The rising production of livestock feed, such as soy, gobbles up more and more valuable agricultural land that could be used to feed people. So farmers in Uganda are being encouraged to use insects as livestock feed, and some are turning the practice into a business. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison about an hour north of New York City, holds some 1,600 inmates; but, even as the men serve their sentences, prison officials are thinking about — and planning for — the day those inmates will be released.
The deputy superintendent for program services, Leslie Malin, says the prison offers technical workshops and academic courses. “We have an associate’s degree program, a bachelor’s degree program, a master’s degree program.”
And it has a music program, in cooperation with the famed Carnegie Hall concert venue.
Making musical connections
Twice a month, artists from New York City travel to Sing Sing and spend a day giving the 30 inmates enrolled in the Musical Connections program formal training. Before it started nine years ago, Sing Sing had a music room.
But one former inmate, identified only as Rob, says there were often fights over who could use it. The Department of Corrections asked that we not use any last names or say what brought these men to prison.
“Where we had fragmented fighting groups, now all these guys are part of this weird cohesive thing, where we have to play together and we’re, all of a sudden, we’re doing the instant duet, me and somebody who hates me. But we’re communicating musically.” Rob paused and asked, rhetorically, “How long can we go on hating each other when we’re helping each other with the score or sharing a piece of music and we’re all kind of struggling to keep up, you know, with everybody else?”
Rob has been on parole for the last year-and-a-half, after spending seven years in Sing Sing. He played just two open mics before he went to prison.
Joe had even less experience.
“I didn’t know what an A flat was,” he acknowledged. “I’ve heard these terms. I couldn’t have explained them to you. I didn’t know what they sounded like. I didn’t know what they meant.”
But after four years in the program — studying music theory and harmony — Joe is writing an opera. He became interested in classical music after working with opera star Joyce DiDonato.
“She definitely opened my eyes to something that I didn’t even know I had within myself,” he said.
Scaling up skills
Kenyatta, who has been incarcerated for 23 years, calls the program “the most transformative thing I’ve ever experienced.” Kenyatta has earned a master’s degree in divinity and given a TED talk from Sing Sing. He has been a part of the music program since it started and says the craft has helped him open up to others.
“Then I can be a little less alone, because I know you understand some part of me, at least, and you can be a little less alone because you know that I understand some part of you,” he said. “And this really has been pivotal in helping me.”
Listen to Kenyatta introduce and sing his composition ‘Holding Out Hope’
The Musical Connections program is run by Carnegie Hall’s Manuel Bagorro, who oversees similar programs in shelters and community centers.
“People have come together; they play together. They negotiate artistic decisions,” he said. “They sort out problems, but all with enormous affection for music.”
And those are all skills that inmates can use on the outside. Danny was released from Sing Sing three-and-a-half years ago, after seven years in the prison system. He learned to play the violin in the Musical Connections program and started writing music.
“After being released from prison, I was able to take that same drive and the same dedication that it takes to learn a musical instrument and to compose, into other areas of my life,” he said.
Take a behind the scenes look at music at Sing Sing
One of the teaching artists, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, says she has seen both personal and musical growth in the prisoners over the years.
“I just think the sky’s the limit for so many of the men in this workshop. They’re professional. They’re working. Many of them are working on the level of a professional musician. And that’s really huge. Yes. Sky’s the limit,” she added with a laugh.
Music lessons
For the members of the workshop who have been released from Sing Sing, Carnegie Hall hosts a monthly gathering. Rob says the men in the alumni group don’t just play music when they get together – they talk about what’s going on in their lives.
“It showed me that everybody was struggling trying to find a job, trying to stay employed, trying to find time to practice in this hectic life,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t alone in any of those things.”
And like other members of the Musical Connections program who are out of prison, Rob has been getting his life together – he’s working as a bike messenger, is now married and plays various musical gigs around town.
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The 25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” and the 35th anniversary of Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” will be celebrated with reunion screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The New York festival announced Monday that Spielberg will join Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Embeth Davidtz for a post-screening conversation April 26 at the Beacon Theatre. The “Scarface” event will reunite De Palma, Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer on April 19 at the Beacon Theatre.
The festival will also host an anniversary screening of 1992’s “In the Soup,” an acclaimed independent film directed by Alexandre Rockwell. The largely forgotten release, starring Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassel, has been restored following a Kickstarter campaign to repair the remaining, damaged print.
Also slated for on-stage interviews at Tribeca are Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Spike Lee and Alec Baldwin.
The festival runs April 18-29.
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A self-driving car has hit and killed a woman in the southwestern United States in what is believed to be the first fatal pedestrian crash involving the new technology.
Police said Monday a self-driving sport utility vehicle owned by the ride sharing company Uber struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was walking outside of a crosswalk in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. She later died in a hospital from her injuries.
Uber said it had suspended its autonomous vehicle program across the United States and Canada following the accident.
Police say the vehicle was in autonomous mode, but had an operator behind the wheel, when the accident took place.
Testing of self-driving cars by various companies has been going on for months in the Phoenix area, as well as Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto as automakers and technology companies compete to be the first to introduce the new technology.
The vehicle involved in the crash was a Volvo XC90, which Uber had been using to test its autonomous technology. However, Volvo said it did not make the self-driving technology.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and National Transportation Safety Board said they are sending a team to gather information about the crash.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on Twitter and said the company is working with local law enforcement on the investigation.
The fatal crash will most likely raise questions about regulations for self-driving cars. Arizona has offered little regulations for the new technology, which has led to many technology companies flocking to the state to test their autonomous vehicles.
Proponents of the new technology argue that self-driving cars will prove to be safer than human drivers, because the cars will not get distracted and will obey all traffic laws.
Critics have expressed concern about the technology’s safety, including the ability of the autonomous technology to deal with unpredictable events.
Consumer Watch, the nonprofit consumer advocacy group, called Monday for a nationwide moratorium on testing self-driving cars on public roads while investigators figure out what went wrong in the latest accident.
“Arizona has been the Wild West of robot car testing, with virtually no regulations in place,” the group said in a statement.
Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who is a member of the Senate transportation committee, said there must be more oversight of the technology. He said he is working on a “comprehensive” autonomous vehicle legislative package.
“This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads,” he said.
Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles increased in July 2016 after a fatality involving a partially autonomous Tesla automobile. In that accident, the driver put the car in “autopilot” mode, and the car failed to detect a tractor-trailer that was crossing the road. The driver of the Tesla died in the crash. Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault.
However, critics have expressed concerns about the safety of the technology, including the ability of the autonomous technology to deal with unpredictable events.
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Alongside Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and the other superheroes of the Marvel Universe is Ms. Marvel… a shape-shifting teen-aged crusader for today’s diverse American society.
She may be a newbie in the world of Marvel superheros, but since she burst onto the comic book scene in February of 2014, Ms. Marvel has become a cultural phenomenon. She’s also the first Muslim superhero to have her own dedicated series.
“I love this comic because it is diverse, and it shows a side of America that I think comics don’t always show,” said DeeDee, a Ms. Marvel fan we met at a Huntington, New York comic book shop.
“She’s not only dealing with school sides of things, like the culture clashes, her parents want her to be more traditional,” said Lois Alison Young, a school teacher who is also a Ms. Marvel fan. “I guess it’s a big cliché but she’s really struggling because she wants to maintain her Muslim identity.”
Ms Marvel is a Pakistani-American teenager from Jersey City named Kamala Khan. Her creator, G. Willow Wilson, is also Muslim.
“She faces a lot of challenges that any teenager faces about family, school, peer pressure, what she wants to do with her life,” Wilson said. “So the real goal is to make the book feel real. How can any reader from any background see themselves in this Muslim girl in the Marvel universe.”
Comic store owner and Orthodox Jew Menachem Luchins welcomed Ms. Marvel fans to meet the author, and says he can relate to Kamala.
“There’s a scene where Kamala goes to the mosque and she’s talking about the responsibilities she has towards people, so it’s vaguely implying that she might be a superhero, but she doesn’t want to tell the imams,” said Luchins. “I have those hypothetical conversations with rabbis in my head. ‘If I got superpowers, would I be allowed on the Sabbath to break Sabbath law to use my superpowers?’ These are the things that I thought of, so Ms Marvel connects with me immensely.”
Kamala Khan’s home town, Jersey City, is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world.
“The point of a superhero is to be a symbol for the culture at that time,” Wilson said.
Kamala Khan’s fictional school is based on the real McNair Academic High School.
“It’s pretty awesome,” said Mohammad Mirza, a student at McNair Academic High School. “She’s basically the superhero of our school. I think the comic book represents the diversity we have at our school.”
“For many people, this character is their only exposure to Jersey City, their only exposure to Islam, to depictions of Muslim people that defies the traditional Hollywood idea of Islamophobic representations,” said Holly Smith, a teacher at the school. “So it’s just interesting to see, especially in this political climate, how this character has really become such a symbol.”
In 2015, the first Ms. Marvel graphic novel won the Hugo award, the highest prize in fantasy and science-fiction literature, for the best graphic story.
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German band Joasihno strikes a chord in a unique way as it takes its show on the road.
Currently touring in Canada, the two-man band works in concert with a “robotic” element that can play several instruments at the same time.
“Actually we call it psychedelic robot orchestra,” said Cico Beck, one of the creators of the band. “It’s a combination of acoustic instruments but also very trashy robot instruments,” he added.
Once hooked up to wires and set up, instruments that include a xylophone, drum and cymbal play on their own. Another contraption, a horizontal, self-revolving wooden stick, stands atop a microphone stand. The stick contains long strings tied on each end with a wooden ping pong-sized-ball attached. As the stick rotates, the balls hit a block on the floor, creating a hollow knocking sound.
Beck said a computer is at the heart of the self-playing instruments.
“Most of this stuff is controlled by the computer. The computer can translate voltage signals, so the robots are controlled by the voltage, that is controlled by the computer,” Beck said.
Playing in an experimental band with a robot orchestra is not the same as playing in a traditional one, said Nico Siereg, the other Joasihno member.
WATCH: Robotic orchestra
”It’s a little bit different because you also have in mind that there are machines playing with you, so there’s no reaction from them.”
Siereg said in some ways, once the robots are programmed, he is free to focus on what he is playing and even improvise. The musician said he can envision future scenarios in which technology plays a greater role in creating different types of music; but, he voiced hope that “real music won’t die.”
Even if the robots are not taking over the music world, Beck said it is undeniable that in the 21st century, music and technology are intertwined.
“Technology is like a very important tool that even, very often, it’s also a very important part of inspiration,” he added.
Joasihno performed several shows at the now-concluded music festival and tech conference known as South by Southwest, held in Austin, Texas. The experimental band is hoping its high-tech use of instrumentals will be music to one’s ears.
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The annual music festival and tech conference, South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas just ended. The event brings together tech startups and musicians from around the globe to network and showcase their work. The types of music played at the festival are as diverse as the musicians there. One band from Germany called Joasihno performed at the festival. The group includes two guys and robots as band members. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic criticized Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, after reports surfaced that another company, Cambridge Analytica, improperly harvested information from 50 million Facebook users.
A British lawmaker accused Facebook on Sunday of misleading officials by downplaying the risk of users’ data being shared without their consent.
Conservative legislator Damian Collins, who heads the British Parliament’s media committee, said he would ask Zuckerberg or another Facebook executive to appear before his panel, which is investigating disinformation and “fake news.”
Collins said Facebook has “consistently understated” the risk of data leaks and gave misleading answers to the committee.
“Someone has to take responsibility for this,” he said. “It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to stop hiding behind his Facebook page.”
Collins also accused the head of the U.K.-based data firm Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, of lying. Nix told the committee last month that his firm had not received data from a researcher accused of obtaining millions of Facebook users’ personal information.
In Washington, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on Twitter that Zuckerberg “needs to testify before Senate Judiciary.”
“This is a major breach that must be investigated,” Klobuchar, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said. “It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoed Klobuchar’s complaint.
“This is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West,” he said. “It’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said on Twitter that “Massachusetts residents deserve answers” and announced that her office will investigate.
The officials reacted to reports in The New York Times and The Guardian of London that Cambridge Analytica, which is best known for working on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had improperly obtained Facebook user data and retained it after claiming it had deleted the information.
Former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie said that the company obtained information from 50 million Facebook users, using it to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.
Wylie told Britain’s Channel 4 news that the company was able to amass a huge database very quickly from an app developed by an academic that vacuumed up data from Facebook users who agreed to fill out a survey, as well as their friends and contacts – a process of which most were unaware.
“Imagine I go and ask you: I say, ‘Hey, if I give you a dollar, two dollars, could you fill up this survey for me, just do it on this app’, and you say, ‘Fine,'” he said. “I don’t just capture what your responses are, I capture all of the information about you from Facebook. But also this app then crawls through your social network and captures all of that data also.”
Wylie said that allowed the company to get roughly “50 million plus” Facebook records in several months and he criticized Facebook for facilitating the process.
“Why Facebook didn’t make more inquiries when they started seeing that, you know, tens of millions of records were being pulled this way, I don’t know,” he said.
Lawmaker Collins said he would summon Nix to reappear before the Parliament committee.
“It seems clear that he has deliberately misled the committee and Parliament by giving false statements,” Collins said.
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International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Andrew Parsons on Sunday declared the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics closed, and paid tribute to late British physicist Stephen Hawking as an “inspiration.”
At a spectacular ceremony that featured dancing, music and light shows, the curtain was officially brought down on nine days of sporting action.
“The time has come for me to declare the Pyeongchang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games closed,” Parsons said.
Hawking, who died last week aged 76, is fondly remembered by Paralympians as he opened the 2012 London Paralympics.
Parsons paid tribute to the scientist as “a genius of a man, a pioneer and inspiration to us all.”
“While Hawking tested the limits of his imagination, Paralympians, you have once again pushed the boundaries of human endeavor,” he told the audience.
Towards the end of the ceremony, the Paralympic flag was handed over to the mayor of Beijing — which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
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Artists and their audiences in New York City will soon have access to a giant stage that can morph into different shapes. “The Shed,” being built on Manhattan’s West Side, will invite visual and performance artists to experiment with a transformable space in which they can present their art. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Maryam Durrani is a child prodigy who wrote her first book at the age of 13, making her one of the youngest authors in America. But as VOA’s Niala Mohammad reports, the hijab-wearing teen defies stereotypes associated with Muslims and girls.
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The president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the Oscars, is being investigated over allegations of sexual harassment.
The Academy is reported to have received three complaints against John Bailey Wednesday.
The Academy issued a statement Friday saying it “treats any complaints confidentially to protect all parties.” The statement said there would be no further comments “until the full review is completed.”
Bailey, who is 75, became Academy president in August. He is a veteran cinematographer whose films include The Big Chill and Groundhog Day.
The Academy and the movie industry have been rocked by the recent revelations of what appears to be widespread sexual harassment in the industry. The #MeToo and the Time’s Up movements have brought global attention to the matter.
Powerful movie producer Harvey Weinstein was expelled from the Academy, following detailed media reports about his inappropriate sexual behavior with actresses and female staff members.
In December, the Academy adopted a code of conduct for its members.
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At this week’s three-day Energy Innovation Summit, organized annually by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-e for short, experts, entrepreneurs, investors and government officials shared ideas, research results and experiences about challenges facing the generation, transformation, distribution and storage of all forms of energy. VOA’s George Putic gives an overview.
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Facebook Inc. on Friday said it was suspending political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, after finding data privacy policies had been violated.
Facebook said in a statement that it suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent group Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) after receiving reports that they did not delete information about Facebook users that had been inappropriately shared.
Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available for comment. Facebook did not mention the Trump campaign or any political campaigns in its statement, attributed to company Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal.
“We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior,” Facebook said, adding that it was continuing to investigate the claims.
Cruz, Trump campaigns
Cambridge Analytica worked for the failed presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and then for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. On its website, it says it “provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the expertise and insights that helped win the White House.”
Brad Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital ad operation in 2016 and is his 2020 campaign manager, declined to comment Friday.
In past interviews with Reuters, Parscale has said that Cambridge Analytica played a minor role as a contractor in the 2016 Trump campaign, and that the campaign used voter data from a Republican-affiliated organization rather than Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook’s Grewal said the company was taking the unusual step of announcing the suspension “given the public prominence” of Cambridge Analytica and its parent organization.
No ads, administering pages
The suspension means Cambridge Analytica and SCL cannot buy ads on the world’s largest social media network or administer pages belonging to clients, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, said in a Twitter post.
Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Cambridge Analytica says it uses “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior. It says it has data on 220 million Americans, two-thirds of the U.S. population.
It has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and it is funded by Robert Mercer, a prominent supporter of politically conservative groups. Facebook in its statement described a rocky relationship with Cambridge Analytica and two individuals going back to 2015.
Professor’s app
That year, Facebook said, it learned that University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan lied to the company and violated its policies by sharing data that he acquired with a so-called “research app” that used Facebook’s login system.
Kogan was not immediately available for comment.
The app was downloaded by about 270,000 people. Facebook said that Kogan gained access to profile and other information “in a legitimate way” but “he did not subsequently abide by our rules” when he passed the data to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.
Eunoia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook said it cut ties to Kogan’s app when it learned of the violation in 2015, and asked for certification from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.
Although all certified that they had destroyed the data, Facebook said that it received reports in the past several days that “not all data was deleted,” prompting the suspension announced Friday.
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FIFA has finally and fully approved video review to help referees at the World Cup.
Also Friday, the world soccer body lifted its three-decade ban on Iraq’s hosting of international events. The cities of Irbil, Basra and Karbala were given the go-ahead to stage official matches.
The last step toward giving match officials high-tech help in Russia was agreed to by FIFA’s ruling council, chaired by President Gianni Infantino.
“We are extremely happy with that decision,” Infantino said at a news conference in Bogota, adding it would lead to “a more transparent and fairer sport. We need to live with our times.”
FIFA will now look to sign a World Cup sponsor for video assistant referees (VAR) at the June 14-July 15 tournament.
The landmark decision on using technology came two weeks after FIFA’s rule-making panel, known as IFAB, voted to write VAR into the laws of soccer.
That move still left competition organizers to opt to use video review in their games, and FIFA’s ruling committee had to sign off on the World Cup decision.
FIFA council member Reinhard Grindel wrote on his Twitter account that clear communication would be important to make the system a success — and was promised on Friday by Infantino.
Referees can call on VAR to review and overturn “clear and obvious errors” plus “serious missed incidents” involving goals, penalty awards, red cards and mistaken identity.
Reviews lag
In 18 months of trials worldwide, reviews have often been slower than promised and communication has been unclear in the stadium.
“Obviously it is not perfect and we are not going to reach 100 percent perfection,” Infantino acknowledged. “What we definitely want to do is help.”
Controversy has been stirred even by the most experienced VAR officials who have handled many more games than most referees who will work at the 64-game World Cup.
Thirty-six referees, plus their teams of assistants, are being trained by FIFA for World Cup duty and many come from countries that do not use video review in domestic games.
The three Iraqi cities that got the go-ahead Friday to host official matches had been allowed to organize friendlies in the last year, provided the security situation was “stable.”
Iraq will host Qatar and Syria for a friendly tournament starting on March 21 in Basra.
“FIFA has given the green light for the resumption, but the organizers of the championship must take the final decision,” added Infantino.
‘No’ to Baghdad, for now
FIFA added that it could not “yet” agree to a request from the Iraqi authorities to organize matches in Baghdad, but Infantino promised that the city’s application would continue to be studied.
Iraq has not played full internationals on home turf since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The ban, covering all but domestic matches, stayed in place after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
It was briefly lifted in 2012, but a power outage during an Iraq-Jordan match in Irbil led FIFA to promptly reinstate it.
Also Friday:
— FIFA reported a $192 million loss in its published accounts for 2017, after another year of stalled sponsor sales. But that was less than half of the $369 million deficit in 2016.
FIFA has backloaded more than $2 billion worth of broadcasting deals into the 2018 accounts and expects to exceed its revenue target of $5.6 billion and show a profit for the 2015-18 financial cycle.
— The soccer body agreed to publish the voting choices of member federations in the 2026 World Cup bidding contest on June 13 in Moscow.
A North American bid combining the United States, Canada and Mexico is competing with Morocco for the right to host the first 48-team tournament in eight years’ time. Up to 207 FIFA members will vote, with the four bidding nations excluded.
— Infantino also answered with a firm “no” when asked whether Russia’s current political tensions with Britain could affect its hosting of the World Cup.
— FIFA failed to make progress on revamping national team competitions for women and youth squads. Discussions had begun on creating a global women’s league, and merging Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups staged every two years into single, annual Under-18 competitions.
Some information for this report came from AFP.
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The world’s most expensive chocolate went on display Friday at a chocolate fair in Obidos in Portugal.
Priced at 7,728 euros ($9,489) and covered in edible gold, the chocolate is part of a limited edition of 1,000 bonbons. It has a filling of saffron threads, white truffle, vanilla from Madagascar and gold flakes.
It was guarded by two uniformed men.
Its creator, Portuguese chocolatier Daniel Gomes, said the diamond-shaped chocolate was certified as the world’s most expensive by the Guinness Book of Records, which in 2017 listed $250 La Madeline au Truffe made by Danish artisan chocolate-maker Fritz Knipschildt’s as the record holder.
Its crown-shaped box is decorated with 5,500 Swarovksi crystals and also carries personalized pincers.
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Fingerprints can unlock doors, phones and more, but are consumers ready to pay with them? Visa thinks so. More companies are exploring biometrics, the analysis of unique biological traits to verify identity, but how secure is the technology? Tina Trinh reports from New York
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A one-page job application filled out by Steve Jobs more than four decades ago that reflected the Apple founder’s technology aspirations sold for $174,000 at a U.S. auction, more than three times its presale estimate.
An Internet entrepreneur from England was the winning bidder, Boston-based auction house RR Auction said on Friday, but the buyer wished to remain anonymous.
The application dated 1973, complete with spelling and punctuation errors, had been expected to fetch about $50,000.
The sale price reached on Thursday was $174,757, the auction house said.
The form lists his name as “Steven jobs” and address as “reed college,” the Portland, Oregon, college he attended briefly. Next to “Phone:” he wrote “none.”
Under a section titled “Special Abilities,” Jobs wrote “tech or design engineer. digital.—f rom Bay near Hewitt-Packard,” a reference to pioneering California technology company Hewlett-Packard and the San Francisco Bay area.
The document does not state what position or company the application was intended for. Jobs and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple about three years later.
RR Auction said the high price reflected the continuing influence of Jobs, who died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 56.
“There are many collectors who have earned disposable income over the last few decades using Apple technology, and we expect similarly strong results on related material in the future,”
Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, said in a statement.
Other highlights from the online auction included an Apple Mac OS X technical manual signed by Jobs in 2001 that sold for $41,806 and a rare signed newspaper clipping from 2008 featuring an image of Jobs speaking at the Apple Developers Conference that sold for $26,950.
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Jesus Christ, who lives in Maine, says she didn’t know Oprah Winfrey was asking for a sign from God about running for president when she sent a letter to the television magnate.
WGME-TV reports 83-year-old Jesus Christ in northern Waterboro says she began a letter writing campaign 50 years ago to spread a message of faith and peace after legally changing her name. Christ says she sent the letter to Oprah because she likes her but had no idea it would get so much attention.
Television anchor Gayle King posted about the letter to Oprah on her Instagram on Wednesday, asking if it was the sign her best friend was looking for.
Christ says if Oprah runs for president, she’ll vote for her.
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A popular Indian pop singer has been convicted of human trafficking and cheating after a court found he pretended people were in his performance troupe so they could get jobs in North America.
Daler Mehndi says he is innocent. He was sentenced to two years in prison but was freed on bail Friday to appeal his conviction.
Prosecutors say Mehndi and his brother took “passage money” from Indians they offered to disguise as performers in his troupe. The job seekers could then stay in the United States and Canada to find work.
The cheating conviction alleges the brothers took money from some Indians and never took them abroad.
Mehndi shot into fame in the 1990s with Punjabi-language songs and energetic dancing. He also lent his voice for Bollywood film songs.
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