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Reuters

  • Smart phone ingredient found in plant extracts

    The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables.

    Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles.

    Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now scientists at Freiburg University of Mining and Technology think they have found a revolutionary way to obtain it from their own soil – with a little help from the natural world.

    Biology professor Hermann Heilmeier is one of the scientists using common plants for this uncommon process.

    “What is being cultivated in this field are various energy crops — for example sunflowers, corn, reed canary grass – but instead of using them for energy purposes we want to use them for phytomining. In German we call it ‘mining with plants’. We want to bring elements that are present in the soil into the roots and shoots of the plants, harvest them and then extract these elements from the plants after they have been used for energy, that is to say fermented,” he said, showing off his field of crops as he measured the moisture levels of the soil.

    The process is still in its early stages, but Heilmeier says they have now identified the plants that could allow them to scale the attempt up. The next stage of the process takes place in a laboratory at the university in Freiburg, where head of industrial chemistry Professor Martin Bertau has been overseeing the project. He said the region is very well-suited to the extraction of germanium due to the composition of the soil.

    “There is zinc ore present here, the ground is very rich in zinc. We have the remains of waste rock piles from mining, which germanium-rich water can drain better through. And when you cultivate plants here and give them that water, they can build up germanium reserves through normal physiological processes. We unlock these reserves through fermentation with the help of bacteria and thus we are able to mobilize the germanium,” Bertau explained.

    Economically, the process is efficient, because the extraction of germanium can happen after plants are processed for use as biogas. Thus many of the costs are already covered in existing biogas plants.

    “We use the normal biogas process, collect the products of fermentation and all there is left to do then is extract the germanium from them. The processing costs of this downstream step are manageable, so even with these low amounts it is still economically viable,” Bertau said.

    The potential for industry could be enormous, but there is still work to do before the benefits can be reaped. At the moment germanium can only be harvested in extremely small quantities, just a few milligrams per liter. Scientists need to achieve at least one gram per liter, which at the moment is only possible through a process of concentrating the extract.

    “It is as it so often is: industry is still waiting because they want to see a facility where everything is already working. Then they say: ‘we’ll have it’. But of course we have to complete the step in between first. Thanks to the support of the BMBF (German ministry for education and research), we have now actually found a solution to an intractable problem and have got to the point where we can upscale the process. So we will be able to work with bigger amounts, with apparatus with a capacity of 1,000 liters or 10 cubic meters instead of 20 liters,” Bertau said.

  • EU still open whether will charge Google over Android

    The Commission, which is in charge of antitrust issues in the European Union, accused Google in April of cheating competitors by distorting Internet search results in favor of its Google shopping service and at the same time opened the Android probe.

    “On the formal investigation when it comes to Android, we still haven’t finalised that. So it is still open whether it will go one way or the other,” Vestager told a news conference.

    “We looked into the case before we formally opened it and of course the reason why we put quite a lot of resources into it is because we have concerns if things are as they should be, if totally by the book.”

  • Wall St. opens higher on hopes of Chinese stimulus

    China’s imports shrank far more than expected in August, falling for the 10th straight month. Imports fell 13.8 percent from a year earlier, more than the 8.2 percent drop economists had expected.

    However, Chinese stocks rose nearly 3 percent on Tuesday as a surge in late-afternoon buying helped erase early losses. Late on Monday, China said it would remove tax on dividend incomes for investors who hold stocks for more than a year in an effort to encourage longer-term investment.

    “With volatility having receded somewhat during the past few days it appears that investors have been reassessing the potential negative fallout from the slowdown in China,” said Markus Huber, a senior analyst at Peregrine & Black.

    At 9:46 a.m. ET the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 306.56 points, or 1.9 percent, at 16,408.94, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 36.69 points, or 1.91 percent, at 1,957.91 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was up 98.86 points, or 2.11 percent, at 4,782.78.

    All the 10 major S&P sectors were higher with the technology index’s 2.15 percent rise leading the advancers. Apple (AAPL.O) shares were up 2.3 percent at $111.82, a day before the iPhone maker is expected to unveil new offerings. The stock was the biggest boost on the S&P and the Nasdaq.

    Global financial markets have been rattled in recent weeks by fears that China’s slowdown could drag on already sluggish global growth, prompting some investors to bet that the U.S. central bank will delay a hike until the end of the year.

    Wall Street capped a tough week on Friday, with major indexes closing down more than 1 percent, after a mixed August jobs report did little to quell uncertainty about whether the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates this month.

    Following Friday’s employment data, futures market traders predicted about a 20 percent chance a rate hike will come this month, down from around 30 percent before the jobs report.

    Nonfarm payrolls increased by 173,000 last month, fewer than the 220,000 that economists polled by Reuters had expected. But the unemployment rate dropped to 5.1 percent, its lowest in more than seven years, and wages accelerated.

    The Fed has said it will raise rates for the first time in nearly a decade when it sees a sustained recovery in the economy. While the labor market has strengthened, inflation remains below the 2 percent target.

    Data on Tuesday showed U.S. small business confidence rose modestly in August, suggesting the economy continued to grow at a steady clip halfway through the third quarter.

    Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota is expected to speak at an event later in the day in Evanston, Illinois.

    Fitbit (FIT.N) was up 11.8 percent at $35.62 after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to “overweight”.

    Alibaba (BABA.N) was up 2.9 percent at $65.81 after German retailer Metro (MEOG.DE) said it will use Alibaba’s Tmall Global platform to offer a range of German products online to Chinese consumers.

    Media General (MEG.N) rose 6.3 percent to $11.83 after it said it would buy diversified media company Meredith Corp (MDP.N) for about $2.34 billion to create the third-largest local TV station owner in the United States. Meredith was up 10.8 percent at $50.89.

    Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,432 to 329. On the Nasdaq, 2,156 issues rose and 373 fell.

    The S&P 500 index showed one new 52-week high and no new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 23 new highs and six new lows.

  • 'War Room' edging 'Straight Outta Compton' over slow weekend

    “Straight Outta Compton” took in $8.9 million at 3,094 locations in its fourth weekend, ending its impressive three-week winning streak at domestic multiplexes. The title should add another $2.3 million on Monday to cross the $150 million milestone, representing another triumph for Universal in a stellar 2015.

    Sony/Affirm’s “War Room” has continued to exceed projections following its surprisingly robust opening weekend, when it took in $11.4 million. The film, playing at 1,526 sites, is on track for a four-day Labor Day weekend haul of $12.3 million, bringing its 11-day total to $27.6 million.

    “War Room” stars Priscilla Shirer, T.C. Stallings and Karen Abercrombie and was directed by Alex Kendrick.

    The holiday weekend appears to be the quietest of the year, which will be first of 2015 without a title topping the $10 million mark over the three-day period.

    Robert Redford’s comedy “A Walk in the Woods” led the rest of the pack with $8.1 million at 1,960 sites and was projected to tack on $2.2 million on Monday. That’s a decent performance for the first wide release from year-old Broad Green Pictures, the ambitious studio launched by brothers Gabriel and Daniel Hammond.

    Paramount’s sixth weekend of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” and EuropaCorp’s launch of “The Transporter Refueled” were battling for fourth place. The fifth “Mission: Impossible” took in $7.2 million at 2,849 locations for the three days and was projected to add $2.1 million on Labor Day to boost its domestic total to $182.5 million.

    The fourth “Transporter” brought in $7.1 million in 3,494 locations for Friday-Sunday and was projected to wind up the four days with $8.7 million.

    Pantelion’s opening of Mexican animated comedy “Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos” (A Rooster with Many Eggs) turned in a solid $3.4 million at 395 theaters.

  • Apple to launch Apple TV with gaming focus

    The article, which cited unnamed people briefed on Apple’s plans, said the new product is expected to have a starting price around $150, more power for better graphics, a new remote that could double as a controller and an app store for buying games.

    Apple representatives were not immediately available for comment.

    The New York Times said most game executives and analysts see little chance that Apple will be able to win over fans of high-end game consoles such as Microsoft Corp’s Xbox One Sony Corp’s PlayStation 4.

    But Apple could instead go after the casual gamers who do not want a high-end console, according to the story.

    On August 27, Apple invited journalists to an event on Wednesday where it is widely expected to unveil new iPhones and potentially a new version of its Apple TV set-top box.

  • Apple ups hiring, but faces obstacles to making phones smarter

    The goal is to challenge Google in an area the Internet search giant has long dominated: smartphone features that give users what they want before they ask.

    As part of its push, the company is currently trying to hire at least 86 more employees with expertise in the branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, according to a recent analysis of Apple job postings. The company has also stepped up its courtship of machine-learning PhD’s, joining Google, Amazon, Facebook and others in a fierce contest, leading academics say.

    But some experts say the iPhone maker’s strict stance on privacy is likely to undermine its ability to compete in the rapidly progressing field.

    Machine learning, which helps devices infer from experience what users are likely to want next, relies on crunching vast troves of data to provide unprompted services, such as the scores for a favorite sports team or reminders of when to leave for an appointment based on traffic.

    The larger the universe of users providing data about their habits, the better predictions can be about what an individual might want. But Apple analyzes its users’ behavior under self-imposed constraints to better protect their data from outsiders.

    That means Apple largely relies on analyzing the data on each user’s iPhone rather than sending it to the cloud, where it can be studied alongside information from millions of others.

    “They want to make a phone that responds to you very quickly without knowledge of the rest of the world,” said Joseph Gonzalez, co-founder of Dato, a machine learning startup. “It’s harder to do that.”

    BEYOND SIRI

    The Cupertino-based tech titan’s strategy will come into clearer focus on Sept. 9, when it is expected to reveal its new iPhones and latest mobile operating system, iOS 9. Apple has promised the release will include a variety of intelligent reminders, which analysts expect will rival the offerings from Google’s Android.

    While Apple helped pioneer mobile intelligence -it’s Siri introduced the concept of a digital assistant to consumers in 2011 – the company has since lost ground to Google and Microsoft, whose digital assistants have become more adept at learning about users and helping them with their daily routines.

    As users increasingly demand phones that understand them and tailor services accordingly, Apple cannot afford to let the gap persist, experts say. The iPhone generated almost two-thirds of Apple’s revenue in the most recent quarter, so even a small advantage for Android poses a threat.

    “What seemed like science fiction only four years ago has become an expectation,” said venture capitalist Gary Morgenthaler, who was one of the original investors in Siri before it was acquired by Apple in 2010.

    PLAYING CATCH-UP

    While Apple got off to a slow start on hiring for machine learning jobs, it is closing in on its competitors, said Oren Etzioni, who is CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a professor at the University of Washington.

    “In the past, Apple has not been at the vanguard of machine learning and cutting edge artificial intelligence work, but that is rapidly changing,” he said. “They are after the best and the brightest, just like everybody else.”

    Acquisitions of startups such as podcasting app Swell, social media analytics firm Topsy and personal assistant app Cue have also expanded Apple’s pool of experts in the field.

    Apple does not reveal the number of people working on its machine learning efforts.

    But one former Apple employee in the area, who asked not to be named to protect professional relationships, estimated the number of machine learning experts had tripled or quadrupled in the past few years.

    Many of the currently posted positions are slated for software efforts, from building on Siri’s smarts to the burgeoning search features in iOS. The company is also hiring machine learning experts for divisions such as product marketing and retail, suggesting a broad-based effort to capitalize on data.

    Apple’s hiring mirrors a larger hunt in Silicon Valley for people who can help companies make sense of their huge stashes of data, said Ali Behnam, managing partner of Riviera Partners, an executive search firm. Data scientists are the most sought-after experts in the market, he noted.

    Asked for comment about Apple’s strategy, a company spokeswoman pointed to statements from Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering, who described the release at a developers’ conference in June as “adding intelligence throughout the user experience in a way that enhances how you use your device but without compromising your privacy, things like improving the apps that you use most.”

    But Google and others have an edge in spotting larger trends, meaning Apple’s predictions may not be as good, said Gonzalez, echoing a commonly held view among machine learning experts.

    What’s more, there are some features for which Apple has yet to find an answer, such as Now on Tap, which Google will release this fall. When users press the home button, Google will scan their screens to deliver helpful information – a user reading about an upcoming movie, for example, might receive reviews or a list of showtimes. It would be difficult to deliver such services without sending data to the cloud, experts say.

    ACCESS TO DATA

    Some techniques Apple and Google are investing in – such as deep learning, a hot field of machine learning that roughly simulates the human brain so that computers can spot patterns and classify information – require massive amounts of data that typically cannot be crunched on the device alone.

    For machine learning experts at Apple, access to data complicates the work at every turn, former employees said. Siri enjoys some of Apple’s most liberal privacy policies, holding onto user information for up to six months. Other services, such as Apple Maps, retain information for as little as 15 minutes, the former employee said.

    Machine learning experts who want unfettered access to data tend to shy away from jobs at Apple, former employees say.

    But Apple is strengthening ties to academia to find the talent it will need, attending more industry conferences and discussing its use of tools emerging from university labs, academics say.

    “They are gradually engaging a little more openly,” said Michael Franklin, who directs UC Berkeley’s Algorithms, Machines and People Lab, which Apple sponsors.

    And some machine learning experts might be enticed by the challenge of matching Google’s smarts amid privacy constraints, suggested John Duchi, an assistant professor at Stanford University.

    “New flavors of problems are exciting,” he said.

    If Apple succeeds without compromising privacy, its Mountain View rival may face questions about its approach to analyzing users’ data.

    “People might start to ask Google for more privacy,” Gonzalez said.

  • Turkish jets strike PKK targets after deadly militant attack

    The military said its aircraft bombed 23 Kurdish insurgent targets in a mountainous area near the Iraqi frontier on Monday. The statement from the army also said that another six soldiers had been wounded, but that none were in critical condition.

    The clashes, weeks before polls the ruling AK Party hopes will restore its majority, threaten to sink a peace process President Tayyip Erdogan launched in 2012 in an attempt to end an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people.

    Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels said they had killed 31 members of the armed forces in an attack on a convoy and clashes on Sunday in the mountainous Daglica area of Hakkari province, near the Iraqi border. The army statement said 16 had died making this the highest military death toll in a single attack for years.

    The PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and United States.

    Erdogan said in an interview late on Sunday on the A Haber TV channel that the fight against the PKK would now become more determined. He said 2,000 PKK militants had been killed since the conflict resumed in July.

    Uncertainty arising from the conflict, coinciding with a campaign against Islamic State militants based in Syria, has unnerved investors, with the lira dropping to record lows against the dollar.

    The unrest has raised questions over how security can be guaranteed for the Nov. 1 vote. But Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for over a decade and now seeks a parliamentary mandate to extend his executive powers, said the election would go ahead.

    The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), accused by the government of being bound to the PKK, called for a renewed ceasefire and an extraordinary parliamentary meeting. Leader Selahattin Demirtas cut short a European visit, saying there could be no justification for killing.

    “We will not surrender to war policies which only deem death proper for the people’s poor children and splatter blood on the mothers’ dreams of peace,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to the Daglica attack and conflict in the southeastern town of Cizre.

    Local media reports said a lieutenant colonel in command of the Daglica battalion was among those killed.

    “Two of our armored vehicles suffered heavy damage after the detonation of hand-made explosives on the road. As a result of the blast, there were martyrs and wounded among our heroic armed comrades,” the military said in a statement.

    EMERGENCY MEETING

    The military said two F-16 and two F-14 jets struck 13 PKK targets and operations were continuing despite very poor weather after the attack, which occurred as security forces were clearing roadside bombs planted by the PKK.

    The security source said that after the militants detonated explosives along the road, a clash broke out between the soldiers and fighters from the PKK.

    Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu chaired an emergency meeting with military and intelligence chiefs and ministers on Sunday night in Ankara following the attack, cutting short a visit to the city of Konya.

    “The pain of our security forces who were martyred in the treacherous attack by the separatist terrorist organization sears our hearts,” Erdogan said in a statement, adding he believed the Turkish people would unify and take a “decisive stance” against threats to national security.

    After he spoke, some 200 people chanting pro-Erdogan slogans attacked the Hurriyet newspaper’s offices in Istanbul, accusing it of misquoting him and implying that the president was trying to gain political capital from the Daglica attack.

    Protesters with sticks and stones smashed windows, according to the Dogan news agency, part of the same group as Hurriyet, which has attracted criticism from pro-government circles over its coverage of the conflict.

    The PKK launched its insurgency in 1984 with the aim of carving out a state in the mainly Kurdish southeast. It later moderated its goal to strengthening Kurdish political rights.

    Some Turks fear Kurds in Syria, backed by the United States in their fight against Islamic state, and Kurds in Iraq, as well as the PKK, harbor ambitions of an independent contiguous Kurdish state.

  • Islamic State takes Syrian state's last oilfield: monitor

    The Jazal field was now shut down and clashes were ongoing east of Homs, with casualties reported on both sides, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, without giving dates or more details.

    Syria’s army said it had repulsed an attack in the same area but did not mention Jazal or comment on how much of the country’s battered energy infrastructure remained under its sway. It said it killed 25 fighters, including non-Syrian jihadists.

    “The regime has lost the last oilfield in Syria,” said the Observatory, which tracks violence through a network of sources on the ground.

    Commentators on social media said fighting had surged in the last two to three days and the rebels had taken the oilfield on Sunday.

    Jazal is a medium-sized field that lies to the north west of the rebel-held ancient city of Palmyra, close to a region that holds Syria’s main natural gas fields and multi-million-dollar extraction facilities.

    The army, which has been fighting to retake the city and surrounding areas since they fell in May, had managed to secure the oil field’s perimeter in June.

    The Observatory also said U.S.-led coalition bombing raids in areas in the militant’s de facto capital of Raqqa had killed at least 16 militants, including five foreign jihadists.

    Islamist insurgents bombarded the heart of the Syrian capital Damascus and mortars killed at least one civilian and wounded scores, state television said.

  • Qatar sends 1,000 ground troops to Yemen conflict: al Jazeera

    Qatari pilots had already joined months of Saudi-led air strikes on the Houthi militia, which seized Sanaa a year ago and then advanced across much of the country, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile in March.

    Military sources told Reuters that Qatari troops were on their way to Yemen and preparing to join a new push on Houthi positions in Sanaa. They told Reuters the Qatari force had not yet entered the Arabian Peninsula country.

    But a regional Yemeni official in oil-producing Marib province east of Sanaa said the Qatari contingent had already “crossed the al-Wadia border post” between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and was heading to Marib – where Hadi loyalists have been preparing for the thrust toward Sanaa.

    Saudi-owned al Arabiya satellite network also said Qatari and Saudi reinforcements had crossed the frontier.

    The first reported involvement of Qatari ground forces in Yemen coincided with an intensification of the conflict a few days after a rocket strike in Marib that killed dozens of soldiers including Saudis and Emiratis.

    Saudi coalition forces on Sunday carried out repeated air raids on Houthi targets and allied troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in apparent retaliation.

    Saudi-led warplanes on Monday renewed strikes on Houthi targets across Yemen and Houthi-run media said the raids killed at least 12 people, including women and children, in the central province of Ibb.

    It was not immediately possible to independently verify the report.

    ARMORED VEHICLES, APACHE HELICOPTERS

    Al Jazeera’s English website said 1,000 Qatari soldiers, backed by 200 armored vehicles and 30 U.S.-made Apache helicopters had been deployed.

    Qatar’s foreign ministry made no immediate comment.

    A Qatar-based defense source said the number of Qatari troops was less than 1,000. “They are as of now not deployed in Yemen but in Saudi Arabia to protect the border,” he added.

    The Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper said on Monday that Saudi Arabia had also sent “huge reinforcements” of elite forces, along with Qatari troops, to Marib.

    “Final preparations are being made for a decisive battle, before moving on to liberate Sanaa,” al-Hayat said.

    Jean-Marc Rickli, a professor at King’s College London who is teaching at Qatar National Defence College, told Reuters it was Qatar’s first deployment of ground forces in Yemen.

    “This force will probably take part in the overall war effort to retake the capital after the coalition successfully recaptured Aden last month,” he added.

    Gulf Arab states regard the Houthis as proxies for non-Arab Iran, which they accuse of trying to extend its influence into Arab countries, including Syria and Yemen.

    Saudi-led forces have helped Hadi supporters drive the Houthis out of the southern port of Aden in July but have made little progress in other areas since, where the fighting in Marib and the central city of Taiz remains bogged down.

  • Indian elephant tramples Chinese man to death: police

    The 41-year-old victim was fatally injured by the animal in the Gharghoda forest of Chhattisgarh state, local police chief Sanjeev Shukla told AFP by telephone.

    “A wild elephant today trampled a Chinese engineer in Gharghoda forest area,” Shukla said.

    He identified the victim as Jong Kitau, a Chinese engineer working on a power project in the state and staying at a local guest house with his team.

    The incident took place when Kitau and his colleague set out for a morning walk and came face to face with the elephant, which charged at the pair.

    While his colleague managed to flee with only minor injuries, Kitau was unable to escape in time, Shukla said.

    Indian elephants can grow to 6.4 metres (21 feet) in length and 3.5 metres in height, according to the World Wildlife Fund. They can weigh up to five tonnes.

    India is home to some 25,000 elephants but their numbers are dwindling, mainly due to poaching and human destruction of their habitats.