A new documentary follows an underground group of citizen journalists from ISIS occupied Raqqa Syria, risking their lives to expose the atrocities of the militants against civilians on social media. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Matthew Heineman as well as Abdul-Aziz al-Hamza, the co-founder of the group called “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.”
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Around the world, support is growing for electric cars. Automakers are delivering more electric models with longer range and lower prices, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and the Tesla Model 3. China has set aggressive targets for electric vehicle sales to curb pollution; some European countries aim to be all-electric by 2040 or sooner.
Those lofty ambitions face numerous challenges, including one practical consideration for consumers: If they buy electric cars, where will they charge them?
The distribution of public charging stations is wildly uneven around the globe. Places with lots of support from governments or utilities, like China, the Netherlands and California, have thousands of public charging outlets. Buyers of Tesla’s luxury models have access to a company-funded Supercharger network.
Charging stations scarce
But in many places, public charging remains scarce. That’s a problem for people who need to drive further than the 200 miles or so that most electric cars can travel. It’s also a barrier for the millions of people who don’t have a garage to plug in their cars overnight.
“Do we have what we need? The answer at the moment is, ‘No,’” said Graham Evans, an analyst with IHS Markit.
Take Norway, which has publicly funded charging and generous incentives for electric car buyers. Architect Nils Henningstad drives past 20 to 30 charging stations each day on his 22-mile (35-kilometer) commute to Oslo. He works for the city and can charge his Nissan Leaf at work; his fiancee charges her Tesla SUV at home or at one of the world’s largest Tesla Supercharger stations, 20 miles away.
It’s a very different landscape in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where Jeff Solie relies on the charging system he rigged up in his garage to charge two Tesla sedans and a Volt. Solie and his wife don’t have chargers at their offices, and the nearest Tesla Superchargers are 45 miles (72 kilometers) away.
“If I can’t charge at home, there’s no way for me to have electric cars as my primary source of transportation,” said Solie, who works for the media company E.W. Scripps.
Small percentage of electric vehicles
The uneven distribution of chargers worries many potential electric vehicle owners. It’s one reason electric vehicles make up less than 1 percent of cars on the road.
“Humans worst-case their purchases of automobiles. You have to prove to the consumer that they can drive across the country, even though they probably won’t,” said Pasquale Romano, the CEO of ChargePoint, one of the largest charging station providers in North America and Europe.
Romano says there’s no exact ratio of the number of chargers needed per car. But he says workplaces should have one charger for every 2.5 electric cars and retail stores need one for every 20 electric cars. Highways need one every 50 to 75 miles, he says. That suggests a lot of gaps still need to be filled.
Filling the charging gap
Automakers and governments are pushing to fill them. The number of publicly available, global charging spots grew 72 percent to more than 322,000 last year, the International Energy Agency said. Navigant Research expects that to grow to more than 2.2 million by 2026; more than one-third of those will be in China.
Tesla Inc., which figured out years ago that people wouldn’t buy its cars without roadside charging, is doubling its global network of Supercharger stations to 10,000 this year. BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Ford are building 400 fast-charging stations in Europe. Volkswagen is building hundreds of stations across the U.S. as part of its settlement for selling polluting diesel engines. Even oil-rich Dubai, which just got its first Tesla showroom, has more than 50 locations to charge electric cars.
But there are pitfalls. There are different types of charging stations, and no one knows the exact mix drivers will eventually need. A grocery store might spend $5,000 for an AC charge point, which provides a car with 5 to 15 miles of range in 30 minutes. But once most cars get 200 or 300 miles per charge, slow chargers are less necessary. Electric cars with longer range need fast-charging DC chargers along highways, but DC chargers cost $35,000 or more.
That uncertainty makes it difficult to make money setting up chargers, says Lisa Jerram, an associate director with Navigant Research. For at least the next three to five years, she says, deep-pocketed automakers, governments and utilities will be primarily responsible for building charging infrastructure.
There’s also the question of who will meet the needs of apartment dwellers. San Francisco, Shanghai and Vancouver, Canada, are now requiring new homes and apartment buildings to be wired for EV charging.
But without government support, plans for charging stations can falter. In Michigan, a utility’s $15 million plan to install 800 public charging stations was scrapped in April after state officials and ChargePoint objected.
Solie, the electric car owner in Wisconsin, likes Europe’s approach: Governments should set bold targets for electric car sales and let the private sector meet the need.
“If the U.S. were to send up a flare that policy was going to change … investments would become very attractive,” he said.
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A statue of the Beatles in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar could be at risk in an alleged land grab, protesters say, as rapid development turns a city once famed for wide open spaces into a cluttered metropolis.
Residents are protesting plans to build commercial properties in an area known as Beatles Square, where a bronze bas-relief monument to the “Fab Four” commemorates the former Soviet satellite’s transition to democracy in 1990.
“For a long time there were stories about construction on the land, but nobody wanted to believe it,” said Tsoggerel Uyanga, a community organizer and senior partner at research group MAD Investment Solutions.
Rock and Roll Communist Revolution
The monument, erected in 2008 with donations from politicians, businessmen and artists, marks the site where Mongolians gathered to talk about banned Western pop music and soon became a quirky tourist attraction.
The music of the Beatles, Abba, and other Western pop groups helped launch the “Rock and Roll Communist Revolution” that inspired a generation to fight for Mongolian democracy 30 years ago.
The protests began after an Aug. 2 announcement that construction work would start, with residents calling the project a “land grab” and expressing fears the Beatles statue could be moved or even demolished.
Authorities have defended the development as part of a “car-free street” project to build an underground shopping complex complete with street gardens.
A lawyer for Mongolia’s National Construction Association said there were no plans to remove the Beatles statue, however.
“By implementing the project, there are a great deal of advantages, such as increasing jobs and reducing traffic congestion,” said D. Uuganbayar, the lawyer.
Congestion, pollution grow
Congestion and pollution have grown in the capital as its population has doubled over the last two decades, with thousands of impoverished herders flocking to settle in makeshift residential areas.
The strain on Ulaanbaatar’s infrastructure has forced the city to rethink its planning of urban spaces, and drawn criticism for the sale of public land to wealthy buyers.
Investors have failed in the past to deliver on promises to protect public spaces affected by development, Uyanga said, pointing to the Bogd Khan conservation area where the World Bank had raised concerns about overdevelopment.
“It became a black market for land authorities during the early democratic years,” said Uyanga.
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A judge on Friday threw out a Denver radio host’s case against Taylor Swift in a trial that delved into their dueling lawsuits over whether he groped her during a backstage meet-and-greet and whether she and her team ruined his career.
U.S. District Judge William Martinez determined that the pop star could not be held liable because David Mueller failed to prove that she personally set out to have him fired after the 2013 photo op before a concert. His identical allegations against Swift’s mother and her radio liaison will go to jurors for a verdict.
Mueller denies groping Swift and sued the singer, her mother, Andrea Swift, and their radio handler, Frank Bell, seeking up to $3 million as compensation for his ruined career.
The singer-songwriter said in her countersuit that she wanted a symbolic $1 and the chance to stand up for other women.
With jurors outside the courtroom Friday, attorneys on both sides argued over whether Mueller had presented enough evidence to send his full case to the jury. Those statements and the judge’s questions focused on whether Swift herself had done anything to get Mueller fired.
It comes after days of testimony from the singer and others. Swift spent an hour on the witness stand Thursday defiantly recounting what she called a “despicable and horrifying and shocking” encounter.
“He stayed attached to my bare ass-cheek as I lurched away from him,” Swift testified.
“It was a definite grab. A very long grab,” she added in her testimony.
Swift’s testy exchange with Mueller’s attorney occasionally elicited chuckles — even from the six-woman, two-man jury. She got a laugh when she said Dent saw Mueller “lift my skirt” but someone would have had to have been underneath her to see the actual groping — “and we didn’t have anyone positioned there.”
Swift testified that after the photo was taken, she tried to get as far away Mueller as she could. She said she told him and his girlfriend, who was also in the photo, “thank you for coming” in a monotone voice before they left.
She also said she was stunned and did not say anything to Mueller or halt the event after he left because she did not want to disappoint several dozen people waiting in line for photos with her.
In the image, shown to jurors during opening statements but not publicly released, Mueller’s hand is behind Swift, just below her waist. Mueller’s then-girlfriend, Shannon Melcher, is on the other side of Swift. All three are smiling.
Melcher testified Friday that she saw nothing happen during the brief encounter and that she and Mueller were rudely confronted and escorted out of the arena that evening. Melcher said Mueller was devastated by the accusation.
She said she and Mueller started out as co-workers at country station KYGO-FM and became romantically involved in February 2013, a few months before the concert. They drifted apart late in 2013, but Melcher says they remained friends.
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You won’t find any pictures of dogs playing poker at dOGUMENTA (I) NYC.
A three-day art exhibition is attracting hundreds of canines to a marina in Lower Manhattan, where hounds and terriers are feasting their eyes, and in some cases their mouths, on nearly a dozen masterpieces created expressly for them.
The idea is the brainchild of former Washington Post art critic Jessica Dawson, who says she was inspired by her rescue dog, Rocky, a tiny morkie (Yorkie-Maltese mix), who regularly joins her at exhibits of the human variety.
“When Rocky accompanied me on my gallery visits, I noticed that he was having a much better time than I was,” said Dawson, who moved to New York four years ago. “He was not reading the New York Times reviews, he was not reading the artists’ resumes, and so I said he has something to teach me about looking, and all dogs have something to teach us about looking at contemporary art and being with it.”
The exhibit, which takes its name from Documenta, which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany, was put on by Arts Brookfield. Organizers staggered the arrival times of the dogs to keep things orderly.
“I think she’s enjoying it,” said Lorraine Gates, who attended with her tiny Japanese Chin, Maltese and Papillon mix. “I love this idea; I think it’s really wonderful.”
The 10 works of art at the outdoor exhibit were all strategically placed at eye level for the canines. One featured an elaborate display of dog biscuits and other treats that attendees were invited to munch on.
At another exhibit, four-legged art critics were lifting their hind legs and “expressing” themselves on a work called “Fountain.” As the dogs left their marks, scribbles of blue streaks were left behind on the white blocks.
Dawson said Rocky had visited several times.
Susan Godwin and her morkie, Tasha, were soaking up the art vibes. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Godwin gushed. “You can go to museums all over New York and you can never bring your dog.”
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U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla is close to testing a long-haul self-driving electric truck that could drive in convoys following a lead vehicle.
The company is reportedly also in contact with Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles about the possibility of testing the truck on the state’s roads.
Earlier this year Tesla’s founder Elon Musk announced that a new long-haul truck would be revealed in September but did not mention plans to make it self-driving.
Long-haul trucks on interstate highways often drive at relatively constant speeds with little or no intersections which makes autonomous driving easier to achieve.
Several large truck manufacturers, such as Volvo and Mercedes, as well as Silicon Valley companies have been working on the so-called ‘platooning’ technology that will enable long-range trucks to drive in formation, with only the lead vehicle having a human driver.
But even if the tech gets perfected, automakers are still struggling with the current limitations of electronic vehicles, namely their limited range per charge.
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Google’s workforce needs to “represent the world in totality,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, at an international girls coding competition held on the company’s campus here Thursday night.
His comments come as the search engine giant grapples with a high profile internal debate over the number and influence of its female employees. Last year, the company reported that women represent just 31 percent of Google’s workforce and held 24 percent of leadership roles. Several initiatives are underway to boost those numbers, but those efforts are now a focus of some criticism.
On Monday, the company fired James Damore, a male engineer, who wrote about the role of women in tech and criticized the company’s efforts to bring more women into its workforce.
This week, the author of the memo filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The company canceled an employee town hall meeting because of online harassment prior to the meeting, according to reports.
But the coding competition, Technovation, provided an apt backdrop for Pichai’s comments.
With girls waving their country flags and pitching their products, Pichai appeared to address the controversy without speaking about it directly.
“I want you to know there’s a place for you in this industry,” Pichai said. “There’s a place for you at Google. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you.”
The girls had competed for months – often teaching themselves to code – to make it to the final round in Mountain View, Calif. They learned how to test their products in the market and make their pitches in English.
Winners
A team from Kazakhstan won the senior round for their mobile app QamCare, which helps users keep track of each other in case of an emergency. They will receive $15,000.
Five runner-up senior teams from Kenya, Armenia, India and Kazakhstan will receive $10,000 each.
In the junior division, a team from Hong Kong won for Dementia Care Companion app. It uses games and cues to help people with dementia and their families stay connected. They will receive $10,000.
Runner-up teams from Cambodia, India, Canada and the U.S. will receive $5,000 each.
In the eight years of the competition, 15,000 girls from more than 100 nations have completed the program, said Tara Chklovski, founder and chief executive of Iridescent, the non-profit organization behind the event.
“The growing scale is exciting,” she said. “Many of these girls go on to win startup competitions, go to major in computer science. They get featured in national press. They get invited by heads of state.”
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Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone using technology they hope will eventually be integrated into mass-market products. The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and operates by harvesting tiny amounts of power from radio signals, known as radio frequency or RF waves. VOA’s George Putic has details in this report by Kevin Enochs.
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So close to death was blues rocker Gregg Allman when he was making his final album, the cover photographer did not get to his Savannah, Georgia, house in time.
Instead, “Southern Blood,” Allman’s posthumous paean to his life and music to be released in September, is adorned with a sepia shot of the grounds, a wooden boardwalk heading away under the shade of Spanish Moss.
There probably could not be a more appropriate symbol for Allman, who died from cancer in May, aged 69. From the early days with his late brother Duane onwards, Tennessee-born Allman was the epitome of Southern rock and blues.
“Southern Blood” is not about the South per se — for that, skip back an album to the 2011 Grammy-nominated “Low Country Blues.” This one is about Allman.
“[Gregg] was acutely aware that his time was limited,” Allman’s manager and friend Michael Lehman told Reuters when asked about the recording session.
“These compositions, they are all poignant and meaningful and talk about his life’s journey. Everyone of them had meaning [for him].”
For his last hurrah, Allman chose a number of songs written by friends and favorite artists including Jackson Browne, Willie Dixon, Jerry Garcia and Lowell George.
Each song, including those written by Allman himself, touch on something of the man — who led a difficult life with the early death of his brother, six divorces including from his celebrity marriage to Cher, drug addiction, hepatitis C, a liver transplant and, ultimately, cancer.
George’s “Willin,'” for example, is the tale of a hard-times Southwestern truck driver who keeps on the road against all the odds, a hint at Allman’s near continual touring.
Another song — written by Mississippi bluesman Wilie Dixon — needs no explanation: “I Love The Life I Live, I Live The Life I Love.”
In a similar vein a lot of the songs are basically goodbyes.
One such is Allman’s sweet rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Going, Going, Gone” with it’s starting lyrics: “I’ve just reached a place/Where the willow don’t bend/There’s not much more to be said/It’s the top of the end.”
Perhaps most poignant of all is the opening track, Allman’s own “My Only True Friend” in which he calls on the people who have followed his music since before 1969, the year the Allman Brothers hit the road, to remember him.
“You and I both know this river must surely flow to an end Keep me in your heart, keep your soul on the mend I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul, when I’m gone Please don’t fly away to find a new love.”
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Artificial intelligence robots are turbocharging the race to find new drugs for the crippling nerve disorder ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The condition attacks and kills nerve cells controlling muscles, leading to weakness, paralysis and, ultimately, respiratory failure.
There are only two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to slow the progression of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), one available since 1995 and the other approved just this year. About 140,000 new cases are diagnosed a year globally, and there is no cure.
“Many doctors call it the worst disease in medicine, and the unmet need is huge,” said Richard Mead of the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience, who has found artificial intelligence (AI) is already speeding up his work.
Such robots — complex software run through powerful computers — work as tireless and unbiased super-researchers.
They analyze huge chemical, biological and medical databases, alongside reams of scientific papers, far quicker than humanly possible, throwing up new biological targets and potential drugs.
Cell deaths prevented
One candidate proposed by AI machines recently produced promising results in preventing the death of motor neurone cells and delaying disease onset in preclinical tests in Sheffield.
Mead, who aims to present the work at a medical meeting in December, is now assessing plans for clinical trials.
He and his team in northern England are not the only ones waking up to the ability of AI to elucidate the complexities of ALS.
In Arizona, the Barrow Neurological Institute last December found five new genes linked to ALS by using IBM’s Watson supercomputer. Without the machine, researchers estimate the discovery would have taken years rather than only a few months.
Mead believes ALS is ripe for AI and machine-learning because of the rapid expansion in genetic information about the condition and the fact there are good test-tube and animal models with which to evaluate drug candidates.
That is good news for ALS patients seeking better treatment options. Famous sufferers include Gehrig, the 1923-39 New York Yankees baseball player; actor and playwright Sam Shepard, who died last month; and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, a rare example of someone living for decades with the condition.
If the research goes on to deliver new medicines, it would mark a notable victory for AI in drug discovery, bolstering the prospects of a growing batch of startup companies focused on the technology.
Those firms are based on the premise that while AI robots won’t replace scientists and clinicians, they should save time and money by finding drug leads several times faster than conventional processes.
British ‘unicorn’
Mead from Sheffield is working with BenevolentAI, one of a handful of British “unicorns” — private companies with a market value above $1 billion, in this case $1.7 billion — which is rapidly expanding operations at its offices in central London.
Others in the field include Scotland’s Exscientia and U.S.-based firms Berg, Numerate, twoXAR, Atomwise and InSilico Medicine — the last of which recently launched a drug discovery platform geared specifically to ALS.
“What we are trying to do is find relationships that will give us new targets in disease,” said Jackie Hunter, a former drug hunter at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) who now heads Benevolent’s pharma business. “We can do things so much more dynamically and be really responsive to what essentially the information is telling us.”
Unlike humans, who may have pet theories, AI scans through data and generates hypotheses in an unbiased way.
Conventional drug discovery remains a hit-and-miss affair, and Hunter believes the 50 percent failure rates seen for experimental compounds in mid- and late-stage clinical trials due to lack of efficacy is unsustainable, forcing a shift to AI.
A key test will come with a study by Benevolent to assess a previously unsuccessful compound from Johnson & Johnson in a new disease area — this time for treating Parkinson’s disease patients with excessive daytime sleepiness.
Big pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Sanofi and Merck are now exploring the potential of AI through deals with startups.
Being careful
They are treading cautiously, given the failure of “high throughput screening” in the early 2000s to improve efficiency by using robots to test millions of compounds. Yet AI’s ability to learn on the job means things may be different this time.
CPR Asset Management fund manager Vafa Ahmadi, for one, believes it is a potential game-changer.
“Using artificial intelligence is going to really accelerate the way we produce much better targeted molecules. It could have a dramatic impact on productivity, which in turn could have a major impact on the valuation of pharmaceutical stocks,” he said.
Drugmakers and startups are not the only ones chasing that value. Technology giants including Microsoft, IBM and Google’s parent Alphabet are also setting up life sciences units to explore drug R&D.
For Benevolent’s Hunter, today’s attempts to find new drugs for ALS and other difficult diseases amount to an important test vehicle for the future of AI, which is already being deployed in other high-tech areas such as autonomous cars.
“The aim is to show that we can deliver in a very difficult and complex area, ” Hunter said. “I believe if you can do it in drug discovery and development, you can show the power of AI anywhere.”
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The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it was closely monitoring rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, less than 200 days before the 2018 Winter Olympics are set to begin in South Korea’s Pyeongchang.
The games return to the country next year for the first time since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. But what would be the first Winter Games in Asia outside Japan and the first of three consecutive Olympics on the continent risk being overshadowed by the mounting crisis involving North Korea.
The reclusive North’s apparent progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland led to a war of words this week between the two countries, unnerving regional powers.
President Donald Trump said the United States would respond with “fire and fury” if North Korea threatened it. North Korea dismissed the warnings and outlined detailed plans for a missile strike near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
Experts in South Korea said the plans for an attack around Guam ratcheted up risks significantly, since Washington was likely to view any missile aimed at its territory as a provocation, even if it were launched as a test.
Games on track
“We are monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region very closely,” an IOC spokesperson said. “The IOC is keeping itself informed about the developments. We continue working with the organizing committee on the preparations of these games, which continue to be on track.”
South Korea failed to land the Winter Olympics of 2010 and 2014 but succeeded in getting the nod in 2011 for the 2018 edition, which is scheduled for February 9-25.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said last month that the North would be given until the last minute to decide whether it will take part in the Olympics. He wants to get North Korea involved, even though none of its athletes have met the qualification standards.
His proposal for a unified team has already been turned down by a top North Korean sports official as unrealistic in the current political climate.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis kicked off his first official visit to the U.S. technology industry on Thursday with a tour of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, the first stop on a two-day outreach campaign intended to highlight the Pentagon’s commitment to tech innovation.
Mattis was scheduled to visit Mountain View, California, later in the day to tour the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Experimental Unit, or DIUx, a Silicon Valley outpost set up in 2015 by his predecessor, Ash Carter.
He was also expected to visit Alphabet’s Google headquarters in Palo Alto on Friday.
“A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wrote on Twitter.
The visit comes as the Trump administration has sparred with the technology industry on a host of issues, including immigration, privacy and net neutrality.
A hundred teenage girls from seven countries are gathered in Malawi for a ‘Women in Science’ camp. Lameck Masina has the story from the Malawi University of Science and Technology in the Thyolo district of southern Malawi.
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A historical film about the last Russian czar’s affair with a ballerina has been cleared for release, the Culture Ministry said Thursday, despite passionate calls for its ban.
“Matilda,” which describes Nicholas II’s relationship with Matilda Kshesinskaya has drawn virulent criticism from some Orthodox believers and hard-line nationalists, who see it as blasphemy against the emperor, glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russian lawmaker Natalya Poklonskaya, who previously had served as the chief regional prosecutor in Crimea following its 2014 annexation by Moscow, spearheaded the campaign for banning the film. She even asked the Prosecutor General’s office to carry out an inquiry into “Matilda,” which is set to be released on the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
The lavish production, filmed in historic imperial palaces and featuring sumptuous costumes, loosely follows the story of Nicholas II’s infatuation with Kshesinskaya that began when he was heir-apparent and ended at his marriage in 1894.
The czar and his family were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in July 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church made them saints in 2000.
“Matilda” opponents have gathered signatures against the film, and earlier this month several hundred people gathered to pray outside a Moscow church for the movie to be banned.
The film’s critics were recently joined by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed regional leader of Chechnya, and authorities in the neighboring province of Dagestan, who argued that “Matilda” should be barred from theaters in the mostly Muslim regions in Russia’s North Caucasus.
Director Alexei Uchitel has rejected the accusations and prominent Russian filmmakers have come to his defense. The film’s critics and its defenders both have appealed to the Kremlin, but it has refrained from publicly entering the fray.
On Thursday, the Russian Culture Ministry finally announced that the film has received official clearance.
Vyasheslav Telnov, the head of the ministry’s film department, said it checked “Matilda” and found it in full compliance with legal norms.
Asked to comment on statements from Chechnya and Dagestan, Telnov said that the film has been cleared for release nationwide, but the law allows regional authorities to make their own decisions.
“There is no censorship in Russia, and the Ministry of Culture stays away from any ideological views of beliefs,” he said. “A feature film can’t be banned for political or ideological motives.”
Disputes over the movie reflect the rising influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and the increasing assertiveness of radical religious activists.
Russia’s growing conservative streak has worried many in the country’s artistic community. A Moscow art gallery recently shut down an exhibition of nude photos by an American photographer after a raid by vigilantes, and a theater in the Siberian city of Omsk canceled a performance of the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” following a petition by devout Orthodox believers.
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The Japanese summer delicacy of roasted eel, braised with a tangy sauce and sprinkled with prickly mountain pepper, is in question as the creatures with their mysterious migrations become increasingly endangered.
Soaring demand for Japanese eel, or Anguilla japonica, helped put the creatures on the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of endangered species in 2014. It’s spurring poaching of similar species off the U.S. East Coast.
But Katsumi Tsukamoto, “Dr. Eel” of the only “Eel Science Laboratory” at Nihon University in Japan, thinks he’s unlocked the secrets to eventually farming the eels, known as unagi, sustainably and profitably. Tsukamoto found out where the eels are spawning, and that helped researchers study conditions needed to raise them from the egg stage to adulthood.
Secret life of unagi
The possibility of extinction, and soaring prices for grilled eel believed to help build stamina for enduring sweltering summer days, have dismayed many Japanese gourmands and the restaurants that specialize in the dish.
Despite their important role in Japanese food culture, until recently very little was known about the life cycles of eels, such as where they spawned and how tiny, nearly transparent glass eels manage to travel back to their freshwater habitats in Asia and elsewhere.
Supplies depend on wild-catching the juveniles and farm raising them until adulthood, a practice that has spread from Japan to Taiwan and mainland China as demand has surged.
Tsukamoto says his discovery of Japanese eel larvae and spawning adults west of the Mariana Ridge, near Guam, in 2009 has enabled him and other researchers to figure out the right diet and environmental conditions for spawning eels and their offspring.
Eel farming
Despite skepticism about the potential for such farming to work, Tsukamoto says three Japanese state-owned laboratories are able to raise the eels from the larval stage and get them to spawn, completing their life cycle. But for now each lab can raise only about 3,000-4,000 a year. A lack of funds is hindering construction of the infrastructure needed to make such operations commercially viable by producing tens of thousands of eels a year.
The complete farming of eels and some other endangered species as a way to help them survive by relieving the pressure from soaring demand.
Depending on the restaurant, Yuta Maruyama, an intermediate wholesaler who handles wild blue eel at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Fish market, says a multi-course menu including grilled blue eel can cost up to 30,000 yen ($270) per person at exclusive restaurants, mainly in the flashy Ginza shopping and dining district.
The choice eels are often served in different styles to the traditional “kabayaki” eels, which are grilled in a coating of dark soy sauce marinade. Restaurants that specialize in kabayaki, often handed down generation to generation, may offer both wild and farmed eels — with supply depending on what is available that day at the market.
Wild-caught, farm-raised
At Hashimoto, a Michelin one-star kabayaki restaurant in Tokyo that first opened in 1835, the eels are all farm-raised the conventional way on the southern island of Kyushu, after being caught as glass eels.
Like farmed salmon, the farmed eels raised from wild-caught glass eels tend to be fattier. “They have a flavor that is preferred by most customers,” said Shinji Hashimoto, the sixth-generation owner.
Hashimoto said his kabayaki sauce is “light,” to allow the eel’s flavor to come through.
“The Tokyo palette has traditionally disliked sweet flavors,” he said.
To manage with fewer catches and higher prices, Hashimoto tries to get two servings out of larger eels.
After cleaning and slicing them open, the cooks skewer them to ensure they will stay together while cooking. They are grilled directly over hot charcoal, then steamed to soften the flesh. Afterward they are coated in a sauce of soy sauce boiled with sweet rice wine, or mirin and then returned to the grill and basted three times before being served as “unajyu,” steaming hot over rice in a neat lacquer box.
The busiest days tend to be the Day of the Ox in the lunar calendar, the first of which in 2017 was Tuesday, July 25th. Hashimoto served about 150 customers that day.
“Even if the price rose to 10,000 yen (about $90) for one box of unajyu, Japanese people would still eat it once a year,” Tsukamoto said. “Why do Japanese people like unagi? Because we like soy sauce. The salty-sweet sauce, made from a mixture of soy sauce and mirin, is brushed on, is singed and grilled on the eel over charcoal — and that smell makes it irresistible.”
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China has sent an unbreakable code from a satellite to the Earth, marking the first time space-to-ground quantum key distribution technology has been realized, state media said Thursday.
China launched the world’s first quantum satellite last August, to help establish “hack proof” communications, a development the Pentagon has called a “notable advance.”
The official Xinhua news agency said the latest experiment was published in the journal Nature Thursday, where reviewers called it a “milestone.”
Quantum key technology
The satellite sent quantum keys to ground stations in China between 645 km (400 miles) and 1,200 km (745 miles) away at a transmission rate up to 20 orders of magnitude more efficient than an optical fiber, Xinhua cited Pan Jianwei, lead scientist on the experiment from the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences, as saying.
“That, for instance, can meet the demand of making an absolute safe phone call or transmitting a large amount of bank data,” Pan said.
Any attempt to eavesdrop on the quantum channel would introduce detectable disturbances to the system, Pan said.
“Once intercepted or measured, the quantum state of the key will change, and the information being intercepted will self-destruct,” Xinhua said.
The news agency said there were “enormous prospects” for applying this new generation of communications in defense and finance.
China lags in space
China still lags behind the United States and Russia in space technology, although President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing its space program, citing national security and defense.
China insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted its increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.
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The planet has a bit of a waste problem. Every year, at least 200 million tons of raw sewage goes untreated. This is an environmental and health crisis. But one enterprising startup in Kenya is turning all that waste into fuel. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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More than 20 million people are working as modern slaves, and a technology developer is hoping artificial intelligence can help clean up the world’s supply chains and root out worker abuse.
Developer Padmini Ranganathan said mobile phones, media reports and surveillance cameras can all be mined for real-time data, which can in turn be fed into machines to create artificial intelligence (AI) that helps companies see more clearly what is happening down the line.
“The time to do this now is better than ever before, with so many countries and companies focusing on modern slavery,” she said. “At the start of the decade, the driving force for compliance was fear of being penalized. Now companies are looking at social impact and saying they want to do this.”
More scrutiny of modern-day slavery
Modern-day slavery has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, putting regulatory and consumer pressure on companies to ensure their supply chains are free from forced labor, child workers and other forms of slavery.
Almost 21 million people are victims of forced labor, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), with migrant workers and indigenous people particularly vulnerable.
But Ranganathan said there are new digital ways to stamp out exploitation, given humans have failed to end modern slavery.
“The technology can filter over 1 million articles a day using forced labor specific key words and highlight potential areas of risk in a supply chain,” she said.
Ranganathan works for information technology services company SAP Ariba, which helps companies better manage their procurement processes.
She said a new program could map weak links in corporate supply chains by culling data from a host of sources, from surveillance cameras to non-profits and other agencies.
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning can use these huge volumes of data and extract meaningful information,” she said.
Forced labor worth $150 billion
Forced labor in the private economy generates $150 billion in illegal profits per year, according to the ILO.
Ranganathan hopes her new program will curb that market and help create “supply chains with a conscience.”
For instance, she said it could help detect if child labor was used to pollinate cotton, which in turn was used to produce a branded shirt. Or it could help monitor labor conditions on cocoa plantations, giving companies “real-time exposure” so they can purge their supply chains of abuse right away.
“The convergence of technology will make things more transparent and real-time exposure can be created,” she said.
“In the AI world, techniques are being piloted where we could arm the lowest level supplier with a mobile app, ensure hotlines in factories, use of surveillance cameras and make this all a part of the contract.”
Ranganathan conceded that mapping the “last mile” of any supply chain was the hardest part, with many outsourcing work to homeworkers and small units, where data was harder to gather.
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Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone, using
technology they hope will eventually come to be integrated into mass-market products.
The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and works by harvesting tiny amounts of power from radio signals, known as radio frequency or ‘RF’ waves.
“Ambient RF waves are all around us so, as an example, your FM station broadcasts radio waves, your AM stations do that, your TV stations, your cellphone towers. They all are transmitting RF waves,” team member Vamsi Talla told Reuters.
The phone is a first prototype and its operation is basic — at first glance it looks little more than a circuit board with a few parts attached and the caller must wear headphones and press a button to switch between talking and listening.
But researchers said there are plans to develop further prototypes, featuring a low-power screen for texting and even a basic camera. They also plan a version of the battery-free phone that uses a tiny solar cell to provide power.
The researchers plan to release a product in eight to nine months time, thought they would not give further details. One team member however, was prepared to give a glimpse of how their work will impact the future of cellphone technology.
“In the future every smartphone will come with a battery-free mode where you can at least make a voice call when your battery’s dead,” said the researcher.
The initiative is not the only one seeking to improve the way that mobile technology is powered. Researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Surrey in Britain, are developing supercapacitors, which they believe will eventually allow devices to charge in a period of a few minutes.
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Facebook on Wednesday made its biggest move to date to compete in the television market by expanding its video offerings with programming ranging from professional women’s basketball to a safari show and a parenting program.
The redesigned product, called “Watch,” will be available initially to a limited group in the United States on Facebook’s mobile app, website and television apps, the company said.
The world’s largest social network added a video tab last year, and it has been dropping hints for months that it wanted to become a source of original and well-produced videos, rather than just shows made by users.
Reuters reported in May that Facebook had signed deals with millennial-focused news and entertainment creators Vox Media, BuzzFeed, ATTN, Group Nine Media and others to produce shows, both scripted and unscripted.
Daniel Danker, Facebook’s product director, said in a statement Wednesday: “We’ve learned that people like the serendipity of discovering videos in News Feed, but they also want a dedicated place they can go to watch videos.”
Facebook said the shows would include videos of the Women’s National Basketball Association, a parenting show from Time Inc and a safari show from National Geographic. Facebook is broadcasting some Major League Baseball games and that would continue, the company said.
Eventually, the platform would be open to any show creator as a place to distribute video, the company said.
The company, based in Menlo Park, California, faces a crowded market with not only traditional television networks but newer producers such as Netflix and Alphabet’s YouTube as well as Twitter and Snap.
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