Tesla Says Vehicle in Deadly Crash Was on Autopilot 

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A vehicle in a fatal crash last week in California was operating on Autopilot, making it the latest accident to involve a self-driving vehicle, Tesla has confirmed. The electric car maker said the driver, who was killed in the accident, did not have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the crash, despite several warnings from the vehicle. Tesla Inc. tells drivers that its Autopilot system, which can maintain speed, change lanes and self-park, requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel in order to take control of the vehicle to avoid accidents.  Tesla said its vehicle logs show the driver took no action to stop the Model X SUV from crashing into a concrete lane divider. Photographs of the SUV…


AP Analysis: Blacks Largely Missing From High-Salary Positions

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Jonathan Garland's fascination with architecture started early: He spent much of his childhood designing Lego houses and gazing at Boston buildings on rides with his father away from their largely minority neighborhood.  But when Garland looked around at his architectural college, he didn't see many who looked like him. There were few black faces among students, and fewer teaching skills or giving lectures.    "If you do something simple like Google 'architects' and you go to the images tab, you're primarily going to see white males," said Garland, 35, who's worked at Boston and New York architectural firms. "That's the image, that's the brand, that's the look of an architect." And that's not uncommon in other lucrative fields, 50 years after the Reverend Martin Luther King, a leader in the fight…


These Burgers Are Better for the Planet, but You’d Never Know It

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As the world's population heads toward 10 billion by midcentury, experts are wrestling with how to feed the world without wrecking the planet. It's not easy to find foods with lower environmental impact that still taste as good as the ones they are intended to replace. But chefs and environmentalists are both cheering one new menu item: the mushroom-blended burger. VOA's Steve Baragona has more. ...


NY’s Immigrant Taxi Drivers Despair as Taxi Industry Slumps

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A financially distraught yellow cab driver from Romania recently hanged himself in his New York garage, marking the fourth suicide among city taxi drivers in as many months. In the tragedy's aftermath, members of New York's taxicab drivers union are renewing their calls for a cap on the number of app-based for-hire vehicles, such as Uber and Lyft, which they say are driving workers of a once-thriving industry into the ground. VOA's Ramon Taylor reports. ...


Could Enemies Target Undersea Cables That Link the World?

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Russian ships are skulking around underwater communications cables, causing the U.S. and its allies to worry the Kremlin might be taking information warfare to new depths. Is Moscow interested in cutting or tapping the cables? Does it want the West to worry it might? Is there a more innocent explanation? Unsurprisingly, Russia isn't saying. But whatever Moscow's intentions, U.S. and Western officials are increasingly troubled by their rival's interest in the 400 fiber-optic cables that carry most of world's calls, emails and texts, as well as $10 trillion worth of daily financial transactions. "We've seen activity in the Russian navy, and particularly undersea in their submarine activity, that we haven't seen since the '80s," General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command, told Congress this month. Without undersea cables,…


Trump EPA Expected to Roll Back Auto Gas Mileage Standards 

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The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will roll back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration's plans to combat climate change.  It's not clear whether the announcement will include a specific number, but current regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025. That's about 10 mpg over the existing standard.  Environmental groups, who predict increased greenhouse gas emissions and more gasoline consumption if the standards are relaxed, say the announcement could come Tuesday at a Virginia car dealership. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email Friday that the standards are still being reviewed. Legal showdown Any change is likely to set up a lengthy…


Facebook ‘Ugly Truth’ Memo Triggers New Firestorm Over Ethics

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Was a leaked internal Facebook memo aimed at justifying the social network's growth-at-any-cost strategy? Or simply a way to open debate on difficult questions over new technologies? The extraordinarily blunt memo by a high-ranking executive — leaked this week and quickly repudiated by the author and by Facebook — warned that the social network's goal of connecting the world might have negative consequences, but that these were outweighed by the positives. "Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies," the 2016 memo by top executive Andrew "Boz" Bosworth said. "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools." While Bosworth and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the memo was only a way to provoke debate, it created a new firestorm for the social network mired in…


Vietnam Stands to See Modest Wins if China, U.S. Start Trade War

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A wider Sino-U.S. trade dispute would help export-reliant Vietnam compete against Chinese companies but put the country at risk of any global fallout, analysts say. The numerous exporters in Vietnam that ship manufactured goods to the United States would save money compared with Chinese peers if not subject to American tariffs, said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate with business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City. The U.S. government said this month it would develop a list of tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports. China has threatened to impose its own in response. “Let’s say (the United States) went the more traditional route, tensions kept escalating and more tariffs are slapped on Chinese products,” Daugherty said. “In that case Vietnam’s export sector definitely benefits. We’re…


Rivers and Tides Can Provide Affordable Power

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While wind turbines and solar cells generate power only when there is wind and sun, most rivers always flow and most ocean shores always experience tidal currents. At a recent energy summit organized by the U.S. Energy Department, a company from Maine displayed an innovative submersible generator that effectively harvests power from shallow rivers and tidal currents. VOA's George Putic has more. ...


Despite Setbacks, Automakers Move Forward with Electric and Self-Driving Cars

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A recent fatality involving one of Uber's self-driving cars may have created uncertainty and doubt regarding the future of autonomous vehicles, but it's not stopping automakers who say autonomous and self-driving vehicles are here to stay. At the New York International Auto Show this week, autonomous vehicles and electric cars were increasingly front and center as VOA's Tina Trinh reports. ...


Uber Avoids Legal Battle With Family of Autonomous Vehicle Victim

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The family of a woman killed by an Uber Technologies Inc self-driving vehicle in Arizona has reached a settlement with the ride services company, ending a potential legal battle over the first fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle. Cristina Perez Hesano, an attorney with the firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said "the matter has been resolved" between Uber and the daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died after being hit by an Uber self-driving SUV while walking across a street in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe earlier this month. Terms of the settlement were not given. The law firm representing Herzberg's daughter and husband, whose names were not disclosed, said they would have no further comment on the matter as they considered it resolved. An Uber…


Soybean Acres to Exceed Corn for the First Time in 35 Years

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Corn has been dethroned as the king of crops as farmers report they intend to plant more soybeans than corn for the first time in 35 years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says in its annual prospective planting report released Thursday that farmers intend to plant 89 million acres (36 million hectares) in soybeans and 88 million acres (35.6 million hectares) in corn. The primary reason is profitability. Corn costs much more to plant because of required demands for pest and disease control and fertilizer. When the profitability of both crops is close, farmers bet on soybeans for a better return. The only year that soybean acres beat corn in recent memory was 1983, when the government pushed farmers to plant fewer acres to boost prices in the midst of…


Trump Accuses Amazon of Not Paying Taxes, Putting Retailers Out of Business

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U.S. President Donald Trump attacked online tech giant Amazon, accusing the company of paying too little taxes and being responsible for putting retailers out of business. In a Twitter post early Thursday, Trump blasted the online retail titan, saying “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election,” adding, “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Trump has a long history blaming Amazon for hurting traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. He tweeted last August, “Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt - many jobs being lost!” For years,…


Superjumbo Flight to Lebanon Brings Hope of Tourism Revival

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The world's largest passenger jet landed at Beirut's international airport on Thursday, bringing with it hope for a revival of Lebanon's vital tourism sector. The one-off Emirates Airbus A380 flight from Dubai was an acknowledgement of the substantial passenger traffic between Lebanon and Gulf nations, where many Lebanese nationals work and more pass through to destinations farther afield. Emirates said it scheduled the flight, the first of its kind to carry paying passengers, to see if Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport was ready to handle regular A380 service. Lebanese officials hope the results are positive, as tourist arrivals climb to levels last seen in 2010, before the uprising in neighboring Syria the following year raised fears of violent spillover. Lebanon welcomed 1.85 million tourists in 2017, according to the Tourism…


Entrepreneur: ‘Anyone Can Play a Role’ in African Innovation

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While working for a big consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria, Afua Osei repeatedly encountered women who wanted to advance professionally but didn't know how. They needed guidance and mentoring. So, Osei and her colleague Yasmin Belo-Osagie started She Leads Africa, a digital media company offering advice, information, training and networking opportunities to help "young African women achieve their professional dreams," according to the website. Launched in 2014, it now has an online community of over 300,000 in at least 35 countries in Africa and throughout the diaspora. "I didn't plan to be an entrepreneur," Osei said this month at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual festival of music, film and tech innovation.  Anyone can be an innovator, Osei said in an interview, after co-hosting a meetup on starting and investing…


Adobe New Service Aims to Follow Users Across Multiple Devices

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Visiting Subway's website on a personal computer might not seem to have anything to do with checking the NFL's app on a phone. But these discrete activities are the foundation for a new service to help marketers follow you around. Adobe, a company better known for Photoshop and PDF files, says the new initiative announced Wednesday will help companies offer more personalized experiences and make ads less annoying by filtering out products and services you have already bought or will never buy. But it comes amid heightened privacy sensitivities after reports that Facebook allowed a political consulting firm to harvest data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. And Adobe's initiative underscores the role data plays in helping companies make money. Many of the initial uses are for better…


3 Facebook Messenger App Users File Lawsuit Over Privacy

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Three Facebook Messenger app users have filed a lawsuit claiming the social network violated their privacy by collecting logs of their phone calls and text messages. The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in northern California, comes as Facebook faces scrutiny over privacy concerns. Facebook acknowledged on Sunday that it began uploading call and text logs from phones running Google's Android system in 2015. Facebook added that only users who gave appropriate permission were affected, that it didn't collect the contents of messages or calls, and that users can opt out of the data collection and have the stored logs deleted by changing their app settings. The suit seeks class-action status. A message seeking comment from Facebook on Wednesday was not immediately returned. ...


Israeli Company Converts Trash Into Household Items

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There is a saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That is the idea behind a new concept by an Israeli company that is taking trash from landfills and converting it into a plastic-like composite. The material is being used to make household items and furniture, as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block. ...


WTO Chief Sees No Sign of US Departure

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There is no sign that the United States is distancing itself from the World Trade Organization, and negotiations are underway to avert a global trade war, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a series of tariff-raising moves, upsetting allies and rivals alike. Trump is also vetoing the appointment of WTO judges, causing a backlog in disputes and threatening to paralyze what is effectively the supreme court of trade. Some trade experts have begun asking whether Trump wants to kill the WTO, whose 164 members force each other to play by the rules. "I have absolutely no indication that the United Sates is walking away from the WTO. Zero indication," Azevedo said in an interview on the BBC Hardtalk program,…


Trump Gets First Trade Deal as US, Korea Revise Agreement

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U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned against economic agreements he considered unfair to America has his first trade deal. The United States and South Korea have agreed to revise their sweeping six-year-old trade pact which was completed during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. The agreement “will significantly strengthen the economic and national security relationships between the United States and South Korea,” according to a senior administration official in Washington. Trump had threatened to scrap the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), calling it “horrible.” But officials of his administration on Tuesday confirmed key aspects of the agreement which officials in Seoul had announced the previous day. “When this is finalized it will be the first successful renegotiation of a trade agreement in U.S. history,” according to a senior…


In Niger’s Desert, Europe’s Migration Crackdown Pinches Wallets

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For this ancient town on the southern edge of the Sahara, the flow of desperate migrants trying to reach Europe used to be a boon, not a burden. Abdoul Ahmed, a 31-year-old mechanic in Agadez, measured the good years in customers. When arrivals in Europe peaked in 2015, dozens of cars came to his workshop each day to get their tires changed before setting off across the desert. But since the European Union cracked down on migration a year later, his daily clientele has dropped to one or two. That earns him about $4, to be shared with five skinny teenage apprentices. "Times are bad. There's no activity," he said, sitting along one of the few paved roads in Agadez, a mud-brick town where beat-up motorcycles outnumber cars. For years,…


Techno Teachers: Finnish School Tests Robot Educators

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Elias, the new language teacher at a Finnish primary school, has endless patience for repetition, never makes a pupil feel embarrassed for asking a question, and can even do the "Gangnam Style" dance. Elias is also a robot. The language-teaching machine comprises a humanoid robot and mobile application, one of four robots in a pilot program at primary schools in the southern city of Tampere. The robot is able to understand and speak 23 languages and is equipped with software that allows it to understand students' requirements and helps it to encourage learning. In this trial, however, it communicates in English, Finnish and German only. The robot recognizes the pupil's skill levels and adjusts its questions accordingly. It also gives feedback to teachers about a student's possible problems. Some of…


Watchdog: FBI Could Have Tried Harder to Hack iPhone

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FBI officials could have tried harder to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism investigation before launching an extraordinary court fight with Apple Inc. in an effort to force it to break open the device, the Justice Department’s watchdog said Tuesday. The department’s inspector general said it found no evidence the FBI was able to access data on the phone belonging to one of the gunmen in a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, as then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress more than once. But communications failures among FBI officials delayed the search for a solution. The FBI unit tasked with breaking into mobile devices only sought outside help to unlock the phone the day before the Justice Department filed a court brief demanding Apple’s help, the inspector…


Poll: Trump Benefiting From Economic Policies

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A growing American economy and passage of a Republican tax overhaul appear to be helping President Donald Trump lift his approval ratings from historic lows, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump remains unpopular with the majority of Americans, 58 percent. But 42 percent say they now approve of the job he's doing as president, up seven points from a month ago. That's a welcome change in trajectory for a White House that has been battered by chaos, controversies and internal upheaval. The poll suggests that at least some of the president's improving standing is tied to the economy, which has steadily grown and added jobs, continuing a trajectory that began under President Barack Obama. Nearly half of Americans surveyed — 47…


Affordable Chip Pinpoints Methane Leaks

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One of today’s most affordable sources of fossil-based energy is natural gas, which consists primarily of methane. Found in remote, deep underground reservoirs, the gas must be transported through long pipelines with thousands of connections, valves and pumping stations, which are inevitably prone to leaks. Scientists at IBM are testing a small, affordable gas detector that could be placed literally anywhere. VOA’s George Putic reports. ...