Study: US Insurers Unprepared for Climate Change Disasters 

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Most U.S. insurance companies have not adapted their strategies to address the dangers of climate change, making them likely to raise rates or deny coverage in high-risk areas, said a study released Tuesday. With predictions of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season approaching, thousands of people could be unable to afford insurance protection or lose it altogether, said the Canadian research study published in the British Journal of Management. Scientific consensus holds that climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather, from hurricanes to flooding. Last year, three record hurricanes struck the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, causing billions of dollars' worth of damage. Yet insurance and reinsurance companies overwhelmingly continue to treat storms as "anomalous rather than correlated to climate change," the study said. "Insurers that ignore…


Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ Adapted for Video Game

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Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth — err, game.   Henry David Thoreau wrote those words — most of them — in his seminal book, "Walden.'' They make up the objective of a video game that seeks to translate his exploits in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, into a playable digital reality.   "Walden, a Game" is adapted from the book and launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4. It has been available on computers for almost a year.   "Obviously it's an odd or unique idea for a game," said Tracy Fullerton, who conceived the idea and led the team that created it at the University of Southern California's Game Innovation Lab.…


Mexico Central Bank to Create Cybersecurity Unit After Hack

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Mexico's central bank said Tuesday that it was creating a cybersecurity unit, following a hack on a domestic payments system at the end of April that affected Mexican banks. The central bank said in a notice in the government's daily gazette that the new unit would design and issue guidelines on information security for the country's banks, which are supervised by the central bank. Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon Carrillo said Monday that the country had seen an unprecedented attack on payment system connections and that he hoped that measures being taken would stop future incidents. The attack on Mexican banks is similar to one of the biggest-ever known cyber heists, when thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank in 2016, said Fermin Gonzalez, head of forensic services…


US Lawmakers Push Back on Trump Talk of Helping China’s ZTE

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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday rejected any plan by President Donald Trump to ease restrictions on China's ZTE Corp, calling the telecommunications firm a security threat and vowing not to abandon legislation clamping down on the company. Trump on Monday had defended his decision to revisit penalties on ZTE for flouting U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, in part by saying it was reflective of the larger trade deal the United States is negotiating with China. “I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week. The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange…


Mexico Says NAFTA Deal Unlikely This Week, Canada Upbeat

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Mexico's economy minister said that he saw diminishing chances for a new North American Free Trade Agreement ahead of a Thursday deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the current U.S. Congress. U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Republican-controlled Congress would need to be notified of a new NAFTA deal by Thursday to give lawmakers a chance of approving it before a newly elected Congress takes over in January. “It is not easy. We do not think we will have it by Thursday,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told broadcaster Televisa on Tuesday. But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a more upbeat tone, telling reporters in Calgary a few hours later, “There is very much an eminently achievable outcome ... and we are…


US Senate Preps for Net Neutrality Vote

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Senate Democrats are mounting a last-ditch campaign to preserve so-called "net neutrality" that has prevented certain content or users from being slowed on the internet in the United States — an effort most Republicans say is misguided and counterproductive. On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's December decision to repeal Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from favoring certain users or material. All 49 Democrats and one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, back the resolution in the 100-member chamber. "All [net neutrality] does is protect the openness of the internet to competitors across the country," said Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats. "I believe this resolution will restore us to a place where small businesses will be able to…


Twitter Changes Strategy in Battle Against Internet ‘Trolls’

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Twitter Inc on Tuesday revised its strategy for fighting abusive internet trolls," saying it would use behavioral signals to identify harassers on the social network and then limit the visibility of their tweets. San Francisco-based Twitter, known for freewheeling discussions since it was founded in 2006, has been trying to rid itself of harassment out of concern that personal attacks were driving people away. Twitter's rules already prohibit abuse, and it can suspend or block offenders once someone reports them. Users can also mute people they find offensive. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Twitter now would try to find problematic accounts by examining behavior such as how frequently people tweet about accounts that do not follow them or whether they have confirmed their email address. Tweets from those accounts will…


Kenya Steps Into Space with First Satellite Launch

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Kenya took its first step into space with the launch Friday of a nano-satellite made at the University of Nairobi. Engineers involved in creating the cube-shaped space capsule described it as Kenya’s joining the space club, although much remains to be done to get the Kenya space program off the ground. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Nairobi. ...


Hawaii Volcano Eruption Costs Tourism Industry Millions

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People nixing vacations to Hawaii's Big island has cost the tourism industry millions of dollars as the top attraction, Kilauea volcano, keeps spewing lava. Cancellations from May through July have hit at least $5 million, said Ross Birch, executive director of the island's tourism board. The booking pace for hotels and other activities, such as tours for lava viewing, zip lines and glass bottom boats have fallen 50 percent. A handful of cruise ships have also decided not to come into port even in Kona on the west side of the island, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) away from the volcano. This is the "first leak we're seeing out of the bucket,'' Birch said. Tourism is one of Hawaii's biggest industries and a big part of the local economy. The…


Study Finds Uber’s Growth Slows After Year of Scandal; Lyft Benefits

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Uber Technologies’ growth has slowed as a series of scandals has allowed the ride-hailing company’s chief U.S. competitor, Lyft, to grab more market share, digital research firm eMarketer said in a report on Monday. The research firm has lowered its forecasts for Uber’s growth for the next several years. It projects 48 million U.S. adults will use Uber at least once this year, up 18 percent from last year but well off eMarketer’s earlier forecast of more than 51 million. EMarketer based its analysis on data from Uber and Lyft, such as trip numbers and app downloads, as well as customer surveys from researchers at JP Morgan and other firms. Series of scandals The report quantifies the effect of a series of scandals at Uber last year, which included an…


Trump Urges Quick NAFTA Resolution in Talks with Trudeau

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U.S. President Donald Trump urged for a quick conclusion to a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement during a phone call Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  The White House said Trump "underscored the importance" of quickly reaching a deal, while Trudeau’s office said the two spoke of the "possibility of bringing the negotiations to a prompt conclusion." The talks have come under increased pressure to quickly produce a deal after U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said this week he would need to be notified of a new agreement by May 17 to give the current Congress a chance to pass it this year. Canada, the United States and Mexico are renegotiating their 24-year-old free trade pact in a process triggered by the Trump administration. Trump has been highly…


Musk Tells Tesla Staff He Is Planning ‘Reorganization’

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Tesla's chief executive officer told employees on Monday the company is undergoing a “thorough reorganization,” as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes last week involving its electric, self-driving cars. CEO Elon Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization it was “flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission” in an email that was confirmed by Tesla after being disclosed earlier by the Wall Street Journal. Senior Tesla executives have departed or cut back work Waymo, Alphabet Inc's self-driving unit, said on Sunday that Matthew Schwall had joined the company from Tesla, where he was the electric carmaker’s main technical contact with U.S. safety   investigators.…


Forget Pokemon Go, Red Cross Augmented Reality App Brings War to You

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Thousands of people are using their smartphones to experience the devastation of urban conflict through an augmented reality app which aims to raise awareness of the suffering faced by millions trapped by war, the app's developer said on Monday. Launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in March, "Enter the room" provides a visceral, first-person experience of war through the eyes of child from their bedroom. While there are numerous apps being designed by aid groups, this is the first known use of augmented reality (AR) by the humanitarian sector to simulate civilian life at war. The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times since its launch. Entering through a portal on the screen of their device, users experience the impact of years of fighting in…


Trump Vows Action to Ease Job Loss at Chinese Tech Giant

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U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he is trying to find a way to let giant Chinese technology firm ZTE "to get back into business, fast" after the U.S. had barred the company from using American components. "Too many jobs in China lost," Trump said in a Twitter comment days after ZTE announced it had ceased "major operating activities" because of the cutoff of U.S.-made parts that provide a quarter or more of the parts needed to build its wireless stations, optical fiber networks and smartphones. Trump has often complained about China stealing U.S. jobs, but said he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the economic fallout at ZTE and had ordered the U.S. Commerce Department "to get it done!" ZTE halted manufacturing at its Shenzhen…


Management Training in India Aims to Empower Professional Women

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There's a push to level the playing field for women in India, where women account for 42 percent of university graduates but only 24 percent are hired as entry level professionals. Of these, 19 percent are likely to reach senior level management. To make matters worse, the number of women who leave the work force is also higher than men. As Ritul Joshi reports, a specially designed management course for women in New Delhi is teaching them to make their way in a male dominated work force. ...


NASA to Send Tiny Helicopter to Mars 

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NASA is planning to send a tiny autonomous helicopter to Mars on its next rover mission to the red planet. The space agency announced Friday that the helicopter will be carried aboard the Mars 2020 rover as a technology demonstration to test its ability to serve as a scout and to reach locations not accessible by ground. The helicopter is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The craft weighs less than 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), has a fuselage about the size of a softball and twin, counter-rotating blades that will spin at almost 3,000 rpm — a necessity in the thin Martian atmosphere. Solar cells will charge its lithium-ion batteries. Flights will be programmed because the distance to Mars precludes real-time commands from Earth. ...


How Close Is Electric Aviation?

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Electric-powered ground transport is slowly but steadily taking over from one based on fossil fuels. Electric cars, buses, bikes, scooters, even electric skateboards are growing more common on streets around the world. The next step is electric aviation, and airplane manufacturers are eyeing this potentially very lucrative market. VOA's George Putic reports. ...


Facebook Checks Its Bias

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When Facebook recently said it would allow outside reviewers inside its platform to look for signs of racial or political bias, civil liberties and human rights activists politely applauded. For years, activists have called on tech companies to undergo assessments of how their policies affect people, both in the U.S. and globally. The companies have long rejected those audits as unnecessary. But now Facebook is inviting outsiders in to look at allegations of racial and political bias. "It's better than nothing," Rebecca MacKinnon said of the Facebook audits. She is director of Ranking Digital Rights a project that evaluates 22 tech and telecommunications firms annually in areas such as privacy, expression and governance. "There's increasing pressure on them to do this kind of thing," MacKinnon added. Facebook has faced criticism that…


Latest Round of NAFTA Talks Ends Without Breakthrough

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Senior officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico ended the latest round of talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement without any major breakthroughs on how to renegotiate the deal. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Friday after a week of talks in Washington that the United States will continue to work with its partners to update the 1994 trade pact.  "The United States is ready to continue working with Mexico and Canada to achieve needed breakthroughs on these objectives," he said. The talks involved all three of the top officials in the NAFTA negotiations: Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. The talks have come under increased pressure to produce a deal quickly after U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said this week…


UK’s May, Trump Agree Talks Needed Over Iranian Sanctions

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British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in a phone call Friday that talks were needed to discuss how U.S sanctions on Iran would affect foreign companies operating in the country. Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Iranian nuclear deal and revive U.S. economic sanctions has alarmed the leaders of Britain, France and Germany who remain committed to the deal and who have significant trade ties with Tehran. "The prime minister raised the potential impact of U.S. sanctions on those firms which are currently conducting business in Iran," her spokeswoman said. "They agreed for talks to take place between our teams." The spokeswoman said May had told Trump that Britain and its European partners remained "firmly committed" to ensuring the deal was upheld as the best way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear…


Minister: Mexico Refuses to Be Rushed Into Poor NAFTA Deal

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Mexico will not be rushed into revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) just to get a deal, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Friday ahead of trilateral talks with his U.S. and Canadian counterparts. Guajardo said he would meet at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) with Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and that the three are closer to agreeing new rules for autos that are vital for a deal. However, Guajardo, who is eager to reach an agreement on all the principal aspects of a modernized NAFTA before sealing a new deal, said plenty of other issues were outstanding. "I have to make very clear [that] the quality of the agreement and the balance of the agreement has to be maintained. So…


World Bank: Kenyan Refugee Camp ‘Open for Business’

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Burden or business opportunity? A new U.N.-backed study of refugees from the World Bank's International Financial Corporation argues for the latter. The IFC researchers examined one of Africa's oldest and largest refugee camps, Kakuma in northwest Kenya. What they found is a growing consumer base they say is ripe for more private investment in sectors like mobile banking and energy. The IFC took VOA's Daniel Schearf on a tour of the camp. He has this report. ...


Smartphone Apps Help You Monitor Your Health

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Advanced sensor technology can monitor a wide range of applications, from water quality to air pollution to energy use. Faith Lapidus tells us how a team of scientists at the University of Washington, with support from the National Science Foundation, is turning the sensors in smartphones into home health care tools. ...


UN: Protectionism, Debt Threaten Asia Growth

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A senior United Nations official says trade protectionism, rising private and corporate debt, and shortcomings in revenue raising are growing challenges to the economic outlook for the Asia Pacific. Shamshad Akhtar, executive secretary of the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), noted the threats of trade wars undermining the region’s positive economic growth outlook. The United States has pressed states, notably China, to reduce trade and current account deficits with the U.S., recently imposing tariffs on steel exports from several countries. Akhtar said such trade protectionism represents “quite a big threat” along with nontariff barriers, which have been rising since the 2008 global financial crisis, such as cross border restrictions that further limit trade. “If you look at the trends, there has been a post-2008…


Official: Trump Administration Will Allow AI to ‘Freely Develop’ in US

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The Trump administration will not stand in the way of the development of artificial intelligence in the United States, a top official said on Thursday, while acknowledging that the burgeoning technology will displace some jobs. At a White House summit that included companies like Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., technology policy adviser Michael Kratsios said the administration of President Donald Trump did not want to dictate "what is researched and developed." "To the greatest degree possible, we will allow scientists and technologists to freely develop their next great inventions right here in the United States," he said, according to a copy of his remarks provided by the White House. AI and deep machine learning raise ethical concerns about control, privacy, cybersecurity, and the future of work, companies…


Mexico Says Time Running Out for Quick NAFTA Deal; Canada Upbeat

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Mexico on Thursday indicated time was running out to see whether NAFTA nations could agree a new deal in the short term while Canada struck a upbeat tone, saying top-level talks this week had achieved a great deal. Major differences remain between the three members of the North American Free Trade Agreement after more than eight months of largely slow-moving negotiations launched at the insistence of Washington, which wants major changes to the 1994 pact. A source close to the talks said U.S. officials have told Canada and Mexico that May 17 or 18 is the deadline for a text that could be dealt with by the current U.S. Congress. A second source confirmed that those dates had been discussed. Need solutions before elections Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he…


Italian Researchers Develop Lighter, Cheaper Robotic Hand

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Italian researchers on Thursday unveiled a new robotic hand they say allows users to grip objects more naturally and featuring a design that will lower the price significantly. The Hennes robotic hand has a simpler mechanical design compared with other such myoelectric prosthetics, characterized by sensors that react to electrical signals from the brain to the muscles, said researcher Lorenzo De Michieli. He helped develop the hand in a lab backed by the Italian Institute of Technology and the INAIL state workers' compensation prosthetic center. The Hennes has only one motor that controls all five fingers, making it lighter, cheaper and more able to adapt to the shape of objects. "This can be considered low-cost because we reduce to the minimum the mechanical complexity to achieve, at the same time,…


A New Silicon Valley is Sprouting in Middle America

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Kavitha Kamalbabu needed a break. She had raised her two children and the youngest was now in kindergarten. It was time to turn attention to her career. The 36-year-old wanted to code. The mecca of high tech -- Silicon Valley — wasn't an option because she needed to stay close to home and family in Indianapolis, Indiana. "I chose Kenzie Academy because of its life project-based learning," she said. Kamalbabu is now at the top of her class, getting a two-year degree as a software developer. Kenzie, based in Indianapolis, was established to keep talent in Middle America and to create a mini tech capital. "Our point is to bring people from Indianapolis to stay in Indianapolis," said founder Courtney Spence. To do that, they place students in local companies…