Venezuela Crisis Enters New Phase With Sunday Vote

Despite four months of deadly protests and the threat of U.S. sanctions, Venezuela on Saturday found itself 24 hours away from a consolidation of government power that appeared certain to drag the OPEC nation deeper into a crisis that has entire neighborhoods battling police and paramilitaries while the poor root for scraps in piles of trash.

 

In the opposition strongholds of relatively wealthy eastern Caracas, skinny teenagers manned barricades of tree branches, garbage and barbed wire torn from nearby buildings. Clashes with police began late Friday afternoon and lasted into the night. The months of violence have left at least 113 dead and nearly 2,000 wounded.

 

The rest of the capital was calm. Across the city, residents said they wanted President Nicolas Maduro out of power but didn’t want to risk their lives or livelihoods taking on his socialist government and its backers.

 

“I have a young daughter, I can’t risk anything happening to me,” said Maria Llanes, a 55-year-old flower-store worker who lives in a south Caracas neighborhood dominated by armed pro-government motorcycle gangs. “What do I do, protest in this neighborhood, so that they kill me? This area’s run by a mafia loyal to the money the government pays them.”

 

Constituent Assembly

Maduro called for a massive turnout Sunday for a vote to elect members of an assembly tasked with rewriting the 18-year-old constitution created under president Hugo Chavez. The opposition is boycotting because, it says, the vote called by Maduro was structured to ensure that his ruling socialist party dominates.

 

The opposition says the government is so afraid of low turnout that it’s threatening to fire state workers who don’t vote, and take away social benefits like subsidized food from recipients who stay away from the polls. By Wednesday, the resulting National Constituent Assembly will become one of the most powerful organs in the country, able to root out the last vestiges of democratic checks and balances in favor of what many fear will be a single-party authoritarian system.

First Lady Cilia Flores, a candidate for the assembly, said it would create a commission to ensure those responsible for the political upheaval “pay and learn their lesson.” Diosdado Cabello, first vice president of Venezuela’s socialist party, says the assembly will strip legislators in the opposition-controlled National Assembly of their immunity from prosecution. He said the office of Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, who recently became one of Maduro’s most outspoken critics, would be “turned upside down.”

 

“On July 30, the constitutional assembly will happen,” Maduro said Friday at a subsidized housing ceremony. “I’ve been loyal to Chavez’s legacy. Now it’s your turn.”

 

Washington has imposed successive rounds of sanctions on members of Maduro’s administration and Vice President Mike Pence on Friday promised “strong and swift economic actions” after Sunday’s vote. He didn’t say whether the U.S. would sanction Venezuelan oil imports, a measure with the potential to undermine Maduro but cause an even deeper humanitarian crisis here.

 

Opposition in hiding

Opinion polls show that more than 70 percent of the country is opposed to Sunday’s vote. But as many as half of all Venezuelans support neither the government nor the opposition – a phenomenon evident in the glum paralysis that has gripped much of the country as protesters and police wage nightly battles. While Venezuelans bitterly complain about shortages of food and medicine, few still respond to opposition calls for protests, a far cry from early demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands pouring into the streets.

 

“Many strange things have taken place this week that makes you wonder what is going on with the opposition. I don’t know. The opposition is at home, the opposition is hiding,” Caracas resident Abed Mondabed said.

 

The opposition has organized a series of work stoppages and a July 16 protest vote it says drew more than 7.5 million symbolic votes against the constitutional assembly. It called late Friday for massive marches on the day of the assembly vote.

 

In the eastern neighborhood of Bello Monte, the site of fierce battles with police in recent days, a 54-year-old shop owner named Ricardo watched masked adolescents block a road with dumpsters as a soot-smeared, emaciated man picked through their contents for bits of food.

 

Ricardo, who declined to provide his last name for fear of government retaliation, said he felt the Sunday vote meant the last chance for political resolution of Venezuela’s problems was gone, ushering in an even more violent phase.

 

“Negotiations have come to an end,” he said. “The fight will continue and all of a sudden it could be a lot tougher.”

Silicon Valley’s Hot Café: Where Digirati Pitch Ideas Over Venezuelan Coffee

Silicon Valley is the tech industry’s epicenter, but what is the epicenter of Silicon Valley?

It might just be Coupa Café in downtown Palo Alto, Calif.

For the tech community, this café is a meeting place of the who’s who of Silicon Valley, where the likes of the late Steve Jobs of Apple, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have all been spotted. Up-and-coming startup founders are able to buy their lattes with the digital currency Bitcoin before their pitch sessions with leading industry venture capitalists.

The café is so well known among techies that a cup with the Coupa logo was featured as a prop in the 2010 film The Social Network.

“I remember seeing Mark Zuckerberg sitting here and having meetings and people coming up,” said Eric Sokol, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University.

While Silicon Valley is famous for companies such as Facebook, Twitter and other billion-dollar empires built in cyberspace, some folks in the valley still believe real-world human connections can make a difference.

Making connections

Just from frequenting the café, Sokol says, he became an adviser to a health care related startup and a new venture capitalist fund. Both came about when other patrons at the café overheard conversations he was having, he said.

That’s the kind of “crazy nest of connections” that can occur at Coupa, he said.

The Venezuelan-born Jean Paul Coupal founded the café with his mother and sister in 2004 with the hopes of bringing a bit of his homeland to Silicon Valley — Venezuelan coffee, crepes and Venezuelan arepas. The family puts its touch on all aspects of the business — Coupal’s sister and mother personally painted each of the eight cafés.

While the beautifully decorated walls and rich cuisine may be what initially attracted the tech community, the café’s tech focus has kept it in the vanguard of this café-saturated region.

In 2013, Coupa Cafe began accepting Bitcoins, a digital payment system, allowing customers to pay for their lattes and arepas with the currency.

“We want to be part of the technology,” Coupal said.

The pre-office

And there’s another perk: The café allows patrons to stay all day, which makes it attractive for entrepreneurs who are in the pre-office-space stage.

“A lot of the startups in the area come and they like to work at Coupa, coding all day,” Coupal said. “We’ve seen a lot of products that got developed at Coupa.”

With Stanford and other colleges nearby, the possibility of a life-changing chance encounter is not lost on local students interested in tech.

“I am currently teaching myself JavaScript here at Coupa right now,” said Katie Kennedy, a local community college student. “If someone happened to look over my shoulder and saw what I was doing, I would definitely not say no to any help.”

Now, there are eight Coupa Cafe locations. This one, the original on Ramona Street, is in a building from the 1930s.

“The food’s good, the coffee’s good,” Sokol said. “I wish I had stock, but I don’t in Coupa. And I don’t know, it just has the right atmosphere, the right mix of people. It’s got an energy about it, I guess.”

Cafe Coupa shows that being at the right place at the right time can change a café’s fate as much as a techie’s life.

Spain Evacuates 300 as Forest Fire Spreads

Regional government authorities in southeastern Spain say a wildfire has forced the evacuation of 300 people and burned 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of pine forest.

 

Francisco Martinez, the regional head of agriculture, environment and rural development for Castilla-La Mancha, says residents from 10 small towns and visitors at a campsite have been relocated.

 

More than 150 firefighters supported by air units were fighting the fire Saturday. The blaze started Friday and spread into the National Park of Los Calares del Rio Mundo.

 

Spain and neighboring Portugal are prone to forest fires during the typically dry and hot summer months.

Silicon Valley’s Hot Cafe: Where Digirati Pitch Ideas Over Venezuelan Coffee

There’s a café in the heart of Silicon Valley where the biggest names in tech are known to take their lattes, attracting startup founders who frantically make their pitches to the venture capitalists holding court at the wooden tables. Coupa Café in Palo Alto, California, has a certain electric buzz, as Deana Mitchell reports.

Mainstream Model 3 Could Make or Break Tesla Dreams

For Tesla, everything is riding on the Model 3.

The electric car company’s newest vehicle was delivered to its first 30 customers, all Tesla employees, Friday evening. Its $35,000 starting price, half the cost of Tesla’s previous models, and range of up to 310 miles (498 km) could bring hundreds of thousands of customers into the automaker’s fold, taking it from a niche luxury brand to the mainstream. Around 500,000 people worldwide have reserved a Model 3.

Those higher sales could finally make Tesla profitable and accelerate its plans for future products like SUVs and pickups.

Or the Model 3 could dash Tesla’s dreams.

Much could go wrong

Potential customers could lose faith if Tesla doesn’t meet its aggressive production schedule, or if the cars have quality problems that strain Tesla’s small service network. 

The compact Model 3 may not entice a global market that’s increasingly shifting to SUVs, including all-electric SUVs from Audi and others going on sale soon. And a fully loaded Model 3 with 310 miles of range costs a hefty $59,500; the base model goes 220 miles (322 km) on a charge.

Limits on the $7,500 U.S. tax credit for electric cars could also hurt demand. Once an automaker sells 200,000 electric cars in the U.S., the credit phases out. Tesla has sold more than 126,000 vehicles since 2008, according to estimates by WardsAuto, so not everyone who buys a Model 3 will be eligible.

“There are more reasons to think that it won’t be successful than it will,” says Karl Brauer, the executive publisher for Cox Automotive, which owns Autotrader and other car buying sites.

Always part of Tesla plans

The Model 3 has long been part of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla’s plans. In 2006, three years after the company was founded, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would eventually build “affordably priced family cars” after establishing itself with high-end vehicles like the Model S, which starts at $69,500. This will be the first time many Tesla workers will be able to afford a Tesla.

“It was never our goal to make expensive cars. We wanted to make a car everyone could buy,” Musk said Friday. “If you’re trying to make a difference in the world, you also need to make cars people can afford.”

Tesla started taking reservations for the Model 3 in March 2016. Musk said more than 500,000 people have put down a $1,000 deposit for the car. People ordering a car now likely won’t get it until late 2018. Cars will go first to employees and customers on the West Coast; overseas deliveries start late next year, and right-hand drive versions come in 2019.

Challenges to deliver

But carmaking has proved a challenge to Musk. Both the Model S and the Model X SUV were delayed and then plagued with pesky problems, like doors that don’t work and blank screens in their high-tech dashboards.

Tesla’s luxury car owners might overlook those problems because they liked the thrill of being early adopters. But mainstream buyers will be less forgiving.

“This will be their primary vehicle, so they will have high expectations of quality and durability and expect everything to work every time,” said Sam Abuelsamid, a senior researcher with Navigant Research.

The Model 3 was designed to be much simpler and cheaper to make than Tesla’s previous vehicles. It has one dashboard screen, not two, and no fancy door handles. It’s made primarily of steel, not aluminum. It has no instrument panel; the speed limit and other information normally there can be found on the center screen. It doesn’t even have a key fob; drivers can open and lock the car with a smartphone or a credit cardlike key.

‘Manufacturing hell’

Still, Musk said he’s expecting “at least six months of manufacturing hell” as the Model 3 ramps up to full production. Musk wants to be making 20,000 Model 3s per month by December at the carmaker’s Fremont factory.

Musk aims to make 500,000 vehicles next year, a number that could help Tesla finally make money. The company has only had two profitable quarters since it went public in 2010. But even at that pace, Tesla will remain a small player. Toyota Motor Corp. made more than 10 million vehicles last year.

Abuelsamid said even if it doesn’t meet its ambitious targets, Tesla has done more than anyone to promote electric vehicles.

“A decade ago they were a little more than golf carts. Now all of a sudden, EVs are real, practical vehicles that can be used for anything,” he said.

Chemical Industry and U.S. Call for Global Culture of Chemical Security

Securing petrochemical plants and keeping chemicals out of the hands of terrorists were the topics of discussion at a recent Chemical Sector Security Summit in Houston, Texas. Security experts say the countries that are producing chemicals are shifting and that is one of many reasons developed and developing nations need to share best security practices. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Houston, a petrochemical hub in the United States.

Trump to Approve Sanctions Bill; Russia Imposes Its Own

The White House says President Donald Trump approves of Congress’ new sanctions against Russia and he intends to sign the bill.

In a statement Friday, the press secretary said the president has reviewed the final version of the bill that outlines additional sanctions against a wide range of Russia industries. The bill also gives Congress the ability to block the president from lifting the Russia sanctions.

The Trump administration had opposed the sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for interfering in last year’s U.S. presidential election. The White House argued that it needed flexibility in trying to improve relations between the two countries. But after months of investigations into contacts between Russian officials and members of President Trump’s campaign team, there was broad bipartisan support in both houses of Congress for more stringent measures.

Russia responds with sanctions

Russia responded earlier Friday to the sanctions with new measures targeting U.S. missions in the country. Moscow said Washington must reduce the number of diplomatic and technical staff working in U.S. missions in Russia to 455 by Sept. 1. That’s same number of Russian diplomats and technical staff Moscow said are working in the United States. It is unclear how many Americans that would affect, possibly hundreds.

In addition to the reduction in U.S. diplomatic personnel, Russia also said it would block the U.S. embassy in Russia from accessing its warehouses in Moscow and a vacation compound in Serebryany Bor.

“We also reserve the right to take other measures according to the principle of reciprocity, which may affect the interests of the United States,” the ministry said.

​Putin approves decision

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian leader had personally approved Friday’s Foreign Ministry decision.

“The form in which the sanctions bill emerged from the Senate had greater significance,” Peskov said.

The Russian retaliation was celebrated in Moscow as a long overdue response to actions from the previous U.S. administration.

In December 2016, former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and seized Russian embassy compounds in Maryland and New York as punishment for Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections.

At the time, Putin chose not to respond, a move many saw as a gesture of goodwill to the incoming Trump administration, which had expressed a desire for improved relations with Moscow.

Yet Friday’s move reflected growing Russian frustration that the Trump White House, besieged by multiple investigations into its ties to Russia during the campaign, had not delivered on its campaign promises.

“We did everything in our power to save relations from disaster, but the Americans did just the opposite,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev in a post to Facebook. Kosachev, a Russia politician, went on to call the retaliation “long overdue.”

Sergey Markov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin, also cheered the Kremlin’s decision as inevitable, writing on Facebook that “hope that the President of the United States could change relations with Russia for the better are over.”

The bill U.S. senators approved Thursday also imposes new sanctions on Iran and North Korea. For Russia, the measures are designed to affect a wide range of Russian industries, hitting the country squarely in the pocketbook.

The European Union has expressed concern about the new sanctions, saying they could have an impact on the European energy sector.

Praise on Capitol Hill

Daniel Fried, an Obama-era official who coordinated the administration’s sanctions policy, told VOA he didn’t think the move by Congress to block Trump from altering sanctions would affect a bilateral settlement, but rather was meant to stop Trump from lifting the sanctions “for no good reason.”

“I think if there were a settlement and if this were generally acceptable to all the parties, including Ukraine, I think that Congress would not stand in the way of the administration lifting the Ukraine-related sanctions,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are already praising the group effort to pass the bill quickly. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement: “I am pleased the Senate has acted overwhelmingly to give the administration much-needed economic and political leverage to address threats from Iran, Russia, and North Korea. This bipartisan bill is about keeping America safe, and I urge the president to sign it into law.”

Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Senate Banking Committee said, “This bill passed with overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House, sending a strong message to Vladimir Putin that attacks on our democracy will not be tolerated. President Trump should sign this bill as soon as it hits his desk. Otherwise, he risks encouraging Russia’s interference in future elections.”

VOA’s Charles Maynes, Michael Bowman and Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.

Socialist Party Candidates Fill Venezuelan Ballot 

One candidate is the son of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and another is his wife. A third is a socialist militant whom late socialist leader Hugo Chavez once called a criminal who should be jailed.

But of the 6,120 candidates in Sunday’s election for a 545-member legislative super body, none are from Venezuela’s opposition, which is boycotting what it calls a rigged ballot meant to consummate a dictatorship.

Critics say Maduro is less interested in rewriting the constitution, which already provides generous powers to the executive branch, than he is in obtaining the near-absolute powers that the new legislative body would have.

It would be able to dissolve state institutions, and its decisions could not be overruled by any other government agency.

Opposition boycotts, Socialists flood in 

The absence of the opposition, which won a landslide victory in 2015 legislative elections, means the pool of aspirants for the all-powerful assembly is a mixture of well-known ruling Socialist Party leaders and rank-and-file pro-government activists.

Two-thirds of them will vie for seats distributed via municipalities and state capitals. The remainder are running for seats allocated to specific demographic groups, ranging from students to fisherman and farmers.

The son of Nicolas Maduro, who has the same name, is running as a candidate for public sector workers. In an interview with local media, he said he is qualified because he led a presidential inspection team created by his father to monitor public works, giving him valuable information to protect workers’ rights.

“We visited hospitals, public works, social programs, it was very advanced,” the younger Maduro, 27, told local television station Venevision this week.

On the ballot to represent Caracas, the capital, is first lady Cilia Flores, a Socialist Party power broker who has been widely accused of installing family members in positions of power.

Big name candidates

The election gives disproportionate weight to historically pro-government rural areas at the expense of opposition-leaning cities because seats are distributed by municipalities, which opposition leaders noted when refusing to join the vote.

They also say that the use of sectorial candidates gave too much leverage to the government-leaning electoral council to weed out candidates.

A significant portion of the seats will likely go to well-known party leaders such as Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello, hard-line former Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez and oil workers union leader Wills Rangel.

But less-influential players are also seeking seats.

One is Valentin Santana, best known for leading a group known as “La Piedrita” or “The Little Stone” that describes itself as a revolutionary community organization that helps organize citizens in Caracas’ poor west end.

The late Chavez in 2009 excoriated Santana for making death threats against government adversaries, labeling him a criminal and calling on the chief prosecutor to arrest him.

Santana has three outstanding arrest warrants and has evaded multiple attempts by authorities to detain him, according to local media. Reuters was unable to contact him.

World criticizes election

The election has been highly criticized by governments around the world. Opposition leaders say the Socialist Party will use it arbitrarily to arrest adversaries and to sack public officials who question the government, such as dissident chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega.

Since April, Maduro’s opponents have been staging violent street demonstrations to protest his refusal to respect the opposition-led Congress and to demand a resolution to a severe economic crisis.

More than 100 people have been killed in the unrest.

Some candidates say the opposition’s withdrawal has opened possibilities for socialist activists without links to political parties to take part in the vote.

Orlando Toral, 33, is running as a candidate under the demographic of people with disabilities, citing a slight limp resulting from an infection he got after a skateboarding accident.

“I’m happy that people with disabilities also have rights, thanks to laws created in the revolution,” Toral said as he prepared to join a rally with Maduro marking the close of the campaign. “(The opposition) is seeking to delegitimize a process that is going to bring power to all of us.”

Brexit Web Tangled by Spats Over How to Leave, Irish Border

Britain’s progress toward life outside the European Union became more entangled Friday, with divisions deepening over Northern Ireland’s border and even the type of divorce Britain actually wants.

The uncertainty coincided with the EU’s top negotiator warning that formal talks are set to be delayed, eating up more of the two-year divorce timetable.

Negotiations on the future relationship between Britain and the EU are now less likely to start in October because of a lack of progress at the initial stage of talks about the breakup, Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has told EU ambassadors.

Britain responded that it was confident that enough progress could be made to start the second stage of talks, but as Prime Minister Theresa May vacationed in Italy, her ministers engaged in a public debate about how Brexit should look.

Finance Minister Philip Hammond, who opposed leaving the EU in last year’s referendum and has one eye on the business community, said there should be no immediate change to immigration or trading rules when Britain leaves.

Five years away

A shift to new arrangements could last until mid-2022, he said, adding he wanted to avoid a cliff-edge. He stressed that British hospitals and care homes relied as much on EU migrant workers as many businesses.

“We’ve been clear that it will be some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the U.K. and the European Union,” he told BBC radio.

May’s loss of her majority in the British Parliament with a botched gamble on a snap election has prompted an apparent softening of rhetoric on Brexit. But some EU member state diplomats say it’s now hard to discern what Britain wants.

Britain has less than two years to negotiate the terms of the divorce and the outlines of the future relationship before it is due to leave in late March 2019. Both sides need an agreement to keep trade flowing between the world’s biggest trading bloc and the fifth-largest global economy.

“In the immediate aftermath of leaving the European Union goods will continue to flow across the border between the U.K. and EU in much the same way as they do now,” Hammond said.

Britain’s economy weathered the immediate shock of last year’s vote to leave the EU much better than the government and most analysts had predicted.

But growth in the first half of this year has been the weakest since 2012, and earlier on Friday a closely watched consumer survey showed sentiment was its weakest in a year.

Households viewed the economy as the worst in four years.

Brexit transition

May expects what she calls an implementation phase, but she has given few details of how it would look. Any such deal will also be subject to discussion with the other 27 EU members.

Hammond’s tone, meanwhile, is sharply different from that of some other senior ministers in May’s cabinet who want a cleaner break with the EU, including swift controls on immigration.

“A transitional deal will delay all the benefits of being able to control our laws, trade and borders. We need to get on with it,” said Richard Tice, a Brexiteer who helped fund one of the Leave campaigns in the EU referendum.

The anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party said Hammond’s words indicated uncontrolled EU immigration would continue for years after the 2019 leave date.

Late on Friday, the Daily Telegraph reported that Hammond and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, who favors taking a tough stance with the EU on Brexit, had issued a joint statement saying they were “working together to take the U.K. out of the EU.”

It made no mention of transitional arrangements, the newspaper said.

Government representatives were unable to immediately confirm the joint statement.

It was unclear whether Hammond’s proposals would become government policy, though the implications could be far-reaching.

The proposals could be read to mean that Britain would continue to pay into EU coffers during the transition, continue to accept EU laws and even effectively accept its four freedoms, allowing free movement of people, capital, goods and services.

“I am not sure if they fully know what they want themselves,” one EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

The European Commission said that discussions about a potential Brexit transition period could begin only once divorce issues were settled.

Three points

Before talks on a transition can begin, the EU wants to settle three main points: the future rights of expatriate citizens, the exit bill Britain has to pay and how to avoid the reimposition of border controls between the Republic of Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

Neither side has proposed a solution to the Northern Ireland issue, which remains sensitive almost two decades after a peace deal ended years of violence in the province.

Ireland is against the imposition of an “economic border” with Northern Ireland, and the Irish government is not going to help Britain design one, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.

He was speaking after Northern Irish Protestant politicians propping up May’s minority government reacted with fury to a report that Dublin wants customs checks on boats and planes between Britain and Ireland rather than along its land border with Northern Ireland.

Ireland’s foreign minister said no such proposal existed. “As far as this government is concerned there shouldn’t be an economic border. We don’t want one,” Varadkar told reporters at a briefing in Dublin.

Mexico City Floating Farms, Chefs Team Up to Save Tradition

At dawn in Xochimilco, home to Mexico City’s famed floating gardens, farmers in muddied rain boots squat among rows of beets as a group of chefs arrive to sample sweet fennel and the pungent herb known as epazote.

 

By dinnertime some of those greens will be on plates at an elegant bistro 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the north, stewed with black beans in a $60 prix-fixe menu for well-heeled diners.

 

Call it floating-farm-to-table: A growing number of the capital’s most in-demand restaurants are incorporating produce grown at the gardens, or chinampas, using ancient cultivation techniques pioneered hundreds of years ago in the pre-Columbian era.

 

While sourcing local ingredients has become fashionable for many top chefs around the globe, it takes on additional significance in Xochimilco, where a project linking chinampa farmers with high-end eateries aims to breathe life and a bit of modernity into a fading and threatened tradition.

 

“People sometimes think [farm-to-table] is a trend,” said Eduardo Garcia, owner and head chef of Maximo Bistrot in the stylish Roma Norte district. “It’s not a trend. It’s something that we humans have always done and we need to keep doing it, we need to return to it.”

Xochimilco, on the far southern edge of Mexico City, is best-known as the “Mexican Venice” for its canals and brightly colored boats where locals and tourists can while away a weekend day listening to mariachi music and sipping cold beers.

 

It has also been a breadbasket for the Valley of Mexico since before the Aztec Empire, when farmers first created the “floating” islands bound to the shallow canal beds through layers of sediment and willow roots.

 

There’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world, and Xochimilco is designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

 

But that World Heritage status and Xochimilco itself are threatened by the pollution and encroaching urbanization that plague the rest of the sprawling metropolis.

 

Enter Yolcan, a business that specializes in placing traditionally farmed Xochimilco produce in Mexico City’s most acclaimed restaurants Those include places like Gabriela Camara’s seafood joint Contramar and Enrique Olvera’s Pujol, which is perhaps the country’s most famous restaurant and regularly makes lists of the world’s best.

 

Yolcan has been around since 2011, but it’s only in the last year that business has really taken off with the number of restaurant partners increasing by a third during that period to 22. Last month five of them teamed up with Yolcan for dinner to benefit chinampa preservation.

The company directly manages its own farmland and also partners with local families to help distribute their goods, lending a much-needed hand as an intermediary.

 

“The thing about the chinampa farmer is that he does not have the time to track down a market or a person to promote his product,” said David Jimenez, who works a plot in the San Gregorio area of Xochimilco. “Working the chinampas is very demanding.”

 

All told Yolcan’s operation covers about 15 acres (6 hectares) and churns out some 2.5 tons of produce per month. Due to the high salinity of the soil drawn from canal beds, the straw-covered chinampa plots are particularly fertile ground for root vegetables and hearty greens like kale and chard.

Diners reserve weeks in advance for a coveted table at Maximo Bistrot, one of three restaurants Garcia runs. Meticulously prepared plates of chinampa-grown roasted yellow carrots with asparagus puree arrive at the table, accompanied by sea bass with green mole sauce and wine pairings in tall glasses.

Garcia estimated he gets about two-thirds of his ingredients from Yolcan or other organic farms nearby. He was born in a rural part of Guanajuato state where his family raised corn and largely ate what they grew, so sourcing local is second-nature.

 

“I think all of the world’s restaurants should make it a goal to use these alternative ingredients,” Garcia said, stirring a pot of beans flavored with the aromatic epazote herb. “Even though it’s a little more expensive, a little more difficult to find.”

 

Chinampa produce generally sells for 15 to 100 percent more than comparable goods at the enormous Central de Abasto, the go-to wholesale market for nearly all of Mexico City’s chefs that is so monolithic its competition sets prices across the country.

 

But chefs who buy from Yolcan are happy to pay a premium knowing they’re getting vegetables free of chemical fertilizers or pesticides and also supporting a centuries-old tradition.

 

Diners at Maximo Bistrot also said they enjoyed their meal, especially the burrata with chinampa-grown heirloom tomatoes. One couple said they are willing to pay the prices of these high-end eateries in order to have the best produce.

 

“We’ve eaten in 26 countries around the world, and for the price and quality, this was awesome,” said Kristin Kearin, a 35-year-old masseuse from United States. “I honestly think that using small producers is going to come back.”

Troops Deploy in Rio de Janeiro Amid Increasing Violence

Thousands of soldiers began patrolling Rio de Janeiro on Friday amid a spike in violence in Brazil’s second-largest city.

The deployment of 8,500 soldiers, plus hundreds of police and highway patrol officers, is aimed at fighting organized crime gangs, which control many of the city’s hundreds of slums.

Defense Minister Raul Jungmann said patrols would soon start participating in operations against drug traffickers. That is a break from previous duties that were limited to patrolling, manning checkpoints and recovering caches of weapons seized during police raids. The operation is scheduled to run until the end of 2018.

Some troops began deploying in the afternoon, with trucks full of soldiers seen rolling over bridges and expressways.

While the main efforts were concentrated in the city’s north, where violence is most pervasive, armored vehicles were also patrolling the quiet surroundings of the Santos Dumont airport. As the sun set, a dozen soldiers with rifles in hand stood silhouetted against Guanabara Bay.

“I’m not really sure what they are doing here, since the crime they have to fight is in the other side of the city,” said Almir Soares, a passer-by. He called the deployment a stunt, but then conceded that the military operation could deter violence where it is actually needed.

Three people on average were killed each day by stray bullets in the first six months of the year in Rio de Janeiro. That number, plus criminal assaults and increasing shootouts between drug traffickers and police, have led authorities in recent weeks to acknowledge that much of the city is out of their control.

Last year, 85,000 troops were used to bolster security around the venues of the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio.

Public security experts say Brazil’s worst recession in decades is exacerbating the situation.

Regional Rights Body Says Argentina Should Free Jailed Activist

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said Friday that Argentina’s government should release jailed social activist Milagro Sala.

The commission said in a statement that there are many risk factors surrounding her detention, including alleged harassment, aggression and a death threat.

It granted a precautionary measure in favor of Sala stating that Argentina is obligated to fulfill a U.N. panel’s panel resolution last year saying she was arbitrarily detained and asked the government for her immediate release.

Sala heads Argentina’s Tupac Amaru social movement and won a seat in 2015 in the regional parliament of the Mercosur group of South American nations.

She was arrested on January 16, 2016, and accused of “inciting criminal acts” linked to a protest she led against authorities. The Jujuy provincial government in northern Argentina then broadened the charges, saying her movement “embezzled public funds” meant for the construction of housing for low-income people.

Sala has denied any wrongdoing.

The government’s Secretariat of Human Rights said in a statement that it would relay the recommendations to Jujuy’s judicial and administrative authorities and that it respected the rights commission.

OAS body

Members of the commission, which is an autonomous body of the Organization of American States, visited Jujuy and met with representatives of all parties. The commission said Sala is under constant harassment, including the initiation of legal cases without the guarantee of the right to defense, constant transfers and extreme surveillance.

The commission acted in response to a complaint filed by the Argentine human rights group Center for Legal and Social Studies and other human rights organizations.

“The commission makes it clear that Milagro Sala cannot remain in jail,” said Horacio Verbitsky, the group’s president. “The constant transfers are using a perverse methodology. It’s as if instead of a social leader, this was [Mexican drug lord] ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.”

Sala, a close ally of former President Cristina Fernandez, is accused of irregularly managing money that she received during Fernandez’s administration for the construction of lower-income housing in Jujuy province.

Her supporters say she looks only to benefit the poor. They call her arrest a political move by provincial Governor Gerardo Morales and other political allies of current President Mauricio Macri.

Pence to Visit Estonia, Georgia, Montenegro on NATO, Russia

Vice President Mike Pence visits three countries in Russia’s neighborhood beginning Monday to signal support for them and NATO while drawing a line against aggression.

 

Pence’s trip to Estonia, Georgia and Montenegro is viewed as a follow-up to President Donald Trump’s visit to Europe earlier this month. Then, Trump used stops in Poland and Germany to try to pull off a tricky balancing act of improving ties with Moscow while also presenting the U.S. as a check against Russia’s moves in the region.

 

Pence’s mission will be encouraging those countries to continue to ally with the West and resist Russia’s attempts to splinter the NATO alliance.

 

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have previously been dispatched to try to allay the concerns of countries near Russia that the U.S. really will stand behind NATO and support the sovereignty of non-member former Soviet republics.

 

The concerns stem from Trump’s suggestion during the campaign that the U.S. might not defend NATO allies and his apparent desire for closer relations with Russia. Trump received criticism on his first European trip for passing up the chance to affirm the NATO mutual defense commitment clause known as Article 5, which frames an attack on one as an attack on all. Trump did affirm U.S. support for Article 5 on his second trip to Europe.

 

The vice president is expected to deliver a message of support for U.S. trade and investment with the countries while underscoring the U.S. commitment to the security of the three nations, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters about the trip on the condition that they not be identified by name. Pence also will stress the values of freedom of speech, democracy and religious tolerance.

 

In Estonia, Pence is expected to highlight bilateral ties with the U.S., particularly on trade, investment and cyber issues. Pence also is expected to thank Estonian officials for their approach to “burden-sharing,” diplomatic speak for agreeing to spend a full share of 2 percent of their GDP on defense, the administration officials said.

 

The vice president also is expected to underscore the U.S. commitment to NATO, which sees Russia as a security threat and offers protection to concerned member states near Russia’s borders.

 

In Georgia, Pence is expected to highlight U.S. support for its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the officials said. Georgia is the only country on the trip that is not a NATO member and, like Ukraine, has seen Russian encroachment on its territory. The administration officials said the U.S. is encouraging Georgia to continue to make reforms to its judiciary and expand anti-corruption efforts.

 

In Montenegro, Pence will celebrate that nation as the newest NATO ally.

 

On Wednesday, he’ll attend the Adriatic Charter Summit in Podgorica, Montenegro, to highlight the U.S. commitment to the Western Balkans and underscore the importance of good governance, political reforms and rule of law. Also expected to attend are the leaders of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.

Peru’s President Promises Better Times in 2018

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski renewed his promise Friday to spur a faster economic expansion in the Andean nation, forecasting at least 4 percent growth in 2018 following a year of setbacks that he apologized for not handling better.

Addressing lawmakers and the public on Peru’s Independence Day, Kuczynski said he was sending Congress a proposal to speed up property transfers to make way for infrastructure projects after flooding and a graft scandal knocked growth prospects.

But Kuczynski did not announce any other economic measures in a speech that was more than an hour long and marked the start of his second year in the presidency.

Expectations dashed

Kuczynski had raised expectations upon taking office a year ago that the copper-producing country’s economy would improve with the former Wall Street banker and World Bank economist at its helm.

But Kuczynski’s plans to jump-start economic growth through infrastructure development and lower taxes were derailed this year by an unexpectedly brutal rainy season and revelations that Odebrecht, a Brazilian builder with an outsized presence in Peru, had bribed local officials for at least a decade.

“Maybe I underestimated the titanic effort that was needed to re-establish economic growth in this context. I apologize if that was the case,” Kuczynski said in Congress as he read from a speech that his office said he wrote.

Mending fences

The gesture might help Kuczynski mend fences with the right-wing opposition party that controls the single-chamber Congress and has pressured three of his ministers to resign.

Kuczynski’s government is also under pressure from striking public sector teachers and doctors whose protests to demand better wages have blocked roads and tourism in parts of Peru in recent weeks.

Peru’s economy is on track to expand by less than 3 percent this year, down from 3.9 percent in 2016, as unemployment rises, tax revenues plummet and the fiscal deficit grows.

Kuczynski called the current growth pace “totally inadequate” for a country with such a young population, and said investments in post-flood rebuilding combined with better prices for Peru’s mineral exports should ensure growth of at least 4 percent next year.

“Peru will get its rhythm back! I’ll make sure of it,” Kuczynski said.

But in a sign of the gloomier outlook, Kuczynski said he now aims to end his term in 2021 with the poverty rate at 15 percent, down from about 20 percent last year but far from the goal of 10 percent he announced before taking office.

US Lawmakers Expect More Sanctions on Venezuela Over Vote

Republican U.S. lawmakers said on Friday they expected Washington would announce more sanctions on Venezuela if its government proceeds with an effort to elect a legislative body that critics call a plan to create a dictatorship.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who has worked closely with President Donald Trump’s administration on Latin American issues, held a news conference with two other Republican members of Congress, all from Florida, to discuss the issue ahead of the controversial vote in Venezuela on Sunday.

Julio Borges, who leads Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly legislature, telephoned in to the news conference to discuss the vote.

Rubio noted that the Trump administration had announced sanctions this week, and added, “You can expect more.”

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on 13 senior Venezuelan officials on Wednesday, heaping pressure on unpopular President Nicolas Maduro to scrap plans for the new congress.

A senior Trump administration official told Reuters this week that the administration would make good on Trump’s threat to take action and would act “very quickly” on further sanctions if Maduro goes ahead with his plan.

Another lawmaker at the news conference, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, said he hoped Maduro will “take a deep breath” and back off. “If they don’t, the United States will not stand still,” he said.

Rubio insisted the United States was not seeking to dictate to Venezuela. “What unifies us today in this cause isn’t interference in another country’s affairs, but support for its people,” he said.

Rubio said Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin had been involved in the issue, and that Trump had spoken to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about Venezuela this week.

Rubio said he had spoken to Trump three times this month about Venezuela and that he had spoken to Vice President Mike Pence about it on Thursday and earlier in the week, as well.

“There is high-level engagement throughout this administration on this issue,” Rubio said.

Hackers Scour Voting Machines for Election Bugs

Hackers attending this weekend’s Def Con hacking convention in Las Vegas were invited to break into voting machines and voter databases in a bid to uncover vulnerabilities that could be exploited to sway election results.

The 25-year-old conference’s first “hacker voting village” opened on Friday as part of an effort to raise awareness about the threat of election results being altered through hacking.

Hackers crammed into a crowded conference room for the rare opportunity to examine and attempt to hack some 30 pieces of election equipment, much of it purchased over eBay, including some voting machines and digital voter registries that are currently in use.

Showdown between hackers

“We encourage you to do stuff that if you did on election day they would probably arrest you,” said Johns Hopkins computer scientist Matt Blaze, who organized the segment in a conference room at the Caesar’s Palace convention center.

The exercise featured a “cyber range” simulator where blue teams were tasked with defending a mock local election system from red team hackers.

Concerns about election hacking have surged since U.S. intelligence agencies claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic Party emails to help Republican Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Russians targeted 21 state elections

A Department of Homeland Security official told Congress in June that Russian hackers had targeted 21 U.S. state election systems in the 2016 presidential race and a small number were breached, but there was no evidence that any votes had been manipulated.

Russia has denied the accusations.

Jake Braun, another organizer, said he believed the hacker voting village would convince participants that hacking could be used to sway an election.

“There’s been a lot of claims that our election system is unhackable. That’s BS,” said Braun. “Only a fool or liar would try to claim that their database or machine was unhackable.”

Call for paper ballots

Barbara Simons, president of advocacy group Verified Voting, said she expects Russia to try to influence the U.S. 2018 midterm election and 2020 elections. To counter such threats, she called for requiring use of paper ballots and mandatory auditing computers to count them.

More than 20,000 people were expected to attend the three-day Def Con convention.

The hacker voting village was one of about a dozen interactive areas where participants could study and practice hacking in fields such as automobiles, cryptology and healthcare.

 

Spanish Court Rejects Extradition of Lawyer Wanted in Brazilian Graft Probe

Spain’s high court has rejected an extradition request from Brazil for a lawyer accused of involvement in corruption involving oil company Petrobras.

Brazilian prosecutors have accused Rodrigo Tacla Duran of helping to launder money for homebuilders in a scheme between building firms and executives at Brazil’s Petrobas, a police statement in November said.

The case against Duran, a dual Brazilian-Spanish citizen, will be processed in Spain, the high court said in a statement.

Duran is being investigated for belonging to an organized crime network, bribery and money laundering, the court added.

The office of Brazil’s general prosecutor said in a statement it would evaluate whether to send the case to Spanish authorities in the hope they would prosecute Duran. They did not say when a decision would be made.

It was not immediately possible to contact Duran’s lawyers.

Honolulu Targets ‘Smartphone Zombies’ With Crosswalk Ban

A ban on pedestrians looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street will take effect in Hawaii’s largest city in late October, as Honolulu becomes the first major U.S. city to pass legislation aimed at reducing injuries and deaths from “distracted walking.”

The ban comes as cities around the world grapple with how to protect “smartphone zombies” from injuring themselves by stepping into traffic or running into stationary objects.

Starting October 25, a Honolulu pedestrian can be fined between $15 and $99, depending on the number of times police catch him looking at a phone or tablet device as he crosses a street, Mayor Kirk Caldwell told reporters gathered near one of the city’s busiest downtown intersections Thursday.

“We hold the unfortunate distinction of being a major city with more pedestrians being hit in crosswalks, particularly our seniors, than almost any other city in the county,” Caldwell said. Honolulu data on distracted-walking incidents were not immediately available.

Caldwell signed the legislation Thursday after it was passed in a 7-2 vote by the City Council earlier this month, city records show.

People making calls for emergency services are exempt from the ban.

Injury toll

More than 11,000 injuries resulted from phone-related distraction while walking in the United States between 2000 and 2011, according to a University of Maryland study published in 2015.

The findings pushed the nonprofit National Safety Council to add “distracted walking” to its annual compilation of the biggest risks for unintentional injuries and deaths in the United States, highlighting the severity of the issue.

“Cellphones are not just pervading our roadways but pervading our sidewalks, too,” Maureen Vogel, a spokeswoman for the council, said in a phone interview on Friday.

Efforts to save pedestrians from their phones extend beyond America’s shores. London has experimented with padding lamp posts to soften the blow for distracted walkers, according to the Independent newspaper.

In Germany, the city of Augsburg last year embedded traffic signals into the ground near tram tracks to help downward-fixated pedestrians avoid injury, local media reported.

Opponents of the Honolulu law argued it infringes on personal freedom and amounts to government overreach.

“Scrap this intrusive bill, provide more education to citizens about responsible electronics usage, and allow law enforcement to focus on larger issues,” resident Ben Robinson told the City Council in written testimony.

Colombia Permits Temporary Status for Some Venezuelans Amid Crisis

Colombia said Friday that it would grant temporary legal status to more than 150,000 Venezuelans who entered the country legally and overstayed their visas, due to the deteriorating political and economic crisis in their home country.

The measure is meant as a relief for those who entered with a passport at a border checkpoint but are now in the country illegally and unable to work, exposing them to potentially abusive employers and conditions.

The protection will be valid for up to two years and let recipients work and receive social security benefits. Venezuelans must have entered on or before July 25 to qualify.

It does not apply to the estimated 100,000 or more Venezuelans who entered illegally through the nations’ porous, 1,370-mile (2,200-kilometer) frontier, although officials are reviewing their situation.

Migration agency director Christian Kruger said Colombia was closely watching migratory patterns ahead of Venezuela’s contentious Sunday vote for a special assembly that will be tasked with rewriting constitution. So far no changes have been noted, but Colombia has prepared contingency plans to handle a sudden influx, such as sending 1,000 officials to border points.

“Each one of them knows where to go, which team they are with,” Kruger said.

Crossing with ease

The Andean neighbors have historically had a fluid border relationship, with many crossing on a daily basis to go to school or work.

Decades ago 4 million Colombians migrated to Venezuela when their country was mired in armed conflict and Venezuela’s oil-rich economy was booming. More recently that tide has reversed, with many of those same migrants returning to Colombia to get away from triple-digit inflation, food and medical shortages, and a homicide rate that is among the world’s highest.

An estimated 25,000 Venezuelans enter Colombia daily at legal crossing points, either to buy food other supplies or to visit family. About the same number return each day, according to Colombian migration officials.

Other Andean nations including Ecuador and Peru also say they have seen an uptick in Venezuelan migrants, though the Venezuelan government denies that. Officials in Venezuela have not released migration statistics in more than a decade.

Gladys Yambay, head of the Migration Control Unit in Rumichaca, Ecuador, on the border with Colombia, said the increase in Venezuelans arriving this week required the opening of four additional processing windows.

Hundreds have been lining up with suitcases in hand, she said.

Roomba Vacuum Maker iRobot Betting Big on ‘Smart’ Home

The Roomba robotic vacuum has been whizzing across floors for years, but its future may lie more in collecting data than dirt.

That data is of the spatial variety: the dimensions of a room as well as distances between sofas, tables, lamps and other home furnishings. To a tech industry eager to push “smart” homes controlled by a variety of Internet-enabled devices, that space is the next frontier.

Smart home lighting, thermostats and security cameras are already on the market, but Colin Angle, chief executive of Roomba maker iRobot Corp., says they are still dumb when it comes to understanding their physical environment. He thinks the mapping technology currently guiding top-end Roomba models could change that and is basing the company’s strategy on it.

“There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared,” said Angle.

That vision has its fans, from investors to the likes of Amazon.com, Apple and Alphabet, who are all pushing artificially intelligent voice assistants as smart home interfaces. According to financial research firm IHS Markit, the market for smart home devices was worth $9.8 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow 60 percent this year.

Map sharing

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to share its maps for free with customer consent to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years. Angle added the company could extract value from those agreements by connecting for free with as many companies as possible to make the device more useful in the home.

Amazon declined to comment, and Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

So far investors have cheered Angle’s plans, sending iRobot stock soaring to $102 in mid-June from $35 a year ago, giving it a market value of nearly $2.5 billion on 2016 revenue of $660 million.

But there are headwinds for iRobot’s approach, ranging from privacy concerns to a rising group of mostly cheaper competitors — such as the $300 Bissell SmartClean and the $270 Hoover Quest 600 — which are threatening to turn a once-futuristic product into a commoditized home appliance.

Low-cost Roomba rivals were the subject of a report by short-seller Ben Axler of Spruce Point Capital Management, which sent the stock down 20 percent to $84 at the end of June.

The company’s smart home vision has helped bring around some former critics. Willem Mesdag, managing partner of hedge fund Red Mountain Capital — who led an unsuccessful proxy fight against Angle last year and wound up selling his iRobot shares — is now largely supportive of the company’s direction.

“I think they have a tremendous first-mover advantage,” said Mesdag, who thinks iRobot would be a great acquisition for one of the Big Three. “The competition is focused on making cleaning products, not a mapping robot.”

Military beginnings

Founded in 1990, iRobot saw early success building bomb disposal robots for the U.S. Army before launching the world’s first “robovac” in 2002. The company sold off its military unit last year to focus on the consumer sector, and says the Roomba — which ranges in price from $375 to $899 — still has 88 percent of the U.S. robovac market.

All robovacs use short-range infrared or laser sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, but iRobot in 2015 added a camera, new sensors and software to its flagship 900-series Roomba that gave it the ability to build a map while keeping track of its own location within that map.

So-called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology right now enables Roomba, and other higher-end robovacs made by Dyson and other rivals, to do things like stop vacuuming, head back to its dock to recharge and then return to the same spot to finish the job.

Guy Hoffman, a robotics professor at Cornell University, said detailed spatial mapping technology would be a “major breakthrough” for the smart home.

Right now, smart home devices operate “like a tourist in New York who never leaves the subway,” said Hoffman. “There is some information about the city, but the tourist is missing a lot of context for what’s happening outside of the stations.”

With regularly updated maps, Hoffman said, sound systems could match home acoustics, air conditioners could schedule airflow by room, and smart lighting could adjust according to the position of windows and time of day.

Companies like Amazon, Google and Apple could also use the data to recommend home goods for customers to buy, said Hoffman.

Privacy concerns

One potential downside is that sharing data about users’ homes raises clear privacy issues, said Ben Rose, an analyst who covers iRobot for Battle Road Research. Customers could find it “sort of a scary thing,” he said.

Angle said iRobot would not be sharing data without its customers’ permission, but he expressed confidence most would give their consent in order to access the smart home functions.

Another Roomba risk is that cheaper cleaning products are what consumers really want. In May, The New York Times’ Sweethome blog dethroned the $375 Roomba 690 as its most-recommended robovac in favor of the $220 Eufy RoboVac 11, saying the connectivity and other advanced features of the former would not justify the greater cost for most users.

Short-seller Axler’s June report caused a stir mostly with its prediction that value-priced appliance maker SharkNinja Operating LLC could launch a robovac by year’s end. SharkNinja declined to comment.

One potential iRobot bulwark against these new competitors: a portfolio of 1,000 patents worldwide covering the very concept of a self-navigating household robot vacuum as well as basic technologies like object avoidance.

A handful of those patents are now being tested in a series of patent infringement lawsuits iRobot filed in April against Bissell, Stanley Black & Decker, Hoover Inc., Chinese outsourced manufacturers and other robovac makers. The litigation is the most significant in iRobot’s history.

A lawyer for Hoover declined to comment. Lawyers for Bissell and Stanley Black & Decker did not respond to requests for comment.

The patents are a “huge part of our competitive moat,” Angle said. “It is getting really hard not to step on our intellectual property.”

IOM: US-Mexico Migrant Route Deadlier With Trump Immigration Policy

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports the migrant route from Mexico to the United States has become deadlier since the Trump administration’s tougher immigration policy came into force.

According to the IOM, 231 migrants have died this year trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. That, it said, is an 18-percent increase over the same period last year.

The agency said the past week has been particularly deadly. Besides the eight migrants who suffocated in the back of a boiling hot truck in San Antonio, Texas, it said three of the migrants who had been rescued were so severely dehydrated they succumbed while in the hospital.

In addition to those fatalities, the IOM reported six drownings along the Rio Bravo River separating Mexico from Texas. While the death toll continues to mount, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told VOA there are 40 percent fewer apprehensions of migrants on the border than at the same time last year.

“Our figures released today are 140,024 … migrant apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border through the end of June,” he said. “That number last year was 267,746, … almost twice the number this year. So, if deaths are up and apprehensions are down, by definition, the route is deadlier because people are crossing in fewer numbers, but dying in more numbers. So, per capita, yes, it appears to be deadlier.

The IOM, which tracks migrant deaths globally, said this has been a bad week in Mexico. It reported a recent worldwide total of 3,282 migrant deaths has increased by 83. It said at least 70 of the new fatalities were in Mexico.

Researchers: Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Deforestation in Congo

A new technique using artificial intelligence to predict where deforestation is most likely to occur could help the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) preserve its shrinking rainforest and cut carbon emissions, researchers have said.

Congo’s rainforest, the world’s second-largest after the Amazon, is under pressure from farms, mines, logging and infrastructure development, scientists say.

Protecting forests is widely seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to reduce the emissions driving global warming.

But conservation efforts in DRC have suffered from a lack of precise data on which areas of the country’s vast territory are most at risk of losing their pristine vegetation, said Thomas Maschler, a researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

“We don’t have fine-grain information on what is actually happening on the ground,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

To address the problem Maschler and other scientists at the Washington-based WRI used a computer algorithm based on machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence.

The computer was fed inputs, including satellite derived data, detailing how the landscape in a number of regions, accounting for almost a fifth of the country, had changed between 2000 and 2014.

The program was asked to use the information to analyze links between deforestation and the factors driving it, such as proximity to roads or settlements, and to produce a detailed map forecasting future losses.

Overall the application predicted that woods covering an area roughly the size of Luxembourg would be cut down by 2025 — releasing 205 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

The study improved on earlier predictions that could only forecast average deforestation levels in DRC over large swathes of land, said Maschler.

“Now, we can say: ‘actually the corridor along the road between these two villages is at risk’,” Maschler said by phone late on Thursday.

The analysis will allow conservation groups to better decide where to focus their efforts and help the government shape its land use and climate change policy, said scientist Elizabeth Goldman who co-authored the research.

The DRC has pledged to restore 3 million hectares (11,583 square miles) of forest to reduce carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement, she said.

But Goldman said the benefits of doing that would be outweighed by more than six times by simply cutting predicted forest losses by 10 percent.