Month: June 2017

Cosby’s Chief Accuser Denies Romance Before Alleged Assault

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Bill Cosby’s chief accuser on Wednesday denied they had a romantic relationship before he allegedly drugged and assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home.

The defense resumed its cross-examination of Andrea Constand one day after she broke her long public silence about Cosby by testifying that the comedian gave her three blue pills and then violated her with his fingers in 2004 as she lay paralyzed, unable to tell him to stop.

Cosby lawyer Angela Agrusa suggested that Constand, a 44-year-old former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, once enjoyed a romantic dinner at Cosby’s home before the alleged assault.

“You were sitting by the fire. The room was dark. There was a nice mood …,”  Agrusa began, paraphrasing Constand’s 2005 statement to police.

“I don’t know what that means,” Constand said.

“The lights were dim and the fire was going,” the lawyer continued.

“I don’t really remember how dim the lights were, but I did have to eat my dinner,” Constand said.

Agrusa also spent a painstaking hour going over Constand’s phone records, hoping to show she changed her mind about the date she says Cosby assaulted her.

High-profile trustee

Cosby arrived at the courthouse Wednesday accompanied by actress Sheila Frazier, who starred with him in the 1978 comedy “California Suite.” Frazier was accompanied by her husband, John Atchison, a celebrity hairstylist whose clients include Cosby and his wife, Camille.

Cosby, 79, is charged with aggravated indecent assault. The comedian once dubbed America’s Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

 

Constand managed the women’s basketball team at Temple, Cosby’s alma mater, while he was a high-profile trustee. She said on Tuesday that she felt her continued friendship with Cosby after the alleged assault was important to the school’s athletic department.

His lawyers have tried to poke holes in Constand’s story, citing differences between her courtroom testimony and the accounts she gave to police and in a lawsuit in 2005. The defense has argued the two had a romantic relationship, that Constand wasn’t incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Phone records

 

The defense has pointed out that phone records show Constand called Cosby 53 times after she says he assaulted her. Constand told the jury the calls mostly involved the women’s basketball team, especially around tournament time.

 

Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.

 

Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case. Constand’s case is the only one in which Cosby has been charged.

 

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are sexual assault victims unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.

 
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Elvis Presley’s Graceland Estate Opened to Public on This Day in ’82

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As a child growing up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley promised his parents that one day he would earn a lot of money and use it to buy the family a big house.

He made good on that promise in 1957, when he bought Graceland for $102,500 in Memphis, Tennessee. The mansion, originally built in 1939, remains the centerpiece of the 5.6-hectare estate, although it has been considerably refurbished and embellished over the decades.

Elvis, his parents, wife Priscilla Presley, daughter Lisa Marie and a collection of friends and relatives that made up his entourage all lived in Graceland most of the time until Elvis’s sudden death in August 1977 at the age of 42.

The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia — a form of heart attack —but overuse of prescription drugs for years is widely believed to have been a major cause of his final illness, when his heartbeat became so erratic that Elvis fell unconscious and died in his private quarters. His father, Vernon Presley, had the autopsy report sealed from public view.

Funeral rites for Presley at Graceland commanded worldwide attention, with 80,000 mourners in attendance. His gravesite on the mansion grounds became a magnet for visitors.

Less than five years after Elvis’s death, Graceland was opened to the public on June 7, 1982.

“600,000 people visit Graceland annually,” said Libby Perry, a Graceland spokesman.

All these years later, do visitors report feeling Elvis’s presence at Graceland?

“Of course,” Perry said. “Just ask anyone who has visited.”
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Graceland: Elvis Presley’s Lavish Mansion Opened to Public

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Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists walk through Presley’s mansion, bought for $102,500.00 in 1957
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World Economy Seen Picking Up, But Political Uncertainty a Risk

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A global watchdog says the world economy is picking up speed but faces big political uncertainties and needs to be reformed to make growth work for a broader swath of people.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says in its latest outlook report, published Wednesday, that world growth should accelerate from 3 percent in 2016 to 3.6 percent in 2018.

The OECD, whose members comprise the richest economies in the world and that serves as a policy think tank, said businesses and consumers are increasingly confident and employment and trade are recovering.

OECD Chief Economist Catherine Mann said, however, that “policymakers cannot be complacent.” There is uncertainty over government policies in major countries and wages are not yet growing as much as hoped.
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App Improves Quality of Life, Survival for Cancer Patients

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Cancer patients are being urged to speak up about their experiences with side-effects from chemotherapy. This, following a new study that shows reporting symptoms can improve their chances of survival. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Climate Change Puts Penguins at Risk

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The United Nations Ocean Conference opens next week in New York and is to call for action to help protect marine life from the threats of global warming, over-fishing and pollution. But in some cases, climate change is already affecting some of the ocean’s iconic species. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Trump Chooses Regional Banker as Key Regulator of US Banks

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President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.

 

Trump announced late Monday he is naming Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration’s efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.

 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation’s largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.

 

Otting was CEO from 2010 to 2015 of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin’s appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a “foreclosure machine” when he headed the big California-based bank. The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.

 

Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank’s chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.

 

OneWest was among a number of big banks that signed consent orders with the OCC over alleged mortgage servicing abuses. The bank didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing under the 2011 order but agreed to undertake a plan to correct problems.

 

“If Mr. Otting didn’t deal fairly with the customers at his own bank, it’s difficult to see why he’s the best choice to look out for the interests of customers at more than 1,400 banks and thrifts across the country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.

 

Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.

 

With Otting’s appointment, Trump continues to fill out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.

 

Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.

 

Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.

 

Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.
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WHO Ranks Antibiotics in Bid to Counter Drug Resistance

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The World Health Organization published a new classification of antibiotics Tuesday that aims to fight drug resistance, with penicillin-type drugs recommended as the first line of defense and others for use only when absolutely necessary.

The new “essential medicines list” includes 39 antibiotics for 21 common syndromes, categorized into three groups: “Access,” “Watch” and “Reserve.”

Drugs on the “Access” list have lower resistance potential and include the widely used amoxicillin.

The “Watch” list includes ciprofloxacin, which is commonly prescribed for cystitis and strep throat but “not that effective,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, told reporters.

Its use should be “dramatically reduced,” the WHO said.

“We think that the political will is there, but this needs to be followed by strong policies,” Kieny said.

The “Reserve” category antibiotics such as colistin should be seen as a last resort. That prompts questions about how producers of such antibiotics could make money, said Suzanne Hill, WHO’s director of essential medicines and health products.

‘Keep it in reserve’

“What we need to do is stop paying for antibiotics based on how many times they are prescribed, to discourage use. We don’t want colistin used very frequently. In fact, we don’t want it used at all,” Hill said. “What we need to do as a global community is work out how we pay the company not to market colistin and not to promote it and to keep it in reserve.”

The WHO classification takes into account the use of antibiotics for animal health use, and was developed together with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health.

Other changes to the list included the addition of two oral cancer treatments, a new pill for hepatitis C that combines two medicines, a more effective treatment for HIV, and new pediatric formulations of medicines for tuberculosis.

But the WHO also said Roche’s well-known flu drug oseltamivir, marketed as Tamiflu, may be removed from the list unless new information supports its use in seasonal and pandemic influenza outbreaks.

“There is an updated data set compared to when the committee evaluated this product last, and what that suggests is that the size of the effect of oseltamivir in the context of pandemic influenza is less than previously thought,” Hill said.

But oseltamivir was the only listed antiviral, and was still useful for pregnant women and patients with complications, so the drug should be restricted to the most critical patients, she added.
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UN Chief Warns of Serious Clean Water Shortages by 2050

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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that by 2050 global demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40 percent and at least a quarter of the world’s population will live in countries with a “chronic or recurrent” lack of clean water.

 

He told the Security Council that “strains on water access are already rising in all regions,” noting that three-quarters of the 193 U.N. member states share rivers or lake basins with their neighbors.

“Water, peace and security are inextricably linked,” Guterres said. “Without effective management of our water resources, we risk intensified disputes between communities and sectors and increased tensions among nations.”

 

The secretary-general said the United Nations is ready to engage in preventive diplomacy to keep the competition for water from sparking conflicts.

 

Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose country currently holds the council presidency, noted that since 1947, some 37 conflicts have taken place between countries related to water.

 

“Our planet, the human family and life in all its myriad forms on Earth are in the throes of a water crisis that will only get worse over the coming decades,” he said.

 

“If current patterns of consumption continue unabated, two-thirds of the world’s population will be facing water shortages as a daily reality by 2025,” Morales added.

Right now, he said, more than 800 million people lack access to safe drinking water and more than 2.5 billion don’t have basic sanitation.

Morales, who presided over the meeting, said the limited availability of fresh water underscores the importance of tackling the issue and ensuring that access to clean water is shared and doesn’t become “a pretext for domestic or international conflict.”

 

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said the world has already seen what can happen “when the waters run dry,” pointing to drought in Somalia that is driving acute food shortages and threatening famine and a lack of clean water that is exacerbating the crisis sparked by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria and sickening thousands.

 

He said the world currently is not on track to meet U.N. goals for 2030 calling for improved water security, access to drinking water and sanitation, as well as stronger management of water resources shared by countries.

In South Asia, Rycroft said, 1 billion people across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan rely heavily on just three rivers, but “despite facing similar problems posed by water demand and climate change, regional collaboration between these countries is limited.”

Rycroft said Britain has provided $30 million over the past five years to support a regional approach to “identify and resolve challenges affecting these transboundary waters.”

 

But to tackle the problem globally, he urged the world’s developed nations to also invest in delivering improved water security within and between states.

 

In one example of regional cooperation, Ethiopian Ambassador Tekeda Alemu said that while there are differences between the six countries that are upstream and downstream on the Nile River, those nations negotiated for 13 years to produce an agreement on using its waters. It was signed by all six nations and is awaiting ratification by three of them.

 

“The cooperation between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan and the signing of the Declaration of Principles by the leaders of the three countries is also another manifestation of regional cooperation that needs to be enhanced further,” he said.
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More US Drug Deaths in 2016 Than Ever Before

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Drug deaths in the U.S. rose at the steepest rate ever to the highest level in recorded history in 2016, claiming more than 60,000 lives, and early data suggest deaths from opioids and other drugs will continue to increase in 2017.

Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Tuesday. 

“Drug abuse is crippling families and communities throughout our country,” Rosenstein said at a joint news conference with Drug Enforcement Agency officials. “We are not talking about a slight increase. There is a horrifying surge in drug overdoses.”

More than two million Americans have some sort of physical dependence on opioids — painkillers that are legally prescribed to many people, but can become addicting if they are taken in excess or for long periods of time.

A new and even more dangerous aspect of the opioid crisis is the increasing prevalence of extremely potent, illegally manufactured variants of existing drugs, such as fentanyl.

Even minute amounts of illicit versions of fentanyl or carfentanil — as little as two or three grains — can be lethal. A troubling side effect of the drug problem is the risk that such potent substances pose to police officers and paramedics trying to help drug overdose victims.

Although DEA does not yet have data quantifying the problem, officials say there is a clear increase in cases where first responders handling evidence or helping overdose victims have become ill, suffering breathing problems, dizziness and even loss of consciousness after accidental inhalation of such opioids. The acting administrator of the federal antidrug agency, Chuck Rosenberg, has warned emergency responders to use caution in drug-overdose cases, and to wear protective gear such as masks and gloves to reduce the chance of accidental contamination.

Even dogs trained to detect illegal drugs are at risk. Their handlers have begun carrying antidotes for the animals as well as for themselves, but the new wave of synthetic drugs is so powerful that multiple doses of antidotes are sometimes necessary to save the rescuers.

Summarizing the DEA advice to emergency teams at an overdose scene, Rosenberg said: “If you don’t know what it is, assume there’s something in it that will kill you.”

Rising threat in Europe

The extremely rapid rise in opioid problems is not unique to the U.S. The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, in Lisbon, reported Tuesday that dangerous synthetic compounds mimicking the effects of heroin or morphine are a growing health threat in the EU.

Overdose deaths in Europe rose six percent to 8,441 in 2015, rising for the third consecutive year. And the center warned that drug-related deaths in Europe could be much higher, due to “systematic under-reporting in some countries” and delayed reporting.

Legally prescribed opioids, which are estimated to be used by up to 100 million Americans, also are a growing issue in Europe. Opioids are now represented in 38 percent of all requests for drug treatment in the European Union, the center’s report said, adding: “In both Europe and North America, the recent emergence of highly potent new synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl derivatives, is causing considerable concern.”
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US, Mexico Reach Sugar Pact Without Backing from US Producers

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The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the “agreement in principle” with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.

He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.

“Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form,” Ross said without elaborating on their objections.

He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.

Asked how long this would take, Ross said, “It should be days, not weeks or months.”

The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico’s overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.

It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents.

These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.

An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.

Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called “final technical consultations” for a deal.

Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.

U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.

The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico.

In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.

The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.

ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV, have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal.

They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.

The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.
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Ariana Grande Becomes British Heroine with Manchester Concert

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U.S. pop star Ariana Grande, hardly a household name in Britain before a suicide bomber killed 22 people at her Manchester concert in May, has emerged as a national heroine there following an emotional televised benefit performance.

In the days following Grande’s sold-out show on Sunday, which raised some $3 million for a victims fund and became the U.K.’s most-watched TV broadcast of the year, Britons have embraced the 23-year-old singer. They have called for her to be formally honored by Queen Elizabeth and the city of Manchester.

At the One Love Manchester concert, Grande hugged a weeping schoolgirl as they performed her hit “My Everything” before a crowd of 55,000 people.

The tiny performer ended the show alone on stage, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in tears.

Her team is working to release that emotional final number as a single to raise even more money for victims, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The concert served as a catharsis for many in Manchester and all of Britain, moving British tabloid journalist Piers Morgan to write Grande a lengthy public apology for doubting her courage.

“By coming back to Manchester so soon, shrugging off the latest attack in London, standing on that stage and performing with such raw emotion and power, you showed more guts, resilience, strength of character and “Blitz spirit” than every sniveling, pathetic ISIS coward put together,” Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail.

Grande was herself a survivor of the May 22 bombing, still inside Manchester Arena when an explosion ripped through the lobby area following her encore. Morgan had criticized the apparently shaken singer for quickly returning home to Florida instead of staying to console victims.

But within days Grande and her team began organizing the benefit, which overcame considerable logistical and security obstacles to take place less than two weeks later. Days before the show, she turned up unannounced at a Manchester-area hospital to visit young girls wounded in the attack.

Grande carried on with Sunday’s show despite the attack in London the night before in which seven people were killed. She enlisted fellow entertainers such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Coldplay and Oasis frontman and Manchester native Liam Gallagher.

Daily Telegraph columnist Victoria Lambert similarly apologized for dismissing Grande, who first gained fame on the Nickelodeon teen comedy “Victorious,” as a lightweight pop star not fit to be a role model for her daughter.

“Because far from being a cliched child star, Grande has shown herself to be a perfect role model for our daughters after all,” Lambert wrote.
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Report: International Tourism to US Stronger Than Expected

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More international visitors came to the U.S. than expected in April 2017, according to a new report released Tuesday in Washington.

 

The U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index shows that international travel to the U.S. grew by about 4 percent in April, compared with data for April 2016.

 

The strong showing contradicted fears that tourism from abroad would slow in reaction to President Donald Trump’s proposed travel bans, which have been blocked by court challenges.

 

The Trump administration’s first ban on travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries was issued Jan. 27. The Travel Association said any fallout from the travel bans would have begun to show up in April travel data.

 

“Are we surprised by this data? The honest answer is yes,” U.S. Travel Association CEO Roger Dow said in a statement. “There have been many claims that the administration’s actions on travel have tarnished America’s brand abroad, but we’re seeing hard economic evidence of the U.S. travel sector’s remarkable resilience.”

 

The U.S. Travel Association statistics also suggest that a slowdown in international arrivals that began in the spring of 2016 may be moderating.

Data from the U.S. Commerce Department has been showing a decline in international arrivals over the second and third quarters of last year. Those statistics take months to compile and will not reflect 2017 arrivals until next year. The government data is also more comprehensive, including, for example, border crossings by car from Canada and Mexico, which the U.S. Travel Association data does not include.

It’s also not unusual for travel spending and arrivals numbers to fluctuate month to month due to seasonal tourism and other economic factors.

 

The Travel Trends Index is compiled in partnership with Oxford Economics, using multiple sources including hotel and airline data.

 

The U.S. Travel Association is a national nonprofit organization representing the travel industry, dedicated to increasing travel within and to the U.S.

 
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EU Hopes for Western Balkan Common Market by Mid-2018

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The European Union hopes six Balkan countries will agree at a summit on July 12 in Italy to create a regional common market that could be working within a year, a top EU official said Tuesday, in the bloc’s latest step to re-engage the region.

The EU is eager to show it remains committed to the Balkan region despite public hostility at home to further eastern enlargement of the bloc following years of economic crisis, high unemployment and the rise of euroskeptic and populist parties.

The Western Balkan common market, which would remove barriers to trade, introduce standardized rules for businesses and lift obstacles to working across the region, would build on an existing regional free-trade accord, said European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids.

“We hope to get endorsement for this at the Trieste summit,” Hahn said of the next annual gathering of Western Balkans leaders with top EU officials.

“With the political will, we can have this done within a year,” he told reporters, adding that the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, would help the process.

Pointing toward EU

The six Western Balkan nations, still scarred by wars fought in the 1990s and plagued by political and ethnic divisions, all hope eventually to join the EU. The six are Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

The EU sees a common market of 20 million people across the six nations as a way to strengthen the Balkan economy, calm ethnic tensions, counter Russian influence and reinvigorate the region’s bid to join the bloc, diplomats say.

Hahn said the common market would help prepare countries for the EU’s single market, which breaks down barriers to trading across the bloc, giving unfettered access to consumers.

“This is an attempt to create a positive atmosphere in the Balkans, to create new business opportunities. It should be achievable,” Hahn said.

Hahn also stressed that any agreement would not remove all remaining tariff barriers because Kosovo relies on customs duties for a third of its revenues.
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Alleged Cosby Sex Assault Victim: ‘I Wanted It to Stop’

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The woman who accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 2004 told her story for the first time publicly Tuesday at the entertainer’s trial.

Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball official, told the suburban Philadelphia courtroom Tuesday that she visited the comic’s Philadelphia home for career advice. She told how Cosby allegedly gave her three blue pills, telling her they were to reduce stress.

“They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she said Cosby told her.

Constand said the pills instead left her paralyzed and unable to fend off Cosby’s sexual advances.

“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen. I wasn’t able to fight in any way. I wanted it to stop,” she said.

She alleged that Cosby put his hands under her shirt and on her genitals.

Cosby whispered to his lawyers and shook his head during her testimony.

His defense lawyers asked Constand why she continued to telephone Cosby after the alleged assault and attended one of his comedy shows.

Constand said it was just business concerning the university basketball team. But the defense emphasized inconsistencies between Constand’s testimony and in accounts she gave to police a decade ago, including how she first met the actor.

The cross-examination will continue Wednesday.

The court also heard from the mother of another one of Cosby’s alleged victims, who corroborated her daughter’s testimony of being assaulted by the comedian in 1996.

More than 50 women allege that Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most would have happened too long ago to prosecute.

Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges and is not expected to take the stand.

Cosby is known for his stand-up comedy routines focusing on his Philadelphia childhood and growing up in a middle-class black family. He played a wise and genial doctor in his 1980s television comedy series The Cosby Show. It was the country’s most popular television series for several years, but is scarcely rebroadcast anymore.
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George and Amal Clooney Welcome Twins: A Boy and a Girl

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Amal Clooney on Tuesday gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, the first children for the international human rights lawyer and her movie star spouse.

“This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives. Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine,” George Clooney’s publicist Stan Rosenfield said in an email.

He added cheekily, “George is sedated and should recover in a few days.”

Amal Clooney, 39, and the 56-year-old Oscar-winning star of films like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Three Kings” married in Italy in 2014, making them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples.

Rosenfield did not say where the twins were born but the couple appear to have been spending much of their time recently in England, where they have one of several homes.

The couple adopted a low profile during the pregnancy, keeping the news private for months before it was confirmed in February by the actor’s close friend, Matt Damon.

Amal Clooney largely continued her work as a human rights lawyer, addressing the United Nations in March and urging the international community to investigate crimes committed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Nevertheless, celebrity news media speculated for months about the sex of the twins, where they would be born and in which country they will be raised.

On Tuesday, social media lit up with congratulatory messages and “Ella and Alexander” was among the top trending topics on Twitter in the United States.

Many contributors praised the choice of names as a refreshingly normal departure from a trend that has seen celebrity babies given names like Apple, Audio, Bronx, North West and Rocket.

“Good lord, the Clooneys have given their twins lovely ordinary names. Shocking. And they call themselves celebrities…,” wrote British journalist Nicola Jane Swinney on Twitter.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres posted a Twitter message saying, “Congratulations, George and Amal, or as I’m now calling you, Ocean’s Four.”

Congratulations also came from actress Mia Farrow and U.S. journalist Katie Couric.

People magazine reported on Tuesday that former U.S. President Barack Obama paid a long, private visit with the Clooneys at their home in the countryside west of London on May 27.

George Clooney canceled a visit to Armenia for a humanitarian event this past weekend, saying in a message to organizers that “if I came there and my wife had twins while I was there, I could never come home.”
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Driverless Bus-train Hybrid Runs on Virtual Painted Tracks

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A Chinese company has unveiled a driverless bus-train hybrid that uses white lines painted on the road to navigate.

The company, CRRC, called the electric vehicle a “smart bus.”

The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit is made up of three cars, is 30 meters long and is capable of carrying about 500 passengers. It can reportedly reach speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour and can travel 25 kilometers on one 10-minute charge.

It uses sensors to stay on the white line.

The smart bus is much cheaper than building a rail track. This makes it ideal for cities that have growing demand for public transit, but not enough money to build subways.

According to state media, Xinhua, it costs $102 million to build a kilometer of subway and only $2 million for the ART.

The first line will be a 6.5 kilometer route expected to start running in 2018 in Zhuzhou.
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US Army Base Goes Green With Renewable Energy Project

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The U.S. military’s biggest base on American soil has begun drawing nearly half of its power from renewable energy, days after President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a global agreement to fight climate change.

Fort Hood, in Texas, has shifted away from fossil fuels to wind- and solar-generated energy in order to shield the base from its dependence on outside sources, a spokesman said.

“We need to be autonomous. If the unfortunate thing happened and we were under attack or someone attacked our power grid, you’d certainly want Fort Hood to be able to respond,” Chris Haug, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said in a phone interview.

The project brings the Army base, home to 36,500 active-duty personnel and some 6,000 buildings, in line with the Department of Defense’s decade-long effort to convert its fossil fuel-hungry operations to renewable power.

It comes in the wake of Trump’s decision last week to withdraw the United States from a landmark global agreement to fight climate change, the Paris accord, a move that drew condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

The project is already fully operational. Its 63,000 solar panels, located on the base’s grounds, and 21 off-base wind turbines provide a total of some 65 megawatts of power, according to an Army statement.

Previously, some 77 percent of base’s energy was generated by fossil fuels, a 2015 draft report assessing the renewable energy plan shows.

Burning fossil fuel generates greenhouse gases that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet.

The Paris accord aims to reduce such emissions, including by encouraging a shift to clean energy.

Fort Hood’s new solar field and wind farm will result in savings of more than $100 million over some 30 years, the Army said.

Over the last decade, the U.S. military and intelligence officials have developed a broad agreement about the security threats that climate change presents, in part by threatening to cause natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas, damage American military bases worldwide and open up new natural resources to global competition.

The number of military renewable energy projects nearly tripled to 1,390 between 2011 and 2015, a Reuters analysis of Department of Defense data previously showed.

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), a Department of Defense agency assisting the Army in its renewable-energy shift, is also working with the U.S. Air Force on long-term renewable energy projects, a DLA spokeswoman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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Chinese Firms Help Government Monitor Citizens with Big Data

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A Chinese city is using big data provided by a phone company to track the movement of its migrant worker population, expanding the many ways China is using big data to not just enhance performance but also track the daily lives of its citizens.

“When you buy a mobile phone SIM card, you need to register your identity information,” said an officer of China Mobile designated at the company’s booth during the recent Big Data Expo in southwest China’s Guiyang city. He was explaining how the mobile phone company is assisting Guiyang police about the movement of migrants in the city on a real-time basis.

“So, we can obtain information about the people in a given area and details like whether they are men or women, their age, and where they come from,” he said.

Very suddenly, big data is set to take up many of the responsibilities of the Communist Party’s feedback mechanism. It is also expected to act as feedstock for the anti-corruption campaign, which has been using information about spending on wines and luxury buying for the purpose of investigations.

Social profiling

China has already introduced a system data-driven social credit rating system in 40 towns and cities, which will be expanded to the entire country by 2020.

Information about a person buying expensive wine, foreign luxury goods or an air ticket would be fed into a giant system which will analyze blocks of data to keep the government informed about the situation on the ground.

The tracking of people posting critical comments in social media is already going on and social media data will also be fed into the system, which goes far beyond financial credit ratings practiced in developed countries. Here, the system isn’t focused entirely on debts and earnings, but on economic and social behaviors with an intention to allocate rewards and punishments.

China’s Internet-based companies are eagerly joining the government’s grand experiment. Mobike, a bike hiring company is giving out award points for bicycle users to voluntarily inspect parked bikes and inform the company about the misbehavior of other bikers.

A big data based information system might help improve the working of the police force in some respects. Officials in the government’s education and health departments said big data is being introduced as a tool improve delivery systems.

Risks for many

But it can also help authorities in tracking the movement of political dissidents, journalists, NGO workers, foreign companies and individuals, analysts said.

“For international companies operating in China, the Social Credit System poses significant challenges,” Mirjam Meissner, an expert with Mercator Institute of China Studies in Berlin, said. “They will probably be fully integrated into the system’s mechanisms and could see their freedom of decision-making in China significantly constrained,” she said.

At the same time, the rating system could create a more level playing field, since both domestic and international companies would be subject to the same rating mechanisms, Meissner said.

Kweichow Moutai Group, which produces high-end wines, has introduced a mobile phone app and encourages buyers to make online purchases.

“We monitor online sales to analyze the proportion of our potential users and our actual users. So, we can allocate our promotion efforts in different regions based on the information,” an official posted at the company’s booth at the Guiyang Big Data Expo said.

“The data is only for decision-making support to our company, and our data is not being made public,” he said.

However, officials from several companies confirmed that they routinely share data with government departments. For instance, the government’s tourism department collects data from online ticket selling companies and airlines to determine the flow of Chinese tourists to specific countries, and judge which destination is attracting high-spenders.

This information is seen as a major asset for the government, which is anxious about the movement of money and talent out of China. In addition, China is widely believed to use tourism as a political lever in dealing with foreign governments.

For instance, it is believed to have actively discouraged the movement of Chinese tourists to South Korea during the recent controversy over the installation of the U.S.-made THAAD anti-missile system. China and South Korea are now discussing the resumption of tourist flows as part of a new effort to mend forces.

 
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With a Sloppy ‘Kiss,’ Intrepid Fish Enjoys Perilous Feast

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A kiss from a colorful reef fish called a tubelip wrasse is no one’s idea of romance, being so full of slime and suction, but it is perfectly suited for eating a hazardous diet using one of the animal kingdom’s most unique feeding strategies.

Scientists on Monday described for the first time how the fish thrives in the Indian Ocean and central-western Pacific as one of the few creatures capable of dining on corals, one of the planet’s most difficult menu items.

Corals are marine organisms boasting thin, mucus-covered flesh that contains venomous, stinging cells spread over a razor-sharp skeleton. Of the more than 6,000 fish species that live on reefs, only about 128 eat corals. Scientists knew that the yellow-and-purple tubelip wrasse was one of them, but how it did it was a mystery.

The researchers used a scanning electron microscope to determine the structure of its fleshy, pouty-looking lips and high-speed video to learn what it does while feeding.

“Kissing the mucus and flesh of corals with self-lubricating lips was not what we were expecting,” said marine biologist Víctor Huertas of James Cook University in Australia.

The thick lips of the fish, which reaches about 7 inches (18 cm) long, were found to be made of a tightly packed series of thin folds of tissue, like the underside of a mushroom top, covered in slime from mucus-secreting cells.

“To our knowledge, this type of lip has never been recorded before,” James Cook University marine biologist David Bellwood said.

They discovered that the fish approaches the coral slowly and inspects its surface, protrudes its jaws, then produces powerful suction as its lips make contact with the coral for two-100ths of a second. In that scant time, it ingests the flesh and coral mucus off the coral skeleton.

“It looks exactly like a quick kiss with a distinctive ‘tuk’ sound,” Huertas said, “often leaving a coral ‘hickie,’ which is actually a patch of flesh sucked off the skeleton.”

“It would be a good basis for a horror movie,” Bellwood added.

The mucous coat may protect the lips from the stinging cells, help to seal them against the coral surface to enhance suction force and serve as a conveyor belt that captures the coral mucus and the stinging cells being ingested, the researchers said.

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.
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