Pakistani Engineer Turns Straw Waste Into Fuel
A Pakistani engineer has designed a system to help developing countries avoid fuel imports by making ethanol with the millions of tons of straw that are wasted each year. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Month: August 2018
Rare Finds and Loyal Customers at New York’s Poster Museum
Not many museums can say they have 500,000 items on display, but the Poster Museum in New York can. Established in 1973 in Manhattan by a passionate collector, the museum has the largest collection of posters in the world. Olga Loginova has the story.
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US Objects to China’s Internet Restrictions
The U.S. “remains deeply concerned with China’s long-standing restrictions on freedom of expression online,” a State Department official said Thursday, reacting to Google’s reported plan to relaunch its search engine in China.
“We strongly object to all efforts by China to force U.S. companies to block or censor online content as a condition for market access,” the official said.
Google shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, citing government attempts to “limit free speech on the web.” But a company whistle-blower who spoke to the online publication The Intercept said Google was in the advanced stages of launching a custom Android search app in China that will comply with the Communist Party’s censorship policies on human rights, democracy, free speech and religion.
The Intercept cited internal Google documents and people familiar with the rollout. The publication said the project, code-named Dragonfly, has been in development since 2017. It said the project began to progress more quickly following a December meeting between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and a senior Chinese government official.
According to the documents obtained by The Intercept, Google said it would automatically filter websites blocked by China’s so-called Great Firewall. Banned websites will be removed from the first page of search results with the disclaimer: “Some results may have been removed due to statutory requirements.”
Empty searches
The documents also say that Google’s app will “blacklist sensitive queries” by returning no results when people search for certain words or phrases.
“We provide a number of mobile apps in China … [to] help Chinese developers and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a Google spokesman told VOA in a statement in response to the alleged plans.
China has 772 million internet users — more than any other country — and hundreds of millions of potential users who are not yet connected to the internet.
China’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has not commented on the plans.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and former presidential candidate, posted on Twitter that Google’s reported plans to set up “a censored search engine” in China were “very disturbing” and could help China “suppress the truth.”
VOA’s Nike Ching at the State Department contributed to this report.
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Apple is 1st Public US Company to be Valued at $1 Trillion
Apple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion.
The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of $20 billion worth of its own shares.
The Silicon Valley company’s stock has skyrocketed more than 50,000 percent since it went public in 1980, greatly exceeding the S&P 500’s impressive 2,000 percent gain during the same period.
Apple’s success was fueled in large part by its iPhone, which transformed it from a niche player in the burgeoning personal computer sector into a global technological powerhouse.
The company was co-founded by the late Steve Jobs, a product innovator who helped prevent the company’s collapse in the late 1990s.
As the company’s market value climbed over the decades, it revolutionized how consumers communicate with each other and how companies conduct business on a daily basis.
US Administration Proposes Freezing Auto Fuel Efficiency Standards
The Trump administration has announced plans to freeze fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.
The administration also announced Thursday it wants to rescind the authority of California and other states to set more stringent vehicle mileage standards to address environmental issues like climate change and smog.
New fuel-efficiency requirements, which were set to take effect in 2020, would be frozen through 2026.
The freeze, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department, would increase projected daily U.S. oil consumption by 500,000 barrels by the 2030’s, the administration said.It also said the freeze would save up to 1,000 lives each year by cutting the price of new and safer vehicles.
Environmental groups are condemning the proposal.
Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp described the proposal as “a massive pileup of bad ideas” that would increase pollution and boost fuel costs. Krupp said the organization would challenge the administration’s action “in the court of public opinion and the court of law.”
The advocacy group Earthjustice said the proposal “is the latest in a long list of gifts from the Trump administration to the oil industry given at the cost of the public health of Americans.”
Seventeen states, including California sued the administration over the freeze in May, in anticipation of the new regulation.
California and 12 other states use more stringent standards than the EPA. Together they account for 40-percent of the American market for cars and light-duty trucks.
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US Farmers Want ‘Trade Not Aid’
The rolling fields of green soybean plants growing on Fred Grieder’s Illinois farm would be a welcome sign most years … an indicator of a promising harvest in the fall.
But this isn’t most years.
Tariffs are turning away potential customers overseas, and Grieder estimates he could lose around $100 an acre if the trade war continues.
“It’s a squeeze,” he told VOA from his farm outside Bloomington, Illinois.
Lose $100, get $14 in aid
It’s a squeeze the Trump administration has acknowledged, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to plan a $12 billion aid package to help farmers like Grieder.
“If you take the $12 billion, assuming it will all go to beans, which it won’t, and divide that by our planted acreage, that’s about $14 an acre” in government aid, he said.
Grieder says the aid does not even come close to making up for the $100 loss per acre he expects.
Since May, the price per bushel for soybeans has dropped almost 20 percent over the escalating trade war between the United States and China. Tariffs threaten to cut off important export markets, cutting into profits even as U.S. farmers brace for a fifth year of declining farm income.
It’s not that Grieder isn’t grateful for the aid package, but he says he would just rather have “trade over aid.”
“We appreciate the fact that the USDA is concerned about us, and want to make us whole,” he explained. “But the reality is the numbers, in a large trade war like this, are overwhelming.”
Man-made disaster
“This is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster. It’s not an act of God, some would call it an act of foolishness,” said Mark Albertson, director of strategic market development for the Illinois Soybean Association.
Albertson said he believes the trade dispute with China is a greater threat to farmers than the drought of 2012.
“We had mechanisms in place to deal with that, and we always knew that the very next year we would be able to plant our crops again and hope for the best. In this case, we don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know what the next year brings. We don’t have necessarily hope of the trade war going away very soon, and it looks like Brazil is all too eager to take away our market share with China.
“If they get used to purchasing more and more Brazilian soybeans, that spells bad news for us. That’s the overall concern, and an aid package does nothing to solve that problem,” Albertson said.
Biggest worry: Competitors
It’s also farmer Grieder’s biggest concern.
“Brazil, one of our largest competitors, they are always expanding,” he said. “So this could affect our markets years down the road, and I’m probably more worried about that than I am the short wash out here.”
Albertson said another major challenge is what to do with the soybeans that can’t be sold.
“It looks like we may end up putting a record amount of soybeans in storage, and when that happens, we know from history the prices will go south,” he added.
As the trade war continues, Grieder’s routine remains the same. He hopes strong global demand for soybeans outside China will make up for decreasing prices. He’s waiting to see if President Donald Trump’s trade tactics will work before permanent damage is done to the reputation — and reliability — of U.S. grain products.
“I support what he’s trying to do. I can’t say that I support his methods,” Grieder said.
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Chinese Actress Drops off Social Media Amid Tax Rumors
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has disappeared from social media amid rumors she is the target of a tax evasion investigation.
Fan, 36, usually maintains a prominent presence on China’s main microblogging service Weibo, where she has more than 62 million followers. However, her account hasn’t been updated since June 2, when she wrote about the work of her charitable foundation.
Her boyfriend, actor Li Chen, has not updated his account since July 6.
Unconfirmed reports circulating online say both have been barred from leaving China as the authorities look into claims that Fan was given dual contracts for her work: a public one giving her official salary and a private one stating her actual, much higher, pay.
Chinese media reports say neither Fan, her production company nor agent can be reached, boosting speculation that all have been caught up in the probe. Police rarely comment on such investigations until a conclusion has been reached.
However, in a June 3 statement, Fan’s production company stated that Fan had never signed any Cying-yang contract, so named because of their dual natures.
Wealthy entertainer
Fan has appeared in dozens of movies and TV series in China, but is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
She is one of China’s wealthiest entertainers, pulling down tens of millions of dollars for her roles, along with substantial amounts in appearance fees and product endorsements.
Chinese authorities have sought to rein in high salaries for actors that can eat up much of a production’s budget. In June, regulators capped pay at 40 percent of a total TV show’s production budget and 70 percent of the total paid to the actors in films.
Career-ending cases
Criminal cases can be career-ending for Chinese celebrities because the communist authorities, who possess ultimate control over what content is released, have ordered offenders blacklisted.
China’s last major celebrity scandal was in 2014, when Jaycee Chan, an aspiring entertainer and the son of actor Jackie Chan, was sentenced to six months in prison for allowing others to smoke marijuana in his Beijing apartment.
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Small LA Theater Amplifies Voice of Hispanic Community
A small theater in the heart of a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles is giving voice to the immigrant community there. The place has provided a stage for new artists at risk of social exclusion. Some of them had been catapulted to the Hollywood sets. Arturo Martinez has this report narrated by Cristina Caicedo Smit.
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Alarms on Russian Meddling Sounded on Capitol Hill
One day after Facebook shut down 32 fake social media accounts that spewed politically divisive messages, U.S. lawmakers were warned that Russian efforts to confuse and polarize the American people are as robust and pernicious as ever. VOA Senate correspondent Michael Bowman reports both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are concerned.
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Congress Passes Bill Forcing Tech Companies To Disclose Foreign Software Probes
The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.
The legislation, part of the Pentagon’s spending bill, was drafted after a Reuters investigation last year found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence services.
The final version of the bill was approved by the Senate in a 87-10 vote on Wednesday after passing the House last week. The spending bill is expected to be signed into law by Trump.
Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to probe the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help Moscow discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.
The new rules were drafted by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
“This disclosure mandate is the first of its kind, and is necessary to close a critical security gap in our federal acquisition process,” Shaheen said in an emailed statement.
“The Department of Defense and other federal agencies must be aware of foreign source code exposure and other risky business practices that can make our national security systems vulnerable to adversaries,” she said.
Disclosure + database
The law would force U.S. and foreign technology companies to reveal to the Pentagon if they allowed cyber adversaries, like China or Russia, to probe software sold to the U.S. military.
Companies would be required to address any security risks posed by the foreign source code reviews to the satisfaction of the Pentagon, or lose the contract.
The legislation also creates a database, searchable by other government agencies, of which software was examined by foreign states that the Pentagon considers a cyber security risk.
It makes the database available to public records requests, an unusual step for a system likely to include proprietary company secrets.
Tommy Ross, a senior director for policy at the industry group The Software Alliance, said software companies had concerns that such legislation could force companies to choose between selling to the U.S. and foreign markets.
“We are seeing a worrying trend globally where companies are looking at cyber threats and deciding the best way to mitigate risk is to hunker down and close down to the outside world,” Ross told Reuters last week.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the legislation.
Source code revealed
In order to sell in the Russian market, technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP SE and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, the Reuters investigation found last year.
In many cases, Reuters found that the software companies had not informed U.S. agencies that Russian authorities had been allowed to conduct the source code reviews. In most cases, the U.S. military does not require comparable source code reviews before it buys software, procurement experts have told Reuters.
The companies had previously said the source code reviews were conducted by the Russians in company-controlled facilities, where the reviewer could not copy or alter the software. The companies said those steps ensured the process did not jeopardize the safety of their products.
McAfee announced last year that it no longer allows government source code reviews. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said none of its current software has gone through the process.
SAP did not respond to requests for comment on the legislation. HPE and McAfee spokespeople declined further comment.
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British Businesses Told to Do More to Close ‘Obscene’ Gender Pay Gap
More British businesses should be made to report the difference in how much they pay male and female staff, lawmakers said Thursday, citing “obscene” gender pay gaps in some companies.
Businesses and charities with more than 250 workers must publish figures on their gender pay gap each year under a law introduced last year, but they account for less than half Britain’s workforce.
On Thursday a parliamentary committee said smaller firms tended to be more unequal, urging the government to extend the reporting requirement to all businesses with more than 50 employees.
Shine a light wider
“Companies are failing to harness fully the talents of half the population,” said Rachel Reeves chairwoman of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.
The first round of reporting completed this year helped to shine a light on how men dominate the highest paid jobs in Britain, the committee said in a report. Yet more has to be done to bridge the country’s pay gap — one of the largest in Europe, it said.
“Our analysis found that some companies have obscene and entirely unacceptable gender pay gaps of more than 40 percent,” Reeves said.
The committee said the government should require companies to publish a blueprint to address discrepancies in salary and report annually on their progress. This year only 5 percent set themselves a target, it said.
“We have to move on from simply reporting the pay gap, to taking action to close it,” said Sam Smethers, the head of women’s rights group, the Fawcett Society.
Persistent problem
As in many other countries, gender pay inequality has been a persistent problem in Britain despite sex discrimination being outlawed in the 1970s, and has sparked a public debate in recent years over why wages are still so different for men and women.
The overall gender pay gap in Britain stands at 18.4 percent, according to government data published last year.
But for more than 1 in 10 large businesses the gap is higher than 30 percent, the report said.
“Employers have to adjust to the increasing need for flexible working and champion policies that enable caring responsibilities to be shared equality between women and men,” said Niki Kandirikirira of campaign group Equality Now.
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Dispute Over 3D-Printed Guns Raises Many Legal Issues
A little-known dispute over 3D-printed guns has morphed into a national legal debate in the last week, drawing attention to a technology that seems a bit of sci-fi fantasy and — to gun-control advocates — a dangerous way for criminals to get their hands on firearms that are easy to conceal and tough to detect.
The gun industry calls the outcry an overreaction that preys on unwarranted fears about a firearm that can barely shoot a round or two without disintegrating.
It also raises a host of constitutional questions involving First Amendment protections for free speech and Second Amendment rights to own guns.
Here are some questions and answers about the debate.
Q. What is behind the dispute?
A. Cody Wilson, the founder of Texas-based Defense Distributed, first posted downloadable blueprints for a handgun called the Liberator that could be made using a 3D printer in 2013. Within days it had been downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were saved by people outside the United States.
The dispute between Wilson and the federal government went on for years until this past June when they reached a settlement that paved the way for Wilson to resume posting the designs.
The State Department decision came amid an obscure administrative change — begun under the Obama administration — in how the weapons are regulated and administered. Military grade weapons remain under the purview of the State Department, while commercially available firearms fall under the Commerce Department. The settlement with Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to State Department regulations.
Wilson resumed sharing his blueprints for the gun the day the settlement went into effect last week.
Q. Why does Wilson want the authority to post the designs on his website?
A. Wilson calls it a First Amendment issue. He believes the First Amendment gives him a constitutional right to disseminate the code to make a gun with a 3D printer.
“This is a very, very, very easy First Amendment question that I think people might be hesitant to accept because it involves guns and people don’t like guns,” said his lawyer, Josh Blackman.
And Wilson has a strong legal claim that distribution of the information is different than actually making an all-plastic firearm.
While it is a violation of the federal Undetectable Firearms Act to make, sell or possess a firearm that can’t be detected by magnetometers or metal detectors, what Wilson is doing is simply providing the information on how to make such a firearm.
“What Defense Distributed was doing was not making and then shipping the weapons overseas,” said Chuck James, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private lawyer with the Washington, D.C.-area firm of Williams Mullen. “They were making the data available on the web where it would be available to someone overseas.”
Q. What kind of gun designs are available on the website?
A. Defense Distributed shows a variety of designs. The code for a 3D-printed gun is for what he calls the Liberator, which gets its name from a pistol American forces used during World War II.
His design includes a metal firing pin and a metal block. His site also includes blueprints to make various AR-platform long guns and some other handguns using more traditional means and materials.
Q. Are 3D-printed guns legal?
A. In 1988, the U.S. enacted the Undetectable Firearms Act, making it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess a firearm that couldn’t be detected by a metal detector. That law has been renewed several times by Congress and remains in effect.
If 3D-printed guns contain enough metal to be flagged by a metal detector, they are considered legal under U.S. law.
Gun-control advocates argue that the risks are too great to allow 3D-printed guns because even if they’re designed to include metal, it’s too easy for someone to not include those pieces or to remove them to skirt detection.
“It’s an absurdity. You can take the piece of metal out and put it back in at your own whims and you can take it out and walk through a metal detector undetected,” said Jonas Oransky, legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety.
Q. How well do 3D-printed guns work?
A. Gun experts and enthusiasts recoil at the suggestion that a 3D-printed gun is a true threat, calling the firearms mere novelties.
Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, 3D-printed guns are notorious for usually lasting only a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.
A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired.
“People have got this Star Trek view” of the guns being futuristic marvels, said Chris Knox, communications director for The Firearms Coalition, a gun-rights group. “We’re not talking about exotic technology.”
Others are quick to point out that normal guns are readily available in the U.S. with little regulation, making 3D-printed guns a major hassle compared with regular weapons.
Q. What’s the status of the debate?
A. A federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Wilson from continuing to post the designs on his site. A hearing is to be held in that case next week.
In the meantime, President Donald Trump criticized the Department of Justice advising the State Department to reach a settlement with Wilson without first consulting with him.
Wilson’s website currently displays a banner asking people to help “to uncensor the site.” Clicking a link directs the person to a page to pay membership dues ranging from $5 a month to $1,000 for a lifetime.
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US Confirms Plan to Raise China Import Tariff to 25 Percent
U.S. President Donald Trump sought to ratchet up pressure on China for trade concessions by proposing a higher 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, his administration said Wednesday.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Trump directed the increase from a previously proposed 10 percent duty because China has refused to meet U.S. demands and has imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
“The increase in the possible rate of the additional duty is intended to provide the administration with additional options to encourage China to change its harmful policies and behavior and adopt policies that will lead to fairer markets and prosperity for all of our citizens,” Lighthizer said in a statement.
There have been no formal talks between Washington and Beijing for weeks over Trump’s demands that China make fundamental changes to its policies on intellectual property protection, technology transfers and subsidies for high
technology industries.
Two trump administration officials told reporters on a conference call that Trump remains open to communications with Beijing and that through informal conversations the two countries are discussing whether a “fruitful negotiation” is possible.
“We don’t have anything to announce today about a specific event, or a specific round of discussions, but communication remains open and we are trying to figure out whether the conditions present themselves for a specific engagement between the two sides,” one of the officials said.
Derek Scissors, a China scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said a 25 percent tariff rate is more likely to shut out Chinese products and shift American supply chains to other countries, as a 10 percent duty could be offset by government subsidies and weakness in China’s yuan currency.
“If we’re going to use tariffs, this gives us more flexibility and it’s a more meaningful threat,” he said, adding that Trump’s pressure strategy will not work if he does not resolve trade disputes with U.S. allies such as the European Union, Mexico and Canada.
Public comment period extended
The higher tariff rate, if implemented, would apply to a list of goods valued at $200 billion identified by the USTR last month as a response to China’s retaliatory tariffs on an initial round of U.S. tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese electronic components, machinery, autos and industrial goods.
Trump has ultimately threatened tariffs on over $500 billion in Chinese goods, covering virtually all U.S. imports from China.
The USTR said it would extend a public comment period for the $200 billion list to September 5 from August 30 because of the possible tariff rate rise.
The list, unveiled on July 10, hits American consumers harder than previous rounds, with targeted goods including such items as tilapia, dog food, furniture, lighting products, printed circuit boards and building materials.
China said Wednesday that “blackmail” would not work and that it would hit back if the United States took further steps hindering trade, including applying the higher tariff rate.
“U.S. pressure and blackmail won’t have an effect. If the United States takes further escalatory steps, China will inevitably take countermeasures and we will resolutely protect our legitimate rights,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing.
Investors fear an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing could hit global economic growth, and prominent U.S. business groups, while weary of what they see as China’s mercantilist trade practices, have condemned Trump’s aggressive tariffs.
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Google Mum on Chinese Search Engine Reports
Google declined Wednesday to confirm reports that it plans to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, where its main search platform was previously blocked, along with its YouTube video platform.
“We provide a number of mobile apps in China … [to] help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a Google spokesperson told VOA in a statement.
The first report on the possible rollout came from The Intercept, and online news publication, which cited internal Google documents and people familiar with the purported plan.
The Intercept said the project, code-named Dragonfly, has been in development since last year. It said the project began to progress more quickly following a December meeting between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and a senior Chinese government official.
Search terms regarding democracy, human rights and peaceful protests will be among those blacklisted in the new search engine app, the report said. It added the search engine had already been demonstrated to Chinese government officials.
The report said a final version could be introduced within six to nine months, pending approval of Chinese officials.
China’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has not commented on the reported plans.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and former U.S. presidential candidate, posted on Twitter that Google should be given the “benefit of the doubt” but that the reported plans were still “very disturbing.”
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Fed Keeps Key Rate Unchanged While Signaling Future Hikes
The Federal Reserve is leaving its benchmark interest rate unchanged while signaling further gradual rate hikes in the months ahead as long as the economy stays healthy.
The Fed’s decision left the central bank’s key short-term rate at 1.75 percent to 2 percent – the level hit in June when the Fed boosted the rate for a second time this year.
The Fed projected in June four rate hikes this year, up from three in 2017. Private economists expect the next hike to occur at the September meeting.
In a brief policy statement, the Fed notes a strengthening labor market, economic activity growing at “a strong rate,” and inflation that’s reached the central bank’s target of 2 percent annual gains. Officials see economic risks as roughly balanced.
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Social Media Bosses to Face US Lawmakers in September
Top executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google will face lawmakers on Capitol Hill next month to explain what the social media giants are doing to combat foreign information operations.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Republican Sen. Richard Burr, and ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, made the announcement Wednesday, at the start of a hearing on how Russia and other countries and actors have been manipulating social media.
The goal of the September 5 hearing will be “to hear the plans they have in place, to press them to do more, and to work together to address this challenge,” Warner said.
“They can do better to protect our democracy,” he added. “I’m concerned that even after 18 months of study we are still only scratching the surface when it comes to Russia’s information warfare.”
Burr called the foreign information operations, like those being carried out by Russia, “an intolerable assault on the democratic foundation this republic was built on.”
“It’s also important that the American people know that these activities neither began nor ended with the 2016 elections” Burr said. He warned that activities like those identified recently by Facebook have been going beyond just social media, “creating events on our streets with real Americans unknowingly participating.”
Facebook Tuesday announced it had shut down 32 Facebook and Instagram accounts because they were “involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” much of it targeting left-wing American political groups.
Facebook said it was too early to say whether the accounts were being run by Russia, but an analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found signs pointing to “the Russian-speaking world.”
In a blog post, the lab noted similarities to activity by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), including “language patterns that indicate non-native English and consistent mistranslation, as well as an overwhelming focus on polarizing issues at the top of any given news cycle with content that remained emotive rather than fact-based.”
Facebook’s announcement followed a warning issued by Microsoft less than two weeks ago, which said hackers had targeted the campaigns of at least Congressional candidates in the upcoming election.
Microsoft said the phishing attacks, similar to ones employed by Russian-linked operatives to target the Republican and Democratic campaigns during the 2016 election, were thwarted.
Late last week, The Daily Beast reported one of the targets of those attacks was Missouri’s Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia.
During Wednesday’s senate hearing, a number of senators cautioned the issue is much bigger than the 2016 or 2018 elections.
“It is about the integrity of our society,” said Sen. Burr. “This is about national security.”
“It would be a mistake to think this is just about elections,” added Republican Sen. John Cornyn, noting similar techniques could be used to destroy reputations or tank stock prices.
Experts say some of that already is happening.
“On the state actor front we have seen evidence of campaigns targeting energy and agriculture,” said Renee DiResta, director of Research at New Knowledge.
“In agriculture, that’s taken the form of spreading fear about GMOs [genetically modified organisms],” she said.
“There’s a commercial dimension to this that’s underreported. There’s a lot more going on in the commercial space,” Graphika Founder and CEO John Kelly told lawmakers.
“Sometimes they’re tied, these political attacks and attack on corporations where corporations will be basically punished with falsely amplified boycott campaigns, and similar measures for doing something, which is politically not what Russia wants to see.”
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China Warns of Retaliation if US Takes More Trade Steps
China’s government has warned it will retaliate if Washington imposes new trade penalties following a report the Trump administration will propose increasing the tariff rate on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, warned Tuesday that Beijing will “definitely fight back” to defend its “lawful rights and interests.” He gave no details of possible retaliatory measures.
Bloomberg News reported, citing three unidentified sources, the Trump administration would propose imposing 25 percent tariffs on a $200 billion list of Chinese goods, up from the planned 10 percent.
The two sides have imposed 25 percent tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods in a dispute over China’s technology policy.
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A Special Type of 3D Printing
3D printers are being used extensively in industry, research, teaching and hobbies, printing with metal, plastic and even edible material such as dough. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, are experimenting with another kind of 3D printing – with yarn. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Building a Musical Organ is No Simple Task
Thousands of dollars worth of parts, more than a year of hard work, attention to hundreds of intricate details — this is what it takes to build a musical organ. A small company in Tennessee has been building these grand musical instruments for nearly 30 years and recently walked VOA’s Lesia Bakalets through the fascinating and complicated process. Anna Rice narrates this report.
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Saltwater Treatment Plant Brings ‘Tasty Tea’ to Indian Island
Each morning, Kamarunisa Poovummada sips her cup of tea while watching waves from the Arabian Sea crash around a water treatment plant opposite her house on Kavaratti island, off India’s southwest coast.
She links the taste of her perfectly brewed cup to the desalination plant that has brought potable water to the doorsteps of islanders, and almost erased the memory of the brackish tea she hurriedly swallowed down until a decade ago.
“We first noticed the difference when we saw the golden color of the tea as we strained it into our cups,” Poovummada recalled. “And then we tasted the tea and it was magical.”
The “tasty” tea is celebrated daily by residents of Kavaratti, the capital of India’s smallest Union Territory Lakshadweep, an archipelago of 36 islands, of which only 10 are inhabited.
Surrounded by pristine beaches, lagoons and coral reefs, the islanders have for decades battled a shortage of clean water – a challenge facing many island inhabitants globally.
Over the years, the sea’s clear blue waters seeped into the islands’ limited groundwater reserves, making every sip saline.
Limited land availability also resulted in groundwater sources being too close to sewage sumps, causing contamination and making water unsafe for drinking, cooking or even bathing.
“The water system was a mess,” said Hidyathulla Chekkillakam, who grew up on the island and is an employee of the public works department that runs the desalination plant.
Different options were tried, from open wells to rainwater harvesting, he said – but they were either ineffective or too expensive.
“Good drinking water was a prized commodity,” he added.
Piped Dreams
When Purnima Jalihal and her team from the Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) first arrived on Kavaratti in 2004, they were armed with blueprints for a desalination plant and cartons of bottled water.
They found themselves in the midst of a fragile ecosystem, with clear instructions from the island administration to “not destroy” anything. They were also warned about the tea, and soon found even a sip made them queasy.
“The salinity in the water was unbearable, and the people knew it was not good for their health. But they had no choice,” Jalihal said.
The project – and the fact it was headed by a woman – drew curious islanders to the site, where Jalihal’s team had to improvise designs to ensure construction did not harm the ecosystem.
“It was a struggle to get things going,” the scientist said. “There was no infrastructure and we couldn’t bring in heavy machinery. Everything had to be done manually.”
The team built floating structures and towed them into the sea, including an underwater pipeline.
In less than a year, the water treatment plant was up and running, producing 100,000 liters of potable water a day.
Pipelines were laid along the streets, with a community tap set up every 25 meters (82 ft). And in 2005, the water supply started.
“It was almost like a revolution,” housewife Rahiyanath Begum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as she watched her children play on the beach.
“Tea is a part of our life. We drink it without milk and so the color and taste are important. If the tea is good, it means the water is good,” she said.
Poovummada, Begum and the 11,200 residents of Kavaratti – a tiny island measuring just 5.8 km (3.6 miles) long and 1.6 km wide – neatly line up buckets around the water taps for an hour each day.
Tourist Attraction
Abdul Latif is used to islanders visiting the plant to show it off to their children, and guests from the mainland.
“It’s almost like a tourist spot,” the 43-year-old operator said, smiling.
From walking visitors across the bridge to see the underwater pipeline to urging everyone to drink a glass of treated water, Latif has become a poster boy for the plant, which has withstood storms, including Cyclone Ockhi in 2017.
“It rarely breaks down, and the real challenge is when big jellyfish get stuck in the underwater pumps,” he said.
Built at a capital cost of about 50 million Indian rupees ($727,400) with government funding, the plant technology is robust, environmentally friendly and requires little effort to operate and maintain, Jalihal said.
Developed by the NIOT, it utilizes the temperature difference between sea-surface water and deep-sea water to evaporate the warmer water at low pressure and condense the vapour with the colder water to obtain fresh water.
Buoyed by its success, the NIOT set up two plants on Agatti and Minicoy islands in 2011, providing more than 15,000 residents with clean water. Construction of six more desalination plants is now underway on other inhabited islands.
Only one other water treatment plant in India, off the coast of Chennai city, uses the same home-grown technology. Others purify water with reverse osmosis, a costlier imported method.
Latif and his team work shifts to keep the motors of the plant running, to supply nine liters of water per day for each resident, including three for drinking and five for cooking.
“We discourage people from using it for a bath or washing clothes because we don’t want even a precious drop wasted,” said Chekkillakam. “Everyone understands because we have seen how quickly clean water sources dry up or get contaminated.”
Going Green
A decade after the Kavaratti desalination plant became operational, Jalihal is back at the drawing board, this time working on a new plant for the island that will draw power from the sea instead of running on diesel generators as now.
“It will be completely green, using ocean thermal energy to run. Then the system will be perfect,” she said.
Khadeeja Lavanakkal cannot wait for the second plant. She lives at the end of the pipeline, and sometimes gets only a trickle of clean water because others have filled extra buckets.
“We have an open well, but when officials come to check the water they tell us it is more saline than sea water. We could do with a little more clean water to drink.”
Nonetheless, Lavanakkal is grateful to the scientists.
“It’s not just the tea but even the curries we cook are so much tastier,” she said.
“And the best part is that we can close our eyes and drink a glass of water without worrying about falling ill.”
($1 = 68.7400 Indian rupees)
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