Month: March 2018

Flu Vaccines More Effective for Children Than for Adults

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So far, 114 children in the U.S. have died from influenza or a flu-related illness, and the flu season is not yet over.

Most of those children had not been vaccinated against the virus, Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

In her testimony Thursday before a House of Representatives subcommittee, Schuchat said that although this year’s vaccine effectiveness was relatively low — the CDC’s preliminary survey shows it is 36 percent effective overall — its effectiveness in children is much higher, at 59 percent.

When asked why, Schuchat acknowledged that infectious disease specialists don’t know, but she offered two theories.

“One is, children’s immune response is often better than adults, particularly better than older adults. A second is your response to an influenza vaccine may differ when it’s the first time you’ve been exposed to influenza or the vaccine,” she said.

Flu vaccine’s benefits

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get a flu vaccine every year, although only about 60 percent of children in the U.S. get that vaccine. Children are more likely to get the virus and spread it, and Schuchat said having more children vaccinated is in the public interest.

“We know that flu vaccines can prevent disease and reduce severity, and we know that they can also prevent spread,” she said.

Getting the flu vaccine doesn’t mean someone won’t be hospitalized or even die from the flu, but the vaccine makes it much less likely.

One study found that, for healthy children, the flu vaccine reduced the risk of dying by almost two-thirds. For those children whose medical condition put them at greater risk, the vaccine cut their risk of death in half.

Peak flu has passed

Although the peak of the flu season has passed in the U.S., Schuchat said, “There’s still a lot of flu out there.”

This year’s flu season started a month earlier than most, and the predominant strain, H2N2, an A strain, is more virulent than the B strains that are also circulating. Another difference from regular flu seasons is that the virus circulated through the entire continental U.S. at the same time.

The virus peaked in early February, but the season has several more weeks to go.

Schuchat told the subcommittee that the B strains are more common right now than they were a few weeks ago, which may actually be good news because the CDC found that the vaccine is 42 percent effective against influenza B viruses.

She told the subcommittee, “Some vaccine is better than no vaccine protection.”
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Watchdog: Western Tech Used for Hacking in Turkey, Syria

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A Canadian company’s hardware is being used to hack internet users along Turkey’s border with Syria, researchers said Friday, adding that there were signs that Kurdish forces aligned with the United States might have been targeted.

The revelation comes as Turkey presses its offensive against the Kurds dug in along the country’s frontier with northwestern Syria, a conflict that threatens to disrupt the American-led effort to extinguish the Islamic State group. The apparent use of Canadian technology to target a U.S. ally was an irony underlined by Ron Deibert, the director of the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, which published a report on the spying.

“These companies are not closely regulated, and that can lead to a lot of unintended consequences, including consequences that harm our foreign policy interests and human rights interest as well,” Deibert said. “It’s a strong argument for government control over this kind of technology.”

Canadian tech

 

Citizen Lab identified the hardware behind the hacking as PacketLogic devices produced by Procera, a Fremont, California-based company that was recently folded into Canada-based network management firm Sandvine, which is owned by American private equity group Francisco Partners. 

 

In a statement issued before the report’s release, Sandvine said it investigates all allegations of abuse but said it had been unable to complete its inquiry because Citizen Lab refused to provide the company with its findings in full. 

“Once we have the necessary data, we will conduct a full investigation and take appropriate action,” Sandvine said.

The statement also said Citizen Lab’s allegations were “technically inaccurate and intentionally misleading,” but a representative for the company has yet to supply an example of a misleading or inaccurate claim.

Government spying

Citizen Lab said it discovered the hacking after a European cybersecurity company reported that network service providers in two unidentified countries were trying to compromise their users using a powerful hacking technique known as network injection. Citizen Lab scoured the internet for signs of the spying and eventually traced the activity to the Turkish provinces of Adana, Hatay, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir and to the Turkish capital, Ankara, as well as parts of northern Syria and Egypt. 

 

Network injection — so-called because malicious software is injected into everyday internet traffic by whoever controls the network — has long been feared as a particularly powerful form of government spying.

“This can potentially be used to target anyone in the country with the click of the button,” said Bill Marczak, the lead author of the report.

 

Although the identities of those being spied on in Turkey and Egypt aren’t clear, Marczak said that the devices appeared to be installed on the network belonging to Turk Telekom, a leading phone and internet provider in Turkey as well as parts of northern Syria. He said there were hints suggesting some of the targets are affiliated with the YPG, the Kurdish Marxist rebel group which is fighting Turkish forces for control of the northwestern Syrian province of Afrin. Although Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization, the group provides the backbone of the U.S.-backed operations against the Islamic State in eastern Syria.

 

American officials acknowledged Monday that ground operations against the jihadist group’s remnants in eastern Syria were on hold because Kurdish fighters were being diverted to the battle against Turkey. 

Turk Telekom statement

 

Turk Telekom said in a statement that it complies with Turkish law and doesn’t interfere with internet users’ access. It added that the company “does not redirect any internet user to receive malicious downloads of popular software applications.” A representative for the company did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.

 

Sandvine’s ties to the Turkey government have been the subject of previous reporting. In 2016, Forbes reported that engineers at Procera were so troubled at the prospect of supplying surveillance hardware for use by Turk Telekom that six of them quit in protest. 

 

“I do not wish to spend the rest of my life with the regret of having been a part of (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s insanity, so I’m out,” one the engineers said in a letter of resignation quoted by Forbes.

 

LinkedIn shows at least 16 Procera-Sandvine employees listed as working in Egypt or Turkey. One Sandvine engineer based in Cairo listed “lawful interception” — a commonly used euphemism for state-sanctioned surveillance — as one of his interests.
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Age No Barrier to Enjoying Sports

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Two remarkable women are putting to rest the idea that sports are for the young. Faith Lapidus has their stories.
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Students Learn Real Skills By Creating Virtual Businesses

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Students around the United States are creating virtual businesses that produce simulated products, which are marketed and sold for virtual money. Mike O’Sullivan reports that hundreds of student entrepreneurs came to Pasadena, California, to promote the virtual companies they have created.
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Competition Heavy at Thailand Elephant Polo Competition

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The action was hot and heavy — especially heavy — as competition began Thursday in Thailand’s King’s Cup Elephant Polo tournament, a quirky charity event whose proceeds benefit the beasts who are the games’ stars.

The game deviates from standard polo in several aspects, aside from the mounts weighing upward of 2,200 kilograms (5,000 pounds). Two people, the player and a mahout, or trainer, sit astride each elephant. The mallets are about two meters (6.6 feet) long, and women are allowed to use both hands to wield them.

Elephants are the de facto national animal of Thailand, and for a time even adorned the country’s flag. But in the past few decades, they have fallen on hard times, as deforestation has deprived them of a habitat where they can roam wild and led to massive unemployment in logging, the sector where tamed elephants could once earn an honest living.

The tournament’s organizer, a Thai-owned international hotel chain, say that since the games began in 2001, originally in the seaside resort city of Hua Hin but now in the capital, Bangkok, they have raised almost $950,000 for projects benefiting Thailand’s elephants, “including housing for the mahouts and families, shelters for the elephants and a mobile blood centrifuge and elephant ambulance for the Thai Elephant Conservation Center.”

The playing beasts can count on a special treat after each match, sugar cane or a nutritious mix of molasses and rock salt in rice balls, to replace depleted vitamins and minerals.
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Bones Found in 1940 Probably Amelia Earhart’s, Study Says 

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Bones found in 1940 on a western Pacific Ocean island were quite likely to be remains from famed aviator Amelia Earhart, a new analysis concludes.

The study and other evidence “point toward her rather strongly,” University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz said Thursday. 

Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937, and the search for an answer to what happened to her and her navigator has captivated the public for decades.

Jantz’s analysis is the latest chapter in a back-and-forth that has played out about the remains, which were found in 1940 on Nikumaroro Island but are now lost.

All that survive are seven measurements, from the skull and bones of the arm and leg. Those measurements led a scientist in 1941 to conclude the bones belong to a man. In 1998, however, Jantz and another scientist reinterpreted them as coming from a woman of European ancestry, and about Earhart’s height. But in 2015, still other researchers concluded the original assessment as a man was correct. 

Now Jantz weighs in with another analysis of the measurements, published in January in the journal Forensic Anthropology. 

For comparison, Jantz used an inseam length and waist circumference from a pair of Earhart’s trousers. He also drew on a photo of her holding an oil can to estimate the lengths of two arm bones.  

Analysis showed “the bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer,” he wrote in the journal article. It’s highly unlikely that a random person would resemble the bones as closely as Earhart, he wrote.

In a phone interview, Jantz noted that some artifacts found on the island also support the possibility that the bones came from Earhart. 

“I think we have pretty good evidence that it’s her,” he said.
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Catholic Women Urge Pope to Tear Down Church’s ‘Walls of Misogyny’

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Roman Catholic women led by former Irish president Mary McAleese demanded a greater decision-making role for women in the Church on Thursday, urging Pope Francis to tear down its “walls of misogyny”.

McAleese was the key speaker at a symposium of Catholic women called “Why Women Matter”, attended by hundreds of people and followed by many others around the world via web-streaming.

The Women’s Day event was held at the headquarters of the Jesuit religious order after the Vatican withdrew permission for it to be held inside its walls when organizers added controversial speakers without its permission.

McAleese, who supports gay marriage and the ordination of women as priests, joked about the change of venue to a location just a block away from the Vatican walls, saying: “I hope all their hearing aids are turned on today”.

She said the Church’s ban on a female priesthood had “locked women out of any significant role in the Church’s leadership, doctrinal development and authority structure”.

The Church teaches that women cannot be ordained priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles. Those calling for women priests say he was only following the norms of his time.

“We are here to shout, to bring down our Church’s walls of misogyny,” she said, adding that the Church’s position on keeping women in a subordinate role to men had “kept Christ out and bigotry in”.

“How long can the hierarchy sustain the credibility of a God who wants things this way, who wants a Church where women are invisible and voiceless in Church leadership?” she said in her address. McAleese was Irish president between 1997 and 2011.

Many women, she said, “experience the Church as a male bastion of patronizing platitudes, to which Pope Francis has added his quota”.

The pope has promised to put more women in senior positions in the Vatican but critics say he is moving too slowly.

Other women speakers included Zuzanna Radzik, a Catholic theologian from Poland, who described the struggle to make priests and bishops in her homeland take her seriously as an intellectual on a par with men.

Many in the audience were nuns, who cheered on the speakers who demanded more rights for women in the Church.

Last week, a Vatican magazine denounced widespread exploitation of nuns for cheap or free labor in the Roman Catholic Church, saying the male hierarchy should stop treating them like lowly servants.

The article in the monthly “Women, Church, World”, remarkable for an official Vatican publication, described the drudgery of nuns who cook, clean and wait on tables for cardinals, bishops and priests.
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Judge to Weigh Whether Trump’s Twitter Blocks Violate Free Speech

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A federal judge is expected to hear arguments on Thursday about whether President Donald Trump violated Twitter users’ free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution by blocking them from his account.

The arguments before U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan are part of a lawsuit brought last July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and several individual Twitter users.

Trump and the plaintiffs are seeking summary judgment, asking Buchwald to decide the case in their favor without a trial.

Twitter lets users post short snippets of text, called tweets. Other users may respond to those tweets. When one user blocks another, the blocked user cannot respond to the blocker’s tweets.

The plaintiffs have accused Trump of blocking a number of accounts whose owners criticized, mocked or disagreed with him in replies to his tweets.

They argued that Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, is a public forum, and that denying them access based on their views violates the First Amendment.

Trump in court papers countered that his use of Twitter is personal, not a “state action.”

Even if it were a state action, he said, his use of Twitter was a form of “government speech,” not a public forum.

Trump’s Twitter use draws intense interest for his unvarnished commentary, including attacks on critics. His tweets often shape news and are retweeted tens of thousands of times.
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11 Nations to Sign Pacific Trade Pact as US Plans Tariffs

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Trade ministers from 11 Pacific Rim countries are set to sign a sweeping agreement to streamline trade and slash tariffs just as U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to formalize new tariffs on aluminum and steel to protect U.S. producers.

The deal to be signed Thursday in the Chilean capital is an outgrowth of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump pulled the U.S. out of last year.

Many feared the agreement would not prosper without its most influential country. But the remaining 11 members pressed ahead, saying it shows resolve against protectionism.

The pact includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
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US First Lady to Present International Women of Courage Award

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The White House says Melania Trump will present the International Women of Courage Award later this month.

The first lady also will deliver remarks at a March 21 State Department ceremony recognizing women who have shown courage and leadership in pressing for women’s rights worldwide.

The State Department award began in 2007 to commemorate International Women’s Day, which is Thursday. More than 120 women from more than 65 countries are being honored this year.

The first lady says in a statement that the courage shown by the honorees furthers her belief “in the powerful impact women can make through solidarity and support of one another.” She adds that “our strength is something to be celebrated.”

Mrs. Trump also participated in last year’s awards ceremony.
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Latinos Grab Oscars Spotlight, and Hope to Hold It

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The 90th annual Academy Awards were, by any definition, a moment of triumph for Latinos.

Guillermo del Toro became the third Mexican-born filmmaker to win best director, and it was his lavish Cold War fantasy “The Shape of Water” that was crowned best picture. Pixar’s box-office smash “Coco,” the biggest budget studio release to feature a largely Hispanic cast, won best animated feature and best song. Lin-Manuel Miranda reminded viewers of Puerto Rico, rebuilding from Hurricane Maria. Lupita Nyong’o advocated for the Dreamers. Rita Moreno returned, resplendently, in the dress she wore to the Oscars in 1962. And Chile’s “A Fantastic Woman” won best foreign language film.

But the Oscars were also, by any measure, an aberration. As much as Hispanics had the spotlight at Sunday’s ceremony, they are seldom granted center stage by Hollywood the rest of the year.

“It was kind of ironic,” said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. “By having so many presenters, you’re presenting that this is a very diversified business when it’s not. You can appreciate that they’re there. But then you can ask yourself: Is this really the way Hollywood is? And the answer is no.”

Despite accounting for 18 percent of the U.S. population, and 23 percent of frequent moviegoers, according to the Motion Picture Association’s 2017 statistics, Hispanics are chronically underrepresented in the movies. A study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism found that only 3 percent of speaking characters in the top 100 movies of 2016 were Latinos.

There were no Latinos among the acting nominees this year, nor are there most years. Demian Bichir (“A Better Life”) was the last Latin American nominated, six years ago. Only a handful of Latino actors have ever won an Oscar, including Moreno, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn and Benicio del Toro.

America Ferrera, in a Deadline column in 2016, wrote: “All audiences want to see the world they live in reflected on screens big and small. At a certain point, it becomes unavoidable to notice that we’re being ignored.” Chris Rock, in a 2014 column for The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough?”

But while (hash)OscarSoWhite brought renewed focus on the industry’s poor track record in diversity, Latinos have often been left out of the discussion.

 

 The National Hispanic Media Coalition held two protests ahead the Oscars, one outside the annual academy luncheon and another in Hollywood on Saturday. But Nogales believes stronger action is necessary. He says that he’s asked each of the six major studios to meet with the watchdog group within the next ten days or the coalition will begin boycotting one studio at a time.

“It’s a take-it or leave-it proposition,” said Nogales, who advocates for more American-born Latinos in media. “We’re 50 million strong so we can hurt people’s bottom line.”

That box-office power has been especially obvious with “Coco,” a film that Pixar shifted during development to tell a more indigenously Mexican story. Adrian Molina was also added as co-director. It’s made $745 million worldwide and set new box-office records in Mexico.

“We started making `Coco’ six years ago and it was a very different political climate, of course, than we find ourselves in now,” director Lee Unkrich told reporters backstage Sunday. “While we were making the film, we had a change of presidency and a lot of things started to be said about Mexico and about Mexican-Americans that was unacceptable.

“We began to feel a new urgency to get the movie out into the world,” he said. “We knew how important it was.”

President Donald Trump, whose immigration policies and pledge to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico has been deeply unpopular among Latinos, followed up the Oscar broadcast by tweeting Monday that Mexico had to do “much more on stopping drugs from pouring into the U.S.”

Del Toro, though, spoke on the Dolby Theatre stage about the power of art to “erase the lines in the sand.” The 53-year-old filmmaker, born in Guadalajara, began his first speech by saying, “I am an immigrant.”

His win joins him with his countrymen, Alejandro Inarritu (“Birdman,” “The Revenant”) and Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”) — who are together known as the “Three Amigos” — as the three Mexican-born filmmakers to win best director, and all in the last five years. Long friends who share their scripts with one another and rely on each other for advice, they have together dominated the Oscars for half a decade like few before them.

“Every time we can demonstrate in any forum, be it sports, science, art, culture, anywhere, what we have to bring to the world discourse, to the world conversation, is extremely important,” del Toro said backstage. “And it’s extremely important when we do it to remember where we’re from, because it’s honoring your roots, honoring your country.”
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‘A Wrinkle in Time’ – a Big Leap for Its Teenage Star

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Storm Reid tried to play it cool when Ava DuVernay told her she’d gotten the lead role in Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” but it wasn’t long before the tears started flowing.

“I flipped out,” says Reid, now 14 and in the ninth grade.

The Atlanta-native started acting at age 3 after she told her mother that she wanted to be a “stuperstar.” She’s had bit roles in television (“NCIS: Los Angeles,” ”Chicago P.D.”) and film (“12 Years a Slave,” ”Sleight”), but nothing even close to something like “A Wrinkle in Time.” As the heroine Meg Murry, she is in nearly every frame, navigating mean girls at school, the loss of her father and even interdimensional travel.

“It’s such an important story to be told,” says Reid, who had done a book report on the Madeleine L’Engle novel in the 6th grade. “She goes on this beautiful journey and finds herself and becomes more accepting and learns that she is worthy of being loved.”

DuVernay saw Reid very early on in the casting process and said every girl after had to measure up to her. Eventually she trusted her initial impulse and went back to Reid.

“This whole thing doesn’t work if you don’t have a great Meg. She goes from completely depressed to defiant to exuberant to joyful to determined to fighting evil. It’s every emotion,” says DuVernay. “She has the whole thing on her shoulders. She’s incredible.”

The experience of filming “A Wrinkle in Time” was incredible, Reid says, not only because it meant acting alongside the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling and Chris Pine, but because of DuVernay’s set.

“Our set was so inclusive with women and men and different races and sexualities. It was kind of like the United Nations,” Reid says. “She has a beautiful vision and a beautiful mind.”

Reid looks up to actors like Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman and loves movies like “Hidden Figures” that tell stories that aren’t so widely known. She appreciated that all of her A-list co-stars were humble and down to earth and says that she is still just a normal teenager with a normal life outside of acting.

She says people keep telling her how much she’s going to change with her new raised profile. But Winfrey disagrees.

“Miss Oprah told me those people are not right,” Reid says. “She told me, ‘You’re going to stay the same but the people around you are going to change.’ I feel like I’ll be recognized more once the movie comes out but I’m still the same girl.”
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New Initiative Links Protection of Human Rights, Environmental Rights

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The U.N. environment program is taking aim at corporations and governments that threaten and intimidate environmental defenders and foul the planet for financial gain. A panel of environmental activists meeting in Geneva explored the actions needed to ensure a safe, healthy environment.

A film that began a panel discussion is narrated by Kenyan environmental activist Phyllis Omido. She succeeded in closing down a lead smelting plant in a slum near Mombasa, which she said spewed poisonous fumes into the air, killing and harming local residents, including her child.

While that battle was won, the fight is far from over. U.N. Environment’s head of communication for environmental governance, Niamh Brannigan, says threats against environmental defenders continue.

“We have been receiving messages over the last two days to say that another environmental defender has been shot dead in the Philippines. Ricardo Mayumi of the Ifugao Peasant Movement. He has been leading the opposition to the Mini Hydro Dam in Santa Clara of the Santa Clara Power Corporation and we believe that he has been shot dead,” said Brannigan.

Between 2002 and 2013, the United Nations reports 908 people in 35 countries have been killed defending the environment and land.

U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore says all human rights depend on the environment. Yet, she says people continue to pollute the Earth’s resources for short-term economic gain, endangering the lives and livelihoods of future generations.

“The polluter must pay, so we say. But in practice it is those who have contributed the least who are paying the most… We know what to do — defend the environment and defend those who defend it… and hold those who violate the law accountable,” she said.

Bianca Jagger is president and chief executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She calls for those who assassinate environmental defenders of indigenous peoples and their communities to be brought to justice. But she acknowledges that is difficult because governments often join forces with companies that exploit indigenous rights.

“So, we need to make a call to all those multi-nationals or national companies that are involved in dams, mining and other exploitation of the land, who want to take the land away from indigenous people and their ancestral land from indigenous people that we need to put an end to that,” she said.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment John Knox was instrumental in pushing forward the Environmental Rights Initiative that seeks to promote, protect and respect human and environmental rights. He says it is absolutely crucial that more be done to protect environmental defenders.

“Four people on average a week are killed around the world for trying to protect the environment,” said Knox. “If we cannot protect the people who are trying to protect the environment for the rest of us, everything else we are doing will be ineffective. So, it is absolutely vital that we do that.”

Knox says the right to a healthy environment has been adopted by more than 100 countries. In an ironic twist, he notes one place where it has not been adopted is at the United Nations. He says it is time for this world body to recognize that everyone should be able to enjoy his or her human right to a safe and healthy environment.

 

 
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The Samsung S9 Has a Great Camera – Just Like Other Phones

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Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 phone has a darn-good camera.

But other top-end phones also have darn-good cameras. Technology in smartphones has improved to the point that it’s really hard to tell the difference.

The S9 outperforms its rivals in many test shots. The evening sky is darker, for instance, with less distortion. But usually there’s little obvious difference beyond color variation, which is subject to personal tastes.

The most distinctive feature in Samsung’s new camera is super-slow-mo video. People appear frozen as they jump. It’s a gimmick, but potentially fun.

The phone comes out March 16 with a U.S. starting price of $720 through Samsung and T-Mobile and nearly $800 through the other major U.S. carriers.
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Europe Split on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline as US Warns Against Dependence on Russian Gas

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Several Eastern European states have ramped up their opposition to a new gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany. The Nord Stream 2 project will bring Russian gas directly to Western Europe, but critics say it will increase dependence on Russia and enrich its state-owned energy firms at a time when Moscow stands accused of endangering European security. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Competition Finalists Announced

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Nine teams with members from 25 countries entered the final phase of the $7 million Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition for technologies that could cheaply and efficiently map the floors of the world’s oceans.  Using current technology this feat would take up to 600 years. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Canada, Mexico, Others Could Be Spared From US Tariffs on Metals

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Some countries are now likely to be spared from planned tariffs on metals advocated by U.S. President Donald Trump. 

“We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week, and there are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada, based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday. 

The comment resulted in key stock indexes and the U.S. dollar paring losses in afternoon trading. 

The Dow Jones industrial average, after falling more than 300 points during the session, closed off 83 points, a drop of one-third of a percent. 

Market players said the sell-off was sparked by the previous day’s announcement that the president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, was resigning. The former Goldman Sachs investment bank president had opposed the sweeping tariffs for foreign steel and aluminum. 

Trump could sign the tariffs as soon as Thursday afternoon, but it could also occur on Friday, according to White House officials. 

‘Easy to win’

Trump boasted last week that trade wars “are good and easy to win” after his surprise announcement he planned to impose a 25 percent U.S. tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent levy on aluminum imports. That prompted widespread criticism from his normal Republican colleagues in Congress and America’s allies. 

The president, according to staffers, acted on recommendations made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, formerly a billionaire investor, and Peter Navarro, an economist who is director of the White House National Trade Council. 

Ross said the planned steel and aluminum tariffs were “thought through. We’re not looking for a trade war.”

The tariffs proposal also won support from economic nationalists in the United States and some Democratic lawmakers in manufacturing states whose fortunes could be boosted by the tariffs protecting their metal industries.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, on Wednesday in a European radio interview, warned of a global trade war, predicting the U.S. tariffs could lead to “a drop in growth, a drop in trade, and it will be fearsome.”

Warning that there would be no victors in such a trade war, Lagarde urged “the sides to reach agreements, hold negotiations, consultations.”

‘Easy to lose’

European Council President Donald Tusk echoed Lagarde’s stance, saying, “The truth is quite the opposite: Trade wars are bad and easy to lose. For this reason, I strongly believe that now is the time for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to act responsibly.”

The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union, detailed retaliatory tariffs it plans to impose on prominent U.S. products if Trump carries out his plan to impose the metal tariffs, taxing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, bourbon, blue jeans, cranberries, orange juice and peanut butter.

Moody’s Investors Service said the planned tariffs “raise the risk of a deterioration in global trade relations.”

Trump said on Twitter that since former President George H.W. Bush was in the White House 30 years ago, “our Country has lost more than 55,000 factories, 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs and accumulated Trade Deficits of more than 12 Trillion Dollars.”

“Bad Policies & Leadership. Must WIN again!” Trump also said on Twitter. 

Trump claimed the United States last year had a trade deficit of “almost 800 Billion Dollars,” significantly overstating the actual figure of $566 billion, which still was the biggest U.S. trade deficit in nine years. 

A new report Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit in January — the amount its imports exceeded its exports — reached $56.6 billion, the highest monthly total since October 2008.
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Despite Widespread Pushback, Trump Finds Some Support for Tariff Plan

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum has met criticism from his Republican allies in Congress, many of whom worry the measures could trigger a trade war that damages U.S. businesses. But the president does have supporters among some Senate Democrats from states where voters are concerned about the long-term loss of American manufacturing jobs.

“This welcome action is long overdue for shuttered steel plants across Ohio and steelworkers who live in fear that their jobs will be the next victims of Chinese cheating,” Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, said in a statement released after the plan was announced. “If we fail to stand up for steel jobs today, China will come after other jobs up and down the supply chain tomorrow.”

American labor unions have also broadly favored Trump’s proposed tariffs, saying they have been complaining for years that foreign countries frequently subsidize their own steel industries, putting American competitors at a disadvantage. 

Economists have been mostly critical of the plan, saying that overall it will hurt American manufacturers, some of whom may be targeted by trading partners for retaliatory sanction. They argue that the benefits to steel and aluminum workers are outweighed by job losses among Americans in other industries. 

Tariffs in focus in special election 

A test of how much the issue is resonating with American voters comes next week, when voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, vote in a special election to fill a vacated seat. 

Many voters are looking to the president to fulfill his campaign promise of protecting manufacturing jobs in America’s heartland.

The race for the seat left vacant by Rep. Tim Murphy’s sex scandal is coming down to the wire between Republican candidate Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb.

Saccone’s campaign endorsed Trump’s tariff plan in a statement, saying “If other countries aren’t playing by the rules and tariffs are needed to protect steel and aluminum jobs in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Rick would support those measures.”Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator Bob Casey also voiced his support for the president’s plan in a Facebook statement Thursday.

“I commend the President for announcing his intent to take action to protect our steelworkers from countries, like China, that cheat on trade. I have repeatedly called on this and previous Administrations to aggressively enforce our trade laws. For years, foreign countries have been dumping steel into our markets and costing our workers their jobs and suppressing their wages,” he wrote.

But Trump’s plan to impose the new tariffs prompted White House Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn to resign Tuesday.

McConnell, Ryan concerned

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan also expressed their concerns to the president, urging him to target the tariffs against specific countries to avoid a potential trade war.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told cable news network CNBC Wednesday the administration is not seeking a trade war. 

“We’re going to have very sensible relations with our allies,” said Ross. “We hope and we believe that at the end of the day, there will be a process of working with the other countries that are our friends.”

Trump dismissed concerns about a trade war during a joint press conference with the Swedish prime minister Tuesday.

“When we’re behind on every single country, trade wars aren’t so bad,” he told reporters. “In some cases we lose on trade plus we give them military where we’re subsidizing them tremendously. So, not only do we lose on trade, we lose on military.”

The administration is considering the new tariffs under a so-called “232 report.” It allows the president to impose trade quotes or tariffs if a probe finds imports threaten national security.

‘National security’

“It’s about our economy,” Vice President Mike Pence said of the need to enact tariffs, during a February meeting with lawmakers. “It’s about our national security.”

A March 7 Politico/Morning Consult poll of 2,000 registered voters, found that 65 percent of Republicans support the president’s plan.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday the administration was still on pace to fully roll-out the tariffs at the end of this week.
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FBI Chief: Corporate Hack Victims Can Trust We Won’t Share Info

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The FBI views companies hit by cyberattacks as victims and will not rush to share their information with other agencies investigating whether they failed to protect customer data, its chief said Wednesday. Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, encouraged companies to promptly report when they are hacked to help the FBI investigate and prevent future data breaches.

He contrasted the FBI’s approach to that of other regulators and state authorities. Without naming other agencies, Wray referred to “less-enlightened enforcement agencies,” some of which he said take a more adversarial approach.

“We don’t view it as our responsibility when companies share information with us to turn around and share that information with some of those other agencies,” Wray said in response to an audience question at a cybersecurity conference at Boston College.

Amid a wave of high-profile data breaches at major corporations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general are investigating how many of them secured consumer data before they were hacked.

Equifax Inc, which suffered a breach in 2017 that compromised the data of more than 147 million consumers, is fighting a lawsuit by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and faces probes by over 40 other states and the FTC.

Ride-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc is also facing investigations by state attorneys general after a data breach of 57 million accounts. Uber has been sued by the states of Washington and Pennsylvania, and like Equifax faces private class action lawsuits over the breach.

Speaking at the conference, Wray said the FBI needed to partner with the private sector to combat an evolving threat that has “turned into full-blown economic espionage and extremely lucrative cybercrime.”

Wray, who took over as director in August, said in order to prevent cyber threats, companies should approach the FBI as soon as they see signs of unauthorized access to their computer systems or malware infesting them.

“At the FBI, we treat victim companies as victims,” he said.

 
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Trump Sells Tax-Cut Package to Hispanic Business Owners

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President Donald Trump is selling Hispanic business owners on his new tax cuts.

Trump is delivering the keynote address Wednesday at the annual legislative summit of the Latino Coalition. It’s his first time addressing Hispanic business owners.

The president says the $1.5 trillion package of tax cuts he signed late last year have finally given American business a “level playing field.” He tells the Latino business owners that they’ll “see more of this in the coming weeks.”

Trump highlighted administration efforts to eliminate regulations that many businesses find burdensome.

Trump also touched on immigration. He blamed Democrats for failing to reach agreement with the White House on a plan to protect immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.
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