BEIJING/PARIS (Reuters) - China said on Sunday it was investigating Meng Hongwei for suspected wrongdoing after the head of the global law enforcement organization Interpol and Chinese vice minister for security was reported missing in France. The statement by a Chinese anti-graft body was the first official word from China about Meng since his disappearance was reported in France on Friday. Meng had been reported missing by his wife after traveling last month from France, where Interpol is based, to China. “Public Security Ministry Vice Minister Meng Hongwei is currently under investigation by the National Supervisory Commission for suspected violations of law,” the Chinese anti-corruption body said in a brief statement on its website. Interpol said later that Meng had resigned as president of the organization, and that South Korean national Kim Jong Yang would become its acting president, while it would appoint a new president at a Nov 18-21 meeting of the organization in Dubai. Interpol said earlier over the weekend that it had asked Beijing to clarify Meng’s situation. “Today, Sunday 7 October, (at) the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon, France received the resignation of Mr Meng Hongwei as President of Interpol with immediate effect,” Interpol said in a statement on Sunday. When asked about the Chinese announcement on Sunday, France’s Interior Ministry said it had no information. The French ministry said last Friday that Meng’s family had not heard from him since Sept. 25, and French authorities said his wife was under police protection after getting threats. French police have been investigating what is officially termed in France a “worrying disappearance”. Local French media broadcast a video which they said was from Meng’s wife Grace, in which she issued a brief statement from a hotel in Lyon to express her concerns. Reuters could not confirm the comments attributed to her. “As long as I can’t see my husband in front of me, speaking to me, I can’t have any confidence,” Grace Meng was quoted as saying by French TV stations and Sunday newspapers. The websites of French papers broadcast video clips showing Meng speaking in a trembling voice, with her back to a TV camera in order to hide her appearance. “This is a matter for the international community. This matter belongs to my motherland,” she added in the video clips. French media also reported that Meng’s husband had recently sent her a mobile phone message featuring a knife image, as a way of showing her that he felt he was in danger. Meng, 64, was named to the post of Interpol president in late 2016, part of a broader Chinese effort to gain leadership positions in key international organizations. Presidents of Interpol are seconded from their national administrations and remain in their home post while representing the international policing body. INTERPOL President Meng Hongwei poses during a visit to the headquarters of International Police Organisation in Lyon, France, May 8, 2018. Jeff Pachoud/Pool via ReutersInterpol, which groups 192 countries and is usually focused on finding people who are missing or wanted, is run on a day-to-day basis by its secretary general, German national Juergen Stock. When Meng was named Interpol’s president, human rights groups expressed concern that Beijing might try to leverage his position to pursue dissidents abroad. Beijing has in the past pressed countries to arrest and deport to China citizens it accuses of crimes, from corruption to terrorism. Under President Xi Jinping, China has been engaged in a crackdown on corruption. Reporting by Tony MunroeAdditional reporting by Caroline Pailliez in Paris, Editing by Edmund Blair, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, William MacleanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

9 U.S. ‘Can The President Be Impeached?’ We Answer Your Questions

A white nationalist wanted for crimes authorities say were committed on the campus of the University of Virginia a day before a deadly rally has said he will turn himself in to authorities.University of Virginia police say Christopher Cantwell of Keene, New Hampshire, is wanted on three felony charges: two counts of the illegal use of teargas or other gases and one count of malicious bodily injury with a “caustic substance”, explosive or fire.Contacted Tuesday by the Associated Press, Cantwell – who appeared in a Vice News documentary about the violence – acknowledged he had pepper-sprayed a counter-demonstrator during an 11 August protest but insisted he was defending himself, saying he did it “because my only other option was knocking out his teeth”.Cantwell also said he had been trying for days to find out about whether he had outstanding warrants. When the police issued a statement, Cantwell said he was “convinced” that he was wanted and would turn himself in.He would not say Tuesday evening where or exactly when that would happen, only that it would be done in the “most appropriate and safe manner possible”. He said it would occur in the next 24 hours, “likely much sooner than that”, and that he looked forward to his day in court.Also Tuesday, the city council in Charlottesville, Virginia, voted to drape two Confederate statues in black fabric during a chaotic meeting packed with irate residents who screamed and cursed at councilors over the city’s response to the white nationalist rally.The council meeting was the first since the “Unite the Right” event, which was believed to be the largest gathering of white nationalists in a decade. The demonstrators arrived in Charlottesville partly to protest the city council’s vote to remove a statue of Confederate Gen Robert E Lee.Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a car slammed into a crowd protesting the rally. James Alex Fields Jr, 20, has been charged in the death. Topics Virginia US crime news

A Russian official is expected to become the new head of Interpol, despite concerns that Moscow has used the agency to target its opponents.Alexander Prokopchuk, a veteran of the country's interior ministry, is favourite to be elected president at a meeting of Interpol's annual congress.He is currently one of four vice-presidents of Interpol.The election follows the disappearance of Interpol's former president Meng Hongwei in September.China has since confirmed he has been detained and is being investigated for allegedly taking bribes.Representatives from Interpol's 194 member states are meeting in Dubai for the vote.They will decide between Mr Prokopchuk and another vice-president, South Korea's Kim Jong Yang, but the Russian is considered the favourite.Although the role of president is largely ceremonial, it still wields influence and the election of Mr Prokopchuk would be seen as a major success for Russia.But there is growing criticism of his candidacy from human rights groups and officials from other countries who fear his election could lead to an escalation in Russia's attempts to pursue its critics.Mr Prokopchuk has been accused of abusing Interpol's so-called red notice system - international arrest warrants - to target critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, while serving as Interpol's Moscow bureau chief. One group of US senators said electing him would be "akin to putting a fox in charge of the henhouse", while a prominent Kremlin critic said it would be like "putting the mafia in charge".The UK says it is backing Kim Jong Yang, and has been urged by some British MPs to consider withdrawing from Interpol if Mr Prokopchuk is elected."Putting a senior representative of one of the most criminalised governments on Earth in charge of Interpol makes a mockery of the organisation in principle," said Conservative lawmaker Bob Seely.Lithuania, which regained its independence from Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union and is now a member of both Nato and the European Union, has threatened to leave Interpol if Mr Prokopchuk is elected.If you cannot view this article in full, click to launch the interactive content.

The orange glow of one of California's many wildfires can be seen Friday from a hilltop in Geyserville, Calif. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP hide caption toggle caption Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Updated at 8:30 p.m. ETSome 9,000 firefighters who are working long hours with little or no rest continue to battle historically destructive Northern California wildfires that have claimed at least 40 lives, wiped out whole neighborhoods and damaged vineyards and farms in the heart of the state's wine country. In this week's fires alone, 22 people have died, the Sonoma County Coroner's office said Saturday."We're pretty exhausted. It's pretty steep terrain," Sonoma wildland firefighter Steven Moore says at a makeshift staging area next to the Tubbs Fire, which is still raging just a few miles outside the tourist city of Calistoga.Moore says he has hardly slept this week. "We've been dealing with trying to save the structures. The winds aren't helping. All we can do is get to the structures as fast as we possibly can and save what we can."Additional firefighting resources have poured into California in the last 24 hours from across the state and the nation.Fueled mostly by chewing tobacco, coffee and adrenaline, firefighters here are, in the words of one commander, "pushing it to the limits.""We have people who've been on that line for days, and they don't want to leave that section of line because there's still work to do, there are homes to save and they're very passionate about it," says Napa County Fire Chief Barry Biermann. "We're public service employees and [that's what] everyone does — we're here to help."Now getting firefighters off the line and rested is a priority, even if it's against their will. "It's like pulling teeth to get firefighters and law enforcement to disengage," he says. The Two-Way California Fire Officials Begin To Express Optimism About Battling Wildfires Part of the passion to stay comes from the fact that many of those fighting the fires make their homes and livelihood in the area."Everybody is shot, but at the same time, a lot of the people working the fires live here. It's their community. So no one can really shut down," says Joe Buchmeier, a battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. He lives just down the hill from where he is battling a cluster of fires still burning north of the city of Sonoma."They're actually getting forced to shut down. People are saying, 'You're going to go sleep!' So we go sleep and then come back as soon as we can," Buchmeier says.Since the fires fueled by powerful winds erupted last Sunday night, he says he has basically caught two or three hours of sleep in the cab of his truck when he can. One time, he "ended up on a couch for probably three hours" before heading back out to the fire.He was headed for a short nap just as a giant air tanker swooped overhead dropping another burst of rusty red fire retardant on the nearby hillside."This starts happening, and you get pumped up again," he says.But coffee and adrenaline only take you so far "before you hit the wall."And stronger gusting "red flag" winds are forecast for this weekend, putting fire crews on edge.At a staging area for the Tubbs Fire outside of Calistoga, "the fire is just jumping around all over the place," says Brandon Tolp, a Cal Fire fireman from the San Bernardino area.He has a wad of chew in his mouth and more tins of it visible inside his firetruck. It's fuel, he says, when you have little time to eat. "Last time I ate was yesterday at noon, so something to pass the time," he says with a smile.More than a dozen wildfires are burning in Northern California with only several of them partially contained. Firefighters are reporting modest but solid progress."Anywhere we have uncontained (fire) lines, we are concerned," Biermann, who is the Cal Fire deputy commander for Napa, said Friday. Firefighters "are tired, they're working hard; but we're making great progress" on the Atlas Fire in Sonoma and other stubborn blazes.The Tubbs Fire has burned more than 35,000 acres so far. It's now 44 percent contained, officials say, and fire crews are "doing a great job keeping that fire away from Calistoga," says Napa County supervisor Diane Dillon.The city and the surrounding unincorporated areas are still under a mandatory evacuation.Dillon again asked the some three dozen people who have defied the evacuation order to "leave the city now" so that first responders "can do their job."Calistoga resident Greg Winter, whose home is close to the front line of the fire, is one of those who has not heeded the mandatory order. He says he wants to take care of his animals — ducks, chickens, goats, turkeys and more. "They have people to save and homes to save, so they don't need to be worrying about my animals," he says.As firetrucks rumble by, Winter and his partner Heidi Vardaro are hurriedly raking up bone dry leaves and brush to try to create a fire break between the roadway and his property as ash falls around him. The fire is just 2 or so miles away."Yeah that's pretty close, but you've got a lot of land break here," he says pointing to the rows of wine grapes across the street. "We'd see it coming," Winter says optimistically. "If push comes to shove, we're ready to go. The keys are in the truck. We'll stop what we're doing and get the hell outta here."He says if it comes to it, he'll set all his animals free in the hope they can fend for themselves.California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom says big fires interacting with population centers may be "the new norm out here," requiring new strategies to mitigate, predict and aggressively react to fire outbreaks quicker. The Two-Way California Blazes Are Part Of A Larger And Hotter Picture, Fire Researchers Say Sharing best practices, Newsom says, across state borders will be key, including training, technology and the creation of teams that deploy aggressively on the ground. "Opportunities to dust off new technologies" including drone and infrared tools "to get out there and get ahead of some of these fires in ways that, frankly, only technology can provide," Newsom says.Meantime, on the very southern perimeter of the Tubbs Fire, contractors with two giant bulldozers are poised to cut a fresh fire line up a steep hill just past rows of deep blue zinfandel grapes.Bulldozer driver Jake Moore from Eureka is blunt about the challenging terrain as a boss ahead of him hangs ribbon to guide the machines up the hill. "You're gonna have to pay attention to what you're doing," he says with a wad of chew in his mouth gazing at the steep and rocky hillside in front of him.Buchmeier, the Cal Fire battalion chief, says that when the time comes, he is looking forward to a long, deep sleep and a cold India Pale Ale.NPR's Windsor Johnston and Richard Gonzales contributed to this report.

PARIS (Reuters) - French police are investigating the disappearance of Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, who was reported missing after traveling from France to his native China, while his wife has been placed under police protection after receiving threats. Meng’s wife contacted police in Lyon, the French city where the international police agency is based, after not hearing from him since Sept. 25, and after receiving threats by phone and on social media, France’s interior ministry said. A person familiar with the investigation said the initial working assumption was that Meng had antagonized Chinese authorities in some way and had been detained as a result. “France is puzzled about the situation of Interpol’s president and concerned about the threats made to his wife,” the ministry said, adding that it was in contact with China. Meng’s wife, who has remained in Lyon with their children according to police sources, was receiving protection, it said. It was not clear why Meng, 64, who was named Interpol’s president two years ago, had traveled to China, which has not commented officially on his disappearance. China’s Ministry of Public Security did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment and there was no mention of him in official media on Saturday. There have been several cases in recent years of senior Chinese officials vanishing without explanation, only for the government to announce weeks or even months later that they have been put under investigation, often for suspected corruption. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed source as saying Meng had been taken for questioning as soon as he landed in China, but it was not clear why. French police are investigating what is officially termed in France a “worrying disappearance”. Interpol, which groups 192 countries and which is usually focused on finding people who are missing or wanted, said in a statement from its secretary general, Juergen Stock, that it had asked China for clarification. “Interpol has requested through official law enforcement channels clarification from China’s authorities on the status of Interpol President Meng Hongwei,” Stock, who is in charge Interpol’s day-to-day running, said on Saturday. Roderic Broadhurst, a professor of criminology at Australian National University, said Meng’s disappearance would be “pretty disconcerting” for people in international bodies that work with China, and could ultimately damage China’s efforts to develop cooperative legal assistance measures with other countries. “It is bizarre,” Broadhurst said on Saturday, adding that China was likely to “brush off” any political damage that it would cause to Beijing’s involvement in international bodies. “It’s a price that might have to be paid, but I guess they would see that as a cost worth bearing,” Broadhurst said. Presidents of Interpol are seconded from their national administrations and remain in their home post while representing the international policing body. Meng is listed on the website of China’s Ministry of Public Security as a vice-minister, but lost his seat on its Communist Party Committee in April, the South China Morning Post reported. Meng has almost 40 years’ experience in criminal justice and policing, and has overseen matters related to legal institutions, narcotics control and counter-terrorism, according to Interpol’s website. Interpol staff can carry special passports to help speed deployment in emergency situations but that would not have given Meng any specific rights or immunity in his home country. FILE PHOTO: INTERPOL President Meng Hongwei poses during a visit to the headquarters of International Police Organisation in Lyon, France, May 8, 2018. Jeff Pachoud/Pool via ReutersWhen Meng was named Interpol’s president in Nov. 2016, human rights groups expressed concern that Beijing might try to leverage his position to pursue dissidents abroad. Beijing has in the past pressed countries to arrest and deport to China citizens it accuses of crimes, from corruption to terrorism. At the time, Amnesty International called Meng’s appointment “at odds with Interpol’s mandate to work in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Reporting by Catherine Lagrange in Lyon, Richard Lough, Simon Carraud, Sarah White and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Mark Hosenball in London, Yawen Chen and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Richard Balmforth/Raju Gopalakrishnan/Alexander SmithOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Brett Kavanaugh went after women’s reproductive rights this week, just months after being placed on the US supreme court. He tried to stop the court from blocking a Louisiana law, which would severely restrict access to abortion in the state. He didn’t quite make it, this time, but only because Chief Justice John Roberts was unwilling to overturn the court’s precedent set just two years earlier in a nearly identical case in Texas. But, still, there was Kavanaugh, who shouldn’t have been on the bench in the first place, weighing in. And, that’s a problem.Without question, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were the sub-prime mortgage of US supreme court nominee vetting. The results will likely be equally disastrous.Similarly, the confirmation process for Kavanaugh was rigged from day one. He was nominated by a president who is an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime and needed a Supreme Court Justice who had already argued that the nation’s chief executive “should be exempt from ‘time-consuming and distracting’ lawsuits and investigations.”Meanwhile, last fall, the Republicans were anxious that the impending “Blue Tsunami” in the mid-term elections just might wipe away Republican majorities in one or both houses of Congress and lead to strengthening voting rights, the Affordable Care Act, and Roe v Wade. To stop that kind of legislation, which is supported by the vast majority of Americans, would require an impenetrable conservative majority on the Court to act as a bulwark. As a result, for the Republican party leadership, there was no rule that could not be invented, ignored, twisted, or lied about to secure that goal.Yet, in its rush to fill the seat, the Republicans, like eager buyers, ignored warning signals that the House of Kavanaugh was not as solid as it originally appeared. Numerous credible allegations of sexual assault were brought against Kavanaugh. And, of course, there was Kavanaugh’s unforgettable rage-filled partisan opening statement.Despite all of the warning signs, however, Kavanaugh was still confirmed by the slimmest of margins with Senator Susan Collins, a key swing vote, convinced that he was committed to precedent and “would not vote to overturn Roe v Wade.”As this spectacle unfolded, it became clear, just like the subprime mortgage fiasco, that our institutions have once again failed the American people. Accountability collapsed under the weight of a party unnecessarily fearful of demographic change. And, equally important, that fear has put the nation at risk.Someone is now ensconced on the highest court in the land who was not properly vetted. The Republicans glossed over questions about judicial temperament and partisanship, alcohol abuse, sexual violence, perjury, and how hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt accrued and disappeared within a year. It was as if they were looking at an applicant with an 810-credit score, 50% down, and a debt-to-credit ratio that was well within bounds. But once the veneer of girls’ basketball coach, Yale Law, and carpool dad was pulled away, Kavanaugh exuded the telltale signs of a major credit risk on the bench.We don’t know to whom he actually owed $200,000 and what the source of funds were to pay it off so quickly. We don’t know how a judge can afford a country club fee that’s nearly half his salary. In short, we don’t know who owns him. Because his work with the George W Bush administration during the War on Terror is still locked away in the 93% of documentation that was hidden from the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we don’t know if a case involving torture, Guantanamo Bay, or NSA wiretapping would be a conflict of interest because he was somehow involved. We simply don’t know.What we do know is that his hyper-partisan rant makes Kavanaugh a compromised member on the Supreme Court who would have to recuse himself from a number of cases brought by the very “left-wing opposition groups” he accused of trying to derail him, such as the ACLU, NAACP-Legal Defense Fund, and Planned Parenthood. If Kavanaugh refused to bow out of those cases, especially given his threat that “what goes around comes around,” the Court’s decision would naturally be seen as a vendetta, payback, and, therefore, suspect.Yet, credibility and trust are absolutely essential for a functioning democracy; essential for governance; and essential for the rule of law. Once the court’s rulings are called into question on basic fundamental grounds of judicial bias, its legitimacy becomes as shaky and threatening to the political system as Wall Street’s alchemy of converting suspect “C” mortgage bonds into “A” rated ones was to the economy.That didn’t end so well, either. Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is also a Guardian US columnist Topics Brett Kavanaugh Opinion comment

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Google dominates US classrooms with its affordable laptops and free apps like Google Docs. Now Apple appears to be getting serious about recovering some share of the education market.Apple executives announced their latest education products at a Chicago high-school auditorium today (March 27) to an audience of journalists, analysts, educators, and students. The hour-long event had little new hardware on show. “We believe iPad is best at engaging students,” a company representative said onstage. But it’s not clear that its latest offerings would put a serious damper on Google and its partners’ education sales.Here’s a quick rundown of everything Apple announced.Apple revamped its 9.7-inch iPad that supports Apple’s stylus, the Pencil. It features just about everything you’d expect on a tablet of its ilk, including a Retina HD display, an 8-megapixel camera, Apple’s A10 processor, which was first seen in the iPhone 7, a TouchID fingerprint scanner (no FaceID sensors like on the new iPhone X), and a front-facing camera for selfie-taking and Skyping.Unlike the more expensive iPad Pro (which starts at $649), this iPad does not support Apple’s Smart Keyboard case. Apple also did not reduce the price of its Pencil stylus (which is still $99), but did announce that Logitech is making a stylus called the Crayon which will work with iPads, and starts at $49.The new iPads start at $329 for a 32GB model. Apple said that teachers and schools will be able to get them for a discounted rate of $299. It comes in gold, silver, and grey. Sadly, no rose gold.iWork updates. Apple announced a new suit of iWork apps with tons of updates for schools. It focused mostly on the new version of Pages, where teachers can make textbooks for their students directly on an iPad, as well as mark up documents using an Apple Pencil. Students can collaborate on editing projects together in class over wifi, much like they’ve been able to on Google Docs for years.Minor apps get minor updates. GarageBand, Apple’s music-making app, got minor refreshes, including a royalty-free sound library for class presentations. Clips, Apple’s Snapchat-like video app, got new Apple-designed posters and animations that make it easier for students to make mini-presentations on the fly.Schoolwork. Apple released a new app for teachers to keep track of their students, and basically make digital handouts for homework as easily as they can write an email. The app also lets teachers assign specific tasks to students within educational apps and see how well they’re progressing. Obliquely referencing issues in the news right now, Apple harped on the fact that the data in this app is private, seen only by the student and teachers involved. The app will launch in June.More storage. Apple announced that all iCloud accounts associated with a school will now get 200GB free cloud storage, a massive boost over the 5GB it previously offered. It didn’t extend this offer to those who have graduated, and it’s worth noting that Microsoft Office 365 subscribers get 1TB of free data.Everyone Can Create. Apple said that it will soon launch a new curriculum, focused on how the iPad is a powerful creative tool for the classroom. It builds on the Everyone Can Code curriculum it previously launched to encourage students to learn to code.Apple did not announce any updates to its low-cost laptops, including the MacBook Air, which many had been hoping for. It didn’t announce availability for AirPower, the wireless-charging mat it previewed back in September. It didn’t even introduce a new version of its Pencil.There were no surprise reveals at this event, and it was true to its invitation, which said we would “hear creative new ideas for teachers and students.”The pricing structure effectively rules out the new iPad from being a true competitor to most Chromebooks. Despite what Apple would like us to believe, it is not that easy to type out a term paper on a touchscreen. The new iPad software (more on that below) will definitely make doing project work and taking notes at school far easier. But doing essays, browsing the web, and chatting with friends is a lot easier to do when you have a proper keyboard to type on, and you can easily type on the device on your lap or a table. What’s more, if you’re buying Apple’s new iPad and a Pencil, even with the school discount, the starting price is $398. Many Chromebooks are the same price or cheaper, and have touchscreens as well as full keyboards.Then there’s the issue of whether schools that have already invested in Google’s suite of offerings would be willing to switch back for the sake of Apple’s new software and stylus capabilities. Then again, at least iPads have all of Google’s apps on them.Perhaps there’s hope. While sitting in the school’s cafeteria after the event, one teacher spoke with her colleagues about the new iPad. ”It’s not like, revolutionary, but it’s way more helpful,” she said. “The stuff we’re asking for, they’re listening.”

This story was originally published on Undark magazine and has been republished here with permission.You could be forgiven for thinking that AI will soon replace human physicians based on headlines such as “The AI Doctor Will See You Now,” “Your Future Doctor May Not Be Human,” and “This AI Just Beat Human Doctors on a Clinical Exam.” But experts say the reality is more of a collaboration than an ousting: Patients could soon find their lives partly in the hands of AI services working alongside human clinicians.There is no shortage of optimism about AI in the medical community. But many also caution the hype surrounding AI has yet to be realized in real clinical settings. There are also different visions for how AI services could make the biggest impact. And it’s still unclear whether AI will improve the lives of patients or just the bottom line for Silicon Valley companies, healthcare organizations, and insurers.“I think that all our patients should actually want AI technologies to be brought to bear on weaknesses in the healthcare system, but we need to do it in a non-Silicon Valley hype way,” says Isaac Kohane, a biomedical informatics researcher at Harvard Medical School.If AI works as promised, it could democratize healthcare by boosting access for underserved communities and lowering costs—a boon in the United States, which ranks poorly on many health measures despite an average annual healthcare cost of $10,739 per person. AI systems could free overworked doctors and reduce the risk of medical errors that may kill tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of U.S. patients each year. And in many countries with national physician shortages, such as China where overcrowded urban hospitals’ outpatient departments may see up to 10,000 people per day, such technologies don’t need perfect accuracy to prove helpful.But critics point out that all that promise could vanish if the rush to implement AI tramples patient privacy rights, overlooks biases and limitations, or fails to deploy services in a way that improves health outcomes for most people.“In the same way that technologies can close disparities, they can exacerbate disparities,” says Jayanth Komarneni, founder and chair of the Human Diagnosis Project (Human Dx), a public benefit corporation focused on crowdsourcing medical expertise. “And nothing has that ability to exacerbate disparities like AI.”Today, the most popular AI techniques are machine learning and its younger cousin, deep learning. Unlike computer programs that rigidly follow rules written by humans, both machine learning and deep learning algorithms can look at a data set, learn from it, and make new predictions. Deep learning in particular can make impressive predictions by discovering data patterns that people might miss.But to make the most of these predictions in healthcare, AI can’t go at it alone. Rather, humans still must help make decisions that can have major health and financial consequences. Because AI systems lack the general intelligence of humans, they can make baffling predictions that could prove harmful if physicians and hospitals unquestioningly follow them.The classic example comes from Rich Caruana, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, as he explained in Engineering and Technology magazine last year. In the 1990s, Caruana worked on a project that tried using an earlier form of machine learning to predict whether a patient with pneumonia was a low-risk or a high-risk case. But trouble arose when the machine learning model tried to predict the case for asthma sufferers, who are high-risk because their preexisting breathing difficulties make them vulnerable to pneumonia. The model pegged these patients as low-risk, requiring minor intervention rather than hospitalization—something a human expert never would have done.If you follow the model blindly, says Kenneth Jung, a research scientist at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, “then you’re hosed. Because the model is saying: ‘Oh, this kid with asthma came in and they got pneumonia, but we don’t need to worry about them, and we’re sending them home with some antibiotics.'”Deep-learning predictions can also fail if they encounter unusual data points, such as unique medical cases, for the first time, or when they learn peculiar patterns in specific data sets that do not generalize well to new medical cases.The AI predictions do best when applied to massive data sets, such as in China, which has an advantage in training AI systems thanks to access to large populations and patient data. In February, the journal Nature Medicine published a study from researchers based in San Diego and Guangzhou, China, that showed promise in diagnosing many common childhood diseases based on the electronic health records of more than 567,000 children.But even large data sets can pose problems, particularly when researchers try to apply their algorithm to a new population. In the Nature Medicine study, all of the half million patients came from one medical center in Guangzhou, which means there is no guarantee the diagnostic lessons learned from training on that data set would apply to pediatric cases elsewhere. Each medical center may attract its own unique set of patients—a hospital known for its cardiovascular center, for instance, may attract more critical heart conditions. And findings from a Guangzhou hospital that mostly attracts ethnic Chinese patients may not translate to one in Shanghai with a higher number of foreign-born, non-Chinese patients.(CAPTION: In this 2017 TEDx Talk, Shinjini Kundu of Johns Hopkins Hospital explains how AI tools have the potential to glean more from medical images than doctors alone can—including predicting diseases before patients show symptoms.)This extrapolation will prove difficult in other situations as well. For example, says Marzyeh Ghassemi, a computer scientist and biomedical engineer at the University of Toronto, say you have 40,000 ICU patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center—that’s just one hospital in one city. “And so I have all these papers that have done predictions with this data. Does that work with another hospital in Boston? Maybe. Does it work for a hospital in another state? Would it work in another country? We don’t know.”While AI models may not work in every case, Ghassemi thinks the technology is still worth exploring. “I am very much in favor of taking these models from the bench to the bedside,” she says, “but with really aggressive precautionary steps.”Those steps need to exist throughout AI development and deployment, says I. Glenn Cohen, a law professor at Harvard University and a leader for the Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law. This may involve verifying the accuracy and transparency of AI predictions. And during data collection, researchers will also need to protect patient privacy and ask for consent to use patient data for training AI.The consent issue comes up again when the AI model is ready for experimental clinical testing with real patients. “Do patients need to be told you’re using the algorithm on them, and does it matter whether the AI is completely guiding care or partly guiding care?” Cohen asks. “There is really very little thinking on these questions.”Ghassemi also advocates for frequently auditing AI algorithms to ensure fairness and accuracy across different groups of people based on ethnicity, gender, age, and health insurance. That’s important given how AI applications in other fields have already shown that they can easily pick up biases.After all those steps, the people and companies providing AI services will need to sort out legal liability in the case of inevitable mistakes. And unlike most medical devices, which usually need just one regulatory approval, AI services may require additional review whenever they learn from new data.Some regulatory agencies are rethinking how to assess healthcare AI. In April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a discussion paper to get public feedback about how to update the relevant regulatory review. “What we are continuously trying to do here is get back to our goal of giving people access to technologies, but we’re also realizing that our current methods don’t quite work well,” says Bakul Patel, director for digital health at the FDA. “That’s why we need to look at a holistic approach of the whole product life cycle.”In addition to issues surrounding access, privacy, and regulations, it also isn’t clear just who stands to benefit the most from AI healthcare services. There are already healthcare disparities: According to the World Bank and the World Health Organization, half of the globe’s population lacks access to essential healthcare services, and nearly 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty by healthcare expenses. Depending on how it is deployed, AI could either improve these inequalities, or make them worse.“A lot of the AI discussion has been about how to democratize healthcare, and I want to see that happening,” says Effy Vayena, a bioethicist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland.“If you just end up with a fancier service provision to those who could afford good healthcare anyway,” she adds, “I’m not sure if that’s the transformation we’re looking for.”How this all plays out depends on the different visions for implementing AI. Early development has focused on very narrow diagnostic applications, such as scrutinizing images for hints of skin cancer or nail fungus, or reading chest X-rays. But more recent efforts have tried to diagnose multiple health conditions at once.In August 2018, Moorfields Eye Hospital in the United Kingdom and DeepMind, the London-based AI lab owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, showed that they had successfully trained an AI system to identify more than 50 eye diseases in scans, which matched the performance of leading experts. Similarly broad ambitions drove the San Diego and Guangzhou study that trained AI to diagnose common ailments among children. The latter wasn’t as good at diagnosing pediatric diseases compared to senior physicians, but it did perform better than some junior physicians.Such AI systems may not need to outperform the best human experts to help democratize healthcare but simply expand access to current medical standards. Still, so far, many proposed AI applications are focused on improving the current standard of care rather than spreading affordable healthcare around, Cohen says: “Democratizing what we already have would be a much bigger bang for your buck than improving what we have in many areas.”Accenture, a consulting firm, predicts that top AI applications could save the U.S. economy $150 billion per year by 2026. But it’s unclear if patients and healthcare systems supplemented by taxpayer dollars would benefit, or if more money would simply flow to the tech companies, healthcare providers, and insurers.“The question of who is going to drive this and who is going to pay for this is an important question,” says Kohane. “Something a bit hallucinatory about all those business plans is that they think they know how it will work out.”Even if AI services make cost-saving recommendations, human physicians and healthcare organizations may hesitate to take AI advice if they make less money as a result, Kohane cautions. That speaks to the bigger systemic issue of the U.S. health insurers using a fee-for-service model that often rewards physicians and hospitals for adding tests and medical procedures, even when they aren’t needed.There is another AI opportunity that could improve the quality of care while still leaving most medical diagnoses in the hands of doctors. In his 2019 book “Deep Medicine,” Eric Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, talks about creating essentially a supercharged medical Siri—an AI assistant to take notes about the interactions between doctors and their patients, enter those notes in electronic health records, and remind physicians to ask about relevant parts of the patient’s history.“My aspiration is that we decompress the work of doctors and get rid of their data clerk role, help patients take on more responsibility, and key up the data so it doesn’t take so long to review things,” Topol says.That “never-forgetful medical assistant or scribe,” says Kohane, would require AI that can automatically track and transcribe multiple voices between physicians and patients. He supports Topol’s idea but adds that most AI applications in development don’t seem to be focused on such assistants. Still, some companies such as Saykara and DeepScribe have developed services along these lines, and even Google teamed up with Stanford University to test a similar “digital scribe” technology.An AI assistant may sound less exciting than an AI doctor, but it could free up physicians to spend more time with their patients and improve overall quality of care. Family physicians in particular often spend more than half of their working days entering data into electronic health records—a main factor behind physical and emotional burnout, which has dire consequences, including patient deaths.Ironically, electronic health records were supposed to improve medical care and cut costs by making patient information more accessible. Now Topol and many other experts point to electronic health records as a cautionary tale for the current hype surrounding AI in medicine and healthcare.The implementation of electronic health records has already created a patchwork system spread among hundreds of private vendors that mainly succeeds in isolating patient data and makes it inaccessible to both physicians and patients. If history is any guide, many tech companies and healthcare organizations will feel the pull to follow similar paths by hoarding medical data for their own AI systems.One way around this may be to use a collective intelligence system that aggregates and ranks medical expertise from different sources, says Komarneni, who is trying this approach with Human Dx. Backed by major medical organizations such as the American Medical Association, Human Dx has built an online platform for crowdsourcing advice from thousands of physicians on specific medical cases. Komarneni hopes that such a platform could, in theory, also someday include diagnostic advice from many different AI services.“In the same way that multiple human professionals might look at your case in the future, there is no reason why multiple AI couldn’t do it,” Komarneni says.As doctors wait for their AI helpers, crowdsourcing projects like Human Dx “could definitely lead to improved diagnostics or even improved recommendations for therapy,” says Topol, who coauthored a 2018 study on a similar platform called Medscape Consult. The paper concluded collective human intelligence could be a “competitive or complementary strategy” to AI in medicine.But if AI services pass all the tests and real-world checks, they could become significant partners for humans in reshaping modern healthcare.“There are things that machines will never do well and then others where they’ll be exceeding what any human can do,” Topol says. “So when you put the two together, it’s a very powerful package.”Jeremy Hsu is a freelance journalist based in New York City. He frequently writes about science and technology for Backchannel, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Science, and Scientific American, among other publications.

Bengaluru and New Delhi may be the big boys of India’s startup club, but a bunch of smaller cities are increasingly making their presence felt.Driven largely by incubators and tech parks, startup ecosystems are mushrooming in tier 2 and tier 3 towns, and the likes of Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Indore, and Kochi are emerging as new hubs. A fifth of India’s startups are now to be found in such cities, a Nov. 02 report by IT industry lobby Nasscom and consulting firm Zinnov shows. In 2016, these cities accounted for around 16% of Indian startups.And despite operating in places away from the traditional hubs, startups working across healthcare, education, agriculture, energy, and others have received enough attention from investors. Around 20% of all venture capital (VC) investments made between July and September this year went to firms in tier 2 and tier 3 towns, shows data from LetsVenture, a platform that connects startups with investors.The big lure of these smaller cities includes low manpower cost, cheaper real estate, and more affordable amenities. This allows young companies to do more with their limited budgets and stay bootstrapped longer.“If you don’t have significant tech talent requirement, and if you’re a B2C (business to consumer) company, basing your company out of a smaller town might be better…expenses are low,” Harshil Mathur, co-founder of payments solution startup Razorpay, told Quartz. Razorpay was incorporated in Jaipur in 2013, but shifted to Bengaluru two years later since most of its customers and prospective clients were there.For other businesses, client access is not much of a constraint, thanks to the internet. “It’s not the right decision for a startup to do things in a metro unless you have to travel to meet people (in that city) daily,” said Rajeev Tamhankar, founder of comics publishing startup TBS Planet Comics, which recently moved its headquarters from Bengaluru to Jabalpur.Smaller cities also have close-knit startup communities which help entrepreneurs find their first set of customers more easily, added Mathur. But the one struggle a startup operating from a small town could face is attracting niche talent, several entrepreneurs told Quartz. “Role models have already been established, which shows that scalability is possible from a tier 2 city,” Anurag Jain, co-founder and COO of Jaipur-based Girnarsoft, the parent company of CarDekho, told The Economic Times last year. “Talent acquisition still remains a major challenge in these markets,” he said.Nonetheless, small-town India’s startup culture is only getting stronger.

After all was said and done in the Senate hearings for US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, before the vote decided the fate of Roe v Wade and many other progressive agendas, my friends kept putting their faith in female senators. Yes, the Republicans control the Senate and this is Trump’s nominee, but they have six women serving as senators, and how could any woman not be moved by the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford? How could the senators not feel a stronger solidarity with their gender than their party? Surely they will keep his appointment from happening.My friends were not alone. In the lead-up to the vote, Vox.com was one of many outlets to breathlessly report on swing vote Maine Republican senator Susan Collins’s history of maverick behavior, calling her a “progressive icon”. “Collins cares deeply about women,” they reported a colleague saying. And when she inevitably chose to confirm Kavanaugh and vote in line with her Republican brethren, women expressed shock and disappointment. A New York Times op-ed called her a “gender traitor.” New York Magazine accused her of “betraying women”.This vocal disappointment is a little surprising, as polls were saying all along that support for Kavanaugh was split among party – and not gender – lines. Even before the accusations surfaced, Democrats were positioning Kavanaugh as the “anti-woman” nominee because of his anti-choice record and association with Trump, despite him having the support of the majority of Republican women. The hearings about the sexual assault allegations did not cause a mass gender-based defection as most of the Republican women polled stayed steadfast in their support. Collins, and the other four Republican women senators who voted to confirm him, were probably doing what they thought the majority of their supporters – including their supporters – wanted them to do. And there’s no reason to think that might not be true.In fact, the idea that women will somehow ultimately vote for what is best for women (as if there is a set of positions on specific issues that will improve the lives of all women) has proven false repeatedly, and yet the idea refuses to die. The rhetoric around Collins echoed the rhetoric around women voters after the revelation of Trump’s Access Hollywood video. Surely women could not vote for such a man. And yet he won 41% of women’s votes. Allegations of pederasty and predatory behavior with teenage girls did not prevent Roy Moore from receiving the majority of white women’s votes in the Alabama Senate election. And now #MeToo is actively being used in women’s campaign ads, with some candidates spending more time relaying their personal stories than their political positions, hoping that will capture votes.Many women voters seem turned off by the idea of claiming victimhood through gender. One woman, explaining to New York Magazine why she voted for Trump even after the “grab them by the pussy” audio was released, said: “I like getting groped! ... When a guy gropes me, I get groping on them! I grope them back.” After Senator Al Franken was accused of harassment and was seemingly forced out of Congress by some of his women colleagues, female constituents were polled as supporting Franken in higher numbers than their male counterparts. The senator who led the charge against Franken, Democrat Kristen Gillibrand, has seen her approval ratings drop ever since.Believing, then, that women are a singular demographic, with shared experiences and shared interpretations of those experiences, shared values and priorities, and a shared vision for the world is becoming increasingly dangerous. Not all women were against Kavanaugh. That’s because not all women line up with the vision of how a certain segment of centrist-to-liberal women commentators want other women to be: progressive, idealistic, fair-minded. Not all women support abortion rights, or gay and trans rights, or believe that Black Lives Matter. A large number of Republican women want a pro-life, pro-Wall Street, pro-Christian white man on the supreme court. (Nor is this a problem merely with white women; women, like men, tend to vote in their personal interest, and what that is will vary due to a more complex array of factors than just gender or race. Class and marital status appear to matter just as much.)We need to stop classifying political activity as “bad for women” or “good for women” and instead allow for the complexity of thought and belief in the conversation about policy and legislation. And we should stop trying to lump all women together when we mean a specific section of women, and stop speaking on behalf of women who clearly want nothing to do with us.Gender is not an ideology, and it is arrogance to believe Republican women are simply deluded or brainwashed by men and incapable of thinking for themselves. And if we do want to persuade them to a less conservative position, calling them traitors or assuming we know what they are thinking, when we so clearly do not, will not help our cause. We live in increasingly partisan times, but that is not going to be overcome by blindly insisting all women belong on the same side. Jessa Crispin is the author of Why I Am Not A Feminist Topics Brett Kavanaugh Opinion US supreme court comment

UPS invests in self-driving cars The company announced an investment in TuSimple, an autonomous truck startup, on Thursday in an effort to cut costs and time in ground deliveries. 0:44

Democrats from Virginia's Black Legislative Caucus have protested against a visit by President Donald Trump because of what they termed his "racist and xenophobic" rhetoric.They and other Democrats boycotted the visit.Mr Trump travelled to historic Jamestown to commemorate the 400th anniversary of representative democracy in the Western Hemisphere.He is accused of stoking racial tension by attacking minority Congress members."I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world," Mr Trump said on Tuesday as he departed the White House for Jamestown.The visit marks the day in 1619 when Virginia's first House of Burgesses met in Jamestown - the first English permanent colony in North America.The group of white, male property owners became the inspiration for American democracy, and state legislatures and congresses across the continent."Self-government in Virginia did not just give us a state we love - in a very true sense, it gave us the country we love, the United States of America," Mr Trump said in his address to Virginia lawmakers and state officials in Jamestown.He noted that 2019 marks 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. Next month, the city plans to commemorate this anniversary."In the face of grave oppression and grave injustice, African Americans have built, strengthened, inspired, uplifted, protected, defended and sustained our nation from its very earliest days," Mr Trump said.The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Washington, is leading a delegation of lawmakers to the West African nation of Ghana where they will visit castles where enslaved people were kept before being shipped in bondage to the New World.On Wednesday she is due to address Ghanaian lawmakers.The last-minute announcement by the White House that Mr Trump would visit the city led to boycotts by the state's Democratic lawmakers and Black Legislative Caucus."We will not be attending any part of the commemorative session where Donald Trump is in attendance," the Virginia House Democrats said on Twitter. "The current president does not represent the values that we would celebrate at the 400th anniversary of the oldest democratic body in the Western world."The state's black caucus said Mr Trump's participation was "antithetical to the principles" that the group stood for.Members intend to hold a rival event in Richmond on Tuesday.Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney resigned from the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation's steering committee for the commemoration - which issued the invitation to Mr Trump - saying that the Republican president "denigrates our democracy" and should not be welcomed.Mr Trump has long been accused of stoking racial tensions, going back decades before he became a political figure.In the past month, Mr Trump has accused four Democratic congresswoman of colour - all US citizens - of hating America. He said they should "go back" to "the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".In the past week he has attacked Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings - who is black - saying that the Baltimore district that he represents is a "rodent-infested mess". US House condemns Trump 'racist' attacks What Americans make of Trump tweets Pelosi decries Trump ‘racist attacks’ on lawmaker On Tuesday, Mr Trump called his accusers "racist" and said his strategy of "pointing out the tremendous corruption that's taken place... in Democrat run cities" was helping him politically"I think I'm helping myself," Mr Trump said. "These people are living in hell in Baltimore."By the BBC's Chris Buckler in JamestownIt says much about modern America that at a celebration of this country's democratic roots, there was a protest against its democratically elected president. However, the summer of 1619 is remembered not only for that important first meeting of an assembly, it also marked the beginning of brutal years when Africans were brought to this land.Donald Trump's recent criticisms of the city of Baltimore have angered, but the comments that some congresswomen of colour should go back to where they came from were beyond what many black Democrats were prepared to accept. They felt they had to boycott the event. In his speech, Mr Trump was more careful with his words than in his tweets. And he made specific reference to the past wrongs committed against African Americans. That won't stop the many accusations against the president who has repeatedly tried to defend himself against suggestions he is racist. People who were at Jamestown to learn about their country's history were critical of both Mr Trump and the Democrats. Many felt it was wrong to try to exclude the head of state from such a symbolic ceremony, even as they questioned his recent online attacks.What's clear is that by design or angry accident, Mr Trump's tweets have helped ensure that race will be a key and extremely sensitive issue throughout the campaign for next year's presidential election. Two women, one big conversation Her ancestors enslaved mine. Now we're friends 'There's going to be racism until the day we die' How America moves beyond its racist past Why racism in US is worse than in Europe

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Now to Venezuela, which holds municipal elections tomorrow. As we've discussed on the program before, food shortages, hyper-inflation and a violent crackdown on protesters have made the administration of President Nicolas Maduro deeply unpopular. But Maduro's problems have not translated into success at the ballot box for Venezuela's political opposition. Reporter John Otis is in Caracas and he explains why.JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Yon Goicoechea would seem like an ideal candidate for the opposition in municipal elections that will be held on Sunday.YON GOICOECHEA: (Foreign language spoken).OTIS: Goicoechea, who is running for mayor of El Hatillo, a middle-class suburb of Caracas, oozes charisma. At this town hall meeting, he quickly wins over the crowd.GOICOECHEA: (Foreign language spoken).(APPLAUSE)OTIS: Goicoechea has earned his stripes in the opposition. As a university student, he led protests against the late Hugo Chavez, who ushered in Venezuela's socialist revolution. After receiving threats, he fled the country. He returned to Venezuela last year but was jailed for 14 months on charges of possessing explosives.GOICOECHEA: I first had a cell in which - if I extend my arms, I could touch both sides of the cell. It was really hard, really claustrophobic.OTIS: He was released last month after the charges were dropped, but instead of a warm welcome back to freedom, his decision to run for mayor has angered his political allies. That's because Venezuela's main opposition parties are calling for a boycott of Sunday's vote, claiming it will not be free and fair. They point out that electoral officials are Maduro loyalists and that the government has refused to allow independent observers to monitor the vote. Dirty tricks also marred October's gubernatorial elections that were dominated by candidates of the ruling Socialist Party.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)FREDDY GUEVARA: (Foreign language spoken).OTIS: At a recent news conference, opposition leader Freddy Guevara said, "under these conditions, we can't keep playing the regime's game." As a result, Goicoechea's defiance of the opposition boycott has sparked ugly rumors. Some say that while in prison, he cut a deal with the government - his freedom in exchange for taking part in sham elections.GOICOECHEA: (Foreign language spoken).UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Foreign language spoken).OTIS: At the town hall meeting, this woman asked Goicoechea point blank whether he's gone over to the government's side, which he strongly denies. The dispute is another sign of chaos within the opposition. Analysts say that instead of keeping their eyes on the prize of winning elections, rival factions often spend more time taking aim at one another. What's more, sitting out the election will allow the ruling party to maintain control of hundreds of town and city governments. That's according to Javier Corrales, a Venezuela expert at Amherst College.JAVIER CORRALES: There's nothing that the government wants more than abstention.OTIS: Meanwhile, opposition leaders are holding talks with the Maduro government in the Dominican Republic. One of their goals is to ensure equal conditions for next year's presidential election. But Goicoechea doubts Maduro will make any concessions. He argues that the opposition must contest every election and points out that its candidates sometimes pull off upset victories.GOICOECHEA: I know that the electoral conditions are not fair. I know that these are not democratic elections, but this is what we can do. And we need to get stronger if we want to change the situation in the country.OTIS: Newly freed from prison, Goicoechea will resume his fight for change on Sunday. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Caracas.(SOUNDBITE OF RAPPAHANNOCK'S "EMANCIPATOR")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.

It must go down as one of the most embarrassing months ever for Russia’s military intelligence.In the 30 days since Theresa May revealed the cover identities of the Salisbury poison suspects, the secretive GRU (now GU) has been publicly exposed by rival intelligence agencies and online sleuths, with an assist from Russia’s own president.Despite attempts to stonewall public inquiry, the GRU’s dissection has been clinical. The agency has always had a reputation for daring, bolstered by its affiliation with special forces commando units and agents who have seen live combat.But in dispatching agents to the Netherlands who could, just using Google, be easily exposed as graduates of an elite GRU academy, the agency appears reckless and absurdly sloppy.One of the suspected agents, tipped as a “human intelligence source” by Dutch investigators, had registered five vehicles at a north-western Moscow address better known as the Aquarium, the GRU finishing school for military attaches and elite spies. According to online listings, which are not official but are publicly available to anyone on Google, he drove a Honda Civic, then moved on to an Alfa Romeo. In case the address did not tip investigators off, he also listed the base number of the Military-Diplomatic Academy.That was the same school where Anatoliy Chepiga, the alleged true identity of the Russian suspect in the Salisbury poisoning, finished his education. Viktor Suvorov, a GRU agent who later defected to the west, described the academy as so secret that Soviet citizens could be jailed just for revealing its existence.The internet has now made it far harder to hide that evidence. But the GRU apparently thought that would not matter.Meanwhile, most of the alleged agents could be found online.One of the men, Aleksei Morenets, an alleged hacker, appeared to have set up a dating profile.Another played for an amateur Moscow football team “known as the security services team” a current player told the Moscow Times. “Almost everyone works for an intelligence agency.” The team rosters are publicly available.Russia has claimed that the investigations are fake and that researchers are in league with western intelligence. But most of the evidence to uncover the spies was already out there, and conveniently timestamped on social media.The saga began after May’s announcement last month, when Vladimir Putin ordered the two Salisbury suspects to appear on television. There, the two men fumbled through an awkward story about visiting Salisbury twice to see the cathedral, while an editor for state television suggested that they were gay. Homosexuality is largely treated as taboo in Russia and the government passed a law banning “gay propaganda” in 2013.It didn’t help. One of the two men was outed as a likely GRU colonel anyway, after online investigators dug up photographs from his military service and leaked passport records.Along the way, the researchers from Bellingcat and the Insider also recognised that the men were issued sequentially numbered passports by a special division, making it easier for anyone with access to a leaked database to identify them.And then came Thursday’s bombshell: four men outed by Dutch investigators for attempting to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (as well as Malaysia’s investigation into a downed jetliner).The alleged spies were caught carrying enough telephones to fill an electronics store. Moreover, like all meticulous Russians on a business trip, they held on to their taxi receipts from GRU headquarters.Russia will publicly deny the latest reports and revelations about the alleged GRU agents. It has no other alternative. But the exposure of several consecutive European operations should raise questions about whether Russian military intelligence is being intentionally provocative or has simply gone off the rails. Topics Espionage Russia Europe Vladimir Putin Sergei Skripal Novichok poisonings Netherlands news

The detained Chinese head of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, is being investigated for alleged bribe-taking, Chinese authorities have announced.Mr Meng was first reported missing in late September after travelling from Interpol HQ in France to China.His wife has revealed that he sent her a text message with a knife emoji on the day he went missing.Mr Meng is the latest high-profile target to be ensnared in China's sweeping anti-corruption campaign.He is also a vice-minister for public security in the country.In its announcement of the investigation, China's Public Security Ministry said the probe was "correct, wise and shows the determination of [President Xi]'s administration to continue its anti-corruption drive".Interpol is the global policing agency that co-ordinates between police forces around the world, including searches for missing and wanted persons.Interpol's general secretariat oversees the day-to-day work of the 192-member organisation, with the role of the president largely ceremonial. Charting China's 'great purge' under Xi China punished 'million' for corruption China's new anti-corruption super agency After Mr Meng's disappearance was made public on Friday, speculation had mounted that he had been taken into custody. A number of top Chinese government officials, billionaires and even an A-list celebrity have vanished in recent months.Last week, actress Fan Bingbing, who disappeared in July, emerged with a public apology and a fine of 883 million yuan ($129m; £98.9m) for tax evasion and other offences.But correspondents say that Mr Meng's high-profile position at Interpol was once seen as a prize for Beijing, raising questions about whom he might have angered or what he might have done to be targeted as part of President Xi's anti-corruption blitz.In a statement on Twitter on Sunday, it said it had received Mr Meng's resignation with immediate effect. Under its terms it has appointed senior vice-president Kim Jong-yang of South Korea as acting president.A new president will be elected for the remaining two years of Mr Meng's mandate at the general assembly in Dubai next month.On Saturday, the international police agency urged China to clarify Mr Meng's status, saying it was concerned about the well-being of its president. There has been no word from him on the charges he faces.French authorities have opened an investigation and have placed Mr Meng's wife under police protection after she received threats.Grace Meng, speaking shortly before China's confirmation of the detention, had told journalists she thought he was in danger.She issued an emotional plea for international help to find her husband.On the day he went missing, she said he had sent her a social media message telling her to "wait for my call", before sending a knife emoji, signifying danger.With her back to the cameras to avoid being identified out of fear for her safety, she held back sobs to read out a statement in Chinese and English."We are always connected by [our] hearts. He would support me in doing this. The matter belongs to fairness and justice. The matter belongs to the international community. The matter belongs to the people of my motherland."Analysis by Robin Brant, in BeijingWhen Meng Hongwei was appointed two years ago, one newspaper here wrote that it would "promote understanding abroad of China's justice system". This is probably not what was envisaged back then. His "resignation" and apparent detention makes it clear that it's the laws of China - and the rules of its governing Communist Party - that trump all else for any government official. Even if they're appointed to a job in France. China's new National Supervision Commission - an anti-corruption agency - said Mr Meng was being investigated for "violation of laws".Importantly it didn't mention - as is often the case with high-profile detentions like this - the charge of "violating party rules". The anti-corruption body has targeted thousands of people in a relentless drive led by President Xi Jinping. There are also rumours that Mr Meng may have been purged because of his links to another senior party figure out of favour with the leadership.The investigation into Mr Meng has raised some concern that international institutions will be reluctant to appoint Chinese officials to high positions - something Beijing has pushed for in recent years.Chinese nationals hold top positions at several global institutions including the UN, IMF, World Bank and Unesco.But Tom Rafferty of the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing said while he believes the current case is not likely to affect future appointments, it does have an impact on China's image on the international stage."There's obviously going to be some bad publicity around this and it's not like China doesn't care about this," he said."But whatever they want Mr Meng for has in this case trumped their concern for international public opinion."Long read: The thoughts of Chairman XiHe was elected Interpol president in November 2016, the first Chinese person to take up the post, and was scheduled to serve until 2020.He headed the organisation's Executive Committee, which provides overall guidance and direction.Mr Meng has 40 years of experience in criminal justice and policing in China, notably in the fields of drugs, counter-terrorism and border control.After his election, human rights groups expressed concern that the move could help China pursue political dissidents who have fled the country.

The latest updates on those devastating computer chip flaws just get worse and worse: A group of security researchers, including one from Google’s elite Project Zero security team, warns that the two critical vulnerabilities collectively could give hackers access to passwords and other data on most PCs, cloud servers, and smartphones around the world.The researchers claim one weakness, called Meltdown, is present on most Intel processors released since 1995. A second exploit, dubbed Spectre, could expose data on even more systems, they write.“Almost every system is affected by Spectre: desktops, laptops, cloud servers, as well as smartphones,” they write. “More specifically, all modern processors capable of keeping many instructions in flight are potentially vulnerable. In particular, we have verified Spectre on Intel, AMD, and ARM processors.”Both potentially allow hackers to exploit optimizations in modern processing chips in order to indirectly access data from other software running on the machine. That could mean stealing passwords or data from a password manager or web browser, or, in some cases, even peering into information belonging to other users of a shared cloud server.Affected devices don’t let hackers access secured information directly, but certain carefully designed operations run at different speeds depending on the data stored at different points in memory. That lets nefarious users effectively determine the values of system data or other people’s information byte by byte by process of elimination, almost the digital equivalent of holding a stethoscope to a bank safe. The researchers wrote that they don’t know if either vulnerability has actually been exploited by hackers.And while attackers harnessing Meltdown can be blocked by updates being rolled out for popular operating systems, the researchers say Spectre might be a more stubborn target. In some cases, it might be possible to upgrade microcode–extremely low-level instructions that help implement more complex functionality on modern processors–to prevent Spectre attacks, and it may be possible to patch some software to reduce vulnerabilities. But that may not stop all possible attacks, warns Paul Kocher, one of the researchers who discovered Spectre.“Still, the hardware nature of the issue means it’s going to be a slow and messy mitigation process,” he writes in an email to Fast Company.Software fixes to Meltdown could also slow down various processes running on affected computers, though Kocher says different computer workloads will be affected in different ways. Some experts cautioned certain use cases could see a slowdown of as much as 30%, The New York Times reported, but Intel said in an early statement that for average users, the effects “should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.”Intel and Microsoft officials each emphasized they had no evidence the issues had been exploited, and Google’s Android unit said it was unaware of “any successful reproduction of these vulnerabilities that would allow unauthorized information disclosure on any ARM-based Android device.”News of the vulnerabilities leaked earlier than many in the industry expected, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC. The Register, a tech news site based in the United Kingdom, reported Tuesday that a vulnerability existed.In its statement, Intel refuted earlier rumors implying that it alone is vulnerable to the newly discovered attacks and urged users to install patches released by operating system makers.“Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices–with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems–are susceptible to these exploits,” according to Intel. The company provided a bug bounty to the researchers, they said in announcing the vulnerability.Similarly, chipmaker Arm said only a subset of its processors are affected and that the relevant flaw could only be exploited if malware was able to run on a machine.“Arm takes all security threats seriously and we encourage individual users to ensure their software is up-to-date and always follow good security practices,” the company said in a statement to Fast Company. “Please note that our Cortex-M processors, which are pervasive in low-power, connected IoT devices, are not impacted.”And AMD said there “is a near zero risk” to its processors, CNBC reported. In a statement, the company said that the only attack variant that it’s spotted affecting its chips can be fixed through operating system or software fixes with “negligible performance impact.” The chipmaker didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from Fast Company.Hardware vendors, operating system makers, and cloud computing companies quickly announced early steps to address the issues Wednesday. Leading cloud provider Amazon announced Wednesday afternoon that the vast majority of its Elastic Compute Cloud instances were “already protected” and that others would be updated within a few hours. The company also urged customers to update the operating systems running on their cloud servers.A patch for the Linux operating system kernel is available, and a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email Wednesday that the company was rolling out fixes for its cloud servers and operating systems.“We are in the process of deploying mitigations to cloud services and are releasing security updates today to protect Windows customers against vulnerabilities affecting supported hardware chips from AMD, ARM, and Intel,” the spokesperson wrote.Google also released an update for Android that should help limit such attacks. Apple didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from Fast Company, though the researchers said a patch is available for Mac OS X.Still, entirely preventing leaks from Spectre, in particular, may take some time.“As it is not easy to fix, it will haunt us for quite some time,” the researchers wrote.

“We didn’t even have money for toilet paper,” said Mr. de Souza, the anthropologist, who has worked at the museum for 38 years.There were a handful of missed opportunities that could have enabled museum personnel to take better care of the building and its contents.University officials and the World Bank discussed the possibility of securing a loan in the 1990s, but the talks fizzled. In 2014, the federal government approved an $8.6 million package to modernize the museum. But the money ultimately was not disbursed.In recent years, the museum turned to Brazil’s National Development Bank for help. After a protracted negotiation, the bank this year committed to funding a series of improvements worth $5 million, which would have included a fire suppression system.The overhauls were due to start late this year.After the fire, Daniela Alarcon, an anthropologist at the National Museum who studies the Tupinambá people from the northeastern state of Bahia, collected statements about its loss from leaders from the tribe.“That place was like a memory, a computer hard drive, that at any moment, any ethnic group, from any people, could access to get information, to know where they were, to not feel lost,” one of those leaders, Glicéria Jesus Silva, told Ms. Alarcon.To her, the building felt like a homecoming.“You came from here, this is your origin,” she said, describing what the museum meant to her. “What was there won’t ever come back, no one can replace it.”

FILE PHOTO: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies during the third day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Alex Wroblewski/File PhotoWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Judiciary Committee will reopen its hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court following allegations of sexual misconduct that he has denied, Republican Senator John Thune said on Monday. “The Judiciary Committee is going to move forward with a process and that process will include an open, public hearing, an opportunity for people to ask questions. Hopefully we’ll have a full understanding of what happened,” said Thune, a member of Senate Republican leadership. Thune, who did not give a date for the hearing, said he assumed Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford would testify. Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Tom BrownOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.