At one atom thick, graphene is one of those miracle materials that many say is the stuff of the future. The future may be now as graphene’s potential is being realized as the key to quick efficient 5G networks, and the future of telecommunications. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Category Archives: News
Worldwide news. News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called “hard news” to differentiate it from soft media
Trump Runs Victory Lap on Michigan Stage
U.S. President Donald Trump, at his first political rally since the end of the two-year Russia collusion investigation, unleashed a furious attack on cheerleaders of the probe into alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Moscow.
The “group of major losers” went beyond personal attacks, according to Trump, and tried to tear up the fabric of American democracy, refusing to accept the results of the presidential election.
They were “trying to sabotage the will of the American people” and “illegally regain power by framing innocent Americans,” claimed Trump at a boisterous rally Thursday night in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
‘Collusion delusion’
Although special counsel Robert Mueller’s report has not been released, the president says it totally exonerates him.
However, a four-page summary written by U.S. Attorney General William Barr states that while the “report does not conclude the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Taking a victory lap on the rally stage, Trump, however, declared that “after three years of lies, smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over.”
Trump unleashed particular vitriol at two powerful House Democrats, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, who are among those in Congress vowing to continue investigating him, his election campaign and Trump businesses.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff is a “little pencil-neck,” said Trump, who subsequently mentioned Nadler, chairman of the House judiciary committee, and declared, “these people are sick.”
Earlier in the day, Schiff faced calls from Republicans to resign as committee chairman. He immediately hit back at them citing what he called “evidence of collusion” between Trump and Russia.
Democrats want to see full report
‘Nadler is among the Democrats requesting Barr send Congress the full Mueller report by April 2.
“Show us the report and we’ll come to our own conclusions,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday in a message directed at the attorney general.
Pelosi questioned what the president and the Republicans are afraid of, mocking them as “scaredy-cats.”
Deepening divide
Trump also continued with his criticism of the “fake news media,” whom he accused of teaming with “the deep state” of trying but failing to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
“Many people were badly hurt by this scam, but more importantly our country was hurt,” Trump said.
Thursday’s verbal barrages fired by the Republican president and the opposition Democrats put on stark display the deepening political divide in America.
A diverse group of Democrats, including six women, as well as black, Hispanic and openly gay candidates, is vying to challenge Trump in 2020.
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US Bills Would Let State Prisons Jam Cellphone Signals
Federal legislation proposed Thursday would give state prison officials the ability they have long sought to jam the signals of cellphones smuggled to inmates within their walls.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and U.S. Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee introduced companion bills in both chambers, The Associated Press learned.
The legislation could help solve a problem prison officials have said represents the top security threat to their institutions. Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones — smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees and even delivered by drone — are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
But the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the nation’s airwaves, has said a decades-old prohibition on interrupting signals at state-level institutions prevents the agency from permitting jamming on that level. Wireless industry groups have said they worry signal-blocking technologies could thwart legal calls.
Prison officials, including South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, have pushed for the ability to jam signals, saying it’s the best way to combat the dangerous devices. In 2017, Stirling testified at an FCC hearing in Washington alongside Robert Johnson, a former South Carolina corrections officer nearly killed in 2010 in a hit orchestrated by an inmate using an illegal phone.
Phone aided escape
Also that year, an inmate escaped from a maximum-security prison in South Carolina, thanks in part to a smuggled cellphone. In 2018, seven inmates at a maximum-security South Carolina prison were killed in what officials have said was a gang fight over territory and contraband including cellphones.
The FCC has shown willingness to work on the issue, holding a field hearing in South Carolina at the invitation of then-Gov. Nikki Haley. Last year, making good on a pledge to do so, Chairman Ajit Pai hosted a meeting with members of Congress, prisons officials and stakeholders from the wireless industry.
After last year’s meeting, Kustoff told the AP he was encouraged by the FCC’s action on the issue. Officials from wireless trade group CTIA, who also attended the meeting, thanked Pai for organizing the gathering and said its members “recognize the very real threat that contraband devices pose in correctional facilities across the nation, and we appreciate the commitment of all stakeholders to identify and implement lawful solutions to this problem.”
Jamming is legal in federal facilities, although it hasn’t been used. Last year, federal officials tested micro-jamming technology at a federal prison in Cumberland, Md., saying they were able to shut down phone signals inside a prison cell, while devices about 20 feet (6 meters) away worked normally.
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Trump: Special Olympics Will Be Funded
President Donald Trump says he has overruled his education secretary and others and will fund the Special Olympics.
“I’ve been to the Special Olympics. I think it’s incredible,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn Thursday.
The Special Olympics give physically and mentally challenged athletes in the United States and elsewhere the chance to compete in Olympic-style sports and other games.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose agency funds the games, created a national firestorm this week when she announced she was cutting nearly $18 million from the games as part of the Trump administration’s 2020 budget proposal.
DeVos defended the cuts, saying although she supports and loves the Special Olympics, the games are not a federal program and receive millions in private and corporate donations.
She said the federal government cannot give grants to every worthy program.
DeVos issued a statement Thursday saying she is pleased the games will be funded, and said she had privately fought for the grants to continue.
Lawmakers from both parties said cuts for the games would not have gotten through Congress.
The Trump administration had proposed eliminating federal grants for the Special Olympics in the 2019 budget, but Congress rejected the idea.
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Bipartisan Support Seen for a US-Taiwan Free-trade Deal
Influential figures in Washington are calling for the establishment of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan, even as U.S. and Chinese officials move toward a resolution of their long-running trade dispute.
“We have a lot of issues with Beijing, and a lot of opportunities with Taiwan,” said Edwin J. Feulner in an interview with VOA. Feulner is the founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank in Washington known for its conservative views and ties with the Republican Party.
Feulner thinks trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing will most likely conclude within 60 days, at which point a full-force push for a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan could begin. Those talks would be “more or less independent of what’s going on with bilateral negotiations with Beijing,” he said.
WATCH: Feulner: Taiwan Not Seen by Administration as ‘Bargaining Chip’
Feulner predicted “huge bipartisan support on Capitol Hill” for such an agreement. “Both Republican and Democrat, both House and Senate members, are overwhelmingly positive that a free China can exist, and can be there in the world community today,” he said.
WATCH: Feulner: ‘We Intend to Strengthen Our Friends’
However, any such deal could be expected to anger authorities in Beijing, who see Taiwan as a renegade Chinese province and adamantly oppose any initiatives that treat the island as an independent country or entity.
The international community has seen how Beijing tries to make Taiwan pay for any inroads it makes toward international recognition, said Scott W. Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a global policy research group. But Beijing’s problem, he said, “is that they’ve dialed the pain up so high, so often, that it’s hard to see what more they can do.”
On Wednesday, Feulner invited Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to participate by Skype in a conference at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Tsai, on a stopover in Hawaii after visiting three Indo-Pacific nations that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, told the audience her government was enthusiastic about the prospect of bilateral trade talks with the U.S.
“If we can have a breakthrough in trade with the U.S., this will be very helpful in terms of encouraging many other trading partners to do the same,” she said, adding that a trade deal with the United States would reduce Taipei’s reliance on China “as they increase their political influence in Taiwan, primarily using economic actors.”
Tsai expressed hope that talks with Washington will include discussion about Taiwan’s role in the global high-tech supply chain “amid concerns of technology theft and control over 5G networks” by Beijing.
Two prominent members of the U.S. Congress joined Feulner in welcoming Tsai to the U.S. and expressed their support for a bilateral free-trade agreement. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a Republican and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the pursuit of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan “imperative.”
Common values
Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republican on its subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation, told Tsai and the audience that “trade is important between our nations, but more important than that is our common belief in the values we hold, the democracies that we have together. That in itself is the thing that really binds us together.”
Steve Yates, former U.S. government official and longtime observer of U.S.-Taiwan relations, told VOA that President Donald Trump has “unhesitatingly signed” a series of resolutions and bills in support of closer ties between Washington and Taipei. To him, this signals it might be time “for the administration and Congress to be able to cross that bridge and get some results.”
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US Housing Department Charges Facebook With Housing Discrimination
Facebook was charged with discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of its ad-targeting system.
HUD said Thursday Facebook is allowing advertisers to exclude people based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map and giving advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women.
The agency also claims Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude people that the social media company classified as parents; non-American-born; non-Christian; interested in accessibility; interested in Hispanic culture or a wide variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes.
HUD, which is pursuing civil charges and potential monetary awards that could run into the millions, said Facebook’s ad platform is “encouraging, enabling, and causing housing discrimination” because it allows advertisers to exclude people who they don’t want to see their ads.
The claim from HUD comes less than a week after Facebook said it would overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing , credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement with a group that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others.
The technology at the heart of the clashes is what has helped turned Facebook into a goliath with annual revenue of close to $56 billion.
It can offer advertisers and groups the ability to direct messages with precision to exactly the crowd that they want to see it. The potential is as breathtaking as it is potentially destructive.
Facebook has taken fire for allowing groups to target groups of people identified as “Jew-haters” and Nazi sympathizers. There remains the fallout from the 2016 election, when, among other things, Facebook allowed fake Russian accounts to buy ads targeting U.S. users to enflame political divisions.
The company is wrestling with several government investigations in the U.S. and Europe over its data and privacy practices. A shakeup this month that ended with the departure of some of Facebook’s highest ranking executives raised questions about the company’s direction.
The departures came shortly after CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out a new “privacy-focused” vision for social networking. He has promised to transform Facebook from a company known for devouring the personal information shared by its users to one that gives people more ways to communicate in truly private fashion, with their intimate thoughts and pictures shielded by encryption in ways that Facebook itself can’t read.
However, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Thursday there is little difference between the potential for discrimination in Facebook’s technology, and discrimination that has taken place for years.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” Carson said. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.
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Tossing Coins on Brexit: 2nd Referendum, General Election?
Britons desperately wanting some clarity in the country’s interminable Brexit saga were disappointed Wednesday when lawmakers plunged the country’s proposed exit from the European Union, after half-a-century of membership, into further disarray, failing to find a majority for any way forward after a series of so-called indicative votes.
The hope had been a majority might emerge from the eight different options they voted on, which included staying in the EU, leaving with no withdrawal agreement, remaining in the bloc’s customs union and/or single market or holding a second Brexit referendum.
“Parliament Finally Has Its Say: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” Britain’s Guardian newspaper announced on its front-page Thursday.
“In summary: the Commons has now overwhelmingly rejected every single type of Brexit, and no Brexit,” tweeted Michel Deacon, the Daily Telegraph’s parliamentary sketch-writer. The option of leaving without a deal was defeated by a huge margin. So, too, was a motion that would see Brexit cancelled altogether.
It wasn’t what the organizers of the indicative votes in the House of Commons had hoped would be the upshot. Backed by the opposition parties and pro-EU Conservative rebels they seized control of the parliamentary agenda from the government, the first time in 140 years that Downing Street hasn’t called the shots on what can be debated and when on the floor of the House of Commons.
“This is going well. Putting the Commons in charge was clearly a brilliant idea,” tweeted Andrew Neil, the arch-Brexiter presenter of a BBC politics show. The EU’s chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said Britain’s intentions had become more mysterious than those of the mythological sphinxes guarding ancient tombs.
More confusion
To add to the confusion in London, just before the indicative voting, an exhausted Prime Minister Theresa May told her Conservative lawmakers she would relinquish the party leadership and resign as prime minister, but only if her contentious Brexit withdrawal agreement, which parliament has twice rejected, is passed.
May’s announcement was a last-ditch bid to persuade Conservative Brexiters to back her withdrawal agreement, a deal they disapprove of because it would keep Britain closely aligned with the European Union and obedient to its rules while a longer-term trade relationship is negotiated.
A hardcore of Conservative Eurosceptics and ten lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, who May has to rely on because her government is a minority one, have adamantly refused to back her deal. They say the plan poses a risk to the integrity of the union of the United Kingdom. The DUP believes if it took effect, it would cause trade differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and create in effect a “border down the Irish Sea.”
There were no signs Thursday that May will be able to persuade enough holdouts to vote for her deal, if it is put before the Commons for a third time, leaving Britain on course to crash out of the EU without a deal on April 12, unless the British government requests, for the second time, a Brexit postponement.
EU negotiators have indicated they might be open to another delay, but only if it is a lengthy one of a year or more.
It remains unclear how the political deadlock in London can be broken. The idea of leaving without a transition deal has strong opposition in the Commons and would likely be blocked by a majority of lawmakers.
Frustration on EU side
EU negotiators, out of exasperation, could decide to raise the stakes and decline another Brexit postponement, hoping to force the Commons to stop Brexit altogether, say some analysts. But it is unlikely they would risk such a high stakes gamble, fearing that might push Britain into crashing out by accident as much as by design.
European Council President, Donald Tusk, said last week in Brussels that the European Union will work with Britain for as long as it takes and on Wednesday he urged European lawmakers to be open to a long delay in Britain’s departure.
That leaves Britain trapped — paralyzed by a deadlocked House of Commons, itself a reflection of a country split down the middle over staying a member of the EU or quitting. With all avenues seemingly leading to dead-ends, there is more talk now in the British parliament of the need to hold an general election, hoping that returns a parliament that is not so undecided.
Behind-the-scenes Cabinet ministers and Conservative party officials are war-gaming calling an election three years ahead of schedule. David Davies, a pro-Brexit Conservative MP who quit as Brexit minister, says “a general election is a lot more likely now.” He added: “I don’t say it’s going to happen, but clearly if a government can’t get through on the one issue which we were really elected to deal with at the last election it puts us all in a very difficult situation.”
The problem in calling a snap election is the British public doesn’t want another one so soon after the Conservatives called another early poll two years ago, according to opinion surveys, with just 12 percent backing the idea.
The other problem for the Conservatives is that they would be fighting an election with a leader who has announced she intends to step down soon and heading a party that’s even more deeply and rancorously divided than the main opposition Labour party.
In the division lobbies on Wednesday some Conservative lawmakers on different sides of the Brexit question were spotted cursing each other and one clash prompted the intervention of colleagues, who feared a brawl might break out.
Commons in charge
Organizers of Wednesday’s indicative voting are placing some hopes that the Commons can still break the deadlock. They say clarity could be reached on Monday when lawmakers are due for another session of indicative voting, this time on the options that attracted the most support.
Labour’s Stephen Doughty said they never expected the votes on Wednesday to reveal a majority for one option. The whole idea was to narrow down the alternatives that have the most support and for parliament then to reconsider.
The two closest votes Wednesday were for staying in the EU’s customs union and another for a second referendum confirming any Brexit departure. Both attracted more votes than May’s deal has got the two occasions it was voted on in parliament. Campaigners for a second referendum appear buoyed.
They believe Britons have shifted their attitudes on Brexit since the 2016 referendum, pointing to a new polling study by veteran pollster John Curtice, which indicates voters are becoming increasingly doubtful about Brexit. The study suggests two and half years after the plebiscite, leaving the European Union may not now reflect majority thinking.
British Report Finds Technical Risks in Huawei Network Gear
British cybersecurity inspectors have found significant technical issues in Chinese telecom supplier Huawei’s software that they say pose risks for the country’s telecom companies.
The annual report Thursday said there is only “limited assurance” that long-term national security risks from Huawei’s involvement in critical British telecom networks can be adequately managed.
The report adds pressure on Huawei, which is at the center of a geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China.
The U.S. government wants its European allies to ban the company from next-generation mobile networks set to roll out in coming years over fears Huawei gear could be used for cyberespionage.
The report noted that Britain’s cybersecurity authorities did not believe the defects were a result of “Chinese state interference.”
Iceland’s WOW Air budget Carrier Collapses, Cancels all Flights
Iceland’s budget carrier WOW Air said it had ceased operations and cancelled all flights on Thursday, potentially stranding thousands of passengers.
The collapse of the troubled airline, which transports more than a third of those traveling to Iceland, comes after buyout talks with rival Icelandair collapsed earlier this week.
“All WOW Air flights have been cancelled. Passengers are advised to check available flights with other airlines,” the carrier said in a statement.
“Some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, in light of the circumstances. Information on those airlines will be published, when it becomes available.”
WOW Air, founded in 2011, exploited Iceland’s location in the middle of the North Atlantic to offer a low-cost service between Europe and North America as well as tapping into a tourist boom to the volcanic island.
However it had flown into financial trouble in recent years due to heightened competition and rising fuel prices, and had been searching for an investor for months.
On Monday WOW Air said it was in talks to restructure its debt with its creditors after Icelandair ended brief negotiations over buying a stake in the no-frills airline.
WOW Air was left needing $42 million to save the company, according to the Frettabladid newspaper.
The privately-owned airline has undergone major restructuring after posting a pre-tax loss of almost $42 million for the first nine months of 2018.
It has reduced its fleet from 20 to 11 aircraft, eliminating several destinations, including those to the US, and cutting 111 full-time jobs.
A report by a governmental work group has warned that a WOW Air bankruptcy would lead to a drop in Iceland’s gross domestic product, a drop in the value of the krona and rising inflation.
DeVos Defends Plan to Eliminate Special Olympics Funding
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday defended a proposal to eliminate funding for the Special Olympics, pushing back against a storm of criticism from athletes, celebrities and politicians who rallied to support the organization.
DeVos became a target on social media after Democrats slammed her plan to remove the group’s funding as part of nearly $7 billion in budget cuts for next year. The Special Olympics received $17.6 million from the Education Department this year, roughly 10 percent of its overall revenue.
In a statement responding to criticism, DeVos said she “loves” the organization’s work and has “personally supported its mission.” But she also noted that it’s a private nonprofit that raises $100 million a year on its own. Ultimately, she argued, her agency can’t afford to continue backing it.
“There are dozens of worthy nonprofits that support students and adults with disabilities that don’t get a dime of federal grant money,” she said. “Given our current budget realities, the federal government cannot fund every worthy program, particularly ones that enjoy robust support from private donations.”
Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver on Wednesday pushed back against the proposed cut.
“This is not the old Special Olympics, it’s not my mom’s Special Olympics in some ways,” he said on MSNBC. “This is a new Special Olympics. We are actively engaged in the educational purposes that the country has articulated at the federal level.”
In a statement posted Wednesday night on its website, the organization called on “federal, state and local governments to join Special Olympics in remaining vigilant against any erosion of provisions that have made a substantial difference in the lives of people with [intellectual disabilities].”
The statement added, “U.S. Government funding for our education programming is critical to protecting and increasing access to services for people with intellectual disabilities.”
The Trump administration tried to eliminate Special Olympics funding in its previous budget proposal, too, but Congress ultimately increased funding for the group. Lawmakers indicated that the latest attempt will also fail.
“Our Department of Education appropriations bill will not cut funding for the program,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the Senate subcommittee over the education budget. Blunt said he’s a “longtime supporter” of the group and recently attended its World Games.
DeVos is expected to present her budget to Blunt’s panel Thursday, just days after being grilled over it in the House. Democrats on a House subcommittee asked DeVos how she could cut Special Olympics funding while calling for a $60 million increase in charter school funding.”
Once again, I still can’t understand why you would go after disabled children in your budget. You’ve zeroed that out. It’s appalling,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said at the hearing.
DeVos told the panel that her department “had to make some difficult decisions,” adding that the Special Olympics is best supported by philanthropy.
Following the hearing, Twitter was alight with comments from parents, advocates and celebrities who slammed DeVos and urged her to rethink the proposal.
Joe Haden, who plays for the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers and works as an ambassador for the Special Olympics, said he was sickened by the cut. “This is so wrong on so many Levels!” he said on Twitter.
Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, called the proposal outrageous. Kasich, who also represented Ohio in the U.S. House, said that when he was on the budget committee, “these types of programs were off limits — for good reason.”
Others opposing DeVos included Julie Foudy , former captain of the U.S. women’s soccer team, and actress Marlee Matlin , who said the benefits of the Special Olympics are “immeasurable.”
Some Special Olympics athletes joined in to support the group, including Derek “Tank” Schottle, who posted a video that had been viewed more than 140,000 times by Wednesday.
“Win or lose, we’re all winners in our hearts,” he said. “What warms peoples’ hearts is we’re all humans, just like everybody else.”
The Special Olympics’ 2017 annual report, the latest available on its website, says the group received a total of $148 million in revenue that year, including $15.5 million from federal grants.
More than three quarters of the group’s revenue comes from individual and corporate contributions and other fundraising efforts.
DeVos’ budget places the Special Olympics funding among 29 programs up for elimination in 2020, arguing that they have achieved their purpose or that they are ineffective, don’t meet national needs or are better funded from other sources.
The proposal separately calls for $13.2 billion in federal grants awarded to states for special education, the same amount that was given this year.
In her statement, DeVos said it was “shameful” that the media and members of Congress “spun up falsehoods and fully misrepresented the facts.” She drew attention to the $13.2 billion in state grants, along with an additional $226 million for grants supporting teacher training and research to help students with disabilities.
“Make no mistake,” she added, “we are focused every day on raising expectations and improving outcomes for infants and toddlers, children and youth with disabilities, and are committed to confronting and addressing anything that stands in the way of their success.”
This isn’t the first time DeVos has run afoul of disability rights advocates.
Some were stunned by a 2017 Senate hearing in which DeVos, while being questioned about a federal law supporting students with disabilities, said it was “a matter that is best left to the states.” When asked if she was familiar with the federal law, she said she “may have confused it.”
DeVos again roiled advocates last December when she rescinded Obama-era guidance meant to protect racial minorities and students with disabilities from unwarranted discipline. In making the decision, DeVos said discipline decisions should be left to teachers and schools.
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US Lawmakers Criticize Proposed Cuts to US Foreign Aid, Diplomacy
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts to diplomacy and foreign aid from strong criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in hearings Wednesday. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Elliot Engel told Pompeo the president’s budget was “dead” as soon as it arrived on Capitol Hill. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
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US Republicans Intensify Counter-Attack After Mueller Investigation
A second U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday sought to examine the motives of federal agents and investigators who launched the Trump-Russia probe as a Republican effort gathered momentum to seek retribution on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson told Reuters he planned to join Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican, in a review of what motivated an investigation that led to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
“How was this pushed by members of the FBI, Department of Justice and the intelligence community? We’re fully aware of the bias that existed in those agencies under the Obama administration,” Johnson said, referring to Democratic President Barack Obama, who preceded Trump.
“I’ve been talking to Senator Graham. I want to work hand-in-glove, our two committees, to try and get that information and make it public for the American people,” he said.
Trump, who, along with fellow Republicans, has seized on the disclosure that Mueller did not find his campaign conspired with Russia to meddle in the election, has been calling for investigations into how the probe got started.
“He is on fire. Anybody who thinks this is going to go by the wayside does not understand the issue of retribution,” said a Trump confidant who speaks to the president regularly. “Hell hath no fury like a president scorned.”
Trump advisers predict Trump will make much of the matter at a rally for supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday, his first major appearance since the Mueller investigation concluded.
A Trump ally, Graham laid out plans for his own investigation this week and urged U.S. Attorney General William Barr to name a special counsel to look into the matter separately.
U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told reporters he was very concerned that Barr would not submit Mueller’s report to Congress by next Tuesday as Democrats had requested. Nadler said he had a 10-minute phone conversation with Barr on Wednesday.
“I asked whether he could commit that the full report, an unredacted full report with the underlying documents evidence would be provided to Congress and to the American people. And he wouldn’t make a commitment to that. I am very concerned about that,” Nadler said.
Mueller’s report was submitted on Friday to Barr, who issued a summary. Trump said he had been completely exonerated, even though the report did not clear him on the question of obstructing justice.
Trump still faces congressional investigations into his personal and business affairs. But Republicans are hoping Mueller’s findings will help Trump’s 2020 re-election prospects and rebound against his Democratic accusers.
A focus of Republican inquiries is a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump’s campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged. Johnson also hopes to unearth facts about alleged discussions at the Justice Department both to surreptitiously record conversations with Trump and to approach Cabinet members about replacing him under the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment.
Johnson said federal law enforcement officials would have done better to approach Trump quietly about concerns they had involving members of his campaign.
During his investigation, Mueller brought charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former Trump aides. Asked about the Republican push to investigate the investigators, Democrat Jamie Raskin of the House Judiciary Committee said: There is a scramble to obscure the reality that nobody has seen the Mueller report yet.
“So, it was perfectly predictable,” he added, “that once they declared the president completely and totally exonerated by a report no one has read, they would turn in vindictive fashion to try to go after the people whoever raised questions about the president’s conduct.”
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Students Mix Tech, Fashion Wearables for Disabled
Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks like buttoning a shirt can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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Facebook, Instagram Ban White Nationalist Speech
Facebook has announced it is banning praise, support, and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its platform and on Instagram, which it also owns.
The company made the announcement Wednesday in a blog post, saying, “It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services.”
The post says Facebook has long banned hateful speech based on race, ethnicity and religion, though it had permitted expressions of white nationalism and separatism because it seemed separate from white supremacy.
“But over the past three months,” the post read, “our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world … have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.”
“Going forward,” it continued, “while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.”
It said people searching for terms associated with white supremacy will be directed to information about the group “Life After Hate,” which is an organization that helps violent extremists leave their hate groups through intervention, education, support groups and outreach.
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Lawmakers Hammer Trump’s Proposed State Department Cuts
Top lawmakers are blasting the Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill about the plan to cut his agency’s budget by 23 percent. He says difficult choices were made when crafting the 2020 proposal but argues the funding is enough to achieve the administration’s foreign policy goals.
Lawmakers don’t see it that way. Democratic Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York described the request as “insufficient” and said she intends to work with her colleagues to reject it.
“If the President’s budget were enacted it would undermine U.S. leadership and stymie worldwide efforts to counter violent extremism, terrorism and disinformation,” Lowey said.
A Republican on the panel, Hal Rogers of Kentucky, said the plan seemed “detached from reality” and warned “if we were to accept cuts of the magnitude proposed it would make our nation less safe, make it harder to achieve the effectiveness we all seek.”
The Trump administration has called for steep cuts to diplomacy three years in a row. Each time, lawmakers have ignored the requests. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, Democrat-New York, has already pronounced the 2020 proposal “dead on arrival.”
While the 2020 budget request would reduce spending in areas such as refugee resettlement and global health care programs, it would allocate $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel. Trump has made strong relations with Israel central to his administration’s foreign policy and has promised a landmark plan to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Pompeo told lawmakers Wednesday the peace plan was forthcoming and would be made up of “new and fresh and different” ideas. When asked if the plan supports a state for Palestinians as well as the state of Israel, Pompeo said, “ultimately it will be the peoples of those two lands that resolve this and make that decision about how it is they’ll come together, what the contours of that resolution will look like.”
The 2020 budget request also seeks $5.4 billion to improve security for U.S. diplomats, an issue that has received more attention since the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Barbara Bush Blamed Trump for ‘Angst,’ New Book Reveals
Barbara Bush says Donald Trump caused her “angst” during the 2016 election and led her to question whether she was still a Republican in the months before she died.
The late former first lady’s thoughts about Trump were revealed in excerpts published Wednesday in USA Today of an upcoming biography, The Matriarch.
In a February 2018 interview, Bush was asked if she still considered herself a Republican. She replied, “I’d probably say ‘no’ today.”
She died in April at age 92.
Bush recalls drafting a funny letter to mail after the election congratulating Bill Clinton on becoming a presidential spouse. But Bush said when she woke up, she realized “to my horror that Trump had won.”
A friend gave Bush a clock that counted down the time remaining in Trump’s first term that she kept at her bedside.
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Trump Assembling an Army of Operatives for re-Election Fight
In 2016, President Donald Trump compared Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the lumbering federal bureaucracy. Now he’s building one of his own.
From an office tower across the Potomac River from Washington, from the bowels of the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill and from field offices across the country, Trump is assembling an army of operatives to fight for victory in what stands to be a legacy-defining political battle. Even with a sea of still-unfilled desks, his 2020 campaign is already unrecognizable from the fly-by-night operation of the last effort, when Trump won the White House despite his inexperienced campaign team.
Trump may still consider himself his own best strategist and communicator, but this time he’s leaving nothing to chance. Trump’s 2020 effort is melding the RNC and his presidential campaign into one functional entity, with the two organizations sharing staff, resources and data in what they argue is the perfect model of the modern integrated campaign.
“We are creating the largest and most efficient campaign operation in American history with the ability to reach more voters than ever before,” said Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Still, the constant and greatest source of uncertainty for the new effort remains Trump — his disdain for feeling managed and his unwavering belief in his own gut instincts above all else.
“Everything the campaign does is to complement and reinforce the candidate, it’s not a substitute for the candidate,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant. “The candidate needs to be in sync with the campaign.”
Trump’s attacks on the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona earlier this month marked an example of how a candidate could unsettle his own political effort.
Driving the 2020 operation is Parscale, a confidant of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is the White House overseer of the campaign. Parscale brings an unusual pedigree to the position: He did website work for Trump’s golf properties before being hired to run Trump’s digital efforts in 2016, when his targeted Facebook ads helped drive Trump voters in the Midwest to the polls.
A priority of both Parscale and Kushner, aides said, is reducing the disruptive staff turnover that defined Trump’s first White House bid and continued through his first two years in the White House. Key campaign hires have had to pass muster with both men. And Parscale, with his 13-month tenure in the job, already has lasted longer than any of Trump’s three 2016 campaign heads.
One reason that Trump is more open to a bulky campaign apparatus this time: the RNC’s fundraising prowess. Trump self-funded his 2016 campaign to the tune of more than $66 million, but he hasn’t put any money into his campaign since November 2016, and officials say that, so far, he doesn’t intend to.
Buoyed by the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the special counsel investigation, which had been hanging over the president’s 2020 prospects, the announcement that Mueller found no evidence of collusion with Russia has served as an unofficial kickoff for Trump’s campaign. But the GOP’s fundraising operation is already well underway.
For 2020, Trump’s campaign is benefiting from the RNC’s access to high-dollar donors, as well as Trump’s massive grassroots email list for small-dollar contributors. Through the end of 2018, the last date for which figures are publicly available, the campaign had brought in more than $129 million. President Barack Obama, by comparison, didn’t even begin his 2012 re-election campaign until 2011. Party operatives think the 2020 campaign and allied GOP groups will need to raise more than $1 billion for Trump’s re-election effort.
Trump’s campaign is spending heavily out of the gate, with twice as much spent on digital advertising so far this year as the Democratic field combined, according to data compiled by Democratic digital marketing firm Bully Pulpit Interactive.
Beyond early fundraising success, the campaign says it is deploying its dollars more efficiently than previous campaigns.
Trump’s 2016 effort was entirely dependent on the RNC in the general election for data, field workers and rapid response, leaning on the national party’s army of staffers in swing states and yearslong technology investments to win. The party operation dwarfed Trump’s campaign staff of just over 100.
Heading into 2020, Trump and the Republican Party are increasingly indistinguishable. In the main hallway of the party’s Capitol Hill headquarters, glossy photos of Trump have replaced photos of other GOP presidents. Political director Chris Carr holds the title for both the campaign and the RNC. And while state-based operatives may work for either entity or their joint venture, known as “Trump Victory,” they will share a common organizational chart.
The RNC’s existing data operation, which Democrats are frantically trying to replicate, has been steadily honed over the last six years, soaking up consumer data and years of political outreach to produce “voter scores” on every voting-age American. The 100-scale scores are then used by GOP campaigns to identify and contact the voters they need to turn out at the polls.
Trump’s campaign is aiming even higher going forward, planning to build a team of more than 1 million volunteers to reach out to swing voters, aides said.
“We will have a formidable ground game, one volunteer for every 13 swing voters, and a data operation that cannot be replicated,” Parscale promises.
Trump’s 2016 campaign chief executive, Steve Bannon, who has feuded with some in the president’s orbit since leaving the White House, assesses the 2020 operation positively.
“They got an operation stood up,” he says approvingly.
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Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Win Tech’s ‘Nobel Prize’
Computers have become so smart during the past 20 years that people don’t think twice about chatting with digital assistants like Alexa and Siri or seeing their friends automatically tagged in Facebook pictures.
But making those quantum leaps from science fiction to reality required hard work from computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. The trio tapped into their own brainpower to make it possible for machines to learn like humans, a breakthrough now commonly known as “artificial intelligence,” or AI.
Their insights and persistence were rewarded Wednesday with the Turing Award, an honor that has become known as technology industry’s version of the Nobel Prize. It comes with a $1 million prize funded by Google, a company where AI has become part of its DNA.
The award marks the latest recognition of the instrumental role that artificial intelligence will likely play in redefining the relationship between humanity and technology in the decades ahead.
“Artificial intelligence is now one of the fastest-growing areas in all of science and one of the most talked-about topics in society,” said Cherri Pancake, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, the group behind the Turing Award.
Although they have known each other for than 30 years, Bengio, Hinton and LeCun have mostly worked separately on technology known as neural networks. These are the electronic engines that power tasks such as facial and speech recognition, areas where computers have made enormous strides over the past decade. Such neural networks also are a critical component of robotic systems that are automating a wide range of other human activity, including driving.
Their belief in the power of neural networks was once mocked by their peers, Hinton said. No more. He now works at Google as a vice president and senior fellow while LeCun is chief AI scientist at Facebook. Bengio remains immersed in academia as a University of Montreal professor in addition to serving as scientific director at the Artificial Intelligence Institute in Quebec.
“For a long time, people thought what the three of us were doing was nonsense,” Hinton said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They thought we were very misguided and what we were doing was a very surprising thing for apparently intelligent people to waste their time on. My message to young researchers is, don’t be put off if everyone tells you what are doing is silly.”
Now, some people are worried that the results of the researchers’ efforts might spiral out of control.
While the AI revolution is raising hopes that computers will make most people’s lives more convenient and enjoyable, it’s also stoking fears that humanity eventually will be living at the mercy of machines.
Bengio, Hinton and LeCun share some of those concerns — especially the doomsday scenarios that envision AI technology developed into weapons systems that wipe out humanity.
But they are far more optimistic about the other prospects of AI — empowering computers to deliver more accurate warnings about floods and earthquakes, for instance, or detecting health risks, such as cancer and heart attacks, far earlier than human doctors.
“One thing is very clear, the techniques that we developed can be used for an enormous amount of good affecting hundreds of millions of people,” Hinton said.
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India Conducts First Successful Test of Anti-Satellite Weapon
India says it has successfully tested a new anti-satellite missile, marking another major development in its budding space program.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Wednesday in a nationally televised address that scientists had destroyed a satellite orbiting about 300 kilometers above Earth’s atmosphere in a mission that lasted only three minutes. The prime minister said the country has now “registered its name as a space power” alongside the United States, China and Russia, the only other nations to achieve such a feat.
The United States and the former Soviet Union conducted anti-satellite tests from the early days of the space age, with the U.S. successfully shooting down a satellite in 1985. China achieved the feat in 2007.
Modi insisted that Wednesday’s test did not violate any international treaties, and was conducted purely in the interest of national security.
The test was conducted as Modi leads his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party into parliamentary elections on April 11 in his quest for a second term. It is also the latest demonstration of India’s military capabilities since 40 Indian soldiers were killed in February in a suicide bombing attack in the disputed region of Kashmir.
New Delhi retaliated with airstrikes on a suspected militant camp in Pakistan, its bitter rival and nuclear-armed neighbor.
An Indian fighter jet was shot down and its pilot briefly held captive after the two sides engaged in a subsequent aerial dogfight over Kashmir.
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Updating Software, Shaping History: New Imperial Era Name Looms Large in Japan
In Japan, every emperor’s era has its own name – appearing in places such as coins, official paperwork and newspapers – and with abdication coming at the end of April, speculation is swirling about what the new “gengo” will be.
Although the Western calendar has become more widespread in Japan, many people here count years in terms of gengo or use the two systems interchangeably. Emperor Akihito’s era, which began in 1989, is Heisei, making 2019 Heisei 31.
The new era name is one of biggest changes — practically and psychologically – – for Japan at the start of Crown Prince Naruhito’s reign on May 1. On April 30, Akihito will abdicate, ending an era in the minds of many Japanese.
The new name is so secret that senior government officials involved in the decision must surrender their cell phones and stay sequestered until it is broadcast, media reports say.
City offices and government agencies, which mostly use gengo in their computer systems and paperwork, have been preparing for months to avoid glitches.
To make the transition easier, authorities will announce the new gengo – -two Chinese characters the cabinet chooses from a short list proposed by scholars — a month early, on April 1.
“We’ve been working on this change for about a year,” said Tsukasa Shizume, an official in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, where the era name will be changed on 55 kinds of paperwork in 20 administrative sections. The month-long lead time should be sufficient, he said.
Fujitsu and NEC Corp. have been helping customers ensure the switch doesn’t crash their systems.
Programs have been designed to make it easy to change the gengo, said Shunichi Ueda, an NEC official.
“If people want to test their computer systems, they can use a trial gengo and see if it works,” he said.
Most major companies use the Western calendar in their computer systems, so it won’t affect them as much, although smaller companies might run into some problems, he said.
In Tokyo’s Minato ward, officials will cross out Heisei on thousands of documents and stamp the new gengo above it.
National mood
The era name is more than just a way of counting years for many Japanese.
It’s a word that captures the national mood of a period, similar to the way “the ’60s” evokes particular feelings or images, or how historians refer to Britain’s “Victorian” or “Edwardian” eras, tying the politics and culture of a period to a monarch.
“It’s a way of dividing history,” said Jun Iijima, a 31-year-old lawyer who was born the last year of Showa, the era of Akihito’s father, Emperor Hirohito. “If you were just counting years, the Western system might be sufficient. But gengo gives a certain meaning to a historical period.”
The 64-year Showa era, which lasted until 1989, has generally come to be identified with Japan’s recovery and rising global prominence in the decades after World War II.
The imperial era name is also a form of “soft nationalism,” said Ken Ruoff, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University.
“It’s one of these constant low-level reminders that Japan counts years differently and Japan has a monarchy,” he said.
The gengo characters are carefully chosen with an aspirational meaning. Heisei, which means “achieving peace,” began on Jan. 8, 1989, amid high hopes that Japan would play a greater role in global affairs after decades of robust economic growth.
Soon afterward, Japan’s economic bubble popped, ushering in a long period of stagnation and deflation. The rise of China and South Korea diminished Japan’s international prominence, and a series of disasters – including the 1995 Kobe earthquake and 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crises – has marred Heisei’s image.
Fading use
In daily life, usage of the gengo system is slowly declining as Japan integrates into the global economy.
A recent Mainichi newspaper survey showed that 34 percent of people said they used mostly gengo, 34 percent said they used both about the same, and 25 percent mainly the Western calendar.
In 1975, 82 percent said mostly gengo. Both calendars use Western months.
Japanese drivers licenses have started to print both dates, instead of just gengo.
Iijima, the lawyer, says legal paperwork uses the era name because that’s what the court system uses. But in daily life he uses both. For global events, he thinks in terms of the Western calendar – like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – and uses both dating systems for domestic events.
He is indifferent about what characters will be chosen for the next gengo.
But remembering that his grandparents suffered during World War II, he hopes that it will be an era without war, that Japan will keep up economically with China and India and that it will grow into a “mature,” more tolerant place.
“I hope Japan can become a society where minorities can live more easily,” he said.
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Public Concern Over Privacy Pushes Tech Industry to Change
Mounting public concern over data privacy is pushing tech giants to change their ways, industry experts said on Tuesday, a day after Apple unveiled a series of new products, stressing their privacy-friendly features.
The world’s second-most valuable technology company will now offer a credit card, a news service called Apple News+ and a TV service with original programming, all designed to keep users’ information private and secure, it said on Monday.
Apple’s announcements come on the heels of user privacy scandals that have rocked tech companies over the last several years.
Such clarity is welcome in a digital environment that lacks transparency and where people are sometimes unaware of what happens to their data, said Hielke Hijmans, a law expert at the Brussels Privacy Hub, a Belgian research center.
“This empowers the users and helps to give them a genuine choice,” he said.
Earlier this month, rivals like Google and Facebook said they were making changes to boost user privacy.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to encrypt more of the conversations happening on its messaging services, which could limit Facebook’s ability to parse those conversations.
Google said it is working on privacy enhancements for the Android operating system that powers most of the world’s mobile phones, such as locking down access to phone cameras and microphones.
At the launch event in California, Apple executives said the company will not allow advertisers to track what users read on its news service and it will not itself have that data.
Consumer data from its credit card will not be shared or sold to third parties for marketing, and the company will not know where a purchase was made, what was bought or how much it cost, Apple said.
Yet, Apple’s privacy moves aren’t likely to be mimicked by everyone, said Jan Penfrat, a senior policy advisor at advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi).
Assembling profiles of consumers for the purpose of targeting advertisements is at the heart of how Google and Facebook made money, he said.
Unlike those companies, Apple’s business model is not largely dependent on advertising.
“Apple is rather the exception, not the norm,” Penfrat added.
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One in Three Fear Losing Homes in West and Central Africa, Poll Finds
Nearly one in three people living in West and Central Africa fear losing their homes and land in the next five years, according to a survey of 33 countries, making it the region where people feel most insecure about their property.
More than two in five respondents from Burkina Faso and Liberia worry their home could be taken away from them, revealed Prindex, a global property rights index which gauges citizens’ views.
In West Africa, “a history of governments and investors seizing land for large projects has made people more insecure,” said Malcolm Childress, executive director of the Global Land Alliance, a Washington-based think tank that compiles the index.
Insecurity can lead to people struggling to plan for their futures, holding back entire economies, Childress said.
“In countries like Rwanda, however, which are mapping and registering customary land, that uncertainty is much lower,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that only 8 percent of the country’s respondents feared losing their homes.
In Southeast Asia and Latin America, which Childress said had strong institutions documenting land, only 21 percent and 19 percent of people, respectively, reported feeling insecure about their property.
The survey, conducted by U.S. polling firm Gallup and launched in Washington, D.C., at a World Bank conference on Tuesday, is the largest ever effort documenting how secure people feel about their homes and land at a global level.
A lack of formal documentation and poor implementation of land laws threaten tenure in many countries, experts say, with more than 5 billion people lacking proof of ownership, according to the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy.
Survey respondents cited being asked by their landlord to leave the property as well as family disagreements as the main reasons for feeling insecure.
The index also found that 12 percent more women than men felt they might lose their property in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.
That gap shows “there is a long way to go in meeting the aspiration of equal economic rights for women worldwide,” said Anna Locke from the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank that is involved in the index.
The survey for the first time sampled respondents in Britain, where 11 percent of people feared losing their home, mainly due to a lack of money or other resources.
More than 50,000 people were questioned about ownership or tenure in 33 countries most of them from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Over the next year, the poll will be extended to 140 countries.
Prindex is an initiative of the Omidyar Network — with which the Thomson Reuters Foundation has a partnership on land rights coverage — and the U.K.’s Department for International Development.
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Land Lost, Families Uprooted as Myanmar Pushes Industrial Zones
Than Ei lived in the Thilawa area near Yangon for years, growing vegetables in her backyard and sending her two children to school with money from her husband’s construction job.
Then came the government order to move. Than Ei’s family was among 68 households relocated in 2013 to make way for the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the first such industrial area in Myanmar, about 23km (15 miles) southeast of Yangon.
Authorities said each family would get a home a few miles away, or a plot of land and money to build a house, as well as jobs in the new factories, with good wages.
But six years on, Than Ei and others who moved say their incomes are lower than before, and they have only limited access to services. Many families sold their homes and left the area after they ran out of money, Than Ei said.
“There is no land to grow vegetables or to keep chickens, and we are not close to transport or the market anymore,” Than Ei said outside her one-room home in Myaing Thar Yar village.
“My husband only got a job as a security guard two years after (the move). We had to take out a loan until then, which we are still paying off.”
For developing nations like Myanmar – which emerged from decades of economic isolation in 2011 when the military stepped back from direct control – SEZs are seen as a way to attract much-needed foreign investment and create jobs.
Authorities say Thilawa SEZ is being built according to international environmental and social safeguards, which includes getting the consent of residents and offering adequate compensation.
But for those whose lives have been uprooted by the country’s economic ambitions, the reality is different, said Mike Griffiths, a researcher at the Myanmar Social Policy and Poverty Research Group, a think tank based in Yangon.
“They not only have lower levels of income, but are more likely to have higher expenditure, higher rates of debt and lower employment rates,” he wrote in a report last year on the relocated households. “The picture is of extreme vulnerability.”
Risky Model
The model for economic growth that Myanmar and other countries in the region hope to emulate is that of China, which in the 1980s set up about half a dozen major SEZs to boost its market reforms.
Experts say SEZs have contributed significantly to China’s economic growth, with the World Bank estimating in 2015 that they accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP.
Spurred by China’s example, governments from sub-Saharan Africa to southeast Asia have adopted SEZs, but analysts say they have a mixed record of success.
“The model has passed its use-by-date, and officials have been slow to catch on,” said Charlie Thame, a professor of political science at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.
“Even from an economic point of view they are fraught with risk, mostly borne by host states.”
In poorer nations, SEZs “overwhelmingly fail to provide decent jobs or generate beneficial effects to local economies,” he said, and domestic legislation and international investment frameworks largely fail to protect those affected.
No Consultation
When completed, the Thilawa SEZ will cover some 2,400 hectares (9 sq. miles) of land. Dozens of manufacturers, largely making goods for export, are already operating there.
Thilawa is the only operational SEZ in the country, with the Dawei SEZ in the southern region of Tanintharyi on hold after some initial construction. A third SEZ is planned, with Chinese investment, in Kyauk Pyu in Rakhine state.
The site in Thilawa had been earmarked for industrial use under the junta government in 1996, but the original plans fell through.
When authorities announced the start of development for the SEZ six years ago, they said since the land already belonged to the government, villagers living on it were only eligible to be compensated for their crops.
None of the residents made to move were consulted on the economic or social impacts of the development, said Mya Hlaing, a member of the Thilawa Social Development Group, which was set up to represent the villagers.
“We were also promised training and jobs, but very few have got jobs – and even then, only as cleaners and security guards,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A spokesman for Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development, which operates Zone 1 of the SEZ, said the land acquisition was carried out by government authorities, and that those affected had been offered several job opportunities.
Myanmar authorities did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Backlash
About 600km away in southern Myanmar, development of the Dawei SEZ has been suspended since 2013, after it sparked community protests and hit funding difficulties.
The project is a joint venture of the Thai and Myanmar governments, and includes a 140-km road to the Thai border, a port, a power plant, a reservoir and an industrial estate.
Most residents affected by the initial phase of construction refused to move into the nearly 500 homes that had been built a couple of miles away.
“We were not told what types of factories would be built or what their impact would be,” said Mar Lar, who sold some of her land in the southern Htein Gyi village but still lives in her own home.
Residents in Dawei fear construction on the stalled project will resume soon, even as a backlash against SEZs is growing.
Protests broke out in Vietnam last year over planned new SEZs.
In India, the Supreme Court has asked why land acquired for SEZs is not being used, and the Myanmar government has scaled back its Kyauk Pyu project with China over fears of a debt trap.
But back in Thilawa, the second phase of construction is about to kick off and will see the relocation of more than 800 families, said Aye Khaing Win, a community leader.
“The government says the SEZ has done many good things, but we have lost our land. We have not benefited,” he said.
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Biden Rips ‘White Man’s Culture,’ Regrets Anita Hill Hearing
Former Vice President Joe Biden condemned “a white man’s culture” Tuesday night as he lashed out against violence against women and, more specifically, lamented his role in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings that undermined Anita Hill’s credibility nearly three decades ago.
Biden, a Democratic presidential prospect who often highlights his white working-class roots, said Hill, who is African-American, should not have been forced to face a panel of “a bunch of white guys.”
“To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to give her the kind of hearing she deserved,” he said, echoing comments he delivered last fall as the nation debated sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh amid his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
Later in his Tuesday remarks, Biden called on Americans to “change the culture” that dates back centuries and allows pervasive violence against women. “It’s an English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change,” Biden said.
The 76-year-old Democrat delivered the remarks at a New York City event honoring young people who helped combat sexual assault on college campuses. The event, held at a venue called the Russian Tea Room, was hosted by the Biden Foundation and the nonprofit group It’s on Us, which Biden founded with former President Barack Obama in 2014.
Biden is perhaps the last high-profile Democrat who has yet to announce his or her 2020 intentions. He has a small team of political operatives laying the groundwork for a run, but he has acknowledged publicly in recent weeks that his entrance in the presidential race is no sure thing.
Biden’s role in the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings are among his many political challenges as he weighs his place in today’s Democratic Party. Should he run, he would be among a handful of white men in a Democratic presidential field that features several women and minorities.
In remarks that were rambling at times and spanned more than a half hour, Biden repeatedly denounced violence against women. It’s a topic Biden knows well. As a senator, he introduced the Violence Against Women’s Act in 1990.
“No man has a right to lay a hand on a woman no matter what she’s wearing, she does, who she is, unless it’s in self-defense. Never,” he said Tuesday.
He then shared a conversation he had with a member of a college fraternity.
“If you see a brother taking an inebriated co-ed up the stairs at a fraternity house and you don’t go and stop it, you’re a damn coward,” Biden said. “You don’t deserve to be called a man.”
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