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Night Shift Toggle On Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) New iOS 9.3 Beta

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has confirmed that one of the notable new features to come with iOS 9.3 beta 1 is the Night Shift. The feature is designed in a way that cuts down the amount of blue light emitted by an iOS device in the evening. As noted by Apple, studies have shown that blue light has the ability to negatively impact sleep as it alters the cardiac rhythm in the body. The shifting of the device’s color display makes it appear warmer.

The Night Shift toggle will be next to the brightness slider in the Control Center. There will be two options available: “Turn on for Now” and “Turn on until Tomorrow.”

It is possible that Night Shift will be activated on 64-bit iOS devices running iOS 9.3. Night Shift could also be made available on the Display and Brightness section in settings.

Though there is a high probability that the Control Center Night Shift option will be available in a future 9.3 beta, it is still not clear whether it will be an iPhone only feature or if iPad will have it as well. Control Center on the iPad would be much larger than on the iPhone since the iPad has a larger display.

Most likely, Apple will move the top rows of the iPhone Control Center closer together so as to create room for the Night Shift button. Many users use their iPhones before bed, making the new feature quite useful.

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Asian Markets Unsettling, But European Markets Find Some Calm

Asian markets tumbled into negative territory after shedding gains in the early hours, reflecting broader sentiment which is centred around China’s slowdown, the oil rout and a generally weak global economic outlook.

More panic

Among major Asian indices, the Shanghai SE Composite Index shed the most, down by 3.23% to 2,880.48, hovering at the lowest level since December 2014. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng too nosedived by 1.70%, losing 320.83 points to 18,565.47, breaching three-year lows. According to analysts, uncertainties and the volatile global currency environment is the cause of the sell-off.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 pared early gains and went into the red to close the session 398.93 points down, or 2.43% to 16,017.26. Foreign investors were net sellers in Japan last week as well, which recorded an outflow of 358.3 billion worth of shares for the week ended January 16.

Before the market opening, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) had fixed its yuan mid-point at 6.5585, which is seen as a stable number in relation to prior fixes of the bank.

Europe in the green, US mixed

European markets breathed easy during the morning hours. England’s FTSE 100 gained 1.77% while Germany’s DAX was up by nearly 2%. Europe’s Euronext also traded higher by 2.2%.

It remains to be seen if European markets’ optimism continues  as investors across the globe are concerned about the direction of the global economy while oil continues to trade below the $30 level.

Dejected with the oil slump and slowdown in China, broader U.S. markets were mixed today. Oil prices have shed nearly 30% since the beginning of the year, though there was a slight bounce today that is now fading a little. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is still marginally up while the S&P 500 Index is barely up 5 points after a stronger rally earlier in the day. $2 trillion worth of market cap has been lost already this year.

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Acacia Needs a Suitor; Who Fits the Bill?

biotech

In September last year, UK based private biotech Acacia Pharma announced its intention to go public with a £230 million IPO. A few weeks later, the company revised its IPO valuation to £150 million, and in October, announced it was delaying the IPO outright. Behind all this back and forth, the company was putting the finishing touches to a phase III in its lead candidate, Baremsis. The trial sort of took a back seat, with markets focusing on the capital environment surrounding Acacia and its operations. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced the topline from the phase III, with the drug meeting its primary endpoint ad demonstrating superiority of a number of currently available treatments. This complicated things somewhat. Why? Well, Acacia is in a rare position for a development stage biotech – it managed to get a drug through to phase III completion on venture capital alone. Now, however, it has hit a snag. The IPO market is still weak, so the company’s decision to hold off on an IPO likely still stands, even with the latest results announced. However, it doesn’t have enough money to mount an NDA and carry it through to the commercialization of Baremsis. The only options left, then, are selling up or partnering with a well capitalized company in one form or another.

In the US alone, more than 40 million people undergo surgery each year. Globally, this number rises to exceed 100 million. More than 30% of all cases experience post operative nausea and vomiting (PONV) – Baremsis’s target indication. In the US and Europe, the average cost to a patient to avoid PONV through the use of current treatment options is $100. Even at this low cost, it won’t take much market penetration for a drug with a superior profile to current SOC to notch up multi billion dollars’ worth of revenues. With this in mind, chances are only the biggest names in healthcare will be able to shell out the upfront payment for a collaboration deal, and even fewer will be able to afford an outright purchase of Acacia. Let’s try and slate up some potential suitors.

First, let’s quickly run over the drug itself, and put some efficacy numbers together that will support the NDA.

There’s a region in our brains called the chemoreceptor trigger zone (CTZ), which is the area that initiates vomiting. The way it does this is (and we’re simplifying this a bit) by communicating with a range of neurotransmitters that stimulate the CTZ based on certain pathogens, or other nausea inducing conditions, being present. One of these neurotransmitters is dopamine. Dopamine attaches to a receptor and essentially instructs the CTZ to initiate vomiting. Baremsis is an intraveneous formulation of a drug called amisulpride, which is a dopamine antagonist. It’s stops the dopamine/receptor connection, and in doing so, switches off the CTZ response.

In the phase III on which the NDA will be based, efficacy was measured against a primary endpoint of complete response, defined as no vomiting. The drug improved on the current SOC when used in conjunction, compared to just SOC administration – showing a 57.7% vs 46.6% complete response rate. Safety was no issue, and tolerability had already been determined. In short, there looks to be no reason the drug won’t get the green light – that is, if Acacia can outline a realistic commercialization strategy for the FDA. Which brings us nicely to potential suitors.

Most of the drugs in the space, and definitely the ones that Baremsis will likely target as co-administrations, are generic. There are a couple of forerunners in the space, however, when it comes to producing these generics.

First up, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (NYSE:TEVA). Teva produces the most widely sold generic version of the aforementioned SOC with which Baremsis was paired in the phase III, ondansetron. The company had just shy of $1 billion cash on its books at the end of Q3 2015, with a further $5 billion in accounts receivable – much of which has likely now realized. In short, it could afford Acacia, and would have a vested interest in commercializing Baremsis and marketing it as a booster on its current SOC product.

Another potential suitor is Sanofi (NYSE:SNY). Sanofi markets the drug metoclopramide under a variety of different guises globally, and with the rights to do the same with Baremsis, could also pitch the two therapies as a combination treatment for PONV with an improved efficacy and safety profile over single drug treatments. The company is also well capitalized, with a little over $7.5 billion reported at last count.

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Euro Gains Against Dollar After Weak U.S. Economic Data

The Euro traded higher against the US dollar today after trading near flat on Wednesday as meek inflation data in the U.S. pushed rate hike expectations to beyond the first quarter of the year. The pair had touched a low of 1.0868 and was seen trading near 1.0900. Support and resistance for the pair are at 1.0538 and 1.1496 respectively.

Softer data

The U.S. Department of Labor had reported a fall of 0.1% in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December, which came just below projections. The CPI showed an increase by 0.7% on an annual basis, implying a 0.5% gain over the previous month. Meanwhile, Core CPI also rose by 2.1% year-over-year.

In Europe, investors are now eyeing the European Central Bank meeting, which is scheduled to take place today, to see what possible easing measures the bank may adopt. Market participants are of the view that the ECB will keep rates unchanged on account of China’s slowdown and the ongoing oil rout.

Other currencies

The safe-haven yen remains a preference for investors after oil prices plunged to $26.50 per barrel. The oil slump continues to weigh on a range of currencies including the Canadian, Aussie, and New Zealand dollars, and especially the Saudi riyal. Softer inflation expectations have sent the Australian dollar lower against the greenback. AUD/USD slipped 0.12% to 0.6898. The Melbourne Institute trimmed down inflation expectations to 3.6% from 4% for the next 12 months. The pair has support at 0.6825 and resistance at 0.6962.

Apart from this, the greenback gained against the British pound this morning. The pair was trading 0.10% down at 1.4175. On Wednesday, the U.K. Office for National Statistics had reported a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.1% over the last three months.

The U.S. Dollar index as a whole traded down by 0.06% to 99.07.

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Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Finds Symbolic Victory Over Samsung

Only days after Samsung Electronics requested the US Supreme Court to take up its patent conflict with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Samsung has been ordered not to sell some of its older smartphones in the United States.

On Monday, US district Judge Lucy Koh granted an Apple motion for an injunction against all devices that are covered by the patents that Samsung was found to be overstepping. The Galaxy S2 Skyrocket , Admire, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch and several other devices that are now banned from sale in the US. All the banned smartphone devices are at least three years old.

Samsung is said to have violated some patents including slide to unlock, autocorrect and data collection, all owned by Apple. During the hearing, the court declared that it found that Apple will suffer irredeemable harm if Samsung was allowed to continue selling the infringed features. Monetary compensation alone was deemed unsatisfactory. However, Joe Mullins at Ars Technica believes that since the phones are quite old the order won’t shake Samsung’s market share significantly.

The court order also banned any Samsung software or code that might implement an infringing feature in the future. The order came as a surprise as Judge Koh is the one who ruled in August 2014 that the $199.6 million compensation Apple got from Samsung was adequate and satisfactory. If the court could not ban the devices then, why did it order the ban now? That’s why the injunction may only be a temporary symbolic victory until the case is decided.

A Samsung spokesman called the order another example of the abuse of the judicial system by Apple. According to Samsung, the order creates a bad legal precedent and has the potential to harm the choice of consumers for several generations to come. Samsung is warning that every other tech company is now concerned that the Apple versus Samsung conflict will be a gateway for more patent litigation.

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Serious Security Flaws Uncovered In Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Others

Apple Store, Apple Inc

A large number of critical security vulnerabilities have just been uncovered in various mobile and PC systems. Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iOS and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android are some of the systems in which security loopholes have been detected. Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) systems have also been shown to have hundreds of exploitable vulnerabilities.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has released fixes for some of the flaws in its systems and Oracle is in the process of sealing the security loopholes.

Security researchers from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Trend Micro, Google and other firms detected the massive security flaws, some of which have existed since 2012.

Weakness in Apple’s systems

The researchers uncovered a number of vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS, two of which the researchers say could allow malicious code to be added to iPhones and iPads if a user visits a tainted site. Apple has already released nine fixes to the security flaws detected in iOS.

Security loopholes have also been detected in Apple’s Mac OS X system. Apple is yet to fix all the problems in OS X.

Android vulnerabilities

Google’s Android also has a number of flaws in it. There is no word about how many of the critical issues have been fixed. However, one of the problems with Android was a weakness that hackers could exploit to install malicious apps on Android smartphones.The problems detected in Android affected KitKat and later versions.

One of the troubles with Android is that updates to the software are not quickly adopted, partly because of the large number of people who use Android devices.

Linux machines found vulnerable

In Linux, a number of flaws were detected as well, with one of the weaknesses said to affect as many as 66% of Android phones. Some of the weaknesses in Linux have existed from as far back as 2012, according to security researchers at Perception Point. Those running Linux 3.8 or later versions have been advised to patch their systems before hackers seize the opportunity.

Oracle’s 248 flaws

Hundreds of security flaws were uncovered in Oarcle’s systems, including Oracle Database, Java and E-Business Suite. The company has already released fixes for 248 security flaws and is in the process of sealing more loopholes.

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Arch Coal’s Bankruptcy Continues to Pull Down Coal Stocks

Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Arch Coal Inc’s (OTCMKTS: ACIIQ) Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing yesterday has heightened fears over the future of coal companies. Many coal stocks have yet to recover from a steep downhill slide following Arch Coal’s announcement, exacerbated by a broad market collapse today.

Trading on Arch Coal’s stock was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange and transactions on the stock have shifted to the over-the-counter platform. The shift has done little to keep the stock steady.

Arch Coal is pulling a number of coal stocks down with it. Peabody Energy Corporation (NYSE: BTU) fell 11.5% in the last session and Cloud Peak Energy Inc. (NYSE: CLD) trimmed 13.4% of its market cap in the same session. Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (OTCMKTS:ANRZQ) also dipped more than 20%.

When coal prices were higher, Arch Coal and many other coal producers spared no effort to acquire what they considered strategic assets. Arch Coal borrowed heavily to fund its acquisitions, leaving it with a highly-leveraged balance sheet. Unfortunately, the celebration over high coal prices didn’t last long, leaving Arch Coal high and dry.

The situation was made worse by shrinking demand for coal, especially in the face of climate change threats that have turned many energy producers towards cleaner sources of energy. The slide in oil and gas prices added salt to Arch’s wounds.

$700 million hole

Arch Coal’s balance sheet shows $6.5 billion debt against $5.8 billion in assets, which means that the company has a $700 million hole in its financial books. The company’s bankruptcy filing is not unexpected as many coal companies are struggling and some will likely be forced to follow down Arch Coal’s path sooner or later.

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Global Weakness Continues To Drag U.S. Markets Down

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

U.S. stock indices sold off heavily today as expectations of more stimulus in China was eclipsed by yet another very steep drop in oil prices, at one point by more than 7%. Gains that began yesterday morning for U.S. equities were quick to evaporate, which was only a preview of today’s heavy selloff, breaching the S&P 500 low hit during the August 24th crash as well as the Dow Jones.

Oil continues making new lows as both Brent Crude futures and U.S. Oil futures are trading at sub-$30 levels. Brent crude is trading at $27.50 per barrel while NYMEX breached the 2003 level at $27.32 before rebounding to $27.59, 87 cents down from yesterday. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has already said that the oil glut is not likely to resolve until the end of 2016.

On the currency front, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the strength of dollar against a basket of global currencies fell to 99.11. Investors are closely watching for more strong U.S. data that can point to rate hike by the Federal Reserve after last week’s data failed to meet expectations.

Major industrials like International Business Machines Cop. (NYSE: IBM) and Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDA.A) reported dull fourth-quarter earnings today. Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) was up after posting earnings above analyst projections.

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Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) Says Over 50% Of Organizations Lack Faith In Their Cybersecurity Measures

Backlit keyboard

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has established in its latest survey that more than half of all organizations lack confidence in their cybersecurity systems. The situation seems to be heightened by the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks. In places like Australia, ransomware attacks are sharply on the rise, going by recent disclosures.

In its 2016 Annual Security Report, Cisco paints a gloomy picture of the global cybersecurity situation. The company’s findings include growing confusion among enterprises buying security systems.

As much as spending on cybersecurity is on the rise, not many of those building security around their data have faith in what they are paying for.

55% of organizations lack confidence

According to Cisco, only 45% of organizations have confidence in their cybersecurity measures. That means that a whopping 55% of organizations simply spend their money on security products but they don’t think what they are buying makes them secure enough.

What is the cause of such pessimism? Companies are increasingly losing faith in security measures they implement because they see hackers becoming more sophisticated and relentless in their attacks. Hackers have been able to recalibrate their attacks to avoid detection if a target happens to seal a loophole they intended to exploit.

Companies’ abilities to patch their systems and keep cybercriminals away is increasingly becoming more diluted.

Popular cybercrimes

Ransomware cyberattacks are on the rise. This type of attack happens when attackers encrypt a data storage device such as a hard drive and demand payment to release the data. Many organizations are losing millions of dollars through ransomware breaches. Usually, a window pops up asking the victim to pay a certain amount of money to redeem their stolen data.

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New Zealand And Australian Dollar Under Pressure Against Greenback

New Zealand dollars

The New Zealand dollar felt some pressure as it tested its September 30 low recovering to 0.6370 against the US dollar. Support and resistance level for the NZD/USD pair are now at 0.6331 and 0.6485 respectively.

Consumer sentiment in Australia deteriorates

The Australian dollar also lost strength against the U.S. dollar, leaving it trading near 6-year lows. The pair shed 0.85% to settle at 0.6850. The weakness in AUD/USD was driven by softer Australian consumer sentiment data that dipped 3.5% sequentially in January while global outlook continues to be a concern. The pair is likely to find support at 0.6823 and resistance at 0.6962. The Aussie dollar traded sharply lower against the euro, with EUR/AUD marching up by 1.27% to 1.5987.

Declining Chinese growth remains a concern in the backdrop following the new numbers released yesterday. The annual GDP growth in China fell to 6.8% from 6.9% in the previous quarter. Though the numbers met expectations, it reconfirms beliefs that the world’s second-largest economy is not keeping up the pace.

Oil bounce fades as crash continues

The sharp decline in oil prices to a level below $28 a barrel today has further dampened the global economic growth outlook. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has projected that the oil market will remain oversupplied until the end of 2016. The report has disappointed investors who were expecting a bounce in oil prices in the coming months.

Later today, all eyes will be set on the US consumer price index, which will help decide the direction of the US dollar. It is expected that core inflation will rise to 2.1% on an annual basis. A strong CPI data point can serve as an indication for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve, which can push the greenback higher.

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