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Samsung’s new AI assistant

Samsung is preparing to launch a digital assistant called “Bixby,” the latest product to result from the tech industry’s obsession with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

Bixby will be featured on the new Galaxy S8, Samsung’s head of research and development Injong Rhee said in a blog post.

The S8 launches in New York next week.

Samsung is banking on the S8 to help it recover from last year’s embarrassing Note 7 debacle. The company killed off the flagship device after a recall and various fixes failed to stop some Note 7s from overheating and catching fire.

It’s also facing potential disruptions as de facto leader Lee Jaeyong’s criminal trial begins in South Korea. Lee has been caught up in a corruption scandal and is facing a list of charges including bribery and embezzlement.

Bixby will enter a market that is already crowded with competitors, including Apple’s (AAPL, Tech30) Siri, Amazon’s (AMAZON) Alexa, Google (GOOG) Assistant, Microsoft’s (MICROS) Cortana and IBM’s (IBM, Tech30) Watson. Even Facebook (FB, Tech30) CEO Mark Zuckerberg has an assistant called Jarvis.

Samsung, however, insists that Bixby is “fundamentally different from other voice agents or assistants.”

The electronics giant said that Bixby’s ability to work across supported apps sets it apart from Siri or Cortana. For example, you could direct BIxby to “find a photo of Jane and text it to Sally.”

Users will also be able to switch between using Bixby to issue voice commands and using smartphones the old fashioned way, via touch commands. That is a clumsier experience on existing assistants, which often start tasks over if you switch from voice to touch.

Unlike its competitors, the S8 will come with a dedicated Bixby button, allowing users to fire up the smartphone digital assistant the same way they would a walkie-talkie. Samsung plans to make Bixby available on all its appliances, including air conditioners and TVs.

“We believe Bixby will evolve from a smartphone interface to an interface for your life,” Rhee said.

Tech firms are betting that an increasing number of people will soon use digital assistants to interact with various devices. Research firm Tractica predicts the market for virtual digital assistants will top $15 billion by 2021.

Rhee said that Bixby would be “at the heart of our software and services evolution as a company.”

Ian Fogg, a mobile devices analyst with IHS Markit, said the statement represented a major shift for the hardware giant.

“They’ve never made such a strong statement that they need to be a software and services company before,” he said.

Some analysts remain skeptical of Bixby because it doesn’t play to the firm’s strengths. The company’s other digital assistant, the S Voice, launched in 2012 and was quickly outpaced by Siri and Google Assistant.

“I am concerned about whether a traditionally hardware-centric company like Samsung can execute well on this, especially against … heavyweights like Google,” said Bryan Ma, a smartphone analyst with research firm IDC.

However, Ma said that even Apple hasn’t perfected its digital assistant.

“It’s still only the first inning of the ballgame right now,” he said.

Last year, Samsung acquired a startup called Viv Labs in an effort to build its expertise in the area. Viv Labs is helmed by a co-creator of Apple’s Siri, and its assistant can handle complex queries from users.

Bixby was reportedly developed using Samsung’s in-house technology, but updates will incorporate Viv’s features and tech.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published March 21, 2017: 7:06 AM ET

Clinton makes political remarks

“There is no place I’d rather be than here with you,” Clinton said, before adding: “Other than the White House.”

During her keynote address at the annual conference hosted by the Professional BusinessWomen of California, Clinton spoke largely about women’s equality and peppered in criticism of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

“Obviously the outcome of the election wasn’t the one I hoped for, worked for, but I will never stop speaking out for common sense benefits that will allow moms and dads to stay on the job,” Clinton said.

Besides a few comments in public gatherings and tweets from her personal account, Clinton has largely laid low since the election. She was spotted after the election in the woods near her New York home and, along with her husband former President Bill Clinton, she attended Trump’s inauguration.

She called Republicans’ attempted replacement for the Affordable Care Act “a disastrous bill,” adding that the Trump administration has been “met with a wave of resistance” that indicates the protests against Trump’s policies are just getting started.

“People who had never been active in politics told their stories at town hall meetings.” Clinton said. “They were people who had something to say and were determined to be heard.”

During the question and answer portion of her appearance, she grew incredulous at the GOP health care debate.

“Really? Take away maternity care?” Clinton said. “Who do these people talk to?”

Clinton also focused on issues like inclusivity and diversity of women in the workplace and the need for the private sector to make better efforts to bring more women to the table.

“Advancing the rights and opportunities of women and girls is the great unfinished business of the 21st century,” she said, while noting that women’s representation in Washington is “the lowest it’s been in a generation.”

‘A lifetime of practice’

The former secretary of state also responded to racially charged incidents directed at two prominent black women today.

In one, White House press Secretary Sean Spicer told April Ryan, a longtime White House correspondent and one of the few black women journalists in the press briefing room, to “stop shaking your head” and accused her of being “hell-bent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays.”

In another, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly came under fire for racist comments mocking Rep. Maxine Waters’ hair, saying her hair looked like a “James Brown wig.”

O’Reilly later apologized, but not after a slew of controversy. Tuesday, Clinton said Waters had been “taunted by a racist joke about her hair.”

Women of color, said Clinton, have “a lifetime of practice taking precisely these kinds of indignities in stride.”

‘Resist, insist’

On the policy front, Clinton criticized the US for still not having a national paid family leave policy and said those who do benefit from such policies are often among the highest income workers. Clinton called on the private sector to do more to help.

“You’re the people who figured out how to fit computers in the palms of our hands,” she said. “You have the power.”

But overall, Clinton offered an optimistic tone in the face of Trump’s victory.

“Where some see a dark vision of carnage, I see a light shining on creativity and opportunity,” she said, referencing the inaugural address.

She offered the audience her new mantra: “Resist, insist, persist, enlist.”

She encouraged the audience to “resist actions that go against our values as Americans,” insist on “putting people first,” “persist” like Sen. Elizabeth Warren did when she was prevented from reading a letter written by Coretta Scott King about Sen. Jeff Sessions, and “enlist” others by running for office or opening a business.

“I’ll be right there with you every step of the way,” she said.

How Tetris can soothe after trauma

But a new study has shown that playing the computer game Tetris within hours of experiencing trauma can prevent those feelings from taking over your mind.

PTSD occurs when intrusive memories linked to fear from a traumatic event become consolidated in a person’s mind by them visualizing the event in a loop until it becomes locked in their brain.

Competing with the visualization, such as with a game like Tetris, can block that consolidation form happening.

“An intrusive memory is a visual memory of a traumatic event,” said Emily Holmes, Professor of Psychology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, whose team led the study. “Tetris also requires imagination and vision. Your brain can’t do two things at once, so this interrupts.”

Tetris is a simple, visual and addictive computer game in which the goal is to line up falling shapes to form rows that then disappear when aligned. As rows disappear, more shapes fall and the longer the game lasts, the higher the score.

The goal in Tetris is to line up falling shapes to form rows that disappear when aligned.

Holmes hopes that use of these simple and early strategies with patients could help prevent the onset of PTSD. The current standard treatment doesn’t begin until after people develop the condition.

PTSD is estimated to effect 3.5% of adults in the US, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The percentage is similar globally, at 4.6%, according to the World Health Organization.

Effective soon after an accident

Researchers tested the game on 71 patients in a UK emergency room who were seeking care after a motor accident. Half of them received standard care for their injuries, while the other half received a psychological intervention within six hours of their accident in which they were asked to recall their trauma, practice playing Tetris and then given the game to play on their own.

The patients were then monitored for one week, during which time they tracked how often they had memories, or flashbacks, relating to their accident. The people who has played Tetris reported 62% less memories on average over the week.

“After two days they had gone down to pretty much zero,” Holmes told CNN.

Researchers have long believed that intervening early — within hours or days of the event — could stop the fearful memories from developing in the brain. This is the first study using something as simple as a computer game.

Holmes has been researching the use of Tetris in this way for more than a decade in the lab and this proof-of-concept study is the first time she has experimented with patients.

The research remains in it’s early stages, she stresses. What we need to do is a larger study,” said Holmes who also hopes to monitor the effectiveness of her approach over a longer period of time, up to six months.

The need for more insight using a larger cohort of people was raised by consultant Mark Salter from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as well as the need to test options other than Tetris. “The study is small … and not everyone plays Tetris or is computer literate,” he told CNN. He added that there is also the challenge of “getting someone to participate when they’ve just seen something terrifying.”

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But he was intrigued by the findings and the ability of this prevention measure to be given soon after someone experiences a trauma. “What’s exciting about this is that it happens quickly,” he said. “It allows an immediacy to the intervention.”

Salter said the approach needs to include other options that are more universally acceptable since “it’s not just Tetris that does this.”

Holmes said that anything visual and engaging could have a similar effect. But, he added, other engrossing activities using other parts of the brain, such as number or word activities, may not work, or make things worse.

Meditating can help you live to 100

In the past, my family and friends would’ve typically described me as pleasant but hurried. My baseline restlessness and edginess, however, have now nearly vanished.

Without difficulty, I have sustained attention when my young children spend time with me. Instead of constant surveillance of my phone, there is an ability to quickly hyper-focus on the task is at hand and a corresponding joy of living in a distraction-less world.

This change seems to have started the end of last year, after I spent a morning meditating with the Dalai Lama.

First off: Yes, I do feel a little ridiculous writing a line like that, and I didn’t feel worthy of his invitation at the time. Even though I meditate, I’ve never been sure whether I was using proper technique or whether there was an acceptable way to meditate in the presence of His Holiness.

If he was looking forward to a good meditation partner, I worried he was unlikely to find it in me. Even my posture is terrible when sitting cross-legged on the floor. My back starts to hurt, followed by my knees. Thus, my breathing, which is supposed to drive my focus, sounds raspy and uneven. All this makes my mind race instead of slowing down and calming.

Just thinking about meditating with His Holiness was making me anxious.

Nevertheless, who says “no” to a chance to meditate with the Dalai Lama? I agreed to join him early the next morning at his private residence.

A practice that begins at 3 a.m.

At 81 years, old, the Dalai Lama keeps a very active schedule. I met him in Mundgod, India, at the Drepung Monastery, where he was overseeing a symposium bridging Buddhism and science.

The monastery itself is a dazzling bejeweled structure built 600 years ago. Inside, there are enormous golden Buddhas standing next to ornate walls. The discussion hall itself is grand but warm, with doors and windows open to the hot South Indian sun.

For three days, his Holiness moderated sessions on weighty metaphysical topics such as the criteria for valid reasoning, the fundamental constituents of the universe, origins of life and the subjective experience of the mind.

It was fascinating and mind-bending — but also mentally exhausting. It was difficult to stay awake, let alone keep up with the rapid-fire debate between the Buddhists and the scientists. Yet his Holiness was mentally engaged and inquisitive throughout, even more remarkable given more than half the comments were being translated for him.

The Dalai Lama typically wakes about 2:40 a.m. and starts his daily meditation routine at 3 a.m., even as most of his staff is still snoozing.

This was the backdrop when one of his senior staff members picked me up outside the monastery early one morning. We drove in a three-car convoy to the gates outside his private residence.

From there, several more staff members escorted us to a small conference room where his security detail was slowly waking and drinking their morning tea. Finally, his chief of staff walked me just outside the personal quarters of the Dalai Lama.

Meditating is hard for him, too

There were a few minor instructions before we entered. Eye contact is not a problem, and shaking hands is acceptable if you use two hands, not just one. Try not to turn your back to him when leaving the room, and instead walk backward, as much as possible facing him. When sitting cross-legged on the floor, don’t point your feet at the Dalai Lama. And the correct address is “your holiness.”

Shortly after, the doors opened, and I nervously walked into a very modest room where the Dalai Lama was sitting on a raised platform, already deep in meditation. I slipped off my shoes, sat cross-legged at a slight angle on the floor to avoid my toes being pointed in his direction, closed my eyes and started to focus on my breathing.

All my meditation insecurities immediately started to kick in. After a few minutes, I heard his deep, distinctive baritone voice: “Any questions?”

I looked up and saw his smiling face, starting to break into his characteristic head-bobbing laugh.

“This is hard for me,” I said.

“Me, too!” he exclaimed. “After doing daily for 60 years, it is still hard.”

It was at once surprising and reassuring to hear him say this. The Dalai Lama, Buddhist monk and spiritual leader of Tibet, also has trouble meditating.

“I think you will like analytical meditation,” he told me. Instead of focusing on a chosen object, as in single-point meditation, he suggested I think about a problem I was trying to solve, a topic I may have read about recently or one of the philosophical areas from the earlier sessions.

He wanted me to separate the problem or issue from everything else by placing it in a large, clear bubble. With my eyes closed, I thought of something nagging at me — something I couldn’t quite solve. As I placed the physical embodiment of this problem into the bubble, several things started to happen very naturally.

The problem was now directly in front of me, floating weightlessly. In my mind, I could rotate it, spin it or flip it upside-down. It was an exercise to develop hyper-focus.

Less intuitively, as the bubble was rising, it was also disentangling itself from any other attachments, such as subjective emotional considerations. I could visualize it, as the problem isolated itself, and came into a clear-eyed view.

Too often, we allow unrelated emotional factors to blur the elegant and practical solutions right in front of us. It can be dispiriting and frustrating. Through analytical meditation, His Holiness told me, we can use logic and reason to more clearly identify the question at hand, separate it from irrelevant considerations, erase doubt and brightly illuminate the answers. It was simple and sensible. Most important, for me — it worked.

Meditation for skeptics

As a neuroscientist, I never expected that a Buddhist monk, even the Dalai Lama, would teach me how to better incorporate deduction and critical thinking to my life — but that is what happened.

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It changed me. And I am better for it. I practice analytical meditation every day, usually early in the morning. The first two minutes are still the hardest, as I create my thought bubble and let it float above me. After that, I reach what can best be described as a “flow” state, in which 20 to 30 minutes pass easily.

I am more convinced than ever that even the most ardent skeptics could find success with analytical meditation.

Over the holidays, I spent as much time as possible relaying the Dalai Lama’s teachings to my family and friends and teaching them basic principles of analytical meditation. This was the gift I most wanted to share with them. And now with you.

Exxon to Trump: Don’t ditch climate change deal

America’s biggest oil company told the White House it believes the Paris agreement is an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change” and the U.S. should remain a party to it.

Exxon (XOM) said the country is “well positioned to compete” under the terms of the Paris deal, which was reached in late 2015 with the goal of slowing global warming. President Obama hailed the agreement as “the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.”

The Exxon letter was sent to the White House on March 22, just days before Trump took a massive swipe at environmental regulations implemented under Obama. The administration had asked Exxon for its views on the Paris accord.

Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to undo the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash carbon emissions by coal plans and other power utilities.

Before taking office, Trump called climate change a “hoax” and blasted the Paris COP21 agreement as a “bad deal” for the U.S.

However, after winning the election Trump told The New York Times he has an “open mind” about the Paris agreement and said he believes clean air and “crystal clear water” are important.

Exxon has a complex and controversial history with climate change. The energy giant is being investigated for allegedly misleading the public and shareholders about what it knew about the dangers of climate change.

But in 2007 Exxon admitted publicly that climate change poses risks and said it’s responsible to begin working on ways to reduce emissions.

Exxon has also been a consistent public supporter of the Paris agreement.

“We welcomed the Paris Agreement when it was announced in December 2015, and again when it came into force in November 2016. We have reiterated our support on several occasions,” Peter Trelenberg, Exxon’s environmental policy and planning manager, wrote to the White House.

Last month Exxon CEO Darren Woods, who replaced Rex Tillerson when he left to become Trump’s secretary of state, wrote a blog post saying the company is “encouraged” that the Paris agreement creates a framework for “all countries” to address rising emissions.

Exxon noted in its letter to the White House that unlike the Kyoto Agreement, the Paris deal is the first major international accord to feature pledges from developed nations like the U.S. and developing ones like China. Exxon pointed out that China is the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitted and India is likely to pass the U.S. as No. 2 before mid-century.

Even though Trump is a climate change skeptic, his secretary of state and leading emissary on climate issues, does not appear to be one.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Tillerson said he came to the conclusion years ago that “the risk of climate change does exist and the consequences could be serious enough that action should be taken.”

But Tillerson ducked allegations that Exxon misled the public on climate change. He refused to answer repeated questions during the hearing about whether the company ignored internal research going back to the 1970s on the impact of burning fossil fuels.

Earlier this month it emerged that Tillerson allegedly used the pseudonym “Wayne Tracker” to send emails related to climate change while serving as CEO of Exxon.

— CNNMoney’s Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 29, 2017: 1:50 PM ET

McCain threatens shutdown over defense spending

Story highlights

Sen. John McCain said he won’t support a continuing resolution over defense spending
His comments come as leaders are making a serious effort to negotiate FY 2017’s appropriations

The Arizona Republican told CNN he wouldn’t vote for a continuing resolution, a funding bill that maintains the previous spending levels. When asked how far he would go, McCain said he only had one vote, but that he wouldn’t rule out a shutdown.

“If that’s the only option. I will not vote for a CR no matter what the consequences because passing a CR destroys the ability of the military to defend this nation, and it puts the lives of the men and women in the military at risk,” McCain said. “I can’t do that to them.”

McCain’s comments come as leaders are making a serious effort to negotiate the remaining appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2017 that would likely include some of the new military spending that McCain is pushing for.

Congressional leaders are up against a tight deadline. After last week’s failure to pass the health care bill out of the House, there are questions about how much leaders can get passed even if their goal remains to finish appropriations bills instead of passing a continuing resolution. Congress has to come to an agreement before the government runs out of money April 28.

Raising the stakes? Congress is on recess for two weeks in mid-April.

McCain has long been an advocate for increased military spending and has voted for continuing resolutions in the past, but this time, McCain says he just won’t do it and that the military would be set back by another CR.

“I will not vote for a CR. I don’t care what’s in it,” he said.

McCain’s comments may put pressure on leaders to see that some rank-and-file members are serious. They won’t accept just another, last minute continuing resolution. If that’s the only option, there could be a shutdown ahead.

Study: Greatest rise in heroin use was among whites

More people die from drug overdoses than from guns or car accidents. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1995, 43,115 people in the United States died from the disease.

Furthermore, since 1999, the number of overdoses from prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone, as well as illicit drugs like heroin, have quadrupled. In fact, heroin now accounts for one in four overdose deaths in the United States.

Now, a new study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry looks beyond the total number of overdose deaths to get a better picture of how heroin use patterns have changed since 2001. Since then, the number of people who have used heroin has increased almost five-fold, and the number of people who abuse heroin has approximately tripled.

The greatest increases in use occurred among white males.

Heroin use on the rise

The authors evaluated the responses of 79,402 individuals, as collected from the 2001-2002 and the 2012-2013 National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a longitudinal study conducted by the National Institutes of Health to evaluate alcohol and drug use and abuse. While heroin use between whites and non-whites was fairly similar in the 2001-2002 results, at 0.34% and 0.32% respectively, by 2012-2013 the percentage of whites who had used heroin jumped to 1.90%. Just 1.05% of non-whites in 2012-2013 used heroin. Heroin use also increased significantly among those with a high school education or less, as well as those who lived at less than 100% of the federal poverty line.

The authors of the new report write “these trends are concerning because increases in the prevalence of heroin use and use disorder have been occurring among vulnerable individuals who have few resources to overcome problems associated with use.”

According to a 2016 Surgeon General’s report on alcohol, drugs and health, only one in 10 of those with a substance use disorder receive any treatment.

“The good news is that among all drugs of abuse, heroin and opioids have by far the best treatment medications available. Methadone and buprenorphine have proven effectiveness data, they not only reduce the chances of dying from an opioid overdose by 50%, they support people being in recovery from their addiction and reduce health care costs and improve a wide array of other outcomes,” said Caleb Banta-Green, an associate professor of health services at the University of Washington. Banta-Green was not involved in the study.

Starting with prescription drugs

The study also confirmed the idea that many heroin users start by using prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone. Approximately one-third of all white heroin users reported using prescription drugs for non-medical purposes in 2001-2002. By 2013 more than half of all white heroin users started by initially using prescription drugs. For non-whites, the number of people who started by using prescription drugs before heroin actually dropped in the same time frame.

An accompanying editorial by Bertha Madras, a psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and former deputy director in the White House’s Office of National Drug Control and Policy pointed to the shift in treating pain as a major factor in understanding the current crisis. She noted that in the past two decades, the number of opioid prescriptions has risen three-fold.

“This shift in practice norms was fueled by acceptance of low quality evidence that opioids are a relatively benign remedy for managing chronic pain,” she wrote. “These vast opioid supplies created a risk for diversion, opioid misuse and disorder, and overdose death.”

The study did not find any significant difference when looking at what age groups were using heroin, but heroin dependency and addiction was significantly higher for those below the age of 45 than those above. That should be a cause of concern, said Banta-Green, who noted that one of the costs of overdoses and abuse to society is lost productivity.

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A county-by-county study released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, calculated that drug overdose deaths resulted in a 778 years of potential life lost for every hundred thousand people. This report also found that most of the increase in premature deaths in 15- to 44-year-olds is due to drug overdoses. And while no community is immune to this crisis, suburbs, which used to have the lowest rates of premature deaths from drug overdoses now have the highest rates.

The authors of the longitudinal study note that “heroin use appears to have become more socially acceptable among suburban and rural white individuals, perhaps because its effects seem so similar to those of widely available [prescription opioids].”

The findings of these new reports are in line with earlier research over the past two decades about increasing heroin and opioid overdoses. “The trend isn’t a surprise — the takeaway is what matters. Heroin use disorder is a serious medical condition with which individuals are likely to struggle for the rest of their life. We need to give them the tools they need to survive and thrive,” said Banta-Green.

3 ways Mexico could pay for the wall

But is there any way for Mexico to fund a border wall without officials there dipping into their country’s coffers?

Let’s crunch the numbers on a few possible options that have made the rounds in Washington:

1. Tapping into money immigrants send home

Mexican immigrants sent nearly $27 billion home in 2016, according to the country’s central bank. And most of that money came from people living in the United States.

Generally, immigrants report that the money they send funds things like food, clothing, housing and education for their families. What if some of it went to building a wall on the border?

On the campaign trail, Trump said he’d change the Patriot Act and cut off a portion of remittances to Mexico unless the country agreed to pony up. Since then, a less aggressive approach has circulated in some policy circles: taxing wire transfers, the most common way immigrants send money home.

That idea is unpopular with money transfer companies and immigrant rights advocates.

And Mexican authorities have vowed to do everything they can to ensure that no one messes with the money immigrants send. It’s Mexico’s largest source of income — higher even than the amount of money it earns from oil exports. Even though remittances are a small portion of Mexico’s GDP, they have a big impact in some of the country’s poorest communities.

In the Mexican state of MichoacÃ¡n, for example, migrant remittances made up almost 10% of the state’s gross domestic product in 2015, according to data from the Bank of Mexico and BBVA Bancomer.

Past proposals to tax remittances have never gotten off the ground in Washington. But at least one US state has taken this approach.

In 2009, Oklahoma started charging a fee on individual wire transfers of $5 plus 1% on any amount over $500. Since then, the measure — which applies to funds sent through licensed money transmitters like Western Union and MoneyGram — has raised more than $67.2 million for a fund at the state’s Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, according to state tax records.

The case: For those who resent that undocumented immigrants not only live in the United States, but also send money out of the country, a remittance tax is an attractive option, as the National Review’s Jim Geraghty has noted.

“In their eyes,” he wrote in 2015, “illegal immigrants from Mexico effectively steal from the United States by entering the country, offering unethical employers a labor force that isn’t covered by wage, workplace safety, and other laws, getting paid under the table, and then sending the money out of the country.”

The catch: Wire transfer companies don’t ask for or track the immigration status of people who use them. If they did, analysts say undocumented immigrants simply would find other ways to send money. So it’s likely a tax would end up applying to anyone who sends remittances — something critics say would unfairly punish Americans and immigrants who came to the country legally. Oklahoma tried to get around this by creating a tax credit for its fees; but critics argue that many people eligible for credits don’t take them.

Critics also say a tax on remittances would likely push Mexicans to find other ways to get cash over the border.

“In the paranoid atmosphere that’s been created by certain anti-immigrant statements, I think it would make people even more reluctant to use official channels,” says David Landsman, executive director of the New York-based National Money Transmitters Association.

The chances: The numbers might add up, but it’s still a tough sell. Congress is loathe to levy taxes in general, though a tax reform package to be discussed this year could offer an opportunity. Congressional leaders have priorities in that package that they will not want derailed if a plan to tax remittances becomes too controversial. Relations between the US and Mexico would also surely factor into the debate.

2. Seizing money from drug cartels

US Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, introduced a proposal last month titled the BUILD WALL Act of 2017. Its aim: to use money seized from drug traffickers to fund security at the border.

The case: Sensenbrenner’s proposal calls for the US Attorney General to study ways the Justice Department can increase assets seized from cartels. He dubbed the approach “a creative solution to a complex problem.”

Drug cartels send between $19 billion and $29 billion annually back to Mexico, according to US federal officials. And using money from criminals rather than law-abiding US taxpayers to foot the bill for anything sounds like an easy sell.

The catch: Authorities on the southwest US border have already seized a large amount of money heading to Mexico: more than $57 million in four years, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But it’s just a fraction of the smuggled money officials believe is crossing the border — and just a fraction of the estimated cost of a wall. And currently, at least some of the money seized from cartels is already spoken for. Currency CBP seizes that is forfeited goes into a Treasury Department fund that’s used for law enforcement initiatives across the country. The amount of money seized has also decreased in recent years. A recent CBP report noted “significant decreases in both the number of seizures and the average dollar value” of the amounts seized.

The chances: Harder than it sounds. Passing legislation in Congress is always difficult, and this year a lot of time is already expected to be eaten up by Obamacare repeal, tax reform and budgeting. Any bill perceived to be an element of Trump’s border security efforts will become controversial, as Democrats seek to oppose his immigration policies and have deemed the wall a poison pill in any legislation. Plus, asset seizure tiptoes into criminal justice reform, its own area of disagreement on the Hill.

3. A border tax

In January, Trump administration officials suggested a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico could be used to pay for a border wall. The idea was floated early on in Trump’s presidency, and in some circles, it sank. After the proposal drew a swift uproar from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, White House officials who’d touted it later said it was just an idea.

If such a plan is put into place, a vast array of items â€” including cars, mechanical equipment, produce and household goods â€” would be subject to a levy.

The case: When it comes to exports and imports, there’s a lot of money in play. Mexico is the United States’ third largest goods trading partner, with an estimated $295 billion in imports from Mexico crossing the border in 2015.

“By doing it that way we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall, just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in January.

Later that day, he sent a softer message, saying the border tax idea was intended to be just one example of paying for the wall. “I just want to be clear that we’re not being prescriptive in saying that is the only way,” he said, “nor is the rate prescriptive.”

The catch: Critics say such a tax would punish consumers more than anyone else, it would violate NAFTA and it could spur a trade war. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham quickly dismissed the idea, posting a tweet that played off the President’s own Twitter style.

“Simply put,” Graham wrote, “any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho Sad.”

The chances: Low. Lawmakers are already engaged in a heated debate over a proposed border adjustment tax, which would tax imports from around the world while exempting exports from US taxes. While House Speaker Paul Ryan and like-minded Republicans are in favor, the proposal still faces a heavy set of opposition from inside and outside the party. Tacking on a Mexico-specific tax is unlikely to get much traction, as we saw with Spicer’s swift walkback of the trial balloon earlier this year.

CNN’s Jeremey Diamond, Theodore Schleifer and Patrick Gillespie contributed to this report. Illustration by Kenneth Fowler.

Will Trump switch to iPhone from Android?

Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, said late Tuesday on Twitter that the president has been tweeting from “his new iPhone” for the past couple of weeks. But a tweet bearing the hallmarks of Trump’s combative style came from an Android device as recently as Saturday.

The matter has potential national security implications.

During the early weeks of his presidency, Trump came under scrutiny over reports he was continuing to use his old, unsecured Android phone to send tweets to the 27 million followers of his @realDonaldTrump account.

“The national security risks of compromising a smartphone used by a senior government official, such as the President of the United States, are considerable,” two Democratic senators wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis last month asking for more information about the president’s mobile devices.

At the time of his inauguration, Trump was reported to have traded in his Android phone, believed to be a Samsung, for a secure device. But @realDonaldTrump tweets marked as coming from “Twitter for Android” kept appearing.

The concern, according to the senators, is that hackers may be able to break into an unsecured device and “turn on audio recording and camera features, as well as engaging surveillance tools that allow location and other information tracking features.”

Earlier this month, the Android-marked tweets dried up for a while and more iPhone tweets appeared. Some news organizations suggested the president might have switched phones.

But on Saturday, a typical Trump tweet with the Android tag popped up, declaring that “ObamaCare will explode.”

The White House declined to say whether any of the devices being used by Trump were secure.

“We don’t discuss the security measures that are or have taken place,” press secretary Sean Spicer told CNNMoney by email Wednesday.

Intelligence officials went to great lengths to provide former President Barack Obama with a secure BlackBerry that he could use to communicate with his advisers.

Security researchers say it’s tougher to compromise iPhones than Android devices, but not impossible.

Trump used an iPhone early in his campaign, a time when he also criticized Apple (AAPL, Tech30) for making products overseas. In February 2016, he called for a boycott of Apple products over the tech giant’s refusal to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers.

“I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn’t give info to authorities on the terrorists I’ll only be using Samsung until they give info,” he tweeted. Apple didn’t back down, and Trump eventually appeared to stop tweeting from an iPhone.

Some observers had used Trump’s iPhone abstinence as a way of guessing which tweets from the @realdonaldtrump account he’d actually written himself.

Android-marked tweets, believed to be direct from Trump, tended to be angrier and use all caps liberally. More restrained tweets, often promoting Trump events, would be posted from an iPhone, presumably by aides.

Now, both styles of tweet are coming from iPhones, with a little Android still mixed in.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published March 29, 2017: 11:08 AM ET

This skyscraper is out of this world

Clouds Architecture Office has unveiled plans for a futuristic skyscraper dubbed the “Analemma Tower.” The building would hover majestically above the ground because it would be attached — wait for it — to an actual asteroid, in space, that is forcibly put into orbit around the earth.

If that’s not enough to digest, consider that your exact address in this pendulous pad could be anywhere on Earth. The tower will be suspended via high-strength cabling from an asteroid and placed in “eccentric geosynchronous orbit”. In other words, it would be always moving — residents and visitors would take a daily journey between the northern and southern hemispheres with a prolonged visit over a main “home” point like New York City or Dubai (it’s always New York City or Dubai, isn’t it?)

In 2015 the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission successfully landed on the surface of the comet Churyumov-Geraismenko showing that it is possible to interact with such smaller bodies in space. NASA’s “Asteroid Redirect Mission” is scheduled to send a robot to collect a boulder off an asteroid and then place that boulder into a stable orbit around the moon.

In like fashion, CAO plans to use an asteroid harnessed with high strength cabling reaching towards earth to hold the skyscraper along its journey.

Analemma Tower’s designer Ostap Rudakevych told CNN that the tower could be made of durable and lightweight materials such as carbon fiber and aluminum. Advances in cable engineering would be needed to achieve the cable strength required to support the structure. Power would come from space based solar panels that have a constant exposure to sunlight. Water for the tower will be captured from clouds and rainwater and maintained in a semi-closed loop system.

As proposed the top of the tower sits at 32,000m and would be expected to reach speeds of 300mph as it travels through the sky.

How you would hang out

The design leaves some pretty important questions to be answered, like, “What do I do if I want to also have a life on the ground?” “Won’t my family and friends miss me because they will only have a finite window each day in which to see me, and even then, I will be floating above the earth, unable to make contact?”

The upper reaches of Analemma would extend beyond the troposphere

If you have to ask these questions then, we hate to say it, you are probably not ready to live in a huge mobile asteroid tower, but the designers have your back nonetheless.

Rudakevych said he envisions large passenger drones allowing people to move back and forth between the tower and earth’s surface along with cutting edge electro-magnetic elevators moving people throughout the this fantastic vision.

Currently the proposal calls for the tower to be mid-air over Dubai which has a long history of building tall and stylish skyscrapers at a fraction of the cost of U.S. based construction.

When asked what inspired such a project, Rudakevych said, “Since humans have emerged from caves our buildings have been growing ever taller and lighter. We believe that some day buildings will break free from earths surface, releasing us from harmful floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. Analemma Tower is a speculative idea for how this might be achieved some time in the future.”