Facebook and Google once aimed to connect the world. Now they would be happy just to reconnect part of it.

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to send a “connectivity team” to help restore communications in ravaged Puerto Rico. Google parent company Alphabet offered to send its Wi-Fi balloons. They were among several tech companies proposing disaster response ideas, most aimed at getting phone and internet service up and running.

Some of these plans, of course, are more aspirational than others.

Battery Power

Tesla CEO Elon Musk often takes to Twitter to mull over ideas, but on Friday his musings about sending his company’s solar-powered batteries to help restore Puerto Rico’s power attracted the attention of the island’s governor.

“Let’s talk,” said Gov. Ricardo Rossello in a Friday tweet.

Musk agreed. Hours later, he announced he was delaying the unveiling of Tesla’s new semi-truck and diverting resources, in part to “increase battery production for Puerto Rico and other affected areas.”

The need for help in restoring power and communication after Hurricane Maria is great: The Puerto Rican energy authority reported Saturday that about 88 percent of the island is still without power. The Federal Communications Commission said Saturday that 82 percent of cell sites remain out in Puerto Rico; 58 percent are out of service in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The FCC’s daily status report also shows significant wireline, TV and radio outages remain in both U.S. territories. The agency formed a task force this week and approved an advance of $77 million to support carriers working to restore telecommunications services.

Vague Promises

But many offers of help from big companies remain somewhat vague. Google parent company Alphabet has proposed launching balloons over the island to bring Wi-Fi service to hard-to-reach places, as it has in other parts of the world.

The FCC announced Saturday that it’s approved an experimental license for Project Loon to operate in Puerto Rico. But that doesn’t mean it will able to get them in the air anytime soon.

“We’re grateful for the support of the FCC and the Puerto Rican authorities as we work hard to see if it’s possible to use Loon balloons to bring emergency connectivity to the island during this time of need,” said Libby Leahy, a spokesman for Alphabet’s X division.

But there are limitations, she said Saturday.

“To deliver signal to people’s devices, Loon needs be integrated with a telco partner’s network — the balloons can’t do it alone,” she said, adding that the company is “making solid progress on this next step.”

Collaborative efforts

Cisco Systems has sent a tactical team and says it is working with local government, emergency responders and service providers to facilitate restoration and recovery efforts. The company, along with Microsoft and others, backs the NetHope consortium, which specializes in setting up post-disaster communication networks and has field teams now operating in Puerto Rico and several other Caribbean islands.

“Communication is critical during a disaster,” Zuckerberg said after the hurricane hit, announcing that employees from his company’s connectivity team — the same group working to build high-altitude drones that can beam internet service down to Earth — were heading to Puerto Rico. But with its aircraft still in the testing phase, the company said Friday that the engineers it’s sent to Puerto Rico are focused on providing support to NetHope’s teams.

Smaller organizations

Much of the ground work is being spearheaded by nonprofit organizations and small firms with expertise in rural or emergency communications.

Lexington, Massachusetts-based Vanu Inc., which sets up wireless communications networks in rural parts of the United States, Africa and India, is sending dozens of its small, solar-powered cellular base stations to volunteer crews on the ground in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Aid workers are pairing Vanu’s devices with other technology, such as inflatable satellite antennas.

After setting up a network on the island of Vieques, off the main island of Puerto Rico, one team watched from a roof as local residents started getting text alerts from family members who had been trying to get in touch.

“They noticed everyone in the plaza pulling their phones out,” said CEO Vanu Bose. “You don’t have to announce you’ve lit up coverage. People know right away.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Hawaii officials are working to raise awareness of the top cause of drowning for people visiting Hawaii: snorkeling.

Out of 650 ocean drownings from 2007 to 2016, the state Department of Health has recorded 169 as related to the common ocean activity, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported on Saturday. A total of 156 of those deaths were of tourists to the islands.

Motor vehicle crashes were the next highest cause of visitor deaths, with 85 recorded during the same period.

The numbers have prompted a state committee to explore ways to help prevent the deaths. Honolulu Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services have teamed up with a major visitor television channel to air public service announcements on snorkeling safety in 25,000 hotel rooms on the island of Oahu.

On Oahu so far this year, 16 ocean drownings have occurred. Hanauma Bay, a popular snorkeling spot on Oahu that hosts about 1 million visitors each year, had 16 snorkeling-related drownings during the nine-year period.

Lifeguards rescue about four to five people every day at the bay, Ocean Safety Lt. Kawika Eckart said.

“More novice swimmers or people without any kind of ocean skills tend to go snorkeling because it’s looked on as a really safe activity,” Eckart said. “You’re not getting into the surf. You’ve got fins, a mask and snorkel on, so there’s a false sense of security.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The Chinese Basketball Association is on tour in the US, with teams playing against US professional squads. Calla Yu from VOA’s Mandarin Service was at a recent game in the Washington area.
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From: MeNeedIt

Two back-to-back hurricanes in the continental U.S. displaced more workers than first thought resulting in a net loss of 33 thousand jobs in September. But the job losses seem to have had little effect on the national unemployment rate, which fell to 4.2 percent the lowest since 2001. Mil Arcega has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Astronauts say seeing the Earth from a distance, where the whole planet comes into perspective, is a life-changing experience that makes you realize how beautiful and fragile it is. A group of enthusiasts in California set up a nonprofit organization that uses satellite imagery to spread this feeling to as many people as possible and raise awareness about the dangers of detrimental human activities. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera in the crowded Rohingya refugee camp that sits on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar.

At least a half-million Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have crossed the border to escape a military crackdown in their villages.

In Yemen, a massive and deadly cholera epidemic has affected almost 800,000 people, and the World Health Organization expects that number to climb to 1 million by year’s end. Worldwide, about 100,000 people die from cholera each year.

WATCH: WHO, Others Pledge to End Cholera

End cholera by 2030

On Tuesday, the WHO, along with governments, aid agencies and donors announced a roadmap to end cholera by 2030. It’s the first global pledge to end this disease.

Dr. Amesh Adalja said it’s not possible to eliminate cholera because cholera is a bacteria that exists naturally. Adalja is an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. He is also a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Adalja told VOA it is possible to make cholera as rare in Bangladesh and in Yemen as it is in the United States and the rest of North America. He said sanitation is the key to eliminating cholera.

The disease is “not something that should happen in 2017,” Adalja said. “This is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.”

Cholera is a diarrheal disease. The bacteria that causes cholera lives in coastal waters and in brackish rivers. It thrives where there is poor water treatment, poor toilet sanitation and poor hygiene. It’s caused by eating or drinking contaminated food and water.

Malnutrition plays a role

Malnutrition is also a factor. Jesse Hartness is the senior director of emergency health and nutrition at Save the Children, an agency that has been working to control the cholera outbreak in Yemen.

“There’s a cycle of illness and malnutrition where you have a child who is sick, and they lose their appetite,” Hartness said. “They are dehydrated from having diarrhea, they lose weight, and, once they are malnourished, that also drives their vulnerability to additional illness.”

Anyone can get cholera, but children, pregnant women and the elderly are most at risk.

Yet, cholera is not difficult or expensive to treat. Hartness said it is simple if the disease is caught early and if you can provide hydration to the less severe patients so they don’t become severe patients who require more intensive treatment.

But in places ravaged by flooding and other natural disasters, or by manmade disasters like war, or in crowded refugee camps, sanitation is hard to maintain. Water can’t be treated properly. Human waste can’t easily be disposed of hygienically, so in addition to providing aid, organizations like Save the Children find themselves trying to rebuild sanitation systems.

The WHO says about 2 billion people globally lack access to clean water.

Vaccine available

Vaccines can help. Adalja said the oral vaccines the WHO uses to manage cholera outbreaks have about a 65 percent effectiveness rate over five years. He adds that “65 percent isn’t 100 percent, but it is very good.”

Hartness said in order to end cholera in Yemen, the war that Yemen has been mired in for three years has to end.

“In order to really look at ending this outbreak, we have to look at ending the war,” he said. “And if that can’t happen immediately, we have to look at negotiating access to these communities … that are the hardest to reach.”

Adalja added, “It’s basically a poverty trap for some of those countries which they can never get out of. … This is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.”

Forty-seven countries are affected by cholera, and the WHO expects the global cholera situation to get worse, which is behind its urgency to end the disease.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera. On Oct. 3, the WHO said it could have acted faster to fight a massive, deadly cholera epidemic in Yemen. The announcements came after the agency announced a plan to end cholera in the near future. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.
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From: MeNeedIt

In 1982’s ‘Blade Runner,’ filmmaker Ridley Scott imagined the dystopian world of 2019 as overcrowded, polluted and inhabited by humans and their genetically engineered look-alikes. As 2019 nears, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve creates ‘Blade Runner 2049.’ As the lines between humanity and artificial intelligence are blurred again, both films probe the nature of life and its moral implications. VOA’s Penelope Poulou looks at what sets Denis Villeneuve’s sequel apart from Scott’s classic.
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From: MeNeedIt

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.

 
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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From: MeNeedIt