Africa is now the continent with the largest percentage of people under 35 years-old. Experts say that presents both opportunities and challenges. Harnessing the demographic dividend through investments in youth is the theme of this year’s Africa Day celebrations. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has more.
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Генеральний прокурор України Юрій Луценко закликав депутатів ухвалити закон, який легалізує діяльність копачів бурштину. Про це він заявив під час своєї звіту за свою роботу у Верховній Раді.

«Так, є постанова Кабміну, яка пропонує своє бачення. Але закон про старательство бурштинової галузі із подальшим екологічним відновленням природного балансу був би надзвичайно важливим. Більше того, за даними оперативними, які мені поклали на стіл, оплата бандитам від бурштинових копачів у день сягала 100 тисяч доларів США. Якщо це помножити на рік – то це оборонний бюджет країни,» – заявив генпрокурор.

Водночас, за його словами, слідство у справі так званої «рівненської бурштинової мафії» завершено, у цій справі проходить півтора десятки різних посадових осіб прокуратури, СБУ і МВС.

4 липня 2016 року керівники Генпрокуратури, СБУ та МВС заявили про здійснену на Рівненщині і в Києві спецоперацію з метою ліквідувати злочинну схему незаконного видобутку й реалізації бурштину, до якої були причетні понад три десятки осіб. Кількох із них відразу затримали. Також було здійснено понад сотню обшуків.

Пізніше в ГПУ заявили, що серед підозрюваних – колишній керівник Сарненської місцевої прокуратури Рівненської області, колишній начальник Дубровицького відділу Сарненської місцевої прокуратури Рівненської області, колишній працівник управління з боротьби з організованою злочинністю Головного управління УМВС України в Житомирській області, відсторонена від посади слідча слідчого управління Головного управління Нацполіції в Рівненській області.

 
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According to a recent analysis, in about 15 years, depending on the country, up to 38 percent of jobs performed by humans may be turned over to robots. Experts who gathered last week at a robotic expo in Paris say we have to prepare for the new reality if we want to avoid disruptive social changes. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The U.S. government has filed a civil lawsuit against automaker Fiat Chrysler, saying the company has used illegal software to fake emission results on its diesel vehicles.

The civil complaint filed Tuesday follows initial accusations from the Environmental Protection Agency released in January.

The software reportedly hid emissions of nitrogen oxide, allowing the vehicles to appear to comply with regulations set forth in the Clean Air Act, while still emitting more of the gas than is allowed.

At issue are the 2014 to 2016 models of Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 pickup trucks with three-liter diesel engines sold in the United States, around 104,000 vehicles in total, the EPA said.

In 2015, Volkswagen was caught using a similar device to cheat emissions standards. Volkwagen, however, admitted to having cheated, while Fiat Chrysler denies wrongdoing. The VW scandal eventually led to approximately $20 billion worth of fines levied against the company and indictments of seven company executives.

Fiat Chrysler did not immediately comment Tuesday, but its shares fell 2.9 percent.
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Національний банк України заявив про намір оскаржувати судові рішення щодо неправомірності входження держави в капітал «Приватбанку» та процедури bail-in. Про це йдеться у повідомленні на сторінці НБУ в Facebook.

«Національний банк наголошує, що всі рішення щодо «Приватбанку» були прийняті виключно в рамках спеціальної процедури, передбаченої статтею 41-1 Закону України «Про систему гарантування вкладів фізичних осіб»», – зазначається там.

Окружний адміністративний суд Києва визнав націоналізацію «Приватбанку» частково незаконною, про що йдеться в постанові суду № 826/20239/16.

18 грудня минулого року уряд ухвалив рішення про націоналізацію «Приватбанку». Згідно з умовами націоналізації, єврооблігації «Приватбанку» підлягали процедурі bail-in (конвертації боргу кредиторів у капітал). Національний банк України розглядає їх як зобов’язання, пов’язані з колишніми власниками банку.

Міжнародне рейтингове агентство Standard&Poor’s (S&P) 11 січня знизило рейтинг «Приватбанку» з рівня «R» (під наглядом регулюючого органу) до «SD» (вибірковий дефолт).

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is proposing major changes in the way Washington’s $4.1 trillion budget is spent, with more money for the military, border security, and veterans. The just-published budget for next year also slashes money for programs that benefit the poor.

Trump’s top budget official Mick Mulvaney says for the first time the budget looks at spending from the point of view of the taxpayers, rather than the people who get government help.

The director of the Office of Management and Budget says the budget translates Trump’s campaign promises and priorities into practical plans. Mulvaney says the approach will balance the budget in 10 years, and boost economic growth to three percent.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and World Bank Economist Larry Summers, calls the budget’s economic assumptions “ludicrously optimistic.” In an opinion article in the Washington Post he says the impact on low income Americans will be “dire.”

A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form may be quite different from what the chief executive submits. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.

Cuts in social programs

The Trump budget includes $3.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, with some of the largest reductions in programs that help the poor pay for health care and buy food. A nutrition program known as “food stamps” currently serves more than 40 million people.

The budget proposal also follows Trump’s campaign promises to not to cut Social Security, a government-run old age pension program, or Medicare, which helps the elderly pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine.

Critics of Mr. Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just more than half of government spending during the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming spending on Social Security and Medicare.

Mulvaney explained the cuts in social programs as a desire to get people who are relying on federal programs when they should not be to go back to work.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the Trump plan “guts investment in jobs and hollows out our economy,” and instead should be focused on investments in jobs, education, clean energy and medical research.

 
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Google already monitors your online shopping – but now it’s also keeping an eye on what you’re buying in real-world stores as part of its latest effort to sell more digital advertising.

The offline tracking scans most credit and debit card transactions to help Google automatically inform merchants when their digital ads translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store.

Google believes the data will show a cause-and-effect relationship between online ads and offline sales. If it works, that could help persuade merchants to boost their digital marketing budgets.

Google windfall

The Mountain View, California, company already runs the world’s biggest online ad network, one that raked in $79 billion in revenue last year. That puts it in the best position to capture any additional marketing dollars spent on computers and mobile devices.

Google plans to unveil the store-sales measurement tool Tuesday in San Francisco at an annual conference it hosts for its advertisers.

The gathering gives Google a prime opportunity to woo advertisers – one that it surely welcomes, given that it’s still trying to overcome a marketing boycott of its YouTube video site . The boycott began two months ago over concerns that Google hadn’t prevented major brand advertising from appearing alongside extremist video clips promoting hate and violence.

Google is also introducing several other features designed to help merchants drive more traffic to their physical stores and to gain a better understanding on how digital ads appearing across a variety of devices are affecting their sales.

Smarter ad tracking

Most of the new analytics twists draw upon Google’s inroads in “machine learning” – a way of “training” computers to behave more like humans – to interpret the data. Google’s search engine and Chrome web browser are a rich source of data about people’s interests and online activities that it can feed into machine-learning systems.

In the case of the store sales measure tool, Google’s computers are connecting the dots between what people look at after clicking on an online ad and then what they purchase with their credit and debit cards.

For instance, if someone searching for a pair of running shoes online clicked on an ad from a sporting goods store but didn’t buy anything, an advertiser might initially conclude that the ad was a waste of money. But Google says its new tool will now be able to tell if the same person bought the shoes a few days later at one of the advertiser’s brick-and-mortar stores.

Digital dossiers

Google says it has access to roughly 70 percent of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with other companies that track that data. That means Google still won’t be able to document every purchase made using plastic – and it still has no way of knowing when people buy something with cash.

The digital dossiers that Google has compiled on the more than one billion people who use its search engine and other services, including Gmail, YouTube and Android, worry privacy watchdogs. Google gives its users the option to limit the company’s tracking and control what types of ads they are shown.

Google says its computers can collect identifying data triggered by online clicks and match it with other identifying information compiled by merchants and the issuers of credit and debit cards to figure out when a digital ad contributes to an offline purchase.

Shoppers remain anonymous, meaning they aren’t identified by their names, according to Google. And the company says it doesn’t share any of its anonymized information with its advertisers; instead, it targets ads at individuals who fit demographic profiles sought by advertisers.

 
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South Korea’s recent election of liberal politician Moon Jae-in as the country’s new president has triggered a shift in China’s approach to relations with Seoul.

After months of harsh criticism of South Korea’s decision to deploy a U.S.-made missile defense system and the enactment of harsh economic sanctions, Beijing appears to be changing its tact.

Its opposition to South Korea’s deployment of the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system has not gone away, but is becoming less shrill.

And some see signs that China is already beginning to loosen its ban on the import of South Korean cultural products such as television shows and entertainment performances, as well as group travel by Chinese tourists to the country.

The shift started with signals from the top late last week.

On Friday, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with an envoy of South Korean President Moon, he said Beijing was willing to work together with Seoul to “properly handle disputes” and “put China-South Korea relations back onto a normal track.”

Over the past few days, reports in the Chinese state media have noted signals that the ice-breaking may have already begun. Two South Korean musicals already have performance dates in Beijing and Shanghai. “Bballae,” which means laundry in Korean, will begin in late June. Performances of another musical, “My Bucket List,” will begin in Beijing and Shanghai in August, reports said.

According to a report in the National Business Daily, which was also carried in the Communist Party-mouthpiece People’s Daily, 4,000 Chinese employees of an unnamed medical equipment company are reaching out to travel agents in Seoul to book a group trip to South Korea.

According to the report, the trip is expected to “thaw” the frozen-out tourism industry. Alitrip is also reporting a rise in the number of bookings to South Korean amusement parks.

Nonetheless, the tourism sanctions have hit South Korea hard, with the number of tourists visiting China’s northeastern neighbor dropping sharply in recent months.

Chinese travel agencies are still barred from booking group tours to South Korea. Advertisements for individual travel packages are also absent from most websites. Those websites that do have discount tours (such as CTrip.com) are not prominently placed.

“China will take some different actions regarding Korean entertainment or access to the Korean market and tourism, but actually that will come after President Moon and Xi Jinping meet,” said Lee Ki-beom, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

President Moon will be traveling to Washington next month to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and then is likely to meet with Xi around July. In the run-up to that meeting, China is likely to try to sweeten the relationship with continued moves, but some are skeptical the ban on group tours will be completely lifted.

Lee said since Moon is leading a minority government, he needs the support of South Korea’s legislature, the National Assembly, for major issues like approving a new law on the THAAD missile system. This would provide Moon an opportunity to soften South Korea’s diplomatic stance towards China, but the National Assembly is unlikely to accept Beijing’s demand to dismantle it.

 
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President Donald Trump is proposing to balance the federal budget within 10 years by slashing many social programs, including some that help the poor pay for food and medical care, called food stamps and Medicaid.

Officials have outlined some new details of the president’s first spending plan. A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form is often quite different from what the chief executive proposes. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.  

In his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, a government-run old-age pension program, or Medicare, which helps elderly people pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine. That means deeper cuts to some other programs.  

Critics of Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just over half of government spending over the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming this spending. They also say administration officials have based the budget on “unrealistic and rosy economic growth projections.”
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Gambia’s government used a court order Monday to seize assets belonging to exiled former President Yahya Jammeh.

They include nearly 90 bank accounts and 14 companies linked to Jammeh.

Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou says Jammeh stole $50 million in public funds before fleeing Gambia for Equatorial Guinea in January.

Jammeh and his associates have been unavailable for comment since he left the country.

Jammeh ruled Gambia for 22 years before losing December’s presidential election to Adama Barrow. He contested the results for several weeks before giving up and fleeing the country.

His long-ruling political party lost April’s parliamentary elections to the opposition United Democratic Party.

Along with allegations of looting public funds, investigators in Gambia are also probing a number of disappearances under the Jammeh government.

 
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Державна служба України з питань безпечності харчових продуктів та захисту споживачів повідомила, що ще з суботи, 20 травня, діє новий порядок пропуску підконтрольних вантажів у режимі транзиту через територію України до Придністровського регіону Молдови.

Відповідно до розпорядження головного державного інспектора ветеринарної медицини України від 17.05.2017 № 33, пропуск такого транзиту тепер здійснюється лише за умови його погодження з Національним агентством безпеки харчових продуктів Республіки Молдова, мовиться в повідомленні.

У «Держпродспоживслужбі» наголосили, що ця вимога відповідає угоді про співпрацю в галузі ветеринарії країн СНД, яку парафували, зокрема, представники України і Молдови. Відповідно до цієї угоди, під час імпорту та міжнародного транзиту в обов’язковому порядку завчасно оформлюються дозволи центральних державних ветеринарних органів сторін, на території яких ввозиться та через території яких транспортується підконтрольний вантаж.

Оскільки дія цієї угоди не поширюється на відносини з самопроголошеною й невизнаною Придністровською Молдавською Республікою, що є сепаратистським регіоном Молдови, підтримуваним Росією, й було ухвалене згадане рішення з метою забезпечити виконання угоди, мовиться в повідомленні. Таке рішення також відповідає вимогам Всесвітньої організації охорони здоров’я тварин (МЕБ).

Останнім часом з’являються повідомлення про те, що Україна на придністровській ділянці кордону з Молдовою запроваджує спільний контроль із представниками законної влади Молдови – прикордонниками, митниками тощо. У Придністров’ї, де розташовані російські війська, у відповідь скаржаться на «блокаду» проросійського регіону.
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Several hundred middle school and high school students from Senegal and surrounding countries spent last week in Dakar building robots. Organizers of the annual robotics competition say the goal is to encourage African governments and private donors to invest more in science and math education throughout the continent.

The hum of tiny machines fills a fenced-off obstacle course, as small robots compete to gather mock natural resources such as diamonds and gold.

The robots were built by teams of young people gathered in Dakar for the annual Pan-African Robotics Competition.

‘Made in Africa’

The event’s founder, Sidy Ndao, says this year’s theme is “Made in Africa,” and focuses on how robotics developed in Africa could help local economies.

“We have noticed that most countries that have developed in the likes of the United States have based their development on manufacturing and industrialization, and African countries on the other hand are left behind in this race,” Ndao said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to inspire the kids to tell them about the importance of manufacturing, the importance of industry, and the importance of creation and product development.”

During the week, the students were split into three groups.

The first group worked on robots that could automate warehouses. The second created machines that could mine natural resources, and the third group was tasked to come up with a new African product and describe how to build it.

Building a robot a team effort

Seventeen-year-old Rokyaha Cisse from Senegal helped her team develop a robot that sends sound waves into the ground to detect the presence of metals and then start digging.

Cisse says it is very interesting and fun, and they are learning new things, as well as having their first opportunity to handle robots.

As part of a younger team, Aboubacar Savage from Gambia said their robot communicates with computers.

“It is a robot that whatever you draw into the computer, it translates it and draws it in real life,” Savage said. “It is kind of hard. And there is so much competition, but we are trying. I have learned how to assemble a robot. I have learned how to program into a computer.”

The event’s founder, Ndao, is originally from Senegal, but is now a professor at the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln College of Engineering in the United States.

“I have realized how much the kids love robotics and how much they love science,” Ndao said “You can tell because when it is time for lunch, we have to convince them to actually leave, and then [when] it is time to go home, nobody wants to leave.”

Outsourced jobs cost Africa billions

A winning team was named in each category, but Ndao hopes the real winners will be science and technology in Africa.

The organizers of the Next Einstein Forum, which held its annual global gathering last year in Senegal, said Africa is currently missing out on $4 billion a year by having to outsource jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to expatriates.

Ndao said African governments and private investors need to urgently invest more on education in those fields, in particular at the university level.
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