If you’re wealthy and you want to buy an airplane, no matter how big, you want to go to the biennial Dubai Air Show. There, you will find everything, from a small two-seater to a diamond-encrusted jet. Aircraft manufacturers say business is booming as more and more rich people try to avoid crowded commercial flights. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Strong demand is set to give a huge boost to renewable energy growth in sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years, driving cumulative capacity up more than 70 percent, a senior international energy official said Wednesday.

From Ethiopia to South Africa, millions of people are getting access to electricity for the first time as the continent turns to solar, wind and hydropower projects to boost generation capacity.

“A big chunk of this [growth] is hydro because of Ethiopia, but then you have solar … in South Africa, Nigeria and Namibia and wind in South Africa and Ethiopia as well,” said Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable division at the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

He forecast installed capacity of renewable energy in the Sub-Saharan region almost doubling — from around 35 gigawatts now to above 60 gigawatts, given the right conditions.

Ethiopia has an array of hydropower projects under construction, including the $4.1 billion Grand Renaissance Dam along the Nile River that will churn out 6,000 megawatts upon completion.

That is enough for a good-sized city for a year.

“Africa has one of the best potential resources of renewables anywhere in the world, but it depends very much on the enabling framework, on the governance and the right rules,” Frankl told Reuters on the sidelines of a wind energy conference.

Coal industry opposition

The transition to a low-carbon trajectory to reduce harmful greenhouse gases is creating opposition from the coal industry and fueling uncertainty in countries where job creation was linked to coal mining.

In Africa, this tension and its impact on new investment has been best illustrated by South Africa’s state-owned Eskom and its reluctance to sign new deals with independent power producers, according to analysts.

In May, the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA) said the energy regulator agreed to investigate Eskom’s refusal to sign agreements that delayed 2,942 megawatts in new solar and wind projects.

“Our government does not appear to appreciate the forces of nature,” SAWEA Chairman Mark Pickering said Wednesday.

The inability of Eskom to sign the new power purchase agreements for two years has delayed investment of 58 billion rand ($4.03 billion), and hit investor confidence with at least one shutdown of a wind turbine manufacturing plant, said SAWEA.

“The continent has a lot of potential, but the problem is financial and political issues, so all of our projects are being delayed for quite a long time, like with Eskom,” said Mason Qin, business development manager for southern and eastern Africa at China’s Goldwind.
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With the Islamic State group almost defeated on the ground in Iraq and Syria and its territorial hold dramatically reduced, the terror group and its sympathizers continue to demonstrate their ability to weaponize the internet in an effort to radicalize, recruit and inspire acts of terrorism in the region and around the world.

Experts charge that the terror group’s ability to produce and distribute new propaganda has been significantly diminished, particularly after it recently lost the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, its self-proclaimed capital and media headquarters.

But they warn that the circulation of its old media content and easy access to it on social media platforms indicates that the virtual caliphate will live on in cyberspace for some time, even as IS’s physical control ends.

“Right now we have such a huge problem on the surface web — and [it’s] really easy to access literally tens of thousands of videos that are fed to you, one after the other, [and] that are leading to radicalization,” Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College and adviser for the group Counter Extremism Project (CEP) in Washington, said Monday.

Little headway

Speaking at a panel discussion about the rights and responsibilities of social media platforms in an age of global extremism at the Washington-based Newseum, Farid said the social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter have tried to get radical Islamist content off the internet, but significant, game-changing results have yet to be seen.

Farid said social media companies are facing increasing pressure from governments and counterterrorism advocates to remove content that fuels extremism.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced it had developed new artificial intelligence programs to identify extremist posts and had hired thousands of people to monitor content that could be suspected of inciting violence.

Twitter also reported that it had suspended nearly 300,000 terrorism-related accounts in the first half of the year.

YouTube on Monday said Alphabet’s Google in recent months had expanded its crackdown on extremism-related content. The new policy, Reuters reported, will affect videos that feature people and groups that have been designated as terrorists by the U.S. or British governments.

The New York Times reported that the new policy has led YouTube to remove hundreds of videos of the slain jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki lecturing on the history of Islam, recorded long before he joined al-Qaida and encouraged violence against the U.S.

The World Economic Forum’s human rights council issued a report last month, warning tech companies that they might risk tougher regulations by governments to limit freedom of speech if they do not stem the publishing of violent content by Islamic State and the spread of misinformation.

IS digital propaganda has reportedly motivated more than 30,000 people to journey thousands of miles to join IS, according to a report published by Wired, a magazine published in print and online editions that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy and politics.

An ongoing struggle

Experts say measures to restrict cyberspace for terrorist activities could prove helpful, but they warn it cannot completely prevent terror groups from spreading their propaganda online and that it will be a struggle for some time.

According to Fran Townsend, the former U.S. homeland security adviser, terrorist groups are constantly evolving on the internet as the new security measures force them onto platforms that are harder to track, such as encrypted services like WhatsApp and Telegram and file-sharing platforms like Google Drive.

She said last month’s New York City attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, used Telegram to evade U.S counterterrorism authorities.

“This guy was on Telegram in ISIS chat rooms. He went looking for them, he was able to find them, and he was able to communicate on an encrypted app that evaded law enforcement,” Townsend said during Monday’s panel on extremism at the Newseum.

U.S. officials said Saipov viewed 90 IS propaganda videos online, and more than 4,000 extremism related images were found on his cellphones, including instructions on how to carry out vehicular attacks.

As the crackdown increases on online jihadi propaganda, experts warn the desperate terror groups and their lone wolf online activists and sympathizers could aggressively retaliate.

Last week, about 800 school websites across the United States were attacked by pro-IS hackers. The hack, which lasted for two hours, redirected visitors to IS propaganda video and images of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Similar attacks were also reported in Europe, including last week’s hacking of MiX Megapil, a private radio station in Sweden where a pro-IS song was played for about 30 minutes.

A global response

Experts maintain that to counter online extremism and terrorism, there is a need for a coordinated international response as social media platforms continue to cross national borders and jurisdictions.

Last month, Facebook, Twitter, Google and the Group of Seven advanced economies joined forces against jihadi online propaganda and vowed to remove the content from the web within two hours of its being uploaded.

“Our European colleagues — little late to this game, by the way — have come into it in a big way,” Townsend said.

She said the U.S-led West had given more attention to physical warfare against IS at the expense of the war in cyberspace.

“We have been very proficient in fighting this in physical space. … But we were late in the game viewing the internet,” she said.

Townsend added that the complexity of the problem requires action even at the local level.

“The general public can be a force multiplier,” she said, adding, “As you’re scrolling through your feed and you see something … it literally takes 50 seconds for you to hit a button and tell Twitter, ‘This should not be here and it’s not appropriate content.’ And it will make a difference.”
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Eleven countries meeting at the APEC summit in Da Nang agreed Saturday to seek a trans-pacific free trade agreement, despite the world’s largest market – the United States – pulling out of the deal.  Vietnam is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of freer trade as it expands rapidly growing exports, including technology.  VOA’s Daniel Schearf visited Vietnam’s largest technology company, FPT, and has an exclusive interview with its chairman in Danang.
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Before advanced satellites and drones started collecting military intelligence, the U.S. relied on high-flying supersonic aircraft that could quickly penetrate the airspace of adversary countries, take pictures and exit before being caught. The last of those planes, retired in 1998, still holds several world records. But now, spy planes can only be found in museums. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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U.S. intelligence agencies say that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election in part through online propaganda. But a new report shows the United States was not the only target. According to the 2017 “Freedom on the Net” report, disinformation campaigns are increasing as Internet freedom declines globally. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has the findings of the report.
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A new independent study places Pakistan among the top four countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Syria, where people have been murdered in each of the last three years for writing about sensitive subjects online.

The annual “Freedom on the Net” report, released Tuesday by U.S.-based Freedom House, is based on an assessment of internet freedom in 65 countries, accounting for 87 percent of internet users worldwide. The latest study primarily focused on developments between June 2016 and May 2017.

The research declared Pakistan “not free” for a sixth consecutive year, noting internet freedom has deteriorated due to violence and intimidation related to social media activists.

“Internet shutdowns, a problematic cybercrime law, and cyberattacks against government critics contributed to the ongoing deterioration. Political speech online is vulnerable to restriction as Pakistan enters an election year in 2018,” the report noted.

The most frequent targets, it says, seem to be online journalists and bloggers covering politics, corruption and crime, as well as people who express religious views that may contrast with or challenge the views of the majority.

The study went on to conclude that perpetrators of the reprisal attacks remained unknown “but their actions often aligned with the interests of politically powerful individuals or entities.”

The report documented incidents of violence and intimidation during the research period. The government of Pakistan has not commented on the findings.

In June, a Pakistani court sentenced to death earlier this year an internet user, Taimoor Raza, for committing blasphemy on Facebook. In April, university student Mashal Khan was killed in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province by a mob who accused him of posting blasphemous content online.

Khan’s murder sparked widespread outrage across Pakistan. An anti-terrorism court is hearing the lynching case against 57 suspects indicated by the court.

“Such attacks often succeed in silencing more than just the victim, encouraging wider self-censorship on sensitive issues like religion. The state’s failure to punish perpetrators of reprisal attacks for online speech perpetuates a cycle of impunity,” according to the report.

The Pakistani government enacted the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in August 2016, introducing stronger censorship and surveillance powers with inadequate oversight, say critics.

Earlier this year, five bloggers known for criticizing the powerful military and religious militancy were abducted for few weeks. One of them later told media a government institution had detained and tortured him. Authorities had distanced themselves from the alleged abductions.

Tuesday’s report also criticized the government for the prolonged suspension of mobile internet services in parts of Pakistan, including the violence-plagued northwestern federally administered tribal areas, where security forces have been conducting anti-militancy operations.
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About 15 percent of U.S. federal agencies have reported some trace of Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab software on their systems, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told Congress on Tuesday.

Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for cybersecurity at DHS, told a U.S. House of Representatives panel that 94 percent of agencies had responded to a directive ordering them to survey their networks to identify any use of Kaspersky Lab products.

The Trump administration in September ordered civilian U.S. agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab from their networks, saying it was concerned the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm was vulnerable to Kremlin influence and that using its anti-virus software could jeopardize national security.

Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama.
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Prepare to be amazed … and possibly terrified. Engineers in Zurich have created a four-legged robot that may one day do labor that is dangerous for humans. It’s also equipped with thermal cameras, which means the “ANYmal” may one day keep an eye on you. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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In Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, the rapid improvement in internet connectivity and availability of affordable smartphones has been a great leveler.

Many of its roughly 15 million urban and rural inhabitants have gained, in a short time, access to mobile internet and social media, which provide relatively free communication and independent, nongovernment sources of information.

Some tech-savvy Cambodian activists, like Ngeth Moses, began to harness the internet to foster social change years ago.

Ngeth Moses, head of the Media/ICT Unit with the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights in Phnom Penh, has campaigned online through social media platforms for political freedom and human rights causes.

Ngeth Moses has also trained dozens of members of NGOs and youth organizations on how to use online campaigning and online expression platforms, such as Open Cyber Talk.

In the past year or so, however, the optimism among activists about the positive impact of greater internet access has given way to growing fears as the Cambodian government stepped up efforts to curtail online freedom of expression and political opposition.

“I’m more cautious now before posting or commenting [on] anything political online,” Ngeth Moses said, because of the growing state scrutiny of online content and the increase in reprimands or arrests of netizens.

At the same time, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have actively raised their online profile ahead of the national elections next year in an attempt to reach millions of new social media users.

Tightening online control

In early 2016, a new law increased the government’s authority over the telecommunications industry to include “overbroad surveillance powers” that pose “a threat to the privacy of individual users,” according to the U.S. think tank Freedom House.

The law includes punishments for several offensives, among them a prison term of seven to 15 years for threatening “national security,” a charge that the local human rights group Licadho said is vague and open to political abuse.

A pending cybercrime law is also raising concerns about legal limits on what users are allowed to post on the internet.

In 2016, the court used an older law to punish online dissent when it sentenced university student Kong Raiya to 18 months in prison for incitement over a Facebook post that criticized the CPP.

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been increasingly targeted over online statements.

Senator Hong Sok Hour was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly posting false documents on Facebook in 2016. On October 25, King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned him at Hun Sen’s request.

Last month, a 20-year-old fruit vendor was arrested in western Cambodia and reportedly charged with incitement and public insult for Facebook posts said to defame Hun Sen and the Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk.

“The situation of internet freedom in Cambodia is of increasing concern,” said Ramana Sorn, who coordinates the Protecting Fundamental Freedoms Project of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, adding that the government’s technological ability to collect the communications and social media data from individual users has expanded exponentially.

“In the current political climate, social media users must be keenly aware of the risks related to what they are posting and sharing on Facebook and other web platforms,” Ramana Sorn said.

Nop Vy, media director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, echoed these concerns, saying, “Human rights and social workers who are using the social media platforms feel insecure in communicating and publishing their information.”

​Government plays down concerns

Government spokesmen told VOA Khmer that the activists’ criticism was overblown and that prosecutions over online content concerned only those who defamed others or posed genuine threats.

“We need those multiple opinions, but we do not want those insulting or organizing any subversive campaigns against other people’s reputations — they will face legal consequences,” said Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers.

“Only those having a hidden agenda are concerned about it,” CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said. “Those who have nothing to hide, they need not worry about being surveilled or monitored.”

The rising online repression comes, however, amid a nationwide crackdown on political opposition and independent media ahead of the July 2018 national elections.

On September 3, CNRP Chairman Kem Sokha was arrested and charged with treason.

Hun Sen announced the CNRP would be dissolved, and many party members, including deputy party leader Mu Sochua, have fled Cambodia since the first week of October, fearing arrest.

Also in September:

The 24-year-old independent English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily closed after receiving a $6 million tax bill;
The Phnom Penh office of U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia Khmer-language news broadcaster was closed;
Local FM radio stations were ordered to stop carrying the Khmer news broadcasts by RFA and the Voice of America; some independent FM stations were shut down;
And the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute was expelled after years of operation. 

This crackdown, seen as the worst in 20 years, prompted widespread international condemnation and threats of action from the European Union and the United States, but Cambodia, which relies on China’s political support and largesse, appears unmoved.

​Greater access to information

Despite the broad crackdown, millions of Cambodians are now on Facebook and connected through digital communications apps, sometimes encrypted.

Experts said any repressive government will find it hard to check the spread of independent information that can inform the public of politically sensitive issues.

In 2015, internet/Facebook became the main information channel for Cambodians, with 30 percent of netizens using it to access information, surpassing the more state-controlled TV (29 percent) and radio (15 percent), according to an Asia Foundation report.

The improved access to online information “often wakes people up and makes [them] more likely to be critical of the government,” said Mike Godwin, an internet freedom expert and a senior fellow with the U.S.-based R Street Institute.

“In fact, efforts to suppress [online] dissent probably will not work as well as they had hoped because they may have the effect of awaking citizens to their unhappiness,” he said.

When popular political analyst Kem Ley was assassinated last year, his funeral march in the capital, Phnom Penh, drew hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom reportedly learned of the event through online messages and posts that quickly went viral.

Cambodia’s capacity and effort to control online content, however, are still less than those of its mainland Southeast Asian neighbors, according to Freedom House, which ranked the country on its 2016 Freedom on the Internet Index as “partly free.”

​Strongman seeks ‘likes’

Amid the tightening government control on online dissent, Hun Sen and his CPP have sought to expand their social media use to reach out to the public ahead of the national elections next year. In 2013 elections, the CPP narrowly beat the CNRP in a disputed result.

The 65-year-old strongman has urged officials to use Facebook, and he has presented a warm, revitalized image on his Facebook page, which he began in 2015 and has 8.5 million followers. Some photos show him driving passenger cars, attending family outings and frequently exercising.

Some researchers have said that the Cambodian government has formed a nationwide program with “cyberunits” run at local levels, which spread countless pro-CPP messages, denounce the opposition and attack government criticism on social media.

Ngeth Moses, the tech-using activist, said the CPP’s recent embrace of social media only belied the worsening freedom of expression in Cambodia, as could be seen in the controls exercised over pro-CPP Facebook pages. 

“Commenters on the prime minister’s [Facebook] page have been followed and if these comments contained inappropriate words, there were people who got the commenters to apologize,” he said. “On the surface, the internet freedom in Cambodia looks better than in some other countries in ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], but in practice it is not.”
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The World Robot Olympiad, being held in Costa Rica this weekend, shows human athletes still have little to worry about: Sweat and glory do not compute well when relegated to faceless automatons.

But the same may not be true for workers, especially those in menial or transport activities where robots are steadily taking over. Think factory assemblers and sorters, or even self-driving cars.

Some of the technology behind the robot revolution could be seen in the Olympiad, which gathered more than 2,500 people from more than 60 countries in a vast hall on the outskirts of Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose — the first time the event, now in its 14th year, has been held in the Americas.

Pint-sized robots packed with sensors and rolling on plastic wheels showed their football skills by battling rivals on miniature soccer fields.

Others rolled across tables seeking out blocks of certain colors and sizes to grab and place within demarcated zones.

It was all more than child’s play for the contestants representing their countries, aged from 6 to adult.

“It’s so difficult,” said Hassan Abdelrahem Alqadi, 17, from the United Arab Emirates.

“We have to do it in the system and make the robot take the color and go to the pieces that we want. So it’s very difficult,” he said.

The teen, who hopes to be a mechanical engineer in the oil industry, admitted he had picked up tips from watching other competitors’ practice sessions. He and other tech-savvy youngsters crowded around dozens of tables — computers or robots in their hands — to observe.

Environmental theme

At one table, a group of Australian teens fine-tuned their contraptions trying to win possession of a palm-sized transparent “soccer” ball containing a sensor. The robots were able to detect the ball, grab it while fending off rivals, and protect the goal area.

Being at the Olympiad, surrounded by equally bright peers from around the world, was eye-opening for the teens.

“We’ve never been to an international competition before, so it’s a new experience. I can really only compare it to the competitions we’ve had in Australia — in Australia, we’ve done pretty well,” said Tiernan Martin, 13.

The competition over the weekend was being judged in several age categories, as well as in the football, university and open tournaments.

This year, the environment was the overriding theme — an area in which Costa Rica is at the forefront.

Thus, robots had to show their usefulness in sustainable tourism (identifying protected areas), carbon neutrality (planting trees) and clean energy (seeking out the best places to set up wind turbines.

Robots ‘help humanity’

Costa Rica’s science and technology minister, Carolina Vasquez Soto, told AFP her country won the right to host the Olympiad — hitherto held mostly in Asia — “for the participation we’ve had in sustainability, because we are contributing to that with more and bigger resources.”

On the larger question of what robots and artificial intelligence now represent for human workers, the national organizer for the World Robot Olympiad, Alejandra Sanchez, was upbeat.

While some see robots as a threat to jobs, she said she saw them as an opportunity.

“I think it’s really good. It’s good they replace human beings in some tasks. But we are not being discarded — we’re changing the functions for human beings,” she said.

“Before, a human being was the one painting cars, for example. Now we have a robot painting vehicles and a human being controlling the robot. … So, it’s a personal opinion, but I believe robots are here to stay, and here to help humanity.”
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Some foreign students in U.S. schools find it challenging to submit grammatically correct, idiomatically accurate papers. So two former Ukrainian graduate students launched an artificial intelligence-driven grammar-proofing program that goes well beyond spell-check. Today, their 8-year-old startup, Grammarly, whose first venture round netted $110 million in May, has offices in Ukraine and the U.S. VOA Ukrainian Service correspondent Tatiana Vorozhko has the story.
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Aerial surveillance can be an indispensable part of police or security work. But small police forces certainly can’t afford planes or helicopters to help them do their jobs. So increasingly, drones are filling the gap and providing eyes in the sky. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The United Nations is set to host talks on the use of autonomous weapons, but those hoping for a ban on the machines dubbed “killer robots” will be disappointed, the ambassador leading the discussions said Friday.

More than 100 artificial intelligence entrepreneurs led by Tesla’s Elon Musk in August urged the U.N. to enforce a global ban on fully automated weapons, echoing calls from activists who have warned the machines will put civilians at enormous risk.

A U.N. disarmament grouping known as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) will on Monday begin five days of talks on the issue in Geneva.

But anything resembling a ban, or even a treaty, remains far off, said the Indian ambassador on disarmament, Amandeep Gill, who is chairing the meeting.

“It would be very easy to just legislate a ban but I think … rushing ahead in a very complex subject is not wise,” he told reporters. “We are just at the starting line.”

He said the discussion, which will also include civil society and technology companies, will be partly focused on understanding the types of weapons in the pipeline.

Proponents of a ban, including the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots pressure group, insist that human beings must ultimately be responsible for the final decision to kill or destroy.

They argue that any weapons system that delegates the decision on an individual strike to an algorithm is by definition illegal, because computers cannot be held accountable under international humanitarian law.

Gill said there was agreement that “human beings have to remain responsible for decisions that involve life and death.”

But, he added, there are varying opinions on the mechanics through which “human control” must govern deadly weapons.

Machines ‘can’t apply the law’

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is mandated to safeguard the laws of conflict, has not called for a ban, but has underscored the need to place limits on autonomous weapons.

“Our bottom line is that machines can’t apply the law and you can’t transfer responsibility for legal decisions to machines,” Neil Davison of the ICRC’s arms unit told AFP.

He highlighted the problematic nature of weapons that involve major variables in terms of the timing or location of an attack — for example, something that is deployed for multiple hours and programmed to strike whenever it detects an enemy target.

“Where you have a degree of unpredictability or uncertainty in what’s going to happen when you activate this weapons system, then you are going to start to have problems for legal compliance,” he said.

Flawed meeting?

Next week’s U.N. meeting will also feature wide-ranging talks on artificial intelligence, triggering criticism that the CCW was drowning itself in discussions about new technologies instead of zeroing in on the urgent issue.

“There is a risk in going too broad at this moment,” said Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch, who is the coordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

“The need is to focus on lethal autonomous weapons,” she told AFP.

The open letter co-signed by Musk as well as Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, warned that killer robots could become “weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways.”

“Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close,” they said.
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The results of three recent separate studies are staggering, the oceans are filled with about 5 trillion bits and bobs of plastic debris. Now, one English sailing team is doing its part, skimming plastic off the ocean’s surface, bucket by bucket. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Bicycle highways, urban farms and local energy hubs — just some of the ways that yesterday’s smokestack cities are turning into tomorrow’s green spaces.

The Urban Transitions Alliance (UTA), a network that brings together cities in Germany, the United States and China, launched this week to help members learn regeneration tricks from each other.

“What to do with your brownfield sites, how to transition with citizens in mind, create new jobs — these cities have a lot of challenges in common,” said Roman Mendle, Smart Cities program manager at ICLEI, an international association of local governments.

As up to 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated in urban areas, cities have to play a leading role in addressing climate change.

Experts from more than 20 countries met in Essen, Germany, this week to launch the UTA and thrash out how post-industrial cities can reinvent themselves in plans that will be submitted to the U.N. climate talks in Bonn this week.

Essen, once a coal and steel city known as Germany’s “Graue Maus” (grey mouse) for its polluted air and waterways, has gained a reputation as a trailblazer for sustainability, becoming the European Commission’s European Green Capital 2017.

“There is a lot of know-how in Essen on how to transition from the age of carbon to a post-carbon world,” said Simone Raskob, Essen’s deputy mayor and head of its environment department.

“No city can do this by itself. There are a lot of challenges,” Raskob, who leads the European Green City – Essen 2017 project, told Reuters.

Experts praise Essen for cleaning up its waterways, creating green spaces and turning grimy industrial sites into dynamic cultural centers, such as the Zeche Zollverein, a towering UNESCO World Heritage site that arose from a disused coal mine.

To ease traffic congestion, Essen built Germany’s first bike highway, connecting with a 100-km (62-mile) regional network.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, once a dynamo of U.S. heavy industry, has shifted from a fossil fuel-based economy, reinventing itself as a hub for green buildings innovation and clean energy.

The former steel city has been switching over to LED street lights, retro-fitting municipal buildings for energy efficiency and developing district energy initiatives.

The city will also host the largest U.S. urban farm: 23 acres (9 hectares) on a site where low-income housing once stood.

“One of the key things we have recognized is that becoming greener also brings economic benefits,” said Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s chief resilience officer.

Founding UTA members include districts of Beijing and Shijiazhuang in China; Buffalo and Cincinnati in the United States; and Dortmund in Germany.
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An Australian museum has teamed up with computer giant International Business Machines to count the country’s native frog population, and they want amphibian enthusiasts to jump on board.

The Australian Museum and IBM say they developed the world’s first smartphone app especially designed to let users record and report frog calls, croaks and chirps — without disturbing them.

Australia has 240 named native species of frog, and the museum wants to use its FrogID app to identify what it believes are dozens more still ribbiting under the radar.

“One of the cool things about this is you can survey frogs just by listening,” said Jodi Rowley, the museum’s curator of amphibian and reptile conservation biology.

“It’s actually a lot more accurate than photos, and photos encourage people to handle or disturb frogs,” Rowley added. She noted that every frog species has a unique call.

While frog populations are in decline around the world, Australia’s frogs are especially vulnerable because of a combination of climate change, pollution, introduced species and urban development, the country’s Department of Environment and Energy says.

According to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act four frog varieties are extinct, five are critically endangered, 14 are endangered and a further 10 are considered vulnerable.

Scientists say the presence of frogs in an ecosystem is a sign of good environmental health, but the small amphibians are highly sensitive to changes in their habitat.

Rowley said she hopes campers, hikers and other serious nature lovers will help with the research, but she noted that even the humble backyard fishpond could provide valuable data.

“It might allow us to figure out which areas of suburbia are really good for frogs, why they are good and hopefully help create more frog friendly habitats in suburbia,” she said.

Rowley said amateurs who record previously unknown frog calls may even help discover a new type of frog or determine if any introduced species have gone unnoticed.

“All these things will help us — and help Australia — make sure that frogs don’t croak,” she said.
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What’s Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest takeaway as he wraps up a year of travel to dozens of U.S. states? The importance of local communities.

To this end, Facebook’s CEO is announcing a program to boost small businesses and give people technical skills on and off Facebook. The move shows how intertwined Facebook has become not just in our social lives, but in entrepreneurs’ economic survival and growth. Facebook says 70 million small businesses use its service. Only 6 million of them advertise.

Called Community Boost, the program will visit 30 U.S. cities next year and work with local groups to train people in skills such as coding, building websites – and naturally, using Facebook for their business.

Zuckerberg says the effort is not just about Facebook’s business but its core mission.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump went around and over the “Great Firewall” of China in a late-night tweet in Beijing as he thanked his hosts for a rare tour of the Forbidden City and a private dinner at the sprawling, centuries-old palace complex.

Many Western social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in China. A sophisticated system has been built to deny online users within China access to blocked content.

That was not an issue for Trump, known for tweeting to his 42.3 million followers at any hour of the day, Wednesday, the day he arrived in Beijing.

“On behalf of @FLOTUS Melania and I, THANK YOU for an unforgettable afternoon and evening at the Forbidden City in Beijing, President Xi and Madame Peng Liyuan. We are looking forward to rejoining you tomorrow morning!”

Trump even changed his Twitter banner, uploading a photograph of himself and Melania with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, during a Chinese opera performance at the Forbidden City.

The Twitter banner upload did not go unnoticed by Chinese state media, with state broadcaster CCTV flashing screenshots of the photograph Thursday.

Trump’s visit was also the third-most talked-about topic on Chinese social media platform Weibo over the last 24 hours, trailing only the birthday of a singer in a Chinese boy band and a weekly Asian pop song chart.

Many people wondered how Trump managed to evade China’s tough internet controls.

“I guess he must have done it via WiFi on a satellite network,” said a user on Weibo.

Many foreigners log on to virtual private networks (VPNs) to access content hosted outside of China. Another option is to sign up for a data-roaming service before leaving one’s home country.

Not all of Trump’s tweets in China were bright and cheerful.

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Executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter faced anger from lawmakers last week over their platforms’ roles in Russian interference into the 2016 election. But for Silicon Valley, the biggest challenge lies ahead as tech companies look for ways to work with a U.S. Congress intent on closing legal loopholes before 2018 midterm elections.

Congressional scrutiny showed U.S. law has fallen behind the rapid growth of social media. Without rules governing paid political advertising on social media, foreign agents were free to post false or inflammatory material in an attempt manipulate public opinion. But lawmakers remain optimistic about the opportunity to learn from the past.

“If there is a place that has ever understood change, it’s Silicon Valley. It is based on disruption. It’s based on people taking risks,” Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, told VOA.

Greater transparency

Eshoo, whose congressional district covers part of Silicon Valley, has been a longtime advocate for greater transparency in the more traditional fields of TV and print political advertising.

“When citizens know who has paid for something, it has an effect on their thinking,” Eshoo said. “It doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t still be Americans that would like that divisive ad. But at least they’ll know where it comes from, and you can have a much clearer debate about who is saying what and what they are attempting to do.”

The HONEST Ads Act, a legislative proposal recently introduced in both houses of Congress, follows along those lines.

If passed, the bill would regulate online political ads under the same rules as broadcast advertisements, requiring companies to keep a public database storing those ads and providing information about their funding.

“Americans deserve to know who’s paying for the online ads,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a co-sponsor of the bill, said last month. “Even if the Russian interference hadn’t occurred, we should still be updating our laws. Our laws should be as sophisticated as those who are trying to manipulate us.”

“Creating a database like that is going to be hard and complicated and messy. It’s a good idea that’s going to have a tough execution,” Dave Karpf, a professor of political communication at George Washington University, told VOA.

Karpf said that while there are no perfect solutions, it’s important to recognize the tech companies for what they’ve become.

“Facebook and Google are media companies — they’re just different media companies then we’re used to seeing,” he said. “They’re not broadcasters, but they are information platforms. And they’re quasi-monopolies — even a benevolent monopoly is a bad thing for public discourse and public knowledge.”

But none of the social media heads would fully commit to support of the bill as it now stands during their congressional testimony, appearing instead to favor a self-policing approach.

Battling fake news

Addressing paid political advertisements on social media platforms is just one part of the puzzle. The 2016 election revealed a vast ecosystem of fake news that will be almost impossible to police.

“What’s an even greater problem is that the Russians and others are setting up sites to deliberately disseminate misinformation — false news, fake news, what have you — they are not identifying themselves as Russian-sponsored,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor at Georgetown University and co-author of an October 2017 report on Russian cybermeddling.

“This is the larger problem for Facebook and other social media companies — how to handle the deliberate disinformation — and I’m not so sure the solution is legislative,” Jacobson said.

Eshoo downplayed talk that these challenges signal a downturn for tech innovators, saying it’s time lawmakers, companies and citizens took on a shared responsibility.

“We need to do a much better job with this,” she said. “We’re going to need them to cooperate with us. I don’t think that there has to be a slugfest on this.” She said the social media companies need to tell Congress how, in terms of their engineering and their algorithms, they can best accomplish what lawmakers set forth.
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The Texas church massacre is providing a familiar frustration for law enforcement: FBI agents are unable to unlock the gunman’s encrypted cellphone to learn what evidence it might hold.

But while heart-wrenching details of the rampage that left more than two dozen people dead might revive the debate over the balance of digital privacy rights and national security, it’s not likely to prompt change anytime soon.

Congress has not shown a strong appetite for legislation that would force technology companies to help the government break into encrypted phones and computers. And the fiery public debate surrounding the FBI’s legal fight with Apple Inc. has largely faded since federal authorities announced they were able to access a locked phone in a terror case without the help of the technology giant.

As a candidate, Donald Trump called on Americans to boycott Apple unless it helped the FBI hack into the phone, but he hasn’t been as vocal as president.

Still, the issue re-emerged Tuesday, when Christopher Combs, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio division, said agents had been unable to get into the cellphone belonging to Devin Patrick Kelley, who slaughtered much of the congregation in the middle of a Sunday service.

“It highlights an issue you’ve all heard about before. With the advance of the technology and the phones and the encryption, law enforcement is increasingly not able to get into these phones,” Combs told reporters, saying the device was being flown to an FBI lab for analysis.

Combs didn’t identify the make or model, but a U.S. official briefed by law enforcement told The Associated Press it was an Apple iPhone.

“We’re working very hard to get into that phone, and that will continue until we find an answer,” Combs said.

Combs was telegraphing a longstanding frustration of the FBI, which claims encryption has stymied investigations of everything from sex crimes against children to drug cases, even if they obtain a warrant for the information. Agents have been unable to retrieve data from half the mobile devices – more than 6,900 phones, computers and tablets – that they tried to access in less than a year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said last month, wading into an issue that also vexed his predecessor, James Comey. Comey spoke before Congress and elsewhere about the bureau’s inability to access digital devices. But the Obama White House never publicly supported legislation that would have forced technology companies to give the FBI a back door to encrypted information, leaving Comey’s hands tied to propose a specific legislative fix.

Bad idea, some believe

Security experts generally believe such encryption backdoors are a terrible idea that could expose a vast amount of private, business and government data to hackers and spies. That’s because those backdoor keys would work for bad guys as well as good guys – and the bad guys would almost immediately target them for theft, and might even be able to recreate them from scratch.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took aim at Silicon Valley’s methods for protecting privacy during a speech last month, saying Trump’s Justice Department would be more aggressive in seeking information from technology companies. He took a harder line than his predecessors but stopped short of saying what specific steps the administration might take.

Washington has proven incapable of solving a problem that an honest conversation could fix, said David Hickton, a former U.S. attorney who now directs a cyber law institute at the University of Pittsburgh.

“We wait for a mass disaster to sharpen the discussion about this, when we should have been talking about it since San Bernardino,” he said. “Reasonable people of good will could resolve this problem. I don’t think it’s dependent on the political wins or who is the FBI director. It’s begging for a solution.”

Even so, the facts of the church shooting may not make it the most powerful case against warrant-proof encryption. When the FBI took Apple to court in February 2016 to force it to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, investigators believed the device held clues about whom the couple communicated with and where they may have traveled.

But Combs didn’t say what investigators hoped to retrieve from Kelley’s phone, and investigators already have ample information about his motive. Authorities in Texas say the church shooting was motivated by the gunman’s family troubles, rather than terrorism, and investigators have not said whether they are seeking possible co-conspirators.

Investigators may have other means to get the information they seek. If the Texas gunman backed up his phone online, they can get a copy of that with a legal order – usually a warrant. They can also get warrants for any accounts he had at server-based internet services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.

In the California case, the FBI ultimately broke into the phone by paying an unidentified vendor for a hacking tool to access the phone without Apple’s help, averting a court battle.

The FBI has not yet asked Apple for help unlocking Kelley’s phone as it continues to analyze the device, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and did so on condition of anonymity. Another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the discussions, said Apple contacted the FBI on its own to offer technical advice after learning from a Texas news conference that the bureau was trying to access the cellphone.

Former federal prosecutor Joseph DeMarco, who filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of groups that supported the Justice Department against Apple, said he was hopeful the case would spur fresh discussion. If not by itself, he said, the shooting could be one of several cases that prompt the Justice Department to take other technology companies to court.

“Eventually, the courts will rule on this or a legislative fix will be imposed,” he said. “Eventually, the pressure will mount.”
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Struggling social media platforms Twitter and Snapchat are taking on new looks as the services seek wider audiences in the shadow of Facebook.

Twitter is rolling out a 280-character limit for nearly all its users, abandoning its iconic 140-character limit for tweets. And Snapchat, long popular with young people, will undergo a revamp in hopes of becoming easier to use for everyone else.

Both services announced the moves Tuesday as they look for ways to expand beyond their passionate but slow-growing fan bases.

Twitter has said that 9 percent of tweets written in English hit the 140-character limit. People ended up spending more time editing tweets or didn’t send them out at all. By removing that hurdle, Twitter is hoping people will tweet more, drawing more users in.

Waking up to the news Wednesday, Germany’s justice ministry wrote that it can now tweet about legislation concerning the transfer of oversight responsibilities for beef labeling.

The law is known in German as the Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz.

Munich police, meanwhile, said that “at last” they won’t need abbreviations to tweet about accidents involving forklift drivers, or Niederflurfoerderfahrzeugfuehrer.

In Rome, student Marina Verdicchio said the change “will give us the possibility to express ourselves in a totally different way and to avoid canceling important words when we use Twitter.”

Shakespearean skepticism

Others were not impressed, including at least one who quoted Shakespeare: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

And, as Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel noted, change does not come without risk.

“We don’t yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application,” he said. “We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.”

Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, did not provide details on the upcoming changes.

During the third quarter, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly users, up just 1 percent from the previous quarter. Snapchat added 4.5 million daily users in the quarter to 178 million, which amounts to a 3 percent growth. The company does not report monthly user figures.

Those numbers pale next to social media behemoth Facebook, which reported that its monthly users rose 16 percent to 2.07 billion.

“The one thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback,” Spiegel said. “As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use.”

His comments came on a conference call with industry analysts after the company posted the lackluster user-growth numbers and revenue that fell well short of Wall Street expectations. Snap’s stock was bludgeoned Wednesday, falling 16 percent to $12.70 in early-morning trading. The Venice, California, company went public in March at $17 a share.

Expanding the base

Snapchat needs to grow its user base beyond 13-to-34-year-olds in the U.S., France, the U.K. and Australia, Spiegel said. This, he said, includes Android users, people older than 34 and what he called “rest of world” markets.

Meanwhile, Snap said Wednesday that Chinese internet company Tencent had acquired a 10 percent stake in the company. Tencent runs the WeChat messaging app, as well as online payment platforms and games. Earlier this year, Tencent bought a 5 percent stake in Tesla Inc.

As for Twitter, the move to 280 characters was begun as a test in September.

“People in the experiment told us that a higher character limit made them feel more satisfied with how they expressed themselves on Twitter, their ability to find good content, and Twitter overall,” said project manager Aliza Rosen in a blog post.

The expansion to 280-character tweets will be extended to all users except those tweeting in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, who will still have the original limit. That’s because writing in those languages uses fewer characters.

The company has been slowly easing restrictions to let people cram more characters into a tweet. It stopped counting polls, photos, videos and other things toward the limit. Even before it did so, users found creative ways to get around the limit. These include multipart tweets and screenshots of blocks of text.

Twitter’s character limit was created so that tweets could fit into a single text message, back when many people were using texts to receive tweets. But now, most people use Twitter through its mobile app; the 140-character limit is no longer a technical constraint but nostalgia.
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German bureaucrats — notorious for their ability to create lengthy tongue twisters consisting of one single word — are celebrating the doubling of Twitter’s character limit.

Twitter announced Tuesday it’s increasing the limit for almost all users of the messaging service from 140 to 280 characters, prompting a mix of delighted and despairing reactions.

Waking up to the news Wednesday, Germany’s justice ministry wrote that it can now tweet about legislation concerning the transfer of oversight responsibilities for beef labeling.

The law is known in German as the Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz.

Munich police, meanwhile, said that “at last” they won’t need abbreviations to tweet about accidents involving forklift drivers, or Niederflurfoerderfahrzeugfuehrer.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert made clear he’ll keep it short, quoting Anton Chekhov: “Brevity is the sister of talent.”
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