Despite ethical and safety concerns, researchers are getting closer to building life from scratch. In fact, scientists are hoping to synthesize a human genome in the next 10 years. Investors are putting huge amounts of money into research that may deliver novel drugs, materials and chemicals. Some of the projects were highlighted at a synthetic biology conference in London April 4-6. VOA’s Deborah Block has a report.
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The U.S. government on Friday dropped its effort to force Twitter to identify users behind an account critical of President Donald Trump, the social media company said.
In response, Twitter said it was dropping a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government that challenged the request to unmask the users.
Twitter had sued just a day earlier, claiming the government overstepped its authority in issuing a summons to reveal the account owners.
The lawsuit said that the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection had sought the identity of the users of Twitter handle @ALT-USCIS.
‘Alternative’ handles
The account describes itself as “immigration resistance.” Its creators told media outlets the account is run by current and former employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.
It is one of several “alternative” handles purportedly created by current federal employees unhappy with the Trump administration.
It was not immediately clear why the government withdrew its effort to identify the Twitter users. It was also not immediately known whether the government had closed an investigation it said it was conducting into the Twitter account.
The American Civil Liberties Union praised the government’s decision to withdraw its request, saying in a tweet, “Big victory for free speech and the right to dissent.”
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Late rapper Tupac Shakur and 1960s protest singer Joan Baez were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Friday on a night where nostalgia was mixed with calls to political action.
Former Journey frontman Steve Perry reunited on stage with his “Don’t Stop Believin'” bandmates for the first time in 25 years to screams and hugs of joy, while Roy Wood of Electric Light Orchestra turned up for the New York ceremony 45 years after leaving the English band.
But one of the strongest moments came from Baez, 76, who linked her lifelong record of social activism and non-violence with a rallying call for resistance today.
“Let us together repeal and replace brutality and make compassion a priority. Let us build a great bridge, a beautiful bridge, to welcome the tired and the poor,” Baez told the Hall of Fame audience.
A comeback for Baez?
Baez then played an acoustic version of the traditional spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and ended with the hope that the song’s band of angels were “coming for to carry me, you, us, even Donald Trump, home.”
Baez enjoyed a new round of fame this week with a protest song called “Nasty Man” about U.S. President Donald Trump.
It was her first songwriting effort in 25 years and has been viewed some 3.3 million times since it was posted on her Facebook page on Tuesday.
Shakur is sixth rapper to be inducted
Emotions ran high for the induction of Shakur, the Harlem-born rapper who was gunned down at age 25 in a 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas that has never been resolved.
Shakur, whose songs about social and racial injustice still resonate today, was only the 6th rap act to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its 30-year history.
Fellow rapper Snoop Dogg recalled he and Shakur in the early 1990s as “two black boys struggling to become men.”
“Tupac’s a part of history for a reason — because he made history. He’s hip hop history. He’s American history,” Snoop said.
“Tupac, we love you. You will always be right with us. They can’t take this away from you homie,” he said, accepting the statuette on Shakur’s behalf.
British progressive rock group Yes, and Seattle-based grunge band Pearl Jam were also among the 2017 inductees, who were chosen by more than 900 voters drawn from the music industry.
Chuck Berry, Prince also honored
Disco producer Nile Rodgers, the man behind 1970s hits like “Le Freak” and “We Are Family,” was presented with a special award for musical excellence.
Artists are eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first recording.
Tributes were also paid on Friday to Chuck Berry, who died last month at age 90 and who was the first person ever to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and Prince, who died of an accidental painkiller overdose in April 2016.
The 2017 induction ceremony will be broadcast on cable channel HBO on April 29.
Pearl Jam, Tupac Shakur, Joan Baez, Electric Light Orchestra, Journey and Yes will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Friday night.
Nile Rodgers will receive a special honor at the event held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Presenters inducting the 2017 class include David Letterman, Snoop Dogg, Pharrell Williams, Dhani Harrison, Pat Monahan, Jackson Browne and Alex Lifeson of Rush.
Shakur, the prolific rapper, was shot and killed at his peak in 1996. “Keep Ya Head Up,” “Life Goes On,” “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” and “Changes” are among his best-known songs.
After Nirvana just three years ago, Pearl Jam is the second band with roots in Seattle’s grunge rock scene to make it into the Rock Hall. The band exploded in popularity from the start in the early 1990s behind songs like “Alive,” “Jeremy” and “Even Flow.”
Shakur, Baez, Pearl Jam and ELO were all elected in their first year as nominees.
To be eligible, all of the nominees had to have released their first recording no later than 1991. Inductees will eventually be enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland.
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Twitter on Thursday sued to block an order by the U.S. government demanding that it reveal who is behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies.
Twitter cited freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records about the account, @ALT_uscis. The account is claimed to be the work of at least one federal immigration employee, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court.
The acronym USCIS refers to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the account describes itself as “immigration resistance.” Trump has vowed to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
Following Trump’s inauguration in January, anonymous Twitter feeds that borrowed the names and logos of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies appeared to challenge the president’s views on climate change and other issues. They called themselves “alt” accounts.
Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio declined to comment on whether the government had demanded information about other accounts critical of Trump.
User privacy advocate
Twitter, which counts Trump among its active users, has a record of litigating in favor of user privacy.
“The rights of free speech afforded Twitter’s users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech,” Twitter said in the lawsuit.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment on pending litigation. The Justice Department, which typically represents federal agencies in court, and the White House had no immediate comment.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said in a statement that it was a waste of resources to try to uncover an anonymous critic, and he called on the Homeland Security inspector general to investigate who directed the “witch hunt.”
Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Twitter user, said the government’s request was highly unusual. Requests for social media account information from the U.S. government typically involve national security or criminal charges, she said.
“We have seen no reason the government has given for seeking to unmask this speaker’s identity,” Bhandari said, adding that the right to anonymous speech against the government is “a bedrock American value” strongly protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Tweeter’s response
Shortly after the lawsuit became public, @ALT_uscis tweeted a copy of the First Amendment and a picture of part of the lawsuit. The account’s followers nearly tripled to 89,000 in the hours after the news broke.
For weeks the account has posted criticism of the administration. It tweeted a parody of the game bingo for “right-wing idiots,” said that some anti-immigration advocates must have been dropped on their heads at birth, and mocked Trump for not giving more of his wealth to charities.
Twitter said it received an administrative summons last month demanding that it provide records related to the account.
A copy of the summons filed with the lawsuit says the records are needed for an investigation to ensure compliance with duties, taxes and fines, and other customs and immigration matters.
It was not immediately clear how the anonymous account fit into those laws and regulations, and Twitter said the summons was an abuse of a law meant to be used to investigate imported merchandise.
Twitter might have a strong case that the summons was improper, said Paul Alan Levy, staff attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, who specializes in online privacy and free speech issues.
“I don’t think there is any way for the government to come out of this looking good,” Levy said.
There is no indication that the White House was aware of the summons, which was signed by a Florida-based supervisor who works in an office that investigates employee corruption, misconduct and mismanagement. The supervisor could not be reached for comment.
The summons requested, but apparently did not order, that Twitter keep the document private.
Past battles
The social media company has a history of challenging government demands for information on its users, including a 2012 demand from New York prosecutors about an Occupy Wall Street protester. In that case, Twitter was forced to hand over tweets from the protester to a judge who threatened the company with sanctions, and the protester pleaded guilty of disorderly conduct.
Twitter sued the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014, seeking permission to publicly disclose more information about requests it gets from U.S. authorities for information about its users.
The lawsuit was partly dismissed last year.
Among the lawyers representing Twitter in the latest case is Seth Waxman, a former high-ranking Justice Department official under President Bill Clinton.
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Pirooz Parvarandeh, a longtime Silicon Valley executive, saw a problem.
Although he has lived in the United States for more than 40 years, he knew little about the contributions and accomplishments of Iranian Americans like himself. That lack of knowledge is widespread, he feared, and in his view makes Iranians in America more subject to stereotypes, discrimination and attacks.
“What image comes up with ‘Iranian’? A terrorist? A hostage-taker? Or a contributing member of society?” he asked at a talk this week at the University of California, Berkeley. “If we don’t know the contributions of Iranian Americans, how can we expect the American public to know? If the public is not with us, why would policymakers want to stick up for us?”
Last year, Parvarandeh met with other Iranian Americans to come up with the Iranian Americans’ Contribution Project, a nonprofit that uses technology to gather and analyze data about Iranian Americans. Their efforts picked up steam after Iran was listed among countries included in the Trump administration’s travel ban.
“We want to build a shield,” Parvarandeh said. “We want to build a protective mechanism to say, ‘Here is what we’ve done.'”
Counting contributions
Parvarandeh’s quest is one that many immigrant groups have considered as they try to both assimilate in the U.S. and stand proud of their cultural identity. For Iranian Americans, the issue has been especially complicated by long-standing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. An estimated one million Iranians live in the U.S., mainly in California.
The project aims to stay out of the political fray and has no religious affiliation. It approaches the question of Iranian Americans’ contributions in a systematic way, something Parvarandeh considers “pioneering” among all of the U.S. diaspora groups.
Working with software engineers, the project has come up with an algorithm that captures 200,000 unique Iranian last names and 70,000 unique first names. By applying that algorithm to public databases the organization buys or finds of professional organizations, scholarly articles and licensing bodies, the project creates a snapshot of Iranian Americans in a variety of professions.
So far, the project has found 490 Iranian American chiropractors, more than 9,000 physicians, more than 3,000 dentists and about 1,000 pharmacists. Iranians have been awarded at least 40,000 patents and they make up more than 2.5 percent of lawyers admitted to the State Bar of California. On its website, the project shows where Iranians in a variety of professions are on a U.S. map, sometimes county by county. It also offers a breakdown of professions of people found through LinkedIn.
Since some Iranian names can be found in other countries, the algorithm also calculates the probability that a person is Iranian.
Building a brand
The approach has its limits. The second generation of Iranian Americans and people marrying non-Iranian Americans may begin to take more American-sounding names. But Parvarandeh says he is hoping that Iranian Americans will participate in the project and help make it more accurate. At the moment, the data is anonymized, meaning that it doesn’t list the names of people it captures. But the project combines the data with interviews with Iranian Americans about their life stories and accomplishments.
“There are many arrows being shot in our direction,” he said. “There’s anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and Europe. What we’re trying to do is build a reputation, build a brand.”
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Don Rickles, the master insult comic who created laughs with ridicule and sarcasm in a decades-long career that earned him the facetious nickname “Mr. Warmth,” died on Thursday at his Los Angeles home from kidney failure, his publicist said. He was 90.
Rickles, who said he developed his brand of mockery humor because he was no good at telling traditional jokes, had recently postponed some performances, including a show set for May in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that was pushed back to November just this week.
His death was confirmed by his spokesman, Paul Shefrin, who said Rickles is survived by his wife of 52 years, Barbara, as well as their daughter, Mindy Mann, and two grandchildren. He would have turned 91 on May 8.
The New York-born Rickles had an intense, often-ad libbed, rapid-fire delivery and a wide, impish grin. He delighted nightclub audiences, Hollywood royalty and politicians by hurling invective at them, all in good fun.
Encountering Frank Sinatra for the first time during a stand-up act in 1957, Rickles greeted the mercurial singer as Sinatra walked in with a retinue of tough guys by saying, “Make yourself at home, Frank – hit somebody.”
Luckily for Rickles, the line amused Sinatra, who became one of his biggest boosters and took to calling the short, bald Rickles “Bullethead.”
Performing decades later at the second inaugural gala of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1985, Rickles did not hesitate to zing the commander-in-chief, asking, “Is this too fast for you, Ronnie?”
But the most frequent targets of the “Merchant of Venom” were the fans who packed his performances for a chance to be belittled as a “dummy,” a “hockey puck” or worse. Celebrities often showed up just for the honor of being mocked by Rickles, and no minority or ethnic group was immune to a Rickles tongue-lashing.
“He was called ‘The Merchant of Venom’ but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known,” actor-comedian Bob Newhart and his wife, Ginnie, said in a statement.
Comic actor Jim Carrey tweeted: “Don once begged me for a couple of bucks, then told me to twist myself into a pretzel.
Ego slayer! Comic Everest!” Oscar winner Tom Hanks also tweeted a tribute to his “Toy Story” co-star, saying, “A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never.”
Rickles also mocked himself and shied away from describing himself as an “insult comic,” insisting that his humor was not intended to be mean-spirited but was built on making wild exaggerations for the sake of laughs.
Much of Rickles’ material played on racial and ethnic stereotypes that did not always keep up with cultural evolution.
He came under fire in 2012 for a joke that characterized President Barack Obama as a janitor. His spokesman defended the line as just “a joke, as were the other comments Don made that night.”
“Anyone who knows him knows he’s not a racist,” the spokesman told Politico then.
Heckling the Hecklers
Rickles, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, proved especially adept in early nightclub engagements at handling hecklers, which led him to make poking fun at audience members a major part of his act.
In an interview with Reuters to promote his 2007 memoir “Rickles’ Book,” he said his flair for impromptu insults grew out of his shortcomings as a conventional comic.
“I just can’t tell jokes,” he said. “As a young man I had a personality that I could rib somebody and get away with it.”
Rickles, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, also built a resume as an actor, making his film debut as a junior officer alongside Clark Cable and Burt Lancaster in the 1958 submarine drama “Run Silent, Run Deep.”
He went on to appear in a series of 1960s “beach party” movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and in 1970 played Army hustler Sergeant Crapgame in the wartime caper “Kelly’s Heroes,” with Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland.
He endeared himself to an entirely new generation by providing the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the computer-animated “Toy Story” movie and its two sequels in the 1990s. In 1995 he had a dramatic role in Martin Scorsese’s Las Vegas crime film “Casino.”
But Rickles’ biggest exposure came on television, both as a frequent sitcom guest star and late-night and variety show regular, especially on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” and “The Dean Martin Show.”
On Carson, Rickles was typically introduced by Spanish matador music, signifying that someone was about to be gored.
He took a long break from live shows and a Los Angeles performance in January 2015 was his first in 17 years.
Several Rickles TV series were short-lived, the most popular of which was the NBC comedy “C.P.O. Sharkey,” in which he starred as a U.S. Navy chief petty officer in charge of new recruits. The series lasted just two seasons.
A TV documentary, “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project,” directed by John Landis, aired on HBO in 2007.
Six Facts About Don Rickles
* Rickles was not always an insult-slinging comedian. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where his classmates included Jason Robards, Grace Kelly and Anne Bancroft. He had an early undistinguished stage career before gravitating toward comedy work, starting out in strip joints and working his way up to nightclubs, casinos, records, television and movies.
* Rickles did not think of himself as an “insult comic.” He said his act was all in fun and that his barbs were exaggerations delivered with good humor. “I’m the guy that makes fun of the boss at the Christmas party on Friday night and Monday still has his job,” he once said.
* Rickles inspired lots of nicknames. Singer Frank Sinatra called the short, bald comedian “Bullethead” while late-night television host Johnny Carson gave him the facetious title “Mr. Warmth” and Milton Berle dubbed him “The Merchant of Venom.”
* One of Rickles’ most notorious put-downs was to call someone a “hockey puck” but he once told an interviewer he was unsure how he came up with the barb.
* A lifelong Democrat, Rickles performed as part of Ronald Reagan’s second presidential inauguration. He joked that he took the job because he wanted to hang out with Sinatra.
* Rickles was a devoted son but in his act referred to his mother, Etta Rickles, as “the Jewish Patton.”
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Paul O’Neill, who founded the progressive metal band Trans-Siberian Orchestra that was known for its spectacular holiday concerts filled with theatrics, lasers and pyrotechnics, has died. He was 61.
University of South Florida police spokeswoman Renna Reddick said O’Neill was found dead in his room by hotel staff at a Tampa Embassy Suites late Wednesday afternoon. She says there were no obvious signs of foul play, and a medical examiner is working to determine an official cause.
The band said in a statement that O’Neill died from a “chronic illness.” The band calls his death “a profound and indescribable loss for us all.”
O’Neill was a rock producer and manager who began putting together Trans-Siberian Orchestra in 1996, blending heavy metal with classical music and creating a unique brand of rock theater. He tapped three members of the Tarpon Springs, Florida, band Savatage to be part of TSO and intended for it to be a “supergroup,” similar to popular bands like ELO, Pink Floyd and Yes.
“The best description of a TSO show I ever saw came from a reporter who said the only way to describe TSO is ‘The Who meets Phantom of the Opera with Pink Floyd’s light show,”’ O’Neill told the Tampa Bay Times in an email interview in 2012. “I would take any one of those alone as a compliment.”
The band is best known for its hard rock takes on Christmas staples like “Carol of the Bells,” but also more experimental, arena-rock songs such as “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24),” which described a lone cello player playing a forgotten holiday song in war-torn Sarajevo. That song was on the band’s 1996 album, “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” which went triple platinum.
Fans especially loved the band’s Christmas tours, which were heavy on guitar solos and heavier on special effects — similar to a Broadway Christmas pageant with a heavy metal soundtrack. One magazine once wrote that “TSO has enough pyro to BBQ an entire school of blue whales” during a show.
“My personal theory is it was being in the right place at the right time. It was easier for us to jump the generation gap between all the people before us. There’s something magical about watching a 15-year-old kid get into an Al Pitrelli guitar solo and his father jamming out there with him. That’s [proof] enough time has gone by that everybody has rock in common now, which simply didn’t exist when it was born in the ’60s,” O’Neill told Billboard.
But O’Neill, with his signature flowing locks, sunglasses and leather jackets, was remembered by legions of fans on social media Thursday for something else: his deep generosity.
Fans recalled how O’Neill would often approach them before concerts and hand them a silver dollar from the year they were born (he kept a case of them while touring), or sometimes hand out jean jackets. And others recall him tipping waitresses thousands of dollars for a post-show meal, buying drum sets for young fans and on numerous occasions, would not let security guards kick fans out until everyone received an autograph.
O’Neill is survived by his wife and daughter.
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Pop star Britney Spears may not be topping the charts these days, but she’s still big enough to influence elections in another country.
Because of a July 3 Spears concert in Tel Aviv, a first for the singer, Israel’s Labor Party decided to push back primary voting by a day.
“We delayed the vote one day, to July 4. We couldn’t hire enough security for the election because of the Britney Spears concert on July 3. There would also be a lot of traffic and roadblocks that would make it hard for the vote to go ahead,” Labor Party spokesman Liron Zach said, according to CNN.
The primary was set to decide the leader of the party and future challenger for the prime minister spot.
“We aren’t concerned about voters favoring Spears over the party. The two main concerns are security and traffic,” Zach said.
Spears’ stop in Israel is part of a world tour, her first since 2011.
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Iranian-American Nilou Motamed began her second year as editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, an American lifestyle magazine dedicated to covering new trends in food, drink, travel, design and entertaining. In an interview with VOA Persian journalist Saman Arbabi in New York, the 45-year-old Motamed explains how her Iranian roots inspired her not only to pursue success in the competitive U.S. media industry, but also to highlight Iranian culture through her magazine.
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Abuses linked to mining in countries such as Myanmar and Colombia are being overlooked by technology companies focused only on eliminating “conflict minerals” from war-torn parts of Africa in their supply chains, researchers said on Thursday.
In Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), competition for mineral resources has fueled two decades of conflict in its eastern provinces, including a 1998-2003 war that killed millions, mostly from hunger and disease.
Congo’s supply of tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold – metals used in smartphones, batteries and laptops – has been under scrutiny since 2010, when U.S. laws required U.S.-listed firms to ensure supply chains were free from “conflict minerals”.
Yet the same minerals are being quarried in areas controlled by armed groups — sometimes using child labor — in countries such as Myanmar, Bolivia and Rwanda, according to research published by Verisk Maplecroft on Thursday.
The problem for tech companies was being able to trace the metals used in their products to the source mine or smelter, the risk consultancy group said in a report.
“The problem is because this is so far down the supply chain, it’s difficult for technology companies to know if those minerals they’re using are coming from irresponsibly managed operations,” said Stefan Sabo-Walsh of Verisk Maplecroft.
Sabo-Walsh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that in the most extreme cases the minerals are excavated using forced labor in order to buy weapons and fund violence.
A convoluted process
After minerals are mined, they are sold to a middleman and usually taken to the country’s capital, where the raw metal is extracted and blended with other metals, the report said.
The blend is exported to a country such as China and then transformed for use in tech products.
The complicated process “further muddies supply chain transparency efforts” for companies that strive to only use safe and ethical extraction, Verisk Maplecroft said.
Tin, which is used in tablet computers and smartphones, was ranked as having the highest risk for labor rights violations at illegal mines.
Bolivia, Myanmar and Indonesia, some of the largest tin-producing countries, pose an “extreme risk” for child labor at tin mines, the research showed.
Some smaller mines are not run by armed groups but still hurt the environment and local communities and are difficult to police, Sabo-Walsh said.
At illegal mines, waste water runoff often makes its way into local water sources, polluting the supply, he said.
“Organizations need to be aware of the bigger picture when sourcing minerals from different countries – otherwise they risk a consumer backlash or regulatory penalties from the raft of emerging supply chain legislation,” he said in a statement.
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Forty percent of Americans say they are more cautious about what they write in emails since last year’s cyber attacks against the Democratic Party, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.
The March 11-20 opinion survey showed that a sizable minority of Americans made personal changes to how they interact online following the hacking of emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, which were later published by WikiLeaks and other entities.
Among respondents, 45 percent said they had changed their online passwords since the hacks.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia orchestrated the disclosure of the emails to embarrass the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Republican Donald Trump win. The emails also led to the ouster of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Moscow denies the allegations.
Concerns about online security crossed party lines, with 43 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans saying they had been more cautious about personal email since the election hacking.
“It makes you start to wonder how secure anything is as far as your own privacy,” said Delene Rutledge, 67, a retired teacher in Indiana who participated in the poll. “And yet I’m not the greatest at coming up with great passwords – I’m not sure it would make any difference.”
Despite concerns about digital privacy, only a small percentage of Americans said they had started protecting themselves online in other ways within the past month.
Five percent of adults said they had begun using secure messaging services like Signal, WhatsApp or Wickr.
Some 16 percent said they had placed tape over the camera in their computers to block any unwanted spying, a tactic advocated by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and FBI Director James Comey.
Twenty-one percent said they had switched off the tracking capabilities of their internet browsers, while 17 percent changed their user ID on social media networks like Facebook or Twitter and 10 percent unplugged smart TVs or other internet-connected devices when not using them.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It included 3,307 American adults and had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points.
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Twitter has unveiled a new, light mobile site aimed at emerging markets where people are still using slower 2G mobile connections.
Twitter Lite, according to the company, will use less data and will be up to 30 percent faster than the full Twitter website.
The service will be rolled out globally, but is primarily aimed at India, Africa and parts of Latin America.
“Twitter Lite provides the key features of Twitter, your timeline, Tweets, Direct Messages, trends, profiles, media uploads, notifications, and more,” Twitter said in a blog post.
Twitter Lite also offers a “data saver mode” that allows a user to see smaller previews of videos and images before they fully load. That could save up to 70 percent on data usage, the company said.
For Android users, Twitter Lite can still deliver push notifications as well as offline support “so you will not be interrupted while using Twitter if you temporarily lose your connection,” the company said.
According to the global mobile phone operators group, GSMA, there were 3.8 smartphone connections globally at the end of 2016.Of those, 45 percent use slower 2G networks.
Twitter is following a trend toward tech companies offering lite versions of their services. Facebook has a lite version for both the main Facebook app and its Messenger app. Microsoft offers a lite version of Skype for users in India.
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Ahmad Ahmad was elected head of Confederation of African Football last month
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A court paved the way Wednesday for Poland’s government to take control of a new World War Two museum that has been the focus of a major ideological standoff over how to remember the war.
The conflict has pitted the creators of the Museum of the Second World War — who place Poland’s war experiences in an international context and emphasize the fate of civilian populations — against the nationalistic ruling party, which prefers to focus on Polish suffering and military heroism.
Culture Minister Piotr Glinski sought to take control of the museum last year by merging it with an as-yet-unbuilt museum, the Museum of Westerplatte and the War of 1939.
Critics of the government described the maneuver as a legal trick aimed at pushing out the managers of the original museum.
The attempt was held up for months in the courts, giving director Pawel Machcewicz time to open the World War Two museum to the public in March after more than eight years of development. It is located in Gdansk, where Germany fired some of the war’s opening shots against Poland.
Merger can proceed
A decision Wednesday by the Supreme Administrative Court now paves the way for the Culture Ministry to take control of the Museum of the Second World War. The court overruled a lower court’s decision to suspend the merger, which now can proceed.
The ministry said in a statement that the merger of the two institutions would take place “immediately” and will mean “a significant increase of their potential.”
The ministry argues that it is not economically justifiable to operate two state museums on a similar subject in the same city.
Opponents of the ruling Law and Justice party see the step as part of the party’s broader agenda to take control of state institutions and to reshape the nation to conform to its nationalistic worldview.
The museum project was launched in 2008 by then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is now one of the European Union’s top leaders.
Tusk is a longtime rival of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the ruling party’s leader, and many political observers think Kaczynski’s opposition to the museum is at least partly rooted in that rivalry.
Kaczynski has for years also criticized the museum’s concept and said he preferred a museum that would focus exclusively on Polish suffering and military heroism.
Poland was occupied during the war by both Germany and the Soviet Union and subjected to unthinkable horrors by the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Nearly 6 million Polish citizens were killed.
Many Poles feel that the world has never truly understood the magnitude of their country’s devastation, a belief that has bolstered the views of some museum critics who argue Poland’s tragedy must be told as its own story.
Wartime suffering
Director Machcewicz argues that Poland’s wartime suffering, which features heavily in the museum, is much more meaningful, especially to foreign visitors, when placed alongside information about the suffering also inflicted across Europe and beyond.
Machcewicz is expected to lose his position now that the government has been cleared to take control of the Museum of the Second World War.
He expressed satisfaction that he was at least able to open the facility, allowing thousands of visitors to see it before the exhibition is potentially changed. But he also appealed to the government not to change the exhibition.
“I will keep fighting for the integrity of the exhibition even after I am fired,” he said.
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Country star Alan Jackson, actor-singer-guitarist Jerry Reed and songwriter Don Schlitz will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame later this year. Their selection was announced Wednesday.
Jackson, 58, from Newnan, Georgia, broke out in 1990 with his neo-traditional style of honky-tonk country music that earned him several multiplatinum records. His hit songs include “Chattahoochee,” ”She’s Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)” and “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).”
Jackson, with his signature white hat, said during the press conference that his dad’s wooden radio inspired him to write “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” one of his first singles. The radio is now in an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, along with a pair of water skis he wore for the music video for “Chattahoochee.”
“I’ll be in the Hall of Fame with Daddy Gene’s radio and my water skis and some blue jeans with holes in them,” Jackson said.
The singer-songwriter earned two Grammy Awards and was named entertainer of the year three times by the Country Music Association. Over the course of his 25-year career, he’s the second most nominated artist in CMA history with 81 nominations and has had more than 30 No. 1 country hits.
“This is about the last dream on the list, right here,” Jackson said.
Reed, from Atlanta, Georgia, became a popular country star in the 1960s with his fingerstyle picking that earned him the nickname “Guitar Man.” which became the title of one of his signature songs. His hits include Grammy-winning “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” and “Amos Moses.”
After regularly appearing on Glen Campbell’s TV show, he started a successful career in Hollywood. He starred opposite Burt Reynolds in the “Smokey and the Bandit” films and appeared in Adam Sandler’s “The Waterboy.”
He died in 2008 at 71. His daughters Seidina Hubbard and Lottie Zavala spoke on his behalf Wednesday.
Schlitz, 64, from Durham, North Carolina, has written dozens of top country hits including “The Gambler,” ”On The Other Hand,” ”Forever and Ever, Amen,” ”The Greatest” and “When You Say Nothing At All.”
His songs were cut by Kenny Rogers, Randy Travis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Judds, Tanya Tucker and more. He has won three CMA song of the year awards and two Grammy Awards, and has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“I will never be able to believe that I deserve this, unless I receive it as a representative of my family, my mentors, my collaborators, my promoters and my friends,” Schlitz said. “That’s the only way I can deal with this.”
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The Pew Research Center says Muslims are soon to rival Christians as the largest religious group worldwide, with higher birth rates among Muslim families predicted to increase the Muslim population to a number ties with Christians by 2060.
Pew said in a study released Wednesday that by 2060 Muslims will make up about 31 percent of the world population, with about 3 billion people, while Christians will make up about 32 percent, or 3.1 billion people.
A Pew study two years ago found that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and could overtake Christianity by the end of this century. The analysis is based on 2,500 census, survey and population registers from around the world.
Pew experts say they allowed for conversion rates, but maintain that birth and death rates will have a far larger impact on religious populations.
Other religious groups such as Hindus and Jews are expected to grow to larger total numbers by 2060, but not at pace with total population growth. And the number of people who profess no religion is expected to shrink, given current birth rates.
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The World Cup champion women’s soccer team has a new labor contract, settling a dispute in which the players sought equitable wages to their male counterparts.
The agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation runs through 2021, meaning the players will be under contract through the 2019 World Cup in France and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The women will receive raises in base pay and bonuses as well as better provisions for travel and accommodations.
“We are proud of the hard work and commitment to thoughtful dialogue reflected through this process, and look forward to strengthening our partnership moving forward,” U.S. Soccer and the players’ association said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The deal comes as the national team is preparing to play an exhibition match against Russia on Thursday in Frisco, Texas. The team faces Russia again on Sunday in Houston.
The agreement was ratified by the players and the federation’s board Tuesday. The team had been playing under a memorandum of understanding that expired Dec. 31.
It also comes before the start of the National Women’s Soccer League season on April 15. U.S. Soccer pays the wages of the national team players who are allocated across the domestic league, and the terms of those salaries are outlined in the collective bargaining agreement.
“I’m proud of the tireless work that the players and our bargaining team put in to promote the game and ensure a bright future for American players,” player representative Meghan Klingenberg said in a statement. “We are excited to further strengthen the USWNTPA through our new revenue generating opportunities and abilities.”
A group of players drew attention to the fight for a better contract a year ago when they filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged wage discrimination by the federation. The women maintained that players for the men’s national team earned far more than they did in many cases despite comparable work.
Talks had stalled late last year when the players split with the union’s executive director. They picked up again over the last two months after U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association brought in a new executive director and legal representation. Klingenberg, Becky Sauerbrunn and Christen Press were elected player representatives at the team’s January training camp.
The memorandum of understanding between U.S. Soccer and USWNTPA was struck in March 2013. Early last year U.S. Soccer took the players’ association to court to clarify that the CBA ran through 2016 after the union maintained that players could strike.
A federal judge ruled in June that the team remained bound by a no-strike provision from its 2005-12 collective bargaining agreement, heading off any labor action that could have affected last Olympics in Brazil.
The USSF has maintained that much of the pay disparity between the men’s and women’s teams resulted from separate labor agreements. The women’s team had set up its compensation structure, which included a guaranteed salary rather than a pay-for-play model like the men, in the last contract.
There has been no decision issued in the EEOC complaint, which was brought by Sauerbrunn, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd. All five were on the team that won the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada.
“While I think there is still much progress to be made for us and for women more broadly, I think the WNTPA should be very proud of this deal and feel empowered moving forward,” Rapinoe said.
The contract announcement follows an agreement between USA Hockey and its women’s national team for better compensation following a threat by players to boycott the world championships.
The Irish women’s national soccer team also said Tuesday it could skip an upcoming international match because of a labor dispute. The players, many of them amateurs, say they aren’t compensated for time off from their daily jobs. They say they don’t even have their own team apparel, but share it with Ireland’s youth teams.
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Germany has threatened to slap social media companies with huge fines if they do not act quickly enough to remove “hate speech” from their websites.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday approved a measure that would fine websites like Facebook and Twitter up to $55 million if they do not do enough to censor comments that violate German speech law.
“Hate crimes that are not effectively combatted and prosecuted pose a great danger to the peaceful cohesion of a free, open and democratic society,” said Merkel’s government in a statement.
Germany outright bans any speech that overtly promotes racism or insults a certain segment of the population. It also, due to its Nazi past, bans public Holocaust denial.
The draft legislation would require social media companies to remove any illegal speech within 24 hours of it being flagged by users. Other offensive content would need to be removed within seven days of being reported and reviewed.
The German Federation of Journalists blasted the move and said the legislation would make it “difficult to reconcile freedom of the press and opinion.”
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the companies are responsible for policing and removing hateful content from their sites and that “there is no room for criminal incitement on social media.”
“The internet affects the culture of debate and the atmosphere in our society. Verbal radicalization is often a preliminary stage to physical violence,” he added.
The massive flow of refugees into Germany over the past two years has fueled a rise in negative online comments, alarming German authorities. In 2015, the social media companies agreed to step up policing of online hate speech, though Maas said they have not done enough.
Mass cited research that claims Twitter removes just one percent of the illegal content flagged by users within 24 hours, while Facebook removes 39 percent. Facebook rejected Mass’s data, citing its own data that shows it removes about 65 percent of illegal content within a day.
German lawmaker Renate Kuenast called the fines “an invitation to not just erase real insults, but to wipe out almost everything for the sake of playing it safe.”
The bill still needs to be approved by parliament.
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Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropy promised $100 million over the next five years to support journalism and fight fake news, the foundation announced Wednesday.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which broke the story of the controversial Panama Papers, is the first organization to receive funds from the Omidyar Network – a three-year grant of up to $4.5 million “to expand its investigative reporting”.
“Across the world, we see a worrying resurgence of authoritarian politics that is undermining progress towards a more open and inclusive society,” Matt Bannick, Omidyar Network Managing Partner, said. “A lack of government responsiveness and a growing distrust in institutions, especially the media, are eroding trust. Increasingly, facts are being devalued, misinformation spread, accountability ignored, and channels that give citizens a voice withdrawn.”
Formally announcing the commitment at the Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship in Oxford, England, the Omidyar Network has also promised support to the Anti-Defamation League, devoted to fighting anti-Semitism, and the Latin American Alliance for Civic Technology (ALTEC).
Established in 2004 by Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the Omidyar Network supports organizations to foster economic and social change.
Reporting on the Panama Papers revealed secret, so called offshore financial accounts that were hiding assets to avoid tax payments.
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