Journalists at the Hartford Courant have won the right to organize, just four days after they asked parent company Tribune Publishing to recognize the union. Organizers at the Connecticut newspaper had also filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board.

“The company has agreed to voluntarily recognize the Hartford Courant Guild as the representative of certain newsroom employees at the Hartford Courant and Courant Community,” Tribune Publishing said in a statement Friday. “No date has been set for the beginning of contract negotiations.”

The Courant is the latest of several Tribune newspapers to see their newsrooms unionize. Similar successful efforts were made at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. (Tribune Publishing, previously named Tronc, subsequently sold the LA Times.)

The Hartford Courant Guild will cover nearly 60 reporters, editors and photographers at the paper. More than 80 percent of eligible staffers signed union cards saying they want to be represented, organizers said.

“We acknowledge Tribune Publishing for taking this step, which expedites contract negotiations, and recognizes the overwhelming will of our newsroom to take a seat at the table,” the union said in a statement.

It added, “We look forward to building a more productive and collaborative relationship with the company as we join the conversation shaping the future of the Hartford Courant. We fight for improved resources and support so we can continue to serve our readers to the best of our abilities.”

Tribune Publishing has been the focus of sale and merger talks, and in January the newspaper chain announced the departures of its CEO and the two top officials of its digital arm.

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An app that allows Saudi men to track the whereabouts of their wives and daughters is available in the Apple and Google app stores in Saudi Arabia.

But the U.S. tech giants are getting blowback from human rights activists and lawmakers for carrying the app.

The app, called Absher, was created by the National Information Center, which according to a Saudi government website is a project of the Saudi Ministry of Interior.

The description of the app in both stores says that with Absher, “you can safely browse your profile or your family members, or [laborers] working for you, and perform a wide range of eServices online.”

In Saudi Arabia, women’s lives are highly restricted. For example, according to Human Rights Watch, women have always needed permission from a male guardian, usually a father or husband, to leave the country. In the past, paper forms were required prior to travel.

The Absher app makes the process a lot more convenient for Saudi men. And it’s drawing criticism, especially from human rights advocacy groups.

“It’s really designed with the men in mind,” says Rothna Begum, a senior researcher on women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. “Of course, it’s incredibly demeaning, insulting and humiliating for the women and downright abusive in many cases, because you’re allowing men absolute control over women’s movements.”

This week, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to both companies asking them to remove the app. “Saudi men can also reportedly use Absher to receive real-time text message alerts every time these women enter or leave the country or to prevent these women from leaving the country,” he wrote.

In an interview with NPR on Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about Absher. “I haven’t heard about it,” he said. “But obviously we’ll take a look at it if that’s the case.”

NPR also reached out to Google, but the company has not responded.

Both Apple and Google have faced previous controversies over apps in their stores. Both stores have policies banning inappropriate content such as the promotion of hate speech, graphic violence, bullying and harassment. The companies have faced some backlash over these policies, particularly around how they might impact small businesses.

Human Rights Watch’s Begum says she can see how the companies might not have realized initially that the app could be used for monitoring women. “It has other services that are quite generic and normal government services,” she says.

Apple and Google have different systems for flagging inappropriate apps. Apple prescreens apps, and Begum says Google relies on its users to alert it about violations. But, she says, each company needs to boost scrutiny of government-supported apps, especially when they are created by repressive regimes.

“They should consider the human rights implications … especially when it’s offered by a government,” she says. “When they’re evaluating whether an app should be allowed … providers really should consider the broader context or the purpose of the app, how it’s being used in practice and whether it’s facilitating abuse.”

Ironically, Absher has also been helpful to a few women trying to escape the repressive Saudi regime. Begum says some women have managed to secretly change the settings in the app on their male guardian’s phone so that it allows them to travel.

However, she says, Google and Apple need to push back against the Saudi government and either disable the app entirely or disable the features that enable men to track women in their families. “By not saying anything,” she says, “they’ve allowed the government to facilitate the abuse.”

In his letter to Google and Apple, Wyden wrote: “It is hardly news that the Saudi monarchy seeks to restrict and repress Saudi women, but American companies should not enable or facilitate the Saudi government’s patriarchy.”

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Apple CEO Tim Cook says he’s optimistic about trade talks between the U.S. and China. His remarks come as representatives from both countries are scheduled to meet later this week in Beijing.

“Both sides are talking and I always think that is always the essential thing to reaching an agreement,” Cook told NPR on Monday. “… It’s in both parties’ best interests to come together.”

Apple has much to lose if the talks don’t go well. China has been a key part of Apple’s growth. Analysts say close to 20 percent of the company’s business comes from China and Taiwan.

A March 1 deadline looms over the talks. The Trump administration says if an agreement is not reached by then over issues such as intellectual property rights, it will increase tariffs on Chinese imports from 10 percent to 25 percent.

Much of Apple’s growth in China has come from the sales of its marque product — the iPhone. However, Apple had to revise its earnings forecast downward in the winter quarter, largely due to slower iPhone sales in China.

Cook attributed slower sales in China in part to the devaluation of the yuan. “Because the local currency devalued over the course of the year,” he said, “our prices did go up there, more so than did in regions that are U.S. dollar denominated.”

In response, Cook said, Apple has cut prices in China to be in accord with prices before the currency devaluation. “We’ll see how that works out for us,” he said.

If the U.S. and China fail to reach an agreement by March 1, and the U.S. raises tariffs to 25 percent, analysts say, Chinese officials may retaliate and punish U.S. companies doing business there, further dampening Apple’s ability to compete in one of the world’s largest markets.

Despite slowing iPhone sales, Apple is seeing growth in other areas, especially in services — which include Apple Pay and Apple Music. Apple reported services brought in a record $10 billion in the winter quarter.

The company is also investing heavily in health care, rolling out features such as an electrocardiogram that helps detect heart problems using its Apple Watch.

Over the last year, Apple has also been in the process of rolling out a service that stores medical records from a variety of hospitals and providers in one place. On Monday, it announced a new partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which will allow veterans using the VA’s health services to use the Health app on iPhones.

Cook says the app provides veterans with the ability to view their allergy conditions, lab results and medications in one spot. “This is part of our overall effort to really empower the patient,” he said. “We can’t wait to serve … a population of folks that we really have great reverence for.”

The app will allow a veteran to visit a doctor and be able to immediately share records without having to contact the offices of other clinicians and providers.

Last March, Apple rolled out this service to other health care providers such as Stanford Medicine, NYU Langone Health and Johns Hopkins Medicine.

A report by research firm CB Insights said “the market opportunity in healthcare is huge, and Apple sees healthcare and wellness as a core part of its app, services, and wearables strategies.” The report said global spending in health care exceeds $7 trillion a year, dwarfing the size of the smartphone market.

Officials at the VA and leaders at other health care facilities say Apple’s strong emphasis on security and privacy is part of the reason they are partnering with the company on health records. Cook has been a vocal proponent of privacy, calling out companies like Facebook for using the personal data of its users to sell lucrative ads.

While Cook may be optimistic about China-U.S. relations, Apple may need to look elsewhere if it wants to keep up the pace of growth it’s had for some 15 years.

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Kashmir Hill wanted Amazon out of her life, completely.

It was the first week of a six-week experiment in living without tech giants. She had a virtual private network, or VPN, that would keep her devices walled off from any Amazon product. She would avoid Whole Foods and power down her Kindles.

But she had a problem. A small, chipper problem.

Alexa.

She couldn’t connect her Amazon Echo to the VPN. But if she just unplugged the smart speaker, someone, like her husband, might forget and plug it back in.

Then a colleague suggested that she hide it. Say, in a drawer.

Hill was so used to Alexa’s constant presence, the convenient timers and music on demand, that she hadn’t even considered putting the device away.

“We’ve only had it for two years, and it already has the level of prominence where I couldn’t have imagined just taking it off the counter,” she told NPR’s Weekend Edition. “I just can’t believe that, especially since I’m a privacy reporter.”

Hill, a reporter and editor at Gizmodo, has tackled extreme tech experiments before, like living in a smart home and spending only Bitcoin for a week.

Last fall, she decided to try cutting off Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple — each for a week, and then all at once. She wrote about her attempt for Gizmodo.

The experiment was inspired, she said, by the condemnations of tech behemoths. Critics say the companies are monetizing our attention, mishandling our data and profiting from our children. They’ve concentrated too much economic power. They’re shaping our society in ways we don’t fully understand yet.

“People will say, if you don’t like the company, just stop using their products,” Hill said. “I wanted to find out if that was possible, and, spoiler, it’s not possible.”

Beyond a surface level boycott, like deleting her Facebook account, Hill tried to sever any ties that usually funnel her data, money and attention to the five companies. Each publishes a list of IP addresses they control, so technologist Dhruv Mehrotra built her a VPN that essentially blacklisted those addresses.

Armed with that VPN and unmitigated determination, Hill put Alexa in a drawer and started her Amazon week. And it was as though a vast tract of the web blinked out.

“When I started pulling stats about Amazon, I was shocked,” she said. The company reportedly controls nearly half of all online commerce. But the company’s most profitable business is Amazon Web Services, or AWS, its cloud-computing arm that hosts apps and websites.

“They basically control kind of the backbone of Internet infrastructure,” she said. “They’re not just shipping packages out all over America. They’re also shipping a ton of data to people’s computers.”

Netflix, HBO Go and AirBnB are among the many websites hosted by AWS, and therefore were off-limits to Hill during her Amazon week (though she would have been free to browse NPR.org). Work tools were also forbidden: AWS hosts Gizmodo’s website, as well as the messaging platform Slack. At one point, her daughter cried over the digital entertainment blockade.

Other companies presented unexpected challenges. Blocking Google meant she couldn’t use Lyft or Uber, which rely on Google Maps. Going into any given coffee shop put her at risk of coming into contact with Microsoft, if the shop used Windows to operate its payment system. Cutting off Facebook left her feeling strangely isolated, pining for connection even at the cost of pervasive data surveillance.

And there were slip-ups, like when she ordered an item off eBay instead of Amazon, only to have it show up at her door in an instantly recognizable package. The seller had used Amazon to fulfill the order.

“The big thing I learned is that it’s not possible to navigate the modern world without coming into contact with these companies,” she said. “It made me certainly sympathetic to some of the critics who are saying these companies are too dominant in their spaces.”

The exception? Apple. Hill says when she gave up her iPhone and stepped out of Apple’s “walled garden,” she had no trouble staying away from the company — and it wasn’t collecting data on her.

But giving up her iPhone posed another challenge when she tried to block all five companies at once in the experiment’s final week.

“Google and Apple have a duopoly on the smartphone market,” she said. “So when I went out trying to find a smartphone that was not made or touched by either tech giant, it wasn’t possible.”

After searching in vain, she settled on a “dumb phone.” She chose the Nokia 3310, an orange brick with T9 texting that has spawned countless memes — and perhaps even ensured its own continued existence — by being essentially indestructible.

“I went back to the ’90s!” Hill said, laughing. “This experiment was a time machine.”

A time machine, and a lesson, too. Before the experiment, the first thing she would do every morning, before touching her husband or talking to her daughter, was stare at a screen.

“I would grab my iPhone and just start scrolling,” she admitted. “It’s how I started the day, every day.”

There was nothing worth scrolling through on the Nokia 3310, so she didn’t bother. The smartphone fast broke her habit. Now she turns her phone off each evening, and she doesn’t turn it on in the morning until she needs it.

“I got out of some bad tech habits,” she said. “And I’m just kind of looking at screens less. So, if nothing else, I’m glad I did this experiment in terms of becoming a healthier tech user.”

Editor’s Note: Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are financial sponsors of NPR.

NPR’s Emily Abshire contributed to this report.

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President Trump is delivering his State of the Union address Tuesday night, a speech that had been delayed during the government shutdown.

The annual remarks come as a bipartisan group of lawmakers continue to negotiate border security funding and Trump’s wall proposal — the central issue that led to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

NPR reporters will be annotating Trump’s remarks live, adding context and analysis.

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