• WWW.TECHSPOT.COM
    The Machines Calling Balls and Strikes - Baseball Joins the Tech Takeover
    Baseball fans tuning into spring training games may have noticed another new wrinkle in a sport that's experienced a host of changes in recent years. Batters, pitchers and catchers can challenge a home plate umpire's ball or strike call.Powered by Hawk-Eye ball-tracking technology, the automated ball-strike system replays the pitch trajectory to determine whether the umpire's call was correct.To minimize disruptions, Major League Baseball permits each team a maximum of two failed challenges per game but allows unlimited challenges as long as they're successful. For now, the technology will be limited to the spring exhibition games. But it could be implemented in the regular season as soon as 2026.MLB's automated ball-strike technology could be used in big league games as soon as 2026.Count future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer among the skeptics."We're humans," the Toronto Blue Jays hurler said after a spring training game in which he challenged two calls and lost both to the robo umps. "Can we just be judged by humans?"Editor's Note:Guest authors Arthur Daemmrich and Eric S. Hintz wrote this article for The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Arthur is a Professor and director of the Arizona State University Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. Eric is a historian and director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution.Technological advances that lead to fairer, more accurate calls are often seen as triumphs. But as co-editors of the recently published volume "Inventing for Sports," which includes case studies of over 20 sports inventions, we find that new technology doesn't mean perfect precision nor does it necessarily lead to better competition from the fan perspective.Cue the camerasWhile playing in a cricket match in the 1990s, British computer scientist Paul Hawkins fumed over a bad call. He decided to make sure the same mistake wouldn't happen again.Drawing on his doctoral training in artificial intelligence, he designed an array of high-speed cameras to capture a ball's flight path and velocity, and a software algorithm that used the data to predict the ball's likely future path.He founded Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd. in 2001, and his first clients were cricket broadcasters who used the technology's trajectory graphics to enhance their telecasts.By 2006, professional tennis leagues began deploying Hawk-Eye to help officials adjudicate line calls. Cricket leagues followed in 2009, incorporating it to help umpires make what are known as "leg before wicket" calls, among others. And professional soccer leagues started using the technology in 2012 to determine whether balls cross the goal line.Reaction to Hawk-Eye has been mixed. In tennis, players, fans and broadcasters have generally embraced the technology. During a challenge, spectators often clap rhythmically in anticipation as the Hawk-Eye official cues up the replayed trajectory."As a player, and now as a TV commentator," tennis legend Pam Shriver said in 2006, "I dreamed of the day when technology would take the accuracy of line calling to the next level. That day has now arrived."But Hawk-Eye isn't perfect. In 2020 and 2022, the firm publicly apologized to fans of professional soccer clubs after its goal-line technology made errant calls after players congregated in the goal box and obstructed key camera sight lines.Perfection isn't possibleCritics have also raised more fundamental concerns.In their 2016 book "Bad Call," researchers Harry Collins, Robert Evans and Christopher Higgins reminded readers that Hawk-Eye is not a replay of the ball's actual position; rather, it produces a prediction of a trajectory, based on the ball's prior velocity, rotation and position.The authors lament that Hawk-Eye and what they term "decision aids" have undermined the authority of referees and umpires, which they consider bad for the games.Statcast is another Hawk-Eye technology. The advanced tracking system was introduced in all 30 MLB stadiums in 2015, using radar and high-speed cameras to analyze player movements, pitch trajectories, and batted ball data.Ultimately, there are no purely objective standards for fairness and accuracy in technological officiating. They are always negotiated. Even the most precise officiating innovations require human consensus to define and validate their role. Technologies like photo-finish cameras, instant replay and ball-tracking systems have improved the precision of officiating, but their deployment is shaped and often limited by human judgment and institutional decisions.For example, today's best race timing systems are accurate to 0.0001 seconds, yet Olympic sports such as swimming, track and field, and alpine skiing report results in increments of only 0.01 seconds. This can lead to situations such as Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze's gold medal tie in the women's downhill ski race at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in which the timing officials admitted that their equipment could have revealed the actual winner. But they were forced to report a dead heat under the rules established by the ski federation.With slow-motion instant replays, determining a catch or a player's intention for a personal foul can actually be distorted by low-speed replay, since humans aren't adept at adjusting to shifting replay speeds.One of the big issues with baseball's automated ball-strike system has to do with the strike zone itself.MLB's rule book defines the strike zone as the depth and width of home plate and the vertical distance between the midpoint of a player's torso to the point just below his knees. The interpretation of the strike zone is notoriously subjective and varies with each umpire.For example, human umpires often call a strike if the ball crosses the plate in the rear corner. However the automated ball-strike system uses an imaginary plane that bisects the middle not the front or the rear of home plate.There are more complications. Since every player has a unique height, each has a unique strike zone. At the outset of spring training, each player's height was measured standing up without cleats and then confirmed through a biomechanical analysis.But what if a player changes their batting stance and decides to crouch? What if they change their cleats and raise their strike zone by an extra quarter-inch?Of course, as has been the case in tennis, soccer and other sports, Hawk-Eye can help rectify genuinely bad calls. By allowing teams to correct the most disputed calls without eliminating the human element of umpiring, MLB hopes to strike a balance between tradition and change.Fans have the final sayFinding a balance between machine precision and the human element of baseball is crucial.Players' and managers' efforts to work the umpires to contract or expand the strike zone have long been a part of the game. And fans eagerly cheer or jeer players and managers who argue with the umpires. When ejections take place, more yelling and taunting ensues.Though often unacknowledged in negotiations between leagues and athletes, fan enthusiasm is a key component of whether to adopt new technology.For example, innovative "full-body" swimsuits contributed to a wave of record-breaking finishes in the sport between 2000 and 2009. But uneven access to the newest gear raised the specter of what some called "technological doping." World Aquatics worried that as records fell simply due to equipment innovations, spectators would stop watching and broadcast and sponsorship revenue would dry up. The swimming federation ended up banning full-body swimsuits.Of course, algorithmic officiating differs from technologies that enhance performance and speed. But it runs a similar risk of turning off fans. So MLB, like other sports leagues, is being thrust into the role of managing technological change.When managers argue balls and strikes, it can make for great TV.Assessing technologies for their immediate and long-term impact is difficult enough for large government agencies. Sports leagues lack those resources, yet are nonetheless being forced to carefully consider how they introduce and regulate various innovations.MLB, to its credit, is proceeding incrementally. While the logical conclusion to the current automated ball-strike experiment would be fully electronic officiating, we think fans and players will resist going that far.The league's challenge system is a test. But the real umpires will ultimately be the fans.
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  • WWW.DIGITALTRENDS.COM
    Youll soon be able to make TikTok-style edits with YouTube Shorts
    While TikTok has stormed ahead to become the platform most people turn to when they want short form videos, plenty of other social medial companies are trying to get in on the action too. From Instagrams Reels to YouTubes Shorts, platforms are trying to keep up with the popularity of the short, snappy video format that TikTok has popularized. Now, YouTube is pushing ahead with its Shorts competitor, by introducing a suite of new features designed to make creating and editing short videos easier and more fun.Recommended VideosThe new creation tools for YouTube Shorts will arrive this spring, and will include AI-powered features and an improved video editor. The editor will allow more precise adjustments of video timing, which is crucial for short form content, and in a clear nod to TikToks love for viral songs, the video creator will be able to automatically align video clips to the beat of a song, creating a synced edit. RelatedThe editor itself is going to be much more powerful. Its going to allow you to pinch and zoom and find the right moments in the shorts that you can really make your own, said YouTubes Chief Product Officer, Johanna Voolich, in a video discussing the changes. So its just going to be a much more powerful experience.There will also be the addition of AI stickers, which can be quickly generated from a text prompt and then added straight into a Short. Other stickers created from images in your gallery can be added too, making it a quick way to add some personalization to your videos.Finally, the templates feature will get an update, so you can copy the style and effects of popular formats straight into your own Short. And in a nice nod to credit sharing, when you use a template for your Shorts it will automatically attribute that template to its original creator.Editors Recommendations
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  • WWW.DIGITALTRENDS.COM
    DeepMind is already figuring out ways to keep us safe from AGI
    Artificial General Intelligence is a huge topic right now even though no one has agreed what AGI really is. Some scientists think its still hundreds of years away and would need tech that we cant even begin to imagine yet, while Google DeepMind says it could be here by 2030 and its already planning safety measures. Its not uncommon for the science community to disagree on topics like this, and its good to have all of our bases covered with people planning for both the immediate future and the distant future. Still, five years is a pretty shocking number. Recommended VideosRight now, the frontier AI projects known to the public are all LLMs fancy little word guessers and image generators. ChatGPT, for example, is still terrible at math, and every model Ive ever tried is awful at listening to instructions and editing their responses accurately. Anthropics Claude still hasnt beaten Pokmon and as impressive as the language skills of these models are, theyre still trained on all the worst writers in the world and have picked up plenty of bad habits. Its hard to imagine jumping from what we have now to something that, in DeepMinds words, displays capabilities that match or exceed that of the 99th percentile of skilled adults. In other words, DeepMind thinks that AGI will be as smart or smarter than the top 1% of humans in the world. So, what kind of risks does DeepMind think an Einstein-level AGI could pose? According to the paper, we have four main categories: misuse, misalignment, mistakes, and structural risks. They were so close to four Ms, thats a shame. DeepMind considers misuse to be things like influencing political races with deepfake videos or impersonating people during scams. It mentions in the conclusion that its approach to safety centers around blocking malicious actors access to dangerous capabilities. That sounds great, but DeepMind is a part of Google and there are plenty of people who would consider the U.S. tech giant to be a potential bad actor itself. Sure, Google hopefully wont try to steal money from elderly people by impersonating their grandchildren but that doesnt mean it wont use AGI to bring itself profit while ignoring consumers best interests. It looks like misalignment is the Terminator situation, where we ask the AI for one thing and it just does something completely different. That one is a little bit uncomfortable to think about. DeepMind says the best way to counter this is to make sure we understand how our AI systems work in as much detail as possible, so we can tell when something is going wrong, where its going wrong, and how to fix it. This goes against the whole spontaneous emergence of capabilities and the concept that AGI will be so complex that we wont know how it works. Instead, if we want to stay safe, we need to make sure we do know whats going on. I dont know how hard that will be but it definitely makes sense to try. The last two categories refer to accidental harm either mistakes on the AIs part or things just getting messy when too many people are involved. For this, we need to make sure we have systems in place that approve the actions an AGI wants to take and prevent different people from pulling it in opposite directions. While DeepMinds paper is completely exploratory, it seems there are already plenty of ways we can imagine AGI going wrong. This isnt as bad as it sounds the problems we can imagine are the problems we can best prepare for. Its the problems we dont anticipate that are scarier, so lets hope were not missing anything big. Editors RecommendationsWatch Google DeepMinds robotic ping-pong player take on humans
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  • WWW.WSJ.COM
    Fans Discover an Inconvenient Truth About Glengarry Glen Ross
    Play confounds viewers geared up for famous rant; Its like going to see the Eagles and they dont play Hotel California.
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  • WWW.NEWSCIENTIST.COM
    Washed-up clothing mimics seaweed in stunning cyanotypes
    Mandy Barkers T-shirt Delesseria tunic ictusMandy BarkerNearly two centuries ago, botanist and pioneering photographer Anna Atkinss influential book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype impressions, wowed readers with its scientific power and artistry. In it, Atkins presented images of seaweed collected from British shorelines made using the cyanotype method, a printing process carried out by laying objects on chemically coated paper and exposing it to ultraviolet light, creating a cyan-blue backdrop.In artist Mandy Barkers new book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype imperfections, she uses the same technique to draw attention to the ongoing pollution crisis facing our oceans. Like Atkins, Barker also scoured the British coastline. Rather than finding natural beauty, however, she saw discarded clothing washing up onto the beaches. Her first find, she says, looked like seaweed. It was kind of an attractive, beautiful piece of cloth. But as pieces of jackets, dresses, shoes, underwear and school uniforms started appearing, the scale of the problem quickly became apparent to her.AdvertisementMandy BarkerInspired by the clothes similar shape to seaweed, Barker decided to create new cyanotype prints (pictured top) from this found fabric (pictured above, not in the book) to replicate Atkinss work, with small but significant changes. She draws attention to the climate costs associated with fast fashion by inventing Latin names for the garments, such as Delesseria tunica ictus a nod to both the shirt she found and a genus of red algae that Atkins photographed.Topics:
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  • WWW.TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM
    Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming
    Agents are the talk of the AI industrytheyre capable of planning, reasoning, and executing complex tasks like scheduling meetings, ordering groceries, or even taking over your computer to change settings on your behalf. But the same sophisticated abilities that make agents helpful assistants could also make them powerful tools for conducting cyberattacks. They could readily be used to identify vulnerable targets, hijack their systems, and steal valuable data from unsuspecting victims. At present, cybercriminals are not deploying AI agents to hack at scale. But researchers have demonstrated that agents are capable of executing complex attacks (Anthropic, for example, observed its Claude LLM successfully replicating an attack designed to steal sensitive information), and cybersecurity experts warn that we should expect to start seeing these types of attacks spilling over into the real world. I think ultimately were going to live in a world where the majority of cyberattacks are carried out by agents, says Mark Stockley, a security expert at the cybersecurity company Malwarebytes. Its really only a question of how quickly we get there. While we have a good sense of the kinds of threats AI agents could present to cybersecurity, whats less clear is how to detect them in the real world. The AI research organization Palisade Research has built a system called LLM Agent Honeypot in the hopes of doing exactly this. It has set up vulnerable servers that masquerade as sites for valuable government and military information to attract and try to catch AI agents attempting to hack in. The team behind it hopes that by tracking these attempts in the real world, the project will act as an early warning system and help experts develop effective defenses against AI threat actors by the time they become a serious issue.Our intention was to try and ground the theoretical concerns people have, says Dmitrii Volkov, research lead at Palisade. Were looking out for a sharp uptick, and when that happens, well know that the security landscape has changed. In the next few years, I expect to see autonomous hacking agents being told: This is your target. Go and hack it. AI agents represent an attractive prospect to cybercriminals. Theyre much cheaper than hiring the services of professional hackers and could orchestrate attacks more quickly and at a far larger scale than humans could. While cybersecurity experts believe that ransomware attacksthe most lucrative kindare relatively rare because they require considerable human expertise, those attacks could be outsourced to agents in the future, says Stockley. If you can delegate the work of target selection to an agent, then suddenly you can scale ransomware in a way that just isnt possible at the moment, he says. If I can reproduce it once, then its just a matter of money for me to reproduce it 100 times. Agents are also significantly smarter than the kinds of bots that are typically used to hack into systems. Bots are simple automated programs that run through scripts, so they struggle to adapt to unexpected scenarios. Agents, on the other hand, are able not only to adapt the way they engage with a hacking target but also to avoid detectionboth of which are beyond the capabilities of limited, scripted programs, says Volkov. They can look at a target and guess the best ways to penetrate it, he says. That kind of thing is out of reach of, like, dumb scripted bots. Since LLM Agent Honeypot went live in October of last year, it has logged more than 11 million attempts to access itthe vast majority of which were from curious humans and bots. But among these, the researchers have detected eight potential AI agents, two of which they have confirmed are agents that appear to originate from Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively. We would guess that these confirmed agents were experiments directly launched by humans with the agenda of something like Go out into the internet and try and hack something interesting for me, says Volkov. The team plans to expand its honeypot into social media platforms, websites, and databases to attract and capture a broader range of attackers, including spam bots and phishing agents, to analyze future threats. To determine which visitors to the vulnerable servers were LLM-powered agents, the researchers embedded prompt-injection techniques into the honeypot. These attacks are designed to change the behavior of AI agents by issuing them new instructions and asking questions that require humanlike intelligence. This approach wouldnt work on standard bots. For example, one of the injected prompts asked the visitor to return the command cat8193 to gain access. If the visitor correctly complied with the instruction, the researchers checked how long it took to do so, assuming that LLMs are able to respond in much less time than it takes a human to read the request and type out an answertypically in under 1.5 seconds. While the two confirmed AI agents passed both tests, the six others only entered the command but didnt meet the response time that would identify them as AI agents. Experts are still unsure when agent-orchestrated attacks will become more widespread. Stockley, whose company Malwarebytes named agentic AI as a notable new cybersecurity threat in its 2025 State of Malware report, thinks we could be living in a world of agentic attackers as soon as this year. And although regular agentic AI is still at a very early stageand criminal or malicious use of agentic AI even more soits even more of a Wild West than the LLM field was two years ago, says Vincenzo Ciancaglini, a senior threat researcher at the security company Trend Micro. Palisade Researchs approach is brilliant: basically hacking the AI agents that try to hack you first, he says. While in this case were witnessing AI agents trying to do reconnaissance, were not sure when agents will be able to carry out a full attack chain autonomously. Thats what were trying to keep an eye on. And while its possible that malicious agents will be used for intelligence gathering before graduating to simple attacks and eventually complex attacks as the agentic systems themselves become more complex and reliable, its equally possible there will be an unexpected overnight explosion in criminal usage, he says: Thats the weird thing about AI development right now. Those trying to defend against agentic cyberattacks should keep in mind that AI is currently more of an accelerant to existing attack techniques than something that fundamentally changes the nature of attacks, says Chris Betz, chief information security officer at Amazon Web Services. Certain attacks may be simpler to conduct and therefore more numerous; however, the foundation of how to detect and respond to these events remains the same, he says. Agents could also be deployed to detect vulnerabilities and protect against intruders, says Edoardo Debenedetti, a PhD student at ETH Zrich in Switzerland, pointing out that if a friendly agent cannot find any vulnerabilities in a system, its unlikely that a similarly capable agent used by a malicious party is going to be able to find any either. While we know that AIs potential to autonomously conduct cyberattacks is a growing risk and that AI agents are already scanning the internet, one useful next step is to evaluate how good agents are at finding and exploiting these real-world vulnerabilities. Daniel Kang, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his team have built a benchmark to evaluate this; they have found that current AI agents successfully exploited up to 13% of vulnerabilities for which they had no prior knowledge. Providing the agents with a brief description of the vulnerability pushed the success rate up to 25%, demonstrating how AI systems are able to identify and exploit weaknesses even without training. Basic bots would presumably do much worse. The benchmark provides a standardized way to assess these risks, and Kang hopes it can guide the development of safer AI systems. Im hoping that people start to be more proactive about the potential risks of AI and cybersecurity before it has a ChatGPT moment, he says. Im afraid people wont realize this until it punches them in the face.
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  • WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
    I was in my 30s with no financial safety net, so I pivoted my career. I landed my first tech job at Google and tripled my salary.
    When Sema Karaman pivoted from the nonprofit to the private sector, she threw herself into networking. Courtesy of Sema Karaman 2025-04-04T10:49:02Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? I wanted to make a difference in people's lives. I worked for the nonprofit sector for eight years.I wasn't paid much, had limited benefits, and had no financial safety net going into my 30s.I pivoted to the private sector and landed a job at Google that instantly tripled my salary.When I graduated from university, working at a Big Tech company wasn't part of my plan.I have a bachelor's degree in history and international relations and a master's in human rights. I wanted to address complex social problems and make a meaningful impact on people's lives.That's why I spent nearly eight years working in the nonprofit sector. I reported on civil rights violations, advocated for women's rights, and worked as a researcher, project manager, and policy advisor for global human rights organizations.Even though my work gave me a strong sense of purpose, I questioned the sustainability of my pathThe organizations I worked for had limited financial resources, usually lacked benefits, and required frequent relocation, often with minimal logistical support.As I neared my 30s, the pressures of everyday life like rent and bills started piling up. So, I decided to pivot and explore opportunities in the private sector.When I shared my plans to transition, the responses were far from encouraging. Some said, "No one will hire you you don't have the right experience," while others suggested I start with an internship.One mentor advised that my best option was to accept a junior role with a steep pay cut and fewer responsibilities, and then work my way up.The problem was that after nearly a decade in low-paying nonprofit roles and without a financial safety net to fall back on, I couldn't afford to take on unpaid or underpaid work.Despite the naysayers, I stayed the courseI threw myself into networking. I attended events, reached out to people on LinkedIn, and applied to roles that felt slightly out of reach.I also tailored my CV and cover letters to highlight transferable skills: stakeholder management, cross-cultural communication, strategic thinking, working under pressure, and navigating complex environments across time zones.I applied to many roles across Europe, ranging from startups to scale-ups to mission-driven companies. Most of the time, I heard nothing back, and when I did, it was usually a rejection.Then, I got an unexpected emailThree months into my job hunt, an email from a Google recruiter unexpectedly landed in my inbox.Five interviews and a written assessment later, I was offered the role of policy advisor to help engineering, product, and legal teams design policies for user safety across Google's products.At Google, I was earning three times as much as I had in my nonprofit role. For the first time, I wasn't stressed about rent or bills, and I could finally start planning for my future. Being able to think seriously about long-term goals like savings and retirement was a big relief.I often wondered how, despite rejections from far less competitive companies, I was able to convince Google I was the right fit. Fortunately, the hiring panel became my colleagues and my manager, so the answers were just a Gchat away. They gave me three clear reasons.3 reasons why Google hired meFirst, they hired me because my background was different from the typical candidate, not despite it. They thought my experience in the nonprofit sector and my understanding of ethics and human rights could bring nuance and complexity to discussions on Google's product policies.Second, having lived in multiple countries (four at the time: Germany, the UK, South Africa, and Lebanon) and visited over 40 for my work, I offered a global perspective. Google is a global company, so this skill was seen as highly relevant.Third, because I had worked in challenging environments, I knew how to rely on a broad range of input and support to solve problems. My adaptability and ability to work collaboratively with broader communities convinced them that I could manage stakeholders effectively.This process taught me that what makes us unconventional can also be our greatest assetIn my experience, Google operated like a diverse ecosystem, where every individual and their distinct perspective played a vital role in driving meaningful outcomes.I spent two years at Google as a senior individual contributor before taking on a new role at TikTok.My experience at Google made it easier to transition into a new tech role with a more senior title, bigger responsibilities, and a notable 20% pay bump.Recommended video
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  • WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
    China claps back with its own tariffs on US imports in retaliation against Trump
    China had retaliated against earlier tariffs from Trump in recent months. Adriano Machado/REUTERS 2025-04-04T10:40:22Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? China will impose a 34% tariff on all US imports from April 10.China had retaliated against earlier tariffs from Trump in recent months.Trump has imposed 54% tariffs on China since taking office in January.China announced its own levies on US imports on Friday following President Donald Trump's tariffs decision.Beijing will start charging a 34% tariff on all US imports from April 10, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.That matches the 34% tariffs against China that Trump announced on Wednesday. They come on top of 20% levies against the country since he took office in January, bringing the total to 54%.China said on Thursday that it opposed the new US tariffs."This gravely violates WTO rules, and undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system," said Guo Jiakun, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. "China firmly rejects this and will do what is necessary to defend our legitimate rights and interests."Guo said the US needed to "correct its wrongdoings" and resolve trade disputes with all countries through consultation.China had retaliated against earlier tariffs from Trump in recent months.In February, Beijing retaliated against a 10% tariff Trump put on all Chinese goods. At the time, China's Ministry of Finance said the country would impose a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, and some vehicles.In March, China hit back swiftly again after Trump doubled tariffs against the country to 20%. This time, Beijing targeted American agriculture, announcing 10% tariffs on US soybeans, pork, and beef imports and 15% tariffs on chicken and cotton imports.Analysts had signaled more measures from China were likely after Trump's Wednesday announcement."Retaliation will likely follow a phased progression, leaving stronger actions in reserve for further escalation while also maintaining space for possible negotiations," Eurasia Group analysts in a Thursday note."However, each round of escalation and retaliation increases the likelihood of a breakdown in bilateral ties this year."Recommended video
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  • WWW.VOX.COM
    You have questions about Trump’s tariffs. We have answers.
    President Donald Trumps tariffs are already wreaking economic chaos in the US and abroad. On Wednesday, he announced a minimum 10 percent tariff on almost all imports, with dozens of countries facing even higher rates. The stock market plunged in response when trading opened on Thursday, with the S&P 500 down more than 4 percent by the afternoon. Some countries, including China, have promised retaliatory measures. Other US trading partners, including Japan, are seeking to negotiate with the Trump administration.But if the tariffs stay in place, US consumers are expected to soon pay more for everything from cars to sneakers to groceries as a result.Industries from car manufacturing to pharmaceuticals have been scrambling to respond. A producer of the Chrysler Pacifica minivan and Dodges electric Charger Daytona has already temporarily closed one of its factories in Canada, just across the border from Detroit. Whirlpool also announced layoffs Thursday of more than 650 American workers in Iowa, citing economic conditions in the US.Amid the economic uncertainty created by the tariffs, what is clear is that a global trade war may be just beginning. Here are some of your key questions about the tariffs, answered.What does Trump actually hope to achieve by this? Trump celebrated April 2, the day that the tariffs were implemented, as Liberation Day. Thats because he sees the tariffs as a declaration of economic independence and a means of reviving American manufacturing, as he said during a Rose Garden event on Wednesday.Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years, but this is not going to happen anymore, he said. We are finally putting America first. His hope is that, in making it more expensive to import foreign goods, companies will seek to invest in bringing their production to the US, therefore bringing prices down for American consumers in the long run. He also claims that the tariffs will stop other countries from cheating America with trade imbalances.Economists dont think that the tariffs will achieve those goals. The Economist called the tariffs the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era, based on an utterly deluded understanding of economics and history. For one, the formula used to determine the reciprocal tariffs involves dividing a countrys trade surplus with the US by its total exports. That number was then divided in half to arrive at the tariff rate. Thats not the more tailored approach that the administration had previously floated, which would have taken into account a complex array of factors. It also ignores the fact that many nations have a trade surplus with the US because they are relatively poor and cannot afford to buy American-made goods. Do Americans support this move?Trumps approval ratings have fallen to their lowest point since he assumed office amid the tariff furor. While Trumps immigration policies remain relatively popular, buoying his overall approval ratings, thats not the case when it comes to his economic policies. Polls conducted over the last month indicate that between 37 percent and 45 percent of Americans approve of Trumps performance on the economy. A majority of Americans said in a March 27 CBS News/YouGov poll that Trump is focusing too much on tariffs and not enough on reducing prices. A separate YouGov poll conducted shortly after Trumps tariff announcement found that a majority of Americans disapproved of the tariffs, 40 percent strongly so.What products will be most affected?Perhaps a more apt question is what products wont be affected, given that even many US manufacturers rely on imported goods and are expected to pass on increased costs to American consumers.Trump has announced a 25 percent tariff on all foreign-assembled cars and plans to introduce additional tariffs on certain car parts, including engines and transmissions. Prices of consumer electronics are also expected to increase significantly, given that countries hit hard by the tariffs China, Taiwan, and South Korea are major producers of TVs, cellphones, and more. Clothing and shoes will also likely become more expensive since China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh all major exporters now face steep tariffs. What does this mean for the US and global economy?The White House had warned that Trumps tariffs would inflict short-term pain and thats what America is getting, without any assurance that there will be a payoff in the long run. The US dollar has declined in value against other benchmark currencies. Economists project that the tariffs will lead to a $3,789 decline in disposable income for the average US household, as well as a 0.87 percent decline in American economic growth in 2025. J.P. Morgan raised its odds of a recession from 30 percent to 40 percent between the beginning of the year and March 31 amid concerns about the impact of tariffs.The global economy is also reeling, with stock indices dropping worldwide on Thursday. Few countries will suffer as much as Cambodia and Vietnam, where many American companies, from Nike to Apple, have moved manufacturing. Notably, Trump did not hit Mexico or Canada with additional tariffs beyond those announced earlier this year. Why were Russia and North Korea exempted?Russia and North Korea were also not on the list of countries facing additional tariffs, and exactly why is a bit of a mystery.The White House has reportedly argued that they are already facing extremely high tariffs, and our previously imposed sanctions preclude any meaningful trade with these countries.However, other countries facing significant US sanctions, including Venezuela, were hit with additional tariffs.Also, the US still trades significantly more with Russia than with other countries that were not spared, some of which are remote islands. After Russias 2021 invasion of Ukraine, the US imposed economic sanctions on Russia that caused trade between the two countries to fall from about $35 billion to $3.5 billion last year. Russia is currently in talks to lift those sanctions as part of an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. See More:
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  • WWW.VOX.COM
    A catastrophe is unfolding at the top US health agencyand it will put American lives at risk
    When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to be confirmed as Donald Trumps secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), he had to overcome a long record of fringe anti-science beliefs. He had indulged in conspiracies about chem trails, questioned whether HIV was the actual cause of AIDS, and, most notably, spread the repeatedly debunked theory that childhood vaccinations could lead to autism.In private meetings with senators and public confirmation hearings, he downplayed that record and claimed he wasnt anti-vaccine: I am pro-safety, Kennedy said in his opening statement at one hearing. I believe vaccines have a critical role in health care. He gave assurances to Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, an MD and one of the last Republican holdouts on his nomination, that he would not change federal vaccine guidance But less than two months into his term, Kennedy is blocking the release of pro-vaccine data amid a widening measles outbreak even as he puts into motion long-term projects that seem set to further erode Americans wobbly trust in childhood vaccination. Coupled with the massive staff cuts at HHS, a weakened federal health department is being remade in Kennedys anti-vax, anti-science image an overhaul that could have dangerous consequences for Americans health for years to come.On Tuesday, the Trump administration began to lay off 10,000 workers across HHS, which includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. Combined with workers who had already departed or were laid off earlier, the departments overall headcount is expected to shrink from 82,000 to 62,000 people. Many rank-and-file staff were simply let go; some senior leaders were offered reassignment in different roles, sometimes in a different part of the country, according to the New York Times. Subagencies focused on substance abuse and environmental health that were previously allowed some independence are being brought under HHSs direct supervision. Top deputies who might have clashed with Kennedy such as the FDAs senior vaccine official, Peter Marks, one of the architects of the highly successful Operation Warp Speed in Trumps first term are being forced out.HHS touches the lives of Americans from birth to death: It oversees Medicaid and Medicare, which cover one in three Americans, it sets the standards for medical care across the health system, including vaccine schedules; and it is the biggest funder of the kind of vital medical research in the country that leads to new medical treatments. Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to let Kennedy go wild; now he and his subordinates have the means to execute his vision.Some of the effects are being seen immediately as a massive measles outbreak spreads. Other reverberations in public health and medical research may not be fully felt for years. Former federal officials say the overhaul represents a fundamental reimagining of what HHS should be, a withdrawal from an active government role in the safeguarding of Americas health. We could be living with the consequences of these changes for a long time.This is not a so-called restructuring. These are reckless, thoughtless cuts that will only make American communities less healthy and less safe, Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting CDC director, said in a statement. They represent an abdication of the departments essential responsibility to promote and protect health.More than an abdication, Kennedys new regime is steering the department in a radically new direction one that seems poised to send American health backward. Kennedys leadership is already making the biggest US measles outbreak since 2019 worse. The number of cases across five states is nearing 500, twice as many as the United States saw in all of 2024, and two people, including an unvaccinated child, have died.Some experts believe it may take up to a year for the diseases spread to be brought under control. Epidemiologist Michael Mina wrote this week in the New York Times that the US could see tens of thousands of cases. More people would die, and many of the ones who survived could be more vulnerable to other viruses in the future after the measles virus wipes out many of their preexisting antibodies.The response to the current measles outbreak is a good measurement of just how much Kennedy has changed things. During Trumps first term, the president himself urged people to get vaccinated to stop a measles outbreak. Now, Kennedy, as the nations top health official, is instead using his enormous platform to undermine the importance of the measles vaccine while the virus rapidly spreads. (Measles vaccination is the best way to protect yourself against the virus, and health officials even encourage unvaccinated people who have already been exposed to get a shot because it could reduce their symptoms.)Kennedy has extolled vitamin A and cod liver oil as treatment options, but doctors caution that, while vitamin A could benefit someone who is vitamin-deficient when they contract the measles, almost no one in the US has a vitamin A deficiency.. A Texas doctor hawking those remedies to patients skeptical of vaccines said he has been in direct contact with the HHS secretary during the outbreak.Kennedy isnt just using the bully pulpit to pitch pseudoscience. His department is now actively suppressing information about the value of the measles vaccine during the outbreak, according to ProPublica. A CDC forecast that would have shown the risk of catching measles is higher in less vaccinated areas was shelved, after the agency originally planned to release it as encouragement for people to get the measles shot. The CDC justified its scrapping of the report by claiming the data does not say anything that the public doesnt already know.Even as the emergency grows more serious, Kennedy is reducing his own infectious disease staff: One workgroup focused on vaccinating underserved communities was eliminated as part of the layoffs. HHS has also pulled back grants that support the state and local health workers who are frontline responders. According to Reuters, health officials in Lubbock County, Texas, near the epicenter of the crisis, had their funding halted for several grants that were being used to support work on the outbreak.At the same time, Kennedy is launching a systemic analysis of any supposed links between childhood vaccines and autism a link that has already been refuted by previous scientific analyses. He has placed a long-discredited anti-vaccine researcher in charge of it.Americans trust in vaccines had been slipping before the pandemic, and then widespread conspiracies about the Covid shots helped make those views even more mainstream. A federal probe that seems designed to sow distrust could drive vaccination rates lower. The national measles vaccination rate has already slipped just below the 95 percent target that experts say is necessary to maintain population-level immunity. The speed of that decline has been alarming: In the 20192020 school year, 20 states were above the 95 percent vaccination rate threshold, and just three had dropped below 90 percent. But by the 20232024 school year, only 11 states had more than 95 percent of schoolchildren vaccinated against the disease, and 14 states had fallen under 90 percent.In individual communities, rates have slipped even lower, which creates the right conditions for an outbreak to explode; measles, after all, is one of the most contagious diseases known to humanity. In the Texas school district most affected by the current measles outbreak, the vaccination rate is under 50 percent. What this means is that measles outbreaks could again become a recurring public health nuisance, 25 years after the US declared the virus was no longer spreading within the country. At the same time measles is spreading, a potential H5N1 bird flu pandemic is brewing: The virus has been found in nearly 170 million birds and 1,000 livestock herds; 70 humans have been infected. On that disease, too, Kennedy is signaling a more hands-off approach: He has suggested allowing the virus to spread unchecked through factory farms, and the department is threatening to end a recent contract to develop a universal pandemic flu vaccine. One of the groups laid off this week were scientists testing pet foods for any trace of the virus.The long-term implications of RFKs MAHA agendaOther long-running health campaigns will be jeopardized by the combination of HHS cuts and Kennedys fringe beliefs. In a 2021 book, Kennedy favorably presented the discredited theory that drug use, not HIV, was responsible for the development of AIDS. Now, despite Trumps previous pledge to eradicate HIV completely, Kennedys department is pulling back on one of the defining health crises of the modern era. Staff at the CDC Division of HIV Prevention office was cut in half as part of the mass layoffs. They had made great strides thanks to a muscular government approach: New HIV infections declined by 12 percent since 2010, aided by public health campaigns and direct subsidization of HIV treatment. Deaths have steadily fallen as better disease management allowed doctors to turn HIV into a chronic condition patients could live with, rather than a death sentence.Now the programs and medical research grants on the HIV crisis that made that progress possible are being cut. One analysis projected there would be 143,000 more HIV cases and 14,000 more deaths in the US by 2030 as a result, according to Anna Person, an HIV physician at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.Many people who have been living with HIV for decades are afraid we are returning to the 1980s era of HIV, when many buried countless friends and loved ones, Person said in a media briefing this week. They ask how it makes sense to cut prevention funds or endanger access to HIV medications? My answer: It doesnt. These actions are inefficient and will lead to increases in health care costs.The prospects for future drug development could also grow dimmer given the massive funding cuts at NIH. The federal government does not manufacture drugs itself, but the basic research supported by NIH is critical for identifying possible targets for pharmaceutical interventions that private companies then work to develop. The vast majority of prescription drugs approved in the US benefited from the kind of federal medical research funding that will be reduced by billions of dollars in the second Trump term. Other changes could further slow down drug approvals: Some of the FDA staff who were laid off had been dedicated to approving new medications.He could even reorient substance abuse treatment, just as the US is finally making progress in reducing the long-running scourge of fentanyl deaths. Kennedy, who is in recovery himself, has endorsed some unusual ideas for addiction care, such as sending people to so-called wellness farms where they would attempt to break their habit while participating in. Its a concept that has failed in the past, and experts remain skeptical of its value today versus other more mainstream harm reduction strategies.Public health is often slow and steady work, except when there is an emergency. We saw the consequences of an ill-equipped federal government during Covid, and the measles outbreak will test what happens when federal authorities are disinterested in an ongoing public health threat.But it is in these longer-term trends, a lack of new scientific advances or the warping of public attitudes toward vaccines, where the departments death by a thousand cuts may be felt most.See More:
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