Natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that reaches homes through underground pipes. Unfortunately, older pipes often leak, wasting fuel and releasing unburned methane, a potent greenhouse gas. To find and measure leaks, Colorado scientists teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund and Google Street View Cars to make “methane maps.” From Fort Collins, Colorado, Shelley Schlender reports.
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Month: August 2017
3-D View of Cells Could Mean New Ways to Fight Disease
What turns a cell into a brain cell, or a muscle cell, or a cancer cell for that matter? It is all about the DNA, and what genetic markers get turned on and off. Scientists at the Salk Institute have created a 3-D map of a cell that is giving them a unique view of how DNA works inside individual cells. Kevin Enochs reports.
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In Hotels, China Filling Gaps in ‘Great Firewall’
In China, the plush international hotel lobby has been one of the few places to find gaps in the “Great Firewall,” a sophisticated system that denies online users access to blocked content such as foreign news portals and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Now that small crack in the system may be closing, too, as Beijing tightens control over what it sees as its domestic cyberspace, mimicking real-world border controls and subject to the same laws as sovereign states.
Regulators have warned firms providing internet networks for hotels to stop offering, or helping to install, virtual private networks (VPNs) into hotel systems, tools that allow users to evade, at least partially, China’s internet censors.
“We received notices recently from relevant (government) departments, so we don’t make recommendations anymore,” said a marketing manager at Chinese hotel network provider AMTT Digital, who is not named because he is not authorized to talk to the media. He added this was linked to increased government scrutiny over the use of unauthorized VPNs.
Tunnel closing for some
VPNs create a tunnel through the Great Firewall allowing users to access blocked content outside China’s borders.
Companies in China routinely use VPNs for their businesses, which Beijing has said are not currently under threat.
A notice from the Waldorf Astoria in Beijing, circulated online, said the hotel had stopped offering VPN services.
A Waldorf official declined to comment, but several staff said the hotel no longer offered VPN services. “(VPNs) don’t accord with Chinese law,” one staffer told Reuters. “So we don’t have this anymore.”
Network provider: hotels decide
A leading internet network provider to hotels in China, AMTT Digital says it works with more than 30 global hotel chains including Marriott, InterContinental, Shangri-La , Wyndham, Starwood and Hilton.
Previously, the firm, which is backed by several funds including ones with government ties, would recommend “certified,” or government approved, VPNs, the manager said, which would then be incorporated into hotels’ internal networks.
“We would make recommendations of certified VPN providers and then incorporate them into the gateway so it runs smoothly,” he said. “But it is up to the hotel to decide if they want it.”
Dozens of VPNs closed
China’s Ministry of Information Industry and Technology (MIIT), which oversees regulation of VPNs, did not respond to requests for comment.
As it clamps down further on access to outlawed online content, Beijing has recently closed dozens of China-based VPNs, overseas providers have seen rolling attacks on their services, the WhatsApp encrypted messaging app was disrupted, and telecoms firms have been enlisted to extend China’s domestic internet control.
U.S. tech giant Apple Inc pulled dozens of VPN apps from its App Store in China at the weekend, drawing criticism from app providers who said it was bowing to pressure from Beijing’s cyber regulators.
“We’re in the middle of the storm right now with the government fiercely cracking down on VPNs,” said Lin Wei, a Beijing-based network security expert at Qihoo 360 Technology Co. “It’s really hard for ordinary people to find anywhere they can get on sites like Google.”
No Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
The “neutered” hotel VPNs, which staff and analysts said were often installed with tacit approval from authorities, already underline sensitivities of even ceding small amounts of control.
President Xi Jinping has overseen a marked sharpening of China’s cyberspace controls, including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules. This push is now ramping up ahead of an expected consolidation of power at the Communist Party Congress this autumn.
Guests at the InterContinental hotel on the east side of Beijing can search on Alphabet Inc’s Google search engine or check their email on Gmail, a business need for many travelers, but both otherwise widely blocked in China.
But they can’t access Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, which are banned by the government.
China also routinely blocks sensitive content online such as searches for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or, more recently, coverage of imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died of cancer last month. These topics are searchable, though, in China using a VPN connection.
Some hotels haven’t blocked sites
Technical staff at five other hotels in Beijing, including Crowne Plaza, Hilton and Shangri-La, said guests could still access some blocked websites, though others were often still off-limits. Officials at the hotels declined to comment.
Other hotels Reuters spoke to said they did not offer VPN services because it did not accord with government rules.
“It’s a compromise the hotels are making,” said Lin, the network security expert. VPNs were not technically illegal, but were in a “grey area” and “for well-known reasons” authorities were cracking down on them.
Staff and guests at a number of hotels said some kind of VPN service was still on offer, either built into the hotel’s Wi-Fi network or on demand to guests who needed access.
Reuters visited the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza in Beijing, both owned by InterContinental Hotels Group, where Google and Gmail were unblocked. A worker at the Hilton Beijing hotel said the same sites should be accessible.
Officials at IHG and Hilton did not respond to requests for comment.
Some hotels went further.
A technician at the Pangu 7 Star Hotel in Beijing, owned by exiled tycoon Guo Wengui, said resident guests could get full internet access, including sites like Facebook and Twitter, through its VPN-enabled “Pangu global” Wi-Fi network.
“We have a special VPN to cross the Great Firewall,” the worker told Reuters. “But it’s a little bit slow.”
Reuters couldn’t reach Pangu officials for comment.
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Scientists: Much of South Asia Could Be Too Hot to Live in by 2100
Climate change could make much of South Asia, home to a fifth of the world’s population, too hot for human survival by the end of this century, scientists warned Wednesday.
If climate change continues at its current pace, deadly heat waves beginning in the next few decades will strike parts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a study based on computer simulations by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Key agricultural areas in the Indus and Ganges river basins will be hit particularly hard, reducing crop yields and increasing hunger in some of the world’s most densely populated regions, researchers said.
“Climate change is not an abstract concept. It is impacting huge numbers of vulnerable people,” MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Business as usual runs the risk of having extremely lethal heat waves.”
The areas likely to be worst affected in northern India, southern Pakistan and Bangladesh are home to 1.5 billion people, said Eltahir, the study’s co-author.
Currently, about 2 percent of India’s population is sometimes exposed to extreme combinations of heat and humidity; by 2100 that will increase to about 70 percent if nothing is done to mitigate climate change, the study said.
Heat waves across South Asia in the summer of 2015 killed an estimated 3,500 people, and similar events will become more frequent and intense, researchers said.
Persian Gulf
Projections show the Persian Gulf region will be the world’s hottest region by 2100 as a result of climate change.
But with small, wealthy populations and minimal domestic food production requirements, oil-rich states in the Gulf will be better able to respond to rising heat than countries in South Asia, Eltahir said.
The study does not directly address migration, but researchers said it is likely that millions of people in South Asia will be forced to move because of blistering temperatures and crop failures unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Disaster experts from South Asian countries met in Pakistan last month to launch a toolkit to help city governments develop ways to manage the impact of heat waves in urban areas.
Ahmedabad, in western India, has already introduced a heat action plan — South Asia’s first early-warning system against extreme heat waves.
Authorities in the city of 5.5 million have mapped areas with vulnerable populations and set up “cooling spaces” in temples, public buildings and malls during the summer.
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Dow Jones Closes Above 22,000 — a 6th-straight Record High
The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a sixth-straight record Wednesday, closing above 22,000 for the first time, but experts point out that whatever goes up must always come down.
The Dow closed up a fraction at 22,016.
Healthy earnings reports from computer technology giant Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company, and airplane manufacturer Boeing were major contributors to the Dow hitting another major milestone.
The Dow Jones is an index of 30 major companies from a variety retail, manufacturing and service industries. It has been used as a gauge of the health of the U.S. stock market for more than 100 years.
The Dow is up 11 percent so far this year and all of Wall Street has been in what is known as a “bull market” for several years.
It has been buoyed, in part, by better-than-expected corporate earnings and expectations brought on by the pro-business Trump White House.
But some analysts say they cannot see a lot of room for the Dow to go much higher.
They say that while they expect more positive earnings reports, Congress’ inaction on President Trump’s proposed tax cuts could take some wind out of investor optimism.
Plus, they point out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of just 30 companies, which they say is sometimes a narrow gauge of overall investor confidence.
Some other world markets have outperformed the New York Stock Exchange so far this year, such as the Dow Jones China 88 Index, the eurozone’s Euro Stoxx Index and the Sao Paulo Bovespa Index in Brazil.
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US Scientists Able to Alter Genes of Human Embryos
U.S. scientists have succeeded in altering the genes of a human embryo to correct a disease-causing mutation, making it possible to prevent the defect from being passed on to future generations.
The milestone, published this week in the journal Nature, was confirmed last week by Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), which collaborated with the Salk Institute and Korea’s Institute for Basic Science to use a technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 to correct a genetic mutation for a heart condition.
Until now, published studies using the technique had been done in China with mixed results.
CRISPR-Cas9 works as a type of molecular scissors that can selectively trim away unwanted parts of the genome, and replace it with new stretches of DNA.
“We have demonstrated the possibility to correct mutations in a human embryo in a safe way and with a certain degree of efficiency,” said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and a co-author of the study.
To increase the success rate, his team introduced the genome editing components along with sperm from a male with the targeted gene defect during the in vitro fertilization process.
They found that the embryo used the available healthy copy of the gene to repair the mutated part.
The Salk/OHSU team also found that its gene correction did not cause any detectable mutations in other parts of the genome – a major concern for gene editing.
Still, the technology was not 100 percent successful – it increased the number of repaired embryos from 50 percent, which would have occurred naturally, to 74 percent.
The embryos, tested in the laboratory, were allowed to develop for only a few days.
“There is still much to be done to establish the safety of the methods, therefore they should not be adopted clinically,” Robin Lovell-Badge, a professor at London’s Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
‘Utmost Caution’
Washington’s National Academy of Sciences (NAS) earlier this year softened its previous opposition to the use of gene editing technology in human embryos, which has raised concerns it could be used to create so-called designer babies. There is also a fear of introducing unintended mutations into the “germline,” meaning cells that become eggs or sperm.
“No one is thinking about this because it is practically impossible at this point,” Izpisua Belmonte said. “This is still very basic research … let alone something as complex as what nature has done for millions and millions of years of evolution.”
An international group of 11 organizations, including the American Society of Human Genetics and Britain’s Wellcome Trust, on Wednesday issued a policy statement recommending against genome editing that culminates in human implantation and pregnancy, while supporting publicly funded research into its potential clinical applications.
The latest research involved a gene mutation linked to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the most common cause of sudden death in otherwise healthy young athletes. It affects around 1 in 500 people.
Salk’s Izpisua Belmonte, emphasizing that much more study is needed, said the most important practical application for the new technology could be in correcting genetic mutations in babies either while they are still in utero or right after they are born.
“It is crucial that we continue to proceed with the utmost caution, paying the highest attention to ethical considerations,” he said.
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New Website Aims to Track Russian-backed Propaganda on Twitter
A website launched on Wednesday seeks to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter, part of a growing non-governmental effort to diminish Moscow’s ability to meddle in future elections in the United States and Europe.
The “Hamilton 68” dashboard was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns.
The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a “near real-time” analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda.
The site was launched at a time when the Trump administration has shown reluctance to address Russian cyber attacks during ongoing investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow during the 2016 election.
U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers have warned that Russia will attempt to interfere in the 2018 congressional elections and the next presidential election in 2020.
Twitter accounts selected by the new website include those overtly involved in disinformation campaigns pushed by Russian propaganda outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, and users that share information promoting the Russian government.
It also includes automated bots and “cyborgs,” or users identified as partially automated and partially human-controlled, that helped amplify Russian propaganda.
“We’re not necessarily saying everyone in this list is getting a paycheck from the Kremlin,” said J.M. Berger, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, adding that the group had “very high confidence” accounts selected were spreading Russian disinformation.
U.S. intelligence agencies said Russia conducted a wide-ranging influence operation to discredit Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, a Republican, win the 2016 election.
Russia has denied the allegations, and Trump has inconsistently embraced or challenged the assessment of his own intelligence agencies.
The research group is exploring ways to conduct similar analyses for other platforms, including Facebook, Alphabet’s YouTube and Reddit, but such projects are more difficult because less data is openly accessible, Berger said.
Twitter said it was not involved in the project. It had no other comment.
The name for the website is taken from Federalist Paper 68, which was authored by U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as part of a series of essays anonymously published to defend the U.S. Constitution to the public.
Hamilton wrote of “protecting America’s electoral process from foreign meddling” in Federalist Paper 68, Alliance for Securing Democracy wrote in a blog post. “Today, we face foreign interference of a type Hamilton could have scarcely imagined.”
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UN Agencies Urge More Support, Funds for Breastfeeding
The World Health Organization and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recommend that mothers breastfeed within the first hour after giving birth and continue until their children reach age 2, with supplemental food as they grow older. Yet no country in the world meets these standards or provides enough support for breastfeeding mothers, according to a report the agencies released Tuesday.
“Breast milk works like a baby’s first vaccine, protecting infants from potentially deadly diseases and giving them all the nourishment they need to survive and thrive,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said in a press release.
Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, posed this question on UNICEF’s website: “What if governments had a proven, cost-effective way to save babies’ lives, reduce rates of malnutrition, support children’s health, increase educational attainment and grow productivity?”
Lake provided the answer: “They do: It’s called breastfeeding. And it is one of the best investments nations can make in the lives and futures of their youngest members — and in the long-term strength of their societies.”
According to the Global Breastfeeding Initiative, a partnership of 20 international agencies whose goal is to increase investment in breastfeeding worldwide under the leadership of UNICEF and WHO, breastfeeding can bolster brain development, which in turn can lead to a smarter, more productive work force.
Furthermore, breastfeeding saves mothers’ and babies’ lives. In the first six months of life, it helps prevent diarrhea and pneumonia, two major causes of infant death. Breastfeeding also reduces the risk of ovarian and breast cancer, two leading causes of death among women.
The World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, wants to see at least 50 percent of the world’s children under 6 months of age exclusively breastfed by 2025. Reaching that target will require an investment of an additional $5.7 billion, or just $4.70 per newborn, for such things as improving breastfeeding practices in maternity facilities and improving access to lactation counseling — and it could generate $300 billion in economic gains across lower- and middle-income countries by 2025 and save 520,000 children’s lives in the next 10 years, according to a World Bank study.
Because nursing mothers need support from their families and communities, and governments worldwide need to implement policies such as paid maternity leave and nursing breaks, the U.N. agencies declared August 1-7 World Breastfeeding Week.
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No More Freebies? India Plans Crackdown on Marketing by Drugmakers
India, one of the world’s largest markets for pharmaceuticals, is drawing up its first set of marketing rules for drugmakers, restricting gifts and trips offered to doctors and pharmacists to 1,000 rupees ($15), according to a draft proposal seen by Reuters.
Such rules are common overseas, but are not set in stone in India, where campaigners have long demanded a crackdown on unethical selling practices that include gifts ranging from electrical appliances to foreign trips to woo physicians and pharmacists into prescribing and stocking specific medicines.
The country has voluntary marketing guidelines for drugmakers, but critics say they are ineffective.
“In India, corruption and bribery of doctors is widespread,” said Samiran Nundy, a leading gastrointestinal surgeon. “I’ve seen a range of ways in which this works, from presents to doctors to paying for them to attend conferences.”
“It’s great that marketing rules are coming into place,” he added. “I hope that these will be enforced.”
Besides limiting marketing spending, the draft proposal — drawn up by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) and under review of India’s law ministry — also forbids drugmakers from making false claims on the curative abilities and efficacy of drugs.
An official at the DoP declined to comment on the draft’s specifics, but confirmed to Reuters that the order was under review, though the implementation date for the rules is not set.
The draft says a failure to abide by the rules would result in a marketing ban on a drugmaker for up to a year or more, depending on the degree of the violation. It would also lead to confiscation of all packs of the company’s highest-selling drug brands, which would then be given away to government hospitals.
Companies would also be able to turn a marketing suspension order into a fine, according to the proposal, by paying penalties of between 500,000 rupees ($7,800) and 100 million rupees ($1.56 million), depending on the order’s severity.
Trial samples
The rules limit the number of free samples a company can offer a doctor to full treatment courses for three patients.
But they don’t specify that only new medicine samples can be given away for free, noted Amitava Guha, national co-covener of the health care-focused civil society group Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.
“If this is applicable to all medicines of a company, there will be no change in the present situation,” he said, calling it a major loophole that the companies could exploit.
He also said the marketing ban penalty was vague as it did not specify if it would bar the company from marketing all, or specific, products. The penalty would be “meaningless” for a single product, as drug company salesmen market in private meetings so there is no material evidence, Guha said.
The Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), a lobby group of India’s largest drugmakers, said it supports mandatory rules for curbing undesirable marketing practices, but they should be transparent, easy to implement and unambiguous.
This “should not be reduced to yet another ‘Inspector Raj,'” IPA Secretary General D.G. Shah said, adding that rules should also address the need for doctors’ continuing medical education.
“Someone has to take responsibility of keeping doctors up to date with the latest advances in the field of medicines.”
The draft rules allow drugmakers to sponsor trips for doctors, pharmacists and relatives to attend seminars, medical conferences or scientific meetings, so long as the companies maintain a record of the minutes, expenses and agenda.
Mandatory code
In a letter last year, Tapan Sen, a member of India’s upper house of parliament, urged the government to act on drafting a mandatory code on the marketing of pharmaceuticals, citing irregular practices by several companies.
Indian media reported that the letter said the country’s largest drugmaker, Sun Pharma, Abbott India and privately-held Macleods Pharmaceuticals were among drugmakers found to have sent doctors on “pleasure trips.”
Abbott said at the time that it had a strict policy against providing gifts and other incentives to doctors, while Macleods refuted the allegations.
Sun told Reuters it organizes “continuous medical education” programs to educate doctors, not promote its products, and these are compliant with the voluntary marketing guidelines set by the government in 2015.
The current draft says companies will be allowed to organize screening camps or awareness campaigns at public health centers, but it bars advertising by stealth and mandates that doctors involved in such events be paid commensurate to their average daily income.
To ensure implementation of the rules, an Ethics Compliance Officer of the rank of joint secretary to the Indian government would be appointed.
Pharmaceutical marketing practices have long been a subject of controversy globally. In India, where health insurance is scarce and many rely on pharmacists for medical advice, critics say sketchy practices have led to over-prescription of strong cocktail drugs, causing drug-resistance.
GlaxoSmithKline was battered by a bribery scandal in China that landed it with a record $490 million fine in 2014.
It went on to slash the number of sales reps and overhaul its business globally, stopping sales-based incentives for drug reps and reducing paid junkets for doctors.
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Producer: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Delayed to Maintain Quality
The premiere of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS’s subscription streaming service, CBS All Access, was postponed nine months to maintain the quality of the brand.
Executive producer Alex Kurtzman told the Television Critics Association on Tuesday that much time had been spent discussing how to create this new world for TV that felt authentic to the Star Trek universe.
Also during that time, executive producer Bryan Fuller decided to exit the series to focus on other projects.
Kurtzman said it became clearer that the targeted January 2017 debut would compromise the quality of the show, so it was pushed back with the blessing of CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves.
Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green of The Walking Dead as the central character, First Officer Michael Burnham. She’s the foster daughter of the Vulcan Sarek, who is Spock’s father.
“We are telling a story that we believe in. Everyone is so passionate. The craftsmanship here in our entire company, behind the camera and in front of the camera, is nothing short of stellar,” said Martin-Green.
Kurtzman also debuted the theme song for Star Trek: Discovery, performed by a 60-piece orchestra. It plays homage to the original theme and the entire song will play under a credit sequence in each episode.
The timeline for the series is 10 years prior to the original series.
Executive producer Akiva Goldsman said, “We are going to cross paths with components that Trek fans are familiar with, but it is its own stand-alone story with its own characters and its own unique vision of Trek.”
Star Trek: Discovery also stars Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh and Shazad Latif.
The series premiere will broadcast on CBS September 24. Immediately following, the first and second episodes will stream on CBS All Access. New episodes going forward will be available on Sundays.
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1980s Soap ‘Dynasty’ Returns With Circa-2017 Mischief
Money! Power! Glamour! Catfights! The CW’s reboot of “Dynasty” will have much in common with the classic 1980s original.
But the new “Dynasty” aims to “kick it up a notch,” says Elizabeth Gillies, who plays Fallon Carrington, daughter of wealthy industrialist Blake Carrington, on the show. Pamela Sue Martin played her in the original series.
Gillies told TV critics Wednesday that her character is “as feisty as ever” and that she loves Fallon’s strength.
She played a strong woman on FX’s “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.” But on that show, her character was rough around the edges, while Fallon is refined.
Gillies noted that “Fallon doesn’t want to be a rock star. She wants to be CEO.”
That means trading in “crop tops and lace bras for Gucci and Christian Louboutins,” Gillies said.
“Dynasty” premieres Oct. 11.
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US Congress’ Next Big Battle: Tax Reform
As the U.S. stock market hit a new all-time high Wednesday, key U.S. lawmakers staked out core positions for a looming battle that could impact economic performance for decades: reforming America’s complicated and much-maligned tax system.
“Comprehensive tax reform represents the single most important action we can take now to grow the economy and to help middle-class families finally get ahead,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, adding that Washington has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to act.
“For families, we want to make their taxes simpler, fairer and lower. For small businesses, we want to provide the conditions they need to form, invest and grow,” McConnell said.
An object of near-universal ridicule, the federal tax code is thousands of pages long and forces many Americans to hire accountants or attorneys to comply with its vast array of provisions.
President Donald Trump made tax reform a major campaign promise last year, including lowering America’s corporate tax rate, the highest among the world’s major economies. Failure to deliver on what has been a core Republican pledge to voters for multiple election cycles would be a bitter pill for a party still licking its wounds over its inability — so far — to abolish former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
While Senate Democrats unified in opposition to repealing Obamacare, many say they are eager to work with Republicans on tax reform so long as certain conditions are met.
“First, don’t cut taxes for the top 1 percent [richest Americans],” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “Second, don’t increase the [federal] debt and deficit. And third, negotiate in a fair and open process.”
Opposition to reconciliation
Democrats are objecting to any Republican attempt to pass tax reform though reconciliation, a Senate procedure that sets aside the three-fifths majority commonly required to advance a bill. Under reconciliation, Republicans could approve tax reform using their narrow Senate majority, bypassing Democrats entirely.
Schumer warned that reconciliation would torpedo “bipartisan tax reform before a discussion between our two parties has even begun.”
“Is he [McConnell] closing the door on bipartisanship because he so dearly wants to cut taxes on the top 1 percent?” the minority leader asked. “The wealthy are doing great right now, God bless them.”
For his part, McConnell promised ample opportunities for Democrats to help shape a final tax reform bill.
“Our expectation is for this legislation to move through the committees this fall under regular order, followed by consideration on both the House and Senate floor,” the majority leader said. “There’s a great deal of bipartisan consensus about what ails our tax code, and my hope is our friends on the other side of the aisle [Democrats] will join us in a serious way to address it.”
Revenue-neutral
McConnell has said that tax reform should be revenue-neutral, meaning that any tax cuts would have to be offset by revenue increases in other areas of the federal code. It is widely assumed that Republicans will propose reducing a variety of tax rates paid by wage earners and businesses, while eliminating some tax deductions many Americans use to lower their tax bills.
For decades, some Republicans have argued that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating the economy, leading to higher output and more tax revenue. Democrats contend the theory was proven false under the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, which saw deficits rise after major tax cuts were enacted.
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James Comey Has Book Deal, Publication Set for Next Spring
Former FBI Director James Comey has a book deal.
Flatiron Books told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Comey is writing a book about leadership and decision making that will draw upon his career in government. Comey will write about experiences that made him the FBI’s best-known and most controversial FBI head in recent times, from his handling of the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to allegations of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump fired Comey in May and soon after told NBC News that he was angered by the FBI’s investigation into “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia,” which he called a fake story. Comey has since testified before Congress that Trump asked him to end an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn and kept memos about his meetings with the president.
According to Flatiron, Comey will cite “examples from some of the highest-stakes situations in the past two decades of American government” and “share yet-unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career.”
The book is currently untitled and scheduled for next spring.
“Throughout his career, James Comey has had to face one difficult decision after another as he has served the leaders of our country,” Flatiron Publisher and President Bob Miller said in a statement. “His book promises to take us inside those extraordinary moments in our history, showing us how these leaders have behaved under pressure. By doing so, Director Comey will give us unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in leadership itself.”
Comey was represented by Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin. Financial terms were not disclosed, but several publishers bid for the book and three officials with knowledge of the negotiations said the auction topped $2 million. The officials asked not to be identified because were not authorized to discuss the book.
Comey was appointed as FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed his successor, Christopher Wray, a former high-ranking official in President George W. Bush’s Justice Department who oversaw investigations into corporate fraud.
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Amazon, in Sign of Growth, Holds Job Fair for US Warehouses
Amazon is holding a giant job fair Wednesday and plans to make thousands of job offers on the spot at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses.
Though it’s common for Amazon to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping, the magnitude of the hiring spree underscores Amazon’s growth when traditional retailers are closing stores — and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online.
Nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 packing, sorting and shipping jobs at Amazon will be full time. Most of them will count toward Amazon’s previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.
The bad news is that more people are likely to lose jobs in stores than get jobs in warehouses, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
On the flip side, Amazon’s warehouse jobs provide “decent and competitive” wages and could help build skills.
“Interpersonal team work, problem solving, critical thinking, all that stuff goes on in these warehouses,” Carnevale said. “They’re serious entry-level jobs for a lot of young people, even those who are still making their way through school.”
At one warehouse — Amazon calls them “fulfillment centers” — in Fall River, Massachusetts, the company hopes to hire more than 200 people Wednesday, adding to a workforce of about 1,500. Employees there focus on sorting, labeling and shipping what the company calls “non-sortable” items — big products such as shovels, surfboards, grills, car seats — and lots of giant diaper boxes. Other warehouses are focused on smaller products.
And while Amazon has attracted attention for deploying robots at some of its warehouses, experts said it could take a while before automation begins to seriously bite into its growing labor force.
“When it comes to dexterity, machines aren’t really great at it,” said Jason Roberts, head of global technology and analytics for mass recruiter Randstad Sourceright, which is not working with Amazon on its jobs fair. “The picker-packer role is something humans do way better than machines right now. I don’t put it past Amazon to try to do that in the future, but it’s one of the hardest jobs” for machines.
Besides Fall River, the event is taking place at Amazon shipping sites in Baltimore; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Etna, Ohio; Hebron, Kentucky; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Kent, Washington; Robbinsville, New Jersey; Romeoville, Illinois and Whitestown, Indiana.
The company is advertising starting wages that range from $11.50 an hour at the Tennessee location to $13.75 an hour at the Washington site, which is near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
Amazon is also planning to hold events for part-time positions in Oklahoma City and Buffalo, New York.
Amazon is “insatiable when it comes to filling jobs at warehouses,” Roberts said. He said Amazon’s job offers could also help drive up wages at nearby employers, including grocery stores and fast-food joints.
“It has a relatively healthy effect in the surrounding area,” he said.
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Digital Nomads Work Remotely from Anywhere
Digital technology is changing how people live and work. There are now so-called “digital nomads” who move from city to city as they explore new places and cultures while earning a paycheck.
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Egypt Reserves Reach Record High of Over $36 Billion
Egypt’s foreign reserves reached over $36 billion in July, a record high, which the prime minister described as “good news” as it shows that the economy is recovering, the central bank said Tuesday.
The bank announced the increase in a brief statement saying that the figure is 4.7 billion dollars higher compared to the previous month. In December 2010, foreign reserves reached $36 billion.
Egypt’s Prime Minister Sherif Ismail hailed the increase of the foreign reserves saying, “this is an assuring message about the Egyptian economy and that we are capable of covering the needs of the Egyptian people.”
“This means that the Egyptian economy has recovered,” he said.
$12 billion loan from IMF
The rise comes after the government secured a $12 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. In order to qualify for that loan, the government imposed a set of tough economic measures, including subsidy cuts and the flotation of its local currency.
The economic measures were hailed by the IMF but have left many Egyptians struggling with both reduced buying power and spiraling inflation while the government struggles to generate jobs in country with an official population of 92 million.
This summer, Egypt raised electricity prices by more than 40 percent and increased gasoline prices by up to 55 percent while doubling the price of the household staple butane canisters, used for cooking.
Measures benefit middle, lower classes
Ahead of the latest hikes, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi approved a package of measures benefiting middle and lower class Egyptians, including income tax relief, bonuses for state employees, increases in pensions and ration card subsidies.
The government embarked on the economic reform program soon after el-Sissi took office three years ago. Egypt’s economy has been battered since the 2011 uprising and continues to face major challenges, including a rising Islamic militancy. Tourism, a major pillar of national revenue, was dealt a blow in 2015 when militants belonging to an affiliate of the Islamic State group downed a Russian airliner killing all 224 people aboard.
As Warming Brings More Malaria, Kenya Moves Treatment Closer to Home
When it rains in Emusala village, a person sick with a fever can find it hard to get to the nearest health center, which requires a trip along the slippery footpaths that lead to the nearest main road some 10km (6 miles) away, in the heart of Western Kenya’s Kakamega County.
But if the fever spells the onset of malaria, rapid diagnosis and treatment are essential.
That’s where Nicholas Akhonya comes in. With the aid of a simple medical kit and his mobile phone, Akhonya, a trained community health volunteer, is able to diagnose villagers with malaria in their own homes, offer treatment, and refer acute cases and pregnant women to health facilities for specialized care.
Malaria cases are on the increase in Kenya, and experts attribute the upsurge to changes in the climate.
According to Dr. James Emisiko, coordinator for the Division of Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases in Kakamega County, mosquitoes breed particularly well in stagnant water in warm temperatures.
The females feed on human blood in order to produce eggs, and if a mosquito carrying the malaria-causing plasmodium parasite bites a person, it is likely to infect them.
Kenya’s recent drought — the harshest in East Africa since 2011— followed by sporadic rainfall in the middle of this year has created a perfect breeding environment for mosquitoes, Emisiko told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The result is an upsurge of malaria cases, especially in the Western Kenya region and around Lake Victoria.
“The only way to control deaths from this life-threatening disease is to ensure that all fever cases are tested wherever the patients are, malaria-positive cases [are] treated and all complicated cases referred to nearby health centers,” the doctor said.
He said that parents in rural areas often initially give painkillers to children with fever. When families finally seek proper medical attention, it is often too late for those who have malaria to respond to simple anti-malarial drugs, and they require expensive hospitalization instead.
Calling in the Volunteers
To tackle the problem, for the past two years county governments in malaria-prone areas have worked with non-governmental organizations to train community health volunteers to diagnose the disease in patients’ homes, using rapid diagnostic kits.
The volunteers then treat those who test positive, and refer complicated cases to the nearest health center.
“In case of any complication, all I need is to have power on my mobile phone so that I can communicate with medical experts using the toll-free number for further advice,” said Akhonya, one of the volunteers.
The U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that there are 6.7 million new clinical cases of malaria in Kenya each year and 4,000 deaths, most of them in Western Kenya.
According to Moses Makokha, clinical officer in charge of the Bumala-A sub-county health center in Busia County, some malaria cases can be fatal little more than 24 hours after symptoms occur, especially in children below the age of five years and pregnant women.
In pregnant women, malaria can lead to miscarriage or other serious complications, Makokha said.
“It is always an easy disease to manage – but only if it is identified at the onset of the fever and treated immediately using the correct medication,” Makokha said.
Kakamega County’s government has trained 4,200 community health volunteers to manage simple malaria, working with Community Asset Building and Development (CABDA), a local NGO, and with support from Amref Health Africa, an international Kenyan medical charity headquartered in Nairobi.
The volunteers are supplied with test kits and basic drugs to treat the disease at no cost to patients.
Treating malaria at the village level, among other interventions, has helped reduce the prevalence of the disease in Kakamega County from 38 percent in 2013 to 27 percent in 2016, according to County Health Executive Peninah Mukabane.
“This is one of the success stories that we are all proud of,” Ephy Imbali, CABDA’s executive director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Cash – and Status
Refresher questions from trainers keep the volunteers on their toes, and ongoing training helps to keep their skills sharp, said Imbali. Experts from county health departments visit frequently to monitor the program.
Each volunteer receives a monthly motivational stipend of 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($20).
“Apart from the stipend, I have learned so many things in terms of health interventions which are not just important for my immediate family but also to the community where I live,” said Miriam Opechi, one community health volunteer and a mother of three children.
“I feel very happy whenever a patient gets well after my intervention. It gives me a complete satisfaction, and makes me feel a valuable member of the society, commanding a lot of respect from the villagers,” she said.
According to Imbali, the program makes it possible for residents of rural areas to get access to medicines even on weekends and holidays when public health facilities are usually closed.
Emisiko, Kakamega County’s health official, said the volunteers’ efforts reduce crowding at local health facilities, making it easier for health providers to attend to other important ailments.
But the work of community health volunteers is not always limited to malaria.
Simon Ondeyo, who hails from Emusala, said in a telephone interview that community health volunteers had treated his children for malaria a number of times.
But Ondeyo is himself is a tuberculosis patient who had given up on an arduous treatment regimen until community health volunteers began visiting him daily to ensure that he took his drugs.
Today he feels fully recovered — though is still completing his course of treatment.
“Without the volunteers, I do not know if I would be alive today,” he said.
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European Oil Majors Seek to Harness US Offshore Wind
Some European oil majors have made inroads into the emerging U.S. offshore wind energy market, aiming to leverage their experience of deepwater development and the crowded offshore wind arena at home.
Late entrants to the offshore wind game in Europe, which began with a project off Denmark 25 years ago and is now approaching maturity, they are looking across the Atlantic at what they view as a huge and potentially lucrative new market.
Norway’s Statoil has won a license to develop a wind farm of the New York coast, is marketing its new floating turbine to California and Hawaii and is retraining some oil and gas staff to work in its wind division.
Royal Dutch Shell bid for a lease offshore North Carolina earlier this year while Denmark’s DONG Energy, a wind energy pioneer which agreed to sell its oil and gas business in May, is in a Massachusetts-based offshore wind consortium, holds a lease off the New Jersey coast and has opened an office in Boston.
Offshore wind generation began in the United States late last year, ironically after the election of President Donald Trump. He is skeptical about climate change, complains about subsidies for renewable energy and battled against an offshore wind farm near his Scottish golf resort.
However, a string of federal seabed leases were awarded before Trump took office and more are planned. The investment needed to get projects going is one of the biggest
obstacles.
“Undeniably, offshore wind is a big boys’ game because it requires large amounts of capital because scale is such an important cost driver,” said Samuel Leupold chief executive of DONG Energy’s offshore wind business.
While DONG has shifted decisively towards renewables, Statoil and Shell are still firmly rooted in fossil fuels and other major European oil companies, in common with their U.S. counterparts, have so far steered clear of U.S. offshore wind.
Washington estimates its potential at 2,000 gigawatts (GW), many times anticipated capacity in Europe of 25 GW by 2020, but U.S. federal subsidies expire at the end of 2019 and while they may be renewed by Congress, that is no means certain.
Costs in Europe have fallen to a level that enabled DONG to place a zero subsidy bid earlier this year, but offshore wind farms are still multi-billion dollar projects. A push into deeper U.S. waters and the bigger turbines needed to compete without subsidies will keep price tags high.
Early Days
Trump signed an executive order in March expected to roll back his predecessor Barack Obama’s plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants. There is also no carbon price mechanism across the United States like those in Europe and elsewhere, although there are two regional ones.
U.S. oil companies have some investments in solar and onshore wind, but when it comes to offshore wind, many say they are waiting for a time when government support is not needed.
“Chevron supports renewables that are scalable and can compete without subsidies,” said Morgan Krinklaw, a spokesman for Chevron, which owns an onshore wind farm.
A report from analysts at Lazard in December pegged the cost of U.S. offshore wind at $118 MWh, around twice as much as onshore wind or combined-cycle gas turbines.
Asked to comment on that figure, Statoil, which is building its first floating wind turbine park off the Scottish coast, said costs were coming down and it was working to drive them down further, partly by redeploying existing staff.
The company has about 1,000 employees in the U.S. oil industry, said Stephen Bull, senior vice president of the company’s wind business. “There’s scope for us to plug into our existing oil and gas supply chain,” he added, referring to existing contracts with equipment and service suppliers.
Statoil spokeswoman Elin Isaksen said she did not expect any of its offshore wind projects in the U.S. to have begun construction by 2019 and that it was too early to quote numbers for the New York project, while acknowledging there was, as yet, no supply chain.
“We expect to see – and will help – the supply chain evolve rapidly in step with the broader industry as offshore wind takes hold in the U.S. in the coming years,” she said.
In Virginia, where Spanish utility Iberdrola’s Avangrid has secured an offshore wind licence, a rich marine engineering heritage is expected to help local companies gain work. Smaller European oil and gas firms are also gaining work.
JDR Cable Systems, a British company that has traditionally supplied subsea power lines to oil and gas platforms, earlier this year won a $275 million contract to provide electric cables for the largest U.S. offshore wind farm off the Maryland coast.
“We are well placed to develop business in the U.S. because of the existing relationships we have in Europe,” said John Price, global sales director for renewables at JDR.
State level decision-making on electricity procurement, the next stage of getting offshore wind off the ground, is helping.
Massachusetts, where DONG has secured a seabed license, last year issued a law requiring its utilities to buy up to 1.6 GW of offshore wind power by June 2027, with a tender to be held later this year.
DONG’s North America wind power president Thomas Bostrom said it would bid in the Massachusetts power purchase tender in December and would not comment on costs ahead of that. He too, emphasized his company was playing the long game.
“As excited as we are for offshore wind in the U.S., we are still in the early days of the industry,” Bostrom said.
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International Sting Hits Dark Web’s Promise of Anonymity
They are known as the “dark Web” — encrypted corners of the internet that promise anonymity to customers who want to buy or sell illegal drugs, weapons and other contraband.
But these futuristic marketplaces recently became much less anonymous after an international sting captured the addresses of thousands of users and shut down two of the biggest sites: first AlphaBay in early July, and then Hansa Market at the end of the month.
Now, many users are wary of joining the next secretive marketplace, and that’s exactly the point.
“Don’t be stupid and hop on the next big market,” one user wrote on the Reddit discussion forum where users openly trade tips on dark Web markets. “It will most likely be completely run by [law enforcement].”
U.S. and European law enforcement authorities say the closures of AlphaBay and Hansa Market were the largest dark Web criminal marketplace takedown in history.
To dark Web users, the message is clear, said Europol Director Robert Wainwright: “You’re not as safe, as anonymous, as you think you are.”
The takedown
AlphaBay and Hansa were two of the top three criminal markets on the dark Web, sites that sprang up in the wake of drug market Silk Road’s takedown in 2013.
Hansa’s users numbered in the five digits; AlphaBay had more than 200,000 customers and 40,000 vendors, making it 10 times as large as Silk Road. It generated nearly $1 billion in sales.
The operation to shutter AlphaBay and Hansa grew out of several independent investigations, according to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The investigation into AlphaBay appears to have started as early as 2015 when undercover agents posing as customers started making small purchases on the site. In one case, an agent bought an ATM skimming device; in another, an undercover officer purchased a small quantity of drugs.
In December 2016, investigators got a break when they came across a priceless clue: the site operator’s personal email address. In the days after AlphaBay’s launch in December 2014, investigators learned, the administrator included his personal email address — Pimp_Alex__91@hotmail.com — in AlphaBay’s “welcome email” to new users singing up for the site’s discussion forum.
It was the kind of gaffe that had exposed Silk Road’s founder and would lead to the downfall of AlphaBay’s creator.
Traced to website designer
The email address was traced to Alexandre Cazes, a French-speaking Canadian website designer from Quebec. Born in 1991, Cazes had posted the email address on a tech forum as far back as 2008 and later used it to create PayPal and LinkedIn accounts.
Meanwhile, Europol provided Dutch law enforcement authorities with a lead on Hansa Market that would allow them to identify the site’s administrators and locate its servers in Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands.
“When we knew the FBI was working on AlphaBay, we thought, ‘What’s better than if they come to us?’ ” Petra Haandrikman, leader of the Dutch investigative team that brought down Hansa, told cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs.
Investigators then coordinated the timing of the two sites’ takedown. A plan was hatched: The Dutch would move in first, followed by the Americans.
On June 20, as German police arrested Hansa’s two German administrators in Germany, Dutch law enforcement authorities moved to seize control of the site. The takeover was seamless.
On July 4, the FBI took AlphaBay offline but made it look like an outage. Unaware that the FBI was on his tail, Cazes swung into action to bring the site back online.
When Thai police, assisted by FBI and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, raided Cazes’ house in Bangkok the next day, they found he’d contacted AlphaBay’s server host to request a reboot and was logged into its forum to answer comments by AlphaBay users.
On his unlocked, unencrypted laptop, agents found passwords for AlphaBay, its servers and other online identities associated with the site.
As rumors swirled that AlphaBay operators had absconded in what is known as an “exit scam,” authorities sought to quell the talk: AlphaBay was down for maintenance and would be up again soon, they posted on Reddit on July 6.
In the days that followed, the number of users on Hansa jumped 800 percent as AlphaBay users streamed in, according to Wainwright of Europol. To cope with the flood of orders, authorities temporarily closed registration to new users.
“There was a lot of frustration from ex-AlphaBay users that weren’t allowed to register on the site,” Haandrikman said.
Then on July 20, authorities pulled the plug. The Dutch shut down Hansa, putting up a banner saying the site had been “seized and controlled” since June 20. A nearly identical FBI banner went up on AlphaBay.
U.S. and European authorities went public with the news. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called AlphaBay’s seizure “the largest dark Web criminal market takedown in history.” Wainwright of Europol said the criminal dark Web had taken “a serious hit” and that there were “more of these operations to come.”
Intelligence yield
The intelligence yielded by the Hansa operation “has given us a new insight into the criminal activity of the darknet, including many of its leading figures,” Wainwright said.
Dutch authorities said that 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers had been identified and shared with Europol. Over 500 deliveries were stopped in the Netherlands alone. Europol sent “intelligence packages” on drug shipments to law enforcement agencies in 37 countries. Wainwright said the identified users would be subject to follow-up investigation by Europol and partner agencies.
Joseph Campbell, a former assistant FBI director, said the intelligence — users’ names and phone numbers, email and IP addresses, banking and wire transfer information — is invaluable to law enforcement authorities looking to dismantle criminal networks on the internet.
“They can utilize that to identify criminals, identify victims, identify sources of the contraband, sources of the funding, transiting of the currency, look for money laundering activities, where the funds coming from, are they going to offshore banks,” said Campbell, who is now a director at Navigant Consulting.
The next AlphaBay
Meanwhile, business is down on the dark web as shellshocked “AlphaBay refugees” lie low, waiting for the dust to settle. But sooner or later, they’ll find a new home.
“Just like a massive gang takedown in a city, some other group is going to come in, unless preventive activities take place, and fill that void even more,” Campbell said.
Still, he added, the operation is going to be “deterrent to some individuals.”
Law enforcement has long been criticized for playing catch up with criminals. Acting FBI Director Andy McCabe acknowledged the criticism but said that was “the nature of criminal work.”
“It never goes away,” McCabe said at a July 20 news conference. “You have to constantly keep at it. And you’ve got to use every tool in your toolbox. And that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
For the FBI, cybercrime represents “a high-priority threat,” Campbell said.
“So they’re going to continue to target their resources against this threat and work to identify where activities are taking place that are that are victimizing people,” he said.
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Scientists Turn to Big Data in Hunt for Minerals, Oil and Gas
Scientists searching for everything from oil and gas to copper and gold are adopting techniques used by companies such as Netflix or Amazon to sift through vast amounts of data, a study showed Tuesday.
The method has already helped to discover 10 carbon-bearing minerals and could be widely applied to exploration, they wrote in the journal American Mineralogist. “Big data points to new minerals, new deposits,” they wrote of the findings.
The technique goes beyond traditional geology by amassing data about how and where minerals have formed, for instance by the cooling of lava after volcanic eruptions. The data can then be used to help find other deposits.
“Minerals occur on Earth in clusters,” said Robert Hazen, executive director of the Deep Carbon Observatory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and an author of the study.
“When you see minerals together, it’s very like the way that humans interact in social networks such as Facebook,” he said.
Hazen said the technique was also like Amazon, which recommends books based on a client’s previous orders, or by media-streaming company Netflix, which proposes movies based on a customer’s past viewing habits.
“They are using vast amounts of data and make correlations that you could never make,” he told Reuters.
Lead author Shaunna Morrison, also at the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Carnegie Institution, said luck often played a big role for geologists searching for new deposits.
“We are looking at it in a much more systematic way,” she said of the project.
Among the 10 rare carbon-bearing minerals discovered by the project were abellaite and parisite-(La). The minerals, whose existence was predicted before they were found, have no known economic applications.
Gilpin Robinson of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who was not involved in the study, said the USGS had started to collaborate with the big data project.
“The use of large data sets and analytical tools is very important in our studies of mineral and energy resources,” he wrote in an email.
The DCO project will also try to collect data to examine the geological history of the moon and Mars.
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