South by Southwest is a pop-up marketplace of ideas. Held in Austin, Texas, it combines music and film festivals with a tech conference. Its nine days of events draw people from around the world, including Africa, as Tigist Geme of VOA’s Horn of Africa Service reports.
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Tossing swimmers and boaters a lifeline when they get into trouble on the water takes on a new meaning when that lifeline is attached to a robot. Faith Lapidus explains.
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France added more kindling to a growing commercial dispute between Europe and the United States, announcing Wednesday it would sue American tech giants Google and Apple over allegedly abusive business practices.

After peanut butter, cranberries and bourbon, Google and Apple are the latest American icons in Europe’s crosshairs. Speaking to French radio Wednesday, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire accused the two U.S. companies of unilaterally imposing prices and other terms on French startups.

Google and Apple may be powerful, Le Maire said, but they should not be able to treat French startups and developers the way they currently do.

France has taken legal action against the companies before. But this latest dispute comes amid a potential trade war, as Washington prepares to slap tariffs against steel and aluminum imports.

The European Union has vowed countermeasures on products such as peanut butter if the bloc is not exempted from the U.S. measures, which may take effect next week. But European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told the EU Parliament Wednesday she hopes that will not happen.

“As long as the measures have not entered into force, we hope to avoid a significant trade dispute,” she said. “The root problem, as many of you have said, is overcapacity in steel and aluminum sectors.”

Malmstrom said the European Union and the United States should instead work together to end unfair subsidies by some countries and level the trading field.

France has a mixed relationship with U.S. internet companies — both encouraging them to invest here, but also to pay more EU taxes — as it tries to build its home-grown industry.

Last year, it also threatened fines against Amazon for allegedly abusing its dominant position with suppliers. French justice has yet to rule on the case.
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Only one of 118 gender discrimination complaints made by women at Microsoft was found to have merit, according to unsealed court documents.

The Seattle Times reports the records made public Monday illustrate the scope of complaints from female employees in technical jobs in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016.

And according to the court documents, Microsoft’s internal investigations determined only one of those complaints was “founded.”

The documents were released as part of an ongoing lawsuit by three current or former Microsoft employees alleging gender discrimination.

The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status for the case, claiming more than 8,600 women collectively lost out on $238 million in pay and 500 promotions because of discrimination in the company’s performance review process.

Microsoft’s case is one of several against giant companies in the technology industry, which has been criticized in recent years for its lack of female and minority employees and for a workplace culture that some say is hostile toward those groups.

The plaintiffs argue that men in similar roles with similar job performance were promoted faster and given more raises than their female colleagues.

Microsoft has said a class action isn’t warranted because there is no common cause for the employees’ complaints and plaintiffs have not identified systemic gender discrimination. The company has denied that systemic bias is taking place through its employee-review process.

In court documents, Microsoft also has stood behind its internal investigative process, which involves a four-person team that looks into each complaint filed with the company. In a statement Tuesday, a Microsoft said all employee concerns are taken seriously and that the company has a “fair and robust system in place” to investigate them.

U.S. District Judge James Robart is hearing the case in U.S. District Court in Seattle and is expected to decide on the class-action request in the next several months.

Information from: The Seattle Times.
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Chinese telecoms giant Huawei says it will continue to invest in the United States despite recent setbacks in its efforts to boost sales there.

Xu Qingsong, also known as Jim Xu, Huawei’s head of sales and marketing, told reporters in Shenzhen he was “confident” Huawei smartphone sales would triple this year in the U.S. from last year.

News reports in January said Huawei appeared to be on the verge of cracking the lucrative American market when it signed a deal with AT&T, but the agreement fell through under U.S. government pressure.

In the past, Huawei officials have rejected U.S. security complaints as politically motivated or possibly an attempt by competitors to keep it out of the market.

“I don’t know why they’re so nervous,” Xu said Tuesday, referring to the U.S. “They’re too nervous.”

Huawei sells some models in U.S. electronics stores and online but has a minimal share of an American market in which most sales are through carriers. Globally, the company trails Samsung and Apple in handset shipments but leads in China, the biggest market, and says it expects to ship a total of 150 million this year.

Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of network gear used by phone companies, suffered earlier setbacks in the American market when a congressional report in October 2013 said it was a security risk and warned telecom carriers not to use its equipment.

More recently, a new global struggle for influence over next-generation “5G” communications technology has brought Huawei under increasing scrutiny by the U.S. government. Many American officials are concerned Chinese companies such as Huawei could take a larger, or even a dominant, role in setting 5G technology and standards and practices.

Kevin Ho, president of Huawei’s handset product line, said they’ll instead focus on Europe and developing markets in Asia, especially India, where Huawei sees opportunities to expand the Shenzhen-based company’s market share.

“There are still some big countries where our market share is very, very low,” Ho said. “This is a hint of where we can raise our market share globally.”

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump blocked Singapore chipmaker Broadcom from pursuing a hostile takeover of prominent U.S. rival Qualcomm, a deal which officials believed could have hobbled the U.S.’s ability to make a quick transition to 5G.

When asked about the blocked deal, Xu declined to comment.

Separately, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill on January 9 that would prohibit government purchases of telecoms equipment from Huawei Technologies and smaller rival ZTE, citing their ties to the Chinese military and backing from the ruling Communist Party.
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South by Southwest (SXSW) is not just an annual music festival and tech conference in Austin, Texas, it also includes venues where people from specific countries or regions of the world can gather to share ideas. This is the inaugural year for Africa House at South by Southwest, and it’s providing valuable networking opportunities for Africans who come to experience and benefit from this eclectic festival. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Austin.
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Brenda Katwesigye traveled thousands of kilometers from Uganda in eastern Africa to Austin, Texas with a vision. She wants to find help for Wazi Vision, the startup that she founded in 2016 to make eyeglasses more affordable. Katwesigye’s company, named for the Swahili word that means “clear,” says Wazi Vision makes the frames from recycled plastic and that they cost 80 percent less than what is currently on the market. 

“We need people that are here that can sell them in their stores. We need people with online e-commerce platforms that can help with logistics and everything,” she said.

Katwesigye hopes to find these partners at South by Southwest (SXSW), the music and film festival and tech conference held in Austin in the spring every year. Her home away from home at the event is Africa House, a venue where Africans can meet members of the diaspora in the United States and other Africans from Africa. 

“It’s quite incredible. We’ve traveled all the way from Africa to meet Africa here and to meet people that we otherwise would never have had a chance to meet back home.” Katwesigye added, “I’ve met some really meaningful contacts that I plan on following up on.”

Her trip would not be possible without the help of the United States African Development Foundation (USADF), which funded her travel.

“It’s a global environment. These are people here again, who are artisans and who are tech entrepreneurs and who are people who are really social change makers in the U.S. who want to meet African counterparts,” said C.D. Glin, president of USADF.

U.S.-born Bunmi Akinyemiju grew up in Nigeria, went to college in the U.S. and returned to Nigeria to become managing director and chief executive officer of Lagos-based Venture Garden Group, a payment and data analytics company.

“We look for new technologies. We look for new startups, so while we look for startups, that allows us to actually make investments in those startups that can collaborate with our parent company,” said Akinyemiju.

USADF and two other organizations have joined forces to sponsor the first Africa House at SXSW this year. The other two are U.S. public relations firm Insider, which works with emerging market entrepreneurs, and Temple Management Company, a talent and events management agency based in Lagos, Nigeria.

“Really to be able to showcase Africans and their social enterprises to the community at South by Southwest was something we felt like was a must do this year,” said Glin.

Azariah Mengistu is making a premium handcrafted leather sneaker in Ethiopia, in part to change Africa’s image abroad.

“We want everyone to challenge global perceptions of what people thought when they saw Africa. So we want people to engage with the product, something physical that was made with the best quality at the best standards with the best materials. We wanted it all to be done in Africa.”

For Nigerian musician 9ice, Africa House is a venue “to network. It is to make more fans.” 

Glin says that while this is the first Africa House at South by Southwest – it won’t be the last.
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Alphabet’s Google said on Tuesday that it will launch a network of free Wi-Fi hotspots across Mexico, part of the search giant’s effort to improve connectivity in emerging markets and put its products in the hands of more users.

Google Station, an ad-supported network of Wi-Fi hotspots in high-traffic locations, is launching in Mexico with 56 hotspots and others planned, the company said.

Mexico will be Google Station’s third market following India and Indonesia, and the first in Latin America.

Mexico has made great strides in connectivity since a 2013-14 telecom reform intended to loosen the grip of billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil, which has long dominated the market.

From 2013 to 2016, the number of people accessing the Internet in Mexico rose by 20 million, according to a report last fall by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Still, the country lags behind other OECD nations in terms of internet access, the report said.

“We are finding that public Wi-Fi remains still a very important way to get online,” Anjali Joshi, a vice president for product management at Google, told reporters.

She added that Google saw Mexico as a good entrypoint for the product in Latin America. Mexico-based SitWifi provided equipment for the hotspots.

Google’s initial batch of Wi-Fi zones is scattered across the country, from the Ciudad Juarez airport at the U.S. border to posh shopping centers in Mexico City.

Google Station now counts roughly 8 million users a month in India, where the program began in 2016.
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Scientists are always on the lookout for affordable and efficient methods for capturing carbon dioxide, responsible for global warming and the rising acidity of seawater. A new procedure, developed at the University of York in Britain, promises to extract large amounts of CO2 from seawater and store it safely, and recycle millions of tons of aluminum waste at the same time. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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U.N. human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said Monday that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there.

Facebook had no immediate comment on the criticism Monday, although in the past the company has said that it was working to remove hate speech in Myanmar and kick off people who shared such content consistently.

More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security crackdown last August. Many have provided harrowing testimonies of executions and rapes by Myanmar security forces.

The U.N. human rights chief said last week he strongly suspected acts of genocide had taken place. Myanmar’s national security adviser demanded “clear evidence.”

Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media had played a “determining role” in Myanmar.

“It has … substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissention and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly, of course, a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” he said.

U.N. Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee said Facebook was a huge part of public, civil and private life, and the government used it to disseminate information to the public.

“Everything is done through Facebook in Myanmar,” she told reporters, adding that Facebook had helped the impoverished country but had also been used to spread hate speech.

“It was used to convey public messages, but we know that the ultra-nationalist Buddhists have their own Facebooks and are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities,” she said. “I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended.”

The most prominent of Myanmar’s hardline nationalist monks, Wirathu, emerged from a one-year preaching ban Saturday and said his anti-Muslim rhetoric had nothing to do with violence in Rakhine state.

Facebook suspends and sometimes removes anyone that “consistently shares content promoting hate,” the company said last month in response to a question about Wirathu’s account.

“If a person consistently shares content promoting hate, we may take a range of actions such as temporarily suspending their ability to post and, ultimately, removal of their account.”
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The inventor of the worldwide web, Tim Berners-Lee, called on Monday for powerful internet platforms and social media companies to be regulated to prevent the internet from being “weaponized at scale.”

The British computer scientist, in an open letter published on the 29th anniversary of the creation of the web, said a “new set of gatekeepers” was now dominant, controlling the spread of ideas and opinions.

“The fact that power is concentrated among so few companies has made it possible to weaponize the web at scale,” he wrote.

“In recent years, we’ve seen conspiracy theories trend on social media platforms, fake Twitter and Facebook accounts stoke social tensions, external actors interfere in elections and criminals steal troves of personal data.”

The intervention by the 62-year-old MIT professor comes as some European governments turn to legislation to curb “fake” news and hate speech that they fear is undermining the basis of their democracies.

In Germany, a law entered force on January 1 that foresees fines of up to 50 million euros ($62 million) on internet platforms that fail to remove hate speech — which is illegal — within 24 hours.

French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile plans legislation that would empower judges to order the removal of fake news during election campaigns.

And in Brussels, the European Commission has served notice to internet platforms that they must find a way to remove extremist content within one hour of being notified, or face legislation compelling them to do so.

Berners-Lee, whose Web Foundation campaigns for a more open and inclusive internet, doubted that companies that have been built to maximize profits can adequately address the problem on a voluntary basis.

“A legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may help ease those problems,” he said.

Expressing concern over how big internet platforms handle users’ data in targeting advertising, Berners-Lee said a balance needed to be found between the interests of companies and online citizens.

“This means thinking about how we align the incentives of the tech sector with those of users and society at large, and consulting a diverse cross-section of society in the process.”
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What originally started as a music festival in the 1980s has evolved into an event that is much bigger and harder to define. Imagine networking and partying for more than a week. That is what is happening in Austin, Texas. Musicians, film promoters and tech companies from around the world are gathering for the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details from Austin.
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