worldwide news
Trade rhetoric is spilling into the real world of jobs and consumer goods. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6. Beijing is fighting back with its own $34 billion of tariffs on American goods. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, investors are understandably on edge.
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Trade rhetoric is spilling into the real world of jobs and consumer goods. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6. Beijing is fighting back with its own $34 billion of tariffs on American goods. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, investors are understandably on edge.
…
A book about an alleged prophecy describing Donald Trump’s win as U.S. president is being produced as a movie by Liberty University, but students at the Christian college are pushing back on the film.
The production, in which Liberty University students are technicians, editors and set decorators for class credit, tells the story of Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, Florida. Taylor said in 2011 God told him Trump would become president of the United States. Trump won the election in 2016.
“This movie could reflect very poorly on all Liberty students and Liberty University as a whole,” states an online petition called “Cancel the Liberty University Film Programs Heretical Film Project,” created by Liberty students.
The author’s “claims to have received prophecies directly from God … do not align with the Bible’s message,” states the petition signed by more than 2,000 respondents.
Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, partnered with Christian filmmaker Rick Eldridge, owner of Reel Works Studio in Charlotte, N.C., to produce the book, which was published in July 2017.
Liberty University staff contends that this has been an excellent learning experience for students in cinematic arts at the university.
“We think this feature-length work experience is unique to our department among film schools,” said Stephan Schultze, Liberty professor of cinematic arts and director of the film. “This distinction gives our students a skill set that makes them ready for the workforce upon graduating.”
Movie production experience
Students agree they have gained hands-on experience working on the movie production. But some said they object to the alleged prophecy and the message.
In their online petition, they cited a later interpretation of the Bible, 1 John 4:1, that suggests believers “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
“We should be very wary of modern-day prophets,” the petition says. “Mark Taylor has claimed God told him that electing Trump will save the world, which is unbiblical at best and heretical at worst.”
“Liberty’s mission statement and purpose is to be a light on a hill and to train champions for Christ,” the petition continues. “Openly supporting both a ‘modern-day prophet’ and Trump as a school does not convey this mission.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is an outspoken Trump supporter and was appointed to the Trump Task Force for Higher Education in 2017.
Schultze said the Liberty students who worked on the film served in positions that usually go to people with at least five years of experience in the film industry.
The Liberty students pushed back, saying they were “of the distasteful opinion that the producer had only come to Liberty to make his film because he could get free student labor that would significantly lower the cost of making the film,” according to a source who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of us felt used at times, which was another reason why we petitioned against the film in the first place.”
Students were given other options to working on the prophecy film, but those were of lesser experience, the source said. Well into the making of the film, students said, “it became clear … after the initial script reading and the many rewrites … the film did have a political agenda, which we were against.”
Biopic-style film
Schultze said the film is a biopic that “chronicles real-life events, following a fireman [Taylor] suffering from PTSD who believes he has heard a message from God, that Donald Trump will be the next president.” He did not respond directly to whether he thought the film was heretical but said he would “advise people to watch the movie first.”
“I think the film will be well-received, and people will be inspired to know that our students have created a narrative film whose quality is strong enough to warrant a national theatrical release on more than 1,200 screens,” he said.
“This is been a great experience for students, and I believe it will provide them with the edge they need for employment upon graduating,” Schultze added.
He said that Liberty University did not receive or pay any fees in exchange for the movie being produced there. He said there was a “cost benefit to student involvement,” but there was also “a risk to engage newly skilled labor still in a steep learning curve. It all evens out in the end because additional shooting days are required for the teaching process to take place on set. Our students’ education is a huge benefactor in the process.”
Students contested that the experience had enhanced their learning.
“Many do not want this movie on their resume and some are even considering … dropping out,” the student petition said.
Eldridge of Reel Works said he wants the film’s message to resonate with its viewers.
“We hope that they will be inspired by all that is great about our country,” Eldridge said of the audience in an email to VOA. “All the while we hope that they will be entertained by the story and the many voices who will speak during our reflective conversations after the dramatic story.”
…
A book about an alleged prophecy describing Donald Trump’s win as U.S. president is being produced as a movie by Liberty University, but students at the Christian college are pushing back on the film.
The production, in which Liberty University students are technicians, editors and set decorators for class credit, tells the story of Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, Florida. Taylor said in 2011 God told him Trump would become president of the United States. Trump won the election in 2016.
“This movie could reflect very poorly on all Liberty students and Liberty University as a whole,” states an online petition called “Cancel the Liberty University Film Programs Heretical Film Project,” created by Liberty students.
The author’s “claims to have received prophecies directly from God … do not align with the Bible’s message,” states the petition signed by more than 2,000 respondents.
Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, partnered with Christian filmmaker Rick Eldridge, owner of Reel Works Studio in Charlotte, N.C., to produce the book, which was published in July 2017.
Liberty University staff contends that this has been an excellent learning experience for students in cinematic arts at the university.
“We think this feature-length work experience is unique to our department among film schools,” said Stephan Schultze, Liberty professor of cinematic arts and director of the film. “This distinction gives our students a skill set that makes them ready for the workforce upon graduating.”
Movie production experience
Students agree they have gained hands-on experience working on the movie production. But some said they object to the alleged prophecy and the message.
In their online petition, they cited a later interpretation of the Bible, 1 John 4:1, that suggests believers “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
“We should be very wary of modern-day prophets,” the petition says. “Mark Taylor has claimed God told him that electing Trump will save the world, which is unbiblical at best and heretical at worst.”
“Liberty’s mission statement and purpose is to be a light on a hill and to train champions for Christ,” the petition continues. “Openly supporting both a ‘modern-day prophet’ and Trump as a school does not convey this mission.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is an outspoken Trump supporter and was appointed to the Trump Task Force for Higher Education in 2017.
Schultze said the Liberty students who worked on the film served in positions that usually go to people with at least five years of experience in the film industry.
The Liberty students pushed back, saying they were “of the distasteful opinion that the producer had only come to Liberty to make his film because he could get free student labor that would significantly lower the cost of making the film,” according to a source who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of us felt used at times, which was another reason why we petitioned against the film in the first place.”
Students were given other options to working on the prophecy film, but those were of lesser experience, the source said. Well into the making of the film, students said, “it became clear … after the initial script reading and the many rewrites … the film did have a political agenda, which we were against.”
Biopic-style film
Schultze said the film is a biopic that “chronicles real-life events, following a fireman [Taylor] suffering from PTSD who believes he has heard a message from God, that Donald Trump will be the next president.” He did not respond directly to whether he thought the film was heretical but said he would “advise people to watch the movie first.”
“I think the film will be well-received, and people will be inspired to know that our students have created a narrative film whose quality is strong enough to warrant a national theatrical release on more than 1,200 screens,” he said.
“This is been a great experience for students, and I believe it will provide them with the edge they need for employment upon graduating,” Schultze added.
He said that Liberty University did not receive or pay any fees in exchange for the movie being produced there. He said there was a “cost benefit to student involvement,” but there was also “a risk to engage newly skilled labor still in a steep learning curve. It all evens out in the end because additional shooting days are required for the teaching process to take place on set. Our students’ education is a huge benefactor in the process.”
Students contested that the experience had enhanced their learning.
“Many do not want this movie on their resume and some are even considering … dropping out,” the student petition said.
Eldridge of Reel Works said he wants the film’s message to resonate with its viewers.
“We hope that they will be inspired by all that is great about our country,” Eldridge said of the audience in an email to VOA. “All the while we hope that they will be entertained by the story and the many voices who will speak during our reflective conversations after the dramatic story.”
…
United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars.
The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin.
Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said.
The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs on cars could amount to $294 billion.
The EU report, submitted to the U.S. Commerce Department, maintained the tariffs would disrupt cross-border supply chains in the automotive industry. The report said the tariffs could possibly trigger higher U.S. industrial costs, raise consumer prices, hurt exports and cost jobs.
The World Trade Organization said Wednesday trade barriers being set by world economic powers could jeopardize the global economic recovery.
“This continued escalation poses a serious threat to growth and recovery in all countries, and we are beginning to see this reflected in some forward-looking indicators,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevendo said.
Azevendo did not expound on his remarks, but the WTO’s quarter trade outlook indicator in May suggested trade growth in the second quarter would decelerate.
United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars.
The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin.
Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said.
The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs on cars could amount to $294 billion.
The EU report, submitted to the U.S. Commerce Department, maintained the tariffs would disrupt cross-border supply chains in the automotive industry. The report said the tariffs could possibly trigger higher U.S. industrial costs, raise consumer prices, hurt exports and cost jobs.
The World Trade Organization said Wednesday trade barriers being set by world economic powers could jeopardize the global economic recovery.
“This continued escalation poses a serious threat to growth and recovery in all countries, and we are beginning to see this reflected in some forward-looking indicators,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevendo said.
Azevendo did not expound on his remarks, but the WTO’s quarter trade outlook indicator in May suggested trade growth in the second quarter would decelerate.
European businesses are unsettled as they watch the U.S. and China collide over trade. And for good reason: the nascent global trade war could represent the biggest single threat to the economic upswing that has helped the region get past its financial crisis.
In theory, some European companies could benefit, jumping into market niches if Chinese businesses are kept out of the U.S. market. But that would only be a few companies or sectors.
When your entire economy is heavily dependent on trade, an overall slowdown in global commerce caused by tit-for-tat import taxes provokes fear and undermines confidence.
And that’s just what’s happening in Europe. By one measure, business confidence has fallen in six of the past seven months in Germany, where exports are almost half of annual economic output.
“It’s worth all our efforts to defuse this conflict, so it doesn’t become a war,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
The U.S. is due to put tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday. The Chinese will respond with tariffs on an equivalent value of U.S. products such as soybeans, seafood and crude oil.
Amid all this, Europe has its own trade dispute with the U.S. After the U.S. put tariffs on steel and aluminum from many allies, including the European Union, the 28-country bloc responded with import taxes on some $3.25 billion of U.S. goods. The Trump administration is also studying the option of putting tariffs on cars, which would significantly escalate the confrontation.
The head of the EU’s executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, will head to Washington in late July to try to personally persuade Trump against further measures targeting Europe.
The disputes over trade threaten to spoil the good times for Europe’s economy.
Growth last year was the strongest in a decade, since before the global financial crisis. While that has eased in recent quarters, the economy is still strong enough to create jobs. The number of unemployed fell by 125,000 in May, leaving unemployment in the 19 countries that use the euro at 8.4 percent, the lowest since 2008 and down from a high of 12.1 percent in 2013.
“Trade tensions stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump are clouding the economic outlook in Europe,” wrote analysts at Berenberg bank in London. They rated the trade risk ahead of troubles from Italy’s heavy debt load or faster than expected interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Many European companies would suffer because they both produce and sell goods in the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies.
For example, tariffs that China is expected to impose Friday on U.S.-made autos would hit German carmakers Daimler and BMW since they both make vehicles in the United States and export them to China.
Daimler has already lowered its outlook for profits, citing higher than expected costs from the new tariffs. BMW warned in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Friday that tariffs would make it harder for it to sell in China the vehicles it builds at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, “potentially leading to a strongly reduced export volumes and negative effects on investment and employment in the United States.”
Last year, BMW exported 272,000 vehicles from the Spartanburg plant, more than half its total production. Of those, 81,000 — worth $2.37 billion — went to China. BMW says its exports reduced the U.S. trade deficit by around $1 billion.
By themselves, the tariffs that take effect Friday won’t immediately have a dramatic impact on global trade. The fear is that retaliation will spiral, hitting the total amount of global commerce.
Even if the overall effect is to harm growth, there could be benefits for some European companies and sectors. Economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Jianwei Xu at the French bank Natixis say that European makers of cars, aircraft, chemicals, computer chips and factory machinery could in theory snare market share by substituting for Chinese or American products in the two markets. But that’s only if Europe’s own trade dispute with the U.S. does not escalate — a big if.
Europe is waiting to see whether the Trump administration will go ahead separately with tariffs on auto imports. European companies like BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi divisions, and Fiat Chrysler send $46.6 billion worth of vehicles every year to the U.S. Some 13.3 million people, or 6.1 percent of the employed population of the EU, work in the automotive sector, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.
“Europe cannot win anything” on an overall basis “for one obvious reason: we are net exporters,” said Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and a senior fellow at European research institute Bruegel. “But we should not understate the view that some sectors could get something out of a U.S.-China trade war.”
Amid the brewing conflict, China has sought to get Europe on its side, putting on a diplomatic charm offensive during visits by Merkel and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The EU and China agreed last month to deepen commercial ties and support trade rules. But the EU remains a close, longtime ally of the U.S. on a range of issues, despite the current tensions with the Trump administration.
One negative outcome for Europe, Herrero said, would be if Trump can push the Chinese into a trade agreement aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit. The additional U.S. goods to China could come at the expense of European competitors.
“If China concedes to the U.S. proposed agreement, the whole situation faced by the EU would be much tougher,” she and Xu wrote in a research note. “For China to massively reduce its trade surplus with the U.S., it has to in some way substitute its imports away from the EU to the U.S., which would have a significant negative impact on the EU producers.”
…
European businesses are unsettled as they watch the U.S. and China collide over trade. And for good reason: the nascent global trade war could represent the biggest single threat to the economic upswing that has helped the region get past its financial crisis.
In theory, some European companies could benefit, jumping into market niches if Chinese businesses are kept out of the U.S. market. But that would only be a few companies or sectors.
When your entire economy is heavily dependent on trade, an overall slowdown in global commerce caused by tit-for-tat import taxes provokes fear and undermines confidence.
And that’s just what’s happening in Europe. By one measure, business confidence has fallen in six of the past seven months in Germany, where exports are almost half of annual economic output.
“It’s worth all our efforts to defuse this conflict, so it doesn’t become a war,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
The U.S. is due to put tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday. The Chinese will respond with tariffs on an equivalent value of U.S. products such as soybeans, seafood and crude oil.
Amid all this, Europe has its own trade dispute with the U.S. After the U.S. put tariffs on steel and aluminum from many allies, including the European Union, the 28-country bloc responded with import taxes on some $3.25 billion of U.S. goods. The Trump administration is also studying the option of putting tariffs on cars, which would significantly escalate the confrontation.
The head of the EU’s executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, will head to Washington in late July to try to personally persuade Trump against further measures targeting Europe.
The disputes over trade threaten to spoil the good times for Europe’s economy.
Growth last year was the strongest in a decade, since before the global financial crisis. While that has eased in recent quarters, the economy is still strong enough to create jobs. The number of unemployed fell by 125,000 in May, leaving unemployment in the 19 countries that use the euro at 8.4 percent, the lowest since 2008 and down from a high of 12.1 percent in 2013.
“Trade tensions stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump are clouding the economic outlook in Europe,” wrote analysts at Berenberg bank in London. They rated the trade risk ahead of troubles from Italy’s heavy debt load or faster than expected interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Many European companies would suffer because they both produce and sell goods in the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies.
For example, tariffs that China is expected to impose Friday on U.S.-made autos would hit German carmakers Daimler and BMW since they both make vehicles in the United States and export them to China.
Daimler has already lowered its outlook for profits, citing higher than expected costs from the new tariffs. BMW warned in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Friday that tariffs would make it harder for it to sell in China the vehicles it builds at its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, “potentially leading to a strongly reduced export volumes and negative effects on investment and employment in the United States.”
Last year, BMW exported 272,000 vehicles from the Spartanburg plant, more than half its total production. Of those, 81,000 — worth $2.37 billion — went to China. BMW says its exports reduced the U.S. trade deficit by around $1 billion.
By themselves, the tariffs that take effect Friday won’t immediately have a dramatic impact on global trade. The fear is that retaliation will spiral, hitting the total amount of global commerce.
Even if the overall effect is to harm growth, there could be benefits for some European companies and sectors. Economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Jianwei Xu at the French bank Natixis say that European makers of cars, aircraft, chemicals, computer chips and factory machinery could in theory snare market share by substituting for Chinese or American products in the two markets. But that’s only if Europe’s own trade dispute with the U.S. does not escalate — a big if.
Europe is waiting to see whether the Trump administration will go ahead separately with tariffs on auto imports. European companies like BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi divisions, and Fiat Chrysler send $46.6 billion worth of vehicles every year to the U.S. Some 13.3 million people, or 6.1 percent of the employed population of the EU, work in the automotive sector, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.
“Europe cannot win anything” on an overall basis “for one obvious reason: we are net exporters,” said Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and a senior fellow at European research institute Bruegel. “But we should not understate the view that some sectors could get something out of a U.S.-China trade war.”
Amid the brewing conflict, China has sought to get Europe on its side, putting on a diplomatic charm offensive during visits by Merkel and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The EU and China agreed last month to deepen commercial ties and support trade rules. But the EU remains a close, longtime ally of the U.S. on a range of issues, despite the current tensions with the Trump administration.
One negative outcome for Europe, Herrero said, would be if Trump can push the Chinese into a trade agreement aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit. The additional U.S. goods to China could come at the expense of European competitors.
“If China concedes to the U.S. proposed agreement, the whole situation faced by the EU would be much tougher,” she and Xu wrote in a research note. “For China to massively reduce its trade surplus with the U.S., it has to in some way substitute its imports away from the EU to the U.S., which would have a significant negative impact on the EU producers.”
…
It might seem meshuganah — crazy — to stage a beloved musical in a language that most of the audience won’t understand. But Tevye the dairyman and his family will speak Yiddish in an off-Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof” directed by Oscar and Tony winner Joel Grey.
Previews start Wednesday for the show, which will be the first-ever U.S. production of “Fiddler” in the language its characters would have spoken.
“I always knew what this play was about and that’s how I had the chutzpah to tackle it,” Grey said during a rehearsal at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which is housed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. “We work in English first on the scenes so that everybody understands the characters, and the third or fourth time we do it in Yiddish, and we just keep at it.”
There will be supertitles in English and Russian for theatergoers who don’t know their schmaltz from their schmutz.
“Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964 starring Zero Mostel as Tevye and ran for eight years. It has been a favorite of schools and community theater groups ever since and has been revived on Broadway four times. Its songs including “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man” are familiar even to people who’ve never seen the show.
Based on stories by Sholom Aleichem originally written in Yiddish, “Fiddler” is set in 1905 in a Jewish village in czarist Russia.
A Yiddish version of “Fiddler” translated by actor and writer Shraga Friedman as “Fidler afn Dakh” was performed in Israel in 1966 but was never staged in the United States until now.
In the Yiddish version of the show, the song “To Life!” doesn’t have to be translated from “L’Chaim!” — It’s just ‘L’Chaim!” “If I Were a Rich Man” becomes “Ven ikh bin a Rotschild,” from a story by Aleichem about a man who imagines he were as wealthy as a member of the Rothschild family.
The new production shows how decades of work to preserve Yiddish by organizations including the Folksbiene — Yiddish for World Stage — have paid off.
“For more than a generation we’ve had an explosion of contemporary Yiddish arts and culture by musicians, poets, theater makers, scholars and writers who have studied the language and its history and its incredible volume of modern literature and eclectic music,” said Alisa Solomon, the author of “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof,” published in 2013.
Solomon said “Fiddler” is “free to just kind of be itself in a way that 50 years ago it couldn’t be in some circles because there was an absence of that vibrant Yiddish culture.”
Yiddish, which is based on German with elements taken from Hebrew and other languages and is written with the Hebrew alphabet, was once spoken by millions of Eastern European Jews but fell victim both to the Holocaust and the pull of assimilation. Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won a Nobel Prize for his stories written in Yiddish, famously said the language “has been dying for a thousand years, and I’m sure it will go on dying for another thousand.”
Immigrants to the United States built a thriving Yiddish theater scene that launched the careers of famed acting teacher Stella Adler and stars such as Edward G. Robinson. The Folksbiene was founded in 1915 and was once one of more than a dozen Yiddish theater companies on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It presents plays from the Yiddish theater canon as well as new work and adaptations of Yiddish literary works such as “Yentl,” based on Singer’s story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.”
Grey’s father, Mickey Katz, was a musician and actor who performed Yiddish comedy songs, but Grey said he doesn’t speak much Yiddish himself and has been learning while rehearsing.
Grey watched as the actors rehearsed the tavern scene from “Fiddler” in which Tevye agrees to let the butcher Lazar Wolf marry his eldest daughter. To a non-Yiddish speaker, the most easily understood words were schnapps and vodka.
The 86-year-old is best known for his role as the master of ceremonies in “Cabaret,” a musical that improbably turned the rise of Hitler into popular entertainment.
“He brings a whole other dimension in terms of his theatrical knowledge and sense,” said Zalmen Mlotek, the Folksbiene’s artistic director. “It’s an experience.”
…
It might seem meshuganah — crazy — to stage a beloved musical in a language that most of the audience won’t understand. But Tevye the dairyman and his family will speak Yiddish in an off-Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof” directed by Oscar and Tony winner Joel Grey.
Previews start Wednesday for the show, which will be the first-ever U.S. production of “Fiddler” in the language its characters would have spoken.
“I always knew what this play was about and that’s how I had the chutzpah to tackle it,” Grey said during a rehearsal at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which is housed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. “We work in English first on the scenes so that everybody understands the characters, and the third or fourth time we do it in Yiddish, and we just keep at it.”
There will be supertitles in English and Russian for theatergoers who don’t know their schmaltz from their schmutz.
“Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964 starring Zero Mostel as Tevye and ran for eight years. It has been a favorite of schools and community theater groups ever since and has been revived on Broadway four times. Its songs including “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man” are familiar even to people who’ve never seen the show.
Based on stories by Sholom Aleichem originally written in Yiddish, “Fiddler” is set in 1905 in a Jewish village in czarist Russia.
A Yiddish version of “Fiddler” translated by actor and writer Shraga Friedman as “Fidler afn Dakh” was performed in Israel in 1966 but was never staged in the United States until now.
In the Yiddish version of the show, the song “To Life!” doesn’t have to be translated from “L’Chaim!” — It’s just ‘L’Chaim!” “If I Were a Rich Man” becomes “Ven ikh bin a Rotschild,” from a story by Aleichem about a man who imagines he were as wealthy as a member of the Rothschild family.
The new production shows how decades of work to preserve Yiddish by organizations including the Folksbiene — Yiddish for World Stage — have paid off.
“For more than a generation we’ve had an explosion of contemporary Yiddish arts and culture by musicians, poets, theater makers, scholars and writers who have studied the language and its history and its incredible volume of modern literature and eclectic music,” said Alisa Solomon, the author of “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof,” published in 2013.
Solomon said “Fiddler” is “free to just kind of be itself in a way that 50 years ago it couldn’t be in some circles because there was an absence of that vibrant Yiddish culture.”
Yiddish, which is based on German with elements taken from Hebrew and other languages and is written with the Hebrew alphabet, was once spoken by millions of Eastern European Jews but fell victim both to the Holocaust and the pull of assimilation. Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won a Nobel Prize for his stories written in Yiddish, famously said the language “has been dying for a thousand years, and I’m sure it will go on dying for another thousand.”
Immigrants to the United States built a thriving Yiddish theater scene that launched the careers of famed acting teacher Stella Adler and stars such as Edward G. Robinson. The Folksbiene was founded in 1915 and was once one of more than a dozen Yiddish theater companies on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It presents plays from the Yiddish theater canon as well as new work and adaptations of Yiddish literary works such as “Yentl,” based on Singer’s story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.”
Grey’s father, Mickey Katz, was a musician and actor who performed Yiddish comedy songs, but Grey said he doesn’t speak much Yiddish himself and has been learning while rehearsing.
Grey watched as the actors rehearsed the tavern scene from “Fiddler” in which Tevye agrees to let the butcher Lazar Wolf marry his eldest daughter. To a non-Yiddish speaker, the most easily understood words were schnapps and vodka.
The 86-year-old is best known for his role as the master of ceremonies in “Cabaret,” a musical that improbably turned the rise of Hitler into popular entertainment.
“He brings a whole other dimension in terms of his theatrical knowledge and sense,” said Zalmen Mlotek, the Folksbiene’s artistic director. “It’s an experience.”
…
It was 50 years ago the sci-fi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” by author Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, opened in theaters across America to mixed reviews. The almost three-hour long film, was too cerebral and slow-moving to be appreciated by general audiences in 1968. Today, half a century later, the movie is one of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time.
Film director Douglas Trumbull was a special photographic effects supervisor on the “2001” set. He describes Kubrick as a perfectionist and an innovative genius, who spent four years producing the film.
“He started out with the intention of making a more conventional movie, with dialogue and suspense and character development and drama and things that movies are normally are made out of. And during the production he began stripping away all of the conventions of normal melodrama because he was working on this 70mm giant widescreen Cinerama process and the movie progressively became more immersive. And the more immersive it became and the more experiential it became the less you had to talk about it,” says Trumbull.
To create this immersive experience Kubrick built “a centrifuge set, the big center piece of the movie” as Trumbull describes it.
The cameras were tied on the rotating set and were filming in 360 degrees. This is how Kubrick created the illusion of the spacecraft crew walking from the floor to the ceiling. And then there was the music.
“The movie differentiates itself in many ways with using classical music rather than a score which underscores every moment and the composer will often gouge the strings at the moment you are supposed to be afraid. Kubrick did not want any of that manipulation,” says Trumbull.
The music of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz is in step with Kubrick’s crisp, slow moving images of space: an otherworldly spectacle watched on huge Cinerama curved screens in 1968.
Many describe the effect as ‘hypnotic,’ enhancing the message of “2001:A Space Odyssey,” that humanity’s intellectual advancement was aided by alien intelligence.
Kubrick steered clear of images of stereotypical aliens. Instead, the alien presence appears suddenly, through a looming black monolith, transmitting signals that teach apelike anthropoids how to use tools for hunting and survival. Millions of years later, in Kubrick’s imagined high tech world of 2001, the aliens make contact again through the monolith.
This time, the sleek rectangle prods humans towards an exploration voyage to Jupiter.
“And they get to Jupiter and that’s where the transformation takes place.” By “transformation,” Trumbull means the evolution of Dave Bowman, the only surviving astronaut aboard Spacecraft Discovery 1, into a noncorporeal entity after he makes contact with aliens through a stargate that transcends time and space. Trumbull, takes credit for the visual effects that created the famous Stargate.
“I seemed to be able to come at it with some new solutions for Stanley that no one had thought out before and he began to trust me. So, I would go to him and say ‘I think I have the solution for the Stargate,’ for example, that was one of the high points for me on the movie. And it was this idea that you could take photography and open the camera shutter for a long period of time, several seconds, and move lights and blink them on and off in patterns and create three dimensional light streams for the star gate, which seems to me to be in perfect harmony with the idea of the Stargate which of itself was supposed to be a transition through time and space,” Trumbull says.
Other innovations followed.
“There was one artist who was in charge of painting the Earth for example, no one had any photographs of the Earth yet, because they had not added orbiting satellites yet,” says Trumbull. “And so, he worked out this technique painting with water colors on glass and then painting the clouds on glass and then going back and scratching it with a razor blade which started creating things that simulated the way clouds naturally form on the Earth. Then, I painted all the stars in the movie. All the stars are spattered white paint from my airbrush onto black shiny paper and I’ve worked out this technique of reducing the pressure of the airbrush until it started to sputter, and it would sputter stars which would become completely irregular and very natural looking, not like I painted them with a paintbrush, which would look artificial.”
Trumbull compares Kubrick’s filming of “2001” to today’s all-immersive Virtual Reality filmmaking:
“You know, the time when the ‘2001’ was made, it was in a time of Cinerama and these 70-millimeter spectacles of “Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” and giant-screen theaters and you would go out, it was a big deal to go out to see a big-screen movie.”
Today, he says, the equivalent all immersive 360-degree filming and viewing would be virtual reality.
“A lot of people want to have their virtual reality experience, they want to go into another dimension, they want to have some experience that transcends their everyday reality. That’s what I think virtual reality promises.”
Equally significant to the film’s technology is the plot.
“The story it was trying to express was extremely cosmic and very big. Because the idea was that some super intelligent highly evolved civilization way beyond our imagination that to us would look like a god would be incomprehensible to us, like magic, was intervening in human affairs from time to time just to make sure we got through,” says Trumbull.
A powerful sub plot was the antagonistic relationship between man and artificial intelligence. Hal, the ship’s malfunctioning central computer, and Bowman, clash over the ship’s control.
Bowman prevails. His psychedelic-looking passage through the Stargate ends in a static hotel room the aliens have recreated from his memory in order to make contact with him in a different dimension. There, on the bed, Bowman, a very old man, is dying before he gets transformed into a transparent star child.
To celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary, artist Simon Birch recreated that hotel room at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Exhibit curator Martin Collins explains the lasting power of the film.
“The movie did not seek to pose specific answers to its largest questions. What would be the fruits of space exploration, what would be the potential meaning of contact with extra-terrestrials, what would be the possible transformations that might occur to humanity as it undertakes exploration outside the planet? So, all of these larger questions are kind of implied here in this room and I think we hope that these visitors will sit back a little bit and think about why this room is here and think about this larger set of questions that Kubrick and Clark posed in “2001: (A Space Odyssey).”
The film has been remastered in HD format and has been released in IMAX theaters to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It feels as contemporary as ever.
“I think the movie has stood all these 50 years because it’s unique, it’s spectacularly beautiful, it’s 70mm giant screen. You have to see it on a giant screen to say ‘ah, now I understand why it’s so beautiful, and why these shots last so long, because they are worth looking at. And then the story is this very cosmic evolutionary future looking. And so, when the movie is over, there is a lot to think about,” says Trumbull.
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The weirder it gets, the more Lakeith Stanfield looks right at home.
It was Stanfield, as the bodysnatched Andrew Hayworth, personifying the nightmare of Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” In Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” his cosmically lackadaisical pot-smoking philosopher Darius is the epitome of the show’s freewheeling surrealism. And in Boots Riley’s comic and caustic social satire “Sorry to Bother You,” Stanfield is the entry-level telemarketer Cassius (“Cash”) Green, whose swift rise introduces him to a darkly dystopian world.
“I do find I’m a little more comfortable than the average person in strange situations, which is probably why I’m an actor,” says Stanfield. “I’ve been in some strange situations. Like orgies. And I was in an orgy in this movie. It wasn’t strange to me at all. I had no reservations about getting naked. I was supposed to be naked in this, full frontal.”
He grins. “Maybe I am, I don’t know.”
Since his acclaimed feature-film debut in 2013’s “Short Term 12,” Stanfield, 26, has become one of the most arresting, unpredictable, and in-demand actors in Hollywood. He has played Jimmie Lee Jackson (“Selma”), Snoop Dogg (“Straight Outta Compton”‘), Miles Davis (“Miles Ahead”) and, um, Chandler, in Jay-Z’s “Friends”-style music video “Moonlight.” In even his soberer parts, Stanfield has a disarmingly laid-back, unflappable presence, like his antennae is tuned to a different frequency than everyone else.
Glover, the “Atlanta” creator, vividly remembers first meeting Stanfield.
“He barely talked to me,” Glover said in an email. “He was not concerned with getting the job at all. He was already living in a different dimension than the rest of us.”
“Sorry to Bother You,” which opens Friday on the heels of ecstatic reviews, Stanfield may have found the best feature-film vehicle yet for his particular dimension. The movie is a years-long passion project for Riley, the Bay-area hip-hop pioneer and activist, who along the way also spoke to Glover and Peele about the role. It’s a wild, anti-capitalist romp through workplace America, all seen through the dazed eyes of Stanfield.
“What holds the movie together — which is why I picked Lakeith — is there’s all this crazy stuff happening but you have to believe that character,” says Riley. “If it’s an actor that’s like, ‘Oh, this is how I show I’m scared. This is how I show I’m confused’ — it wouldn’t work. Lakeith doesn’t care about what his face looks like. He just gets to that emotion.”
In the film, Cassius is catapulted into overnight success once he begins using what an older employee played by Danny Glover terms is “your white voice.” Stanfield’s rise, though, has been predicated on remaining himself.
“It’s a hard thing to be yourself and be available,” Stanfield said in a recent interview in Soho. “It’s much easier to use the white voice, which I’ve also done. But at some point, I become exhausted with it and I have to say what’s on my mind and do what I feel. Part of that is the reason why people put cameras on me.”
Stanfield has previously channeled into music his underprivileged upbringing in the Southern California desert city of Victorville. In eachof the 2015 music videos for his hip-hop duo Moors, Stanfield (who recently apologized for a freestyle with homophobic lyrics) returns to an image of drowning on the seafloor.
“At the time I made those, I felt smothered by circumstances,” says Stanfield. “There was a lot of family drama at the time. I watched a family member that I love try to kill themselves by suffocation. I was writing from that place. The reason why you haven’t seen very much follow-up to that kind of material is because, luckily, I haven’t been in those kinds of situations.”
Drawn into acting by a high-school drama class, Stanfield came to Los Angeles at 18. He recalls spending hours staring at Echo Lake in between auditions, with nothing else to do.
“I was homeless. And I was hungry sometimes,” Stanfield says. “But I didn’t really view it as hard. I always kept a positive idea about it. I remember being in my car listening to Jimi Hendrix and eating McDonald’s and being like: One day, I’m going to remember this moment. And I still do.”
Stanfield’s breakthrough came via Destin Daniel Cretton’s college short film “Short Term 12,” which five years later became the feature about a foster care facility for at-risk teens. By then, Stanfield was in Sacramento working at a marijuana factory. His character, who gradually comes out of his shell, mirrored Stanfield’s own journey. But any reticence is now long gone.
“I always want to expand,” says Stanfield. “I can learn something from everyone and everything and hopefully I get to play a dog that is also a cat, that is also a man and a woman and a flower so I can just be all versions of life.”
“Playing a flower would be awesome,” adds Stanfield, smiling, before referencing his “Atlanta” character. “It’s a very Darius thing to say.”
Exactly where Darius ends and Stanfield begins can be difficult to define. A lot of Darius’ eccentric serenity comes directly from Stanfield, who improvises much of Darius’ non-sequitur musing. “In some ways, he is me,” says Stanfield.
“I think he’s not acting. Acting is pretending. And Keith doesn’t seem to pretend much,” explains Glover. “Darius, like Lakeith, is living in the now. I can honestly say Lakeith is the only person in the world I know who could play Darius.”
There’s some method to Stanfield’s madness, even if the method is the sort that worries directors. Riley discovered that himself, when he realized Stanfield didn’t know his lines as shooting approached on “Sorry to Bother You.”
“And he’s like: ‘I don’t usually do that until right before,’ says Riley. “His brain is still going through a process of finding the words. It might just be a millisecond more, but it’s not that polished thing. That makes the lines more real for him. That’s what all the fantastical elements and the absurdity rely on.”
Last summer, Stanfield had a baby with his girlfriend, actress Xosha Roquemore. He has his biggest budget film yet coming in October: “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” In a since-deleted Instagram post, Stanfield noted of the largely Swedish cast: “I’m the only black person in this film.”
But having grown up gravitating toward movies that he saw himself in, Stanfield likes the idea that “Sorry to Bother You” could be “some kid’s ‘Menace to Society’ … but with less guns.”
“Now, black bodies can occupy space where we have these fantastical and absurd things happening, which we haven’t seen,” he says. “You can’t do that when you’re too busy trying to make yourself seem human. We can still talk about those things, but now we can also talk about these other things.”
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China is putting pressure on the European Union to issue a strong joint statement against President Donald Trump’s trade policies at a summit
this month, but it’s facing resistance, European officials said.
In meetings in Brussels, Berlin and Beijing, senior Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, have proposed an alliance between the two economic powers and offered to open more of the Chinese market in a gesture of goodwill.
One proposal has been for China and the European Union to launch joint action against the United States at the World Trade Organization.
But the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, has rejected the idea of allying with Beijing against Washington, five EU officials and diplomats told Reuters, ahead of the Sino-European summit in Beijing on July 16-17.
Instead, the summit is expected to produce a modest communique that affirms the commitment of both sides to the multilateral trading system and promises to set up a working group on modernizing the WTO, EU officials said.
Liu has said privately that China is ready to set out for the first time what sectors it can open to European investment at the annual summit, expected to be attended by President Xi Jinping, China’s Premier Li Keqiang and top EU officials.
Chinese state media have promoted the message that the EU is on China’s side, officials said, putting the bloc in a delicate position. The past two summits, in 2016 and 2017, ended without a statement because of disagreements about the South China Sea and trade.
“China wants the European Union to stand with Beijing against Washington, to take sides,” said one European diplomat. “We won’t do it and we have told them that.”
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Beijing’s summit aims.
In a commentary on Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua news agency said China and Europe “should resist trade protectionism hand in hand.”
“China and European countries are natural partners,” it said. “They firmly believe that free trade is a powerful engine for global economic growth.”
China’s moment?
Despite Trump’s tariffs on European metals exports and threats to hit the EU’s automobile industry, Brussels shares Washington’s concern about China’s closed markets and what Western governments say is Beijing’s manipulation of trade to dominate global markets.
“We agree with almost all the complaints the U.S. has against China. It’s just we don’t agree with how the United States is handling it,” another diplomat said.
Still, China’s stance is striking, given Washington’s deep economic and security ties with European nations. It shows the depth of Chinese concern about a trade war with Washington, as Trump is set to impose tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports on Friday.
It also underscores China’s new boldness in trying to seize leadership amid divisions between the United States and its European, Canadian and Japanese allies over issues including free trade, climate change and foreign policy.
“Trump has split the West, and China is seeking to capitalize on that. It was never comfortable with the West being one bloc,” said a European official involved in EU-China diplomacy.
“China now feels it can try to split off the European Union in so many areas — on trade, on human rights,” the official said.
Another official described the dispute between Trump and Western allies at the Group of Seven summit last month as a gift to Beijing because it showed European leaders losing a longtime ally, at least in trade policy.
European envoys say they already sensed a greater urgency from China in 2017 to find like-minded countries willing to stand up against Trump’s “America First” policies.
No ‘systemic change’
An April report by New York-based Rhodium Group, a research consultancy, showed that Chinese restrictions on foreign investment were higher in every single sector save real estate, compared with the European Union, while many of the big Chinese takeovers in the bloc would not have been possible for EU companies in China.
China has promised to open up. But EU officials expect any moves to be more symbolic than substantive.
They say China’s decision in May to lower tariffs on imported cars will make little difference because imports make up such a small part of the market.
China’s plans to move rapidly to electric vehicles mean that any new benefits it offers traditional European carmakers will be fleeting.
“Whenever the train has left the station, we are allowed to enter the platform,” a Beijing-based European executive said.
However, China’s offer at the upcoming summit to open up reflects Beijing’s concern that it is set to face tighter EU controls, and regulators are also blocking Chinese takeover attempts in the United States.
The European Union is seeking to pass legislation to allow greater scrutiny of foreign investments.
“We don’t know if this offer to open up is genuine yet,” a third EU diplomat said. “It’s unlikely to mark a systemic change.”
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Sophia, one of the world’s most advanced and perhaps most famous artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot, was a big hit at this year’s Information & Communication Technology International Expo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Visitors, including various dignitaries, were excited to meet the life-like AI robot as she communicated with expo guests and expressed a wide range of facial expressions. As VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports, Sophia has become an international sensation.
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The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday granted a temporary reprieve to ZTE that allows China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker to conduct business needed to maintain existing networks and equipment in the United States as it works toward the lifting of a U.S. sales ban.
The authorization from the department’s Bureau of Industry and Services, dated July 2 and seen by Reuters, runs until August 1.
ZTE and spokespeople for the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
ZTE, which makes smartphones and networking gear, was forced to cease major operations in April after the United States slapped it with a supplier ban saying it broke an agreement to discipline executives who conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
The company had also agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty and put $400 million in an escrow account as part of the deal to resume business with U.S. suppliers — which provide almost a third of the components used in ZTE’s equipment.
The escrow agreement is still pending, according to a source. Until it is executed, ZTE cannot deposit the $400 million in escrow necessary to get the ban lifted.
While the denial order is still in place, the authorization grants a waiver to some companies that do business with ZTE to do so for one month, a source told Reuters.
The waivers allow for a limited type of activity but do not authorize any new business.
The uncertainty about the ban amid intensifying U.S.-China trade tensions has hammered ZTE shares, which have fallen 60 percent since trading resumed last month following a two-month hiatus, wiping out more than $11 billion of the company’s market valuation.
ZTE announced a new board last week in a radical management shakeup as part of a $1.4 billion deal with the United States.
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Eike Batista, the former mining and oil magnate who was once Brazil’s richest man, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for bribing Rio de Janeiro state’s disgraced ex-governor, according to a court document published Tuesday.
Batista’s conviction and sentencing by federal judge Marcelo Bretas are the latest in a wave of graft investigations that have sent scores of powerful businessmen and politicians to jail.
The eccentric former billionaire’s meteoric rise and fall mirrored the recent fortunes of Brazil, where the commodities boom faded as his energy, mineral and logistics empire fell apart earlier this decade.
His swashbuckling attitude and confident forecasts of a prolonged golden era for Brazil evaporated just as Latin America’s largest economy suffered its worst recession on record.
Batista, whose legal team said he would appeal, was found guilty of paying a $16.5 million bribe to former Rio governor Sergio Cabral, who also was found guilty in the case.
Batista’s companies won state contracts in exchange for the bribe, including one awarding his consortium the rights to run Brazil’s temple of soccer, the Maracana in Rio, the stadium where the 2014 World Cup final was played and the 2016 Olympic Games’ opening and closing ceremonies were held.
The bribes were also linked to the construction of the $3.7 billion Acu port facility, controlled since 2013 by Prumo Logistica, which is majority owned by U.S.-based EIG Energy Partners.
Prosecutors said Batista paid a quarter of the bribes to Cabral in cash and the rest in shares of state-led oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, miner Vale SA and drinks company Ambev SA, a unit of Anheuser Busch Inbev NV.
Batista was last year fined 21 million reais ($5.4 million) for trading shares based on insider information about shipbuilding company OSX Brasil.
Tuesday’s ruling was the sixth corruption conviction for Cabral, who has been sentenced to over 120 years.
Six years ago, Batista, 61, had a net worth exceeding $30 billion and ranked among the world’s 10 richest people, according to Forbes magazine, and he had declared he would soon top the list. He sat atop EBX, then one of the world’s most expansive industrial conglomerates, with units ranging from oil and shipping to entertainment and beauty care.
However, Batista made massive bets on offshore oil plays that did not pan out and the extension of a commodity boom that fizzled as he inflated investors’ hopes.
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When a CIA-backed venture capital fund took an interest in Rana el Kaliouby’s face-scanning technology for detecting emotions, the computer scientist and her colleagues did some soul-searching — and then turned down the money.
“We’re not interested in applications where you’re spying on people,” said el Kaliouby, the CEO and co-founder of the Boston startup Affectiva. The company has trained its artificial intelligence systems to recognize if individuals are happy or sad, tired or angry, using a photographic repository of more than 6 million faces.
Recent advances in AI-powered computer vision have accelerated the race for self-driving cars and powered the increasingly sophisticated photo-tagging features found on Facebook and Google. But as these prying AI “eyes” find new applications in store checkout lines, police body cameras and war zones, the tech companies developing them are struggling to balance business opportunities with difficult moral decisions that could turn off customers or their own workers.
El Kaliouby said it’s not hard to imagine using real-time face recognition to pick up on dishonesty — or, in the hands of an authoritarian regime, to monitor reaction to political speech in order to root out dissent. But the small firm, which spun off from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research lab, has set limits on what it will do.
The company has shunned “any security, airport, even lie-detection stuff,” el Kaliouby said. Instead, Affectiva has partnered with automakers trying to help tired-looking drivers stay awake, and with consumer brands that want to know whether people respond to a product with joy or disgust.
New qualms
Such queasiness reflects new qualms about the capabilities and possible abuses of all-seeing, always-watching AI camera systems — even as authorities are growing more eager to use them.
In the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s deadly shooting at a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, police said they turned to face recognition to identify the uncooperative suspect. They did so by tapping a state database that includes mug shots of past arrestees and, more controversially, everyone who registered for a Maryland driver’s license.
Initial information given to law enforcement authorities said that police had turned to facial recognition because the suspect had damaged his fingerprints in an apparent attempt to avoid identification. That report turned out to be incorrect and police said they used facial recognition because of delays in getting fingerprint identification.
In June, Orlando International Airport announced plans to require face-identification scans of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights by the end of this year. Several other U.S. airports have already been using such scans for some departing international flights.
Chinese firms and municipalities are already using intelligent cameras to shame jaywalkers in real time and to surveil ethnic minorities, subjecting some to detention and political indoctrination. Closer to home, the overhead cameras and sensors in Amazon’s new cashier-less store in Seattle aim to make shoplifting obsolete by tracking every item shoppers pick up and put back down.
Concerns over the technology can shake even the largest tech firms. Google, for instance, recently said it will exit a defense contract after employees protested the military application of the company’s AI technology. The work involved computer analysis of drone video footage from Iraq and other conflict zones.
Google guidelines
Similar concerns about government contracts have stirred up internal discord at Amazon and Microsoft. Google has since published AI guidelines emphasizing uses that are “socially beneficial” and that avoid “unfair bias.”
Amazon, however, has so far deflected growing pressure from employees and privacy advocates to halt Rekognition, a powerful face-recognition tool it sells to police departments and other government agencies.
Saying no to some work, of course, usually means someone else will do it. The drone-footage project involving Google, dubbed Project Maven, aimed to speed the job of looking for “patterns of life, things that are suspicious, indications of potential attacks,” said Robert Work, a former top Pentagon official who launched the project in 2017.
While it hurts to lose Google because they are “very, very good at it,” Work said, other companies will continue those efforts.
Commercial and government interest in computer vision has exploded since breakthroughs earlier in this decade using a brain-like “neural network” to recognize objects in images. Training computers to identify cats in YouTube videos was an early challenge in 2012. Now, Google has a smartphone app that can tell you which breed.
A major research meeting — the annual Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, held in Salt Lake City in June — has transformed from a sleepy academic gathering of “nerdy people” to a gold rush business expo attracting big companies and government agencies, said Michael Brown, a computer scientist at Toronto’s York University and a conference organizer.
Brown said researchers have been offered high-paying jobs on the spot. But few of the thousands of technical papers submitted to the meeting address broader public concerns about privacy, bias or other ethical dilemmas. “We’re probably not having as much discussion as we should,” he said.
Not for police, government
Startups are forging their own paths. Brian Brackeen, the CEO of Miami-based facial recognition software company Kairos, has set a blanket policy against selling the technology to law enforcement or for government surveillance, arguing in a recent essay that it “opens the door for gross misconduct by the morally corrupt.”
Boston-based startup Neurala, by contrast, is building software for Motorola that will help police-worn body cameras find a person in a crowd based on what they’re wearing and what they look like. CEO Max Versace said that “AI is a mirror of the society,” so the company chooses only principled partners.
“We are not part of that totalitarian, Orwellian scheme,” he said.
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India has asked Facebook to prevent the spread of false texts on its WhatsApp messaging application, saying the content has sparked a series of lynchings and mob beatings across the country.
False messages about child abductors spread over WhatsApp have reportedly led to at least 31 deaths in 10 different states over the past year, including a deadly mob lynching Sunday of five men in the western state of Maharashtra.
In a strongly worded statement Tuesday, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said the service “cannot evade accountability and responsibility” when messaging platforms are used to spread misinformation.
“The government has also conveyed in no uncertain terms that Whatsapp must take immediate action to end this menace and ensure that their platform is not used for such mala fide activities,” the ministry added.
Facebook and WhatsApp did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but WhatsApp previously told the Reuters news agency it is educating users to identify fake news and is considering changes to the messaging service.
The ministry said law enforcement authorities are working to apprehend those responsible for the killings.
WhatsApp has more than 200 million users in India, the messaging site’s largest market in the world.
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Major U.S. trading partners including the European Union, China and Japan voiced deep concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday about possible U.S. measures imposing additional duties on imported autos and parts.
Japan, which along with Russia had initiated the discussion at the WTO Council on Trade in Goods, warned that such measures could trigger a spiral of countermeasures and result in the collapse of the rules-based multilateral trading system, an official who attended the meeting said.
More than 40 WTO members — including the 28 countries of the European Union — warned that the U.S. action could seriously disrupt the world market and threaten the WTO system, given the importance of cars to world trade.
The United States has imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports and is conducting another national security study that could lead to tariffs on imports of cars and car parts. Both sets of tariffs would be based on concerns about U.S. national security.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 29 that the probe would be completed in 3 to 4 weeks.
But the European Union has warned the United States that imposing import tariffs on cars and car parts would harm its own automotive industry and likely lead to countermeasures by its trading partners on $294 billion of U.S. exports.
A Russian official told the WTO meeting that the issue of U.S. investigations had been raised over the past year in different WTO meetings, only to see things change for the worse.
The United States was losing its reputation as a trusted trade partner, the Russian delegate told the meeting, adding that the United States could soon start an investigation into the case for import tariffs on uranium products.
China, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Singapore, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Qatar, Thailand and India all echoed the same concerns and said they doubted the U.S. tariffs were in line with WTO rules.
The U.S. diplomat at the meeting said the matter was already the subject of formal disputes at the WTO, so it should not be on the committee’s agenda, the official who attended the meeting said.
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The International Basketball Federation, or FIBA, is conducting an investigation into a bench-clearing brawl between Australia and the Philippines that led to the ejection of 13 players.
The fight broke out during a 2019 FIBA World Cup qualifying game Monday in the Philippine Arena outside Manila. Australia was leading the host squad 79-48 late in the third quarter when Roger Pogoy of the Philippines struck Australian opponent Chris Goulding with an elbow. Goulding’s teammate Daniel Kickert retaliated by shoving Pogoy to the floor, sparking the free-for-all.
The on-court anger spread into the crowd, with at least one fan throwing a folding chair at the players.
The game resumed with only three eligible Philippines players. The game was called after two of the Philippine players fouled out and Australia holding a commanding 89-53 lead.
FIBA issued a statement saying it will open disciplinary proceedings against both teams, with final decisions to be “communicated in the coming days.”
Anthony Moore, the head of Basketball Australia, said his players were “bruised and battered” but not seriously hurt. Moore apologized for the team’s actions, saying it was “not the spirit in which we aim to play basketball.”
Among the players ejected was Australian center Thon Maker, who launched several wild high-flying kicks at Philippine players during the melee. The Sudanese-born Maker, a star with the National Basketball League’s Milwaukee Bucks, tweeted his apologies hours after the brawl, saying he was “deeply disappointed over the actions displayed” during the game.
“Being from a war-torn country, basketball for me has always been a means to bring people together,” Maker said.
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