Finding a comfortable working environment can sometimes be difficult, especially for women working in male-dominated fields like science and technology. But some new startups are all about creating spaces that cater to and are dominated by women. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Category Archives: News
worldwide news
Optimism, But No Concrete Progress at US-China Trade Talks
The most recent round of trade talks between the United States and China concluded in Washington this week with no firm deal other than a commitment to keep talking. Nike Ching reports on the status of the talks between the world’s leading economies, as they try to find common ground before more America tariffs come online in early March.
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US to Leave INF Arms Control Treaty Signed by Reagan and Gorbachev
The United States announced Friday it is pulling back from a decades-old treaty that banned an entire class of nuclear weapons, sparking concern among some analysts the move could trigger a new arms race. VOA’s diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
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It’s Trump’s Speech, but Women Have a Message, Too
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump is to give his second State of the Union speech after a fight with lawmakers over border wall funding that triggered the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump will address a Congress with a record number of younger members, minorities and women. He will also have to contend with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to avoid another shutdown in less than two weeks. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more from the White House.
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Trump Denounces Pelosi Over Border Wall Funding
The president of the United States has lambasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “very bad for our country” and saying that “she doesn’t mind human trafficking” because she opposes designating money for a wall at the U.S. border with Mexico.
In an interview Friday with CBS News, Donald Trump said Pelosi is “very rigid” and that she is attempting “to win a political point’ by refusing to give him money for the wall that was a major component of his successful presidential campaign.
During the campaign, however, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused. Now Trump wants Congress to give him money for the border wall, and the Democrats who are in control of the House of Representatives have refused.
“Democrats have put forward strong, smart and effective border security solutions in the bipartisan conference committee,” said Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, adding that the president “still refuses to take a second shutdown off the table.”
Trump recently ended a 35-day partial government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he wanted for the wall.
National emergency option
The president said Friday he will consider calling for a “national emergency” as the path forward to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border because he doesn’t think negotiations among lawmakers will produce the necessary funding.
“We will be looking at a national emergency because I don’t think anything is going to happen. I think Democrats don’t want border security. And when I hear them talking about the fact that walls are immoral, walls don’t work — they know they work,” Trump said Friday.
However, The Washington Post reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is a Republican, has privately warned Trump that a declaration of a national emergency could divide the Republican Party.
The Post, citing two Republican sources, said McConnell told Trump that such a declaration could lead Congress to pass a resolution disapproving the emergency declaration.
On Thursday, the president called bipartisan congressional talks over border wall funding a “waste of time.”
In a White House interview with The New York Times Thursday, Trump again hinted he may declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress and build the wall without its approval.
“I’ll continue to build the wall and we’ll get the wall finished. Now whether or not I declare a national emergency, that you’ll see … I’ve set the table, I’ve set the stage for doing what I’m going to do.”
Government shutdown option
In less than three weeks, if there is no deal on border security that Trump would sign, there could be another government shutdown.
If Trump does declare a national emergency, Democrats who don’t want any money for a border wall will probably immediately challenge Trump in court.
The president had strong words for Pelosi who has said over and over again she will not agree to give Trump the $5.7 billion he wants for a wall.
Pelosi has said she was open to other kinds of barriers along the border, but Trump said that was unacceptable.
More troops to the border
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said it is sending an additional 3,500 troops to the U.S. southern border with Mexico to assist with border security measures.
Democrat Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, released the latest troop numbers after slamming the Pentagon’s lack of transparency in a letter to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.
A defense official confirmed that the Pentagon was sending 3,500 more active duty troops to the border, for a total of 5,800 active duty troops and 2,300 National Guard troops supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s request for additional border security.
The official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity, added that this “initial pop” in the number of troops would not be sustained through September.
Some of these 3,500 will be replacing troops who will be leaving soon, while others are only assigned to the border for 30 or 60 days in order to set up large coiled barbed wire in specific areas, according to the official.
Without giving any details, Trump tweeted Thursday “More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also. With a Wall it would be soooo much easier and less expensive.”
Trump, as he often has, claimed erroneously that “Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go.” The U.S. has been repairing existing barriers, which Trump called “a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!”
At various times, Trump has called the barriers at the border an impenetrable concrete wall, and other times “steel slats,” or a see-through barrier, even “peaches,” if people preferred.
On Thursday, though, Trump said, “Let’s just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!”
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End of an Era: China-Silicon Valley Relationship Chills
The trade dispute between the U.S. and China is disrupting Silicon Valley.
What had been a steady flow of Chinese money into tech firms appears to be slowing. Investors are concerned about the “headline risk” of doing business with Chinese investors.
And in some cases, U.S. startups are shunning Chinese investment.
These changes come after years of investment and collaboration between China and Silicon Valley. But the trade dispute, coupled with U.S. policymakers’ concerns about Chinese investments in sensitive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, have increased scrutiny of cross border deals on all sides.
A drop in investment
In 2018, Chinese firms invested more than $2 billion in U.S. technology firms, but that was a drop of nearly 80 percent from the year before, according to a Forbes report citing S&P Global Market Intelligence.
While Chinese investors took stakes in roughly the same number of U.S. tech deals — 80 compared to 89 in 2017 — that was off from the peak in 2016 when Chinese investors were part of 107 deals. Among the biggest recipients of Chinese investment in 2018 were Farasis Energy, a battery maker, and Epic Games, a gaming company, according to the Rhodium Group.
While deals continue to come together in 2019, the recent indictment of a Huawei executive has added to a new chill between the two regions, according to observers in Silicon Valley.
A technology war
In China, the battle is seen as less about Huawei and its alleged wrongdoing and more as a proxy for a “technology war” between countries over technological supremacy.
“The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.”
One recent change in the U.S. has been the expansion of a government program that reviews foreign investment in areas deemed sensitive.
Despite the expanded U.S. regulatory reviews, Chinese investments in U.S. tech firms are mostly getting through, said Chuck Comey, a partner at Morrison Foerster, a law firm.
As for Chinese companies buying or merging with U.S. tech ones?
“It ain’t happening,” he said.
Saying ‘no’ to Chinese investment
The increased tensions have given investors — and even some potential recipients of investment — some pause. One U.S. company, which had accepted Chinese investment in the past, told Reuters that it declined investment from Chinese investors in its most recent round.
“We decided for optical reasons it just wouldn’t make sense to expose ourselves further to investors coming from a country where there is now so much by way of trade tensions and IP tensions,” said Carson Kahn, CEO of Volley, an artificial intelligence training firm.
At a recent event in Silicon Valley about China and U.S. investments, speakers on a panel discussed how the geopolitical tensions affected their business. While several predicted that in the long run, the current friction between the two countries will have a minimal effect on cross-border business between China and Silicon Valley, there was a sense that an era has ended.
“We’ve kind of taken for granted,” said Kyle Lui, a partner at DCM, a global venture capital firm, “that the prior decade plus there’s been lots of strong collaboration between the U.S. and China.”
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Tech Firms, States Spar With US Government Over Net Neutrality
Tech companies and nearly two dozen U.S. states clashed with the government in federal court Friday over the repeal of net neutrality, a set of Obama-era rules aimed at preventing big internet providers from discriminating against certain technology and services.
Judges challenged arguments made by both sides in the face-off in an appeals court in Washington.
Lawyers for the states and the companies tried to persuade the three-judge panel to restore the net neutrality regime, set in 2015 but repealed in December 2017 at the direction of a regulator appointed by President Donald Trump. The companies challenging the FCC action include Mozilla, developer of the Firefox web browser, and Vimeo, a video-sharing site.
The net neutrality rules had banned cable, wireless and other broadband providers from blocking or slowing down websites and apps of their choosing, or charging Netflix and other video services extra to reach viewers faster.
The practice of slowing down transmission is known as “throttling.”
The action by the Federal Communications Commission rolling back the neutrality rules “is a stab in the heart of the Communications Act,” said attorney Pantelis Michalopoulos, referring to the Depression-era law that established the FCC.
Information vs. telecom service
The FCC wrongly classified the internet as an information service rather than a telecom service, using that as a rationale for not cracking down on misconduct by big internet providers, Michalopoulos said, who represents Mozilla and the other companies in the case.
Government lawyers, as well as big internet providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, argued to keep net neutrality repealed.
Thomas Johnson, the FCC’s general counsel, said the agency’s “light-touch” regulatory scheme, requiring the internet providers to disclose their practices and operations, provides adequate safeguards. The internet — used more extensively to transmit information — is different both in nature and function from phone service, Johnson maintained. It therefore should be regulated as an information service and not subject to the utility-style oversight of phone companies, he said.
The politically charged issue has emerged from its origins as an engineering challenge to become an anti-monopoly rallying point and even a focus for “resistance” to the Trump administration.
Once Trump took office, net neutrality became one of his first targets as part of broader government deregulation. The FCC chairman he appointed, Ajit Pai, made rolling back net neutrality a top priority.
On the other side, support for net neutrality comes from many of the same people who also are critical of the data-vacuuming tech giants that benefit from it. Politicians have glommed on to the cause to appear consumer-friendly.
The Democratic takeover of the House in November’s midterm elections could revive efforts to enshrine net neutrality in federal law, though Trump likely would veto any such attempts.
At the hearing in the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Stephen Williams questioned Michalopoulos’s assertions that the FCC had wrongly classified the internet as an information service. Telephone services, too, offer an array of customer products, he said. On the question of broadband providers charging premiums for faster service, Williams said a large majority of consumers prefer cheaper, lower-speed options, citing polls.
Judges’ views
The judges are weighing whether the FCC had the authority to nix the 2015 rules and get out of the business of enforcing net neutrality. It appeared that Williams was sympathetic to the FCC’s arguments, while Judge Patricia Millett raised possible legal avenues for the companies and states suing the agency, and Judge Robert Wilkins was the swing vote, said Doug Brake, director of broadband and spectrum policy for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank.
The judges could decide to can the repeal or send it back to the FCC for a redo if they have specific objections.
“Today we fought for an open and free internet that puts consumers first,” Mozilla Chief Operating Officer Denelle Dixon said after the hearing. “We believe the FCC needs to follow the rules like everyone else.”
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Why Wealthy Americans Are Renting Instead of Buying
Although they can afford to purchase a home, more well-to-do Americans are choosing to rent instead.
The number of U.S. households earning at least $150,000 annually that chose to rent rather than buy skyrocketed 175 percent between 2007 and 2017, according to an analysis by apartment search website RentCafe, which used data from the Census Bureau to reach its conclusions.
This new breed of renters challenges long-held assumptions that Americans rent a place to live primarily because they can’t afford to buy a home.
“Lifestyle plays an important part in their decision to rent,” study author Alexandra Ciuntu told VOA via email. “Renting in multiple cities at once has its perks, and so does changing one trendy location after another.”
Business and technology hubs like San Francisco and Seattle have the highest numbers of wealthy renters.
“Given the escalating house prices, it seems like a verifiable better decision to go with renting for longer,” Ciuntu said. “Given that in San Francisco, for example, $200,000 buys you just 260 square feet, it’s understandable why top-earners give renting a serious try before deciding whether to invest in a property or not.”
In fact, in both San Francisco and New York, wealthy renters outnumber well-to-do buyers. There are more high-earning renters — 250,000 — in New York City that anywhere else in the country.
“Ten years ago we would have associated real estate equity with life stability, whereas the two are not necessarily interrelated nowadays,” Ciuntu said. “Renting proves to be a more flexible option for those enjoying a dynamic and rich lifestyle. From a more millennial standpoint, this is no longer a brief solution before settling down, but rather an attractive world of possibilities.”
However, this rental enthusiasm doesn’t mean folks in the wealthiest brackets are rejecting homeownership, according to Ciuntu. Between 2007 and 2017, Chicago added 9,800 more wealthy owners than high-income renters, Seattle gained 13,400, and Denver added almost 18,000 more well-to do earners than wealthy renters.
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Women Will Surround Trump at State of the Union Address
Pelosi behind and above. Female immigrants, gazing down from the balcony. A black woman who ran a close race for governor of Georgia, rebutting.
When President Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Union address under divided government on Tuesday, he’ll be surrounded by these and other living reminders of the 2018 elections that delivered Democrats the House majority and a record number of women to Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will sit just over his shoulder on the dais, on-camera, looking out at the assembled lawmakers, Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and diplomats. Seated in front of Trump will be a record number of women House members, most Democrats and some dressed in easy-to-spot white. And in the gallery overhead? Two former employees of Trump’s New Jersey golf club, women and immigrants, who have spoken out about its hiring practices.
Afterward, Stacey Abrams will become the first black woman to deliver the Democratic rebuttal.
“I hope she does a good job. I respect her,” Trump said Thursday of Abrams, who narrowly lost the race for Georgia governor to the president’s ally, Brian Kemp. The president pledged to deliver a speech rooted in a theme of “unity,” even as he renewed his demand for a border wall as a condition of keeping the government open past Feb. 15. Before he spoke in the Oval Office Thursday, Pelosi again rebuffed the demand and belittled him on national security matters.
Trump will give his speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress at a sensitive time in talks to prevent agencies from shuttering after the longest government shutdown in history. Members of Congress are inviting federal workers who went without pay for 35 days and are worried about a repeat.
But the striking visual is shaping up to be the new lawmakers who will be arrayed around the president and elected in the wake of Trump’s inflammatory statements about women, immigrants, Muslims and more.
Two female immigrants will be among the lawmakers’ guests and seated in the gallery above the House chamber. One is Victorina Morales, who worked for one of Trump’s clubs in New Jersey for years even though she was born in Guatemala and lived in the U.S. illegally. Morales, a guest of New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, said in an interview that she feels respectful toward the president. But she does have a message for him after years of hearing Trump describe immigrants as a scourge that takes jobs from Americans.
“Forget about the wall, stop separating families and focus on immigration reform,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press, conducted in Spanish.
Another woman who cleaned the president’s clothes and made his bed at his Bedminster, N.J., club is attending the address, too.
Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who worked at Trump’s club from 2010 to 2013, will be attending as a guest of Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, according to the lawyer for both women, Anibal Romero. Diaz told the AP last month that she was also hired without legal papers and supervisors at the club knew it. She is now a legal permanent U.S. resident. Diaz said she decided to speak out because she is angry about the president describing immigrants as violent.
Abrams speaks both before and after Trump. The Georgia Democrat, heavily courted by Democrats to run for a Senate seat in 2020, lost her bid to be the nation’s first African-American woman governor after a protracted fight.
On Sunday, the 45-year-old Democrat will take her push for voting rights to the airwaves in her home state during the Super Bowl. Abrams’ political group, Fair Fight, has bought airtime on Georgia affiliates broadcasting the game so the Atlanta Democrat can push for election law changes.
Abrams said she’ll speak about inclusion “at a moment when our nation needs to hear from leaders who can unite for a common purpose.”
As Court Gag Order Looms, Trump Adviser Roger Stone on Media Blitz
President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone made multiple media appearances Thursday in Washington, talking freely with reporters before he was set to appear in court Friday and likely face a gag order from a judge.
Charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with obstructing a congressional probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Stone will appear before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is widely expected to bar him from discussing the case in the press after imposing a similar gag order on Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Criminal defendants typically shun the media spotlight, but Stone, a 66-year-old self-proclaimed Republican “dirty trickster,” has embraced it since his arrest Jan. 25 in Florida.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges of obstructing the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, making false statements to Congress and witness tampering.
The indictment alleged Stone told several unidentified members of Trump’s 2016 campaign that he had advance knowledge of plans by the WikiLeaks website to release damaging emails about Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Stone lied to Congress about those interactions and misled the congressional panel about his efforts to learn more about WikiLeaks’ planned releases, the indictment said.
‘Honest mistake’
On Thursday, Stone dismissed the charges as mere “process crimes” that did not involve any intentional lies, and called Mueller’s probe politically motivated.
“Perjury requires both intent and materiality,” Stone told Reuters in an interview, adding that any failure to disclose emails or text messages was just an “honest mistake.”
“I testified truthfully on any matter of importance,” he said.
Stone is the 34th person to be swept up into Mueller’s probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Trump denies any collusion and has called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt. Russia denies meddling in the election.
Stone said he did not even know for sure which Trump campaign officials were being referenced in the indictment and that he was never directed by the campaign to learn about future releases by WikiLeaks.
‘Epic fight’ ahead
A court filing Thursday showed Mueller’s investigators had collected several terabytes of evidence from multiple electronic devices.
Stone said he did not yet know what other evidence Mueller might possess. While expressing confidence in his innocence, he was not so confident about the outcome of the case.
“It’s the District of Columbia. It’s a difficult venue,” he said. “I certainly face an extraordinary and epic fight.”
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Robust Job Gain in January Shows US Economy’s Durability
U.S. employers shrugged off last month’s partial shutdown of the government and engaged in a burst of hiring in January, adding 304,000 jobs, the most in nearly a year.
The healthy gain the government reported Friday illustrated the job market’s resilience nearly a decade into the economic expansion. The U.S. has now added jobs for 100 straight months, the longest such period on record.
The unemployment rate did rise in January to 4 percent from 3.9 percent, the Labor Department said, but mostly for a technical reason: The number of people counted as temporarily unemployed jumped 175,000, with most of that increase consisting of federal workers and contractors affected by the shutdown.
The government on Friday also sharply revised down its estimates of job growth in November and December. Still, hiring has accelerated since last summer, a development that has surprised economists because hiring typically slows when unemployment is so low.
“The overwhelming conclusion from today’s numbers is that the U.S. labor market remained incredibly strong at the start of 2019,” said Leslie Preston, senior economist at TD Economics.
Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, said that many federal workers and contractors likely went out and found part-time work during the 35-day shutdown. The ability of many of them to do so is itself a sign of the job market’s strength, Swonk said.
Last month’s healthy job gain will assuage some concerns that had arisen about the U.S. economy. Global growth is weakening, the Trump administration is engaged in a trade war with China and higher mortgage rates have slowed home sales. Those factors have led many economists to forecast slower growth this year compared with 2018.
Yet strong hiring should boost household incomes, fueling more consumer spending, which would help drive economic growth.
Most sectors of the economy reported solid hiring gains in January. Education and health care added 55,000 jobs, retailers nearly 21,000 and professional and business services, which includes such higher-paying positions as engineers and architects, 30,000.
Rising pay
The ongoing demand for workers is leading some businesses to offer higher pay to attract and keep staff. Average hourly wages rose 3.2 percent in January from a year earlier. That’s just below the annual gain of 3.3 percent in December, which matched October and November for the fastest increase since April 2009.
Teresa Carroll, an executive at the staffing firm Kelly Services, said her company has explained to many clients that they have to pay more to find the workers they need. Some employers are still reluctant to offer higher pay, which has made it harder for them to find and keep workers, she said.
“They’ve enjoyed two decades of minimal pay growth in general,” she said. “It’s our job to educate our clients about the labor market.”
On a monthly basis, from December to January, wages barely rose, though. That’s likely to keep the Federal Reserve unlikely to raise interest rates in the coming months, economists said. Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier this week that the case for raising the Fed’s benchmark rate had weakened. Many economists and investors took that as a sign that a rate increase is unlikely any time in the coming months.
Swonk cautioned that some quirks likely inflated last month’s job gain. For example, some of the furloughed federal workers and contractors who took part-time jobs during the 35-day government shutdown might have been counted as having two jobs during January. Now that the shutdown has ended, these people will go back to being counted as having just one job beginning in February.
And for most of January, the weather was relatively warm in much of the United States, which likely boosted construction employment. Builders added 52,000 jobs, the most in nearly a year.
The strong job market, though, is encouraging more people who weren’t working to begin looking. The proportion of Americans who either have a job or are seeking one — which had been unusually low since the recession ended a decade ago — reached 63.2 percent in January, the highest level in more than five years.
Jessica Jacumin began a permanent job a month ago as a cook at an assisted living facility in Augusta, Georgia, after working there as a paid intern. Before that, she had been out of work and mostly not looking while she spent 18 months studying culinary arts at Helms College, a career school sponsored by Goodwill Industries.
Though Jacumin, 42, and her husband both have Navy pensions, her new job has provided much-needed income and health insurance. That, in turn, has allowed their family to spend a bit more freely.
“I am right now planning our first family vacation in three years,” she said.
Jacumin, her husband and three children will head to Hilton Head in South Carolina in July.
Impact of shutdown
The partial government shutdown caused 800,000 workers to miss two paychecks. But because these workers will eventually receive back pay, they were counted as employed in the survey of businesses that produces the monthly job gain.
But in a separate survey of households that is used to calculate the unemployment rate, some of these people were counted as temporarily jobless. That’s a key reason why the unemployment rate rose despite the healthy job gain.
Most economists have forecast that the shutdown will likely slow economic growth for the first three months of this year. But some say that even businesses that lost income from the shutdown likely held onto their staffs, knowing that the shutdown would only be temporary.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the shutdown slowed annual growth for the January-March quarter by about 0.4 percentage point, to a rate of 2.1 percent, though that loss should lead to a bounce-back later this year.
The partial government shutdown has delayed the release of a range of government data about the economy, including statistics on housing, factory orders, and fourth-quarter growth.
The reports that have been released have been mixed. The Federal Reserve’s industrial production report showed that manufacturing output rose in December by the most in nearly a year, boosted by auto production. But consumer confidence fell in January for a third straight month.
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New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker Launches 2020 Bid
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Friday declared his bid for the presidency in 2020 with a sweeping call to unite a deeply polarized nation around a “common purpose.”
The New Jersey Democrat, who is the second black candidate in a primary field that’s already historically diverse, delivered his message of unity amid an era marked by bitter political division.
“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good-paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame,” Booker said in the video, subtly jabbing at President Donald Trump.
“It is not a matter of can we, it’s a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will?” he added. “I believe we do.”
Booker enters what’s shaping up to be a crowded presidential primary, with three of his fellow Democratic senators – Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York – already either declared or exploring a run. But he’s spent months telegraphing his intentions to join the race, visiting the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to build connections with key powerbrokers.
Booker, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, won a special Senate election in 2013 to replace Democrat Frank Lautenberg and then won a full Senate term in 2014. He will be able to run for a second full Senate term in 2020 while running for president, thanks to a law that New Jersey’s governor signed in November.
But that doesn’t mean the 49-year-old’s path to the nomination will be easy. As many as five more Democratic senators could soon mount their own primary bids, creating a competition for voters’ attention, and several of Booker’s rival presidential hopefuls bring higher name recognition to a race that may also feature popular former Vice President Joe Biden. Booker also will likely stand alone as an unmarried candidate, though he brings a compelling personal biography that could help elevate his message of bringing Americans together around what he described as “common purpose.”
Booker’s father grew up in a low-income community in North Carolina, and the senator has recalled his family’s later struggle to settle in suburban New Jersey amid discrimination against black homebuyers. The senator has brought a heartfelt and passionate style to his achievements in the Senate, at times fusing his personal spirituality with policy proposals that focus on social justice. Booker played a key role in the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that Trump supported last year, for example, a deal he helped strike two months after sparring with Republicans during the battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
In his announcement video, Booker invoked the fight against slavery and the role of immigration in building the nation’s character.
“The history of our nation is defined by collective action; by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists; of those born here and those who chose America as home; of those who took up arms to defend our country and those who linked arms to challenge and change it,” he said.
Born in the nation’s capital but raised in New Jersey, Booker made a name for himself as Newark mayor by personally shoveling the snow of residents. He has $4.1 million left in his campaign coffers that could also be used to assist his presidential run. Rather than opening an exploratory committee to test the waters, Booker took the direct step to open a campaign seeking the Democratic nomination.
UAE Senior Diplomat Denies Hacking Americans
A United Arab Emirates senior diplomat denied Thursday the country had targeted “friendly countries” or American citizens in a cyberspying program that a Reuters report said involved a hacking team of U.S. mercenaries.
The Reuters investigation published Wednesday found that the UAE used a group of American intelligence contractors to help hack rival governments, dissidents and human rights activists. The contractors, former U.S. intelligence operatives, formed a core part of UAE’s cyber hacking program called Project Raven.
Project Raven also targeted Americans, and the Apple Inc iPhones of embassy staff for France, Australia and the United Kingdom, according to former operatives and program documents reviewed by Reuters.
Apple has declined to comment and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
When asked about Project Raven by reporters at a briefing in New York, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash acknowledged the country has a “cyber capability,” but denied targeting U.S. citizens or countries with which it has good relations.
“We live in a very difficult part of the world. We have to protect ourselves,” Gargash said. “We don’t target friendly countries and we don’t target American citizens.”
The French and U.K. embassies in Washington have declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Australian ministry of foreign affairs has declined to comment. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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In Reversal, Trump Says He and Intel Chiefs on ‘Same Page’
A day after he lashed out at U.S. intelligence agency chiefs over their assessments of global threats, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Thursday and said that he and the intelligence community “are all on the same page.”
Trump met with his director of national intelligence and other top security officials in the Oval Office and said afterward that they told him their testimony at a Senate hearing had been “mischaracterized” by the news media.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats had slammed the president for his comments disparaging Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel and other top security officials.
The officials told Congress on Tuesday that North Korea is unlikely to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and that the Iran nuclear deal is working, contrary to what Trump has claimed.
The intelligence agency chiefs “said that they were totally misquoted and … it was taken out of context,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They said it was fake news.”
Coats and other officials presented an update to the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday on their annual assessment of global threats. In a public report and testimony broadcast on C-SPAN, they warned of an increasingly diverse range of security dangers around the globe, from North Korean nuclear weapons to Chinese cyber espionage to Russian campaigns to undermine Western democracies.
Trump tweeted Thursday that he and the intelligence leaders “are very much in agreement on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, etc.” and that he values their service.
“Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!” he wrote.
Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters that the intelligence officials were “courageous” in speaking “truth to power” by publicly contradicting Trump.
“One dismaying factor of it all is that the president just doesn’t seem to have the attention span or the desire to hear what the intelligence community has been telling him,” Pelosi said Thursday, calling Trump’s comments attacking the intelligence leaders “cause for concern.”
Trump said earlier that intelligence officials were wrong about North Korea, Iran and the Islamic State, which they said remains a terrorist and insurgent threat.
“Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
Pelosi said Trump’s comments were “stunning.”
“It’s important for the Republicans in Congress to recognize they have to weigh in with the president to say, ‘You can’t act without knowledge,’”Pelosi said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said it was “past time” for U.S. intelligence officials to stage an intervention with Trump.
In a letter to Coats, Schumer called Trump’s criticism of intelligence agencies “extraordinarily inappropriate” and said it could undermine public confidence in the government’s ability to protect Americans.
Schumer urged Coats and other officials to “educate” Trump about the facts and raw intelligence underlying threat assessments so the administration can speak “with a unified and accurate voice about national security threats.”
Asked about his tweets earlier Thursday, Trump did not back away from questioning the assessment by Coats and Haspel.
“I disagree with certain things that they said. I think I’m right, but time will prove that, time will prove me right probably,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think Iran is a threat. I think I did a great thing when I terminated the ridiculous Iran nuclear deal. It was a horrible one-sided deal.”
Speaking about intelligence agencies generally, Trump added: “I have great respect for a lot people but I don’t always agree with everybody.”
At a hearing Tuesday, Coats said intelligence information does not support the idea that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will eliminate his nuclear weapons.
Trump later insisted on Twitter that the U.S. relationship with North Korea “is the best it has ever been.” He pointed to the North’s halt in nuclear and missile tests, the return of some U.S. service members’ remains and the release of detained Americans as signs of progress.
U.S. intelligence agencies also said Iran continues to work with other parties to the nuclear deal it reached with the U.S. and other world powers. In doing so, they said, Iran has at least temporarily lessened the nuclear threat. In May 2018, Trump withdrew the U.S. from that accord, which he said would not deter Iran.
“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran,” Trump tweeted. “They are wrong!”
Hit by Sanctions, Asia’s Iran Crude Oil Imports Drop to 3-Year Low in 2018
Iranian crude oil imports by Asia’s top four buyers dropped to the lowest volume in three years in 2018 amid U.S. sanctions on Tehran, but China and India stepped up imports in December after getting waivers from Washington.
Asia’s top four buyers of Iranian crude — China, India, Japan and South Korea — imported a total 1.31 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018, down 21 percent from the previous year, data from the countries showed.
That was the lowest since about 1 million bpd in 2015, when a previous round of sanctions on Iran led to a sharp drop in Asian imports, Reuters data showed.
The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports last November as it wants to negotiate a new nuclear deal with the country. U.S. officials have said they intend to reduce the Islamic Republic’s oil exports to zero.
On a monthly basis, Asia’s imports from Iran rebounded to a three-month high of 761,593 bpd in December as China and India stepped up purchases after Washington granted eight countries waivers from the Iranian sanctions for 180 days from the start of November.
“We expect Iranian exports to Asia to remain stable at around 800,000 barrels per day until May, when the waivers expire,” said Energy Aspects analyst Riccardo Fabiani.
In December, China’s imports climbed above 500,000 bpd for the first time in three months, while India’s imports rose above 302,000 bpd.
Japan and South Korea did not import any Iranian crude that month because they were still sorting out payment and shipping issues, but the countries have resumed oil lifting from Iran this month.
During the 180-day period, China can import up to 360,000 bpd of Iranian oil, while India’s imports are restricted to 300,000 bpd. South Korea can import up to 200,000 bpd of Iranian condensate.
“After May, it will all depend on the U.S. administration’s decisions, which at the moment remain completely obscure. On balance, they are likely to extend the current waivers, although rumors are that there could be a significant cut in waivered volumes,” Fabiani said.
As a precaution, Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner, is looking for an annual deal to buy U.S. crude as it seeks to broaden its oil purchasing options, its chairman said Wednesday.
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Facebook Takes Down Vast Iran-Led Manipulation Campaign
Facebook said Thursday it took down hundreds of “inauthentic” accounts from Iran that were part of a vast manipulation campaign operating in more than 20 countries.
The world’s biggest social network said it removed 783 pages, groups and accounts “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior tied to Iran.”
The pages were part of a campaign to promote Iranian interests in various countries by creating fake identities as residents of those nations, according to a statement by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook.
The announcement was the latest by Facebook as it seeks to stamp out efforts by state actors and others to manipulate the social network using fraudulent accounts.
“We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Gleicher said.
“We’re taking down these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they post. In this case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.”
The operators “typically represented themselves as locals, often using fake accounts, and posted news stories on current events,” including “commentary that repurposed Iranian state media’s reporting on topics like Israel-Palestine relations and the conflicts in Syria and Yemen,” Gleicher said.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review linked these accounts to Iran.”
The operation dating back to as early as 2010 had 262 pages, 356 accounts, and three groups on Facebook, as well as 162 accounts on Instagram and were followed by about two million users.
Facebook said the fake accounts were part of an influence campaign that operated in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, U.S., and Yemen.
Facebook began looking into these kinds of activities after revelations of Russian influence campaigns during the 2016 U.S. election, aimed at sowing discord.
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Weather, Shutdown Blamed for Immigration Courts Backlog
U.S. immigration officials blame the government shutdown and the extreme winter weather for confusion about immigration court hearings.
In an emailed statement, the part of the Justice Department overseeing immigration courts said some immigrants with notices to appear Thursday wouldn’t be able to proceed with those hearings.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review said the shutdown prevented immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices. Weather-related closures this week also slowed the agency’s processing of cases.
The agency also said in some cases, courts didn’t receive the required paperwork.
Separately, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the overflow of hearings scheduled Thursday had been expected because of the shutdown.
Similar backlogs have occurred nationwide since a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling addressed how to provide notices to immigrants to appear in court.
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‘Dreamer’ Rhodes Scholar to Attend State of the Union Address
A recent Harvard University graduate who is the first so-called Dreamer to receive a Rhodes scholarship will attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address as a guest of a New York congresswoman.
Democratic Rep. Grace Meng said she invited Jin Park to attend Trump’s address Tuesday in the hope of bringing more attention to his plight and that of thousands of other young immigrants.
The 22-year-old Queens resident told The Associated Press he might not be allowed back in the country if he attends the University of Oxford in England this fall.
Park is a native of South Korea and has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, which protects him from deportation. But Trump has rescinded overseas travel benefits for DACA holders as he seeks to end the Obama-era program.
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Ghirardelli, Russel Stover Fined over Chocolate Packaging
Ghirardelli and Russell Stover have agreed to pay $750,000 in fines after prosecutors in California said they offered a little chocolate in a lot of wrapping.
Prosecutors in Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Fresno, Santa Cruz and Yolo counties sued the candy makers, alleging they misled consumers by selling chocolate products in containers that were oversized or “predominantly empty.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Ghirardelli offered one chocolate product containing less cocoa than advertised.
The firms didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing but agreed to change their packaging under a settlement approved earlier this month. Some packages will shrink or will have a transparent window so consumers can look inside.
San Francisco-based Ghirardelli and Kansas City-based Russell Stover are owned by a Swiss company, Lindt & Sprungli.
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Apple Busts Facebook for Distributing Data-Sucking App
Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use.
In doing so, Apple closed off Facebook’s efforts to sidestep Apple’s app store and its tighter rules on privacy.
The tech blog TechCrunch reported late Tuesday that Facebook paid people about $20 a month to install and use the Facebook Research app. While Facebook says this was done with permission, the company has a history of defining “permission” loosely and obscuring what data it collects.
“I don’t think they make it very clear to users precisely what level of access they were granting when they gave permission,” mobile app security researcher Will Strafach said Wednesday. “There is simply no way the users understood this.”
He said Facebook’s claim that users understood the scope of data collection was “muddying the waters.”
Facebook says fewer than 5 percent of the app’s users were teens and they had parental permission. Nonetheless, the revelation is yet another blemish on Facebook’s track record on privacy and could invite further regulatory scrutiny.
And it comes less than a week after court documents revealed that Facebook allowed children to rack up huge bills on digital games and that it had rejected recommendations for addressing it for fear of hurting revenue growth.
For now, the app appears to be available for Android phones, though not through Google’s main app store. Google had no comment Wednesday.
Apple said Facebook was distributing Facebook Research through an internal-distribution mechanism meant for company employees, not outsiders. Apple has revoked that capability.
TechCrunch reported separately Wednesday that Google was using the same privileged access to Apple’s mobile operating system for a market-research app, Screenwise Meter. Asked about it by The Associated Press, Google said it had disabled the app on Apple devices and apologized for its “mistake.”
The company said Google had always been “upfront with users” about how it used data collected by the app, which offered users points that could be accrued for gift cards. In contrast to the Facebook Research app, Google said its Screenwise Meter app never asked users to let the company circumvent network encryption, meaning it is far less intrusive.
Facebook is still permitted to distribute apps through Apple’s app store, though such apps are reviewed by Apple ahead of time. And Apple’s move Wednesday restricts Facebook’s ability to test those apps — including core apps such as Facebook and Instagram — before they are released through the app store.
Facebook previously pulled an app called Onavo Protect from Apple’s app store because of its stricter requirements. But Strafach, who dismantled the Facebook Research app on TechCrunch’s behalf, told the AP that it was mostly Onavo repackaged and rebranded, as the two apps shared about 98 percent of their code.
As of Wednesday, a disclosure form on Betabound, one of the services that distributed Facebook Research, informed prospective users that by installing Facebook Research, they are letting Facebook collect a range of data. This includes information on apps users have installed, when they use them and what they do on them. Information is also collected on how other people interact with users and their content within those apps, according to the disclosure.
Betabound warned that Facebook may collect information even when an app or web browser uses encryption.
Strafach said emails, social media activities, private messages and just about anything else could be intercepted. He said the only data absolutely safe from snooping are from services, such as Signal and Apple’s iMessages, that fully encrypt messages prior to transmission, a method known as end-to-end encryption.
Strafach, who is CEO of Guardian Mobile Firewall, said he was aghast to discover Facebook caught red-handed violating Apple’s trust.
He said such traffic-capturing tools are only supposed to be for trusted partners to use internally. Instead, he said Facebook was scooping up all incoming and outgoing data traffic from unwitting members of the public — in an app geared toward teenagers.
“This is very flagrantly not allowed,” Strafach said. “It’s mind-blowing how defiant Facebook was acting.”
Trump Order Asks Federal Fund Recipients to Buy US Goods
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Thursday pushing those who receive federal funds to “buy American.” The aim is to boost U.S. manufacturing.
Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, told reporters during a telephone briefing the policies are helping workers who “are blue collar, Trump people.” Later he amended that, saying he “every American is a Trump person” because Trump’s economic policies affect everyone.
Navarro said the order would affect federal financial assistance, which includes everything from loans and grants to insurance and interest subsidies.
He says some 30 federal agencies award over $700 billion in such aid each year. Recipients working on projects like bridges and sewer systems will be encouraged to use American products.
Survey: 2018 ‘Worst Year Ever’ for Smartphone Market
Global smartphone sales saw their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 isn’t much better, new surveys show.
Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 percent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year.
“Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.
“Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, (South) Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.”
Reith said the market has been hit by consumers waiting longer to replace their phones, frustration around the high cost of premium devices, and political and economic uncertainty.
The Chinese market, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 percent drop, according to IDC’s survey, which was released Wednesday.
IDC said the top five smartphone makers have become stronger and now account for 69 percent of worldwide sales, up from 63 percent a year ago.
Samsung remained the number one handset maker with a 20.8 percent share despite an eight percent sales slump for the year, IDC said.
Apple managed to recapture the number two position with a 14.9 percent market share, moving ahead of Huawei at 14.7 percent, the survey found.
IDC said fourth-quarter smartphone sales fell 4.9 percent – the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
“The challenging holiday quarter closes out the worst year ever for smartphone shipments,” IDC said in its report.
A separate report by Counterpoint Research showed similar findings, estimating a seven percent drop in the fourth quarter and four percent drop for the full year.
“The collective smartphone shipment growth of emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and others was not enough to offset the decline in China,” said Counterpoint associate director Tarun Pathak.
Trump Says He will Let Justice Department Decide Handling of Mueller Report
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would let the Justice Department decide how to handle the special counsel’s report on an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow.
Republican Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, William Barr, said at his confirmation hearing this month he would allow Robert Mueller to complete the probe and pledged to make as many details of the findings public as he can.
Asked in an interview with the Daily Caller conservative website whether he would make the decision on whether to release the Mueller report, Trump said “they’ll have to make their decision within the Justice Department.”
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Monday that Mueller’s probe is “close to being completed.”
Trump told the Daily Caller he has not spoken to Whitaker about whether the investigation is nearing its conclusion.
Whitaker’s comments were the first time a top government official with knowledge of the investigation has publicly said it is in the final stages.
Democrats worry that Trump’s administration may try to undercut the investigation, which has clouded Trump’s two years in office and has been a frequent target of the president and his allies. So far, the investigation has ensnared 34 people.
Russia rejects the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow ran an operation to hack Democratic Party computers and spread disinformation to undermine candidate Hillary Clinton and the American electoral process.
The president dismisses the probe as a political witch hunt and denies collusion with Russia.
Mueller’s office most recently indicted a long-time Trump confidant, Republican political operative Roger Stone, on charges of obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
Others in Trump’s orbit charged by prosecutors include former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, his former campaign deputy, Richard Gates, and his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn and former lawyer Michael Cohen.
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Need for Speed: Carts on Rails Help Manila’s Commuters Dodge Gridlock
Thousands of commuters flock to Manila’s railway tracks every day, but rather than boarding the trains, they climb on to wooden carts pushed along the tracks, to avoid the Philippine capital’s infamous traffic gridlock.
The trolleys, as the carts are known, most of them fitted with colorful umbrellas for shade from the sun, can seat up to 10 people each, who pay as little as 20 U.S. cents per ride, cheaper than most train rides.
“I do this because it gives us money that’s easy to earn,” said Reynaldo Diaz, 40, who is one of more than 100 operators, also known as “trolley boys,” who push the carts along the 28-km (17-mile) track, most wearing flimsy flip-flops on their feet.
“It’s better than stealing from others,” said Diaz, adding that he earned around $10 a day, just enough for his family to get by. A trolley boy since he was 17, he lives in a makeshift shelter beside the track with his two sons.
Diaz said the trolley boys were just “borrowing” the track from the Philippine National Railways, but the state-owned train company has moved to halt the trolley service after the media drew attention to its dangers recently.
The risk arises because those pushing and riding the trolleys have to watch out for the trains to avoid collisions.
“Of course we get scared of the trains,” said Jun Albeza, 32, who has been a trolley boy for four years after he was laid off from plumbing and construction jobs.
“That’s why, whenever we’re pushing these trolleys, we always look back, so we can see if there’s a train coming. Those in front of us will give us a heads-up too.”
When a train approaches, the trolley boys quickly grab the lightweight carts off the track and jump out of the way along with their riders.
Still, there have been no fatal accidents since the makeshift service started decades ago, some of the trolley boys told Reuters.
A Manila police officer confirmed that records showed no casualties related to the trolley boys.
“It is really dangerous and should not be allowed, But we understand that it’s their livelihood,” said the officer, Bryan Silvan. “They’re like mushrooms that just popped up along the tracks and they even have their own association.”
When the Philippine National Railways began operation in the 1960s, its network of more than 100 stations extended to provinces outside Manila.
But neglect and natural disasters have since caused it to cut back operations by two-thirds, even as the capital’s population has ballooned to about 13 million.
For office workers and students, the minutes shaved off daily commutes justify the risks of trolley rides.
“The distance to our workplaces is actually shorter through this route,” said one office worker, Charlette Magtrayo.
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