While hackers steal credit card numbers online, other crooks do it directly from the card, at the point where a consumer exchanges the data with a cash or banking machine. The U.S. Secret Service says those crooks, called skimmers, steal more than a billion dollars annually. A group of students at the University of Florida is developing a device that may put a stop to this type of crime. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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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
Afghan Immigrant Women Prosper in Male Dominated Tech World
The United States is a land of opportunity for many immigrants. But some who come to the US often face big hurdles. The challenges can be especially great for immigrant women trying to succeed in male dominated careers in STEM fields: for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. VOA spoke with three Afghan women, all of whom prove that where there is a will, there’s usually a way. Zheela Noori went to Silicon Valley to find out what drives them. Freshta Azizi narrates.
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NY Times: US Investigating Cambridge Analytica
The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are investigating Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political data firm embroiled in a scandal over its handling of Facebook Inc user information, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have sought to question former Cambridge Analytica employees and banks that handled its business, the newspaper said, citing an American official and others familiar with the inquiry.
Cambridge Analytica said earlier this month it was shutting down after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees resulting from reports the company harvested personal data about millions of Facebook users beginning in 2014.
Allegations of the improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. election campaign, have prompted multiple investigations in the United States and Europe.
The investigation by the Justice Department and FBI appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, the Times said.
Investigators have contacted Facebook, according to the newspaper.
The FBI, the Justice Department and Facebook declined to comment to Reuters. Former officials with Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available to comment.
Cambridge Analytica was created around 2013, initially with a focus on U.S. elections, with $15 million in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and a name chosen by future Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, the New York Times has reported. Bannon left the White House on August 2017.
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Study: US Insurers Unprepared for Climate Change Disasters
Most U.S. insurance companies have not adapted their strategies to address the dangers of climate change, making them likely to raise rates or deny coverage in high-risk areas, said a study released Tuesday.
With predictions of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season approaching, thousands of people could be unable to afford insurance protection or lose it altogether, said the Canadian research study published in the British Journal of Management.
Scientific consensus holds that climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather, from hurricanes to flooding. Last year, three record hurricanes struck the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Yet insurance and reinsurance companies overwhelmingly continue to treat storms as “anomalous rather than correlated to climate change,” the study said.
“Insurers that ignore climate change will not put away enough money to cover their claims. To recoup those losses, they’ll have to raise rates or pull coverage from high-risk areas,” said lead author Jason Thistlethwaite, an assistant professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo.
They will face whopping payouts associated with disasters, he said.
So long, coverage
“When this shift happens, thousands of people will lose coverage or it will be unaffordable,” he said.
Insured losses hit an all-time high between 2004 and 2014, according to a 2015 analysis by reinsurer Swiss Re.
Insurance companies use reinsurance to minimize their risk.
But in 2015, only 3 percent out of a sample of 178 U.S. property insurers and reinsurers were taking into account climate change in corporate governance, underwriting and investment, the study found.
However, the number of companies factoring in climate change in at least one area of operation doubled to about three dozen from 2012 to 2015, it said.
With storm-related payouts soaring, insurance companies may go out of business or lose investors, Thistlethwaite said.
A shrinking insurance market will drive up costs to consumers, he said.
The researchers analyzed insurers in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Washington and New Mexico.
Less than a month away, the Atlantic hurricane season has been predicted to be “above average” by Colorado State University meteorologists. The season runs from June 1 to November 30.
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Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ Adapted for Video Game
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth — err, game.
Henry David Thoreau wrote those words — most of them — in his seminal book, “Walden.” They make up the objective of a video game that seeks to translate his exploits in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, into a playable digital reality.
“Walden, a Game” is adapted from the book and launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4. It has been available on computers for almost a year.
“Obviously it’s an odd or unique idea for a game,” said Tracy Fullerton, who conceived the idea and led the team that created it at the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab.
Fullerton told The Associated Press that “Walden” is one of her favorite books, and she thinks its meaning — a tale of escaping technology to appreciate nature — is topical today.
“It seemed to be a kind of game that he was playing,” Fullerton said. So she created one to mimic it.
Fullerton acknowledges the irony of trumpeting nature in a video game but said she hopes the game will be more contemplative than others.
Players drop in with a half-built cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. From there, they can essentially decide everything they do over eight seasons (Thoreau thought a year was better divided into eight parts than four), which takes six hours of real time.
They can finish building the house and toil in the fields, or they can venture out into 70 acres of virtual nature.
The objective is to find the right balance between survival — players can’t die, but they can faint — and fulfillment. As players seek more inspiration from nature, interacting with animals and trees, the actual game world becomes more colorful and more physically beautiful, Fullerton said.
The team at USC spent more than a decade creating the game, she said. Team members consulted literature and history experts to ensure the accuracy of its portrayals, and the game’s sound designer recorded all of its audible elements in the real Walden woods.
It’s available for free for teachers, and a curriculum is available online, but Fullerton said the game’s primary purpose is entertainment.
Joseph Simpson, a software developer from Ohio, said he reads Walden every year and discovered the game while reading about Fullerton.
“I immediately, without hesitation, bought it and started playing it,” he said. Simpson said the essence of the book has been implemented into the game in a way that doesn’t corrupt it with too many objectives or missions.
“I may not have to read Walden this year because I can play the game,” he said.
Experts on the textual version of “Walden” also were intrigued.
Robert Hudspeth, a former president of the Thoreau Society and an English professor at the Claremont Graduate University in California, said he has heard of the game but hasn’t played it.
“I will say, however, that anything that might spark an interest in Thoreau’s writing is welcome,” Hudspeth said. “If playing a game stimulates the players to go to the books, then I’m all for it!”
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Mexico Central Bank to Create Cybersecurity Unit After Hack
Mexico’s central bank said Tuesday that it was creating a cybersecurity unit, following a hack on a domestic payments system at the end of April that affected Mexican banks.
The central bank said in a notice in the government’s daily gazette that the new unit would design and issue guidelines on information security for the country’s banks, which are supervised by the central bank.
Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon Carrillo said Monday that the country had seen an unprecedented attack on payment system connections and that he hoped that measures being taken would stop future incidents.
The attack on Mexican banks is similar to one of the biggest-ever known cyber heists, when thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, said Fermin Gonzalez, head of forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mexico.
“Perhaps, some financial institutions perceived the attacks in Bangladesh as something very distant,” he said, adding that some Mexican banks may not have invested in sufficient security measures.
“But criminals look for vulnerability and once they see it they are going to exploit it.”
The central bank has not identified which banks were hit by the cyberattack or detailed how much thieves were able to wire out to bogus accounts in other banks.
A source close to the government’s investigation said more than 300 million had been siphoned out of banks, but it was not clear how much had subsequently been taken out in cash withdrawals.
Bank Grupo Financiero Banorte said Tuesday it does not expect the attack to hit financial results.
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US Lawmakers Push Back on Trump Talk of Helping China’s ZTE
U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday rejected any plan by President Donald Trump to ease restrictions on China’s ZTE Corp, calling the telecommunications firm a security threat and vowing not to abandon legislation clamping down on the company.
Trump on Monday had defended his decision to revisit penalties on ZTE for flouting U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, in part by saying it was reflective of the larger trade deal the United States is negotiating with China.
“I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week.
The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange for easing the ban on selling components to ZTE.
“They are basically conducting an all-out assault to steal what we’ve already developed and use it as the baseline for their development so they can supplant us as the leader in the most important technologies of the 21st century,” Rubio said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Asia policy.
Trump had taken to Twitter on Sunday with a pledge to help the company, which has suspended its main operations, because the penalties had cost too many jobs in China. It was a departure for a president who often touts “America First” policies.
The Commerce Department in April found ZTE had violated a 2017 settlement created after the company violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and banned U.S. companies from providing exports to ZTE for seven years.
U.S. companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.
Cybersnooping?
The suggestion outraged members of Congress who have been pressing for more restrictions on ZTE. Some U.S. lawmakers have alleged equipment made by ZTE and other Chinese companies could pose a cyber security threat.
”Who makes unilateral concessions on the eve of talks after you’ve spent all this time trying to say, correctly in my view, that the Chinese have ripped off our technology?” Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, told Reuters.
Wyden, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, was one of 32 Senate Democrats who signed a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump of putting China’s interests ahead of U.S. jobs and national security.
The company has denied wrongdoing.
Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday he did not expect lawmakers would seek to remove a ban on ZTE technology from a must-pass annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress.
“I confess I don’t fully understand the administration’s take on this at this point,” Thornberry said. “It is not a question to me of economics, it is a question of security.”
Another Republican, Senator John Kennedy, defended Trump, saying the president’s approach is part of a larger set of negotiations with China.
“He didn’t get up one day and go, ‘I think I’ll change my mind on ZTE.’ I think it’s part of a larger issue, and part of a larger set of negotiations,” Kennedy told reporters.
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US Judge Refuses to Dismiss ex-Trump Aide Manafort’s Criminal Case
A federal judge refused on Tuesday to dismiss criminal charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, after Manafort claimed that Mueller had exceeded his prosecutorial powers.
In a sharp rebuke of those claims, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had followed all the Justice Department’s rules when he hired Mueller and Mueller’s case against Manafort is not overly broad or improper.
Rosenstein “expressly approved the Special Counsel’s investigation of the facts alleged in the indictment, so there has been no violation of the regulations, and the Special Counsel did not act without authority,” she wrote.
In response to the ruling, Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said: “Paul Manafort maintains his innocence and looks forward to prevailing in this matter.” A spokesman for the Special Counsel declined to comment.
Manafort, who performed lobbying work for a pro-Russian former Ukrainian president before serving as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, is facing two indictments brought by Mueller in federal courts in Washington and Alexandria, Virginia.
The charges against him in the Washington case include conspiring to launder money, conspiring to defraud the United States and failing to register as a foreign agent. In Virginia, he faces charges that include bank fraud and filing false tax returns.
He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, none of which are directly related to work he performed for Trump’s campaign.
In both criminal cases, Manafort has asked the courts to dismiss the charges on the grounds that Rosenstein’s May 17 appointment order hiring Mueller runs afoul of Justice Department rules on special counsels.
He has also argued that Mueller’s case against him has nothing to do with Russian interference in 2016 election, and that the probe by the FBI into his Ukraine dealings predates the Russia probe.
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Democrats Seek to Counter Trump’s 2020 Message
Grappling with the realities of President Donald Trump’s reign, Democrats are trying to offer a counterweight to the president’s message — without making it all about Trump.
An annual conference organized by a prominent Democratic think tank included an early glimpse Tuesday at some of the Democrats plotting a challenge to Trump in 2020. But it also laid bare some of the challenges Democrats face in opposing a president whose presence has been all-consuming and in developing an alternative agenda to reach voters who turned to Trump in 2016.
“What they want to hear about is the economy and their plans for it. They don’t want to hear about Donald Trump every single minute,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said at the Center for American Progress’ Ideas Conference. “We resist, but we also insist on a better way forward.”
The lineup at the daylong conference featured appearances by several potential 2020 candidates, including Klobuchar and Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Also speaking: former Housing Secretary Julian Castro and current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats have pointed to growing activism since Trump’s election, from the women’s march after his inauguration to a student movement in support of gun control measures following the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. And they have captured special election victories in Alabama, electing Democratic Senator Doug Jones, and in western Pennsylvania, helping Democrat Conor Lamb overcome millions in Republican expenditures in a GOP-leaning district.
Democrats are hoping for a “blue wave” in the midterms to recapture one or both chambers in Congress, which they have said would serve as a precursor to ousting Trump from office.
Grass roots ‘stood up’
“The reason why we don’t have Trumpcare today,” said New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, referring to the president’s failed attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, “is because the grass roots stood up, stood tall and said, ‘No.’ ”
But the party is still dealing with tensions on how far it should move to embrace more liberal policies on the economy and health care in response to Trump.
Sanders, who battled Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination in 2016, rattled off a litany of liberal causes, including the need for a single-payer health care system, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, reproductive rights and universal child care. But he pointed to the role of the “oligarchy in this country” as the nation’s most central challenge, a movement he said was leading to “a government of the few, by the few, and for the few.”
“It is so important that we set big goals and we not be afraid of that,” said de Blasio, who announced plans for the New York Police Department to “overhaul and reform” policies related to marijuana enforcement in the next month.
Castro, HUD secretary under President Barack Obama and a former San Antonio mayor, said the party needed a “new blueprint” that would make universal prekindergarten a reality, provide free college for at least the first two years and protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
Trump’s distilled message
One of the critiques of Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign was that it failed to present a coherent argument on what the party would stand for under her watch. Trump, meanwhile, successfully distilled his message into his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and narrowly defeated Clinton in Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin that had been safe Democratic territory.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, noted that Trump claimed victory in Ohio, a perennial presidential battleground, by nearly 9 percentage points in 2016, saying the president won in “communities he had no business winning.”
“I think workers in my state are looking for somebody in elected office to talk about the dignity of work, to talk about whose side are you on, to talk about why work matters,” Brown said. “I don’t hear that enough from elected officials.”
Neera Tanden, the center’s president and a longtime Clinton adviser, said that while Trump represents “an unprecedented threat to our values and our norms,” Democrats cannot simply resist the president and his policies but instead need to provide an alternative to his agenda.
The event was attended by a number of financial donors, political strategists and activists who are beginning to assess what is expected to be a massive field in 2020, spurred in part by Trump’s sluggish public approval ratings.
Robert Wolf, a major Democratic donor who attended the conference, said the party was “starting to build a narrative of things we stand for,” as opposed to simply opposing Trump at every turn.
“We have to make sure we’re the party of ‘for things,’ ” Wolf said.
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US Senate Preps for Net Neutrality Vote
Senate Democrats are mounting a last-ditch campaign to preserve so-called “net neutrality” that has prevented certain content or users from being slowed on the internet in the United States — an effort most Republicans say is misguided and counterproductive.
On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s December decision to repeal Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from favoring certain users or material. All 49 Democrats and one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, back the resolution in the 100-member chamber.
“All [net neutrality] does is protect the openness of the internet to competitors across the country,” said Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats. “I believe this resolution will restore us to a place where small businesses will be able to compete and blossom and prosper.”
Added Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “Net neutrality is our 21st century right, and we will fight to protect it. Eighty-three percent of Americans, in polling, say they want to protect net neutrality.”
Republicans insist they, too, believe in net neutrality, but want to safeguard it by crafting forward-looking legislation rather than re-imposing an outdated regulatory structure.
“Democrats have decided to take the issue of net neutrality and make it partisan,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota said. “Instead of working with Republicans to develop permanent net neutrality legislation, they’ve decided to try to score political points with a partisan resolution that would do nothing to permanently secure net neutrality.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Trump appointee, defended the commission’s decision at a recent telecommunications conference in Washington, saying antiquated and heavy-handed federal internet regulation slows innovation and discourages investment in cyberinfrastructure.
“If you want something to operate like a slow-moving utility [company], there is no better way to ensure that than by regulating it as such,” Pai said. “[The American people] want more access, they want competition. They want the internet to be better and faster and cheaper.”
The FCC chairman added that federal regulators retain the ability to crack down on any unfair practices regarding internet access, and that service providers are required to disclose whether they slow any content or offer paid so-called “fast lanes.”
Such assurances have not satisfied more than 20 U.S. states that sued to prevent the FCC’s decision from going into effect June 11. In Washington, Democrats say small-business owners are worried they will be at a disadvantage in reaching new customers if net neutrality disappears.
“It’s all about having equal access to the internet,” King said, pointing to Certify, a small Web-based company in Portland, Maine, as an example of what is at stake. “One hundred fifty employees. It has two million users around the globe — that’s because of the power of the internet. We don’t want that business to be choked off by a large competitor who can pay preferential rates [for internet access].”
America’s largest internet service providers have said they will not engage in “throttling” — dramatically slowing down certain content — once the new FCC rules go into effect next month.
The net neutrality resolution could pass in the Senate 50-49, given the absence of Arizona Republican John McCain. From there, it faces significant hurdles. Passage is seen as less likely in the Republican-led House of Representatives, and President Donald Trump is unlikely to sign a bill overriding a decision backed by the FCC chairman he selected.
Even so, Democrats see an opportunity to highlight an issue of concern to many Americans ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
“This vote will allow senators to show once and for all where everyone stands on #NetNeutrality,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted.
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Twitter Changes Strategy in Battle Against Internet ‘Trolls’
Twitter Inc on Tuesday revised its strategy for fighting abusive internet trolls,” saying it would use behavioral signals to identify harassers on the social network and then limit the visibility of their tweets.
San Francisco-based Twitter, known for freewheeling discussions since it was founded in 2006, has been trying to rid itself of harassment out of concern that personal attacks were driving people away.
Twitter’s rules already prohibit abuse, and it can suspend or block offenders once someone reports them. Users can also mute people they find offensive.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Twitter now would try to find problematic accounts by examining behavior such as how frequently people tweet about accounts that do not follow them or whether they have confirmed their email address.
Tweets from those accounts will appear lower in certain areas of the service, such as search results or replies to tweets, even if the tweets themselves have not been found to violate any rules.
“We want to take the burden of the work off the people receiving the abuse or the harassment,” Dorsey said in a briefing with reporters. Past efforts to fight abuse “felt like Whac-A-Mole,” he added.
Tweets will not be removed entirely based on behavioral signals, Dorsey said.
In tests the new approach resulted in a 4 percent decrease in abuse reports originating from search results and an 8 percent decrease in abuse reports from the conversations that take place as replies to tweets, according to the company.
Most abuse comes from a small number of accounts that have an outsized impact, said Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president for trust and safety.
Social media firms including Twitter and Facebook are under pressure to remove bullies, many of whom target women and minorities. Many women cannot express themselves freely on Twitter without fear of violence, Amnesty International said in a report in March.
Reducing abuse could also help Twitter’s business. If more people sign up and spend time on the service, marketers may buy more ads on it.
Dorsey said that Twitter’s 336 million monthly active users should expect a series of other changes over the next several months as the company explores ways to encourage tweets that are more civil.
In March, Twitter sought proposals from academics and others to help gauge the “health of public conversations.” Dorsey said the company is reviewing 230 submissions it received.
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Kenya Steps Into Space with First Satellite Launch
Kenya took its first step into space with the launch Friday of a nano-satellite made at the University of Nairobi. Engineers involved in creating the cube-shaped space capsule described it as Kenya’s joining the space club, although much remains to be done to get the Kenya space program off the ground. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Nairobi.
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Hawaii Volcano Eruption Costs Tourism Industry Millions
People nixing vacations to Hawaii’s Big island has cost the tourism industry millions of dollars as the top attraction, Kilauea volcano, keeps spewing lava.
Cancellations from May through July have hit at least $5 million, said Ross Birch, executive director of the island’s tourism board.
The booking pace for hotels and other activities, such as tours for lava viewing, zip lines and glass bottom boats have fallen 50 percent. A handful of cruise ships have also decided not to come into port even in Kona on the west side of the island, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) away from the volcano.
This is the “first leak we’re seeing out of the bucket,” Birch said.
Tourism is one of Hawaii’s biggest industries and a big part of the local economy. The Big Island topped other islands in the archipelago pulling in $2.5 billion in revenue last year.
On Monday, another fissure spewing lava and unhealthy gas opened up, and a crack in the Earth that emerged a day earlier was sending molten rock on a slow run for the ocean, officials said.
The National Weather Service has warned residents of “light ashfall” throughout the day in Kau, the island’s southernmost district, after a burst of volcanic emissions around 9 a.m.
Nearly 20 fissures have opened since the Kilauea volcano started erupting 12 days ago, and officials warn it may soon blow its top with a massive steam eruption that would shoot boulders and ash miles into the sky.
A fissure that opened Sunday led authorities to order 10 people to flee their homes, Hawaii County Managing Director Wil Okabe said. Overall, nearly 2,000 people have been told to evacuate since May 3, and lava has destroyed more than two dozen homes.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the flow from the crack that emerged Sunday was heading on a path that would take it to the ocean, about 2 miles (3 kilometers) away. No homes or roads were threatened by the flow.
Lava on Sunday spread across hundreds of yards of private land and loud explosions rocked the neighborhood not far from the Leilani Estates subdivision, where more than a dozen other active vents opened over the past week.
Nearby resident Richard Schott, 34, watched from a police checkpoint as the eruption churned just over a ridgeline and behind some trees.
“I’ve actually seen rocks fly over the tree line, and I can feel it in my body,” Schott said. “It’s like a nuclear reaction or something.”
Few fissures, ground deformation and abundant volcanic gases indicate eruptions on the eastern flank of Kilauea are likely to persist, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.
“The appearance of the fissures in the past couple of days does not change the overall picture or concern,” Geological Survey scientist Steve Brantley said.
Christian and Maritza Ricks, who moved to the area from California in April, stopped at the side of the road to watch and listen to the latest eruption.
“I guess it’s just part of living on the island,” Ricks said.
He said he wasn’t really afraid of the destruction happening around him.
“In a way, it’s kind of exciting to see what’s going on and be this close to it,” Christian Ricks said.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported a fissure opened Saturday just east of the Puna Geothermal Venture energy conversion plant, where steam and hot liquid are brought up through underground wells and the steam feeds a turbine generator to produce electricity.
As a precaution, plant workers last week removed 50,000 gallons (189,265 liters) of a flammable liquid stored at the site.
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Study Finds Uber’s Growth Slows After Year of Scandal; Lyft Benefits
Uber Technologies’ growth has slowed as a series of scandals has allowed the ride-hailing company’s chief U.S. competitor, Lyft, to grab more market share, digital research firm eMarketer said in a report on Monday.
The research firm has lowered its forecasts for Uber’s growth for the next several years. It projects 48 million U.S. adults will use Uber at least once this year, up 18 percent from last year but well off eMarketer’s earlier forecast of more than 51 million.
EMarketer based its analysis on data from Uber and Lyft, such as trip numbers and app downloads, as well as customer surveys from researchers at JP Morgan and other firms.
Series of scandals
The report quantifies the effect of a series of scandals at Uber last year, which included an internal probe of sexual harassment and workplace behavior; a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into whether Uber managers violated U.S. laws against bribery of foreign officials; a lawsuit by Alphabet alleging trade secrets theft that Uber settled for $245 million; and the departure of Uber’s chief executive officer, who was pushed out by investors concerned about the growing list of problems.
Uber did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Lyft has grown quickly, adding more than 160 cities last year, benefiting from Uber’s tarnished image and as a later entry into markets where people are already familiar with ride-hailing services, eMarketer said. On Monday, Lyft said it has 35 percent of the national ride-hailing market, and in 16 U.S. markets its share exceeds 40 percent.
“Uber’s brand image took an even bigger hit than expected as it grappled with a series of scandals and PR disasters in 2017,” said Shelleen Shum, eMarketer’s forecasting director. “Lyft, which had been rapidly expanding its coverage, seized on the opportunity to brand itself as a more socially conscious alternative.”
Lowered forecast
The research firm said it has lowered its forecast for Uber’s growth every year through 2021, reflecting the company’s competitive disadvantage after last year’s problems. EMarketer’s previous projections pegged the number of Uber users in 2017 at about 44 million, but the actual number ended up being fewer than 41 million.
Even so, Uber remains the dominant U.S. ride-hailing company. At the end of this year it will have about 77 percent of the market, down from 90 percent in 2016, while Lyft will have 48 percent, up from nearly 29 percent, according to eMarketer.
EMarketer’s projections for 2022 show Uber with nearly 74 percent of customers and Lyft with 59 percent of ride-hailing customers. Some people use both services.
Lyft operates in roughly the same number of U.S. cities as Uber, as well as in Toronto. Uber operates across the globe, although it has retreated from Southeast Asia, Russia and China after losing billions of dollars competing with local rivals.
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Trump Urges Quick NAFTA Resolution in Talks with Trudeau
U.S. President Donald Trump urged for a quick conclusion to a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement during a phone call Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The White House said Trump “underscored the importance” of quickly reaching a deal, while Trudeau’s office said the two spoke of the “possibility of bringing the negotiations to a prompt conclusion.”
The talks have come under increased pressure to quickly produce a deal after U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said this week he would need to be notified of a new agreement by May 17 to give the current Congress a chance to pass it this year.
Canada, the United States and Mexico are renegotiating their 24-year-old free trade pact in a process triggered by the Trump administration. Trump has been highly critical of the 1994 deal, blaming it for the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs that hurt the U.S. economy.
He has repeatedly threatened to leave the pact if a satisfactory updated agreement is not reached.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Monday that none of the contentious issues the three countries have been discussing appear to have been resolved. Ross, who is not directly involved in the NAFTA talks, told reporters in Washington Monday that the big issues are still a “work in progress.”
Last week, the latest round of NAFTA talks ended in Washington without any major breakthroughs on how to renegotiate the deal. Those talks were the first to involve all three of the top officials in the negotiations — U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo.
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Watchdog: US EPA Chief Pruitt Asked for 24/7 Security From Day 1
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt requested and received around-the-clock security from his first day in office in 2017, the agency’s watchdog on Monday told a lawmaker questioning Pruitt’s expensive security detail.
Prior EPA administrators have not had blanket protection.
Pruitt, under pressure from Congress for his high travel and security spending in his position at America’s top environmental regulator, has said his 24-hour security was installed due to unusual threats against him.
In a May 14 letter, EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. said the decision was made by the agency’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training after being informed that Pruitt had requested that such protection begin once he was confirmed as administrator.
The inspector general’s office “played no role in this decision,” Elkins added.
The letter was addressed to Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who had asked the office how and why Pruitt was getting 24-hour protection.
“EPA’s Protective Service Detail handles security decisions and this particular decision was made before Administrator Pruitt arrived at EPA,” agency spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in an email.
During hearings last month, Pruitt, who was confirmed Feb. 17, 2017, justified his security spending by citing threats he had received since taking office.
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Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid Undergoes Surgery for Cancer
Former Senator Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, was recovering after undergoing surgery Monday at Johns Hopkins Cancer Center in Baltimore to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas.
Reid, 78, will undergo chemotherapy, according to a statement released Monday by his family.
“His doctors caught the problem early during a routine screening and his surgeons are confident that the surgery was a success and that the prognosis for his recovery is good,” the statement said.
The former Senate Democratic leader declined to seek re-election in 2016 after more than three decades in Congress. A 2015 accident left him blind in one eye.
A former boxer who grew up poor in the small town of Searchlight, Nevada, Reid rose to one of the most powerful positions in American politics as Nevada’s longest-serving senator.
He helped propel the passage of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and blocked the development of a nuclear waste dump in Nevada. He was also a champion of his home state’s gaming and tourism industry and built up a well-organized Democratic machine in Nevada.
Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who was recruited by Reid to replace him, wished him a speedy recovery.
“Senator Reid is no stranger to a fight. He beat his opponents in the boxing ring, took on the mob in Nevada, and moved bills in the Senate that no one believed could be done. He’ll beat cancer too,” she said in a statement.
His former congressional rival, John Boehner, tweeted prayers for Reid, writing: “You’re a fighter, Harry. You can whip this.”
Reid and Boehner are working on creating a public policy think tank at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focusing on policy issues that affect the tourism, hospitality and gambling industries.
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US Embassy’s Move in Israel Draws Criticism from Around the World
Many of the United States’ allies, along with its foes, expressed criticism of the U.S. decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem Monday, saying it would increase tensions in the Middle East.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said, “We disagree with the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital” before a final peace agreement is reached in the Middle East.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Monday’s violence in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers killed more than 50 Palestinian civilians in clashes at the border. Macron said he had “warned repeatedly of the repercussions” of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
In a statement, Macron’s office said he talked with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday and is planning to talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated Moscow’s objection to the U.S. move. “We firmly believe that it is inappropriate to unilaterally revise the decisions of the international community in this way,” he said.
Many Arab leaders also condemned the move, with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri calling it “provocative,” and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif describing it as “a day of great shame.”
Saudi Arabia condemned the Israeli gunfire against Palestinians in Gaza but did not mention the opening of the U.S. Embassy.
“Saudi Arabia strongly condemns the Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire against unarmed Palestinian civilians, which has left dozens of dead and wounded,” a Saudi foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to London that the embassy move was “very, very unfortunate” and said it disqualified the United States from being a mediator in the Middle East peace process.
Turkey’s government said was recalling its ambassador to the United States “for consultations” over the U.S. Embassy move. It also recalled its ambassador to Israel following what it called a “massacre” of Palestinians on the Gaza border.
Turkey also has called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s largest body of Muslim-majority nations. Erdogan wants the meeting to be held Friday. In response to the thousands of people who took to the streets of Istanbul Monday, Erdogan promised to hold a pro-Palestinian rally on Friday after the OIC meeting.
Kuwait also condemned the violence in Gaza and requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council for Tuesday.
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Musk Tells Tesla Staff He Is Planning ‘Reorganization’
Tesla’s chief executive officer told employees on Monday the company is undergoing a “thorough reorganization,” as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes last week involving its electric, self-driving cars.
CEO Elon Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization it was “flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission” in an email that was confirmed by Tesla after being disclosed earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Senior Tesla executives have departed or cut back work
Waymo, Alphabet Inc’s self-driving unit, said on Sunday that Matthew Schwall had joined the company from Tesla, where he was the electric carmaker’s main technical contact with U.S. safety investigators. Last week, Tesla said Doug Field, senior vice president of engineering, was taking time off to recharge.
Tesla is at a critical juncture as it tries to fix production problems that have slowed the rollout of its Model 3 sedan, a mid-market car seen as key to the company’s success, and as it expands on other fronts.
The company has registered a new car firm in Shanghai, China, in a likely step toward production in China.
Musk said on a May 2 earnings call that the company was “going to conduct sort of a reorganization restructuring of the company … this month and make sure we’re well set up to achieve that goal.”
He added that “the number of sort of third-party contracting companies that we’re using has really gotten out of control, so we’re going to scrub the barnacles on that front. It’s pretty crazy. You’ve got barnacles on barnacles. So there’s going to be a lot of barnacle removal.”
Tesla will still rapidly hire critical positions “to support the Model 3 production ramp and future product development,” Musk said in the email.
Tesla faces a variety of issues
Investors gave a rare rebuke to Musk after he cut off analysts on the earnings call asking about profit potential, sending shares down 5 percent despite promises that production of the troubled Model 3 was on track.
In the latest of two reported crashes last week that have drawn attention, a Tesla Model S sedan was traveling at 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) when it smashed into a fire truck stopped at a red light in South Jordan, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City on Friday night, police said on Monday.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said on Monday “at this point it doesn’t appear that NTSB is investigating” the Utah crash.
The Tesla driver suffered a broken ankle and was taken to a hospital while the firefighter was not injured, the police said.
Witnesses said the Tesla sedan did not brake prior to impact, police said in a statement, adding it was unknown if the Autopilot feature in the Model S was engaged at the time.
“Tesla has not yet received any data from the car and thus does not know the facts of what occurred, including whether Autopilot was engaged,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
The NTSB said last week it was investigating a Tesla accident in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 8 that killed two teenagers and injured another — the agency’s fourth active probe into crashes of the company’s electric vehicles.
Autopilot, a form of advanced cruise control, handles some driving tasks and warns those behind the wheel they are always responsible for the vehicle’s safe operation, Tesla has said.
A U.S. traffic safety regulator on May 2 contradicted Tesla’s claim that the agency had found that its Autopilot technology significantly reduced crashes.
Tesla shares dipped 0.5 percent to $299.45 on Monday.
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Forget Pokemon Go, Red Cross Augmented Reality App Brings War to You
Thousands of people are using their smartphones to experience the devastation of urban conflict through an augmented reality app which aims to raise awareness of the suffering faced by millions trapped by war, the app’s developer said on Monday.
Launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in March, “Enter the room” provides a visceral, first-person experience of war through the eyes of child from their bedroom.
While there are numerous apps being designed by aid groups, this is the first known use of augmented reality (AR) by the humanitarian sector to simulate civilian life at war. The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times since its launch.
Entering through a portal on the screen of their device, users experience the impact of years of fighting in accelerated time as the virtual child’s bedroom room transforms from a place of light and laughter to one of darkness and suffering.
“It (AR) makes war real in a powerful and new way and pushes the audience to really think about this question: What if this happened to your childhood bedroom, or your son or daughter’s?” said the ICRC’s Digital Content Manager Ariel Rubin.
“We spend our lives on our smartphones, walking around with our eyes glued to them. There is something incredibly moving about mapping this virtual reality onto our actual reality “and within that creating a narrative that tells a real story.”
Around 65 million people are fleeing conflict in countries like Syria and Yemen today – 75 percent of whom live in cities, where battles are increasingly taking place, says the ICRC.
Yet many of urban conflicts are being waged using weaponry designed for open battlefields, say aid workers, resulting in greater destruction in these highly populated towns and cities.
As a result, vital infrastructure from medical facilities to basic services such as electricity and water are being hit.
In Yemen, for example, there has been a total collapse of the healthcare system, water and sewage network, the food chain, and the most basic building blocks for a healthy and functioning society – all because of the war, said Rubin.
“It is easy to get lost in the numbers and forget that each and every number represents a human being. Many of them are children who see their bedrooms, homes, their childhoods be totally destroyed by war,” he said.
“Our hope is that the AR app will help connect people to this reality that millions of people are facing every day in their cities.”
Augmented reality apps for gaming such as Pokémon GO have become increasingly popular in recent years, but they are also being developed as online shopping and education tools.
Preliminary reviews of ‘Enter the room’ have been largely positive.
“The chance to use augmented reality to generate empathy towards the victims of these ignored conflicts is an exciting application of this new technology,” said one user’s review on Apple’s App Store.
“Hopefully, it can lead to meaningful change in the world’s response to the continuing slaughter of innocents in places like Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and Yemen.”
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Scientists Modify Biology with Technology
Imagine storing digital data in DNA, wearing a device that makes you smarter, or creating new materials by manipulating the genes of microbes. They may sound like science fiction, but scientists are working on these technologies that combine what they know about biology and altering it with the help of artificial intelligence. Their work was presented at the Milken Institute Global Conference at a panel called “Things That Will Blow Your Mind.” VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles.
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China Sends Trade Envoy to US, Welcomes Trump ZTE Comments
China said Monday it is sending an envoy to the United States this week for talks aimed at cooling a trade dispute that threatens to upend markets from soybeans to steel, and welcomed comments by President Donald Trump hinting at a possible easing of sanctions on embattled Chinese telecoms firm ZTE.
The foreign ministry said Vice Premier Liu He will visit the U.S. from Tuesday to Saturday for consultations with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Ministry spokesman Lu Kang also said China appreciated tweets by Trump saying he would help ZTE Corp. get “back into business” because too many jobs in China are at stake after the U.S. government cut off access to ZTE’s American suppliers.
“We think highly of the U.S. statement regarding ZTE’s case. We are currently in close communication over details of the implementation,” Lu told reporters at a daily news briefing.
Referring to Liu’s visit, Lu said China was willing to work with the U.S. to “strive for positive and constructive outcomes from the next round of economic and trade discussions.”
Partially state-owned ZTE makes cellphones, network switching equipment and other telecommunications equipment. Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department banned it from buying U.S. technology or components for seven years after it misled regulators by failing to discipline employees involved in illegal exports and instead paid them bonuses.
Liu’s trip to Washington follows a visit by Mnuchin and other U.S. officials to Beijing earlier this month, where they conveyed a demand that China slash its trade surplus with the U.S. by $200 billion by the end of 2020.
An intensifying rivalry over advanced technology has also fueled demands by Washington that China give up policies that favor domestic companies. Beijing considers such programs as fundamental to its state-driven economic model and vital for its future growth.
America’s trade deficit with China amounted last year to $337 billion in goods and services.
The intensifying trade dispute has rattled financial markets for weeks. In March, the Trump administration slapped tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. China counterpunched with tariffs on a range of U.S. products, including bourbon and blue jeans.
An even higher-stakes fight looms over American allegations that China steals technology and forces U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets in exchange for access to the Chinese market. The United States is considering imposing tariffs on up to $150 billion of Chinese products, and Beijing has countered with proposed tariffs on $50 billion in American goods, including soybeans and small aircraft.
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Trump Vows Action to Ease Job Loss at Chinese Tech Giant
U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he is trying to find a way to let giant Chinese technology firm ZTE “to get back into business, fast” after the U.S. had barred the company from using American components.
“Too many jobs in China lost,” Trump said in a Twitter comment days after ZTE announced it had ceased “major operating activities” because of the cutoff of U.S.-made parts that provide a quarter or more of the parts needed to build its wireless stations, optical fiber networks and smartphones.
Trump has often complained about China stealing U.S. jobs, but said he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the economic fallout at ZTE and had ordered the U.S. Commerce Department “to get it done!”
ZTE halted manufacturing at its Shenzhen factory after the Commerce Department blocked access to American-made components until 2025, contending that ZTE had failed to punish its workers for violating U.S. trade controls against North Korea and Iran.
The U.S. fined ZTE $1.2 billion last year but said last month the company had failed to live up to the agreement and lied about punishing the employees believed to be involved in skirting the sanctions, instead paying them bonuses.
ZTE, with 75,000 employees and business in more than 160 countries, is the No. 4 smartphone vendor in the U.S. When the U.S. sanctions were announced in April, ZTE said it had worked to improve its compliance with the trade bans and sent the U.S. commerce agency information to support its request to end the U.S. export ban.
Trump’s move to help the Chinese technology firm could signal a thaw in trade relations between the world’s two biggest economies, the U.S. and No. 2 China.
The U.S. leader has proposed tariffs on as much as $150 billion in Chinese imports, and Beijing has responded in kind. The two countries have held trade talks during the tariff standoff, but there has been no immediate resolution to call off the tariff hikes.
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Melania Trump Steps Onto Public Stage Amid White House Scandals, Controversies
U.S. first lady Melania Trump stepped into the limelight this month as she launched her official platform to address major issues facing children today. Since becoming the first lady, Mrs. Trump has kept a relatively low profile amid the turmoil and controversies surrounding the Trump White House, but experts say Mrs. Trump, who enjoys a higher approval rating than her husband, may be ready to take on a more public role. VOA White House Correspondent Peggy Chang has more from the White House.
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