Month: January 2018

Intel Shares Fall as Investors Worry About Costs of Chip Flaw

Posted on by Cobiz

Intel Corp shares fell nearly 2 percent Thursday as investors worried about the potential financial liability and reputational hit from recently disclosed security flaws in its widely used microprocessors.

The largest chipmaker had confirmed Wednesday that flaws reported by researchers could allow hackers to steal sensitive information from computers, phones and other devices. Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and other software makers have issued patches to protect against the vulnerabilities.

Intel may be on the hook for costs stemming from lawsuits claiming that the patches would slow computers and effectively force consumers to buy new hardware, and big customers will likely seek compensation from Intel for any software or hardware fixes they make, security experts said.

“The potential liability is big for Intel,” said Eric Johnson, dean of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. “Everybody will be scrambling over the next few days to figure out just how big it is.”

Intel has said that the patches for the bugs would slow its chips down somewhat but that most users will not notice.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest seller of cloud computing services, said in a statement it does not “expect meaningful performance impact for most customer workloads.”

Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google both said in statements on their websites that they expect few performance problems for most of their cloud computing customers.

Financial repercussions

But the incident is likely to spur cloud companies to press Intel for lower prices on chips in future talks, said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, which owns shares in Intel.

“What [Intel’s cloud customers] are going to say is, ‘You wronged us, we hate you, but if we can get a discount, we’ll still buy from you,'” Forrest said.

Forrest also expects Intel will have to increase its chip development spending to focus on security.

Government agencies and security experts said they knew of no cyberattacks that had exploited the vulnerabilities.

Financial services firms were studying information on the vulnerabilities to determine how to best respond, said the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a global industry group known as FS-ISAC that shares data on cyberthreats.

Banks and other firms are trying to understand what it will cost to respond to the issue, FS-ISAC said in an emailed statement.

“In addition to the security considerations raised by this design flaw, performance degradation is expected, which could require more processing power for affected systems to compensate and maintain current baseline performance,” FS-ISAC said. “There will need to be consideration and balance between fixing the potential security threat vs. the performance and other possible impact to systems.”

Lawsuit filed

Lawyers filed a lawsuit in San Jose, California, federal court on Wednesday that sought class-action status and compensation for people who had bought vulnerable Intel chips or computers that came with them already installed.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the lawsuit.

While more lawsuits are expected, Intel’s biggest customers are likely to quietly seek compensation for any harm caused by the vulnerabilities, including costs to patch machines or replace microprocessors, Johnson said.

Legal experts said that consumers would have to prove concrete damages and harm to proceed with claims.

Intel shares fell 1.8 percent, following a 3.4 percent decline Wednesday.

Shares in rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc climbed 4.9 percent as investors speculated the No. 2 maker of microprocessors would woo customers away from Intel.

Still, researchers had said some of AMD’s chips had one of the two vulnerabilities disclosed on Wednesday, as do processors from ARM Holdings.
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Vitamin C Might Shorten Tuberculosis Treatment Time, Study Indicates

Posted on by Cosc

A new study has found that anti-tuberculosis drugs killed more bacteria in laboratory mice given a vitamin C supplement than those given drugs alone.

If the findings hold up in human studies, the authors say, the result could be that there’s a cheap, safe way to reduce the months-long treatment time for one of the world’s leading killers. Also, the vitamin supplement could offer a way to cut down on the development of drug-resistant TB, a serious health threat.

Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 1.7 million people died of the disease last year. Of more than 10 million new infections, about 600,000 were resistant to the leading drug. 

Front-line drugs attack TB cells as they multiply, but a small proportion of the bacteria survive by going dormant. If therapy stops too soon, these “persisters” start multiplying and the patient relapses, often with strains that are resistant to the drugs.

Current TB treatment takes six months, largely to outlast the persisters. But it’s hard for patients to stay on treatment for so long.

Accidental discovery

Albert Einstein College of Medicine microbiologist William Jacobs and colleagues previously discovered by accident that antioxidants like vitamin C stopped TB bacteria in a test tube from becoming persisters.

“When we first discovered it, it was like, ‘Wow! There’s just so much we don’t know yet. And wouldn’t that be really cool if it really works,’ ” Jacobs said.

The study in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy said Jacobs and colleagues found that TB-infected mice treated with two standard drugs plus a high dose of vitamin C had roughly tenfold fewer bacteria in their lungs after several weeks than mice treated with drugs alone.

“It’s not sterilization yet,” he added, “but it’s heading in that direction.”

But will it work in people?

“The bottom line is that we don’t know the answer,” Jacobs acknowledged. “But I think what this study suggests is we should really go and [find out].”

Other experts not connected to the study agreed.

Even though there has been very little research on vitamin C and tuberculosis, the nutrient is “a safe compound, it’s widely available, it’s inexpensive,” noted David Alland, associate dean of clinical research at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. “I think that when we have those kinds of options to look at, we should look at them without having to spend decades trying to figure out exactly how they work.”

And if it does work, he added, “you’d get a big bang for your buck.”
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Wall Street’s Love of Tax Cuts Drives Dow to 25,000 Mark

Posted on by Coeco

Wall Street sure loves the tax bill, even if polls show most Americans don’t.

The Dow Jones industrial average surged past 25,000 Thursday, a strong signal of investor enthusiasm for President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut. The milestone comes less than a year after the Dow topped 20,000.

“We broke a very, very big barrier,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “Every time you see that number go up on Wall Street it means jobs, it means success, it means 401(k)s that are flourishing.”

It’s easy to see why investors like the tax overhaul: Businesses will benefit from a steep cut in the corporate tax rate. They’ll also be able to fully deduct the cost of major purchases from their taxable income, reducing the amount they owe. And companies with large stockpiles of cash overseas can bring the money back to the United States at new, lower rates.

All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index by roughly 8 percent this year. That’s much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6 percent that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center.

“All else being equal, this should go straight to the bottom line,” said David Joy, chief market strategist for Ameriprise Financial, a financial services company based in Minneapolis. Improved corporate profits contributed to the market’s gains last year.

The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26 percent in support.

Where profits will go

Still, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, nearly 20 large companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees.

Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economy’s long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees.

Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors’ hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the U.S. and overseas, haven’t always led to higher wages.

For Wall Street, it’s all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Whether businesses pass most of the extra money to workers or to shareholders, consumer spending should increase and lift economic growth.

Trump has repeatedly made highly optimistic claims about the impact of his tax cuts and other policies on the economy, speculating that they would lead to annual growth of 4 percent or higher.

Expectations

Last month, the Treasury Department estimated that the economy will expand at a 2.9 percent annual rate for the next decade.

Private economists, as well as the Federal Reserve, forecast a more modest impact. Most expect growth will be closer to 2.5 percent in 2018 and slower than that in subsequent years.

Some companies and sectors will likely benefit more than others, particularly if they derive most of their income from the United States. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that large banks will see their earnings rise by 13 percent as a result of the corporate rate cut. Wells Fargo will likely see the biggest gain, at 18 percent.

Analysts at Stifel, an investment bank, project that some restaurant chains could see earnings boosts of 20 percent or more, including Chipotle, Wingstop and Domino’s Pizza.

Barclays, another bank, says that technology and pharmaceutical firms, which are already paying lower taxes because they have lots of cash overseas, will see much smaller increases of less than 4 percent.

The legislation’s corporate tax cut is not necessarily as dramatic as it seems, because most corporations don’t end up paying the full 35 percent rate. Barclays estimates that the “effective” tax rate — what companies actually pay — will drop from 26 percent to 20.1 percent.

Shareholders vs. investment

Joy and other analysts think that most of the money brought back from other countries will go to shareholders, rather than investment. That’s what happened in 2004, when companies were given a one-time low rate on repatriated cash as an inducement.

Opinions differ, however, when it comes to the additional profits that result from the tax cut. Many economists expect that most of those dollars will also be passed on to shareholders.

Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School and former top economist for President George W. Bush, says the corporate tax cut will eventually benefit workers through higher pay. That will also boost the economy and most businesses by lifting spending.

“Any way you slice it, it’s good for companies,” Hubbard said.

For much of last year, the stock market’s gains were helped by a synchronized global recovery, with economies from Europe to Asia to Latin America expanding simultaneously for the first time in a decade.

Since November, investors’ anticipation of a tax cut has pushed markets higher, said Keith Parker, an analyst at UBS.

Still, the market’s outsize return only benefits a narrow slice of the population. According to research by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University, just 10 percent of the population owns 84 percent of the stock market’s value.

“That benefit won’t accrue to everybody, certainly,” Joy said.
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Interior Department Wants to Open 90 Percent of US Continental Shelf to Drilling    

Posted on by Coeco

The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced plans to open up 90 percent of America’s coastal waters to oil drilling, including off California and Florida, two areas where activists have worked for years to protect marine ecosystems from oil spills.

The proposed five-year plan released Thursday is much more expansive than one issued by President Donald Trump in April last year. The Interior Department is proposing 47 possible auctions of drilling rights in nearly all parts of the U.S. continental shelf.

It is a major increase from the 11 lease sales during the Obama administration.

The draft plan would allow the sale of drilling leases in 25 of the nation’s 26 offshore planning areas, including 19 areas in the waters around Alaska, seven in the Pacific Ocean, and nine in the Atlantic Ocean.

One area considered off-limits is the waters near Alaska’s far-western Aleutian Islands, which were protected by former President George W. Bush.

“We are going to become the strongest energy superpower this world has ever known,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters Thursday in a conference call. “We want to grow our nation’s offshore energy industry, instead of slowly surrendering it to foreign shores. We will produce enough energy to meet our needs at home, and we will export enough energy to lead the world.”

Zinke also said in a news release Thursday that “responsibly developing our energy resources” is important to the U.S. economy and will help fund coastline conservation. He said the broad proposal is meant to kick off a “lengthy and robust” public comment period.

“Not all areas are appropriate for offshore drilling, and we will take that into consideration in the coming weeks,” he said.

The Department of the Interior is in charge of setting the start date of the 60-day public comment period. 

Some critics of the proposal have already let their feelings be known. 

Florida Governor Rick Scott, an ally of Trump, has already vowed to fight attempts to drill in Florida. In a statement Thursday, Scott said, “I have already asked to immediately meet with Secretary Zinke to discuss the concerns I have with this plan and the crucial need to remove Florida from consideration.”

Another Trump ally in Florida, Representative Matt Gaetz, has also said he is opposed to drilling off the Florida coast.

The administration is currently operating under the five-year plan set by the Obama administration, which covers 2017-2022. Initially, President Barack Obama had proposed drilling off the Atlantic Coast and off Alaska’s Arctic shore, but both proposals were dropped in the final plan.

Last year, Zinke took a number of steps to make it easier to lease and explore for onshore and offshore oil, including removing some safety regulations put into place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Eleven people died in the initial explosion on the Deepwater Horizon in 2010, and the resulting oil spill — an estimated total of 4.9 billion barrels over five months — is considered the largest industrial spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
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Trump Lawyer Tries to Block Publication of Insider Book on White House

Posted on by Corts

For a second consecutive day, the White House press secretary on Thursday fielded a barrage of reporters’ questions about a forthcoming book that portrays a chaotic initial year for the presidency of Donald Trump.

Most people in the United States could “probably care less about a book full of lies,” responded Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who characterized Fire and Fury as “trash” and something “a fired employee wanted to peddle.” 

That fired employee is Steve Bannon, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign in its final quarter of 2016 and was chief strategist in the White House for the initial seven months of his presidency.

Bannon is quoted extensively by author Michael Wolff in the 336-page book.

Asked whether Breitbart News should fire Bannon, who is executive chairman of the right-wing news and opinion website, Sanders replied, “I certainly think it’s something they should look at and consider.” 

A lawyer for the president on Thursday sought to block publication of the book, contending it is defamatory and libelous and demanding that Wolff and his publisher, Henry Holt and Co., stop its release. It originally had been scheduled to be released Tuesday, but Wolff said Thursday that it now would arrive in bookstores Friday — four days early.

Charles Harder said his legal team was “investigating numerous false and/or baseless statements” made about Trump in the book that Wolff said came from more than 200 interviews he conducted during Trump’s successful election campaign and after the president took office a year ago.

Harder, the previous day, also sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, demanding that he stop making defamatory remarks about Trump and his family.

On Thursday, Trump said, “He [Bannon] called me a great man last night, so he obviously changed his tune pretty quick.”

The White House said Trump was not trying to block anyone’s constitutional protection of freedom of speech through the legal threats.

“The president absolutely believes in the First Amendment,” Sanders responded to a reporter’s question at Thursday’s media briefing. “But as we’ve said before, the president also believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact when it certainly and clearly is not.”

In perhaps the most controversial passage in the book, Bannon is quoted as saying he thought it “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now a White House adviser; and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Russians in the midst of the campaign at Trump Tower in New York.

The younger Trump had been promised by an intermediary for the Russians that he would be handed incriminating documents about Trump’s election challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton, as part of Moscow’s effort to help Trump win, although Trump Jr. subsequently said no such damaging evidence materialized.

Within hours of the surfacing of excerpts from the book, Trump said in a statement Wednesday, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

Trump said that Bannon was “only in it for himself” and “spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” at the same time that he had declared war on the media.

Bannon also is quoted as saying that Trump Jr. will “crack like an egg” under the pressure of the investigations into meddling by Russia in the last U.S. presidential election.

On Thursday, White House officials continued to attack Wolff’s credibility, accusing him of having a record of misquoting interview subjects and inventing scenarios. 

“This is a practice he is used to doing,” said Sanders, describing Wolff’s latest book as “mistake after mistake after mistake.”
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New York’s Met Museum Will Start Charging Mandatory $25 Fee

Posted on by Corts

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is partially abandoning its “pay-what-you-wish” admissions policy that has made it an egalitarian destination for generations of art lovers.

Starting March 1, the museum will charge a mandatory $25 entrance fee to most adult visitors who don’t live in New York state.

Museum President and CEO Daniel Weiss announced the change Thursday.

Weiss says the extra money will help balance the Met’s $305 million annual operating budget.

Entrance will remain free for all children under 12 and pay-as-you-wish for students up to graduate school in New York and surrounding New Jersey and Connecticut.  

The $25 fee will allow visitors to enter the Met over three consecutive days, instead of just one.
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YouTube Star Logan Paul Steps Away From Posting After Outcry

Posted on by Cobiz

YouTube star Logan Paul has stepped away from posting videos following an outcry when he uploaded images of what appeared to be the body of someone who killed themselves in a Japanese forest.

Paul took to Twitter on Wednesday to say he was suspending his video blog “for now” and “taking time to reflect.”

A petition on Change.org that demands his YouTube channel be deleted had been signed by more than 125,000 people by Thursday morning.

Paul created a furor when he posted a video of him in a forest near Mount Fuji showing what seemed to be a body hanging from a tree.

The video was viewed some 6 million times before being removed from Paul’s YouTube channel, a verified account with more than 15 million subscribers.

A storm of criticism followed despite two apologies, with commenters saying Paul seemed disrespectful and that his initial apology was inadequate.

In Paul’s initial apology, he said he had wanted to raise awareness about suicide and possibly save lives, and he denied his goal was to drive clicks to his social media content.

“I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a monsoon of negativity,” he said in his Twitter post.

“I don’t expect to be forgiven. I’m simply here to apologize,” he said on the more somber video apology uploaded on YouTube and Twitter late Tuesday. “None of us knew how to react or how to feel.”
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Death Rates After Surgery Twice as High in African Hospitals

Posted on by Cosc

Patients in African hospitals are twice as likely to die after surgery than the global average, according to a new study.

Although African patients were younger and at lower risk than average, 1 percent died of complications after elective surgery, compared to a 0.5 percent death rate worldwide.

“It’s really concerning when you see how high the mortality is, considering that the patients are generally fit and they’re having a lot more minor surgeries,” lead author Bruce Biccard of the University of Cape Town said.

Workforce and resource shortages across the continent are likely a major factor, the authors of the study write in the journal The Lancet.

The group of more than 30 African researchers took a one-week snapshot of surgeries at 247 hospitals in 25 African countries, from Algeria to Madagascar.

The study found a severe shortage of African surgeons, obstetricians and anesthesiologists. Previous research has found that fewer patients die after surgery when there are 20 to 40 specialists per 100,000 population. Across the continent, this study found an average of less than one per 100,000.

In addition to the high death rate, “the most alarming finding was how few people actually received surgery,” noted a commentary accompanying the study. An expert panel has estimated that 5 percent of the population needs surgery in a year. African hospitals on average performed less than one-twentieth of that figure.

It noted that patients were receiving surgery later in the course of their diseases. Nearly 60 percent of the operations were urgent or emergency procedures, compared with about a quarter in high-income countries.

Most of the patients who died did not do so on the operating table, but in the days following surgery.

“We’re actually failing to recognize patients who are having complications in the post-op period,” study author Biccard said. “So a minor complication becomes a major complication.”

That offers an opportunity for improvement, Biccard noted. Since increasing the number of doctors is unlikely in the short term, his group is working on a method “that will tell us before surgery which patients we think are going to get into trouble.”

His group is planning a study in 2019 to see if they can reduce patient deaths by focusing limited resources on patients at the highest risk.
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Dow Breaks 25,000 Barrier for First Time

Posted on by Coeco

The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through the 25,000-threshold for the first time Thursday, and notched another 1,000-point milestone. The index of blue-chip stocks is studded with industrial heavyweights such as Boeing and Caterpillar.

Among the biggest gainers were technology companies and banks. Wells Fargo jumped 1.9 percent and Microsoft rose 0.7 percent.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning, “Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.”

 

The Dow increased 118 points, or 0.5 percent, to 25,037. The Nasdaq edged up 16 points to 7,081.

This latest record came in early trading Thursday — only five weeks after closing above 24,000 points for the first time.

Other major indexes also rose to new levels, driven by a strong report on private jobs.

The recent rally has been spurred by faster economic gains around the world, along with a more optimistic outlook from businesses and consumers.
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Novelist, Holocaust Survivor Appelfeld Dies in Israel at 85

Posted on by Corts

Aharon Appelfeld, a prolific Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor whose works examined the lost world of European Jews and the new lives they pursued in Israel, died Thursday. He was 85.

Writing in Hebrew, the Romanian-born Appelfeld penned more than 40 books and was one of Israel’s most widely translated authors.

Appelfeld’s “Blooms of Darkness,” the tale of an 11-year-old boy hidden from the Nazis by a prostitute, won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in London in 2012. Appelfeld was also awarded the State of Israel Prize for Literature in 1983 and was a Man Booker International Prize finalist in 2013.

‘Our beloved writer’

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, on Twitter, expressed sorrow “about the passing of our beloved writer.”

Amos Oz, one of Israel’s most prominent novelists, said on Army Radio that Appelfeld shied away from graphic depictions of the Holocaust, choosing instead to describe its effect on the lives of his characters.

“Appelfeld never wrote about gas chambers, never wrote about executions, about mass graves, atrocities and experiments on human beings. He wrote about survivors before and after. He wrote about people who did not know what was about to happen to them and about people who already knew everything but hardly spoke about it,” Oz said.

“He didn’t want, or he was unable, to write depictions of the horrors — he said that too. They are beyond the ability of human language to express them. You have to approach them indirectly, tiptoeing from afar,” said Oz, once Appelfeld’s student in a kibbutz.

Escaped concentration camp

Appelfeld was a young boy when his mother was killed by the Nazis. He and his father were sent to a concentration camp in Transnistria in an area of Ukraine then under control of the German-allied Romanian forces. Age 10 at the time, he escaped and spent three years hiding in forests in Ukraine.

“I survived in the fields and forests. Sometimes I worked as a shepherd or taking care of broken-down horses,” he told The New York Times in 1986. “I lived with marginal people during the war — prostitutes, horse thieves, witches, fortune tellers. They gave me my real education.”

After the war, he immigrated to Israel — he learned Hebrew beforehand — and when he was 28 he discovered that his father had survived and they were reunited in Israel.

“Even though I spent time on kibbutzim that tried to change me, I did not change. I remained, basically, the Jewish refugee child who survived,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in 2015.

American-Jewish author Philip Roth once described Appelfeld as a “displaced writer of displaced fiction, who made displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own.”

Works by Appelfeld translated into English include “Badenheim 1939” (1978), a tale set in a fictional Austrian resort on the eve of World War II, and “The Immortal Bartfuss”
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Chicken Waste Could Generate Power Plant Electricity

Posted on by Cobiz

Coal-fired power plants release greenhouse gases into the air, causing pollution and contributing to climate change. But as much as 10 percent of the coal used in power stations could be replaced … by chicken waste. VOA’s Deborah Block has a report.
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Marijuana Sales Brisk in California Following Monday’s Legalization

Posted on by Cosc

The recreational use of marijuana is now legal in California. But only a few cities in the U.S. state are ready to start selling pot, which was officially legalized on Jan. 1. The logistics of creating new business models is complicated, but it’s clear the demand is high. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Australia Plans Legal Cannabis Exports to a Lucrative World Market

Posted on by Coeco

Australia said Thursday it planned to become the fourth country in the world to legalize medicinal marijuana exports in a bid to score a piece of the estimated $55 billion global market.

Cannabis cultivation in Australia is still relatively small, as recreational use remains illegal. But the government hopes domestic medicinal use, legalized last year, and exports will rapidly boost production.

“Our goal is very clear: to give farmers and producers the best shot at being the world’s No. 1 exporter of medicinal cannabis,” Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters in Melbourne.

Company shares rise

Shares in the more than a dozen Australian cannabis producers listed on the local exchange soared after the announcement.

Cann Group ended the day up 35 percent; AusCann Group rose nearly 54 percent; and BOD Australia closed up about 39 percent. All were record highs for those companies. Hydroponics Company finished up 30 percent, hitting its highest price in five weeks.

Peter Crock, chief executive of Cann Group, which cultivates cannabis for medicinal and research purposes, said medicinal marijuana production had been stymied by limited demand from Australian patients.

“While the Australian patient base is growing, it is very small,” Crock told Reuters. “Being able to export will allow us to have the scale to increase production.”

Hunt said the new legislation would include a requirement that growers first meet demand from local patients before exporting the remainder of their crop.

Three countries export

Despite growing demand, only Uruguay, Canada and the Netherlands have so far legalized the export of medicinal marijuana. Israel has said it intends to do so within months.

The Australian government’s proposal needs to pass federal parliament when it returns to session in February. The country’s main opposition Labor Party has signaled it would support the move. Exports would then likely begin within months.

Fuelled by a growing acceptance of the benefits of marijuana to manage chronic pain, moderate the impact of multiple sclerosis and to soften the effects of cancer treatment, several countries and 29 states in the United States have legalized cannabis for medicinal use.

Australia’s chief commodity forecaster does not publish data on cannabis production, but rough estimates by the University of Sydney estimated the legal industry at A$100 million ($78 million), well below the C$4 billion ($3.19 billion) that Canada estimates its market to be worth.

U.S. consultants Grand View Research last year forecast the global medicinal cannabis market would be worth $55.8 billion by 2025.
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Astronauts: Trump’s Proposed Moon Mission Will Take Time

Posted on by Cosc

American astronauts aboard the International Space Station told VOA on Wednesday that their excitement about recently announced plans to restore U.S. manned space missions to lunar orbit was eclipsed only by their skepticism about the logistical feasibility of completing the mission within six years.

“Going back to the moon is a bigger project than a lot of people think,” said Expedition 54 Flight Engineer Scott Tingle, who joined fellow NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei at the ISS on December 19.

Just last month, David Kring, head of the Lunar and Planetary Institute at the Universities Space Research Association, said the first unmanned launch in the program to get back to the moon could come in a little more than a year.

Kring, who was present at Trump’s signing ceremony for the new lunar policy directive, which came 45 years to the day after Apollo 17’s final moon landing on December 13, 1972, said an unmanned mission to lunar orbit could happen by 2019.

“That will launch the Orion crew vehicle and will orbit the moon without astronauts,” Kring told VOA. “Then in 2023 the vehicle launches again, this time with astronauts who will orbit the moon and return. After that is successful, we can actually deploy the astronauts in space [in between the Earth and the moon].”

US, Russia to cooperate

Russia and the United States in September agreed to cooperate on a NASA-led program to build the first lunar space station as part of a longer-term mission to send humans to Mars. Both countries said a manned lunar spaceport could be orbiting the moon by 2024, when the International Space Station program is slated to end.

Speaking with VOA’s Russian service via an ISS live-feed broadcast by NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, Tingle said successfully launching a manned vehicle into lower-moon orbit by 2023 might not be as simple as it sounds.

“Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we’re that close to doing it now,” Tingle said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of engineering to do, a lot of planning to do, a lot of operations to do, and it’s going to be expensive. It’s going to take a lot of manpower, and it’s going to take a lot of thinking outside the box to make it as quickly and efficiently as we can.

“And we can’t do that alone,” he added. “We’re going to need to do it with international partners. So I do believe the international partnership will work; I believe it will be necessary to have a really good product and to be able to achieve success with that mission goal.”

‘A wise step’

Despite the logistical challenges, Tingle’s U.S. colleague aboard the ISS, Mark Vande Hei, expressed optimism about the new lunar directive.

“I think it’s an extremely wise step,” Vande Hei said. “I think the moon provides us an excellent opportunity to rehearse, relatively close to the Earth, inhabiting a planetary-sized object with the ability, if things go wrong, to get people back relatively easily when compared with going to Mars.”

“I think it’s going to be a huge step for humanity to have a lasting presence anyplace other than lower-Earth orbit,” he added. “I’m really looking forward to getting people on the moon, keeping them there for long periods of time, and then using that as a way to test out equipment to get ready to make sure we do it safely when we finally do get to Mars.”

Tingle was part of a trio of U.S., Japanese and Russian astronauts to join Vande Hei aboard the ISS on December 19.

Vande Hei, who has been aboard the ISS since September, floated aside Tingle and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency throughout the interview.

New Year’s in space

The three astronauts, Tingle said, shared a New Year’s Eve dinner with the three Russian astronauts inhabiting another wing of the ISS.

“New Year’s Day, we took a little bit of time off, but more importantly we celebrated by having a nice, good dinner with our Russian colleagues down in the Russian segment,” Tingle said. “They were hospitable to us, and it was fun to sit and relax with them.”

Asked if they popped a bottle of champagne to ring in 2018, Tingle paused, passing the microphone to Vande Hei.

“No, we’re not allowed any alcohol,” said Vande Hei. “But our Russian crewmates went ahead and made us some grape juice with labels that made it look like we had champagne, so that was kind of fun to pretend.”

This story originated in VOA’s Russian service.
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Conditions are Severe for Rohingya Health in Camps

Posted on by Cosc

Health workers are concerned with outbreaks of diseases in the massive Rohingya camps housing more than 650,000 people. Cramped quarters, malnourishment and pre-existing health conditions add up to real concerns as new cases of diphtheria worry aid workers. Steve Sandford reports from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
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Mormon Church Leader Thomas Monson Dies at 90  

Posted on by Cosc

Mormon church leader Thomas Monson has died, the church announced Wednesday from its Salt Lake City headquarters. 

He was 90 years old and led the church for 10 years.

Monson became a church bishop when he was just 22, and at age 36 became the youngest apostle in Mormon church history.

Monson was well-respected by Mormons all over the world for his dedication to humanitarian causes, from disaster relief to the simplicity of urging members to bring comfort to someone who is lonely. 

Monson was also a successful newspaper publisher.

The Mormon church is formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and was founded in New York state in 1830.

Its 16 million followers around the world regard the church leader as a prophet who received define revelation.
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US Auto Sales Decline, Ending Record Streak

Posted on by Coeco

Auto sales in the United States fell by 2 percent in 2017, the first decline in seven years.

Ford Motor reported Wednesday that its new vehicle sales fell 1 percent, as did those of General Motors. Fiat Chrysler reported a decline of 8 percent compared with 2016. Volkswagen said its sales in the U.S. rose by 5 percent.

But even with the decline, the industry sold 17.2 million cars, making 2017 the fourth-best sales year in U.S. history, after 2000, 2015 and 2016, according to Kelley Blue Book.

For the 36th straight year, Ford’s F-Series pickup truck remained the top-selling vehicle in the country. Mercedes-Benz was the top selling luxury brand, even with a sales decline of 1 percent.

Analysts expect auto sales to fall in 2018 because of higher interest rates. But they say the vehicles themselves are to blame for some of the decline. The newer models are more durable so drivers are holding on to their cars longer. The average age of vehicles on the road has climbed to 11.6 years, up from 8.8 years in 1998.

Despite the decline, the industry remains robust. The average price of a new vehicle reached an all-time high last year of $36,113, as drivers bought bigger SUVs with more sophisticated technology.

“It’s still a buoyant industry and the underlying factors that drive it are still very positive,” Ford’s U.S. sales chief, Mark LaNeve, said.
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Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk, Researchers Say

Posted on by Cobiz

Security researchers on Wednesday disclosed a set of security flaws that they said could let hackers steal sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and ARM Holdings.

One of the bugs is specific to Intel but another affects laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets and internet servers alike. Intel and ARM insisted that the issue was not a design flaw, but it will require users to download a patch and update their operating system to fix.

“Phones, PCs — everything is going to have some impact, but it’ll vary from product to product,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday afternoon.

Researchers with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Project Zero, in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries, discovered two  flaws.

The first, called Meltdown, affects Intel chips and lets hackers bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s memory, potentially letting hackers read a computer’s memory and steal passwords.

The second, called Spectre, affects chips from Intel, AMD and ARM and lets hackers potentially trick otherwise error-free applications into giving up secret information.

The researchers said Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. had patches ready for users for desktop computers affected by Meltdown. Microsoft declined to comment and Apple did not immediately return requests for comment.

Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers at Graz University of Technology in Austria who discovered Meltdown, said in an interview with Reuters that the flaw was “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found.”

Specter a long-term issue

Gruss said Meltdown was the more serious problem in the short term but  could be decisively stopped with software patches. Specter, the broader bug that applies to nearly all computing devices, is harder for hackers to take advantage of but less easily patched and will be a bigger problem in the long

term, he said.

Speaking on CNBC, Intel’s Krzanich said Google researchers told Intel of the flaws “a while ago” and that Intel had been testing fixes that device makers who use its chips will push out next week. Before the problems became public, Google on its blog said Intel and others planned to disclose the issues on January 9.

The flaws were first reported by The Register, a tech publication. It also reported that the updates to fix the problems could cause Intel chips to operate 5 percent to 30 percent more slowly.

Intel denied that the patches would bog down computers based on Intel chips.

“Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits,” Intel said in a statement. “Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.”

ARM spokesman Phil Hughes said that patches had already been shared with the companies’ partners, which include many smartphone manufacturers.

“This method only works if a certain type of malicious code is already running on a device and could at worst result in small pieces of data being accessed from privileged memory,” Hughes said in an email.

AMD chips are also affected by at least one variant of a set of security flaws but that can be patched with a software update. The company said it believes there “is near zero risk to AMD products at this time.”

Google’s report

Google said in a blog post that Android phones running the latest security updates are protected, as are its own Nexus and Pixel phones with the latest security updates. Gmail users do not need to take any additional action to protect themselves, but users of its Chromebooks, Chrome web browser and many of its Google Cloud services will need to install updates.

The defect affects the so-called kernel memory on Intel x86 processor chips manufactured over the past decade, allowing users of normal applications to discern the layout or content of protected areas on the chips, The Register reported, citing unnamed programmers.

That could make it possible for hackers to exploit other security bugs or, worse, expose secure information such as passwords, thus compromising individual computers or even entire server networks.

Dan Guido, chief executive of cybersecurity consulting firm Trail of Bits, said that businesses should quickly move to update vulnerable systems, saying he expects hackers to quickly develop code they can use to launch attacks that exploit the vulnerabilities.

“Exploits for these bugs will be added to hackers’ standard toolkits,” said Guido.

Shares in Intel were down by 3.4 percent following the report but nudged back up 1.2 percent to $44.70 in after-hours trading, while shares in AMD were up 1 percent to $11.77, shedding many of the gains they had made earlier in the day when reports suggested its chips were not affected.

It was not immediately clear whether Intel would face any significant financial liability arising from the reported flaw.

“The current Intel problem, if true, would likely not require CPU replacement in our opinion. However the situation is fluid,” Hans Mosesmann of Rosenblatt Securities in New York said in a note, adding it could hurt the company’s reputation.
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Blackberry Surges on Deal With Baidu for Self-driving Cars

Posted on by Cobiz

BlackBerry Ltd and Chinese internet search firm Baidu Inc on Wednesday signed a deal to jointly develop self-driving vehicle technology, sending BlackBerry’s Toronto-listed shares up 13 percent to a four-year high.

The deal follows similar agreements with firms including Qualcomm Inc, Denso and Aptiv Plc to develop autonomous-driving technology with BlackBerry’s QNX software, which are expected to start generating revenue in 2019.

Investors and analysts are closely watching what comes of those agreements amid expectations that QNX could become a key technology in the burgeoning self-driving vehicle industry, serving as the operating system for computer chips used to run self-driving vehicles.

QNX will be the operating system for Apollo, a platform for self-driving vehicles that Baidu announced in April and has billed as the “Android” of the autonomous driving industry.

“The opportunity is global, it’s for a very large market and I think it’s a very solid win for BlackBerry,” said CIBC Capital Markets analyst Todd Coupland.

Apollo has since signed up several major automakers, including Ford Motor Co, Hyundai Motor Group and several Chinese carmakers.

QNX has long been used to run car infotainment consoles. BlackBerry has recently developed the software to run sophisticated computer chips for autos that manage multiple safety-critical systems.

BlackBerry shares rose 13 percent in Toronto to C$16.95, their sharpest one-day gain since April and highest close since March 2013.

The two companies said they will also integrate Baidu’s CarLife, a leading smartphone integration software for connected cars in China, its conversational AI system and high definition maps with BlackBerry’s infotainment platform.

 
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Disease Outbreaks Plague Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

Posted on by Cosc

At Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, unclean water, cramped living quarters and squalid conditions create a prime environment for outbreaks of preventable diseases among the estimated 650,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled strife in neighboring Myanmar.

While 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine already have been delivered by more than 200 mobile vaccination teams, another contagious bacterial infection, diphtheria, has emerged.

“Diphtheria is a vaccine preventable disease. It’s an illustration of how the Rohingya population that are living in the makeshift settlements here had very little access to health care in their place of origin in Myanmar,” said Kate Nolan, emergency coordinator with international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.

Diphtheria often causes the buildup of a sticky grey-white membrane in the throat or nose. The infection causes airway obstruction and damage to the heart and nervous system. The fatality rate increases without the diphtheria antitoxin.

“This is an extremely vulnerable population with low vaccination coverage, living in conditions that could be a breeding ground for infectious diseases like cholera, measles, rubella and diphtheria,” said Dr. Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the World Health Organization representative to Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s health sector is rated among the worst in the world, particularly in the ethnic regions where conflict and poverty have delayed medical development.

The Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state after insurgents attacked security forces in late August, prompting a military crackdown that has since been described as ethnic cleansing.

‘Appalling’ health care

Myanmar’s government denies it has engaged in ethnic cleansing, and it insists that a majority of the violence and burning of Rohingya villages was done by the Rohingya militants who attacked the Myanmar security forces.

“The health care facilities for the Rohingya in Rakhine state are appalling and just a small amount of the needs were being met, even before the attacks in August,” said Rohingya expert Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, a human rights organization that monitors and documents the situation.

According to Lewa, the impoverished Rohingya population in northern Rakhine say they are treated with discrimination by Myanmar medical staff at government hospitals and face severe movement restrictions when traveling to health care facilities.

Lewa points to Myanmar’s Maungdaw District, where the army conducted so-called “clearance operations” following deadly insurgent attacks last year.

“Health facilities set up by INGOs [international nongovernmental organizations] in Maungdaw have been burned to the ground, which will make it even more difficult for them if and when they are allowed to return,” Lewa added.

Currently, INGOs are not allowed in the areas outside Maungdaw.

Doctors Without Borders has responded to the rapid spread of diphtheria in neighboring Bangladesh by converting one of its mother and child inpatient facilities at the Balukhali makeshift settlement, and at another inpatient site, into treatment centers.

“The emergence of this disease is a concern because it contributes to an existing precarious public health situation that we have in the makeshift settlements,” Nolan said.

Tracking down carriers

Now, potential carriers must get antitoxins and antibiotics to prevent the further spread of the bacterium and kill it.

“We need to find all the suspected cases in the camps and get them all here to start the antibiotic treatment and keep them isolated for 48 hours,” said on-duty doctor Thomas Hansen.

Because the disease spreads easily through water droplets from sneezing and coughing, medical teams are tasked with following up on initial quarantine with visits to a patient’s family to trace and treat people who might have come in contact with the disease in the community.

Doctors Without Borders and health partners like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are working together to isolate suspected cases.

One of the biggest challenges for health workers, however, is getting to remote locations where potential outbreaks can occur.

With the sudden influx of the 650,000 refugees, new land clearance has led to huts being constructed well beyond the main roadways.

“They live in areas that are difficult to reach. You cannot reach them by cars or Tom Toms [three-wheeled taxis] because of no roads, so they will have to carry their patients to where they can get treatment,” said Dagne Hordvei, team leader with the Norwegian Red Cross.

“We have an agreement with [Doctors Without Borders] that we take the measles patients from them, and they take the diphtheria patients, with lots of activity going out to the communities to try to reduce the speed of the spreading of diphtheria.”

Vaccination campaign

As Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare — working with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other health partners — implements a vaccination campaign to prevent future outbreaks of diphtheria, it appears that at least some of the next generation of Rohingya will have protection from preventable diseases.

“We are working with partners to ensure that clinical guidance is available to health workers, and that there are enough beds and medicines for those who get sick. But the only way to control this outbreak is to protect people, particularly children, through vaccination,” said the WHO’s Paranietharan.

As of December 21, Doctors Without Borders has seen more than 2,000 suspected diphtheria cases in its health facilities, and the number is rising daily. Most of the patients are between the ages of 5 and 14 years old.

More than 20 Rohingya in Bangladesh have died from the disease.
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One Difference Between 2009 vs 2018 Iran Protests? 48 Million Smartphones

Posted on by Cobiz

In 2009, the world watched as Iranians marching in the streets turned to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to organize and share information.

The technology-assisted protests were dubbed the first “Twitter revolution.”

Flash forward to 2018 and technology again is playing a role in demonstrations sweeping cities across Iran.

But much has changed in the intervening years when it comes to the communication tools used by Iranian citizens for organizing and publicizing protests.

Here are some of the main changes:

1. The rise of smartphones has brought more Iranians on to the internet

In 2009, fewer than 15 percent of Iranians had internet access, according to the World Bank.

While Twitter was used to get news of the protests out to the world, it is unclear how much of a role it or any service played to help organize political actions. Word of mouth, in some accounts, as well as SMS messaging over cellphones (and just 30 percent of Iranians owned a cell phone) played a larger role than internet services.

Now, with the advent of smartphones in Iran – about half of Iranians, or 48 million people, have smartphones. More than 50 percent of Iranians are online.

2. An explosion in messaging options

In 2009, Facebook and Twitter were relatively new with Iranians accessing the services mostly on their desktop computers.

As the 2009 protests unfolded, the Obama administration asked Twitter to delay an update that would have taken the service offline to allow Iranians to continue to use it.

Now, Iranian citizens have a number of ways of receiving and sending messages – straight from the device they carry in their pockets.

Of these newer services, the most popular in Iran is Telegram, an instant messaging service that offers encrypted secret chats and channels, where people discuss news and current events. By one count, more than 100,000 Iranian channels are on Telegram. Facebook’s Instagram is the second most popular service.

“Telegram channels are frequently used for organizing protests and for sharing political opinion,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

As the protests continued, the Iranian government shut down Telegram and Instagram. But other messaging apps give users options.

“Regime in Iran can shut down signal, telegram, etc., but differently from 2009, the whole country is connected and they have a long list of other messaging apps to use,” tweeted Jared Cohen, founder and chief executive of Jigsaw, an Alphabet company, and a senior fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations. “This time around, it’s much harder to win a game of technology wack-a-mole.”

And indeed, the head of Telegram took to Twitter on Tuesday to suggest users go to Whatsapp, which “remains fully accessible in Iran.”

3. Wider adoption of anti-filtering tools

Since the 2009 Green Movement, more Iranians have access to anti-censorship technology, such as VPNs and proxies, servers that transmit content that can evade government controls.

“Iranian internet users are making use of a wider variety of circumvention tools that allow for selective access to blocked resources,” said Alp Toker, founder of NetBlocks.org, a digital rights group.

“This could be down to a more mature understanding of internet filtering that has developed since the Green Movement protests after 2009, supported by domestic technical expertise and earlier initiatives to develop tools for Iran,” Toker said. “This suggests that workarounds for Iran’s internet filters have become a way of life for many mobile and desktop internet users.”

4. Dangers exist for Iranians using mobile technology

With more communication technologies available to Iranians, they are more regulated and less open than they were in 2009, says Toker. Mobile devices are more restricted than computers, making it more difficult to circumvent Iran’s internet filters, he added.

In addition, many Iranians are using outdated iPhone devices and skipping software security updates, which means they may be more vulnerable to state-sponsored hacking and surveillance, Toker said.

Since 2009, the Iranian government has worked to create its own internet service and restricted content it considers objectionable on commercial services.

“Iran’s own strict regime of internet filters, but also U.S. sanctions limiting the transfer and sale of technology and security products, are likely contributing factors that mean the choke points are still an effective mechanism for mass control,” Toker said.
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In Uganda, Dogs Comfort Victims of War

Posted on by Cosc

Eleven years since the end of the civil war in Uganda, which pitted Lord’s Resistance Army rebels against the government, tens of thousands of people still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health practitioners estimate that seven in 10 people in Northern Uganda were traumatically affected by the war.

At the age of 12, Francis Okello Oloya was blinded by a bomb blast as he dug in the family garden. In a boarding school for the blind, Okello found it difficult to ask people for help, especially in getting to the toilet at night. Now a 29-year-old community psychologist, that childhood experience led to the birth of a project involving what he calls comfort dogs.

“I had to navigate my way from the sleeping quarter to latrine and that was not easy,” he said. “And these dogs came to know that I needed help. And they began the practice of helping me from the sleeping quarters to the latrine. Being a person of visual impairment, you normally feel that you are going to burden people a lot.”

Dogs are mainly used for hunting in Uganda, with a few people warming up to the idea of owning dogs at home, mostly for security. But Okello began collecting street dogs, which were handed over to guardians with training in dog handling.

In 2015, Okello started The Comfort Dog Project to help people in Gulu town, especially those who were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

Philda Akum, 35, is one of the 29 beneficiaries of the project. In 1997, she and her four brothers were abducted by the LRA and taken to Sudan.

One of her brothers tried to escape.

That brother was captured and killed, Akum says. Another brother was selected to go to the battlefront; he was shot dead. Two days later, her youngest brother contracted cholera and died. The horrors have left her traumatized, she says. She returned home and joined group therapy, which is how she got her dog, Lok Oroma.

Lucy Adok, 39, spent five years fighting in the bush.

“I was in combat and saw many people being killed,” she said. “I was destroyed. When I returned home, I experienced flashbacks and any loud sound sounded like a bullet. When I learned that I could get a dog as a friend, I took on Sadiq.

“I now spend a lot of time with Sadiq. I have dreams of our games during the day and slowly Sadiq has replaced the bad memories from the war.”

The dogs find a home, and the guardians find life companions.
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