To many Americans the Star-Spangled Banner, also known as Old Glory, is almost a religious icon. That hasn’t always been the case. Back in the late 1700s, during the American Revolutionary War, regiments of George Washington’s Continental Army used various flags to declare their independence from Great Britain. VOA’s Nikoleta Ilic spoke with an expert on U.S. flags about the origins and the various iterations of the Star-Spangled Banner.
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Month: May 2018
Messages to Graduates Touch on Strength, Integrity, Fearlessness, Courage
It is commencement season in America, when high school and university students gather for graduation ceremonies featuring advice from prominent Americans. This year, at a time of heightened political divisions in the country and accusations of “fake news,” many speakers are featuring political themes and talking about integrity. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Using Gene Therapy to Defeat Cancer, Hereditary Disease
Gene therapy could potentially allow doctors to cure some of the deadliest types of cancer and rare hereditary diseases with one injection. The FDA recently approved the use of three anti-cancer drugs, all based on genetically modified human cells. Scientists say up to 80 percent of all types of cancer will respond to gene therapy treatments in the future. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Daria Dieguts reports.
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Scientists Find Opioids, Antibiotics in Puget Sound Mussels
Scientists who track pollution have discovered traces of antibiotics and the pain reliever oxycodone in some Puget Sound mussels.
KIRO-TV reported this week that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained clean mussels from Penn Cove on Whidbey Island and put them in different areas to test for water contamination.
Scientists worked with the Puget Sound Institute to analyze the data and discovered three out of 18 locations came back positive for trace amounts of oxycodone.
State Fish and Wildlife biologist Jennifer Lanksbury said the contamination most likely came through wastewater treatment plants.
She said the chemicals might be having an impact in fish and shellfish in the areas.
Mussels at a restaurant or store are safe to eat because they come from clean locations, Lanksbury said.
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US Conservationists Sue Trump Administration Over Migratory Bird Policy
A coalition of conservation groups sued the Trump administration on Thursday, accusing the government of slashing protections for migratory birds.
At issue is the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which the National Audubon Society and other plaintiffs say has been undermined. In the past, the act helped hold parties responsible for actions that killed or injured migratory birds.
But in December, the Trump administration said energy companies and other businesses that accidentally kill migratory birds will no longer be criminally prosecuted.
“As you can imagine, many causes of bird fatalities — including oil spills — could fall into this ‘unintentional’ category, so we’re taking the administration to court,” David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
Plaintiffs also include the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Defendants are the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Daniel Jorjani, the Interior Department’s principal deputy solicitor.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, representing the government in the lawsuit, declined to comment. Representatives for the Fish and Wildlife Service, interior and justice departments also declined comment.
The Trump administration’s December move, in a legal memo from the Interior Department, reversed a longstanding practice at the agency and a last-minute rule implemented by the outgoing Obama administration. It came after several appeals courts ruled that the government was interpreting a century-old law aimed at protecting birds too broadly.
In the legal opinion, Jorjani said that a 1918 law that officials have used to prosecute those who kill birds “incidentally” as part of doing business was really aimed at preventing poaching and hunting without a license.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act “applies only to direct and affirmative purposeful actions that reduce migratory birds, their eggs, or their nests, by killing or capturing, to human control,” Jorjani wrote.
The memo is already being followed, the lawsuit said, and one or more companies constructing natural gas pipelines were told they may cut down trees with nesting birds during the breeding season.
The conservation groups request that the court vacate the memo and declare the defendants “revert to their prior, correct longstanding interpretation and policy,” the lawsuit said.
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Markets Disrupted as Italy’s Populists Negotiate Cabinet
Italy’s prime minister-designate, Giuseppe Conte, a political novice and obscure law professor accused of padding his resume, put the finishing touches to his cabinet lineup Friday. And initial reaction from financial markets was far from approving.
Italian government bond prices slumped and the country’s ailing banks saw their stock prices hit an 11-month low. Italy’s outgoing economy minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, warned the incoming coalition government of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and far-right League not to underestimate the power of the markets.
“The most worrying aspect of the program, which this government is working on, is its underestimation of the consequences of certain choices,” Padoan told the Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper.
M5S and the League unveiled their government agreement a week ago, after more than 70 days of tortuous talks, following the country’s inconclusive parliamentary elections in March. The polls saw establishment parties trounced.
The coalition partners’ program includes massive tax cuts favoring the rich — a League demand — additional spending on welfare for the poor, and job-seekers and a roll-back of pension reforms that helped Italy weather the multi-year-long eurozone debt crisis which bankrupted Greece.
Investors — domestic and foreign — are expressing alarm about what the next few months may hold for an Italy governed by unlikely political partners. Fears include a public sector spending spree that will put Rome not only on a collision course with the European Union over budget rules. It also will weaken the already perilous state finances of Italy, the third largest economy in Europe and the second most indebted.
Some financial analysts say investors are becoming wary about European equities in general, fearing political and economic unpredictability in Italy could trigger contagion, prompting a new eurozone crisis. European markets were on track Friday to record collectively their first weekly decline since March — and investors last week withdrew the most money in nearly two years from western European funds.
“Investors should take caution as far as European equities go,” Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX Strategy at BK Asset Management, told CNBC’s cable TV show Trading Nation this week.
Immigration
EU officials in Brussels and Italy’s half-a-million migrants are as anxious as investors. They are bracing for confrontations with the incoming populist government, whose two halves agree about very little, except when it comes to euro-skepticism and disapproval of migrants. M5S itself is split sharply between liberals and conservatives.
Earlier this week Italian President Sergio Mattarella approved Giuseppe Conte, aged 54, as the coalition’s nominee for prime minister — despite evidence that the academic had padded his resume with stints at New York University, Girton College, Cambridge and France’s prestigious Sorbonne. None of them had any record of his official attendance, although he was granted a visitor’s library card by NYU.
Conte also claimed in his resume to have founded a prominent Italian law practice, but was only an external contributor, according to the firm.
A figurehead?
Few here in Rome believe Conte, who was born in the southern region of Puglia, will be anything but a figurehead. The mutually antagonistic party leaders, M5S’ Luigi Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini, weren’t prepared to give way to each other and let the other have the job — hence Conte’s nomination, which still has to be approved by parliament.
The Economist magazine suggested he might end up as the fictional valet Truffaldino, a character in an 18th century Italian comedy entitled “Servant of Two Masters.” Whether he will be able to bridge disagreements between Di Maio and Salvini is unclear — and a testimony to that, say analysts, is the party leaders’ decision to set up a “conciliation committee” to adjudicate disputes.
“Nobody knows what will happen, because this is a government without precedent and the two parties are virtually incompatible,” said Sergio Fabbrini, director of the LUISS School of Government in Rome.
Economy
The parties were locked in dispute Friday with no agreement about who should occupy the key position of economy minister. The League has been pushing for 82-year-old economist Paolo Savona, a former industry minister who wants Italy to drop the euro as its currency, which he describes as “a German cage.” Savona opposed Italy signing in 1992 the Maastricht Treaty, a key document that started the process of closer EU political integration.
Even if the League fails in its bid to secure the economic portfolio for Savona, there are plenty of likely policy clashes ahead between the EU and Western Europe’s first all-populist government, despite the fact the League is no longer demanding Italy drop Europe’s single currency and M5S is no longer pushing for a referendum on Italy’s future EU membership.
Both party leaders now talk about reforming the EU from within.
Trouble ahead
Nonetheless, flashpoints are on the near horizon. Salvini, a hardline migrant opponent, is likely to become interior minister and will oversee the coalition’s agreed to anti-immigration plans, many of which are in violation of EU law. They include truncating asylum procedures, the forcible detention of irregular migrants and the repatriation of half-million migrants, most from sub-Saharan Africa, to their countries of origin.
Next month, EU leaders are due to extend the European bloc’s sanctions on Russia, but Italy’s coalition partners are opposed, viewing Moscow as a partner, rather than foe. Both M5S and the League want the sanctions lifted that were imposed on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Some analysts predict the new government’s slim majority — only seven in the Senate — as well as fiscal realities, will constrain the revolutionary fervor of Italy’s populists. But others envision instability and unpredictability in the weeks and months ahead.
On Friday, the European Commission’s vice-president for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, issued a stark warning to Italy: “Our message from the European Commission is very clear: that it is important Italy continues to stick with responsible fiscal and macro-economic policies.”
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FBI: Foreign Hackers Have Compromised Home Router Devices
The FBI warned on Friday that foreign cybercriminals had compromised “hundreds of thousands” of home and small-office router devices around the world which direct traffic on the internet by forwarding data packets between computer networks.
In a public service announcement, the FBI has discovered that the foreign cybercriminals used a VPNFilter malware that can collect peoples’ information, exploit their devices and block network traffic.
The announcement did not provide any details about where the criminals might be based, or what their motivations could be.
“The size and scope of the infrastructure by VPNFilter malware is significant,” the FBI said, adding that it is capable of rendering people’s routers “inoperable.”
It said the malware is hard to detect, due to encryption and other tactics.
The FBI urged people to reboot their devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and help identify infected devices.
People should also consider disabling remote management settings, changing passwords to replace them with more secure ones, and upgrading to the latest firmware.
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Discharged and Jobless: US Veterans Seek Change in Hiring Rules
Military veterans who were discharged for relatively minor offenses say they often can’t get jobs, and they hope a recent warning to employers by the state of Connecticut will change that.
The state’s human rights commission told employers last month they could be breaking the law if they discriminate against veterans with some types of less-than-honorable discharges. Blanket policies against hiring such veterans could be discriminatory, the commission said, because the military has issued them disproportionately to black, Latino, gay and disabled veterans.
At least one other state, Illinois, already prohibits hiring discrimination based on a veteran’s discharge status, advocates say, but Connecticut appears to be the first to base its decision on what it deems discrimination by the military. Regardless of the state’s reasons, veterans say, the attention there could at least educate employers.
“You may as well be a felon when you’re looking for a job,” said Iraq War veteran Kristofer Goldsmith. Goldsmith said the Army gave him a general discharge in 2007 because he attempted suicide.
An honorable discharge is the only type that entails full benefits. A dishonorable discharge is given after a court-martial for serious offenses, which can include felonies. Other types of discharges in between — known by veterans as “bad paper” — are issued administratively, with no court case, and can stem from behavior including talking back, tardiness, drug use or fighting.
The commission says its guidance focused on that middle class of discharges.
Sometimes such discharges are given to veterans whose violations stemmed from post-traumatic stress disorder, like Goldsmith’s, or brain injuries. Many private employers may not be aware of those extenuating circumstances or understand the differences between discharges, critics say.
And they either won’t hire bad-paper veterans or won’t give them preferences an honorably discharged veteran would get, the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School told the Connecticut commission.
The clinic, acting on behalf of the Connecticut chapter of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, showed the commission job postings that require applicants who have served in the military to have been honorably discharged.
It also cited a 2017 report by the advocacy organization Protect Our Defenders that found black service members were more likely to be disciplined than white members. And the commission’s guidance to employers notes thousands of service members have been discharged for their sexual orientation.
Employers might require an honorable discharge as an easy way to narrow the pool and get strong applicants, said Amanda Ljubicic, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut.
“At face value it seems like a simple, logical cutoff to make as an employer,” she said. “Certainly this new policy forces employers to think about it differently and to think about the complexities.”
The Vietnam Veterans of America asked for a presidential pardon for bad-paper veterans. President Barack Obama didn’t respond as he was leaving office, nor did President Donald Trump as he was entering, said John Rowan, the organization’s president. He was unsure whether activists would ask Trump again.
PTSD
More than 13,000 service members received a type of discharge for misconduct, known as other than honorable, between 2011 and 2015, despite being diagnosed with PTSD, a traumatic brain injury or another condition associated with misconduct, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, under an order from Congress, expanded emergency mental health coverage to those veterans for the first time last year.
Passing new laws to address the effects of bad paper is probably not the best solution, said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who pushed for the changes; rather, he said, the military should stop issuing bad-paper discharges to injured veterans.
Goldsmith, 32, said he developed PTSD after his first deployment to Iraq. He was set to leave the military and go to college when the Army extended his active-duty service and ordered him back in 2007. Goldsmith said he attempted suicide shortly before he was due to deploy.
Because of his general discharge, Goldsmith lost his GI Bill benefits. He didn’t know how he’d find a job. If he didn’t mention his military service, he would have a four-year gap on his resume. But if he did, he would have to disclose medical information to explain why he left.
A friend eventually hired him to work at a photo-booth company, and Goldsmith began contacting members of Congress to press for health care for veterans with bad paper.
“Things like addressing employment discrimination on the national level are so far from possible,” he said, “I don’t think any of us in the advocacy community has put enough pressure on Congress to handle it.”
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Broadcom’s Tan, CBS’s Moonves Among Highest-Paid CEOs
Here are the highest-paid CEOs for 2017, as calculated by The Associated Press and Equilar, an executive data firm.
The AP’s compensation study covered 339 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their respective companies, which filed proxy statements between January 1 and April 30.
Compensation often includes stock and option grants that the CEO may not receive for years unless certain performance measures are met. For some companies, big raises occur when CEOs get a stock grant in one year as part of a multi-year grant.
- Hock Tan
Broadcom
$103.2 million
Change from last year: Up 318 percent
- Leslie Moonves
CBS
$68.4 million
Change: flat
- W. Nicholas Howley
TransDigm
$61 million
Change: Up 223 percent
(Howley left the CEO position last month.)
- Jeffrey Bewkes
Time Warner
$49 million
Change: Up 50 percent
- Stephen Kaufer
TripAdvisor
$43.2 million
Change: Up 3,400 percent
(Kaufer’s 2017 compensation excludes $4.8 million in incremental fair value relating to the modification of awards granted in 2013.)
- David Zaslav
Discovery Communications
$42.2 million
Change: Up 14 percent
- Robert Iger
Walt Disney
$36.3 million
Change: Down 11 percent
- Stephen Wynn
Wynn Resorts
$34.5 million
Change: Up 23 percent
(Wynn left the CEO position in February.)
- Brenton Saunders
Allergan
$32.8 million
Change: Up 693 percent
- Brian Roberts
Comcast
$32.5 million
Change: Down 1 percent
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Amazon’s Alexa Accidentally Tapes, Shares Family Chat With Contact
A Portland, Oregon, family has learned what happens when Amazon.com Inc’s popular voice assistant Alexa is lost in translation.
Amazon on Thursday described an “unlikely … string of events” that made Alexa send an audio recording of the family to one of their contacts randomly. The episode underscored how Alexa can misinterpret conversation as a wake-up call and command.
A local news outlet, KIRO 7, reported that a woman with Amazon devices across her home received a call two weeks ago from her husband’s employee, who said Alexa had recorded the family’s conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to him.
“I felt invaded,” the woman, only identified as Danielle, said in the report. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it.'”
Alexa, which comes with Echo speakers and other gadgets, starts recording after it hears its name or another “wake word” selected by users. This means that an utterance quite like Alexa, even from a TV commercial, can activate a device.
That’s what happened in the incident, Amazon said. “Subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request,” the company said in a statement. “At which point,
Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list.”
Amazon added, “We are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”
Assuring customers of Alexa’s security is crucial to Amazon, which has ambitions for Alexa to be ubiquitous — whether dimming the lights for customers or placing orders for them with the world’s largest online retailer.
University researchers from Berkeley and Georgetown found in a 2016 paper that sounds unintelligible to humans can set off voice assistants in general, which raised concerns of exploitation by attackers. Amazon did not immediately comment on the matter, but it previously told The New York Times that it has taken steps to keep its devices secure.
Millions of Amazon customers have shopped with Alexa. Customers bought tens of millions of Alexa devices last holiday season alone, the company has said. That makes the incident reported Thursday a rare one. But faulty hearing is not.
“Background noise from our television is making it think we said Alexa,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said of his personal experience. “It happens all the time.”
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Weinstein Surrenders to NY Police in Sex Assault Probe
Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to police Friday morning to face the first criminal charges to be filed against him after months of sexual abuse allegations from scores of women that destroyed his career and set off a national reckoning known as the #MeToo movement.
Weinstein, 66, stepped from a black SUV and walked slowly into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras. He didn’t answer respond to shouts of his name.
The exact charges against Weinstein still had not been made public early Friday. Two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press the case will include allegations by Lucia Evans, an aspiring actress who has said the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office. She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.
One official said it’s likely the case also will include at least one other victim who has not come forward publicly.
The officials spoke Thursday to the AP on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation.
Weinstein was expected to be charged at least with criminal sexual act, a crime that carries up to 25 years in prison, the officials said.
Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment when first contacted about the charges late Friday, but previously said in court paperwork that the allegations that Weinstein forced himself on women were “entirely without merit” and that he never knowingly broke the law.
Evans confirmed to The New Yorker that she was pressing charges.
“At a certain point, you have to think about the greater good of humanity, of womankind,” she told the magazine.
Evans told The New Yorker in a story published in October that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his New York office in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College.
“I said, over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t,’ “she told the magazine. “I tried to get away, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t want to kick him or fight him.”
Evans, who is now a marketing consultant, didn’t report the encounter to police at the time, telling The New Yorker that she blamed herself for not fighting back.
“It was always my fault for not stopping him,” she said.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had been under enormous public pressure to bring a criminal case against Weinstein. Some women’s groups, including the Hollywood activist group Time’s Up, accused the Democrat of being too deferential to Weinstein and too dismissive of his accusers.
A grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for weeks.
In March, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took the extraordinary step of ordering the state’s attorney general to investigate whether Vance acted properly in 2015 when he decided not to prosecute Weinstein over a previous allegation of unwanted groping, made by an Italian model. That investigation is in its preliminary stages.
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing around the globe. Several actresses and models accused him of criminal sexual assaults, but many of the encounters happened too long ago for any prosecution. Film actress Rose McGowan said Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah, “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra said he raped her in her New York apartment in 1992 and Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008.
McGowan told the AP on Thursday that she is gratified but “still in shock” that Weinstein was expected to surrender.
“The justice system has been something very elusive,” McGowan said. “I hope in this case it works. Because it’s all true. None of this was consensual.”
The statute of limitations for rape and certain other sex crimes in New York was eliminated in 2006, but not for attacks that happened prior to 2001.
New York City police detectives said in early November that they were investigating allegations by another accuser, “Boardwalk Empire” actress Paz de la Huerta, who told police in October that Weinstein raped her twice in 2010. She is not one of the victims in the case on Friday; hers was still pending, officials said.
Authorities in California and London also are investigating assault allegations. Britain has no statute of limits on rape cases; some of the allegations under investigation there date to the 1980s.
Harvey and his brother Bob Weinstein started his now-bankrupt company after leaving Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and which became a powerhouse in ’90s indie film with hits like “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.” The Weinstein Co. found success with Oscar winners “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech.”
Strategic Messaging Aims to Combat Ebola in DRC
Two Ebola patients who fled a hospital quarantine area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo later attended a prayer meeting, potentially exposing at least 50 participants to the dangerous virus.
The incident demonstrates the risks of limited public awareness of Ebola and how the virus spreads. So governments and aid groups are boosting efforts to educate the public as part of a broader response to an Ebola outbreak that as of Thursday was suspected in 52 cases of hemorrhagic fever. Of those, 31 have been confirmed as Ebola, with 13 likely and eight possible, the DRC health ministry said. The death toll was revised from 27 to 22, but it’s expected to grow.
“We try to raise awareness and tell people that, no matter their beliefs, it is crucial for patients to remain in health centers for treatment,” the health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, told VOA in a phone interview. “This is part of the community awareness campaign, and it must continue and reach all groups in the population.
“Religious and traditional leaders must be involved, because there are many beliefs surrounding the Ebola virus,” Kalenga said, later adding that a pastor helped officials find one of the patients who fled.
How it starts, spreads
The disease, initially transmitted to humans from wild animals such as fruit bats, monkeys and forest antelope, spreads through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. Early symptoms can include fever, sore throat, fatigue, muscle pain and headache. Symptoms can take up to 21 days to emerge.
The outbreak’s epicenter is in a remote area of northwestern DRC, in Equateur province. Several cases have been confirmed in its provincial capital, Mbandaka, where the patients had fled from the Ebola treatment center. The city has more than 1 million residents, heightening the risk of further infection.
“The hospital where it currently is located is in the middle of the city, with many people coming and going,” Kalenga said. So health officials have decided to relocate the treatment center, run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders, to a site outside the city. That facility is expected to open later this week.
Coordinated messaging
Aid groups, coordinated by the World Health Organization, have been working to support the Congolese government’s response.
A Red Cross team arrived earlier this month in Equateur province with supplies including chlorine disinfectant, safe burial kits and informational posters.
“The most important tool that we have, the only tool to tackle viruses, is information and sharing it,” Julie Hall, special adviser on health for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said in a video clip posted Thursday on Twitter.
The IRFC also posted an animated, one-minute video explaining safe burial practices and why they should be observed.
Dangers of misinformation
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said health workers have hit stumbling blocks in explaining the risks of Ebola and how an experimental vaccine, introduced this week in Congo, might help.
Some people see Ebola as witchcraft, he told VOA. Health workers and burial teams have reported threats amid rumors that they’re bringing the disease with them.
Misinformation also helped fan the West Africa outbreak that began in late 2013 and, over the course of more than two years, killed at least 11,300 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Reports surfaced of attacks on health workers or burial teams accused of disrespecting corpses.
It took aggressive, targeted messaging to allay fears and change behaviors, said Jennifer McQuiston, an official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an expert on infectious disease. She had deployed to Sierra Leone’s capital as the Ebola caseload there “started rising dramatically” in October 2014.
An international communications group had assembled 200 critical messages,important but hard to absorb at once, McQuiston recalled in a phone interview Thursday. So, guided by data on where and how Ebola was spreading, the group “came out with an Ebola ‘big idea of the week.’”
First up: “Safe burials save lives.” McQuiston said people were urged to accept burial teams with protective gear and disinfectant to safely remove bodies, characterizing this as an honorable measure. They also were encouraged to “pledge that if you died of Ebola, you would want your loved ones to give you a safe burial.”
Another week, the message was to “seek early treatment, to deconstruct the myth that people [with Ebola] were better off at home,” McQuiston said. “Going to an Ebola treatment center gives you a much better chance of surviving, and it’s going to save your family’s lives.”
Messages were delivered across radio, TV, social media and billboards, including in picture form, essential in areas with low literacy rates.
McQuiston’s detail lasted less than two months, and she returned to the United States.
“I actually went back to Sierra Leone a year later, in October 2015, and they were on the cusp of being declared Ebola-free” by WHO, she said. “They were proud. They changed their behavior.”
Control measures
With the current DRC outbreak, health experts have rolled out an information campaign that encourages vaccinations not only for front-line health workers but also for relatives and friends of those who have contracted Ebola. The WHO said some 10,000 people should be vaccinated within the next month.
Health officials are identifying and monitoring those who’ve come in contact with infected individuals.
Meanwhile, Kalenga said “all the people” traveling in and out of Mbandaka were being monitored for elevated temperature that might indicate infection. In the West African outbreak that began in late 2013 and killed more than 11,000, airport monitors used non-contact thermometers.
Nigeria, too, has reactivated temperature screening at its land borders, airports and seaports. The continent’s most populous country, with 186 million residents, experienced an outbreak in July 2014 that left seven dead. The WHO pronounced it Ebola-free that October.
Information campaigns also promote washing hands with a chlorine solution to kill the virus.
Handwashing stations have surfaced in public places. UNICEF has set up them up at entrances to schools, and teachers have been instructing students to forgo regular greetings of hugs or handshakes. During the West African outbreak, youngsters waved to or bumped elbows with each other.
This reporting originated in VOA’s Africa Division. Contributors include Paul Alexander and Carol Guensburg.
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Artist Makes Art From Discarded Cosmetics
A British university student has created a range of watercolor paints made from discarded cosmetics. An example, she says, of how the so-called ‘circular economy’ can help improve the environment. It could also be a way for cosmetics companies and retailers to reduce waste and make more money. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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China Snaps up US Oil, Straining Capacity to Export It
The U.S. oil export infrastructure is straining to keep up as the country’s crude oil exports hit new highs and China snaps up more of it than ever before.
U.S. crude production has surged to a record 10.7 million barrels a day, driven largely by growth from the Permian shale patch in West Texas, which pumps more than 3 million barrels per day.
However, the infrastructure to move it abroad is lagging, even as U.S. prices are well below the Brent benchmark, a discount that sits just off three-year highs at $8.09 per barrel.
U.S. crude exports peaked at 2.6 million bpd two weeks ago, but are expected to keep rising.
What is US export capacity?
No definitive data are available on how much crude the United States can export, though analysts estimate a nationwide capacity of 3.5 million to 4 million bpd. Most terminal operators and companies do not disclose capacity, and the U.S. Energy Department does not track it.
“So far, export capacity is keeping pace, but we are walking a tightrope,” said Bernadette Johnson, vice president at Drilling Info.
That capacity may begin to be tested next month, as Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, bought a record 16 million barrels, or about 533,000 bpd of U.S. crude, to load in June, two sources with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.
For the last six months of available data, ending in February, the United States exported about 332,000 bpd to China.
Terminals designed for imports
Analysts are concerned about how quickly the crude terminals at Gulf Coast ports, many initially designed for imports, can shift to handling exports. Only the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port can handle supertanker exports, but it only started testing in February. The supertankers, known as VLCCs or very large crude carriers, can handle about 2 million barrels of oil, the amount preferred by Asian buyers with bigger ports.
“There’s only one dock on the Gulf Coast that can handle a VLCC deepwater, and that’s LOOP. And the LOOP has only started to export,” said Sandy Fielden, director of research in commodities and energy at Morningstar.
Port of Corpus Christi in Texas is developing its Harbor Island port, which will accommodate 120 VLCCs per year, said Jarl Pedersen, chief commercial officer at the port, with a targeted completion of late 2020.
Kpler, a cargo tracking service, Thursday estimated that up to 4.8 million bpd can be moved from the top crude-exporting ports of Corpus Christi, Houston, Port Arthur and New Orleans. Their estimate in October was 3.2 million bpd.
PIRA Energy Group put the U.S. overall crude export capacity at 3.5 million bpd, while Morningstar’s estimate is 3.8 million bpd at most.
Pipelines lacking, too
In addition to port constraints, inadequate pipeline space has created a glut of supply in West Texas, pushing the principle cash grade there to a $13 discount to benchmark U.S. crude futures this month, the biggest in 3½ years.
“The constraint is really the pipeline coming down from the Permian to Corpus Christi,” Pedersen said. However, the ship channel still needs to be deepened, a $320 million project in development with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
There is 3.4 million bpd of pipeline capacity, while total output from tight oil and legacy production from vertical wells in the Permian is at more than 4.2 million bpd, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
“The combined volumes mean that the infrastructure is crammed full — there’s little or no room for incremental volumes,” R.T. Dukes, head of U.S. Lower 48 oil supply at Wood Mackenzie said in a note.
About 300,000 bpd of new pipeline capacity is to come on by the end of January, but “it’s really from next summer that we’ll see big new capacity,” Dukes said.
In the second half of 2019, another 1.25 million bpd will be added, lifting total capacity up to 5 million bpd, he said.
“That’s when the big discount of WTI at Midland will narrow,” Dukes said.
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Hawaii Volcano Sends 3 Flows of Lava Into Ocean
Lava entered the ocean from a third flow Thursday, marking the third week of a Hawaii volcano eruption that has opened up nearly two dozen vents in rural communities, destroyed dozens of buildings and shot miles-high plumes of ash into the sky.
Low lava fountains were erupting from a nearly continuous 2-mile-long (3.22-kilometer) portion of the series of fissures that have opened in the ground, scientists said Thursday. The fountains were feeding channelized lava flows down to the coast. The eastern-most channel split, creating three ocean entries.
Since the eruption began May 3, Hawaii County has ordered about 2,000 people to evacuate from Leilani Estates and surrounding neighborhoods.
Hawaii officials have said they may need to evacuate 1,000 more people if lava crosses key highways and isolates communities in the mostly rural part of the island where the Kilauea volcano is erupting.
A blocked highway would cut people off from the only route to grocery stores, schools and hospitals.
The U.S. Marine Corps said Thursday that it has sent two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from a base near Honolulu to help if more evacuations become necessary. Each helicopter can carry 50 passengers.
20 vents, 50 buildings
The volcano has opened more than 20 vents in the ground that have released lava, sulfur dioxide and steam. The lava has been pouring down the flank of the volcano and into the ocean miles away.
Lava has destroyed 50 buildings, including about two dozen homes. One person was seriously injured after being hit by a flying piece of lava.
There continues to be intermittent explosions at the summit that have been sending plumes of ash into the sky. On Wednesday, the volcano belched a plume that reached about 7,000 feet (2,133 meters), scientists said. Right before the explosion, there was a 3.9 magnitude earthquake at the summit.
“We are kind of in this steady state,” said Wendy Stovall, a scientist at the U.S. Geographical Survey. There’s no indication about whether lava volume will increase or decrease, she said. The continued explosions are expected to “last a little while longer.”
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Brazil: Deal Reached to Suspend Crippling Trucker Strike
Brazil’s government said late Thursday that a deal had been reached with truckers to suspend a 4-day-old strike that caused fuel shortages, cut into food deliveries, backed up exports and threatened airline flights.
Eliseu Padilha, chief of staff for President Michel Temer, told reporters in Brasilia that several unions that represent truckers agreed to suspend the strike for 15 days to give all parties time to negotiate a solution to rising fuel prices that drivers say have cut deeply into their earnings.
The deal came after a full day of negotiations with several of the largest transportation unions.
Diumar Bueno, president of the National Confederation of Autonomous Transporters, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he hoped the agreement would lead to drivers quickly dismantling roadblocks on highways and streets.
But it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the thousands of truckers, who by the nature of their jobs operate with a good bit of independence, would heed calls to stop the strike.
Road transport
Brazil’s economy runs largely on road transport, and the strike to protest rising diesel prices was beginning to have serious consequences, with highway police reporting blocked roads in nearly all of Brazil’s states.
The airport in the capital of Brasilia allowed landings only by planes that carried enough fuel to take off again. The stop-gap measure hadn’t resulted in any flight cancelations, but it was unclear how long it could continue before companies would have to ground planes. The civil aviation authority and airport authorities said they were monitoring fuel supplies carefully.
Long lines formed at gas stations, and some ran out of some kinds of fuel. In Rio de Janeiro, only about two-thirds of the city’s buses were running Thursday, according to Rio Onibus, which represents the companies that run the various lines.
Local media reported food shortages and rationing in some supermarkets, and an association of supermarkets in Brazil’s south warned that perishable food would run out in days if the strike did not end. The association said stores on average have a 15-day supply of dry goods, but fresh food would run out or spoil before then.
The Brazilian Association of Meat Industry Exporters said dozens of meatpacking plants were idling because of the strike, and 1,200 containers carrying beef for export were not being loaded on ships each day. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of meat in the world.
Truckers complain that rising diesel prices have cut deeply into their income and are demanding relief from the government. Diesel prices are being pushed up by rising world oil prices and Brazil’s falling real currency.
Truckers reject Petrobras move
Truckers rejected the Wednesday decision by the state oil company Petrobras to reduce diesel prices at refineries by 10 percent. The company said the measure would last for 15 days and give the government time to negotiate an end to the strike.
“The government thinks truckers are illiterate and can’t count,” said Vicente Reis, who has been driving for 20 years. “In 2018, there has already been about a 25 percent increase in fuel prices. And now they want a 15-day freeze with (a reduction of) 10 percent. Truckers know how to count, Mr. President.”
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Jury: Samsung Owes Apple $539M for Copying iPhone
A jury has decided Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone’s features to lure people into buying its competing products.
The verdict reached Thursday is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011. Apple contends Samsung wouldn’t have emerged as the world’s leading seller of smartphones if it hadn’t ripped off the technology powering the pioneering iPhone in developing a line of similar devices running on Google’s Android software.
Patents infringed
Previous rulings had determined that Samsung infringed on some of Apple’s patents, but the amount of damages owed has been in legal limbo. Another jury convened for a 2012 trial had determined Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh reduced that amount to $548 million.
The issue escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court , which determined in 2016 that a lower court needed to re-examine $399 million of the $548 million. That ruling was based on the concept that the damages shouldn’t be based on all the profits that the South Korean electronics giant rung up from products that copied the iPhone because its infringement may only have violated a few patents.
$1 billion or $28 million?
Apple had argued it was owed more than $1 billon while Samsung contended the $399 million should be slashed to $28 million. The revised damages figure represents a victory for Apple, even though it isn’t as much as the Cupertino, California, company had sought.
“Today’s decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages,” Samsung said in a statement. “We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers.”
An eight-person jury came up with the new amount following a one-week trial and four days of deliberation in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse.
Apple expressed gratitude to the jury for agreeing “that Samsung should pay for copying our products.”
“This case has always been about more than money,” a company statement said. “Apple ignited the smartphone revolution with iPhone and it is a fact that Samsung blatantly copied our design.”
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Actor Freeman Apologizes After Sexual Misconduct Claims
Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman apologized Thursday to anyone he may have offended after reports he sexually harassed women on movie sets.
“Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy,” the 80-year-old actor said in a statement. “I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected. That was never my intent.”
Eight women told CNN television Freeman had engaged in inappropriate behavior on the sets or promotional tours of various films.
A young woman who was a production assistant on 2015’s Going in Style told CNN Freeman touched her, rubbed her lower back and asked if she was wearing underpants as he tried to lift up her dress.
Others accused Freeman of staring at their breasts and quizzing them about sexual harassment.
One woman told CNN she and others on the set of another Freeman film knew “not to wear any top that would show our breasts, not to wear anything that would show our bottoms,” if Freeman was around.
Freeman has been nominated for five Oscars for acting, winning one for Million Dollar Baby in 2005.
He is the latest major media figure to be accused of sexual harassment. Others include journalists Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw; actor Kevin Spacey; and President Donald Trump, who denied all allegations.
Meanwhile, U.S. news reports said film producer Harvey Weinstein would turn himself in to New York police to face criminal charges of sexual misconduct following a long investigation.
Weinstein, once one of the most powerful figures in show business before being forced to step down as head of his production empire, has denied forcing himself on anyone.
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FBI Taps Private Industry to Bring Down Hacker Clearinghouse
When a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted a Latvian software developer last week of running an underground clearinghouse for computer hackers, U.S. prosecutors highlighted it as an example of their commitment to combating cybercrime.
“This verdict demonstrates our commitment to holding such actors accountable,” said acting U.S. Attorney Tracey Doherty-McCormick. “I commend the work of the agents and prosecutors both in the United States and in Latvia, who worked together to bring him to justice.”
Not mentioned was the role played by Trend Micro, a Japanese cybersecurity firm that collaborated with the FBI to hunt down the developer, Ruslans Bondars, and an accomplice, Jurijs Martisevs, who jointly operated Scan4You, a site that helped hackers test their malware.
In a report released after the verdict, Trend Micro offered an inside look at how it identified Scan4You in 2012, took a trove of data about the site to the FBI in 2014, and then worked closely with agents as they built a case against the two men.
Trend Micro says it has supported nearly 20 law enforcement cases around the world.
“In this case, our global threat intelligence network and team of researchers provided an invaluable resource for the FBI as it homed in on this notorious [counter antivirus] service,” said Ed Cabrera, chief security officer for Trend Micro.
The case highlights how the FBI and private cybersecurity firms, once wary of working together, have in recent years started teaming up to combat cybercrime, a problem that costs the world an estimated $600 billion a year.
“The value that the private sector brings to law enforcement investigations is almost incalculable,” said John Boles, a director at consulting firm Navigant who previously worked as an assistant FBI director and led the bureau’s global cyberoperations.
A decade ago “there was almost hesitation on both sides of the fence to cooperate, but somewhere along the line as the scales have tipped, everybody realized it’s a global issue,” Boles said.
In 2011, the FBI created the Office of the Private Sector within the Cyber Division, making private-sector collaboration a key pillar of its cybercrime-fighting strategy.
Since then, the bureau has made more than a dozen major arrests in cybercrime cases, many with help from the private sector, according to Boles. While cybercrime investigations are often initiated by the bureau, some start with a tip from the private sector.
Unusual activity
That was the case with the Scan4You investigation.
In 2012, Trend Micro researchers, while investigating a hacker group, noticed a flurry of unusual activity on their threat radar: Somebody using Latvia IP addresses kept checking the company’s web reputation system, a program that blocks malicious websites.
That led them to another discovery: regular checks of Scan4You URLs against Trend Micro’s web reputation system emanating from Latvia. The goal: to determine whether Scan4You’s scanning scripts could detect malware.
“By 2014, we had a deeper understanding [of Scan4You] and began that relationship with the FBI,” Cabrera said.
The collaboration would continue for the next three years as Trend Micro researchers and FBI agents gathered evidence about Scan4You, its operators and its users.
Scan4You was an underground service that allowed hackers to upload their malware to see whether it could be detected by more than 35 antivirus engines. At its peak in 2016, Scan4You was the largest service of its kind, boasting more than 30,000 customers.
The service allowed cyber scofflaws to test all manner of malicious software, ranging from so-called crypters, a type of software used to conceal malicious files, to remote access trojans, programs that allow a remote operator backdoor access to a computer.
‘World’s most destructive hackers’
Among Scan4You’s customers were “some of the world’s most destructive hackers,” according Doherty-McCormick, the Virginia prosecutor.
One customer used Scan4You to test malware that was later used to steal about 40 million credit card and debit card numbers, costing one U.S. retailer $292 million, according to court documents.
A Russian hacker used Scan4You to develop Citadel, an infamous botnet used by cybercriminals to steal $500 million from bank accounts. The FBI worked with Microsoft to break up the network.
But Scan4You was not a very lucrative operation. As researchers dug deeper, they discovered that Bondars and Martisevs were affiliated with “some of the longest-running cybercriminal businesses” and “involved with one of the largest and oldest pharmaceutical spam gangs known as Eva Pharmacy,” according to Trend Micro.
Bondars, a longtime Latvian resident of Ukrainian citizenship, designed and maintained the site.
Martisevs, a Russian national living in Latvia, provided customer service and promoted the site on cybercriminal forums.
The pair’s deep involvement in an assortment of criminal activities gave them something that helped with their scanning service: cyber-cred.
“These threat actors gained the respect of many other cybercriminals who trusted them and used their malware scanning service,” the report says.
The end for Scan4You came with the 2017 arrests and extradition of Bondars and Martisevs to the United States. Shortly after their arrest, Scan4You went dark.
In March, Martisevs pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Bondars. Last week, Bondars was convicted of three counts related to his role in Scan4You.
Scan4You’s downfall has taken the biggest service of its kind out of commission, but just how big a blow to cybercrime it represents remains to be seen.
Typically, when a site like Scan4You goes offline, its users flee to copycat sites. That has yet to happen, Cabrera said.
“This is a big blow to cybercrime, helping to disrupt countless threat actors and prove there are consequences to their actions,” he said.
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Macron Will Attend World Cup If France Reach Semifinals
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said he would travel to Russia for the soccer World Cup if France reach the semifinals, turning a deaf ear to calls from human rights groups to boycott the tournament.
Human rights groups calling for the boycott over Russia’s involvement in Syria’s civil war met with Macron’s advisers earlier this week, saying it would send a strong symbolic message if the 40-year-old leader did not attend the World Cup.
“If the French team passes beyond the quarterfinals I will come and support,” Macron said during a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Macron has banked on nurturing relationships with awkward leaders such as Putin, appearing engaged on the world stage but remaining non-committal and trying to mediate among opposing sides without unsettling anyone.
France have been drawn to face Australia, Denmark and Peru in Group C at the World Cup, which runs from June 14 to July 15. The top two in the group will progress to the round of 16.
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