Standard & Poor’s Cuts China Credit Rating, Citing Debt

The Standard & Poor’s rating agency cut China’s credit rating Thursday due to its rising debts, highlighting challenges faced by Communist leaders as they cope with slowing economic growth.

The downgrade added to mounting warnings about the dangers of increasing Chinese debt, which has fueled fears of a banking crisis or a drag on economic growth. Moody’s Investors Service cut its own rating for China in May.

 

S&P lowered its rating on China’s sovereign debt by one notch from AA- to A+, still among its highest ratings. The agency had given a warning sign of a possible downgrade in March 2016 when it changed China’s outlook to negative.

 

“A prolonged period of strong credit growth has increased China’s economic and financial risks,” S&P said in a statement. “Although this credit growth had contributed to strong real GDP growth and higher asset prices, we believe it has also diminished financial stability to some extent.”

 

The ratings cut, announced after Chinese financial markets closed for the day, could raise Beijing’s borrowing costs slightly, but the more significant impact is on investor sentiment.

 

Phone calls to the Chinese Finance Ministry were not answered. After the Moody’s downgrade in May, the ministry said the agency had used improper methods and misunderstood China’s economic difficulties and financial strength.

 

Communist leaders have cited reducing financial risk as a priority this year. They have launched initiatives to reduce debts owed by state companies, including by allowing banks to accept stock as repayment on loans. But private sector analysts say they are moving too slowly.

 

Beijing relied on repeated infusions of credit to prop up growth after the 2008 global crisis.

 

That helped propel total nongovernment debt to the equivalent of 257 percent of annual economic output by the end of last year, according to the Bank for International Settlements. That is unusually high for a developing country and up from 143 percent in 2008.

 

Chinese economic growth fell from 14.2 percent in 2007 to 6.7 percent last year, though that still was among the world’s strongest.

 

The government is trying to make the economy more productive by giving market forces a bigger role. It is trying to shrink bloated industries such as steel and cement in which supply exceeds demand, which has depressed prices and led to financial losses.

 

Beijing is trying to steer the economy to slower, more sustainable growth based on domestic consumption instead of investment and exports. But growth has dipped faster than planners wanted, raising the risk of politically dangerous job losses. Beijing has responded by flooding the economy with credit.

 

Official efforts to rein in debt “could stabilize the trend of financial risk in the medium term,” S&P said. “However, we foresee that credit growth in the next two to three years will remain at levels that will increase financial risks gradually.”

 

S&P kept its outlook for China stable. It said that reflected expectations the country will “maintain robust economic performance over the next three to four years.”

 

“We may raise our ratings on China if credit growth slows significantly and is sustained well below the current rates while maintaining real GDP growth at healthy levels,” S&P said. “A downgrade could ensue if we see a higher likelihood that China will ease its efforts to stem growing financial risk and allow credit growth to accelerate to support economic growth.”

 

Global Leaders See Globalization as Challenged, Not Failing

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, business and political leaders around the world met to urge cooperation on such issues as trade, investment and international technology to help boost globalization. Without integration between nations, such issues as the environment, economic development and the well-being of societies suffer. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from New York.

US Central Bank Keeps Rates Unchanged but Who Will Lead the Fed in 2018?

U.S. central bank officials will hold off on the third interest rate hike of the year. But the Federal Reserve says it will go ahead with plans to unload its massive portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage bonds. The decision to delay the rate hike and reduce (or normalize) the Fed’s $4.5 trillion balance sheet had been widely expected. The more pressing question is who will lead the central bank when Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s term ends next year. Mil Arcega has more

Google Bets Big on Hardware With HTC Buy

Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.

The deal announced Thursday underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people’s lives.

Over the past decade, Google had focused on giving away its Android operating system to an array of device makers, including Taiwan’s HTC, to ensure people would keep using its ubiquitous search engine, email, maps, YouTube video service and other software on smartphones and other pieces of hardware.

But that changed last year when Google stamped its brand on a smartphone and internet-connected speaker. HTC manufactured the Pixel phones that Google designed last year, perhaps paving the way for this deal to unfold.

Although Android powers about four out of every five smartphones and other mobile devices in the world, the software can be altered in ways that result in Google’s services being de-emphasized or left out completely from the pre-installed set of apps.

That fragmentation threatens to undercut Google’s ability to increase the ad sales that bring in most of the revenue to its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., as people spend more and more time on smartphones and other devices instead of personal computers.

Apple’s iPhone and other hardware products are also particularly popular among affluent consumers prized by advertisers, giving Google another incentive to develop its own high-priced phone as a mobile platform for its products and ads.

Google also wants to build more internet-connected devices designed primarily for home usage, such as its voice-controlled speaker that’s trying to catch up with Amazon’s Echo. The Home speaker includes a digital concierge, called Google Assistant, that answers questions and helps manage people’s lives, much like the Alexa in Amazon’s Echo.

The purchase is a gamble on several fronts for Google and Alphabet.

Google’s previous forays into hardware haven’t panned out to be big winners so far. It paid $12.5 billion for smartphone maker Motorola Mobility five years ago only to sell it to Lenovo Group for less than $3 billion after struggling to make a dent in the market. And in 2014, Google paid more than $3 billion for home device maker Nest Labs, which is still struggling to make money under Alphabet’s ownership.

Expanding into hardware also threatens to alienate Samsung Electronics, Huawei and other device makers that Google relies on to distribute its Android software.

SEC: 2016 Hack May Have Enabled Illegal Trades

The Securities and Exchange Commission says a cyber breach of a filing system it uses may have provided the basis for some illegal trading in 2016.

In a statement posted Wednesday evening on the SEC’s website, Chairman Jay Clayton says a review of the agency’s cybersecurity risk profile determined that the previously detected incident was caused by a software vulnerability in its EDGAR filing system.

 

The SEC chairman says this breach did not result in exposing personally identifiable information.

 

The SEC files financial market disclosure documents through its EDGAR system, which processes more than 1.7 million electronic filings in any given year.

 

Clayton’s statement also mentioned that a 2014 internal review was unable to locate some agency laptops that may have contained nonpublic information. 

Huge Sea Turtles Slowly Coming Back From Brink of Extinction

Sea turtles are lumbering back from the brink of extinction, a new study says.

Scientists found more populations of the large turtles improving than declining when they looked at nearly 60 regions across the globe. That’s a big change from a decade or two ago, experts said.

Long-living sea turtles have been pushed to endangered levels by hunting, accidentally being caught in fishing nets, habitat loss, plastics pollution and climate change, experts say.

But massive efforts to save the egg-laying turtles by changing fishing nets and creating protected and darkened beaches are working, said study lead author Antonios Mazaris, an ecology professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

 

“There’s a positive sign at the end of the story,” Mazaris said. “We should be more optimistic about our efforts in society.”

Seven species of sea turtles

The research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

 

There are seven different species of sea turtles, all but one endangered. The slow creatures live for several decades with some species weighing about 100 pounds and others well over 1,000 pounds.

Mazaris pointed to Hawaiian green sea turtles, once in trouble 40 years ago, as story of success. Maybe too much success.

“They have more turtles than they know what to do with,” said Roderic Mast, a sea turtle advisory group co-chairman at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which determines the global list of endangered species.

‘Good problem to have’

“Tourists seeking sea turtles create traffic problems and fishermen complain the creatures get in the way, said Mast, who wasn’t part of the study and is president of the Oceanic Society advocacy group. He added: “It’s a good problem to have.”

Mazaris and colleagues looked at 299 sets of turtle populations over different lengths of time around the globe, finding 95 of them increased, while 35 went down. The rest didn’t change or there wasn’t enough data.

 

 There were increases in North and South America on the Atlantic coast but setbacks in the Asia Pacific region.

 “The evidence is widespread and convincing,” said Selina Heppell, head of Oregon State University’s department of fisheries and wildlife, who wasn’t part of the study.

Changes in laws make difference

Mast pointed to Kemp’s ridley sea turtles as a good example of what’s happening, especially in the United States.  In the 1940s, there about 40,000 of them, mostly in the southern U.S. and Mexico. By the 70s, there were only 1,200 left.

The U.S. and Mexican governments changed laws, fishing practices and set aside dark, quiet areas for turtles to nest. That population is increasing by about 10 to 15 percent annually, Mast said. That’s good, but he said they remain critically endangered.

“Sea turtles are bellwethers. They’re flagships that we use to tell the story of what’s going on in the oceans,” Mast said. “And that’s why people should care about turtles.”

 

Nevada Lab: Quake-resistant Bridge Design Tests Well

Scientists at a Nevada earthquake lab Wednesday tested new bridge designs with connectors they say are innovative and created to better withstand violent temblors and speed reconstruction efforts after major quake damage.

University of Nevada, Reno engineers performed the experiments on a giant “shake table” to simulate violent motions of an earthquake to rattle a 100-ton (91-metric ton), 70 foot (21-meter) bridge model to determine how well it would hold up.

The tests, conducted a day after a big quake struck Mexico, shook large concrete columns and beams back and forth for about 30 seconds at a time, displacing some nearly a foot before returning largely to their original spot.

Graduate students measured and marked indications of tiny fractures but no major structural damage was observed in the initial review of the experiments.

“The bridge has done better than we expected,” said Saiid Saiidi, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who served as the project leader. He’s done related research for more than 30 years.

Bridges are already designed not to collapse in earthquakes but often are unsafe for travel after big quakes. He said the designs that were tested employed special types of connectors to link prefabricated bridge parts, including ultra-high performance concrete.

“Earthquakes by themselves don’t kill people, it’s the structures,” Saiidi said.

The elements have been tested on their own but never before combined in a bridge model subjected to realistic earthquake motions, like the 1994 Northridge, California quake. Wednesday’s test inside the University of Nevada’s Earthquake Engineering Laboratory simulated activity of a quake as large as magnitude 7.5.

Some design work by the engineers has been incorporated into a highway off-ramp under construction in Seattle. It’s the first bridge in the world that uses flexible columns and reinforcement bars made out of a metal alloy with titanium that bends and then springs back into shape when quakes hit.

Among other things, the innovative connectors allow for prefabricated concrete and other materials to be attached to an existing bridge foundation so as to speed repair and reconstruction.

Part of the research centers on a so-called “pipe pin” connection developed by the California Department of Transportation’s bridge designers for use in connecting certain beam interfaces in bridge construction.

The pin consists of a steel pipe that is anchored in the column and extended into a steel can embedded in the beam. A gap between the steel pipe and the can enables the extended segment to freely rotate inside the steel can and prevents bending of the protruded segment inside the can.

The University of Nevada’s Earthquake Engineering Lab is the largest of its kind in the United States.

The latest project is funded by the California Department of Transportation, which currently is developing plans for 10 pilot projects based on the developing bridge connector technology.

“This study today is going to allow them to make observations of those designs,” Saiidi said.

Scientists Remove Gene in Human Embryos to See What It Does

British scientists have used a genome editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas9 to knock out a gene in embryos just a few days old, testing the technique’s ability to decipher key gene functions in early human development.

The researchers said their experiments, using a technology that is the subject of fierce international debate because of fears that it could be used to create babies to order, will deepen understanding of the biology of early human development.

CRISPR/Cas9 can enable scientists to find and modify or replace genetic defects. Many describe it as game changing.

Role of key gene

“One way to find out what a gene does in the developing embryo is to see what happens when it isn’t working,” said Kathy Niakan, a stem cell scientists who led the research at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute. “Now we have demonstrated an efficient way of doing this, we hope that other scientists will use it to find out the roles of other genes.”

She said her hope was for scientists to decipher the roles of all the key genes embryos need to develop successfully. This could then improve IVF treatments for infertile couples and also help doctors understand why so many pregnancies fail.

“It may take many years to achieve such an understanding, our study is just the first step,” Niakan said.

No gene, no protein

Niakan’s team decided to use it to stop a key gene from producing a protein called OCT4, which normally becomes active in the first few days of human embryo development.

They spent more than a year optimizing their various techniques using mouse embryos and human embryonic stem cells in lab dishes, before starting work on human embryos.

To inactivate OCT4, they used CRISPR/Cas9 to change the DNA of 41 human embryos. After seven days, embryo development was stopped and the embryos were analyzed.

After an egg is fertilized, it divides for about seven days when it forms a ball of around 200 cells called a blastocyst, Niakan explained in a briefing about her work.

Her results, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that human embryos need OCT4 to form a blastocyst. Without it, the blastocyst cannot form or develop normally.

US research

The British team’s work comes on the heels of milestone science in the United States, where scientists said in July they had succeeded in altering the genes of a human embryo to correct a disease-causing mutation.

Rob Buckle, chief science officer at Britain’s Medical Research Council, praised Niakan’s research and findings: “Genome editing technologies — particularly CRISPR-Cas9 used in this study — are having a game-changing effect on our ability to understand the function of critical human genes,” he said.

 

Study Finds Stereotypes About Boys, Girls Begin at Early Age

Whether children live in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi or New Delhi, by the time they are 15, boys are told to go outside and have adventures, while girls are told to stay indoors and do housework. Furthermore, most girls are told that if they are raped or have sex, they are the ones at fault.

A new study by adolescent-health specialists interviewed 450 poor children and their parents about gender expectations in a total of 15 high-, low- and middle-income countries. The children included in the study, the first of its kind, were between the ages of 10 and 14.

“When we started this work, there was no research at all, no understanding at all of young adolescents,” said Robert Blum, director of the Global Early Adolescent Study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “There was an assumption that these were young children, and they aren’t cued into gender-based violence, gender messages, rape and things of that nature.

“What we see is that around the world, young people have keen awareness, and they’re very cued in to what’s going on.”

The key finding was that rigidly held and enforced gender expectations are linked to increased lifelong health risks — everything from HIV and depression to violence and suicide.

Messages internalized

“We found children at a very early age, from the most conservative to the most liberal societies, quickly internalize this myth that girls are vulnerable and boys are strong and independent,” Blum told VOA. “And this message is being constantly reinforced at almost every turn, by siblings, classmates, teachers, parents, guardians, relatives, clergy and coaches.”

The researchers found that in most cultures, by the time girls are 10 years old, they have been taught that their key asset is their physical appearance.

Lead researcher Kristin Mmari said no matter where they are, girls are concerned about their bodies, and others’ attitudes to them. “In New Delhi, the girls talked about their bodies as a big risk that needs to be covered up, while in Baltimore, girls told us their primary asset was their bodies and they need to look appealing, but not too appealing.”

Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli of the World Health Organization said violence against women is so pervasive that one in three women experience violence from their husbands or other sexual partners. “Social norms accept that a woman has to be beaten,” Chandra-Mouli said.

He and other researchers involved in the study of adolescents’ gender norms discussed their findings at the National Press Club in Washington.

Pressure on boys

The researchers found that boys do not emerge unscathed from gender expectations. They found that the pressure boys face to become physically strong and independent make them more likely to be victims of physical violence and homicide, and more likely to take up unhealthy habits like tobacco, drug and alcohol use.

The study was a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. The Journal of Adolescent Health has published a supplement to its October issue incorporating a number of articles on the subject, along with commentaries by Blum, Chandra-Mouli and others.

Adolescents are torn between opposing expectations, the study showed, especially girls.

In Shanghai, for example, girls are told they should be economically independent, and that they should not rely on men for financial support. At the same time, girls are told their husbands will divorce them if they don’t do housework.

The goal was to understand the factors in early adolescence that predispose young people to subsequent sexual health risks and promote healthy sexuality.

The conclusion was that societies wishing to have healthier adolescents and young adults, free of gender stereotypes, must intervene, where necessary, before children reach age 10. Chandra-Mouli said WHO hopes to use the data from the study to shape programs to change misunderstandings about gender norms.

Blum said the researchers will measure changes in their subjects three times over five years to see how perceptions of gender affect individuals’ lives and how programs change the outcome.

California Condors Return to the Skies After Near Extinction

In a remote, rugged valley overlooking the Pacific Ocean, researchers closely monitor an endangered icon: the California condor.

 

The giant vultures flap their wings and circle the sky before perching on branches and observing their observers.

Wildlife biologist Amy List uses a handheld antenna to track the birds, which wear radio transmitters and numbered tags.

“If we don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know what’s going wrong,” said List, who works for the Ventana Wildlife Society, which manages the condor sanctuary in Big Sur.

 

Three decades after being pushed to the brink of extinction, the California condor is making a comeback in the wild, but constant vigilance is needed to ensure the endangered bird doesn’t reverse course.

One of the world’s largest birds with a wingspan up to 10 feet, the condor once patrolled the sky from Mexico to British Columbia. But its population plummeted in the 20th century due to lead poisoning, hunting and habitat destruction.

 

In 1987, wildlife officials captured the last remaining 22 condors and took them to the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos to be protected and bred in captivity.

 

Those efforts have led to a slow but steady recovery for a species that reproduces slowly compared with other birds. There are now roughly 450 condors, including about 270 in the wild in California, Arizona, Utah and northeastern Mexico.

Plans also are underway to release some captive-bred condors in Redwood National Park in 2019 to establish a population near the California-Oregon border.

 

Federal officials said in August that for the first time in nearly 40 years, condors were roosting in the Blue Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, expanding to their historical range in the southern Sierra Nevada.

 

Another milestone was reached this summer: the first “third generation” condor was born in the wild in California since the 1980s.

 

“We’re seeing very encouraging results that the condors can become self-sustaining again,” said Kelly Sorenson, who heads the conservation group.

 

While condors still face threats from exposure to mercury and the pesticide DDT, biologists say the biggest danger is lead ammunition, which can poison the scavengers when they eat dead animals shot with lead bullets. California banned the use of lead ammunition near condor feeding grounds in 2008 and will be the first state to ban lead bullets in all hunting in 2019.

“We’re already starting to see fewer lead deaths. The condors are surviving longer. Their blood-lead levels are coming down,” Sorenson said.

Some gun owners complain that copper bullets are more expensive and less effective than lead and point to other possible sources of lead, such as paint and metal garbage.

 

“Condors are getting lead poisoning. The question is, are they getting it from lead ammunition?” said Chuck Michel, president of the California Pistol and Rifle Association.

 

Meanwhile, the San Diego Zoo celebrated the birth of its 200th condor this year.

 

“While we were caring for the birds, trying to protect them and provide sanctuary, we were literally writing the book how you propagate a species, how you genetically manage it and prepare it for release back in the wild,” Michael Mace, the zoo’s birds curator.

 

After up to a year at the zoo, chicks are taken to a release site such as the Big Sur sanctuary, where a flock has grown to about 90 condors that travel between Big Sur and Pinnacles National Park. They scavenge, breed and raise chicks on their own, under the close watch of List, the wildlife biologist, and her colleagues.

 

“I hope that I’m out of a job soon because condors don’t need to be managed in the future,” she said. “I hope that they’re self-sustaining and wild and free, and nobody needs to trap or tag or monitor them at all.”

Internet Firms Say Removing Extremist Content Within Hours Is Huge Challenge

Removing extremist content from the internet within a few hours of it appearing poses “an enormous technological and scientific challenge,” Google’s general counsel will say later Wednesday to European leaders who want it taken down quicker.

Kent Walker, general counsel for Alphabet’s Google, will speak on behalf of technology companies Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube at an event on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

The leaders of France, Britain and Italy want to push social media companies to remove “terrorist content” from the internet within one to two hours of it appearing because they say that is the period when most material is spread.

“We are making significant progress, but removing all of this content within a few hours — or, indeed, stopping it from appearing on the internet in the first place — poses an enormous technological and scientific challenge,” Walker will say in a speech on behalf of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a working group formed by the four companies to combine their efforts to remove extremist content.

Tech firms have come under increasing pressure from governments in the United States and Europe to do more to keep extremist content off their platforms after a spate of militant attacks, and the European Union is mulling legislation on the issue.

“There is no silver bullet when it comes to finding and removing this content, but we’re getting much better,” Walker will say.

“Of course, finding problematic material in the first place often requires not just thousands of human hours but, more fundamentally, continuing advances in engineering and computer science research. The haystacks are unimaginably large and the needles are both very small and constantly changing.”

Walker will say the companies need human reviewers to help distinguish legitimate material such as news coverage from the problematic material and train machine-learning tools against “ever-changing examples.”

The companies last year decided to set up a joint database to share unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos of extremist content, known as “hashes,” to help each other detect and remove similar content.

Facebook used a hash that contained a link to bomb-making instructions to find and remove almost 100 copies of that content.

Twitter said Tuesday that it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the “promotion of terrorism,” while Facebook has ramped up its use of artificial intelligence to map out pages and posts with terrorist material.

Review: Apple Watch Goes Solo, But Don’t Dump Your Phone Yet

A chief gripe with Apple Watch is that it requires you to keep an iPhone with you for most tasks. The inclusion of GPS last year helped on runs and bike rides, but you’re still missing calls and messages without the phone nearby.

A new model with its own cellular-network connection is Apple’s next step toward an untethered world. Now you can make and receive calls and messages on the watch while leaving your phone at home.

But the watch still needs regular contact with an iPhone, and for most tasks, the phone needs to be on and connected, even if it’s nowhere nearby. So, you can’t get away with ditching the iPhone altogether. (Android users have their own wristwear options, including Samsung Gear and Android Wear watches, some of which can already manage their own network connections.)

The new Apple Watch Series 3, distinguished by a red crown, comes out Friday starting at about $400. You can forgo cellular, and the red crown, for $70 less. Or get a first-generation model, without GPS, for about $250.

Where it helps

You might not want to bring your phone on a short jog; the watch can still keep you in touch. Or you can leave the phone home while walking the dog or performing a quick errand.

You need a data add-on from the same wireless provider as your phone. It typically costs $5 or $10 a month and uses the phone’s data allotment.

While the watch technically has its own phone number, the major carriers have worked out number syncing. Calls to your phone will go to the watch, and calls from the watch will appear on caller ID with your regular number. Same goes for texts and iMessage chats.

Calls use the watch’s speaker and microphone, or wireless earphones. Colleagues say call quality was fine. It came in handy for sneaking in runs during conference calls (though if you’re my boss, just kidding! Now, about that raise …).

Phone calls and iMessage chats work on the watch even if your phone is off, as do turn-by-turn maps and queries to the Siri voice assistant. For texts, the phone needs to be on — somewhere. With the phone on, you can perform a variety of other tasks, including checking weather apps, Yelp recommendations and notifications that go to the phone.

Coming soon: the ability to stream Apple Music, even with the phone off. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to rival music services or Apple’s podcast app.

Limitations

Because the watch screen is small, many apps offer only a sliver of information and refer you back to the phone to view more. That was little more than an annoyance when the phone was in the same room. If you’ve left the phone behind, though, you’ll be left hanging.

You can also run into trouble while roaming, particularly internationally. For one thing, engineers weren’t able to squeeze in support for cellular frequencies around the world. And outside the U.S., only a handful of carriers are supporting the cellular watch. In any case, don’t forget to switch to airplane mode on flights.

Cellular data also drains the battery quicker. Apple’s promised 18 hours of battery life includes about four hours of such use. An hour of phone calls over LTE will drain the battery completely.

I got dropped from two conference calls because the battery was low to begin with. Plan ahead. A spare watch charger at your desk helps for those days you’re dumb enough to leave your phone on the kitchen counter.

Embracing the tether

It can be handy to untether the watch at times, but it’s not always necessary. Even when tied to the phone, Series 3 offers improvement such as tracking elevation, so you get credit for climbing stairs or jogging up a hill. And you can now hear Siri responses on the watch speaker, something enabled by the new version’s faster processor.

Software update

For owners of past models, a software update out this week, watchOS 4, will bring easier access to music playback controls when exercising — just swipe left. There are more prompts when reaching or nearing daily goals, and options for multiple sports in a single workout.

A new heart rate app now shows heart rate at rest and averages when walking or recovering from exercise. These can help you gauge your overall fitness.

And if your heart rate is high without any signs of exercise, you’ll get an alert. You enable this when you first open the heart rate app. It can signal health problems, though Apple is stopping short of telling you to see a doctor or visit the emergency room, as the watch isn’t marketed — or certified — as a medical device.

Security Firm Links Iranian Hackers to Malware Attacks

A private U.S.-based security firm is linking an Iranian government-sponsored hacking group to cyber-attacks targeted at organizations across the world.

The security firm FireEye said Wednesday the Iranian hackers used malware to attack aerospace and petrochemical firms in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

The hacking group, dubbed APT33 (advanced persistent threat) by the FireEye researchers, used phishing emails and fake domain names to gain access to computer systems of the targeted companies.

The report suggests the hackers target the companies in an effort to “enhance Iran’s domestic aviation capabilities or to support Iran’s military and strategic decision making vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia.”

“We believe the targeting of the Saudi organization may have been an attempt to gain insight into regional rivals, while the targeting of South Korean companies may be due to South Korea’s recent partnerships with Iran’s petrochemical industry as well as South Korea’s relationships with Saudi petrochemical companies,” the report reads.

The FireEye report says the hackers retained access to the companies’ computers for between four and six months at a time, during which the hackers were able to steal data and drop off malware that could potentially be used to destroy the infected computers.

It is difficult to accurately attribute cyber-attacks, but FireEye says it linked the hackers to Iran in part by tracking an online handle, “xman_1365_x,” that was accidentally left in the malware coding.

The report also notes references to the Farsi language in the malware code and that the hackers’ workdays appear to correspond with the Iranian time zone, and the Saturday to Wednesday workweek used in the country.

Epidemic at Work?: Businesses Forced to Deal With Drug Abuse

After a troubled youth himself, Phillip Cohen made it a practice to hire people at his woodworking business who have also struggled with addiction and mental health issues. But when an employee died from a drug overdose, he adopted a zero-tolerance policy.

“I think I have saved lives,” says the owner of Cohen Architectural Woodworking in St. James, Missouri — an area hit very hard by the nation’s growing opioid epidemic. Opioids range from prescription pain medicine like oxycodone to illegal drugs like heroin.

Cohen still hires former drug addicts, felons and people who have been traumatized in life. One person, now a top employee, was hired right after he finished drug rehabilitation. Another used to sell illegal drugs. Still, Cohen says, if a worker fails a periodic random drug or alcohol test, “we’ll fire them on the spot.”

The epidemic of drug use — a report from the surgeon general last year said that 20 million Americans have a substance use disorder — is forcing many small business owners to think about what they would do if they suspect an employee is abusing drugs or alcohol.

Between 1999 and 2015 the number of overdose deaths from opioids and heroin quadrupled, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says. The government also reported more than 15 million adults with what’s called alcohol use disorder in 2015.

Over 70 percent of employers with 50 or more workers have been affected by prescription drugs, according to a survey released this year by the National Safety Council. But more than 80 percent don’t have a comprehensive drug-free workplace policy.

Although Cohen understood the dangers of drugs and knew that some staffers had a history of substance abuse, he wasn’t prepared when a worker overdosed in 2010, three days after the staffer attended a leadership conference.

“I didn’t care what people did at first,” says Cohen, whose workers use saws and other potentially dangerous machinery to create reception desks, cabinets and furniture for businesses, schools and health care facilities. But the devastating death of an employee prompted him to hire an attorney to write a tough drug policy that workers must read and sign.

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” says Cohen, who also brings in counselors and people who run support groups to help staffers who are struggling with personal problems.

Many small business owners don’t think ahead and create a written policy on alcohol and substance abuse, says employment law attorney Shira Forman. That forces them to be reactive, trying to figure out what to do when presented with an employee who shows up drunk, high or hung over, whose work is suffering or who causes an accident.

“It’s often not something that an employer knows how to deal with until they’re confronted with a scenario,” says Forman, who works at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in New York.

Having a policy in place doesn’t make it easier for a boss to confront a staffer they believe to have a drug or alcohol problem. It’s hard on an emotional level, especially if the employee denies there’s an issue and gets angry. But there can also be legal questions that must be considered before an owner broaches the topic.

While a staffer’s behavior might seem to point to a substance abuse problem, it’s often not a clear-cut situation, says Michael Schmidt, an employment law attorney with Cozen O’Connor in New York. An employee may have a prescription for opioids, and therefore be protected by federal, state or local laws. A staffer might have shaking hands, a sign of possible alcohol withdrawal but also a symptom of anxiety or a condition like Parkinson’s disease.

Even when it’s clear that the problem is due to drugs or alcohol, many owners seek help from a lawyer or HR professional. David Grant was taken by surprise when an employee at his public relations company told him that a co-worker had gotten drunk at a lunch with a client.

Grant turned to his human resources provider and a consultant on dealing with alcoholics.

“It was a world I don’t know anything about,” says Grant, whose eponymous company is based in New York. “I was aware of how litigious everyone is, so I did it by the book.”

Grant’s HR provider had created a substance abuse policy that he followed. He told the staffer she had a choice: go into rehabilitation treatment for a month or be fired. She chose treatment, which Grant paid for. He also warned she’d be dismissed if it happened again. And it did; a few weeks after she returned to work she was again drunk at a client lunch.

“I fired her instantly,” Grant says. He had to follow some painful advice from his consultants: “You can’t back off. You can’t be a nice guy.”

At Abbey Research, a market research firm based in Philadelphia, the substance abuse policy calls for employees to be suspended if they fail a random drug test or tell management they have a drug problem.

Their jobs will be held until they pass a drug test, since the company wants to give people a second chance, says Kristen Donnelly, who is in charge of human resources. But if they fail a second time, they’ll be fired.

The company, which seeks to help people who are struggling economically and personally, is located in a neighborhood where drug use has taken a toll. Two staffers have been suspended and then fired for drug use in the 18 months since Donnelly has headed HR.

But even afterward, the company has helped them find resources aimed at getting them back on their feet. “First and foremost they’re human beings, and they’re human beings with a disease,” Donnelly says.

Alexa, What Do You See? Amazon Said to Be Working on Glasses

Amazon is attempting to develop glasses that pair with Alexa and would allow users to access the voice-activated assistant outside the home, according to a newspaper report.

The Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, says the glasses could be released before the end of the year.

 

Amazon.com Inc., based in Seattle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

 

Wearable technology, glasses specifically, is already in limited use. Snapchat sells $130 glasses that take a short video and post it on the social media app. And Alphabet Inc. sells Google Glass to employers, so that doctors or factory workers can search information or talk to co-workers hands free.  

China Announces Trade Secrets Crackdown to Assure Investors

China has announced a crackdown on violations of patents and trade secrets in an effort to mollify foreign companies ahead of a visit to Beijing by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The crackdown might give Beijing diplomatic ammunition to respond to mounting U.S. and European trade complaints. But it fails to address what foreign companies say are bigger problems with intellectual property protection.

The four-month campaign will attack theft of foreign trade secrets and violations of patents, copyrights and trademarks, according to a Ministry of Commerce announcement this month. It says the goal is to “increase foreign investment.”

Investment into China fell in the first half of 2017 following two decades of regular double-digit annual increases. That reflects what business groups say is growing frustration with difficult operating conditions and regulatory and other hurdles.

Companies complained for years that China was the global center for unlicensed copying of goods ranging from Hollywood movies and designer clothes to drugs and computer software. More recently, companies complain that Chinese entities try to steal technology and other trade secrets, sometimes with government encouragement.

Beijing has increased some penalties, but business groups say the Communist government needs to go much further in developing its enforcement and court system to protect intellectual property rights on which its economy increasingly depends.

“As welcome as further public commitments to protecting IPR are, this cannot be achieved through a campaign-style approach,” said Lance Noble, policy director for the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

“It requires a sustained commitment to enforcing existing laws and applying protections equally to foreign and domestic companies,” Noble said in an email. “Doing so is in China’s own interest.”

In a survey this year, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said the share of its member companies that cited China as a global priority dropped to 56 percent from a peak of 78 percent in 2012.

The chamber said American companies were reconsidering investment plans in China due to “unfavorable regulations” and “uncertainty about intellectual property protection.” It said 72 percent considered positive U.S.-Chinese relations important to their business but 83 percent expected them to remain the same or deteriorate.

The two governments say Trump is likely to visit China this year, though no date has been announced.

The American president agreed in April to temporarily set aside trade disputes while Washington and Beijing cooperate over North Korea. But U.S. officials have criticized Chinese policy with increasing force in recent weeks.

On Monday, the U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, complained in a speech in Washington that Chinese efforts to create industrial champions and induce foreign companies to hand over technology threaten the world trading system.

Moody’s: Egypt Economy Still Recovering From 2011 Uprising

Egypt’s economy has started to improve but has yet to recover from the country’s 2011 uprising and the years of unrest that followed, an international credit rating agency said.

Moody’s hailed recent economic and fiscal reforms in its annual report released Tuesday, saying they point to “improved government effectiveness and policy predictability.” Weak finances, however, remain a “key challenge” for the government, it added.

Egypt embarked on an ambitious economic reform plan shortly after President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took office in 2014. The government has slashed subsidies, imposed a value-added tax and allowed currency devaluation in order to qualify for a $12 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The austerity measures have hit the public hard, however, with inflation hovering around 30 percent for months, many import products unavailable, and soaring electricity and fuel costs.

Moody’s said reforms and financial support provided by international lenders have helped in restoring Egypt’s foreign reserves, which are currently above $36 billion, their highest level since December 2010.

“We also expect that Egypt’s high fiscal deficits and government debt levels will gradually reduce,” said Steffen Dyck, a Moody’s vice president.

Egypt’s Finance Minister Amr el-Garhy announced earlier this week that the country will face a $10-$12 billion budget deficit for the current fiscal year 2017-18, which started in July. He also said the government plans to plug the gap by increasing foreign debt issuance, and will announce future bond offerings in the coming weeks.

Egypt’s sovereign rating by Moody’s remains unchanged at B3, far below investment grade and subject to high credit risk, but the outlook remains stable.

Workers in India’s Brick Kiln Industry Trapped in Perpetual Poverty

A human rights organization says millions of workers in India’s brick kiln industry are trapped in a perpetual cycle of imposed debt and low wages, which forces them to bring their children to work alongside them in the hot, dusty kilns.

An estimated 23 million workers are employed in at least 100,000 brick kilns operating across the northern state of Punjab, according to a study released Wednesday by Anti-Slavery International. Nearly all the workers are provided loans from the kiln owners before the brick making season begins, immediately putting them into debt. The owners withhold their wages during the entire season, which lasts up to 10 months, and keep no records, allowing them to pay their workers far less than what is due.

Up to 80 percent of children under 14 years old working an average of nine hours a day during the hot weather months. Because workers are paid for each piece of brick they make, families are forced to put their children to work to increase their output.

The report also says living conditions at the kilns are dire, with the air filled with dust and other chemicals and no access to running water, and entire families living in cramped rooms of just under eight meters.

Volunteers for Social Justice, which partnered with Anti-Slavery International in the report, is urging India’s government to enact a minimum wage for the brick kiln workers, along with child labor laws to ensure that children get a proper education. “It is time that the government takes that responsibility and ends this exploitation that shouldn’t be taking place in the 21st century,” says Jai Singh, the director of Volunteers for Social Justice.

Drones May Soon Deliver Life Saving Defibrillators to Rural Areas

A cardiac arrest happens when the heart stops beating regularly, due to mixed up electrical signals. According to the American Heart Association, when cardiac arrest occurs, every minute that passes before help arrives lowers a person’s chance of surviving by seven to 10 percent. However, as we hear from VOA’s Kevin Enochs, in a crisis when every minute counts, drones may be able to quickly get help to people who live in rural areas.

Giant Antennas in New Mexico Search for Cosmic Discoveries

Employing an array of giant telescopes positioned in the New Mexico desert, astronomers have started a massive surveying project aimed at producing the most detailed view ever made of such a large portion of space using radio waves emitted from throughout the Milky Way and beyond.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the project this week, saying the Very Large Array will make three scans of the sky that’s visible from the scrubland of the San Augustin Plains. It is one of the best spots on the planet to scan space, with 80 percent of the Earth’s sky visible from the location.

The array works like a camera. But instead of collecting light waves to make images, the telescopes that look like big satellite dishes receive radio waves emitted by cosmic explosions and other interstellar phenomenon.

Astronomers expect the images gathered by the array will allow them to detect in finer detail gamma ray bursts, supernovas and other cosmic events that visible-light telescopes cannot see due to dust present throughout the universe. For example, the array can peer through the thick clouds of dust and gas where stars are born.

Scientists involved in the project say the results will provide valuable information for astrophysics researchers.

“In addition to what we think [the survey] will discover, we undoubtedly will be surprised by discoveries we aren’t anticipating now,” project director Claire Chandler said in a statement. “That is the lesson of scientific history and perhaps the most exciting part of a project like this.”

The survey is possible because of a major technological upgrade at the Very Large Array, which was initially conceived in the 1960s and built in the 1970s. The antennas relied on their original electronics and processing systems for years until a recent overhaul made the system capable of producing much higher resolution images.

The work done at the Very Large Array is similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope — making high-quality images so scientists can better study objects in the universe and the physics of how they work.

Research efforts elsewhere search the galaxy for signals or evidence of extraterrestrials, but the New Mexico operation would almost certainly get involved if signals are received, said Very Large Array spokesman Dave Finley.

“I do think when the time comes that they find a signal that they think is the real thing, the first phone call they will make will be to us. They’ll want an image of that region,” Finley said.

Astronomers using the array also expect to see more examples of powerful jets of superfast particles propelled by the energy of massive black holes at the center of galaxies. This could help in understanding how galaxies grow over time.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in 2013 invited astronomers from around the world to submit ideas and suggestions for the survey. Based on the recommendations, scientists and engineers designed the survey and ran a test in 2016. Approval for the full survey was granted this year.

The survey will involve about 5,500 hours of observing time. Data from the three separate scans will be combined to produce the radio images.

The scanning began Sept. 7 and the raw data will be available to researchers as quickly as the observations are made.

The seven-year project will not come at an additional financial cost because the array already has a $15 million annual budget for making observations 24 hours a day for various scientific requests. More of that time will now be dedicated to the project.

Mobile App Aims to Help End Child Marriage in India’s Bihar

A mobile phone app is the latest tool for campaigners seeking to end child marriage in India’s Bihar state, where nearly two-thirds of girls in some of its rural areas are married before the legal age of 18.

The app, Bandhan Tod, was developed by Gender Alliance — a collective of more than 270 charities in Bihar focused on gender rights — and launched this week by Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi. It is backed by the U.N. Population Fund.

India ranks among countries with the highest rates of child marriage in the world, accounting for a third of the global total of more than 700 million women, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.

Bandhan Tod — meaning “break the binds” — includes classes on child marriage and dowries and their ill effects. It also has an SOS button that notifies the team when activated.

“The app is a big part of our efforts to end child marriage in the state,” said Prashanti Tiwary, head of Gender Alliance.

“Education is good, but when a young girl wants help because she is being forced to marry before the legal age, the app can be her way out,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Despite a law banning girls from marrying before they turn 18, the practice is deeply rooted in tradition and widely accepted in Indian society. It is rarely reported as a crime and officials are often reluctant to prosecute offenders.

While boys also marry before the legal age of 21, girls are disproportionately affected.

Risks of abuse, death rise

Early marriage makes it more likely that girls will drop out of school, and campaigners say it also increases risks of sexual violence, domestic abuse and death in childbirth.

Legal efforts have failed to break the stranglehold of tradition and culture that continues to support child marriage, charity ActionAid India said in a report this year.

When the SOS on Bandhan Tod is activated, the nearest small NGO will attempt to resolve the issue. If the family resists, then the police will be notified, said Tiwary.

A similar app in West Bengal state to report child marriage and trafficking of women and children has helped prevent several such instances, according to Child in Need Institute, which launched the app in 2015.

Other efforts include a cash incentive, where the state transfers a sum of money to the girl’s bank account if she remains in school and unwed at age 18.

Suppliers of wedding tents in Rajasthan state have stopped dozens of child marriages by alerting officials.

“It will take a change in mindset and behavior to end child marriage,” said Tiwary, who is lobbying the government to raise the marriage age for women to 21, so they have the same opportunities as men.

“But technology provides a practical and accessible way to help prevent it on the ground,” she said.

Twitter Reports Progress on Weeding Out Users Advocating Violence

Twitter said that its internal controls were allowing it to weed out accounts being used for “promotion of terrorism” earlier rather than responding to government requests to close them down.

U.S. and European governments have been pressuring social media companies including Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to fight harder against online radicalization, particularly by violent Islamist groups.

Twitter said it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the “promotion of terrorism,” a 20 percent decline from the previous six months. Three-quarters of those accounts were suspended before posting their first tweet.

Less than 1 percent of account suspensions were due to government requests, the company said, while 95 percent were thanks to Twitter’s internal efforts to combat extremist content with “proprietary tools,” up from 74 percent in the last transparency report.

Twitter defines “promotion of terrorism” as actively inciting or promoting violence “associated with internationally recognized terrorist organizations.”

The vast majority of notices from governments concerned “abusive behavior,” which includes violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and impersonation.