Month: December 2017

Lady Gaga Achieves ‘Dream’ with Las Vegas Residency

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Pop star Lady Gaga is swapping touring for a two-year stint in Las Vegas, joining the likes of music divas Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Shania Twain who have recently taken up concert residencies in the entertainment mecca.

Gaga, 31, said on Tuesday she will start a two-year engagement at the 5,300-seat Park Theater at the Park MGM resort on the Las Vegas strip in December 2018.

“It’s the land of Elvis, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, Elton John, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli. It has been a life-long dream of mine to play Las Vegas,” the singer said in a statement.

“I am humbled to be a part of a historical lineup of performers, and to have the honor of creating a new show unlike anything Vegas has ever seen before,” she added.

Gaga made her name almost 10 years ago with catchy pop songs, arresting dance routines and outrageous stunts like setting her piano on fire and wearing a raw meat dress.

In February, she kicked off her the halftime show at the annual Super Bowl by singing “God Bless America,” from the top of Houston’s NRG Stadium.

But in September, the “Bad Romance” singer postponed until early 2018 the European leg of her “Joanne” world tour, citing severe pain. She was hospitalized in 2013 for a hip injury and more recently has said she suffers from the musculoskeletal disorder fibromyalgia.

Las Vegas residencies have become a popular draw for top music stars because they allow performers to remain in one place and draw large crowd without the rigors of touring.

Exact dates and ticket prices for Lady Gaga’s residency will be announced at a later date.

The Park Theater is part of the transformation of the Monte Carlo hotel on the Las Vegas Strip into a redesigned Park MGM resort.
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‘Ticking Time Bomb’ as Pacific Children Bear Mental Scars of Climate Disasters

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Each time teenager Freddy Sei hears the rumble of thunder, sees rains pound the earth in his small coastal village or watches strong winds whip palm trees, he is gripped with fear.

The 15-year-old lives in Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation that two years ago was ravaged by monster cyclone Pam with Freddy watching as huts were blown away and water rushed in to submerge his village of South River on Erromango island.

“I was scared because the winds just took the houses away, there was heavy rain and the river banks was overflowing,” said Freddy, speaking through a translator.

“I’m scared that if it ever floods at night, it will come into my house and the flood will take me away. That’s one of my greatest fears,” said the small-framed boy, one of nearly 200 residents of the isolated seaside community of South River — vulnerable to flooding, landslides and rising seas.

A barrage of natural disasters across the low-lying Pacific islands is inflicting lasting mental trauma on children, with one healthcare expert describing it as a “ticking time bomb.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) depression, anxiety, and suicide tend to increase after a natural disaster, according to a March report by American Psychological Association (APA).

People who survive multiple disasters, such as those living in disaster-prone areas, are likely to experience severe trauma, depression and other mental health problems, the APA said.

But children suffer the most.

“After climate events, children typically demonstrate more severe distress than adults … Similar to physical experiences, traumatic mental experiences can have lifelong effects” and even impair brain development, said the report.

‘Time bomb’

As climate change exacerbates the frequency and severity of natural disasters, mental health problems are going to worsen for children, said counsellor Sisilia Siga from Empower Pacific, a mental health service provider in Fiji.

“It’s going to get worse, if [climate change] continues, especially with children since it’s hard for them to handle all these things that’s happening,” she said in an interview in Fiji’s capital Suva.

Siga said she treated villagers in coastal areas during the aftermath of Cyclone Winston last year, the worst storm ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, which crashed into Fiji, killing at least 43 and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

She said she saw many children too traumatized to swim in the sea again, or having flashbacks when there were strong winds or when the ocean was at high tide.

Psychologist Loyda Santolaria, who was deployed in disasters like the 2010 Haiti earthquake, said children are often left to their own devices in the aftermath of a disaster, since many parents are too busy trying to secure food and shelter.

“The parents are unable to cope in a natural disaster, neither are they able to support their children’s vulnerability and needs,” Santolaria, who now works in Vanuatu with aid agency CARE International.

She said many of these children will grow up not knowing how to deal with these traumatic emotions and will become more susceptible to stressful situations.

This may lead to violence, depression, drug use or even suicide, said Alex Pheu, a mental health nurse working in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila.

“It’s like a ticking time bomb. You have people who are scarred for life,” said Pheu. “[Children] learn to live with it until someone commits suicide, or someone hangs themselves on a tree, which I’ve heard has happened.”

With few mental health workers in the Pacific region, Pheu said training villagers in psychological “first aid,” such as spotting signs of depression or anxiety before it becomes a full-blown issue, could help to boost resilience.

“Prevention and detection — that’s the most important thing we should aim for,” he said. “But we always come too late and when we try to undo the knots it’s very, very hard to manage.”

As for children like Freddy, living in a small community accessible only by boat, surviving the next inevitable flood or cyclone preoccupies his young mind.

“Climate change is getting worse,” he said. “I’m scared of it because there could be another flood and I don’t want that to happen.”

Reporting by Lin Taylor. Editing by Ros Russell and Belinda Goldsmith.
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Analysis: US Tax Cut to Deliver Corporate Earnings Gift

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A planned massive Republican tax overhaul has led Wall Street strategists to revise their 2018 corporate earnings forecasts sharply higher, but the jury is out on how long the accelerating effect on profits will last.

The tax bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives approved on Tuesday, will cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, beginning Jan. 1, and would be the biggest positive factor for U.S. earnings in 2018. A Senate vote was still awaited.

Although there is a wide range of profit estimates for 2018, the expected tax plan benefit has strategists now calling for double-digit profit gains in 2018 over 2017, compared with their forecasts for mid-single-digit gains without the tax cuts. S&P 500 earnings growth for 2017 was an estimated 11.9 percent, according to Reuters data.

“This is going to drive the earnings numbers. [Tax] is going to overwhelm everything,” said Credit Suisse Group U.S. Equity Strategist Jonathan Golub, who was waiting for the bill’s passage to adjust his own earnings estimates.

With the U.S. and world economies expanding, consumer demand strong and interest rates low, corporate profits were expected to be healthy next year. The tax law will give them an added jolt of adrenaline.

Many strategists estimate the cut in corporate tax could deliver an extra boost to earnings next year of between about 7 percent to more than 10 percent. Some of the forecasts were based on a previous version of the legislation calling for a tax cut to 20 percent.

In one of the most recent projections, UBS on Friday said it saw a potential 9.1 percent boost to S&P earnings per share because of the tax plan.

Ripple effect unclear

It is unclear how great the lasting positive impact will be.

“The retention of this benefit is unclear,” said Savita Subramanian, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch’s head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy, who forecasts the plan could add $19, or about 14 percent, to S&P 500 earnings including potential paybacks from repatriation, with the net recurring benefit likely to be closer to $11, or 8 percent.

Subramanian, in a presentation earlier this month, said companies may look to use the benefit for short-term lifts. For example, retailers, which have been suffering from competition from Amazon, may want to pass the benefit on with bigger sales and more promotions.

“You have to wonder how much of that benefit you’re going to really see float to the bottom line on a longer-term basis,” Subramanian said.

The boost to profits goes a long way to justify some of the rapid rise in stock valuations since Donald Trump’s election as president a year ago. Stronger earnings mean less stretched price-to-earnings ratios.

The S&P 500 has gained about 5 percent since mid-November when the House passed its tax overhaul bill, and is up about 20 percent year-to-date.

Golub and others said after the initial boost to forecasts, the profit numbers could still drift higher in the months ahead as companies adjust their plans.

“We’ll get a big jump in ’18, but the ripple effect of the tax bill could be the big surprise in the second half of ’18,” said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

“The tax cuts … will give companies a lot more flexibility to do dividend increases, buybacks and hiring, and that’s what’s difficult to get a handle on,” Hellwig said.
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Facebook to Notify Users When Photos of Them Are Uploaded

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Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would begin using facial recognition technology to tell people on the social network when others upload photos of

them, if they agree to let the company keep a facial template on file.

The company said in a statement it was making the feature optional to allow people to protect their privacy, but that it thought some people would want to be notified of pictures they might not otherwise know about.

The feature would not immediately be available in Canada and the European Union, Facebook said. Privacy laws are generally stricter in those jurisdictions, though the company said it was hopeful about implementing the feature there in the future.

Tech companies are putting in place a variety of functions using facial recognition technology, despite fears about how the facial data could be used. In September, Apple Inc revealed that users of its new iPhone X would be able to unlock the device using their face.

Facial recognition technology has been a part of Facebook since at least 2010, when the social network began offering suggestions for whom to tag in a photo. That feature also is optional.

For those who have opted in, Facebook creates what it calls a template of a person’s face by analyzing pixels from photos where the person is already tagged. It then compares newly uploaded images to the template.

Facebook deletes the template of anyone who then opts out, Rob Sherman, Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer, said in a statement.

Under the new feature, people who have opted in would get a notification from Facebook if a photo of them has been uploaded, although only if the photo is one they have access to.

The company plans to add an “on/off” switch to allow users to control all Facebook features related to facial recognition, Sherman said. “We thought it was important to have a really straightforward way of controlling facial recognition technology,” he said.

Facebook said it also plans to use facial recognition technology to notify users if someone else uploads a photo of them as their profile picture, which the company said may help reduce impersonations, as well as in software that describes photos in words for people who have vision loss, so that they

can tell who is in a photo.

Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Leslie Adler.
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Postcards of DC Daily Life from a Mexican Immigrant

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Artist Carlos Carmonamedina is curious about his surroundings. Since growing up in Mexico, traveling around to Europe for school, he’s always seen the cultures in a city’s periphery. When he moved to Washington D.C. two years ago, he was inspired to create a work that represents the city’s visual identity. 

“This project was for me a perfect excuse to get to know the city better and get out there and discover what’s going on around me,” Carmonamedina said. He has created almost 100 postcards in his DC series.

What was originally intended as a personal challenge, has gained popularity online and in the DC community. Carmonamedina sees it as documenting how people live in Washington D.C. at this current point in history.

“It’s just an extension of my personal curiosity and how I approach the world I live in,” Carmonamedina said. “So right now if I’m interested about how the city behaves and how the city changes, it’s natural that my art is gonna reflect that as well.”

Carmonamedina brings a perspective to the city that is different from its political reputation. His postcards include images of everyday human behavior: white collar workers taking their lunch at the fountain in DuPont Circle, a man and his child watching planes take off from Reagan Airport from Gravely Park, local musicians and artists celebrating their work at the DC Funk Parade—all parts of the city that are lost amid the headlines of Washington insiders, backdoor deals in Congress and the influence of K Street.

His ideas come from what he sees on a daily basis. He bikes around the city, looking for an area that he hasn’t been to before, and then sketches what he sees—the architecture, people and natural environment.

His most popular postcard, however, is from the Women’s March last January.

“I try to avoid any political involvement in my art, just because I want people in different audiences to feel comfortable with what they are looking at,” Carmonamedina. “But also, at the same time, I cannot avoid to escape the fact that we live in a very political city and protests and situations that they affect the rest of the country are happening right here.”

Christmas market

For two years now, Carmonamedina has also sold his postcards and prints at the Heinrich Christmas Market in downtown Washington. It’s one of the few times where he gets to interact with multiple fans of his work, rather than just one at a time. DC locals come by often looking for a postcard of their home neighborhood, or they request that he visit their neighborhood or favorite part of the city to draw next.

“I wanted to reach a larger audience,” Carmonamedina said. “Before I was working mostly in gallery circuits where very few people will attend. And this project allows to me interact with a different broader group of people.”

Carmonamedina grew up in Mexico, but left for Romania when he was 24 to pursue a career as an artist. He lived in the UK, Slovakia and France before moving to Washington D.C.

“I’ve been very much into the gallery circuit, trying to get exhibitions here and there, organizing residencies,” Carmonamedina said. ”But I have always been interested in comics and illustration and I wanted to do something a little bit more down to earth which I could also reach, again, a larger audience.”

This project is different from his pervious endeavors, but his art has always had similar elements. “How I approach things like humor, death, peripheries, and how people who live outside of the typical economic cultures … behave,” Carmonamedina said. “So it’s always about empathy and having a little bit of, putting yourself in other people’s shoes.”

As his project gains popularity, Carmonamedina is looking for new sources of inspiration that represent the city not only through his eyes, but through the eyes of the community.

“I feel like, so far has been very much my perspective as a newcomer, but I want to get to know people who have been here for a longer period.” Carmonamedina said. “I’m sure that they are going to give me a different insight of how the things are here.”
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Postcards of DC Daily Life by a Mexican Immigrant

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In the two years since he came to Washington, D.C., Carlos Carmonamedina has created almost 100 postcards of everyday scenes in the nation’s capital. Many have DC landmarks in the background, like the White House, the Capitol and the Washington Monument, but all give a taste of what life in D.C. is like. Niki Papadogiannakis spoke to Carlos about why he documents D.C.
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Amnesty: Failed and Exploited, Nepal Migrant Workers Trapped in Debt Cycle

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Nepali migrant workers are trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation due to a failure by authorities to crack down on recruitment firms that charge illegally high fees for jobs abroad, human rights group Amnesty International said on Monday.

Wages sent back by an estimated four million Nepalis – mainly employed working in construction or as domestic workers in the Middle East, Malaysia and South Korea – make up more than a quarter of the poor Himalayan nation’s gross domestic product.

Nepal permits recruitment agencies to charge 10,000 rupees ($100) from each migrant as a service charge for finding them work with foreign firms, who pay for workers’ travel and visa.

But a survey of over 400 Nepali migrants by Amnesty found workers are not only forced up to 12 times more the permitted amount to agencies, but also that most are forced to borrow the money from unscrupulous money lenders at high interest rates.

“Migrant workers all too often end up trapped in the soul-destroying situation of working abroad for years simply to pay off the huge, often illegal fees they were charged to take the job,” said Amnesty International’s James Lynch.

“The Nepali government’s weak enforcement of the law is playing straight into the hands of extortionists and loan sharks. Tackling this exploitative industry is a matter of urgency,” Lynch added in a statement.

The London-based human rights group said almost two-thirds of the migrant workers, who responded to a telephone survey conducted in Nepal and Malaysia, had paid excessive, illegal recruitment fees to hiring firms.

Workers’ calculations about how to repay these loans were often derailed by unpaid wages or other forms of labor exploitation overseas. More than half of respondents said they received lower monthly salaries than promised by the agencies.

Bhuban K.C., a senior official in Nepal’s labor ministry, said authorities had launched awareness programs for potential migrants to ensure they are not cheated by agencies, adding that compensation was being provided to victims.

Nepal was working with India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which also send migrant workers to the Middle East and Malaysia to ensure that the workers’ interests are protected, he added.

“We are raising our voice internationally to ensure that migrants are not cheated. What we are doing may not be adequate, but we are concerned about our workers welfare,” K.C. told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Amnesty said the Nepali government must do more to enforce laws penalizing exploitative recruitment agencies and urged overseas companies – who use the agencies to source workers – to check abuse within their supply chains.

“Companies who employ migrant workers in the Gulf and Malaysia directly or through their suppliers or subcontractors also have a responsibility,” said Lynch. “Until they take action, they are reinforcing the debt trap that is destroying so many lives in Nepal.”
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CryptoKitties Brings Blockchain to the Masses

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How do you explain the abstract concepts of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies?

With adorable, digital kittens of course.

CryptoKitties, an online game and marketplace featuring virtual kittens, has become an entry point for curious outsiders looking to dabble in cryptocurrencies – decentralized digital monies that rely on blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactions.

Company reps say their main goal is to teach people how to use blockchains; open, distributed ledgers of cryptocurrency transactions. Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol, but there are others.

“As part of launching this project, we were really trying to educate people who haven’t perhaps bought Ethereum before, people who aren’t in the crypto space.” said Elsa Wilk, marketing director at Axiom Zen, the Canadian tech consultancy that created CryptoKitties.

That may have been the initial idea. But marry cute kittens and a buzzy, emerging tech phenomenon and kitten chaos ensued.

CryptoKitties’ cheerful, user-friendly interface has caused its popularity to surge among blockchain products and services. To date, there have been over $16 million USD in transactions resulting from the purchase, breeding and sale of digital kittens.

“Using something like cats is a very unintimidating, friendly, cuddly way to be introduced to a very hard, technical subject like the blockchain,” said Wilk. “We really took the approach of making the blockchain more approachable.”

How it works

CryptoKitties is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Purchases are made using the Ether cryptocurrency, which can be purchased with real money through a digital currency exchange like Coinbase. To begin buying and selling CryptoKitties, users first set up a digital wallet with MetaMask, an Ether wallet and browser for applications built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Kittens cost anywhere from .004 ether (about $3 USD) to upwards of 100,000 ether (a whopping $79.3 million USD). Wilk said the objective of the game is to make more kitties, but one of the company’s ultimate goals was to test whether a blockchain platform could support the buying and trading of unique, digital cats – what Wilk calls “crypto collectibles.”

At launch, the company released about 250 “Gen Zero” kittens, that is, those with no “parents.” Thereafter, a new kitten is released every 15 minutes. According to Wilk, the number of original kittens that will ever be released is approximately 50,000.

Critics of CryptoKitties contend that because the game is only partially decentralized, it is not a true representation of an Ethereum “DApp” or decentralized application. Despite being built on the open-source Ethereum platform, CryptoKitties’ interactions exist within a centralized database and are beholden to policies established by Axiom Zen.

“We really wanted to test the technology, to be able to put cats on the blockchain. We had to develop a new protocol in the process of doing this,” said Wilk.

The game’s popularity has also stalled traffic on the Ethereum network and created delays in the rate of Ethereum transactions processed. All blockchain transactions must first be “mined” or processed by a computer within a blockchain’s decentralized network.

“Because we’re building something that has never really been done before, just the sheer volume of traffic that we received initially caused some scaling problems,” said Wilk.

Still, for Wilk and Axiom Zen, CryptoKitties so far has been a success.

“It is one of the first, I would say, tangible use cases for a cryptocurrency project,” said Wilk, “Being able to actually take an action and have something real and tangible, I think is driving a lot of the interest that we’re seeing.”
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US Blames North Korea for Global Cyber Attack

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The United States is publicly blaming North Korea for unleashing a cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year.

In an op-ed piece posted on the Wall Street Journal website Monday night, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert said that North Korea was “directly responsible” for the WannaCry ransomware attack, and that Pyongyang will be held accountable for it.

“The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Bossert writes. “North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious.”

Bossert says President Donald Trump’s administration will continue to use its “maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.”

Pyongyang has previously denied being responsible for the attack.

But, the U.S. government has assessed with a “very high level of confidence” that a hacking entity known as Lazarus Group, which works on behalf of the North Korean government, carried out the WannaCry attack, senior officials told Reuters.
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Salt Lake City Targets Bid for 2030 Winter Olympics

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Utah officials studying the possibility of Salt Lake City making a bid to host another Winter Olympics said Monday they would rather host the games in 2030, but could be ready if they’re needed for 2026. 

Hosting the games after the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles would provide a better opportunity to raise sponsorship dollars, said Fraser Bullock, co-chairman of the committee and a key player in the city’s 2002 Olympics. Los Angeles has exclusive rights to negotiate first with potential sponsors to help fund their games, meaning hosting the games before them would be more complicated than after, Bullock said.  

“But if nobody else bids for 2026, we would certainly be available,” Bullock said.

Denver and Reno, Nevada have also expressed interest in the U.S. Internationally, cities considering making a bid include Sion, Switzerland; Calgary, Canada; and Sapporo, Japan.

The Salt Lake City committee held its second meeting Monday, discussing in broad strokes budget, venues, staffing, transportation and environmental issues. 

The group is leaning toward recommending that the city make another bid but will issue its full report to state leaders on Feb. 1. It will include a budget estimate and other detailed plans.

Salt Lake City’s pitch would be centered on being able to host the Olympics for less money than other cities by using existing venues. Some venues need improvements and refurbishing, but officials say they wouldn’t have to build anything from scratch. 

It’s likely to still cost $1.2-$1.6 billion, officials have said. 

“Our budget will be a fraction of every other bid city that is out there,” Bullock said.

Even though the 2030 Olympics would normally be awarded in 2023, Bullock said Utah must have its bid ready much earlier. Bullock says there’s a chance the International Olympic Committee awards the 2026 and 2030 games at the same time in 2019.

That’s what the IOC did in September for the first time ever, awarding the 2024 Summer Olympics to Paris and the 2028 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles. 

Salt Lake City would first have to persuade the United States Olympic Committee it’s a better candidate than Denver and Reno because the country can only put one city in the bidding per cycle. 

The USOC has until next March to pick a city for 2026, though chief executive Scott Blackmun said earlier this month that officials believe the 2030 Winter Olympics are more realistic. He said though they are still keeping open the possibility of making a bid for 2026.

Denver, which famously rejected an offer to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, has assembled a committee to take a tough-minded look at whether the city should pursue a bid for another Olympics. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has asked the group, which includes former Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning as well as Gov. John Hickenlooper and the heads of companies such as Vail Resorts and Liberty Global, to look at whether the Olympics could be privately financed, gauge community support and study the possible environmental impact.

Among the international cities with interest, Bullock said he thinks Sion, Switzerland, is the best candidate. But, he said the European country needs to generate support first from its residents and lawmakers. Utah officials say they have polling that shows nearly nine in 10 state residents approve the idea of hosting the Olympics again. 

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert thinks Salt Lake City should make the bid, saying that the state still reaps benefits from hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics, which not only brought billions in spending but invaluable exposure. 

“Foreign direct investment in Utah comes with this exposure,” Herbert said. “It was a great door opener for us on international business.” 

If Utah officials decide to bid, they may have to answer questions about a bidding scandal that marred the 2002 Games and resulted in several International Olympic Committee members losing their positions for taking bribes.

Bullock said he’s not worried because the 2002 Olympics were a success and the current IOC members remember that and not the scandal. 

“We have a new group of IOC members who think of Salt Lake City very fondly,” Bullock said. 

 
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US EPA Seeks Comment on Carbon Rule Replacement

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a notice that it wants public input for a possible replacement of Obama-era regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that the agency is repealing.

The agency’s advance notice kicks off a 60-day comment period on “specific topics for the Agency to consider in developing any subsequent proposed rule,” according to an EPA release.

The move comes after the agency proposed in October to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a collection of emissions standards for U.S. states intended to reduce pollution from power plants – the largest emitters of greenhouse gases – by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“The EPA sets out and requests comment on the roles, responsibilities, and limitations of the federal government, state governments, and regulated entities in developing and implementing such a rule, and the EPA solicits information regarding the appropriate scope of such a rule and associated technologies and approaches,” the notice says.

When EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt first announced he planned to repeal the Clean Power Plan, it was not clear whether the agency intended to replace it. At his first congressional hearing earlier this month, Pruitt said he planned to replace it.

The notice specifically asks for comment on measures to reduce carbon emissions directly at a power plant.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan allowed states to reduce power plant emissions by using a series of different measures across their plant fleets, which some industry groups said went beyond the scope of the federal Clean Air Act.

The EPA is also asking for comment on the role and responsibility of states in regulating power plants for greenhouse gas emissions.

The notice said EPA also wants to hear from states including California and New York, which already have programs to reduce emissions from power plants, to see how their programs could interact with a replacement rule.

Environmental groups, who plan to continue challenging the agency’s moves against the CPP in court, said on Monday the agency is not serious about offering a valid replacement to the Obama-era regulation.

“A weaker replacement of the Clean Power Plan is a non-starter. Americans – who depend on EPA to protect their health and climate – deserve real solutions, not scams,” said David Doniger, director of climate and clean air at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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Plummer Brings on the Charm in Reshot ‘All the Money in the World’

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When director Ridley Scott decided to remove Kevin Spacey from his film All the Money in the World and reshoot it with Christopher Plummer, he did not just pull off an extraordinary feat.

Plummer’s performance as U.S. oil billionaire J. Paul Getty also subtly changed the tone of the movie about the sensational 1973 kidnapping of Getty’s 16-year-old grandson.

“There is a coolness to Kevin. That’s his style, even when he’s being emotional,” Scott said in an interview.

“This man [Plummer] has enormous charm, and when you apply that charm to such, sometimes really hard, words, it makes it much more interesting,” he said.

Part biography and part thriller, All the Money in the World dramatizes the kidnapping in Italy of John Paul Getty III and his grandfather’s refusal to pay a $17 million ransom despite being the richest man in the world.

In a rare move, Scott announced in November that he would reshoot the finished film with Plummer after allegations of sexual misconduct against Spacey, saying he feared negative publicity would damage the film’s prospects.

Spacey issued an apology for the first reported incident, involving actor Anthony Rapp. He has since been accused of misconduct by more than 30 men and dropped from the next season of Netflix TV series House of Cards.

Reuters has been unable to verify the allegations against Spacey. The Oscar-winning actor is seeking unspecified treatment, and a representative on Monday did not respond to a request for comment.

The Sony Pictures movie, now starring Plummer along with original cast members Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg, will be released in Europe later this week and in the United States on Dec. 25.

Plummer, 88, sought to bring humanity to Getty, although he said he “made no pretense at research” for the role ahead of a nine-day reshoot in London and Rome in mid-November. He did not see Spacey’s original scenes.

“I had to follow the writing, all in a very short space of time,” Plummer said. “I saw him more vulnerable than the script suggested … so he would have some dimension and some humanity.”

Plummer, Scott and Williams were nominated last week for Golden Globe awards.

Scott said he was initially drawn to the project not so much because of the kidnapping by the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, who cut off their victim’s ear, but because of the elder Getty.

“He’s an enigmatic character who isolated himself through wealth. When somebody becomes that wealthy, all the friends start evaporating, so he was an isolated individual,” the British director said. Getty died in 1976.

Scott said the $40 million reported budget for the film plus $10 million for reshoots was “a little high.” The costs were borne by production company Imperative Entertainment.

He said he hoped the publicity around the decision to reshoot six weeks before its scheduled release would help rather than overshadow the film.

“I think it may have people attracted to it out of curiosity who normally wouldn’t come and see this film.”
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Brazil Court Approves Compensation for Decades-old Depositor Losses

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A Supreme Court justice on Monday approved an agreement to compensate bank depositors for losses caused by government policies several decades ago, settling more than a million legal disputes that have hung over Brazil’s banking system since the 1980s.

Depositors who lost their savings due to economic programs applied in the 1980s and 1990s to tackle hyperinflation will have two years to sign up for the compensation deal, Justice Dias Toffoli ruled.

Those who are owed up to 5,000 reais ($1,520) will be fully reimbursed, while those with larger liabilities will get between 8 percent and 19 percent less.

Around 60 percent of the depositors covered by the agreement are owed up to 5,000 reais, according to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban). The total value of reimbursements will depend on how many depositors opt in to the scheme.

Reuters had reported in November that banks were likely to agree on reimbursing a total of around 10 billion reais, far below initial central bank estimates of up to 342 billion reais.

Fitch Ratings said earlier this month that such an agreement would be beneficial to the nation’s banks, which have made enough provisions to cover the reimbursements.

Lenders Itaú Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Bradesco SA, Santander Brasil SA, Banco do Brasil SA and Caixa Econômica Federal have signed off on the deal. Other banks can still join.

Under former Presidents  José Sarney and Fernando Collor, Brazil pursued several unorthodox policies to fight galloping inflation, such as confiscating investments in savings accounts.

Reimbursements will be paid in up to three years in as many as five installments, adjusted for the official inflation index.

($1 = 3.2922 reais)
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Facebook Reveals Data on Copyright and Trademark Complaints

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Facebook announced Monday that it removed nearly 3 million posts, including videos, ads and other forms of content, from its services during the first half of 2017 following complaints of counterfeiting and copyright and trademark infringement.

The worldwide data on intellectual property-related takedowns is a new disclosure for Facebook as part of its biannual “Transparency Report,” Chris Sonderby, a deputy general counsel at the firm, said in a blog post.

“We believe that sharing information about (intellectual property) reports we receive from rights holders is an important step toward being more open and clear about how we protect the people and businesses that use our services,” Sonderby wrote.

Transparency report

The ninth Facebook transparency report also showed that government requests for information about users increased 21 percent worldwide compared with the second half of 2016, from 64,279 to 78,890.

For intellectual property disputes, Facebook offers monitoring tools that alert rights holders to suspected copies of their videos and songs on Facebook and use of their brand.

Rights holders can send takedown requests for unauthorized uses to a team of Facebook content analysts.

Entertainment and media industry groups have long expressed frustration with the process, contending that they bear too much of the internet policing burden and that online services should be more proactive about stemming infringement.

377,400 complaints

Facebook did not supply data about earlier periods or release individual requests, a level of detail that advertising rival Alphabet Inc provides for requests to remove Google search results.

Aggregate data shows Facebook received about 377,400 complaints from January through June, with many referencing multiple posts. About 60 percent of the reports related to suspected copyright violations on Facebook.

A “small fraction” of requests were excluded because they were not sent through an official form, Facebook said.

The company removed user uploads in response to 81 percent of filings for counterfeiting, 68 percent for copyrights and 47 percent for trademarks, according to its report. The percentages were roughly similar for Instagram.
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US Bars Drones Over Nuclear Sites for Security Reasons

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The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it will bar drone flights over seven major U.S. nuclear sites, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The move is the latest in a series of growing restrictions on unmanned aerial vehicles over U.S. sites that have national security implications.

The new restrictions begin Dec. 29 and include the Hanford Site in Washington State, Idaho National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, Pantex Site in Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Site and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The FAA said it is considering additional requests from other federal security agencies to bar drones.

Earlier this year, the FAA banned drone flights over 133 U.S. military facilities. The Pentagon said in August that U.S. military bases could shoot down drones that endanger aviation safety or pose other threats.

The FAA also banned drone flights over 10 U.S. landmarks in September, including the Statue of Liberty in New York and Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, at the request of national security and law enforcement agencies.

It separately barred drone flights over the USS Constitution in Boston, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The list also includes Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, Hoover Dam in Nevada and Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board said a September collision between a small civilian drone and a U.S. Army helicopter was caused by the drone operator’s failure to see the helicopter because he was intentionally flying the drone out of visual range.

The incident between a U.S. Army UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter and a DJI Phantom 4 drone near Staten Island, New York, occurred as concerns mount over the rising number of unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace.

The helicopter landed safely, but a 1 1/2-inch (3.8-cm) dent was found on the leading edge of one of its four main rotor blades and parts of the drone were found lodged in its engine oil cooler fan. The Army said previously the helicopter was not targeted and that it was struck by a drone being operated by a hobbyist.

Government and private-sector officials are concerned that dangerous or even hostile drones could get too close to places like military bases, airports and sports stadiums.
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Families Field Test Autonomous Vehicles

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It’s all fun and games until a family gets behind the wheel. That’s the whole idea behind Volvo’s Drive Me project. Automated vehicles are now being test driven by families as part of a multi-stage experiment that’s taking place in Norway. VOA’s Steve Redisch reports.
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Apple’s 2017 iPhone Models Give Taiwan’s Weary Tech Sector a Reprieve

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A boom in production of Apple iPhones is helping lift the economy of Taiwan, an industrial center that still relies on high-tech manufacturing contracts despite increasing competition from offshore.

Apple’s phone sales in the third quarter this year grew 5.7 percent over the same period of 2016, ahead of a cross-brand increase of 3 percent to 383 million units, market research firm Gartner says.

Orders for older iPhones as well as the iPhone X, which is seen taking off next year, have solidified orders for parts supplied by tech firms in Taiwan, analysts say.

Tech specialists say the Silicon Valley icon is looking this year to Taiwanese firms for chip production, camera modules, displays and final assembly.

Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology often assembles Apple gear at sprawling factories in China, for example. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest chipmaker, is building the A11 processor for the iPhone 8, local media reports say.

“It’s a good shot in the arm,” said John Brebeck, Taipei-based managing director of the Hong Kong investment consultancy Peace Field. “If you’ve got Apple making a new chip, if you’ve got the OLED (display) guys and if you’ve got Foxconn with the assembly, the camera module guys, that’s a pretty big chunk of Taiwan GDP.”

A reprieve as offshore competition intensifies

Officials in Taipei worry that China will take a growing share of the world’s hardware manufacturing business, a trend spotted in 2013 when Taiwan’s tablet PC assembly began moving across the strait. China’s costs are generally lower and production scales higher.

Taiwanese high-tech, an aging industry worth about one-fifth of the island’s $528 billion GDP, has long depended on Apple among other developers for orders.

Tech hardware contracts often follow from years of trusted relationships based on quality supplies or assembly, Gartner’s Taipei-based research vice president Tracy Tsai said, citing orders for Macs as an example.

Mac shipments should grow 4 percent this year and 3 percent in 2018 as users replace older devices, she said.

“Notebooks are a something that’s very focused on previous quality and the numerous standards maintained by suppliers, what they measure up to,” Tsai said. “It’s not so easy to change it all, so (it’s) still mainly about Taiwan.”

Apple declined to comment for this report, and its Taiwanese contractors seldom discuss the sources of their business.

Cycles in global demand for consumer electronics highlight Taiwan’s dependence on high-tech. When demand sagged in 2015 and early 2016, Taiwan’s income from exports shrank for 17 straight months. It has stabilized since then.

A tale of cameras and displays

Taiwan-based Largan Precision has made iPhone modules over at least the past six years, analysts believe. But the iPhone X comes with three-dimensional cameras equipped for face recognition, and given the depth of that new technology Largan may share orders.

Apple is expected to tap several suppliers for the related parts, said Bryan Ma, devices analysis vice president with market research firm IDC in Singapore.

Production of smartphone displays also shows pressure from China. Taiwanese display makers AU Optronics and Innolux ranked among IDC’s top five firms for market share in the third quarter.

But BOE Technology of Beijing reached the top spot with a 23.5 percent market share.

BOE gets subsidies from local government in China. It has held prices down and splits its business between higher-end OLED smartphone screens and the basic LCD type used by a range of consumer electronics, said Hattie He, an analyst for mobility service at Canalys in Shanghai. The Apple X uses OLED displays.

“To many Chinese vendors, BOE provides an affordable alternative to the international suppliers, gaining an edge in the OLED transition phase,” He said. “As display is part of the solution, being a leading provider will help BOE continue its growth.”

Chinese PC maker Lenovo and telecom equipment manufacturers Huawei Technologies and ZTE are reaching “sufficient scale to take their businesses worldwide,” Strategy&, a consulting group under PwC, said in a report. “They will be joined, in turn, by hundreds and then thousands more.”

Gains in 2018 from the iPhone X

Apple’s iPhone shipments next year will rise 8 percent to 240 million largely because of the X model, Ma with IDC says.

Apple had already returned to growth in China in the third quarter while posting “strong sales” in emerging markets such as India, Gartner says. The iPhone X got off to a late start, extending benefits to suppliers into next year.

“The expectation always has been that this 10th anniversary edition is going to hit big and clearly as the product came out it was obvious that they had done a lot in the product to make it dramatically different from generations of the past,” Ma said.
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Jazz Superstar Keely Smith Dies at 89

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Jazz superstar Keely Smith, best known for her immortal duets with her late husband Louis Prima, has died of heart failure at 89.

Smith began her professional career her hometown of Norfolk, Virginia when Prima hired her to sing with his band while she still a teenager.

Smith was known for her cool demeanor, her deep smoky voice, and distinct black pageboy haircut, a counter-balance to the high-energy trumpet-playing Prima.

They won the very first Grammy award for best pop vocal performance by a duo for their 1959 hit “That Old Black Magic.”

Smth’s solo career thrived after divorcing Prima in 1961, making albums and becoming a top attraction in nightclubs in Las Vegas and New York.

 

 
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Bitcoin Futures Begin Trading on CME, Price Declines

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Another security based on the price of bitcoin, the digital currency that has soared in value and volatility this year, began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Sunday.

The CME Group, which owns the exchange, opened up bitcoin futures for trading at 6 p.m. EST on Sunday. The futures contract that expires in January opened higher at $20,650, then declined steadily. The futures were trading at $18,775 at 9:00 p.m. EST, down $725.

The CME futures, like the ones that CME competitor the Cboe started trading last week, do not involve actual bitcoin. The CME’s futures will track an index of bitcoin prices pulled from several private exchanges. The Cboe’s futures track the price of bitcoin prices on the particular private exchange known as Gemini.

Each contract sold on the CME will be for five bitcoin.

As bitcoin’s price has skyrocketed on private exchanges this year, largely under its own momentum, interest on Wall Street has grown. The virtual currency was trading below $1,000 at the beginning of the year, and rose to more than $19,000 on some exchanges in the days leading up to its debut on the Cboe and CME. Bitcoin was trading at $18,417 Sunday evening on Coinbase.

But the growing interest in bitcoin has raised questions on whether its value has gotten too frothy. The Securities and Exchange Commission put out a statement last week warning investors to be careful with any investment in bitcoin or other digital currencies. Further, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has proposed regulating bitcoin like a commodity, not unlike gold, silver, platinum or oil.

Futures are a type of contract where a buyer and seller agree on a price on a particular item to be delivered on a certain date in the future, hence the name. Futures are available for nearly every type of security out there, but are most familiarly used in commodities, like oil wheat, soy and gold.

Bitcoin is the world’s most popular virtual currency. Such currencies are not tied to a bank or government and allow users to spend money anonymously. They are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they are traded.

A debate is raging on the merits of such currencies. Some say they serve merely to facilitate money laundering and illicit, anonymous payments. Others say they can be helpful methods of payment, such as in crisis situations where national currencies have collapsed.
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UN Urges Afghan Warring Sides to Facilitate Crucial Anti-Polio Drive

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The United Nations is calling on all parties in the Afghan conflict to facilitate health workers in conducting Monday’s urgent polio vaccination campaign in a volatile southern district with the highest number of polio virus cases of any district in the world.

U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Toby Lanzer warned Sunday the situation in Shahwalikot district in Kandahar province puts hundreds of thousands of children at risk. He said a polio vaccination campaign throughout the district is more urgent than ever

Afghan officials last week reported a new case of wild polio virus, raising the number of cases in Kandahar to five and the nationwide total to 12 in 2017.

Afghan authorities with support from UNICEF and WHO are to vaccinate thousands of children in Shahwalikot starting Monday.

“The outbreak of polio in Shahwalikot means that Afghanistan remains one of only three countries in the world that is still polio-endemic and polio eradication is at risk globally,” Lanzer noted.

“I call on the authorities and all people with influence, including the leaders of the communities in Shahwalikot, to ensure that this polio vaccination campaign takes place by helping health workers, facilitating their task and protecting them and their supplies so that all children are protected against polio.”

Shahwalikot has been the scene of deadly clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents. Southern Afghan provinces, including Kandahar, have been hub of insurgent activities.

Lanzer said that International humanitarian law stipulates clear responsibilities for all warring sides to facilitate the anti-polio drive.

“Together, with the support of all actors on the ground, we can help Afghans rid themselves once and for all of this terrible disease,” emphasized the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator.

Afghanistan and Pakistan officially are now the only two nations across the globe to have reported wild polio virus cases so far this year, though the numbers of cases have dipped to historic lows. Pakistani authorities have reported six cases so far in 2017.

Nigeria is the third country in the world with ongoing wild polio-virus transmission, but so far this year no new cases have been reported.

 
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