Immediately after a jury determined that Taylor Swift had been groped by a radio station host before a concert in Denver, the singer-songwriter turned to one of her closest allies – her mother – and later said she hoped the verdict would inspire other victims of sexual assault.

Swift hugged her crying mother after the six-woman, two-man jury said in U.S. District Court on Monday that former Denver DJ David Mueller had groped the pop star during a photo op four years ago. Per Swift’s request, jurors awarded her $1 in damages – a sum her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation.”

Swift released a statement thanking her attorneys “for fighting for me and anyone who feels silenced by a sexual assault.”

“My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard,” she said, promising to make unspecified donations to groups that help victims of sexual assault.

Nancy Leong, a law professor at the University of Denver, said the verdict is important because “we are getting to the point in society that women are believed in court. For many decades and centuries, that was not the case.”

Leong, who also teaches in the university’s gender studies program, said the verdict will inspire more victims of sexual assault to come forward.

“The fact that she was believed will allow women to understand that they will not automatically be disbelieved, and I think that’s a good thing,” Leong said.

Swift and her mother initially tried to keep the accusation quiet by reporting the incident to Mueller’s bosses and not the police.

But it inevitably became public when Mueller sued Swift for up to $3 million, claiming the allegation cost him his $150,000-a-year job at country station KYGO-FM, where he was a morning host.

“I’ve been trying to clear my name for four years,” he said after the verdict in explaining why he took Swift to court. “Civil court is the only option I had. This is the only way that I could be heard.”

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, Mueller he might appeal and insisted he did nothing wrong “and I can pass a polygraph.”

After Mueller sued, Swift countersued for assault and battery, and during an hour of testimony blasted a low-key characterization by Mueller’s attorney, Gabriel McFarland, of what happened. While Mueller testified he never grabbed Swift, she insisted she was groped.

“He stayed attached to my bare ass-cheek as I lurched away from him,” Swift testified.

“It was a definite grab. A very long grab,” she added.

Mueller emphatically denied reaching under the pop star’s skirt or otherwise touching her inappropriately, insisting he touched only her ribs and may have brushed the outside of her skirt as they awkwardly posed for the picture.

That photo was virtually the only evidence besides the testimony.

In the image shown to jurors during opening statements but not publicly released, Mueller’s hand is behind Swift, just below her waist. Both are smiling. Mueller’s then-girlfriend is standing on the other side of Swift.

Swift testified that after she was groped, she numbly told Mueller and his girlfriend, “Thank you for coming,” and moved on to photos with others waiting in line because she did not want to disappoint them.

But she said she immediately went to her photographer after the meet-and-greet ended and found the photo of her with Mueller, telling the photographer what happened.

Swift’s mother, Andrea Swift, testified that she asked radio liaison Frank Bell to call Mueller’s employers. They did not call the police to avoid further traumatizing her daughter, she said.

“We absolutely wanted to keep it private. But we didn’t want him to get away with it,” Andrea Swift testified.

Bell said he emailed the photo to Robert Call, KYGO’s general manager, for use in Call’s investigation of Mueller. He said he didn’t ask that Mueller be fired but that “appropriate action be taken.”

Jurors rejected Mueller’s claims that Andrea Swift and Bell cost him his job.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge William Martinez dismissed similar claims against Taylor Swift, ruling Mueller’s team failed to offer evidence that the then-23-year-old superstar did anything more than report the incident to her team, including her mother.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Herbie Mays is 3M proud, and it shows — in the 3M shirt he wears; in the 3M ring he earned after three decades at the company’s plant in suburban Cincinnati; in the way he shows off a card from a 3M supervisor, praising Mays as “a GREAT employee.”

But it’s all nostalgia.

Mays’ last day at 3M was in March. Bent on cutting costs and refocusing its portfolio, the company decided to close the plant that made bandages, knee braces and other health care supplies and move work to its plant in Mexico.

At 62, Mays is unemployed and wants to work, though on the face of it he has plenty of opportunities: Barely 10 miles from Mays’ ranch-style brick home in this blue-collar city, GE Aviation has been expanding — and hiring.

In the state-of-the-art laboratory in a World War II-era building the size of 27 football fields, workers use breakthrough technology to build jet engines that run on less fuel at higher temperatures. Bright flashes flare out as GE workers run tests with a robotic arm that can withstand 2,000 degrees (1,090 Celsius).

The open jobs there are among 30,000 manufacturing positions available positions open across Ohio. But Mays, like many of Ohio’s unemployed, lacks the in-demand skills.

“If you don’t keep up with the times,” he said, “you’re out of luck.”

This is the paradox of American manufacturing jobs in 2017. Donald Trump won the presidency in great measure because he pledged to stop American jobs and manufacturing from going overseas, winning Rust Belt votes from Mays and other blue-collar voters.

It’s true that many jobs have gone overseas, to lower-wage workers.

But at the same time, American manufacturers have actually added nearly a million jobs in the past seven years. Labor statistics show nearly 390,000 such jobs open.

The problem? Many of these are not the same jobs that for decades sustained the working class. More and more factory jobs now demand education, technical know-how or specialized skills. And many of the workers set adrift from low-tech factories lack such qualifications.

Factories will need to fill 2 million jobs over the next decade, according to a forecast by Deloitte Consulting and the American Manufacturing Institute. Workers are needed to run, operate and troubleshoot computer-directed machinery, including robots, and to maintain complex websites

Last year, software developer was the second-most-common job advertised by manufacturing companies, behind only sales, according to data provided by Burning Glass Technologies, a company that analyzes labor market data.

Yet the United States for now remains a follower, not a leader, of the trend. Workers in many European and Asian countries are more likely to be working with robots than U.S. workers, studies show. In such countries as Japan and Denmark, robotics and advanced automation have created solid jobs while increasing efficiencies for manufacturers.

Trump continues to make promises about adding U.S. manufacturing jobs. In blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio, he talked about passing by big factories whose jobs “have left Ohio” on his way to a July 25 rally, then told people not to sell their homes because the jobs are “coming back. They’re all coming back.”

But Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and a former U.S. trade representative, conceded in an interview: “We’re not going to see the kind of manufacturing renaissance that we all want in this country unless we focus on skills training.”

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, in a visit to a Detroit factory in June, acknowledged the need to address the skills gap by developing advanced computing skills. And when Trump visited Pewaukee, Wisconsin, in June, he touted the value of training while doing.

“Apprenticeships teach striving Americans the skills they need to operate incredible machines,” Trump said. “This is not the old days. This is new and computerized and complicated.”

Of the 146 million jobs in the United States, only about 0.35 percent were filled by active apprentices in 2016. Filling millions of open jobs through apprenticeships would require a substantial increase in government resources. So far, the Trump administration has called for more funding but hasn’t made any progress securing the funding from Congress.

Apprenticeships are much more common at some European companies, notably German firms. At Germany-based Stihl Inc.’s plant in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for example, A.J. Scherman is learning to be a “mechatronics technician.” Mechatronics combines electrical and mechanical engineering as well as computer skills.

Stihl makes chain saws, leaf blowers and weed trimmers at the factory. Once he’s completed his final year in Stihl’s four-year apprenticeship program, Scherman will read diagnostic software on computer screens attached to each robot to repair and upgrade them. If necessary, he’ll hook up a laptop to program changes.

Scherman, 37, is also earning a college degree as part of the apprenticeship. Thanks to financial aid from Stihl, he’ll finish with zero debt.

Skip Johnson, Stihl’s apprenticeship coordinator, said it’s critically important to bring bright students into the plant, where they can see that the grime and dust they associate with factories are giving way to clean operations using futuristic technology.

“They just come in here, and they’re wide-eyed,” Johnson said.

U.S. manufacturing workers, excluding managers, make an average of $44,000 a year, according to government data. That’s just 2.8 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than a decade ago after years of shifting of jobs overseas or to nonunion states. And it compares with a much higher 8 percent gain for the labor force as a whole over the past decade.

But a typical mechatronics engineer with a four-year degree can earn $97,000 a year; a typical software developer makes just over $100,000.

Festo Didactic, the education arm of Germany-based Festo, last year launched two-year mechatronics apprenticeship programs in Ohio with Sinclair Community College, and is already expanding its U.S. apprenticeship offerings. At Festo’s plant in Mason, workers monitor a robotic distribution system that self-adjusts its work flow to prevent backups.

“This kind of factory has nothing to do with the factory we knew in the 1960s or 1980 or even 2000,” said Yannick Schilly, who heads global supply for Festo’s North American business.

But there’s not much demand locally these days for the kind of repetitive tasks done in those factories by workers such as Herbie Mays.

He acknowledged that there are “plenty of jobs out here.

What you have to do is get training or education.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Amazon.com Inc is rolling out pickup points in the United States where shoppers can retrieve items immediately after ordering them, shortening delivery times from hours to minutes, the company said on Tuesday.

The world’s largest online retailer has launched “Instant Pickup” points around five college campuses, such as the University of California at Berkeley, it said. Amazon has plans to open more sites by the end of the year including one in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Shoppers on Amazon’s mobile app can select from several hundred fast-selling items at each site, from snacks and drinks to phone chargers. Amazon employees in a back room then load orders into lockers within two minutes, and customers receive bar codes to access them.

The news underscores Amazon’s broader push into brick-and-mortar retail. The e-commerce company, which said in June it would buy Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion, has come to realize that certain transactions like buying fresh produce are hard to shift online. Its Instant Pickup program targets another laggard: impulse buys.

“I want to buy a can of coke because I’m thirsty,” said Ripley MacDonald, Amazon’s director of student programs.

“There’s no chance I’m going to order that on Amazon.com and wait however long it’s going to take for that to ship to me.”

“I can provide that kind of service here,” he said of the new program.

Instant Pickup puts Amazon in competition with vending machine services. Yet the larger size of the Amazon sites means they are unlikely to pose a threat to those selling snack and drink vending machines to offices and schools. MacDonald said Amazon considered automating the Instant Pickup points but declined to say why the company had not pursued the idea.

Amazon’s ability to shorten delivery times has been a sore point for brick-and-mortar retailers, who have struggled to grow sales as their customers have turned to more convenient online options. Until Instant Pickup, Amazon shoppers could expect to have their orders within an hour at best via the company’s Prime Now program, or within 15 minutes for grocery orders via AmazonFresh Pickup. Amazon has made two-day shipping standard in the United States.

Instant Pickup prices may be cheaper than those on Amazon.com, MacDonald said. He declined to detail how the items are priced, however.

Other locations in the program now open include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Columbus, Ohio and College Park, Maryland.
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From: MeNeedIt

The former head of Mexico’s state-owned oil company, a key campaign adviser to President Enrique Pena Nieto, has denied accusations that he took bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Emilio Lozoya said Sunday via Twitter that he was never corrupt and suggested the allegations were made by executives seeking to reduce their own sentences in Brazil.

His lawyer Javier Coello Trejo said on Radio Formula on Monday that “we will prove that Emilio Lozoya did not receive a single cent of those supposed $10 million that they paid as a bribe.”

The Brazilian newspaper O Globo said Sunday it had obtained statements made by former Odebrecht’s director in Mexico Luis Alberto de Meneses Weyll to investigators. De Meneses Weyll said that from 2012 to 2014, Odebrecht paid Lozoya $10 million to win a contract for work on a refinery in central Mexico. Lozoya left Pemex last year.

Mexican investigative media collaborative Quinto Elemento Lab and anti-corruption nonprofit Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity also reported they have prosecution documents detailing payments to offshore accounts allegedly linked to Lozoya. The authenticity of the documents could not be immediately confirmed.

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that it did not have all of the information from Brazilian investigators, but would pursue the case to its ultimate consequences.

It noted that Odebrecht and another company, Braskem, had pleaded guilty in federal court in New York in December 2016 to paying bribes in a number of countries, including $10,500,000 to Pemex officials.

The Attorney General’s Office said it had already taken statements from a number of Pemex executives as part of its own investigation. Coello, Lozoya’s lawyer, said that his client had offered to give a statement, but the agency had still not scheduled him to come in.

When the alleged payments began in 2012, Lozoya was an adviser to Pena Nieto’s campaign and a leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
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From: MeNeedIt

The sun is about to spill some of its secrets, maybe even reveal a few hidden truths of the cosmos. And you can get in on the act next week if you are in the right place for the best solar eclipse in the U.S. in nearly a century.

Astronomers are going full blast to pry even more science from the mysterious ball of gas that’s vital to Earth. They’ll look from the ground, using telescopes, cameras, binoculars and whatever else works. They’ll look from the International Space Station and a fleet of 11 satellites in space. And in between, they’ll fly three planes and launch more than 70 high-altitude balloons .

“We expect a boatload of science from this one,” said Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who has traveled to 65 eclipses of all kinds.

Scientists will focus on the sun, but they will also examine what happens to Earth’s weather, to space weather, and to animals and plants on Earth as the moon totally blocks out the sun. The moon’s shadow will sweep along a narrow path, from Oregon to South Carolina.

Between NASA and the National Science Foundation, the federal government is spending about $7.7 million on next Monday’s eclipse. One of the NASA projects has students launching the high-altitude balloons to provide “live footage from the edge of space” during the eclipse.

But it’s not just the professionals or students. NASA has a list of various experiments everyday people can do.

“Millions of people can walk out on their porch in their slippers and collect world-class data,” said Matt Penn, an astronomer at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Penn is chief scientist for a National Science Foundation-funded movie project nicknamed Citizen CATE. More than 200 volunteers have been trained and given special small telescopes and tripods to observe the sun at 68 locations in the exact same way. The thousands of images from the citizen-scientists will be combined for a movie of the usually hard-to-see sun’s edge.

Mike Conley, a Salem, Oregon, stock trader whose backyard is studded with telescopes, jumped at the chance to be part of the science team.

“Who knows? Maybe a great secret will come of this, the mysteries of the sun will be revealed, because we’re doing something that’s never been done before and we’re getting data that’s never been seen before,” he said. “A big discovery will come and everybody will say, `Hey, we were part of that!”’

You don’t need to have telescopes to help out. You can use the iNaturalist app via the California Academy of Sciences and note the reaction of animals and plants around you. You can go to a zoo, like the Nashville Zoo, where they are asking people to keep track of what the animals are doing. The University of California, Berkeley, is seeking photos and video for its Eclipse Megamovie 2017, hoping to get more than 1,000 volunteers.

Even with all the high-tech, high-flying instruments now available, when it comes to understanding much of the sun’s mysteries, nothing beats an eclipse, said Williams College’s Pasachoff. That’s because the sun is so bright that even satellites and special probes can’t gaze straight at the sun just to glimpse the outer crown, or corona. Satellites create artificial eclipses to blot out the sun, but they can’t do it as well as the moon, he said.

The corona is what astronomers really focus on during an eclipse. It’s the sun’s outer atmosphere where space weather originates, where jutting loops of red glowing plasma lash out and where the magnetic field shows fluctuations. The temperature in the outer atmosphere is more than 1 million degrees hotter than it is on the surface of the sun and scientists want to figure out why.

“It’s ironic that we’ve learned most about the sun when its disk is hidden from view,” said Fred “Mr. Eclipse ” Espenak, a retired NASA astronomer who specialized in eclipses for the space agency.

And they learn other things, too. Helium – the second most abundant element in the universe – wasn’t discovered on Earth until its chemical spectrum was spotted during an eclipse in 1868, Espenak said.

But that discovery is eclipsed by what an eclipse did for Albert Einstein and physics.

Einstein was a little known scientist in 1915 when he proposed his general theory of relativity, a milestone in physics that says what we perceive as the force of gravity is actually from the curvature of space and time. It explains the motion of planets, black holes and the bending of light from distant galaxies.

Einstein couldn’t prove it but said one way to do so was to show that light from a distant star bends during an eclipse. During a 1919 eclipse, Arthur Eddington observed the right amount of bending, something that couldn’t be done without the moon’s shadow eclipsing the sun.

“It marked a complete change in the understanding of the universe,” said Mark Littmann of the University of Tennessee, a former planetarium director. “Bang. Right there.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The chief executive of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies resigned on Monday from a business panel led by Donald Trump, citing a need for leadership countering bigotry in a strong rebuke to the U.S. president over his response to a violent white-nationalist rally in Virginia.

The departure of Merck & Co Inc CEO Kenneth Frazier from the president’s American Manufacturing Council added to a storm of criticism of Trump over his handling of Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, in which a woman was killed when a man drove his car into a group of counter-protesters.

Democrats and Republicans have attacked the Republican president for waiting too long to address the violence, and for saying “many sides” were involved rather than explicitly condemning white-supremacist marchers widely seen as sparking the melee.

A 20-year-old man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies as a teenager was facing charges he plowed his car into protesters opposing the white nationalists, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 people. The accused, James Alex Fields, was denied bail at an initial court hearing on Monday.

Merck’s Frazier, who is black, did not name Trump or criticize him directly in a statement posted on the drug company’s Twitter account, but the rebuke was implicit.

“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy,” said Frazier.

Trump immediately hit back, but made no reference to Frazier’s comments on values, instead revisiting a longstanding gripe about expensive medicines. Now he had left the panel, Frazier would have more time to focus on lowering “ripoff” drug prices, Trump said in a Twitter post.

The outrage over Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville violence added to a litany of problems for the president.

Opponents have attacked him for his explosive rhetoric toward North Korea and he is publicly fuming with fellow Republicans in Congress over their failure to notch up any major legislative wins during his first six months in office.

Trump was specifically taken to task for comments on Saturday in which he denounced what he called “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

Under pressure to take an unequivocal stand against right-wing extremists who occupy a loyal segment of Trump’s political base, the administration sought to sharpen its message on Sunday.

The White House issued a statement insisting Trump was condemning “all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred, and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK (Ku Klux Klan), neo-Nazi, and all extremist groups.” Vice President Mike Pence also denounced such groups on Sunday.

Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, tried to defend the president over his reaction, appearing on a series of morning television talk shows on Monday.

Asked about the president’s words and lack of direct condemnation of white nationalist groups, Sessions defended Trump’s statement and said he expected him to address the incident again later on Monday.

Speaking to ABC News, Sessions also said the attack on counter-protesters “does meet the definition of domestic terrorism.”

Trump was scheduled to meet with Sessions and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray on Monday morning to discuss the Charlottesville incident, the White House said in a statement.

International responses were muted. Asked about Trump’s reaction to the violence, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said that what the president said was a “matter for him.”

“We are very clear … We condemn racism, hatred and violence,” he added. “We condemn the far right.”

Court hearing by video

Authorities said Heyer, 32, was killed when Fields’ car slammed into a crowd of anti-racism activists confronting neo-Nazis and KKK sympathizers, capping a day of bloody street brawls between the two sides in the Virginia college town.

Fields appeared in Charlottesville General District Court by video link from Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. He was being held there on a second-degree murder charge, three counts of malicious wounding and a single count of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The next court date was set for Aug. 25.

The U.S. Justice Department was pressing its own federal investigation of the incident as a hate crime.

“We’re bringing the full weight of the federal government to bear on investigating and prosecuting that individual,” Pence told NBC News in an interview that aired on Monday.

More than 30 people were injured in separate incidents, and two state police officers died in the crash of their helicopter after assisting in efforts to quell the unrest.

The disturbances began when white nationalists converged to protest against plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the commander of rebel forces during the U.S. Civil War.

The Charlottesville disturbances prompted vigils and protests from Miami to Seattle on Sunday, including some targeting other Confederate statues. Such monuments have periodically been flashpoints in the United States, viewed by many Americans as symbols of racism because of the Confederate defense of slavery in the Civil War.

In Atlanta, protesters spray-painted a statue of a Confederate soldier, and in Seattle, three people were arrested in a confrontation between protesters supporting Trump and counter-protesters, local media reported.

The web hosting company GoDaddy Inc said on Sunday it had given the neo-Nazi white supremacist website the Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider after the site posted an article denigrating Heyer. The Daily Stormer is associated with the alt-right movement.

Derek Weimer, a history teacher at Fields’ high school in Kentucky, told Cincinnati television station WCPO-TV he recalled Fields harboring “some very radical views on race” as a student and was “very infatuated with the Nazis, with Adolf Hitler.”

Fields reported for basic military training in August 2015 but was “released from active duty due to a failure to meet training standards in December of 2015,” the Army said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Four decades since his death, Elvis Presley still reigns as The King — for impersonators.

Few artists inspire people all over the world to dress up and perform passionately on stage like Presley. Impersonators from different generations and various countries paid tribute to their idol recently at a gathering in the Philippines. The Elvis Presley Friendship Club, Philippines International, is one of over 400 official fan clubs around the world honoring Presley on the 40th anniversary of his Aug. 16, 1977, death.

What was it about Elvis that inspires tribute artists around the globe to perform in his name after all this time? Those at the gathering in Manila speak about their motivations:

WHY DOES ELVIS RESONATE FOR YOU ALL THESE YEARS LATER?

Filipino Jun Espinosa, 44, business consultant:

“Everything for Elvis, that’s the only motivation. And for the fans. Up to now I’m having this in my thought and in my mind that maybe without Elvis in me, I could not have survived certain points of my life. … Maybe as long as I can shake, as long as I can do this, and as long as people will love Elvis, it will be there.”

Ramon Jacinto, 72, musician, TV host and founder of Philippine rock `n’ roll radio station DZRJ:

“He crossed over black music roots to you know, to all nationalities. Even the Beatles were influenced by Elvis. Everybody was influenced. He was the real example of an out-of-the-box showman. And he wiggled, he had a different style of singing from the time of Frank Sinatra. … He opened the door to carefree rock `n’ roll and the attitude.”

HOW DO YOU TAILOR YOUR ELVIS ACT FOR YOUR OWN CULTURE AND AUDIENCE?

Filipina Anjeanette Japor, 22, singer:

“I still incorporate my style, like, pop and something that’s modern. Definitely my songs, the arrangements are different from the original Elvis songs so that people, no matter what age you are, can still enjoy my music.”

Douglas Masuda of Japan, 73, retired lawyer:

“Well, I don’t really tailor anything. Just sing it the way you feel it. If you feel it, the audience feels it. It’s real simple. You’ve got to feel it. Because I don’t look like Elvis, I don’t really sound like Elvis, but when I sing, you feel it, you feel Elvis coming out.”

WHY IS ELVIS STILL RELEVANT 40 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH?

Filipino Bam Angping, 21, college student:

“It’s really the fans. Michael Jackson was a big, big star. But they don’t have that kind of community, like, they celebrate every year impersonations. It’s really the fans that caused Elvis to live this long. He was great at his time. But if it were not for the fans, probably he would be, you know, like, `Yeah I remember him. But not really.”‘

Eddie Lombardo of Italy:

“So we try to keep the name of Elvis alive. …. we’re not trying to duplicate Elvis because nobody can “be” Elvis. There’s only one Elvis, you know? And what we’re trying to (do is) bring the memory of Elvis back to people, that’s basically what we’re doing.”

Japor:

“In the music industry, the songs of Elvis remain a classic. Like Bruno Mars, he has a lot of rock `n’ roll songs. Most of them originated from the legends, one of which is Elvis. So I think his songs still have a great impact to the music we have nowadays. There are a lot of songs actually that were sung by Elvis that are being covered right now. And that gives a modern twist to the song. So because of that, Elvis continues to live with the music.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A Chinese state newspaper warned Monday that President Donald Trump “could trigger a trade war” if he goes ahead with plans to launch an investigation into whether China is stealing U.S. technology.

In a commentary by a researcher at a Commerce Ministry think tank, the China Daily said Trump’s possible decision to launch an investigation, which an official says he will announce Monday, could “intensify tensions,” especially over intellectual property.

The official told reporters Saturday the president would order his trade office to look into whether to launch an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 of possible Chinese theft of U.S. technology and intellectual property.

The Chinese government has yet to comment on the announcement.

A decision to use the Trade Act to rebalance trade with China “could trigger a trade war,” said the commentary under the name of researcher Mei Xinyu of the ministry’s International Trade and Economic Cooperation Institute.

“And the inquiry the U.S. administration has ordered into China’s trade policies, if carried out, could intensify tensions, especially on intellectual property rights.”

The commentary gave no indication of how Beijing might respond but Chinese law gives regulators broad discretion over what foreign companies can do in China.

If an investigation begins, Washington could seek remedies either through the World Trade Organization or outside of it.

Previous U.S. actions directed at China under the 1974 law had little effect, said the China Daily. It noted China has grown to become the biggest exporter and has the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves.

“The use of Section 301 by the U.S. will not have much impact on China’s progress toward stronger economic development and a better future,” said the newspaper.
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From: MeNeedIt

In a small studio littered with empty cigarette packets in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, Abdelrahman al-Habrouk sits hunched over a sheet of paper making portraits with tobacco.

The cigarettes fuel his art; he breaks them in half, painstakingly traces out monochrome images of celebrities or animals with the fine flakes of tobacco, then sprinkles his creations with gunpowder and sets them on fire.

The resulting scorch-marks on the white paper form the portrait.

Habrouk, now 23, started using unusual materials to make images a couple of years ago, experimenting with coffee, salt and sand before settling on the tobacco technique because it is more durable.

“The idea is that I’m trying to make the art live longer,” he told Reuters.

“I wanted to make something good out of something that is considered harmful,” he added.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Beside rows of rusting shipping containers, a decorative wrought iron fence surrounds Taquería Mi Pueblo, one of the first family-run Mexican restaurants in southwest Detroit, Michigan.

Its owner, Jalisco-native José de Jesús López, surveys the trees he planted and his ornamental roosters.

“Everything was abandoned, a dump over there,” he said, walking down Dix Street. When he first arrived as an undocumented immigrant in 1981, López recalls a drug-addict-infested lot and overrun lawn.

“Mexicantown,” as the area is affectionately and marketably called today, is one of Metro Detroit’s most vibrant dining scenes for locals and tourists — and a model for other immigrant neighborhoods.

Landing destination

Like López, many foreigners stumbled upon Detroit, viewing the city as an economically viable “second landing destination” — friendly to immigrants, but with cheaper housing and commercial space than traditional immigrant hubs like New York and San Francisco.

Through the 2008 recession and recovery, native-born residents fled. But immigrants kept coming, starting new businesses, hiring local residents and making their neighborhoods a safer place for children.

A June study by Global Detroit and New American Economy reveals that the city’s immigrant population grew by 12.1 percent between 2010 and 2014, at a time when the city’s overall population declined by 4.2 percent. Though the four-year increase in immigrants amounts to merely 4,137 individuals, the study claims the effects have been widely felt.

Watch: Beleaguered Detroit Relying on Immigrants to Revitalize City

“Immigrants are leading in the city’s recovery,” said Steve Tobocman, director of Global Detroit, “particularly in its neighborhoods like Mexicantown, in Banglatown, where new residents are moving in and helping to stabilize working-class communities by fixing up homes, opening up businesses, and creating more consumers.”

Depopulation, Tobocman adds, remains Detroit’s biggest challenge moving forward, while immigrants are “our best hope to rebuilding,” especially on the neighborhood level.

No ‘magic bullet’

According to Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and Fiscal Policy Institute, more than one-third of Detroit-area “Main Street” business owners were immigrants as of 2013.

But data measuring their economic contributions can be misleading, says Stanley Renshon, CUNY professor of political science.

“Any economic activity is grabbed by economists as positive,” Renshon told VOA. “Yes, you increase the overall financial numbers of the country, but the people who benefit most from that are the immigrants themselves, and that’s fine. We want them to prosper, but don’t tell me that what you’re doing is saving the country or the city or the town.”

Detroit’s ongoing struggles, including a long history of political corruption and one of the highest murder rates in the country, can’t be solved by new immigrants, he added.

Hurting American workers?

Last week, White House senior adviser for policy Stephen Miller announced the administration’s support for an immigration bill that would cut legal immigration by half.

Their premise that less-skilled immigrants take away work opportunities from native-born Americans is an “America first” message intended to resonate with President Donald Trump’s base in depressed rust belt towns like Detroit.

“How is it fair, or right or proper that if, say, you open up a new business in Detroit, that the unemployed workers of Detroit are going to have to compete against an endless flow of unskilled workers for the exact same jobs?” asked Miller during a White House press briefing Aug. 2.

Global Detroit’s Tobocman says Trump’s proposed policies won’t produce any new jobs and may cost the Michigan economy hundreds of millions of dollars.

“[Trump’s actions would choke] off a critical supply of talent, of investment, and of global connections that are critical to the future of Michigan, to us being a mobility capital for the world,” Tobocman said.

Detroit suffered an unemployment rate of 28.4 percent during the great recession, but had rebounded to 7.8 percent in June.

Banglatown

Following the likes of Mexicantown, Metro Detroit’s second-most populous foreign-born community, from Bangladesh, hopes to follow suit and create a cultural tourist destination of its own: Banglatown.

“You will hardly find any vacant spot right now,” said Ehsan Taqbeem, founder of Bangladeshi-American Public Affairs Committee (BAPAC), driving his Jeep Grand Cherokee past South Asian restaurants, fabric and fish shops in Detroit and neighboring Hamtramck.

“The value of the homes have gone up since [the recession], businesses have been thriving, and traffic has gone up tremendously,” he said.

Unlike Mexicantown, Banglatown is a concept still in its early stages. There are no traditional rickshaws carrying tourists down Conant Avenue — at least not yet.

But Taqbeem, who runs an automotive retrofitting service, along with other local business owners, sees the benefit of being a branded community in a global-minded city.

Mahabub Chowdhury, part-owner of Aladdin Sweets & Cafe, found success in nourishing his neighborhood and patrons, a majority of whom are non-Bangladeshis. One regular customer, whom he describes as a nice “American white person,” calls him directly.

“Sometimes his car is broken, and he calls us, ‘Can you pick me up from my house?’ And we go to his house and bring him to our restaurant,” Chowdhury said.

‘​Believing in Detroit’

In Mexicantown, Lopez’s eyes well as he recalls his early days on a Jalisco ranch, before finding eventual success in Detroit.

“My main dream was to be able to buy a truck for my dad,” Lopez said. “I worked all my life, and when I had the money, I didn’t have my father anymore.”

Now an American citizen, López, a father of four, says he accomplished the American Dream by creating something that will outlive him and provide for the community long after he has passed.

What Detroit still needs, he said, is more people to call it home. 

“That’s happening little by little,” Lopez said. “The greatest changes won’t happen overnight.”

“They happen slowly, and that’s part of believing in oneself, believing in Detroit,” he said.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Scientists from U.S. and Britain have found four planets, slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a star visible with a naked eye.

Using a technique so sensitive that it can measure tiny changes in the light emitted by stars, scientists at University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Hertfordshire detected the planets orbiting the star Tau Ceti, which is 12 light-years from Earth. Two of the planets orbit in the so-called habitable zone, meaning the surface water could possibly exist.

The changes in light are caused by gravitational pull of the planets orbiting the star.

Tau Ceti, in the south of the constellation Cetus, emits light spectrum similar to our sun but is about 25 percent smaller.

The two planets in its habitable zone are larger than Earth, but frequent bombardment by asteroids and comets from the star’s massive debris ring make them improbable candidates to sustain life.

Observations were done from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
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From: MeNeedIt

Some countries depend heavily on fossil fuels for power, including the Philippines. But now a kind of solar energy “flower” is among the clean power alternatives there. The Smartflower can produce 40 percent more energy than a traditional rooftop solar design. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it.
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From: MeNeedIt