Entering or exiting Cochin International airport in India’s southern Kochi city, it is hard to miss the sea of solar panels glinting under the sun on a vast stretch of land on one side of the road and on top of a massive car park. Close by, a huge billboard proclaims the airport’s status as the world’s first airport fully powered by solar energy.

The journey to that title began with a pilot project five years ago as airport authorities searched for ways to minimize ever-growing power bills. 

“We put solar panels on the rooftop of Terminal One, we observed it for a year and we found it is quite good and can be safely scaled up,” said the airport’s managing director, V.J.Kurian.

Now, the energy being produced by the sun-drenched airport’s solar plant meets its needs round the clock. The excess power harnessed by tens of thousands of solar panels during the day is stored in the city’s energy grid. 

“We will produce the entire energy during these morning 10 hours and directly we will use some part of energy,” explained project manager Jerrin John Parakkal. “Excess energy we will bank to grid and then during nighttime we will take it back.”

​UN award

In 2018 Cochin airport won one of the United Nations top environmental awards: Champions of the Earth Award for Entrepreneurial Vision. The project is a testament to India’s ambitions of rapidly scaling up the use of solar power to reduce its carbon emissions and has prompted other airports and infrastructure projects to explore the potential of solar energy.

Kurian, who led the project, recalls that initially there were doubts about the project’s financial viability — the cost of producing one megawatt of power was pegged at $1 million. But the falling price of solar panels in recent years brought down costs and helped make the ambitious project a reality. 

“We get back our investment in less than six years time, which I thought was an excellent investment opportunity and next 25 years is meant for all profit,” Kurian said.

Expanding capacity

To retain the title it received in 2015 as the world’s first fully solar powered airport, the facility has steadily expanded capacity. The more than 29 megawatts currently produced will soon be scaled up to nearly 40 megawatts to meet the needs of ever-growing passenger traffic in a city that is Kerala’s commercial capital and a gateway to tourist destinations. 

The solar panels had been placed on a large tract of unused land set aside for future cargo, but because usable land is the biggest challenge for solar projects, airport authorities have searched for alternatives. They found available space on top of the airport’s car park and a 2-kilometer canal.

Airport authorities estimate that the elimination of carbon emissions over 25 years would be equal to planting 3 million trees. And to make the green project even greener, organic vegetables are being grown under the solar panels and on spare land on the side. About 60 tons were produced last year and were sold to airport staff.

Interest in solar grows

The project has prompted interest from other airports in India and in some African countries, which are also eyeing the potential of solar power. 

“We have signed an MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the government of Ghana. We have had a team from Liberia who were interested in us helping them to put up solar panels specially in the airport sector,” Kurian said.

The Cochin airport is being seen as a model of how from household rooftops to big infrastructure projects, sunny India is increasingly turning to solar power. 

“They have a demonstration effect also. So many people walk through the airport. If they get to know that solar energy is being utilized on such a scale, that means it is a viable solution,” said Amit Kumar, a solar energy expert with the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.

India’s massive rail sector is also turning to solar energy. Solar panels are being placed on top of some train coaches. A rail station in the northeastern city of Guwahati has begun generating enough solar power to meet its needs. The government is also exploring how highways could be lighted with solar lights.

India’s target of increasing its solar capacity to 100,000 megawatts by 2022 has attracted big investments in the sector. Japan’s SoftBank has promised to invest $20 billion in Indian solar projects, and some of the world’s largest solar parks are being built in the country. That has raised hopes that India will be able to meet its commitment of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions about 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

However experts warn that the imposition of import duties last year on solar panels from China and Malaysia amid a push to increase indigenous manufacturing has affected the momentum of growth.

“It is moving fast, but in recent times there have been some hiccups (disruptions). I would say it is moving towards its target, at the moment a bit slowly,” Kumar said.
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India’s southern Kochi city in Kerala state is among the world’s most innovative airports, completely powered by solar energy. Winner of the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award for Entrepreneurial Vision in 2018, the project is testimony to India’s ambitions of rapidly scaling up the use of solar power to reduce its carbon emissions. Anjana Pasricha has this report.
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Called the “greenest office building in the world,” the Bullitt Center in Seattle, Washington, generates its own electricity and its own water, collected from rain falling on the roof. Opened on Earth Day in 2013, the Bullitt Center has been nicknamed a “Living Building.” Natasha Mozgovaya visited the green building to see for herself what makes it so unusual. Anna Rice narrates her report.
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The world of work is going through a major transformation. Technological advances are creating new jobs and at the same time leaving many people behind as their skills are no longer needed. A new study by the International Labor Organization’s Global Commission on the Future of Work addresses the many uncertainties arising from this new reality.

The International Labor Organization agrees artificial intelligence, automation and robotics will lead to job losses, as people’s skills become obsolete. But it says these same technological advances, along with the greening of economies also will create millions of new jobs.

Change is coming

The co-chair of the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, says these advances offer many opportunities. But he warns people must harness the new technologies for the world of work and not be allowed to control the future shape of work.

“In the 20th century, we established that labor is not a commodity. In the 21st century, we must also ensure that labor is not a robot. We propose a human in command type of approach ensuring that technology frees workers and improves work rather than reducing their control,” he said.

Ramaphosa says change is inevitable and will happen whether people like it or not.

“We believe that we would rather be ahead of the curve rather than behind it and get the developments that are unfolding to shape us and to lead us. We need to be ahead so that we can shape the type of world of work that we want to see,” he said.

Human-centered conversation

In its study, the 27-member commission has adopted a human-centered approach. At this time of unprecedented change, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder says having people at the heart of this debate is critical for achieving a decent future of work.

“I think people, families, countries around the world are indeed grappling with the challenges and the opportunities of transformative change at work and the ambition of our commission … is, in a very concise and a very clear, and I think above all an action oriented way to try to set out a road map of how we can indeed seize the opportunities and deal satisfactorily with those challenges,” Ryder said.

Ten recommendations

After 15 months of work, the commission has come up with 10 recommendations for attaining decent and sustainable work. They include a call for a universal labor guarantee to protect workers’ rights, an adequate living wage and a safe workplace.

The commission proposes social protection measures from birth to old age. It says technological change must be managed to boost decent work. It says the gender gap should be closed and equality achieved in the workplace.

Ryder says the report puts a heavy emphasis on life-long learning and the renewal of skills throughout one’s working life.

“With the rapidity of change being what it is at work today,” he said, “it is simply not realistic to believe that the skills that we acquire at the beginning of our lives in our education, what we tend to think of as a period of our education will serve us throughout a working life. I mean, the shelf life of skills acquired at the beginning is a lot shorter than working life is going to be.”

Ryder notes the future number of jobs or the future of employment will not be determined alone by the autonomous forward march of technology. He says that will depend on the choices of policymakers.

The commission study indicates it is reasonable to assume that humans and robots will be able to live in harmony with one another — if humans are put in control of the forward application of technology.
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Chinese internet users lost access to Microsoft’s Bing search engine for two days, setting off grumbling about the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight online censorship.

Microsoft Corp. said Friday that access had been restored. A brief statement gave no reason for the disruption or other details.

Comments on social media had accused regulators of choking off access to information. Others complained they were forced to use Chinese search engines they say deliver poor results.

“Why can’t we choose what we want to use?” said a comment signed Aurelito on the Sina Weibo microblog service.

Government censorship

Bing complied with government censorship rules by excluding foreign websites that are blocked by Chinese filters from search results. But President Xi Jinping’s government has steadily tightened control over online activity.

The agency that enforces online censorship, the Cyberspace Administration of China, didn’t respond to questions sent by fax.

China has by far the biggest population of internet users, with some 800 million people online, according to government data.

Foreign sites blocked

The Communist Party encourages internet use for business and education but blocks access to foreign websites run by news organizations, human rights and Tibet activists and others deemed subversive.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has promoted the notion of “internet sovereignty,” or the right of Beijing and other governments to dictate what their publics can do and see online.

Chinese filters block access to global social media including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Officials argue such services operating beyond their control pose a threat to national security.

Xi’s government also has tightened controls on use of virtual private network technology that can evade its filters.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit operated a search engine in China until 2010 that excluded blocked sites from results. The company closed that after hacking attacks aimed at stealing Google’s source code and breaking into email accounts were traced to China.

That has helped Chinese competitors such as search engine Baidu.com to flourish. But Baidu has been hit by repeated complaints that too many search results are irrelevant or are paid advertising.
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A tiny fraction of Twitter users spread the vast majority of fake news in 2016, with conservatives and older people sharing misinformation more, a new study finds. 

Scientists examined more than 16,000 U.S. Twitter accounts and found that 16 of them — less than one-tenth of 1 percent — tweeted out nearly 80 percent of the misinformation masquerading as news, according to a study Thursday in the journal Science. About 99 percent of the Twitter users spread virtually no fake information in the most heated part of the election year, said study co-author David Lazer, a Northeastern University political and computer science professor. 

Spreading fake information “is taking place in a very seamy but small corner of Twitter,” Lazer said. 

Lazer said misinformation “super sharers” flood Twitter: an average of 308 pieces of fakery each between Aug. 1 and Dec. 6 in 2016.  

And it’s not just that few people are spreading it — few people are reading it, Lazer said. 

“The vast majority of people are exposed to very little fake news despite the fact that there’s a concerted effort to push it into the system,” Lazer said. 

The researchers found the 16,442 accounts they analyzed by starting with a random pool of voter records, matching names to Twitter users and then screening out accounts that appeared to not be controlled by real people. 

Their conclusions are similar to those of a study released earlier this month that looked at the spread of false information on Facebook. It also found that few people shared fakery, but those who did were more likely to be over 65 and conservatives. 

​Boost to credibility

That makes this study more believable, because two groups of researchers using different social media platforms, measuring political affiliation differently and with different panels of users came to the same conclusion, said Yonchai Benkler, co-director of Harvard Law School’s center on the internet and society. He wasn’t part of either study but praised them, saying they should reduce misguided postelection panic about how “out-of-control technological processes had rendered us as a society incapable of telling truth from fiction.” 

Experts say a recent showdown between Kentucky Catholic school students and a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial seemed to be stoked by a single, now-closed Twitter account. Lazer said the account fit some characteristics of super sharers from his study but it was more left-leaning, which didn’t match the study. 

Unlike the earlier Facebook study, Lazer didn’t interview the people but ranked people’s politics based on what they read and shared on Twitter. 

The researchers used several different sources of domains for false information masquerading as news — not individual stories but overall sites — from lists compiled by other academics and BuzzFeed. While five outside experts praised the study, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, head of the public policy center at the University of Pennsylvania, found several problems, especially with how they determined fake information sites. 

Lazer’s team found that among people they categorized as left-leaning and centrists, less than 5 percent shared any fake information. Among those they determined were right-leaning, 11 percent of accounts shared misinformation masquerading as news. For those on the extreme right, it was 21 percent. 

This study shows “most of us aren’t too bad at circulating information, but some of us are determined propagandists who are trying to manipulate the public sphere,” said Texas A&M University’s Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric who wasn’t part of the study. 
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Robots aren’t replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of existing work, according to a new Brookings Institution report.

The report, published Thursday, says roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs with “high exposure” to automation — meaning at least 70 percent of their tasks could soon be performed by machines using current technology. Among those most likely to be affected are cooks, waiters and others in food services; short-haul truck drivers; and clerical office workers.

“That population is going to need to upskill, reskill or change jobs fast,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and lead author of the report.

Muro said the timeline for the changes could be “a few years or it could be two decades.” But it’s likely that automation will happen more swiftly during the next economic downturn. Businesses are typically eager to implement cost-cutting technology as they lay off workers.

Some economic studies have found similar shifts toward automating production happened in the early part of previous recessions — and may have contributed to the “jobless recovery” that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

But with new advances in artificial intelligence, it’s not just industrial and warehouse robots that will alter the American workforce. Self-checkout kiosks and computerized hotel concierges will do their part.

Most jobs will change somewhat as machines take over routine tasks, but a majority of U.S. workers will be able to adapt to that shift without being displaced.

The changes will hit hardest in smaller cities, especially those in the heartland and Rust Belt and in states like Indiana and Kentucky, according to the report by the Washington think tank. They will also disproportionately affect the younger workers who dominate food services and other industries at highest risk for automation.

Some chain restaurants have already shifted to self-ordering machines; a handful have experimented with robot-assisted kitchens.

Google this year is piloting the use of its digital voice assistant at hotel lobbies to instantly interpret conversations across a few dozen languages. Autonomous vehicles could replace short-haul delivery drivers. Walmart and other retailers are preparing to open cashier-less stores powered by in-store sensors or cameras with facial recognition technology.

“Restaurants will be able to get along with significantly reduced workforces,” Muro said. “In the hotel industry, instead of five people manning a desk to greet people, there’s one and people basically serve themselves.”

Many economists find that automation has an overall positive effect on the labor market, said Matias Cortes, an assistant professor at York University in Toronto who was not involved with the Brookings report. It can create economic growth, reduce prices and increase demand while also creating new jobs that make up for those that disappear.

But Cortes said there’s no doubt there are “clear winners and losers.” In the recent past, those hardest hit were men with low levels of education who dominated manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs, and women with intermediate levels of education who dominated clerical and administrative positions.

In the future, the class of workers affected by automation could grow as machines become more intelligent. The Brookings report analyzed each occupation’s automation potential based on research by the McKinsey management consulting firm. Those jobs that remain largely unscathed will be those requiring not just advanced education, but also interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence.

“These high-paying jobs require a lot of creativity and problem-solving,” Cortes said. “That’s going to be difficult for new technologies to replace.”

 
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Amazon’s long search for a new headquarters location — nicknamed HQ2 — came to an end in November 2018, as the company decided to open offices in New York City and Crystal City in Northern Virginia. And while the opening of HQ2 is still months away, Natasha Mozgovaya visited the original Amazon HQ in Seattle.
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The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that 43 flights into New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport were required to hold after drone sightings at a nearby airport Tuesday, while nine flights were diverted.

The incident comes as major U.S. airports are assessing the threat of drones and have been holding meetings to address the issue.

The issue of drones impacting commercial air traffic came to the fore after London’s second busiest airport, Gatwick Airport, was severely disrupted in December when drones were sighted on three consecutive days.

An FAA spokesman said that Tuesday’s event lasted for 21 minutes. The flights into Newark, the 11th busiest U.S. airport, were suspended after a drone was seen flying at 3,500 feet over nearby Teterboro Airport, a small regional airport about 17 miles (27.3 kilometers) away that mostly handles corporate jets and private planes.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark and Teterboro airports, as well as New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Wednesday that it hosted a working session with the FAA, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies last week “to review and enhance protocols for the rapid detection and interdiction of drones.” It declined to discuss specifics for security reasons.

The Port Authority added that it is “committed to continuing our collaboration with the FAA and federal and state law enforcement partners to protect against any and all drone threats to the maximum extent possible.”

The Chicago Department of Aviation said Wednesday it is working closely with the FAA and law enforcement “to ensure safe and secure operations at both O’Hare and Midway” but would not discuss drone preparations.

The FAA declined to comment on meetings with major airports, but said it has been in “close coordination” with security agency partners “to address drone security challenges.”

Drone sightings, rules

The drone sightings at London’s Gatwick Airport last month resulted in about 1,000 flights being canceled or diverted and affected 140,000 passengers.

The U.S. Congress last year gave the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security new powers to disable or destroy threatening drones after officials raised concerns about the use of drones as potential weapons.

United Airlines, the largest carrier at Newark, said Tuesday that the impact to its operations had been minimal.

The FAA initially said it had reports of two drones on Tuesday evening, but it since clarified to say it had two reports of one drone in northern New Jersey airspace.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Transportation Department proposed rules that would allow drones to operate over populated areas and end a requirement for special permits for night use, long-awaited actions that are expected to help speed their commercial use.

There are nearly 1.3 million registered drones in the United States and more than 116,000 registered drone operators.

Officials say there are hundreds of thousands of additional drones that are not registered.
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Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, has launched NASA experiments into space on a brief test flight.

The New Shepard rocket blasted off Wednesday from West Texas, hoisting a capsule containing the experiments. The eight experiments were exposed to a few minutes of weightlessness, before the capsule parachuted down. The rocket also landed successfully, completing its fourth spaceflight.

This was Blue Origin’s 10th test flight, all precursors to launching passengers by year’s end. The capsules have six windows, one for each customer. Blue Origin isn’t taking reservations just yet. Instead, the Kent, Washington, company is focusing on brief research flights.

Wednesday’s flight lasted just over 10 minutes, with the capsule reaching 66 miles high, or 107 kilometers, well within the accepted boundary of space.

Bezos is the founder of Amazon.

 
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Cameras and alarms keep offices and warehouses safe worldwide. But a new kind of security guard is making the rounds looking for anything that is unusual. Michelle Quinn reports.
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American tech giant Google has opened a new office in Berlin that it says will give it the space to expand in the German capital.

CEO Sundar Pichai said Tuesday the space means Google could more than double the number of Berlin employees to 300. Google currently has 1,400 employees in Germany.

Pichai says “the city has long been a capital of culture and media. Now it’s also home to a fast-growing startup scene and an engine for innovation.”

Google has faced regulatory headwinds in Europe, and was fined 50 million euros ($57 million) Monday in France for alleged violations of European data privacy rules.

Google Central Europe vice president Philipp Justus didn’t directly address the fine, but said Google’s committed to transparency and clarity on what data is collected and how it’s used.
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France’s data watchdog fined Google nearly $57 million on Monday, saying the tech giant failed to provide users with transparent information on its data consumer policies and how their personal information was used to display advertising targeting them.

The French agency CNIL said U.S.-based Google made it too difficult for internet users to understand and manage their personal preferences online.

“The information provided is not sufficiently clear,” the regulatory agency said, “for the user to understand the legal basis for targeted advertising is consent, and not Google’s legitimate business interests.”

It was the first ruling using the European Union’s strict new General Data Protection Regulation since it was implemented last year, a sweeping set of rules that has set a global standard forcing large American technology firms to examine their practices or risk huge fines.

Google said it was studying the ruling to determine its next steps.

“People expect high standards of transparency and control from us,” Google said. “We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements” of the new regulations.

 
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Russia’s communication watchdog, Roskomnadzor, opened “administrative proceedings” Monday against Facebook and Twitter for non-compliance with country’s data laws, Interfax news agency reported.

Roskomnadzor head Alexander Zharov is quoted as saying that U.S. social media giants have a month to comply or face legal proceedings.

According to Roskomnadzor, Facebook and Twitter have not explained how and when they would comply with legislation that requires all servers used to store Russians’ personal data to be located in Russia.

Russia has introduced stricter internet laws in the past five years, among other things requiring search engines to share encryption keys with Russian security services.

In April last year, thousands rallied in Moscow in support of internet freedom after Russian authorities attempted to block access to the popular messaging app Telegram.

Telegram had refused to give state intelligence services access to private conversations which are usually encrypted.
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In the future, a tattoo may not only be a way for someone to express themselves, it may also be used to monitor a genetic condition or even control a prosthetic device. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Home to Apple, Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is an American economic powerhouse, producing technology companies with global influence. But behind these influential American brands are scores of foreign workers who play a critical role in the Valley’s tech workforce. Deana Mitchell reports.
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Humanity’s efforts to move into and peer into space seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance in the past few weeks. NASA’s pictures of Ultima Thule continue to astound, as do Chinese pictures from their probe on the far side of the moon. Coming soon, the James Webb Telescope will allow NASA to look even farther into the great beyond. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Facebook may be facing the biggest fine ever imposed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations involving the personal information of its 2.2 billion users.

The FTC is considering hitting Facebook with a penalty that would top its previous record fine of $22.5 million, which it dealt to Google in 2012 for bypassing the privacy controls in Apple’s Safari browser, according to The Washington Post. The story published Friday cited three unidentified people familiar with the discussions.

In an automated response, the FTC said it was unable to comment, citing its closure due to the U.S. government shutdown. Facebook declined to comment.

The potential fine stems from an FTC investigation opened after revelations that data mining firm Cambridge Analytica had vacuumed up details about as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

The FTC has been exploring whether that massive breakdown violated a settlement that Facebook reached in 2011 after government regulators had concluded the Menlo Park, California, company had repeatedly broken its privacy promises .

The FTC decree, which runs through 2031, requires Facebook to get its users’ consent to share their personal information in ways that aren’t allowed by their privacy settings.

Since the Cambridge Analytica erupted 10 months ago, Facebook has vowed to do a better job corralling its users’ data. Nevertheless, its controls have remained leaky. Just last month, the company acknowledged a software flaw had exposed the photos of about 7 million users to a wider audience than they had intended.

The FTC’s five commissioners have discussed fining Facebook but haven’t settled on the amount yet, according to the Post.

Facebook’s privacy problems are also under investigation in other countries and the target of a lawsuit filed last month by Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine.
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A Duke University team expects to have a product available for election year that will allow television networks to offer real-time fact checks onscreen when a politician makes a questionable claim during a speech or debate.

The mystery is whether any network will choose to use it.

The response to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 8 speech on border security illustrated how fact-checking is likely to be an issue over the next two years. Networks briefly considered not airing Trump live and several analysts contested some of his statements afterward, but nobody questioned him while he was speaking.

Duke already offers an app, developed by professor and Politifact founder Bill Adair, that directs users to online fact checks during political events. A similar product has been tested for television, but is still not complete.

The TV product would call on a database of research from Politifact, Factcheck.org and The Washington Post to point out false or misleading statements onscreen. For instance, Trump’s statement that 90 percent of the heroin that kills 300 Americans each week comes through the southern border would likely trigger an onscreen explanation that much of the drugs were smuggled through legal points of entry and wouldn’t be affected by a wall.

The Duke Tech & Check Cooperative conducted a focus group test in October, showing viewers portions of State of the Union speeches by Trump and predecessor Barack Obama with fact checks inserted. It was a big hit, Adair said.

“People really want onscreen fact checks,” he said. “There is a strong market for this and I think the TV networks will realize there’s a brand advantage to it.”

Networks mum

If that’s the case, the networks aren’t letting on. None of the broadcast or cable news divisions would discuss Duke’s product when contacted by The Associated Press, or their own philosophies on fact checking.

Network executives are likely to tread very carefully, both because of technical concerns about how it would work, the risk of getting something wrong or the suspicion that some viewers might consider the messages a political attack.

“It’s an incredibly difficult challenge,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, longtime NBC News executive who recently became dean of Hofstra University’s communications school.

Adair said the system will be automated. Mindful that many politicians repeat similar claims, the database will be triggered when code phrases that have been fact-checked before come up. An onscreen note would either explain that a claim is false or misleading and direct viewers to a website where they can find more information, or provide a succinct explanation of why it is being challenged. He envisions an average of one fact check popping up every two minutes. A network using the service would likely air the speech or debate on a delayed basis of about a minute.

Lukasiewicz said network executives would likely be wary of letting an outside vendor decide what goes on their screen. Adair said anyone who uses the system would be given veto power over what information is being displayed.

CNN and MSNBC have been most aggressive in using onscreen notes, called chyrons, to counter misleading statements by Trump, although neither did during the border speech. Among the post-speech analyses, Shepard Smith’s rapid-fire reality check on Fox broadcast during the three-minute pause before Democrats spoke was particularly effective. But critics like the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America said anyone who turned the coverage off when Trump stopped speaking was exposed to no questioning of his words.

Complicated, cumbersome

“There is a responsibility to not just be a blind portal and just let things go unchallenged,” said David Bohrman, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who consulted on MSNBC’s 2016 election coverage. “The goal is a good one. The execution is a challenge.”

A technical junkie, Bohrman said he explored different approaches for real-time TV fact-checking while at CNN, but they ultimately proved too complicated and cumbersome.

For networks, an incorrect onscreen fact-check would be a public relations disaster. Politicians also make many statements that a critic might question but isn’t necessarily factually incorrect. For example, Trump’s contention that there is a “crisis” at the southern border: Is that a fact or matter of interpretation?

Rest assured, people will be watching. Very carefully.

Even Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center, concedes that “we all understand that President Trump has a casual approach to factivity.”

But conservatives are deeply suspicious that Trump’s words are being watched more carefully than those of Democrats. They will notice and take offense if Trump is corrected on the air much more than his rivals, he said, no matter if Trump actually makes more false or misleading statements.

“People aren’t going to trust you,” he said, “because they know what the objective is. The objective is to ruin the president.”

Adair stressed that his product is nonpartisan. He believes television networks will catch on at some point because they will realize that their viewers want quick fact-checking.

“Anyone who criticizes will get criticized for criticizing,” Bohrman said. “But the reality is we may be able to help the viewers.”
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Electric car and solar panel maker Tesla said Friday it plans to cut its staff by about 7 percent.

“The road ahead is very difficult,” the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an email to employees posted on the company’s website.

He said Tesla Inc. hopes to post a “tiny profit” in the current quarter but that after expanding its workforce by 30 percent last year, it cannot support that size of staff.

Musk said in a tweet in October that Tesla had 45,000 employees. A 7 percent cut would involve laying off about 3,150 people.

Tesla’s shares tumbled earlier this month after it cut vehicle prices by $2,000 and announced fourth-quarter sales figures that fell short of Wall Street estimates.

“Our products are too expensive for most people,” Musk said in the memo to Tesla staff saying the company has to “work harder.”

“Tesla has only been producing cars for about a decade and we’re up against massive, entrenched competitors,” he said.

The company says it delivered over 245,000 electric cars and SUVs last year, nearly as many as all previous years combined. But its 2018 production fell far short of a goal set nearly three years ago of manufacturing 500,000 vehicles for the year. That goal was announced in May of 2016 based on advance orders for its mid-range Model 3, which sells for $44,000.

Musk said Tesla plans to ramp up production of the Model 3, “as we need to reach more customers who can afford our vehicles.”

“Attempting to build affordable clean energy products at scale necessarily requires extreme effort and relentless creativity,” he said in the memo, “but succeeding in our mission is essential to ensure that the future is good, so we must do everything we can to advance the cause.”
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A federal appeals court said Thursday it would not delay oral arguments set for Feb. 1 on the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules governing internet providers.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday asked the court to delay the arguments over its December 2017 repeal, citing the partial government shutdown. Without comment, the court denied the request.

The FCC had no immediate comment on the decision.

A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia have asked the court to reinstate the Obama-era internet rules and block the FCC’s effort to pre-empt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet.

Several internet companies are also part of the legal challenge, including Mozilla Corp, Vimeo Inc and Etsy Inc, as well as numerous media and technology advocacy groups and major cities, including New York and San Francisco.

The FCC voted to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.

The FCC said providers must disclose any changes in users’ internet access.

‘Misguided’ repeal

The net neutrality repeal was a win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, but was opposed by internet companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

Major providers have not made any changes in how Americans access the internet since the repeal.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the lawsuits are aimed at overturning the agency’s “misguided” repeal of the Obama rules. “The fight for an open internet continues,” she wrote on Twitter.

The panel hearing the case is made up of Judges Robert Wilkins and Patricia Millett, two appointees of Barack Obama, and Stephen Williams, an appointee of Republican Ronald Reagan.

In October, California agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality law until the appeals court’s decision on the 2017 repeal and any potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Whether buying a fish fillet at a supermarket or ordering steak in a restaurant, consumers will soon be able to use their phones to check instantly whether their food is green and ethical. Launched by environmental group WWF and investment firm BCG Digital Ventures, OpenSC is a website that harnesses blockchain technology to allow users to scan a QR code on a product or menu that reveals the full history and supply chain before they buy.

“For those catching and producing things in a very unsustainable way, it’s quite easy for them to hide behind the complexity of supply chains,” said Paul Hunyor, Asia region head at BCG Digital Ventures in Sydney.

“There is a lack of carrots for those doing good at the production end because it is very hard for them to make the end consumer aware of all the good work they’re doing,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Globally, consumers and retailers are demanding more information about what they procure, buy and eat, to ascertain that its production and transportation does not damage the environment, or use illegal and unethical business practices. In response, large consumer goods companies, restaurants and other businesses are looking at ways to attract more customers by offering sustainable products that are guaranteed as free of deforestation or slave labor, for example.

The OpenSC platform, conceived in 2017 when WWF was piloting a tuna fisheries traceability project in the Pacific Ocean, will initially focus on fish and beef. It plans to expand in the next two years to cover other commodities like palm oil and timber. OpenSC allows consumers to cut through the complexity and lack of transparency in supply chains, said Hunyor. The digital tool will cover environmental, social and human rights, and hopes to attract sustainability bodies and schemes, as well as corporations and major commodities producers, said Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of WWF-Australia.

“There is … growing momentum around the world with corporates who are doing and want to do the right thing because their customers are increasing demand,” he said. Austral Fisheries, which is part of the Maruha Nichiro Group, has committed to implement OpenSC this year across its fleet which catches Patagonian toothfish. Customers and staff of supermarkets and restaurants, as well as wholesalers, can use the tool to access instant information.

For fish, that would include where it was caught, if the area is a verified sustainable fishing zone, and conditions along the supply chain. Fish tracked by OpenSC, set up as a social enterprise, will be served at a dinner for world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.
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Take a minute and think about your heart. Can you hear it beating? Probably not, but you know it is. Now imagine your heartbeat “in color,” with rhythmic lighting to match. You can now see your unique beat pattern at a new interactive exhibit called “Pulse” at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. In this Log-on segment, VOA’s Carolyn Presutti shows us how your heartbeat joins others and becomes art.
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Facebook says it is investing $300 million over the next three years in local news programs, partnerships and other initiatives.

The money will go toward reporting grants for local newsrooms, expanding Facebook’s program to help local newsrooms with subscription business models and investing in nonprofits aimed at supporting local news.

The move comes at a difficult time for the news industry, which is facing falling profits and print readership. Facebook, like Google, has also been partly blamed for the ongoing decline in newspapers’ share of advertising dollars as people and advertisers have moved online.

Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, acknowledges the company “can’t uninvent the internet,” but says it wants to work with publishers to help them succeed on and off the social network.

“The industry is going through a massive transition that has been underway for a long time,” she said. “None of us have quite figured out ultimately what the future of journalism is going to look like but we want to be part of helping find a solution.”

Facebook has increased its focus on local news in the past year after starting off 2018 with the announcement that it was generally de-emphasizing news stories and videos in people’s feeds on the social network in favor of posts from their friends.

At the same time, though, the company has been cautiously testing out ways to boost local news stories users are interested in and initiatives to support the broader industry. It launched a feature called “Today In” that shows people local news and information , including missing-person alerts, road closures, crime reports and school announcements, expanding it to hundreds of cities around the U.S. and a few in Australia.

The push to support local news comes as Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, California, tries to shake off its reputation as a hotbed for misinformation and elections-meddling. The company says users have been asking to see more local content that is relevant to them, including news stories as well as community information such as road closings during a snowstorm.

The $300 million investment includes a $5 million grant to the nonprofit Pulitzer Center to launch “Bringing Stories Home,” a fund that will provide local U.S. newsrooms with reporting grants to support coverage of local issues. There’s also a $2 million investment in Report for America as part of a partnership aiming to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms across the country over the next five years.

The idea behind the investments, Brown said, is to look “holistically at how a given publisher can define a business model. Facebook can’t be the only answer, the only solution — we don’t want the publisher to be dependent on Facebook.”

Fran Wills, CEO of the Local Media Consortium, which is receiving $1 million together with the Local Media Association to help their member newsrooms develop new revenue streams, said she is optimistic the investment will help.

“I think they are recognizing that trusted, credible content is of benefit not only to local publishers but to them,” she said.

 
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