NY immigrant is repeatedly harassed (audio)

You can also listen to this audio file by clicking on the Play Button

Castro's Death Raises Economy Questions (video)

You can also watch this video by clicking on the Play Button

Firecrackers banned in Delhi (captions)

You can also watch this video by clicking on the Play Button

Can we train our brains to process information differently? (video)

You can also watch this video by clicking on the Play Button

What did I win?

Katrina Bookman of Queens, N.Y., an unemployed mother of four, was playing the slots at the Resorts World Casino near La Guardia Airport in late September when the machine she was using told her, "Printing cash ticket. $42,949,672.76."

Customers and casino personnel surrounded her as she celebrated her massive win. She was escorted from the casino floor and told to come back the next day.  Bookman, who grew up in foster care, was already making plans for the money, including a barber shop for her son.

"What did I win?" Bookman asked when she returned to the casino.

"'You didn't win anything,'" she says she was told.

The New York State Gaming Commission told Bookman she was not entitled to any winnings because the machine, which is only supposed to pay out a maximum win of $6,500, was malfunctioning. All the machines are labeled with a disclaimer reading, "Malfunctions void all pays and plays." According to the gaming commission, her actual winnings were just $2.25.

The state commission said the machine was removed for repairs after the incident,  and then returned to the casino floor.

Bookman said the casino offered her a steak dinner, which she refused.

“You offer me a steak dinner? I feel like they did me real dirty," Bookman said.

"Upon being notified of the situation, casino personnel were able to determine that the figure displayed on the penny slot was the result of an obvious malfunction — a fact later confirmed by the New York State Gaming Commission. Machine malfunctions are rare, and we would like to extend our apologies to Ms. Bookman for any inconvenience this may have caused," a statement from the Resorts casino said, according to a report from the Huffington Post.

Bookman contacted an attorney, Alan Ripka, who says she should at least be entitled to the machine's maximum pay out of $6,500.

"The machine takes your money when you lose. It ought to pay it when you win," Ripka told WABC.

edited from USA Today

Your Personal Electronic Concierge (video)

You can also watch this video by clicking on the Play Button

Freedom on the Net 2016 Report (audio)

• To listen to the audio file, please click on the Play Button below.

• If you are interested in reading Freedom of the House 2016 Report, click on the Map below. 

Audio source: 

Strange cash problem in India

An Indian policeman gesturing to people outside a bank in New Delhi and asking them to wait patiently. CreditAltaf Qadri/Associated Press

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has declared war on corruption, a big factor in perpetuating poverty in that country. But his shocking decision early this month to remove and replace large-denomination paper money was poorly thought out and executed.

Cash is king in India. It is used in an estimated 78 percent of transactions, compared with 20 percent to 25 percent in industrialized countries like Britain and the United States. Many people do not have bank accounts or credit cards, and even those who do often must use cash because many businesses don’t accept other forms of payment.

Paper currency makes it easy for people to avoid taxes and engage in corruption. For example, real estate sales are often split into two parts: a smaller portion, which is reported to the government, is paid by check, and a larger, undeclared sum is paid with stacks of cash, or “black money” as it is often referred to in India. Business people and criminals routinely buy off government officials and politicians with envelopes and briefcases of cash.

Mr. Modi’s solution to a systemic problem is odd: the government will replace  the 500- and 1,000-rupee notes (worth about $7.50 and $15), which together make up about 80 percent of currency in circulation, with new 500-, 1,000- and 2,000- rupee notes.  

The move went into effect last Wednesday. The plan is to force tax evaders and corrupt officials hoarding cash to deposit or exchange their old notes at banks by Dec. 30. Those with very large sums will have to explain how they amassed so much cash and to pay taxes owed on the money.

Many millions of people are lining up at banks to deposit or exchange their old bills. One man told The Times that a bank turned him away because he didn’t have a government-issued identification card, which is required to swap or deposit old bills. He was hoping a charity would feed him and his family while he waited to convert his stack of 500-rupee notes, worth about $148. Meanwhile, many traders are offering lucrative money-laundering services to help the cash-rich get rid of their old bills.

Mr. Modi acknowledged that the currency swap will cause “temporary hardships” to “honest citizens.” But his government did not appreciate the extent of the pain it is inflicting, for what may be only a short-term solution. The government is now circulating new 500- and 2,000-rupee notes, which means that cash-based corruption and tax evasion are almost sure to return as people accumulate the new bills.

Edited From The New York Times

Airbnb is expanding its business

LOS ANGELES — Airbnb used to let you just book room rentals. Now you can also use Airbnb to reserve dance parties in Havana, historical tours in Cape Town and stargazing outings in Los Angeles.

Airbnb said Thursday that it is expanding beyond its core short-term rental business, which faces pushback from local governments around the world, to become a fuller service travel agency. In a step toward that, the company launched a service called Trips,   which will provide tours, tailored activities and other experiences.

Trips is starting with 500 experiences that can last a few hours or span days. They are created and provided by locals in the 12 cities where the service is initially being offered.

Trips helps travelers “immerse in a local community,” Brian Chesky, the chief executive and co-founder of Airbnb, said at the company’s annual conference for hosts and the press.

The new service helps Airbnb create an additional revenue source as it faces some challenges with its main business of matching travelers with hosts who want to rent out their homes for short stays. While the eight-year-old company lists nearly 3 million short-term rentals in more than 34,000 cities around the world, short-term rentals are illegal in some cities and have run into regulatory gray areas in others.

With Trips, Airbnb is pushing deeper into the travel market and allowing people to make extra money in a way that might be less controversial than the short-term rental market. Airbnb began thinking about creating Trips in 2012. It has been in a private testing phase for several months.

J.C. Rodriguez, an artist in Miami who offers a two-day experience called Behind the Art, helps visitors meet with local artists in their studios and create their own pieces. He currently keeps the $150 fee he charges per person, which covers a meal and art supplies, but Airbnb will soon take a 20 percent cut of that income.

In addition to Trips and restaurant reservations, users will be able to rent cars through Airbnb, book flights and add perks such as grocery delivery to their short-term rentals.

Brian Chesky, chief executive of Airbnb, speaking on Thursday in Los Angeles about Trips.  CreditMike Windle/Getty Images for Airbnb

Article edited from The New York Times

You can also listen to this audio file by clicking on the Play Button

The growing internet-of-things world

The vision of the so-called internet of things — giving all sorts of physical things a digital makeover — has been years ahead of reality. But that gap is closing fast.

Today, the range of things being computerized and connected to networks is stunning, from watches, appliances and clothing to cars, jet engines and factory equipment. Even roadways and farm fields are being upgraded with digital sensors. In the last two years, the number of internet-of-things devices in the world has surged nearly 70 percent to 6.4 billion, according to Gartner, a research firm. By 2020, the firm forecasts, the internet-of-things population will reach 20.8 billion.

The optimistic outlook is that the internet of things will be an enabling technology that will help make the people and physical systems of the world — health care, food production, transportation, energy consumption — smarter and more efficient.

The pessimistic outlook? Hackers will have something else to hack. And consumers accustomed to adding security tools to their computers and phones should expect to adopt similar precautions with internet-connected home appliances.

“If we want to put networked technologies into more and more things, we also have to find a way to make them safer,” said Michael Walker, a program manager and computer security expert at the Pentagon’s advanced research arm. “It’s a challenge for civilization.”

Edited from The New York Times

African taxis take on Uber

“I WAS lucky my customers were three big white guys,” says Themba, an Uber driver in Johannesburg recounting a close call with taxi-drivers who tried to block him from collecting passengers at the airport that serves South Africa’s economic hub. “They pushed them out the way and we managed to drive off.”

The ride-hailing app has made a slow start in Africa yet it is fertile ground for a firm offering cheap and safe transport. Most passengers have to choose between overpriced cabs or the back of a motorcycle taxi.

In Abuja, locals use a low-tech version of ride-sharing. Many folks simply stick out a hand at the roadside to hail any passing car before negotiating a fare. Yet locals warn that fake taxis cruise the streets with robbers hiding in the trunk, ready to jump out at a traffic light. In Lagos, some taxi-drivers are even thought to be in cahoots with kidnappers. Not surprisingly, Uber seems to be growing quickly in the few cities where it has launched. In many places rides cost less than a quarter of the fare charged by taxis. And it is adapting to local markets too. In cities such as Nairobi, where few have credit cards, customers can choose to pay for rides using mobile money on their phones, or in cash.

However, the firm is also facing some potholes quite unlike the regulatory barriers erected elsewhere in the world (such as, in Paris and Frankfurt, rules that stop Uber from using unlicensed drivers). Instead of lobbying the government or going to the courts, taxi-drivers in some African cities have taken matters into their own hands.

At the airport and main railway stations in Johannesburg, cabbies crowd around commuters, looking intently at their smartphones before trying to manhandle those who seem to be getting into Uber cars. Shots have been fired in some of these clashes. In Cape Town and Nairobi, Uber cars have been torched and their drivers attacked. The firm has responded by hiring security guards to watch over the main flashpoints in Johannesburg and is testing a panic button that calls armed guards.

Uber also seems to be having some success in winning over taxi-drivers, mainly by signing them up. In Accra, many Uber drivers are also old-fashioned cabbies who have chosen to venture into online ride-hailing. Petrus, an Uber driver in Johannesburg, says he joined the firm three months ago after working for many years behind the wheel of a taxi. “Those who are remaining as taxi-drivers are losing hope,” he says. “Lots of their friends are joining Uber.” Having as many as possible in the drivers’ seats is certainly preferable to having them throwing stones from the side of the road.

from The Economist

Human companies in the age of machines (TED Talk)

You can also watch this video by clicking on the Play Button

Rewriting the history of the dinosaurs

HOW the dinosaurs died out after ruling the planet for over 150m years was a mystery that consumed palaeontologists throughout much of the 20th century. These days it is mostly accepted that they were done in by the climatic after-effects of the impact of a giant asteroid, specifically the one that carved a vast crater 180km across near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Now the focus has shifted from how they died out to where they came from in the first place. In a paper just published in Current Biology, a team led by Max Langer at the University of São Paulo reports the excavation of four fossils that shed some intriguing light on two different aspects of that question.

The fossils, found by Sergio Cabreira at the Lutheran University of Brazil, come from the Santa Maria formation in the south of the country. One of them, at 230m years in age, is one of the oldest dinosaur fossils ever found. Typically, such ancient finds are nothing more than bone fragments, but this specimen, named Buriolestes schultzi, is in remarkably good shape. It is a distant ancestor of the long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus. Those giant animals, which stood up to 16 metres high and weighed 50 tonnes or more, were vegetarians.

B. schultzi seems to have been both diminutive—about 1.5 metres long—and carnivorous. Its teeth are curved and have serrated edges, traits usually associated with meat-eating. That finding raises as many questions as it answers: palaeontologists must now ponder when and why sauropods made the switch from eating meat to eating plants. Size probably had something to do with it: it is difficult to see how an animal the size of Brachiosaurus could have hunted enough prey to support its enormous bulk. But were B. schultzi’s descendants forced to become herbivorous as they grew? Or did they switch to a vegetable diet first, then take advantage of the opportunities for growth that offered?

The other fossils in the find address a different question. Palaeontologists have long thought that dinosaurs rose to dominance at the dawn of the Jurassic period, 201m years ago, by out-competing and rapidly replacing other land animals that emerged earlier. One such group was the lagerpetids, a group of reptiles with some dinosaurian characteristics that arose about 236m years ago, during the Triassic period.

Yet evidence has been mounting that suggests this argument is wrong. Several dinosaur and lagerpetid bone fragments have been found alongside one another in Triassic rocks, hinting that, instead of outcompeting the lagerpetids, the dinosaurs coexisted alongside them for millions of years. The Brazilian discovery builds on these fragmentary finds to deal the rapid replacement argument a fatal blow, by clearly revealing a lagerpetid living alongside a dinosaur more than 30m years before the start of the Jurassic. The worlds’ museums of natural history will have to update their displays.

From The Economist

Donald Trump's Victory Speech (video)

You can also watch the video by clicking on the Play Button