Australia Begins Privacy Investigation into Facebook

Australia’s Privacy Commissioner said on Thursday she had opened a formal investigation into social media giant Facebook Inc after the company confirmed data from 300,000 Australian users may have been used without authorization.

The investigation will consider whether Facebook has breached Australia’s privacy laws, Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said in a statement.

Facebook said on Wednesday that the personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, up from a previous news media estimate of more than 50 million.

Trump Administration Seeks to Temper China Trade War Fears

President Donald Trump said Wednesday the United States is not in a trade war with China, after Beijing announced plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods in response to a similar package announced by the United States.

In a Twitter post Wednesday, Trump contended, “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S.” He added, “Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!”

On the same day, White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg News, “None of the tariffs have been put in place yet, and these are all proposals.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC, “Even shooting wars end with negotiations. … So it wouldn’t be surprising at all if the net outcome of all this is some sort of negotiation.”

Tit-for-tat trade spat

Since the start of this week, the United States and China have been engaging in a tit-for-tat trade spat. On Monday, in response to earlier tariffs on steel and aluminum imposed by the Trump administration, China started tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products, including fruits, nuts, pork, wine, steel and aluminum.

Later the same day, the U.S. Trade Representatives (USTR) proposed to increase tariffs on 1,300 imported goods from China, mostly aerospace, medical and information technology products.

Less than 12 hours later, China announced it plans to impose retaliatory duties of 25 percent on 106 politically sensitive American goods, including soybeans, automobiles and aircraft.

The proposed list is now entering a “public notice and comment process, including a hearing,” the USTR said. After this process is completed, the USTR will issue a final determination on the products subject to the additional duties.

China’s commerce ministry said the question of when the measures will go into effect will depend on when the U.S. tariffs become active.

China’s Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told reporters on Wednesday, “Negotiation would still be our preference, but it takes two to tango. We will see what the U.S. will do.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated at Wednesday’s press briefing that this measure is now going through the review process, and “it will be a couple of months before tariffs on either side would go into effect and be implemented.”

“We’re hopeful China will do the right thing. Look, China created the problem, not President Trump. We’re finally having a president who’s willing to stand up and say enough is enough, we’re going to stop the unfair trade practices,” Sanders said.

She also warned if China doesn’t stop the unfair trade practices, the administration will move forward to the next step.

Already in a trade war

Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he believes that the U.S. and China are already in a trade war.

“It started several weeks ago when the United States instituted penalties on Chinese steel and aluminum, and then the Chinese responded with penalties that also went into effect, so we haven’t just put our guns on the table, we’ve actually pulled the trigger. In the last few days, we’ve announced additional tariffs that will come into effect in the coming weeks. If this isn’t a trade war, I don’t know what one is,” Kennedy told VOA.

​Farming first to be hit

At the frontline of this war is America’s farming industry.

China, which buys nearly $20 billion in U.S. agricultural products annually, has become one of the most important export markets for U.S. farmers, but many agricultural products, including soybeans, cotton, frozen beef and sorghum, will be subject to tariffs if it goes into effect.

American Farm Bureau Federation Policy Communications Director Will Rodger told VOA, “Right now, we export about 20 percent of what we produce. We are very, very dependent on exports. We are looking at 25 percent being placed on soybeans into China.

“The actual economic impact will not be good, it will certainly be bad, the question is how large it’s going to be, we don’t know exactly,” Rodger said.

He said farm income is already at a 16-year low, resulting in many farmers in economic distress.

“While we haven’t reached the crisis point, we have one or two more years of declining income, we will be there pretty quickly,” he noted.

Rodger said the current trade dispute is obviously not a good thing. 

“We need it to stop, we need China and the United States to sit down and come up with a reasonable agreement in a reasonable fashion,” he added.

Losses in the short term

If the tariffs go into effect, China trade expert Kennedy pointed out, there will be potential job losses by the reduced export opportunities, but the most important impact in the short term will be on the financial markets.

Kennedy said the trade dispute between the U.S. and China is not about how fast this is resolved, but the way it is resolved.

“The issues the Trump administration has raised are issues American presidents have raised with China for almost two decades now, and not made the progress that they want. We shouldn’t be looking for a quick deal and put this behind us, we should be ready for a sustained level of tension until China relents,” he said.

Kennedy said China won’t do that easily. 

“China has an economic governance system which is distinctive and critical to the way the Communist Party runs the country, so it’s going to take a lot for them to move fundamentally,” he said.

“The two sides may make some type of short term deal to address superficially the challenges, but this is not something that will go away in the next few weeks,” Kennedy added.

State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report.

 

Wall Street Closes Higher as China Tariff Fears Ease

Wall Street’s three major indexes staged a comeback to close around 1 percent higher Wednesday as investors turned their focus to earnings and away from a trade conflict between the United States and China that

wreaked havoc in earlier trading.

After investors fled equities in the morning because of proposed retaliatory tariffs from China, their concerns about a potential trade war eased by the afternoon after President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said the administration was in a “negotiation” with China rather than a trade war.

Investors said they were comforted by the fact that any tariffs would not take effect immediately, if at all.

Strategists also cited the Standard & Poor’s bounce above a key technical

support level and said they expected equities to rise further around the first-quarter earnings season, due to start in mid-April.

“We’re starting to feel that while markets hate uncertainty, Trump’s bark is worse than his bite when it comes to trade,” said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas. 

“It’s earnings that’s going to lift us off this bottom. It wouldn’t shock me if we chopped around sideways for a little bit before earnings season. … The trade stuff is really a sideshow. We’re waiting for real economic data, like the jobs report Friday, and for earnings. For now, it’s going to be all about the technicals,” he said.

A rebound

The S&P opened below its 200-day moving average, a key technical level, but inched above it as the session progressed, and by afternoon was in positive territory.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 230.94 points, or 0.96 percent, to close at 24,264.30; the S&P 500 gained 30.24 points, or 1.16 percent, to 2,644.69; and the Nasdaq Composite added 100.83 points, or 1.45 percent, to 7,042.11.

The turnaround marked the first time the S&P had showed gains for two consecutive days since early March.

Despite big swings in stocks, trading activity in U.S. equity options was muted as expectations for strong corporate earnings quelled the urge to load up on contracts that benefit from a surge in market volatility.

The CBOE Volatility Index, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility for the S&P 500, closed down 1.04 points at 20.06.

The technology sector rose 1.4 percent with only two of its stocks ending the day in negative territory, including Facebook Inc., which was pummeled after news its chief executive would testify in Congress over a data privacy scandal.

It too closed well off its session low with a 0.6 percent drop to $155.10.

Boeing was the biggest drag on the Dow because of its exposure to China, and ended the day well off its session lows with a 1 percent decline to $327.44 after falling as low as $311.88.

Farm machinery company Deere & Co ended down 2.9 percent at $148.57 as it could be hurt by China tariffs if its customers’ exports are curbed.

After being a laggard for much of the session, the S&P 500’s industrials sector turned positive late in the day to close 0.4 percent higher.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.19-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.95-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and eight new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 40 new highs and 94 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 7.04 billion shares, compared with the 7.3 billion average for the last 20 trading days.

Graceland Opens Vault for Elvis Documentary to Air on HBO

A new television documentary about Elvis Presley takes advantage of the vast collection of footage, pictures, documents and music from his estate to give a behind-the-scenes look at the king of rock ‘n’ roll.

“Elvis Presley: The Searcher,” a two-part, three-hour documentary, will premiere April 14 on HBO. Director Thom Zimny, who worked on several Bruce Springsteen documentaries, had full access to Graceland’s vault and made ample use of it to unearth little-seen footage.

“That was one of the exciting parts because every day I was discovering new gems of Elvis Presley’s archives,” Zimny said.

“He came up with pieces of footage that Priscilla and I had never seen before, and we grew up with Elvis,” said Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis’ longtime friends and an executive producer on the documentary along with Priscilla Presley, his ex-wife.

Along with his family and friends, Zimny interviewed studio musicians, producers, engineers and directors, as well as artists like Springsteen, Tom Petty and Emmylou Harris. Zimny uses only voiceovers for the narration instead of seeing the interviewees’ faces to keep the focus on the music and footage of Elvis over his career.

“Most documentaries, you see people talking, and I think that takes you out of the film,” Priscilla Presley said. “So you do get distracted, where here, you take on the flow, you can see what’s going on visually and you’re not taken out of that moment, and I think that’s brilliant.”

Zimny makes heavy use of footage from Elvis’ 1968 television special, considered his comeback to music after a long period of movie acting.

“He had been out of performing for years, almost 10 years,” Presley said. “This to him was the make or break of his career.”

Zimny said he had no limitations on addressing any aspect of Elvis’ career, and the film does touch on the controlling influence of his manager Colonel Tom Parker as well as Elvis’ prescription drug abuse.

Priscilla said Presley began using prescription drugs when he was given them during his Army stint. Even after years of using medications, she said Elvis never realized his addiction.

“He didn’t think he was addicted,” Presley said. “It was a part of his life, really. There was no Betty Ford. There were no rehab centers. But he didn’t think he had to go to a rehab center. There were prescribed to him. The doctors knew what they were giving to him. So that was pretty much a part of his life.”

Presley said there’s still a lot for music fans to learn about the star, who died in 1977.

“He was in uncharted territories,” Presley said. “There was no other that reached the heights that he did as far as changing style, changing music.”

Female Shooter Targets YouTube Headquarters

Police say a woman shooter entered YouTube headquarters in California Tuesday and wounded at least three people before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mike O’Sullivan reports, the shooter’s motive is unknown.

Giving World’s Unfamiliar Music the Exposure it Deserves

Record producer, Ian Brennan, and his wife Marilena Delli, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, are on a quest for the unknown and unfamiliar. Their passion for discovering uniqueness in human stories and music has taken them to far-flung places around the world, from Malawi to record songs by prisoners, to rural Rwanda and Cambodia to give voice to genocide survivors.

Music to his Ears

For a music lover like Ian Brennan, hearing a good song is a rewarding adventure, even if it’s in a language he doesn’t understand. He believes it’s better for us, neurologically and sociologically, to listen to diverse music, which is not what is offered by the commercial music business.

“What we get with the recorded music is by nature repetition, hearing not only the same song, not only the same singer, but the same performance of the same song over and over and over again. But there is a lot more to the world than that.”

Photo Gallery: Unfamiliar Music

The greatest music, Brennan adds, comes from everyday life, from people’s traditions or just their own emotions.

“I think there is so much untapped potential, untapped creativity in the world that to hear from just a small sliver of people is kind of a disservice for everyone.”

Rwandan Experiences

Brennan began exploring that untapped potential about 10 years ago, when he accompanied his wife, who is half Italian, half Rwandan, and her mother, a genocide survivor, to Rwanda.

“My Mom lost all her family,” says Delli. “When we decided to go there, I was shooting a documentary called The Rwanda Mama, about my Mom’s return to Rwanda 30 years apart. She actually discovered that her best friend, who she thought died in the genocide in 1994, was alive and that was the reason why she decided to go back.”

During this trip, the couple had a chance to listen to a local artist, Adrien Kazigira, the lead singer of the Rwandan band, The Good Ones. Brennan went to his farm to record Kazigira’s songs.  

“He’s one of the most gifted roots writers, folk writers, I think in any language in the world. But unfortunately, because he sings in Kinyarwanda and not in English, he’s not heard by many people as he probably should be,” Brennan says.

Together, they produced two albums and are working on the third.  “Sara,” from the group’s first album, is one of Brennan’s most favorite songs. It’s a love song, he explains, that communicates a variety of complicated emotions. “It’s specifically about a woman who had contracted AIDS and was sent away by her lover and her family and spent the little money that she had to a witch doctor to try to cure herself. And it’s someone who truly loves and cares about her, trying to convince her not to leave, not to be banished.”

Prison Music

In Malawi, Brennan and Delli teamed up again, as they worked on different projects where he recorded the music and she photographed the artists.

“We did Malawi’s Mouse Boys, who have released three albums,” he says. “We also did the Zomba Prison Projects which were with the individuals from the maximum security prison in Malawi, whose first album was surprisingly nominated for a Grammy award, which was something that was deserved, but not expected.”

The couple prefers projects where they work with people who are not identified as musicians, or people who may not have ever sung in public or written songs before.

“That was true of the Zomba Prison Project,” Brennan says. “We worked with over a hundred individuals and produced two albums.  Also in Tanzania, when we worked on the Tanzania Albinism Collective (Project). It’s incredible the music that can come forward from someone when they’re given the opportunity to be listened to, and to be heard.”

Different Languages, Similar Experiences

Though in different languages and with different melodies, Brennan says most of these songs convey similar feelings and experiences.  Genocide survivors in Cambodia who survived the Khimar Rouge, for example, share some similar experiences with the individuals in Rwanda who survived the three genocides there.

He points to “Defeat the Giant,” by Cambodian artist Soun San, as an example. The song gives voice to genocide victims anywhere.

“Soun San was the master musician from Cambodia,” Brennan says. “He was injured during the Khmer Rouge, but survived. His voice is, I think, an important one and one that I think more people would want to hear. We had set up for him to come to the UK last summer to perform, but unfortunately, between the time he was invited and he got his passport and booked the flight, he fell ill and passed away a month or so before the event.”

For their next project, Brennan and Delli are heading to Pakistan.

“We also have a release coming from Ustad Saami from Karachi, who is a 75-year-old vocal master,” Brennan says. “He sings a lot of pre-Islamic music in Sanskrit, pre-Sanskrit and in Farsi. He’s a very, very gifted and very rare individual because the music that he sings no one else does or really even can.”

Delli is excited about these projects, not only because she loves traveling, but because she believes these projects can make the world a better place. “I just think music is a wonderful way to connect people all over the world and a wonderful instrument to touch people’s heart and overcome hatred and prejudice.”

Having such a calling while discovering the sounds of different cultures and meeting unique artists encourages the couple to keep searching the world for hidden music.

Rapper Safaree Robbed at Gunpoint of $183,000

A rapper and reality star says he was robbed at gunpoint in New Jersey in what was “one of the worst, scariest nights of my life.”

Safaree Samuels says the robbery happened Monday in Fort Lee around 2 a.m. The 36-year-old told WWPR-FM two men ran up and had him face down on the ground with a gun to his head.

Police say the suspects stole $183,000 in cash and jewelry.

Police Capt. Matthew Hintze says officers tried to stop a SUV near the scene, but the driver fled into New York City.

Hintze says the driver lost control and crashed into a concrete divider, and three people ran from the scene.

Police have arrested two suspects and charged them with robbery. A search for the third person is ongoing.

Ex-Ford Employee Awarded Nearly $17 Million in Discrimination Lawsuit

A jury has awarded nearly $17 million to a former Ford engineer who sued the automaker for discrimination because he says two supervisors repeatedly berated and criticized him for his Arab background and accent.

The Detroit Free Press reports that a federal jury in Michigan ruled March 28 that Faisal Khalaf was subjected to workplace discrimination and retaliation after he reported the abuse. Khalaf was born in Lebanon.

The jury awarded Khalaf $15 million in punitive damages, $1.7 million in retirement and pension losses, and $100,000 for emotional distress for the actions of Ford supervisors Bennie Fowler and Jay Zhou.

A Ford representative says the company disagrees with the verdict and is pursuing options to get it “corrected.”

Ford has been criticized for workplace discrimination before, including in a December New York Times investigation into sexual harassment at two Chicago plants.

Baltimore Seeks US Supreme Court Review of Abortion Ruling

Attorneys in Baltimore are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that struck down as unconstitutional an ordinance requiring pregnancy centers notify patients if they don’t offer abortion or birth control services.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that the ordinance unconstitutionally compelled speech by Christian-based Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns Inc., which opposes abortion.

 

Justices ruled the ordinance wasn’t tailored to serve the city’s interest in preventing harm to women’s health through deceptive advertising by abortion opponents.

 

The Daily Record reports the city’s request filed last week says the ordinance doesn’t violate free speech. Instead, it lets patients know which services are available.

 

The center has until April 30 to respond to the city’s request for a Supreme Court review.

 

 

 

YouTube Shooter Told Family She ‘Hated’ the Company

A woman who believed she was being suppressed by YouTube and told her family members she “hated” the company opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in California, wounding three people before taking her own life, police said.

Investigators do not believe Nasim Aghdam specifically targeted the three victims when she pulled out a handgun and fired off several rounds in a courtyard at the company’s headquarters south of San Francisco on Tuesday, police said.

But a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that Aghdam had a longstanding dispute with the company. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said Aghdam used the name “Nasime Sabz” online.

A website in that name decried YouTube’s policies and said the company was trying to “suppress” content creators.

“Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” one of the messages on the site said. “There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!”

Aghdam “hated” YouTube and was angry that the company stopped paying her for videos she posted on the platform, her father, Ismail Aghdam, told the Bay Area News Group.

On Monday, he called police to report his daughter missing after she didn’t answer the phone for two days and warned officers that she might go to YouTube, he said.

Officers in Mountain View — about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from YouTube’s headquarters — found her sleeping in her car in a parking lot around 2 a.m. Tuesday but let her go after she refused to answer their questions. Aghdam didn’t appear to be a threat to herself or others, police spokeswoman Katie Nelson said.

Nelson would not say whether officers had been warned that Aghdam might have been headed to YouTube headquarters.

Earlier Tuesday, law enforcement said the shooting was being investigated as a domestic dispute but did not elaborate. It was not immediately clear why police later said the people shot were not specifically targeted.

One of the victims — a 36-year-old man — was in critical condition, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital said. A 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition, the spokesman said.

YouTube employee Dianna Arnspiger said she was on the building’s second floor when she heard gunshots, ran to a window and saw the shooter on a patio outside.

“It was a woman and she was firing her gun. And I just said, `Shooter,’ and everybody started running,” Arnspiger said.

She and others hid in a conference room for an hour while another employee repeatedly called 911 for updates.

The world’s biggest online video website is owned by Silicon Valley giant Google, but company officials said it’s a tight-knit community. The headquarters has more than a thousand engineers and other employees in several buildings. Originally built in the late 1990s for the clothing retailer Gap, the campus south of San Francisco is known for its sloped green roof of native grasses.

Inside, Google several years ago famously outfitted the office with a 3-lane red slide for workers to zoom from one story to another.

“Today it feels like the entire community of YouTube, all of the employees, were victims of this crime,” said Chris Dale, a spokesman for YouTube.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a tweet the company would “come together to heal as a family.”

Officers and federal agents responding to multiple 911 calls swarmed the company’s campus sandwiched between two interstates in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno.

Zach Vorhies, 37, a senior software engineer at YouTube, said he was at his desk working on the second floor of one of the buildings on the campus when the fire alarm went off.

He got on his skateboard and approached a courtyard, where he saw the shooter yelling, “Come get me.” He said the public can access the courtyard where he saw the shooter without any security check during working hours.

There was somebody lying nearby on his back with a red stain on his stomach that appeared to be from a bullet wound.

He said he realized it was an active shooter incident when a police officer with an assault rifle came through a security door. He jumped on his skateboard and took off.

Officers discovered one victim with a gunshot wound when they arrived and then found the shooter with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound several minutes later, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said. He said two additional gunshot victims were later located at an adjacent business.

Facebook CEO to Testify Before Congressional Committee

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before a congressional committee about the privacy scandal that has rocked the social media company.

The House and Energy and Commerce Committee announced Wednesday Zuckerberg will testify on April 11 about the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users that could be used to influence voters in U.S. elections. The firm was hired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, which paid the firm nearly $6 million.

Committee chairman Greg Walden and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone said the hearing hopes to “shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online.” The panel is the first of three congressional committees that have asked Zuckerberg to testify.

Zuckerberg’s upcoming testimony comes after senior Facebook officials failed to answer questions during a private meeting with congressional staffers about how the company and third-party software developers use and protect consumer data.

It remains unclear if Congress or the administration will take any action against Facebook, but the company is well-positioned to counter any efforts to regulate it.

The social media giant has a large lobbying operation to advance its interests in Washington. Documents filed with the House and Senate shows Facebook spent more than $17 million in2017, much of it on an in-house lobbying team that is comprised of former Republican and Democratic political aides. The company lobbied on a variety of issues, including potential changes to government surveillance programs and on corporate tax issues.

CDC: Drug-resistant ‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Pose Growing Threat

“Nightmare bacteria” with unusual resistance to antibiotics of last resort were found more than 200 times in the United States last year in a first-of-a-kind hunt to see how much of a threat these rare cases are becoming, health officials said Tuesday.

That’s more than they had expected to find, and the true number is probably higher because the effort involved only certain labs in each state, officials say.

The problem mostly strikes people in hospitals and nursing homes who need IVs and other tubes that can get infected. In many cases, others in close contact with these patients also harbored the superbugs even though they weren’t sick — a risk for further spread.

Some of the sick patients had traveled for surgery or other health care to another country where drug-resistant germs are more common, and the superbug infections were discovered after they returned to the U.S.

“Essentially, we found nightmare bacteria in your backyard,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“These verge on untreatable infections” where the only option may be supportive care — fluids and sometimes machines to maintain life to give the patient a chance to recover, Schuchat said.

The situation was described in a CDC report.

Bugs and drugs are in a constant battle, as germs evolve to resist new and old antibiotics. About 2 million Americans get infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die, Schuchat said.

Concern has been growing about a rise in bacteria resistant to all or most antibiotics. Last year, public health labs around the country were asked to watch for and quickly respond to cases of advanced antibiotic resistance, especially to some last-resort antibiotics called carbapenems.

In the first nine months of the year, more than 5,770 samples were tested for these “nightmare bacteria,” as CDC calls them, and one quarter were found to have genes that make them hard to treat and easy to share their resistance tricks with other types of bacteria. Of these, 221 had unusual genes that conferred resistance. The cases were scattered throughout 27 states.

“Even in remote areas” this threat is real, because patients often transfer to and from other places for care, said Dr. Jay Butler, chief medical officer for the state of Alaska and past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Others in close contact with the infected patient then were tested, and 11 percent were found to be carrying the same superbugs even though they were not sick. This gives the bugs more of a chance to spread.

What to do? CDC suggests:

—Tell your doctors if you recently had health care in another country.

—Talk with them about preventing infections, taking care of chronic conditions to help avoid them, and getting vaccines to prevent them.

—Wash your hands regularly and keep cuts clean until healed.

Closure of Top Philippine Resort Island Would Shake up Business to Cut Pollution

The possible closure of a major coastal tourism magnet in the Philippines for environmental cleanup will hurt business, but for a cause that helps everyone longer term, experts say.

President Rodrigo Duterte said via the presidential website in March he would place Boracay Island under a “state of calamity.” The island may be shut down for two to 12 months, Philippine media reports say, citing other statements from Duterte and cabinet members.

The government is “addressing wastewater issues through an improved sewerage system,” the country’s environment minister Roy Cimatu said in a March 27 statement.

Boracay, a 10.3-square-kilometer feature in the central Philippines, has been compared to Bali and other Asian beach resort hot spots. Its main white sand beach runs four kilometers, paralleled by a strip of at least 100 hotels.

“The Philippines has been very aggressive in its campaign to attract tourists… and Boracay is actually the No. 1 selling point of the tourism business in the Philippines,” said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman.

“So it will really be a big blow to the tourism industry and we don’t know what will happen to these industries depending on Boracay, if they will continue if they can return to operation,” Atienza said.

Fear of closure

Government agencies have not finalized any closure of Boracay Island but dropped enough hints to prompt flight and hotel cancellations, analysts and operators report. Domestic media say arrivals in March were normal but expected a fall for this month.

Tourists who read “negative news” about Boracay are cancelling mid-year reservations, said a manager with Boracay Pito Huts, a 10-year-old group of villas for tourist groups on the island. Villa staff people may be asked to “take a vacation” if bookings don’t pick up, she said.

“As a preparation, of course we have to tighten our belts,” said the manager, who did not want to be named. “We are in the toilet. For June bookings or June tourists it’s nothing. That’s how we got affected.”

The Boracay Foundation, a business association with an environmental focus, declined comment for this report. A Department of Tourism representative said her office could make no statements on the possible closure.

Suspension of business would hurt a network of common Filipinos who sell souvenirs, prepare meals or drive tourists around the island, Atienza added.

Boracay generated $1.076 billion in tourism receipts last year, the local provincial tourism office said, as cited by the Philippine Information Agency, an increase of about 15 percent over 2016. Tourism was 8.6 percent of the Philippine GDP in 2016.

People and waste

Boracay has an ideal capacity of about half a million tourists per year, compared to its 2017 total of 2 million, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said in an online video. More than 300,000 tourists reached the island in January and February this year, it said.

Travelers often visit Boracay during the northern hemisphere winter to escape the cold in spots such as China, Russia and South Korea.

The island should review its “carrying capacity,” said Alicia Lustica, a coastal ecosystems cluster head with a department research Center. “We need also to assist also the volume of waste that has been generated and likewise how people are doing their activities on Boracay Island,” Lustica said in the video.

Sewage became an issue because some resorts treat their own inadequately or dump it into the sea, the domestic news website BusinessMirror.com said in January. It cites overbuilding and inadequate infrastructure as additional problems for Boracay.

The nongovernmental organization Global Coral Reef Alliance said more than 10 years ago sewage “from uncontrolled development” was hurting Boracay’s coral and fisheries.

The environment ministry also plans to do a “massive replanting” of trees on Boracay, the minister said in the March 27 statement.

Boracay renewal

A temporary closure would let Boracay clean itself up to become better for tourists, said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila.

“It’s going to hurt us, but I think moving forward we will probably see a lot of pent-up demand for Boracay — just like in any business a temporary renovation — and I think that’s how you should probably see what’s happening in Boracay,” he said.

Travelers would rather see a cleaner island, he added. Today Boracay-bound tourists must pay an environmental impact fee at a boat pier before stepping onto the island.

A cleaner Boracay would motivate other Philippine beach resort areas to protect their environments before they too face shutdown, Ravelas said. “You need the one example, and everybody will follow,” he said.

Duterte called Boracay a “cesspool” and ordered his government to fix problems in six months, the presidential office website says. The state of calamity, Duterte said, would let the government offer aid to people facing business losses.

China Announces $50 Billion in Retaliatory Tariffs on US Goods

China announced Wednesday it plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods in response to a similar package announced by the United States.

The Chinese measures would boost tariffs by 25 percent on 106 U.S. products, including soybeans, aircraft and cars.

China’s commerce ministry responded with its own measures less than 11 hours after the U.S. issued a proposed list of Chinese goods. The ministry said the question of when the measures will go into effect will depend on when the U.S. tariffs become active.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to impose $50 billion in increased tariffs on Chinese products last month, and on Tuesday the U.S. Trade Representative released a proposed list of 1,300 goods including aerospace, medical and information technology products.

Subject to public review

That list will be subject to a public review process scheduled to run until late May.

“The total value of imports subject to the tariff increases is commensurate with an economic analysis of the harm caused by China’s unreasonable technology policies to the U.S. economy,” the USTR said.

The United States has accused China of pressuring foreign companies to hand over technology.

China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said Wednesday that accusation is groundless, and that while China wants to resolve the trade dispute through dialogue, if the United States continues the fight then China will too.

Unlike the U.S. list, which includes many obscure industrial goods, China’s list targets cotton, frozen beef, soybeans and other agricultural products that are produced in states from Iowa to Texas that favored Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The U.S.-China dispute has fueled concern it could stymie a global economic recovery if other countries raise their own import barriers.

The prospect of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies also has worried stock market investors. U.S. markets opened sharply lower Wednesday. Shortly after the markets opened, the S&P 500 Index fell 1.4 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8 percent and the NASDAQ Composite Index was 1.6 percent lower.

Trump, however, dismissed the notion of a U.S.-China trade war on Wednesday, tweeting that previous U.S. administrations weakened the country’s ability to defend itself on trade matters.   

“We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!”

In a subsequent tweet Trump seemed to imply the U.S.-China trade imbalance is so wide that there is only room for improvement.

“When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!”

Despite Trump’s claims, U.S. government figures show the U.S. had a $375 billion trade deficit with China at the end of 2017.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also dismissed concerns Wednesday about a burgeoning trade war with China and said recent trade actions between the two countries would probably lead to a negotiated agreement.

“It wouldn’t be surprising at all if the net outcome of all this is some sort of negotiation,” Ross said in an interview with CNBC.

Ross brushed off worries of a trade dispute, saying U.S. tariffs imposed on China amount to only 0.3 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said Wednesday that accusation is groundless, and that while China wants to resolve the trade dispute through dialogue, if the United States continues the fight then China will too.

 

Zuckerberg: Facebook Deleted Posts Linked to Russian ‘Troll Factory’ 

Facebook, expanding its response to people using the platform improperly, said Tuesday that it had deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages associated with a “troll factory” indicted by U.S. prosecutors for fake activist and political posts in the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Facebook said many of the deleted articles and pages came from Russia-based Federal News Agency, known as FAN, and that the social media company’s security team had concluded that the agency was technologically and structurally intertwined with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told Reuters in an exclusive interview that the agency “has repeatedly acted to deceive people and manipulate people around the world, and we don’t want them on Facebook anywhere.”

Massive data collection

The world’s largest social media company is under pressure to improve its handling of data after disclosing that information about 50 million Facebook users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked on then-Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

The removed accounts and pages were mainly in Russian, and many had little political import, the company said. Previously Facebook focused on taking down fake accounts and accounts spreading fake news. The new policy will include otherwise legitimate content spread by those same actors, Zuckerberg said.

“It is clear from the evidence that we’ve collected that those organizations are controlled and operated by” the Internet Research Agency, he added.

In February, the agency known as IRA was among three firms and 13 Russians indicted by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller on charges they conspired to tamper in the presidential campaign and support Trump while disparaging Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Russian media organization RBC last year reported that FAN and IRA once shared the same street address and had other connections. One of the people that it said made decisions at FAN was indicted by Mueller’s office, which is investigating U.S. intelligence agency conclusions that Moscow tried to undermine the democratic process. Russia denies interfering in the elections.

Ban accounts

Facebook disclosed in September that Russians used Facebook to meddle in U.S. politics, posting on the social network under false names in the months before and after the 2016 elections.

Zuckerberg said Tuesday that improved machine learning had helped find connections between the latest posts and IRA. He and Facebook security officials said the company would do the same when they find more legitimate content being pushed out by groups exposed as manipulators.

“We’re going to execute and operate under our principles,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t allow people to have fake accounts, and if you repeatedly try to set up fake accounts to manipulate things, then our policy is to ban all of your accounts.”

Zuckerberg said that the standard is high for such retribution toward news organizations and that state-owned media by itself was fine.

The company decided to root out as much as it can of IRA, which was involved with posts including sponsoring fake pages that were pro-Trump, pro-border security and protesting police violence against minorities, among other topics.

The expanded response could provoke a backlash from Russian internet regulators.

Last October, Google followed up on reported connections between FAN and IRA by removing FAN stories from its search index. Media regulator Roskomnadzor asked Google for an explanation, saying that it needed to protect free speech.

Google then reinstated FAN, according to reports at the time. Facebook officials said its accounts and pages in question had 1 million unique followers on Facebook and 500,000 on Instagram, mainly in Russia, Ukraine, and nearby countries such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his college dorm room in 2004, personally kept quiet about the Cambridge Analytica data leak for four days before apologizing and outlining steps that he said would help protect personal data.

The 33-year-old billionaire plans to testify before U.S. lawmakers to explain Facebook’s privacy policies, a first for him, a source said last week, although he has so far not committed to doing the same for U.K. lawmakers.

Multiple investigations

Britain’s data protection authority, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 37 U.S. state attorneys general are investigating Facebook’s handling of personal data.

Zuckerberg initially downplayed Facebook’s ability to sway voters, saying days after the U.S. elections that it was a “pretty crazy idea” that fake news stories had an influence.

Eventually, though, Facebook’s security staff concluded that the social network was being used by spies and other government agents to covertly spread disinformation among rivals and enemies.

Critics including U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have complained Facebook moved too slowly to investigate and counter information warfare. 

Facebook stepped up efforts to shutter fake accounts before a national election last year in France, and has said it will work with election authorities around the world to try to prevent meddling in politics.

The company, which is now one of the main ways politicians advertise to voters, plans to start a public archive showing all election-related ads, how much money was spent on each one, the number of impressions each receives and the demographics of the audience reached.

Facebook is on track to bring that data to U.S. voters before congressional elections in November, Zuckerberg said Tuesday. Facebook plans to send postcards by U.S. mail to verify the identities and location of people who want to purchase U.S. election-related advertising.

US Unveils Tariffs on $50 Billion Worth of Chinese Imports

The Trump administration on Tuesday raised the stakes in a growing trade showdown with China, announcing 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 industrial technology, transport and medical products to try to force changes in Beijing’s intellectual property practices.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office unveiled a list of mainly non-consumer products representing about $50 billion of annual imports that would nonetheless hit supply chains for many U.S. manufacturers. The list ranges from chemicals to light-emitting diodes, motorcycles and dental devices.

Publication of the tariff list starts a public comment and consultation period expected to last around two months, after which USTR said it would issue a “final determination” on the product list. It has scheduled a May 15 public hearing on the tariffs.

USTR said the tariffs were proposed “in response to China’s policies that coerce American companies into transferring their technology and intellectual property to domestic Chinese enterprises.”

The agency added that such policies “bolster China’s stated intention of seizing economic leadership in advanced technology as set forth in its industrial plans, such as ‘Made in China 2025.'”

China has denied that its laws require technology transfers and has threatened to retaliate against any U.S. tariffs with trade sanctions of its own, with potential targets such as U.S. soybeans, aircraft or heavy equipment. The dispute has raised fears about a possible trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

The U.S. list heavily targets advanced technology products that benefit from Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” program, which aims to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products and build a dominant position in future industries.

The state-led 2025 program targets 10 strategic industries: advanced information technology, robotics, aircraft, new energy vehicles, pharmaceuticals, electric power equipment, advanced materials, agricultural machinery, shipbuilding and marine engineering and advanced rail equipment.

US States Vow to Defend Auto Fuel Efficiency Standards

Nearly a dozen U.S. states and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday promised to defend federal automobile efficiency standards against a rollback proposed this week by Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“All Americans … deserve to enjoy fuel-efficient, low-emission cars and light trucks that save money on gas, improve our health and support American jobs,” the attorneys general from 11 states said in a statement responding to

Pruitt’s proposal on Monday to ease the Obama-era standards.

The standards called for roughly doubling by 2025 the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles sold in the United States to about 50 miles (80 kilometers) per gallon. Proponents say such standards help spur innovation in clean technologies and cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

California has long been allowed by an EPA waiver to impose stricter standards than Washington does on vehicle emissions of some pollutants. Twelve other states follow California’s lead on cleaner cars.

The attorneys general, from states including New York, Iowa and Massachusetts, said they would challenge a rollback in court. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has already threatened to sue in defense of the standards.

The statement, also signed by more than 50 mayors from around the country, said automakers have been making progress in meeting the national standards and that compliance costs have been lower than projected.

Auto industry executives have not publicly sought specific reductions in the requirements negotiated with the Obama administration in 2011 as part of a bailout deal. But they have urged Pruitt and President Donald Trump to revise the standards so it becomes easier and less costly to meet the targets.

Pruitt defended his decision at EPA headquarters on Tuesday.

“We have nothing to be apologetic about with respect to the progress we’ve made in reducing emissions as a country,” Pruitt said. The EPA will make sure that U.S. consumers would not have to buy more expensive autos as a result of efficiency standards, he said.

Pruitt, a former attorney general of Oklahoma, a major oil producer, has been criticized by politicians after reports that he paid well below market rates to live in a condo owned by a lobbyist who deals with issues overseen by his agency. Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly phoned Pruitt this

week to say they supported him, an administration source said Tuesday.

IMF: As Myanmar Economy Rebounds, Sanctions Risk Gives Some Investors Pause

The government of Aung San Suu Kyi is opening the economy and growth is rebounding in Myanmar, though the possibility of broader Western sanctions over the Rohingya refugee crisis is nevertheless giving some foreign investors pause, according to a senior IMF official.

Shanaka Jay Peiris, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) mission chief to Myanmar, said in a recent interview that initial data reviewed by the IMF indicated that some foreign investors were delaying final approval of projects until there was clarity about how the situation may unfold.

“The numbers we have for FDI [foreign direct investment] aren’t showing it yet … but foreign investment approvals are slowing down, so there is some indicator that going forward FDI may be weaker,” Peiris told Reuters following the publication last week of the IMF’s latest review of Myanmar’s economy.

“Since August, investors are taking a pause. It isn’t a surprise,” he said. He said it was unclear which projects were being delayed and added that more data was necessary to better understand whether the “pause” was temporary or not.

However, leading indicators such as FDI project amounts approved by Myanmar’s government for the first 10 months of fiscal 2017/18 from April show “a marked slowdown” since September 2017, according to the IMF.

For now, FDI inflows for 2017/18 still look to be a “solid number,” Peiris added.

While it is too soon to know what it could mean for the overall economy, Peiris said: “We have to see whether project approvals were temporarily lower or will be a trend, as well as whether actual FDI inflows will fall by much. The magnitude would also matter.”

“We are not operating under the assumption that there are going to be broad economic sanctions,” he added, downplaying the risk of a decline.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay said that, “Especially in Myanmar, because of the Rakhine issue, tourism has come down, investments and FDI have come down too,” adding that the authorities were working hard to ensure macroeconomic stability.

The report by the IMF, which follows annual consultations with the government, followed a November visit to Myanmar, the first since nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after a military crackdown condemned by the international community.

The World Bank announced on Oct. 13 it was delaying the release of $200 million in budget support for Myanmar in response to the “forced displacement of the Rohingya.”

Both the United States and Canada imposed sanctions against a general in Myanmar’s military for his role in the crackdown against the Muslim Rohingya. The European Union said in February it was preparing sanctions against military leaders to hold them accountable for their role in the crisis.

The Trump administration’s aid chief, Mark Green, said last month he will visit Myanmar soon for talks with the government and to see for himself conditions of the Rohingya refugees.

Targeted sanctions

Peiris said the IMF believed that any more Western sanctions would likely target individuals in the military and not the economy.

“If the sanctions are limited to the military personnel, which has been the case to now, we believe it will be less of an impact” on the economy, Peiris said. “If it is broader, it would be more worrying.”

Overall, the IMF sees economic growth picking up toward an estimated potential rate of about 7 to 7.5 percent after lower-than-expected growth of 5.9 percent in 2016/17.

The United States remains concerned about the plight of the Rohingya, a Treasury official told Reuters, declining to comment on the status of sanctions investigations. Another U.S. official said the Trump administration was reviewing all options on Myanmar.

When asked by Reuters how concerned the government was about more sanctions, the Myanmar spokesman said such actions would affect “the whole country” because Myanmar was no longer a military dictatorship but instead run by “a democratic government elected by the people.”

“They shouldn’t do the economic sanctions,” the government spokesman said. “If the investments are affected, then it affects the people.”

Opening up

The IMF visit came shortly before Myanmar introduced regulations to bring the country’s banks closer to international standards and force them to recover mostly open-ended “overdraft loans” that make up the bulk of their lending.

Myanmar’s central bank deputy governor, Soe Thein, told Reuters in November that private banks had been given more time to clear most of their loan books.

Private banks account for more than half of banking system assets and the largest six private banks hold around 80 percent of private bank assets, according to the IMF.

The new rules compel banks to open their books to the central bank, and Peiris said initial data raised concerns about the need for more bank capital.

“It is more fragile than what has been published, so banks will have to raise capital and recognize losses,” he said.

“The question is whether owners are willing to put up the money, and if they can’t, will they try to find partners? How that will evolve is hard to tell but they will need more capital,” he said. The Fund would have a better perspective of the situation during its next visit later this year, he said.

“We and the central bank do have a sense that it is a significant issue,” he added.

Asked whether the government agreed with the IMF assessment on the banks, the Myanmar government spokesman said reforms were important to build economic stability.

“It is necessary to be careful,” he said, “We cannot afford to make any mistakes.”

Experts: In Self-Driving Cars, Human Drivers and Standards Come Up Short

Autonomous cars should be required to meet standards on their ability to detect potential hazards, and better ways are needed to keep their human drivers ready to assume control, U.S. auto safety and technology experts said after fatal crashes involving Uber Technologies and Tesla vehicles.

Automakers and tech companies rely on human drivers to step in when necessary with self-driving technology. But in the two recent crashes, which involved vehicles using different kinds of technologies, neither of the human drivers took any action before the accidents.

Driverless cars rely on lidar, which uses laser light pulses to detect road hazards, as well as sensors such as radar and cameras. There are not, however, any standards on the systems, nor do all companies use the same combination of sensors, and some vehicles may have blind spots.

Queue the music for the human driver — music that drivers often find difficult to hear.

“Humans don’t have the ability to take over the vehicle as quickly as may be expected” in those situations, said self-driving expert and investor Evangelos Simoudis.

In the Uber crash last month, the ride-services company was testing a fully driverless system intended for commercial use when the prototype vehicle struck and killed a woman walking across an Arizona road. Video of the crash, taken from inside the vehicle, shows the driver at the wheel, seemingly looking down and not at the road. Just before the video stops, the driver looks upward toward the road and suddenly looks shocked.

In the Tesla incident last month, which involved a car that any consumer can buy, a Model X vehicle was in semi-autonomous Autopilot mode when it crashed, killing its driver. The driver had received earlier warnings to put his hands on the wheel, Tesla said.

Some semi-automated cars, like the Tesla, employ different technologies to help drivers stay in their lane or maintain a certain distance behind the vehicle in front. Those systems rely on alerts — beeping noises or a vibrating steering wheel — to get drivers’ attention.

‘Immature technology’

Duke University mechanical engineering professor Missy Cummings said the recent Uber and Tesla crashes show the “technology they are using is immature.”

Tesla says its technology is statistically proven to save lives through better driving. In a response to Reuters on Tuesday, Tesla said drivers have a “responsibility to maintain control of the car” whenever they enable Autopilot and need to be ready to respond to “audible and visual cues.”

An Uber spokesperson said, “safety is our primary concern every step of the way.”

A consumer group, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, says a bill on self-driving cars now stalled in the U.S. Senate is an opportunity to improve safety, quite different from the bill’s original intent to quickly allow testing of self-driving cars without human controls on public roads. The group has proposed amending the bill, the AV START Act, to set standards for those vehicles — for instance, requiring a “vision test” for automated vehicles to test what their different sensors actually see.

The group believes the bill should also cover semi-automated systems like Tesla’s Autopilot — a lower level of technology than what is included in the current proposed legislation.

Other groups have also put forth proposals on self-driving cars, including requiring the vehicles and even semi-automated systems to meet performance targets, greater transparency and data from makers and operators of the vehicles, increased regulatory oversight, and better monitoring of and engagement with human drivers.

Role of drivers

Others want to focus on the human driver. In November, Consumer Reports magazine called on automakers for responsible labeling “to help consumers fully understand” their vehicles’ autonomous functions.

Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ head of automotive testing, said human drivers “are bad at paying attention to automation and this technology is not capable of reacting to all types of emergencies.

“It’s like being a passenger with a toddler driving the car,” he said.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is doing tests using semi-automated vehicles including models from Tesla, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and General Motors Co. The aim is to see how drivers use semi-autonomous technology — some watch the road with their hands above the wheel, others do not — and which warnings get their attention.

“We just don’t know enough about how drivers use any of these systems in the wild,” said MIT research scientist Bryan Reimer.

Timothy Carone, an autonomous systems expert and professor at Notre Dame University’s Mendoza College of Business, said autonomous technology’s proponents must “find the right balance so the technology is tested right, but it isn’t hampered or halted.”

“Because in the long run it will save lives,” he said.

‘Chappaquiddick’ Puts Focus on Aftermath of Kennedy Car Accident

Jason Clarke plunged into frigid waters, repeatedly, for his role as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in “Chappaquiddick.”

The Australian actor said his research about the accident that thwarted Kennedy’s presidential chances included jumping into Poucha Pond, the same waters the Massachusetts Democrat’s car crashed into in July 1969, killing Mary Jo Kopechne.

Clarke said the indie film, which is in limited release on Friday, doesn’t try to sensationalize the accident, which Kennedy failed to report for 10 hours.

He said the film sticks “to the facts as much as we could and to play it out without scandalizing, without going to the tabloid of it.”

“This man committed this act and he worked his way out of it with help and with his own moral journey to the other side, where he then became one of the longest-serving senators in history. I don’t think — partisanship aside — you can’t take away from what he did.”

Kennedy went to Martha’s Vineyard to race in the Edgartown Regatta and on the evening of July 18, 1969, attended a party at a rented house on Chappaquiddick Island. Guests included Kennedy friends and several women, including Kopechne, who had worked on the presidential campaign of his brother Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated a year earlier.

Kennedy and Kopechne, 28, left the party together and a short time later their car plunged into Poucha Pond. Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and said he made several futile attempts to rescue Kopechne, who was trapped inside.

Kennedy, who died in 2009, later described his failure to report the incident to police for 10 hours as “indefensible.”

Clarke visited the bridge and pond as part of his research for the film, even jumping in.

“It’s pretty much unchanged apart from the bridge itself has got guard rails and wider. There’s no other buildings. The Dike House is still there, the same place. It’s dark. There’s no lights on the road,” he said. “The water is dark and the current is strong.”

“I think I held my breath for five seconds to see where I came up. And I came up a big distance away,” Clarke said.

Kennedy’s underwater escape was recreated in the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. Clarke said the scene was hard to shoot not only because of the ocean’s cold water, but also because he had to get out of the car while upside down.

The film, an Entertainment Studios release, spends more time on the aftermath of the accident. Clarke said viewers should leave theaters with a greater understanding of Kennedy.

“You can be with Ted a bit. You cannot just externalize it and say bad, horrible, disgusting man. You might want to at the end, but you can be there for it: on the phone afterwards, the walk back, the swim, the lies, the made-up story — or perhaps it’s actually really what did happen. But you can actually stay there with Ted. Not enough to be a Kennedy, but enough to almost touch him,” he said.

Jim Gaffigan, who plays attorney Paul Markham, one of the co-hosts of the party that Kennedy and Kopechne left together, agreed.

“We all have earlier versions of ourselves that we’re not crazy about. At least I do,” he said. “So there is something very interesting about the journey that Ted goes through, and being exposed to his relationship with his father,” he said. “Look, it’s not a documentary, but there is an attempt to be objective and ask objective questions.”