Month: June 2017

Triple Oscar Winner Daniel Day-Lewis Retiring From Acting

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Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis is retiring from acting, his spokeswoman said on Tuesday, ending a storied movie career that includes performances in “Lincoln” and “Gangs of New York.”

Day-Lewis, 60, the only man to have won three best actor Oscars, gave no reason for his decision, calling it private.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” his publicist, Leslee Dart, said in a statement. “He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years.”

The statement said there would be no further comment.

He has one more movie in the works — “Phantom Thread,” which is set in London’s 1950s fashion world and is due to be released in December.

Day-Lewis, who was born in Britain and holds dual Anglo-Irish citizenship, won his third best actor Oscar in 2013 for playing U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in “Lincoln.”

His win made him the first man to be awarded three best actor Oscars in the history of the Academy Awards.

He previously won Academy Awards for his roles as a paraplegic Irish writer in “My Left Foot” (1989) and a greedy early 20th-century oil baron in “There Will Be Blood” (2007).

The tall, intellectual actor keeps a low-key profile and is known for choosing his roles carefully and taking long breaks between films.

In the late 1990s, he took time off from acting to work as an apprentice shoe-maker in Italy. After his 2013 Oscar win for “Lincoln,” London’s Sunday Times reported that he planned to take a sabbatical at his farm in Ireland.

Day-Lewis is known for his meticulous preparation. For “Lincoln,” he spent months researching Lincoln’s political and personal life and before shooting began he was texting his screen wife, Sally Field, in 19th century vernacular.

“For My Left Foot,” he spent weeks living in a wheelchair, and while shooting “Gangs of New York” he was known for sharpening knives between takes to capture the menace of his character Bill “The Butcher” Cutting.

Day-Lewis has three children and is married to writer and director Rebecca Miller.
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Tony Bennett Receives Gershwin Prize From National Library

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Tony Bennett, the beloved and durable interpreter of American standards whose chart-topping career spans seven decades, has been honored with this year’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

 

The Library of Congress announced the award Tuesday. The lifetime achievement award named for the duo of George and Ira Gershwin was created by Congress to honor singers and songwriters who entertain, inform and inspire. Past recipients include Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder.

 

Bennett, 90, gained his first pop success in the early 1950s with a string of singles for Columbia Records, including “Because of You” and “Rags to Riches.” His 24 Top 40 hits included his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (1962), which won two Grammy awards.

 

Bennett enjoyed a career revival in the 1990s and became popular with younger audiences in part because of an appearance on “MTV Unplugged.” He continued recording and touring constantly, and in 2014, his collaboration with Lady Gaga, “Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

 

“His staying power is a testament to the enduring appeal of the Great American Songbook the Gershwins helped write, and his ability to collaborate with new generations of music icons has been a gift to music lovers of all ages,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement.

 

Bennett recalled that one of his earliest recordings was “Fascinating Rhythm,” a song by the Gershwins.

 

“To be receiving an award named in their honor is one of the greatest thrills of my career, and I am deeply appreciative to the Library of Congress to be named this year’s recipient,” Bennett said in a statement.

 

Born Anthony Thomas Benedetto in Queens, New York, in 1926, Bennett served in World War II, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp. He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to support civil rights and has performed for 11 U.S. presidents.

 

He is also an accomplished painter whose work has been exhibited at galleries around the world.

 

Bennett is scheduled to accept the award in Washington in November.
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Record Heat Recorded Worldwide

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports the planet Earth is experiencing another exceptionally warm year with record-breaking temperatures occurring in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States.

At least 60 people have been killed in the devastating forest fires in central Portugal. The World Meteorological Organization says one of the factors contributing to these run-away wildfires are very high temperatures that have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius.

Extremely high temperatures also have been recorded in Spain and in France, which issued an Amber alert, the second highest alert level on Tuesday.  WMO reports near record heat is also being reported in California and in the Nevada deserts.

Meteorologists report North Africa and the Middle East are experiencing extremely hot weather with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius.  But WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis says the hottest place on Earth appears to be the town of Turbat in southwestern Pakistan, which reported a temperature of 54 degrees Celsius in May.

“It seems like this is a new temperature record for Asia.  If it is verified, it will equal a record … which was set in Kuwait last July. So, we will now set up an investigation committee to see if that indeed is a new temperature record for the region,” Nullis said.

WMO Senior Scientist Omar Baddour says the world heat record of 56 degrees Celsius was recorded in Death Valley in the United States in 1913.  

“It is very difficult to break a world record because it is not easy to have all the conditions in terms of pressure, invasion of air together at one place.  So, the concern now is we are close to cross that record.  We are now 54.  We are not that far.”  

The WMO says it expects global heat waves will likely trigger more deadly wildfires.  If necessary precautions are not taken, it warns many people will die from the heat, as happened in 2003, when heat waves across Europe killed 70,000 people.

Scientists predict climate change will cause heat waves to become more intense, more frequent and longer.
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Yemen Struggling With Cholera Outbreak, Currently World’s Largest

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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the cholera outbreak in Yemen has spread to practically every part of the war-torn country.  Suspected cases of cholera and acute watery diarrhea now top 170,000, with 1,170 deaths.

WHO reports cholera has spread to 20 of Yemen’s 22 governorates in just two months. Spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says aid agencies are scaling up their operation and refining their response.  

He says it is not possible to cover the country at all times, so WHO and the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF)  workers are going to so-called hotspots – the most affected areas – to treat cholera victims who are most at risk.

He calls the situation a very challenging one.

“If you look at the numbers, we are talking close to 2,000 suspected cases a day.  Cholera is endemic in Yemen.  It is currently the largest cholera outbreak that we have in the world,” Jasarevic said.

Cholera can be easily treated by replacing lost fluids right away.  But patients can die within hours if the disease is left untreated. Jasarevic says cholera is being transmitted through contaminated water so it is critical to provide people with a clean water supply.

“It is difficult in a situation where a country has a health system that is collapsing.  There is simply no money in the budget and health facilities are not having money to run their daily operations.  There is also the issue of waste collection that obviously affects the quality of water and access to clean water,” he said.

Jasarevic says the WHO and UNICEF are providing water purification tablets and are chlorinating water in an effort to keep contaminated water sources at a minimum.  He says both agencies also are providing money to health workers as an incentive to have them treat cholera patients.  He notes health workers have not received a salary in six months.
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NTSB: Driver Ignored Warnings, Did Not Hold Wheel in Fatal Tesla Crash

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A man who died last year when his semi-autonomous Tesla Model S collided with a truck kept his hands off the steering wheel and apparently did not respond to automated warnings from the car to take the wheel, according to over 500 documents released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Monday.

The report found that over the “vast majority” of the 37-minute trip Joshua Brown, a former Navy SEAL, was not holding the steering wheel. He only did so for 25 seconds, the NTSB said. The report found that Brown also appeared to ignore numerous warnings to take hold of the wheel prior to the May 2016 crash near Williston, Fla.

The findings appear to take the blame away from Tesla, which has yet to comment on the NTSB report. The company did say last year that autopilot mode “does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility.”

The report is also good news for the nascent driverless car industry, which hopes to show that computers can drive safely for extended periods of time with limited human intervention.

The NTSB findings echo a report on the incident released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At that time, Tesla founder Elon Musk called the report “very positive.”

According to the Reuters news agency, Brown family attorney Jack Landskroner said the NTSB documents disprove prior media reports that Brown was watching a movie when the crash occurred. He also said the family has yet to take legal action against Tesla, but would continue to review the NTSB documents.

In the wake of the incident, Tesla upgraded its autopilot mode making it harder to operate in hands-off position. The upgrade also prevents drivers from using autopilot mode if they fail to respond to computerized prompts from the system.
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Australia Moves to Protect Classified Docs from Cyber Espionage

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Australia says it will move classified government information from a private data center in Sydney after a Chinese consortium bought a major stake in the company. The move comes despite assurances from the company, Global Switch, that its files are secure.

Global Switch owns two secure data facilities in downtown Sydney, and stores classified Australian government defense and intelligence files.

Its ownership changed in December when its UK-based parent company accepted a $3 billion bid from Chinese investors for a 49 percent stake in the Sydney-based firm. Among the investors was an entrepreneur who owns part of China’s leading data enterprise, the Daily Tech.

In response, Australian officials said they would move classified files from the private storage facility to a state-run data unit when its current contract expires in 2020, despite a promise from Global Switch that its services are secure.

Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a respected think tank, says the government in Canberra is right to be wary of China’s cyber capabilities.

“China is certainly up there with Russia and Iran and North Korea as being amongst the most active cyber espionage entities. It is looking to steal information,” he said. “Increasingly I think China is building a capability to actually go in and do damage to critical infrastructure through cyber means as well.”

The government says Australia is increasingly a target for cybercrime and espionage, and has warned that cyberspace was “under persistent threat.”

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said cyber security was “the new frontier of warfare” and announced new measures to protect Australian democracy from foreign interference.

Last October, Canberra revealed a foreign power had managed to install malicious software on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s computer system to steal sensitive documents and compromise other government networks. Officials did not identify the country suspected of the breach, but security analysts pointed the finger at China.

 

 
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Refugee Cooks Take Over European Kitchens

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The Refugee Food Festival is taking place in 13 European cities, marking World Refugee Day on June 20. For two weeks, restaurants are being taken over by refugee chefs from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and others. Marthe van der Wolf reports for VOA from Brussels.
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Jack Black Leads Star-studded Cast for ‘Jumanji’ Reboot

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U.S. actor Jack Black has some big comedic shoes to fill in his forthcoming project, which sees him take the lead role in “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” a star-studded reboot of the hit 1995 comedy that starred the late Robin Williams.

Black said that he only watched the original film after being cast in the follow-up. He described Williams as a “genius” who was “at the peak of his powers” in the movie.

The original “Jumanji” saw Williams play a man who escapes from captivity inside a magical jungle-themed board game. The new film sees that premise reversed, with the lead characters journeying into the game’s fantastical world.

“In this one we actually travel with the characters into the jungle and it’s gorgeous and treacherous and exciting,” Black told Reuters.

In another twist away from the original, which saw Williams’ character enter the game as a child and emerge as an adult, this film sees child characters transform into adults when they get pulled into the game.

Black and co-star Nick Jonas were promoting the film at Cine Europe 2017, an annual cinema convention held in Barcelona.

In addition to Black and Jonas the film features screen muscleman Dwanye “The Rock” Johnson, and comedian Kevin Hart.

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is due out in cinemas in December.
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Scientists Find New Biomarker to Guide Cancer Immunotherapy

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Scientists said on Monday they had pinpointed a particular type of immune system cell that could predict more precisely if cancer patients are likely to respond to modern immunotherapy medicines.

The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Immunology, suggests doctors and drug developers will need to get smarter in zeroing in on those people who stand to benefit from the expensive new drugs, which are revolutionizing cancer care.

Drugs such as Merck’s Keytruda, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo, Roche’s Tecentriq and AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi can boost the immune system’s ability to fight tumors, but they only work for some patients.

The current widely used benchmark when giving cancer immunotherapy is a protein called PDL-1. However, many experts view PDL-1 as a “blunt instrument”, since it does not match precisely to drug response, leading to the consideration of other measures, such as the level of mutation in tumors.

The latest research adds a further twist by highlighting therole of so-called tissue-resident memory T-cells.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology found that lung cancer patients with lots of this cell type in their tumors were 34 percent less likely to die than others.

“Having made the first baby steps with PDL-1 testing, we need to be smarter by using new tests,” said Christian Ottensmeier, a Cancer Research UK scientist who worked on the study.

“PDL-1 testing is a little bit like saying ‘you’ve got a Ferrari because it is red.’ Many Ferraris are red and many tumors that are PDL-1 positive will respond to immunotherapy, but on its own that is not sufficient.”

Ottensmeier and colleagues now plan further clinical trials to see how well their biological predictor can pick out patients who will benefit from taking Opdivo.

Industry analysts expect the new generation of cancer immunotherapy drugs to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual sales by early next decade, with lung cancer the biggest single market.
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AI Becoming an Increasingly Valuable Health Tool

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Artificial intelligence is turning out to be a useful tool for doctors who are increasingly using complex algorithms to help them diagnose disease, and even create new drugs. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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3-year Global Coral Bleaching Event Easing, But Still Bad

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A mass bleaching of coral reefs worldwide is finally easing after three years, U.S. scientists announced Monday.

About three-quarters of the world’s delicate coral reefs were damaged or killed by hot water in what scientists say was the largest coral catastrophe.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a global bleaching event in May 2014. It was worse than previous global bleaching events in 1998 and 2010.

The forecast damage doesn’t look widespread in the Indian Ocean, so the event loses its global scope. Bleaching will still be bad in the Caribbean and Pacific, but it’ll be less severe than recent years, said NOAA coral reef watch coordinator C. Mark Eakin.

Places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, northwest Hawaii, Guam and parts of the Caribbean have been hit with back-to-back-to-back destruction, Eakin said.

University of Victoria, British Columbia, coral reef scientist Julia Baum plans to travel to Christmas Island in the Pacific where the coral reefs have looked like ghost towns in recent years.

“This is really good news,” Baum said. “We’ve been totally focused on coming out of the carnage of the 2015-2016 El Nino.”

While conditions are improving, it’s too early to celebrate, said Eakin, adding that the world may be at a new normal where reefs are barely able to survive during good conditions.

Eakin said coral have difficulty surviving water already getting warmer by man-made climate change. Extra heating of the water from a natural El Nino nudges coral conditions over the edge.

About one billion people use coral reefs for fisheries or tourism. Scientists have said that coral reefs are one of the first and most prominent indicators of global warming.

“I don’t see how they can take one more hit at this point,” Baum said. “They need a reprieve.”
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As South Korea Seeks Reconciliation With the North, What’s in it for the US?

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As South Korea’s new leadership works toward easing long strained inter-Korean relations, U.S. experts are eyeing the country’s conciliatory overtures to the Kim Jong Un regime, worried that a possible resumption of the Kaesong Industrial Complex could provoke discord with the Trump administration.

Shortly after South Korean President Moon Jae-in named Cho Myoung-gyun to be his North Korea point man on June 13, Cho, who played a key role in launching the now-stalled economic cooperation project, told reporters, “Operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex should be restored. I will speak after thoroughly looking into the details.” 

That statement caused a flurry of criticism in Washington, with many analysts saying reviving activities at the complex possibly could hurt Washington-Seoul relations and diminish their alliance coordination. Seoul closed the complex in February 2016 as punishment for the regime’s nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

“Reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex is very problematic from Washington’s perspective,” Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who specializes in North Korea, told VOA’s Korean Service.

Launched in 2004 to enhance cooperation between the two Koreas, the jointly run industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the border, has reportedly provided $100 million a year in wages to 54,000 North Korean workers and contributed almost $2 billion in trade for Pyongyang.

Terry said any conciliatory action that translates into significant financial benefits for Pyongyang contradicts Washington’s North Korea policy, which is focused on thwarting the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program by severing all possible revenue streams that fund it. 

“We don’t know where the money is going,” Terry said. “It could be contributing to North Korea’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) missile program. There is no evidence that it’s not.”

Thomas Countryman, who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, said restarting Kaesong’s activities would not only reward Kim for the continued provocations, but also throw cold water on international efforts.

“It would be inconsistent with the [U.N. Security Council] resolutions if not in the letter, then in the spirit,” Countryman said. “There is simply no way that [South Korea] could convince China to have a strict enforcement of the U.N. resolutions, if South Korea is reopening a complex that provides tens of millions of dollars of hard currency every year to the North Korean regime.” 

Formerly the Obama White House coordinator for arms control and WMD, Gary Samore of the Belfer Center at Harvard University said Seoul should be more strategic and use Kaesong as a bargaining chip in response to or as part of a deal with Pyongyang to take steps toward limiting and eventually eliminating its nuclear activities.

“It would be a big mistake to resume the Kaesong Industrial Park without getting something in return,” Samore said. “So if Kim Jong Un agrees to some limits on nuclear and missile activity — for example, a freeze on testing — then I think one response that [South Korea] could make would be to resume the Kaesong Industrial Park, with the understanding that the facility would be suspended if Kim Jong Un resumed nuclear and missile testing.”

Negotiations on Pyongyang’s nuclear program have been in limbo for almost a decade, with Washington and Seoul ratcheting up economic pressure and a stubborn Pyongyang persisting with weapons development. But since Moon took office last month, he appears to be easing conditions for talks with the North.

“I make it clear that we will open dialogue without a precondition” should North Korea stop launching missiles and testing nuclear devices, Moon said Thursday at an event marking the 2000 inter-Korean summit.

But when President Donald Trump’s top diplomat Rex Tillerson led a U.N. Security Council special meeting in April, he rejected negotiations with Kim, saying North Korea “must take concrete steps to reduce the threat that its illegal weapons programs pose to the U.S. and our allies before we can even consider talks.” Those steps would be dismantling its nuclear and missile programs.

Moon Chung-in, South Korea’s special presidential advisor for foreign and security affairs, commented at an event in Washington Friday that his president proposed “scaling down” the Washington-Seoul joint military drills if North Korea “suspends its nuclear and missile activities.”

The State Department downplayed the significance of the comments.

“We understand these views are the personal views of Mr. Moon and may not reflect official ROK govern policy,” said Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs spokesperson Alicia Edwards in an email to VOA.

A senior official at the South Korean presidential office said the advisor did not coordinate with the president’s office on the proposal.

This report originated on VOA Korean.
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DC United’s Star Goalie a Muslim Who Balances Faith with Football

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Ramadan is Islam’s holy month. It is a time of reflection honoring the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. It is also a month of fasting during which able-bodied Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, which poses unique challenges for professional athletes. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington
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Tech Titans Gather at White House to Modernize Government

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced he wants to see up to $1 trillion of tax savings over the next decade by a “sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology.”  

Trump told the American Technology Advisory Council in the White House State Dining Room that “we’re embracing big change, bold thinking and outsider perspectives to transform government and make it the way it should be and at far less cost.”

A slew of high-tech heavyweights, some of whom have criticized President Donald Trump’s policies, huddled at the White House on Monday as the administration kicked off its “technology week.”

The chief executive officers of 18 companies held meetings with White House and other Trump administration officials to generate ideas to attempt to transform and modernize government services.

“In addition to the trillion in cost we can take out, probably we can add another two trillion [dollars] on the numerator in terms of digital business by getting the public and the private sector in full cooperation under your administration,” Bill McDermott, the CEO of enterprise software company SAP, told Trump.  

Also speaking to the group, one of the world’s most successful venture capitalists, John Doerr, contended that there is also a “trillion dollars of value locked up in government databases. The Kleiner Perkins chairman told the president that “if you set the data free the entrepreneurs are going to do the rest.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the world’s largest online shopping retailer, recommended government, for its transformation, “use commercial technologies whenever possible” to save taxpayers’ money. He also said it was impossible to overstate that investment is needed in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The CEO of cloud computing company VMware, Pat Gelsinger, echoed that, saying “we deeply believe that we need to be planting those seed corns for our children and grandchildren.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also agreed, saying increasing competitiveness could be achieved through government spending in research. And the native of India told the president the United States should maintain an “enlightened immigration policy,” noting he was the beneficiary of such a policy.   

The corporate leaders at the table with the president on Monday cumulatively represented more than $3.5 trillion in market value, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

“Today we’ve assembled a very impressive group of leaders from the private sector and are putting them to work here today to work on some of the country’s biggest challenges that will make a very meaningful difference to a lot of its citizens,” White House senior advisor Jared Kushner said as the White House kicked off the day of meetings.

Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, says the goal is to “work to modernize the government’s technology infrastructure.”

There is outside skepticism about whether the president’s goal – at least in monetary terms – can be achieved.

“I do not understand how or where that trillion-dollar number comes from,” veteran Silicon Valley engineer Leslie Miley told VOA. “There is no basis for that claim so, as an engineer, I would not believe it until I saw a breakdown.”

The sprawling federal government maintains more than 6,000 data centers, some of the systems stretching back more than a half century.

The Department of Defense is still using floppy disks in some of its computer systems, Kushner noted.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Trump that computer coding should be a required subject in every public school and that “the U.S. should have the most modern government in the world, and today it doesn’t.”

“Tim Cook is right, we should,” Miley, who has worked at Apple, Google, Slack and Twitter, told VOA. “However, with key leadership positions in the government unfilled, it’s going to be difficult getting a strategy in place and executed.”

Monday’s White House event included working sessions over four hours focused on citizen services, cloud computing, analytics, cybersecurity, big data, purchasing and contract reform, talent recruitment and retraining, government and private sector partnerships, H1-B Visas and future trends, according to a White House official.

Other prominent administration participants included Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert, Office of Management  and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and three cabinet secretaries: Steven Mnuchin of Treasury, John Kelly of Homeland Security and Wilbur Ross of Commerce.

 

Other participating Silicon Valley chief executives included Eric Schmidt of Alphabet (parent company of Google), Brian Krzanich of Intel, Steven Mollenkopf of Qualcomm, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe and Ginni Rometty of IBM.

Several of those attending on Monday also were at a similar meeting Trump convened last December before his presidential inauguration.

Notably absent from this second meeting was Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who recently quit as an outside economic advisor to the president in protest of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
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US Top Court Hands Chevron Victory in Ecuador Pollution Case

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to Chevron Corp. by preventing Ecuadorean villagers and their American lawyer from trying to collect on an $8.65 billion pollution judgment issued against the oil company by a court in Ecuador.

The justices turned away an appeal by New York-based lawyer Steven Donziger, who has spent more than to two decades trying to hold Chevron responsible for pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest, of lower court rulings blocking enforcement in the United States of the 2011 judgment.

While not disputing that pollution occurred, San Ramon, California-based Chevron has said it is not liable and that Donziger and his associates orchestrated the writing of a key environmental report and bribed the presiding judge in Ecuador.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan barred enforcement of the judgment in 2014, citing the corruption used to obtain it. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld Kaplan’s decision, citing “a parade of corrupt actions” by Donziger and his associates, including coercion and fraud, culminating in the bribe offer.

The 2nd Circuit found that Chevron’s $8.646 billion judgment debt was “clearly traceable” to corrupt conduct by the legal team representing the villagers from the area affected by the pollution.

The lengthy legal battle with Chevron has been waged in several countries and was documented in “Crude,” a 2009 documentary film. The plaintiffs have said they plan to continue efforts to enforce the judgment in other countries, regardless of the outcome in the United States.

The saga was drawn extensive media attention over the years, with a succession of reporters given tours by both sides of the affected sites on the edge of the Amazonian jungle near the town of Lago Agrio. The plaintiffs also touted the backing of several celebrities including actors Mia Farrow and Danny Glover.

Donziger and representatives of residents of the Lago Agrio region have sought to force Chevron to pay for water and soil contamination caused from 1964 to 1992 by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001. Chevron has said a 1998 agreement between Texaco and Ecuador absolved it of further liability.

Donziger’s crusade began to unravel when Chevron noticed a deleted scene in the “Crude” documentary, released in 2009, showing Donziger working with supposedly neutral experts in preparing a report for the Ecuadorean court.

Chevron was then able to get access to out-takes and other material related to the documentary via court order. Chevron cited this evidence when it filed its lawsuit in 2011 seeking to block enforcement of the judgment, saying Donziger’s actions violated U.S. anti-racketeering law.

Donziger has also tried to enforce the judgment in Canada, Brazil and other countries where Chevron operates.

 
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US Supreme Court Limits Where Companies Can be Sued

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday tightened rules on where injury lawsuits may be filed, handing a victory to corporations by undercutting the ability of plaintiffs to bring claims in friendly courts in a case involving litigation over the Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. blood-thinning medication Plavix.

The justices, in an 8-1 ruling, threw out a lower court decision allowing hundreds of out-of-state patients who took Plavix to sue the company in California. State courts cannot hear claims against companies that are not based in the state when the alleged injuries did not occur there, the justices ruled.

The court last month reached a similar conclusion in a separate case involving out-of-state injury claims against Texas-based BNSF Railway Co.
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Google Outlines Steps to Fight Extremist Content

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Google says it is stepping up its efforts to identify and remove videos related to terrorism and violent extremist content, particularly on its YouTube platform.

“While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies,” Google said, “the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now.”

First, the company says it’s increasing its use of technology to identify videos that contain extremist messages. It added that it has used “video analysis models” to find and assess more than 50 percent of the terrorism-related content that has been removed in the past six months.

“We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new ‘content classifiers’ to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content,” the company said.

The company acknowledges that technology can’t fully solve the problem, so it is also adding 50 expert NGO’s to its YouTube Trusted Flagger program. Flaggers, the company said, can better identify the difference between violent propaganda and news and that they are more than 90 percent accurate. Google says it already works with 63 organizations as part of the program.

Google said it will also be taking a “tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies.” It said videos that “contain inflammatory religious or supremacists content” will appear with a warning. People will not be able to make money off them, or to comment on or endorse them.

“That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find,” Google wrote. “We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.”

In a fourth step, Google said it will “expand its role in counter-radicalization efforts” through what it calls the “Redirect Method.”

“This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining,” Google wrote, in reference to Islamic State. “In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages.”

The steps were first published in an opinion piece Sunday on the Financial Times website and can now be found on a Google blog.

Google’s steps follow a recent Facebook announcement that the social media giant is using artificial intelligence to combat terrorist content.

Earlier this year, the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report critical of organizations like Google and Facebook. The anti-hate group said the companies “have done little to counter the use of their platforms to spread hateful, false “information,” from conspiracy theories accusing various minority groups of plotting against America to websites promoting Holocaust denial and false “facts” about Islam, LGBT people, women, Mexicans and others.”
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BRICS Meeting Highlights Climate Change, Trade, Terrorism

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Climate change, trade and terrorism were highlighted Monday at a Beijing meeting of foreign affairs officials from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known collectively as the BRICS nations.

The five nations are seeking to further align their views on key issues at a time when President Donald Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from multilateral arrangements such as the Paris climate accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China in the coming year would look to “expand with more broad and wide-ranging cooperation in areas such as trade and commerce and investment.”

Together the BRICS countries account for roughly 40 percent of the world population and 20 percent of the global economy. All five countries are members of the G20, although their economic prospects have declined somewhat amid crises in Brazil and South Africa and the effect of sanctions lodged against Russia by the West.

South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane pointed to climate change as a major concern.

“There is one climate and for future generations we must employ every effort at our disposal to reverse the effects of climate change,” she said.

Nkoana-Mashabane also pointed to the need to form joint efforts to fight terrorism, sentiments reflected by Vijay Kumar Singh, an Indian External Affairs official.

“It is important to enhance BRICS security in counterterrorism matters,” Singh said.

Leaders of the five nations are due to meet for a summit in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen in September.
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Little-known Koepka Wins US Open Golf Championship

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Little-known American golfer Brooks Koepka won the 117th U.S. Open championship Sunday for his first major title at the age of 27. He’d only won one previous tournament on the PGA Tour.

Koepka tied for the best score in relation to par in the history of the U.S. Open with a 16-under 272 for the four rounds on the par 72 course. His margin of victory was four shots over two golfers who tied for second place — Brian Harman, also from the U.S., and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama.

“It’s definitely a special moment,” Koepka said shortly after completing his final round of 5-under-par 67. “The way I putted this week was unbelievable. . . What I’ve done this week is amazing.”

Koepka pulled away on the closing holes by making a difficult save of par on the 13th hole, then sinking birdie putts on the 14th, 15th and 16th holes.

The Florida native said he received lots of encouragement and advice from friends and family Saturday night, ahead of the final round, and that he felt very confident in his game. And he said he knew where he stood throughout the final round because there were very clear leader boards at each hole.

“I just tried to get as low as I could (on each hole) and stay focused,” Koepka said.

This year’s tournament was played at Erin Hills, an 11-year-old course less than an hour’s drive from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A U.S. Open had never been held in that north central state before.

While more players than usual broke par at a U.S. Open, many of the world’s best golfers failed to make the halfway cut after Friday’s second round. In fact, it was the first time since the world rankings were created in 1986 that the top three ranked golfers in the world missed the cut.

They are defending champion and world No. 1 Dustin Johnson of the United States, No. 2 Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and No. 3 Jason Day of Australia. It was McIlroy who also shot 16-under-par in winning his U.S. Open title at Congressional Country Club outside Washington in 2011.
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Hundreds of Thousands Gather at Brazil Gay Parade

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Hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo for one of the world’s largest gay pride parades.

 

The revelers have packed the city’s Paulista Avenue before Sunday’s parade. Some are helping hold up a gigantic rainbow-colored flag symbolizing LGBT rights.

 

Organizers say they expect 3 million people to participate in the city’s 21st annual gay pride parade.

The parade this year focuses on secularism and the idea that no religion is law regardless of people’s individual beliefs.

 

Claudia Regina is president of the gay rights group organizing the parade.

 

She says on the event’s official Facebook page that “our main enemies today are religious fundamentalists” and says some groups insist on condemning LGBT people and “removing rights that we have already obtained.”
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