Togo Targets COVID Relief With Satellites, Mobile Phones and AI
How satellite imagery and artificial intelligence helped the government of Togo deliver COVID-19 relief to its neediest citizens.
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World’s First Reusable Satellite Readies for Launch
The world’s first reusable satellite is set to launch next month. Plus, communication satellites galore, and the U.S. military test-launches weaponry that shatters the speed of sound. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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US Rolls Out Voluntary Cybersecurity Goals
The United States is trying to make it easier for companies and organizations to bolster their cybersecurity in the face of growing attacks aimed at crippling their operations, stealing their data or demanding ransom payments.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) rolled out their new Cybersecurity Performance Goals on Thursday, describing them as a critical but voluntary resource that will help companies and organizations make better decisions.
“Really what these cybersecurity performance goals present is a menu of options to advance one’s cybersecurity,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters, describing the rollout as a “watershed moment” for cybersecurity.
“They are accessible, they are easy to understand, and they are identified according to the cost that each would entail, the complexity to implement the goal, as well as the magnitude of the impact that the goal’s implementation would have,” he added.
For months, U.S. officials have been warning of an ever more complex and dangerous threat environment in cyberspace, pushing the government’s “Shields Up” awareness campaign, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
They have also called attention to cyberattacks by Iran and North Korea, while warning that both nation states and non-state actors have increasingly been scanning and targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, from water and electric companies to airports, which were struck by a series of denial-of-service attacks earlier in October.
Private cybersecurity companies have likewise warned of a growing number of attacks against health care companies and education and research organizations.
While some bigger U.S. companies and organizations have been able to devote time, money and other resources to confront the growing dangers, U.S. officials are concerned that others have not.
In particular, CISA has worried about small to mid-sized businesses, along with hospitals and school systems, often described by officials as target rich but resource poor because they do not have the money or resources to defend systems and data from hackers.
Officials said the new guidelines, which focus on key areas like account security, training, incident reporting, and response and recovery, and come with checklists, are designed to ease the burden. The officials also said they anticipate the goals will change and evolve along with the threat.
The newly unveiled goals “were developed to really represent a minimum baseline of cyber security measures that if implemented, will reduce not only risk to critical infrastructure but also to national security, economic security and public health and safety,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly, calling them a “quick start guide.”
“[It’s] really a place to start to drive prioritized investment toward the most critical practices,” she said.
According to CISA, many of the new goals are already resonating, including with state and local officials running U.S. elections.
“We’ve been working with them to implement several of these best practices, as well as ensuring that they have the tools and resources and the capabilities to ensure the security and resilience of election infrastructure,” Easterly told reporters Thursday. “I’ve met with election officials even just over the past few days … and they all expressed confidence in particular in the cybersecurity across all of their systems.”
CISA also said Thursday that U.S. states and territories needing more help can take advantage of $1 billion in grants that are being made available over the next four years.
The grants, designed specifically to help protect U.S. critical infrastructure, were first announced last month.
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UN: Greenhouse Gas Cuts Needed to Prevent Climate Catastrophe
GENEVA – A U.N. report warns the window for preventing a climate catastrophe is fast closing. The U.N. Environment Program’s latest Emissions Gap Report urges unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and a rapid transformation of societies to head off the worst.
The U.N. report finds the world is falling far short of the Paris climate goals agreement, with no credible pathway for limiting a temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said progress since last year’s climate change conference, COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, has been woefully inadequate. She said nations have failed to deliver on their pledges for greater emissions cuts.
She noted greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 45 percent by 2030 to stop climate change. However, instead of stabilizing global temperatures at 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level, she said temperatures will likely rise 2.4 to 2.6 degrees by 2100.
“We are sliding from climate crisis to climate disaster. This report is sending us a very, very clear message. If we are serious about climate change, we need to kickstart a system-wide transformation now. We need a root and branch redesign of the electricity sector, of the transport sector, of the building sector, and food systems.”
Additionally, she said financial systems must be reformed so they can bankroll the required transformations. She says incremental changes no longer are an option. Bold action must be taken now.
Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Peterri Talaas called the transformational changes doable. He noted the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, earlier this year reported that prices of climate-friendly energy solutions have been dropping.
“Nowadays, it is cheaper to invest in solar or wind energy as compared to the fossil energy. And the good news is also that 32 countries have reduced their emissions during the past 15 years, whereas their economies have been growing. So, there is not an automatic connection between economic growth and emissions growth.”
He mentioned European countries, the United States, Japan, and Singapore as some of the countries that have managed to grow their economies while reducing emissions.
Environmental experts estimate a global transformation to a low-emissions economy is expected to require investments of at least $4 trillion to $6 trillion a year. They are urging nations attending next week’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to agree to foot the bill and to up their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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MSF Warns of Measles, Cholera Outbreaks at Kenya Refugee Complex
The charity Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Complex faces a high risk of measles and cholera outbreaks as thousands of new refugees arrive from areas of Somalia where the diseases are circulating.
More than 233,000 refugees live in three overcrowded camps in the complex.
Doctors Without Borders, best known by its French acronym MSF, reported a sharp rise since January in the number of people fleeing to Kenya to escape drought, hunger and violence.
Many of the new arrivals are from southern Somalia, where measles and cholera outbreaks recently have occurred, the charity said.
MSF’s deputy program manager for Kenya, Adrian Guadarrama, said Thursday in Geneva that many are being received by refugee communities inside camps, but many more are living in very poor conditions on the outskirts of the camps.
Last week, he said, MSF teams recorded three cases of measles and two suspected cases of cholera in Dagahaley, one of Dadaab’s three refugee camps.
“This should be an alarm for all the actors and stakeholders involved in the response in Dadaab. Because we know that just one case of any of these diseases can cause a full-blown outbreak very quickly, affecting not only the refugee community, but also the host community,” Guadarrama said.
Kenya’s Health Ministry last week issued a cholera alert following confirmation of 61 cases in six counties.
Guadarrama said Kenya stopped registering new arrivals in Dadaab in 2015.
Unregistered refugees, he said, cannot get basic services and assistance. He said clean drinking water is scarce, and toilets and handwashing points lacking. These conditions, he said, make the unregistered refugees highly vulnerable to life-threatening diseases.
Guadarrama said the need for measles and cholera vaccination campaigns is urgent, but that devising a strategy is complex. Some people are scattered in the outskirts, he said, while others are inside Dagahaley camp.
“We talk about a camp of 115,000. So, just to identify them is quite a challenge,” he said. “And this is why having screening, or a reception center or a registration center — that would be ideal — would allow us to cope with those activities and provide access to basic services including vaccination, for example.”
Guadarrama said the humanitarian situation in the camps and in the surrounding communities is not yet at the breaking point and there is still time to avoid an emergency in a long and protracted crisis.
0Musk Says He Doesn’t Seek ‘Free-for-All Hellscape’ for Twitter
Elon Musk is telling Twitter advertisers he is buying the platform to “help humanity” and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything can be said with no consequences.
The message to advertisers posted Thursday on Twitter came a day before Musk’s deadline for closing his $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company and take it private.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote, in an unusually-long message for the billionaire Tesla CEO who typically projects his thoughts in one-line tweets
He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
The message reflects concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.
Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed an April deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial that would likely lead to a judge forcing Musk to complete the deal.
But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through by Friday, paying a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday and changing his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit.”
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Germany to Become One of Europe’s First Countries to Legalize Cannabis
Germany on Wednesday unveiled plans to legalize cannabis, potentially making it one of the first countries in Europe to make marijuana legal.
Presenting his plans to the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said the proposal aims to achieve “the most liberal cannabis liberalization in Europe, and, on the other hand … the most tightly regulated market.”
Germany’s federal Cabinet reportedly approved the plan, kicking off a lengthy process to legalize growth, cultivation and distribution of the plant.
German laws must comply with European legislation, and under the proposal, the government would regulate cannabis production, sale, and distribution as part of a controlled, legalized market, said Lauterbach, describing the reform as a possible “model” for other European countries.
Although many European countries have decriminalized small amounts of cannabis for recreational purposes, only one, Malta, has fully legalized it.
The proposed plan would also legalize the acquisition and possession of 20 to 30 grams of cannabis for personal consumption, cultivation of up to two or three plants per person, and sales through specialized stores. Use of cannabis would remain prohibited for anyone under 18.
According to the plan, the government would also introduce a special consumption tax and develop education and abuse prevention programs, while ongoing investigations and criminal proceedings connected to cannabis would be terminated.
Legalizing cannabis would push out Germany’s cannabis black market and could increase annual tax revenues, create 27,000 new jobs, and generate cost savings of about $4.7 billion, according to a report by Reuters.
Wednesday’s announcement was met with mixed reactions throughout the country. A national pharmacists association warned of potential health risks of legalizing cannabis, while some regional officials expressed concerns that Germany would become a drug-tourism destination, similar to the Netherlands, where some coffee shops are allowed to sell cannabis under strict conditions.
According to The Guardian, Germany’s health minister said the Dutch system “combined two disadvantages: liberal use but not a controlled market. What we have learned from the Dutch experience is that we don’t want to do it that way. We want to control the entire market.”
Some information from this report came from Reuters.
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