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Uber criticised in US over assault reporting prior to London ban
 When Uber refused to comply with a warrant in a California sexual assault case, police, prosecutors and the judge were bewildered.

Lt Brian South told the Guardian that in more than 15 years on the job, he had never seen anyone so brazenly defy a judge’s order for records. A prosecutor testified that Uber was actively preventing law enforcement from protecting riders from violence, and a judge attacked the ride-share corporation for a “horrific” pattern of ignoring police, describing its typical response as “give as little as possible, be as uncooperative as possible”.

The judge’s forceful rebuke – in a criminal case where a driver was accused of restraining and attacking a female passenger – is one of many allegations across the globe of Uber neglecting the safety of riders and drivers by failing to work with law enforcement and ignoring standard regulations. Last week, Uber lost its license in London in part due to the government’s concerns about the company’s failure to report sexual assaults to police.

While Uber is fighting London to stay in operation there, critics throughout the world are pushing other local municipalities to follow suit – and some say the law enforcement concerns cited in the UK are far from unique. Several women in the US, who say they were sexually assaulted in Uber cars, are now filing fresh lawsuits against the company and spoke exclusively with the Guardian this week about their claims of fundamental public safety problems at Uber.

The San Francisco-based firm is facing widespread pressure after months of bad press surrounding corporate misconduct and sexual harassment, shady tactics to evade law enforcement and claims that Uber mistreats and underpays its drivers.

In Moraga, a city 20 miles east of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, court records reveal particularly damning allegations related to the company’s evasion of police. After a driver was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery in May, prosecutors successfully obtained a warrant for information related to the more than 1,000 rides the suspect had given in the previous 90 days.

Uber claimed the order was overly broad, ignored the warrant, missed the deadline imposed by the judge and failed to properly communicate with police, according to a court transcript. Prosecutors were then forced to delay the investigation and bring Uber to court in an unusual hearing where Judge Clare Maier sanctioned the company and angrily demanded it comply with the order she had already signed.

An anti-Uber protest in New York in February 2017. Photograph: Michael N/Pacific/Barcroft Image

“The reputation of Uber for cooperating with law enforcement is horrific,” said Maier, whose $1,000 sanction was first reported in the East Bay Times. “The fact that Uber resists search warrants gives me grave concern that there is an ulterior motive here and not any desire to cooperate.”

The judge said she was further concerned Uber was blocking an investigation into a man who could be a repeat offender.

“I don’t think you have the authority to just resist a search warrant,” the judge later said. “You’ve dragged your feet on every aspect of it.”

South, the police lieutenant on the case, said in an interview: “I’ve never had somebody flat-out refuse to comply with a search warrant.”

Uber’s lawyer Candace Kelly testified that it was a “technology company” that put strangers together in cars where “bad things” can happen, and that Uber did not “want to be the cause of delay in solving those incidents”.

A spokesperson for Uber, which subsequently complied with the warrant, declined to comment.

‘They turn their back on women’

Women who say they have been attacked during Uber trips said the company should be liable and should have done more to help police hold assailants accountable.

“Uber is allowing this to happen and providing the means to make it so easy for predators,” said Indra, a Virginia woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a driver last year and requested not to use her full name. Her subsequent conversations with Uber left her with the impression that the company’s position was “this kind of thing is common and they just didn’t care”, she said. “That’s just abhorrent. They didn’t seem concerned about me as a person.”

Indra, 38, is one of several women who is now bringing lawsuits against Uber with Lisa Bloom, a high-profile California attorney who has brought sexual misconduct cases against Fox News, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump.

They didn’t seem concerned about me as a person Indra, from Virginia

A Los Angeles woman, who filed a case anonymously as Jane Doe on Tuesday, alleged in a lawsuit that after she reported a driver fondling her in a car, an Uber representative told her: “Do whatever you want to about the incident.”

In an interview, Jane Doe, 25, said Uber never even refunded her ride or followed up with her to let her know if the driver had been permanently banned. She said it was not clear whether Uber had done everything it could to work with police: “If there’s any sort of battery or sexual assault claims – anything that’s putting a driver or passenger at risk – they should be fully willing to comply with the police and give them any information they need.”

Uber typically does not disclose information to passengers or drivers about alleged assailants, citing privacy concerns, and complies with law enforcement requests for data only when given subpoenas. The Jane Doe suit alleges that this policy can hamper police investigations and discourage criminal charges, arguing that “non-cooperation with law enforcement agencies means that Uber has provided its drivers with tacit assurance that their misconduct will not be detected by law enforcement”.

Uber’s failure to work with police means that for some victims, their only option is to file a civil suit, Bloom said in an interview.

“They have all this information. It’s a very simple matter for them to cooperate,” she said. “It’s just shocking how they are turning their back on women customers and allowing this to go on.”

Bloom also filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of a passenger who claimed she was sexually harassed and falsely imprisoned by an Uber driver.

A recent lawsuit filed in Kansas City alleged that an Uber passenger was raped by a driver a month after Uber was explicitly warned by a member of the public that the man was dangerous. The driver had also previously been convicted of attempted first-degree murder, according to the suit.

Kate Lewis, a former Uber driver, also publicly accused the company of failing to do enough to support a criminal investigation after she reported that a passenger had groped and sexually assaulted her throughout a ride last year.

“They were very defensive and not very sympathetic,” she said in a recent interview, adding that police told her that lack of communication by Uber was impeding the investigation. “Uber made it worse by not letting me get closure.” Police, however, claimed Uber cooperated in that investigation.

Uber declined to comment on specific cases. The company said it has a 24/7 customer support team and employs former law enforcement professionals who work with police.

Output: Uber has been accused of failing in relation to law enforcement by several women in the US who have spoken to The Guardian. The allegations come in the wake of Transport for London’s decision last week not to renew the company’s licence in the city, based partly on Uber’s failure to report sexual assaults to the police. The company, which was criticised by a judge in California for refusing to comply with a warrant in a case of sexual assault, is facing lawsuits from a number of women in the US who claim that they were assaulted in Uber cars.


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Climate change made Europe’s 2017 heatwaves more likely: WWA
 The scorching temperatures across Europe’s Mediterranean nations this summer were made at least 10 times more likely by climate change, according to scientists.

Furthermore, without action to tackle global warming, such summer heatwaves with temperatures soaring over 40C will become normal by 2050.

The new analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group also analysed the particular “Lucifer” heatwave which struck south-east France, Italy and Croatia in early August and found it was made at least four times more likely by human-caused climate change.

The Lucifer heatwave saw temperatures fail to drop below 30C for three days and nights in the hottest spots, and was linked to a 15% surge in emergency hospital admissions in Italy. Prolonged heat is known to be very dangerous to health and a severe heatwave in Europe in 2003 was linked to 75,000 deaths by subsequent analysis.

“Summers keep getting hotter,” said Friederike Otto at the University of Oxford, UK, also part of WWA. “Heatwaves are far more intense than when my parents were growing up in the 1950s. If we do nothing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the kind of extreme heat we saw this past summer will be the norm when my young son is a grown man.”

The fast-growing science of climate change attribution tackles the question of what impact global warming is having on extreme weather and the people it affects. No event can be said to be caused by climate change because random extremes occur naturally. But by comparing extremes with historical measurements and computer models of a climate unaltered by carbon emissions, researchers can show how global warming is already heavily loading the dice of dangerous weather.

In June, WWA showed the extreme heatwave that saw deadly forest fires blazing in Portugal and Spain was made 10 times more likely by global warming. In Portugal, 64 people died. Previous work has demonstrated floods in England and France – even as far back as 2000 – were made more significantly likely by climate change.

Research in Australia has shown the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef was 175 times more likely due to greenhouse gas emissions, while the recent hot winter was made 60 times more likely.

Hurricanes are much more complex and time consuming to analyse than heatwaves and WWA is currently working on Hurricane Harvey. But scientists are clear that climate change is most likely to have made the giant storms that have ripped across the Caribbean and the US this year more destructive. This is because greater heat means more storm energy and rainfall, while rising sea level means storm surges reach further inland.

The new research analysed this summer’s heat across Spain, southern France, Italy and the Balkans. It compared the measured temperatures with four different groups of climate models in which the heating effect of the last century of carbon emissions were omitted. This showed the high level of heat in June, July and August was at least 10 times more likely than it would have been in the early 1900s.

A cyclist waits to cross a road in Valencia, Spain, where the temperature is 41C. Photograph: Manuel Bruque/EPA

The researchers did the same for the Lucifer heatwave, examining its three-day peak in early August. They found the intensity of such heatwaves has increased by 1C to 2C since 1950 and that overall climate change has quadrupled the change of them happening.

In June, the Guardian revealed that the UK government’s failure to update building regulations for homes, hospitals and schools could cause a tripling of heatwave deaths by 2040.

“It is critical that cities work with scientists and public health experts to develop heat action plans because such extreme heat will become the norm in the middle of the century,” said Robert Vautard, a researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France. “Climate change is impacting communities right now and these plans save lives.”

Output: Heatwaves that rolled across Mediterranean countries this summer were made 10 times as probable by man-made climate change, according to analysis by scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group. The study also found that “Lucifer”, a particularly deadly heatwave which affected Croatia, France and Italy in August, was four times more likely to happen as a result of climate change. Without action on global warming, 40C temperatures during summer will be standard for Europe by 2050, according to the research.


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Researchers harness evaporation energy to produce electricity
 The idea sprang from research into the mechanical properties of the subtilis spores, which can exist in a dormant state for hundreds of years. “It struck me as amazing how much mechanical energy they seem to have,” says Ozgur Sahin, an associate professor of biological sciences at the university. “They are so rigid that as the material’s shape changes it produces a lot of energy.”

Sahin glued the spores to a tape made of polyimide—a polymer used in fuel cells, computer displays, and various military applications—and surrounded them with a shutter mechanism that controls the passage of moisture. The shutter is essentially an oscillator, a mechanical switch like an electrical circuit, that opens and closes in response to the force produced by the spore changing shape. The opening and closing of the switch produces the regular pulsing of the swelling and shrinking spores. When the shutter is open, moisture escapes to the air and the spore dries out; when it closes, moisture fills the gap, the humidity increases, and the material expands.

An eight-centimeter by eight-centimeter water surface can produce about two microwatts of electricity (a microwatt is one-millionth of a watt), on average, and can burst up to 60 microwatts, says Sahin. That doesn’t sound like a lot of electricity; so far Sahin and his team have used the evaporation engines to power an LED and a miniature car that weighs a tenth of a kilogram.

“We made a lot of compromises in creating this version in hopes of creating a self-sufficient device,” he says. “We know actually that it can be made 100 times more powerful by solving a number of problems.”

Those solutions include adjusting the size of the moisture cavities and the mechanism of the shutters that control the flow of moisture. Sahin believes that arrays of the devices on the surface of lakes or other bodies of water could produce a scalable renewable energy technology, but that is likely years off, if it ever happens at all. One possible use could be to create battery-size “bricks” of spores than can be activated to produce electricity—just add water.

The tiny engines may have no practical applications in the near term, but they’re still a useful demonstration of the ubiquity of natural energy that can—at least in theory—be harnessed by relatively simple and cheap devices.

As Sahin says, unlike solar and wind power, “Evaporation is not intermittent.”

Output: A recent study shows that, theoretically, utilising natural water evaporation could produce more than 325 GW of electricity in the US more efficiently than burning coal. Columbia University researchers developed a technology they claim can harnesses the motion of Bacillus subtilis spores, which contract and expand as they absorb and release air moisture, to drive generators. Vitally, they continue doing so when dormant or dead. The technology remains in its laboratory stage and co-author of the paper, Ozgur Sahin, warned that it is a "thought experiment" not a "literal development proposal".


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Researchers harness evaporation energy to produce electricity
 That, however, would require covering the surface of every lake and reservoir larger than 0.1 square kilometers in the lower 48 states, excluding the Great Lakes, with arrays of the devices. Obviously, that would directly conflict with existing economic and recreational uses, and raise a host of serious aesthetic and environmental concerns. Notably, interfering with evaporation on a large enough scale, across a big enough lake, could even alter local weather.

But study coauthor Ozgur Sahin says that the paper is more of a thought experiment designed to underscore the potential of the technology and the importance of advancing it beyond lab scale, rather than any sort of literal development proposal.

Sahin, an associate professor of biological sciences and physics at Columbia University, believes it could make a significant contribution to clean-energy and climate goals, even if it's never rolled out at anywhere near the potential extent highlighted in the study.

He says that early use cases could include remote reservoirs already generating hydroelectric power, where it's not as likely to interfere with other uses. It could offer the added benefit of reducing water loss through evaporation, increasing the amount available for energy generation, irrigation, and other needs.

The team of scientists also created a tiny, evaporation-powered car, dubbed Eva.

Sahin and colleagues at Columbia have been working on this technology for years. In a 2015 paper, the team described an evaporation engine that relied on Bacillus subtilis spores adhered to stacks of film attached to shutter mechanisms. When the device is placed above water, the spores absorb moisture from natural evaporation and expand, opening the shutter and allowing moisture to escape. The spores then dry out and contract, closing the shutter once again, and allowing additional air moisture to flow in and restart the process. When the device is connected to a generator, the continual oscillating motion generates a tiny amount of power.

As MIT Technology Review previously reported: "An eight-centimeter-by-eight-centimeter water surface can produce about two microwatts of electricity (a microwatt is one-millionth of a watt), on average, and can burst up to 60 microwatts."

The team has continued to work on improving the efficiency and scalability of the technology, exploring additional materials and means of spore adhesion. Because the technology is largely based on biological materials, the eventual cost could be lower than solar photovoltaic cells and other technologies that require specially manufactured materials, Sahin believes.

Crucially, Bacillus subtilis spores continue to perform the necessary mechanical motion even when they're dead or dormant.

In addition, the technology largely avoids the intermittency limitations of wind and solar power because, while evaporation rates change, they don't stop. Moreover, since the devices decrease the evaporation rate, they also raise the temperate of surface water. Modeling in the new study showed that by deliberating altering the rate of this process, they could create a kind of thermal water battery that balances out generation and demand. When throttled up, the heat in the water would increase evaporation, boosting power generation.

“We could match power demand on an hourly basis about 98 percent of the time in warm and dry places,” Sahin says. “Which means you don’t need an external battery to adjust for intermittency.”

Output: A recent study shows that, theoretically, utilising natural water evaporation could produce more than 325 GW of electricity in the US more efficiently than burning coal. Columbia University researchers developed a technology they claim can harnesses the motion of Bacillus subtilis spores, which contract and expand as they absorb and release air moisture, to drive generators. Vitally, they continue doing so when dormant or dead. The technology remains in its laboratory stage and co-author of the paper, Ozgur Sahin, warned that it is a "thought experiment" not a "literal development proposal".


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Hurricanes show need for building regulations, says US architect
 Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Designing buildings to be sustainable, resilient and safe is at the core of what architects do. Resilient, energy-conscious buildings are good for the environment and for economic policy.

Yet in recent months, policymakers in Washington and in some states have proposed and even succeeded in rolling back regulations that have made America’s buildings among the safest and most advanced in the world. This is ill-advised public policy, especially in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Late last month, the administration issued an executive order to roll back rules governing environmental reviews for infrastructure projects and to lift restrictions on federally funded projects in flood-prone areas. This is part of ongoing efforts to streamline regulations, ostensibly to speed the rebuilding of aging U.S. infrastructure. Red tape should be eliminated, of course, but why would we abandon requirements to keep federally funded projects outside of FEMA-defined flood plains?

Common-Sense Regulations

It is a mistake to roll back common-sense programs that make people safer in order to save taxpayers money. Designing projects to avoid exposure to natural disasters—floods, fires and earthquakes—is not just important to citizen health, safety and welfare, it makes basic economic sense. In 2016 alone, we spent $46 billion in the wake of natural disasters, and that was just in direct costs. The damage wrought by Harvey and Irma will total at least five times that much.

Efforts to weaken sound design policies are gaining traction in the states, too. The catastrophic damage from Hurricane Andrew 25 years ago led to more stringent Florida building codes, which have made the state’s newer buildings and homes resilient even to the most recent major storms. But in June of this year, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed legislation that will imperil Floridians’ ability to withstand future storms by no longer requiring the state to adopt new editions of nationally recognized, state-of-the-art model building codes.

Energy-conserving, sustainable buildings save lives and they save money, a fact that policymakers should realize.

The American Institute of Architects asked the governor to veto this legislation, noting that weaker codes could lead to much higher costs for rebuilding following major disasters—at the very moment that policymakers in Washington are looking to reduce funding for FEMA and other programs that help communities after disasters. The Wall Street Journal reports that Florida houses built after the state adopted the more stringent building codes survived Hurricane Irma in much better shape than those built under previous versions of the code.

And when Indiana was on the brink of allowing its energy code to expire last fall, last minute lobbying by architects convinced then-Governor Mike Pence to extend the code, keeping buildings warm in winter and cool in summer at reduced costs and lower rates of energy use.

Cost-Effective Policies

These are matters of common sense, but how do we convince states to maintain sound regulations and sensible policies to keep buildings efficient and resilient?

One solution is on the horizon. Shortly before the administration took office this January, a cash-starved FEMA proposed a regulation that would help the government meet the staggering costs of disaster recovery. FEMA proposed imposing a ”state disaster deductible”—a requirement that states shoulder some of the disaster recovery costs up front, before receiving federal dollars. The deductible would be reduced for states that applied stricter building codes, or took other steps to reduce vulnerability to disasters.

These kinds of cost-effective, innovative policies will help to ensure that the federal government does its part to make our buildings safer. So far, this proposal has been spared in efforts to gut building regulations, but the perception remains among some policymakers that good design is more expensive and not worth pursuing.

Energy-conserving, sustainable buildings save lives and they save money, a fact that policymakers at all levels of government should realize.

Output: US federal and state policymakers' decisions to scrap some building regulations to save construction costs and taxpayers' money will make buildings less resilient to extreme weather and more costly to rebuild after natural disasters, argues Thomas Vonier, the president of the American Institute of Architects. For example, last month the Trump administration issued an executive order to ease rules governing environmental reviews for infrastructure projects and reduce restrictions on federally funded projects in flood-prone areas. Vonier says this relaxing of standards is ill advised, particularly considering the damage done by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.


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London sees seventh emergency air alert in 13 months
 The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has triggered the capital’s emergency air quality alert as polluted air from the continent combines with toxic air in London to create dangerous levels of pollution.

The alerts will see warnings displayed at bus stops, road signs and on the underground. Khan has also asked TV and radio stations across the capital to warn their viewers and listeners in news bulletins.

Anyone with lung or heart problems is advised to reduce strenuous exercise, especially outside. The young and elderly are particularly vulnerable.

Today’s alert has been triggered by “high” levels of air pollution. It is the seventh time in 13 months that the mayor has used the alert system. One instance was because the level of pollution was deemed “very high”, and on six occasions because it was “high”.

Khan said: “The shocking and illegal state of London’s filthy air means once again I am triggering a high air pollution alert today under my new comprehensive alert system.”

The government’s committee on the medical effects of air pollutants advises adults and children with lung problems, and adults with heart problems, to reduce strenuous physical exertion, particularly outdoors, and particularly if they experience symptoms. People with asthma may find they need to use their reliever inhaler more often. Older people should also reduce physical exertion.

Khan is implementing a range of measures to try to tackle the air pollution crisis in the capital, and he called on the government to do more.

“I am doing everything with the powers I have at City Hall and it’s now time for the government to step up by introducing a national diesel scrappage fund to rid our streets of dirty diesels, and to give me the powers I need to tackle non-transport sources of pollution.”

Responding to the news that the capital’s air quality emergency alert had been triggered, Prof Jonathan Grigg from Doctors Against Diesel said “dirty air is seriously damaging Londoners’ health and wellbeing.”

Grigg called on Khan to do more to tackle it. “Vulnerable people shouldn’t have to restrict their activities to stay safe,” he said. “Sadiq Khan must bring London’s air pollution down to legal levels as soon as possible, and commit to phase out diesel vehicles by 2025 to protect Londoners’ lungs.”

The government has come under increasing pressure over the UK’s air quality. It has suffered a string of humiliating defeats in the courts over its failure to clean up the nation’s air. Its latest proposal, released in July, was met with widespread criticism from clean air campaigners and regional politicians.

The latest episode of dangerously polluted air has been caused by mist, low cloud, fog and slow wind speed in London that has lead to a build up of pollution. This has combined with air arriving from the continent that has travelled slowly over industrial polluted areas giving it time to pick up emissions on the way. Experts say this is likely to produce high levels of PM2.5 and moderate levels of PM10 particulate pollution across areas of London and the south-east.

Output: London experienced its seventh emergency air quality alert in 13 months on Wednesday. The alert, triggered by the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, came as polluted air from the continent joined with toxic air within the city to produce an atmosphere likely to contain high levels of PM2.5 and moderate levels of PM10 particulate pollution. Khan called on the government to introduce a national diesel scrappage scheme and to increase his powers to combat non-transport pollution.


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Regus Regus opens workspace on top floor of Sayeh Tower in Tehran
 Iranian companies and business visitors can now benefit from flexible work and meeting spaces in Tehran with the arrival of Regus. The international serviced office and meeting room provider launched its first flagship location in the Iranian capital in partnership with EDGE Business Group.

Regus Tehran is on the top floor of the Sayeh Tower, located on Valiasr Avenue – one of Tehran’s main thoroughfares and commercial centres. Benefits of the area include five-star hotels, top restaurants, banks and shopping centres in addition to Mellat (Nation) Park opposite the building.

Regus believes its centre will help meet the growing demand for world-class office space in what many business analysts call the world’s largest untapped market since the fall of the Soviet Union.

GDP growth in the MENA region’s second largest economy is expected to hit 4.5% by the end of the year, and as Iran’s economy continues to develop after the landmark nuclear deal in 2016, it is becoming an exciting market to consider for global brands.

With the addition of Iran to its global network, Regus now boasts a presence in 120 countries.

“It is exciting to see Regus coming to Iran and its presence there is testament to Iran being a thriving hub for business. Both local and international businesses will be able to benefit from this high-quality and ultra-modern workspace, whether they are looking to expand an existing business or start up a new one,” said Dr Mohsen Talaie, senior board advisor to Edge Business Group, Regus’s local partner in Iran.

Mark Dixon, chief executive of Regus, said: “Modern, dynamic businesses need to be able to work where they want and when they want, so I am very excited we are adding Iran to a growing global network. Whether you are a multi-national global corporation or a start-up, more than ever before you need flexibility, agility and the right location to succeed. Now firms in Iran or visitors can join over two million Regus customers who enjoy those benefits as part of our international network.”

Regus clients include Iran’s first and largest fashion e-commerce brand, Modiseh; the first global concierge service provider in Iran, Emminence; Iran’s largest consulting group, Ara Enterprise; Iran’s Largest FMCG company, Golestan; and one of the largest PR agencies in the world, MC Group.

The official launch ceremony took place on 13 September in the presence of government leaders, local business leaders, foreign companies’ representatives and guests from the chambers of commerce and foreign diplomatic corps in Tehran.

Output: Flexible workspace provider Regus has opened its first location in Tehran with the aid of business services firm Edge Business Group. Regus Tehran occupies the top floor of the Sayeh Tower, close to major retail areas and Mellat Park. Regus aims to explore the “world’s largest untapped market”, with GDP growth in the region predicted to reach 4.5% by the end of 2017. With the addition of the Tehran site, Regus will have a location in 120 countries. Clients include Iran fashion e-commerce brand Modiseh and Emminence, Iran's largest consulting group.


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Sirin Labs seeks ICO funding for 'blockchain phone'
 Sirin Labs, the company behind the $14,000 Solarin smartphone, is now developing an open-source model that runs on a fee-less blockchain. The Finney -- named in honor of bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney -- will be the only smartphone in the world that's fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic coins. Or so says the company, which is launching a crowdsale event this October (date to be confirmed) to support the phone's development.

According to Sirin, all Finney devices (there's an all-in-one PC coming, too) will form an independent blockchain network powered by IOTA's Tangle technology. The network will operate without centralized backbones or mining centers cluttering up the transaction process, using the SRN token as its default currency (only SRN token holders will be able to purchase the device). And it'll all run on a Sirin operating system specially designed to support blockchain applications such as crypto wallets and secure exchange access.

The phone comes with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a device with a $1,000 (£740) price tag, including a 256GB internal memory and 16MP camera, plus a hefty suite of security measures. A behavioral-based intrusion prevention system, physical security switch and blockchain-based tamper proof feature mean that, in theory, it's going to take considerable effort to hack. But the question is whether anyone would want to. "The crypto community" is still a niche market, certainly more niche than the affluent business market the $14,000 Solarin was intended for, and that didn't work out so well -- only 10 months after its launch the company laid off a third of its staff, claiming it would be "pursuing new directions to a new product line". Some have suggested the Solarin was a product ahead of its time, and the Finney may well be too.

Output: Swiss consumer electronics firm Sirin Labs is launching a crowdsale event in October to fund its next project, an open-source smartphone running on blockchain technology. The Finney will be followed by a personal computer, with both devices operating on an independent blockchain network. Sirin Labs said the smartphone will be the only model secure enough to hold cryptocurrencies. The Finney is set to cost $1,000 and will be available only to holders of Sirin Labs' SRN tokens. Its launch will follow that of the firm's $14,000 Solarin phone, which was released last year.


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DuPont HF alkylation process could offer alternative to diesel
 - DuPont, Overland Park, Kansas

Jason Nunez is a Senior Technical Service Engineer at DuPont Clean Technologies for the alkylation and hydroprocessing businesses. He has more than 14 yr of experience in the refining and petrochemical industries. Prior to joining DuPont in 2014, he served in various roles at Citgo Petroleum Corp. and the Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery. Mr. Nunez holds BS degrees in chemical engineering and environmental science from McNeese State University.

Output: The clean fuel alkylate could become a widespread alternative to diesel, thanks to the development of a safer hydrofluoric acid (HF) alkylation conversion process. The fuel, a type of petrol, could help meet increasingly stringent emissions standards. Scientists at US chemicals giant DuPont have devised a cost-effective reactor design that replaces HF alkylation units with sulphuric acid alkylation units, sulphuric acid being a safer option than the more volatile HF. In the US, there are around 100 alkylation units in use with approximately half using HF alkylation technology that could be converted to sulphuric acid alkylation.


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BMO Harris issues credit card giving SMEs contactless payments
 BMO Harris Bank, a US-based lender, has released a new credit card especially for small businesses in the country.

The new offering, known as Small Business Mastercard, will enable the banks’ small merchants to add the card details to the BMO Harris Bank Masterpass, Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay digital wallets to make contactless payments.

Using these digital wallets, small business customers can make transactions from their mobile devices without the need of wallet or a card.

The new zero liability protection eliminates unauthorised purchases and also supports the bank’s mission in providing small business customers an efficient way to make business purchases.

BMO Financial Group head of North American Retail Payments Jennifer Hawkins said: “Small business owners are busy, and we’re here to help by offering them a simpler purchasing experience on their smartphone devices.

“Our digital wallets are secure and easy to use, making for a simple, straightforward buying experience.”

Output: Chicago-based lender BMO Harris Bank has launched a credit card for small US businesses, giving them access to its own Masterpass digital wallet as well as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay. The Small Business Mastercard also includes zero-liability protection.


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Insightin's AI-driven chatbot helps patients manage healthcare
 Patients deciding the next step of their care may soon be doing so with the help of an AI on their phone. Today, Insightin Health — a Gaithersburg, Maryland-based company that develops a data-based clinical decision-making platform — announced that it has launched a consumer-facing version of its machine learning-based service, which presents all of a user's health data and future options via a text-based chatbot.

The In360 app will offer users real-time access to streamlined data collection and personal decision-making tools. The platform incorporates users’ behavioral trends to make predictive recommendations and gauge care options, while presenting the information in a straightforward way that Insightin CEO and founder Enam Noor says provides an edge over competing services.

“There are many good consumer facing apps out there that are great, but as a consumer I may need several of these to manage my care, and they are likely unconnected,” Noor told MobiHealthNews. “Our user friendliness comes from our simple, intuitive design, and simple user interface.”

More specifically, the app condenses several aspects of paying for and receiving care in a way that is easy to understand, and then begins planning the next best option in a way that reflects the user’s tendencies.

“When a patient visits a doctor, pays a bill, schedules a preventative screening, claims a reward, or provides a quality rating, In360 gathers [information], connects the data, and provides the consumer with the next steps along their path to wellness,” Noor said. “The way people interface with their health insurer, doctor, or wider care team is changing, and we offer a multi-channel experience that is preference driven, and that alone makes the consumer more apt to engage because they are in control.”

In360 is available to consumers through an app or web browser, and Noor says that the app will eventually allow users to voice chat with the AI bot. The app is fully integrated with Insightin Health’s larger platform, which is marketed to health plans as a means to examine member acquisition, retention, engagement, and competitive analysis. In360 is the first of several consumer-facing features that will be launched as part of Insightin’s platform.

“The overarching goal we are solving is to empower the [consumers] to be healthier by engaging in preventative care with knowledge,” Noor said. “Healthier outcome for the member is a win-win for both the member and health plan.”

Output: Maryland-based firm Insightin Health has launched the In360 app, a text-based chatbot that's powered by artificial intelligence (AI). It offers users real-time access to their health data and enables them to make informed decisions about treatment, in particular, by helping to manage how they pay for and receive care. The app integrates fully with Insightin Health's main platform and is one of a suite of features for patients that the company is planning to roll out. Insightin CEO Enam Noor said the preference-driven nature of the technology makes customers more likely to adopt it "because they are in control".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Trump pushes $200m of funds towards STEM education
 “Does that sound like big bucks? What do you guys think?”

That’s what President Donald Trump asked a young student today in the Oval Office. Surrounded by children, educators, Ivanka Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the President signed a presidential memorandum that expands K-12 computer science and STEM education in the United States with at least $200 million in annual grant funding.

In a memo directed to DeVos, President Trump acknowledged that STEM skills, particularly computer science, will be necessary for workers to attain jobs in the future. Yet, as he noted, many American schools don’t offer computer science courses, or teachers qualified to teach these subjects.

The memo affirms that computer science education should be one of the Department of Education’s priorities, and instructs DeVos to take that into account when awarding grants to schools. In addition, the Department of Education should make helping districts recruit and train teachers in STEM subjects—in particular, computer science—a priority.

According to the memo, “The Secretary of Education (Secretary) shall, consistent with law, establish the promotion of high-quality STEM education, including Computer Science in particular, as one of the priorities of the Department of Education. The Secretary shall take this priority into account, to the extent permitted by law, when awarding grant funds in fiscal year 2018 and in future years.”

There appears to be no new federal funding for this new initiative. Rather, the memo directs the Department of Education to devote at least $200 million in existing grant funds to support computer science education efforts. (Department officials did not respond , and neither did the White House ).

In an interview with EdSurge, Hadi Partovi, CEO of Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding computer science education, says the Department of Education is being directed to focus existing grant funding on computer science programs.

Partovi does not seem concerned about how that stipulation may impact non-computer science programs at schools. “What it does is it focuses existing funds towards schools that teach CS,” he says, also adding that “it is going to create an incentive for schools to begin teaching computer science.” School districts that are applying to the Federal government for grants can get the same funding they were before, and “they’re now encouraged to include a proposal to expand access to computer science, with a focus on diversity.”

The memo also directs the education department to submit an annual report the Office of Management and Budget on “whether these actions succeeded in promoting and expanding access to high-quality STEM education, including Computer Science in particular, both generally and with respect to underserved populations.”

An Iranian-American, Partovi points out that he’s “probably the most unusual spokesperson to defend something done” by the Trump Administration, as his own community is being “directly targeted” by its policies. (Trump also announced a new travel ban on countries including Iran today.) He says he can distinguish and celebrate computer science education from other policies, contending that this initiative will help underprivileged children in American schools.

“It’s completely obvious to me that this policy will help American students, American children and, especially more than anything else, American children in communities, backgrounds and races that feel most targeted from some of the things that you may disagree with from this administration,” Partovi adds.

On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump, who is credited with leading this initiative, will join business leaders in Detroit to share more details about the tech sector’s support. Salesforce is one of the confirmed companies.

Trump’s announcement adds yet another twist in his relationship with the tech industry, which has largely condemned his position and policies surrounding immigration and citizenship.

Gerard Robinson, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who served as an education advisor on Trump’s transition team, says even though most tech companies don’t agree with the Trump administration’s policies, in politics, business people will still seek areas where they can agree.

“If Amazon and the tech companies believe this is important because this will help bolster the number of people available for them to hire, then they’ll see that as a good thing,” Robinson explains. “So for this, they'll work together. On other issues, they won’t.”

Output: The US president, Donald Trump, has signed a memorandum directing the Department of Education to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education a priority, and allocate at least $200m in annual grant funding to it. The memo also indicated Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos should take STEM education into account when awarding grants, creating an incentive for schools to teach computer science. Hadi Partovi, the CEO of non-profit Code.org, said the policy would benefit US children "that feel most targeted by some of the things that you may disagree with from this administration".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Twitter allows select users to test new 280 character limit
 Twitter has increased the 140-character limit for posts for the first time in its history.

The social network is allowing a number of its users to test a new 280 limit, claiming the previous restriction meant speakers of some languages were constrained when compared to others.

For example, only 0.4 percent of Tweets in Japanese are 140 characters in length compared to nine percent in English. The average Japanese Tweet is 15 characters long, while the English figure is 34.

Twitter character limit

“For example, when I (Aliza) Tweet in English, I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits,” said Aliza Rosen, Twitter Product Manager.

“Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all. But when Iku Tweets in Japanese, he doesn’t have the same problem. He finishes sharing his thought and still has room to spare.

“This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.”

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While Twitter has experimented with a number of new features that have drastically changed the experience, such as quoted Tweets, threads and images that don’t count towards the limit of a post, the 140 limit has remained sacrosanct.

The same constraint on Direct Messages was lifted in 2015 however.

Twitter said that although there might be an “emotional constraint” to the old limit, it is not worried that longer posts will damage the appeal of the platform.

“This is a small change, but a big move for us,” said CEO Jack Dorsey. “140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!”

What do you know about mobile apps? Try our quiz!

Output: Twitter has raised its maximum character limit for selected users from 140 to 280, arguing that the limit unfairly impacted speakers of some languages. Only 0.4% of Japanese tweets reach 140 characters, for instance, with the average being 15 characters long. In English, by contrast, 9% of tweets hit the 140 character cap, and the average tweet is 34 characters. The social network commented that although there might be an “emotional constraint” to the old 140 character limit, it is not concerned about damage to the platform's overall appeal.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
San Diego Congressman Holds Town Hall For Seniors
 California faces drastic federal funding cuts under a Republican proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Among the hardest hit populations would be low-income seniors. Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, held a town hall Q & A Friday with a group of seniors to talk about their concerns.

The event was held at the Serving Seniors center downtown, which offers meals and services to hundreds of seniors. The seniors packed a dining hall to tell Peters their worries about Medicare and Medicaid.

The congressman said the GOP bill is being rushed through without expert analysis or a thorough discussion in the House of Representatives.

RELATED: Graham-Cassidy Health Bill Would Shift Funds From States That Expanded Medicaid

"If this bill passes that the Senate's considering — Graham Cassidy — that means tens of billions of dollars of lost Medicaid money for California. And it's really gonna hit this group of people really hard," Peters said.

Peters said he plans to continue fighting the proposal when he returns to Washington on Monday.

The seniors also shared concerns over the region's hepatitis A outbreak. Peters said he has requested for the Centers for Disease Control to provide additional treatment programs and oversight.

Output: California faces drastic federal funding cuts under a Republican proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Among the hardest hit populations would be low-income seniors. Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, held a town hall Q & A Friday with a group of seniors to talk about their concerns.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Hepatitis deaths grow by one as cases continue to rise
 The death toll in San Diego’s hepatitis A outbreak increased by one Tuesday, and the region’s top public health official said she has not seen any signs yet of a slowdown in the public health emergency that has now killed 17 people.

Dr. Wilma Wooten said there are currently 49 suspected hepatitis cases and one death still under investigation. That number sat at 44 one week ago and has bounced around from roughly 30 to 50 cases under investigation at any given time for several months, public health officials have said.

“Until the numbers start dropping, we won’t have a clear indication of whether we have turned the corner or not,” Wooten said after making a presentation to the county Board of Supervisors.

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She said the total case count in the current outbreak jumped to 461 Tuesday with 315 hospitalizations since November and 17 deaths. That’s one more death, 17 more cases and 10 more hospitalizations than a week ago.

Labs at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta have confirmed current case counts, and Wooten said her office is still waiting for word from the CDC that an 18th death was caused by one of the 1B hepatitis strains responsible for outbreak cases in San Diego and several other California communities.

The CDC sent two of its workers to San Diego for a three-week period after the health department requested assistance in May. Dr. Nick Yphantides, the health department’s medical director, said the CDC will send representatives to San Diego next week for a planning meeting with local public health staffers.

San Diego County saw a major uptick in hepatitis A vaccinations since Yphantides led a group of local government and health care workers who stood together one week ago to announce a public education campaign, encouraging vaccinations for at-risk groups, frequent hand-washing and other hygiene and sanitation efforts.

In less than one week the number of vaccinations provided throughout the region jumped from nearly 23,000 to more than 42,000, Wooten said Tuesday.

Given that the county’s homeless population was estimated to be about 9,100 in the annual January count, some might think that the vaccination work is finished. But Wooten said there is more to do. She said that the number estimated to have “unstable” living circumstances is about 25,000.

“They might be living on somebody’s couch today, but they’re on the streets tomorrow,” Wooten said.

Illicit drug users are another major cohort of the hepatitis A cases confirmed so far. Wooten said that this population, across all types of drugs, is estimated to be 400,000 countywide. If half of those are already immune, that would leave about 200,000 who could benefit from immunization. So, while 42,000 vaccinations looks like a lot, that number, Wooten said, is probably far from what’s necessary to reach a large percentage of those who are most at risk.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Supervisor Kristin Gaspar wondered about the roughly 25 percent of cases who are not homeless and don’t use illicit drugs.

While these folks may not be in one or both of these high-risk groups themselves, the county has said that many have links to people who are in those high-risk categories. Gaspar asked for more information on precisely how many of the 461 cases occurred among the general population with no link to a high-risk group.

She said knowing that number could go a long way toward easing the fears of the larger community, especially businesses.

“I know that there is a heightened level of concern which trickled down and has impacts on our small business community, our local restaurants, for example, people that might be considering traveling to San Diego,” Gaspar said. “We want people to be informed, but we don’t want people walking around fearful to touch a doorknob.”

Wooten said she did not have a precise breakdown of that 25 percent available Tuesday morning but said the county, with the assistance of the CDC, is working on answering the question.

“We do know that a significant number of that group has had relationships with or worked or had some association with the at-risk groups. But a significant number have not. Staff and the CDC … will be working over the coming weeks to try to characterize any relationships or demographics of that group,” Wooten said.

Meanwhile, the city of San Diego has been busy on the sanitation front. Four portable restrooms went in at Tailgate Park. Located downtown at 14th and L streets, the facilities will be disinfected twice per day and will be monitored by full-time security. The addition brings the total number of downtown restrooms accessible to the homeless to 22, about half of which are open 24 hours a day.

Dozens of hand-washing stations have been installed around San Diego’s urban core and Wooten said work is underway to install more stations in outlying communities.

There were also fresh maneuvers Tuesday on the political front.

In a move to step up pressure on the mayor’s office to address homelessness and the hepatitis A outbreak, four City Council members released a memo Tuesday pushing for a ballot measure focused exclusively on addressing the homeless crisis and the need for affordable housing.

In the meantime, the council members said that Mayor Kevin Faulconer should redirect the $5 million that had previously been allocated in the city budget for a special election to “accelerate the citywide efforts to combat homelessness.”

The statement was signed by Council President Myrtle Cole and members David Alvarez, Barbara Bry and Georgette Gomez, all Democrats.

Their memo comes amid ongoing efforts by a coalition of tourism and civic leaders to get a citizens initiative on the June 2018 ballot that would raise the hotel tax to fund a convention center expansion, expand homeless services and fund road repairs. Some homeless advocates have opposed the effort, arguing that the homeless crisis deserves a ballot measure of its own. So far, no firm measure has been released.

“The position of the four of us is that if we’re going to put anything forward, it should be focused on homelessness and an affordable housing component that keeps people from becoming homeless,” Alvarez said. “The message we’re sending is we’re not interested in holding the homeless hostage to try and pursue other initiatives and another agenda.”

Councilwoman Bry said that, unlike the homeless crisis, expanding the convention center is not an emergency.

“If they were to collect enough signatures for something that focuses on the convention center expansion, my only decision would be what ballot it would go on. And I would vote to put it on the November 2018 ballot,” she said

Craig Gustafson, the mayor’s spokesman, did not address the notion that the homeless issue should be separated from convention center expansion and road repairs, focusing instead on what Faulconer’s proposal would do for the homeless if the council supported it.

“Earlier this year the Mayor proposed a ballot measure to create the first-ever dedicated funding stream for homeless services and affordable housing in the city’s history,” Gustafson said in an email. “It’s unfortunate the Council majority chose to delay the Mayor’s plan for homeless funding until next year, but he remains committed to working with the Council to take meaningful action to reduce homelessness.”

Staff writers Lori Weisberg and David Garrick contributed to this report.

Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

Output: The death toll in San Diego’s hepatitis A outbreak increased by one Tuesday, and the region’s top public health official said she has not seen any signs yet of a slowdown in the public health emergency that has now killed 17 people.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Treating patients as consumers — the key to improving revenue cycle health
 With an increase in high deductible plans, access to mobile healthcare and more transparency into price and quality, patients are more in charge of their health and are shouldering greater financial responsibility for the care they receive.

Patients are becoming the healthcare industry's largest payers, with more than 51 percent having a health plan with a deductible of more than $1,000, according to Carrie Moneymaker, vice president of solution design at Zotec Partners. This makes collecting patient payments vital to the hospital's bottom line. At Becker's Hospital Review 3rd Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago, Ms. Moneymaker presented a way for hospitals to collect patient payments and retain a functional revenue cycle — treating the patient as a consumer.

"It's especially important for healthcare providers to recognize that patients should now be viewed as the consumer. They search the web for this care and the price of this care…We are no longer business to business. We are consumer to business," Ms. Moneymaker said.

Ms. Moneymaker suggested that providers establish a patient portal that allows patients to access their data at all times to allow patients to set up payment plans, place a credit card on file for easy payment and print their statements. Providers should also educate patients early on about upfront payments and their health savings account, set expectations that the service requires payment, strive to have the best customer service and create policies and procedures that are always followed, Ms. Moneymaker added.

In addition, since patients take an average of two times longer than insurers to pay their bills and require more touch points, Ms. Moneymaker said mobile technology such as texting will be a key transforming agent in the future healthcare climate.

Output: With an increase in high deductible plans, access to mobile healthcare and more transparency into price and quality, patients are more in charge of their health and are shouldering greater financial responsibility for the care they receive.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
How Failure of the Obamacare Repeal Affects Consumers
 Obamacare repeal is dead, again. But the months of Republican attacks on the health law will still have consequences for some consumers.

For now, people who get their insurance through Medicaid can rest easy. While some states have applied to make minor changes to their programs, the demise of the Graham-Cassidy legislation on Tuesday means no major cutbacks are on the immediate horizon. But almost every health bill that Republicans proposed this year called for subjecting the program to caps, so that idea seems unlikely to disappear.

Those with employer insurance can also coast along with the status quo; there have been no policy changes affecting the price or comprehensiveness of workplace health plans. The Republican bills would have eliminated rules requiring large employers to offer health benefits and could have weakened protections against annual or lifetime limits on workers’ coverage.

Output: Obamacare repeal is dead, again. But the months of Republican attacks on the health law will still have consequences for some consumers. For now, people who get their insurance through Medicaid can rest easy. While some states have applied to make minor changes to their programs, the demise of the Graham-Cassidy legislation on Tuesday means no major cutbacks are on the immediate horizon.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Obamacare Repeal Fails Again: What’s Next for Health Care?
 "Game of Thrones" fans know that what is dead may never die. The saying may hold true for Obamacare repeal as well.

The collapse of the Senate’s latest health care bill means that Republicans will miss the deadline for repealing the Affordable Care Act this year using a process that would require only 50 votes. The budget rules that enable that process expire on September 30, the end of fiscal year 2017.

Senate Republicans had to decide Tuesday whether to bother with a vote on the doomed bill. Was it better to try to show the conservative grassroots that they tried or to avoid the spectacle of failure on the Senate floor? They opted to pull the bill. But Republicans aren’t giving up entirely on the goal of Obamacare repeal. “We haven’t given up on changing the American health care system,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said. “We are not going to be able to do that this week, but it still lies ahead of us, and we haven’t given up on that.”

Here’s where the health care debate goes next:

The Final Margin Still Matters: Even without a vote, the margin of defeat matters for the future, writes David Leonhardt of The New York Times. “The more senators who oppose Graham-Cassidy, the less likely that yet another version of Trumpcare will emerge. … If Republicans come to terms with their total lack of a reasonable repeal plan, more of them will be open to a bipartisan compromise to fix Obamacare’s flaws.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) issued a statement Tuesday decrying the “lousy process” for the Graham-Cassidy bill, but she did not indicate how she would have voted.

Another Repeal Attempt Could Happen: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans are moving on to tax reform, but some GOP lawmakers reportedly hope to start over by having health care included in the budget blueprint for 2018 — the same blueprint that’s supposed to include instructions for tax reform so that it can pass with a simple GOP majority. Squeezing in health care could threaten the chances that a budget vehicle passes, potentially torpedoing tax reform in the process, and prominent lawmakers in both the House and Senate have already come out against the idea. Still, Graham predicted that his bill could return. “There are 50 votes for the substance,” he said. “There are not 50 votes for the process.” Even if Obamacare repeal is left out of the 2018 budget, Congress could still come back to it soon: One option is to use the fiscal 2019 budget. “It’s not a question of if, but when,” Graham said.

A Bipartisan Fix Seems Unlikely Right Now: About 70 percent of Americans want Congress to work on stabilizing the ACA marketplaces. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said again Monday that once Obamacare repeal is off the table, Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on that. And Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) had made some progress on a plan to guarantee federal subsidies for low-income Americans in exchange for additional flexibility for states on how that money could be spent. But the bipartisan effort stopped when the last-ditch Obamacare repeal appeared to be gaining momentum, and it now looks stalled. "We stopped the bipartisan talks last week because my goal wasn't just to get a bipartisan agreement — it was to get a bipartisan result,” Alexander said Monday. “I didn't see any way to get one in the current political environment." On Tuesday, he said he would consult with Murray to try to find consensus on steps that would help in 2018 and 2019. But other Republican leaders “indicated they have little interest in shoring up the existing insurance market,” The Washington Post reported Tuesday. “Instead, they suggested, the ongoing instability would backfire on Democrats and build momentum for the ACA’s eventual repeal.”

So the 2018 Insurance Market Will See Steep Rate Hikes: Insurers have until Wednesday to finalize contracts with the federal government to sell health plans through the Obamacare marketplace next year. Premiums are set to climb by double digits in many places, and insurers have placed at least part of the blame on the ongoing uncertainty about whether the Trump administration will continue to make cost-sharing reduction payments. The Trump administration has made the payments so far, but has not committed to continuing them. Any Obamacare stabilization efforts at this point are far more likely to affect 2019 rates. A safe bet for the next year: We’ll hear a lot more criticism of the health care law from Republicans, lots of complaints from Obamacare supporters about the administration’s sabotaging the exchanges, and plenty of complaints from Americans about rising health care costs.

Output: "Game of Thrones" fans know that what is dead may never die. The saying may hold true for Obamacare repeal as well.  The collapse of the Senate’s latest health care bill means that Republicans will miss the deadline for repealing the Affordable Care Act this year using a process that would require only 50 votes.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Premiums Likely to Rise Amid Fallout From Graham-Cassidy Health Bill
 In taking one last shot to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republicans derailed a rare bipartisan push to stabilize the nation’s health insurance marketplaces and prevent double-digit rate hikes for many Obamacare customers next year.

Earlier this month, there was a glimmer of hope that partisan warfare over the ACA had finally fizzled on Capitol Hill. Returning from the August recess, the Senate’s health committee launched a bipartisan effort — backed by health insurers and governors — to stabilize the ACA before a critical Sept. 27 deadline.

The push focused on short-term fixes to stave off increases in health insurance premiums, including extending key cost-sharing reduction payments that President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off and granting states more flexibility to establish reinsurance programs, which help insurers pay for their most expensive claims.

But that effort died last week amid the resurgence of partisan health care proposals, most notably after some Senate Republicans, with support from the White House, pushed an 11th-hour bid to revive a repeal effort before the end of the month. While that last-ditch Obamacare repeal push floundered Tuesday, there is little residual momentum among Republicans who supported the stabilization bill to resume negotiations with Democrats.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who spearheaded the bipartisan effort with ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), blamed both sides for killing momentum on a bipartisan fix: Republicans for resuming their Obamacare repeal push and some Democrats for rallying behind a single-payer health care proposal.

“We stopped bipartisan talks last week because my goal wasn’t just to get a bipartisan agreement, it was to get a bipartisan result,” Alexander told reporters Monday. “And I didn’t see any way to get one in the current political environment.”

But on Tuesday Alexander — who said he supported the latest GOP repeal push — reversed course, saying in a statement he would reach out to committee members of both parties about resuming discussions about a “limited bipartisan plan.”

Output: In taking one last shot to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republicans derailed a rare bipartisan push to stabilize the nation’s health insurance marketplaces and prevent double-digit rate hikes for many Obamacare customers next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Graham-Cassidy Would Lead to Unaffordable Costs for Older Adults Who Get Sick or Have a Pre-Existing Condition
 The Graham-Cassidy bill, as released on September 13, 2017 and on September 25, 2017, would lead to unaffordable increases in health care costs for older adults ages 50-64 who get sick or have a pre-existing condition. AARP examined the potential impact of Graham-Cassidy on two typical older consumers in select states and counties.

Health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs could skyrocket under the bill. For example, in Cumberland County, Maine, a 50 year old consumer who is diagnosed with colon cancer could see her total health care costs increase by as much as $53,000 a year. And a 60 year-old consumer with preexisting conditions including diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure, could see his total health care costs increase by as much as $30,200 a year.

Output: The Graham-Cassidy bill, as released on September 13, 2017 and on September 25, 2017, would lead to unaffordable increases in health care costs for older adults ages 50-64 who get sick or have a pre-existing condition.  AARP examined the potential impact of Graham-Cassidy on two typical older consumers in select states and counties.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Public-private partnerships could bring long-term telemedicine to resource-poor areas
 While telemedicine has been touted as a potential care delivery strategy in remote and low-resource settings, successfully sustaining these services has proved difficult. The key to long-term deployment, recent research suggests, could lie in key partnerships between public health systems and entrepreneurial providers of telemedicine.

“Telemedicine is very helpful in extending the reach of healthcare to medically underserved regions.” Radha K. Mahapatra, professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Business, told MobiHealthNews. “However, implementing telemedicine in rural areas in low-income countries poses many challenges due to lack of resources, from technical infrastructure to human capital and financial capital.”

In his case study, which was presented at the Americas Conference on Information Systems 2017, Mahapatra and colleague Sahadeva Sahoo, a retired employee of the Indian Administrative Service, investigated a model currently employed by OTTET Telemedicine, a non-profit, non-government organization servicing India’s Odisha state. OTTET entered an arrangement with the state’s government to augment the local public health system by linking to private specialty hospitals or other large state-run medical facilities.

These connections, Mahapatra and Sahoo wrote, were enabled by information communication technologies (ICT). OTTET built 127 Telemedicine Operations Centers (TOCs) outfitted with laptops, video cameras, mobile diagnostic devices, and patient health record software in rural areas that could link with non-local private care partners.

The program has been a long-running success, according to the study, with 900 telemedicine technicians trained and approximately 500,000 patients served since 2009.

These results, they wrote, can be attributed to multiple factors inherent to the public-private partnership model. When the funding grants of other public health development projects expire, systems often fail due to a lack of local ownership. OTTET’s model, on the other hand, sought “micro entrepreneurs” willing to offset the $9,000 to $12,000 TOC startup costs and have a stake in the locally-operated centers. OTTET also gained local support for the telemedicine program’s success by training unemployed local youths to man each center and operate the telemedicine technology. All the while, these centers enjoyed the support of the state government’s regulatory oversight and technical support — services that required little to no additional costs to the public health service.

Mahapatra and Sahoo’s analysis suggests that OTTET’s program is not only sustainable, but appears to still be growing despite the various difficulties of introducing telemedicine to rural populations. The organization’s strategy to link government services with private stakeholders should be further examined, they argued, and should serve as a blueprint for future rollouts of rural telemedicine programs and other similar initiatives.

“There is a need to conduct more studies to understand the contingent conditions that lead to sustainable development through ICT-based projects. OTTET Telemedicine certainly offers a significant data point in this stream of research, and shines a light on the path to sustainable development,” they concluded.

Output: While telemedicine has been touted as a potential care delivery strategy in remote and low-resource settings, successfully sustaining these services has proved difficult. The key to long-term deployment, recent research suggests, could lie in key partnerships between public health systems and entrepreneurial providers of telemedicine.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Buyer beware: Long-term care costs are surging, survey says
 Tom Murphy

The Associated Press

Long-term care costs are surging and the most expensive option — a private nursing home room — may soon top $100,000 per year.

Growing labor expenses and sicker patients helped push the median cost of care that includes adult day care and assisted living communities up an average of 4.5% this year, according to a survey released Tuesday by Genworth Financial. That's the second-highest increase since Genworth started its survey in 2004.

The cost of home health aide services climbed the most, rising 6%, to $21.50 an hour. Private nursing home care now costs more than $97,000.

Many Americans don't plan for these expenses or understand them until they face them, said Joe Caldwell of the National Council on Aging, which is not tied to the study.

"People don't like to think about it and talk about it ahead of time, so they kind of put off planning and saving for it financially because they don't think it's going to happen to them," he said.

Long-term care can impose a crushing financial burden on individuals or families in part because Medicare, the federal health coverage program for people over age 65, provides limited help. That can force people who don't have private coverage to spend down their assets until they qualify for the government's health insurance program for the poor, Medicaid.

Genworth Financial Inc. sells long-term care coverage and didn't address that cost in its study, which was based on information from 15,000 long-term care providers.

Coverage costs are rising as well, Caldwell said, noting that few employers offer help with that expense like they do with more common forms of coverage such as health insurance.

Initial premiums for long-term care coverage can cost well over $2,000 annually, depending on the customer's age, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, which researches health care issues.

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A third of Americans 40 and older have done no planning for their long-term care needs, according to a 2016 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey.

Caldwell said many people don't realize the limits of Medicare coverage, and he expects the need for long-term care to soar.

"There is this aging baby-boom population that's going to be really hit hard in the coming decade," he said. "We need to figure it out."

For 2017, long-term care prices climbed in part because the cost of labor rose, according to Genworth. Care providers had to raise pay to compete for workers in a tight job market or comply with state requirements for minimum wages. Many also have started providing health insurance to their workers to comply with the Affordable Care Act. The federal law requires all companies with 50 or more full-time employees to offer coverage.

Genworth researchers say costs also are rising because care providers are working with patients that have more complex medical needs and live longer than they did a decade ago. Plus Medicaid offers reimbursement that can fall below the cost of care, which forces long-term care providers to make that up in their prices.

Genworth sees no sign that long-term care expenses are starting to slow, said David O'Leary, CEO of the company's U.S. life division.

"We only see cost of care increasing," he said.

Output: Long-term care costs are surging and the most expensive option — a private nursing home room — may soon top $100,000 per year.


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Automation a threat to workers: Corbyn
 Robots are, in many ways, better than humans – especially if you work in HR. Robots never ask for a pay rise. Robots never steal someone else’s milk from the fridge. Robots almost never make a scene at the Christmas party. So it’s no surprise that automation threatens a lot of jobs, especially as in the long run they’re a fair bit cheaper than humans that consistently draw a salary, get sick and take the skills elsewhere after a time.

Robots may be good for company owners, who get to maximise profits, but it’s not so hot for society as a whole. If an entire workforce is displaced, then what do they do for work? How do they survive? These are difficult questions with serious repercussions that governments have been ducking for some time, as I wrote about in more depth here.

Today at the Labour Party conference, Jeremy Corbyn will attempt to answer some of these questions, and while it’s far easier to do this from the comfort of the opposition benches, it does at least start a discussion. Corbyn’s answer is for companies that replace workers with robots to be taxed in a “new settlement between work and leisure.”

“We need urgently to face the challenge of automation; robotics that could make so much of contemporary work redundant,” the Labour leader will say. “That is a threat in the hands of the greedy but what an opportunity if it’s managed in the interests of society as a whole.

“If planned and managed properly, accelerated technological change can be the gateway for a new settlement between work and leisure, a springboard for creativity and culture, making technology our servant and not our master at long last.”

The Wider Picture

You can disagree with the methods, but this feels quite an important moment to me. People on the fringes of politics have been talking about automation and robotics for a while, but for a keynote speech from a party leader, this could be a watershed moment.

When I wrote about this from my time at Futurefest 2016, a quote from Futurologist David Smith stuck with me: “If you think about the language, it’s very old: we use the ideas of retirement, pensions, taxation, welfare, how we generate money. The language is all wrong. This is half the problem – we can’t really have a conversation until we rethink how it really works.

“There needs to be a debate among politicians who have a view of the future – and there aren’t many – for a political system that has more long-term thinking,” he added. Quite so: our politics simply isn’t built for long-term planning. All a party needs to think about is the next election in five years time. Ten, 20 or 30 years away is somebody else’s problem – until it isn’t anymore.

Corbyn’s intervention may not be fully formed, but the more people that are thinking about the serious issues that automation raises the better.

Output: The leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has suggested that companies which replace their staff with robots ought to be taxed. In a speech delivered at the party's annual conference in Brighton, Corbyn discussed the problem of people being made redundant by machines, saying: "If planned and managed properly, accelerated technological change can be the gateway for a new settlement between work and leisure, a springboard for creativity and culture, making technology our servant and not our master at long last".


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Tesco promises more from rebranded in-store payment wallet
 Tesco has officially launched Tesco Pay+ in a move designed to make payments in-store faster and easier. A replacement for PayQwik Tesco Pay+ replaces PayQwik from Tesco, the popular digital wallet service. First trialled two years ago and now rolled out to stores nationwide, the app has…

Output: UK retail giant Tesco is rebranding its PayQwiq in-store payments system two years after being trialled. Now named Tesco Pay+, the app includes all its predecessor's features but Tesco has promised additional functionality in the future. As an incentive, until 14 January, customers are being offered a bonus loyalty-card point for every £4 ($5.3) spent via Tesco Pay+, which has a higher spending threshold than other contactless payment methods. Tesco said customers using the app visit stores 20% more often and that the payment system frees up staff to do more useful shop-floor tasks.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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AdBlock Plus launches filter for Facebook ads
 Adblock Plus has struck online advertising another blow by offering a new filter for users who want to block Facebook ads.

Ad-blocking apps, plugins, and software are used to strip the majority of advertising out of website pages, social media networks, and other online services.

While they can prevent malvertising -- fraudulent and malicious ads -- from potentially placing users at risk, they can have a massive knock-on effect for companies that rely on advert-generated revenue to stay afloat and keep offering free content online.

There's no easy option -- although The Pirate Bay has recently turned to visitor CPU cryptocurrency mining as an alternative to ads -- beyond negotiation between vendor and ad-block provider, or making ads more seamless to prevent users from turning to such software in the first place.

Some of the time, a game of cat-and-mouse comes into play, with adblockers on a campaign to block adverts, and vendors changing tactic to stop it occurring.

Adblock Plus and Facebook have been battling for some time now. Every time an ad-blocker introduces ways to remove ads, Facebook plays whack-a-mole and brings ads back to the forefront once more.

This week, Adblock Plus swung again, by announcing the addition of a new filter capable of blocking out likely adverts on the social networking site.

The new filter depends on a new "has" filter -- currently available only on Chrome and Opera -- to "read" Facebook posts and pick out the telltale signs of an advert. If elements which appear to be advertising appear, then the post is blocked.

Adblock Plus says that web elements at the top or parent level are often marked with advertising signals. However, Facebook obfuscated these signals by moving ad signatures below the parent level, rendering ad blockers ineffective.

The new filter allows the blocker to snoop under the top of the sub-elements below it, resulting in potentially some success with removing adverts.

"We're outfoxing Facebook's latest attempt to hide the ads on their site so ad blockers can't block them," Adblock says. "We're reasonably sure that Facebook's IT army will eventually outfox our outfoxing. Just like death and paying taxes, Facebook will continue the cat-and-mouse game, ushering in a fix that will stop ad blockers.

"The difference this time around, versus the back and forth our community shared with Facebook last fall, is that due to our community's hard work, we'll be able to respond more quickly to Facebook's next anti-block volley," the company added.

Previous and related coverage

Malvertising campaign strikes top websites worldwide Web domains including The New York Times, BBC, AOL, and MSN became victims of the campaign, designed to spread the Angler exploit kit. Malvertising reached new heights in 2016 The rise in such fraud is giving not only consumers a headache, but also ad agencies and firms which have to mitigate the threat. White Ops, Trade Desk partner to tackle ad fraud The companies aim to block fraudulent ad impressions before they are purchased.

Output: Open-source browser extension Adblock Plus has launched a tool capable of blocking ads on Facebook. The solution goes beneath the parent level of a web page to find hidden elements marked with advertising signatures, a practice Facebook employs to hide its ads from blocking software. However, Adblock doesn't expect to outsmart its rivals for long. "We're reasonably sure that Facebook's IT army will eventually outfox our outfoxing", the company said.


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'Second tipping point' opens door to replacing all existing power
 Michael Liebreich, BNEF Chairman of the Advisory Board, gives his much-anticipated ‘state of the clean energy industry’ keynote at BNEF’s Future of Energy EMEA Summit in London, September 2017. View the presentation slides or the related opinion piece .

About BloombergNEF

BloombergNEF (BNEF) is a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. Our expert coverage assesses pathways for the power, transport, industry, buildings and agriculture sectors to adapt to the energy transition. We help commodity trading, corporate strategy, finance and policy professionals navigate change and generate opportunities.

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Output: The first tipping point for renewable energy, where solar and wind power is cheaper to install than thermal capacity, is upon us in many places already, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder Michael Liebreich. The second tipping point, when it is cheaper to build new renewable capacity than it is to keep existing thermal resources going, will be here by around 2030, increasing the addressable market for renewables to “everything” from incremental replacements, he said.


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Teambrella P2P crypto-based insurance launches in two markets
 Teambrella wants to solve some problems of the insurance industry by eliminating insurance companies. Utilizing smart contracts and cryptocurrencies the Russian developers have built a decentralized insurance platform. Now the first projects have launched, covering pets in South America and bicycles in the Netherlands. Due to the fees, the developers switched from Bitcoin to Ethereum.

Until now, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have mostly demonstrated, that you can build and maintain money in a decentralized way, without states and central banks. That marks a historic innovation, which started a silent revolution that will need decades to penetrate the whole of society.

Money is just the Beginning

For some, however, this is just the beginning. Smart contracts are said not just to revolutionize money, but the concept of a company as a whole. The reason is that with blockchain driven smart contracts you can decentralize any process in which a group of people decides what is done with money under certain rules. The DAO has been an impressive demonstration, that it is possible to use smart contracts to build a complex organization like an investment company – without a company, but just with decentrally organized peers. The DAO failed, but the idea it symbolized lives on. It just started.

One of the most thrilling DAOs is Teambrella. The Russian developers behind the project have worked on the platform, which aims to create a decentralized insurance company, for almost two years. Now they have launched the project with insurance teams in South America and the Netherlands.

Solving Insurance Problems by Eliminating Insurance Companies

“Insurance companies and policyholders have conflicting interests,” the whitepaper explains the problems with traditional insurance, “This is reflected in various bad faith practices of the companies, such as unreasonable delays, denial of payment, etc. Though some jurisdictions try to mitigate this by adopting the tort of insurance bad faith, the general public has a very negative perception of the industry. This, in turn, leads to a high amount of frauds committed by otherwise law-abiding persons.” The developers of Teambrella believe that these problems can be reduced or eliminated by implementing a peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance organization. Further, an insurance DAO can bring insurances to areas in which no insurance is available right now.

The concept of Teambrella is to let peers build groups, for example, to insure bicycles. The peers decide about rules, what is covered, what documents need to be submitted and so on. Formulas from insurance math connect values like risk, reimbursements, and value of the insured object. The members of the team can decide on their own, how much they pay, which is at the same time the maximum amount others pay when they submit a damage by themselves.

When there is a case, every team member can vote in relation to the reimbursement payments it made in the past. To make it more simple to use Teambrella in larger groups, it is possible to give your vote to another member, which receives parts of the reimbursements as a fee. Such “pro-voter” can be a freelancer for insurance companies, which could have the same responsibilities as employees for insurance companies.

The monthly payment of the team members is made in cryptocurrencies on multisig addresses. These addresses are designed in a way that funds can only be released after a defined number of team members signed their vote.

Pioneering with Pet Insurance in Peru and Argentina

After years of development, Teambrella recently started. The first teams are niche cases in South America and the Netherlands. “We are interested to see how Teambrella will work in different contexts and cultures. These first teams are the pioneers; we want to go further in exploring more opportunities for P2P coverage and collaborating with the various communities,” developer Alex Paperno explains.

There are two teams; one connects cat owners in Peru with dog owners in Argentina to insure their cats, in case they get sick or need surgery. The second group covers bicycles in the Netherland, the country famous for its love of this particular mode of transport. Both teams have just started, Paperno explains, “In Peru, we have a team of 80 pet owners, in Argentina and the Netherlands we are still accepting new team members.”

Switching from Bitcoin to Ethereum

During the first years of development, Teambrella used P2SH addresses for bitcoin payments. However, during the past month, the team switched to Ethereum. Paperno explained why:

“While bitcoin was naturally the best choice back then, we did not design Teambrella to be bound by one cryptocurrency. Using bitcoin turned out to be a challenge as long as the fees were growing up to $5, and that is incompatible with our model. If the situation with Bitcoin changes, we may reconsider the decision, though we plan to implement support of ShapeShift soon so we could work with multiple cryptocurrencies.”

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Output: Russian based insurtech Teambrella is trialling its peer-to-peer blockchain-based platform in South America and the Netherlands. The firm is making use of blockchain to create "teams" of self-insured customers, insuring their pets in Peru and Argentina and their bikes in Holland. The goal is to create a platform where peers can insure each other, bypassing an insurance company. Lauded as the first decentralised autonomous organisation for insurance, Teambrella aims to make use of smart contracts which payout following a team vote in the event of a claim.


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FT.com uncovers $1.3m a month of domain spoofing against its site
 The Financial Times has investigated the scale of domain spoofing occurring against its site, and has been shocked by the results.

The publisher has found display ads against inventory masquerading as FT.com on 10 separate ad exchanges and video ads on 15 exchanges, even though the FT doesn’t even sell video ads programmatically, with 300 accounts selling inventory purporting to be the FT’s. The scale of the fraud uncovered is vast — the equivalent of one month’s supply of bona fide FT.com video inventory was fraudulently appearing in a single day. The FT has estimated the value of the fraudulent inventory to be £1 million ($1.3 million) a month.

“The scale of the fraud we found is jaw-dropping,” said Anthony Hitchings, the FT’s digital advertising operations director. “The industry continues to waste marketing budgets on what is essentially organized crime.”

Jon Slade, Financial Times chief commercial officer, on Sept. 27 planned to notify the exchanges in question by mail to remove the fraudulent inventory, with the promise that the FT will check back in a month to ensure action has been taken. Hitchings wouldn’t say which exchanges were at fault but added that they are “known” names. A second letter is on its way to 11,000 of the FT’s client and agency contacts, explaining the problem and asking them to watch out for inventory that isn’t sourced from the two exchanges the FT sells its display inventory through, Google AdX and TrustX.

The fraud investigation coincided with the FT’s adoption of ads.txt, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab’s tool created to help publishers combat ad fraud — specifically domain spoofing, but also arbitrage via unauthorized reselling. Other publishers including the Guardian and News UK have also adopted ads.txt, though uptake has been slow in the U.K. In his letter, Slade urged the buy side to push for publisher adoption of ads.txt.

“We are working with partners to support the adoption of ads.txt by all publishers, as part of our ongoing efforts to help clean up digital advertising. By eliminating this extremely widespread form of fraud, budgets will work that much harder for advertisers and the revenue will reach working media to fund the independent, high-quality journalism which society, especially today, depends upon,” Slade wrote in the letter to client and agency contacts.

Domain spoofing has long dogged digital advertising, and premium publishers are top targets for fraudsters, as advertisers will pay a lot for their inventory. The scale at which publishers have become domain-spoofing targets was brought under a sharp spotlight in February after the “Methbot” scheme, which spoofed more than 6,000 publishers in the U.S.

“This is what inspires fraudsters to take a vanilla URL and dress it up as a comScore top 50 site, so it appears more attractive to DSPs. This results in the fraudsters getting paid, the advertiser having to deal with some terrible PR about their brand appearing on a random site and the publisher is left out of pocket. Ads.txt is going to help stamp a lot of these bad actors out,” said ad tech consultant Paul Gubbins.

The Financial Times has long favored direct deals with advertisers, so programmatic ads only account for 5 percent of its advertising revenue. That could mean other publishers who rely more on programmatic revenue could have an even bigger domain-spoofing problem.

It’s not the first time the FT has looked into fraud on its own site, although it is the first time it has conducted this particular test. Previously, a bank came to the FT to talk about poor performance of its ads, which the bank had bought via a trading desk, according to Hitchings. “The brand thought they had bought a homepage takeover for the day and were expecting high impact. Not a single ad appeared,” he said.

We’ll discuss the next phase of programmatic at the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe. Learn more here.

Output: The Financial Times is urging fellow publishers to adopt the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab’s tool ads.txt, after it uncovered £1m ($1.3m) a month worth of fraudulent inventory that purported to be the FT's posted across 10 ad exchanges and 15 video exchanges. "The industry continues to waste marketing budgets on what is essentially organised crime,” said Anthony Hitchings, the FT’s digital advertising operations director, who would only say the exchanges were "known names". In February, the domain spoofing scheme Methbot fooled more than 6,000 US publishers.