to headline Coachella in 2007, so it begs the question: Why has it taken so long?
Women have always performed at Coachella, which began Friday, since it was launched in 1999. In the last few years the number of female performers has grown, including acts that blend alternative and pop, such as Sia and Tegan & Sara, to mega genre-mashers like M.I.A., Janelle Monae and Santigold.
Coachella is known as the festival for cool kids — and musicians. That leaves little to no room for acts that dominate Top 40 radio, where women have a strong presence, from Katy Perry to Rihanna.
Halsey, the Grammy-nominated singer who is readying her second alternative album and had one of last year’s biggest pop hits with “Closer” alongside the Chainsmokers, performed at Coachella last year. The 22-year-old said women who perform alternative music are often billed as pop artists because of their sex.
“Festivals like Coachella, they pride themselves on being part of the counterculture, being tastemakers, upholding themselves to a certain standard of the artists that they include, and I think one of the problems is that female artists are so often tainted as pop artists even when they don’t necessarily intend to be,” Halsey said. “Female artists can put out the same style of a record as a male artist and when a male artist does it, it has a certain type of dignity, it has a certain type of edge … as soon as a woman puts out a record of the same caliber, it’s immediately filed as a pop record no matter what.”
Halsey said it’s something she’s experienced in her own career with the success of “Closer.”
“It was this giant pop record and immediately I was a pop artist even though I put out an alternative album, I played alternative festivals and I was on alternative radio,” she said. “As soon as [you] do one pop record it’s like the kiss of death for a female artist sometimes.”
Gary Bongiovanni, CEO of concert trade publication Pollstar, said he didn’t think the gap between male and female headliners at Coachella was calculated.
“I don’t see that there’s any sexism. There’s nothing more than trying to put together a bill of artists that the public wants to see. And we live in a world where a significant majority of the acts are either male or male-fronted bands versus females or female-fronted bands,” he said. “If you look at the level of business all of those artists do and you try to cobble together a lineup that’s going to be appealing, it’s difficult, and there are a lot of the female acts that may not lend themselves to performing in front of 60,000 or 80,000 people in an open field, versus headlining an area or more likely a theater.”
In last year’s Pollstar chart of the 100 top-grossing North America tours, women made up about 15 percent of the list, which was dominated by male acts and male-fronted bands. Only two women cracked the Top 10: Beyonce was No.1 and Adele came in fifth.
Coachella is sold out before the lineup is announced, so the festival has the luxury of picking performers instead of relying on acts to help sell tickets.
Along with Gaga, this year’s headliners include Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar, who released his hotly anticipated new album Friday. Some of the female performers include Lorde, Banks, Tove Lo, Kehlani, Nao, Kiiara and Bishop Briggs. Yukimi Nagano, who fronts Swedish band Little Dragon, is returning to Coachella for a third time.
Nagano said she was surprised that it’s been 10 years since a woman headlined the festival, adding: “I think it’s a really positive thing.”
Jason White, executive vice president of marketing at Beats by Dre, said the company is purposely, and exclusively, giving attention to women at the festival: Their space at Coachella will only feature female performers, including Erykah Badu, DJ Kiss, Ana Calderon, JCK DVY and Jasmine Solano.
“I think it really meshes incredibly well with what’s going on with Coachella because you do have Gaga, we’re excited about seeing Kehlani [and] there’s some really solid performers this year,” he said.
Halsey, who spoke over the phone Thursday as she drove to the desert to watch Coachella as a fan, said she was thrilled to see Gaga take the stage. She said the recent Super Bowl halftime performer is one of those pioneering female acts that haven’t been boxed into a genre, though she knows “the extremes [Gaga] has to go to maintain that counterculture are much greater than that of what a male artist has to do.”
“Drake is still considered a rap/rhythm artist even though he is essentially a pop artist when you look at the decisions that he makes and the climate that kind of surrounds his projects,” Halsey said.
“And when you have a female artist in the same lane, they get written off as a pop artist simply because they’re female, simply because the conversation with them, it goes to fashion, makeup or whatever, and those are questions and comments that don’t surround the brand and surround the career of a male artist.”
…
Julian Lennon Honors Mom, the Environment in Children’s Book
Julian Lennon is looking to nurture a new generation’s commitment to the environment, with a little help from a white feather.
The firstborn son of the late John Lennon has co-authored “Touch the Earth,” a picture book for kids as young as 3 about the world’s water problems, from polluted oceans to the need for clean drinking water in the developing world.
Out later this month, the book from Sky Pony Press has a group of kids loaded into a plane called the White Feather Flier as they span the globe and learn about the need for filtration, irrigation and ocean life protection. With illustrations created both by hand and computer, it’s the first of three children’s books he plans, in line with the environmental and humanitarian work of his White Feather Foundation.
“We’ve failed miserably in looking after our environment. I think this is a great way to approach children into realizing what’s at stake, and to help educate and help them make decisions about the right things to do for the future,” Lennon said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s for those with inquiring minds who are asking why?”
Lennon has taken on environmental issues in song, including his 1991 “Saltwater,” and in film, including the 2006 documentary “Whaledreamers,” covering a gathering of indigenous and tribal leaders that explores connections among whales, dolphins and humanity.
Appealing to the next generation of prospective eco-warriors grew out of his friendship with co-writer Bart Davis after the two put aside plans — for now — for the 54-year-old Lennon to write a biography. But he hasn’t completely abandoned the idea.
“I feel time’s marching on, you know. A lot of my friends and people I know are popping their clogs,” Lennon laughed. “You know, who knows what’s next. It’s in the cards in the next few years, absolutely, before it’s too late.”
So what’s up with the white feather for Lennon, the former Beatle’s son with his first wife, Cynthia? He shares the story at the back of the book.
“On the odd occasion when I saw dad he mentioned once that should he ever pass, a way he would let me know that he was OK, or that we were all going to be OK, would be in the form of a white feather,” Lennon explained. “I thought that quite peculiar. I told mum about it, too, and we just sort of went on with life.”
Later, while on tour in Australia, he was presented with a white swan feather by an aboriginal tribal elder of the Mirning people.
“It was a freaky moment, but one I took to heart immediately,” he said. “I realized that this was about stepping up to the plate now and, you know, I can sing all I want about this stuff but am I actually going to do something about it? So I spent 10 years making a documentary about the Mirning people.”
It’s also when he established his foundation, visiting Ethiopia with the head of a clean water initiative and touring schools and health clinics in Kenya. A portion of the books’ proceeds will go the foundation, which now does a range of work, including providing scholarships for girls in Kenya.
Lennon’s father was shot to death in 1980. His mother died two years ago of cancer at age 75. Her loss remains tender. Lennon dedicates the book to Cynthia, and he established the Kenya scholarships in her name.
“I talk to her every night, pretty much,” Lennon said. “She has given me the strength to carry on. Where I’m at at the moment, I feel very strong, very zenlike. I just want to do the right thing. To try to continue to be the best that I can be. That was all based around wanting to make her proud. I try to continue all the work that I do in her name.”
…
Hackers Release Files Indicating NSA Monitored Global Bank Transfers
Hackers released documents and files Friday that cybersecurity experts said indicated the U.S. National Security Agency had accessed the SWIFT interbank messaging system, allowing it to monitor money flows among some Middle Eastern and Latin American banks.
The release included computer code that could be adapted by criminals to break into SWIFT servers and monitor messaging activity, said Shane Shook, a cybersecurity consultant who has helped banks investigate breaches of their SWIFT systems.
The documents and files were released by a group calling themselves the Shadow Brokers. Some of the records bear NSA seals, but Reuters could not confirm their authenticity.
The NSA could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shook said criminal hackers could use the information released Friday to hack into banks and steal money in operations mimicking a heist last year of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank.
“The release of these capabilities could enable fraud like we saw at Bangladesh Bank,” Shook said.
The SWIFT messaging system is used by banks to transfer trillions of dollars each day. Belgium-based SWIFT said Friday that it had no evidence that the main SWIFT network had been accessed.
It was possible that the local messaging systems of some SWIFT client banks had been breached, SWIFT said in a statement, which did not specifically mention the NSA.
“We have no evidence to suggest that there has ever been any unauthorized access to our network or messaging services,” SWIFT said in a statement to Reuters.
When cyberthieves robbed the Bangladesh Bank last year, they compromised that bank’s local SWIFT network to order money transfers from its account at the New York Federal Reserve.
Contents of documents
The documents released by the Shadow Brokers on Friday indicate that the NSA may have accessed the SWIFT network through service bureaus. SWIFT service bureaus are companies that provide an access point to the SWIFT system for the network’s smaller clients, and may send or receive messages regarding money transfers on their behalf.
“If you hack the service bureau, it means that you also have access to all of their clients, all of the banks,” said Matt Suiche, founder of the United Arab Emirates-based cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies, who has studied the Shadow Broker releases and believes the group has access to NSA files.
The documents posted by the Shadow Brokers include Excel files listing computers on a service bureau network, user names, passwords and other data, Suiche said.
“That’s information you can only get if you compromise the system,” he said.
Cris Thomas, a prominent security researcher with the cybersecurity firm Tenable, said the documents and files released by the Shadow Brokers show “the NSA has been able to compromise SWIFT banking systems, presumably as a way to monitor, if not disrupt, financial transactions to terrorist groups.”
Since the early 1990s, interrupting the flow of money from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere to al-Qaida, the Taliban and other militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries has been a major objective of U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.
Mustafa Al-Bassam, a computer science researcher at University College London, said on Twitter that the Shadow Brokers documents show that the “NSA hacked a bunch of banks, oil and investment companies in Palestine, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, more.”
He added that NSA “completely hacked” EastNets, one of two SWIFT service bureaus named in the documents that were released by the Shadow Brokers.
Reuters could not independently confirm that EastNets had been hacked.
EastNets, based in Dubai, denied it had been hacked in a statement, calling the assertion “totally false and unfounded.”
EastNets ran a “complete check of its servers and found no hacker compromise or any vulnerabilities,” according to a statement from EastNets’ chief executive and founder, Hazem Mulhim.
‘Not a drill’
In 2013, documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said the NSA had been able to monitor SWIFT messages.
The agency monitored the system to spot payments intended to finance crimes, according to the documents released by Snowden.
Reuters could not confirm whether the documents released Friday by the Shadow Brokers, if authentic, were related to NSA monitoring of SWIFT transfers since 2013.
Some of the documents released by the Shadow Brokers were dated 2013, but others were not dated.
The documents released by the hackers did not clearly indicate whether the NSA had actually used all the techniques cited for monitoring SWIFT messages.
On Friday, Snowden tweeted that the Shadow Brokers release was “not a drill” and that it shows the NSA was capable of hacking fully updated Microsoft Windows systems.
Several of the alleged NSA hacking techniques identified in the Shadow Brokers documents appeared to target older Windows operating systems, including Windows XP.
That may indicate that the documents, if they are authentic, are older. Microsoft stopped releasing routine security updates for Windows XP in 2014, but some businesses and individual users continue to use Windows XP.
Microsoft said in a statement to Reuters that it was reviewing the matter “and will take the necessary actions to protect our customers.”
…
Russia Boycotts Kyiv-hosted Eurovision Event Over Contestant Kerfuffle
Russia’s leading state broadcaster has announced plans to boycott the Eurovision 2017 song contest after the host country, Ukraine, barred Russia’s contestant, wheelchair-bound singer Yulia Samoylova, from entering the country.
Kyiv’s decision in late March to ban the 28-year-old Russian paraplegic vocalist stemmed from her June 2015 performance in Crimea, where she appeared without the approval of Ukrainian authorities after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula.
Announcing the boycott Friday, Channel One, the state broadcaster that transmits the competition to large Russian audiences, said event organizers had offered the option of sending a different contestant or having Samoylova perform via video link from Moscow.
“In our view this represents discrimination against the Russian entry, and of course our team will not under any circumstances agree to such terms,” said Yuri Aksyuta, the station’s chief producer for musical and entertainment programs.
The contest organizers also condemned the Ukrainian decision but said the event will go ahead.
In March, a Ukrainian security services official told VOA that the ban on Samoylova was “based solely on the norms of Ukrainian law and national security interests.”
The Kremlin called it political pettiness.
“Practically everyone has been to Crimea; there are hardly any people who haven’t been to Crimea,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Peskov also challenged criticism that Samoylova’s nomination was a deliberately provocative act by Kremlin officials — an attempt to make Kyiv appear cruel for restricting participation of a disabled artist.
“We don’t see anything provocative in this,” Peskov said, explaining that Channel One producers had nominated Samoylova independently.
Despite the high-blown kerfuffle, Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Bassarab told VOA that Ukraine’s law can’t allow for exceptions.
“On the basis of Ukraine and international law, the Russian contestant violated the law,” he told VOA’s Russian service. “Naturally, anybody, including this particular Russian citizen, should be barred entry into Ukraine. There is nothing personal in this position. We can’t make exceptions … [just because] they were nominated for an international contest or have a disability.”
Politics or entertainment?
Ukrainian political analyst Yaroslav Makitra says Kyiv’s ban touches on a broader range of questions.
“It’s critical to decide what matters to us more, politics or entertainment,” he said. “If it’s politics, then we should have said ‘no’ to hosting Eurovision. … But if we want to promote the Ukraine across the globe, then we need to seek legislative and legal opportunities that would allow the Russian contestants to come to Ukraine.”
Otherwise, he said, Kyiv risks turning Eurovision into a competition of political finger-pointing.
Samoylova, a 2013 runner-up in the Russian version of The X Factor, who also performed at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Paralympics, says that if she were permitted to perform, political tensions would be far from her mind.
“I’m simply not thinking about that. It is all out of the mix and it’s not very important,” she said. “I sing and my goal is to sing well, to represent Russia and not to embarrass myself.”
Frank Dieter Freiling, chairman of Eurovision’s steering committee, issued a statement Friday condemning Kyiv’s decision to ban Samoylova on the ground that it violates Eurovision’s ethos as a nonpolitical event.
“However, preparations continue apace for the Eurovision Song Contest in the host city, Kyiv. Our top priority remains to produce a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest.”
Dima Bilan was the last Russian to win Eurovision in 2008. The 62nd international song contest will be held in May in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
Svetlana Cunningham translated from Russian. This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian service. Some information is from Reuters.
…
The iPhone of Cars? Apple Enters Self-driving Car Race
Apple is joining the fiercely competitive race to design self-driving cars, raising the possibility that a company that has already re-shaped culture with its iPhone may try to transform transportation, too.
Ending years of speculation, Apple’s late entry into a crowded field was made official Friday with the disclosure that the California Department of Motor Vehicles had awarded a permit for the company to start testing its self-driving car technology on public roads in the state.
The permit covers three vehicles — all 2015 Lexus RX 450h hybrid SUVs — and six individual drivers. California law requires people to be in a self-driving car who can take control if something goes wrong.
Apple Goes Mobile … In a New Way
Apple confirmed its arrival in the self-driving car market, but wouldn’t discuss its intentions. Its interest in autonomous vehicle technology, however, has long been clear .
The Cupertino, California, company pointed to a statement that it issued in December. “Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems,” the company said then. “There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation.”
Apple released that statement after Steve Kenner, a former Ford Motor executive who is now Apple’s director of product integrity, notified federal regulators of the company’s interest in self-driving cars in a letter.
Like others, Apple believes self-driving cars could ease congestion and save millions of people who die annually in traffic accidents often caused by drunk or distracted motorists.
Self-driving cars could also be a lucrative new market. And Apple has been searching for its next act for a while, one that will take it beyond its mainstay phones, tablets and personal computers.
A Next Big Thing
Although iPhone’s ongoing popularity has helped Apple remain the world’s most valuable company, the company hasn’t had a breakthrough product since the 2010 debut of the iPad, currently in the throes of a three-year sales slump. The dry spell has raised doubts as to whether Apple lost some of its trend-setting magic with the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011.
Apple will be vying against 29 other companies that already have California permits to test self-driving cars. The list includes major automakers, including Ford, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen and Tesla, as well as one of its biggest rivals in technology, Google, whose testing of self-driving cars has been spun off into an affiliate called Waymo.
Since Google began its work on self-driving vehicles eight years ago, Waymo’s fleet of self-driving cars has logged more than 2 million miles on the road.
That means Apple has a long way to catch up in self-driving technology. But it has often been a follower in markets that it eventually revolutionized. It wasn’t the first to introduce a digital music player, smartphone, or tablet before its iPod, iPhone and iPad came out.
Deep Pockets
With $246 billion in cash, Apple also could easily afford to buy technology that accelerates its development of self-driving cars. There has been recurring speculation that Apple might eventually acquire Tesla, which has a market value of about $50 billion. Neither Apple nor Tesla has given any inkling that they’re interested in joining forces, though.
Speculation about Apple’s interest in expanding into automobiles began swirling in 2015 amid media reports that the company had begun secretly working on building its own electric car under the name project “Titan.” Apple never confirmed the existence of Titan, which is now believed to be dead.
…
‘The Promise’ Brings Tragedy of 1915 Armenian Massacre to Big Screen
Celebrities of Armenian descent including Cher and the Kardashians lent their support this week to “The Promise,” a period drama centered around the massacre of Christian Armenians during World War I in what is now Turkey.
“The Promise,” out in U.S. theaters on April 21, stars Oscar Isaac as an Armenian medical student and Christian Bale as an American foreign correspondent, both of whom fall in love with the same woman.
Their love triangle unfolds as the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war is followed by the 1915 massacre of Christian Armenians.
“So many people, when confronted with a period film, they tend to ask that question ‘why is this still relevant?'” Bale told Reuters at Wednesday’s red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.
“You only have to look at the news to see sadly how relevant this story still is,” he added.
Terry George, who directed 2004 Oscar-nominated historical drama “Hotel Rwanda,” said shooting “The Promise” coincided with news of Yazidi refugees besieged by Islamic militants in northern Iraq and the mass exodus of Syrians attempting to flee the war-torn country for Europe.
“As we were shooting, we were watching the same events in the same location – people under siege in the mountains and drowning in the Mediterranean,” George said.
The nature and scale of the massacre of Christian Armenians remains a contentious issue.
Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.
Singer Cher, whose father was Armenian-American, joined reality TV stars Kim and Kourtney Kardashian at the premiere.
“There is something about people when they don’t see other people as human beings, then they objectify and then they can do anything to them,” Cher said about the massacre.
“Westworld” actress Angela Sarafyan, who plays Isaac’s wife in the film and is of Armenian descent, described the role as very personal.
“My great-great-grandparents fled to Syria, Aleppo to survive and to start a family and today, people from Syria, Aleppo leave to other places so they can live,” she said.
“One hundred years have gone by and that is still happening,” she added.
…
Rian Johnson Debuts Teaser Trailer for ‘The Last Jedi’
Is the Force still strong with Luke Skywalker?
The first trailer for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” dropped on Friday, showcasing a morose and withdrawn Skywalker. The two-minute teaser , unveiled by director Rian Johnson at the “Star Wars Celebration” fan event in Orlando, Florida, offered few clues to the film. But it notably includes Mark Hamill’s iconic hero gravely intoning, “It’s time for the Jedi to end,” from a dark cave.
The trailer whetted the appetites of ravenous “Star Wars” fans who turned out in droves in Orlando and online, where the event was streamed live. Actor Josh Gad, a Disney star from another universe (“Frozen,” “Beauty and the Beast”), hosted a panel including Johnson, producer Kathleen Kennedy and cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and a new addition, Kelly Marie Tran.
“The Last Jedi” picks off where “The Force Awakens” left off, with Rey (Ridley) meeting Luke on a remote island, filmed off the coast of Ireland. Some shots in the trailer also suggested Skywalker training Rey on the island. In “The Force Awakens,” Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren has turned to the dark side after being tutored by Luke.
The presentation was mostly a game of teasing hints about the film while revealing very little about it.
“I actually can tell you some things. A small amount,” said Ridley, laughing. She said the film will go “deep” into Rey’s story and reveal how it can be difficult meeting your heroes — presumably alluding to a cranky Skywalker. “They may not be what you expect,” said Ridley to knowing groans in the crowd.
“The Force Awakens” director and “Last Jedi” producer J.J. Abrams has previously hailed Hamill’s performance in the film, suggesting it could land him an Oscar nomination. Hamill, the most raucously received star on Friday, said he drew on his own experiences for this new chapter in Luke’s life.
“I said: I have to relate to things that are real in my own life to understand where Luke is at this point in his life,” Hamill said.
“The Last Jedi” is due in theaters Dec. 15.
…
Meet the Rival to the ‘Mother of All Bombs’
The so-called “Mother of All Bombs,” may be the biggest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal, but it’s not the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the world.
That title goes to Russia’s “Father of All Bombs,” which is reportedly four times heavier than the 10,300-kilogram Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), the official name of the U.S. GBU-43/B.
FOAB is also quite a different kind of bomb. While the MOAB is conventional, the FOAB is thermobaric, meaning it uses oxygen in the atmosphere to increase the damaging effects.
According to Business Insider, the FOAB explodes in midair with a “fuel-air mixture” that, according to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, creates an intense “pressure wave” as well as a vacuum that “ruptures the lungs.”
Even if the fuel does not ignite, it’s highly toxic and likely deadly to anyone coming into contact with it, the DIA wrote.
The blast radius of the FOAB is around 300 meters, with an explosion equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, Reuters reported.
On Thursday, the U.S. military used its MOAB for the first time on the battlefield, dropping it on tunnels in Afghanistan that were reportedly used by Islamic State terrorists.
…
Ugandan Inventors Invent Better Way to Diagnose Pneumonia
Three university engineering graduates in Uganda are taking on one of the leading killers of young children in Africa – pneumonia. They say the prototype of their invention, a “smart jacket” they have named Mama’s Hope, can diagnose the illness faster and more accurately than the current medical protocol.
Four-month-old Nakato Christine writhes on a hospital bed, breathing fast. On the other end of the bed is her twin sister, in the same condition.
Nakato coughs as Senior Nurse Kyebatala Loy adjusts the nasal gastric tube.
“They have been put on oxygen because they have difficulty in breathing and the feeding is also difficult because of their fast breathing,” Kyebatala said.
Since January, 352 babies have been admitted with pneumonia to pediatric ward 16 at Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala.
Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death for children under five years of age in Africa and south Asia, according to the World Health Organization. In 2015, pneumonia killed nearly a million children worldwide.
A key problem is the challenge involved in diagnosing the disease. The sooner the sick children start receiving antibiotics, the better their chance of survival. But health workers armed with stethoscopes and thermometers can miss the infection in its early stage. Dr. Flavia Mpanga of the U.N. Children’s Fund in Kampala says other methods, like the respiratory timer, can lead to misdiagnosis.
“If you see the respiratory timer, it’s got a ticking mechanism that confuses the community health workers. When they are taking the breathe rates, they confuse the ticking sound of the respiratory timer with the breathe rates and every child is almost diagnosed with pneumonia,” said Dr. Mpanga.
She says over-diagnosis means some children are taking antibiotics they don’t need, which is also a public health problem.
A trio of recent university engineering graduates in Uganda think they have an answer. They have been working with the Mulago School of Public Health to test a prototype of their invention, the smart jacket, called Mama’s Hope.
Two of the inventors, 26-year-old Beseufekad Shifferaw and 25-year-old Brian Turyabagye, gave VOA a demonstration.
“Ahh so…[zipper sound]… the jacket…is placed on the child…first, this goes around the child and then the falcon fastening is placed, and then the flaps are placed…[fade out]”
“This jacket will simply measure the vital signs of pneumonia. That is the breathing rate, the state of the lungs and the temperature,” said Turyabagye. “Now those signs are transmitted to our unit here, through which a health worker can read off the readings, which include cough, chest pains, nausea or difficulty in breathing. With those additional signs and symptoms, they are coupled with the result that has been measured by the jacket and it gives a more accurate diagnosis result.”
For now, it is just a prototype. But the inventors say their tests have shown that the smart jacket can diagnose pneumonia three times faster than traditional exams.
UNICEF has put the team in touch with its office in Copenhagen in charge of innovations to help them advance in the pre-trial stage. Dr. Mpanga sees potential.
“My only hope is that this jacket can reach a commercial value and be regulatory-body approved so that it can help the whole world,” said Dr. Mpanga.
Dr. Mpanga says taking the guess work out of pneumonia diagnosis could save countless lives in the developing world.
…
What Progress for Parkinson’s Disease?
Shaking, slowness of movement and difficulty talking, those are the most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The progressive neurological disorder affects the way the brain connects with muscles. It has no cure, and the treatments address only the symptoms. April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month. Faiza Elmasry has more. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
…
CIA Director Defends Secrecy of Intelligence Work
CIA Director Mike Pompeo defended the need for secrecy in United States government agencies tasked with keeping the country safe. In a public discussion Thursday, he warned against celebrating individuals who steal U.S. classified documents and make them public, like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Pompeo said Americans should realize these “whistleblowers” act in their own interest and sometimes in the interest of a hostile country. Zlatica Hoke reports.
…
Scientists Hunt in Oman Mountains for Clues to Capturing Greenhouse Gas
As humans struggle to control the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet, scientists are searching for natural ways to remove them from the atmosphere. One group of researchers is drilling deep into a mountain range in Oman, looking for answers to how nature turns carbon dioxide gas into rock. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
…
ePUMB skype chat
