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Opinion When the Robot Doesn’t See Dark Skin
Given how susceptible facial analysis technology seems to recreating gender and racial bias, companies using HireVue, if they hope to increase fairness, should check their systems to make sure it is not amplifying the biases that informed previous hiring decisions. It’s possible companies using HireVue could someday face lawsuits charging that the program had a negative disparate impact on women and minority applicants, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.The risks of biased facial analysis technology extend beyond hiring. According to the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, the faces of half of all adults in the United States — over 117 million people — are currently in face recognition database networks that can be searched by police departments without warrant. These searches are often reliant on facial recognition technology that hasn’t been tested for accuracy on different groups of people. This matters because misidentification can subject innocent people to police scrutiny or erroneous criminal charges.In the case of South Wales, where Big Brother Watch reports that between May 2017 and March 2018 the faces of over 2,400 misidentified innocent people were stored by the police department without their consent, the department reported a false-positive facial identification rate of 91 percent. But it’s important to remember that even if false-positive match rates improve, unfair use of facial recognition technology cannot be fixed with a software patch. Even accurate facial recognition can be used in disturbing ways. The Baltimore police department used face recognition technology to identify and arrest people who attended the 2015 protests against police misconduct that followed Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore.We need to challenge the growing use of this technology, and there has been some progress on this front. The A.C.L.U. is calling on Amazon to stop selling facial analysis technology to law enforcement and is contesting the use of in-car facial recognition for the Vehicle Face System being tested at the United States-Mexico border. Though lawmakers in Texas, Illinois and California have made legislative efforts to regulate facial recognition technology, there are no federal laws. Yet, there is a blueprint. A 2016 report from Georgetown Law School proposed model federal legislation. Policymakers should embrace it.We can also learn from international models. Unlike the United States, Canada has a federal statute governing the use of biometric data in the private sector. Companies like Facebook and Amazon must obtain informed consent to collect citizens’ unique face information. In the European Union, Article 9 of the General Data Protection Regulation requires express affirmative consent for collection of biometrics from E.U. citizens.Everyday people should support lawmakers, activists and public-interest technologists in demanding transparency, equity and accountability in the use of artificial intelligence that governs our lives. Facial recognition is increasingly penetrating our lives, but there is still time to prevent it from worsening social inequalities. To do that, we must face the coded gaze.
2018-02-16 /
The earliest versions of Google’s top products
A lot can change in 20 years. Helpless newborns become campus-dwelling scholars, carefree twentysomethings turn into responsible adults, and tiny tech startups grow into colossal corporations—complete with sprawling portfolios of polished products.Yes, indeed: Just as hominids mature over the course of two decades, Google—which is officially marking its 20th birthday on Thursday—has undergone quite the dramatic transformation since its founding. Heck, even Google products that launched 10 years ago are now barely recognizable from their infant forms.Related Video: Over its 20 years, Google has revolutionized the worldLet’s take a journey back through time to see how some of the company’s most popular products looked at their onset—and just how far they’ve come to reach their current-day states.Google.comGoogle.com—the website and search engine, which represented all Google had to offer in the beginning—began as a research project called BackRub, the brainchild of Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Once it had morphed into Google, early versions of the site sported a bare-bones page with plain text stating, “Welcome to Google” and links to both a regular search engine prototype and a more advanced “might-work-some-of-the-time” version.Google.com in 1998—and you thought the site’s design was minimalist today . . .Clicking the link for the regular prototype took you to a sparse page with a rudimentary version of the Google logo (complete with a Yahoo-style exclamation point at the end, so you knew it had to be exciting!). The page boasted that the nascent search engine held around 25 million pages—a number “soon to be much bigger,” the company promised.The main Google.com search engine prototype, complete with ample exclamations.And it wasn’t lying: As of two years ago, Google was up to a whopping 130 trillion pages, according to Search Engine Land. Today, the company is a touch more modest, with a public estimate that its index holds “hundred of billions of web pages” amounting to more than 100 million gigabytes of data.Oh, and that 1998 link to the “might-work-some-of-the-type” prototype? It pulled up—what else?—a beta version of Google’s namesake service.The first official Google beta project—a sign of what was to come.More about Google’s 20th anniversary: How I went from Google intern to the head of Google MapsAs Google turns 20, it can’t take our goodwill for grantedGmailWhen Google announced Gmail on April 1, 2004, plenty of folks thought it was a joke. The company was known for its April Fools’ pranks, after all, and the official Gmail announcement seemed suspicious both for its then-outrageous-seeming claims (a whole gigabyte of storage—per user?!) and for the silly-sounding tone with which it was written.In reality, of course, it was no laughing matter: Even in its earliest forms, Gmail reshaped expectations for what a web-based email system should be—not only with the amount of storage it offered, but also with its focus on search and its conversation-like organization of threads.A heavily annotated version of Google’s original Gmail inbox.The concept of archiving messages instead of deleting was wild at a time when most webmail services were providing mere megabytes of storage. From the get-go, Gmail gave users tools for managing this ever-expanding history of communication, such as the service’s unusual label system in place of folders, its trademark “All Mail” section, and its superb and supremely speedy search technology.Google used this graphic to introduce users to Gmail’s search interface.Then there were the ads—a point of contention among privacy advocates from the very beginning. (Google stopped scanning email for ad targeting in 2017, but continues to show ads in parts of the Gmail interface today.)The first Gmail conversation view, complete with ads in the site’s right sidebar.Google TalkGoogle’s messaging app saga kicked off with the advent of its Google Talk client in 2005. Talk was initially released as a Windows-only application, though non-Windows users were also able to access the service via an array of third-party clients.Google Talk Beta—back when there was only one Google messaging product to keep track of.The first Talk client let you connect with anyone from your Gmail contacts—a “great way to communicate with your friends without having to leave your computer,” as Google put it at the time. The app even included an internet-based calling feature that promised to make your voice sound “a lot better than it does on answering machines” (what a relief!).A click of the “Call” button was all it took to start talking with a Google Talk contact.Before long, Google Talk got integrated into Gmail, where it was frequently referred to as “Google Chat” or “gChat” by users (though no services with those names technically ever existed). Talk eventually merged with Hangouts, which is now slowly being transitioned into an enterprise product while Android Messages—and, to a lesser extent, Allo—takes over the main messaging role.Google MapsMaps found its way into Google’s product portfolio in 2005, back when MapQuest was the industry leader and printable text directions were the norm. Maps’ earliest design introduced draggable, interactive maps that loaded almost instantly as you moved your mouse around—a now mundane-seeming detail that was anything but ordinary at the time.Google Maps, in its beta days: What’s now mundane seemed magical at the time.From day one, Maps allowed you to search a neighborhood not only for business names or addresses, but also for vague concepts such as “banks,” “pizza,” or “Wi-Fi hotspots” (and remember, this was 2005—when mobile data access was a rarity, and public hotspots were still relatively tough to find).Google Maps brought the power of search into mapping, even in its rough-around-the-edges initial form.And, of course, Maps’ biggest innovation: The service empowered you to see step-by-step directions as an overlay on an actual map. It was, dare I say, revolutionary.The first incarnation of Google Maps directions.YouTubeAt its genesis, YouTube didn’t look much like the service we know today. The earliest available screen shots, from 2005—when YouTube was still an independent effort—show a sparse site centered on video dating. Users were encouraged to upload videos of themselves and then search for potential matches.YouTube, before it figured out its identity.Within a matter of months, though, the site had pivoted into more familiar video-library terrain. And by the time Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the service was using the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”—an identity it’d stick with through 2012—and sporting an entertainment-centric setup that put creative and often wacky user-made videos front and center.A slightly less strange version of YouTube, as the site existed in 2006.Google DocsGoogle Docs grew out of a buzzworthy web-based word processor called Writely. Google bought the app in March 2006, when Microsoft Word was the undisputed productivity champion and web-based alternatives were barely a blip on the radar. The company continued to operate the app under the Writely name through that October.In those early months under Google’s wing, Writely didn’t look much like the Docs we know today:The Google-owned Writely, before its Docs rebranding.Once Google combined Writely with another app it had acquired and been operating as an experimental version of Google Spreadsheets, however—bringing both entities under the Google Docs banner—everything took on a more recognizable form. Still, the Docs interface remained decidedly basic and its function set limited, with a focus mostly on the service’s standout collaboration system.An early version of the Google Docs productivity suite.The company’s cofounder even told CNET the “last thing” he wanted his app to do was to “compete with Microsoft head-to-head”—a mind-set that clearly wouldn’t last for long.Google CalendarUnlike the other products in this story, Google Calendar’s early design—at the service’s launch in 2006—probably looks pretty familiar. That’s because the app didn’t really evolve all that much until its long-awaited redesign just last year.These images from Calendar’s 2006 product tour should bring back some not-so-distant memories:Google’s initial Calendar design, which would mostly stick around until 2017.AndroidLast but not least, a Google product that’s undergone one of modern tech’s most dramatic evolutions: Android. Android’s first public release, in 2008, didn’t even have a dessert-themed code name—but it did have a customizable home screen complete with wallpapers, shortcuts, and a limited range of system widgets.Notifications and multitasking were key focuses for the platform even back then, though things looked just a teensy bit different from what we’re used to today.It wasn’t until the following year’s Android 1.5 Cupcake release that foundational elements like an on-screen keyboard, voice input, and video recording made their way into the platform.All of that may seem like a lifetime ago, but it was a mere nine years in the past—a powerful reminder of just how quickly technology has progressed, and how different the world was when Google and its various products first came along.
2018-02-16 /
Trump aide's appearances on RT channel are focus for Russia inquiry
Robert Mueller is allegedly examining a Trump campaign adviser’s appearances on the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster RT, offering new hints about the investigation into possible collusion between Moscow and Donald Trump’s associates.Mueller’s investigators have asked Ted Malloch, the London-based American academic who is also close to Nigel Farage, about his frequent appearances on RT, which US intelligence authorities have called Russia’s principal propaganda arm.The special counsel’s alleged focus on RT is important because the Russian news channel also has a close relationship with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who in 2016 published tens of thousands of emails stolen from senior Democrats by Russian intelligence operatives.Malloch disclosed that he was questioned about RT to his friend Jerome Corsi, a rightwing author who is himself a target of the investigation. “They thought maybe he was coordinating with Russia – and RT is Russia,” Corsi told the Guardian. Malloch denies any coordination. Draft legal documents and visitor logs from Ecuador’s embassy in London, where Assange is based, show that RT staff met and interviewed Assange on the same day – 2 August 2016 – that Roger Stone, the self-described “dirty trickster” and longtime Trump associate who had previously bragged about having special access to WikiLeaks, was passed information about Assange’s plans.The timing may be coincidental and is not clear evidence that RT shared information with Stone or others. RT denied sharing any information about its interview and said it was “ludicrous, baseless” to make any claim that information was passed from RT staff to Malloch or Corsi.According to a draft court filing drawn up by Mueller, Stone was in late July 2016 scrambling to obtain advance copies of additional emails that WikiLeaks intended to publish after its release of thousands from the Democratic party, which prompted the resignation of its chairwoman.Stone emailed Corsi on 31 July 2016 to say Malloch, a mutual friend of theirs who was in London, “should see Assange”. Corsi has said that he forwarded Malloch a message from Stone explaining that Stone wanted to “get the pending WikiLeaks emails”.On 2 August 2016, Corsi replied with what appeared to be intelligence about WikiLeaks’s plans to dump more emails. “Word is friend in [the] embassy plans 2 more dumps,” it said. Corsi estimated a schedule for the releases, and seemed to predict one would deal with Clinton’s philanthropic foundation. Corsi also proposed spreading speculation that Clinton was in poor health as a campaign tactic to help Trump.Mueller is investigating how Corsi obtained the information about WikiLeaks’ plans. Corsi said he did not recall Malloch ever responding, and that he only pretended he had a secret source in order to appear well-connected. He may have been aware of a separate 25 July 2016 email from a Fox News reporter, which also privately suggested that the Clinton Foundation would be a topic of the Assange emails.But on the same day that Corsi sent his email, Assange told an RT reporter during an interview at the embassy that he would be releasing emails that contained information relating to the Clinton Foundation. Assange’s interview with the RT reporter Afshin Rattansi was not broadcast publicly until several days later, on 6 August. Rattansi did not return a request for comment.RT said in a statement the information conveyed in the 6 August interview “largely echoed” earlier interviews Assange had given, including to the independent news show Democracy Now. Assange was interviewed by Democracy Now on 25 July but did not mention future email releases or the Clinton Foundation.Since Trump’s election victory in November 2016, Malloch has appeared at least five times on Rattansi’s talk show on RT.Malloch, who has denied having any connection to WikiLeaks, declined to comment following multiple requests by the Guardian. WikiLeaks did not respond to requests for comment.In an intelligence assessment published by US authorities following the election, Rattansi’s August 2016 interview of Assange was alleged to have been part of Russian propaganda efforts aimed at boosting Trump and denigrating Clinton.The US intelligence report also noted a past relationship between RT and Assange, alleging that the Kremlin-backed channel had “actively collaborated with WikiLeaks” in an effort to denounce the US. RT has denied being controlled by the Kremlin and said its output is “designed merely to inform, not influence”.Questions about whether the Trump campaign or other associates of the president helped to coordinate the timing of WikiLeaks’s release of emails before the November 2016 election lie at the heart of Mueller’s investigation. Emails were stolen from senior Democrats including Clinton’s campaign chairman by agents of the GRU and transferred to WikiLeaks, according to a US criminal indictment.Assange has denied that he received the hacked emails from Russia.Public statements and documents have so far revealed that Mueller’s team has focused on Stone, Corsi and Malloch as part of their quest to confirm who may have had knowledge about WikiLeaks’s plans.Malloch was briefly detained by Mueller’s investigators at Logan airport in Boston in March this year. He was questioned and issued a grand jury subpoena, but his appearance at the grand jury in Washington DC was postponed.It was unclear in March 2018 why Mueller was interested in Malloch.The academic appeared to have played only a minor role in Trump’s campaign as an “unpaid adviser”, although he claimed in his January 2017 book Hired that he had known Trump for decades and contributed to Trump’s “philanthropic causes” in Florida and New York.It became clearer last week why Mueller took an apparent interest in Malloch when the draft filing containing messages between Stone and Corsi was released to the media by Corsi.Corsi told the Guardian he introduced Malloch to Stone over steaks at the Strip House in midtown Manhattan in late February or March 2016. Mueller’s investigators “wanted to know about the dinner”, he said. When asked if Assange was discussed during the meal, Corsi said he was not a “human tape recorder”.Stone has given conflicting accounts of the meeting. In March he told Business Insider the three chatted about “Brexit and globalism” but did not discuss WikiLeaks, Assange or Russia. Yet last Sunday, Stone told Fox News that Malloch “mentioned that he knew Assange”, which was what prompted him to suggest Malloch go to Ecuador’s embassy in search of the emails.Nearly two years after Stone’s attempt to get to Assange, the FBI descended on Malloch, separated him from his wife and began questioning him. Corsi was quickly alerted – apparently by Malloch or his wife – and, for reasons that are unclear, publicised the news in an “emergency” broadcast on the far-right conspiracy website Infowars.At the time, Corsi said he had been told the FBI was questioning Malloch about Assange and his appearances on RT. He repeated that assertion in an interview with the Guardian this week: “Mueller’s people asked Ted about his appearances on RT.At the time, Malloch said he “knew nothing” about WikiLeaks and has suggested he was being targeted because of his support for Trump. He also played down his longtime friendship with Corsi, who he said “edited a memoir I had written some years ago”.Malloch was subpoenaed to appear before Mueller’s grand jury in Washington DC soon after being questioned by the FBI, but the appearance was postponed and it is unclear if it was ever rescheduled. Malloch said in May that he was “still actively participating in this conversation” with investigators. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.Mueller’s alleged focus on RT is noteworthy, too, because employees of the Russian broadcaster made several visits to Assange at Ecuador’s embassy – on 4, 8, 10, 17 and 23 June 2016, according to visitor logs – a time of high activity for Assange and for the Russian operatives alleged to have stolen the Democratic emails.US intelligence officials also noted in their 2017 assessment that allegations Clinton was suffering “poor physical and mental health” featured prominently in RT’s coverage. RT has rejected claims it paid unusual attention to the subject, pointing to widespread coverage by other outlets after Clinton fell ill at a September 11 memorial event.But a Guardian review of RT’s output found it began raising the allegations at least a month earlier, soon after Corsi’s message to Stone predicting Clinton’s health would dominate the next WikiLeaks email release – and that it “would not hurt” to start suggesting she had suffered a stroke.On 8 August, RT published a misleading article about a six-month-old photograph of Clinton slipping on a stair, which falsely stated she had “well-documented brain injuries”. The channel’s Spanish-language version cited unfounded allegations that Clinton had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.That same day, Russian intelligence operatives posted the first of almost 500 tweets or retweets featuring the hashtag #HillarysHealth, according to a study of 3m postings by Russian troll accounts by the Clemson University researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren.From 30 August, RT itself began using the hashtag in tweets to promote its articles on Clinton’s condition.RT also broadcast wild speculation about Clinton’s health on television. Michael Lebron, the broadcaster and conspiracy theorist who goes by the name “Lionel”, claimed on air that Clinton might be hiding a degenerative illness. He asked: “Where the hell has the mainstream media been regarding Hillary Clinton’s health?”There is no evidence Malloch had a relationship with RT or Rattansi before the November 2016 election. RT told the Guardian that Malloch was introduced to the show Going Underground by Jan Halper Hayes and that Malloch first met Rattansi in February 2017.RT said Malloch had not been paid for his appearances on Rattansi’s show since the election. In those interviews, Malloch dismissed the notion of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives as a conspiracy theory.Malloch also advocated for friendlier US-Russia relations and predicted Trump would move to soften US economic restrictions on Moscow. He asked Rattansi in a February 2017 appearance: “If those sanctions were removed, would not the world be a better place?”Mueller has also been investigating whether another Stone contact, the comedian and radio host Randy Credico, could have been his source for information from WikiLeaks. Credico denies this.There is no evidence that Malloch or Stone ever personally met Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy.Additional reporting by Peter Stone Topics Trump-Russia investigation RT WikiLeaks Julian Assange Russia news
2018-02-16 /
'Politico' Report Finds Lack Of Transparency Surrounding Work Of Trump's Cabinet Secretaries : NPR
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: On any given day it's easy to find reports of what the president is up to. There's a lot more secrecy surrounding his Cabinet secretaries. Those are the officials that run everything from the Environmental Protection Agency to the departments of transportation, energy, housing and more. Politico looked into 17 members of Trump's Cabinet and found that many of them provide little or no information about their schedules. That's a break from the policy under presidents Obama and George W. Bush.Emily Holden of Politico is here to tell us about it. Hi there.EMILY HOLDEN: Hi.SHAPIRO: What do you mean when you write that Cabinet secretaries are carrying out the Trump administration agenda largely in secret? What exactly is the information they're not putting out?HOLDEN: So we really did this in numbers. And we polled each of our policy reporters to ask, how does your agency handle this specifically? And we found that eight of the 17 we looked at don't give advance public notice or press notice of where they will be even when they're having public events. Say they're speaking to a trade group, or they're at a conference, or they're out of town at something that the press should know about. And in addition to that, six out of the 17 also are not releasing the calendars that their agency heads. So after the fact saying this is where we were on this day, and this is who we talked to.SHAPIRO: Who are the worst offenders?HOLDEN: I think that EPA's Scott Pruitt has definitely come under a lot of criticism for where he has been because there's been some reporting already to show that he'll meet with a trade group, and then he will soon after make a decision in their favor. Now, that's what he came into office to do. He said that he wanted to roll back regulations that he thinks aren't fair to industry. And so that is his intention. But we've even had instances where the EPA press staff will - won't confirm that he's traveling when we have someone who's seen him on a flight somewhere. They won't tell us where he's going or why. One of those he was traveling to meet with fuel marketers to speak at their conference. And so those are very clearly businesses he's regulating.SHAPIRO: Why does it matter whether the public has this information or not?HOLDEN: Well, I think that the government oversight groups we were talking to are saying that, you know, if you don't know where these people are that really should make you question, what are they hiding because they should be doing things that are going to help Americans. And everyday Americans don't have time to follow the schedules of all these people, so they really depend on beat reporters and national reporters and also local reporters to keep tabs on what they're doing and what that means for them, for their health and their safety.SHAPIRO: We're not just talking about, for example, the head of the CIA. We're talking about the head of Housing and Urban Development, who's creating housing policy for Americans.HOLDEN: Exactly. And also the - you know, the education secretary, who had a meeting with the education minister from Saudi Arabia. And our reporters and other reporters only found out about it on social media.SHAPIRO: What did the Trump administration tell you about their decision not to make these schedules public?HOLDEN: They essentially said, we don't have a policy on whether agencies are releasing this information in advance, but we do tell agencies that they must comply with these Freedom of Information Act requests after the fact to put out their schedules.SHAPIRO: Every presidential administration has fights with the press over transparency. How is what's happening in the Trump administration different from what we saw under Obama and George W. Bush?HOLDEN: Right. So you've seen examples of this before under the Obama administration. The Associated Press had to sue for the calendars from the State Department for Hillary Clinton and didn't get all of those until after the election, actually. But what we're seeing here appears to be more of a pattern where you have not only an attempt to keep this veil over what they're doing every day and their advance schedules - which, you know, could be to an extent their prerogative, to decide, you know, what they allow reporters to come to, what they tell reporters about. But they do have a legal obligation if the calendars are requested to hand those over after the fact.SHAPIRO: Emily Holden wrote the article for Politico "Where Is Trump's Cabinet? It's Anybody's Guess." Thanks for coming into the studio today.HOLDEN: Thank you so much.Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
2018-02-16 /
Roger Stone says he may soon be indicted in Trump
Roger Stone, the longtime associate of Donald Trump, has predicted that he may soon be indicted as part of Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.In an email urging supporters to donate to his legal defence fund, the veteran Republican operative said he expected imminent action against him from the special counsel, who has secured a conviction and guilty pleas from other Trump allies.“Robert Mueller is coming for me,” Stone wrote, before asserting that his name was next on what he called Mueller’s “hit list” of targets. Stone denied wrongdoing and said he faced legal peril simply because he had advised Trump for several decades.Asked on Monday whether he expected criminal charges, Stone said in a text message that he believed Mueller “may frame me for some bogus charge in order to silence me or induce me to testify against the president”.Stone, 66, has been known for his controversial campaign tactics since working on Richard Nixon’s notorious committee to re-elect the president in 1972. His former business partner and fellow Trump adviser, Paul Manafort, was last week convicted in Virginia of financial crimes and faces another trial in Washington next month.Stone has confirmed that he exchanged messages during the 2016 campaign with “Guccifer 2.0”, who publicly purported to be an independent hacker. Mueller alleges that Guccifer was in fact a front for Russian intelligence operatives who stole and leaked emails from senior Democrats, throwing the party into turmoil at the height of the 2016 campaign.Several times during July 2016, Stone said that he thought Russia was behind the email hacking, before abruptly denying that this was the case. Stone also claimed to have communicated with Julian Assange, who published the Democratic emails through his site WikiLeaks, but later claimed to have been joking.Mueller’s team has spent months looking into Stone’s circle of friends and aides. Several of them have testified to a grand jury, including Stone’s protege Sam Nunberg, his former social media adviser Jason Sullivan, and his housemate Kristin Davis. Prosecutors appear to be reviewing Stone’s actions during the 2016 campaign as well as his finances more generally.Davis, known as the “Manhattan madam” since once running a high-end prostitution service, has said she was asked about a tweet Stone posted in August 2016 predicting “it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel”. Emails stolen from the account of John Podesta, campaign chairman for Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, were subsequently published.Nunberg told MSNBC earlier this month that he expects Stone to be indicted on “some broad charge that he was part of a conspiracy to defraud America” and that this would be combined with “a bunch of financial charges”.Another Stone associate, Andrew Miller, has been held in contempt of court after refusing to comply with a subpoena from Mueller’s team. Miller, who ran political action committees for Stone and initially cooperated with Mueller’s inquiry, is appealing against the ruling and may take his case to the supreme court. He claims Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional. Topics Trump-Russia investigation news
2018-02-16 /
Heroic uncle rescues his 8
Byrd ran through the flames to get outside so he could catch his niece and two nephews as they jumped from the windows. The two boys, 6-year-old Junior and 4-year-old Rory, made the jump, but Mercedes was too scared. Suddenly, Byrd's sister Kayla fell to the ground, and Mercedes fell backward into the home.Byrd said he did not stop to think; he ran back into the burning home to save his niece. He grabbed Mercedes and took his shirt off to wrap around her face so she would not inhale smoke.The cause of the fire is still under investigation. This left Byrd's back exposed to the flames, causing fourth-degree burns and nerve damage, but he said he would do anything for the children."I spend most my days off with my nieces and nephews," he said. "Mercedes is already an uncle's girl."Kayla and the two boys are doing fine. Byrd expects to be moved to Grays Harbor Community Hospital, near Aberdeen, this week.Fire investigators have not determined the cause of the blaze, according toCNN affiliate KOMO, but they believe that it started on the second floor.The Aberdeen Police Department estimates that there was $268,000 worth of damageto the structure and its contents. Neighbors have started a food, clothing and toy drive for the family, KOMO reports.
2018-02-16 /
Turkey condemns Austria's 'racist' move to close seven mosques
As many as 60 Turkish imams and their families face expulsion from Austria and seven mosques are due to be closed under a clampdown on what the government has called “political Islam”.Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said the country could no longer put up with “parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation,” which he said had “no place in our country”.The announcement at a press conference by leading members of the coalition government, which comprises the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), prompted a furious reaction from Ankara, which called the move anti-Islamic.“Austria’s decision to shut down numerous mosques and deport imams with a lame excuse is a reflection of the anti-Islam, racist and discriminatory populist wave in this country,” tweeted İbrahim Kalin, a spokesman for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Austria’s interior minister, Herbert Kickl, of the FPÖ, said around 150 people faced losing their right to residency, taking into account the imams’ family members.The moves follow an investigation by the national religious affairs authority into activities carried out by mosques in Austria. Images of children in a Turkish-financed mosque re-enacting the first world war battle of Gallipoli have dominated headlines in Austria for weeks, and intensified a nationwide debate over what is widely viewed as the insufficient integration of people of Turkish origin in Austrian society.The photographs, published in April, showed some of the boys playing dead and being draped in Turkish flags – seeming to identify more with Turkey than with Austria – at what was reportedly an official event organised by the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Association (ATIB). The ATIB condemned the images, calling the event “extremely regrettable”, but insisting that it had called it off.Relations between Austria and Turkey have long been strained, with Kurz insistent to the European Union since he entered office last year that it should cease negotiations about Ankara joining the bloc.At the press conference on Friday, Kurz, Kickl, the vice-chancellor, Christian Strache, and the culture minister, Gernot Blümel, said the country had an obligation to be “watchful” of political Islam. The initiative is part of the so-called Islam law, which was brought in under the previous government, in which Kurz was a minister.Among the mosques facing closure is the Mosque of the Grey Wolves on Antonsplatz, in the working-class Vienna district of Favoriten, where the Gallipoli reenactment took place. The Grey Wolves are widely considered to be a far-right ultranationalist group. The other six mosques are in Vienna, Upper Austria and Carinthia, in all of which hardline salafist teachings are said to be widespread. The imams facing expulsion all stand accused of receiving funding from abroad. Official investigations have been launched in 11 cases. Two of the imams had already been denied extensions to their residency permits.Blümel stressed that the clampdown was not anti-Islam, insisting that “it is not a contradiction to be both a practicing Muslim and a proud Austrian”.ATIB, which is the umbrella organisation for 60 associations with more than 100,000 members, said it made no secret of the fact that it funded imams in Austria. “This happens not because we want it to, but because there is no adequate training offered for imams in Austria,” Yasar Ersoy, its spokesman, told Austrian radio.Thomas Schmidinger, a political scientist, said he doubted whether outlawing outsider funding for Austria-based imams would have the effect of reining them in. “I think it’s far more likely to be the case that ATIB will feel marginalised and will try to find alternative, albeit illegal ways to finance imams,” he told Austrian media.He said extremist groups such as the Grey Wolves were likely to be driven underground, making it far harder for authorities to monitor them. He also said it was unfortunate the government had launched its clampdown in the middle of a Turkish election campaign, calling it “water on the wheels of the far right”.During last year’s Turkish referendum on expanding the president’s powers, tensions ran high between Vienna and Ankara after Austria said it would not allow campaign-related events. Relations were also strained by Kurz’s staunch opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the EU. Topics Austria Turkey Islam Europe Religion news
2018-02-16 /
Brazil quits U.N. migration pact, will still take in Venezuelan refugees: source
FILE PHOTO: Ernesto Araujo, who was appointed by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro as Foreign Minister, arrives for a meeting at the transition government building in Brasilia, Brazil November 22, 2018. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/File PhotoBRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil has pulled out of a United Nations pact on dealing with rising migration, joining the United States and a growing number of countries in rejecting the agreement, a Brazilian diplomat with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo said last month before he was sworn in that it was his intention to exit the agreement. A diplomat, speaking on condition they not be named as they were not authorized to speak with the press, confirmed to Reuters that Brazil had officially left the pact. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment. Araújo said last month that the international accord was “an inappropriate instrument” to deal with the issue and nations should set their own policies. With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the United Nations began work on the non-binding agreement after more than 1 million people arrived in Europe in 2015, many fleeing civil war in Syria and poverty in Africa. The accord, which addresses issues such as how to protect migrants, integrate them and send them home, has been criticized by mostly right-wing European politicians who say it could increase immigration. All 193 U.N. members except the United States agreed to its wording in July, but only 164 - including Brazil - formally ratified it. Araújo has said that Brazil would continue to take in refugees from neighboring Venezuela, but that the fundamental point is restoring democracy in that nation. Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Brooks and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2018-02-16 /
Cosby sentencing is new milestone for #MeToo movement
(Reuters) - When a grainy video of standup comedian Hannibal Buress making a joke about Bill Cosby’s rape allegations on an October night in 2014 went viral, the rallying cry of #MeToo was years away. The men the movement would lay low were still at the height of their powers. That same evening, Bill O’Reilly was on his top-rated Fox News show, railing against political correctness, while the next morning, Charlie Rose told CBS This Morning’s audience about an Ebola outbreak. But the Buress clip was the first rumble of an avalanche bearing down on Cosby, prompting dozens of women to come forward with their own stories of abuse by the entertainer, eventually leading to his arrest and subsequent conviction. When the comedian, once known as “America’s Dad,” is sentenced to what could be up to 10 years in prison this week for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004, it will be perhaps the starkest evidence yet that the #MeToo movement has permanently altered the way the country reckons with sexual misconduct by powerful men. “I’m hoping that’s a permanent change – that there isn’t the idea that you get to a point of success that you can do whatever you want,” said Aviva Orenstein, a law professor at Indiana University who has studied sexual assault cases. “Jokes about casting couches – I mean, that was tolerated for years. Sexual favors are expected, and genius is recognized as an exception to decency.” Cosby, once the beloved star of the 1980s television comedy “The Cosby Show,” eventually faced accusations from some 60 women stretching back decades, some of which had long been known but previously failed to gain traction. His arrest in late 2015 predated the #MeToo movement, which gained steam following multiple allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, by nearly two years. But Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on sexual assault cases, said Cosby’s case, as well as the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, helped “seed the ground” for the coming wave. “I do think you can draw a line between the Cosby case and where we are now,” she said. The movement itself may have helped convict Cosby, after his first trial in mid-2017 for sexually assaulting a former friend, Andrea Constand, ended with a hung jury. By the time he faced his retrial, the #MeToo campaign had exploded. Defense lawyers grilled prospective jurors before the trial on whether they could set aside their feelings about #MeToo. The judge who oversaw both trials, Steven O’Neill, allowed prosecutors to call five additional accusers to tell their stories at the second proceeding, bolstering Constand’s account. “[The movement] may have influenced the judge’s willingness to allow more witnesses,” Orenstein said. In closing arguments, prosecutors specifically called out Cosby’s lawyers for targeting the women’s credibility, saying those attacks discourage victims from speaking up. FILE PHOTO: Bill Cosby reacts while being notified a verdict is in, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in his sexual assault retrial, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 26, 2018. Mark Makela/Pool via Reuters/File PhotoExperts said the #MeToo movement’s work is far from over. In Cosby’s case, he was only convicted after a jury heard from several women, rather than only one, underscoring the challenges sole accusers can face. That dynamic is on display in the controversy surrounding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Tuerkheimer said, with Kavanaugh and his allies denying allegations from a woman that he sexually assaulted her in high school. But Cosby’s conviction has given hope to many survivors, particularly those whose abuse occurred too long ago to pursue criminal charges, according to Rebecca O’Connor, vice president of public policy at RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). The nonprofit’s hotline has received a record number of calls in the last year, with many survivors citing the Cosby case and others as inspiration. “I think for a lot of survivors, they can see themselves in this story,” she said. “People are watching carefully.” Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Tom BrownOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2018-02-16 /
Virginia judge rules confederate statues are war monuments and can't be removed
A Virginia judge has ruled that the Confederate statues in Charlottesville are protected by state law because they are war monuments – and will not be taken down while the case is ongoing.The statues were at the center of shocking violence in the summer of 2017 as neo-Nazis and other white nationalists, marching in support of them staying put in a park in the college town, clashed with anti-rightwing demonstrators in an outbreak that left many injured and one young demonstrator dead.The ruling on Wednesday by Judge Richard Moore came after a lawsuit was filed against city council members by the Monument Fund, an organization based in Charlottesville that campaigns to preserve such statues, which could yet go to trial.The suit was filed back in March 2017, alleging that the city council violated state laws when they voted to remove the statues of Confederate generals Robert Lee, and later, the Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson monument from Charlottesville.Moore cited how the statues depict the men in military uniforms and on horses associated with them during the civil war. Virginia law makes it illegal for local municipalities to remove war monuments without permission from the state.Moore acknowledged the controversy that has surrounded Confederate statues around the nation in recent years, and said his ruling is limited to the question of whether the Lee and Jackson statues fall under the definition of war memorials in Virginia law.“While some people obviously see Lee and Jackson as symbols of white supremacy, others see them as brilliant military tacticians or complex leaders in a difficult time ... and do not think of white supremacy at all and certainly do not believe in, accept or believe in such. In either event, the statues to them under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the civil war,” Moore wrote in his ruling. Before the case goes to trial, Moore must first rule on other pending issues, including the council’s motion for immunity from the lawsuit.Bob Fenwick, a former city councilor who is named in the lawsuit, believes that the council still has a good case for removing the statues, claiming that “It was a lawful act that we did” and that he was “very comfortable” with his vote to remove the statues. “It’s based on a flawed law, so the law doesn’t make much difference; it was a public process, it was a lawful process, so that’s our case,” he said.In an effort to fight against the council’s original vote to remove the statues, hundreds of far right members gathered in Charlottesville in August 2017, to protest in what was called a Unite the Right rally. The protest turned deadly when self-avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors killing a woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring nearly three dozen other people. Fields was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison last year.Other Confederate monuments across the country have been the subject of fierce debate and sometimes clashes. Many have been taken down following the violence in Charlottesville. Topics Virginia Law (US) news
2018-02-16 /
To Prevent Wildfires, PG&E Pre
Butte County (Berry Creek, Brush Creek, Clipper Mills, Feather Falls, Forbestown, Oroville)Sierra County (Alleghany, Downieville, Goodyears Bar, Pike City, Sierra City)Placer County (Alta, Applegate, Auburn, Baxter, Colfax, Dutch Flat, Emigrant Gap, Foresthill, Gold Run, Loomis, Meadow Vista, Weimar)Nevada County (Chicago Park, Grass Valley, Nevada City, North San Juan, Penn Valley, Rough and Ready, Soda Springs, Washington)El Dorado County (Aukum, Camino, Coloma, Cool, Diamond Springs, El Dorado, Fair Play, Garden Valley, Georgetown, Greenwood, Grizzly Flats, Kelsey, Kyburz, Mount Aukum, Omo Ranch, Pacific House, Placerville, Pollock Pines, Shingle Springs, Silver Fork, Somerset, Strawberry, Twin Bridges)Amador County (Fiddletown, Jackson, Pine Grove, Pioneer, Plymouth, Sutter Creek, Volcano)Plumas County (La Porte)Calaveras County (Glencoe, Mokelumne Hill, Mountain Ranch, Rail Road Flat, West Point, Wilseyville)Yuba County (Brownsville, Camptonville, Challenge, Dobbins, Marysville, Oregon House, Strawberry Valley)Lake County (Clearlake, Clearlake Oaks, Clearlake Park, Cobb, Finley, Hidden Valley Lake, Kelseyville, Lakeport, Lower Lake, Middletown)Napa County (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Lake Berryessa, Napa, Pope Valley, St. Helena)Sonoma County (Cloverdale, Geyserville, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa)
2018-02-16 /
Trump labor secretary who cut Epstein deal plans to slash funds for sex trafficking victims
Alexander Acosta, the US labor secretary under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, after the billionaire was investigated for having run a child sex trafficking ring, is proposing 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking.Acosta’s plan to slash funding of a critical federal agency in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children is contained in his financial plans for the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2020. In it, he proposes decimating the resources of a section of his own department known as the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB).The bureau’s budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.ILAB has the task of countering human trafficking, child labor and forced labor across the US and around the world. Its mission is “to promote a fair global playing field for workers” and it is seen as a crucial leader in efforts to crack down on the sex trafficking of minors.Katherine Clark, a congresswoman from Massachusetts, said Acosta’s proposed cut was “reckless” and “amoral”. When seen alongside the sweetheart plea deal he granted Epstein in 2008, when Acosta was the US attorney in Miami, she said, it indicated that the labor secretary did not see protecting vulnerable children as a priority.“This is now a pattern,” Clark told the Guardian. “Like so many in this administration Mr Acosta chooses the powerful and wealthy over the vulnerable and victims of sexual assault and it is time that he finds another line of work.”Clark grilled Acosta about the proposed cuts in April, when he presented his departmental budget to the House appropriations subcommittee. On that occasion, she said, she found him “rude, dismissive, challenging”.“I’m sure this is a very uncomfortable topic for him,” Clark said, “but I don’t think he should be able to hide from it.”Acosta is facing mounting pressure from Democrats to resign, over the lenient deal he gave Epstein and in the wake of the billionaire’s new prosecution. Epstein was arrested on Saturday and indicted on two sex trafficking counts by federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York in an apparent rebuke to Acosta’s earlier decision.Under the 2008 deal negotiated by Acosta, an FBI investigation that had produced a 53-page draft indictment involving more than 30 potential underage victims was shut down. The billionaire only had to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting women who were controversially labeled prostitutes.Epstein ended up serving 13 months in a Florida jail during which he was allowed out six days a week to attend his plush business offices.Senior Democrats have been lining up to call for Acosta to go. On Tuesday the party leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, accused the labor secretary of having let a serial sex trafficker “off easy”.Schumer said: “This is not acceptable. We cannot have as one of the leading appointed officials in America someone who has done this.”Others to call for Acosta to go include House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, Tim Kaine, a senator from Virginia, and former vice-president Joe Biden, now running for the presidential nomination.On Tuesday, Donald Trump gave his first comments since Epstein’s arrest. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president praised Acosta as an “excellent secretary of labor” said: “The rest of it we’ll have to look at very carefully but you are talking about a long time ago.”Trump tried to minimize Acosta’s role in the 2008 plea deal, saying: “I hear there were a lot of people involved in that decision not just him.”The Department of Labor is widely respected for its vital role in investigating, prosecuting and preventing human trafficking worldwide. Experts say any major cut to ILAB would be a direct threat to the US government’s ability to combat the sexual exploitation of children.“A huge cut of this sort is bound to expose children to more risk of sexual trafficking,” said Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who co-authored California’s law on human trafficking.“An 80% reduction at ILAB will undoubtedly eliminate many of the US government’s anti-human trafficking efforts that have been critical in encouraging action by law enforcement.”Kim said Acosta having granted the lenient plea deal to Epstein, combined with the proposed cuts to ILAB, made it entirely inappropriate that he continued in his current role.“He should step down,” she said.The battle over the future of ILAB is ongoing. Acosta’s proposed cuts were imported into Trump’s $4.7tn federal budget, released in March, which contains several Republican goals including extra money for the military and funding of the president’s beloved border wall.The Democrats have responded with a 2020 House budget that passed in June. It would see ILAB resources expand to $122m.“Congress ultimately makes the decisions about how money is spent and appropriated,” said Clark. “We will prevail and the bureau will not be shuttered if we can get this item through Congress.” Topics Trump administration Human trafficking US politics Donald Trump news
2018-02-16 /
Ride hail firm Lyft races to leave Uber behind in IPO chase
(Reuters) - Ride-hailing company Lyft Inc beat bigger rival Uber Technologies Inc in filing for an initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, defying the recent market jitters and taking the lead on a string of billion-dollar-plus tech companies expected to join Wall Street next year. Lyft’s IPO will test investors’ appetite for the most highly valued Silicon Valley companies and for the ride-hailing business, which has become a wildly popular service but remains unprofitable and has an uncertain future with the advance of self-driving cars. San Francisco-based Lyft, last valued at about $15 billion in a private fundraising round, did not specify the number of shares it was selling or the price range in a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Lyft could go public as early as the first quarter of 2019, based on how quickly the SEC reviews its filing, people familiar with the matter said. Lyft’s valuation is likely to end up between $20 billion and $30 billion, one source added. The ride service was set up in 2012 by entrepreneurs John Zimmer and Logan Green and has raised close to $5 billion from investors. While it continues to grow faster than its larger competitor, Uber, it is also losing money. Lyft would follow a string of high-profile IPOs of technology companies valued at more than $1 billion this year, such as Dropbox Inc and Spotify Technology SA. However, market turmoil fueled by the escalating trade tensions between the United States and China could dampen enthusiasm for the debuts of other 2019 hopefuls like apartment-rental service Airbnb Inc, analytics firm Palantir Technologies and Stripe Inc, a digital payment company. Including Lyft, these round out four of the top-10 most highly valued, venture-backed tech companies. “Market declines mean that the offer price will be lower than otherwise. But there’s a danger of waiting to go public as well. Markets could go even lower, and the companies could raise less money if they waited longer,” said Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida. Such fears have pushed some companies to hustle. Uber moved its target IPO date up from the second half of next year to the first half. Some venture capitalists said they are urging portfolio companies that had been planning a public debut in the next 18 months to hurry up and file. An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris HelgrenIn a key test for the U.S. IPO market on Thursday, Moderna Inc is considering selling up to 20 percent more shares than originally planned in its IPO, allaying concerns that the stock market tumult could derail the biggest flotation of a biotechnology company since 2016, Reuters reported. The filing by Lyft, which hired JPMorgan Chase & Co, Credit Suisse and Jefferies as underwriters, plants a flag in the ground to go public before larger rival Uber. The race between them is one of the most closely watched in Silicon Valley. A provision included in an investment by SoftBank into Uber requires the company to file for an IPO by Sept. 30 or the company risks allowing restrictions on shareholder stock transfers to expire. Uber investor Mitchell Green, a partner at Lead Edge Capital, said Lyft going public first bodes well for Uber, because if Lyft trades at a high multiple, the much-larger Uber will command even more money. “Lyft has built a very U.S.-based rideshare business that has done well,” Green said. “If public market investors get excited about that they are really going to get excited about a business that is 5X the size.” Earlier this year, Lyft said it had 35 percent of the U.S. ride-hailing market. The company operates in the United States and Canada, while Uber is in much of the world and has other businesses including freight-hailing and food delivery. Both Uber and Lyft have lost huge sums of money by spending heavily competing with each other for passengers and drivers and entering new markets, although they have recently raised prices and reduced subsidies. The companies have held out the promise of boosting profitability by eventually replacing human drivers with robots piloting autonomous vehicles, but a future of cities and suburbs crisscrossed by fleets of self-driving cars is years away, given the technical and regulatory challenges, particularly in the United States. “With autonomous cars on the horizon, it is anyone’s guess where this sector goes in the future,” said Jeff Zell, senior research analyst and a partner at IPO Boutique in Florida. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone in London, Britain November 10, 2017. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File PhotoLyft in particular is one of the newest entrants to self-driving and has only a small robo-taxi service in Las Vegas using another company’s technology. Its investors include General Motors Corp, which holds a 9 percent stake in Lyft that it acquired for $500 million in 2016, but GM has wound down its cooperation with Lyft, choosing instead to acquire the autonomous car company Cruise. Lyft presents other risks, including unresolved questions about its workforce of independent contractor drivers. A decision by the California Supreme Court earlier this year, which makes it easier for workers to prove they are employees and sets a higher standard for companies to treat workers as contractors, threatens to upend Lyft and Uber’s business models. Both companies face legal battles with drivers over their classification. Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York and Heather Somerville in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru and Joseph White in Detroit; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2018-02-16 /
EVs are a hit with Wipro, Cognizant and other Indian IT firms
At a time when India’s electronic vehicle (EV) ecosystem is struggling, the one place where it’s getting traction is the country’s $154 billion IT industry.On July 18, Tata Motors said it would supply 10 EVs to IT outsourcing major Cognizant. These EVs will be used inside Cognizant’s Hyderabad campus, where Tata Power will supply and install two fast-charging stations.This comes just months after India’s third-largest IT outsourcing company, Wipro, committed to transitioning its global fleets into EVs by 2030. In April this year, the Bengaluru-based company said it will scale up its use to at least 500 EVs in the next three years and 1,000 by 2023.This means, in five years, Wipro alone will be using around half the number of EVs annually sold in India right now.Several IT firms in India have been using EVs—mostly basic battery-operated carts—to commute within their campuses for long. Now they want to go beyond.“We recently embarked upon the use of electric vehicles to provide a green alternative for our employees to commute to work,” said R Ramkumar, executive director for India at Cognizant. “We have launched the initiative at our campuses in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, and will expand it across our other locations in India over time.”Wipro has similar plans for Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune. This will involve scaling up to nearly 2,000 vehicles, it told Quartz in an email. The billionaire Azim Premji-led company has already leased around 50 EVs in Hyderabad and the National Capital Region. “It has also launched corporate vehicle ownership and lease programmes, and installed charging points at all its major facilities in India,” the company said.Unisys India, the Indian arm of Pennsylvania-based IT major Unisys Corp, began using EVs in 2015, the company told Quartz. “These electric vehicles run on lithium-ion batteries and do not require fossil fuels to run,” it said. Currently, its EVs are clocking 400,000 kilometres per month.However, skeptics say these decisions have more to do with projecting an ec0-friendly image than bringing about a real change.Amid a changing business environment, Indian IT companies have been struggling to adapt to new technologies. The shift to EVs could well be a step towards showing clients how up-to-date they are.“There is always a lot of expat traffic in IT campuses. [An] image is important and hence the choice of EVs,” said Deepesh Rathore, director at Emerging Markets Automotive Advisors, an auto industry consultancy. “IT companies also need to be seen as the torchbearers of new, environment-friendly technology and EVs are a perfect fit.”While within their campuses, EVs have worked great, expanding their usage to city roads will be a challenge given the lack of supporting infrastructure in India and the generally slow speed limits of most EVs.“EVs will thrive only where there is a predictable usage pattern because of a lack of proper infrastructure still,” said Kumar Kandaswami, a partner at Delloite.
2018-02-16 /
Brazil backs Venezuela uprising, but says it won't intervene militarily
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s right-wing government threw its support behind Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s push to oust President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday, and called on other nations to do the same. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro speaks with journalists after visiting Yasmin Alves at the Estrutural slum, in Brasilia, Brazil April 27, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano MachadoBrazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army officer, wrote on his official Twitter account that the people of Venezuela are “enslaved by a dictator” and that he supports “freedom for our sister nation to finally become a true democracy.” His security adviser, retired general Augusto Heleno, said he was shocked by an image of an armored car of Venezuela’s National Guard apparently running over protesters. But he said the situation was not clear, Guaido’s support among the military appeared to be “weak” and it was uncertain whether military officers were abandoning Maduro. Guaido called on Tuesday for the military to help him oust Maduro and asked Venezuelans to take to the streets on a day he vowed would be the last for Maduro’s stay in power. However, by the evening Maduro was still in charge, and there was little sign of the military leadership abandoning him. Guaido is recognized as interim head of state by Brazil, the United States and dozens of other Western nations, but his backers say they want to see a peaceful transition. Presidential spokesman General Otavio Rego Barros told reporters Brazil had completely ruled out intervening militarily in Venezuela and was not planning to allow any other country to use its territory for any potential intervention in its neighbor. Barros read out a statement expressing support for the “Venezuelan people fighting for democracy” and called on other nations to support Guaido’s effort to end the “Maduro dictatorship.” Earlier, Brazil’s foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said it was “positive” to see movement of some Venezuelan military toward recognizing Guaido as the legitimate president of their country. “Brazil supports the democratic transition process and hopes the Venezuelan military will be part of that,” Araujo said. Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia, Eduardo Simoes and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2018-02-16 /
DeSantis Warns Florida Not to ‘Monkey This Up,’ and Many Hear a Racist Dog Whistle
Representative Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, drew accusations of using a racist dog whistle on Wednesday after saying in a television interview that voters should not “monkey this up” by electing his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who would be the state’s first black governor.Mr. Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, won the primary election in an upset on Tuesday night, handing a major victory to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.In the interview with Fox News on the first day of the general election campaign, Mr. DeSantis, 39, who has President Trump’s support, attacked Mr. Gillum’s candidacy by painting him as a far-left socialist.[Read more about some things to know about Mr. DeSantis]“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” he said. “That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”Terrie Rizzo, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, blasted Mr. DeSantis’s comments. “It’s disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles,” she wrote on Twitter.In a statement, Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, rejected the idea that the candidate’s comments had a racial undertone.“Ron DeSantis was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses,” Mr. Lawson said. “To characterize it as anything else is absurd.”[Sign up here for The Times’s politics newsletter | Here’s what’s coming up next on the primary calendar]In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday after the controversy over the remarks took off, Mr. Gillum said Mr. DeSantis was taking a page “directly from the campaign manual” of Mr. Trump.“In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls,” Mr. Gillum said. “They’re now using full bull horns.”“I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump,” he added. “I’m going to try and stay high.”The anchor who conducted the interview with Mr. DeSantis, Sandra Smith, said on air later in the day that Fox “does not condone” the language the Republican candidate used.Monkeys have long been used in racist insults against black people, and many took note of that history. Sharon Austin, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, said she saw Mr. DeSantis’s language as a not-so-subtle racist dog whistle, similar to what many black politicians — including former President Barack Obama — have faced during their campaigns.“Why, of all words, would you use the term monkey?” she said of the remark. “If you don’t know about the history of racist language, racist imagery about animals and apes and black men — that’s ignorance.”Critics online said that Mr. DeSantis’s description of Mr. Gillum, 39, as an “articulate spokesman” for liberal views was another veiled racist message. The word “articulate” has a history of being used by white people to praise certain black people in a way that carries a troubling subtext of surprise at their intelligence.In describing Mr. Gillum as an extreme leftist, Mr. DeSantis used a message similar to that of Mr. Trump, who wrote in a tweet on Wednesday that Mr. Gillum was a “failed Socialist Mayor” who has enabled “crime & many other problems to flourish in his city.”Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had not heard Mr. DeSantis’s remarks but called him an “extreme talent.”Numerous Democrats who seized on Mr. DeSantis’s comments connected them to the president. “It barely took 12 hours for Trump yes-man Ron DeSantis to make a racist comment about his opponent,” Zach Hudson, a spokesman for the Democratic political action committee American Bridge 21st Century, said in a statement.Mr. Gillum’s victory on Tuesday was propelled by an endorsement from Senator Bernie Sanders and financial support from Tom Steyer, George Soros and Collective PAC, a group dedicated to electing African-Americans. He supports universal health care, legalizing marijuana and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — as well as impeaching Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis’s own primary victory signaled the influence of Mr. Trump’s endorsements on state Republican races. Mr. DeSantis gained attention from conservatives last year by making television appearances on Fox News to defend the president, who responded with his own praise. Mr. Trump gave Mr. DeSantis a full-throated endorsement in June.Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Gillum will face off for more than two months before voters go to the polls in November.“It’s going to be a long and probably pretty ugly campaign,” Dr. Austin said.
2018-02-16 /
The men who stay awake so India's rich can sleep
On a dimly-lit street, they look like lone warriors against unknown threats. From afar, their shadows loom over suburban Noida, a newly-gentrified satellite city on the outskirts of India's capital, Delhi. Heavy silence blankets the area, broken only by the occasional shrill blast from a whistle. Two men, dressed in dark blue jackets and caps with the word "security" sewn in bright yellow, have just begun their nightly patrol. "I have stopped thieves from stealing cars," 55-year-old Khushi Ram, who goes by a first name only, says with pride. "And then I handed them over to the police."He and Ranjit Singh, 40, are security guards. But they are not protecting banks, brightly-lit jewellery stores or corporate offices. They protect more than 300 posh homes every night - and they do this by going on foot patrol for hours. "I like my job because I feel like I'm doing something for the public," Khushi Ram says.It is bitingly cold and as they rub their hands together to spark some warmth, they breathe out - and it blends easily with the dense smog hanging in the air. Walk through any of the grid-like neighbourhoods that make up the bulk of Delhi's residential housing for the middle and upper classes, and you will see many such security guards whose jobs are a halfway point between a watchman and a police officer. They can be seen sitting on plastic chairs at the entrance to a neighbourhood, logging details as vehicles enter and exit; or patrolling the blocks through the night while tapping their wooden sticks on the ground - a familiar sound that is both tedious and reassuring. They are part of India's informal and often invisible workforce, which runs into hundreds of millions by some estimates. Many informal workers end up in jobs that are crucial to city neighbourhoods, from domestic workers to security guards. "Everybody in the neighbourhood - from small children to the elderly - depends on us for their safety," says Ranjit. "This is always on my mind when I am patrolling and it pushes me to do my best." Ranjit's weapon is a torch. And Khushi Ram has a whistle slung around his neck. The two men divide the sprawling block - lined with metal and wooden gates that stand in front of two and three-storey homes - between them and set off. Often, they walk and occasionally, they cycle. They cautiously stop in front of every house and examine it through the gates before walking past.The two men did not think they would be checking gates and streets in a neighbourhood they could never afford to live in when they left their villages in search of greener prospects. The invisible workforce - stories about the unorganised workers at the heart of India's economy The Indian men who make money selling trash Behind India's construction boom: 'We risk our lives to build your homes' Ranjit is from the eastern state of Bihar and Khushi Ram is from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh - both are largely rural and among India's poorest states. Many of the guards I spoke to say they moved to Delhi in search of a government job, hoping to work for the police or the railways. These jobs are coveted because they come with benefits and tenure. Some of them even harboured dreams of joining the Indian Army. But they ended up filling a different gap. An acute shortage of policemen in India, where there is about one officer for every 1,000 people, has meant that many of these guards have become de-facto protectors across neighbourhoods. "We work with the police to keep residents safe," says Ranjit, who moved to Delhi two years ago. He was immediately hired by a local contractor to guard the neighbourhood in Noida. Local police have also benefited from the work of such guards, seeing as there are about five or six of them in each residential block. "We consider them an extra force," says Ajay Pal Sharma, a senior police officer in Noida. The crime rate in the Noida, he adds, decreased by 40% in 2018 compared with the year before. "This is partly because of our relationship with the guards, who have a lot of manpower, so we try and work closely with them." Aerial photos reveal the stark divide between rich and poor Why inequality in India is at its highest level in 92 years Mr Sharma adds that his precinct has also trained some of the guards in recent years, as the bulk of them do not receive any formal training. He said they have taught the guards to watch out for car thieves and suspicious activity.The guards also keep their ears open for stray dogs - they say barks from them signal something worth investigating. Khushi Ram moved to Delhi more than 20 years ago and has been doing the same job ever since. He says that most people in the neighbourhood respect him, but others tend to look down on this line of work. "Some get nasty because they see us as a lowly-paid person who doesn't deserve respect." Boosting Mumbai's 'informal' nighttime economy Why segregated housing is thriving in India His first pay check was for 1,400 rupees (about $20; £15.50). Now, he earns 9,000 rupees a month. "The increase in pay is not much, considering how basic living costs constantly go up when you live in cities," he says. "I can barely survive with this income, but I don't have any other skill so I have to continue."A job like this lies at the bottom of India's booming private security industry, which employs about eight million people. An industry report estimates that by 2020, there will be more than 11 million. The demand is driven by expanding cities, new businesses and a stretched police force. But guards like Ranjit and Khushi Ram represent 65% of the industry, which is still unregulated. They have no promise of career growth and pay increases are sporadic and far from guaranteed."I employ 200 guards and pay them the best I can. But the problem is that people don't want to pay a lot," says Himanshu Kumar, who owns a small private security firm that stations guards in residential areas. He says that many see these guards as chowkidars, a term for villagers who voluntarily patrol the streets in exchange for food and money. "But cities are different," Mr Kumar says. "You have to pay more because the job is tougher. Unfortunately, people's attitudes have not changed."It is a winter night in Delhi, and the air is leaden with pollution. As Ranjit and Khushi Ram walk, they cough frequently. The job requires that they walk for at least five to six hours every night and sometimes, they stop to make a fire to warm themselves. There is no relief in the summer either as sweltering temperatures persist through the night. It can be a pretty thankless job, says Ranjit, who only gets to see his family once a year since they still live in Bihar. "In an ideal world, I would be paid more for this job but the pay is so low that I want to quit," he says. "It is harder than you think - to stay awake when the rest of the city sleeps."Photographs and additional reporting by Ankit SrinivasThis is the last story in a three-part series about the millions of informal workers who help Indian cities function.
2018-02-16 /
Brazil backs Venezuela uprising, but says it won't intervene militarily
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s right-wing government threw its support behind Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s push to oust President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday, and called on other nations to do the same. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro speaks with journalists after visiting Yasmin Alves at the Estrutural slum, in Brasilia, Brazil April 27, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano MachadoBrazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army officer, wrote on his official Twitter account that the people of Venezuela are “enslaved by a dictator” and that he supports “freedom for our sister nation to finally become a true democracy.” His security adviser, retired general Augusto Heleno, said he was shocked by an image of an armored car of Venezuela’s National Guard apparently running over protesters. But he said the situation was not clear, Guaido’s support among the military appeared to be “weak” and it was uncertain whether military officers were abandoning Maduro. Guaido called on Tuesday for the military to help him oust Maduro and asked Venezuelans to take to the streets on a day he vowed would be the last for Maduro’s stay in power. However, by the evening Maduro was still in charge, and there was little sign of the military leadership abandoning him. Guaido is recognized as interim head of state by Brazil, the United States and dozens of other Western nations, but his backers say they want to see a peaceful transition. Presidential spokesman General Otavio Rego Barros told reporters Brazil had completely ruled out intervening militarily in Venezuela and was not planning to allow any other country to use its territory for any potential intervention in its neighbor. Barros read out a statement expressing support for the “Venezuelan people fighting for democracy” and called on other nations to support Guaido’s effort to end the “Maduro dictatorship.” Earlier, Brazil’s foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said it was “positive” to see movement of some Venezuelan military toward recognizing Guaido as the legitimate president of their country. “Brazil supports the democratic transition process and hopes the Venezuelan military will be part of that,” Araujo said. Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia, Eduardo Simoes and Tatiana Bautzer in Sao Paulo; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2018-02-16 /
Satellite crashes will plague us unless we manage space traffic better
There were plenty of unusual things about this week’s satellite kerfuffle between the European Space Agency and SpaceX—the public statement released by ESA, initial reports that SpaceX declined to move its Starlink satellite despite being warned about a risk of collision, and SpaceX’s claim it didn’t respond because a glitch caused it to miss the warning, to name a few. But perhaps the least surprising aspect was the prospect that two objects in orbit could have crashed into one another. Orbital congestion is rapidly building. Two dozen companies alone have proposed launching well over 20,000 satellites in the next 10 years. For context, fewer than 8,100 payloads have been placed in Earth’s orbit since the space age began. Incidents like the ESA-SpaceX near-miss make it clear our current space management system is untenable.That’s not a huge surprise, considering there is no real standard for managing space traffic around the world. “I would describe it as nascent to nonexistent,” says Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation. Most satellite operators, including some abroad, simply rely on the US Air Force’s forecast of potential “conjunctions” between active objects in orbit. The Air Force—which initially aimed just to track missiles in space, not to become the world’s space traffic cop—tracks objects using radar and delivers alerts when the probability of a collision is higher than 1 in 10,000 (on Monday, that probability rose to around 1 in 1,000).“Each satellite operator is basically on their own to assess the risk [of collision] and determine what to do about it,” says Roger Thompson, a senior engineering specialist at the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation. “And each one has their own risk posture. Sometimes those operators will perform a collision avoidance maneuver. Sometimes they’ll just ride it out, if they still believe the risk is low enough.”There are reasons enough why this has become the norm. For one thing, changing the trajectory of an object speeding around the planet at tens of thousands of miles per hour isn’t easy, especially when it’s relying on a tiny thruster for maneuvering. And oftentimes, a concerning level of risk will drop by one or two orders of magnitude as more data arrives. In the vast majority of cases, maneuvers aren’t necessary.But mega-constellations like Starlink, which will comprise thousands of satellites when fully operational, complicate our space traffic forecasts and collision avoidance strategies. “We can’t just continue to do business as usual,” Thompson says. “You don’t want to step out of the way of an oncoming car and step into the way of an oncoming bus, so to speak.”Technology can play a pivotal role. “The US military has struggled to upgrade its computer systems to improve the accuracy of the warnings and be able to accept different kinds of data,” says Weeden. “Shifting from ’60s-era military hardware to modern hardware will help a lot.” We can also deploy radar systems in more parts of the world—some can even be operated by private companies—to track more objects at once. Many satellite operators (including SpaceX) are trying to pursue autonomous systems that can automatically move satellites to avoid collisions when an alert goes out, though they are still unproven; and like self-driving cars, these systems might be useful only if they are communicating with one another.But the bigger picture of space traffic management also needs a rethink, argue Thompson and his Aerospace Corporation colleague Ted Muelhaupt, the lead author of a recent paper outlining specific recommendations. Satellite operators almost always know their own satellites’ positions, but at the moment they don’t share that data with each other. Each must follow its own country’s laws on what altitude satellites are allowed to operate at, where they can travel, who should take what action should a threat of collision arise, how to dispose of dead satellites, and so forth—but there is no way to resolve problems if those regulations conflict with another country’s. An intergovernmental space traffic body could be very useful, but how would such a body actually police traffic and back up its regulations with punitive measures? We can’t just hand out tickets for anyone who violates the rules. There’d be no bite behind the bark.So if the stick won’t work, you have to go with the carrot. “If a central agency could provide a service that lets people get mutual benefits, that will get people to join on their own,” Muelhaupt says. “It’s like a standard—if you get enough people to adopt the standard, the standard becomes enforceable on its own through the market. Satellite operators will voluntarily comply.”Even if they resent being told what to do, operators will get on board because they all agree on one thing: satellite collisions are bad for business, and bad for space. Ultimately this means that protecting one’s own assets means protecting others’ as well. Conflicts are sure to emerge when we start debating which countries and which businesses ought to move out of the way for others. But those spats are far preferable to the alternative, in which Earth’s orbit becomes so littered with debris from shattered orbiters that no one can safely use it.
2018-02-16 /
SpaceX and the Danger of Missing Emails in Space
ESA was the first to reach out. SpaceX responded, saying it had no plans to adjust the position of the satellite. The probability of a collision was about one in 50,000 then, and satellite operators usually don’t make moves until the likelihood reaches more than one in 10,000.The satellites hit that threshold within a day of the email exchange. ESA sent SpaceX another email. Then another. But the agency didn’t hear back.Had the operator seen the messages, a SpaceX spokesperson later said, “we would have coordinated with ESA to determine best approach with their continuing with their maneuver or our performing a maneuver.” But SpaceX, it turned out, didn’t see those emails, thanks to a computer bug in their on-call paging system.By the time they did, the ESA satellite had already ignited its thrusters and dodged. SpaceX had stumbled into a painfully relatable circumstance: missing an important email and then scrambling to explain why with a sorry, just seeing this!The two satellites avoided a crash, which can produce thousands of pieces of debris, increasing the chance of other collisions.But the scenario raised concerns about how satellite operators manage space traffic as it becomes even more congested. The SpaceX satellite, launched in May, was part of the company’s Starlink project, which is meant to provide internet around the world, especially in isolated spots. Musk says he wants to launch about a thousand satellites each year to eventually build a fleet of 12,000. Jeff Bezos wants to launch thousands of satellites of his own, for a similar effort under Amazon. The internet-satellite company OneWeb plans to deploy hundreds.As these constellations of satellites grow, so does the risk of collision. And more risk means more emails and phone calls.“If you have to deal with one or two close approaches a month, picking up the phone might be fine,” says Brian Weeden, a space-policy expert at the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes peaceful uses of space. “But if you now have to deal with dozens or hundreds, it’s not going to scale.”Collision avoidance is a knotty process from start to finish. ESA, SpaceX, and virtually every satellite operator rely on orbital data collected by a unit of the U.S. military. The Air Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron tracks about 23,000 artificial objects bigger than a softball, a tiny slice of which are functioning satellites. If a collision starts looking possible, the unit issues warnings to the appropriate operators.But the data are limited, which Weeden attributes to aging computer systems and information-sharing policies, aimed at protecting national-security interests, that can leave operators in the dark. In practice, that means satellite trackers don’t know exactly where something is in space, so they cannot say with certainty whether two objects will collide. When operators prepare for potential maneuvers, they combine the military data with their own knowledge of the satellite’s position, taking into account “uncertainties in orbit information,” as ESA put it.
2018-02-16 /
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