Month: December 2022

Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.
Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk’s run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public.
He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that Twitter is taking too much of his attention.
Some of Musk’s actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and turned off users. They include laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators and disbanding a council of trust and safety advisors that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
Musk, who also helms the SpaceX rocket company, has previously acknowledged how difficult it will be to find someone to take over as Twitter CEO.
Bantering with Twitter followers last Sunday, he said that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.
As things stand, Musk would still retain overwhelming influence over platform as its owner. He fired the company’s board of directors soon after taking control.

Source: Voice of America

If not Elon, then who? That’s a question many are contemplating since Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO, said this week he was actively looking for a new leader to run the social media network.
Musk’s proclamation comes after more than 10 million respondents said in a Musk-created Twitter poll that he should resign. Musk followed up with a tweet that he would resign as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.”
It was one of many twists in the company’s chaotic restructuring since Musk took over in late October, a period that has included mass layoffs and resignations, advertisers fleeing, policy changes and reversals, and the suspension of some journalists’ accounts.
Musk’s management style is “break-it-to-build it,” said Andrew Miller, chief growth officer at Interbrand North America, a global brand consultancy.
Not a typical turnaround
The new Twitter CEO search has many wondering who could possibly do it. Musk would remain Twitter’s owner, and the task of turning around a beleaguered, long-underperforming company would be daunting.
“There’s a fairly large risk of being terminated or being forced to resign,” said Andy Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who researches tech entrepreneurship and strategy. “So it’s got to be someone comfortable with that outcome.”
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, the electric vehicle firm, had reportedly planned to be in the Twitter CEO position for only a few months. In recent weeks, Tesla investors have clamored for Musk to devote more time to the car company.
Some industry observers see Musk’s poll as a way to prime the public for a planned passing of the Twitter leadership baton.
“I think he was ready to do that, and he wanted to do it with a dramatic flair,” said Richard Hagberg, a leadership coach and psychologist who has worked with Silicon Valley CEOs and entrepreneurs.
Doing damage control
“He would never admit defeat, but maybe he recognizes that the problems he’s having with the Tesla board and some of the bad PR that’s coming his way is damaging his brand,” Hagberg added.
In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX, the satellite and rocket manufacturer.
Whoever takes on the role of Twitter CEO will have to share Musk’s vision for the company and contend with his involvement. Musk has a history of not relinquishing control at his other firms, Wu said.
“Elon Musk was supposed to just be an investor of Tesla, he’s actually not a founder, and he couldn’t hold himself back and had to make himself CEO,” said Wu, of the Harvard Business School. “If that’s any precedent, then this is a situation where his bias would be to hold onto power.”
Musk’s apparent fixation with creating headlines and causing a public stir also might make it harder to step down entirely from Twitter, some observers say. Musk is expected to be Twitter’s top influencer sometime in January, set to pass @BarackObama, the former U.S. president’s account, which is currently No. 1 at 130 million Twitter followers.
“Elon Musk is certainly conscious of his public persona, and this is one channel by which he directly impacts his own public persona,” Wu said. “This is one that will be especially difficult for him to step away from.”
Whether Musk stays involved in Twitter’s day-to-day operations or becomes a quiet owner, his potential CEO replacement will have other big tasks — cost cutting, revenue generating, and putting Twitter on a course to succeed.
For that, a cooler, more dispassionate temperament than Musk’s can be useful, Wu said.
“A lot of these cuts that they’re going through right now are financially necessary, and so we need someone that’s prepared to be in that position,” he said.
Some industry observers point to Musk’s inner circle for possible successors, such as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey or venture capitalist David Sacks. Others speculate it could be a seasoned tech executive from the outside, such as former chief operating officer of Facebook — now Meta — Sheryl Sandberg.
Inspiring with a higher purpose
Whoever it is, the new leader of Twitter will need to appeal to employees’ sense of a higher purpose.
“They need to believe in the mission that overcomes the daily practicalities of the lives that we live, otherwise that style is not going to work, because you’re asking people to go well beyond what any manager should ask of its employees. And it has to start from within,” said Miller at Interbrand.
Musk has had some success doing this, rallying Tesla employees around the idea of a climate change solution vis-a-vis electric vehicles, or inspiring SpaceX workers with the dream of going to Mars. Musk also tried to rally Twitter employees around the idea of broadening free speech on Twitter, with mixed results.
Hagberg classifies Musk as a “visionary evangelist,” which he defines as a leader with a vision for the future who also can be egocentric. It’s hard to imagine two visionary evangelist leaders at Twitter. Regardless, the new CEO will have some work to do to woo what may be a rattled workforce, observers say.
“If you want people to support you,” Hagberg said, “you need to understand how to systematically get them to buy into what you’re trying to do.”

Source: Voice of America

As Chinese social media circulated photos and videos showing crowded fever clinics and people lining up outside of hospitals, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported no new COVID-related deaths on Wednesday and 3,101 new confirmed cases nationwide.
The day before, the NHC reported seven deaths in total over the first two days of recording all COVID deaths in the nation of 1.4 billion people.

A person working in a crematorium in Beijing who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation told VOA Mandarin on December 21 that the wait list for cremations is stretching into January.
The disconnect between their accounts and the strikingly low official tally is one reason for public skepticism.

At a press conference held Tuesday by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council of China, Wang Guiqiang, director of the infectious diseases department of Peking University First Hospital, clarified the criteria China uses for recording a death as caused by COVID.
“Deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure caused by the coronavirus are classified as deaths caused by COVID infection, while deaths caused by other diseases and basic diseases, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, myocardial infarction, etc., are not classified as deaths from COVID-19,” he said. “From clinical practice, [and] in the current study, the main cause of death after infection with the omicron strain is the underlying disease.”
Writing in The Guardian, Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said “Experts following the situation estimate that 60% of the Chinese population (accounting for 10% of the world’s population) will be infected in the next 90 days.”
Twu Shiing-jer, former minister of Taiwan’s Department of Health and chairman of the Development Center for Biotechnology in Taipei, said that if China’s standard is to exclude patients with underlying diseases, then its COVID death toll is underestimated by at least 75% compared to international standards.
“The vast majority of COVID-related deaths are due to underlying diseases,” said Twu. “According to a study that was done in New York in 2020, in general, only about 0.7% of COVID-related deaths were purely due to infection without other causes.”
Chiang Kuan-yu, a Taiwanese doctor, believes that China’s standards are unreasonable, and that the purpose of those standards is to make the government “look good.”
“In Taiwan, as long as you are infected with COVID within 60 days [before death], it will be regarded as a death from COVID-19,” he said. “For example, a car accident will certainly not be counted. If it is related to a COVID emergency or sequelae within 60 days of death, it will be counted as COVID-19 deaths.” A medical term, sequelae means the aftereffects of a disease, condition, or injury.
Twu said that in Taiwan, as of the end of May 2022, as many as 74% of the deaths from COVID-19 were persons who had a history of chronic diseases.
Recounting the strains on China’s healthcare system, Shridhar said, “If the healthcare system collapses, patients will die from all causes requiring medical care — whether a heart attack or a road traffic accident. This has always been the main challenge of COVID-19, given its high hospitalization rate.”
According to the WHO, many countries have turned to excess mortality statistics as a more accurate measure of COVID deaths. This is the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions.
WHO data show 565 COVID-19 deaths in the Americas and 539 deaths in Europe on December 17 with 141 deaths in Southeast Asia on the same day.
Another example of how different totals arise due to methodology comes from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington.
In a study that concluded on December 16, IHME researchers projected a worldwide toll of 7,727,905 deaths by April 1, 2023, using officially reported COVID cases. Tracking total deaths, which are the estimated number of deaths attributable to COVID, including unreported deaths, the study projects a global death toll of 18,572,492 by April 1, 2023.

Source: Voice of America

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement.
After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York.
Weinstein was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury was unable to reach a decision on several counts, notably charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The jury reported it was unable to reach verdicts in her allegations and the allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those counts.
Jurors were 10-2 in favor of conviction of the sexual battery of a massage therapist. They were 8-4 in favor of conviction on the rape and sexual assault counts involving Siebel Newsom.
Weinstein was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman.
He faces up to 24 years in prison when he is sentenced. Prosecutors and defense attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict.
“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,’” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.”
“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing argument. “It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.”
Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of assaults Weinstein’s accusers said happened from 2005 to 2013, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges.
The accusers included Newsom, a documentary filmmaker whose husband is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her intense and emotional testimony of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial its most dramatic moments.
Another was an Italian model and actor who said Weinstein appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a 2013 film festival and raped her.
Lauren Young, the only accuser who testified at both Weinstein trials, said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her and masturbated in front of her.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges involving Young.
A massage therapist testified that Weinstein did the same to her after getting a massage in 2010.
Martinez said in her closing that the women entered Weinstein’s hotel suites or let him into their rooms, with no idea of what awaited them.
“Who would suspect that such an entertainment industry titan would be a degenerate rapist?” she said.
The women’s stories echoed the allegations of dozens of others who have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod starting with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A movie about that reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to see it.
It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, emphasizing that none of the four women went to the authorities until after the movement made Weinstein a target.
Defense lawyers said two of the women were entirely lying about their encounters with Weinstein, and that the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later reframed.
“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson said in his closing argument.
He urged jurors to look past the the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence.
“Believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried,” Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. “Well, fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.”
All the women involved in the charges went by Jane Doe in court. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, as the women named here did.
Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to give context and corroboration to those stories. Four were other women who were not part of the charges but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought to the stand to establish a pattern of sexual predation.
Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial even ended when prosecutors said a woman he was charged with raping twice and sexually assaulting twice would not appear to testify. They declined to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lench dismissed those charges.
Weinstein’s latest conviction hands a victory to victims of sexual misconduct of famous men in the wake of some legal setbacks, including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, held simultaneously and just down the hall from Weinstein’s, ended in a mistrial. And actor Kevin Spacey was victorious at a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month.
Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case is set to be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, also likely to be appealed, means he will not walk free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out.

Source: Voice of America

It could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA’s InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars.
The lander’s power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar panels. Ground controllers at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory knew the end was near, but NASA reported that InSight unexpectedly didn’t respond to communications from Earth on Sunday.
“It’s assumed InSight may have reached the end of its operations,” NASA said late Monday, adding that its last communication was Thursday. “It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy.”
The team will keep trying to contact InSight, just in case.
InSight landed on Mars in 2018 and was the first spacecraft to document a marsquake. It detected more than 1,300 quakes with its French-built seismometer, including several caused by meteoroid strikes. The most recent marsquake sensed by InSight, earlier this year, left the ground shaking for at least six hours, according to NASA.
The seismometer readings shed light on Mars’ interior.
Just last week, scientists revealed that InSight scored another first, capturing a Martian dust devil not just in pictures, but in sound as well. In a stroke of luck, the whirling column of dust blew directly over the lander in 2021 when its microphone was on.
The lander’s other main instrument, however, encountered nothing but trouble.
A German digging device — meant to measure the temperature of Mars’ interior — never made it deeper than half a meter (a couple of feet), well short of the intended 5 meters (16 feet). NASA declared it dead nearly two years ago.
InSight recently sent back one last selfie, shared by NASA via Twitter on Monday.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” the team wrote on InSight’s behalf. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will — but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
NASA still has two active rovers on Mars: Curiosity, roaming the surface since 2012, and Perseverance, which arrived early last year.
Perseverance is in the midst of creating a sample depot; the plan is to leave 10 tubes of rock cores on the Martian surface as a backup to samples on the rover itself. NASA plans to bring some of these samples back to Earth in a decade, in its longtime search for signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars.
Perseverance also has a companion: a mini helicopter named Ingenuity. It just completed its 37th flight and has now logged more than an hour of Martian flight time.

Source: Voice of America