Month: July 2018

Former Apple Engineer Charged With Stealing Self-driving Car Technology

A federal court has charged a former Apple engineer with stealing trade secrets related to a self-driving car and attempting to flee to China.

Agents in San Jose, California, arrested Xiaolang Zhang on Saturday, moments before he was to board his flight.

Zhang is said to have taken paternity leave in April, traveling to China just after the birth of a child.

When he returned, he informed his supervisors he was leaving Apple to join Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese company in Guangzhao, which also plans to build self-driving cars.

But security cameras caught Zhang allegedly entering Apple’s self-driving car lab and downloading blueprints and other information on a personal computer at the time he was supposed to be in China on paternity leave.

Neither the FBI nor Zhang’s lawyers have commented.

New Zealand’s Rocket Lab to Open Second Launch Pad in US

Rocket Lab, a Silicon Valley-funded space launch company, planned to open a second launch site in the United States to complement its remote New Zealand pad, the firm said Wednesday.

Rocket Lab said it was considering four sites on both the East and West coasts and would make a final decision in August.

Founder and Chief Executive Peter Beck said in an emailed statement that launching from the United States “adds an extra layer of flexibility for our government and commercial customers.”

The Auckland and Los Angeles-headquartered firm has designed a battery-powered, partly 3-D-printed rocket and has touted its service as a way for companies to get satellites into orbit regularly.

Its successful launch of a rocket that deployed satellites in January after years of preparation was an important step in the global commercial race to bring down financial and logistical barriers to space.

Rocket Lab counts the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as well as earth imaging firm Planet and global data and analytics company Spire among its customers.

American sites being considered were Cape Canaveral in Florida, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Rocket Lab said.

The firm expected its first launch from the United States would take place in the second quarter of 2019.

Rocket Lab operates the world’s only private orbital launch pad on the Mahia Peninsula in northwest New Zealand, Beck’s home country.

The island nation is well-positioned to send satellites bound for a north-to-south orbit around the poles, whereas the United States is better for satellites flying west to east.

Bike-Share Programs Battle for Paris Turf

Grabbing a bicycle from a docking station and riding the streets of Paris used to be one of the city’s many charms, but the once-loved Velib system has fallen into disarray and some new dockless bike-share programs are struggling to survive.

After it launched in 2007, Velib quickly became a hit, signing up more than 250,000 users who could take advantage of 20,000 bikes around the city. But advertising company JCDecaux’s concession to run Velib expired last year.

A French-Spanish consortium called Smovengo won the tender to run the service for the next 15 years, but it struggled to meet a January deadline to install new docking stations and has battled a raft of technology problems, leaving users frustrated.

At the same time, four dockless bike-share programs, all run by Asian operators, have popped across the city, offering users the ability to unlock a free-standing bike via an app for a fee.

While initially popular thanks to their novelty and Velib’s problems, some of those schemes are now running into trouble, with users unhappy with the quality of the bikes, many of which have been vandalized or thrown in the Seine.

Singapore’s oBike this week became the second of the programs to give up on Paris, which wants to be an urban leader in green mobility. Officials of oBike did not return calls, but a former official said key staff in France had left the company.

In February, Hong Kong startup Gobee.bike halted its operations because of theft and vandalism.

China-owned bike-share firms Ofo and Mobike remain active and have been steadily growing their numbers, thanks in part to Smovengo’s struggle to get fully up and running.

Laurent Kennel, general manager at Ofo France, said the firm now had about 2,500 of its bright yellow bikes on Paris roads and aimed to increase that to 3,000 to 4,000 by the end of summer.

“In Paris and elsewhere, there have been low-quality bikes that were not made to last,” he said. “Free-floating bike sharing hasn’t created the chaos that some had predicted a few months ago. It’s going quite well.”

Mobike also has several thousand of its red bikes on Paris streets and has been adding a larger version, more suited to European frames, also with three speeds, like Ofo and Velib.

Paris cyclists have welcomed the new programs, but are nostalgic for the old Velibs, which they say offered a better, smoother ride and were cheaper, thanks to state subsidies.

“Bike-share services are good for short distances. You can drop them wherever you want, which is convenient,” said Paris cyclist David Bober. “But their quality is not great and they are not very comfortable for long distances.”

He said he used to pay about 30 euros a year for his Velib subscription but that membership for two Asian dockless schemes costs him around 20 euros a month.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has recognized that the city needs to get a grip on the programs and make sure Velib works.

“We know there is this entire field, this entire space of mobility which exists and can be managed in a different way. But for us it clear that it must be regulated,” she said.

Still, more startups are using Paris as a test center. Last month, California-based Lime launched a fleet of dock-free electric scooters in the city, part of a wider rollout in several European cities.

Danish bike share operator Donkey Republic has also launched several hundred dockless bikes. Unlike Mobike and Ofo, the large Danish bikes cannot be parked anywhere but must be chained up at designated parking spots.

Fossils of Early Giant Dinosaur Discovered in Argentina

Scientists have unearthed in northwestern Argentina fossils of the earliest-known giant dinosaur, a four-legged plant-eater with a medium-length neck and long tail that was a forerunner of the largest land animals of all time.

Researchers said the dinosaur – named Ingentia prima, meaning “the first giant” – was up to 33 feet (10 meters) long and weighed about 10 tons, living about 210 million years ago during the Triassic Period.

Ingentia was an early member of a dinosaur group called sauropods that later included Earth’s biggest terrestrial creatures including the Patagonian behemoths Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan.

“We see in Ingentia prima the origin of gigantism, the first steps so that, more than 100 million years later, sauropods of up to 70 tons could come into existence like those that lived in Patagonia,” said paleontologist Cecilia Apaldetti of the Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina, lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Unlike later sauropods, Ingentia’s legs were not pillar-like. Its neck also was shorter than later sauropods, which possessed among the longest necks relative to body length of any animals ever.

Dinosaurs first appeared earlier in the Triassic Period, roughly 230 million years ago. The first ones were modestly sized, a far cry from the immense dinosaurs of the subsequent Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Scientists had previously believed the first giant dinosaurs appeared roughly 180 millions years ago.

Apaldetti called Ingentia not only the largest dinosaur but the biggest land animal of any kind up to that point in time. It was at least twice as large as the other plant-eaters that shared the warm, savannah environment it inhabited. The biggest predators there were not dinosaurs, but large land-dwelling relatives of crocodiles.

“Gigantism is an evolutionary survival strategy, especially for herbivorous animals, because size is a form of defense against predators,” Apaldetti said.

The scientists identified important traits related to gigantism in Ingentia. It possessed a bird-like respiratory system, related to the development of air sacs inside the body that gave it large reserves of oxygenated air and kept it cool despite its large size.

While later giant dinosaurs grew in an accelerated yet continuous manner, an examination of its bones showed that Ingentia grew seasonally rather than continuously, but at an even higher rate.

Ingentia, known from two partial skeletons, was discovered in Argentina’s San Juan Province.

US Imposes Tariffs on Another $200B of Chinese Imports

The United States has decided to impose tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China after efforts to negotiate a solution to a trade dispute failed to reach an agreement, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the United States would impose tariffs of 10 percent on the additional Chinese imports.

The move would be the latest in the escalating trade skirmish between the world’s two biggest economies. They slapped tariffs on $34 billion worth of each other’s goods last week.

President Donald Trump has said the United States might ultimately impose tariffs on more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods — roughly the total amount of U.S. imports from China last year.

Administration officials said a two-month process would allow the public to comment on the proposed tariffs before the list is finalized.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbors: Melbourne Moves into Community-led Housing

In an ideal world, Alex Fearnside would cycle home from work, park his bike in the basement of his apartment complex in Melbourne city center, then jog upstairs through a beautiful courtyard to his flat, stopping only for a quick chat with other residents in the shared dining area.

Later, Fearnside and his wife would head down to the communal kitchen to eat a meal cooked by their neighbors.

Fearnside’s 10-year-old dream for life in the Australian city is nearing reality as it awaits planning approval. It is shared by 50 other Melbourne residents who belong to Urban Coup, a collective that wants to turn a disused button factory in an old industrial area into a co-housing community by 2020.

“What is driving us is we want to know our neighbors,” said the 38-year-old environmental scientist. “We want to know that as we’re growing old, we have people around us who have similar values to who we are and what we bring.”

Urban Coup is one of five innovative housing initiatives that put community at their heart.

The projects are supported with expertise and networks mobilized by Resilient Melbourne, part of 100 Resilient Cities, a network backed by The Rockefeller Foundation to help cities deal with modern-day pressures.

This year, more than half of Asia-Pacific’s population will be urban, and that figure will increase to two-thirds by 2050, the United Nations estimates.

But as the region’s cities continue to expand, services and infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with rising populations and economic growth, while the effects of climate change have created additional challenges.

The Melbourne projects aim to help find solutions to the city’s expanding urban sprawl, worsening traffic congestion and growing social isolation – all of which can contribute to problems like alcoholism and domestic violence.

And by building stronger community bonds, Melbourne should be better placed to recover from potential shocks and stresses, such as rising temperatures and droughts, infrastructure failures and potential pandemics, the schemes’ proponents say.

“Many of the people who started Urban Coup remember growing up on streets where they knew everybody on that street,” said Fearnside. “We wanted a building that would enable us to know our neighbors and allow us to support each other.”

Urban Sprawl

In the past decade, Melbourne has topped various polls as the world’s most liveable city, attracting new residents to Australia’s second-biggest city.

Just under 5 million people live there, and the population is expected to double over the next 30 years, putting increased strain on infrastructure and housing.

As more estates have been built on greenfield sites outside the center, the rise in urban sprawl has brought problems.

Housing developments have outpaced infrastructure, leading to dormitory suburbs, whose residents commute daily but enjoy few services, amenities and transport links.

That causes traffic congestion and longer commute times, as well as a lack of interaction between neighbors, experts say.

“We live in a really beautiful part of Melbourne but we don’t really know our neighbors,” said Fearnside, who currently lives with his wife in a townhouse 5 km (3 miles) north of the central business district.

In Melbourne’s central areas, high-rise blocks have become more common in recent years. But as in many other Australian cities, first-time buyers and families have struggled to afford steeper prices stoked by overseas property investors.

And much new construction has been driven by developers, which tend to put profit before the provision of leisure or communal facilities.

On average, Melbourne property prices have doubled over the last decade, said Clinton Baxter, state director at Savills property agency in the city, and this trend is set to continue.

Central government efforts to help first-time buyers include a grant for deposits and stamp duty concessions, while state governments have sought to open up more land and fast-track approval processes for developments.

Despite this, the supply of new and affordable housing in Melbourne has struggled to keep up with demand. It is not uncommon to see would-be buyers camping out overnight ahead of a land sale to be front of the queue for their own building plot.

“The state government has struggled to keep up with the infrastructure requirements for such a rapidly growing city,” Baxter said.

Living Experiment

The five projects supported by Resilient Melbourne will bring together developers, city and state government agencies, service providers and potential buyers and renters.

Each project is crafted around different community-focused models – some based on renewal of the inner-city and others starting from scratch on greenfield sites.

The projects will also be part of an academic study.

“We want this to be a genuine living experiment so that we can understand in deep ways what works and what doesn’t work – and record it so the successes can be replicated in Melbourne but also internationally,” said Toby Kent, the city’s chief resilience officer.

The projects backed by Resilient Melbourne include a greenfield site for about 5,000 homes led by developer Mirvac.

It is working with local authorities to incorporate community aspects from an early stage.

Besides at least one new school, there will be a town center with shops and a supermarket, and a hub to house programs and events run by the council or residents, with a community-managed cafe and playground, said Anne Jolic, a director at Mirvac.

“Often people who move to some of these … new housing (developments) will feel very isolated,” she said.

Melbourne developer Assemble, meanwhile, plans to turn an old CD and DVD factory near the city center into 73 flats.

The property will include communal spaces like a cafe, a co-working space, crèche and grocery store, and is consulting with potential residents and existing neighbors on the design.

When the final plans are drawn up, residents will pay a refundable 1 percent deposit to secure a place, said Kris Daff, managing director of Assemble.

Once built, they will move in and start a five-year lease with an option to buy at a pre-agreed price, or exit the lease and leave at any time.

Services and events on offer will include dry cleaning, apartment cleaning, dog walking, community dinners, walking groups and film nights in a communal room.

“There is a huge amount of research that shows that when acute shocks have struck in cities, communities where there are existing connections are better able to bounce back,” said Kent, Melbourne’s resilience chief.

As Technology Advances, Women Are Left Behind in Digital Divide

Poverty, gender discrimination and digital illiteracy are leaving women behind as the global workforce increasingly uses digital tools and other technologies, experts warned Tuesday.

The so-called “digital divide” has traditionally referred to the gap between those who have access to computers and the internet, and those with limited or no access.

But technology experts say women and girls with poor digital literacy skills will be the hardest hit and will struggle to find jobs as technology advances.

“Digital skills are indispensable for girls and young women to obtain safe employment in the formal labor market,” said Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, founder of Women’s Worldwide Web, a charity that trains girls in digital literacy.

She said “offline factors” like poverty, gender discrimination and gender stereotypes were preventing girls and women from benefiting from digital technologies.

Globally, the proportion of men using the internet in 2017 was 12 percent higher than women, says the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.

There are also 200 million fewer women than men who own a mobile phone, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a March report.

“Women are currently on the wrong side of the digital skills gap. In tech, it’s a man’s world. We have a global problem, we have an urgent problem on our hands,” said Nefesh-Clarke at a gender equality forum run by Chatham House in London on Tuesday.

According to a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think tank, the use of digital tools has increased in 517 of 545 occupations since 2002 in the United States alone, with a striking uptick in many lower-skilled occupations.

“The entire economy is shifting, and we need new skills to be able to cope with that new economy,” said Dorothy Gordon, a technology expert and associate fellow with Chatham House.

“So when we look at the jobs that women are in today, what are the skillsets that they will need to acquire to be able to be competitive in that job market as we move forward?” she said.

Even with new jobs emerging through online or mobile platforms, such as rideshare apps Uber or Lyft, domestic services or food couriers, women are still faring worse than men, research shows.

A U.S. study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June found the gender pay gap among Uber drivers was 7 percent.

“Many of the challenges that come through digital work are, frankly, old wine in new bottles,” said Abigail Hunt, a gender researcher at the British-based Overseas Development Institute, referring to the Uber study.

She said safety concerns, gender bias and discrimination contributed to how much women could earn in the so-called “gig economy.”

“Discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, geographical location, age — it’s the same issues we’ve always seen that are discriminating against women,” Hunt said.

OPEC to Canada: Build Pipelines or Watch Investment Flow South

The president of OPEC urged Canada on Tuesday to invest in infrastructure to move oil and gas, or risk watching investment flow away to the United States.

The Canadian government agreed in May to buy the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and a related expansion project from Kinder Morgan Canada for C$4.5 billion ($3.4 billion), highlighting the lengths deemed necessary to overcome stiff opposition to such projects.

Insufficient space in the country’s oil pipelines has deepened the discount Canada’s heavy crude can attract from U.S. refiners, compared with U.S. light oil futures.

“If you don’t have the major infrastructure, investors are going to go to your neighbor, where infrastructure is not an issue,” said Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries President Suhail al-Mazrouei. “Act and act quickly if you want to retain those investors. I am being frank because I want to be a true friend to the Canadians.”

“I don’t want them to lose opportunities,” he added.

Mazrouei was speaking in Calgary at a TD investor conference during the city’s Stampede, an annual rodeo that is also the year’s major meet and greet for Canada’s energy sector.

Mazrouei, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister, also singled out Canada’s low-priced natural gas. Much of it is produced in landlocked Alberta, and the country lacks a robust liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector to consume it.

LNG Canada, a proposed C$40 billion export facility for the British Columbia coast, is being reviewed by its joint venture partners ahead of a final investment decision.

“The solution is LNG and pipelines to export that natural gas,” Mazrouei said. “If you provide optionality for the gas, it’s going to fix itself.”

American Airlines to Eliminate Plastic Straws from Cabins, Lounges

American Airlines on Tuesday said it plans to no longer offer plastic straws and stir sticks in its lounges and onboard its flights, amid a broader global push to abandon one-time use plastics.

Starting this month, American said drinks in its airport lounges will no longer come with plastic utensils and will instead feature biodegradable straws and wooden stir sticks. The phase-out onboard its planes will begin in November, with plastic straws and stirrers to be replaced by environmentally friendly bamboo.

“We’re cognizant of our impact on the environment and we remain committed to doing our part to sustain the planet for future generations of travelers,” Jill Surdek, vice president of flight service, said in a statement.

 

The carrier will also transition to “eco-friendly” flatware in its lounges.

American said that the move will eliminate more than 71,000 pounds (32,200 kg) of plastic each year.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier joins rival Alaska Airlines, which announced in May its plans to replace plastic straws with more environmentally friendly alternatives.

On Monday, Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, said it would no longer offer plastic straws at its 28,000 locations by 2020.

Iran Drops Effort to Set Single Exchange Rate as Rial Sags

Iran formally opened a secondary market for hard currency Tuesday, abandoning after three months an effort to dictate a single exchange rate for the rial against the dollar as the threat of U.S. sanctions pressures the Iranian currency.

The new market will cater to small exporters and importers from the private sector, the Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported. Fars said the first transaction exchanged rials for United Arab Emirates dirhams, at a rate equivalent to 75,000 rials to the U.S. dollar.

A central bank official said the secondary market would allow exchange rates to fluctuate freely.

“The price of the foreign currency will be set based on supply and demand,” Mehdi Kasraeipour, the central bank’s director of foreign exchange rules and policies, was quoted as saying on Monday by the IRNA state news agency.

Authorities had announced in early April they were unifying official and free-market rates for the rial in favor of a single rate set by the central bank, and warned that those caught trading the dollar at other rates would face arrest.

The move aimed to halt a plunge in the rial to record lows against the dollar that was fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from world powers’ 2015 deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

Sanctions coming back

Some U.S. sanctions against Iran’s economy are to be reimposed in August and some in November, and the prospect has triggered a panicky flight of ordinary Iranians’ savings into dollars.

The single-rate system failed to stabilize the rial, however, and in late June, the currency sank to record lows of around 90,000 per dollar in black market trade. It was around 80,000 on Tuesday, compared with about 43,000 at the end of 2017.

Worse still, the new system starved importers, other private businesses and Iranians traveling abroad of hard currency, because few holders of dollars were willing to sell at the unattractive central-bank set rate, now 43,010.

Only government agencies and some importers of “priority” goods could obtain dollars at the official rate, prompting complaints by Iranian business leaders and two days of protests by some market traders in Tehran, who shut their shops.

The secondary market was launched Tuesday to ease the hard currency shortage, although Kasraeipour did not elaborate on how it would work or say whether the government might intervene if the rial fell too sharply there.

Tehran has tried twice previously in the past two decades to create a single-exchange rate system for the rial, but both attempts quickly failed because of inadequate dollar supplies, corruption and speculation against the Iranian currency.

Survey: Most People Think World is More Dangerous Than Two Years Ago

Most people think the world is more dangerous today than it was two years ago as concerns rise over politically motivated violence and weapons of mass destruction, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Six out of 10 respondents to the survey, commissioned by the Global Challenges Foundation, said the dangers had increased, with conflict and nuclear or chemical weapons seen as more pressing risks than population growth or climate change.

The results come as NATO leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Wednesday amid growing tensions between the United States and fellow members over defense spending, which some fear could damage morale and play into the hands of Russia.

“It’s clear that our current systems of global cooperation are no longer making people feel safe,” said Mats Andersson, vice chairman of the Global Challenges Foundation, in a statement.

Andersson said turbulence between NATO powers and Russia, ongoing conflict in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine and nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran were making people feel unsafe.

A separate survey commissioned by the Global Challenges Foundation after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un met U.S. President Donald Trump found the talks reassuring.

Less than a third of the nearly 5,000 respondents reported feeling less concerned about weapons of mass destruction.

“War is more likely,” said Dr. Patricia Lewis, director of international security at the think tank Chatham House. “We have a great deal of instability and that is so often a precursor to wars.”

“Two large powers are disrupting the established rules. We saw the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and we see the U.S. starting a trade war, ripping up agreements which the rest of us are trying to abide by,” said Lewis.

Founded to deter the Soviet threat in 1949, NATO is based on deep cooperation with the United States, which provides for Europe’s security with its nuclear and conventional arsenals.

It has found renewed purpose since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, sending battalions to the Baltics and Poland to deter potential Russian incursions.

The survey findings are based on responses from more than 10,000 people in 10 countries surveyed by polling firm ComRes in April this year.

The Global Challenges Foundation promotes discussion of the greatest threats to humanity — issues that could wipe out more than 10 percent of the population — in order to find solutions.

Doctors Say Breast Milk, Not Formula, Is Best

You would never think there could be a dispute about breastfeeding, especially since decades of research show that breast milk is better for babies than formula. But after The New York Times reported the Trump administration opposed a U.N. resolution calling for countries to encourage this practice, health officials the world over responded.

The administration called the Times report “fake news.” Both the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services issued statements saying the U.S. is not anti-breastfeeding. The State Department said the original resolution “called on states to erect hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children.” Both agencies defended bottle feeding with infant formulas and issued statements saying that “not all women are able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons.”

Some women don’t have enough milk. Others may take medication that prohibits breastfeeding. And breastfeeding does not always come naturally for both newborns and mothers. Many doctors think these hurdles can be worked around. They also say if a mother can’t produce enough breast milk, what she can produce is still far better than formula.

Dr. Dennis Kuo heads the general pediatrics unit at the University of Buffalo Medical Center. As both an academic and a practicing pediatrician, he agrees that some women may need to use formula; but, he says the majority of women can breastfeed if they are supported by their doctors, families, communities and employers even before they give birth.

Infant formulas have improved with the addition of fatty acids and better quality proteins. Abbott, a formula manufacturer, says it can replicate prebiotics – nutritional ingredients – found naturally in breast milk. Prebiotics promote the growth of beneficial or “good” bacteria in the baby’s gut.

But even doctors who work in the formula industry acknowledge that breast milk is best. In a company press release in 2016, Rachael Buck, an Abbott researcher, was quoted as saying, “Nothing can replace breast milk. But for those moms who need or choose to use formula, we are committed to providing the most scientifically advanced nutrition.”

Doctors support mothers having a choice, but with caution. Kuo said if government and community policies support breastfeeding, the number of women who cannot provide mother’s milk to their babies will be very low.

Breastfeeding is best even for babies in developed countries. Dr. Joan Younger Meek of the Florida State University College of Medicine said women need a choice, but breast milk is best.  

“We know right after birth, when the mother puts the baby to breast, the baby gets the colostrum – the early milk that the mother produces. And it’s very high in immunoglobulins that protect the baby from infection, so that milk is critically important for babies. And that exclusive breastfeeding continues to support those health benefits for the baby.”  

Meek says in developed countries such as the United States, women need social support so they can breastfeed when they are in public. In the U.S., women have been discouraged, and in some cases prohibited, from breastfeeding at airports, restaurants and other public places. They are often asked to breastfeed in restrooms. Many women find this request offensive and demoralizing.

In low- and middle-income countries, breastfeeding is even more important. In these nations, not all women have access to clean water – a must for mixing formula. The water that goes into the formula has to be clean, along with the bottles, nipples and spoons used to measure formula. If not, the baby can get diarrhea, which can be fatal, since babies don’t have strong immune systems. Breastfed babies get help in avoiding disease from their mothers’ immune systems.

What’s more, formula is expensive. If a mother tries to dilute it to stretch it out, the baby will not get enough to eat and may suffer from malnutrition as well as diarrhea.

The largest and most detailed analysis of the benefits of breastfeeding worldwide was published two years ago in The Lancet medical journal. The study showed that millions of babies around the world would thrive if only they received mother’s milk for the first six months of life – or even longer.

Breastfed babies have fewer ear infections and fewer digestive problems. They grow differently. Breast milk even protects children from obesity later in life.

Breastfeeding also has clear benefits for the mother, as well. For one thing, it reduces the chance that she will hemorrhage after giving birth.  

Doctors say women need to be encouraged and supported in their efforts to breastfeed so their babies can survive and thrive.

 

WhatsApp Launches Campaign in India to Spot Fake Messages

After hoax messages on WhatsApp fueled deadly mob violence in India, the Facebook-owned messaging platform published full-page advertisements in prominent English and Hindi language newspapers advising users on how to spot misinformation.

The advertisements are the first measure taken by the social media company to raise awareness about fake messages, following a warning by the Indian government that it needs to take immediate action to curb the spread of false information.

 

While India is not the only country to be battling the phenomenon of fake messaging on social media, it has taken a menacing turn here — in the past two months more than a dozen people have died in lynchings sparked by false posts spread on WhatsApp that the victims were child kidnappers.

 

Ironically, the digital media giant took recourse to traditional print media to disseminate its message. The advertisements, which began with the line “Together we can fight false information” give 10 tips on how to sift truth from rumors and will also be placed in regional language newspapers.

 

They call on users to check photos in messages carefully because photos and videos can be edited to mislead; check out stories that seem hard to believe; to “think twice before sharing a post that makes you angry and upset”; check out other news websites or apps to see if the story is being reported elsewhere. It also warned that fake news often goes viral and asked people not to believe a message just because it is shared many times.

Internet experts called the media blitz a good first step, but stressed the need for a much larger initiative to curb the spread of fake messages that authorities are struggling to tackle.

 

“There has to be a repetitive pattern. People have to be told again and again and again,” says Pratik Sinha who runs a fact checking website called Alt News and hopes that the social media giant will run a sustained campaign. “That kind of fear mongering that has gone on on WhatsApp, that is not going to go away by just putting out an advertisement one day a year. This needs a continuous form of education.”

 

Some pointed out that although newspapers are popular in India, many of the users of the messaging platform, specially in rural areas, were unlikely to be newspaper readers.

The fake posts that have spread on WhatsApp have ranged from sensationalist warnings of natural calamities, fake stories with political messaging to bogus medical advise. The false messages that warned parents about child abductors were sometimes accompanied by gruesome videos of child abuse.

 

Experts said the that the need to curb fake news has also assumed urgency ahead of India’s general elections scheduled for next year — WhatsApp has become the favored medium for political parties to target voters. With about 200 million users, India is its largest market for the messaging service.

New Startup Brings Robotics into Seniors’ Homes

Senior citizens – adults 65 and older – will outnumber children in the United States for the first time by 2035, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.As their number increases, the demand for elder care is also growing.

For the past 12 years, SenCura has been providing non-medical in-home care for this segment of the population in Northern Virginia.Company founder Cliff Glier says its services “include things as bathing, dressing, companionship, meal planning and prep and transportation, pretty much everything in and around the home that seniors typically need help with.” 

Hollie, one of SenCura’s professional caregivers, visits 88-year-old Olga Robertson every day for three hours.She cooks for her, takes her to appointments, plays some brain games with her and goes walking with her around the neighborhood or in the mall.

But when Hollie is not around, Robertson still has company: a robot named Rudy.“You can have a conversation with him,” Robertson says.”He’s somebody you talk to and he responds.”

He also provides entertainment, telling her jokes, playing games and dancing with her.

In addition to keeping her mentally and physically engaged, Rudy provides access to emergency services around the clock, keeps track of misplaced items and reminds her about appointments and when it’s time for her medicine.The robot stands a bit over a meter high, and has a digital screen embedded in its torso, for virtual check-ins with family and care-givers.

 

Robertson has actually introduced Rudy to her neighbors.“I kind of became famous in the neighborhood because of this robot.”

The caregiver who helps caregivers

Anthony Nunez is founder of INF Robotics, the startup that created Rudy.He says the idea behind the robotic caregiver was inspired by what his mother went through, when his grandmother got older and needed help.

“As I grew older, I realized we weren’t the only family facing this problem,” Nunez recalls.“There are thousands of families facing the same issue.Most cases are even worse where they have the loved one taking care of and the cost becomes an issue.So what we wanted to do was design a robot that’s easy to use, designed especially for seniors, but also affordable.”

Nunez says technology helps seniors age in place, well-taken care of.

“We’re leveraging the artificial intelligence within our platform to help seniors make better decisions, to allow them stay in their home,” he explains.“We’re also working on machine learning on a platform and some cognitive computing to identify patterns within the seniors’ daily habits that could lead to an adverse event, and identifying those ahead of time, then using our cloud computing on a platform to get that info to caregivers before something happens.”

Carla Rodriguez has been working with Nunez’s company since it was founded.She says Rudy’s simple design makes it easy to use.The company also consults their potential customers to decide which features they need most in a robotic caregiver.

 

“We always have seniors involved and every time we had some type of communication we would introduce it,” she says.“Seniors would give us their feedback, ‘We don’t like this, we don’t like that,’ we come in and change it.”

 

Cooperation vs. competition

SenCura’s Cliff Glier met Nunez and his team at an event more than a year ago.He became interested in introducing Rudy to his customers.

“We are dealing with older adults that are typically 80, 90, 100 years old,” he says.“So this kind of technology is very new to them, so there will be some closer looks at it.People, I would say, would be interested once they learn more, we have the opportunity to show them Rudy and its capabilities.”

 

Rudy is not competition for human caregivers, Glier says.“He’s around to help out, where the caregivers typically would come in, may help with bathing or dressing, things at this point Rudy can’t do, but beyond that, Rudy simply fills the growing gap.”

The robot supplements what in-home caregivers do for the growing population of seniors who prefer to age in place – with a little help from some friends.

Uber Poised to Make Investment in Scooter-rental Business

Uber is getting into the scooter-rental business.

 

The ride-hailing company said Monday that it is investing in Lime, a startup based in San Mateo, California.

 

“Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” Rachel Holt, an Uber vice president, said in a statement.

 

Uber will add Lime motorized scooters to the Uber mobile app, giving consumers another option for getting around cities, especially to and from public transit systems, Holt said.

 

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

 

Lime co-founders Toby Sun and Brad Bao wrote in a blog that Uber’s “sizable investment” is part of a $335 million fund-raising round led by GV, the venture-capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc. They said Alphabet is among several new investors. The money will help Lime expand and develop new products.

According to the company website, customers can rent Lime scooters in more than 70 locations in the U.S. and Europe and leave them parked for the next customer to ride. The company is looking to buy tens of thousands of motorized foot-pedal scooters to expand its reach.

 

The scooters aren’t without their critics, however, who consider them a nuisance and a hazard to pedestrians. Officials in cities like San Francisco have been torn between promoting cheap and relatively non-polluting transportation and keeping sidewalks safe and clear of clutter.

 

For Uber, the Lime investment follows its purchase for an undisclosed sum of Jump Bikes, which rents electric bicycles in a half-dozen cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Washington.

 

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi aims to turn Uber into the Amazon.com of transportation, a single destination where customers can go to hitch a ride in a car and on other modes of transportation — even buy rides on city buses and subway systems. Uber also has a food-delivery service.

 

Rival Lyft is looking for new rides too. Last week, it bought part of a company called Motivate that operates Citi Bike and other bike-sharing programs in several major U.S. cities including New York and Chicago. It will rename the business Lyft Bikes. Terms of that deal were not disclosed either.

 

While the often brightly colored rental bikes are becoming a more common sight in the U.S., they have already gained widespread use in China and parts of Europe.

Trump Threatens to ‘Respond’ to Drug Companies That Hiked Prices

President Donald Trump is threatening to “respond” after several major U.S. drug companies raised prices of some widely prescribed medicines.

“Pfizer and others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason,” Trump tweeted Monday. “They are merely taking advantage of the poor and others unable to defend themselves while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe and elsewhere.”

Pfizer hiked the cost of about 40 different drugs earlier this month, including Viagra for male impotence, Lipitor for treating high cholesterol, and the arthritis drug Xeljanz.

Trump, who campaigned on promises to lower drug prices, said in May that some companies were volunteering to cut prices.

Pfizer said the list price of medicines do not include discounts and rebates, and that customers generally do not pay full price at the drug counter.

It also said it makes more than 400 different drugs and is cutting prices on some of them.

How China’s Chickens are Going to Lay a Billion Eggs a Day

Behind a row of sealed red incubator doors in a new facility in northern China, about 400,000 chicks are hatched every day, part of the rapidly modernizing supply chain in China’s $37 billion egg industry, the world’s biggest.

As China overhauls production of everything from pork to milk and vegetables, farmers raising hens for eggs are also shifting from backyards to factory farms, where modern standardized processes are expected to raise quality and safety.

That’s an important step in a country where melamine-tainted eggs and eggs with high antibiotic residues have featured in a series of food safety scandals in recent years. It is also spurring demand for higher priced branded eggs over those sold loose in fresh produce markets.

“These days if you’re a small farmer, your eggs won’t get into the supermarkets,” said Yuan Song, analyst with China-America Commodity Data Analytics.

Tough new regulations on treating manure and reducing the environmental impact from farms have also pushed many small farmers out.

Most egg producers now have between 20,000 and 50,000 hens, said Yuan, a significant change even from two years ago. The remainder with less than 10,000 birds are likely to be shut down soon as local governments favor larger producers that can be more easily scrutinized.

High-tech hatchery

Those rapid changes are driving investments like the 150 million yuan ($22.60 million) hatchery in Handan, about 400km (250 miles) southwest of Beijing.

The highly automated plant, owned by a joint venture between China’s Huayu Agricultural Science and Technology Co. Ltd. and EW Group’s genetics business Hy-Line International, is the world’s biggest hatchery of layer chicks, or birds raised to produce eggs rather than meat.

By producing 200,000 females a day, or around 60 million layers a year (one day a week is for cleaning), it can meet demand from larger farms who want to buy day-old-chicks in one batch, said Jonathan Cade, president of Hy-Line International, based in West Des Moines, Iowa.

“That’s the best way to start off with good biosecurity,” he said. When the birds on one farm are the same age, they are less likely to spread disease.

Imported, latest-generation equipment helps speed up the throughput of the hatchery. An automatic grading machine, which can handle 60,000 eggs an hour, sorts eggs into two acceptable sizes before they enter incubators — uniform eggs produce similar sized chicks that will have the same feeding ability.

Once hatched, female chicks go to automated beak-clipping machines that process around 3,500 an hour.

Only 20 staff will be needed in the new plant, compared with around 100 in Huayu’s older hatchery, said Huayu chairman Wang Lianzeng.

Fierce competition, disease

Efficiency is important in an industry which is not expected to see much volume growth. The Chinese already eat more eggs per capita than almost everyone else, about 280 a year or almost one billion a day across the country, so consumption is unlikely to rise much.

Breeders like Huayu are trying to grow by taking market share from others. In addition to the new Handan hatchery, it is building another in Chongqing, which will bring annual production to 180 million chicks.

Layer inventory last year was around 1.2 billion, according to the China Animal Agriculture Association.

Huayu is also looking into breeding layers and building hatcheries in South-East Asia and Africa, said Wang, the chairman.

Key to industrial-scale facilities will be managing the risks of disease. Prices and demand for eggs and poultry plunged last year, after hundreds of people died from contracting bird flu, even though the disease left flocks largely unscathed.

Although that has created new opportunities for large players to expand after others were forced to exit, the impact of a disease outbreak on intensive operations is significantly higher.

Huayu itself has recently suffered from outbreaks, with high rates of poultry disease Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) in China’s breeding flocks last year, said Wang. The disease can reduce egg production in layers.

Wang said biosecurity is the major advantage in the new hatchery, which uses advanced ventilation and environmental controls to keep new chicks healthy.

“When you enter the hatchery, you wouldn’t know you’re in a hatchery,” he said, referring to the smell typical in older facilities.

Disinfection is used at every step along the chain and workers follow strict procedures on hygiene, he added.

A safe environment with very high standards of biosecurity is important in raising chicks, said Wang.

With such pressures on production, improving animal welfare is unsurprisingly not a priority, said Jeff Zhou, China representative for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a nonprofit.

China has no animal welfare regulations, although some companies have begun voluntarily to phase out the painful beak-trimming practice, including Huayu rival Ningxia Xiaoming Farming and Animal Husbandry Co. Ltd.

Xiaoming is also supplying male chicks from its hatcheries to local farmers to rear for meat in free-range environments, according to CIWF. Huayu sells its male chicks as food for snakes, which are farmed in China for traditional medicine.

YouTube Aims to Crack Down on Fake News, Support Journalism

Google’s YouTube says it is taking several steps to ensure the veracity of news on its service by cracking down on misinformation and supporting news organizations.

 

The company said Monday it will make “authoritative” news sources more prominent, especially in the wake of breaking news events when misinformation can spread quickly.

 

At such times, YouTube will begin showing users short text previews of news stories in video search results, as well as warnings that the stories can change. The goal is to counter the fake videos that can proliferate immediately after shootings, natural disasters and other major happenings. For example, YouTube search results prominently showed videos purporting to “prove” that mass shootings like the one that killed at least 59 in Las Vegas were fake, acted out by “crisis actors.”

 

In these urgent cases, traditional video won’t do, since it takes time for news outlets to produce and verify high-quality clips. So YouTube aims to short-circuit the misinformation loop with text stories that can quickly provide more accurate information. Company executives announced the effort at YouTube’s New York offices.

 

Those officials, however, offered only vague descriptions of which sources YouTube will consider authoritative. Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said the company isn’t just compiling a simple list of trusted news outlets, noted that the definition of authoritative is “fluid” and then added the caveat that it won’t simply boil down to sources that are popular on YouTube.

 

He added that 10,000 human reviewers at Google — so-called search quality raters who monitor search results around the world — are helping determine what will count as authoritative sources and news stories.

 

Alexios Mantzarlis, a Poynter Institute faculty member who helped Facebook team up with fact-checkers (including The Associated Press), said the text story snippet at the top of search results was “cautiously a good step forward.”

 

But he worried what would happen to fake news videos that were simply recommended by YouTube’s recommendation engine and would appear in feeds without being searched.

 

He said it would be preferable if Google used people instead of algorithms to vet fake news.

 

“Facebook was reluctant to go down that path two and half years ago and then they did,” he said.

 

YouTube also said it will commit $25 million over the next several years to improving news on YouTube and tackling “emerging challenges” such as misinformation. That sum includes funding to help news organizations around the world build “sustainable video operations,” such as by training staff and improving production facilities. The money would not fund video creation.

 

The company is also testing ways to counter conspiracy videos with generally trusted sources such as Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. For common conspiracy subjects — what YouTube delicately calls “well-established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation,” such as the moon landing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — Google will add information from such third parties for users who search on these topics.

Russia’s ACRA Rating Agency Says More Sanctions Are Key Risk

The possibility of more Western sanctions against Moscow is the key risk for the Russian economy, as much as 21 percent of which has already felt the impact of existing sanctions, Russia’s Analytical Credit Ratings Agency said in a report Tuesday.

Western sanctions are expected to weigh on Russia’s oil-dependent economy in the longer run, having dented incomes of Russian households, the Kremlin-backed ACRA said.

The West first imposed economic and financial sanctions against Moscow in 2014 for its annexation of Crimea and its role in the Ukrainian conflict.

Russia has responded with counter-sanctions, banning imports of a wide range of food from countries that had targeted Moscow.

Later, sanctions against Russia were expanded, putting extra pressure on Russia’s economy and the ruble.

“The risk of widening of anti-Russian sanctions remains one of the key risks that the Russian economy could face this year,” ACRA said.

New sanctions listed by ACRA might target more companies, Russian state debt or even disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT payment system.

For now, Russia’s international reserves, which stood at nearly $456 billion as of late June, “fully cover external debt, which is vulnerable to wider sanctions,” ACRA said.

“Sanctions should not be named the key factor that limits economic growth in Russia in the mid-term … The impact of sanctions on growth rate could turn out to be more pronounced in the long term for both companies and the economy in general,” ACRA said.

Western sanctions have hit Russian companies that account for 95 percent of the country’s oil and gas industry revenues.

Restrictions imposed on Russian oil and gas companies in 2014 will affect their oil output in 2020s, ACRA said.

Sanctions have also hit Russia’s major state-owned banks, which account for 54 percent of banking assets. But the sanctions’ impact on the financial health of companies and banks has been less pronounced than that of the country’s economic policies, ACRA said.

Moscow’s response to the sanctions, which limited imports, has inflated prices for a number of goods.

“Counter-sanctions have resulted in price growth and a decline in households’ incomes by 2-3 percentage points in 2014-2018,” ACRA said.