Month: March 2018

Prehistoric Giant Shark Tooth Stolen in Australia

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A prehistoric tooth from one of the largest sharks ever known has gone missing from a secret location in a remote World Heritage area in Western Australia.  Police are investigating the theft of the rare Megalodon tooth discovered in the Cape Range National Park.

The location of the rare tooth was thought to have been highly secret.  The well-preserved fossil was stolen from the spot where it was discovered just as wildlife rangers were looking to protect it from theft with a bulletproof glass cover or a wire cage.

The disappearance of the Megalodon tooth, which could be worth thousands of dollars to collectors, is now being investigated by police in Western Australia.  Investigators believe the fossil could have been taken by an amateur collector or by someone who wants to sell it on the black market.  

It is just one of a small number of Megalodon specimens in the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area of Western Australia.

Arvid Hogstrom from Parks and Wildlife in Western Australia says the tooth’s whereabouts remain a mystery.

“The sharks have known to be extinct for 1.6 million years, so it

[is] at least that old.  It has been floating around on the seafloor for quite some time and been pushed up in the ranges and sitting there undisturbed for however long, and someone has come along with a bit of a chisel and taken it away. We are not sure where it has gone,” said Hogstrom.

The ancient shark grew to more than 15 meters long and weighed around 20 tons.

Researchers believe the ancient beast of the sea preyed on turtles and whales, which it would kill with jaws so strong they could crush a car.

The reason for the sharks’ extinction is unknown, but experts have speculated that Megalodon was unable to adapt as the temperature of the Earth’s oceans fell.

Wildlife authorities in Western Australia have circulated a picture of the missing tooth on social media as they intensify their efforts to recover the fossil, which is a priceless link to the region’s ancient past.

 
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Oscars President Accused of Sexual Harassment, Faces Inquiry

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The president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the Oscars, is being investigated over allegations of sexual harassment.

The Academy is reported to have received three complaints against John Bailey Wednesday.

The Academy issued a statement Friday saying it “treats any complaints confidentially to protect all parties.” The statement said there would be no further comments “until the full review is completed.”

Bailey, who is 75, became Academy president in August. He is a veteran cinematographer whose films include The Big Chill and Groundhog Day.

The Academy and the movie industry have been rocked by the recent revelations of what appears to be widespread sexual harassment in the industry. The #MeToo and the Time’s Up movements have brought global attention to the matter.

Powerful movie producer Harvey Weinstein was expelled from the Academy, following detailed media reports about his inappropriate sexual behavior with actresses and female staff members.

In December, the Academy adopted a code of conduct for its members.
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A Data-Driven Approach Aims to Help Cities Recover After Earthquakes

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Taking a data-driven approach to disaster preparedness can help cities at risk bounce back after earthquakes. Faith Lapidus explains.
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Annual Energy Conference Showcases New Technologies

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At this week’s three-day Energy Innovation Summit, organized annually by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-e for short, experts, entrepreneurs, investors and government officials shared ideas, research results and experiences about challenges facing the generation, transformation, distribution and storage of all forms of energy. VOA’s George Putic gives an overview.
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Facebook Cuts Ties with Cambridge Analytica Over Data Privacy

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Facebook Inc. on Friday said it was suspending political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, after finding data privacy policies had been violated.

Facebook said in a statement that it suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent group Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) after receiving reports that they did not delete information about Facebook users that had been inappropriately shared.

Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available for comment. Facebook did not mention the Trump campaign or any political campaigns in its statement, attributed to company Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal.

“We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior,” Facebook said, adding that it was continuing to investigate the claims.

Cruz, Trump campaigns

Cambridge Analytica worked for the failed presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and then for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. On its website, it says it “provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the expertise and insights that helped win the White House.”

Brad Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital ad operation in 2016 and is his 2020 campaign manager, declined to comment Friday.

In past interviews with Reuters, Parscale has said that Cambridge Analytica played a minor role as a contractor in the 2016 Trump campaign, and that the campaign used voter data from a Republican-affiliated organization rather than Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s Grewal said the company was taking the unusual step of announcing the suspension “given the public prominence” of Cambridge Analytica and its parent organization.

No ads, administering pages

The suspension means Cambridge Analytica and SCL cannot buy ads on the world’s largest social media network or administer pages belonging to clients, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, said in a Twitter post.

Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Cambridge Analytica says it uses “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior. It says it has data on 220 million Americans, two-thirds of the U.S. population.

It has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and it is funded by Robert Mercer, a prominent supporter of politically conservative groups. Facebook in its statement described a rocky relationship with Cambridge Analytica and two individuals going back to 2015.

Professor’s app

That year, Facebook said, it learned that University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan lied to the company and violated its policies by sharing data that he acquired with a so-called “research app” that used Facebook’s login system.

Kogan was not immediately available for comment.

The app was downloaded by about 270,000 people. Facebook said that Kogan gained access to profile and other information “in a legitimate way” but “he did not subsequently abide by our rules” when he passed the data to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

Eunoia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook said it cut ties to Kogan’s app when it learned of the violation in 2015, and asked for certification from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.

Although all certified that they had destroyed the data, Facebook said that it received reports in the past several days that “not all data was deleted,” prompting the suspension announced Friday.
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FIFA Finally Approves Video Review to Use at World Cup

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FIFA has finally and fully approved video review to help referees at the World Cup.

Also Friday, the world soccer body lifted its three-decade ban on Iraq’s hosting of international events. The cities of Irbil, Basra and Karbala were given the go-ahead to stage official matches.

The last step toward giving match officials high-tech help in Russia was agreed to by FIFA’s ruling council, chaired by President Gianni Infantino.

“We are extremely happy with that decision,” Infantino said at a news conference in Bogota, adding it would lead to “a more transparent and fairer sport. We need to live with our times.”

FIFA will now look to sign a World Cup sponsor for video assistant referees (VAR) at the June 14-July 15 tournament.

The landmark decision on using technology came two weeks after FIFA’s rule-making panel, known as IFAB, voted to write VAR into the laws of soccer.

That move still left competition organizers to opt to use video review in their games, and FIFA’s ruling committee had to sign off on the World Cup decision.

FIFA council member Reinhard Grindel wrote on his Twitter account that clear communication would be important to make the system a success — and was promised on Friday by Infantino.

Referees can call on VAR to review and overturn “clear and obvious errors” plus “serious missed incidents” involving goals, penalty awards, red cards and mistaken identity.

Reviews lag

In 18 months of trials worldwide, reviews have often been slower than promised and communication has been unclear in the stadium.

“Obviously it is not perfect and we are not going to reach 100 percent perfection,” Infantino acknowledged. “What we definitely want to do is help.”

Controversy has been stirred even by the most experienced VAR officials who have handled many more games than most referees who will work at the 64-game World Cup.

Thirty-six referees, plus their teams of assistants, are being trained by FIFA for World Cup duty and many come from countries that do not use video review in domestic games.

The three Iraqi cities that got the go-ahead Friday to host official matches had been allowed to organize friendlies in the last year, provided the security situation was “stable.”

Iraq will host Qatar and Syria for a friendly tournament starting on March 21 in Basra.

“FIFA has given the green light for the resumption, but the organizers of the championship must take the final decision,” added Infantino.

‘No’ to Baghdad, for now

FIFA added that it could not “yet” agree to a request from the Iraqi authorities to organize matches in Baghdad, but Infantino promised that the city’s application would continue to be studied.

Iraq has not played full internationals on home turf since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The ban, covering all but domestic matches, stayed in place after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

It was briefly lifted in 2012, but a power outage during an Iraq-Jordan match in Irbil led FIFA to promptly reinstate it.

Also Friday:

— FIFA reported a $192 million loss in its published accounts for 2017, after another year of stalled sponsor sales. But that was less than half of the $369 million deficit in 2016.

FIFA has backloaded more than $2 billion worth of broadcasting deals into the 2018 accounts and expects to exceed its revenue target of $5.6 billion and show a profit for the 2015-18 financial cycle.

—  The soccer body agreed to publish the voting choices of member federations in the 2026 World Cup bidding contest on June 13 in Moscow.

A North American bid combining the United States, Canada and Mexico is competing with Morocco for the right to host the first 48-team tournament in eight years’ time. Up to 207 FIFA members will vote, with the four bidding nations excluded.

— Infantino also answered with a firm “no” when asked whether Russia’s current political tensions with Britain could affect its hosting of the World Cup.

— FIFA failed to make progress on revamping national team competitions for women and youth squads. Discussions had begun on creating a global women’s league, and merging Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups staged every two years into single, annual Under-18 competitions.

Some information for this report came from AFP.
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World’s Priciest Chocolate Goes on Display in Portugal

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The world’s most expensive chocolate went on display Friday at a chocolate fair in Obidos in Portugal.

Priced at 7,728 euros ($9,489) and covered in edible gold, the chocolate is part of a limited edition of 1,000 bonbons. It has a filling of saffron threads, white truffle, vanilla from Madagascar and gold flakes.

It was guarded by two uniformed men.

Its creator, Portuguese chocolatier Daniel Gomes, said the diamond-shaped chocolate was certified as the world’s most expensive by the Guinness Book of Records, which in 2017 listed $250 La Madeline au Truffe made by Danish artisan chocolate-maker Fritz Knipschildt’s as the record holder.

Its crown-shaped box is decorated with 5,500 Swarovksi crystals and also carries personalized pincers.
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Visa Tests Biometric Fingerprint Reader on Cards

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Fingerprints can unlock doors, phones and more, but are consumers ready to pay with them? Visa thinks so. More companies are exploring biometrics, the analysis of unique biological traits to verify identity, but how secure is the technology? Tina Trinh reports from New York
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Steve Jobs Pre-Apple Job Application Fetches $174,000 at Auction

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A one-page job application filled out by Steve Jobs more than four decades ago that reflected the Apple founder’s technology aspirations sold for $174,000 at a U.S. auction, more than three times its presale estimate.

An Internet entrepreneur from England was the winning bidder, Boston-based auction house RR Auction said on Friday, but the buyer wished to remain anonymous.

The application dated 1973, complete with spelling and punctuation errors, had been expected to fetch about $50,000.

The sale price reached on Thursday was $174,757, the auction house said.

The form lists his name as “Steven jobs” and address as “reed college,” the Portland, Oregon, college he attended briefly. Next to “Phone:” he wrote “none.”

Under a section titled “Special Abilities,” Jobs wrote “tech or design engineer. digital.—f rom Bay near Hewitt-Packard,” a reference to pioneering California technology company Hewlett-Packard and the San Francisco Bay area.

The document does not state what position or company the application was intended for. Jobs and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple about three years later.

RR Auction said the high price reflected the continuing influence of Jobs, who died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 56.

“There are many collectors who have earned disposable income over the last few decades using Apple technology, and we expect similarly strong results on related material in the future,”

Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, said in a statement.

Other highlights from the online auction included an Apple Mac OS X technical manual signed by Jobs in 2001 that sold for $41,806 and a rare signed newspaper clipping from 2008 featuring an image of Jobs speaking at the Apple Developers Conference that sold for $26,950.
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Snow Science: Crystal Clues to Climate Change, Watersheds

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Capturing snowflakes isn’t as easy as sticking out your tongue.

At least not when you’re trying to capture them for scientific study, which involves isolating the tiniest of crystals on a metal card printed with grid lines and quickly placing them under a microscope to be photographed.

“They are very tiny and they are close to the melting point,” Marco Tedesco of Columbia University said as he set up his microscope beside a snowy field. “So as soon as they fall, they will melt.”

Tedesco recently led a team of three researchers who trudged through the snowy hills of New York’s Catskill Mountains with cameras, brushes, shovels, a drone and a spectrometer to collect the most fine-grained details about freshly fallen snowflakes and how they evolve once they settle to the ground.

That data could be used to provide clues to the changing climate and validate the satellite models used for weather predictions. It also could provide additional information on the snow that falls into New York’s City’s upstate watershed, flows into reservoirs and fills the faucets of some 9 million people.

“We’re talking about sub-millimeter objects,” Tedesco said as he stood in shin-deep snow. “Once they get together, they have the power, really, to shape our planet.”

This is the pilot stage of the “X-Snow” project, which organizers hope will involve dozens of volunteers collecting snowflake samples next winter. The specimens Tedesco spied under his microscope on a recent snowy day displayed more rounded edges and irregularities than the classic crystalline forms. This is characteristic of flakes formed up high in warmer air.

Pictures and video from the drone will be used to create a three-dimensional model of the snow’s surface. Postdoctoral researcher Patrick Alexander trudged though the snow with a wand attached to a backpack spectrometer that measured how much sunlight the snow on the ground is reflecting — a factor determining how fast it will melt. Later, Alexander got down on his belly in the field to take infrared pictures of the snow’s layers and its grain size.

“There are a lot of things that happen that we can’t see with our eyes,” said Tedesco, a snow and ice scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “When snow melts and re-freezes, the grains get bigger. And as the grains get bigger the snow absorbs more solar radiation.”

Tedesco grew up in southern Italy near Naples and never even saw snow until he was 6 years old. But as a scientist, he has logged time studying ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and has studied snow hydrology in the Rockies and the Dolomites. He said snow in the Eastern U.S. has its own character. It tends to be moister than the powdery snow that falls in higher elevation in the West.

Tedesco hopes that a cadre of committed volunteers in the Catskills and the New York City area can take snowflake and snow depth samples next winter. Volunteers won’t need an expensive backpack spectrometer, but he recommends a $17 magnifying lens that clips onto their phone, a ruler, a GPS application and a print-out version of the postcard-sized metal card Tedesco uses to examine fresh snowflakes.

Enlisting volunteers to take snowflake photos is novel and potentially useful, said Noah Molotch, director of The Center for Water, Earth Science and Technology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Molotch, who is not involved in the project, said the pictures will give information about atmospheric conditions and could be useful in the study of climate change.

“Snowflakes are among the most beautiful things in nature,” he said. “And the more we can do to document that and get people interested and excited about that, I think is great.”
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Maine Resident Jesus Christ Sends Letter to Oprah Winfrey

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Jesus Christ, who lives in Maine, says she didn’t know Oprah Winfrey was asking for a sign from God about running for president when she sent a letter to the television magnate.

 

WGME-TV reports 83-year-old Jesus Christ in northern Waterboro says she began a letter writing campaign 50 years ago to spread a message of faith and peace after legally changing her name. Christ says she sent the letter to Oprah because she likes her but had no idea it would get so much attention.

 

Television anchor Gayle King posted about the letter to Oprah on her Instagram on Wednesday, asking if it was the sign her best friend was looking for.

Christ says if Oprah runs for president, she’ll vote for her.
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At SXSW, African Entrepreneurs Promote Tech for Problem-Solving

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South by Southwest is a pop-up marketplace of ideas. Held in Austin, Texas, it combines music and film festivals with a tech conference. Its nine days of events draw people from around the world, including Africa, as Tigist Geme of VOA’s Horn of Africa Service reports.
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Washington’s Famous Cherry Trees Blossoming Soon

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Every year, hundreds of thousands of people flock to Washington in the spring to see the cherry blossoms bloom. The buds on the trees can survive chilly temperatures but need warm days to burst open with their white or pink flowers. But because of fluctuating spring temperatures, it is not always easy to predict when the trees will bloom. As we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block, it appears this year’s flowers may come out a bit earlier than usual.
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FDA Plans to Slash Nicotine Levels in Cigarettes

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Cigarette smoking kills nearly a half-million Americans every year and costs the U.S. economy $300 billion in health care and lost productivity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To help smokers kick the deadly habit and stop kids from starting, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed rules Thursday to cut the nicotine in cigarettes to minimal or nonaddictive levels.

“This milestone places us squarely on the road toward achieving one of the biggest public health victories in modern history and saving millions of lives in the process,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Thursday.

He said the FDA has a “vision of a world where combustible cigarettes would no longer create or sustain addiction.”

Legal authority

The FDA has the legal authority to regulate nicotine levels in cigarettes, but has always been met by court challenges from tobacco companies.

Nicotine naturally occurs in tobacco. It is not deadly but is a highly addictive drug that helps make cigarettes so pleasurable to smokers.

It is the burning tobacco leaf and the numerous additives used in cigarettes that lead to lung cancer, emphysema, and other deadly diseases and cancers.

Secondhand smoke from cigarettes is also harmful to children and potentially lethal to adults.

Public comment

Gottlieb says the FDA is giving the public time to comment on the proposed mandated cuts in nicotine. He says it will help regulators answer such questions as what an acceptable level of nicotine is, whether the cuts should be introduced gradually or immediately, whether weaker cigarettes will bring on a black market for stronger smokes, and whether smokers will smoke more to compensate for the lower levels of the drug.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that if the FDA cuts the nicotine to what it regards as a nonaddictive level, 5 million smokers would quit within one year. The Journal says by the turn of the century, the number of American adults who smoke cigarettes would plummet from the current 15 percent to a minuscule 1.4 percent, saving 8 million lives.
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Former Siemens Executive Pleads Guilty in Argentine Bribery Case

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A former midlevel employee of German industrial giant Siemens pleaded guilty Thursday of conspiring to pay tens of millions of dollars to Argentine officials to win a $1 billion contract to create national ID cards.

Eberhard Reichart, 78, who worked for Siemens from 1964 to 2001, appeared in federal court in New York to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the anti-bribery Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and to commit wire fraud.

Reichart was arraigned last December in a three-count indictment filed in December 2011 charging him and seven other Siemens executives and agents with participating in the decadelong scheme, the Justice Department said Thursday. 

The men were accused of conspiring to pay more than $100 million in bribes to high-level Argentine officials to win the contract in 1998. 

As part of his guilty plea, Reichart admitted in court that he engaged in the bribery conspiracy and that he and his co-conspirators used shell companies to conceal the illicit payments to Argentine officials.

The Argentine government terminated the contract in 2001, but the Siemens executives “sought to recover the profits they would have reaped” through an illicitly obtained contract, said Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in 2011. 

“Far too often, companies pay bribes as part of their business plan, upsetting what should be a level playing field and harming companies that play by the rules,” acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said Thursday.

In 2008, Siemens pleaded guilty of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with the Argentine bribery scheme, agreeing to pay the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission $800 million in criminal and civil penalties.

The company paid the German government another $800 million to settle similar charges brought by the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bars U.S. companies and foreign firms with a presence in the U.S. from paying bribes to foreign officials.

Last year, 11 companies paid just over $1.92 billion to resolve charges brought under the anti-bribery law, according to data compiled by the FCPA Blog.
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Trump to Weigh New Tariffs Targeting China 

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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Thursday that President Donald Trump would soon consider new punitive measures against China for its alleged “theft” of intellectual property.

U.S. officials, according to news accounts, are considering imposing as much as $60 billion in annual tariffs against Chinese information technology, telecommunications and consumer exports to the U.S. in an effort to trim its chronic annual trade deficit with Beijing by $100 billion. Last year, the U.S. says it imported Chinese goods worth $375 billion more than it exported to China.

“In the coming weeks, President Trump is going to have on his desk some recommendations,” Navarro told CNBC. “This will be one of the many steps the president is going to courageously take in order to address unfair trade practices.

“I don’t think there’s a single person … on Wall Street that will oppose cracking down on China’s theft of our intellectual property or their forced transfer,” Navarro said.

The new tariffs and other measures would be in addition to the 25 percent tariff on steel imports to the U.S. and 10 percent levy on aluminum that Trump announced last week, some of which affect China.

​At a political fundraiser Wednesday, Trump attacked several trading partners for the billions of dollars in trade surpluses they have built up against the U.S. He contended that China had become an economic power — the world’s second biggest economy — because of its trade surplus with the United States.

China warned it would likely retaliate against any new tariffs the U.S. imposes.

Foreign minister spokesman Lu Kang said, “History has proven that a trade war is in no one’s interest.”

He said that “if an undesirable situation arises, China has the intention of safeguarding its legitimate rights.”

Trump’s new tariffs on metal imports have led in recent days to volatility on U.S. stock exchanges, with wide day-to-day swings of hundreds of points in stock indexes. 

But Navarro said the U.S. can impose the tariffs in a way that can be good for the American people and good for the global trading system. We can do this in a way that is peaceful and will improve and strengthen the trading system. … Everybody on Wall Street needs to understand: Just relax.”
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Ed Sheeran, Gaga, More to Cover Elton John Across 2 Albums

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John’s songs will be re-worked by top artists including Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton.

John announced on Thursday the April 6 release of two albums. “Revamp” will include covers by pop and rock stars from Mary J. Blige to Miley Cyrus. Miranda Lambert and Dolly Parton will appear on the country album, “Restoration.”

Pink and Logic will team up for “Bennie and the Jets” and Florence + the Machine take on “Tiny Dancer.” Other acts on “Revamp” include Sam Smith, Coldplay, The Killers, Mumford and Sons, Q-Tip, Demi Lovato, Queens of the Stone Age and Alessia Cara.

“Restoration” will feature Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Don Henley, Little Big Town, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, Brothers Osborne, Dierks Bentley, Rhonda Vincent and Lee Ann Womack.
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Saving Lives with Smarter Robots

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Tossing swimmers and boaters a lifeline when they get into trouble on the water takes on a new meaning when that lifeline is attached to a robot. Faith Lapidus explains.
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Queen Elizabeth Gives Consent for Harry-Meghan Wedding

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Queen Elizabeth II has given her formal consent to the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

 

 The British monarch has issued a declaration consenting “to a Contract of Matrimony between My Most Dearly Beloved Grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales and Rachel Meghan Markle.”

 

The prince, fifth in line to the British throne, and the American actress are to marry May 19 at Windsor Castle.

 

Alongside the declaration that was made public Thursday, the queen signed an Instrument of Consent, a formal notice of approval, transcribed in calligraphy and issued under the Great Seal of the Realm.

 

Harry is among a handful of senior royals who must seek the monarch’s permission to marry or have their descendants disqualified from succession to the crown.

 
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HSBC Has 59 Percent Gender Pay Gap, Biggest Among British Banks

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HSBC will reveal a gender pay gap of 59 percent at its main U.K. banking operation, the biggest yet disclosed by a British bank, according to a copy of the lender’s report on the subject seen by Reuters on Thursday ahead of its publication.

The bank will also disclose a mean gender bonus gap of 86 percent at HSBC Bank Plc, which is the biggest of the lender’s seven entities in Britain and employs 23,507 people.

A spokeswoman for the bank confirmed the contents of the report.

The gender pay gap is the biggest yet reported by a British financial firm, according to government data, with some firms yet to provide figures ahead of an April deadline set by Prime Minister Theresa May last year.

Almost 50 years since the passage of Britain’s equal pay act, the continued gulf in earnings between men and women has attracted significant public attention over the past year or so.

In common with other banks, HSBC said its pay gap was largely accounted for by the bank having fewer women in senior roles.

The gender pay gap measures the difference between the average salary of men and women, calculated on an hourly basis.

HSBC said women held only 23 percent of senior leadership positions in its workforce in Britain, despite accounting for more than half of total staff.

The bank said it was taking a number of steps to reduce the pay gap, including committing to an aspirational target of women holding 30 percent of senior roles by 2020.

Last month, Asia-focused Standard Chartered reported a gap of 30 percent in Britain, while Virgin Money — the only major UK lender run by a woman — said its female staff earned on average 32.5 percent less per hour than its male workforce.

Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland reported gender pay gaps of 32.8 percent and 37 percent respectively.

Barclays said last month it paid women in its international division, which houses its investment bank, on average 48 percent of what men earned in fixed pay.

The pay gaps have drawn criticism from lawmakers and are likely to spur questions from investors in the upcoming season for shareholder meetings, with stock prices and future earnings potential strongly linked to banks’ efforts to revive their reputations in the wake of the global financial crisis.
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