Twenty Chinese school children wounded in hammer attack

Police carry bags from a primary school that was the scene of a knife attack in Beijing, China, January 8, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese man attacked at least 20 young children at a Beijing primary school with a hammer on Tuesday, state television reported, in a rare act of violence in the capital.

A 49-year-old man, a former maintenance worker at the school, was detained after venting his anger on the children after his work contract was not renewed, state television cited police as saying.

Twenty were taken to the hospital, the government in the Xicheng district of the capital said in a post on its social media account.

Three suffered heavy injuries but their condition was stable, it said.

Police cars lined the main road close to the school when Reuters arrived at the scene.

Several police officers were seen coming from the school carrying items including sealed paper bags marked “physical evidence” and silver cases before driving off.

Parents waited outside for their children as the school day ended. Almost all of the parents Reuters approached declined to be interviewed.

“I heard that children were attacked (by someone) with a knife, so I’m very anxious,” said a woman surnamed Zhou as she waited for her child to finish school.

Another parent surnamed Jia, said she was concerned about her child’s psychological wellbeing.

“Even though they were on the same floor as the one where this took place, they didn’t know anything about this. So I really don’t want this information to be spread widely so that he starts to feel scared,” she said.

The attacker, originally from northeastern Heilongjiang province, had been detained by police and an investigation was underway, state television said.

Violent crime is rare in China but there has been a series of knife and ax attacks in recent years, many targeting children.

In January 2017, a man in southern China stabbed and wounded 12 children with a vegetable knife. He was executed this month.

“People who hurt children do not deserve to be forgiven,” a social media user wrote in a post on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Zhang Min; Additional reporting by Joyce Zhou, Thomas Peter and Martin Pollard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

China has ‘good faith’ to fix trade issues as talks with U.S. resume

FILE PHOTO: Shipping containers are seen at a port in Shanghai, China July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

By Michael Martina

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has the “good faith” to work with the United States to resolve trade frictions, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday as officials of the world’s two largest economies resumed talks in a bid to end their trade dispute.

U.S. officials are meeting their counterparts in Beijing this week for the first face-to-face talks since U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in December to a 90-day truce in a trade war that has roiled global markets.

Trump said on Sunday that trade talks with China were going very well and that weakness in the Chinese economy gave Beijing a reason to work towards a deal.

On Monday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told NBC the talks were being held with appropriate-level staff and would help determine how the administration moves forward.

Ross also said he saw “a very good chance that we will get a reasonable settlement that China can live with, that we can live with and that addresses all of the key issues”. He added that it would be easiest to tackle immediate trade but harder to resolve enforcement issues and structural reforms such as intellectual property rights and market access.

The two sides agreed to hold “positive and constructive” dialogue to resolve economic and trade disputes in accordance with the consensus reached by their respective leaders, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing.

“From the beginning, we have believed that China-U.S. trade friction is not a positive situation for either country or the world economy. China has the good faith, on the basis of mutual respect and equality, to resolve the bilateral trade frictions.”

Trump imposed import tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods last year and has threatened more to pressure Beijing to change its practices on issues ranging from industrial subsidies to intellectual property to hacking. China has retaliated with tariffs of its own.

“As for whether the Chinese economy is good or not, I have already explained this. China’s development has ample tenacity and huge potential,” Lu said. “We have firm confidence in the strong long-term fundamentals of the Chinese economy.”

Lu also said Vice President Wang Qishan would attend the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in late January, but added that he had not yet heard of any arrangements for a meeting with Trump there.

By Monday evening, few details had emerged of the trade talks, which were scheduled to run through Tuesday.

Although the talks were held at a vice-ministerial level, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who has led trade negotiations with the United States and is a top economic adviser to Xi, made an unexpected appearance at the meetings on Monday, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The U.S. delegation, led by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish, includes undersecretaries from the U.S. departments of agriculture, commerce, energy and treasury, as well as senior officials from the White House.

Tu Xinquan, a Chinese trade expert at Beijing’s University of International Business and Economics, told Reuters before talks began that the meetings would likely focus on technical issues and leave major disagreements to more senior officials.

“China’s economy is significantly slowing down, and the U.S. stock market is declining quickly. I think the two sides need some kind of agreement for now,” Tu said.

Data last week showed manufacturing has slowed in both China and the United States, though the U.S. Labor Department on Friday reported a surge in new jobs in December along with higher wages.

Officials have given scant details on concessions that China might be willing to make to meet U.S. demands, some of which would require structural reforms unpalatable for Chinese leaders.

Even if a trade agreement is reached soon, analysts say it would be no panacea for China’s economy, which is expected to continue decelerating in the coming months.

China’s stridently nationalist Global Times tabloid said in an editorial late on Sunday that statements from both sides that they hoped to reach a deal were cause for optimism, but that Beijing would not cave in to U.S. demands.

“If China was going to raise the white flag, it would have done it already,” the paper said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Kim Coghill/Mark Heinrich)

Bipartisan bill unveiled in Senate to stop China tech threats

FILE PHOTO: Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Senator Mark Warner listens to testimony from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at a hearing on foreign influence operations on social media platforms on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two U.S. lawmakers who have been active in congressional efforts to address technology threats from China introduced a bill on Friday to create a White House office to fight state-sponsored technology theft and defend critical supply chains.

Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat and a vice chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Marco Rubio, a Republican on the panel, introduced the legislation.

The bill aims to create the Office of Critical Technologies and Security to coordinate an inter-agency strategy to fight high-tech threats to national security posed by China and other foreign actors, they said in a press statement.

“We need a whole-of-government technology strategy to protect U.S. competitiveness in emerging and dual-use technologies and address the Chinese threat by combating technology transfer from the United States,” said Warner in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Executive Branch and others to coordinate and respond to this threat.”

The bill was introduced in the midst of a battle between Washington and Beijing as President Donald Trump’s administration has accused China of seeking to steal U.S. technology and other misbehavior.

The two nations have been locked in a trade war for much of the past year, disrupting the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and raising the concern of slowing growth. Talks are set for Beijing next week.

Separately, national security experts as well as lawmakers such as Warner and Rubio have been concerned about the use of Chinese-made telecommunications equipment in U.S. networks, and are attempting to exclude companies like Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp from U.S. networks.

The White House office created by the bill would seek to ensure that critical U.S. supply chains, both government and non-governmental, are not jeopardized by reliance on foreign manufacturers, the two lawmakers said in the statement.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Strong U.S. jobs data boosts stocks, soothes economic fears

FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 27, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

By April Joyner

NEW YORK (Reuters) – World stock markets rallied on Friday while bond yields rose after sharply declining earlier in the week as Beijing announced a new round of trade talks with Washington and U.S. employment data pointed to economic strength.

Equities around the globe were buoyed by the news that China and the United States will hold trade talks in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday.

In the United States, stocks got another boost as stronger-than-expected U.S. employment data soothed some concerns of slowing economic growth. That was welcome news to investors after sharp declines on Thursday following Apple Inc’s cut in its revenue forecast.

“As nervous as we all were yesterday on this Apple news, this does help to soften that a bit, that maybe the consumer or the average person still is more confident than we are giving them credit for,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

The strong U.S. jobs report raised questions among some market watchers about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which has been scrutinized in recent weeks as economic worries have mounted. However, Wall Street surged further after Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke at a meeting of the American Economic Association and said he would not resign if asked to by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Conversely, safe-haven assets that had climbed this week as equity markets were roiled came down substantially. Treasury yields rose sharply after the release of U.S. employment data, and the dollar gained 0.6 percent against the yen. Spot gold prices, which reached a six-month peak on Thursday, dropped 0.8 percent.

In U.S. equities, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 681.9 points, or 3.01 percent, to 23,368.12, the S&P 500  gained 66.58 points, or 2.72 percent, to 2,514.47 and the Nasdaq Composite added 218.87 points, or 3.39 percent, to 6,682.37.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index jumped 2.67 percent, while MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 2.16 percent.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes last fell 32/32 in price to yield 2.6641 percent, from 2.553 percent late on Thursday.

Earlier, an announcement from China’s central bank that it would cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves for the fifth time in the past year lifted Asian and European stocks. The move frees $116 billion for new lending as Beijing tries to reduce the risk of a sharper economic slowdown.

Japanese equity markets, which opened for their first session of the new year, were the main exception, weighed down by the sharp rise in the yen in the past few days.

The news of the U.S.-China trade talks boosted oil prices, with both Brent and U.S. crude futures around 4 percent higher.

 

(Reporting by April Joyner; Additional reporting by Virginia Furness, Swati Pande, Wayne Cole and Chuck Mikolajczak; editing by Jon Boyle, Larry King and Dan Grebler)

China warns pig trade against African swine fever cover-ups as Taiwan concerns grow

Pork for sale is seen at a market in Beijing, China December 26, 2018. Picture taken December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) – China has warned the country’s pork industry that covering up cases of African swine fever is a crime, days after a dead pig was found on a Taiwanese beach prompting Taipei to claim Beijing was not sharing accurate information on the disease.

China’s animal husbandry and veterinary affairs bureau is stepping up investigation and punishment of illegal activity in the pig industry, said a statement published on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs website on Friday.

Failing to report deaths and privately slaughtering and selling sick or dead pigs would be pursued under criminal law, it said, and compensation of 1,200 yuan ($175) for each pig culled was sufficient incentive for farmers to report the disease.

In the worst epidemic of the disease ever seen, China has confirmed about 100 cases of African swine fever across 23 provinces since August last year. The disease, for which there is neither cure nor vaccine, is deadly to pigs but does not harm people.

But many experts believe it is even worse than has been reported, and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen urged Beijing last month to “not conceal” information about the disease.

Tsai raised the issue again in a New Year’s speech after a dead pig was found on a beach on Taiwan’s Kinmen island, a half-hour ferry ride from the east coast of China. The pig has since been confirmed to have the African swine fever virus, while another dead pig was found on a nearby island on Friday, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency reported.

“During our recent efforts to prevent an African swine fever epidemic, China’s government has never followed the relevant agreements and provided Taiwan with accurate, real-time reports about the epidemic situation,” she said.

China has repeatedly said that the disease has been effectively dealt with and is under control. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs did not immediately respond to a fax seeking comment on Friday.

The dead animals found on the Taiwanese islands have stoked fears that Taiwan’s pigs could soon become infected with the disease.

Taiwan’s herd of 5.39 million pigs is tiny compared with China’s 700 million, but pork is the most popular meat in both places and domestic production in Taiwan reduces its need for imports of the staple meat.

(Reporting by Dominique Patton in BEIJING and Yi-Mou Lee in TAIPEI; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

China allows first-ever U.S. rice imports in ‘goodwill gesture’ ahead of trade talks

FILE PHOTO: Shipping containers are seen at a port in Shanghai, China July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has opened the door to imports of rice from the United States for the first time ever in what analysts took to signal a warming of relations between the world’s two biggest economies after a frosty year marked by tensions and tit-for-tat tariffs.

The green light from Chinese customs, indicated in a statement posted on the customs authority’s website on Friday, comes in the run-up to talks between the countries in January after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a moratorium on higher tariffs that would affect trade worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much rice China, which sources rice imports from within Asia, might seek to buy from the United States. But the move, which comes after years of talks on the matter, follows pledges from China’s commerce ministry of further U.S. trade openings earlier this week.

As of Dec. 27, imports of brown rice, polished rice and crushed rice from the United States are now permitted, as long as cargoes meet China’s inspection standards and are registered with the United States Department of Agriculture.

“The permission for U.S. rice suggests an improving U.S. and China relationship,” said Cherry Zhang, an agriculture analyst with consultancy JCI. Zhang said she expected any imports would likely be ordered by state-owned companies.

Officials at a government-affiliated think-tank in Beijing said the price of U.S. rice is not competitive, compared with imports from South Asia, and said the move to formally permit import should be interpreted as a goodwill gesture.

China opened its rice market when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, but a lack of phytosanitary protocol between China and the United States effectively banned imports, according to trade group USA Rice.

Nonetheless, in July, China formally imposed additional tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. rice, even though imports were not permitted at the time.

(Reporting by Meng Meng and Ryan Woo; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

Two of a kind: China’s first pet cloning service duplicates star canine

Owner He Jun poses with his dogs, nine-year-old Juice and its two-month-old clone, at his pet resort in Beijing, China November 26, 2018. Picture taken November 26, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Joseph Campbell

BEIJING (Reuters) – Juice is a one-foot tall canine wonder who has starred in dozens of Chinese film and television productions.

As he gets older and his illustrious career peaks, his Beijing-based master has one wish for the mutt – to live on. Maybe forever.

A mongrel stray adopted off the streets, the nine-year-old Juice — or “Guozhi” in Mandarin — is unable to reproduce since he was neutered from an early age. But his master, animal trainer He Jun, wants to continue his star pooch’s image by making a genetic clone.

“Juice himself is a piece of intellectual property with social influence,” said He.

To achieve that, He went to Sinogene, China’s first biotech company to provide pet cloning services. Sinogene made headlines when it successfully cloned a gene-edited beagle in May last year. A month later, it launched commercial cloning services.

For at least 380,000 yuan ($55,065), pet owners can clone their pets.

Sinogene’s CEO Mi Jidong said the company’s pet cloning business is in its initial stages, but he plans to expand services to eventually include gene editing.

“We’ve discovered that more and more pet owners want their pets to accompany them for an even longer period of time,” said Mi.

China’s biotech industry is growing rapidly and, compared with similar enterprises in the West, faces relatively few regulatory barriers.

Earlier this year, a Shanghai lab produced the world’s first monkey clones, two long-tailed macaques. More controversially, He Jiankui of China’s Southern University of Science and Technology last month claimed he used gene-editing technology to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls.

Tin-Lap Lee, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said while China has regulations on the use of animals for lab research, there are no laws explicitly covering animal cloning.

“On the government side, the image of this cloning industry is very high-tech, and definitely…is very supportive of those high-tech industries because of their high-profit-margin,” said Lee.

In Juice’s case, skin samples were collected from the dog’s lower abdomen and within weeks, Sinogene was able to isolate his DNA and fertilize an egg.

The fertilized egg is then surgically inserted into the uterus of a surrogate mother dog – in this case, a beagle.

Juice’s copy, “Little Juice” — or “Zhizhi” in Chinese — was born in mid-September and stayed with its surrogate mother in Sinogene’s lab for about a month. The puppy was later given to He at a small ceremony at which the original Juice was present.

While He has not committed Little Juice to show business just yet, he sees lots of potential.

“We believe he’ll be even better than the older Juice,” He said.

(Reporting by Joseph Campbell; Editing by Sam Holmes)

Bug business: Cockroaches corralled by the millions in China to crunch waste

Cockroaches are seen among cardboards at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor in Xichang, Sichuan province, China August 10, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Suen

By Thomas Suen and Ryan Woo

JINAN, China (Reuters) – In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them – millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal.

The air is warm and humid – just as cockroaches like it – to ensure the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.

Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills, and cockroaches could be a way to get rid of hills of food scraps, providing nutritious food for livestock when the bugs eventually die and, some say, cures for stomach illness and beauty treatments.

On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tonnes of kitchen waste a day – the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.

The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.

Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people.

A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.

“Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste,” said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.

Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock. “It’s like turning trash into resources,” said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi.

Workers sort kitchen waste to feed cockroaches at a waste processing facility of Shandong Qiaobin Agriculture Technology on the outskirts of Jinan, Shandong province, China October 17, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Suen

Workers sort kitchen waste to feed cockroaches at a waste processing facility of Shandong Qiaobin Agriculture Technology on the outskirts of Jinan, Shandong province, China October 17, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Suen

“ESSENCE OF COCKROACH”

In a remote village in Sichuan, Li Bingcai, 47, has similar ideas.

Li, formerly a mobile phone vendor, has invested a million yuan ($146,300) in cockroaches, which he sells to pig farms and fisheries as feed and to drug companies as medicinal ingredients.

His farm now has 3.4 million cockroaches.

“People think it’s strange that I do this kind of business,” Li said. “It has great economic value, and my goal is to lead other villagers to prosperity if they follow my lead.”

His village has two farms. Li’s goal is to create 20.

Elsewhere in Sichuan, a company called Gooddoctor is rearing six billion cockroaches.

“The essence of cockroach is good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds and even stomach cancer,” said Wen Jianguo, manager of Gooddoctor’s cockroach facility.

Researchers are also looking into using cockroach extract in beauty masks, diet pills and even hair-loss treatments.

At Gooddoctor, when cockroaches reach the end of their lifespan of about six months, they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, before being sent to a huge nutrient extraction tank.

Asked about the chance of the cockroaches escaping, Wen said that would be worthy of a disaster movie but that he has taken precautions.

“We have a moat filled with water and fish,” he said. “If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all.”

(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Ryan Woo; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Trump-Xi trade armistice clears way for more market gains

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, November 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

By Jonathan Spicer and Lewis Krauskopf

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One of the darkest clouds hanging over Wall Street somewhat dissipated on the weekend when China and the United States agreed to shelve any new tariffs and reset discussions, at least temporarily halting an increase in their tensions over trade.

Investors said the agreement, lasting 90 days, between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump at the G20 summit, spelled a reprieve for stocks and could pave the way for a positive bookend to a volatile trading year.

U.S. stock index futures jumped as trading for the week began late on Sunday, with benchmark S&P 500 e-mini futures up 1.55 percent. Treasury futures were soft, suggesting an appetite for risk-taking could extend last week’s gains in the stock market.

The trade tension between Washington and Beijing, along with an uncertain outlook for U.S. rate hikes, have for months dogged prospects for equities. The U.S. pledge not to boost tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods could mark the most important deal in years between the world’s top two economies.

“It sets a pretty positive tone (and) stocks should have a decent rally into December,” said Nathan Thooft, Boston-based global head of asset allocation for Manulife Asset Management.

Thooft said he believed the Trump administration was using a threat to raise tariffs to 25 percent on Jan. 1, from 10 percent now as a negotiating tactic. “So when you start to see evidence that there is the ability to come to some type of agreement, that has to be viewed as a positive,” he said.

The stock market logged an official correction after a selloff in October and continued volatility in November that, just over a week ago, had left the benchmark S&P 500  stock index down 10 percent from its all-time high.

Markets rebounded last week on comments perceived as dovish from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, though the S&P was up only 2.4 percent in 2018.

The latest trade standoff began in September when the United States imposed the 10-percent tariffs, prompting China to respond with its own. Ahead of the leaders’ dinner in Argentina, investors had been bracing for a range of outcomes including a worse-case end to talks and more tit-for-tat measures that would have continued to crimp economic and corporate profit growth.

Instead, the Americans and Chinese officially lauded the result.

Beijing agreed to buy what the White House called a “very substantial” amount of agriculture, energy, industrial and other products. While the clock ticks on the 90-day tariff reprieve, the two sides will try to work out thorny issues including technology transfer, intellectual property and cyber theft.

“It’s not solved by any stretch of the imagination,” said Thooft. But risk assets and cyclical U.S. sectors like materials and industrials should benefit, he said on Sunday.

An initial jump late on Sunday of nearly 2 percent in Nasdaq 100 e-mini futures suggested that technology companies, many of which were hardest hit in the selloff, could rebound.

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, said he was encouraged by the trade talks and warned that raising tariffs to 25 percent as the White House had threatened “would likely hurt consumers, put several American companies out of business and displace thousands of American workers.”

POWELL TESTIMONY

Energy prices could also rebound on Monday since cooling trade tensions could boost the world economy and spur demand.

Oil prices had dropped from a four-year high of about $76 per barrel in early October to just above $50 on Friday. But U.S. crude oil was up 2.7 percent to $52.37 a barrel as of 6:07 p.m. EST (2307 GMT) on Sunday.

Aside from trade policy, Wall Street’s attention has also been trained on Fed policy.

Powell was scheduled to testify on Wednesday to a congressional Joint Economic Committee. But the hearing is expected to be postponed to Thursday because major exchanges will be closed on Wednesday in honor of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at the age of 94.

Last week, Powell backed the Fed’s gradual tightening but said its policy rate was “just below” a range of estimates of the so-called neutral level that neither stimulates nor cools growth. In response, stocks shot up and largely recovered November’s earlier losses.

In the wake of Powell’s speech, Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, said: “what happens in Buenos Aires will determine if stocks post a positive 2018.”

The specter of a global trade war has hovered over the market since March when Trump announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. He also recently said the United States was studying auto tariffs, which could ripple through Europe and Japan, while a pact with Canada and Mexico left some investors heartened about potential progress with China.

Nancy Lazar, economist at research firm Cornerstone Macro, said in a note that the 90-day tariff delay and China’s “incremental concessions” are good news.

“But given the stern U.S. stance, we’re certainly not raising our outlook,” she said of a 2.8-percent growth estimate for the fourth quarter, still comfortably above potential.

With U.S. corporate leaders increasingly voicing concerns over rising costs associated with tariffs, Wall Street appeared set on Monday to welcome any development that eases those pressures.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Grant McCool and Sandra Maler)

China orders halt to gene-editing after outcry over babies

Scientist He Jiankui attends the International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China November 28, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

By Alexandra Harney

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The Chinese government on Thursday ordered a temporary halt to research activities for people involved in the editing of human genes after a Chinese scientist said he had edited the genes of twin babies.

Scientist He Jiankui said this week that he used a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of the twin girls born this month.

He’s announcement, which has not been verified, sparked an international outcry about the ethics and safety of such research.

“The nature of this incident is extremely nasty, and relevant bodies have been ordered to temporarily halt the scientific research activities of relevant personnel,” the state news agency Xinhua said, citing the health ministry, science and technology ministry and China Association for Science and Technology.

The organizers of a conference where He claimed to have edited the genes also condemned the work on Thursday, calling it “deeply disturbing” and “irresponsible”.

“Even if the modifications are verified, the procedure was irresponsible and failed to conform with international norms,” the organizing committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, being held in Hong Kong this week, said in a statement.

The committee called for an independent assessment of He’s claims.

He said gene editing would help protect the girls from infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Chinese scientists have also condemned the work and the Southern University of Science and Technology, where He is on leave from his position as an associate professor, has announced an investigation.

The Guangdong province Health Commission said on its website on Wednesday it and Shenzhen city had set up a team to investigate the case.

He’s filing to a Chinese clinical trials database indicates that a hospital did an ethical review of the project, but the hospital involved denied that its ethics review committee ever met to discuss the work.

He said after his presentation on Wednesday he was proud of what he had done.

The presidents of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) also expressed concern about He’s work.

“The events in Hong Kong this week clearly demonstrate the need for us to develop more specific standards and principles that can be agreed upon by the international scientific community,” NAS president Marcia McNutt and NAM president Victor Dzau said in a statement.

(This story fixes typo in first paragraph)

(Reporting By Alexandra Harney; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)