Month: June 2023

FDA Advisers Back Updated COVID Vaccine Targeting Dominant Variant

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Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously recommended that updated COVID-19 shots being developed for a fall vaccination campaign target one of the currently dominant XBB coronavirus variants. 

The panel voted 21-0 in favor of XBB-targeted shots and the committee’s discussion indicated that the XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant would be preferred. 

COVID vaccine makers Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are developing versions of their respective vaccines targeting XBB.1.5 and other currently circulating subvariants. Preclinical data was presented at the meeting.  

If XBB.1.5 is chosen as the target for this year’s campaign, it would be especially helpful to Novavax, as their protein-based vaccine takes longer to manufacture than rival mRNA-based shots. If the FDA chose a different target, Novavax could again find itself playing catch up to rivals. 

FDA staff reviewers in documents released this week said available evidence suggests this year’s shots should target an XBB subvariant. XBB and its offshoots, which now account for most U.S. infections, are descendants of the omicron variant that caused COVID cases to surge to record levels early last year. 

U.S. regulators are looking to bring the next COVID shots more closely in line with the circulating virus.  

A so-called monovalent vaccine would be a change from the most recent bivalent COVID boosters that targeted both the original strain of the coronavirus and omicron.  

The FDA takes recommendations from its outside experts into consideration before making a final decision on composition of the shots. 
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Chinese EV Makers Make Progress in Bid to Dominate British Market

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Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles are stepping up their push to dominate the European market. As Amy Guttman reports from London, they are making progress in Britain, where car shoppers are eager to buy the lower-cost electric cars that Chinese automakers are offering.
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Bill Gates Visits China for Health, Development Talks

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Microsoft Founder Bill Gates was in China on Thursday for what he said were meetings with global health and development partners who have worked with his charitable foundation.

“Solving problems like climate change, health inequity and food insecurity requires innovation,” Gates tweeted. “From developing malaria drugs to investing in climate adaptation, China has a lot of experience in that. We need to unlock that kind of progress for more people around the world.”

Gates said global crises stifled progress in reducing death and poverty in children and that he will next travel to West Africa because African countries are particularly vulnerable “with high food prices, crushing debt, and increasing rates of TB and malaria.”

Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, said Gates would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Gates is the latest business figure to visit China year, following Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Cambodian Facial Recognition Effort Raises Fears of Misuse

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Experts are raising concerns that a recent Cambodian government order allocating around $1 million to a local company for a facial recognition technology project could pave the way for the technology to be used against citizens and human rights defenders.

The order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and released in March in a recent tranche of government documents, would award the funds to HSC Co. Ltd., a Cambodian company led by tycoon Sok Hong that has previously printed Cambodian passports and installed CCTV cameras in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

The Oct. 17 order appears to be the first direct indication of Cambodia’s interest in pursuing facial recognition, alarming experts who say such initiatives could eventually be used to target dissenters and build a stronger surveillance state similar to China’s. In recent months, the government has blocked the country’s main opposition party from participating in the July national elections, shut down independent media and jailed critics such as labor organizers and opposition politicians.

Neither the Interior Ministry nor the company would answer questions about what the project entails.

“This is national security and not everyone knows about how it works,” Khieu Sopheak, secretary of state and spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, told VOA by phone. “Even in the U.S., if you ask about the air defense system, they will tell you the same. This is the national security system, which we can’t tell everyone [about].”

The order names HSC, a company Sok Hong founded in 2007, as the funds’ recipient. HSC’s businesses span food and beverage, dredging and retail.

HSC also has close ties to the government: in addition to printing passports and providing CCTV cameras in Phnom Penh, it runs the system for national ID cards and has provided border checkpoint technology. Malaysian and Cambodian media identify Sok Hong as the son of Sok Kong, another tycoon who founded the conglomerate Sokimex Investment Group. Both father and son are oknhas or “lords,” a Cambodian honorific given to those who have donated more than $500,000 to the government.

When reached by phone, Sok Hong told VOA, “I think it shouldn’t be reported since it is related to national security.”

Cambodia’s history of repression, including monitoring dissidents in person and online, has raised suspicions that it could deploy such technology to target activists. Last year, labor leaders reported they were recorded via drones during protests.

“Authorities can use facial recognition technology to identify, track individuals and gather vast amounts of personal data without their consent, which could eventually lead to massive surveillance,” said Chak Sopheap, director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. “For instance, when a government uses facial recognition to monitor attendance at peaceful gatherings, these actions raise severe concerns about the safety of those citizens.”

In addition, giving control of facial recognition technology to a politically connected firm, and one that already has access to a trove of identity-related information, could centralize citizens’ data in a one-stop shop. That could make it easier to fine-tune algorithms quickly and later develop more facial recognition tools to be shared with the government in a mutually beneficial relationship, Joshua Kurlantzick, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for Southeast Asia, told VOA.

China — one of Cambodia’s oldest and closest allies — has pioneered collecting vast amounts of data to monitor citizens. In Xinjiang, home to about 12 million Uyghurs, Chinese authorities combine people’s biometric data and digital activities to create a detailed portrait of their lives.

In recent years, China has sought to influence Southeast Asia, “providing an explicit model for surveillance and a model for a closed and walled-garden internet,” Kurlantzick said, referring to methods of blocking or managing users’ access to certain content.

Some efforts have been formalized under the Digital Silk Road, China’s technology-focused subset of the Belt and Road initiative that provides support, infrastructure and subsidized products to recipient countries.

China’s investment in Cambodian monitoring systems dates back to the early days of the Digital Silk Road. In 2015, it installed an estimated $3 million worth of CCTV cameras in Phnom Penh and later promised more cameras to “allow a database to accumulate for the investigation of criminal cases,” according to reports at the time. There is no indication China is involved in the HSC project, however.

While dozens of countries use facial recognition technology for legitimate public safety uses, such investments must be accompanied by strict data protection laws and enforcement, said Gatra Priyandita, a cyber politics analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Cambodia does not have comprehensive data privacy regulations. The prime minister himself has monitored Zoom calls hosted by political foes, posting on Facebook that “Hun Sen’s people are everywhere.”

Given the country’s approach to digital privacy, housing facial recognition within a government-tied conglomerate is “concerning” but not surprising, Priyandita said.

“The long-term goal of these kinds of arrangements is the reinforcement of regime security, of course, particularly the protection of Cambodia’s main political and business families,” Priyandita said.

In the immediate future, Cambodia’s capacity to carry out mass surveillance is uncertain. The National Internet Gateway — a system for routing traffic through government servers which critics compared to China’s “Great Firewall” — was delayed in early 2022. Shortly before the scheduled rollout, the government advertised more than 100 positions related to data centers and artificial intelligence, sowing doubts about the technical knowledge behind the project.

Still, the government is pushing to strengthen its digital capabilities, fast-tracking controversial laws around cybercrime and cybersecurity and pursuing a 15-year plan to develop the digital economy, including a skilled technical workforce.

Sun Narin of VOA’s Khmer Service contributed to this report.
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Modi and Biden Poised to Strengthen Tech Trade, Counter China

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes his first state visit to Washington in nine years on June 21. The trip comes as the United States and India increase cooperation in critical emerging technologies. Matt Dibble has the story.
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NASA Finds Key Building Block for Life in a Saturn Moon

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The long hunt for extraterrestrials just got a big boost.

Scientists have discovered that phosphorus, a key building block of life, lies in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

The finding was based on a review of data collected by NASA’s Cassini probe, and it was published Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature.

Cassini started exploring Saturn and its rings and moons in 2004, before burning up in the gas giant’s atmosphere when its mission ended in 2017.

“This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology,” said Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the paper’s co-authors, noting: “We have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.”

Geysers on Enceladus’ south pole spew icy particles through cracks on the surface out into space, feeding Saturn’s E ring — the faint ring outside the brighter main rings. 

Scientists previously found other minerals and organic compounds in the ejected ice grains, but not phosphorus, which is an essential building block for DNA and RNA. It also is found in the bones and teeth of people, animals, and even ocean plankton.

Simply put, life as we know it would not be possible without phosphorus.

While geochemical modeling had previously found it was likely phosphorus would also be present, and this prediction was published in an earlier paper, it is one thing to forecast something and another to confirm, said Glein.

“It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth,” added first author Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universitat Berlin, in a NASA statement.

To make the new discovery, authors combed through data collected by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument, and confirmed the findings by carrying out laboratory experiments to show that Enceladus’ ocean has phosphorus bound inside different water-soluble forms.  

Over the past 25 years, planetary scientists have discovered that worlds with oceans beneath a surface layer of ice are common in our solar system.

These include Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s largest moon Titan, but even the more distant body, Pluto.

While planets like Earth that have surface oceans need to reside within a narrow window of distance from their host star to maintain the right temperatures for life, the discovery of worlds with subsurface oceans expands the number of habitable bodies that might exist.  

“With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life,” said Glein.

“The next step is clear — we need to go back to Enceladus to see if the habitable ocean is actually inhabited.”
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Fed Keeps Rates Unchanged, but Signals 2 More Potential Hikes This Year

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The Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday after having raised it 10 straight times to combat high inflation. But in a surprise move, the Fed signaled it may raise rates twice more this year, beginning as soon as next month.

The Fed’s move to leave its benchmark rate at about 5.1%, its highest level in 16 years, suggests that it believes the much higher borrowing rates have made some progress in taming inflation. But top Fed officials want to take time to more fully assess how their rate hikes have affected inflation and the economy.

“Holding the target rate steady at this meeting allows the committee to assess additional information and its implications” for the Fed’s policies, the central bank said in a statement.

The central bank’s 18 policymakers envision raising their key rate by an additional half-point this year, to about 5.6%, according to economic forecasts they issued Wednesday.

The economic projections revealed a more hawkish Fed than many analysts had expected. Twelve of the 18 policymakers forecast at least two more quarter-point rate increases. Four supported a quarter-point increase. Only two envisioned keeping rates unchanged. The policymakers also predicted that their benchmark rate will stay higher for longer than they envisioned three months ago.

“We understand the hardship that high inflation is causing, and we remain strongly committed to bring inflation back down to our 2% goal,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference.

One reason why the officials may be predicting additional rate hikes is that they foresee a modestly healthier economy and more persistent inflation that might require higher rates to cool. Their updated forecasts show them predicting economic growth of 1% for 2023, an upgrade from their meager 0.4% forecast in March. And the officials expect “core” inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, of 3.9% by year’s end, higher than they expected three months ago.

Immediately after the Fed’s announcement, which followed its latest policy meeting, stocks sank, and Treasury yields surged. The yield on the two-year Treasury note, which tends to track market expectations for future Fed actions, jumped from 4.62% to 4.77%.

The Fed’s aggressive streak of rate hikes, which have made mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and business borrowing costlier, have been intended to slow spending and defeat the worst bout of inflation in four decades. Mortgage rates have surged, and average credit card rates have surpassed 20% to a record high.

The central bank’s rate hikes have coincided with a steady drop in consumer inflation, from a peak of 9.1% last June to 4% as of May. But excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core inflation remains chronically high. Core inflation was 5.3% in May compared with 12 months earlier, well above the Fed’s 2% target.

Powell and other top policymakers have also indicated that they want to assess how much a pullback in bank lending might be weakening the economy. Banks have been slowing their lending — and demand for loans has fallen — as interest rates have risen. Some analysts have expressed concern that the collapse of three large banks last spring could cause nervous lenders to sharply tighten their loan qualifications.

The Fed has raised its benchmark rate by a substantial 5 percentage points since March 2022 — the fastest pace of increases in 40 years. “Skipping” a rate hike at this week’s meeting might have been the most effective way for Powell to unite a fractious policymaking committee.

The 18 members of the committee have appeared divided between those who favor one or two more rate hikes and those who would like to leave the Fed’s key rate where it is for at least a few months and see whether inflation further moderates. This group is concerned that hiking too aggressively would heighten the risk of causing a deep recession.

In an encouraging sign, inflation data that the government issued this week showed that most of the rise in core prices reflected high rents and used car prices. Those costs are expected to ease later this year.

Wholesale used car prices, for example, fell in May, raising the prospect that retail prices will follow suit. And rents are expected to ease in the coming months as new leases are signed with milder price increases. Those lower prices, though, will take time to feed into the government’s measure.

The economy has so far fared better than the central bank and most economists had expected at the beginning of the year. Companies are still hiring at a robust pace, which has helped encourage many people to keep spending, particularly on travel, dining out and entertainment.
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As Deepfake Fraud Permeates China, Authorities Target Political Challenges Posed by AI

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Chinese authorities are cracking down on political and fraud cases driven by deepfakes, created with face- and voice-changing software that tricks targets into believing they are video chatting with a loved one or another trusted person.

How good are the deepfakes? Good enough to trick an executive at a Fuzhou tech company in Fujian province who almost lost $600,000 to a person he thought was a friend claiming to need a quick cash infusion.

The entire transaction took less than 10 minutes from the first contact via the phone app WeChat to police stopping the online bank transfer when the target called the authorities after learning his real friend had never requested the loan, according to Sina Technology.

Despite the public’s outcry about such AI-driven fraud, some experts say Beijing appears more concerned about the political challenges that deepfakes may pose, as shown by newly implemented regulations on “deep synthesis” management that outlaw activities that “endanger national security and interests and damage the national image.”

The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has propelled cutting-edge technology to mass entertainment applications in just a few years.

In a 2017 demonstration of the risks, a video created by University of Washington researchers showed then-U.S. President Barack Obama saying things he hadn’t.

Two years later, Chinese smartphone apps like Zao let users swap their faces with celebrities so they could appear as if they were in a movie. Zao was removed from app stores in 2019 and Avatarify, another popular Chinese face-swapping app, was also banned in 2021, likely for violation of privacy and portrait rights, according to Chinese media.

Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, head of artificial intelligence and machine learning at SumSub, a Berlin-based global antifraud company, explained how easy it is with a personal computer or smartphone to make a video in which a person appears to say things he or she never would.

“To create a deepfake, a fraudster uses a real person’s document, taking a photo of it and turning it into a 3D persona,” he said. “The problem is that the technology, it is becoming more and more democratized. Many people can use it. … They can create many deepfakes, and they try to bypass these checks that we try to enforce.”

Subbarao Kambhampati, professor at the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, said in a telephone interview he was surprised by the apparent shift from voice cloning to deepfake video calling by scammers in China. He compared that to a rise in voice-cloning phone scams in the U.S.

“Audio alone, you’re more easily fooled, but audio plus video, it would be little harder to fool you. But apparently they’re able to do it,” Kambhampati said, adding that it is harder to make a video that appears trustworthy.

“Subconsciously we look at people’s faces … and realize that they’re not exactly behaving the way we normally see them behave in terms of their facial expressions.”

Experts say that AI fraud will become more sophisticated.

“We don’t expect the problem to go away. The biggest solution … is education, let people understand the days of trusting your ears and eyes are over, and you need to keep that in the back of your mind,” Kambhampati said.

The Internet Society of China issued a warning in May, calling on the public to be more vigilant as AI face-changing, voice-changing scams and slanders became common.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 4 that local governments across China have begun to crack down on false information generated by artificial intelligence chatbots. Much of the false content designed as clickbait is similar to authentic material on topics that have already attracted public attention.

To regulate “deep synthesis” content, China’s administrative measures implemented on January 10 require service providers to “conspicuously mark” AI-generated content that “may cause public confusion or misidentification” so that users can tell authentic media content from deepfakes.

China’s practice of requiring technology platforms to “watermark” deepfake content has been widely discussed internationally.

Matt Sheehan, a fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that deepfake regulations place the onus on the companies that develop and operate these technologies.

“If enforced well, the regulations could make it harder for criminals to get their hands on these AI tools,” he said in an email to VOA Mandarin. “It could throw up some hurdles to this kind of fraud.”

But he also said that much depends on how Beijing implements the regulations and whether bad actors can obtain AI tools outside China.

“So, it’s not a problem with the technology,” said SumSub’s Goldman-Kalaydin. “It is always a problem with the usage of the technology. So, you can regulate the usage, but not the technology.”

James Lewis, senior vice president of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told VOA Mandarin, “Chinese law needs to be modernized for changes in technology, and I know the Chinese are thinking about that. So, the cybercrime laws you have will probably catch things like deepfakes. What will be hard to handle is the volume and the sophistication of the new products, but I know the Chinese government is very worried about fraud and looking for ways to get control of it.”

Others suggest that in regulating AI, political stability is a bigger concern for the Chinese government.

“I think they have a stronger incentive to work on the political threats than they do for fraud,” said Bill Drexel, an associate fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at Center for a New American Security.

In May, the hashtag #AIFraudEruptingAcrossChina was trending on China’s social media platform Weibo. However, the hashtag has since been censored, according to the Wall Street Journal, suggesting authorities are discouraging discussion on AI-driven fraud.

“So even we can see from this incident, once it appeared that the Chinese public was afraid that there was too much AI-powered fraud, they censored,” Drexel told VOA Mandarin.

He continued, “The fact that official state-run media initially reported these incidents and then later discussion of it was censored just goes to show that they do ultimately care about covering themselves politically more than they care about addressing fraud.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Bill Gates in China to Meet President Xi on Friday – Sources 

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Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp’s co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The meeting will mark Xi’s first meeting with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years. The people said the encounter may be a one-on-one meeting. A third source confirmed they would meet, without providing details.

The sources did not say what the two might discuss. Gates tweeted on Wednesday that he had landed in Beijing for the first time since 2019 and that he would meet with partners who had been working on global health and development challenges with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation and China’s State Council Information Office, which handles media queries on behalf of the Chinese government, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. 

Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board in 2020 to focus on philanthropic works related to global health, education and climate change. He quit his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008. 

The last reported meeting between Xi and Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao forum in Hainan province. In early 2020, Xi wrote a letter to Gates thanking him, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for pledging assistance to China including $5 million for its fight against COVID. 

The meeting would mark the end of a long hiatus by Xi in recent years from meeting foreign private entrepreneurs and business leaders, after the Chinese president stopped traveling abroad for nearly three years as China shut its borders during the pandemic. 

Several foreign CEOs have visited China since it reopened early this year but most have mainly met with government ministers. 

Premier Li Qiang met a group of CEOs including Apple’s Tim Cook in March and a source told Reuters that Tesla’s Elon Musk met vice-premier Ding Xuexiang last month.
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EU Lawmakers Vote for Tougher AI Rules as Draft Moves to Final Stage

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EU lawmakers on Wednesday voted for tougher landmark draft artificial intelligence rules that include a ban on the use of the technology in biometric surveillance and for generative AI systems like ChatGPT to disclose AI-generated content.

The lawmakers agreed to the amendments to the draft legislation proposed by the European Commission which is seeking to set a global standard for the technology used in everything from automated factories to bots and self-driving cars.

Rapid adoption of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other bots has led top AI scientists and company executives including Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to raise the potential risks posed to society.

“While Big Tech companies are sounding the alarm over their own creations, Europe has gone ahead and proposed a concrete response to the risks AI is starting to pose,” said Brando Benifei, co-rapporteur of the draft act.

Among other changes, European Union lawmakers want any company using generative tools to disclose copyrighted material used to train its systems and for companies working on “high-risk application” to do a fundamental rights impact assessment and evaluate environmental impact.

Microsoft, which has called for AI rules, welcomed the lawmakers’ agreement.

“We believe that AI requires legislative guardrails, alignment efforts at an international level, and meaningful voluntary actions by companies that develop and deploy AI,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

However, the Computer and Communications Industry Association said the amendments on high-risk AIs were likely to overburden European AI developers with “excessively prescriptive rules” and slow down innovation.

“AI raises a lot of questions – socially, ethically, economically. But now is not the time to hit any ‘pause button’. On the contrary, it is about acting fast and taking responsibility,” EU industry chief Thierry Breton said.

The Commission announced its draft rules two years ago aimed at setting a global standard for a technology key to almost every industry and business and in a bid to catch up with AI leaders the United States and China.

The lawmakers will now have to thrash out details with European Union countries before the draft rules become legislation. 
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Women Want Fistula Treatment, End to Stigma in Tanzania

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Six percent of all maternal deaths around the world are caused by obstructed labor, according to the World Health Organization. That’s when a baby can’t move through the birth canal. It can also lead to obstetric fistula, a condition that can have a long-term impact on a woman’s health, especially in developing countries. Reporter Idd Uwesu has more from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in this report narrated by Omary Kaseko. Video:
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EU Regulators Order Google To Break up Digital Ad Business Over Competition Concerns

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European Union antitrust regulators took aim at Google’s lucrative digital advertising business in an unprecedented decision ordering the tech giant to sell off some of its ad business to address competition concerns.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, said that its preliminary view after an investigation is that “only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services” would satisfy the concerns.

The 27-nation EU has led the global movement to crack down on Big Tech companies, but it has previously relied on issuing blockbuster fines, including three antitrust penalties for Google worth billions of dollars.

It’s the first time the bloc has ordered a tech giant to split up keys of business.

Google can now defend itself by making its case before the commission issues its final decision. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission’s decision stems from a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services.

YouTube was one focus of the commission’s investigation, which looked into whether Google was using the video sharing site’s dominant position to favor its own ad-buying services by imposing restrictions on rivals.

Google’s ad tech business is also under investigation by Britain’s antitrust watchdog and faces litigation in the U.S.

Brussels has previously hit Google with more than $8.6 billion worth of fines in three separate antitrust cases, involving its Android mobile operating system and shopping and search advertising services.

The company is appealing all three penalties. An EU court last year slightly reduced the Android penalty to 4.125 million euros. EU regulators have the power to impose penalties worth up to 10% of a company’s annual revenue.
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What Peanuts Dancing in Beer Teaches Us About the Earth’s Crust

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When peanuts are dropped into a pint of beer, they sink to the bottom before floating up and “dancing” in the glass. 

Scientists have dug deep to investigate this phenomenon in a study published on Wednesday, saying it has implications for understanding mineral extraction or bubbling magma in the Earth’s crust. 

Brazilian researcher Luiz Pereira, the study’s lead author, told AFP he first had the idea when passing through Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires to learn Spanish.  

It was a “bartender thing” in the city to take a few peanuts and pop them into beers, Pereira said. 

Because the peanuts are denser than the beer, they first sink down to the bottom of the glass. 

Then each peanut becomes what is called a “nucleation site.” Hundreds of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide form on their surface, acting as buoys to drag them upward. 

“The bubbles prefer to form on the peanuts rather than on the glass walls,” said Pereira, a researcher at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. 

When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst. 

The peanuts sink again before being propelled up anew by freshly formed bubbles, in a dance that continues until the carbon dioxide runs out, or someone interrupts it by drinking the beer. 

In a series of experiments, the team of researchers in Germany, Britain and France examined how roasted, shelled peanuts fared in a lager-style beer. 

‘Beer-gas-peanut system’

The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, describes two key factors in what the researchers dubbed the “beer-gas-peanut system.” 

They found that the larger the “contact angle” between the curve of an individual bubble and the surface of the peanut was, the more likely it was to form and grow.  

But it cannot grow too much — a radius of less than 1.3 millimeters is ideal, the study said. 

Pereira said he hoped that “by deeply researching this simple system, which everyone can grasp, we can understand a system” that would be useful for industry or explaining natural phenomena. 

For example, he said the floatation process was similar to the one used to separate iron from ore. 

Air is injected, in a controlled way, into a mixture in which a mineral, such as iron, “will rise because bubbles attach themselves more easily to it, while other (minerals) sink to the bottom,” he said. 

The same process could also explain why volcanologists find that the mineral magnetite rises to higher layers in the crystalized magma of the Earth’s crust than would be expected. 

Like peanuts, magnetite is denser, so should sit at the bottom. But because of a high contact angle, the researchers theorize, the mineral rises through the magma with help from gas bubbles. 

Of course, science is never settled, particularly when beer is involved. 

Hoping to create a better model of the dancing peanut phenomenon, Pereira said the scientists will continue to “play with the characteristics of different peanuts and different beers.” 
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North Korea Increases Exports of Wigs and Fake Eyelashes, Raising Alarms in US

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Many of the wigs and false eyelashes labeled “Made in China” that are sold by American retailers may violate U.S. sanctions on North Korea, which is where they are actually manufactured, according to experts.

China imported approximately 30 tons of North Korean-made wigs and false eyelashes in April worth over $22.7 million, according to data from China’s General Customs Administration examined by VOA’s Korean Service.

About half, amounting to more than $11.2 million, were imported by Chinese companies in Henan province. Xiaogang, a city in central Henan province, is the world’s largest wig manufacturing, distribution and export hub.

Although North Korea sealed its border with China in January 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, trade between the neighbors has resumed gradually since North Korea declared victory over COVID-19 in August 2022. China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner.

The amount of Pyongyang’s wig and false lash exports to China in April shows that “trade is returning after the pandemic” as North Korea’s total exports to China in 2021 “only amounted to $56.3 million,” said Troy Stangarone, senior director at Korea Economic Institute (KEI) to VOA Korean by email.

As North Korea’s exports to China return to pre-pandemic levels, experts said U.S. companies must be vigilant that supply chains do not include Chinese manufacturers that use North Korean labor. U.S. penalties for sanctions violations convictions include “incarceration, fines, and forfeiture of any/all goods imported and proceeds of these crimes,” according to federal law.

“Chinese firms have been known to subcontract with North Korean firms and label the goods as made in China,” Stangarone said. “Any efforts by Chinese firms to directly or indirectly export wigs and fake lashes or any other North Korean goods to the United States would be a violation of U.S. sanctions.”

Despite the sanctions, however, there is still a good chance that those items could end up in the U.S., he added.

$128.6 million in human hair products

China was the top global exporter of human hair products including wigs and fake lashes in 2021, totaling approximately $1.84 billion while the U.S. was the largest importer of those products worth approximately $1.01 billion in the same year.

In April, China was the largest exporter of wigs and other human hair products to the U.S. amounting to $128.6 million.

“If firms utilize China as part of their supply chain, they need to be aware” they could be “unknowingly sending North Korean goods to the United States,” said Stangarone.

The U.S. Treasury issued an advisory in 2017 cautioning American businesses to “closely examine their entire supply chain(s) for North Korean laborers and goods and services or technology” especially “those businesses with operation in high-risk countries.”

The advisory said that North Korea uses forced labor to raise revenue to fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs.

The “use of North Korean citizens or nationals as laborers in supply chains could trigger U.S. sanctions, and the issuance of work authorizations for these North Korean nationals is prohibited under UN Security Council resolution 2397” issued in 2017, said the advisory.

Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based attorney who helped draft the Sanctions Enforcement and Policy Enforcement Act in 2016, said, “Importing products made with forced or penal labor into the United States has long been a violation of the U.S. Tariff Act.”

He continued, “If goods are made in whole or in part with North Korean labor, they’re subject to rebuttable presumption that they’re made with forced labor.”

Regulations ban imports from North Korea

The regulations ban imports of goods, services or technology from North Korea. 

In 2019, California-based e.l.f. Cosmetics agreed to pay nearly $1 million for importing over $4 million worth of false eyelash kits from Chinese suppliers that sourced materials from North Korea in violation of the North Korean Sanctions Regulations. 

The U.S. Treasury said the cosmetics company “appears not to have exercised sufficient supply chain due diligence while sourcing products from a region” in which North Korea is “known to export goods.”

“If U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade identifies those [North Korean-made] wigs, it will seize them and sell them at auction,” said Stanton.

Stanton said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) may rely on tips to identify North Korea-made products such as items coming from an exporter or factory with a known history of employing labor in North Korea, among other ways of detection.

In 2022, CBP seized goods produced by the Chinese companies Jingde Trading, Rixin Foods and Zhejiang Sunrise Garment Group at U.S. ports.

The seizures were based on CBP’s “investigation indicating that these companies use North Korean labor in their supply chains in violation of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA),” the CBP said in December 2022. 

CAATSA bans the importation to the U.S. of items made by North Korean workers “anywhere in the world,” said the statement.

Although U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea do not explicitly list wigs and false lashes as banned export items, China and North Korea could be violating those sanctions, according to Stanton. U.N. sanctions ban the Pyongyang regime from exporting items like coal, textiles and seafood to prevent sales revenue from funding its weapons programs.

“The U.N. sanctions are not required to list every product and item that North Korea exports,” Stanton said.

North Korea’s “export to China is nonetheless a violation of UN sanctions if China fails to ensure that Pyongyang doesn’t use the profits for prohibited activities, including WMD proliferations,” continued Stanton.

North Korea conducted a record number of weapons tests last year to enhance the development of its missile and nuclear programs, a practice that Pyongyang is continuing this year. Its latest attempted launch of a satellite using ballistic missile technology banned by the UN failed on May 31.

Christy Lee contributed to this report.
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Big Amazon Cloud Services Recovering After Outage Hits Thousands of Users

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Amazon.com said cloud services offered by its unit Amazon Web Services were recovering after a big disruption on Tuesday affected websites of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and The Boston Globe, among others.

Several hours after Downdetector.com started showing reports of outages, Amazon said many AWS services were fully recovered and marked resolved.

“We are continuing to work to fully recover all services,” AWS’ status page showed.

Tuesday’s impact stretching from transportation to financial services businesses underscores adoption of Amazon’s younger Lambda service and the degree to which many of its cloud offerings are crucial to companies in the internet age.

According to research in the past year from the cloud company Datadog, more than half of organizations operating in the cloud use Lambda or rival services, known as serverless technology.

Nearly 12,000 users had reported issues with accessing the service, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform.

The disruption appeared smaller in time and breadth than one the company suffered in 2017 of its data-hosting service known as Amazon S3, representing the bread and butter of its cloud business.

The outage appeared to extend to AWS’s own webpage describing disruptions in its operations, which at one point failed to load on Tuesday, Reuters witnesses saw.

“We quickly narrowed down the root cause to be an issue with a subsystem responsible for capacity management for AWS Lambda, which caused errors directly for customers and indirectly through the use by other AWS services,” Amazon said.

AWS Lambda is a service that lets customers run computer programs without having to manage any underlying servers.

Twitter users expressed their frustration with the outage, with one user saying, “I don’t know, Alexa won’t tell me because #AWS and her services are down!”

Delta Air Lines also said it was facing problems but did not say if it was related to the AWS outage. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other Amazon services such as Amazon Music and Alexa were also impacted, according to Downdetector.

Amazon had its last major outage in December 2021, when disruptions to its cloud services temporarily knocked out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, and Amazon’s e-commerce website ahead of Christmas.
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Cameroon Officials Campaign Against Taboos to Encourage People to Donate Blood

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Blood banks in Cameroon are usually close to empty due to widely held taboos against blood donation. Officials in the central African country are trying to convince people to move past those beliefs amid an increased demand for blood and blood products in hospitals and on the front lines where soldiers are fighting separatists and Islamist militants. The effort comes ahead of World Blood Donor Day, observed on June 14. 

Illustrating the shortages is the story of a woman who told nurses at the Yaounde military hospital that she has not found anyone to donate blood to save the life of her two-year-old son. 

Hospital workers said the 34-year-old fruit seller’s blood was infected and that it could not be transfused to her son.

Medical staff members have requested blood from government hospitals to save the child’s life, the hospital said, adding that the blood bank at the military hospital is empty.

Celestin Ayangma, head of the laboratory that is in charge of the hospital’s blood bank, said that since January of this year, the Yaounde military hospital had been able to provide only six of the 20 units of blood it needs every day. Ayangma added that patients eventually die if they do not have relatives, friends or other donors to give the blood that the patients need.

By midday on Tuesday, the baby was still waiting for blood. 

Cameroon’s public health ministry reported that in 2022, hospitals in the country were able to collect a little more than 120,000 pints of blood from voluntary donors, family members and friends of sick patients. 

But each year, Cameroon needs at least 600,000 pints of blood for both private and government-owned hospitals.

The government says blood donation needs in Cameroon are increasing due to the separatist conflict in the country’s western regions and fighting with Boko Haram militants on the northern border with Nigeria. 

This year, government officials, health workers and aid agencies took to the streets ahead of World Blood Donor Day, trying to convince people to donate blood and save lives.

Ruth Abeng of the Cameroon Medical Council, an association of Cameroonian doctors, took part in the campaign. She sayid there are very few voluntary blood donors in Cameroon as some people are compelled to donate blood only when they see their sick relatives and friends in need of blood and dying. She said it is disheartening to see patients dying because some of their relatives believe that a blood donation is mystical.

Some Cameroonians believe that if they give blood, the recipient will receive any good luck and success they’ve had in life. Others say God will punish them if they donate blood to an evil person. 

The government says such beliefs are unfounded and people should not be afraid to donate blood. 

The Ministry of Health also says donated blood is not sold as some people erroneously believe. Blood that is donated is stored in banks and transfused to people in need, the government says. 

Hospitals say patients pay a fee of about $50 for the hospital to test donated blood and make sure it is safe to use. 

The government gives donors about $10 in a bid to encourage more donations. 

Cameroon says it expects to raise about 20,000 pints of blood by June 14. 

Hospitals say the amount will not be enough to meet the country’s needs but that it will reduce suffering and prevent some people from dying.
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McCartney: ‘Final Beatles Record’ Out This Year Aided by AI

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A “final Beatles record”, created with the help of artificial intelligence, will be released later this year, Paul McCartney told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

“It was a demo that John (Lennon) had, and that we worked on, and we just finished it up,” said McCartney, who turns 81 next week.

The Beatles — Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — split in 1970, with each going on to have solo careers, but they never reunited.

Lennon was shot dead in New York in 1980 aged 40 while Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001, aged 58.

McCartney did not name the song that has been recorded but according to the BBC it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called “Now And Then”.

The track — one of several on a cassette that Lennon had recorded for McCartney a year before his death — was given to him by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono in 1994.

Two of the songs, “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love”, were cleaned up by the producer Jeff Lynne, and released in 1995 and 1996.

An attempt was made to do the same with “Now And Then” but the project was abandoned because of background noise on the demo.

McCartney, who has previously talked about wanting to finish the song, said AI had given him a new chance to do so.

‘Now and Then’

Working with Peter Jackson, the film director behind the 2021 documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back”, AI was used to separate Lennon’s voice and a piano.

“They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar’,” he explained.

“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had (and) we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI.

“Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”

McCartney performed a two-hour set at last year’s Glastonbury festival in England, playing Beatles’ classics to the 100,000-strong crowd.

The set included a virtual duet with Lennon of the song “I’ve Got a Feeling”, from the Beatles’ last album “Let It Be”.

Last month, Sting warned that “defending our human capital against AI” would be a major battle for musicians in the coming years.

The use of AI in music is the subject of debate in the industry, with some denouncing copyright abuses and others praising its prowess.

McCartney said the use of the technology was “kind of scary but exciting because it’s the future”, adding: “We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
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US Consumer Price Growth Slowed Last Month

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Consumer prices in the United States cooled last month, rising just 0.1% from April to May and extending the past year’s steady easing of inflation. At the same time, some measures of underlying price pressures remained high.

Measured year over year, inflation slowed to just 4% in May — the lowest 12-month figure in over two years and well below April’s 4.9% annual rise. The pullback was driven by tumbling gas prices, a much smaller rise in grocery prices than in previous months and less expensive furniture, air fares and appliances.

Tuesday’s inflation figures arrive just as Federal Reserve officials begin a pivotal two-day meeting, after which they’re expected to leave interest rates alone after imposing 10 straight rate hikes dating back to March 2022. On Wednesday, the central bank will likely announce that it’s skipping a rate hike but may hint that it will resume raising rates as soon as July. Top Fed officials have said they’re leaning toward a so-called “skip” to allow time to assess how their rate hikes have affected inflation and the overall economy.

Still, last month’s drop-off in overall inflation isn’t likely to convince the Fed’s policymakers that they’re close to curbing the high inflation that has gripped the nation for two years. The Fed tends to focus more on “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and generally provide a clearer view of inflation.

And core prices remained high last month, rising 0.4% from April to May, the sixth straight month of increases at that level or higher. Compared with a year ago, core inflation slipped to 5.3% from 5.5%. That is still far above the Fed’s target of 2%.

Last month’s core inflation was fueled mainly by high apartment rental costs and a second straight jump in used car prices, which soared 4.4% just from April to May. On the other hand, wholesale prices of used cars declined last month, which may foretell lower retail used-car prices in coming months.

Gas prices, adjusted for seasonal patterns, fell 5.6% from April to May; they’re down nearly 20% from a year ago. And grocery prices ticked up just 0.1%, a relief to consumers, though they’re still 5.8% higher than they were a year ago.

The stubbornness of underlying inflation reflects a fundamental challenge for the Fed: The economy has steadily defied long-standing forecasts for a recession, dating back more than a year. Instead, businesses have kept hiring at a healthy pace, average paychecks are climbing and workers are freely spending their larger wages.

Though a resilient economy is great for households and businesses, it may also be helping fuel chronically high inflation. Some economists argue that many companies are keeping prices artificially high, more than is needed to cover their own higher costs, to drive profit growth. The nation’s consumers might have to pull back, en masse, before most businesses will reduce prices. In the meantime, steadily robust hiring is allowing Americans, as a whole, to keep spending.

The Fed has raised its benchmark rate by a hefty 5 percentage points over the past 15 months — the fastest pace of rate increases in four decades. Those hikes have led to much higher costs for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and business borrowing. The Fed’s goal is to slow borrowing and spending, cool the economy and tame inflation — without causing a deep recession. It’s a notoriously difficult task.

There are some signs that the Fed’s efforts are having the desired effect. Inflation is expected to take another big step down in the June figures that will be reported next month. Price growth could slide as low as 3.2% from a year earlier, according to some economists’ estimates. That would be significantly below inflation’s peak of 9.1% in June 2022, the highest level in four decades.

Yet any sharp declines in May and June will in part reflect the fact that prices soared in both those months last year. As those months drop out of the year-over-year inflation calculations, they are replaced with smaller monthly gains. The effect can sharply lower measures of annual inflation.

Still, core prices are expected to stay high in May, driven up by another jump in used car prices and steady increases in rental costs. Used car prices soared 4.4% just from March to April. Economists expect another increase, though not quite as large, from April to May.
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Ex-Samsung Exec Charged With Stealing Chip Tech for China Factory 

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South Korea has charged a former Samsung executive accused of stealing company secrets worth hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a copycat chip factory in China, prosecutors told AFP on Tuesday.

Semiconductors have become a flashpoint issue between the United States and China, which are locked in a fierce battle over access to chip-making technology and supplies.

South Korean prosecutors said the 65-year-old former Samsung employee allegedly stole the company’s factory blueprints and clean-room designs from 2018 and 2019.

The Suwon district prosecutor’s office said the suspect unsuccessfully tried to set up a copycat production facility in the Chinese city of Xian — where Samsung already has a chip factory.

The man, who has not been identified and is in detention pending trial, stole material that is classified by South Korea as a “national core technology” — a category of tech that could potentially harm national security and the economy if disclosed overseas.

Prosecutors said he had been in custody for some time and was formally charged on Monday.

They described him as a “top expert in semiconductor manufacturing”, who had worked in the industry for decades.

South Korean authorities said the information allegedly targeted in the theft would have been worth at least $236 million to Samsung.

“It is a serious crime that can have a tremendous negative impact on our economic security by shaking the foundation of the domestic semiconductor industry at a time when competition for chip production is intensifying every day,” prosecutors said in a statement on Monday.

“The semiconductor industry accounted for 16.5% of South Korea’s total exports in 2022… and is a national security asset.”

Six other people who worked with the executive have been charged over suspected involvement in the theft.

Samsung declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Tuesday.

Chip war

Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s largest producers of chips and smartphones, and its parent group’s turnover is equivalent to about one-fifth of South Korea’s GDP.

Like many of the world’s biggest chip makers, a large portion of its production is based in China.

Chips are the lifeblood of the modern global economy, and China — the world’s second-largest economy — relies on a steady supply of chips made by foreign firms for its huge electronics manufacturing industry.

The United States imposed a series of export controls last year to prevent China from acquiring the most advanced chips that could be used in cutting-edge weapons and frontier tech such as artificial intelligence.

The Netherlands and Japan followed this year with restrictions of their own, without naming China.

But the curbs have infuriated Beijing, which has accused Washington of “technological terrorism.”

China last month said U.S. chip giant Micron had failed a national security review, and told operators of “critical information infrastructure” to stop buying its products.

Analysts have described that move as retaliation for the U.S. semiconductor curbs.

“Amid intensifying semiconductor competition between the U.S. and China, South Korea is in a difficult situation as it has to side with its security ally U.S. while it obviously cannot ignore Beijing and its influence,” Kim Dae-jong, a professor of business administration at Sejong University, told AFP.

“Samsung Electronics should pay more attention to technology and information security. China is trying to catch up.”
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India Denies Dorsey’s Claims It Threatened to Shut Down Twitter

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India threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the government’s handling of farmer protests, co-founder Jack Dorsey said, an accusation Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government called an “outright lie.”

Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, said on Monday that India also threatened the company with raids on employees if it did not comply with government requests to take down certain posts.

“It manifested in ways such as: ‘We will shut Twitter down in India’, which is a very large market for us; ‘we will raid the homes of your employees’, which they did; And this is India, a democratic country,” Dorsey said in an interview with YouTube news show Breaking Points.

Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a top ranking official in Modi’s government, lashed out against Dorsey in response, calling his assertions an “outright lie.”

“No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shut down’. Dorsey’s Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law,” he said in a post on Twitter.

Dorsey’s comments again put the spotlight on the struggles faced by foreign technology giants operating under Modi’s rule. His government has often criticized Google, Facebook and Twitter for not doing enough to tackle fake or “anti-India” content on their platforms, or for not complying with rules.

The former Twitter CEO’s comments drew widespread attention as it is unusual for global companies operating in India to publicly criticize the government. Last year, Xiaomi in a court filing said India’s financial crime agency threatened its executives with “physical violence” and coercion, an allegation which the agency denied.

Dorsey also mentioned similar pressure from governments in Turkey and Nigeria, which had restricted the platform in their nations at different points over the years before lifting those bans.

Twitter was bought by Elon Musk in a $44 billion deal last year.

Chandrasekhar said Twitter under Dorsey and his team had repeatedly violated Indian law. He didn’t name Musk, but added Twitter had been in compliance since June 2022.

Big tech vs Modi

Modi and his ministers are prolific users of Twitter, but free speech activists say his administration resorts to excessive censorship of content it thinks is critical of its working. India maintains its content removal orders are aimed at protecting users and sovereignty of the state.

The public spat with Twitter during 2021 saw Modi’s government seeking an “emergency blocking” of the “provocative” Twitter hashtag “#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide” and dozens of accounts. Farmers’ groups had been protesting against new agriculture laws at the time, one of the biggest challenges faced by the Modi government.

The government later gave in to the farmers’ demands. Twitter initially complied with the government requests but later restored most of the accounts, citing “insufficient justification”, leading to officials threatening legal consequences.

In subsequent weeks, police visited a Twitter office as part of another probe linked to tagging of some ruling party posts as manipulated. Twitter at the time said it was worried about staff safety.

Dorsey in his interview said many India content take down requests during the farmer protests were “around particular journalists that were critical of the government.”

Since Modi took office in 2014, India has slid from 140th in World Press Freedom Index to 161 this year, out of 180 countries, its lowest ranking ever.
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