Features

By Tim Johnson

WASHINGTON — A digital worm powered by stolen National Security Agency (NSA) software caused $1 billion in damages when it infected hundreds of thousands of computers in less than a week, a Florida digital security company says. And new attacks may be in the offing.

Hackers unleashed the worm, dubbed WannaCry, on May 12. Some 200,000 to 300,000 computers were affected in at least 150 countries.

“The estimated damage caused by WannaCry in just the initial four days would exceed $1 billion, looking at the massive downtime caused for large organisations worldwide,” Stu Sjouwerman, chief executive at KnowBe4, a Clearwater, Florida, firm that helps firms avoid phishing efforts, wrote in a statement.

The damage estimates include loss of data, lost productivity, disruptions to business, forensic investigation, reputational harm and other factors, the company said.

The digital contagion encrypted the hard drives of computers. Hackers then demanded payment in the digital currency bitcoin to unfreeze the hard drives. 

The hackers provided three bitcoin wallets, or repositories, for payment of a minimum of $300.

An automated tracker of bitcoin payments reports that 302 payments have been made to the wallets, totalling $116,542, indicating that most victims paid no ransom and probably lost all the data on their computers.

Depending on one’s perspective, that might seem to be a relatively small haul for the hackers, given the massive, raw pain they inflicted on users worldwide.

“I would say it’s low, comparatively, especially considering the number of infections and attention it received,” said Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, a Santa Clara, California, computer software security firm.

“One theory is that it was never about the money,” said Perry Carpenter, strategy officer at KnowBe4. “It was more about creating a large-scale bit of noise. The other theory is that it was about the money but it was intended to be small-scale … and got out of hand.”

Among the companies and institutions affected by the attack were FedEx, automotive plants for Renault and Nissan, Spain’s telecommunications giant Telefonica, and some 48 hospitals and clinics of the British National Health Service. Russia was the nation hardest hit.

The WannaCry epidemic utilised one of a handful of powerful cybertools stolen from the NSA and leaked to the public in March by an underground group, The Shadow Brokers.

Cyber security experts warned this week that other leaked NSA tools have been detected and, while currently harmless, could be “weaponised” into something scarier than WannaCry.

A Croatian security adviser, Miroslav Stampar, announced on Sunday on a website favoured by programmers that he had discovered a new self-replicating worm, dubbed EternalRocks, that uses seven leaked NSA exploits, or techniques. EternalRocks allows hackers to dominate and remotely control infected computers, but it has yet to be detected conducting malicious activity.

The new worm could be programmed to sit silently on computers, ready to search for password files and credit card and bank account information, said John Kronick, director of cyber security for the advanced technology group of PCM Group.

“Very clearly, that will be more damaging because those people won’t know that that’s happening,” Kronick said. “It’ll be out the door and you won’t even know it.”

A debate intensified, meanwhile, about whether a hacking group linked to North Korea was behind the WannaCry epidemic.

A prominent cyber security firm, Symantec, said its researchers had detected multiple instances of unique code and tools used in the WannaCry epidemic that had been used previously by Lazarus, a name given to a hacking group linked to North Korea.

Symantec declared Monday that it was “highly likely” that “Lazarus was behind the spread of WannaCry”. A second company, FireEye, concurred on Tuesday that WannaCry shared code with attacks previously believed carried out by North Korea, including a 2014 hack of Sony Pictures and a 2016 theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank.

Dissent has been vigorous, however.

“The release of attribution evidence is premature, inconclusive and distracting,” James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a Washington research centre, said in a blog posting. Scott argued that Lazarus has never been proved to be a North Korean state entity and is more sophisticated than the WannaCry perpetrators.

A rogue faction of Lazarus could be involved, Scott said, although the malware “appears to have been developed with Chinese keyboard settings and used an automatic English translation for ransom demands.”

Carpenter, the KnowBe4 expert, said experts were “always looking for ‘tells’ within the code” and while some evidence pointed a finger at North Korea “there’s no 100 per cent certainty around that”.

“There are other intelligence services, of course, that could insert that same bit of code as a false flag,” Carpenter said. “We actually know that we [the US government] do that in some cases.”

By Deborah Netburn 

It’s no surprise that a change in our planet’s climate would affect our coastlines, our weather patterns and our food supply. But here is something you may not have considered before: global warming might also affect how well we sleep at night.

In a paper published Friday in Science Advances,  researchers show that when local temperatures get unusually high people do not sleep as well as they usually do. And if climate trends continue, we can expect to have more frequent heat waves that also last longer.

“There are going to be lots and lots of impacts of climate change and this is just another factor in a mosaic of negative factors,” said Nick Obradovich, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab who led the work.

If you have ever weathered a particularly sweaty summer in a stuffy apartment with no air conditioning, then you know how hard it can be to fall asleep when the temperature is sky high.

It turns out that we actually need to cool down a bit before we go to sleep. Previous research has shown that just before bedtime our core temperature dips, signalling that it is time for some shut-eye.

Our bodies have a few mechanisms for shedding the excess heat; the blood vessels in our skin dilate, which helps heat escape through the skin, and our hands and feet get warmer, which helps move heat away from the core.

However, lab studies have shown that the body has trouble shedding its core heat when the room temperature is uncomfortably warm. These studies have also found that elevated core temperature is associated with trouble falling and staying asleep.

Obradovich, who studies the social effect of climate change, was curious if he could find evidence that heat waves and other temperature anomalies had any influence on people in the real world. The idea came to him when he was struggling to sleep in his own just-barely air-conditioned apartment in the midst of a particularly hot stretch in the fall of 2015.

“We had an old window unit that could barely cool the living room, and certainly couldn’t send cool air back to the bedroom,” he said. “At night I was tossing and turning, no sheets. And it wasn’t just me. The next day I noticed that my friends and colleagues were all lethargic and grumpy.”

Obradovich wondered if he could get more quantitative evidence that would show people don’t sleep as well when the temperature starts to climb. To find out, he turned to a survey of 765,000 US residents that asked respondents to say how many of the past 30 days they felt they did not get enough rest or sleep and compared their answers with weather data at the city level.

The results were telling: the higher the temperature was compared to average, the greater the number of nights that people report not being able to sleep well.

“If the entire United States experienced a warming of 1°C, that would be associated with 9 million nights of insufficient sleep per month,” Obradovich said.

Further analysis revealed that hot nights don’t affect all of us the same way. He found that people who earn $50,000 or less a year are three times more likely to report a poor night’s sleep on an unusually warm night than those who make more than $50,000. That result could be because poorer people do not have air conditioners or do not have the money to run them.

In addition, he found that people over 65 are twice as likely to have trouble sleeping on a hot night than their younger neighbours. This might be due to a previously reported result that older people have more difficulty regulating their body temperature than younger folks.

Finally, Obradovich looked at the predicted effects of climate change on temperature in the future and found that, on average, by 2050 rising temperatures will cause six additional night of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals, and by 2099 it will cause an excess of approximately 14 nights of tossing and turning per 100 individuals.

SAN FRANCISCO — Privacy experts are calling the global ransomware attack that hit 150 countries a prime example of why requiring tech companies to create backdoors into computer programmes is a bad idea, because of the danger those digital keys might be stolen.

“This is a fine example of the difficulty of keeping secrets,” said Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital liberties non-profit based in San Francisco.

The WannaCry ransomware attack hit on Friday and was relatively quickly contained, but not before it infected at least 200,000 computers. The software used a flaw in the code for the Windows operating system that Microsoft and others said was stolen from the National Security Agency or a group believed to be affiliated with it, where it is thought to constitute part of a US cyber-attack arsenal.

The NSA has said it did not create ransomware tools, but has not addressed the issue of whether the original exploitable flaw the ransomware was based on came from stolen NSA cyber tools.

The fact that they appear to have been stolen from a US government-linked group and are now in the public domain has bolstered tech companies’ contention that security backdoors would do more harm than good — simply because these work-arounds risk ending up in criminal hands.

“This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s chief legal counsel, said in a blog post.

“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” he wrote. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage.”

Government officials and law enforcement have pressed tech companies to write security keys into computer programmes and operating systems that would aid them in gaining access to the e-mail, networks or smartphones of suspected criminals.

This was the heart of the legal battle waged between Apple and the FBI for 43 days last year as the agency sought Apple’s help to write software that would aid it in breaking into an iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.

A bill proposed last August by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would have required companies to provide technical support to get to encrypted data, but did not specify how that would have to be done.

During its legal battle, Apple argued that it should not be required to write code to allow the FBI to try to get into the iPhone because it was simply too dangerous to do so — once written, it could too easily get hacked, leaked and misused.

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post at the time, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi sounded eerily prescient about the damage such stolen tools could wreak.

“Great software has seemingly limitless potential to solve human problems — and it can spread around the world in the blink of an eye. Malicious code moves just as quickly, and when software is created for the wrong reason, it has a huge and growing capacity to harm millions of people,” he wrote.

The ransomware attack is linked to code that started off with a US government group, but ended up in criminal hands. A group called the Shadow Brokers said it stole the Windows vulnerabilities, also called exploits, and posted them online in mid-April, leading Microsoft to post a patch for those flaws.

That was not enough: Because the vulnerability was in older Windows operating systems, one of which Microsoft had stopped supporting, users around the world who had not applied the patch were left vulnerable when a hacker organisation — now thought to be the same one behind the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack — used the flaw to create malware that paralysed computers.

The government’s argument, most often articulated by former FBI director James Comey, was that law enforcement needed to be able to overcome encryption and gain access to computer systems in order to fight law breakers and terrorists who have access to increasingly powerful digital tools to hide their activities.

In March, Comey suggested that the United States and other countries could create a system to allow legal access to tech devices, “a framework, for when government access is appropriate”.

The FBI declined to comment.

It is reasonable to argue that mandating some kind of lawful access mechanisms could add some “unquantifiable additional degree of insecurity” to software and electronic devices, said Adam Klein, a senior fellow at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC who studies national security and surveillance.

“The real question is whether the social value of solving some additional set of crimes would be less than or greater than the social cost that the risk of key theft would create. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but it’s not a frivolous question.”

Tech companies and privacy advocates fear that there is simply no way for digital keys to any system to be 100 per cent protected.

“Even if you design backdoors with the goal of only allowing access by law enforcement, as a practical matter there’s no way to ensure that the bad actors don’t gain access,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.

What happened this week will not be lost on judges in the future should the government again try to get tech companies to build backdoor access into programmes, said Kristen Eichensehr, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles with an expertise in national security law and cybersecurity.

“What we’ve seen happen with WannaCry lends credence to that — and certainly and any court is going to take it into account. The government has shown that it itself is persistently incapable of keeping its tools secure,” she said.

Watching elements of technology reach the tipping point is fascinating, if only because they usually exceed even the most optimistic forecast. In most cases it happens much faster than expected.

An example: digital photography passed the 50 per cent market threshold circa 2003. At the turn of the century die-hard purists who would still swear by film cameras, thinking the big change would take at least till 2030 actually to happen. Another example: smartphones beat “dumbphones” early 2013. Who would have thought that this would happen so soon? Who still uses a phone-only mobile handset today? 

Focus now is on online shopping. Though there are significant discrepancies from country to country, the trend is clear the world over. In the USA the tipping point was reached early this year. Statistics published on www.twice.com indicate that “online orders have finally surpassed in-store purchases.” It is however noted that this excludes buying your groceries.

Whether on Amazon, Ali Baba or less gigantic sites, online shopping is definitely the most obvious digital trend, perhaps alongside online banking.

The economic and the societal impacts of the phenomenon should not be underestimated. Imagine the majority of the shops disappearing from the streets or the malls! Life in the city would not be the same.

The dramatic increase of online shopping volume can be analysed — many are certainly doing it every day — and countless elements can emerge to explain and to quantify the phenomenon. Notwithstanding sophisticated details, marketing criteria and studies by specialists, a couple of these elements are obvious and do not require fancy analysis or a lot of figures.

It is steadily becoming more expensive and time consuming to do in-store shopping, especially in big cities with these dreadful traffic jams, while at the same time smartphone apps are making online shopping a breeze and a pleasure. Combine these two elements and you easily understand why doing it online is the way to go.

Shopping online inside a country is one thing and placing international orders is another. Indeed, restrictions, shipping cost and sometimes unpredictable customs duties work as deterrents. And yet, despite these limitations, international online shopping is also clearly on the increase, though they may produce different statistics from country to country, understandably.

Online shopping is already a common habit among a good part of the population in Jordan, not to mention online ordering of fast food and hubbly-bubbly via smartphone apps. 

Big countries like Canada, Russia, USA, Australia, India and similar ones, have already crossed or will very soon cross the 50 per cent mark. On the other hand smaller countries, and if they also impose severe imports restrictions and heavy customs duties, will take a few years to reach the tipping point where e-commerce will exceed in-store purchases.

Regardless of when exactly it is going to happen, online shopping is going to be the norm very soon, in most countries, as surely as digital photography, smartphones and other digital revolutions did it. The tipping point is around the corner.

As kids, I participated in a party game that I absolutely detested. It was called “passing the parcel” and was a childish version of musical chairs, where people walked in a circle till the music played, and sat down when it stopped. But because the chairs were lesser than the participants, the ones who could not find a seat, got out. In the kiddie variety, a packet was passed from one child to another and whoever was left holding the package when the song concluded, had to undertake a punishment.

The penalties were more or less the same and varied between reciting a nursery rhyme, jumping like a rabbit, pulling the ear of the person sitting next to you, sketching a mountain, etcetera. The recitation and hopping bit I disliked intensely but the moment I was awarded the “ear pulling of neighbour” punishment, I got to work immediately, and performed it with tremendous enthusiasm. Understandably, this did not make me very popular. Therefore, when the tables were turned, and I was at the receiving end, my poor ears were not spared either.

Meanwhile, the rule in my house is that if we receive a gift of chocolates or éclairs, we open the packaging, admire the contents, and then carefully repack it to pass it on to whosoever invites us next. Nobody is allowed to eat just one or two sweets, and unless one is ravenous enough to consume the contents of the entire box, one is strongly discouraged from wasting the rest.

I don’t remember exactly who made this regulation but in a parody of my childhood party game, we have successfully rotated the presents diligently, for the last several decades. I often wonder that if other people follow the same caveat, a day might arrive when the parcel, after doing the rounds of several houses, will come back to the sender.

All these memories come flooding back when I am gifted a box of gloriously golden, almond and walnut stuffed dates recently. A product of palm trees, and cultivated for centuries, it is one of the sweetest fruits around and comes in many different assortments. Even though they can be eaten fresh, dates are often dried to resemble raisins or plums. With its lower moisture content, the dehydrated version is a more concentrated source of nutrients than the fresh one.

Now, where dates are concerned, you either love them or hate them, and I belong to the former category. There are very few people who can be indifferent to them as the reaction this simple fruit invokes, can verge on the extreme.

So, when I begin to examine the heavy box, full of delicious dates that is presented to us, I have to exercise all my self control to not break the cellophane covering and eat a couple of them. With a heavy heart I put the lid back and repack the gift to pass it on to my neighbour, who has invited us for dinner.

“Aha! My favourite caramelised dates”, exclaims my friend’s husband as soon as he unwraps the parcel.

“Don’t open the seal, pass it here please”, my friend dictates.

“But you didn’t let me try the ones we got last month too”, he complains.

“Those were stuffed with almonds”, she says.

“So are these! Where did you get them from?” he asks me.

“Peter gifted me, we gifted Paul, Paul gifted you and you gifted us” he chuckles when I don’t answer.

As a more mainstream brand large comfortable, spacious and sporty large rear-drive saloon, the Dodge Charger is a rare but appreciated commodity at a time when such cars are usually the preserve of pricier premium brands.

In a state of near continuous development the current iteration of Dodge’s long-running Charger arrived in 2015 as a face-lifted model with heavily revised design, reworked interior, improved infotainment system and a standard 8-speed automatic gearbox across the range, including the mid-range 5.7-litre V8 powered R/T. 

Moody and modern

Incrementally upgraded since first arriving in 2006 based on the LX platform, developed during Dodge’s parent Chrysler brand’s association with Mercedes-Benz, the second generation arrived as an evolutionary model using an upgraded LD platform by 2012.

Sporting a more contemporary front with rounded lights, deep-set yet slim and level grille, the 2015 Charger has a distinctly more modern aesthetic than its overtly retro-influenced predecessor, but is said to be subtly influenced by the moody, dramatic and now iconic 1969 Charger coupe.

Long, wide and comparatively low, with discretely scalloped bonnet ridges, recessed grille and LED outline for its browed headlight units, the Charger has a moody and assertive presence, while a black centre bumper section lends its fascia a longer and hungrier edge in R/T spec, as driven.

Sculpted and chiselled with deeply ridged sides and a rakishly descends roofline create a sense of motion and are little changed for 2015. Meanwhile its full-length rear lights are reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s Chargers.

Relaxed yet muscular

Offered with four engine options including a V6 and two high performance SRT and SRT Hellcat V8 units, the driven R/T is the most traditional, and the only non-SRT division V8 version. Carried over unchanged, the R/T’s muscular yet languid naturally aspirated 5.7-litre HEMI V8 engine is a compact and traditional American overhead 16-valve design. 

Robust and progressive in power delivery yet rich in torque across the range, it pulls responsively off the line, if without the jackhammer urgency and relentlessness of the SRT versions.

Charismatic and rumbling, the Charger R/T’s 5.7 Hemi is distinctly low-revving in character, with a 5800rpm rev limit and is capable of running on cheaper grade 91RON petrol (93RON is recommended). At its best in its abundant mid-range, it is flexible and muscular, if not heady and peaky. Developing 370BHP at 5250rpm and 395lb/ft, the Charger R/T is progressive and responsive, and in the absence of official figures, is estimated to carry its hefty 1934kg mass through the 0-100km/h dash swiftly in around 5.5-seconds. 

Confident comfort

With responsive throttle control and progressive delivery the Charger R/T effectively puts power down through its driven rear wheels, with less need for stability control interventions than more powerful iterations. Its smooth and slick shifting 8-speed gearbox with its numerous ratios including more aggressive lower gears and more relaxed higher gears provides improved acceleration, flexibility, refinement and efficiency. One, however, feels that the Charger R/T would have been better served with the 390BHP and 410b/ft version of the same engine as deployed its Ram 1500 stable-mate. 

A large and weighty, but well-balanced, saloon, the Charger drives with confidence and stability at speed and through corners, as demonstrated during test drive at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit.

Fitted with fixed rate “performance suspension” in Dodge-speak, the Charger R/T’s body control is good for its size and weight, but is set-up for a more comfortable ride than its more tautly set-up high performance SRT sister models, and so leans more, but feels more supple and forgiving, and less firmly buttoned down.

Refined and accommodating

Composed, compliant and more agile than its size suggests, the R/T rides on huge 245/45R20, while its electric-assisted steering is accurate and quick at 2.6-turns lock-to-lock, but isn’t into as crisp or tidily composed turning into corners as the next model up, the SRT 392, which seems to be the best resolved model in the charger range.

Highly refined inside and well insulated, the Charger R/T instils confidence and through corners feels balanced, with slight understeer on turn-in if pushed too hard. Its long wheelbase and large tyres provide good rear grip and progressive weight shift.

A vast and accommodating saloon, the Charger R/T’s cabin is hunkered down owing to its high window line, but is spacious and features very comfortable seats. In front room and visibility are good, while boot space and rear cabin width and legroom are plus points.

Rear headroom is fine, but considering its rakish roofline, the Charger’s rear seats are positioned slightly higher than ideal. Well-finished with good quality layouts, textures and high equipment levels, the Charger features an intuitive, versatile and highly capable Uconnect infotainment system.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5.7-litre, cast-iron block/aluminium head, in-line V8-cylinders

Bore x Stroke: 99.5 x 90.9mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, OHV

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive, electronic limited-slip differential

Gear ratios: 1st 4.70 2nd 3.13 3rd 2.10 4th 1.67 5th 1.28 6th 1.0 7th 0.84 8th 0.67

Reverse/final drive ratios: 3.53/2.62

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 370 (375) [277] @5250rpm

Specific power: 65.4BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 191.3BHP/ton

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 395 (536) @4200rpm

Specific torque: 94.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 277.1Nm/tonne

Rev limit: 5800rpm

0-100km/h: 5.5-seconds (est.)

Top speed: 235km/h (est.)

Fuel consumption, city/highway: 14.7-/9.4-litres/100km

Fuel capacity: 70-litres

Fuel requirement, recommended (minimum): 93(91)RON

Length: 5040mm

Width: 1905mm 

Height: 1479mm

Wheelbase: 3052mm

Track, F/R: 1610/1620mm

Ground clearance: 136mm

Kerb weight: 1934kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 53 per cent/47 per cent

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.304

Headroom, F/R: 981/930mm

Legroom, F/R: 1061/1019mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1510/1472mm

Hip room, F/R: 1428/1425mm

Cargo volume: 467-litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 11.5-metres

Lock-to-lock: 2.6-turns

Suspension F/R: Unequal double wishbones/multi-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated perforated discs 345 x 28mm/320 x 22mm

Brake callipers, F/R: 2-/1-pistons

Tyres: 245/45R20

Ambassadors in Jordan Speak Out: Foreign Policy Making in a Changing World

Edited by Marwan Asmar

Amman: Middle East Studies Centre, 2017

Pp. 102

This brief but fact-filled book offers a unique glimpse into the world of diplomacy and Jordan’s relations with five different countries — Arab and/or Asian — and Europe. It consists of lectures by the ambassadors to Jordan from Morocco, Malaysia, Sudan, Turkey, Pakistan and the European Union, delivered as part of the “World and Us” programme in 2015-16. As explained in the preface by Jawad Al Hamad, president of the Middle East Studies Centre (MESC), the “World and Us” programme “revolves around hosting foreign envoys in a seminar-based discussion to present lectures to a select group of politicians, decision-makers, activists and academics”. It aims “to create greater understanding between world countries and this crucial strategic region of the globe”. (pp. 7-8)

Marwan Asmar, political researcher and editor of the book, introduces each ambassador with a short political bio. In his view, the lectures are “invaluable because they are inevitably interdisciplinary”, tackling “issues involving economics, finance, agriculture, education, culture, administration, sociology and development”. Although these subjects are studied in academia, “the lectures expostulated by the ambassadors are different because they are practitioners of diplomacy”. (p. 101)

While all the ambassadors address questions related to stability and security in the context of the current regional turmoil, as well as issues of trade and other forms of cooperation and exchange with Jordan, each has a different emphasis.

Morocco’s Ambassador Al Hassan Abdul Khaleq devotes much of his lecture to the political and constitutional reforms enacted in his country, noting similarities in the approaches adopted by Jordan and Morocco. It is with pride that he tells of the formation of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to handle past human rights violations, a first in the Arab world: “Moroccans took a brave step to look at themselves and their history without complications to reconcile their past and bypass its wrongs.” (p. 18)

Malaysia’s Ambassador Zakri Bin Jaafar shares his country’s development model whereby an ethnically diverse society has achieved greater equality and integration. He speaks of key economic cooperation agreements between Malaysia and Jordan, but considers the most outstanding exchange to be in education: “Malaysian students form the biggest number of non-Arab students here in Jordan, numbering over 3200.” (p. 29)

Meanwhile, almost 1000 Jordanians are studying in Malaysia. He also reminds that Malaysia has always been “very vocal and very strong on the issue of Palestine”. (p. 33) 

Sudan’s Ambassador Elsadig Bakheit Elfaki reviews the special relations prevailing between Sudan and Jordan, stressing cooperation in the fields of agriculture, education, security and medicine in particular, and giving Jordanian doctors and specialists credit for reviving the medical sector in his country. 

Turkey’s Ambassador Sedat Onal stresses commonalities between Jordan and his country “in the way they have come to represent moderation, peaceful coexistence, stability, and a positive agenda” that should be generated in the region as a whole. “We need to engage in soul-searching… to get back to the original sense of togetherness this region has lived in for centuries.” (p. 53)

Besides economic cooperation, he advocates a political solution in Syria and dealing with the refugee crisis--concerns that Turkey shares with Jordan. 

EU Ambassador Andrea Matteo Fontana speaks about Europe’s new global security strategy and Neighbourhood Policy, which includes Jordan and the Middle East. Quite candidly he acknowledges that in the past Europe set priorities regardless of whether these were really shared by its neighbours. “We would like to change that to achieve a higher degree of ownership… we are going to identify less priorities… but these are fully owned by our partners.” (p. 76)

Pakistan’s Ambassador Lt-Gen. Shafat Ullah Khan names cardinal issues of Pakistan’s foreign policy vis-à-vis China, Muslim states, Palestine and Kashmir, before proceeding to detail Pakistan’s historical relations with Jordan in the political, economic, technical, educational and military fields. He names many examples to illustrate his assertion that “Jordan and Pakistan always stand together in time of need”. (p. 88)

Taken together, the ambassadors’ words pay tribute to Jordan’s positive role in the region and the value they attach to its stability. They also reveal the difficulties of formulating policies in a changing world, as well as many parallels among these countries’ positions on settling conflicts and countering terrorism. “Ambassadors in Jordan Speak Out” can be obtained from MESC (e-mail: [email protected].)

PARIS — Weight-loss balloons swallowed rather than surgically inserted in the stomach were shown to be safe and effective in preliminary trials, according to findings unveiled on Thursday at a medical conference.

So-called intragastric balloons have been used for decades to help obese patients shed unwanted kilos. Inflated with water, the devices curb hunger and make it easier to diet by inducing a feeling of fullness.

Up to now, however, they could only be implanted in the stomach surgically, a costly procedure requiring general anaesthesia or sedation.

In a small trial led by Roberta Ienca, a researcher of experimental medicine at Sapienza University of Rome, 42 obese patients — 29 men and 13 women — were fitted with balloons that were swallowed before being inflated with liquid.

“A catheter is attached to the balloon, which is folded into a capsule,” Ienca explained to AFP.

A doctor fills the balloon via the tiny tube, which is then removed via the mouth with a tug. “This process takes just a few seconds,” she added.

The body-mass index (BMI) of the volunteers varied between 30 and 45. The threshold for obesity is a BMI — one’s weight in kilos divided by one’s height (in centimetres) squared — of 30.

The balloons remained in the stomach for 16 weeks, during which time patients were put on a low-carbohydrate, low-calorie diet.

At the end of that time, an internal release valve automatically opens and drains the balloon, which is then excreted.

On average, volunteers shed more than 15 kilos, which amounted to 31 per cent of excess weight.

No serious side effects were reported.

Seeking FDA approval

After the trial, patients were transitioned to a Mediterranean diet, heavy on vegetables and olive oil, and light on protein and starch.

The new technique “appears to be a safe and effective weight-loss method”, Ienca commented in a statement.

Because the swallowable balloon “does not require endoscopy, surgery or anaesthesia, this may make it suitable for a larger population of obese patients not responding to diet or lifestyle treatment”.

It could also lead to significant cost savings, she added.

“In itself, gastric balloons are not a long-term solution for weight loss,” Simon Cork, a researcher in investigative medicine at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study, commented after reviewing the results.

“Nevertheless, gastric balloons are still useful for some patients, and the introduction of a device which doesn’t require surgery to implant is a positive step forward.”

Developed by US-based Allurion Technologies, the system is already marketed in Europe in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece. It is also available in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The company intends to begin the FDA approval process in the United States soon, Ienca said.

The findings were presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Porto, Portugal, which ran through May 20.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Google announced on Wednesday it was bringing its digital assistant to Apple iPhones as part of its effort to win the battle with tech rivals on artificial intelligence (AI).

At its annual developers conference at an outdoor concert-venue near its main campus in Mountain View, California, Google unveiled its vision for computing centred around artificial intelligence.

“We are now witnessing a new shift in computing: the move from a mobile-first to an AI first world,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during an opening presentation.

“It is forcing us to reimagine our products for a world that allows a more natural, seamless way of interacting with technology.”

Those interactions, for Google, include using artificial intelligence to let people engage computers conversationally, have software anticipate needs, and let smartphone cameras “recognise” what they see.

“In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all of our products and applying machine learning to solve problems,” Pichai said.

Google Assistant, the centre of its AI efforts, is in a fierce battle with rivals such as Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft Cortana and Apple’s Siri to be the top choice for use in smartphones as well as connected homes, cars and a range of other devices.

“Siri’s got company, and all these other guys are pretty serious about it,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

Artificial intelligence is being woven into Google’s free Gmail service, used by more than a billion people, for features such as suggesting responses to messages.

For example, opening an email containing an invitation to dinner might trigger a prompt to reply “I’m in.”

Smartphones get eyes

Google machine vision capabilities are being used to enable services such as recognising who is in pictures and what they are doing, as well as translate languages in signs viewed through smartphone cameras, demonstrations showed.

Advanced “Lens” features are being added first to the Google Photo application, which is available free.

Aiming a smartphone camera at a flower will prompt it to be identified; while aiming it at a complex password and hotspot name on a router will let it automatically log into the wireless connection.

Google also unveiled a second-generation computer chip it designed specifically to improve cloud computing capabilities in data centres.

“We want Google Cloud to be the best cloud for machine learning,” Pichai said.

He described the internet giant’s core search service and its Google Assistant as the company’s most important AI products.

Google Assistant, introduced last year, is now on more than 100 million devices, according to the team’s vice president of engineering, Scott Huffman.

“We are really starting to crack the hard computer challenge of conversationality,” Huffman said.

“Soon, with Google Lens, your assistant will be able to have a conversation about what you see.”

Google used the conference to announce a software kit that will let developers build Assistant capabilities into robots, applications, and other computerised creations.

Google also announced enhancements to its Home personal assistant, adding abilities such as hands free telephone calls and acting as speakers for wireless audio.

Android gets lean

Developers cheered when talk turned to Google-backed mobile operating system Android.

Google announced that more than two billion devices powered by Android software are used monthly in a freshly passed milestone.

The coming version of Android, referred to simply as “O” for the time being, will also have boosted artificial intelligence features along with enhanced security, executives showed.

Google is also crafting a lighter version of Android, referred to as “Go”, designed for maximum performance on low-cost, entry-level smartphones in developing countries where internet bandwidth is lean or expensive.

Google said that while it is happy with the momentum of its Daydream virtual reality platform based on using smartphone as screens in headsets, it is working with partners on stand-alone virtual reality gear.

Partners in the endeavour include Vive-maker HTC and Lenovo, according to Google virtual reality team vice president Clay Bavor.

The gathering, which attracted some 7,000 developers on site and had thousands more watching online, focused on software with little mention of hardware, noted analyst Blau.

“There is a continuing trend where devices are becoming devalued and what is on the screen is becoming more valuable,” Blau said.

“With AI, all the apps are getting upgraded so they don’t need new hardware.”

CHICAGO — Colon cancer survivors who ate at least 57 grammes of tree nuts a week — roughly 48 almonds or 36 cashews — were significantly less likely to have their cancer return or to die from their cancer than those who did not eat nuts, US researchers said on Wednesday.

The finding by Dr  Temidayo Fadelu of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and colleagues is the latest to suggest a health benefit from nut consumption.

The researchers analysed a questionnaire about dietary intake from a clinical trial of 826 patients with stage III colon cancer — a stage in which the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes but not other parts of the body.

All of the patients in the study had received surgery and chemotherapy to treat their colon cancers.

People who reported that they ate more than two ounces of tree nuts per week — about 19 per cent of the study participants — had a 42 per cent lower chance of cancer recurrence and a 57 per cent lower chance of death than those who did not eat nuts. 

The benefit applied only to tree nuts and not peanuts or peanut butters, said Fadelu, whose study was released in advance of the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting to be held early next month in Chicago.

That may be because peanuts are legumes, which may have a different metabolic composition than tree nuts, Fadelu said.

“This study shows that something as simple as eating tree nuts may make a difference in a patient’s long-term survival,” ASCO President Daniel Hayes said in a statement. 

Hayes said basic healthy eating is often overlooked by doctors and their patients in cancer care.

The team focused on nut consumption because prior studies have shown that eating nuts can reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes — factors that also influence the risk of recurrence and death from colon cancer

Fadelu said further studies should look at whether tree nuts are associated with better health outcomes at other stages of colon cancer. 

The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and Pfizer Inc.