Outrage, compassion, a desire for justice: these are some of the motivations of 10 women honored by the U.S. State Department this year with the International Women of Courage Award. Mike O’Sullivan spoke with several recipients at a recent stop in Los Angeles.
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Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world’s population, went hungry in 2016. That number seems to be rising.
Poverty is not the only reason, however, people are experiencing food insecurity.
“Increasingly we’re also seeing hunger caused by the displacement related to conflict, natural disaster as well, but particularly there’s been an uptick in the number of people displaced in the world,” said Robert Opp, director of Innovation and Change Management at the United Nations World Food Program.
Humanitarian organizations are turning to new technologies such as AI, or artificial intelligence, to fight global food insecurity.
WATCH: Global Hunger Is Rising — Artificial Intelligence Can Help
“What AI offers us right now, is an ability to augment human capacity. So, we’re not talking about replacing human beings and things. We’re talking about doing more things and doing them better than we could by just human capacity alone,” Opp said.
Analyze data, get it to farmers
Artificial intelligence can analyze large amounts of data to locate areas affected by conflict and natural disasters and assist farmers in developing countries. The data can then be accessed by farmers from their smartphones.
“The average smartphone that exists in the world today is more powerful than the entire Apollo space program 50 years ago. So just imagine a farmer in Africa who has a smartphone has much more computing power than the entire Apollo space program,” said Pranav Khaitan, engineering lead at Google AI.
“When you take your special data and soil mapping data and use AI to do the analysis, you can send me the information. So in a nutshell, you can help me [know] when to plant, what to plant, how to plant,” said Uyi Stewart, director of Strategy Data and Analytics in Global Development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“When you start combining technologies, AI, robotics, sensors, that’s when we see magic start to happen on farms for production, to increase crop yields,” said Zenia Tata, vice president for Global Impact Strategy at XPRIZE, an organization that creates incentivized competitions so innovative ideas and technologies can be developed to benefit humanity.
“It all comes down to developing these techniques and making it available to these farmers and people on the ground,” Khaitan said.
Breaking down barriers
However, the developing world is often the last to get new technologies.
As Stewart said, “815 million people are hungry and I can bet you that nearly 814 million out of the 815 million do not have a smartphone.”
Even when the technology is available, other barriers still exist.
“A lot of these people that we talked about that are hungry, they don’t speak English, so when we get insights out of this technology how are we going to pass it onto them?” Stewart said.
While it may take time for new technologies to reach the developing world, many hope such advances will ultimately trickle-down to farmers in regions that face food insecurity.
“You’ve invented the technology. The big investments have gone in. Now you’re modifying it, which brings the cost down as well,” said Teddy Bekele, vice president of Ag Technology at U.S.-based agribusiness and food company Land O’Lakes.
“So, I think three to four years maybe we’ll have some of the things we have here to be used there [in the developing world] as well,” Bekele predicted.
Those who work in humanitarian organizations said entrepreneurs must look outside their own countries to adapt the new technologies to combat global hunger, or come up with a private, public model. Farmers will need the tools and training so they can harness the power of artificial intelligence to help feed the hungry in the developing world.
This story was written by Elizabeth Lee.
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Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world’s population, went hungry in 2016. Advances in technology and artificial intelligence can help feed them, but there are challenges that keep first world technologies from reaching the developing world. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
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Comedy is a field dominated by men, but that’s changing. Among the trendsetters is Suzie Afridi, a Palestinian-American stand-up comedian. Afridi says she’s probably not living the life her parents wanted for her when she was growing up in the West Bank. But she says how else would a feminist Palestinian Christian, married to a Muslim man, trying to raise a cross-cultural 9-year-old, express herself, except by making people laugh? VOA’s Samina Ahsan takes a look at Afridi’s unlikely journey.
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From a refugee camp in Pakistan to an exhibit at the Smithsonian, Saeeda Etebari has had a remarkable journey, even more extraordinary because she is deaf in a region where there is less opportunity for people with disabilities and also a woman in a field dominated by men. Munaza Shaheed profiles the talented young jewelry-maker.
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The next generation of life-saving robots could be inspired by cockroaches. Faith Lapidus explains how.
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Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for what he calls a “breach of trust” regarding the exploitation of as many as 87 million users’ data by Cambridge Analytica. Questions are swirling in Washington as the CEO of Facebook prepares to testify before Congress. But, whether the hearings will bring about real change around privacy rights remains to be seen. Tina Trinh reports.
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The 2018 World Cup of freestyle wrestling opened Saturday in the U.S. state of Iowa without Russia and Iran, two traditionally strong teams in the sport.
Iran, the six-time defending champ, pulled out in March without citing a reason, although many tied it to the resignation of the Iranian federation president, Rasoul Khadem, over issues related to the country’s state policy of refusing to compete against Israeli competition.
Khadem quit in protest after United World Wrestling (UWW) ruled that an Iranian wrestler threw a match at the Under-23 World Championships in November to avoid having to face an Israeli opponent and temporarily banning the athlete and his coach.
Russia pulled out of the tournament a week ago after saying it did not have enough time for the visa process needed to get the athletes cleared for the journey to Iowa City.
UWW invited Mongolia and India to replace Iran and Russia the annual meet, considered the second-biggest event outside of the World Championships, which will be held in Hungary in October.
“Our team was poised to do well [even if] Russia and Iran [were competing], so that’s a little bit disappointing,” said Rich Bender, the director of USA Wrestling.
“Certainly, in light of the current political situation and the relations between our governments and the drama around what’s going on in our State Departments, with their embassy and ours, this was not the year to wait until the last minute to apply,” he said of the Russians.
Bill Zadick, the U.S. freestyle coach, said, “It’s disappointing that they [Russians and Iranians] weren’t able to make it to the event because they have great wrestling traditions.”
“Despite our difference in politics on the government side, our federations share a brotherhood and have a really positive relationships that I think both sides value,” he added.
The U.S. team beat India in its first match, while Mongolia beat Kazakhstan.
Some material for this report came from AP, Sioux City Journal, Des Moines Register and Interfax.
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Hackers have attacked networks in a number of countries, including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections,” the Iranian IT ministry said Saturday.
“The attack apparently affected 200,000 router switches across the world in a widespread attack, including 3,500 switches in our country,” the Communication and Information Technology Ministry said in a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA.
The statement said the attack, which hit internet service providers and cut off web access for subscribers, was made possible by a vulnerability in routers from Cisco, which had earlier issued a warning and provided a patch that some firms failed to install over the Iranian new year holiday.
A blog published Thursday by Nick Biasini, a threat researcher at Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group, said: “Several incidents in multiple countries, including some specifically targeting critical infrastructure, have involved the misuse of the Smart Install protocol. … As a result, we are taking an active stance, and are urging customers, again, of the elevated risk and available remediation paths.”
On Saturday evening, Cisco said those postings were a tool to help clients identify weaknesses and repel a cyber attack.
Iran’s IT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi posted a picture of a computer screen on Twitter with the image of the U.S. flag and the hackers’ message. He said it was not yet clear who had carried out the attack.
Azari-Jahromi said the attack mainly affected Europe, India and the United States, state television reported.
“Some 55,000 devices were affected in the United States and 14,000 in China, and Iran’s share of affected devices was 2 percent,” Azari-Jahromi was quoted as saying.
In a tweet, Azari-Jahromi said the state computer emergency response body MAHER had shown “weaknesses in providing information to (affected) companies” after the attack, which was detected late on Friday in Iran.
Hadi Sajadi, deputy head of the state-run Information Technology Organization of Iran, said the attack was neutralized within hours and no data was lost.
The story was written by Reuters.
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U.S. President Donald Trump expressed sympathy Saturday for the victims and survivors of a crash involving a bus carrying a Canadian junior hockey team that killed 15 people late Friday.
The Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League were on their way to the town of Nipawin for a playoff game when their bus collided with a tractor-trailer about 5 p.m. on a highway about 30 kilometers north of Tisdale, in northeastern Saskatchewan.
A semi-trailer slammed into a bus carrying a youth hockey team in western Canada, killing 15 people and injuring 14 in a catastrophic collision that a doctor compared to an airstrike and left the vehicles obliterated in the snow. The crash sent shockwaves through the team’s small hometown and a country united by the national sport.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said 14 other people had been injured, three of them critically.
In a tweet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he could not imagine what the parents of the players were going through. “My heart goes out to everyone affected by this terrible tragedy,” he said.
National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman said Saturday, “Our thoughts are with the players, families, coaches, team management and all those throughout the community that have been affected by the tragedy.”
Bettman added, “The NHL mourns the passing of those who perished and offers strength and comfort to those injured while traveling to play and be part of a game they love.”
Hockey Canada, the country’s national governing body of ice hockey, expressed its sadness on Twitter:
The team had been scheduled to play the Nipawin Hawks on Friday night. “Tonight’s game is canceled,” the Hawks said on Facebook.
The Broncos consisted of 24 players, all from Canada, with the youngest age 16 and the oldest 20.
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A bus carrying a group of Canadian junior hockey players collided Friday with a semi-trailer on a rural highway in Saskatchewan, killing 14 people, Canadian media reported citing police.
Fourteen more were injured, including three critically, in the accident involving the Humboldt Broncos team bus, which was heading north for a Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff game against the Nipawin Hawks, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix reported.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector Ted Monroe said at a news conference late Friday that there were “fatalities among the passengers on the bus” and “a number of serious injuries.”
“It is a significant accident, we had a tractor trailer and a bus collide,” Monroe told reporters, declining to go into further detail about the victims.
Police said the crash took place about 28 kilometers (18 miles) north of Tisdale, Saskatchewan as the bus was traveling on highway 35.
“This is much bigger than anyone can begin to imagine,” Broncos team president Kevin Garinger told the Canadian broadcaster CBC. “We are just in utter disbelief and shock at the loss that’s fallen upon us.”
The Broncos team is comprised of 24 players, all from Canada, with the youngest age 16 and the oldest 21.
“It’s a horrible accident, my God,” said Darren Opp, president of the Nipawin Hawks hockey team. “It’s very, very bad.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his sadness at the tragic incident involving such young athletes.
The Saskatchewan league is a feeder system for higher levels of hockey with many graduating to play at U.S. and Canadian colleges and major junior league level, while some go on to the National Hockey League. Former NHL players like defenseman Chris Chelios, goaltender Ron Hextall, forward Rod Brind’Amour and hall of fame goaltender Glenn Hall all played in the SJHL.
Friday’s fatal smash brought back memories of a single vehicle bus crash in December 1986, also in Saskatchewan, that killed four members of the Western Hockey League Swift Current Broncos.
A memorial was placed on the side of the highway at the site of the crash, about four kilometers east of Swift Current.
The Swift Current Broncos expressed their condolences.
“Humboldt Broncos weighing heavy in our hearts and minds tonight,” the team said on Twitter.
Former NHL player Sheldon Kennedy, who survived when the Swift Current bus skidded off the highway in snowy conditions, also sent a message of support.
“Sending all my thoughts and prayers to those impacted with the @HumboltBroncos bus crash,” Kennedy said.
This story was written by the Agence France Presse.
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Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. And in Pakistan where the sport is called football, there’s no shortage of fans. Although football is still considered a man’s game in Pakistan, in Lyari town in the country’s largest city of Karachi, it’s gaining rapid popularity with a new group of fans — young girls. Shayan Salim has the details.
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The Catholic Easter custom of hunting brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies may be over now, but in the Orthodox world, Easter comes one week later. And it brings with it, its own unique traditions. One of them is the centuries-old practice of drawing elaborate patterns on Easter eggs decorated and painted using hot wax. Mariia Prus and Konstantin Golubchik produced this report from Alexandria, Virginia that is narrated by Katherine Gypson.
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We’ve gathered the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending April 7, 2018.
While we don’t get any newcomers this week, we do have a fight brewing for the championship.
Number 5: Post Malone & Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”
Let’s open in fifth place, where Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign hold with “Psycho.” While we await Post’s next album “Beerbongs & Bentleys,” we do think we have some information about its length. Post’s manager recently posted an Instagram photo of a track list on a white board. It was numbered to 18 … meaning there will likely be 18 songs on the new set. Track number one was Post’s chart-topping hit “Rockstar.” No word on a release date, however.
Number 4: Bruno Mars & Cardi B “Finesse”
Bruno Mars and Cardi B lose a slot, as “Finesse” falls to fourth place. On March 26, Cardi finally let us know about her debut album. Titled “Invasion Of Privacy,” it arrives April 6.
Initially set to drop in October, she pushed it back multiple times. The cover art is right out of the 1980s, and if you want to see it, go to our Facebook page, VOA1TheHits.
Number 3: Ed Sheeran “Perfect”
Ed Sheeran also steps back this week, as “Perfect” falls a slot to No. 3. Two songwriters are suing Ed for copyright infringement: They say his song “The Rest Of Our Life,” which Ed wrote for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, steals elements of their 2014 song “When I Found You.” On April 2, Ed filed documents denying any resemblance between the two songs and calling their claims baseless. The judge has yet to decide, but you can compare the two songs by going to our Facebook page, VOA1TheHits.
Number 2: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”
Up two slots to second place go Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line with their runaway country smash “Meant To Be.”
It also leads Billboard’s Hot Country Songs list for a massive 18th week. This is a new countdown high for both acts: Bebe previously hit seventh place with “Me, Myself, and I” featuring G-Eazy, while Florida Georgia Line made it to fourth place with their debut pop hit, “Cruise.”
Number 1: Drake “God’s Plan”
Drake makes it nine weeks at No. 1 with “God’s Plan,” and he’s dropping hints about a new album.
In January, Drake released a two-song EP titled “Scary Hours,” and more music may be on the way. On April 1, the Canadian rapper posted an Instagram photo captioned, “You can see the album hours under my eyes.”
Our time is done for today, but we’ll return next week with a new lineup.
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Facebook violates its users’ privacy rights through the use of its facial recognition software, according to consumer groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Their complaint to the federal government focuses on the use of Facebook software that identifies people in photographs that are uploaded to its site.
A complaint filed Friday by a coalition of consumer organizations with Federal Trade Commission said the social media giant “routinely scans photos for biometric facial matches without the consent of the image subject.”
The complaint says the company tries to improve its facial recognition prowess by deceptively encouraging users the participate in the process of identifying people in photographs.
“This unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous identification of individuals undermines user privacy, ignores the explicit preferences of Facebook users, and is contrary to law in several state and many parts of the world.”
The groups maintain there is little users can do to prevent images of their faces from being in a social media system like Facebook’s. They contend facial scanning can be abused by authoritarian governments, a key argument considering Facebook may be required to provide user information to governments.
The complaint is the latest in a string of privacy-related issues the FTC is already investigating, including charges it allowed the personal information of 87 million users to be improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the British consulting firm which was hired by U.S. President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Until Thursday, Facebook had not said how many accounts had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has also been hesitant to explain how the company’s product might have been used by Russian-supported entities to affect the U.S. presidential election outcome.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify next week before two congressional committees.
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The anticipation around Cardi B’s debut album has been scorching hot, so when the breakthrough artist finally debuted the full album at a party late Thursday, she told the DJ to make sure the sound level was perfect.
“DJ, make it a little loud ’cause I don’t feel it in my bones,” she said after the second track played, while the DJ worked on the sound.
That’s when Cardi B’s silly and likable personality — which has helped her skyrocket on social media and the pop charts — shined brightly. She went into karaoke-mode, singing some of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” even getting the audience of music industry players in New York City to participate.
But the DJ needed two more minutes.
“Two minutes? What the [heck] I’m supposed to do with two minutes? I’m running out of jokes. I’m running out of entertainment,” she said, then reminded the crowd that she’s performing on Saturday Night Live this weekend.
Cardi B, the 25-year-old Bronx rapper, released her major-label debut album, “Invasion of Privacy,” on Friday. It comes 10 months after she dropped “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves),” the ubiquitous rap song that topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in October, making her one of three females to top the pop charts with a song last year.
When that Grammy-nominated song came up during the listening, she skipped it: “I know you heard it 1,000 times. I put it on my album because that’s the song that made me rich. … That song changed my life.”
The next track, “Be Careful,” was released last week and was met with controversy when an older version of the song by rapper Pardison appeared online. Some of the lyrics were directly used on Cardi B’s song and some wrote that she stole the song, though Pardison was listed as a co-writer on the track.
“I don’t know where Pardison is at, but Pardison is a big part of the song. You know, I heard the record and I was like, ‘…I want that record for me. So, you know, I flipped it and I made it into a girl version,” she said.
“I don’t give [expletive], ghostwriter, co-writer, [people], I don’t give a [expletive],” she said. “What you need to do is ask your favorite rappers about their ghostwriters.”
Thursday’s event was tightly packed, as attendees bumped shoulder to shoulder while dancing to Cardi B’s new songs and drinking out of large red cups. The scene outside was similar as people waited in the cold to get inside the white-hot event, then were met with the heavy smell of marijuana as the door opened and some people were allowed to enter.
Bartenders and waitresses at Common Ground mimicked Cardi B’s style: They dressed in the short, green wig and black-and-white plaid shirt Cardi B sports on her new album cover.
“Isn’t it funny? This is the spot I first met my man at,” said Cardi B, referring to her fiance Offset of the multi-platinum rap trio Migos.
“Thank you everybody for coming out. I worked so hard on this album. … This music industry [stuff] is a roller coaster, an emotional roller coaster. It’s more crazier than the streets,” she said.
“Invasion of Privacy” also includes the hit “Bartier Cardi,” while Chance the Rapper, SZA, J. Balvin, Bad Bunny, Kehlani and YG make guest appearances. Cardi B, who developed a following on social media after stripping and appeared on the reality show Love and Hip Hop, has also had major success with the songs “Finesse” with Bruno Mars, “No Limit” with G-Eazy,” and MotorSport” with Migos and Nicki Minaj.
“In barely a year this woman has broken so many records. This girl has so many Hot 100 [hits]. … She’s worked her [butt] off,” said Julie Greenwald, the chairman and COO of Atlantic Records, home to Ed Sheeran, Missy Elliott, Kelly Clarkson, Coldplay and Sia.
“We are so proud of this album,” she added, before calling Cardi B “the first lady of Atlantic Records.”
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Lin-Manuel Miranda thought he had a migraine. It turns out the Broadway star really had shingles.
Miranda tweeted on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with shingles, saying he it caught early and that he had been quarantined from his 8-week-old son.
The Associated Press had reported that he also said on Twitter his ophthalmologist had blurred his eyes and that he was wearing a mask during treatment. But Miranda tweeted Friday that his mask reference and accompanying “Phantom of the Opera” gif were a joke, and his blurred eyes a part of his medical exam. He tweeted, “Sorry. I’m fine. Not wearing a mask.”
Miranda said he was staying with parents nearby.
The 38-year-old wrote the book, music and lyrics and starred in the Broadway smash “Hamilton.”
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President Donald Trump, a constant critic of what he calls “fake news,” will skip the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for a second year in a row.
White House Correspondents’ Association president Margaret Talev said in a statement Friday that the “White House has informed us that the president does not plan to participate in this year’s dinner but that he will actively encourage members of the executive branch to attend.”
Trump had said he “probably won’t do it” in an interview on the “Bernie and Sid” radio show on 77 WABC Radio that was taped Thursday and aired Friday.
Saying the press is “so bad” and “so fake,” Trump said: “I want to get it straightened out with the press before I do it.”
Talev said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will attend to represent the administration at the head table.
The annual dinner, a fundraiser for college scholarships and a venue for reporting awards, mixes politicians, journalists and celebrities and is typically attended by the president and first lady. Remarks by a comedian, often roasting the president, and a humorous address by the president himself, often roasting the press and political opponents, have highlighted the event, which C-SPAN has carried live.
Trump skipped the event last year, holding a rally in Pennsylvania instead. Prior to that, Ronald Reagan was the most recent president to skip the annual dinner, as he was recovering after being shot during an assassination attempt.
If he attended, Trump would likely be a prime target of jokes, with the camera showing his reaction to one-liners. Before he entered politics, the former reality star attended the event and in 2011 was on hand — and appeared humiliated — as former President Barack Obama lobbed joke after joke at his expense.
Trump did attend the annual Gridiron Club Dinner earlier this year, delivering a speech at the annual white-tie affair featuring journalists and officials. At that event, Trump offered a series of good-natured one-liners in his remarks.
Among his quips: “I was very excited to receive this invitation and ruin your evening in person. That’s why I accepted.”
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The European Union said Friday Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
EU spokesman Christian Wigand said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg early next week to address the massive data leaks.
The EU and Facebook will be looking at what changes the social media giant needs to make to better protect users and how the U.S. company must adapt to new EU data protection rules.
Wigand said that EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days “a strong coordinated approach” on how to deal with the Facebook investigation.
Separately, Italy’s competition authority opened an investigation Friday into Facebook for allegedly misleading practices following revelations that the social network sold users’ data without consent.
Authority chairman Giovanni Pitruzzella told Sky News24 that the investigation will focus on Facebook’s claims on its home page that the service is free, without revealing that it makes money off users’ data.
The investigation comes as Italian consumer advocate group Codacons prepares a U.S. class action against Facebook on behalf of Italians whose data was mined by Cambridge Analytica. Codacons said just 57 Italians downloaded the Cambridge Analytica app, but that an estimated 214,000 Italians could be affected because the data mined extended to also the users’ friends.
A top Facebook privacy official is scheduled to meet with the authority later this month.
This story was earlier corrected to show that the EU call will take place with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg not with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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Amazon is spending millions of dollars on lobbying as the global online retailer seeks to expand its reach into a swath of industries that President Donald Trump’s broadsides haven’t come close to hitting.
Trump’s attacks over the last week targeted what Amazon is best known for: rapidly shipping just about any product you can imagine to your door. But the company CEO Jeff Bezos founded more than two decades ago is now a sprawling empire that sells groceries in brick-and-mortar stores, hosts the online services of other companies and federal offices in a network of data centers, and even recently branched into health care.
Amazon relies on a nearly 30-member in-house lobbying team that’s four times as large as it was three years ago as well as outside firms to influence the lawmakers and federal regulators who can help determine its success. The outside roster includes a retired congressman from Washington state who was a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee when he stepped down.
Overall, Amazon spent $15.6 million on lobbying in 2017.
“Amazon is just not on an even playing field,” Trump told reporters Thursday aboard Air Force One. “They have a tremendous lobbying effort, in addition to having The Washington Post, which is as far as I’m concerned another lobbyist. But they have a big lobbying effort, one of the biggest, frankly, one of the biggest.”
Bezos owns the Post. He and the newspaper have previously declared that Bezos isn’t involved in any journalistic decisions.
Earlier in the week, Trump alleged that Amazon is bilking the U.S. Postal Service for being its “delivery boy,” a doubtful claim about a contract that’s actually been judged profitable for the post office. And he has charged that Amazon pays “little or no taxes,” a claim that may have merit. Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said in February that Amazon “has built its business model on tax avoidance.” Amazon reported $5.6 billion of U.S. profits in 2017 “and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on it,” according to Gardner.
The company declined to comment on Trump’s remarks and did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its lobbying operations.
Amazon has grown rapidly since it launched in 1995 as a site that sold books. It has changed the way people buy paper towels, diapers or just about anything else. And its ambitions go far beyond online shopping: its Alexa voice assistant is in tablets, cars and its Echo devices; it runs the Whole Foods grocery chain; the company produces movies and TV shows and it designs its own brands of furniture and clothing.
The company is in the midst of launching an independent business with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway that is seeking to lower health care costs for employees at the three companies. Given the three players’ outsize influence the alliance has the potential to shake up how Americans shop for health care and the initiative sent a shudder through the industry when it was announced in January.
Amazon Web Services is angling for a much larger share of the federal government’s market for cloud computing, which allows massive amounts of data to be stored and managed on remote servers. The CIA signed a $600 million deal with Amazon in 2013 to build a system to share secure data across the U.S. intelligence community.
A partner of Amazon Web Services, the Virginia-based Rean Cloud LLC, in February scored what appeared to be a lucrative cloud computing contract from the Pentagon. But the contract, initially projected to be worth as much as $950 million, was scaled back to $65 million after Amazon’s competitors complained about the award.
Lobbying disclosure records filed with the House and Senate show Amazon is engaged on a wide variety of other issues, from trade to transportation to telecommunications. The company also lobbied lawmakers and federal agencies on the testing and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles. Amazon has been exploring the use of drones for deliveries, but current federal rules restrict flying beyond the operator’s line of sight.
The $15.6 million Amazon spent on lobbying last year was $2.6 million more than in 2016, according to the disclosure records. The bulk of the money — $12.8 million — went for Amazon’s in-house lobbying team. The nearly 30-member unit is led by Brian Huseman, who worked previously as chief of staff at the Federal Trade Commission and a Justice Department trial attorney.
As most large corporations do, Amazon also employs outside lobbying firms — as many as 14 in 2017.
In Amazon’s corner is former Washington congressman Norm Dicks of the firm Van Ness Feldman. Dicks was serving as the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee when he ended his 36-year congressional career in 2013. He represented the company on information technology matters and “issues related to cloud computing usage by the federal government,” according to the records, which show Van Ness Feldman earned $160,000 from Amazon last year.
Amazon brought aboard four new firms in 2017, according to the records. Newcomers Ballard Partners, BGR Government Affairs, Brownstein Hyatt, and McGuireWoods Consulting lobbied for Amazon on transportation, taxes, drones and other issues.
This story was written by the Associated Press.
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