Day: September 21, 2017

Trafficking, Debt Bondage Rampant in Thai Fishing Industry, Study Finds

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

More than a third of migrant fishermen in Thailand clearly were victims of trafficking over the past five years, and even more workers in the industry were possibly trafficked as well, according to a report published Thursday.

Routinely underpaid and physically abused, three-quarters of migrants working on Thai fishing vessels have been in debt bondage, working to pay off an obligation, said the study by the anti-trafficking group International Justice Mission (IJM).

Thailand’s multibillion-dollar seafood sector came under fire in recent years after investigations showed widespread slavery, trafficking and violence on fishing boats and in onshore food-processing factories.

The politically unstable country, which is under military rule, has vowed to crack down on trafficking and recently introduced reforms to its fisheries law.

The IJM study of 260 fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia found 38 percent were clearly trafficked and another 49 percent possibly trafficked.

Only 13 percent reported fair labor conditions at sea and no exploitative recruitment, it said.

Three-quarters reported working at least 16 hours a day, and only 11 percent said they were paid more than 9,000 Baht ($272 U.S.) per month, the legal monthly minimum wage in Thailand.

One fisherman was quoted in the report as saying he was held in debt bondage, owing 20,000 Baht ($604) to his brother, who worked as a supervisor overseeing fishermen.

In debt to brother

“I fear for my life as he has killed in front of me before,” he was quoted as saying. “I don’t dare to run. He would kill my children.”

Field researchers surveyed the 260 fishermen in 20 Thai fishing localities in 2016, collecting information on fishing jobs they had held in the previous five years.

Thailand, the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, had more than 42,000 active fishing vessels as of 2014, and more than 172,000 people were employed as fishermen, the study said.

The study was funded by the Walmart Foundation, the charitable arm of giant U.S. retailer Walmart. With release of the study, the foundation announced a grant to help the IJM improve law enforcement efforts against human trafficking in the Thai fishing industry.

Neither Walmart nor the charity would specify the value of the grant.

Walmart spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by email that “combating forced labor remains a key challenge throughout the world.”

“Regardless of where it occurs in the global supply chain, Walmart is committed to help eliminate forced labor through transparency and collaboration,” she wrote.

Gary Haugen, the chief executive of IJM, said in a statement that “no person should have to live under the oppression or ownership of another.

“As consumers, we shouldn’t have to wonder if the products we’re purchasing are the result of violent injustice,” he said.
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Iraqis Track Abandoned Homes With Digital Tools

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

In camps across northern Iraq, people forced from their homes by Islamic State militants are using their phones to track what is happening to their properties, according to researchers who say returning home is crucial for building a safe future in the war-torn nation.

More than three million Iraqis have been driven from their homes, land and farms, according to the United Nations, many of them by armed groups like Islamic State (IS).

As pro-government forces intensify the fight against IS, clearing militants from much of Mosul and other cities they once held, displaced people are hoping to return home soon.

Before leaving the camps, they are keeping a close eye on Facebook and digital messaging services to better understand what they will be returning to or who might be occupying their homes, said Nadia Siddiqui from Social Inquiry, a research group based in northern Iraq.

With conflicting land claims and weak property rights in parts of Iraq due to years of violence, establishing who rightfully owns what is crucial for reducing violence and building social trust, Siddiqui said.

Digital tools are helping establish ownership by allowing them to build dossiers of what belongs to them with photographic evidence, title deeds and other data which could be used in court to prove their claims.

“In the long-term, land and property issues are some of the root causes (of strife),” Siddiqui told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Erbil, Iraq.

Disputes over property exacerbate communal or religious tensions, she said, and lingering issues over unclear ownership can fester for generations, making it difficult to build the economy and move past a history of violence.

“People remember these kinds of things,” Siddiqui said of land disputes.

Clearing up ownership conflicts and creating arbitration processes for competing land claims can help ease social tensions, she said.

Evidence

More than 60 percent of displaced people use digital tools like Facebook, camera phones and messaging apps to actively monitor the status of their properties, according to a July survey in Erbil supported by Social Inquiry.

The average household of displaced people has three mobile phones, the small survey said, meaning tools to collect data on properties are accessible even to those who fled their lands in the dead of night.

Thirty-two percent of displaced people surveyed share information about the status of their properties on social media.

“What is so exciting about the process is that people have this evidence already on their phones or on their Facebook page,” said Emily Frank, an anthropologist turned marketing executive in Montreal, Canada, who has monitored property rights in countries facing conflict.

Many people, however, do not realize these digital documents and photos of the land where they once lived can be used as evidence in court or a property restitution process once it is safe enough to return home, said Frank.

Along with helping individuals claim their homes from armed groups or others who have been occupying them, photos, videos and other digital data become increasingly powerful as more displaced people collect them, she said.

“If more people can submit evidence, it becomes more widely corroborated,” Frank told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It will be a more just and transparent process.”

Domino effect

Jon Unruh, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who studies land rights, has watched the process happen in Iraq first hand.

Unruh interviewed a 76-year-old man in Erbil who, after fleeing an IS-controlled area, asked a relative still living near his home to walk around the property and take pictures to see who was living inside.

IS and its supporters had occupied homes in the area, and the militant group even issued its own property title deeds, so the displaced man used digital tools and family networks to try and gather information about his home to claim it upon return.

This kind of data could be presented before a government arbitration panel or via a transitional justice plan from the U.N. or a similar international agency when the man attempts to reclaim his property, Unruh said.

Iraqi government officials working on property restitution could not be reached for comment.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Iraq, a U.N.-linked body working with the government on property restitution for refugees, was unavailable for comment.

Officials in Kurdistan, the northern semi-autonomous region of Iraq of which Erbil is the capital, are planning a referendum vote on independence for Sept. 25.

The move, opposed by Iraq’s central government, could complicate efforts for displaced people living in the region to claim properties in other parts of Iraq once it is safe enough to leave camps in the Kurdish region.

It is unclear what moves Iraq’s government will make on property rights in areas once controlled by IS based on digital data, Unruh said.

But officials in the capital Baghdad who he met recently understand the importance of property rights in reducing violence.

“The Iraqi government is most concerned people returning home to ISIS-held areas are going to default to armed kin to resolve their property disputes,” Unruh told the Thomson Reuters

Foundation.

“That returnee who finds their property destroyed moves into someone else’s house. When that person returns there is a conflict —It creates a domino effect.”
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Play Brings Syria’s Heartbreak to American Kitchens

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Twenty strangers have gathered in the dining room of a New York City apartment as a woman with long dark curly hair putters around the kitchen, putting a package of meat in the fridge, sauteing pine nuts.  They settle into chairs, and she begins to speak.

“Since I came back,” she tells them, “I make kubah, again and again, as if I want to close a hole in my soul.”

Welcome to Off Off-Broadway, and the one-woman play “Oh My Sweet Land.”  It is a harrowing story of a Syrian-American woman who follows her Syrian lover to the Middle East, and actress Nadine Malouf whips up meat croquettes as she tells it.

An attack on a way of life

The play, written and directed by Amir Nazir Zuabi, was produced in London in 2014, and is now being performed in different kitchens all around New York. 

Zuabi, a Palestinian, got the idea for the play several years ago, when he traveled to Syrian refugee camps in Jordan.  He adapted several of the stories he heard and, since food and hospitality are a cornerstone of Arab culture, he included cooking.

“I didn’t want to do a horror show.  It’s important to remember that this is an attack on a culture; not just the political situation, it’s an attack on the way of life.  And the loss in Syria is also this – it’s the loss of normality, of just the ability to break bread together and meet.”

Malouf, an Australian actress of Middle Eastern and European descent, says it’s a challenge to deal with the emotions of the story while cooking.

She compares it to rubbing your belly and tapping your head at the same time, adding, “I have nicked myself a few times, I’ve burnt myself with oil.  You know, wounds.  War wounds.”

No safe space

Watching the play in this setting becomes almost painfully intimate, for both the audience and the actor.

“You tell immediately, you know, who doesn’t want you to look at them,” Malouf says.  “And I understand that because there’s, you know, a safety in the audience being in the dark and the actors on stage.  That’s very safe for both parties.  Here no one is safe,” she notes with a small laugh.

Watch: Nadine Malouf in a scene from Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play, Oh My Sweet Land at a home in Brooklyn. (By The Play Company)

After the show, audience members milled outside on the sidewalk to chat and enjoy some baklava.  Among them was Michael Yuen-Killick, the host for this evening’s performance.  He had to clean out his kitchen and dining room for the event, but was happy to open his personal space to 20 strangers.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” he insisted.  “I mean, how often do you get to have a show performed in your house?  Not very often.”

One of those strangers, Allison Martin, a nurse practitioner, called the experience “incredibly visceral.”  “Being in the small space and the smell of the onions midway through … It really brings the far away to right here in front of us.”

And that’s the point of “Oh My Sweet Land” – to have the onions, spices and stories linger long after the final bow.
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Facebook to Release Russia Ads, Beef Up Election ‘Integrity’

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Facebook is slowly acknowledging the outsized — if unintended 0151— role it played in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

 

Bowing to pressure from lawmakers and the public, the company said it will provide the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators, while also pledging to make political advertising on its platform more “transparent.”

 

“I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video and wrote in an accompanying post . “That’s not what we stand for.”

The moves Thursday come amid growing pressure on the social network from members of Congress, who pushed Facebook to release the ads after the company disclosed their existence in early September. Facebook has already handed over the ads to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

 

Facebook’s reluctance to be more forthcoming with information that could shed light on possible election interference has prompted the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee to call for the company to testify in its election-meddling probe.

 

A More Transparent Facebook

 

In one of the first steps Facebook has ever taken to open up its secretive advertising system to observation, the company will now require political ads to disclose both who is paying for them and all ad campaigns those individuals or groups are running on Facebook.

 

That’s a key step that will allow outsiders to see how many different variants of a given ad are being targeted to various groups of individuals, a tactic designed to improve their effectiveness. At the moment, there’s no way for anyone but Facebook to track these political ads, or for recipients to tell who is sponsoring such messages.

 

Since average users “don’t know if you’re seeing the same messages as everyone else,” Zuckerberg said, Facebook will “make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook.”

 

The company will hire 250 more people in the next year to work on “election integrity,” Zuckerberg said.

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel would go farther. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner is writing a bill that would require social media companies to disclose who funded political ads, similar to rules on television broadcasters. In an interview with The Associated Press, Warner said he hoped to work with social-media companies on the bill.

 

And Yet Still Secretive

 

Zuckerberg suggested that the company may not provide much information publicly, saying that the ongoing federal investigation will limit what he can reveal.

 

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have sought to bring Facebook executives before their committee for the past couple of weeks. But critics say Facebook should go further. They say the company should tell its users how they might have been influenced by outside meddlers.

 

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, for instance, stressed again on Thursday that the company should make the ads public, “so that everyone can see the nature and extent of the use of Facebook accounts by Russia.”

 

Zuckerberg also warned that Facebook can’t catch all undesirable material before it hits its social network.

 

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re going to catch all bad content in our system. We don’t check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don’t think our society should want us to,” Zuckerberg said. But those who break the law or Facebook’s policies, he added, “are going to face consequences afterwards.”

 

Facebook won’t catch everyone immediately, he added, but it can “make it harder to try to interfere.”

 

Twitter Also Heads to Capitol Hill

 

Zuckerberg’s move came a day after Twitter confirmed that it will meet next week with staff of the Senate intelligence committee, which has been scrutinizing the spread of false news stories and propaganda on social media during the election.

Warner said the committee wanted to hear from Twitter to learn more about the use of fake accounts and bot networks to spread misinformation.

 

“Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service,” the company said in a statement.
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Study Finds Babies Can Copy Adult Tenacity

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — especially if a baby is watching.

A new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says children about 15 months old can become more persistent in pursuing a goal if they’ve just seen an adult struggle at a task before succeeding.

In the research, that happened even though the babies had to solve a different problem than the grown-ups did.

The children tried their own tasks after watching a woman solve two challenges. Some saw the woman appear to struggle before she succeeded, and others saw her succeed quite easily. The children who watched the struggle were more persistent.

The researchers say the results suggest there may be value in letting children “see you sweat.”

The study was released Thursday by the journal Science.
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Fergie Says She and Josh Duhamel Still ‘Great Friends’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Fergie says even though she and husband Josh Duhamel are splitting up, they’re still “great friends” who love one another and their young son.

The singer talked about her marriage at a screening Wednesday for her new visual album, “Double Dutchess,” at iPic Theaters Fulton Market in New York. She told The Associated Press “the important thing is we’re a family” with 4-year-old Axl and “there’s so much love” that they share.

She says her new songs are about “a lot of different relationships,” adding “feelings are feelings” and “they have to come out somewhere.”

The Black Eyed Peas singer and actor confirmed last week that they had decided to break up earlier this year, but decided to keep the news quiet. They have been married for eight years.

 
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Review: iTunes Video Upgrade Makes New Apple TV Worth It

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

It might seem odd to review the new Apple TV streaming device — one specifically designed to display super-sharp video known as 4K — without actually owning a 4K TV.

But in a way, that’s the point.

Most people still don’t have 4K TVs, so the new Apple TV model doesn’t offer them much. But if you’re an Apple fan and already have 4K, the choice is clear. The new Apple TV 4K is out Friday starting at $179, or $30 more than the regular model. It’s a small difference compared with the price of your TV.

It’s worth noting that alternatives to Apple TV are cheaper and equally capable at a basic level. All of the devices connect to a TV so you can stream most major video services on a big screen. Roku and Amazon have 4K models for less than $100 and non-4K versions for even less. Both are even ahead of Apple TV in being able to stream Amazon video now; it’s coming soon to Apple TV.

But none of the rivals will play movies or shows purchased from Apple’s iTunes, at least without clunky workarounds. To watch those on a big screen directly, you need an Apple TV. And Apple has just sweetened the deal on that front.

The future has arrived

Apple’s embrace of 4K is significant, despite the fact that Roku, Amazon and other rivals beat Apple to that milestone. Apple often waits until there’s broad enough appeal for new technologies. That time is now, given growth in sales of 4K TV and more movies and TV shows released in 4K formats.

Parallel to that is the rise of high-dynamic range technology in television sets. HDR increases color range and produces brighter whites and darker blacks. Better contrast means details in bright scenes aren’t washed out. Apple TV 4K supports HDR, too.

Path to upgrades

4K is coming, just as high definition earlier replaced standard definition. The consulting company Futuresource says a third of TVs sold worldwide this year will be 4K capable, up from 25 percent last year. But people tend to keep TVs for many years, unlike high-turnover phones.

In demos with tech companies and visits to Best Buy, I find superior picture quality in 4K. Your couch needs to close enough to the screen to see the difference. My next TV will likely have 4K, but my 4-year-old Vizio HD TV still works fine (though I’m sure I just jinxed it).

Upgrades to iTunes video – and yours

Many Hollywood blockbusters now have 4K versions of home video releases. Netflix and Amazon are also trying to make their original shows available in 4K. But many indie and older titles remain in HD; even older shows like “The Wonder Years” are still stuck in standard definition.

Fortunately, Apple isn’t making you choose now. If you buy something in HD through iTunes, you’ll automatically get the 4K version when it’s out. And if a 4K version is available now, it will cost the same as its HD counterpart. It’s never been clear why HD video is more expensive than SD when actors, directors and others behind the movies were paid the same.

Lots of people were peeved at how the music industry tried to get them to repurchase the same songs on cassette tapes, CDs and then digital files. I have a collection of DVDs and don’t feel like paying again for higher-quality Blu-ray or digital versions.

So Apple’s decision to treat 4K and HD the same is a good one. That only applies to iTunes, though. Netflix is charging extra for a plan that includes 4K, even when viewed on Apple TVs.

A word of caution: While the new iPhone 8 and iPad Pros unveiled this past June will support HDR, they won’t display 4K. Even the upcoming iPhone X falls short in that respect.

Beyond video

The new Apple TV gets a faster processor, which should make high-end games better to play. A new remote offers more precise motion control and a raised menu button to make it easier to orient yourself without looking. These features alone aren’t enough to justify an Apple TV 4K unless you’re a gamer. The non-4K version is getting the new remote, too. Picture quality is the same for both versions on regular HD sets like mine.

In any case, Apple TV — with or without 4K — will be most useful if you’re already tied into Apple’s system with iDevices and iTunes. Given that rival devices are cheaper, what you’re buying isn’t the device, but an experience — integration and syncing with all your other Apple gadgets. For instance, 4K video taken on an iPhone will play easily on an Apple TV 4K.

If you’re in that camp and are thinking of buying a new TV in the next few years, there’s a good chance it will be 4K, so you might as well choose the 4K version of Apple TV now. But if it’s longer, a better Apple TV will likely be out by then. The non-4K version will do just fine for now.
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The ATM at 50: How It’s Changed Consumer Behavior

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

An automated teller machine. The cash machine. In Britain, a cashpoint. ATMs, known for spitting out $20 bills (and imposing fees if you pick the wrong one), turn 50 years old this year. They’re ubiquitous – and possibly still a necessity, despite the big changes in how people pay for things.

It was a radical move when Barclays installed cash machines in a London suburb in 1967. The utilitarian machine gave fixed amounts of money, using special vouchers – the magnetic-striped ATM card hadn’t been invented yet. There was no way for a customer to transfer money between accounts, and bank employees tabulated the transactions manually at the end of each day.

As the ATMs became familiar, though, they changed not only the banking industry but made people comfortable interacting with kiosks in exchange for goods. Now that means getting movie tickets and boarding passes, self-checkout at grocery stores, and online shopping that brings products to your door with a few clicks. All are based on the idea that people can handle routine transactions by themselves without a teller or cashier.

“The ATM tapped into that innate force in people that gives gratification for doing a task on their own and it grew from there,” said Charles Kane, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

It was a radical concept at the time. The ATM wasn’t the first self-service device – vending machines and the automat had been popular before. But those dispensed items people could hold in their hand.

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, a business professor and ATM historian (yes, they exist!) at Bangor University in Britain, said early users of automated tellers were often checking their balances twice: once to see how much was in their account, then again after withdrawing money to see if it registered.

“They were popular, but it took a long time to slowly convince customers to learn about ATMs and use them regularly,” Batiz-Lazo said.

For the banking industry, ATMs meant banks could be in thousands of places at once, not just in branches, and earn billions of dollars in fees from non-customers. Banks used to staff dozens of tellers at each branch to handle routine transactions, now many staffers work on other tasks, like sales or account maintenance.

Around the U.S. today are roughly 3 million cash machines, according to the ATM Industry Association. Most are actually not owned by banks, but by private companies that install them at convenience stores, restaurants and bars in hopes of grabbing customers who don’t want to find a bank branch.

The wide acceptance of the ATMs changed the types of cash Americans typically carry in the pocketbooks. Since ATMs became more widely available in the early 1980s, the twenty-dollar bill has regularly been the second-most printed bank note each year by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The first place spot is held by the $1 bill.

Even as people use cash less, and credit cards or mobile payments more often, the ATM isn’t going anywhere for a while. At least, that’s what historians and – unsurprisingly – the ATM industry says. Devon Watson, vice president at Diebold Nixdorf, the world’s largest manufacturer of ATMs, says 85 percent of all transactions worldwide are still in cash.

Newer ATMs have more functions than ever. They accept check deposits, can transfer money between accounts, show an account balance, pay a credit card or mortgage payment, or even sell you stamps. NCR, another major manufacturer of ATMs, say the latest models are also designed to act more like smart devices. Kevin King of NCR says that includes “swipe, gesture, multi-touch.”

And future ATMs will likely start selling products as well. Have a checking account? The ATM will ask you whether you want to open a brokerage account. Much like tellers did.
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Kiss Members Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley Reunite on Stage

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Original Kiss members Gene Simmons and Ace Frehley have reunited for their first public appearance since their group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

But unlike that terse ceremony, the Star Tribune reports , they came to St. Paul’s CHS field to play Wednesday night in their first show together in 16 years.  

 

The event was a hurricane relief benefit that Simmons helped organize for the Minnesota-based charity Matter.ngo. The nonprofit focuses on feeding and aiding children worldwide, but after Harvey struck Texas in late August the concert’s theme turned to assistance for Houston and surrounding areas.

 

Frehley took the stage about three-fourths of the way into Simmons’ set, then tore into “Cold Gin” and “Shock Me” before the finale “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
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Anthony Rapp Embarks, Thrilled, on ‘Star Trek: Discovery’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

“Star Trek” has always promoted diversity and tolerance.

Now, a half-century after the original “Star Trek” premiered, a new “Star Trek” arrives with its mission unchanged. “Star Trek: Discovery” takes a step forward by including in its crew an openly gay character, played by an openly gay actor.

Anthony Rapp said he’s proud that “Star Trek” has always been grounded in philosophical and ethical questions. He says it will continue to explore what it means to be human and to understand alien cultures.

He said this is a theme that’s pretty relevant these days.

“Star Trek: Discovery” debuts on the CBS All Access subscription channel and on CBS this Sunday.
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StoryCorps’ Thanksgiving Listen Asks Kids to Record Elders

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

StoryCorps is hoping people give their social media apps a break for a few minutes this Thanksgiving and instead use one designed for listening.

 

The nonprofit oral history project has announced the 2017 edition of its Great Thanksgiving Listen, which calls for high school students to record a conversation with an elder over the holiday weekend using the StoryCorps app.

 

Students can also add photos and videos to their stories and upload them to an online StoryCorps archive. They’ll also be included in a StoryCorps collection at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

 

This is the third year for the Great Thanksgiving Listen. Before 2015, those participating in StoryCorps had to visit the project’s mobile booth or its permanent booths located in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco.
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French Protesters Stage Fresh Protests to Macron’s Labor Law

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

French labor unions staged fresh protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s contested labor law reforms Thursday — a day before he adopts them by executive order.

 

The nationwide action backed by the powerful, hard-left CGT trade union, saw protesters take to the streets in the second round of public opposition to the long-touted reforms that will give more power to employers to hire and fire workers. Macron says that’s needed to power the stagnant French economy and boost jobs.

 

In cities across the country, demonstrators waved anti-capitalist placards and angry personal messages against Macron, whose popularity has recently taken a hit.

 

In Paris, demonstrators brandishing posters reading “The state ruins the people” marched past the posh La Rotonde restaurant where Macron was branded arrogant for prematurely celebrating his victory in the first round of the elections before he had won the presidency.

 

The latest protests come a week after hundreds of thousands of protesters — half a million, according to the unions — took to the streets in the first major challenge to Macron’s fledgling presidency.

 

Macron is waving away the opposition and his government is pressing ahead with the labor reforms, backed by a robust majority in parliament.

 

 
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Claims for US Jobless Aid Fall as Hurricane Impact Recedes

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits dropped by 23,000 last week to 259,000 as the economic impact of Hurricane Harvey began to fade.

 

The Labor Department said Thursday that the less-volatile four-week average rose by 6,000 to 268,750. Overall, nearly 2 million Americans are collecting jobless aid, down almost 6 percent from a year ago.

 

In early September, jobless claims shot up by the most in five years as Harvey battered Texas. But last week claims in Texas fell 45 percent as more people returned to work. Hurricane Irma continued to have an impact on the job market in Florida, where claims more than doubled from the previous week.

 

Despite the weather shocks, claims nationwide remain low by historic standards. New weekly claims have remained below 300,000 for the longest stretch going back to 1970.

 

Claims are a proxy for layoffs, and most employers are confident enough to be holding onto staff. Unemployment is near a 16-year low at 4.4 percent. Employers are adding an average 176,000 jobs a month so far in 2017, down from 187,000 last year and 226,000 in 2015. Some businesses say the job market is so tight that they can’t find workers to fill job openings.
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Fed Agency Urging Corporate Cybersecurity Upgrades Hacked

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The federal agency responsible for ensuring that markets function as they should and for protecting investors was hacked last year and the intruders may have used the nonpublic information they obtained to profit illegally.

 

The disclosure arrived two months after a government watchdog said deficiencies in the computer systems of the Securities and Exchange Commission put the system, and the information it contains, at risk.

 

In July, the Government Accountability Office issued a critical report about the security measures employed by the SEC, citing a number of deficiencies in “the effectiveness of SEC’s controls for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its information systems.” It issued 26 recommendations that it said would make SEC systems more secure.

 

According to the SEC, the breach was discovered last year, but the possibility of illicit trading was uncovered only last month. It did not explain why the hack itself was not revealed sooner, or which individuals or companies may have been impacted.

In a prepared statement, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said a review of the agency’s cybersecurity risk profile determined that the previously detected incident was caused by “a software vulnerability” in its filing system known as EDGAR, short for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system. Clayton said SEC has been conducting an assessment of its cybersecurity since he took over as chairman in May.

 

The SEC files financial market disclosure documents through its EDGAR system, which processes more than 1.7 million electronic filings in any given year. Those documents can cause enormous movements in the market, sending billions of dollars in motion in fractions of a second.

 

The revelation from the critical agency comes as Americans grapple with the repercussions of a massive, months-long hack at the credit agency Equifax, which exposed highly sensitive personal information of 143 million people. Clayton said the agency’s breach did not result in exposing personally identifiable information.

The SEC hasn’t said whether it is investigating the hack at Equifax, but the agency for years has leaned on publicly traded corporations to strengthen their own cybersecurity systems.

 

An investigation into the breach and its possible consequences is ongoing, and the SEC said that it is cooperating with the “appropriate authorities.”

 

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

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

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.”

 
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The Pros and Cons of Immunotherapy Drugs

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Immunotherapy is one of the newer ways the medical community is trying to fight cancer. Immunotherapy is a way to get the body’s natural defenses to fight cancer. It has great promise, and has documented results, but it is not for everyone. VOA’s Kevin Enochs explains.
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Passive Polygraph Takes Lie Detection into 21st Century

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

A ‘passive polygraph,’ developed by SilvertLogic Labs in Seattle, Washington, is a high-tech version of the lie-detector test. Faith Lapidus explains how it works.
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Google Bets Big on Hardware With HTC Buy

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

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.
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