Rachel Varn worked as a salesperson in the bicycle industry, but last year, she quit her job to become a certified cycling instructor. She founded PedalPower Kids to teach bicycle education. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, Varn’s goal is getting more kids on two wheels. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s intention to further hike U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods has alarmed American lawmakers of both parties who fear dire economic consequences from escalating tensions between the United States and its trading partners.
“I’m anxious for the tariff war to come to an end,” Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of agriculturally rich Kansas told VOA on Tuesday. “Exports are very important to the economy of my state. I would encourage the rapid resolution between the United States and China, because it has an immediate and consequential effect on the livelihoods of lots of people.”
“The [president’s] whole tariff policy has been dangerous folly,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez said. “I hear it from New Jersey companies that recently, just this past week, told me about tariffs they have to pay on particular products that they can’t get anywhere else [but foreign suppliers].”
Who’s paying?
On Sunday, Trump announced that tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods would rise from 10% to 25% as of Friday. He tweeted that “China has been paying” U.S. tariffs and that China’s “payments are partially responsible for our great economic results.”
Such assertions are disputed by many lawmakers, including Republicans who, on other matters, often come to the president’s defense.
“Currently, U.S. importers have paid the U.S. government over $16 billion in tariffs on imports from China,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said via Twitter. “This tax is not paid for by Chinese exporters, this is all paid by U.S. importers.”
Trade talks to continue
Despite Trump’s tariff threat, Chinese officials have signaled they intend to continue trade discussions with Washington, prompting some lawmakers to applaud what they see as the White House’s hardball negotiating stance toward Beijing.
“The only reason that China is at the [negotiating] table is because of these tariffs, let’s not kid ourselves,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said. “China has been cheating … and it’s got to stop. And President Trump has been the first president to call their hand.”
Some Democrats, meanwhile, credit Trump for confronting China over its trade practices but fault the strategy and tactics the president has employed.
“I commend President Trump for saying the status quo with China is not working,” Virginia Democratic Sen. John Warner said. “China is not playing by the rules, and my fear is the president may end up with a deal where the president sells an extra $100 billion of [American] soybeans, but these broader issues around technology … and [China’s] ongoing theft of intellectual property go unaddressed.”
“Tariff policy by tweet does not work,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking next year’s Democratic presidential nomination. “We’ve had two years of experience now [with Trump], and it just seems to be getting worse and worse.”
Beyond China
Tariff concerns on Capitol Hill extend beyond China. A group of Republican lawmakers has urged Trump to halt tariffs targeting Canadian and Mexican goods, warning the measures could torpedo Congress’s consideration of a newly negotiated free trade pact between the United States and both nations.
Regarding the president’s new tariff threat on Chinese exports, some Republicans are willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt — for now.
“Perhaps the president is espousing additional tariffs for purposes of getting China’s attention and to negotiate an agreement. That would be a wonderful outcome,” Moran said. “The challenge is: it’s not just one country that can impose tariffs. So, when the United States [previously] imposed tariffs, China retaliated on products from the United States. And that is very damaging to the ability to earn a living.”
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Senior members of the British royal family said on Tuesday they were delighted and thrilled at the birth of Prince Harry and Meghan’s baby as the couple considered a name for their son.
Meghan gave birth in the early hours of Monday morning to the boy, the seventh-in-line to the British throne, leaving his father, Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, and royal fans across the world enthralled.
“We couldn’t be more delighted at the news and we’re looking forward to meeting the baby when we return,” Prince Charles, the baby’s grandfather and heir-to-the-throne, said to well-wishers while on a trip to Berlin.
Harry’s elder brother Prince William and his wife Kate said they were absolutely thrilled at the news.
“I’m very pleased and glad to welcome my own brother to the sleep deprivation society that is parenting,” he said. “I hope the next few days they can settle down and enjoy having a newborn in their family and all the joys that come with that.”
Kate added: “As William said, we’re looking forward to meeting him and find out what his name’s going to be so it’s really exciting for both of them.”
So far, Harry and his aides have merely confirmed the boy weighed 7 lb 3oz (3.26 kg) and that Meghan and the couple’s first child were both healthy and well.
“I am so incredibly proud of my wife and, as every father and parent would ever say your baby is absolutely amazing, this little thing is absolutely to die for,” Harry said on Monday.
Few details about the birth have been released by Buckingham Palace with the announcement itself a mix of traditional and modernity which many say the baby himself represents, being the first mixed race child to be born into a senior position in British royalty in recent history.
The news was relayed on a ceremonial easel outside the palace after “It’s a Boy!” was trumpeted on the couple’s Instagram account, attracting more than 2.6 million “likes”.
It was not clear whether the birth took place at the couple’s home, Frogmore Cottage on the estate of Windsor Castle where they married in a lavish ceremony in May last year, or if Meghan had been rushed to a London hospital as a number of British newspapers reported.
Congratulations Flood In
Celebrities and world leaders were among those to send messages, a reflection of the star status of Harry, 34, and former U.S. actress Meghan, 37.
“Congratulations, Meghan and Harry! Barack and I are so thrilled for both of you and can’t wait to meet him,” former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama said on Twitter.
Harry and Meghan decided to eschew the recent royal tradition of posing for photographs with their new baby hours after the birth, leaving the world’s media and royal fans waiting for a first glimpse of the boy who is entitled to both
British and American citizenship.
It is expected that the couple will hold a limited photo call on Wednesday to show off their son.
“We’re still thinking about names,” Harry said. “The baby’s a little bit overdue so we’ve had a little bit of time to think about it … that’s the next bit.”
Bookmakers have James, Alexander, Albert, Philip, and Arthur as the favorite names, although other suggestions include Spencer, which was the surname of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana.
The baby, the eighth great-grandchild of 93-year-old Elizabeth, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, will not automatically be a prince or a princess or be known as “His Royal Highness” unless the queen issues a decree.
However, when Elizabeth is succeeded by Prince Charles, royal rules mean the boy would then have such titles.
“It is possible that Harry might want his child not to have the burden of a royal title but I think the rest of the world would like the child to have (one),” said Ingrid Seward, editor of “Majesty” magazine.
“Harry always says how much he didn’t want to be a prince and he’d rather be almost anything else but when you’re in that world it’s very difficult to step out of it.”
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to showcase much-anticipated updates to the company’s hardware lines and artificial intelligence.
Google will also likely address privacy updates as concerns about data sharing continue to plague the tech industry. Facebook dedicated much of its own conference last week to addressing privacy.
Rumors suggest that Google may unveil a mid-range Pixel phone as a cheaper option to the flagship model currently on sale for $800.
Pichai has a keynote scheduled Tuesday at the company’s annual I/O conference for software developers in Mountain View, California.
Google says more than 7,000 developers will attend. The conference is focused on updates for the computer engineers that build apps and services on top of Google technology. I/O has also become a stage to announce new consumer products.
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German sports car maker and Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche will pay a 535-million-euro ($598 million) fine over diesel vehicles that emitted more harmful pollutants than allowed, Stuttgart prosecutors said Tuesday.
“The Stuttgart prosecutor’s office has levied a 535-million-euro fine against Porsche AG for negligence in quality control,” the investigators said.
Porsche “abstained from a legal challenge” against the decision, the prosecutors office added.
Tuesday’s levy against Porsche is the latest in a string of fines against VW over its years-long “dieselgate” scandal.
The auto behemoth admitted in 2015 to manipulating 11 million vehicles worldwide to appear less polluting in laboratory tests than they were in real driving conditions.
Following fines against VW, high-end subsidiary Audi and now Porsche, no further investigations over “administrative offences” remain open against the group, a spokesman told AFP.
But legal proceedings against individuals, including former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, remain open.
Meanwhile, thousands of investors are suing the company for the losses they suffered on its shares when news of the scandal broke, while hundreds of thousands of drivers are also demanding compensation.
In its own statement, Porsche said the negligence punished by prosecutors was identified “several levels below the board.”
The firm also said that the cost of the fine was included in a provision of around one billion euros booked by the VW group in the first quarter.
So far the total costs of “dieselgate” for the Wolfsburg-based behemoth have mounted to 30 billion euros.
Shares in VW were down 2.2 percent around 2:00 pm in Frankfurt (1200 GMT) at 154.10 euros, against a DAX index of blue-chip shares down 0.7 percent.
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What do famous Americans such as author Edgar Allan Poe, Wild West outlaw Jesse James and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein have in common?
They all reportedly married their first cousins.
The legality of cousin marriage in the United States varies from state to state. The practice is illegal in 25 states. A first cousin is the child of either parent’s brother or sister.
In some societies around the world, marrying a first cousin is often preferable, not only to keep property or money within the family, but in some cases to keep a “good catch” from going off with a stranger.
But the practice is generally viewed as taboo in the United States.
Opposition to first-cousin marriage in the U.S. dates back to the Puritans, among the earliest European settlers in America, who opposed such unions as far back as the 17th century, according to the book “Consanguinity in Context” by medical geneticist Alan Bittles.
Marriages are considered “consanguineous” when couples are either second cousins or more closely related.
The first actual laws against first-cousin marriage appeared during the Civil War era, with Kansas banning the practice in 1858, followed by Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wyoming in the 1860s.
While first-cousin marriages were once favored by the upper classes in the U.S., such alliances declined sharply in the mid-to-late 19th century, possibly because advances in transportation and communication offered perspective brides and grooms greater access to a wider pool of marital prospects.
Also, as families grew smaller, so did the number of marriageable cousins. And women became more independent during that period, so their marital options increased.
One of the earliest people to influence American public opinion on the issue was the Rev. Charles Brooks of Massachusetts. Brooks delivered a paper at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1855 that asserted first-cousin marriage led to birth defects among the children of such unions.
Alexander Graham Bell, best known for inventing the telephone, also waded into the debate. He suggested introducing legislation to ban consanguineous marriages in families with deaf-mute members so that the condition would not be inherited by children of such marriages.
A seven-year Columbia University study published in 2018 found that children whose parents are first cousins have a 4% to 7% probability of birth defects, compared with 3% to 4% when the parents are distant relatives who marry.
From 1650 to 1850, the average person was fourth cousins with their spouse, according to the study. By 1950, the average person was married to their seventh cousin. The researchers believe that today, many couples are 10th to 12th cousins.
The data on consanguineous marriage in the U.S. is “scant and incomplete,” according to Bittles. CousinCouples.com, a website for people who are romantically involved with their cousin, estimates that about one out of every 1,000 U.S. marriages is between first cousins.
However, Bittles finds that number to be unrealistically low.
“The recent large-scale migration to the USA of couples from countries where consanguineous marriage is traditional may not reveal their premarital relationship,” he told VOA via email. “In terms of numbers, this particularly applies to immigrants from Arab countries … where 20-plus percent of marriages are consanguineous, and South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan where more than 50% of marriages may be consanguineous.”
Some states allow first-cousin marriages only if the couple can’t have children because they are too old or one of the parties is found to be infertile.
When you look past first cousins, there are a number of prominent Americans who married more distant cousins. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both said “I do” to their third cousins. President Franklin Roosevelt was married to his fifth cousin, once removed. And the first wife of Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and President Donald Trump’s lawyer, was his second cousin once removed.
Worldwide, only a handful of countries prohibit first cousin marriages.
“Besides the USA, they comprise the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Philippines,” Bittles says. “Even in the People’s Republic of China, the ban on first-cousin marriages is not enforced in officially recognized ethnic minorities where consanguineous marriage has been traditional.”
Bittles expects the number of cousin marriages in the U.S. to diminish over time as family sizes decline and there are fewer cousins available to marry, and as the children of migrants internalize negative mainstream U.S. views on marrying your cousin.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday that American technologies and expertise could play an important role in developing India’s economy, but were facing significant barriers to accessing its markets.
Ross told a gathering of business leaders in New Delhi that foreign companies were at a disadvantage due to India’s tariff and non-tariff barriers and myriad regulations.
Ross said India was already the world’s third largest economy and by 2030 it would become the world’s largest consumer market because of the rapid growth of its middle class. “Yet today, India is only the U.S 13th largest export market due to overly restrictive market access barriers.”
Meanwhile, the United States is India’s largest export market, accounting for something like 20 percent of the total. “That’s a real imbalance, and it’s an imbalance we must drive to counter,” he said.
He noted that India’s average applied tariff rate is 13.8 percent, the highest of any major world economy.
India’s Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said India would like to work with the United States to resolve such issues in a way that benefits both countries.
“We will address the issues with the United States in a manner that will make this relationship better not just between the United States and India, but for the rest of the world as well,” Prabhu said.
Ross said that American companies now have a unique opportunity to increase defense technology sales to India which in turn would help balance the trade relationship between the two countries.
Bilateral trade in goods and services registered a 12.6% rise to $142 billion in 2018.
Exports of U.S. goods and services to India reached $58.9 billion in 2018, up 19% from 2017, according to the U.S. Embassy.
India offers business opportunities in the sectors of aerospace, defense, energy, health care and environmental technologies.
Representatives of more than 100 U.S. companies are visiting India as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s largest annual trade mission program, Trade Winds. They’re looking for opportunities in aerospace, defense, energy, health care and environmental technologies.
The delegation met with government leaders, market experts and potential business partners in New Delhi on Tuesday. They also will visit Ahmadabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
China has confirmed that its top trade negotiator will travel to the United States to conduct a new round of trade talks later this week, even after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened higher tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods after he complained the process is taking too long.
The Commerce Ministry issued a statement Tuesday that Vice Premier Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s top economic advisor, will meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for two days of talks beginning Thursday.
Trump’s Twitter comments on Sunday about the new tariffs sent Asian stocks and U.S. futures tumbling Monday and added uncertainty over the future of U.S.-China trade negotiations. Despite the market drop, China’s official media stayed silent on Trump’s comments all morning.
Hours later, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that China is “trying to get more information” about Trump’s comments about new tariffs but stressed that Beijing’s negotiating team is still preparing to travel to the U.S. for talks this week. Geng did not say whether Vice Premier Liu would lead the delegation.
“The tweet is a big wrench in China’s foreign trade policy,” Nick Marro, analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), told VOA. “There were a lot of expectations that at least the groundwork for a deal will be finalized this week,” he said, explaining why Beijing should be upset by the new threat.
Tweet with teeth
In his tweet, Trump said he would increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent on Friday. This would reverse a decision Washington took last February to keep it at 10 percent in the midst of trade talks.
“The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!,” Trump said, expressing dissatisfaction about the pace of trade negotiations and what he considered a Chinese attempt to renegotiate some aspects of the proposed deal.
Lighthizer on Monday confirmed that tariffs will be imposed Friday. He and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin told reporters Trump had learned over the weekend that Chinese officials “were trying to go back on some of the language” that had been negotiated in 10 earlier rounds of talks. They did not offer details.
Trump also said his policy of hiking taxes on Chinese goods had paid dividends.
“These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results,” he said.
He went further, saying another $325 billion of Chinese goods which “remain untaxed” will be taxed at 25 percent. He did not specify a timeline for making this change.
Unaffected stance
In its response Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry expressed hope that there is no change in the situation, and the two countries will continue to strive for an end to the trade war.
“What is of vital importance is that we still hope the United States can work hard with China to meet each other half way, and strive to reach a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement on the basis of mutual respect,” Geng said.
Echoing China’s confidence that trade talks would not be disrupted by Trump’s tweet, Shanghai-based expert Shen Dingli said, “China and the U.S. have big and overlapping stakes in bilateral trade. They will overcome any difficulties for a successful outcome of the trade talks.”
The United States will impose a 17.5 percent tariff on Mexican tomato imports starting on Tuesday, as the two countries were unable to renew a 2013 agreement that suspended a U.S. anti-dumping investigation, a Mexican official said on Monday.
The U.S. Commerce Department said in early February that the United States would resume an anti-dumping investigation into Mexican tomatoes, withdrawing from a so-called suspension agreement that halted the anti-dumping case as long as Mexican producers sold their tomatoes above a pre-determined price. U.S. growers and lawmakers say that deal has failed.
At the time, Commerce said it was giving the required 90-day notice before terminating the six-year-old agreement.
“As of tomorrow a tariff of 17.5 percent will be applied on the value of the product … Mexican exporters will be affected, it’s going to affect their financial flows but that is going to be directly transferred to U.S. consumers,” said Mexican Deputy Economy Minister Luz Maria de la Mora.
She added that the U.S. measures will remain in place until a new suspension agreement is reached.
“We’re very disappointed but the good news is that negotiations continue, looking for a solution. And we hope that in the coming weeks we can in fact reach an agreement,” said de la Mora.
Mexico exports around $2 billion worth of tomatoes to the United States annually, according to de la Mora.
A trade war over tomatoes was averted twice since the 1990s, most recently in the 2013 deal that put a price floor on Mexican tomatoes sold in the United States while barring U.S. growers from pursuing anti-dumping charges against Mexican exporters.
Fruit and vegetable growers in the southeastern U.S. had persuaded the Trump administration to seek the ability to impose seasonal anti-dumping duties against Mexican produce in negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But this demand was withdrawn in the final talks over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal reached last October.
A month later, the Florida Tomato Exchange, which represents growers in the state, had petitioned the Commerce Department to terminate the 2013 tomato pact. It argued that the agreement could not be enforced and contained too many loopholes through which Mexican growers could dump tomatoes in the U.S. market.
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Yuuka Hasumi put high school in Japan on hold and flew to South Korea in February to try her chances at becoming a K-pop star, even if that means long hours of vocal and dance training, no privacy, no boyfriend, and even no phone.
Hasumi, 17, joined Acopia School in Seoul, a prep school offering young Japanese a shot at K-pop stardom, teaching them the dance moves, the songs and also the language.
She is one of an estimated one million other K-pop star wannabes, from South Korea and abroad, hoping to get a shot at super competitive auditions by major talent agencies that will take on just a select few as “trainees.”
“It is tough,” Hasumi said in Japanese, drenched in sweat from a dance lesson she attended with 15-year-old friend Yuho Wakamatsu, also from Japan.
“Going through a strict training and taking my skill to a higher level to a perfect stage, I think that’s when it is good to make a debut,” she said.
Hasumi is one of 500 or so young Japanese who join Acopia each year, paying up to $3,000 a month for training and board.
The school also fixes auditions for its candidates with talent management companies that have been the driving force behind the “Korean-wave” pop culture that exploded onto the world stage in the past decade with acts such as global chart topping boy band BTS.
The influx of Japanese talent that is reshaping the K-pop industry comes at a time of increasingly bitter political acrimony between the two countries that has damaged diplomatic ties.
That the tension has done little to dent the K-pop craze among Japanese youth, and the willingness by Korean agencies to take on Japanese talent, speak to the strength of the ties between their people, according to one long-time observer.
“They’re nuts about BTS over there in Japan,” said Lee Soo-chul, board member of Seoul-Tokyo Forum, a private foundation with members of diplomats and business executives from both countries.
K-pop groups, and veteran Korean musicians, are selling out concert halls throughout Japan, said Lee, a former head of Samsung Group’s Japanese operations. “There is no Korea-Japan animosity there.”
Deep Freeze
Tensions rooted in Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of Korea have risen after South Korean court rulings against Japanese firms for forced labor, and amid a perception in Korea that Japan’s leadership has not adequately atoned for its colonial past.
But the popularity of Korean culture and K-pop music is on the rise in Japan, with many fans and artists saying they are not bothered by the diplomatic tension.
“I might get criticized for being Japanese, but I want to stand on a stage and make (South Koreans) know Japanese can be this cool,” said Rikuya Kawasaki, a 16-year-old Japanese K-pop star hopeful who auditioned unsuccessfully in Tokyo for Acopia School.
For schools and agencies, Japan’s music market – the second largest after the United States and bigger than China – is a big prize and many have been on a campaign to recruit Japanese talent.
“It will be good if Japan and South Korea will get along through music,” Hasumi told Reuters during a break from her Korean language class.
Some Japanese transplants have already made it big. The three Japanese members of the girl band Twice helped make the group the second most popular act in Japan, after BTS.
Their success has prompted JYP Entertainment, the South Korean agency backing Twice, to plan the launch of an idol group comprising only Japanese girls.
JYP declined to comment for this story.
Agency officials are reluctant to discuss their success in Japan and the infusion of Japanese talent, wary of fueling a politically charged backlash, industry sources said.
Hard Road to Stardom
There’s no shortage of Japanese hopefuls willing to train under talent agencies’ watchful eye, some having left successful careers back home in search of K-pop fame.
“I’ve heard stories about no free time or not being able to do what I want. But, I think all of K-pop stars who are now performing have gone down the same road,” said Nao Niitsu, a 19-year-old college freshman from Tokyo.
During a visit to Seoul paid for by her mother, herself a die-hard BTS fan, Niitsu auditioned for 10 agencies and was accepted by five.
Debut is elusive, unlike in Japan where it is easier for idols to get a start and then can hone their skills and work on their appeal with the fans.
Miyu Takeuchi said it wasn’t a difficult decision to leave a 10-year career with a top idol band AKB48 back home in Japan to sign with the K-pop agency Mystic Entertainment in March as a trainee.
Even with her experience, she has seven hours of vocal training a day and two-hour dance lessons twice a week, plus early morning Korean lessons.
She is not allowed to have a boyfriend but she says she has no regrets, despite the fact there is no guarantee she will make it.
“I don’t know how long my training period will be, but it has to reach a point where my coaches and management company say ‘Miyu, you are a professional!'”
($1 = 111.1600 yen)
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When Google launched its now distinctive digital assistant in 2016, it was already in danger of being an also-ran.
At the time, Amazon had been selling its Echo smart speaker, powered by its Alexa voice assistant, for more than a year. Apple’s Siri was already five years old and familiar to most iPhone users. Google’s main entry in the field up to that point was Google Now, a phone-bound app that took voice commands but didn’t answer back.
Now the Google Assistant – known primarily as the voice of the Google Home smart speaker – is increasingly central to Google’s new products. And even though it remains commercially overshadowed by Alexa, it keeps pushing the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can accomplish in everyday settings.
For instance, Google last year announced an Assistant service called Duplex, which it said can actually call up restaurants and make reservations for you. Duplex isn’t yet widely available yet outside of Google’s own Pixel phones in the U.S. Alexa and Siri so far offer nothing similar.
Google is expected to announce updates and expansions to its AI Assistant at its annual developer conference Tuesday.
Although voice assistants have spread across smartphones and into cars and offices, they’re currently most commonly found in the home, where people tend to use them with smart speakers for simple activities such as playing music, setting timers and checking the weather. Amazon’s Echo devices maintain a strong lead in the market, according to eMarketer ; the firm estimates that 63% of all U.S. smart speaker users will talk to an Amazon device this year, compared to 31% that will use Google. Apple’s HomePod is a mere afterthought, lumped in the “other” category which has a combined 12%.
More broadly, though, the competition is much more difficult to assess. Google claims the Assistant is now available across more than a billion devices, although many of those are smartphones whose owners may never have uttered the Assistant’s wake-up phrase, “OK Google.”
Google Assistant doesn’t record users commands by default – differing from Alexa – but recording must be turned on to access some of Assistant’s features, including a popular one that allows it to recognize different users by voice.
Amazon and Google may one-up each other on different metrics, but the real measurement is how well they’ve achieved those own goal, said Gartner analyst Werner Goertz.
Amazon’s deep ties in shopping make Alexa the go-to assistant for adding items to your grocery list or putting in a quick re-order of dish soap. Google’s decades of deep search technology make it the leader in looking up or answering questions you might have and personalizing its responses based on what else Google knows about you from your previous searches, your movements or your web browsing.
All that, of course, reinforces Google’s key advertising business, which is based on showing you ads targeted to your interests.
At first, the Assistant on Home mostly just acted as a vocal search engine; it could also carry out a few additional tasks like starting your Spotify playlists. Over time, however, it has added dozens of languages, partnered with more than 1,500 smart home companies to control lights, locks and TVs and learned to identify members of any given household by voice.
It’s also expanded the number of apps and other companies it works with and moved into Google Maps as a way to send text messages while driving.
Both Google and Amazon plan further expansions. Last year, Amazon unveiled a number of home gadgets with Alexa built in, including a “smart” microwave. At the CES gadget show this year, it showed off a phone-connected device that brings Alexa to cars.
Google countered with updates to its expanding Android Auto system, which got Assistant capability last year.
As Assistant and Alexa get smarter, faster and more personalized, analysts expect their reach to become broader and more ubiquitous. The speakers, said eMarketer analyst Victoria Petrock, are “getting people used to talking to their devices.” Eventually, she says, if you can speak to your microwave and TV and lights directly, you won’t need the speakers – except maybe to play music.
In these emerging areas Google is hoping to outflank rivals with its strong inroads with Android smartphones and cars. But it faces competition in many of these areas not just from Amazon, but also Apple and Microsoft.
Google I/O kicks off at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Mountain View, California. The company is expected to announce a less expensive Pixel phone and updates to its smart home devices.
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When Tiger Woods won the Masters on April 14, President Donald Trump declared he was going to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and ordered his aides to schedule the event as soon as possible.
On Monday, Trump got what he asked for. At a ceremony in the sun-splashed White House Rose Garden, Trump made the 43-year-old Woods the fourth, and youngest, professional golfer to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor, after Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Charlie Sifford.
With 81 PGA Tour victories, Woods is one shy of Sam Snead’s all-time record, and with 15 major tournament victories, he trails only Nicklaus, who has 18.
But it was his dramatic Masters victory at Augusta National Golf Club last month, ending an 11-year major championship drought, that capped a years-long comeback from injuries and drama in his personal life, including an arrest two years ago for driving under the influence.
Trump eagerly leapt onto the Tiger bandwagon. The two have played golf a number of times, most recently with Nicklaus in February at Trump’s course in Jupiter, Florida.
At a ceremony attended by several U.S. lawmakers, Trump called Woods “a true legend.”
“He’s a great guy,” said Trump. “He introduced countless new people to the sport of golf, from every background and walk of life. … Tiger Woods is a global symbol of American excellence, devotion and drive.”
Woods, wearing a blue suit (not the Masters green jacket) was joined at the ceremony by his mother, Kultida, his two children, Sam and Charlie, his girlfriend, Erica Herman, and his caddie, Joe LaCava.
“You’ve seen the good and the bad the highs and the lows, and I wouldn’t be here without your help,” Woods said.
Speaking directly to his loved ones, Woods added: “You guys have meant so much to me in my life. I’ve battled and I’ve tried to hang in there and I’ve tried to come back and play a great game of golf again.”
With the golf world wondering if he has enough high-level golf in him to match Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors, Woods left a clue as to his aspirations, calling his recent Masters experience “certainly one of the highest that I’ve accomplished so far in my life on the golf course.”
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Alphabet’s Google is set to roll out a dashboard-like function in its Chrome browser to offer users more control in fending off tracking cookies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Cookies are small text files that follow internet users and are used by advertisers to target consumers on the specific interests they have displayed while browsing.
While Google’s new tools are not expected to significantly curtail its ability to collect data, it would help the company press its sizable advantage over online-advertising rivals, the newspaper said.
Google’s 3 billion users help make it the world’s largest seller of internet ads, capturing nearly a third of all revenue, ahead of rival Facebook’s 20%, according to research firm eMarketer.
Total digital ad spending in the United States will grow 19% to nearly $130 billion in 2019, according to eMarketer.
Google has been working on the cookies plan for at least six years, in stops and starts, but accelerated the work after news broke last year that personal data of Facebook users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
The company is mostly targeting cookies installed by profit-seeking third parties, separate from the owner of the website a user is actively visiting, the Journal said.
Apple in 2017 stopped majority of tracking cookies on its Safari browser by default and Mozilla’s Firefox did the same a year later.
Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
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Louis XIV and Oscar Wilde, meet Bjork and Lady Gaga.
What quality do they share, across the centuries? An innate sense of camp — the aesthetic that’s being celebrated in the new fashion mega-exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”
Think Bjork’s famous 2001 “swan dress,” which is in the show, and Gaga’s unforgettable 2010 raw meat dress, which isn’t (it was real meat, after all.) But lest you think camp is only artifice and theatricality, flamboyance and a desire to shock, Met curator Andrew Bolton wants you to think again.
“People are very quick to dismiss camp as being trite, glib, frivolous,” Bolton said in a weekend interview as he was putting finishing touches on the exhibit, which launches Monday evening at the star-studded Met Gala, to be co-chaired by Gaga herself, along with Serena Williams, Harry Styles, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, and of course Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
“But it actually has a lot of history, it’s really serious, it’s political — and it’s tragic too, disguised as humor,” he said.
The exhibit is built around author Susan Sontag’s 1964 “Notes on ‘Camp,'” a 58-point essay which she dedicated to Oscar Wilde, the 19th century poet and playwright whose camp sensibility is also featured in the show. Camp “is not a natural mode of sensibility,” she wrote. “The essence … is its love of the unnatural, of artifice and exaggeration.”
She also called camp “something of a private code.” Bolton notes that in later years, it became mainstream, to the point where it lost much of its subversive meaning. Originating in gay culture, it slowly became assimilated into the culture at large along with other parts of gay culture, he says.
But every so often camp comes back as a powerful influence in fashion, Bolton says, and he thinks it’s having a new moment now, because it always returns at a time of political polarization and instability.
At a press preview on Monday, Bolton told the crowd that since he chose the subject of “camp,” everyone’s been asking two questions: “Why camp?” and “What IS camp?”
And so the exhibit, which features some 250 items, begins with history — and a grammar lesson. The term “camp” was first used as a French verb — “se camper,” or to flaunt — in the 17th century. In a 1671 Moliere play, the character Scapin tells a fellow servant to “Camp about on one leg. Put your hand on your hip. Wear a furious look. Strut about like a drama king.”
To remind us of one such drama king, there’s Louis XIV, in his official portrait: one leg in front, hand on hip, modeling his massive royal cloak, along with silk stockings and red-heeled shoes.
The exhibit then takes us from the verb to the adjective, “campish,” which had gay connotations in the 19th century, and then to the noun, where camp first enters a Victorian dictionary in 1909, defined as “actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis. Probably from the French.”
Then comes the fashion. There’s “naive camp,” which is intended to be serious but failing, versus “deliberate camp,” intended to be, well, campy.
There are enormous feathered dresses — Sontag wrote that camp was “a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers” — by Armani and by Jeremy Scott, the latter surrounded by scores of attached butterflies. Scott, a specialist in camp, also is represented by a dress of dollar bills, and his McDonald’s-themed outfits for Moschino, where he serves as creative director.
From John Galliano, there are dresses that seem made of newspaper clippings and packing tape. And because the Palace of Versailles is seen as “a sort of camp (Garden of) Eden,” there’s a section of Versailles-style gowns by designers like Franco Moschino and Vivienne Westwood.
“Camp is ‘Swan Lake,'” Sontag wrote, so we also have Bjork’s famous swan dress by designer Marjan Pejoski, the bird’s long neck curving over the shoulder.
Representing what Sontag called “the convertibility of ‘man’ and ‘woman,'” designer Thom Browne contributes a man’s wedding outfit that combines a black tuxedo with a white filmy skirt.
And maybe there isn’t a Lady Gaga meat dress, but there’s a Jeremy Scott “prosciutto dress” (not real, this time), and his wacky TV dinner cape — with carrots, peas and corn on one side, mashed potatoes with butter on the other (they’re fake too, thankfully.)
Because camp “sees everything in quotation marks” (Sontag again), there is designer Virgil Abloh’s 2018 little black dress that says “Little Black Dress,” with boots that say “For Walking.”
And there’s a gigantic birthday cake-like dress of cascading pink tulle by Viktor & Rolfe, which says “Less is More” — because camp is, above all, about irony.
Bolton says he started thinking about camp two years ago when mounting his show on Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons. He reread Sontag’s essay and was struck by how relevant it felt.
He was also inspired to mark the 50th anniversary this year of the 1969 Stonewall riots, a landmark moment in the history of gay rights.
Bolton notes that some designers have always embraced camp — Moschino, Scott, Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui, for example. “But what you’re seeing now is other designers adopting it, like Valentino, Armani. That’s when it shifts, when it’s going beyond a handful to a broader group.”
When the show opens to the public on Thursday, Bolton hopes visitors will be able to look beyond camp’s formal characteristics — irony, parody, artificiality and extravagance, to name a few — and see its broader meaning.
“It’s all of that,” he acknowledges. “But it’s much more.”
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China says its negotiators are preparing to travel to the United States for their next round of trade talks this week, even after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened higher tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods after he complained the process is taking too long.
Trump’s comments about the new tarifs on Twitter on Sunday sent Asian stocks and U.S. futures tumbling Monday and added uncertainty over the figure of U.S.-China trade negotiations. Despite the market drop, China’s official media stayed silent on Trump’s comments all morning.
Hours later, Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that China is “trying to get more information” about Trump’s comments about new tariffs but stressed that Beijing’s negotiating team is still preparing to travel to the U.S. for talks this week.
“The tweet is a big wrench in China’s foreign trade policy,” Nick Marro, Analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU) told VOA. “There were a lot of expectations that at least the groundwork for a deal will be finalized this week,” he said, explaining why Beijing should be upset by the new threat.
Tweet with teeth
In his tweet issued on Sunday, Trump said he would increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent on Friday. This would mark a reversal of a decision Washington took last February to keep it at 10 percent in the midst of trade talks.
“The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!,” Trump said expressing dissatisfaction about the pace of trade negotiations and what he considers Chinese attempt to renegotiate some aspects of the proposed deal.
President Trump also said that his policy of hiking taxes on Chinese goods had paid dividends. “These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results,” he said.
He went further saying another $325 billion of Chinese goods which “remain untaxed” will be taxed at 25 percent. He did not specify a timeline for making this change.
Unaffected stance
In its response Monday, Chinese foreign ministry expressed hope there is no change in the situation and the two countries will continue to strive for an end to the trade war.
“What is of vital importance is that we still hope the United States can work hard with China to meet each other half way, and strive to reach a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement on the basis of mutual respect,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng said.
What the ministry did not clarify is whether China would send the same envoy, Vice Premier Liu He, as head of the official delegation as originally planned.
Echoing China’s confidence that trade talks would not be disrupted by Trump’s tweet, Shanghai based expert Shen Dingli said, “China and the U.S. have big and overlapping stakes in bilateral trade. They will overcome any difficulties for a successful outcome of the trade talks.”
The tweet has also made it difficult for Chinese President Xi to make a proposed China-U.S. deal acceptable to his domestic audience. Xi does not want to be seen as being bulled into accepting a deal by the U.S., Nick Marro said. “It has shattered the potential optics around the deal. The tweet makes the deal look like China has no choice but to listen to the U.S.”
Dingli sees nothing odd about Trump’s use of tweet as a foreign policy instrument although this aspect has been widely criticized in some circles.
“America does not have a propaganda department like the Chinese government. Therefore, Trump has invented something that is good for him,” Dingli said. “A competent propaganda department has made China powerful. My President does not need to use his own account in WeChat [Chinese social media app] to communicate,” he said.
Washington and Beijing have engaged in reciprocal tariff hikes over the last year while negotiators have engaged in lengthy trade talks, alternating negotiations between the two capitals.
Despite an initial goal of finishing by March 1, the two countries have continued to debate several issues, but have yet to complete a deal. Both sides, representing the world’s two biggest economies, have said progress is being made.
The two countries have been trying to resolve disputes over intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. It is not clear whether the tariffs both countries have imposed will remain in place if an agreement is reached.
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Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems.
The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, DARPA.
Dubbed “ElectionGuard,” the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year’s general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer’s conference in Seattle.
Nadella said the project’s software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program, would help “modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world.” Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns.
Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems. Open-source software is inherently more secure because the underlying code is easily scrutinized by outside security experts.
Two of the leading vendors, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, and Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas, both expressed interest in partnering with Microsoft for ElectionGuard. A spokeswoman for a third vendor, Dominion Voting Systems of Denver, said the company looks forward to “learning more” about the initiative.
Anyone with an existing voting system or developing a new one will be able to incorporate the ElectionGuard development kit — at the state or local level in the U.S. or national level for jurisdictions abroad.
“It can be used with a ballot-marking device. It can be used with an optical scanner, on hand-marked paper ballots,” said Josh Benaloh, a senior cryptographer at Microsoft Research and key contributor to the ElectionGuard project.
Benaloh helped produce a National Academies of Science report last year that called for an urgent overhaul of the rickety U.S. election system, which faced serious threats from Russian hackers who in 2016 attempted to infiltrate voting administration systems in several states.
That report called for all U.S. elections to be held on human-readable paper ballots by 2020. It also advocated a specific form of routine post-election audits intended to ensure that votes are accurately counted. While U.S. officials say there is no evidence of hackers tampering with election results, experts say systems used by millions of U.S. voters remain susceptible to tampering.
One election official who has been in informal conversations with the ElectionGuard project leaders is Dean Logan, who runs elections for Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, and is building an open-source voting system for it.
Election integrity activist Susan Greenhalgh of the National Election Defense Coalition said she hoped the project would encourage innovative thinking at the level that elections are actually managed.
ElectionGuard aims to provide “end-to-end” verification of voting in two ways, Benaloh said. First, it lets voters confirm that their votes are accurately recorded.
Second, the unique coded tracker it produces registers an encrypted version of the vote that keeps the ballot choice itself secret while ensuring votes are accurately counted. Outsiders such as election watchdog groups, political parties, journalists and voters themselves can verify online that votes were properly counted without being altered.
The system would also allow for reliable post-election audits and recounts. Microsoft executives say they also plan to build a prototype voting system for reference.
A spinoff of Galois called Free & Fair developed the sophisticated post-election audits , known as “risk-limiting,” for Colorado, which was the first U.S. state to require the audits recommended in the National Academies of Sciences report.
ElectionGuard is not designed to work with internet voting schemes — which experts consider too easily hackable — and does not currently work with vote-by-mail systems.
ES&S told The Associated Press via email that it was excited to partner with Microsoft and “still exploring the potentials” for incorporated the software kit its voting systems.
Hart InterCivic, the No. 3 vendor, said it planned a pilot project with Microsoft to “incorporate ElectionGuard functionality as an additional feature” layered over its core platform.
A spokeswoman for Dominion, the No. 2 vendor, said “We are very interested in learning more about the initiative and being able to review the various prototypes that are being planned, along with hearing more about other federally-supported efforts in the elections space.”
Edgardo Cortes, a former Virginia elections commissioner now with New York University’s Brennan Center, welcomed additional private sector support for election systems.
“I think it’ll take a while to catch on and see how beneficial (ElectionGuard) ends up being,” he said. “But I think it certainly does have a great deal of potential.”
Columbia University will be partnering with Microsoft to audit the pilots.
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“It’s a Boy!” Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan announced on their official Instagram account @sussexroyal.
” We are pleased to announce that Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcomed their firstborn child in the early morning on May 6th, 2019. Their Royal Highnesses’ son weighs 7lbs. 3oz.,” the message said.
Officials said Prince Harry was at his wife’s side during the birth but the location has not yet been disclosed. According to the statement, baby and mother are doing well.
“The Duchess and baby are both healthy and well. The couple thank members of the public for their shared excitement and support during this very special time in their lives.”
The infant is seventh in line to the British throne and is Queen Elizabeth II’s eighth great grandchild.
Journalists and well wishers have been camped out in Windsor, 35 kilometers west of London for days now, awaiting news of the baby’s arrival.
According to Kensington Palace, the former residence of the Royal couple, Harry and Meghan don’t plan to pose for a photo or appear in public with their baby for the time being, instead choosing to celebrate the birth privately.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would raise tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200 billion of Chinese goods.
The United States has levied tariffs on a total of $250 billion of Chinese imports, global steel and aluminum imports, and shipments of washing machines and solar panels since January 2018, when Trump’s administration levied its first trade tariffs.
Trump has referred to himself as a “Tariff Man” and says the duties he has imposed on a range of goods and metal imports are filling up state coffers.
Through mid-March, Washington netted $15.6 billion through tariffs imposed since February 2018, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Customs duties receipts in the first half of the current fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, have shot up by 89 percent from a year ago to $34.7 billion, data from U.S. Treasury shows.
WHO IS PAYING THE TARIFFS?
Trump says China foots the bill for U.S. tariffs on imported Chinese good.
“For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
“We have billions of dollars coming into our Treasury — billions — from China. We never had 10 cents coming into our Treasury; now we have billions coming in,” he said on Jan. 24.
PAID AT CUSTOMS
A tariff is a tax on imports. The CBP typically requires importers to pay the duties within 10 days of their shipments clearing customs.
So the tariffs are paid to the U.S. government by importing companies. Most importers of Chinese-made goods are U.S. companies, or the U.S.-registered units of foreign companies that import goods from China.
Every item imported into the United States legally has a customs code. Importers are expected to check the tariffs and other taxes and duties due on the goods they bring in, calculate what they owe, and pay it.
The CBP reviews the payments. If it discovers an underpayment, U.S. customs will send the importer a fresh bill.
DO U.S. IMPORTERS PASS ON THE COSTS OF TARIFFS TO THEIR SUPPLIERS IN CHINA?
Some of them do, yes. So Chinese companies pay some of the cost. An importing company paying tariffs can manage the cost in several ways:
Cut costs to offset higher tariffs.
Ask suppliers in China for a discount to help offset the higher tariffs.
Seek to source supplies from outside China. So some Chinese companies are losing business.
Pass the tariff costs on to customers by increasing retail prices.
Most importers could use a mix of those options to spread the cost between suppliers, themselves, and consumers or buyers.
HOW DOES THAT ACTUALLY WORK?
For example, higher duties on imports of metals and Chinese products increased Caterpillar’s production costs by more than $100 million last year. In response, the heavy-duty equipment maker increased prices for its products.
Tractor manufacturer Deere & Co estimates a $100 million increase in its raw materials costs this year because of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. Deere has cut costs and increased prices to protect its profits.
A Congressional Research Service report in February found that the tariffs had led to an increase of as much as 12 percent in the price of washing machines in the United States, compared to January 2018 when the duties were not in effect.
According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the steel and aluminum tariffs increased the price of steel products by nearly 9 percent last year, pushing up costs for steel users by $5.6 billion.
Separately, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University, and Columbia University concluded that the Chinese and steel and aluminum tariffs cost companies and consumers $3 billion a month in additional taxes and companies a further $1.4 billion in efficiency loses in 2018.0
WHAT DO CHINESE FIRMS PAY?
China has retaliated against U.S. tariffs by imposing its own tariffs on imports from the United States.
Most importers in China are Chinese. So in the same way the U.S. government is receiving import taxes on Chinese goods from U.S. importers, the Chinese government is receiving taxes on U.S. goods from Chinese importers.
WHAT’S THE TOTAL BILL?
Trump has imposed a 25 percent tax on $50 billion of Chinese goods, and a 10 percent tax on goods worth $200 billion more.
That, in theory, would mean the U.S government would receive a total of $32.5 billion per year on top of whatever duties were already in place.
U.S. tariff revenue in 2018 was $49.7 billion. That was up 41.2 percent from the $35.2 billion in 2017 before the trade wars started.
China has imposed 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. imports, and also has tariffs of 5 to 10 percent on $60 billion more. That equates to around $15.5 billion to $18.5 billion in tariffs.
Chinese tariff revenue in 2018 was 284.8 billion yuan ($42.41 billion), down from 299.8 billion yuan ($44.65 billion) in 2017.
Boeing did not tell U.S. regulators for more than a year that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data optional on the 737 MAX, instead of standard as on earlier 737s, but insisted on Sunday the missing display represented no safety risk.
The U.S. plane maker has been trying for weeks to dispel suggestions that it made airlines pay for safety features after it emerged that an alert designed to show discrepancies in Angle of Attack readings from two sensors was optional on the 737 MAX.
Erroneous data from a sensor responsible for measuring the angle at which the wing slices through the air – known as the Angle of Attack – is suspected of triggering a flawed piece of software that pushed the plane downward in two recent crashes.
In a statement, Boeing said it only discovered once deliveries of the 737 MAX had begun in 2017 that the so-called AOA Disagree alert was optional instead of standard as it had intended, but added that was not critical safety data.
A Federal Aviation Administration official told Reuters on Sunday that Boeing waited 13 months before informing the agency in November 2018.
By becoming optional, the alert had been treated in the same way as a separate indicator showing raw AOA data, which is seldom used by commercial pilots and had been an add-on for years.
“Neither the angle of attack indicator nor the AOA Disagree alert are necessary for the safe operation of the airplane,” Boeing said.
“They provide supplemental information only, and have never been considered safety features on commercial jet transport airplanes.”
Boeing said a Safety Review Board convened after a fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October corroborated its prior conclusion that the alert was not necessary for the safe operation of commercial aircraft and could safely be tackled in a future system update.
The FAA backed that assessment but criticized Boeing for being slow to disclose the problem.
Boeing briefed the FAA on the display issue in November, after the Lion Air accident, and a special panel deemed it to be “low risk,” an FAA spokesman said.
“However, Boeing’s timely or earlier communication with the operators would have helped to reduce or eliminate possible confusion,” he added.
Boeing attributed the error to software delivered to the company from an outside source, but did not give details.
Sunday’s statement marked the first time since the two fatal accidents that Boeing explicitly acknowledged doing something inadvertently in the development of the 737 MAX, albeit on an issue that it contends has no impact on safety.
Boeing has said the feeding of erroneous Angle of Attack data to a system called MCAS that pushed the planes lower was a common link in two wider chains of events leading to both crashes, but has stopped short of admitting error on that front.
The angle of attack measures the angle between the air flow and the wing and helps determine whether the plane is able to fly correctly. If the angle becomes too steep, the flow of air over the wing is disturbed, throwing the plane into an aerodynamic stall. That means it starts to fall instead of fly.
Although the angle itself is key for onboard systems, the industry has debated for years whether such data should be included in already crowded cockpit displays because it is directly related to airspeed, which pilots already scrutinize.
Some analysts and academics say having the AOA Disagree alert installed would have helped Lion Air maintenance crew diagnose a problem on the penultimate flight of the 737 MAX jet that crashed in October, killing all 189 on board.
The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide over safety concerns following the Ethiopian crash in March, killing 157 people.
When the jet returns to service, all new aircraft will have a working AOA Disagree alert as a standard feature and a no-charge optional indicator showing the underlying data, Boeing said. That restores the situation found on the displays of previous 737NG models since around the middle of last decade.
Airlines with grounded 737 MAX jets will be able to activate the AOA Disagree function directly.
Boeing is also developing a software upgrade and training changes to the MCAS system that must be approved by global regulators before the jets can fly again.
Boeing has yet to formally submit the upgrades to the FAA for approval but could do as early as this week once it completes a special test flight.
Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector general’s office and a blue-ribbon panel are also looking into the 737 MAX’s certification. A U.S. House of Representatives panel will hold a hearing on the plane’s status with the FAA’s acting chief, Dan Elwell, and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt on May 15.
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For the next 30 days, Tarannum Mansouri will arise at 3 a.m. at her home in Vadodara, India, being careful not to awaken her toddler son. She will bathe and then join the other women in her family in the kitchen to prepare the morning meal.
A filling breakfast of homemade bread, vegetables, perhaps a chicken curry and fruit will be washed down with tea by 4:30 a.m., before the break of day.
So begins the holy month of Ramadan for more than 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.
What is Ramadan?
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, when Muslims believe the holy Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel in the seventh century. It is a month of fasting, prayer and reflection for Muslims. It is a time when practicing Muslims refrain from all food, drink, smoking and sex from sunrise to sunset.
“It is a holy month,” says Hibo Wardere of London. A month “that you are dedicating to God.”
The last 10 days of Ramadan are considered the most holy. “That is when the seven steps to heaven are open,” Wardere adds. The most important is Laylat al-Qadr, or the “Night of Power,” believed to be the holiest night of the year.
“It is a night everybody stays awake” and prays, she says. “It means all your prayers will be heard, it means all your sins will be forgiven, it means you will get what you dreamed of.”
Islam takes into account that not everyone is able or willing to fast during Ramadan. Children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are exempt from fasting.
Others who are old or ill can also forego fasting, but they must feed one poor person for each day of a missed fast. The practice is called fidya and how much it costs depends on where one lives.
In the U.S., “it comes out to $10 per day or $300 for the month,” says Minhaj Hassan of the nonprofit charity Islamic Relief USA. In Britain, Islamic Relief UK has set the daily rate of fidya at 5 pounds or 150 pounds for the month.
On the other hand, “kaffarah is paid by individuals who miss a fast for no good reason,” says Hassan. “The amount is $600 a day, or feeding 60 people in need (the Arabic term is miskeen).” In Britain, the price is 300 pounds per day.
One can also atone for a missed or deliberately broken fast by fasting for 60 straight days.
Observance in non-Muslim countries
Fasting during Ramadan is “a million times more difficult” in a non-Muslim country “than back home,” says Wardere, who is from Somalia but has lived in London for most of her life.
In the U.S., an estimated 3.2 million Muslims will fast during Ramadan, a small number compared to the 327 million population. By contrast, a 2013 Pew Research Center study shows 94% of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa fast for the month.
”The practice of fasting in Muslim nations is presumably much more common during Ramadan, since there are likely to be more practicing Muslims,” says Hassan. “And fasting is a part of the daily culture during this month. Thus, if people you know are fasting, you’re likely to do the same.”
Most Muslim countries also make it easier for people to fast. Across the Middle East, Ramadan must be observed in public. Which means, even non-Muslims must refrain from eating, drinking and smoking in public. In most of these countries, religious police patrol the streets and violators are usually punished. Most cafes, restaurants and clubs are closed during the day although some hotels serve food in screened-in areas or through room service.
Most public offices and schools are closed and private businesses are encouraged to cut back their hours to accommodate the fasters.
“Being part of an environment or community where fasting is encouraged and accommodated can increase the likelihood of people fasting successfully,” Hassan says. “In some Muslim countries, accommodations are provided for fasting, which may not always be the case in the West” or in other non-Muslim nations.
“Observing Ramadan as a minority has its challenges. But it is not significant enough to make it impossible to fast,” says Naeem Baig of the Islamic Circle of North America. He says it is made easier because “people from other faiths generally are respectful and supportive towards their Muslim colleagues or neighbors.”
Making accommodations
Mansouri, in India, will have to accommodate her fasting while spending weekdays at her job as a teacher in a Hindu school. She says she will try to keep herself busy so as not to think of food when teachers and children take their lunch break.
Similarly, Baig says, “We encourage Muslim parents to inform the schools their children attend and let the teachers know that their children will not be going for lunch break. In most public schools, Muslim children of fasting age can go to the library during lunch and are exempt from PE (physical education).”
Organizations such as the nonprofit Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding work with businesses to help them accommodate the needs of those observing Ramadan.
“Muslim employees observing Ramadan may be fasting during this period. Some may request scheduling accommodations and your company may find that more employees require space for prayer during this time,” writes the group’s deputy CEO, Mark Fowler, on its website.
He encourages his clients to avail themselves to the group’s fact sheet regarding scheduling, dietary restriction, and greetings during Ramadan.
Ramadan 2019
Muslims in the West, Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, and much of the Middle East, including Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, will begin observing Ramadan on Monday. But millions in India, Pakistan and Iran will likely be marking the start of the lunar month on Tuesday, based on moon sightings there.
Ramadan will end on June 3 or June 4, depending on when it started.
After 30 days, Ramadan ends with a three-day celebration known as Eid al-Fitr, when families and friends get together, exchange gifts and feast.
Watch: What is Ramadan?
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