The push to legally restrict children’s access to social media in the United States is gaining steam. So far, however, researchers say there are both negative and positive aspects of minors using the platforms, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out.
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Month: April 2023
Mozambique Battles Cholera in Record Cyclone’s Aftermath
Cyclone Freddy killed hundreds of people in February and March as it pummeled Madagascar, Malawi, and Mozambique. While the long-running storm’s victims were mostly in Malawi, floodwaters in Mozambique have created a fresh threat there from cholera. Cases have nearly doubled in one week to 19,000 amid a shortage of facilities, many of which were badly damaged by the cyclone, especially in the worst-hit province of Zambezia.
The neighborhood of Icidua, on the outskirts of Quelimane city in Mozambique’s central Zambezia province, has reported the highest number of cholera cases.
Most here lived in flimsy huts made of mud or bamboo that were flattened by the cyclone’s up to 215 kilometer per hour winds.
The local health center’s building is no longer stable, so doctors and nurses work outside under the shade of trees.
Mothers lined up patiently this week with their children for cholera treatment in one of the few wards that survived the storm.
The clinic’s director José da Costa Silva says the staff are working at high risk as the roof could collapse at any minute.
“Cholera cases are increasing, and the health center does not have the capacity to treat everybody. Most patients are referred to the provincial hospital,” he said.
The outbreak is not confined to Quelimane city.
The U.N. says more than 19,000 cases have been confirmed across eight of Mozambique’s 10 provinces.
The World Health Organization’s office has called it the worst cholera outbreak in Mozambique for 20 years.
At Quelimane Provincial Hospital, the director general of Mozambique’s National Health Institute this week addressed health workers in a packed room under a torn roof with two gaping holes.
Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr. tells the workers the cholera outbreak is getting more serious by the day.
Confirmed cases in Quelimane district alone have reached about 600 a day, he says, but the real number could be as high as 1,000.
“The disease is not localized to one neighborhood, it’s everywhere,” he said.” It can only be fought with a local chlorine water treatment product called ‘Certeza,’ but supplies are stretched and there aren’t enough people to distribute the bottles.”
Every day, volunteers collect crates of Certeza from outside the hospital and drive to neighborhoods like Icidua, where they walk from house to house, distributing bottles.
Each one should last a family for a week, but demand is massively outstripping supply as the cholera spreads.
For many Mozambicans still recovering in the cyclone’s wake, cholera is just one of many problems.
Outside the village of Nicoadala, about 300 people live in a makeshift camp of tarpaulin huts on a road next to a flooded field.
Their villages and fields are still under water, forcing them to fish in flooded rice paddies to survive.
Sixty-four-year-old Joaquina Bissane says she had to reach the camp by canoe after her village was submerged.
“Cholera is less of a problem here than malaria, as the damp and heat has turned these flatlands into a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” she said. They have received no support from the government, so they are supporting each other.
The World Food Program estimates the cyclone’s floodwaters destroyed 215,000 hectares of crops in Mozambique.
Seventy-year-old farmer Inácio Abdala says his family’s home and fields were among those destroyed.
He says they eat one day and don’t eat the next as they lost everything in the floods. Even the schools are flooded, so their children can’t go to school.
Even after the floods subside, saltwater brought inland by the cyclone may have damaged much of the soil.
Freddy hit just before the main harvest and officials say it will take months, or even years, for farmlands to fully recover — long after they hope to bring the cholera outbreak under control.
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US Chip Controls Threaten China’s Technology Ambitions
Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February.
China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons.
Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.”
Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year.
Investing in self-reliance
The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology.
China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled.
Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.
“China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad.
“I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.”
The conflict has prompted warnings the world might split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation.
“The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.”
U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong, and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes, and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses.
Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next-generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant.
China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies.
EV batteries as leverage
Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said.
Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan.
“China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.”
On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.”
Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details.
The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons.
Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes.
To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies.
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Biden Eyes AI Dangers, Says Tech Companies Must Make Sure Products are Safe
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence (AI) is dangerous, but underscored that technology companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public.
Biden told science and technology advisers that AI could help in addressing disease and climate change, but it was also important to address potential risks to society, national security and the economy.
“Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” he said at the start of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. When asked if AI was dangerous, he said, “It remains to be seen. It could be.”
Biden spoke on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrendered in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn actor.
Biden declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges.
The president said social media had already illustrated the harm that powerful technologies can do without the right safeguards.
“Absent safeguards, we see the impact on the mental health and self-images and feelings and hopelessness, especially among young people,” Biden said.
He reiterated a call for Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to put limits on personal data that technology companies collect, ban advertising targeted at children, and to prioritize health and safety in product development.
Shares of companies that employ AI dropped sharply before Biden’s meeting, although the broader market was also selling off on Tuesday.
Shares of AI software company C3.ai Inc. were down 24%, more than halving a four-session winning streak of nearly 40% through Monday. Thailand security firm Guardforce AI GFAI.O fell 29%, data analytics firm BigBear.ai BBAI.N was down 16% and conversation intelligence company SoundHound AI SOUN.O was down 13% late on Tuesday.
AI is becoming a hot topic for policymakers.
The tech ethics group Center for AI and Digital Policy has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to stop OpenAI from issuing new commercial releases of GPT-4, which has wowed and appalled users with its human-like abilities to generate written responses to requests.
Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has urged society to pause as it considers the ramifications of AI.
Last year the Biden administration released a blueprint “Bill of Rights” to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.
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Study Explains How Primordial Life Survived on ‘Snowball Earth’
Life on our planet faced a stern test during the Cryogenian Period that lasted from 720 million to 635 million years ago when Earth twice was frozen over with runaway glaciation and looked from space like a shimmering white snowball.
Life somehow managed to survive during this time called “Snowball Earth,” and a new study offers a deeper understanding as to why.
Fossils identified as seaweed unearthed in black shale in central China’s Hubei Province indicate that habitable marine environments were more widespread at the time than previously known, scientists said Tuesday. The findings support the idea that it was more of a “Slushball Earth” where the earliest forms of complex life — basic multicellular organisms — endured even at mid-latitudes previously thought to have been frozen solid.
The fossils date from the second of the two times during the Cryogenian Period when massive ice sheets stretched from the poles toward the equator. This interval, called the Marinoan Ice Age, lasted from about 651 million to 635 million years ago.
“The key finding of this study is that open-water — ice-free — conditions existed in mid-latitude oceanic regions during the waning stage of the Marinoan Ice Age,” said China University of Geosciences geobiologist Huyue Song, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Our study shows that, at least near the end of the Marinoan ‘Snowball Earth’ event, habitable areas extended to mid-latitude oceans, much larger than previously thought. Previous research argued that such habitable areas, at best, only existed in tropical oceans. More extensive areas of habitable oceans better explain where and how complex organisms such as multicellular seaweed survived,” Song added.
The findings demonstrate that the world’s oceans were not completely frozen and that habitable refuges existed where multicellular eukaryotic organisms — the domain of life including plants, animals, fungi and certain mostly single-celled organisms called protists — could survive, Song said.
Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The first single-celled organisms arose sometime during roughly the first billion years of the planet’s existence. Multicellular organisms arrived later, perhaps 2 billion years ago. But it was only in the aftermath of the Cryogenian that warmer conditions returned, paving the way for a rapid expansion of different life forms about 540 million years ago.
Scientists are trying to better understand the onset of “Snowball Earth.” They believe a greatly reduced amount of the sun’s warmth reached the planet’s surface as solar radiation bounced off the white ice sheets.
“It is widely believed that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels plummeted just prior to these events, causing the polar ice caps to expand and hence more solar radiation reflected back to space and the polar ice caps expanded further. And the Earth spiraled into Snowball Earth conditions,” Virginia Tech geobiologist and study co-author Shuhai Xiao said.
Seaweed and fossils of some other multicellular organisms were identified in the black shale. This seaweed — a rudimentary plant — was a photosynthetic organism living on the seafloor in a shallow marine environment lit by sunlight.
“The fossils were preserved as compressed sheets of organic carbon,” China University of Geosciences paleontologist and study co-author Qin Ye said.
Multicellular organisms including red algae, green algae and fungi emerged before the Cryogenian and survived “Snowball Earth.”
The Cryogenian freeze was much worse than the most recent Ice Age that humans survived, ending roughly 10,000 years ago.
“Compared to the most recent Ice Age, glacier coverage was much more extensive and, more importantly, much of the ocean was frozen,” Xiao said.
“It is fair to say that the ‘Snowball Earth’ events were significant challenges to life on Earth,” Xiao added. “It is conceivable that these ‘Snowball Earth’ events could have driven major extinctions, but apparently life, including complex eukaryotic organisms, managed to survive, attesting to the resilience of the biosphere.”
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LogOn: Farmers Look to Technology to Help in Fields
Farmers and Silicon Valley technologists are collaborating to make agriculture more efficient and productive. Michelle Quinn reports on the ag technology being developed and what is to come.
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US-Trained Woman Teaching Digital Skills to Children in Rural Kenya
The digital divide is one of the biggest challenges to education in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations says nearly 90% of students lack access to household computers, and 82% to the internet. In Kenya, the aid group TechLit Africa aims to change that by building scores of computer labs. Juma Majanga reports from Mogotio, Kenya.
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Ukraine’s Destruction Brought to Life Through Virtual Reality Exhibit
An exhibition currently on display in Poland uses virtual reality to show the level of destruction Russia’s war has brought on Ukraine. For some visitors, the VR videos that can be viewed at the “Through the War” display have been overwhelming. Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw. Daniil Batushchak.
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TikTok Fined $15.9M by UK Watchdog for Misuse of Kids’ Data
Britain’s privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for users’ personal information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of $15.9 million to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.
It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its parent, Chinese technology company ByteDance, are facing in the West, where governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.
The British watchdog, which was investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts.
TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said.
“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release.
TikTok collected and used personal data of children who were inappropriately given access to the app, he said.
“That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll,” Edwards said.
The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.
“We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in statement. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”
TikTok says it has improved its sign-up system since the breaches happened by no longer allowing users to simply declare they are old enough and looking for other signs that an account is used by someone under 13.
The penalty also covered other breaches of U.K. data privacy law.
The watchdog said TikTok failed to properly inform people about how their data is collected, used and shared in an easily understandable way. Without this information, it’s unlikely that young users would be able “to make informed choices” about whether and how to use TikTok, it said.
TikTok also failed to ensure personal data of British users was processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, the regulator said.
TikTok initially faced a 27 million-pound fine, which was reduced after the company persuaded regulators to drop other charges.
U.S. regulators in 2019 fined TikTok, previously known as Music.aly, $5.7 million in a case that involved similar allegations of unlawful collection of children’s personal information.
Also Tuesday, Australia became the latest country to ban TikTok from its government devices, with authorities from the European Union to the United States concerned that the app could share data with the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing narratives
U.S. lawmakers are also considering forcing a sale or even banning it outright as tensions with China grow.
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Australia Bans TikTok on Government Devices
Australia said Tuesday it will ban TikTok on government devices, joining a growing list of Western nations cracking down on the Chinese-owned app due to national security fears.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the decision followed advice from the country’s intelligence agencies and would begin “as soon as practicable”.
Australia is the last member of the secretive Five Eyes security alliance to pursue a government TikTok ban, joining its allies the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have made similar moves.
Dreyfus said the government would approve some exemptions on a “case-by-case basis” with “appropriate security mitigations in place”.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that the app — which boasts more than one billion global users — could be used to hoover up data that is then shared with the Chinese government.
Surveys have estimated that as many as seven million Australians use the app — or about a quarter of the population.
In a security notice outlining the ban, the Attorney-General’s Department said TikTok posed “significant security and privacy risks” stemming from the “extensive collection of user data”.
China condemned the ban, saying it had “lodged stern representations” with Canberra over the move and urging Australia to “provide Chinese companies with a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment”.
“China has always maintained that the issue of data security should not be used as a tool to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power and unreasonably suppress companies from other countries,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.
‘No-brainer’
But Fergus Ryan, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said stripping TikTok from government devices was a “no-brainer”.
“It’s been clear for years that TikTok user data is accessible in China,” Ryan told AFP.
“Banning the use of the app on government phones is a prudent decision given this fact.”
The security concerns are underpinned by a 2017 Chinese law that requires local firms to hand over personal data to the state if it is relevant to national security.
Beijing has denied these reforms pose a threat to ordinary users.
China “has never and will not require companies or individuals to collect or provide data located in a foreign country, in a way that violates local law”, the foreign ministry’s Mao said in March.
‘Rooted in xenophobia’
TikTok has said such bans are “rooted in xenophobia”, while insisting that it is not owned or operated by the Chinese government.
The company’s Australian spokesman Lee Hunter said it would “never” give data to the Chinese government.
“No one is working harder to make sure this would never be a possibility,” he told Australia’s Channel Seven.
But the firm acknowledged in November that some employees in China could access European user data, and in December it said employees had used the data to spy on journalists.
The app is typically used to share short, lighthearted videos and has exploded in popularity in recent years.
Many government departments were initially eager to use TikTok as a way to connect with a younger demographic that is harder to reach through traditional media channels.
New Zealand banned TikTok from government devices in March, saying the risks were “not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment”.
Earlier this year, the Australian government announced it would be stripping Chinese-made CCTV cameras from politicians’ offices due to security concerns.
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Virgin Orbit Files for Bankruptcy, Seeks Buyer
Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell the business, the firm said in a statement Tuesday.
The California-based company said last week it was laying off 85% of its employees — around 675 people — to reduce expenses due to its inability to secure sufficient funding.
Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure.
The company had organized the mission with the UK Space Agency and Cornwall Spaceport to launch nine satellites into space.
On Tuesday, the firm said “it commenced a voluntary proceeding under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code… in order to effectuate a sale of the business” and intended to use the process “to maximize value for its business and assets.”
Last month, Virgin Orbit suspended operations for several days while it held funding negotiations and explored strategic opportunities.
But at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, CEO Dan Hart told employees that operations would cease “for the foreseeable future,” US media reported at the time.
“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said in the company statement on Tuesday.
“We believe that the cutting-edge launch technology that this team has created will have wide appeal to buyers as we continue in the process to sell the Company.”
Founded by Branson in 2017, the firm developed “a new and innovative method of launching satellites into orbit,” while “successfully launching 33 satellites into their precise orbit,” Hart added.
Virgin Orbit’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down 3% at 19 cents on Monday evening.
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World Bank Warns of ‘Lost Decade’ Due to Slow Economic Growth
In a grim report issued last week, the World Bank warned of a slow-growth crisis in the global economy that could persist over the coming decade unless governments worldwide adopt what it calls “sustainable, growth-oriented policies.”
The World Bank report says that global growth in gross domestic product between 2022 and 2030 is on track to decline to about 2.2%, down one-third from the rate that applied between 2000 and 2010. Although the growth rate in developing economies will be higher, it will also likely decline by one-third, from 6% to 4%, according to the document titled “Failing Long-Term Growth Prospects.”
The report says that a number of factors are depressing long-term growth prospects, including an aging workforce, slower population growth and lower rates of productivity-enhancing investment. The negative effects are exacerbated by global shocks to the economy, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“A lost decade could be in the making for the global economy,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, in a release accompanying the report. “The ongoing decline in potential growth has serious implications for the world’s ability to tackle the expanding array of challenges unique to our times — stubborn poverty, diverging incomes, and climate change. But this decline is reversible. The global economy’s speed limit can be raised — through policies that incentivize work, increase productivity, and accelerate investment.”
Growth strategies
The World Bank report includes specific recommendations that, according to its own estimates, would boost the average predicted global economic growth rate to 2.9% from 2.2% through the remainder of the decade.
The report urges governments worldwide to lower inflation and assure stability in the financial sector. The report also recommends reducing sovereign debt levels, which would free up funds for investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.
Recommended infrastructure investments include upgraded transportations systems and environmentally sustainable improvements to agriculture, manufacturing, and land and water management systems.
The report also calls on countries to lower barriers to international trade, focus on ways to globalize service economy growth and increase labor force participation.
Social progress slowed
Macroeconomists generally agree with much of the World Bank’s assessment, saying that concerns about global growth have been on the rise for several years, and warn that the consequences of a sustained decline — especially in emerging economies — might be severe.
Liliana Rojas-Suarez, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and director of its Latin American Initiative, told VOA that growth began to slow several years ago in Latin America.
“A period of high growth in Latin America occurred in 2000 to 2014,” she said. “That was a period when commodity prices were very high and the region was really growing. But the important thing is that social indicators improved dramatically. Poverty declined, income inequality improved, food security, educational health — name any indicators, they were all improving.”
Since then, she said, much of that progress has reversed.
“Growth is not the only thing,” she said. “You need many more things to actually improve poverty and inequality, but growth is an important component. After [2014], it stopped, and now the social indicators are reverting.”
Impacts unevenly distributed
In a news briefing last week, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the World Bank was correct to warn of a difficult period ahead but that the effects were not likely to be evenly distributed.
“If you look at the last couple years, not only was there surprising resilience in Europe, but a big surprise — a positive surprise — has been the sustained growth in India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, as well as China, once you take out COVID. Indonesia plus India plus Brazil plus Mexico is an awful lot of human beings and an awful lot of global GDP.”
He said that all of those economies had weathered a year of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes without apparent damage to their own domestic currencies, and that most appear well-positioned to continue growing. However, he noted, the same thing cannot be said about many other regions of the globe.
“The World Bank, I think, is right to draw concern to the possibility of a lost decade in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and South Asia,” Posen said. “An awful lot of human beings are at risk or are facing very grim situations. But from a global GDP outlook, or even a global population outlook, most of the major [emerging markets] along with most of the G20, essentially, are doing pretty well. I think it should be a concern for the poor people of the world but not for the world in general.”
New database
As part of the report, the World Bank announced that it is now using a new public database to assess global GDP growth, with data currently extending from 1981 to 2021. The database, according to the World Bank, is the first to track the way in which temporary economic disruptions, including “recessions and systemic banking crises,” affect economic growth over time.
The latter has particular relevance today, given the recent failures of several U.S. banks and the forced takeover of Swiss financial services giant Credit Suisse by UBS.
“Recessions tend to lower potential growth,” Franziska Ohnsorge, a lead author of the report and manager of the World Bank’s Prospects Group, said in a statement. “Systemic banking crises do greater immediate harm than recessions, but their impact tends to ease over time.”
Rojas-Suarez of the Center for Global Development praised the creation of the new database, saying that it “could be very useful, not only for future research but also for monitoring countries moving forward, and for international comparisons.”
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McDonald’s Briefly Closes US Offices Ahead of Layoffs
McDonald’s announced Monday plans to lay off a number of corporate employees and closed U.S. offices through Wednesday as the company prepares to deliver the notifications as part of a larger restructuring plan.
The international fast-food company closed its U.S. offices and some international ones “out of respect,” and to “provide dignity, confidentiality, and comfort to our colleagues,” said an anonymous Reuters source who is familiar with the company and was not authorized to speak to the media.
According to the source, McDonald’s will have more employees beginning new roles or receiving promotions this week than being laid off. The company has more than 150,000 employees globally, with about 70% based outside of the United States.
The layoffs do not include the more than 2 million workers in franchised McDonald’s restaurants around the world.
Several tech-industry companies, including Amazon, Meta, Twitter and Microsoft have announced layoffs in recent months too. McDonald’s competitor Wendy’s also announced restructuring and possible corporate layoffs in January.
At the start of 2023, McDonald’s warned employees that layoffs were coming as it reorganized the company to increase efficiency and set April 3 as the date by which they would share more details with employees.
“We have a clear opportunity ahead of us to get faster and more effective at solving problems for our customers and people, and to globally scale our successful market innovations at speed,” the company said in a memo to workers, reported by The Associated Press.
The Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s declined to comment on how many employees would be affected by the layoffs, but the Reuters source said the number will tally in the hundreds.
Some information from this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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Germany Could Block ChatGPT if Needed, Says Data Protection Chief
Germany could follow in Italy’s footsteps by blocking ChatGPT over data security concerns, the German commissioner for data protection told the Handelsblatt newspaper in comments published on Monday.
Microsoft-backed MSFT.O OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy on Friday after the national data agency banned the chatbot temporarily and launched an investigation into a suspected breach of privacy rules by the artificial intelligence application.
“In principle, such action is also possible in Germany,” Ulrich Kelber said, adding that this would fall under state jurisdiction. He did not, however, outline any such plans.
Kelber said that Germany has requested further information from Italy on its ban. Privacy watchdogs in France and Ireland said they had also contacted the Italian data regulator to discuss its findings.
“We are following up with the Italian regulator to understand the basis for their action and we will coordinate with all EU data protection authorities in relation to this matter,” said a spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC).
OpenAI had said on Friday that it actively works to reduce personal data in training its AI systems.
While the Irish DPC is the lead EU regulator for many global technology giants under the bloc’s “one stop shop” data regime, it is not the lead regulator for OpenAI, which has no offices in the EU.
The privacy regulator in Sweden said it has no plans to ban ChatGPT nor is it in contact with the Italian watchdog.
The Italian investigation into OpenAI was launched after a cybersecurity breach last week led to people being shown excerpts of other users’ ChatGPT conversations and their financial information.
It accused OpenAI of failing to check the age of ChatGPT’s users, who are supposed to be aged 13 or above. Italy is the first Western country to take action against a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.
For a nine-hour period, the exposed data included first and last names, billing addresses, credit card types, credit card expiration dates and the last four digits of credit card numbers, according to an email sent by OpenAI to one affected customer and seen by the Financial Times.
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NASA Announces Diverse International Crew for First Moon Mission Since 1970s
“It’s been more than a half century since astronauts journeyed to the moon — that’s about to change,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as he stood before the current astronaut corps as well as veterans of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs at Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. The crowd was gathered for the historic announcement of the crew for Artemis II — Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen.
“This is humanity’s crew,” said Nelson, emphasizing the diverse makeup of the international crew, all in their 40s. “We choose to go back to the moon and on to Mars, and we are going to do it together, because in the 21st century NASA explores the cosmos with international partners.”
International Space Station veteran Reid Wiseman is mission commander for Artemis II, while engineer Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will serve as mission specialists. Hansen is the first international astronaut scheduled to launch on a mission to the moon, while Koch would make history as the first woman taking part in such a journey.
“Am I excited? Absolutely,” Koch said to the cheering audience during the announcement ceremony. “But my real question is: Are you excited?”
Victor Glover, a U.S. naval aviator, will pilot the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew on a 10-day roundtrip mission around the moon and back, testing the functions of the systems and equipment future crews will use to eventually return to the lunar surface.
In an exclusive interview with VOA during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission last year, Glover said he embraces the opportunity to be the first person of color assigned to a moon mission.
“People keep asking me, ‘Is it meaningful to you that little Black kids look up to you and say they want to be like you?’ You know what? Let’s be honest, I represent America,” he told VOA.
“I’m a naval officer and I work for NASA. I represent America and little white kids, little Mexican kids, little Hispanic kids and little Iranian kids follow what we’re doing because this is maybe one of the most recognizable symbols in the universe,” he said pointing to the NASA patch on his blue flight suit. “I think that that’s really important, and I take that very seriously.”
Not only is the crew makeup historic, those aboard Artemis II could also venture farther in space than any humans before them. While the Artemis II crew won’t orbit or land on the lunar surface, they could travel more than 1 million total kilometers on a path that slingshots well beyond the moon before returning to Earth. NASA says the exact distance and plan depends on a number of factors, including the date of the actual mission launch.
At the end of the NASA ceremony introducing his crew, astronaut Reid Wiseman expressed the determination of the agency to further its goals in space despite repeated delays and cost overruns.
“There’s three words we keep saying in this Artemis program, and that’s ‘We. Are. Going.’ And I want everyone to say it with me – We Are Going!”
NASA hopes to launch Artemis II as early as November 2024, with the first mission back to the lunar surface as early as 2025.
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Zimbabwean Farmers Turning to Conservation Agriculture
Zimbabweans in the agriculture sector are dealing with rising fertilizer costs and poor rainfalls due to climate change. Now, some are turning to organic farming and conservation agriculture to make ends meet, and officials say they are making progress against the odds. Columbus Mavhunga has more from Mashava, one of Zimbabwe’s poorest and most drought-prone districts. (Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe)
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Oil Producers’ Cuts Could Boost Gasoline Prices, Help Russia
Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia said they’re cutting supplies of crude — again. This time, the decision was a surprise and is underlining worries about where the global economy might be headed.
Russia is joining in by extending its own cuts for the rest of the year. In theory, less oil flowing to refineries should mean higher gasoline prices for drivers and could boost the inflation hitting the U.S. and Europe. And that may also help Russia weather Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine at the expense of the U.S.
The decision by oil producers, many of them in the OPEC oil cartel, to cut production by more than 1 million barrels a day comes after prices for international benchmark crude slumped amid a slowing global economy that needs less fuel for travel and industry.
It adds to a cut of 2 million barrels per day announced in October. Between the two cuts, that’s about 3% of the world’s oil suppl
Here are key things to know about the cutbacks:
Why are oil producers cutting back?
Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s dominant member, said Sunday that the move is “precautionary” to avoid a deeper slide in oil prices.
Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has consistently taken a cautious approach to future demand and favored being proactive in adjusting supply ahead of a possible downturn in oil needs.
That stance seemed to be borne out as oil prices fell from highs of over $120 per barrel last summer to $73 last month. Prices jumped after Sunday’s announcement, with international benchmark Brent crude trading at about $85 on Monday, up 6%.
With fears of a U.S. recession exacerbated by bank collapses, a lack of European economic growth and China’s rebound from COVID-19 taking longer than many expected, oil producers are wary of a sudden collapse in prices like during the pandemic and the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.
Capital markets analyst Mohammed Ali Yasin said most people had been waiting for the June 4 meeting of the OPEC+ alliance of OPEC members and allied producers, most prominently Russia. The decision underlined the urgency felt by producers.
“It was a surprise to all, I think, watchers and the market followers,” he said. “The swiftness of the move, the timing of the move and the size of the move were all significant.”
The aim now is to ward off “a continuous slide of the oil price” to levels below $70 per barrel, which would be “very negative” for producer economies, Yasin said.
Part of the October cut of 2 million barrels per day was on paper only as some OPEC+ countries aren’t able to produce their share. The new cut of 1.15 million barrels per day is distributed among countries that are hitting their quotas — so it amounts to roughly the same size cut as in October.
Governments announced the decision outside the usual OPEC+ framework. The Saudis are taking the lead with 500,000 barrels per day, with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Algeria and Kazakhstan contributing smaller cuts.
Will the production cut make inflation worse?
It certainly could. Analysts say supply and demand are relatively well balanced, which means production cuts could push prices higher in coming months.
The refineries that turn crude into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are getting ready for their summer production surge to meet the annual increase in travel demand.
In the U.S., gasoline prices are highly dependent on crude, which makes up about half of the price per gallon. Lower oil prices have meant U.S. drivers have seen the average price fall from records of over $5 per gallon in mid-2022 to $3.50 per gallon this week, according to motor club AAA.
The cuts, if fully implemented, “would further tighten an already fundamentally tight oil market,” Jorge Leon, senior vice president at Rystad Energy, said in a research note. The cut could boost oil prices by around $10 per barrel and push international Brent to around $110 per barrel by this summer.
Those higher prices could fuel global inflation in a cycle that forces central banks to keep raising interest rates, which crimp economic growth, he said.
Given the fears about the overall economy, “the market may interpret the cuts as a vote of no confidence in the recovery of oil demand and could even carry a downside price risk — but that will only be for the very short term,” Leon said.
What will this mean for Russia?
Moscow says it will extend a cut of 500,000 barrels per day through the rest of the year. It needs oil revenue to support its economy and state budget hit by wide-ranging sanctions from the U.S., European Union and other allies of Ukraine.
Analysts think, however, that Russia’s cut may simply be putting the best face on reduced demand for its oil. The West shunned Russian barrels even before sanctions were imposed, with Moscow managing to reroute much of its oil to India, China and Turkey.
But the Group of Seven major democracies imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian shipments, enforced by bans on Western companies that dominate shipping or insurance. Russia is selling oil at a discount, with revenue sagging at the start of this year.
What does the White House say?
White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, said, “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty — and we’ve made that clear.”
She noted, “Prices have come down significantly since last year, more than $1.50 per gallon from their peak last summer” and, “We will continue to work with all producers and consumers to ensure energy markets support economic growth and lower prices for American consumers.”
The initial White House response was milder than in October, when cuts came on the eve of U.S. midterm elections where soaring gas prices were a major issue. President Joe Biden vowed at the time that there would be “consequences,” and Democratic lawmakers called for freezing cooperation with the Saudis.
Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics, said the cutback shows “the group’s support for Russia and flies in the face of the Biden administration’s efforts to lower oil prices.”
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Network Helps Connect African Journalists on Climate Issues
As more people become concerned about the effects of climate change on their lives, journalists in an otherwise struggling industry are becoming specialized in the environmental beat.
But that wasn’t always the case, said Frederick Mugira, founder of Water Journalists Africa, the largest network of journalists on the continent reporting on water.
Mugira said that when he started the organization in 2011, “not so much was being tackled about water.” But now, “we have more journalists preferring to specialize in water and climate issues.”
Mugira, an award-winning journalist based in Kampala, Uganda, founded the network to share ideas and provide training.
From investigative reporting on the impact of a large agricultural industry in Cameroon to how plastics and water pollution are devastating the fishing trade in the African Great Lakes, the coalition is combining environmental, data and solutions-led journalism.
Made up of about 1,000 journalists across Africa, the network works collaboratively to investigate issues around water, wildlife, biodiversity and climate change.
The nongovernmental organization receives funding from various institutions, including the U.S.-based Pulitzer Center and Internews, an international media support nonprofit organization in California.
The network also has a few specialized offshoots, including InfoNile, which uses graphics to map stories on the Nile Basin, and the Big Gorilla Project, which focuses on the endangered species in the forests of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
African nations are among the world’s lowest greenhouse gas emitters, but scientists have long warned the region will be one of the worst affected by climate change. Mugira said that more than ever, local people want explanations of phenomena such as droughts.
“We identify a theme of common and cross-border importance. For example, plastic pollution,” he said. “When we identify a theme, we search for credible data across the countries we’re working on.”
Water Journalists Africa projects include graphs and interactive maps and seek to break down data in a comprehensible and colorful way. Radio, TV and print are some of the mediums used, and the stories are published in English and local languages.
“When we started it, we realized journalists in the region didn’t have experience in data journalism,” Mugira said. But accessing that data can be a challenge.
One reason, Mugira said, is that scientists don’t always trust journalists and don’t always want to share their information. Another challenge comes when some government officials might want to release only numbers that show them in a good light.
“When it comes to natural resources, they don’t really release data, because they see it as sensitive,” he added.
Reporting with results
For Nairobi journalist Sharon Atieno, 29, being a member of Water Journalists Africa opened her up to a wide range of new skills.
“The network has helped shape my environmental reporting, and I’ve also learned to use data,” said Atieno, who learned of the network when applying for grants.
“You can use maps, visualizations, to make it more captivating. This is a skill I acquired not through university but through being part of the Water Journalists Network. That’s how I discovered my beat,” she said.
Asked why she thought the beat was important, Atieno said, “Everything around us is the environment — plastics in the oceans, polluted lakes, everything has an impact not only on the environment but also on climate change.
“Environment reporting is important because even tiny things we’re doing, if you look at it accumulatively, it’s having a very big impact on our lives as human beings.”
Atieno said everything is connected. For example, more drought results in increased wildlife poaching as people’s crops fail and they go hungry.
Atieno has taken part in collaborations with Water Journalists Africa. One story she was particularly proud of looked at how poaching for bushmeat increased when Kenya was under the pandemic lockdown. The poaching resulted in a decline in the population of the country’s iconic Rothschild’s giraffe, she said.
Another story she covered was how waste from sugarcane companies in a part of western Kenya was polluting a nearby river.
“The degradation of the sugarcane waste results in a chemical being produced so when it goes into the water system, it makes the rivers toxic,” she said. “When I did that story, I reached out to the county government. They said they didn’t know it was happening.”
After she covered the story, the county authorities opened a commission to investigate the issue.
Funding challenges
Cross-border networks of environmental journalists in Africa are growing, according to Anton Harber, adjunct professor of journalism at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.
“At our annual gathering of the continent’s investigative journalists, the African Investigative Journalism Conference, we have definitely seen environmental coverage take center stage with the emergence of a number of cross-border, collaborative networks doing important and often excellent work,” he told VOA.
However, he said, such work needs funding to be able to survive.
“Few newsrooms are investing in it because it is not seen as a topic that sells newspapers or brings clicks,” Harber said. “Africa has the stories and the journalists who can tackle it, but they are not usually in the mainstream conventional newsrooms.”
But Mugira said stories from his network were now being picked up and followed by other media as interest in their coverage grows.
“These stories are just a starting point,” he said.
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NASA to Reveal Crew for 2024 Flight Around the Moon
NASA is to reveal the names on Monday of the astronauts — three Americans and a Canadian — who will fly around the Moon next year, a prelude to returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time in a half century.
The mission, Artemis II, is scheduled to take place in November 2024 with the four-person crew circling the Moon but not landing on it.
As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 — more than five decades after the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.
Besides putting the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, the US space agency hopes to establish a lasting human presence on the lunar surface and eventually launch a voyage to Mars.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said this week at a “What’s Next Summit” hosted by Axios that he expected a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2040.
The four members of the Artemis II crew will be announced at an event at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The 10-day Artemis II mission will test NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the life-support systems aboard the Orion spacecraft.
The first Artemis mission wrapped up in December with an uncrewed Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a 25-day journey around the Moon.
During the trip around Earth’s orbiting satellite and back, Orion logged well over 1.6 million kilometers and went farther from Earth than any previous habitable spacecraft.
Nelson was also asked at the Axios summit whether NASA could stick to its timetable of landing astronauts on the south pole of the Moon in late 2025.
“Space is hard,” Nelson said. “You have to wait until you know that it’s as safe as possible, because you’re living right on the edge.
“So I’m not so concerned with the time,” he said. “We’re not going to launch until it’s right.”
Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the Moon.
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Congolese Student’s Device Makes Science Fiction Reality
A student in Congo has developed a tool that allows people to control or move objects using their brain signals. Andre Ndambi visited the department of engineering at the University of Kinshasa and has this story narrated by Salem Solomon. Jean-Louis Mafema contributed.
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