A world without hunger by 2030 is the theme of this year’s World Food Day, and the goal of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Events around the world on October 16th will promote awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger and for the need to ensure food security and nutritious diets for all. Advances in technology and artificial intelligence can help feed the world. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
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Pope Francis has created seven new saints in a canonization ceremony at the Vatican. The new saints included two important Church figures who were strong voices in the favor of the poor: Pope Paul VI and Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Before tens of thousands of faithful in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope Francis elevated to sainthood seven people including Pope Paul VI and murdered Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Both were controversial figures in the church.
Large tapestries with the images of the seven new saints hung from St. Peter’s Basilica as is customary during a canonization ceremony. The other five lesser-known new saints were from Italy, Germany and Spain. They included an Italian orphan who died from bone cancer when he was just 19 years old.
Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera and Spain’s Queen Sofia attended the ceremony.
Pope Paul VI was the third pope to be declared saint by Francis since his election in 2013. He was best known for having presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the church meetings in the 1960s that reformed the Catholic Church and opened it to the world.
Francis said Paul VI, like the apostle, spent his life for Christ’s Gospel, crossing new boundaries and becoming its witness in proclamation and in dialogue, a prophet of an extroverted Church looking to those far away and taking care of the poor.
In a sign of the importance Pope Francis placed on Romero and Paul, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt Romero wore when he was murdered in 1980 and also used Pope Paul’s staff, chalice and vestment. Both men strongly influenced Francis and he praised them for their courage in turbulent times and their dedication to social justice and the poor.
Romero was killed in San Salvador by a right-wing death squad. He had often denounced violence, repression and poverty in his homilies. He became an icon for Latin America’s peasants.
In his homily, Pope Francis praised Romero for “disregarding his own life to be close to the poor and to his people.”
Halloween is a popular holiday in the United States. Hauntworld.com estimates there are more than 4,000 Halloween “fee-based” attractions in the U.S., with the overall industry generating more than $1 billion. VOA’s Jill Craig takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of a popular haunted forest in Maryland, where people pay up for a night of fright.
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Call it Vollywood? Vietnam’s movie scene is growing quickly, with an explosion of theaters across the country, more filmmakers entering the market, and more global attention from the 2017 blockbuster “Kong,” which was set and filmed here.
Search for “Vietnam movies” online and most of the results are not films made by Vietnamese people, but Hollywood depictions of the Vietnam War, like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July. Many of the films are shot in the United States, and all of them are stories about Americans, with Vietnamese characters sprinkled around the backdrop.
This has been a thorn in the side of locals who want Vietnam to have its own place in the world of cinema. That is starting to happen.
Academy Awards submission
Ngo Thanh Van, who came to international prominence with her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has turned to directing. Her newest film, The Tailor, has been submitted as Vietnam’s official entry for next year’s Academy Awards, in the foreign language category.
“Making movies in the Vietnamese market is a risky business, not just for me,” Van, who also had a role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, told the news site Zing. “But it is because it is difficult that I want to put all my heart into doing it.”
Increasing demand
Increasing interest comes from both Vietnamese creators and Vietnamese customers. Domestic theater chain CGV reported a 30 percent jump in profits for 2017 compared to the year before. While it is just one company, it controls close to half the cinemas in the Southeast Asian country. Critics call it a monopoly, but that also means its growth is reflective of the industry’s growth at large. Besides CGV, owned by South Korea’s CJ Group, movies are screened by a crowded playing field that includes BHD, Galaxy, Skyline, Cinestar, Cinebox, Lotte and others.
The theaters are feeding consumer demand in an economy that expands nearly 7 percent every year. That has also brought the likes of Netflix and rival streaming service iflix to serve Vietnamese viewers.
“When a country develops, the next developmental need will be entertainment, so it is important to capture this demand,” investment advisory Investar wrote in an analysis of the film industry. “In Vietnam, many big cinemas have started to flourish, and the investment flow in this field is increasing.”
Diaspora comes home
The growth of Vietnamese cinema coincides with more visibility of the Vietnamese diaspora in films abroad. The Netflix hit To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before stars a Vietnamese-American born in the Mekong Delta town of Can Tho. In Downsizing, Matt Damon plays opposite Hong Chau, who deploys a thick Vietnamese accent but earned a Golden Globe nomination.
And some of that diaspora is coming home. Vietnam has seen American actors, directors, producers and film editors return or resettle here in recent years, most famously the brothers Johnny Tri and Charlie Nguyen. Filmmakers from France, a former colonizer of Vietnam, have also relocated, such as a pair of French-Vietnamese who set up an animation studio in Ho Chi Minh City.
“Watching Vietnamese movies is one of the fun, relaxing and effective ways to express Vietnamese patriotism,” entertainer Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen said on her Facebook page. “If you support Vietnamese movies, the movies will be profitable, and investors will put in more money.”
She added that Vietnam has plenty of scenic locales that would be a cameraman’s dream.
Dream locale
Kong: Skull Island is a good example. The latest installment of the brobdingnagian gorilla franchise was filmed around Vietnam, including shots of the limestone cliffs and malachite green waters of Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The film is also a telling symbol of a Vietnamese shift. Although it is set in the Vietnam War, Kong was not received as a war drama, but celebrated for everything else: The gripping ape-fueled action, the performances of Samuel L. Jackson and Brie Larson, and the majestic scenery. Vietnam is happy to provide that, rather than just another battlefield backdrop.
Vietnamese-language films have gone global here and there, from Cyclo to The White Silk Dress. Locals hope those are just the start of a thriving industry.
“We know that Vietnamese movies are not yet equal with neighboring countries, because we are still in a period of opening up,” Ky Duyen said. “But that does not mean that we will not catch up or even surpass them.”
India has Bollywood. Nigeria has Nollywood. It might soon be time for Vollywood.
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One of the joys of computer algorithms and machine learning is their ability to extract new data from old technologies. Doctors at the University of London in Oxford for instance have figured out a way to take regular CT heart scans and predict heart problems years in advance. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Afghan women too many times have been seen by some as victims. Victims of domestic violence, cultural limitations, political restrictions and more. Their voices often go unheard, but not in a play produced in Washington called ‘Women of Troy: Voices From Afghanistan.’ It is a story of Afghan women’s bravery and resilience, told through music and poetry. VOA’s Zheela Noori has more in this report.
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Summer in the United States is a time for festivals, featuring music, games and food. And in one West Virginia town that can entail very unusual food. We’re talking about fare such as spicy bear and deer stew, rich turtle soup, alligator gumbo, possum and elk. The main ingredients are roadkill … animals killed along the local highways by passing cars. Evgeny Baranov went to this unusual event and tried some of the delicacies. Anna Rice narrates.
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The world was watching, July 20, 1969, as a grainy black and white TV image showed American astronaut Neil Armstrong step onto the moon’s surface and plant a U.S. flag. A new biopic follows his life, chronicling his courage, spirit of adventure and razor-sharp focus under pressure that paved the way to the historical Apollo 11 space mission. “First Man,” also shows the years of comradeship, commitment and sacrifice that galvanized the American spirit and awed the world. Penelope Poulou reports.
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Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts as part of the security breach disclosed two weeks ago, fewer than the 50 million it initially believed were affected.
The hackers accessed name, email addresses or phone numbers from these accounts, according to Facebook. For 14 million of them, hackers got even more data, such as hometown, birthdate, the last 10 places they checked into or the 15 most recent searches.
An additional 1 million accounts were affected, but hackers didn’t get any information from them.
Facebook isn’t giving a breakdown of where these users are, but says the breach was “fairly broad.” It plans to send messages to people whose accounts were hacked.
Facebook said third-party apps and Facebook apps like WhatsApp and Instagram were unaffected by the breach.
Facebook said the FBI is investigating, but asked the company not to discuss who may be behind the attack. The company said it hasn’t ruled out the possibility of smaller-scale attacks that used the same vulnerability.
Facebook has said the attackers gained the ability to “seize control” of those user accounts by stealing digital keys the company uses to keep users logged in. They could do so by exploiting three distinct bugs in Facebook’s code. The company said it has fixed the bugs and logged out affected users to reset those digital keys.
At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg – whose own account was compromised – said attackers would have had the ability to view private messages or post on someone’s account, but there’s no sign that they did.
World stocks are climbing Friday after two days of sharp losses. Major U.S. stock indexes are up more than 1 percent, but they’re still on track for their biggest one-week loss since late March.
Technology and internet companies were some of the hardest hit over the last two days and they led the market higher Friday. Apple climbed 2.7 percent to $220.18. Consumer-focused companies also rallied, as Amazon jumped 3.8 percent to $1,783.96 and Netflix surged 4.7 percent to $336.30.
The S&P 500 index climbed 37 points, or 1.4 percent, to 2,766 at 9:45 a.m. Eastern time. The benchmark index tumbled 5.3 percent over the past two days and as of Thursday it had fallen for six consecutive days. The S&P is down 5.6 percent from its latest record high, set Sept. 20.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 305 points, or 1.2 percent, to 25,358. The Nasdaq composite surged 138 points, or 1.9 percent, to 7,467. The Russell 2000 index gained 17 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,563. That index, which is made up of smaller and more U.S.-focused companies, has fallen into a 10 percent “correction” since reaching a record high at the end of August.
On the New York Stock Exchange, winners outnumbered losers eight to one.
Stocks in Europe and Asia also recovered some of their recent losses. The French CAC 40 and the DAX in Germany both rose 0.8 percent while Britain’s FTSE 100 was 0.7 percent higher. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.5 percent after sinking early in the day and following a nearly 4 percent loss on Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 2.1 percent and the Kospi in South Korea rose 1.5 percent.
The market’s recent losing streak started when strong economic data and positive comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped set off a wave of selling in the bond market. Investors were betting that the U.S. economy would keep growing at a healthy pace. The sales pushed bond prices lower and yields higher. That drove interest rates sharply higher, which worried investors who felt that a big increase in interest rates could eventually stifle economic growth. Higher yields also make bonds more appealing to investors versus stocks.
The worst losses went to stocks that have led the market in recent years, including technology companies, as well as companies that do better when economic growth speeds up, like industrial firms.
Banks rose as they began to report their third-quarter results. Citigroup jumped 2.4 percent to $70.04. Last year’s corporate tax cut and rising interest rates have helped banks make more money.
Bond prices turned lower as the stock market stabilized. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.16 percent from 3.13 percent.
High-dividend stocks lagged the rest of the market, and utilities and household goods makers were little changed. Those stocks held up a bit better than the rest of the market over the last six days. Investors view them as relatively safe, steady assets that look better when growth is uncertain and the rest of the market is in turmoil.
U.S. crude oil added 0.6 percent to $71.43 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the international standard, was up 0.6 percent to $80.77 a barrel in London.
The dollar rose to 112.17 yen from 111.94 yen. The euro fell to $1.1548 from $1.1594.
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Just in case any of the global central bankers and finance ministers gathered in Indonesia missed the message delivered repeatedly this week, the host nation said it again Friday: Everyone stands to lose if trade wars are allowed to escalate.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo didn’t mention the United States or China, the world’s two largest economies, but it was clear who he was talking about in an address to the plenary session of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings on the island of Bali.
WATCH: IMF Urges US and China to De-escalate Tariff Wars
“Lately it feels like the relations among the major economies are becoming more and more like Game of Thrones,” Widodo said in a speech peppered with references to the HBO series about dynasties and kingdoms battling for power.
“Are we so busy fighting with each other and competing against each other that we fail to notice the things which are increasingly threatening, all of us alike, rich and poor, large and small,” he said.
Poorer and populous emerging market countries like his are among the most vulnerable to the fallout from the ongoing U.S.-Sino tariff war, and rising U.S. interest rates that are drawing investors away and driving down currencies.
“All these troubles in the world economy, are enough to make us feel like saying: ‘Winter is coming,'” Widodo said, using a phrase that characters in the popular fantasy series constantly repeat to refer to spectral dangers that could destroy them all.
With rivalry growing in the world economy, Widodo said “the situation could be more critical compared to the global financial crisis 10 years ago.”
The market ructions have now cascaded through to developed markets with Wall Street extending a slide into a sixth session on Thursday amid the trade war fears.
The United States and China have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods over the past few months.
The tariffs stem from the Trump administration’s demands that China make sweeping changes to its intellectual property practices, rein in high-technology industrial subsidies, open its markets to more foreign competition and take steps to cut a politically sensitive U.S. goods trade surplus.
Rubbing salt in U.S. wounds, China reported on Friday an unexpected acceleration in export growth in September and a record $34.13 billion trade surplus with the United States.
Mnuchin: China trade talks must include yuan
In an interview with Reuters, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he told China’s central bank chief that currency issues need to be part of any further U.S.-China trade talks and expressed his concerns about the yuan’s recent weakness.
Mnuchin also said that China needs to identify concrete “action items” to rebalance the two countries’ trade relationship before talks to resolve their disputes can resume.
The U.S. Treasury chief and People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang extensively discussed currency issues on the sidelines of the meetings in Bali.
Mnuchin’s comments on China’s currency come ahead of next week’s scheduled release of a hotly anticipated Treasury report on currency manipulation, the first since a significant weakening of yuan began this spring.
Mnuchin said re-launching trade talks would require China to commit to taking action on structural reforms to its economy.
If the relationship could be rebalanced, he said the U.S.-China total annual trade relationship could grow to $1 trillion from $650 billion currently, with $500 billion of exports from each country.
G-20 members and trade issues
Meanwhile, the chairman of a meeting of finance leaders from the Group of 20 leading industrialized and emerging economies admitted that the trade tensions within the group could only be solved by the countries directly involved.
“The G-20 can play a role in providing the platform for discussions. But the differences that still persist should be resolved by the members that are directly involved in the tensions,” Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s Treasury Minister, told a news conference after chairing the G-20 meeting in Bali.
More than 19,000 delegates and other guests, including ministers, central bank heads and some leaders, were attending the IMF-World Bank meetings, and Widodo asked them to “cushion the blows from trade wars, technical disruption and market turmoil.”
“I hope you will each do your part to nudge our various leaders in the right direction,” Widodo said, adding that “confrontation and collision impose a tragic price.”
The IMF’s twice-yearly report on the Asia Pacific region, released Thursday, warned that the market rout seen in emerging economies could worsen if the Federal Reserve and other major central banks tightened monetary policy more quickly than expected.
At Friday’s plenary, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde estimated that the escalation of current trade tensions could reduce global GDP by almost one percent over the next two years.
IMF forecasts of global economic growth for both 2018 and 2019 were cut to 3.7 percent, from 3.9 percent in its July forecast.
“Clearly, we need to de-escalate these disputes,” Lagarde told the plenary session.
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored 19 student filmmakers at the 45th Student Academy Awards on Thursday night.
The winners are eligible to compete for a 2018 Academy Award in the animated short, live action short and documentary short categories. They join a list of Student Academy Award alumni that includes Pete Docter, Cary Fukunaga, Spike Lee, Trey Parker, Patricia Riggen and Robert Zemeckis.
Seven hundred film academy members sifted through more than 1,500 entries from 400 schools to arrive at the winners, who come from a variety of countries including China, India, Switzerland, France and Mongolia.
The Student Academy Awards are designed to help spotlight emerging global talent in the entertainment industry.
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Queen Elizabeth’s granddaughter Princess Eugenie married Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle on Friday in front of celebrities and Britain’s senior royals including Prince Harry and wife Meghan who wed at the same venue in May.
Eugenie, 28, younger daughter of the queen’s third child, Prince Andrew, and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, tied the knot with Brooksbank, 32, in the castle’s 15th Century St George’s Chapel.
It was the same setting as the wedding of Harry and Meghan earlier in the year, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as the couple are now known, were among the star-studded congregation at Friday’s event.
The 92-year-old queen and her husband Philip, 97, who has retired from official engagements, were joined by other royals and celebrities including Hollywood stars Liv Tyler and Demi Moore, models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and singer Ellie Goulding.
Female guests had to cling on to their hats as a blustery wind threatened their wedding outfits and a page boy tripped on the stairs walking into the chapel.
Eugenie’s dress, by Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos who founded the British-based label Peter Pilotto, was designed deliberately with a low back to reveal scars from surgery she underwent as a child. She was led down the aisle by her father, Prince Andrew.
“This is meant to be a family wedding,” Andrew said earlier. “There will be a few more people than most people have, there are a few more than Harry had, but that’s just the nature of Eugenie and Jack – they’ve got so many friends that they need a church of that size to fit them all in,” he told ITV’s “This
Morning” which broadcast the event live.
Camilla absent
Singing and cheering well-wishers gathered outside in the streets of Windsor in the shadow of the castle, although there were far fewer people than crammed into the town for Harry’s wedding.
“I’m a true royalist,” David Weeks, 77, bedecked in a “Union Jack” suit and bowler hat, told Reuters. “I was here for the queen’s 90th birthday. I was here for Harry and Meghan’s wedding, I wouldn’t miss it, I love the atmosphere.”
The ceremony was overseen by the Dean of Windsor David Conner and charity guests and 1,200 members of the public were invited into the grounds for the occasion.
One noticeable absentee was Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, as she was carrying out an engagement in Scotland.
Princess Charlotte, 3, daughter of Harry’s elder brother Prince William and his wife Kate, was a bridesmaid, and her brother, Prince George, 5, a page boy.
After the service, the couple made an open-top carriage tour of Windsor. The queen then hosted a reception at the castle.
Eugenie, a director at London’s Hauser & Wirth art gallery, and Brooksbank, who owns a wine wholesale business and is European brand manager for Casamigos Tequila, which was co-founded by U.S. actor George Clooney, met in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier in 2010.
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Six African women with albinism, a condition that affects the pigmentation of the skin, hair and eyes, set out to climb Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro earlier this month in a bid to raise the visibility of people living with the condition.
The climbers have all suffered abuse and discrimination, and in one case horrific violence because of their condition. They hope to challenge widely held stereotypes by scaling Africa’s highest peak and titled their summit attempt simply Climb for Albinism.
At 5,895 meters tall, Kilimanjaro is no easy feat for any climber. For those with albinism it is an exceptional challenge. Nodumo Ncomanzi, one of the six climbers, told VOA in an interview following the attempt that she had never faced such conditions.
“I’ve never had to deal with that much sun exposure, and to have my low vision challenged to that extent. So definitely a really difficult environment,” she said.
Daily discrimination
Ncomanzi grew up in Zimbabwe and says the discrimination she faced was not as bad as it is in many other countries, where myth and superstition can often lead to abuse and violence. But she says she was victimized on a daily basis.
“I was very much made fun of at school. I was harassed typically in public in just walking across the street,” she said.
Despite such adversity, Ncomanzi graduated from Yale University in the United States and is now an educational consultant.
Her teammate, Mariamu Staford, overcame perhaps the greatest challenge. She was attacked in her home by a group of men, who hacked off her arms with a machete. She now runs her own textiles business in Tanzania. All of the women volunteered for the climb to try to raise the visibility of people with albinism.
“Especially when women with albinism are discussed in the media for example, the narrative is usually that of victimhood and pity. And we wanted to show that we are more capable of accomplishing and succeeding in challenges that go far beyond the stereotypes that we are usually attached to,” Ncomanzi said.
One summits
Four team members reached camp at 4,700 meters before stopping on medical advice. Two continued the climb: Ncomanzi and Kenyan teammate Jane Waithera, who had to stop 20 meters from the summit because of a knee injury.
In the end, it was Ncomanzi who represented the team at the summit, reaching the peak Oct. 7.
They are remarkable personal achievements for all the climbers, and perhaps a step forward in the fight to end discrimination and abuse against people with albinism.
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The head of Russia’s space agency said Friday that two astronauts who survived the midair failure of a Russian rocket would fly again and would provisionally travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of next year.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, was speaking a day after Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and American Nick Hague made a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying them to the orbital ISS.
Rogozin Friday posted a picture on Twitter of himself next to the two astronauts and said they had now arrived in Moscow. Both men escaped unscathed and feel fine, Roscosmos has said.
The mishap occurred as the first and second stages of a Russian rocket separated shortly after the launch from Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era cosmodrome of Baikonur.
Thursday’s accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launch pad explosion.
The Interfax news agency Friday cited a source familiar with the Russian investigation as saying that a faulty valve had caused the first stage of the Soyuz-FG rocket to malfunction even though the valve had been properly checked before take-off.
NASA has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the United States retired its Space Shuttle program in 2011, although the agency has announced plans for a test flight carrying two astronauts on a SpaceX commercial rocket next April.
Space is an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia at a time of fraught relations. Asked about the mishap, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he was “not worried” that American astronauts have to rely on Russia to get into space.
Moscow has suspended all manned space launches, while Rogozin has ordered a state commission to investigate what went wrong. Russia’s Investigative Committee has also opened a criminal investigation into the matter.
Unmanned launches of the Progress spacecraft, which carry food and other supplies to the ISS and use the same rocket system as Soyuz, might also be suspended, Interfax has said.
WATCH: US-Russian Space Crew Makes Emergency Landing
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A U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut made an emergency return to earth Thursday shortly after launching on what was supposed to be a mission to the International Space Station. Rescuers reached American Nick Hague and Russian Alexei Ovchinin after their emergency landing in Kazakhstan. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb recently sat down with Hague to talk about his future in space, a future now up in the air after his unexpected fall to Earth.
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Facebook announced Thursday that it had deleted over 800 mostly U.S.-based pages and accounts that were posting politically oriented spam and engaging in “inauthentic behavior.”
The social media giant declined a request from VOA News to name the 559 pages and 251 accounts. Nation in Distress, a pro-President Donald Trump page identified by The Washington Post as being among the banned, had over 3 million followers.
Facebook said that many of the pages and accounts had posted political clickbait across multiple fake accounts to drive users to their websites, where they were often targeted with ads.
“Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was,” Facebook said on its news blog. “Others were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”
Facebook said “the ‘news’ stories or opinions these accounts and pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate,” noting the proximity of the 2018 midterm elections.
In the past, Facebook has purged dozens of pages spreading fake news originating from Iran and Russia, countries that have antagonistic relations with the U.S. The company says most of the pages and accounts banned this time were from the U.S.
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Elon Musk replied with a tweet saying “This is incorrect” after the Financial
Times reported that outgoing Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. Chief Executive James Murdoch was the lead candidate to replace him as Tesla Inc. chairman.
Tesla has until Nov. 13 to appoint an independent chairman of the board, part of settlements reached last month between Tesla, Musk and U.S. regulators after Musk tweeted in August that he had secured funding to take the electric car maker private.
The SEC settlement capped months of debate and some investor calls for stronger oversight of Musk, whose recent erratic public behavior raised concerns about his ability to steer the money-losing company through a rocky phase of growth.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which said Musk’s tweeted statements about going private were fraudulent, allowed the billionaire to retain his role as CEO while requiring he give up his chairmanship.
Musk had said he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share, a number that is slang for marijuana. He tweeted the three-word denial of the Financial Times story on Wednesday at 4:20 pm PDT (2320 GMT), about six hours after the newspaper’s post.
In a vote of confidence for Musk, shareholder T. Rowe Price Group Inc. said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that it had raised its stake to 10.2 percent at the end of September from just under 7 percent in June.
The Financial Times cited two people briefed on discussions saying Murdoch was the lead candidate for the job. Murdoch, already an independent director of Tesla, has signaled he wants the job, the report said.
The son of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch, he joined Tesla’s board last year after years of work with media companies. He has no experience in manufacturing and has never led a company that makes cars or electric vehicles.
Murdoch could not immediately be reached for comment. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Twenty-First Century Fox declined to comment.
Board roles
Musk is the public face of Tesla, and any chairman would have to contend with his powerful personality. Thanks to his vision and audacious showmanship, Tesla’s valuation has at times eclipsed that of established U.S. automakers with billions in revenues, and the company has garnered legions of fans, despite repeated production issues.
“The question when it comes to James Murdoch is, ‘Is he the guy who’ll be able to establish that level of authority with Elon Musk?’ ” asked Abby Adlerman, CEO of Boardspan, a corporate governance consulting company.
Murdoch, who at 45 is a near contemporary of 47-year-old Musk, recently navigated a takeover battle between Fox and Comcast Corp. to buy European pay-TV company Sky, which he also chaired.
His record in ensuring Sky’s independent shareholders were represented throughout was exemplary, media analyst Alice Enders said.
“His experience is very recent and very relevant,” she said.
Investor concerns that Tesla’s board was too closely tied to Musk led to the company’s addition of two independent directors, including Murdoch, in July 2017.
Earlier this year, leading U.S. proxy advisers Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services and union-affiliated investment adviser CtW Investment Group had recommended investors cast votes “against” the re-election of Murdoch as a Tesla director at the company’s annual meeting held on June 5.
While CtW cited a lack of relevant experience and a “troubled history as an executive and director,” both proxy firms warned that Murdoch already served on too many boards.
Murdoch currently serves on the boards of Twenty-First Century Fox and News Corp. He stepped down from Sky Plc on Tuesday following the completion of Comcast’s takeover of the broadcaster.
He was appointed chief executive of Sky, founded by his father, in 2003, becoming the youngest CEO of a FTSE 100 company.
“Under his leadership, Sky went down the technology route,” Enders said. “It’s no accident he oversaw that strategy, which was really distinct from the strategy other pay-TV companies followed, and in my view was his most valuable contribution.”
Murdoch replaced his father as chairman of Sky in 2007, but was forced out in 2012 after being embroiled in Britain’s phone-hacking scandal. He returned to Sky’s board in 2016 after rebuilding his career at Fox.
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President Donald Trump welcomed musicians Kid Rock and country star John Rich to the White House on Thursday as he signed legislation overhauling the way music is licensed and songwriters compensated.
Trump signed the Orrin B. Hatch Music Modernization Act on Thursday. The bill won wide bipartisan support in the House and Senate and is backed by the music industry. It’s named after the retiring Utah senator, who is also a musician.
Also joining the president were Mike Love of the Beach Boys, singer Sam Moore and the Christian group MercyMe.
The legislation creates a new independent entity that will license songs to companies that play music online.
The nonprofit collective will then pay songwriters, including those who wrote pre-1970s classics before music copyrights protected their work.
Parties to a new global treaty to combat the illicit sale of tobacco products have taken the first steps toward cracking down on this multi-billion dollar trade. At a three-day meeting at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva they have outlined a plan to shut down the lucrative black market trade in tobacco.
A global tobacco treaty (Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products) entered into force on September 25, with 48 countries joining the new protocol, which is part of the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC). Two-thirds of the parties have enacted or strengthened national legislation aimed at tackling illicit trade in tobacco products.
Parties attending the meeting have set up a working group to create a monitoring system to track and trace the movement of tobacco products. They hope this global information sharing system will be up and running by 2023.
Head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, says illicit trade accounts for one in 10 cigarettes consumed. She says these cigarettes are low-priced and more affordable for young people and vulnerable populations. She says this results in increased consumption of the toxic product by these groups.
She told VOA the black market in tobacco thrives in both rich and poor countries, but it is a much bigger problem in developing countries.
“In the streets of developing countries, you can see all over the world sales of illicit trade of tobacco products. They are openly in their markets…. When it comes to the distribution, this is linked to street sales, to bootlegging as well through borders and even to sales to and by minors. That is a real problem of illicit trade in tobacco products,” she said.
Da Costa e Silva said this flourishing illegal trade undermines tobacco control policies and public health. She said it also fuels organized crime and increases tobacco profits through tax evasion, resulting in substantial losses in governments’ revenues.
She said studies show governments lose $31 billion in taxes annually from the illegal trafficking in tobacco products.
The World Health Organization reports seven million people die prematurely every year from tobacco-related causes.