Archive Month: June 2019

New York staged a huge Gay Pride march Sunday, one of several in major U.S. cities marking the 50th anniversary of the clash between police and gay patrons at the city’s Stonewall Inn bar that sparked the modern gay rights movement.The New York parade could attract three million rainbow flag-waving supporters. More than 650 contingents with 150,000 people, including community groups, corporations, politicians and celebrities, are planning to march through the city’s streets.”I believe we are going to have the greatest Pride celebration in the history of the globe,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, a vocal defender of gay rights and a Democratic presidential candidate.In Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first openly gay mayor, is one of seven grand marshals for its parade.The annual celebration of gay rights has its origin in the June 1969 riots sparked by repeated police raids on Stonewall Inn, a prominent gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. The riots proved to be a pivotal touchpoint in the LGBTQ community’s struggle for civil rights.The smaller Queer Liberation March started Sunday morning at the bar, with its organizers saying that the Pride march had become too commercialized and heavily policed. 
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Professors at the University of Maryland are looking to dramatically improve basic artificial intelligence as they attempt to teach robots how to think and use their past experience to perform new tasks. Nastassia Jaumen visited the University to find out more.
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Some might think musicians who perform in New York City subway stations just show up there to earn a little cash and entertain commuters. But that’s not the case. They have to compete to perform in the coveted spots. The city’s ‘Music Under New York’ program has been holding auditions since 1985. Nina Vishneva explores this underground music world. Anna Rice narrates.
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Augmented technology, or AR, has been around for a few years.  Just ask anyone who ever played the Pokemon Go game on a cell phone.  But at a university in London, Augmented Reality is literally taking on a new life.  Arash Arabasadi brings this story into the world.
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The desktop personal computer changed the world when it was introduced back in the 1970s. But lately laptops and phones have slowly eaten away at that market. But the creators of a new PC that costs less than a trip to the grocery store are hoping their little PC can change that. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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In the United States, dog owners often treat their pets like family. When people go on vacation, they may not take their dogs with them but want them to be well taken care of while they are gone. Doggie boarding facilities are popular alternatives where pets can stay overnight or even longer. Some pet parents even take their dog to a fancy pet resort for top notch services. VOA’s Deborah Block shows us a luxury pet resort in Virginia.
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Elton John on Friday called out Russian President Vladimir Putin for saying that liberalism is “obsolete” and conflicts with the “overwhelming majority” in many countries.In a story published by the Financial Times newspaper, Putin said “the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.” John said in a statement released Friday that he disagrees with Putin’s “view that pursuing policies that embrace multicultural and sexual diversity are obsolete in our societies.”Putin also said Russia has “no problem with LGBT persons … let everyone be happy” in the interview.John called Putin’s words hypocritical since a Russian distributor censored LGBTQ-related scenes from “Rocketman,” the film based on John’s life and career.
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Authorities in the Dominican Republic say they have arrested the mastermind behind the shooting of baseball great David Ortiz earlier this month in an apparent case of mistaken identity.
 
Police said Friday that Victor Hugo Gomez was detained in the Caribbean country. No further details were immediately released.
 
Authorities had said last week that they believed Gomez was living in the U.S.
 He is accused of ordering the killing of his cousin, Sixto David Fernandez. Authorities say hit men confused Ortiz with Fernandez during the June 9 shooting at a bar in the capital of Santo Domingo. The two men are friends and were sharing a table.
 
Ortiz was flown to Boston and remains hospitalized there after doctors in the Dominican Republic removed his gallbladder and part of his intestine.
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Lowe’s has selected Charlotte, North Carolina, to house a 2,000-employee global tech hub. The city hopes the project will cement its reputation as a home for technological talent.
 
Lowe’s and city officials announced Thursday the company would put $153 million toward the project, while the state’s giving a $54 million incentives grant to be paid over 12 years if Lowe’s meets job creation and investment targets.
 
The Charlotte Observer reports Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison says they selected Charlotte for its density of young tech professionals, and its location near Lowe’s headquarters in Mooresville.Lowe says it will begin hiring for about 1,600 new jobs immediately, with average annual pay at more than $115,000.Gov. Roy Cooper’s office says the 23-story tower will open in Charlotte’s South End in 2021.    
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R. Kelly’s lawyers want a Chicago judge to toss a 2019 lawsuit alleging the singer sexually abused a minor a little over 20 years ago.The Chicago Sun-Times reports their motion to dismiss was filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court.
 
The lawsuit says the abuse occurred in 1998. Kelly’s attorneys say she had until 2002 to sue. But state law can extend deadlines to file in cases where the accuser becomes aware of the abuse later.
 
Plaintiff lawyer Jeffrey Deutschman says Kelly has a right to file the motion but that it will drag out the case.
 
The plaintiff is one of four accusers in a separate criminal case . The suit was filed just before Kelly was charged in February with criminal sexual abuse. He denies ever abusing anyone. 
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«Схеми» знайшли позивачку до SkyUp і виявилось, заяву до Баришівського суду вона не писала
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A second small city in Florida has agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom to cybercriminals who disabled its computer system. Days after ransomware crippled the city of about 12,000 residents, officials of Lake City agreed this week to meet the hackers’ ransom demand: 42 Bitcoin or about $460,000. Last week, River Bench, in Palm Beach County, paid $600,000 in Bitcoin to retrieve its data. In both cases, most of the money will be paid by insurance companies. On Thursday, Key Biscayne, a third Florida city, said it too had been targeted by a cyberattack. But city officials said it had managed to restore most of its computer systems by late Wednesday. Ransomware, a type of malicious software designed to deny access to a computer system or data until a ransom is paid, is becoming an epidemic in the public sector. The cybersecurity firm Recorded Future reported in May that 170 city, county or state government systems have been attacked since 2013.Ransomware attacks are not limited to small cities. Baltimore, a city of more than 600,000, has been fighting a cyber breach since May. The city refused to pay the $80,000 ransom that the hackers demanded. Instead, it has spent $18 million on data recovery. Similarly, the city of Atlanta spent nearly $17 million after it was targeted in March 2018. In November, the FBI indicted two Iranian men in a computer hacking and extortion scheme that targeted cities like Atlanta and Newark, N.J., in addition to the Port of San Diego, the Colorado Department of Transportation and six health care-related organizations. The estimated losses added up to more than $30 million.FILE – A screenshot shows a WannaCry ransomware demand, provided by cybersecurity firm Symantec, in Mountain View, California, May 15, 2017.WannaCry attackOne of the largest ransomware attacks was WannaCry, which encrypted hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries in a matter of hours. It was the first time that ransomware had spread across the world in what looked like a coordinated cyberattack.The British national health care system was especially hard hit by WannaCry, which caused thousands of hospitals to go offline. The attack also affected government systems, railway networks and private companies.It was eventually traced to a group of hackers working for North Korea who used stolen highly classified hacking tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency.
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World champion race walker Ines Henriques is aiming for gender equality by asking the Court of Arbitration for Sport to add the women’s 50-kilometer event to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.CAS said Thursday it will hear her appeal against the International Olympic Committee and the IAAF on July 29-30.On the Olympic track and field program, the 50K walk is the only men’s medal event with no female equivalent. The IAAF has said the women’s 50K walk currently lacks the depth and quality to justify Olympic status.When Henriques won the first world championship title in 2017, only seven athletes from four countries started the race. Only four finished as Henriques set a world record of 4 hours, 5 minutes, 56 seconds. Liu Hong of China has since lowered the record below four hours, pending official ratification.The 39-year-old Portuguese walker won the 2018 European Championship title in a 19-athlete race.In an interview published on the IAAF website last year, Henriques said her dream was to compete in Tokyo with more than 30 women.”I hope that the IOC and the IAAF allow me to realize this dream,” she said last year.
 
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Twitter will begin labeling tweets by world leaders that violate its rules, but that it says still serve the “public interest,” the company announced in a blog post Thursday. The function will apply only to verified government officials and political candidates with over 100,000 followers.Twitter’s rules ban content that glorifies or encourages violence, promotes terrorism or carries out targeted harassment of other users. In the past, the company kept tweets by world leaders on the platform even when they broke the rules. The new disclaimers, Twitter said, are meant to clarify how decisions are made about keeping offending tweets online.”Our highest priority is to protect the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” the blog post says. “An important part of that is ensuring our rules and how we enforce them are easy to understand.”The decision to remove a tweet will depend on its potential to cause harm, particularly physical, its potential to provide context and unique perspectives to users, and its value in holding the official responsible.”A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable,” says the post.A task force with representatives from Twitter’s trust and safety, legal, public policy and regional teams will make decisions regarding rule-breaking tweets by world leaders.If a tweet is marked, Twitter’s algorithms and search functions won’t actively spread the content, ensuring fewer people see it. Users won’t get push notifications and won’t be able to see labeled tweets in safe search, top tweets, live events pages or the explore function.Response to Trump?Some published reports tie the new disclaimers to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has run afoul of Twitter’s rules before. He could find some of his own tweets slapped with a disclaimer. A Twitter spokesperson told Buzzfeed News that the move wasn’t aimed at any particular leader. Though meant to clarify Twitter’s decision-making process, the new policy could leave the company vulnerable to criticism from people with views that violate its rules. Some conservatives, including the president, have lambasted the platform for what they view as censorship of their speech.”They [Twitter] make it very hard for people to join me on Twitter and they make it very much harder for me to get out the message,” Trump told Fox Business on Wednesday. The disclaimers won’t be applied to any content posted to Twitter before Thursday.
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Facebook will seek nominations for a 40-person content oversight board “soon,” according to a blog post by the social media site Thursday.The review board would hear appeals to Facebook’s decisions to remove certain kinds of material from the platform and adjudicate cases independent of both Facebook management and governments, according Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of Governance and Global Affairs. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook should develop a “Supreme Court” for content moderation, where users could appeal decisions to a body unaffiliated with the company.FILE – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gestures while speaking during a media event at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, March 7, 2013.”You can imagine some sort of structure … that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein. “I’ve increasingly come to believe that Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” Zuckerberg wrote in a November post. Facebook discussed the issues with more than 2,000 people from dozens of countries.”First and foremost, people want a board that exercises independent judgment,” wrote Harris. He also said people “want a board that’s as diverse as the many people on Facebook and Instagram.” Increased scrutiny The plans to create an oversight board come as the social media entity and other tech companies receive increased scrutiny and criticism regarding content moderation and bias.   Some Republican lawmakers have accused the company of bias in its content moderation systems, while others on the Democratic side have called for antitrust action against the company. In an interview with Fox Business, U.S. President Donald Trump advocated legal action against Facebook and the popular search engine, Google. “Look, we should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, which perhaps we will, OK?” Trump said. 
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