Sophia was activated in 2015Sophia, the famous humanoid robot, has arrived in Ethiopia – but without some of her body parts. A
bag containing some of the robot was lost at Frankfurt airport, which
has led to cancellation of a press conference scheduled to take place on
Friday at the Ethiopian National Museum in the capital, Addis Ababa. Designed by Hong Kong firm Hanson Robotics, Sophia has been programmed to speak Amharic, Ethiopia's official language. She was also due to have dinner with Ethiopia’s Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed during her three-day visit in the city.
Getty Images
Sophia is quite a celebratory, attracting much attention as she travels the worldBut Getahun Mekuria, Ethiopia’s science and technology minister, told BBC Amharic that Sophia would still appear at Saturday’s MCIT International Expo. Getnet
Asefa, the manager of Icog Labs – the engineering firm behind her
Amharic programming, explained that Sophia was fixable and they would
find alternative parts for her. Amharic is the first language she will have spoken other than English since she was activated in 2015. Sophia isn't pre-programmed with answers, instead she uses machine learning and responds by reading people's expressions. She
shot to fame after becoming the first robot to gain the citizenship of a
country – when Saudi Arabia gave her nationality last year.
"I take my hat off to the players, not just as players but as men.
They are marvellous men and it is no wonder everyone has fallen in love
with them," Metsu said.
We have
shown that we are capable of upsetting the hierachy of world football
Bruno Metsu
En route to the quarter-finals they beat Sweden as well as France, and
drew with Denmark and Uruguay playing open, exciting and attractive
football.
"It is extraordinary what we have done and we have learned a great
deal," he added.
"Yes, we lost to Turkey but if we made any mistakes they were down
to the errors of youth and over-enthusiasm.
"I am very proud of the players. It is a great honour to coach
such a nice, flexible team. They were heroic and to lose in extra time
proves our players are heroes.
"We came up against a great Turkish team - but it could have gone
either way.
"I am very proud of my players and we have come and shown that we
are capable of upsetting the hierachy of world football.
"It gives us a lot of hope for the future and the development of
football in our country and in Africa."
Metsu also believes that there could be more shock results in this
World Cup following on from the trend his team started on the opening day
and had a warning for Brazil.
"Turkey are a very, very good team with a lot of individual
talents playing in some of Europe's biggest league.
"They have only lost once here - to Brazil - and they were
probably a bit unlucky to lose that match," he said.
We could
not have done any more
El Hadji Diouf
Senegal's star striker El Hadji Diouf admitted that was hard to lose by
a golden goal.
The Liverpool-bound striker was contained by the Turkish defence for
much of the game.
"It's hard, hard, hard but that's how the game goes," he said
of the sudden-death exit.
"It is so hard, but one day or another our run had to stop. This
is the way God wanted it. We gave it our everything, but luck was with
Turkey.
"It's a shame but we have no regrets. We could not have done any
more."
The headquarters of Sanitation Salvage, one of the largest
private trash haulers in New York City, is a squat brick building that
sits unremarkably amid the garbage dumps and razor wire of the Hunts
Point section of the south Bronx.
The Squitieri brothers, owners for decades, can be found on the top
floor of the house-like structure on Manida Street. The three brothers
are men of considerable wealth and fixtures in Bronx politics, and one
of them, Steven, has been seen riding to special events in a white
chauffeured Rolls Royce. They are also, according to employees,
unforgiving bosses, profane taskmasters who push a small army of drivers
and off-the-books workers through grueling shifts of 18 hours or
longer.
Editor’s note
In May, VOA and ProPublica exposed a cover-up
in the workplace fatality of Mouctar Diallo, who immigrated to New York
City from Conakry, Guinea. This investigation, also produced in
partnership with ProPublica, explores the deeper circumstances
surrounding Diallo’s death.
The building’s basement is the domain of the men who work in neon
reflective gear. Each night the workers, most of them black or Hispanic,
descend the steps to sign in and get their assignments. The supervisors
make sure everyone has the printout from the Squitieris: “Do your job
or get written up.”
From the basement, the workers head to the trucks out in the yard.
Once on their routes, the drivers and their helpers often pick up young
men on the street as additional hands, everyone sprinting through
fatigue and red lights to finish nightly routes of 1,000 stops or more. Mouctar Diallo(Midjao Diallo)
In 2016, Mouctar Diallo, a teenage African immigrant, stepped into the
rough-and-tumble world of Sanitation Salvage. He was hired off the
streets of the Bronx for a few bucks in cash, then spent 18 months as
one of the company’s “third men,” hustling ahead of the trash trucks to
grab garbage from the curb and keep the gritty show rolling.
Then, nearing the end of a shift on Nov. 7, 2017, Diallo wound up
crushed to death under the wheels of a Sanitation Salvage truck. The men
he’d been helping lied to the police, saying their dead colleague was a
homeless person who had come out of nowhere.
The police took them at their word, and Diallo was buried quietly by
his family, the circumstances of his death a cynical fiction.
Even in the bruising, often chaotic world of New York’s nighttime
trash collection, Sanitation Salvage cuts a distinctively brutish
profile. Its role in Diallo’s death – and, in April, the death of an
elderly Bronx man run down while crossing the street with a cane – has
set off a firestorm for the company as well as the city agency that
oversees the commercial trash industry.
An investigation by Voice of America and ProPublica, drawing on
thousands of pages of public documents and interviews with more than a
dozen current and former workers, depicts a workplace environment in
which concerns about safety, as well as workers’ rights and
compensation, are flouted despite years of complaints from workers to
regulators.
The Sanitation Salvage office in Hunts Point, Bronx. (Ryan Christopher Jones)
Records show that more than three-quarters of Sanitation Salvage
trucks have been ordered off the road after federal safety checks. Yet
the company has paid lobbyists to fight local legislation that backers
say would compel haulers to improve on working conditions and safety.
The U.S. Department of Labor several years ago found that Sanitation
Salvage had cheated workers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in
wages. Today, the New York State Insurance Fund is suing the company for
$780,000 in unpaid workers’ compensation insurance obligations for
on-the-job injuries. ‘You’ve Done Well, My Friend’Read how Sanitation Salvage ousted the Teamsters and paid workers off the books. Worker say their union is a sham and was installed by the
company’s owners more than a decade ago. Records show it was long run by
a man later convicted by federal prosecutors of running an extortion
racket at construction sites for the Genovese crime family. Many workers
say they have never had reliable health care and other benefits, yet 2017 union records show that the convicted mobster, James Bernardone, continues to receive “deferred compensation” from the union.
On May 9, two weeks after a Sanitation Salvage truck killed
72-year-old Leo Clarke, more than 50 elected officials, labor leaders
and community organizers rallied outside the Manhattan offices of the
Business Integrity Commission (BIC).
The agency was created two decades ago to root out organized crime by
licensing and investigating the roughly 250 private commercial trash
haulers operating in New York City.
Emergency
crews wash blood from the street where Leo Clarke was run over by a
Sanitation Salvage truck on April 27, 2018. (Ryan Christopher Jones)
Police investigate the scene of Leo Clarke's death and the Sanitation Salvage truck that struck him. (Ryan Christopher Jones)
Antonio Reynoso, a Democrat representing Brooklyn and Queens and the
chairman of the City Council’s Sanitation Committee, told those gathered
that Sanitation Salvage’s license should have been suspended after the
deaths. He accused BIC of softening oversight of the private trash
industry, saying it had never once suspended or revoked the license of a
private trash hauler over safety concerns or unpaid wages.
“Sanitation Salvage is not a bad apple,” he said. “We’re talking about an entire orchard that is rotten.”
Sanitation Salvage did not answer a list of detailed questions from
Voice of America and ProPublica concerning the fatal accidents, the
union and its connection to a convicted mobster, and other issues
involving the company’s operations.
“The recent accidents are absolutely tragic, and we are saddened by
the untimely loss of life,” spokesman Lee Silberstein said in a
statement. “However, our operation is predicated upon three important
principles: 1) safety, first and foremost; 2) fulfilling a crucial need
for our customers and the city; and 3) being a good neighbor.
“A complete review of our record and operation will show that we live
by these principles and a revocation of our ability to do business is
unwarranted.” Daniel BrownellBIC commissioner (BIC file)
BIC Commissioner Daniel Brownell said an investigation of Sanitation
Salvage is under way and could result in revoking the company’s license.
The commission said it had looked into earlier worker complaints about
Sanitation Salvage, leading to a fine for a record-keeping violation.
Brownell has maintained that his agency lacks the legal authority to
hold companies liable for safety shortcomings but is actively seeking
such powers.
At a City Council hearing in March 2017, however, Brownell offered a
broad defense of the private trash industry and his agency’s oversight
of it.
“As I have said many times now, the city’s trade waste industry has
made real strides over the past 20 years,” Brownell testified. “With BIC
oversight in place, the trade waste industry has become largely a
vibrant, competitive and fair one. Much of the credit for this must go
to those in the industry itself who have worked hard for these
improvements.” A Watchdog Under FireRead more about the Business Integrity Commission and its oversight record. The New York Police Department is now investigating the
Sanitation Salvage driver, Sean Spence, who was behind the wheel when
both Diallo and Clarke were struck.
Michael Maldonado worked for 12 years at Sanitation Salvage, where he
earned the nickname “Mikey Cardboard” because one of his routes
required picking up lots of paper for recycling. Maldonado said the
scrutiny of Sanitation Salvage is long overdue. But, like many current
and former workers, he believes the Squitieris – who are major donors to
the local Bronx Democratic Party machine – are too powerful and
connected to face any serious consequences.
“How has this been under the radar for so many years?” he asked. “How
is it that somebody has to [expletive] die for people to notice?”
‘Yo, you want to work?’
One night in late spring of 2016, two workers on a Sanitation Salvage
truck stopped for a break at a deli on East 188th Street in the Bronx.
The men were about eight hours into their shift and still had vast
areas of the Bronx left to traverse. Their work assignment was known at
Sanitation Salvage as Route 3, notoriously long and backbreaking. Almost
all of the garbage for their roughly 1,000 stops was “on the floor,” as
workers called it: heavy bags that had to be lifted by hand off the
ground.
Former Sanitation Salvage driver Vernando Smith (left) regularly worked with Diallo (right) on Route 3.
(Vernando Smith | Facebook)
The driver, Timothy Belgrave, and his helper, Christopher Bourke, sat
on the truck’s steps. They were exhausted, Belgrave recalled. Bourke,
known as Big Chris, eventually struck up a conversation with a young man
who lived nearby.
“Yo, you want to work?” Bourke asked the young man, according to Belgrave.
Right then and there, Mouctar Diallo hopped on the back of the truck
and finished the rest of the route with them. Bourke gave him about $20
out of his own pocket at the end of the night, Belgrave remembered.
What happened to Diallo over the next year and a half included a
number of distinctive indignities, the worst, of course, coming with his
terrible and covered-up death. But the work life he enlisted in that
night on East 188th Street in many ways was, and is, par for the course
at Sanitation Salvage and other companies that collect trash from
businesses in New York City.
Diallo was 19 when he started the job. An immigrant to the Bronx,
Diallo spent his childhood in Conakry, Guinea’s capital. He and his best
friend, Midjao Diallo (no relation), were like brothers growing up,
side by side in school and on the soccer field afterward.
But Mouctar Diallo was ultimately destined for America, and New York specifically.
“Mouctar’s dream was to finish school in New York and get a good paying job,” Midjao Diallo said.
In the Bronx, Mouctar Diallo lived with his mother and siblings in an
apartment just off Fordham Road, one of the major arteries. (The young
man’s mother thanked VOA and ProPublica for telling her son’s story but
declined to speak at length, saying the family was grieving and not
ready to participate.)
Guineans, along with Liberians and Ghanaians, are among the largest
African immigrant groups in the Bronx, and Diallo quickly found himself a
cluster of Guinean friends who all spoke a shared tongue, Fulani. His
friends called him by a nickname: Africa. On summer days, they played
soccer together in St. James Park or took the bus to Orchard Beach in
Pelham Bay. The muggy Bronx heat reminded them of home.
Mamdou Diallo, also no relation and a newfound friend in America,
said Mouctar Diallo and other Guineans believed they were in the Bronx
“for the better.” According to Mamdou, Mouctar and his family were
lawful permanent residents.
In the end, Mouctar Diallo did not thrive at school and wound up
taking odd jobs where he could to help the family’s finances. He talked
of perhaps joining the Army, Mamdou Diallo said. He was a gifted
athlete, fast and strong.
Mouctar was only
getting $30 or $40 a night. But he liked the extra cash and even had fun
doing the work. “He didn’t realize how dangerous it was.” — Mamdou Diallo, Mouctar Diallo’s friend
(Ryan Christopher Jones)
Once on the back of a Sanitation Salvage truck, Mouctar Diallo proved
a natural for the grinding work, according to those he labored
alongside. Best, perhaps, he was unafraid of rats. Just past the 52nd
police precinct on Webster Avenue, Route 3 picked up a dumpster behind a
BP gas station, in a gated area teeming with rats.
Diallo, who soon picked up the nickname Gotto (it’s unclear what the
name referred to), didn’t mind being the one who wrestled the
overflowing dumpster to the truck. The rats stuck out their heads, and
he smacked them away with his gloved hand. Sometimes he’d even grab a
rat and hold it up playfully, his colleagues said.
A ‘banger’ on Route 3
Diallo was a “third man,” an extra helper, one of many added
off-the-books helpers who are both encouraged and approved by management
at Sanitation Salvage, according to current and former workers. A
current worker explained, “A driver will ask for a third man, and the
supervisor will say, ‘No, that’s on you if you want to find somebody.’ ”
Sometimes the company gave workers money to give to people like Diallo.
With a pliable union in place, there was no one to stick up for workers
when needed.
Before long, Belgrave said, Bourke brought Diallo to the Sanitation
Salvage office in Hunts Point to meet with a supervisor to try to get
him on the books. Bourke complained about the length of the route to the
supervisor, telling him he had to hire a permanent guy to help him out,
Belgrave said. But for whatever reason, Diallo wasn’t put on the books.
After a month or two, a driver named Vernando Smith replaced Belgrave
on Route 3, working with Bourke as his chief helper the whole summer
and early fall of 2016. Diallo was their third man three or four nights a
week, said Smith, who has since left Sanitation Salvage for another
company.
There was no doubt that management at Sanitation Salvage recognized
Diallo and knew him as a worker, according to Smith and current workers.
“Everybody knew who he was,” said one current worker. A night
supervisor, Charles Mahr, drove around observing routes and knew Diallo
by sight, the workers said.
On payday, said Smith, Bourke would get his paycheck and his
rubber-band money to pay him back for his third man. The cash would be
folded or rolled, with a piece of paper labeled with Bourke’s name or
“Chris and Vernando’s helper.” It was $80 per night, according to Smith.
(Bourke disputed this, saying the money always came out of his own
pocket.)
This was common practice, according to current workers. One explained
that supervisors would say, “If you’ve got a third man off the books,
let us know and we’ll pay you and you pay him.” A second current worker
added, “A lot of days, you don’t have a third man. And they’ll say,
‘Find somebody.’ And you say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this kid.’ And they give
you the money.”
As a third man, Diallo’s pay was likely much less than $80. Bourke
maintained that he was only giving Diallo $5 or $10 for what he
described as an hour or two of work. Diallo’s friend Mamdou Diallo (no
relation) thought he was getting paid $30 or $40. If so, said Smith,
Bourke would have been pocketing the difference – a not uncommon
practice at the company, workers said. “Sometimes you got guys that
would get the $80 and then short the guys,” explained a current worker.
Mouctar Diallo soon earned the title of “a banger” – a good worker.
He banged it out, he was tireless, racing up and down the street from
stop to stop. And almost always with a smile.
When you worked with Mouctar, Smith and others said, the young man made you laugh the whole night.
It rained one summer night, Smith remembered. Mouctar took off his
shoes, put them inside the truck’s cab, and did the whole route
barefoot.
What exactly happened in the dawn hours of Nov. 7, 2017, remains unclear.
At
about 5 a.m. on Nov. 7, 2017, Diallo’s truck arrived at Gun Hill Road.
It appears Diallo fell off the passenger side step and was run over as
the driver turned onto Jerome Avenue.
At roughly 5 a.m., Diallo’s
truck, driven by Sean Spence with Bourke as the main helper, arrived at
Gun Hill Road. The truck had only a few stops left on Route 3. It
appears Diallo stepped on the step leading to the passenger side door
before suddenly falling off and under the truck as it turned right on
Jerome Avenue.
Spence and Bourke, according to the authorities, disavowed knowing
Diallo. An NYPD report was written up that left blank the place for the
dead man’s name. News accounts referred to a “daredevil homeless man”
who had inexplicably tried to board the moving truck.
Spence could not be reached for comment. Bourke, in a recent
interview with VOA and ProPublica, sought to downplay how often Diallo
helped out on the truck and denied that he had ever tried to get him
placed on the books. He said he did not know how the phony tale of the
homeless man had come to be.
Workers and labor advocates say it’s likely Diallo’s death and the
cover story told was known to management that very night. Workers told
BIC, the oversight agency, that Mahr, the supervisor who workers said
had seen Diallo on the job for some 18 months, came to the scene of the
accident to retrieve the truck. Neither Mahr nor anyone else at
Sanitation Salvage made an effort to correct the lie about the homeless
man.
VOA and ProPublica contacted Mahr to ask about retrieving the truck
and the made-up story of the homeless man. Before hanging up, Mahr only
said he never knew Diallo. “I never saw that poor kid in my life,” he
said.
Workers at Sanitation Salvage soon learned by word of mouth who had
died. Vernando Smith, Diallo’s onetime driver on Route 3, did, too. He
then posted a farewell on Facebook.
“RIP Gotto,” Smith wrote. “Sanitation Salvage banger.”
People gather outside a mosque in
Morrisania, Bronx, that is a hub for the local Guinean community.
Mouctar Diallo's funeral was held there after his death. (Ryan
Christopher Jones)
Justice for a friend
When Mouctar Diallo was killed, prayers and sacrifices were organized
in Gaoual, the hometown of his father. But Midjao Diallo, the
schoolmate from Conakry who now lives in Angola, said he and others
wanted more than funeral rites.
“I am asking for justice for my best friend, Mouctar,” he said.
In the Bronx, Hadiatou Barry, Mouctar Diallo’s mother, can sometimes
be found seated on a windowsill in the hallway of her apartment
building, looking out over her Bronx neighborhood.
She used to share the sill with her son, and they enjoyed watching
over their quiet residential street, just a few blocks from the bustle
of Fordham Road and the ladies selling pan dulce and mango slices, the
men with tables of watches and CDs for sale, the music from big speakers
drifting above the traffic.
“I am in pain,” she said in a brief recent interview. “My first son, lovely boy.”
That BIC did not intervene more aggressively when it found out
Sanitation Salvage employees had lied about Mouctar Diallo’s death was
incomprehensible to some critics of the agency.
According to BIC, Commissioner Brownell learned of the possibility
that Diallo was a worker for the company from labor advocates in
January. In subsequent interviews with BIC investigators, the driver and
the helper admitted to creating the fiction about a homeless man.
But BIC did not ask Sanitation Salvage to suspend the driver, Spence.
Months later, the same driver was behind the wheel when Clarke was
killed on April 27. It was then that BIC asked Sanitation Salvage to
suspend Spence, which the company did.
“They treated Diallo like the trash they wanted to throw in the back of the truck.” — Sean T. Campbell, president of Teamsters Local 813
(David Dee Delgado)
“They treated Diallo like the trash they wanted to throw in the back
of the truck,” Sean Campbell, president of Teamsters Local 813, said of
Sanitation Salvage at the May 9 rally outside BIC’s offices. “This
company is going to continue to play games until somebody drops the
hammer on them.”
In an interview with VOA and ProPublica on April 23, Brownell said
Sanitation Salvage was the subject of an investigation. But when asked
about Sanitation Salvage’s license, he said he didn’t know when – or if –
it had been renewed. Brownell’s signature is on the license renewal, dated Dec. 20.
In angry terms, Brownell insisted at length that his agency was doing
the best it could and wasn’t interested in responding to “gotcha”
questions from reporters.
He said BIC was “a small agency,” and that its investigators “don’t
always have access to the people that you as a journalist would have
because we’re law enforcement.”
Brownell said it would be wrong to think “that we haven’t been doing
what we can, especially in the last two and a half years, to add on to
what we do with regard to integrity and with regard to corruption in
this industry.”
Of the Sanitation Salvage investigation, Brownell said: “I have
acknowledged for many months that Sanitation Salvage is a very screwed
up company.” But Brownell said he and his investigators had to take care
to “actually make the case.”
“And that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort,” he said.
Wildcat revolt
The Squitieris, for their part, appear ready to fight on behalf of
their business. They hired a public relations firm with deep roots in
Bronx politics to handle media inquiries. One of the firm’s
representatives was at the May 9 rally, handing out copies of the
Sanitation Salvage statement expressing condolences and defending the
company’s record. Political money and muscleRead more about how Sanitation Salvage’s owners wield clout in the Bronx. The Sanitation Salvage union, recently renamed Local 741, signed
a new contract with the company on May 8, the day before the rally
outside BIC’s offices. Current workers said they had no choice in the
matter. Current and former workers described Louis DeAngelis, who had
been forced to resign from the Teamsters in the 1990s
for associating with mob figures, as the primary official who has
negotiated union matters with Steven Squitieri over the years. Two
current workers said they saw DeAngelis at Sanitation Salvage
headquarters within the past few months.
The new contract locks workers into the union through April 2021.
In Hunts Point, the night following the rally, a dozen workers declared a wildcat strike at Sanitation Salvage headquarters.
They stood in their reflective gear in front of their trucks and
refused to go out on their routes. It was a showdown with one of the
Squitieri brothers, a scene recorded in a video and shared with VOA and
ProPublica.
“We’re tired,” said a driver.
The worker was talking about their treatment, their pay, the deaths, everything.
“It hurts,” said the worker.
“It hurts me, too,” said Andrew Squitieri. “My signature is at the bottom of your checks.”
He implored them to get back to work. And
ultimately the men would drive out into the night – they had families to
feed and rent to pay. But for a few hours, at least, the garbage trucks
sat silently.
Georges Leonard Sango of VOA’s French to Africa service contributed reporting to this story.
Mouctar Diallo
(Midjao Diallo)
In 2016, Mouctar Diallo, a teenage African immigrant, stepped into the
rough-and-tumble world of Sanitation Salvage. He was hired off the
streets of the Bronx for a few bucks in cash, then spent 18 months as
one of the company’s “third men,” hustling ahead of the trash trucks to
grab garbage from the curb and keep the gritty show rolling.
Records show that more than three-quarters of Sanitation Salvage
trucks have been ordered off the road after federal safety checks. Yet
the company has paid lobbyists to fight local legislation that backers
say would compel haulers to improve on working conditions and safety.
Antonio Reynoso, a Democrat representing Brooklyn and Queens and the
chairman of the City Council’s Sanitation Committee, told those gathered
that Sanitation Salvage’s license should have been suspended after the
deaths. He accused BIC of softening oversight of the private trash
industry, saying it had never once suspended or revoked the license of a
private trash hauler over safety concerns or unpaid wages.
Daniel Brownell
BIC commissioner
The driver, Timothy Belgrave, and his helper, Christopher Bourke, sat
on the truck’s steps. They were exhausted, Belgrave recalled. Bourke,
known as Big Chris, eventually struck up a conversation with a young man
who lived nearby.
Once on the back of a Sanitation Salvage truck, Mouctar Diallo proved
a natural for the grinding work, according to those he labored
alongside. Best, perhaps, he was unafraid of rats. Just past the 52nd
police precinct on Webster Avenue, Route 3 picked up a dumpster behind a
BP gas station, in a gated area teeming with rats.
