Many people enjoy playing video games but take for granted that they can hold and easily operate game controllers. Now Microsoft is making it possible for disabled gamers to join in the fun. Tina Trinh reports.
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Top Twitter and Facebook executives will defend their companies before U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, with Facebook insisting it takes election interference seriously and Twitter denying its operations are influenced by politics.
But no executive from Alphabet’s Google is expected to testify, after the company declined the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to send one of its most senior executives, frustrating lawmakers.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, appearing alongside Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, will say that her company’s efforts to combat foreign influence have improved since the 2016 U.S. election, according to written testimony released Tuesday.
“The actions we’ve taken in response … show our determination to do everything we can to stop this kind of interference from happening,” Sandberg said.
The company is getting better at finding and removing “inauthentic” content and now has more than 20,000 people working on safety and security, she said.
Technology executives have repeatedly testified in Congress over the past year, on the defensive over political influence activity on their sites as well as concerns about user privacy.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has been looking into efforts to influence U.S. public opinion for more than a year, after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Kremlin-backed entities sought to boost Republican Donald Trump’s chances of winning the White House in 2016.
Moscow has denied involvement.
Google offered to send its chief legal officer, Kent Walker, to Wednesday’s hearing, but he was rejected by the committee, which said it wanted to hear from corporate decision-makers.
’Don’t understand the problem’
Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, said he expected the hearing would focus on solutions to the problem of foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections and sow political discord, with a jab at Google.
“You don’t understand the problem if you don’t see this as a large effort from whole of government and the private sector,” Burr told reporters at the Senate.
Google said Walker would be in Washington on Wednesday and be available to meet with lawmakers. On Tuesday it released written “testimony” describing the company’s efforts to combat influence operations.
Twitter’s Dorsey also will testify at a House of Representatives hearing on Wednesday that the company “does not use political ideology to make any decisions,” according to written testimony also made public Tuesday.
Dorsey will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, addressing Republican concerns about how the social media platform polices content.
“From a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said.
Conservative Republicans in Congress have criticized social media companies for what they say are politically motivated practices in removing some content, a charge the companies have repeatedly rejected.
Trump faulted Twitter on July 26, without citing any evidence, for limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans through a practice known as shadow banning.
Democratic Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island blasted Wednesday’s hearing and his Republican colleagues, calling claims of political bias baseless.
“There is no evidence that the algorithms of social networks or search results are biased against conservatives. It is a made-up narrative pushed by the conservative propaganda machine to convince voters of a conspiracy that does not exist,” Cicilline said.
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Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the still-smoldering National Museum, an official said Tuesday, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes.
Flames tore through the museum Sunday night, and officials have said much of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might be lost. Aerial photos of the main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed.
The firefighters “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s vice director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.”
In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.
Museum spokesman Marcio Martins noted that the collection contains hundreds of skulls, and all material would first need to be examined by the Federal Police, who are investigating the still-unknown cause of the fire. Experts will then examine them to determine their identity.
Some objects were rescued from the flames on Sunday night by a professor who rushed into the blaze. Paulo Buckup, a professor of zoology at the museum, recounted Tuesday how he and a few other people pulled out mollusks and marine specimens, going into and out of the building several times until it became too dangerous. He said the group tried to identify in the dark the most irreplaceable objects, but said they only saved a “minuscule portion of the heritage that was lost.”
Many have already said that regardless of what is salvaged, the loss will be immeasurable. Marina Silva, a candidate for president in upcoming elections, called it a “lobotomy of Brazilian history.”
The Globo newspaper wrote in an editorial published Tuesday: “The size of the catastrophe is vast: It struck the national memory, through the loss of the important historical collection; it affected the sciences, interrupting research; and it represents a cultural loss impossible to quantify. We only know that it is enormous.”
The disaster has led to a series of recriminations about who was to blamed, and it has raised concerns that other institutions might be at risk. The national development bank announced Tuesday that it would make $6 million available for museums looking to upgrade their security or fire-prevention plans.
Investigators were first allowed to enter the main building Monday, but it is still off-limits to researchers. Instead, some scientists were focusing attention on an annex on the site, where vertebrate specimens were housed. The fire didn’t reach the area, but it caused the electricity to fail, threatening some artifacts, said Marcelo Wexler, a researcher in the vertebrate department.
“We have animals that need to be frozen, and they were rotting without electricity,” Wexler said.
In a sign of the enormity of the task ahead, a man created a stir when he arrived on the scene carrying a document he said belonged to the institution that he had found across the street. A group of journalists crowded in to see the piece of paper, which was burned at the edges and contained printed text and was in a clear plastic folder. It was not clear what it was or if it was authentic.
“I came here to give it back. I am sure there is much more that flew around,” said Felipe Silva, who said he was a guard at the museum.
Even as efforts turned to searching the rubble, firefighters were still occasionally directing water at the building, where some embers were still burning. Eduardo Rosse, a fire official, said that was normal for a blaze of this size.
Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, a museum official, said Monday that anything held in the main building was probably destroyed, and Serejo told the G1 news portal that 90 percent of the collection may have been destroyed.
But on Tuesday, she held out some hope, telling journalists that staff members were “reasonably optimistic about finding some more items inside.”
She added that UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency, had offered financial and technical assistance. French and Egyptian officials also have offered help. The museum was home to Egyptian artifacts, and Egypt’s ministries of foreign affairs and antiquities have expressed concern over the fate of those objects.
With the cause still under investigation, many already have begun to fix blame, saying years of government neglect left the museum underfunded and unsafe.
Roberto Leher, rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, to which the museum was linked, said it was well known that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repair. In fact, two years ago, federal prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro began investigating safety conditions in the building.
The institution had recently secured approval for nearly $5 million for a planned renovation, including an upgrade of the fire-prevention system, but the money had not yet been disbursed.
On Monday, government officials promised $2.4 million to shore up the building and promised to rebuild the museum.
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As legislators prepare to grill Silicon Valley executives over Russian hacking ahead of midterm elections, some observers say the debate over expanded government oversight is far from over.
On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with legislators in Washington ahead of Wednesday morning’s hearing, where Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg will answer questions about cybersecurity before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told The Washington Post that the hearing aims to “to sound the alarm that what happened in 2016, as we’ve seen, was not a one-off.”
In recent weeks, Microsoft reported that it had disabled six Russian-launched websites masquerading as U.S. think tanks and Senate sites. Facebook and the security firm FireEye revealed influence campaigns, originating in Iran and Russia, that led the social network to remove 652 impostor accounts, some targeting Americans. The office of Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said hackers tied to a “nation-state” had sent phishing emails to old campaign email accounts.
Hacking attempts
Newly reported attempts at infiltration and social media manipulation — which Moscow officially denies — point to Russia’s continued interest in meddling in U.S. politics. While observers say there is no clear evidence of Kremlin efforts to disrupt midterms, it nonetheless appears hackers outside the American political system are probing for a way in.
“What’s interesting about this is that the Russians have shown here that they are not at all partisan in this,” said David Sanger of The New York Times, who first reported on Microsoft’s account of the latest attacks, in which company officials seized website domains created by the Kremlin-linked hacker group known as Fancy Bear or APT28 — the same group that federal investigators and private cybersecurity firms blamed for the 2016 election hack.
The phony sites, designed to emulate the Hudson Institute and International Republican Institute, surreptitiously routed users to pages built by hackers to steal passwords and log-in credentials. The aim, Sanger said, is to disrupt institutions that challenge Moscow or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They are pursuing their own national interests, going after think tanks that have taken positions that the Russians find uncomfortable or threatening, whether it’s the use of sanctions or promotion of democracy or pursuit of kleptocrats,” Sanger told VOA.
The extent to which Microsoft coordinated with federal investigators to thwart the latest attack wasn’t clear, he said.
“I’m not sure whether they gave the government an advance heads up, but the nature of cyber now is that you hear about these [attacks from the] companies before you hear about them from government,” Sanger added.
In recent months, legislators on both sides of the aisle have expressed willingness to regulate how U.S. tech companies safeguard themselves against intrusions. But analyst Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab says the Microsoft takedown bodes well for the tech sector’s independent ability to prevent attacks.
“This is something we’ve seen over the last couple of months — tech companies have been much more forward-leaning in their attempts to prevent this kind of interference,” Nimmo told VOA.
“We had Microsoft coming out up front and saying we’ve just stopped this attack, and they actually attributed it directly to Fancy Bear, which is very striking that they’re actually confident in making that direct attribution. A couple of weeks ago, we had Facebook coming out and exposing a number of inauthentic accounts, which had some connections with the troll farm in St. Petersburg,” he added, referring to the Internet Research Agency linked to the 2016 U.S. election hack. “About a month before that, we had Twitter coming out and releasing a list of handles that it had traced back to the troll farm.”
A troll farm is a group of people who attempt to create disruption in an online community by posting comments online that are deliberately inflammatory or provocative.
US, European action
With all of the recent activity on the platform side, Nimmo said the question is “what are we going to see on the government level?”
More specifically, what can the West can do in order to pressure the Russian government — and does the West have the political will to do it? If nothing else, the latest attacks are likely to embolden U.S. and European lawmakers to pass additional sanctions.
“Although I think we need to fully understand the scope of this activity that Microsoft has reported, it clearly demonstrates that Russia is not in any way pulling back from the techniques that it used in 2016,” said Alexander Vershbow, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and a former NATO deputy secretary general.
“If anything, it’s broadening its target to include conservative think tanks and organizations like the Hudson Institute, and so I think you can say right now, at a minimum, it would give momentum to congressional efforts to tighten the sanctions even further,” added Vershbow, who also has been a U.S. ambassador to Russia, South Korea and NATO. “It may also strengthen the hand of administration officials as they consult with Europe in trying to push the Europeans to tighten their sanctions as well.”
Retired Marine General Jim Jones, former national security adviser during the Obama administration, said although sanctions can be effective in the short term, long-term national security depends on safeguarding the cyber infrastructure itself.
“In a not so distant future, the country that first succeeds in reaching complete cybersecurity will be able to cause even more serious disorders,” Jones told VOA. “That’s the essence of cyberwar in our century.”
For individuals targeted by foreign hackers, such as the Hudson Institute’s Russian kleptocracy expert Ben Judah, no amount of new sanctions or malware detection will be enough.
“Be careful of what you keep on your computer and on your phone,” Judah told VOA. “Have sensitive information? Use pen and paper.”
Following Wednesday morning’s Senate hearing, Twitter CEO Dorsey will appear solo before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he’ll be asked to address allegations of political censorship.
This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service. Original reporting contributed by Natalia Antonova and Jela De Franceschi. Some information is from AP.
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Mormon church founder Joseph Smith insisted on introducing polygamy in the early 1800s despite knowing the societal risks and getting pushback from other leaders and his first wife, recounts a new church history book unveiled Tuesday.
A nearly 600-page book that covers early church history from 1815-1846 doesn’t dwell on polygamy, but doesn’t skip over it either. That’s noteworthy and marks The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ latest attempt to be more transparent about sensitive issues of its past.
Quentin L. Cook and Dale Renlund, high-ranking leaders with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the parts about plural marriage provide the full story within the context of what was happening at that time in history.
“There is discussion of how it began, how it was viewed by the individuals and its part of the history of the restored gospel,” said Renlund, a member of a top governing panel called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “It’s taken in that context without shying away from it. So, a person can get a clear view of what was going on and when and why.”
The book recounts founder Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage after he received what he believed was a revelation from the Lord. The book details how his wife, Emma Smith, and many leaders recoiled and questioned the direction.
At one point, the faith’s polygamous practices led an excommunicated Mormon to publish an expose about the religion and give lectures titled, “The secret wife system at Nauvoo,” the new book says. Some Mormon leaders denied the allegation because polygamy was being practiced secretly and they were unaware.
Previous acknowledgments
The book’s recognition of polygamy — which the faith banned in 1890 and prohibits today — is the most recent example of the Utah-based faith acknowledging polygamous roots.
The faith published an online essay in 2014 that provided a detailed account of polygamous practices during the 1830s and 1840s in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois. That essay acknowledged that while most of Smith’s wives were between 20 and 40 years old, he had one who was 14 years old.
That young bride isn’t mentioned in the new book, but it does tell the story of his marriages to a pair of sisters who were older teens.
In 2015, the church included a small display about plural marriages when it opened its renovated history museum.
The book is a robust and honest version of early church history and while it doesn’t dwell on polygamy, it’s notable that it provides the history of plural marriages in a straightforward way, said Patrick Mason, a professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California who is the chair of Mormon Studies at the college.
Steven E. Snow, executive director of the church history department, said the book provides the whole story behind a difficult time and one that is not well understood.
“If people read this, they’ll understand we’ve been pretty forthright in our telling of the story,” Snow said.
Future books
The book is the first of four planned volumes that will retell the story of the faith. The first volume covers Joseph Smith’s “first vision” in which he said he received a visit from God and Jesus in 1820 in the woods of upstate New York that led to the foundation of the religion. It also tells the story of when Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were fatally shot by a mob in 1844.
The last multi-volume history of the faith was published in 1930 — when church membership was less than 1 million with most members in the American West. Today, the faith counts 16 million members with more than half outside the U.S. The book is available in 14 languages.
Snow said the book “draws on the power of narrative, but is not fiction,” with every scene and dialogue backed by historical research.
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Prosecutors in Los Angeles said Tuesday that they would not pursue a sexual assault charge against actor Kevin Spacey because the statute of limitations has run out.
Spacey has been accused of assaulting a male colleague in 1992.
The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said it was also declining to charge another actor, Steven Seagal, on allegations of assaulting a teenage girl in 1993 for the same reason. Seagal denies the charge.
Spacey is facing other sexual assault charges, and also is under investigation for alleged misconduct in London.
The Oscar-winning star of such films as American Beauty was fired from the television series House of Cards earlier this year, and his appearance in the film All the Money in the World was edited out.
Spacey apologized last year for trying to seduce a teenage actor in 1986, and his spokesman said Spacey was seeking treatment.
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A tiny Alaska Native village has experienced a boom in tourism in recent years as polar bears spend more time on land than on diminishing Arctic sea ice.
More than 2,000 people visited the northern Alaska village of Kaktovik on the Beaufort Sea last year to see polar bears in the wild, Alaska’s Energy Desk reported Monday.
The far north community is located on north shore of Barter Island on the Beaufort Sea coast in an area where rapid global warming has sped up the movement of sea ice, the primary habitat of polar bears. As ice has receded to deep water beyond the continental shelf, more bears are remaining on land to look for food.
The village had fewer than 50 visitors annually before 2011, said Jennifer Reed of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“Today we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of visitors, many from around the world, each year,” Reed said.
Polar bears have always been a common sight on sea ice near Kaktovik, but residents started noticing a change in the mid-1990s. More bears seemed to stay on land, and researchers began taking note of more female bears making dens in the snow on land instead of on the ice.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists began hearing reports of increasing numbers of polar bears in the area in the early 2000s, Reed said. As more attention was given to the plight of polar bears about a decade ago, more tourists stated heading to Kaktovik.
Bears stranded
Most tourists visit in the fall, when bears are forced toward land because sea ice is the farthest away from the shore. Some bears become stranded near Kaktovik until the sea freezes again in October or November.
The fall is also when residents of Kaktovik kill three bowhead whales. Bruce Inglangasak, an Inupiaq subsistence hunter who offers wildlife viewing tours, said residents were unsure how tourists would react to whaling.
“The community was scared about, you know, activists that were going to try to get us to shut down the whaling — subsistence whaling,” Inglangasak said. “But that’s not true.”
Inglangasak said he’s been offering polar bear tours since 2003 or 2004. Most of his clients are from China and Europe, as well as from the Lower 48 U.S. states, and arrive in Katovik on charter planes from Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Many tourists stay several days in the village, which has two small hotels, Inglangasak said.
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If you already subscribe to digital services like Netflix to binge on TV shows and Spotify to groove to an endless mix of music, the auto industry might have a deal for you: Subscribe to your next car as well.
Make that cars, plural. Some of these packages — which charge a monthly fee for the bundled use of a car, insurance and maintenance — let you trade in your vehicle on a regular basis, sometimes almost as readily as you can skip to a new tune on Spotify.
These still-developing car subscription programs are gaining traction among motorists who don’t want to be locked into the hassles of car ownership or even multiyear leasing commitments. All they want is a vehicle available whenever they want or need it.
“It feels like Christmas morning every time they bring me a new car,” said Steve Barnes, a video producer who subscribes to a high-end vehicle subscription program offered through Clutch Technologies, a startup operating in the Atlanta area.
Although they’re still in their infancy, car subscriptions are hooking more motorists as both long-established automakers and startups roll out plans.
How it works
Ford, a 115-year-old automaker with a network of more than 3,000 dealers, expanded into car subscriptions about 16 months ago through Canvas, a subsidiary in San Francisco.
Canvas offers a variety of used, once-leased Ford and Lincoln models as subscriptions that cost anywhere from $379 per month (for a Ford Fiesta subcompact) to $1,125 per month (for a Lincoln Navigator luxury SUV).
Those plans, however, impose driving limits of 500 miles a month. Subscribers can pay extra for higher limits — $35 per month for an additional 350 miles, for instance, or $100 per month for unlimited travel. Unused miles in any given month can be rolled over to the next one. If Canvas customers exceed the monthly mileage limits under their plan, they are charged an additional 15 cents per mile for a Ford car and slightly more for a Lincoln vehicle.
So far, Canvas has limited subscriptions to the San Francisco and Los Angeles area. In its first 16 months in California, thousands of subscribers have signed up for its subscription service while collectively driving about 8.5 million miles, according to the company.
“People are generally changing the way they are working, they are changing the way they are living and they are generally changing the way they are consuming things,” Canvas CEO Ned Ryan said. “Subscriptions are going to be a very large and growing share of how people consume automobiles.”
About a third of Canvas customers decided to subscribe to cars after moving or some other major event that left them reluctant to make a bigger commitment to leasing or owning, Ryan said. Others just like the simplicity and convenience offered by a car subscription, he said.
Temporary arrangement
Liz Dreskin of San Rafael, California, signed up for Canvas earlier this year to help her college-age kids get around at home during their summer break. Both are under the company’s 21-year-old age limit, so Dreskin got a vehicle for herself while allowing her children to drive the BMW she already owned.
After starting off with a sports utility vehicle from Canvas, she decided to pay $99 to switch to a 2015 Mustang. Although she plans to suspend her $500 monthly subscription at the end of September, she intends to start it up again when her kids return for the holidays. She’s also recommending the service to a friend whose current car is breaking down.
“I could totally see myself doing this in the future so I don’t have to deal with car insurance and car payments,” said Dreskin, 52.
Luxury automakers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and General Motors’ Cadillac brand also are offering subscription programs, but those are primarily catering to affluent drivers who want to try out a variety of expensive vehicles.
Barnes, the video producer, signed up with Clutch in 2016 for access to luxury vehicles. The divorced father will get a sports utility vehicle when he has custody of his daughters or a Tesla sports car or something else fun to drive when he’s headed out on the town with his current wife.
He pays about $1,400 per month for his Clutch subscription, substantially more than the roughly $900 per month he used to pay for a lease on a Tahoe and his insurance policy. But he says he can’t imagine ever owning or leasing a car again now that he’s driven dozens of different vehicles that he estimates would have cost him more than $1 million to own.
“I am definitely a ‘tech head’ who had always fantasized about being able to get whatever car you want,” Barnes said.
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U.S. manufacturing activity accelerated to more than a 14-year high in August, boosted by a surge in new orders, but increasing bottlenecks in the supply chain because of a robust economy and import tariffs could restrain further growth.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey was at odds with another survey published on Tuesday that suggested a peak in manufacturing and pointed to a slowdown in the months ahead against the backdrop of a strong dollar. Recent surveys have also signaled a cooling in regional factory activity.
“The surge in the ISM manufacturing index is difficult to square with other evidence, which indicate that growth in the factory sector has started to slow,” said Michael Pearce, a senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics in New York.
“With export orders now waning as a result of the dollar’s rapid appreciation over the past few months, we still think that growth in the factory sector will slow in the coming quarters.”
The ISM said its index of national factory activity jumped to 61.3 last month, the best reading since May 2004, from 58.1 in July. A reading above 50 indicates growth in manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the U.S. economy.
The ISM described demand as remaining “robust,” but cautioned that “the nation’s employment resources and supply chains continue to struggle.”
According to the ISM, survey respondents were “again overwhelmingly concerned about tariff-related activity, including how reciprocal tariffs will
impact company revenue and current manufacturing locations.”
President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policy has led to an escalating trade war with China and tit-for-tat import tariffs with other trading partners, including the European Union, Canada and Mexico.
Trump has defended the duties on steel and aluminum imports and a range of Chinese goods as necessary to protect American industries from what he says is unfair foreign competition.
Economists have warned that the tariffs could disrupt supply chains, undercut business investment and slow the economy’s momentum. The economy grew at a 4.2 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, almost double the 2.2 percent in the January-March period.
The dollar rose against a basket of currencies, while prices of U.S. Treasuries fell. Stocks on Wall Street were trading lower.
Impact of tariffs
The ISM’s new-orders sub-index increased to a reading of 65.1 last month from 60.2 in July. A measure of export orders, however, fell in August, most likely reflecting the dollar’s more than 5.0 percent rise this year against the currencies of the United States’ main trade partners.
The survey’s supplier deliveries index jumped to a reading of 64.5 last month, highlighting the rising bottlenecks in the supply chain, from 62.1 in July. It hit a 14-year high of 68.2 in June. Economists said the strong economy, marked by a labor market that is near or at full employment, as well as the import duties were behind the delays in deliveries.
“Bottlenecks in production will support inflation, but the constraints have yet to become overly binding,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Factories reported hiring more workers last month, with production increasing sharply. That bodes well for August’s employment report, which is scheduled to be released Friday.
Manufacturing payrolls have increased solidly this year.
In the computer and electronic products industry, manufacturers said most suppliers were “waiting to re-evaluate potential price increases until September.”
Machinery manufacturers said while raw material costs appeared to be “leveling off,” and most suppliers “are willing and able to suppress cost increases,” the impact of tariffs remained a concern.
In a separate survey Tuesday, data firm Markit said its U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a nine-month low of 54.7 in August from a reading of 55.3 in July.
Manufacturers reported a decline in new orders, with exports the main source of weakness.
Markit said some of the slowdown in factory activity reflected widespread shortages of inputs, hauliers and labor, leading to a further buildup of backlogs of work.
It said tariffs were exacerbating supply shortages and also driving prices higher. Almost two-thirds of companies surveyed reporting higher input prices explicitly blamed tariffs for the increased costs, Markit said.
“When we look across the recent survey data, it appears that activity has cooled somewhat lately, but remains at a solid level,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at J.P. Morgan in New York.
A third report from the Commerce Department showed construction spending barely rose in July as increases in homebuilding and investment in public projects were overshadowed by a sharp drop in private nonresidential outlays.
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The United Nations considers marriage before the age of 18 to be a human rights violation. While the highest occurrence is in the least developed nations, child marriage is also a reality in the United States. Researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health found some 78,000 American children between the ages of 15 and 17 are or have recently been married. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the effects of being married so young in the U.S.
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Brazilians are mourning the destruction of Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum in an overnight fire. Much of the collection of historic, scientific and cultural artifacts, among the largest in Brazil, is believed to have been destroyed. It was not immediately clear what started the fire late Sunday, but many are blaming the government for years of financial neglect. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Science fiction has long teased consumers about a future where robots are our personal assistants. But it’s no longer science fiction. The recent spike in consumer-grade “smart speakers” that respond to users’ voice commands has been given a face — with the help of a self-navigating robot that listens to its owner’s commands. Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Yemenis file into a makeshift cinema for the first time since fighting broke out in their city of Aden more than three years ago – and watch some of their own story reflected back at them on the projector screen.
The film they have come to see is “Ten Days Before the Wedding” – a gripping drama about a young couple from the southern port city whose marriage plans are nearly derailed by the country’s civil war and other troubles.
It is the first film publicly screened there since the conflict erupted, and the first local Yemeni production in years.
The story rings true for the audience of men and mostly veiled women, sitting on chairs in a hall which is normally used for real-life weddings and other events.
“We lived through each stage of the movie, which talks about each one of us, so we felt as though the film represented us and we were a part of it,” says audience member Nour Sareeb.
The story follows the romance between Rasha and Mamoun and branches out to cover broader issues including the country’s economic collapse and the prospects of rebuilding after violence.
Characters wrestle with falling incomes, rising prices and the problems of raising a dowry.
“We’ve all suffered because of the war, it has affected us all, but we all have ambition and hopes that the country will get better. We all aspire to be happy in this country,” Nour adds.
“We are with you”
Yemen has been devastated by a conflict in which President Abd-Rabu Mansour Hadi’s government, backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, is fighting to drive the Iran-aligned Houthi group out of the capital Sanaa and other cities it seized in 2014.
Violence dropped off in Aden after pro-government fighters recaptured it from Houthi forces in 2015, though battles erupted again earlier this year as southern separatists fought government troops nominally on the same side of the larger war.
The threat of attacks by militants remains, including some from hardline groups opposed to the Western-tinged world of cinema. And economic decline exacerbated by a weakening currency triggered protests this week that paralyzed activity in Aden and nearby areas.
In such an environment, finding investors for the film was not easy, says director Amr Gamal.
“We had to oppose these ideas that make you fear producing anything in the arts and we had to strive and work hard,” he tells Reuters.
“We met with the production team and decided to do it after everyone’s agreement. They all told me ‘We are with you,’ and we were surprised to find that the people in the street supported us,” he adds.
The film premiered in Aden during last month’s Eid al-Adha Muslim festival and has been running ever since.
The United Nations says the war has created the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, and rights groups say both sides have inflicted indiscriminate violence. More than 10,000 people have been killed, while hunger and disease have spread.
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Turkey saw the inflation rate rise to nearly 18 percent in August, a 15-year high fueled by a collapse in the Turkish lira, which fell more than 20 percent over the past few weeks.
The rising inflation and a falling currency are stoking fears Turkey is on the verge of financial and economic crisis.
“It’s the beginning of the slippery slope. It’s going to get worse unless there is a miraculous improvement in the exchange rate,” political analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners said. “We’ve reached the stage where there is nothing to anchor price expectations. People simply can’t gauge what prices or wages or costs will be next month.”
“It’s a very dismal set of numbers. The likelihood is headline inflation will reach 20 percent in (the) coming months,” economist Inan Demir of Nomura Securities said. “This is clearly a set of numbers that warrant a monetary response from inflation targeting the central bank.”
The Turkish Central Bank, in a statement on its website, vowed to act, promising to use all tools at its disposal and reshape its monetary policy stance at a Sept. 13 meeting where they will discuss interest rates.
The lira recouped much of its initial heavy losses following the release of the latest inflation figures.
“This (the central bank statement) is seen as a signal for a rate hike in that meeting,” Demir said. “Even though the wording of the statement is very uncertain, the expectation of tightening are curbing lira weakness after bad inflation numbers.”
International criticism
International investors sharply criticized the central bank for failing to aggressively raise interest rates to rein in inflation and defend the currency. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s influence is widely seen as responsible for the failure of the bank to act. Erdogan has repeatedly voiced opposition to raising interest rates.
“There will be a massive sell-off to the point of panic if they don’t raise rates,” Yesilada said. “This time, they have no option, even if they meant something else (in their statement), as everyone interpreted it as rates will be hiked. But there are two questions: by how much, and will it help at all?” he added.
Investors and analyst claim the central bank needs to raise rates by at least 4 percent, while some suggest a 10 percent raise is needed to avoid further drops in the currency, which analysts warned would open the lira to further pressure.
“In such a scenario, Turkish residents would want to hold more FX (foreign exchange) rather than Turkish lira … to protect their savings. That is a big risk to the currency,” Demir said.
Already, 40 percent of individual accounts in banks are in foreign currency.
However, an aggressive increase in rates may not be enough to rein in inflation or defend the lira, analysts warned.
“The concerns are on multiple fronts,” Demir said.
“What Turkish policy needs to do is straightforward,” he added. “They need to hike rates, tighten fiscal policy (cut government spending) and ease tensions with the United States, removing the threat of further sanctions by releasing (American) pastor (Andrew) Brunson.
“There is a way out of this, but it’s not obvious that the policymakers will take that way,” Demir said.
US trade tariffs
Last month’s imposition of trade tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump over the ongoing detention of Brunson was the trigger for the latest rout in the Turkish currency. Brunson is on trial on terrorism charges, a case dismissed by Washington as politically motivated.
Ignoring U.S. pressure, Turkey’s top appeals court judge, Rustu Cirit, on Monday supported Erdogan’s refusal to release Brunson, saying the pastor’s release is a matter only for the courts.
“To use brute force to reverse this fact, which is a basic principle of contemporary democracies and law of nations, would mean weakening human rights, rather than strengthening them,” Cirit said.
Trump is warning of further sanctions against Turkey if Brunson is not released. American regulatory authorities are considering reportedly a multibillion-dollar fine against Turkish state-controlled Halkbank for violations of Iranian sanctions.
Analysts warn the financial implications of an escalation of U.S.-Turkish tensions will continue to undermine confidence in the lira. However, Erdogan continues to take a robust stance against Washington, insisting the Turkish economy remains strong.
“The list of concerns is long, definitely, but the chief concern I have right now is the policymakers. They need to accept first that there is a significant problem that needs to be addressed,” Demir said. “But we heard this morning from finance minister (Berat) Albayrak that short-term fluctuations in inflation are normal. ”
Turkey already seems set to face a severe recession. Similar depreciations of the currency in past decades was accompanied by a double-digit contraction of the economy.
Analysts warn the stress on the economy will only grow.
“Each day, Ankara lingers or prevaricates the likelihood of a disaster event increases. Right now, the threat is very low, it’s manageable. But as winter approaches, the likelihood increases exponentially,” Yesilada said.
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The U.S. space agency NASA is offering a public challenge, with a lofty $750,000 reward, to anyone who can find ways to turn carbon dioxide into compounds that would be useful on Mars.
Calling it the “CO2 Conversion Challenge,” NASA scientists say they need help finding a way to turn a plentiful resource like carbon dioxide into a variety of useful products in order to make trips to Mars possible.
Carbon dioxide is one resource that is readily abundant within the Martian atmosphere.
Scientists say astronauts attempting space travel to Mars will not be able to bring everything they need to the red planet, so will have to figure out ways to use local resources once they get there to create what they need.
“Enabling sustained human life on another planet will require a great deal of resources and we cannot possibly bring everything we will need. We have to get creative,” said Monsi Roman, program manager of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program.
She said if scientists could learn to transform “resource like carbon dioxide into a variety of useful products, the space — and terrestrial — applications are endless.”
Carbon and oxygen are the molecular building blocks of sugars.
On Earth, plants can easily and inexpensively turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar. However, scientists say this approach would be difficult to replicate in space because of limited resources, such as energy and water.
NASA says the competition is divided into two phases. During the first phase, individuals or teams would submit a design and description of their proposal, with up to five teams winning $50,000 each. In the second phase, the finalists would build and present a demonstration of their proposals, with the winning individual or team earning $750,000.
Those who are up for the challenge need to register by Jan. 24, 2019, and then officially apply by Feb. 28, 2019.
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Yemen’s government says it is giving civil servants and pensioners pay raises, after protests against the country’s woeful economy nearly paralyzed a major port city Sunday.
Officials have not said when the raises would take effect or how much they will be.
Demonstrations against the economy in the port of Aden continued Monday. Many shops were closed, and some people burned tires in the streets.
Some of the marchers demanded to be paid in dollars, accusing senior officials of taking their salaries in the U.S.-based currency while paying the rank-and-file in the increasingly weak Yemeni rial.
The rial has lost more than half its value against the dollar since Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sanaa in 2014, sending the Western-recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia.
It has since returned to set up shop in Aden.
Airstrikes
Meanwhile, the Houthis are demanding a war crimes investigation against the Saudi-led coalition after an airstrike last month that killed 40 children.
In an appeal Monday to the International Criminal Court, the Houthis asked the court to look into its “humanitarian conscience.”
A coalition missile struck a market in a Yemeni town near the Saudi border last month, killing 51 people. Among the dead were 40 children on a school bus coming back from a summer camp outing.
The coalition called the airstrike a “mistake.” It promised to hold those behind the attack legally responsible and to compensate the victims.
But the Houithis accuse the Saudis of being both the “judge and the jury” and “making light” of the civilian deaths.
U.N. human rights officials have said they believe both sides in Yemen may be responsible for war crimes.
The Saudi-led airstrikes have compounded the misery in Yemen, which is not only one of the world’s poorest nations, but is also on the edge of famine.
The U.N. has said about 80 percent of Yemeni civilians lack enough food and medical care.
The coalition airstrikes have obliterated entire neighborhoods, including hospitals and schools.
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It’s coal people like miner Steve Knotts, 62, who make West Virginia Trump Country.
So it was no surprise that President Donald Trump picked the state to announce his plan rolling back Obama-era pollution controls on coal-fired power plants.
Trump left one thing out of his remarks, though: northern West Virginia coal country will be ground zero for increased deaths and illnesses from the rollback on regulation of harmful emission from the nation’s coal power plants.
An analysis done by his own Environmental Protection Agency concludes that the plan would lead to a greater number of people here dying prematurely, and suffering health problems that they otherwise would not have, than elsewhere in the country, when compared to health impacts of the Obama plan.
Knotts, a coal miner for 35 years, isn’t fazed when he hears that warning, a couple of days after Trump’s West Virginia rally. He says the last thing people in coal country want is the government slapping down more controls on coal — and the air here in the remote West Virginia mountains seems fine to him.
People here have had it with other people telling us what we need. We know what we need. We need a job,” Knotts said at lunch hour at a Circle K in a tiny town between two coal mines, and 9 miles down the road from a coal power plant, the Grant Town plant.
The sky around Grant Town is bright blue. The mountains are a dazzling green. Paw Paw Creek gurgles past the town.
Clean-air controls since the 1980s largely turned off the columns of black soot that used to rise from coal smokestacks. The regulations slashed the national death rates from coal-fired power plants substantially.
These days pollutants rise from smoke stacks as gases, before solidifying into fine particles — still invisible — small enough to pass through lungs and into bloodstreams.
An EPA analysis says those pollutants would increase under Trump’s plan, when compared to what would happen under the Obama plan. And that, it says, would lead to thousands more heart attacks, asthma problems and other illnesses that would not have occurred.
Nationally, the EPA says, 350 to 1,500 more people would die each year under Trump’s plan. But it’s northern two-thirds of West Virginia and the neighboring part of Pennsylvania that would be hit hardest, by far, according to Trump’s EPA.
Trump’s rollback would kill an extra 1.4 to 2.4 people a year for every 100,000 people in those hardest-hit areas, compared to under the Obama plan, according to the EPA analysis. For West Virginia’s 1.8 million people, that would be equal to at least a couple dozen additional deaths a year.
Trump’s acting EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whose grandfather worked in the coal camps of West Virginia, headed to coal states this week and last to promote Trump’s rollback. The federal government’s retreat on regulating pollution from coal power plants was “good news,” Wheeler told crowds there.
In Washington, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said Trump’s plan still would result in “dramatic reductions” in emissions, deaths and illness compared to the status quo, instead of to the Obama plan. Obama’s Clean Power Plan targeted climate-changing carbon dioxide, but since coal is the largest source of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, the Obama plan would have curbed other harmful emissions from the coal-fired power plants as well.
About 160 miles to the south of Grant Town, near the state capital of Charleston, shop owner Doris Keller figures that if Trump thinks something’s for the best, that’s good enough for her.
“I just know this. I like Donald Trump and I think that he’s doing the right thing,” said Keller, who turned out to support Trump Aug. 21 when he promoted his rollback proposal. She lives five miles from the 2,900-megawatt John Amos coal-fired power plant.
“I think he has the best interests of the regular common people at the forefront,” Keller says.
Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy program would dismantle President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which has been caught up in court battles without yet being implemented.
The Obama plan targeted climate-changing emissions from power plants, especially coal. It would have increased federal regulation of emissions from the nation’s electrical grid and broadly promoted natural gas, solar power and other cleaner energy.
Trump’s plan would cede much of the federal oversight of existing coal-fired power plants and drop official promotion of cleaner energy. Individual states largely would decide how much to regulate coal power plants in their borders. The plan is open for public review, ahead of any final White House decision.
“I’m getting rid of some of these ridiculous rules and regulations, which are killing our companies … and our jobs,” Trump said at the rally.
There was no mention of the “small increases” in harmful emissions that would result, compared to the Obama plan, or the health risks.
EPA charts put numbers on just how many more people would die each year because of those increased coal emissions.
Abboud and spokeswoman Ashley Bourke of the National Mining Association, which supports Trump’s proposed regulatory rollback on coal emissions, said other federal programs already regulate harmful emissions from coal power plants. Bourke also argued that the health studies the EPA used in its death projections date as far back as the 1970s, when coal plants burned dirtier.
In response, Conrad Schneider of the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Task Force said the EPA’s mortality estimates had taken into account existing regulation of plant emissions.Additionally, health studies used by the EPA looked at specific levels of exposure to pollutants and their impact on human health, so remain constant over time, said Schneider, whose group analyzes the EPA projections.
With competition from natural gas and other cleaner energy helping to kill off more than a third of coal jobs over the last decade, political leaders in coal states are in no position to be the ones charged with enforcing public-health protections on surviving coal-fired power plants, said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
“Our state is beholden to coal. Our politicians are beholden to coal,” Stockman said outside Trump’s West Virginia rally, where she was protesting. “Meanwhile, our people are being poisoned.”
And when it comes to coal power plants and harm, Schneider said, “when you’re at Grant Town, you’re at Ground Zero.”
Retired coal miner Jim Haley, living 4 miles from the town’s coal-fired power plant, has trouble telling from the smokestack when the plant is even operating.
“They’ve got steam coming out of the chimneys. That’s all they have coming out of it,” Haley said.
Parked near the Grant Town post office, where another resident was rolling down the quiet main street on a tractor, James Perkins listened to word of the EPA’s health warnings. He cast a look into the rear-view mirror into the backseat of his pickup truck, at his 3-year-old grandson, sitting in the back.
“They need to make that safe,” said Perkins, a health-care worker who had opted not to follow his father into the coal mines. “People got little kids.”
A key opponent of high-tech, automated weapons known as “killer robots” is blaming countries like the U.S. and Russia for blocking consensus at a U.N.-backed conference, where most countries wanted to ensure that humans stay at the controls of lethal machines.
Coordinator Mary Wareham of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots spoke Monday after experts from dozens of countries agreed before dawn Saturday at the U.N. in Geneva on 10 “possible guiding principles” about such “Lethal Automated Weapons Systems.”
Point 2 said: “Human responsibility for decisions on the use of weapons systems must be retained since accountability cannot be transferred to machines.”
Wareham said such language wasn’t binding, adding that “it’s time to start laying down some rules now.”
Members of the LAWS conference will meet again in November.
When President Donald Trump pulled the plug on an upcoming trip to North Korea by his secretary of state, he pointed a finger of blame at China and the global superpower’s trade practices.
In his recent trade breakthrough with Mexico, Trump praised the country’s outgoing president for his help on border security and agriculture.
Both developments offered fresh evidence of how Trump has made trade policy the connective tissue that ties together different elements of his “America First” foreign policy and syncs up them with his political strategy for the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s 2016 triumph was paved in part by his support among blue-collar voters in Midwestern manufacturing states that narrowly supported him over Democrat Hillary Clinton, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
His aggressive trade tactics, epitomized by tariffs and standoffs with longtime economic partners and allies, are aimed at reversing what he has long viewed as unfair trade deals while maintaining support among largely white, working-class voters who have been hurt by the loss of manufacturing jobs.
“Trump understands that economic policy is foreign policy and vice versa,” said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The most important element of foreign policy is to not just keep the world safe but to also promote America’s economic interest. That’s what Trump does — this is America First.”
It’s also good politics, in Trump’s view.
“It’s a populist position. But it’s also a popular position with a lot of Americans,” Moore said.
As he puts a high premium on trade gains, Trump is intertwining the issue with a host of top foreign policy concerns.
Trump, asked by reporters last week about North Korea living up to its commitments to denuclearize, said “part of the North Korean problem is caused by our trade disputes with China,” pointing to the U.S. trade imbalance with China.
“We have to straighten out our trade relationship because too much money is being lost by us,” Trump said. “And as you know, China is the route to North Korea.”
Trade has been a common refrain at the president’s rallies, where he has vowed to pursue “fair and reciprocal trade.”
“We don’t want stupid trade like we had for so long,” Trump said during a rally in Duluth, Minnesota, in June.
Trump’s second year as president has been marked by a number of trade disputes with traditional U.S. allies and global rivals alike, an approach cemented by his tweet that “trade wars are good.”
He imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in March, prompting retaliation from the European Union and other American allies. Later in the month, Trump announced tariffs on China to combat what he called the theft of U.S. technology from a wide range of goods and services.
China struck back with its own sanctions on a variety of U.S. products, including Midwest farm-produced soybeans in a way to hit hard against the president’s base of voters. The two sides have clashed during the spring and summer, raising the stakes in their trade fight.
In late July, Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a temporary deal at the White House to avert tariffs on automobile imports and a ramping up of their trade dispute — although the threat still remains.
After a breakthrough with Mexico, Trump’s team has been engaged in talks with Canada aimed at creating a new version of the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.
While previous administrations have often used a carrot-and-stick approach to trade as a way to forge agreements, before Trump’s arrival trade agendas had emphasized multi-lateral and bilateral deals aimed at maintaining U.S. leadership around the world, promoting American values and improving human rights.
This administration, by contrast, “is leveraging foreign policy tools to achieve its trade goals,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Critics say Trump’s insistence on trade concessions could hamper his ability to move forward in other areas.
On North Korea, for example, Trump has sought to turn his meeting with Kim Jong Un into a vivid example of how his unconventional style can bring longstanding U.S. adversaries to the bargaining table.
But by raising China’s trade practices as essential to any progress to ensuring North Korea gets rid of its nuclear weapons, Trump runs the risk of getting bogged down in both areas — and having little to show for it.
Mixing foreign policy and trade policy introduces so many variables it’s “virtually impossible to close on a precise policy decision,” said Daniel Ujczo, a trade attorney with Dickinson Wright PLLC in Columbus, Ohio. “You’re constantly chasing after the next issue as opposed to having a very targeted approach to the objective.”
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Tanned and wearing a swimsuit, So Myong Il walks to the barbecue pit and throws on some clams.
He obviously loves the beach he’s on as well as the rugged, emerald Chilbo mountains that rise abruptly behind it. He loves them enough to forget, for a moment at least, that he is a senior official sent to deliver an ideology-soaked pitch singing their praises and instead lets the natural beauty surrounding him speak for itself.
Comrade So sees great things for North Korean attractions like this.
Hotels, big and small. Tourists from all over the country, maybe the world. “As long as we have the leadership of our respected Marshal,” he says, referring to leader Kim Jong Un, “our future will be bright indeed.”
So wouldn’t think of questioning the leader, but there is a hint of apprehension in his voice. And he isn’t alone.
North Korea is pushing ahead with a new strategy of economic development and the intensified diplomacy with China, South Korea and the United States that such a move requires. But hopes for a better future are mixed with concern over potential downsides of political or social volatility, and something that’s harder to articulate: a fear of the unknown – even if it appears far more promising than the arduous path the country has been on for decades.
Even before announcing in January that he had sufficiently perfected his nuclear arsenal and could start to focus on other things, Kim has held economic development to be his primary long-term concern.
He has allowed markets and entrepreneurialism to flourish and, since succeeding his father as leader seven years ago, has dramatically transformed the skyline of the capital, Pyongyang, with several high-rise districts. The transformation in the east coast city of Wonsan, where Kim has a summer villa, has been almost as spectacular.
As Kim prepares for the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding on Sept. 9, his ambitious development plan is being implemented, from the small-time renovation of town halls to the almost biblical-scale mobilization of “soldier-builders,” who are working around the clock to turn the remote northern city of Samjiyon into yet another showcase of Pyongyang-style socialism.
Economic development – and how U.S. capital and know-how could speed it along – was President Donald Trump’s big carrot when he met with Kim in Singapore three months ago to try to negotiate a denuclearization deal.
But Kim’s diplomatic overtures aren’t intended to open the door to American capitalists, a scenario that would make any good party cadre shudder. They are aimed at breaking down support for sanctions and getting the U.S. to step out of the way. Kim’s game is to play China and the U.S. off each other, grab whatever concessions he can along the way and adjust his position as the situation evolves.
In the meantime, lest anyone get the wrong idea, the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea has begun churning out paeans to socialism in its daily newspaper along with anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism screeds that underscore North Korea’s official opposition to essentially anything that might be considered the American way of life. Or, as it’s known in the jargon of North Korea’s propaganda machine, “the imperialists’ bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning.”
The past few months have been tense in Pyongyang.
Restrictions on some of the movements of foreign diplomats have been tightened, for example, and even requests by The Associated Press to interview government officials or to speak with regular citizens have mostly been denied.
Uncertain of where it might all end up, state-run media have provided only limited coverage of Kim’s meetings with Trump in June and his multiple summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Reports have portrayed Kim as the consummate statesman, firmly in charge of a carefully considered strategy to make his country safer and more prosperous.
Kim is ardently wooing South Korean investment to help him build the very things Trump was offering: infrastructure, particularly roads and railways, and the development of selected tourism zones. After a high-profile chill last year, he is also actively courting Beijing, which continues to be an essential source of fuel, a key market for North Korea’s coal and other natural resources and a fairly reliable check on U.S. power in the region.
Pyongyang’s explanation for the shift in its foreign policy has been consistent: Having successfully built a credible nuclear deterrent to U.S. aggression, Kim is reaching out to Seoul to join hands in a “for Koreans, by Koreans” effort to secure a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, unhindered by the meddling of foreign powers.
Undoubtedly, images of the leader smiling and shaking hands with Trump, whose face had never been on the front pages of their newspapers before, signaled a major and bewildering change to many North Koreans.
But officials have made sure they don’t have much time to ruminate on it.
Normal routines of work and study have been put on hold for large segments of the populace who have been mobilized for the development projects. Tens of thousands of people in Pyongyang, meanwhile, have spent the past several months feverishly preparing for mass rallies and mass games to mark the anniversary.
Mount Chilbo, a collection of rocky peaks and a stretch of largely untouched seashore on the country’s northeastern fringe, is one of North Korea’s most cherished natural wonders.
The first hotel for non-Korean visitors opened in the 1980s, followed in 2004 by homestay-style lodgings near the beach, said So, a North Hamgyong Province People’s Committee official. Together they have a capacity of fewer than 100 guests and only operate from April until early November.
Many North Koreans bring tents and sleep on the beach.
But even in this rustic corner of the country, the pressure to contribute to Kim’s grand development scheme is keenly felt.
So said he would soon travel to China to discuss possible areas of cooperation.
As an indicator of Kim’s success with Beijing, tourism from China is already on the rise. Pyongyang’s longer-term goal, however, is to tap the South Korean market. The idea is that, if handled properly, South Korean tourism would present a chance to promote the North in a positive light and boost its image within South Korea.
That’s a gamble too.
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, South Koreans were allowed to visit in a highly regulated and controlled manner, and massive investment from South Korean businesses helped the North fund infrastructure projects in the same Wonsan-Mount Kumgang area that Kim is focusing on now. But it ended badly in 2008 when a South Korean woman who entered a restricted area was shot to death by a North Korean soldier.
So said he believes Chilbo, like Kim’s pet projects in Wonsan, could be a big draw for tourists. But he worries about where the money will come from and what might be lost.
“Whatever we do, we need to protect the natural beauty of this place,” he said.”I think there will be many changes in the coming years. Plans are being discussed. But nothing is decided.”