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There continues to be little doubt that the global economy is slowing.

South Korean exports — also referred to as the world’s economic “canary in the coal mine” — fell 4.7% in November from a year earlier.

While this overall number wasn’t as bad as the 9.0% plunge expected by economists, the economists argue that a truer picture can be seen in the details.

“On closer inspection, however, we see no reason for optimism,” Barclays’ Wai Ho Leong and Angela Hsieh said.

Why they call it the ‘canary coal mine’

Economists look to Korean exports because they are the world’s imports. Major traded goods are as varied as automobiles, petrochemicals, and electronics such as PCs and mobile devices.

Furthermore, this report is the first monthly set of hard economic numbers — as opposed to soft-sentiment-based reports like purchasing managers surveys — from a major economy, economists across Wall Street dub South Korean exports as the global economic “canary in the coal mine.”

(It’s thought that miners would bring cage canaries down into the mines with them to monitor for noxious gases. Should the levels of noxious gases like carbon monoxide rise, the canary would die signaling to the miners that it was time to get out.)

The underlying decline was closer to 8.9%

Among Korea’s major industries is the manufacturing of shipping vessels, which accounted for a whopping $2.19 billion dollars of the country’s $44.4 billion worth of exported goods.

“The main lift [in exports] was a 133% year-on-year surge in vessel deliveries, which came in the last 10 days of November (vessel shipments in the first 20 days were at 29.5%),” Leong and Hsieh observed. “Excluding vessels, exports actually fell 8.9% m/m sa (October: -3.0%; Sep: +5.7%), a sign of deepening export compression.”

Barclays attributed the gain in vessels to the delivery of deep water floating oil and gas platforms, which they estimate to run about $1 billion to $4 billion per unit. They speculate the order could have been made by a company in Europe, where exports bound for the country jumped 9.3% during the month.

Going back to the core goods, the message was not good. Exports to China fell 2.6%, even as exports were bolstered by China’s record Singles’ Day shopping event; popular items for Chinese shoppers include Korean-made cosmetics, household appliances and clothes.

Exports to the US fell 9.2%.

“There were no discernible signs of further orders for the Christmas festive period,” the analysts noted.

So, there’s not much optimism here.

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The hepatitis C virus causes cirrhosis, is the leading cause of certain liver cancers, and is the most frequent reason people need liver transplants.

Dealing with those costly, debilitating, and long-term illnesses takes a toll on the healthcare system.

Yet there’s a solution that could greatly reduce hepatitis C (HCV) incidence and eventually overall healthcare costs: Treat HCV in prisons, where it’s most common, and it’ll be less likely to spread elsewhere. 

In a recent study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers argue that this strategy will be cost effective and beneficial for all of society, not just prisoners.

An $84,000 treatment

A full 17.3% of the US prison population has the virus, while it’s only found in 1% of the non-institutionalized population.

But as people cycle in and out of jails and prisons, the virus spreads, especially when people aren’t aware they have it in the first place.

It’s transmitted mostly through exposure to an infected person’s blood — usually due to intravenous drug usage — though also through sex and occasionally in other ways. A pregnant woman can pass it on to a child.

Due to new advances, we now have drugs to fight HCV that didn’t exist before. Many of those infections could be stopped.

“With the advent of new and highly effective medications, there’s a real opportunity to treat this population,” Gabriel Eber, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, tells Tech Insider.

Those new drugs are really expensive: One course of treatment with Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi averages $84,000 per patient. But most patients are cured after one course of treatment. Living for ten years with liver disease, meanwhile, costs an estimated $270,000; the costs associated with a liver transplant can be double that, one analysis found.

Providing HCV drugs like Sovaldi to healthcare providers in the prison system would require a big initial investment, but according to the researchers behind the new study, it would be worth it.

‘A good investment for society’

In order to figure this out, researchers built a system that modeled the costs of screening for HCV in prisons. They calculated the costs of “opt out” screening, where everyone would be checked who didn’t opt out, and compared these results to what would happen if they didn’t screen or only screened people deemed to be “at risk” of HCV.

They write in the study that right now, prisons may have an incentive to not screen for HCV, since if they diagnose an illness, they can’t ignore it — and treating all the hepatitis infections in prisons would cost a lot. But that means that people who are released are more likely to have no idea of their hepatitis status, which makes them more likely to pass it on.

The researchers found that screening the approximately 2 million people in the prison system and treating those infected would cost just over $1.1 billion in the first year. They also modeled infection rates with people entering and leaving the system.

Assuming all prisoners were screened and treated, both the general population and the prison population would see an immediate decrease in HCV cases, according to their model, as you can see in the charts to the side (or above on mobile).

After 10 years, they calculate, the reduction in the incidence of HCV would save thousands of lives and hundreds of millions in healthcare costs, both in and out of prison.

That’s in part because with fewer transmissions and fewer infections, the costs of screening and treating would fall each year, down to $66 million after 15 years, according to their model.

In a 30-year-model, screening and treating the disease would save a net total (counting the costs of treatment) of more than $750 million.

In other words, the researchers say that spending the money would be a cost-effective way of helping stop what they describe as an “epidemic.”

However, as they write in the study, “to achieve these benefits, the government needs to provide additional resources to prison health care, which will be a good investment for society.”

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La Llanada (Colombia) (AFP) – Gold mining can be a dirty, bloody business, but a village in Colombia has been rewarded for an ethical model — producing clean “green gold” which has seduced big international jewelers.

The gold ground out of the gray rocks of the Andes in La Llanada is worn by Hollywood stars at the Cannes Film Festival, in creations by Swiss jeweler Chopard.

The La Llanada operations were certified in October by Fairmined, an international body that certifies ethical mining practices. That opened the way for it to sell its gold to international companies.

“It is a sustainable model that benefits people as well as nature,” said Diego Riascos, general manager of the Coodmilla village mining cooperative.

“If there is an international market that is much better for us, because the miners will be able to sell their gold at a better price.”

– Gold without blood –

The La Llanada mines have also been certified as an environmentally-friendly operation, which avoids using toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury.

“This is clean gold,” Edison Rosero, 23, who works as foreman in one of the mines, run by his uncle Celimo.

Like numerous other locals, Edison rides up on a motorbike from the village to the mine. There they descend 100 yards under the rock to the seam to pick up the rocks loosened by explosives.

You would think getting the gold out of these mountains, through the dense green forest and away onto the necks and wrists of rich Europeans would be an ordeal.

The surrounding Narino mountains are a hotspot of violence in the decades-old armed conflict between rebels and the Colombian government.

– ‘Sustainable luxury’ –

Yet through a strongly community-based, small-scale production system, the locals here have avoided extortion and kidnappings by armed groups and competition from big firms.

The indigenous Abades people mined the gold here centuries ago before they were killed off in the 16th century. Canadian firms came in the 1930s but left when gold prices fell during World War II and never returned.

Ever since, the locals have kept control of the production and profits from the gold they painstakingly extract from the rocks, via the Coodmilla cooperative.

“Here there is no violence between miners,” says Riascos.

The Fairmined standard was developed by the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM), a Colombia-based NGO with operations in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

– Power to the miners –

It sets environmental and labor norms and ensures that production benefits local communities.

The gold from La Llanada sparkles in the leaves of the Palme d’Or trophy in Cannes and also in jewelry worn on the red carpet by stars such as the Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard.

It is part of what Chopard calls a drive towards “sustainable luxury”.

Chopard joined forces with the ARM in 2013 to support La Llanada.

“For me it was very obvious that the Palme d’Or had to go green,” Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s artistic director, told AFP in the jeweler’s workshop in Geneva.

Regulating mining in a country where nearly two thirds of such operations are estimated to be carried out illegally is a challenge for Colombian authorities.

Gold is currently considered even more profitable than the drug-trafficking that funds armed groups.

“The Fairmined certificate is a way to formalize production and empower mining communities,” said Lina Villa, executive director of the ARM.

La Llanada was the second mine in Colombia to be certified by Fairmined. Another cooperative in Iquira, central Colombia, won the certification in 2014.

“The Colombian government has been working hard to replicate this model throughout the whole country,” said deputy mining minister Maria Isabel Ulloa in her office in Bogota, referring to the ethical cooperatives.

In the harmonious village with the smoking peak of the Galeras volcano on the horizon, Edison and his friends spend their spare time playing music and singing. Children run around in the street and other miners play volleyball.

The rest of the time they labor to lug rock out of the mine, mill them and sieve them, hoping to glean a gram or two of gold — for this is still, despite everything, extremely tough work.

“Sometimes you spend more on the work than you earn from it,” Edison said. “Mining is always an adventure.”

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Apple’s vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue sat down with CNN’s Brian Stelter to talk about Apple News, the company’s built-in news reading app for the iPhone and iPad.

At the end of the interview, Cue gave his candid thoughts about the press, a group that Apple often ignores or opposes.

CNN: There must be times when you read the news and you seethe. You see a story about Apple that is wrong, you see a rumour about Apple that is crazy [and so] it’s interesting to see you talk about how much you appreciate journalism given that Apple is so severely scrutinised in the press.

CUE: We appreciate great journalism more than rumours, certainly. But, then again, journalism is very, very important and we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

The inference being that Apple appreciates journalists who tow the line rather than expose inconvenient truths about the company.

Apple has been under much scrutiny since the iPhone became so successful, engaging in a dramatic showdown with Gizmodo after it obtained a pre-production iPhone. Steve Jobs personally called Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo editor in chief, to ask for the device back. Gizmodo was then blacklisted from Apple events.

Mark Gurman, one of the most influential Apple bloggers, wrote a long article on how Apple controls the media narrative using access (usually to upcoming products or news) and aggression describing Apple’s press team as “probably the best in the world.”

When Katie Cotton, the long-time head of Apple PR, left the company, Valleywag, the snarky blog dedicated to covering technology, wrote the headline: “Goodbye to Katie Cotton, the Queen of Evil Tech PR.”

You can watch the whole video here:

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OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Hundreds of supporters of Burkina Faso’s newly elected president started chanting “Presi, Presi,” as preliminary results announced early Tuesday handed Roch March Christian Kabore an outright win.

The electoral commission said 60 percent of the 5.5 million registered voters participated in Sunday’s election to replace a transitional government established after a popular uprising ousted President Blaise Compaore last year. Compaore had been in power for 27 years.

Kabore, a former prime minister, avoided a runoff with 53 percent of the vote. He said the nation owes its new path toward reconciliation to those killed during the uprising, and to those who died resisting a failed week-long military coup in September.

Candidates have seven days to contest the results before the constitutional court finalizes them.

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PROSTEJOV, Czech Republic (AP) — There was no mistaking what the stone slab was, only the spot where it lay was somehow not fitting. Instead of marking a place of the departed, the tombstone served as a doormat to a henhouse in a small Czech village.

Confronting the dark legacy of the Holocaust, a small team of researchers has been working to reassemble a Jewish cemetery in the eastern city of Prostejov that was destroyed during the Nazi occupation. The Nazi death machine wipe out 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, wiping out a third of world Jewry — and didn’t even let those already dead rest in peace.

The discovery of Prostejov’s lost graveyard was a result of efforts to find roughly 2,000 tombstones that were desecrated and disappeared more than 70 years ago in what was then Czechoslovakia. Dozens of Jewish cemeteries faced the same eradication as the one in Prostejov.

Turned upside down and after a bit of cleaning, the tombstone found at the entrance to the henhouse, in a village outside Prostejov, revealed a Hebrew inscription that was hidden for decades.

Bearing the name Juli Rosenthal, it reads: “Here lies a modest and righteous woman, Mrs. Yittel, the wife of our dear teacher Mr. Leib Rosenthal, may he be long alive, who passed away 76 years old.”

New York philanthropist Louis Kestenbaum first drew attention to the cemetery when he was looking for the tomb of Prostejov Rabbi Zvi Horowitz, who died in 1816.

“His writings are still revered in Jewish communities throughout the world,” Kestenbaum told The Associated Press by email. “For Rabbi Horowitz and other great rabbis from the region, Prostejov is known as a major seat of Jewish learning and culture. This makes the cemetery an important monument in both Jewish and Czech history.”

Indeed, Prostejov was for centuries home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the eastern part of the country known as Moravia. The Jewish philosopher Edmund Husserl was born here, and his relatives were buried at the town’s Jewish cemetery, as were family members of celebrated author Stefan Zweig.

The local Jews used the cemetery from 1801 until the beginning of the 20th century. Before the Nazis took over, the Jewish community rejected proposals from City Hall to sell the site. After the transport to the Terezin concentration camp of nearly all the town’s 1,442 local Jews, as well as 250 others who came as refugees, the graveyard was doomed to destruction, said Marie Dokoupilova, a historian in the local museum. Only some 200 of those sent to Nazi camps survived the Holocaust, and most of them left the country to live in Israel and elsewhere. Today, there are less than a dozen Jews living in Prostejov.

Dokoupilova, who wrote the only Czech study about the site, said all 1,924 tombstones were desecrated, likely in 1943, and no documents are available to clarify their fate. The search for a site that disappeared such a long time ago in the wartime chaos looked like mission impossible at the beginning, said Tomas Jelinek, who is leading the cemetery effort.

“At the start, we had no clue, experts knew nothing,” he said. “But we thought that it was impossible for such a big numbers of stones, and some of them were quite big, to completely evaporate without a trace.”

That hunch was proven right after they published an announcement about the project in a City Hall newspaper. The team didn’t have to wait long for responses from people with information about stones they had in their homes, or tips on where they could be found.

Since the project kicked off in July, Jelinek and his collaborators have tracked down about 150 tombstones or their fragments: “I consider it a small miracle,” Jelinek said. “It’s a huge surprise.”

Preserved plans and details of the cemetery, including the inscriptions stored at the archive of Prague’s Jewish Museum, make it possible to identify the people they belonged to. Their living relatives now have an unexpected chance to rediscover their family past — previously considered lost forever.

“I was surprised when I heard about the tombstone,” Andrew Koss from Colorado Springs, Colorado, told the AP by email. His great-grandmother Hana Fleicher was buried in Prostejov in 1852, and a part of her tombstone was reported found by in the village of Seloutky — the first piece recovered following the newspaper announcement.

Many of the tombstones were smashed up and used for building. In the village of Zesov, an entire cellar was built of them in the same garden where Mrs. Rosenthal’s tombstone had lain. David Hanousek, the owner, had no problem agreeing to return all the tombstone pieces found on his property. “I have no intention to keep them,” Hanousek said.

In a recent discovery, a whole backyard of a house in Prostejov was paved with some 50 large tombstone blocs. Anna Holestova said she moved to her grandmother’s home 25 years ago, and was told her grandfather brought the stones there since they were given out for free during the war.

“It feels weird to walk on them,” Holestova said. “They should be taken to the place they belong to.”

After the war, the cemetery was used as a sports ground. In the 1950s, it was an amusement park for a while. Today, it is a public park where local residents walk their dogs.

“In Jewish law and tradition, cemeteries are sacred places that must not be disturbed,” Kestenbaum said. “The site is a cemetery, plain and simple, and it needs to be preserved as such in keeping with Jewish tradition.”

Jelinek believes that can happen.

In December, a new design for the Jewish cemetery will be presented to local authorities.

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The United Nations Climate Change Conference, also called COP21, kicked off in Paris November 30, and they don’t end until December 11.

Over the next couple weeks we’ll see history unfold, since the Paris talks could be where the world finally agrees to a legally binding, specific plan to limit carbon emissions.

Global leaders from 195 countries are going to try to figure out how to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, and raise $100 billion per year by 2020 to do so.

Luckily, the internet has lots of ways to stay up to date with the monumental decisions that are being made at the conference, even if you can’t be there in person.

Watch Live:

• The UN has a livestream of all the sessions, which you can play back on demand.
• UN Web TV is another 24-hour live and on-demand option if the livestream doesn’t have everything you want.
• Climate Talks Live is also keeping track of what’s trending by the hour.

Read the best coverage:

If you want to catch up on the day’s events, check in on the New York Times’ live blog.

Reuters has a very visually engaging live blog, too.

And the BBC, of course, has lots of video.

Follow who is there, on Twitter:

Twitter has multiple hashtags for the event, with #cop21 being the most popular. They even made neat little emojis that automatically get added when you use the hashtags.

Here are a few other twitter accounts to follow:

The official conference account

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India

David J. Unger, Energy editor at Christian Science Monitor

Megan Rowling, Reuters

Justin Catanoso, environmental journalist

Perrin Ireland, science communications specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council

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HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese manufacturing was at its weakest in more than three years in November despite stimulus measures to bolster the world’s No. 2 economy while service industries improved, according to an official survey released Tuesday.

The manufacturing index based on a survey of factory purchasing managers slipped for the fourth straight month, falling to 49.6 in November from 49.8 the previous month.

The index is based on a 100-point scale, with the 50-point mark separating expansion from contraction.

The latest data highlight the two-speed nature of China’s economy as officials try to shift the economy’s focus from manufacturing to services in a transition that’s proving to be rocky. Growth in the latest quarter fell to a six-year low of 6.9 percent, slightly down from 7 percent in each of the two preceding quarters after repeated interest rate cuts and other stimulus measures

Services, which have helped offset the weakness in manufacturing, showed some improvement. The official measure covering China’s service industries rose to 53.6 from 53.1.

A sub-index covering new manufacturing orders, seen as an indicator of overall demand, fell to 49.8 from 50.3.

Separately, the private Caixin/Markit purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing released the same day also remained at a level indicating contraction, although it improved to 48.6 from 48.3.

The official index, compiled by the Chinese Federation for Logistics and Purchasing, includes more of the country’s larger, state owned enterprises while the Caixin survey is weighted to smaller, private enterprises in China’s manufacturing industry, which employs tens of millions.

ANZ Bank economists Liu-Li Gang and Louis Lam said the official manufacturing index was consistent with other data released last month that showed factory output weakening and reinforce the need for Beijing to roll out further stimulus measures.

“With soft growth momentum and deflation pressures creeping up, we expect the authorities to further ease monetary policy and continue to implement an expansionary fiscal policy in order to prevent further slowdown of the economy in 2016,” they said in a report.

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Follow Kelvin Chan: twitter.com/chanman

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Learn how to tie ascot, once-around, and loop knots. This is the most useful information you’ll learn this winter. So pay attention and stay warm.

Produced by Matthew Stuart. Special thanks to Devan Joseph and Antonio Centeno.

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Selfies of children and their parents were accessed in the VTech hack that saw more than five million customers’ details being accessed.  

By: Matt Burgess,

Continue reading…

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