British author Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The prize committee in Sweden says Ishiguro, through his novels, has “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

The committee said the 62-year-old author was born in Nagasaki, Japan.  He moved to Britain when he was five-years-old.

Ishiguro has written numerous novels, but the committee said on Twitter his most celebrated work was The Remains of the Day, a story about a butler at an English country estate.  

The novel was turned into a movie featuring Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

Swedish academy secretary Sara Danius said Ishiguro is “a writer of great dignity” who has “developed an aesthetic universe all his own.”

“He is a little bit like a mix of Jane Austen, comedy of manners and Franz Kafka.  If you mix this a little, not too much, you get Ishiguro in a nutshell,” Danius said.

As the recipient of the $1.1 million prize, the world’s most prestigious literary award, Ishiguro joins the ranks of Doris Lessing and Ernest Hemingway.

The recipient last year was poet/songwriter Bob Dylan, an influential contributor to popular music and culture for the past half century.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 110 times between 1901 and 2017, according to NobelPrize.Org.

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Students who attended for-profit colleges were twice as likely or more to default on their loans than students who attended public schools, according to a federal study published Thursday.

The report by the National Center of Education Statistics looks at students who began their undergraduate education in 2003 and defaulted on at least one loan over the next 12 years. Fifty-two percent of the students who attended for-profit schools defaulted on their loan. That’s compared to 17 percent for those who attended a four-year public institution and 26 percent at community college.

The report also finds that the for-profit students defaulted on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.

The report comes as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rewrites rules that had been put in place by the Obama administration to protect students who said they were defrauded by their for-profit colleges.

The study also found that this group of students is defaulting on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.

Default rate

Of the students who started college in 2003, 27 percent had defaulted on at least one loan after 12 years, the study found. For those who started their undergraduate education in 1995, the default rate was 18 percent. The rate of full repayment was 20 percent in the younger group, compared to 24 in the older group.

Robert Kelchen, a professor of education at Seton Hall University, suggested that the higher rate among the 2003 freshmen might be due to them entering the labor market at the height of the Great Recession.

Default rates were higher for those students who never completed their education, the study said.

“Degree completion is a key component of a student’s ability to repay their loan,” said Joshua Goodman, a professor of public policy at Harvard University. “Simply attending college without completion doesn’t really pay off.”

Among borrowers in the 2003 group, the median amount owed after 12 years was $3,700 for those who earned undergraduate certificates, $11,700 for students getting associate’s degrees and $13,800 for bachelor’s degrees or higher.
…

From: MeNeedIt

South Korea indicated Wednesday it was open to talks on revising a 2012 trade pact with the United States after initial differences that followed President Donald Trump’s threat to terminate the accord unless it was renegotiated.

After a day of talks in Washington, South Korea’s trade ministry said in a statement, “The two sides recognized the need to amend the FTA to enhance mutual benefits of the KORUS FTA,” as the pact is called.

The U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, said the United States looked forward to stepped-up talks “to resolve outstanding implementation issues as well as to engage soon on amendments that will lead to fair, reciprocal trade.”

The statements mark a shift from an initial meeting in August, when the two sides failed to agree on next steps after Lighthizer had made demands to amend the agreement to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea.

Since the trade agreement went into effect in 2012, the U.S. goods trade deficit with South Korea more than doubled to $27.6 billion last year. But through July 2017, the bilateral trade deficit fell to $13.1 billion from $18.8 billion during the same period of 2016, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

No date was given for a third round of talks between the two countries, which comes as Lighthizer is also focused on revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.
…

From: MeNeedIt

News bulletin in 1957: Sputnik stuns the world.

CIA in 2017: Not really.

The CIA released newly declassified documents Wednesday revealing that while the American public was surprised when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite 60 years ago, intelligence agencies weren’t caught off guard.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower had advance knowledge about the Soviets’ work on Sputnik, which was launched by a rocket on October 4, 1957. He had been worrying for several years about the Kremlin’s long-range missile capability and how rockets armed with nuclear warheads could threaten America.

The documents indicate that U.S. intelligence and military officials and members of the Eisenhower administration not only knew that the Soviet Union was planning to launch Sputnik but also knew it could be put into orbit by the end of 1957.

The launch of Sputnik opened the space age and became a major victory for the Kremlin that highlighted its military might and technological abilities. But it wasn’t a surprise to those in the know within the Eisenhower administration.

Before the launch, the CIA issued two National Intelligence Estimates that included possible timelines for what was then called an “Earth satellite vehicle.” In December 1955, one predicted the Soviets could launch one by 1958. In March 1957 — about six months before the launch — another intelligence estimate said Moscow was capable of putting a satellite into orbit before the end of that year.

And even earlier, then-CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote a letter to the defense secretary in which he pushed for rapid development of an American Earth satellite and warned of a public relations fallout for the United States if the Soviets were first to launch one.

“In addition to the cogent scientific arguments advanced in support of the development of Earth satellites, there is little doubt but what the nation that first successfully launches the Earth satellite, and thereby introduces the age of space travel, will gain incalculable international prestige and recognition,” Dulles wrote in January 1955.

“Our scientific community as well as the nation would gain invaluable respect and confidence should our country be the first to launch the satellite.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that the Fed is committed to making sure that the regulations it imposes on the nation’s community banks are not overly burdensome, noting a proposed rule issued last week to simplify requirements governing how much capital these banks must hold.

In remarks to a community banking conference in St. Louis, Yellen said the proposed new rule on capital requirements was the latest effort by regulators to ease burdens on smaller banks. She says the Fed is seeking to increase the number of community banks eligible for less frequent examinations and loosen requirements for property appraisals on commercial real estate transactions.

Yellen has defended the tougher regulations imposed following the 2008 banking crisis but has said there is room to ease regulatory burdens on smaller banks.

“For community banks, which by and large avoided the risky business practices that contributed to the financial crisis, we have been focused on making sure that much-needed improvements to regulation and supervision are appropriate,” Yellen told the conference.

During last year’s election campaign, Donald Trump attacked the Dodd-Frank Act passed by Congress in 2010 to prevent future crises as a disaster that he said had stifled the economy by limiting bank lending. Yellen, however, has said that the major parts of Dodd-Frank have made the financial system safer and should be retained.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The plague, bubonic plague to be exact, is endemic to the island of Madagascar, where about 400 cases show up every year. But this year cases have spiked early and more than two dozen people have died. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Yahoo on Tuesday said that all 3 billion of its accounts were hacked in a 2013 data theft, tripling its earlier estimate of the size of the largest breach in history, in a disclosure that attorneys said sharply increased the legal exposure of its new owner, Verizon Communications.

The news expands the likely number and claims of class action lawsuits by shareholders and Yahoo account holders, they said. Yahoo, the early face of the internet for many in the world, already faced at least 41 consumer class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal and state courts, according to company securities filing in May.

John Yanchunis, a lawyer representing some of the affected Yahoo users, said a federal judge who allowed the case to go forward still had asked for more information to justify his clients’ claims.

“I think we have those facts now,” he said. “It’s really mind-numbing when you think about it.”

Yahoo said last December that data from more than 1 billion accounts was compromised in 2013, the largest of a series of thefts that forced Yahoo to cut the price of its assets in a sale to Verizon.

Yahoo on Tuesday said “recently obtained new intelligence” showed all user accounts had been affected. The company said the investigation indicated that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information.

But the information was protected with outdated, easy-to-crack encryption, according to academic experts. It also included security questions and backup email addresses, which could make it easier to break into other accounts held by the users.

Many Yahoo users have multiple accounts, so far fewer than 3 billion were affected, but the theft ranks as the largest to date, and a costly one for the internet pioneer.

Verizon in February lowered its original offer by $350 million for Yahoo assets in the wake of two massive cyber attacks at the internet company.

Some lawyers asked whether Verizon would look for a new opportunity to address the price.

“This is a bombshell,” said Mark Molumphy, lead counsel in a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Yahoo’s former leaders over disclosures about the hacks.

Verizon did not respond to a request for comment about any possible lawsuit over the deal.

Verizon, the likely main target of legal actions, also could be challenged as it launches a new brand, Oath, to link its Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post internet properties.

In August in the separate lawsuit brought by Yahoo’s users, U.S. Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled Yahoo must face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of owners accounts who said their personal information was compromised in the three breaches.

Yanchunis, the lawyer for the users, said his team planned to use the new information later this month to expanding its allegations.

Also on Tuesday, Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, said he plans to hold a hearing later this month over massive data breaches at Equifax and Yahoo. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission already had been probing Yahoo over the hacks.

The closing of the Verizon deal, which was first announced in July, had been delayed as the companies assessed the fallout from two data breaches that Yahoo disclosed last year. The company paid $4.48 billion for Yahoo’s core business.

A Yahoo official emphasized Tuesday that the 3 billion figure included many accounts that were opened but that were never, or only briefly, used.

The company said it was sending email notifications to additional affected user accounts.

The new revelation follows months of scrutiny by Yahoo, Verizon, cybersecurity firms and law enforcement that failed to identify the full scope of the 2013 hack.

The investigation underscores how difficult it was for companies to get ahead of hackers, even when they know their networks had been compromised, said David Kennedy, chief executive of cybersecurity firm TrustedSEC LLC.

Companies often do not have systems in place to gather up and store all the network activity that investigators could use to follow the hackers’ tracks.

“This is a real wake up call,” Kennedy said. “In most guesses, it is just guessing what they had access to.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

The long-awaited sequel to the cult classic “Blade Runner,” a 1982 sci-fi thriller, finally hits movie theaters on Friday.

But there is not much that stars Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling can say about “Blade Runner 2049,” for fear of revealing major plot spoilers.

Ford, who reprises his role as an older Rick Deckard, and Gosling as a new ‘blade runner’ Officer K, told Reuters that the film offers a glimpse into the potential impact of a rapidly changing climate and an increasingly isolated society reliant on technology.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The first film touched upon the future or what they envisaged the world to be. Now we’re 30 years on, what elements does this film address which you think will resonate with audiences today?

Gosling: “Overpopulation, global warming, being isolated by technology.”

Ford: “Social inequity.”

Gosling: “The false narratives we create about large groups of people in order to make ourselves feel better about how awful their circumstances are.”

Ford: “The necessity to have a moral structure into which to pour what’s possible and to make judgments about what we use and what we don’t use.”

Q: How would you say this film pushes forward messages about humanity that weren’t covered in the first one?

Ford: Well I would just quibble with the word ‘message’ because it’s an experiential opportunity because you discover your relationship to the ideas in the context of an emotional geography so I think as an audience, it has an opportunity to engage you in a way that is pretty rare.

Q: How did you go about playing your character with ambiguity as it is not always known who is a human and who is a Replicant?

Ford: I don’t think there’s a style to the acting necessarily. There is so much new information coming at you as a character and as an audience that you just want to be still and make sure that you’re reading this right, that you really know what’s going on so the characters are constantly in the midst of a dilemma that is like drinking out of a gardening hose. There is so much happening to them that it’s close to overwhelming for them.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The European Union insisted Tuesday that Brexit negotiations with Britain will not move on to the question of future relations until enough progress has been made on divorce issues, such as how much the country’s exit bill should be.

Britain desperately wants talks to move on to future trade and security arrangements but EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that more needs to be done on the withdrawal issues first.

Juncker told the European Parliament that “we have not made the sufficient progress needed” and the legislators backed him, approving a resolution underscoring the same point with a vote of 557 to 92 with 29 abstentions. It further underscored the unity of the 27 EU nations as they face off with Britain in the talks.

The EU wants London to commit to guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens already in Britain, making sure border posts do not reappear between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and Ireland itself and pay up for everything it had agreed to while it was a member.

Juncker said “the taxpayers in the EU 27 should not pay for the British decision” to leave, while the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said “serious differences remain” on how many bills the U.K. still has to settle. Estimates vary widely from 20 billion euros ($27 billion) to over three times that amount.

“Serious rifts remain, especially on the financial settlement,” Barnier said. “We will not pay at 27 what has been decided at 28, it is simple as that.”

The parliamentary resolution called for postponing any move to widen the talks with Britain unless “a major breakthrough” takes place during the fifth round of negotiations in Brussels next week.

Observers said decisive progress was highly unlikely. Tuesday’s moves further dampened hopes that the EU leaders might give the green light to an expansion in the talks at a summit on Oct 19-20.

Many lawmakers were also dismissive of Britain’s Conservative government, which is widely seen as insecure and bumbling.

The head of the biggest party group in the European Parliament called for the sacking of British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for stoking confusion over the Brexit talks.

The European People’s Party chairman, Manfred Weber, appealed to Prime Minister Theresa May: “Please sack Johnson, because we need a clear answer who is responsible for the British position.”

Weber turned Henry Kissinger’s famous observation about the many leaders in the EU onto Britain: “Who shall I call in London? Who speaks for the government? Theresa May, Boris Johnson, or even (Brexit negotiator) David Davis?”

Others are speculating that Britain might actually be stalling to make sure that the member states that trade heavily with the U.K. would buckle and concede at the last moment, sowing discord among the 27.

EPP member Tom Vandenkendelaere said the strong backing of the resolution proved differently. “If the Brits they can play their old divide-and-rule game, they’d better think again,” he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Scientists Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne have won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in detecting gravitational waves.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award Tuesday along with its $1.1 million prize.

Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves that are created anytime a mass accelerates, but it was not until recently that the waves were actually observed.

Weiss, Barish and Thorne were key figures in the work done by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which measures tiny disturbances the waves make to space and time as they pass through the Earth.

LIGO made the world’s first-ever detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Scientists say those waves were produced as two black holes collided and merged into a single, massive black hole.
…

From: MeNeedIt

After several years of struggling to make a living doing odd jobs in and around his village, 26-year-old Pushkar Singh came to New Delhi from the northern Uttarakhand state three months ago to hunt for a job.

The high school dropout is willing to do anything — cook, work as a security guard, a peon in an office. But not only has he failed to secure a job, he has not even got an interview so far.

“It’s a huge worry, not having work,” said a despondent Singh as he wondered how long he can continue staying with his relatives.

The hopes of young people like Singh had been fueled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of creating millions of jobs for the country’s huge young population when he took power in 2014. Optimism rose after India won the tag of the world’s fastest growing economy. 

But the Indian economy has hit a sharp slowdown, leaving tens of thousands of people struggling to find work in mega cities like New Delhi, which are magnets for migrant labor.

The economy clocked a growth rate of 5.7 percent in the April to June quarter, its most sluggish pace in three years.

The bleak number has set alarm bells ringing and raised fears that India could struggle to return to a high growth path.

“It is a cause for concern, the economy has slowed down much more than most had expected,” said D.K. Joshi, Chief Economist at rating agency Crisil in Mumbai.

Reasons for the slowdown

The slowdown has prompted critics to accuse Modi’s government of economic mismanagement.

Most attention has turned to two major measures that have disrupted the economy in the last year. Critics have slammed the government for imposing a currency change last November to flush out illegal cash, saying it slowed down businesses amid massive currency shortages and gave an unnecessary shock to a cash dependent economy.

In July, India implemented a long overdue and widely welcomed tax reform — a goods and services tax (GST) meant to clean up a complex tax regime and make it easier to do business.

But many worry that faulty implementation and multiple tax rates have created confusion for businesses struggling with the new system.

Economists point out that the currency change and GST, coming within months of each other, have made the slowdown sharper and deeper for virtually all sectors of the economy, which had already started losing pace last year.

The impact is evident in the markets of the Indian capital, which are usually the most crowded at this time of the year. It is India’s main festive season, when consumer spending hits a high. But shop owners are disappointed because customers are not opening their wallets easily.

A usually buzzing upmarket area in New Delhi wears a deserted look. Manu Talwar, the owner of a shop selling high-end mobile phones, has been struggling to make a sale in a country counted as the world’s fastest growing smart phone market, where a new device is coveted by an aspirational generation. 

“You can see the market, it does not look like Diwali, the market is so down. Mobiles, accessories, people were crazy about it. As of now, iPhone 8 has launched, but there is no market,” said Talwar.

The government says it is looking for ways to rev up the economy — according to reports, it is considering spending billions of dollars to give investment a push.

Prime Minister Modi, seen as a business-friendly, reformist leader, recently announced the formation of a five-member panel to advise him on economic issues.

At the heart of the challenge is the need for jobs in a country where about 10 million enter the workforce every year. Modi had hoped to give manufacturing a push to create jobs for low-skill labor, but a flagship “Make in India’ program he launched to woo foreign investors has yet to show significant results. And a slowing economy means that jobs are even being lost in several sectors.

“To think of an overall manufacturing push of the kind China gave, or many East Asian economies that we observed in those economies, that does not seem to be a reality in India. There is a lot of ground to cover to reach that level,” said economist Joshi.

Officials are striking an optimistic note, calling the slowdown transitory, but economists warn recovery will be gradual.

That means Pushkar Singh’s hunt for a job and shop owner Manu Talwar’s hopes of the market picking up may not happen anytime soon.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Facebook Inc plans to hire 1,000 more people to review ads and ensure they meet its terms, as part of an effort to deter Russia and other countries from using the social media network to interfere in others’ elections, it said on Monday.

Facebook said last month that it believed people in Russia bought about 3,000 politically divisive ads on its network in the United States in the months before and after the November U.S. presidential election.

Since its disclosure, Facebook has faced questions and calls for increased U.S. regulation from U.S. authorities. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has outlined steps that the company plans to take to deter governments from abusing the social media network, the world’s largest.

In a statement on Monday, Facebook said it would add more than 1,000 people over the next year and invest more in software to flag and take down ads automatically.

“Reviewing ads means assessing not just the content of an ad, but the context in which it was bought and the intended audience – so we’re changing our ads review system to pay more attention to these signals,” the company said.

Facebook said it had 17,048 employees at the end of 2016, excluding contractors. In May, it said it would hire 3,000 more people over the following year to speed up the removal of videos showing murder, suicide and other violent acts that shocked users.

Like other companies that sell advertising space, Facebook publishes policies for what it allows, prohibiting ads that are violent, discriminate based on race or promote the sale of illegal drugs.

With more than 5 million paying advertisers, however, Facebook has difficulty enforcing all of its policies.

The company said on Monday that it would adjust its policies further “to prevent ads that use even more subtle expressions of violence.” It did not elaborate on what kind of material that would cover.

Facebook also said it would begin to require more thorough documentation from people who want to run ads about U.S. federal elections, demanding that they confirm their businesses or organizations.
…

From: MeNeedIt