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Risk-free rates ( RFRs) news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Libor’ s days are coming to an end, so what does the future hold? A Risk.net expert panel discusses the original dream of a multi-benchmark world, and whether it is still alive
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Quantitative analyst news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Investing according to environmental, social and governance ( ESG) criteria can be done in various ways, with continuing development of filters and ways of analysing companies. As the market in ESG indexes and investments linked to sustainability matures, …
Welcome to Risk.net’ s guide to the world’ s leading quantitative finance master’ s programmes
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Italy news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
The €10.8 billion cull helped improve the Italian bank’ s CET1 ratio 52bp
Synthetic securitisation shaved €2.2 billion off of credit RWAs alone
Italian lender has €20.8 billion of government-backed loans on its books
Italian bank nets €2.4 billion of RWA relief from regulatory changes
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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OTC nickel contracts stuck despite trading resumption | Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 77% of risk leaders believe that complex, interconnected new risks are emerging at a more rapid pace than ever before. Most risk leaders are satisfiedâ¦
Todayâs financial crime threats are dynamic and fast-moving. Financial criminals continue to up their game and itâs critical for firms to move even faster than the speed of crime. With many regulaâ¦
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
While nickel futures trading has resumed on the London Metal Exchange ( LME), contractual problems have meant holders of over-the-counter derivatives contracts linked to the metal are still unable to settle trades that expired during the market shutdown.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is working on a bilateral template that would allow counterparties to use the new prices to settle the trades. But, in the meantime, the contracts remain stuck unless they are dealt with
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Anti-money laundering news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Also: Credit Suisse cops two cartel shops; banks get slapped in gender pay gap. Data by ORX News
Also: Santander plays Santa; JPM in messaging mayhem; ‘ Sterling Lads’ cost HSBC a couple of bricks. Data by ORX News
Despite more fraud and crypto crime, firms’ op risk losses fall in number and in volume. Data by ORX News
Risk.net explores five derivatives trading themes discussed by experts in a recent webinar sponsored by Numerix
Machine learning could help with loan decisions – but only if banks can explain how it works. And that’ s not easy
Firms face many challenges as deadlines loom for phases five and six of the uncleared margin rules ( UMR), including getting their average aggregate notional amount calculations right to determine which phase they are in. With only three months to prepare…
Also: Turkish crypto exchange’ s missing $ 2bn; online payment scams rise during Covid. Data by ORX News
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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NatWest Group news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Measures to remedy internal model deficiencies added £14.8 billion RWAs overnight
Also: Santander plays Santa; JPM in messaging mayhem; ‘ Sterling Lads’ cost HSBC a couple of bricks. Data by ORX News
Despite more fraud and crypto crime, firms’ op risk losses fall in number and in volume. Data by ORX News
Market RWAs fell from £10.9 billion to £8 billion in Q3 following regulatory approval for a VAR update linked to Libor cessation
HSBC’ s $ 15.5 billion increase was the main driver, but other banks saw RWAs fall
The updated model is expected to reverse a £1.5bn increase in markets RWAs next quarter
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Austria news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Chris Lee has taken over global market investment products and the db-x division in Asia for Deutsche Bank. Formerly head of the structured products group at UBS, Lee started at Deutsche in the last week of June.
Erste Group Bank AG issued nine individual certificates on to the Bucharest Stock Exchange as it joins the Romanian market.
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Bank of America news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
If you have any problems with your access, contact our customer services team.
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your Enterprise account.
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If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.
Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Also: Credit Suisse cops two cartel shops; banks get slapped in gender pay gap. Data by ORX News
US legislative tweak was meant to prevent banks from using their own capital models too liberally. It’ s now something different
Stock buybacks and dividends hit $ 117.7 billion last year
Libor’ s days are coming to an end, so what does the future hold? A Risk.net expert panel discusses the original dream of a multi-benchmark world, and whether it is still alive
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
You need to sign in to use this feature. If you don’ t have a Risk.net account, please register for a trial.
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State Street news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
If you have any problems with your access, contact our customer services team.
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your Enterprise account.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.
Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
US legislative tweak was meant to prevent banks from using their own capital models too liberally. It’ s now something different
Stock buybacks and dividends hit $ 117.7 billion last year
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
You need to sign in to use this feature. If you don’ t have a Risk.net account, please register for a trial.
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Africa news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
You are currently accessing Risk.net via your institutional login.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Financial fraud and fat fingers loom large, but annual top 10 op risk losses still show fewer fails. Data by ORX News
Fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, subprime ( still) and rogue trading – and Citi crops up twice. Data by ORX News
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Broker BRS sees potential for a shipyard supercycle | A number of positive factors are brewing up demand for a scaled-down shipbuilding industry
Shipbroker Barry Rogliano Salles ( BRS) predicts shipyards could be set to benefit from a supercycle following a recent recovery in demand.
Shipbuilders last saw a supercyle — which is a prolonged period of demand-driven expansion — between 2005 and 2008, and the Paris-based broker believes the conditions might be just right for a repeat.
In its annual review, BRS said China drove the last shipyard supercycle, but this time around it could be decarbonisation and fleet renewal which helps stoke up demand.
“ We believe that there is evidence to suggest that a new supercycle is looming, ” the broker said. “ This will not be driven by a new Chinese economic boom as was the case in the 2000s, but rather a replica of the shipping boom which took place between 2003 and 2008 when an amazing number of ships were contracted. ”
BRS thinks it might have spotted the first signs of a supercycle in 2021 when newbuilding orders recovered to 132m-dwt, compared to 75m in the Covid-19 affected year of 2020. Prices also jumped by 30% in 2021.
On top of that has been a dramatic curbing of global shipbuilding capacity since 2008, when there were 682 shipyards, compared to just 275 today.
The result of reduced capacity is that shipyards are already starting to fill up well into 2025. BRS estimates that currently active shipyard capacity can only produce between 1,200 and 1,300 ships annually, compared to 2,000 ships between 2005 and 2010.
Consolidation has also meant that the world’ s nine largest shipbuilding groups now control 75% of world capacity.
More capacity in fewer hands will likely give shipyards the upper hand in the future market.
While newbuilding capacity has been shrinking, the world fleet has been growing, which will increase the fleet replacement demand. In 2021 there were 40,588 ships compared to 30,864 ships in 2008.
Decarbonisation regulation is also placing pressure on owners to replace non-eco ships built before 2010.
The willingness of owners to order lower carbon-emitting ships was demonstrated by the number of owners ordering Energy Efficiency Design Index phase 3 vessels well ahead of the 2025 enforcement of the newbuilding efficiency standard.
There has also been a growth in alternative fuel LNG, LPG and methanol ships ordered well ahead of any regulatory requirement, BRS pointed out.
While there are numerous positive indications for shipyards BRS does have some caveats that indicate the start of the supercycle might not quite be here yet.
The new ordering last year may have just been the result of the post-Covid economic rebound and unexpected boom in container and dry bulk rates, rather than the start of a prolonged recovery.
Also, the average ship demolition age is still above 25-years old, which indicates that owners are not rushing to replace old with new. “ This, therefore, suggests that the new supercycle should not start before mid-2025, ” BRS said.
Then there is always black swan events like the Covid-19 pandemic, fluctuations in the price of raw materials, natural disasters and sanctions which could all impact the future market direction. | general |
Cliquet options news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
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The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
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The Authors introduce a closed-form approximation for the forward implied volatilities.
Traditionally, smile models have been assessed according to how well they fit market option prices across strikes and maturities. However, the pricing of most recent exotic structures, such as reverse cliquets or Napoleons, is more dependent on the…
Since the discovery that traditional calibration methods fail to capture the dynamics of the smile, new approaches based on mixtures or ensembles of models have been developed. Simon Johnson and Han Lee present a variant of this approach that can be used…
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Mean reversion news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
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This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
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Is factor momentum greater than stock momentum? Yes – this paper argues – but only at short lags.
The author evaluates the usefulness of bias-correction methods in enhancing the Vasicek model for market risk and counterparty risk management practices.
This study investigates international stock index arbitrage opportunities between seven blue-chip indexes in Asian, European and US time zones over a twenty-year time horizon.
This paper proposes a new risk-based regime-switching model for stock prices to examine the impact of operational risk events on stock prices.
This paper models the evolution of the oil price as a mean-reverting regime-switching jump–diffusion process.
The authors of this paper study the calibration of futures contracts on temperature indexes.
This paper derives a closed-form version of a model with a trend-stationary, stochastic volatility exchange rate, using both a linear and quadratic trend.
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AstraZeneca's Evusheld Recommended for EU Approval for Covid-19 Prevention | By Jaime Llinares Taboada
AstraZeneca PLC said Thursday that its Evusheld drug for Covid-19 prevention has been recommended for marketing authorization in the European Union.
The pharmaceutical company said that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency based its positive opinion on Evusheld trial results which showed a 77% reduction in the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19 at primary analysis.
People not adequately protected by a Covid-19 vaccine may particularly benefit from pre-exposure prophylaxis with Evusheld, AstraZeneca said.
`` Evusheld has the potential to provide long-lasting protection to vulnerable populations such as the immunocompromised who can't mount an adequate response to a Covid-19 vaccine, and we 'll continue to work with governments in Europe to make Evusheld available as quickly as possible, '' Hugh Montgomery, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London, said.
AstraZeneca expects that the European Commission will shortly complete its review of the positive opinion to determine whether to grant a marketing authorization for Evusheld.
Write to Jaime Llinares Taboada at jaime.llinares @ wsj.com
( END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-24-22 1429ET | business |
Quant investing news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
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Traditionally quants have learnt to pick data apart. Soon they might spend more time making it up
Quants searching for ESG signals have reached very different conclusions. Mostly they blame the data
The week on Risk.net, October 12–18, 2019
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Optimisation news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
In this paper, a theoretical method is empirically illustrated in finding the best time to forsake a loan such that the overall credit loss is minimized.
Since the financial crisis that began in 2007–08, regulatory pressure on requirements around capital adequacy, liquidity, funding, balance sheet size and leverage has become increasingly intense. As a consequence, financial institutions need to manage…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the operational risk and maturity level of IT in an anonymized financial institution, based on the American Productivity and Quality Center benchmark and control objectives for information and related technologies.
With margin requirements a potential drain on financial resources, delivering healthy returns while meeting regulatory obligations is paramount. To help participants optimise more of their risk, Varqa Abyaneh, chief product officer, Quantile, discusses…
This webinar explores how trading businesses can adapt to this new environment to improve margins and generate alpha, examining the future of trading technology, how companies will implement these new innovations and new skills that might be needed.
This paper considers the role of policies that protect consumers from aggressive debt collection tactics.
In this paper the authors formulate a novel Markov regime-switching factor model to describe the cyclical nature of asset returns in modern financial markets.
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Pension funds news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
Also: Credit Suisse cops two cartel shops; banks get slapped in gender pay gap. Data by ORX News
The GameStop saga showed that securities lending is opaque. New rules are unlikely to improve things
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American energy innovation’ s big moment | T HE OPPORTUNITY to make the covid-19 recovery green has been squandered. A new analysis of over $ 14trn in pandemic stimulus, injected by 19 countries and the European Union, finds that just 6% went on programmes likely to cut emissions. America did particularly badly: hardly any of its $ 6trn splurge was climate-friendly. Perhaps the best that can be said for the catastrophe in Ukraine is that the ensuing energy crisis has provided an opportunity to reverse that failure.
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The early responses, it is true, have been somewhat discouraging. As European countries cast around for substitutes for Russian oil and gas, short-term fixes are the need of the hour, leading to a higher oil price and probably more oil and gas production. Joe Biden’ s administration, which branded itself the greenest ever, is urging producers to drill, baby, drill. Its signature climate policy is meanwhile snarled up in Congress. Mr Biden said as much about diabetes as climate change in his recent state-of-the-union message. Yet there is also cause for hope—in America especially.
Its clean-tech sector is in ferment. The administration used one of the world’ s biggest energy confabs, held in Houston this month, to broadcast its plea for more hydrocarbons. Less publicised, notes Daniel Yergin, an energy guru and one of CERAWeek’ s organisers, was the fact that the summit’ s energy-innovation section drew bigger crowds than the main event. Clean tech attracted over $ 87bn of investment from venture-capital and private-equity firms alone in the year to June 2021. And there is little expectation, even as interest rates rise, of the boom petering out. It is being driven by three forces that seem likelier to grow: society’ s fear of climate change, long-term corporate commitments to decarbonisation, and the underappreciated impact of shrewd legislation.
The last includes the bipartisan Energy Policy Act of 2020, which hugely expanded the Department of Energy’ s role in research and development, and the infrastructure law of 2021, which amplified that effort. The climate components of the stalled Build Back Better bill are better known and indeed essential to Mr Biden’ s time frame for decarbonising the economy. Yet they are largely dedicated to accelerating the deployment of mature technologies such as solar and wind energy. The two earlier laws were focused more on developing the breakthrough technologies on which most of the world’ s decarbonisation effort will depend.
The Department of Energy, hitherto best known for looking after the country’ s nuclear weapons, has been restructured for the task. One of its under-secretaries has been dedicated to innovation. Among its new clean-tech programmes are three climate “ Earth-shots ” —the first in what looks like a promising series. One aims to reduce the production cost of hydrogen by 80% in a decade; another to cut the cost of grid storage by 90%; and a third to develop affordable ways to suck carbon from the atmosphere.
Scepticism is warranted about how far such efforts will go. The department’ s network of 17 national labs has always been excellent. Yet America’ s record in commercialising their inventions is abject. Having invented photovoltaic cells, America left it to Japan, Germany and then China—where over 70% of panels are now made—to bring them to market. Having poured public money into electric vehicles, notably after the oil shock of 1973, it let Japanese, Chinese and European firms commercialise them.
The problem, suggests Nikos Tsafos of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, is that whereas politicians share an almost ideological belief in America’ s genius for innovation, those on the right, especially, struggle to understand that it involves deployment as well as invention. To deploy clean tech rapidly requires two things that America still mostly lacks. One is a national climate policy to raise the cost of pollution, thereby creating demand. The other is an industrial policy sufficient to boost supply.
The optimistic case for the energy crisis is that it could help deal with both these shortages. It is already boosting European demand for American clean tech. And it might conceivably persuade Congress to expend more political and public capital on accelerating America’ s ability to meet that demand: most pressingly by passing the climate portions of Build Back Better; and by thinking more creatively about industrial policy in the bills that members of both parties are drafting.
In eastern Europe, fear of Vladimir Putin had recast the energy transition as a geopolitical imperative even before he invaded Ukraine. Poland and Romania are among the countries keenest on small modular nuclear power stations, an unproven technology, in which American companies are experimenting. The war has made its promise of faster, cheaper, safer nuclear energy seem more attractive—and the existing nuclear-tech leaders, Russia and China, less appealing. Even as Germany and others make hurried plans to invest in new fossil-fuel infrastructure, moreover, they are promising to adapt it to non-fossil alternatives. In committing to build two new LNG import terminals, for example, Olaf Scholz, Germany’ s chancellor, suggested they would later be converted to green hydrogen, another potential American strength.
This represents a clear opportunity to connect the world’ s most advanced clean tech with the continent with the most advanced climate policies. The Biden administration claims to be seized by it. “ The whole government now wants to accelerate the energy transition on the basis of energy security, as well as climate, ” says one of its senior members. “ Even foreign-policy experts, who generally don’ t talk about climate change, are obsessed with this. ”
The question is whether at least a little of the spirit will arise in Congress. Don’ t hold your breath. But don’ t count it out, either. The politics of national security, supply chains, energy and climate are in flux, deeply interconnected and capable of inspiring surprising coalitions even there. ■
The e-commerce giant is expanding at a rapid pace. How might that change America?
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OCC member default fund contributions jump 8% | Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 77% of risk leaders believe that complex, interconnected new risks are emerging at a more rapid pace than ever before. Most risk leaders are satisfiedâ¦
Todayâs financial crime threats are dynamic and fast-moving. Financial criminals continue to up their game and itâs critical for firms to move even faster than the speed of crime. With many regulaâ¦
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
The Options Clearing Corporation ( OCC) asked participants to pour an additional $ 2.5 billion into its default fund in the fourth quarter of the year, bringing the total to its highest level since Q1 2018.
Aggregate required member contributions to the fund totalled $ 15.8 billion at end-December, 19% higher than in the previous quarter.
The OCC’ s own aggregate pre-funded contribution to its default fund fell almost 12% to $ 291 million.
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Climate is changing for derivative valuation adjustments | Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 77% of risk leaders believe that complex, interconnected new risks are emerging at a more rapid pace than ever before. Most risk leaders are satisfiedâ¦
Todayâs financial crime threats are dynamic and fast-moving. Financial criminals continue to up their game and itâs critical for firms to move even faster than the speed of crime. With many regulaâ¦
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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When pricing new long-dated derivatives contracts, dealers are increasingly factoring in how climate change will affect their counterparties’ underlying business. To incorporate this additional risk, firms are developing new valuation adjustment methods.
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Morgan Stanley bests Goldman as top US fund single-name CDS dealer | Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 77% of risk leaders believe that complex, interconnected new risks are emerging at a more rapid pace than ever before. Most risk leaders are satisfiedâ¦
Todayâs financial crime threats are dynamic and fast-moving. Financial criminals continue to up their game and itâs critical for firms to move even faster than the speed of crime. With many regulaâ¦
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Morgan Stanley jumped ahead of Goldman Sachs as the largest single-name credit default swap ( CDS) dealer to US mutual funds, posting its largest position on record with the client sector.
The bank increased its market share to 17.5% in the fourth quarter, up from 13.4% a year earlier, due to larger positions with Pimco and Goldman’ s decline with Eaton Vance, which pared back its non-corporate CDS positions.
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Vulnerabilities arise in financial services as AI and machine learning use balloons | Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
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Todayâs financial crime threats are dynamic and fast-moving. Financial criminals continue to up their game and itâs critical for firms to move even faster than the speed of crime. With many regulaâ¦
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This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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The scale at which financial services firms are adopting artificial intelligence and machine learning continues to grow, bringing with it new dimensions of risk and vulnerability. In a recent Risk.net webinar sponsored by TCS, experts discussed approaches to bias and discrimination, governance and explainability of models, and the most critical data issues facing firms. Here we explore three themes that emerged from the discussion
Bias leading to unfair outcomes or discrimination can occur first in the historical data used to train predictive models, and second in the new data used by that model to make future decisions. The webinar’ s panellists noted that bad bias within datasets may impact the ability of AI models to accurately quantify the probability of a default or risk loss event. This could result in unfair decisions and higher misclassification rates. As well as exposing a firm to higher credit risk, this could also lead to customers being wrongly denied access to credit, leading to reputational risk for firms. On a positive note, news sentiment analytics, which uses natural language processing and machine learning, is being used successfully in credit risk management.
UK General Data Protection Regulation specifies the risk of discrimination that comes with automated decision-making, one webinar panellist explained. The Information Commissioner’ s Office ( ICO) has produced guidance for organisations using AI to process personal data on how to mitigate the risk of bias and discrimination. As part of a new framework the ICO is developing to audit these firms, assurance and investigations teams will scrutinise the technical and organisational measures they are taking to mitigate those risks.
The panellists agreed on the potential of using data and AI to reduce bad bias, and said firms are already using AI tools to try to mitigate these risks. By assessing biases in the underlying datasets they aim to ensure the quality of the data used in model development and in model execution is both consistent and complete. One panellist, a regulator, said that firms should be considering two new concepts in the use of machine learning and AI: representation and completeness of their data.
Being able to explain model outputs is vital for the financial services industry; webinar participants said that explainability provides an understanding of rate rationalisation as well as outcomes, such as a denial of credit or a transaction being marked as fraudulent.
A multifaceted, multilayered machine learning model changes with the inputs and with the outcomes. With the governance layer no longer static, firms will need dynamic governance processes to continue to provide explainability. The regulator noted that it runs some of its own machine learning models as challenger models to their current ways of working.
As a first line of defence, firms are educating their modellers to build explainability into their designs. Where the models are not explainable, firms are using a layered approach and assessing outcomes to ensure these are not biased. If there is bias, the ongoing challenge is to try to understand whether the bias is a feature of the model, the dataset on which it was developed or the dataset it is running on.
The most successful adoption of AI and machine learning occurs when firms are able to leverage new datasets previously unavailable because of limitations to econometric techniques. However, as one panellist remarked, the speed, scale and complexity of AI models, along with a number of data-related issues, raise new regulatory challenges, both in terms of the safety and soundness of individual firms, and potential systemic risks to financial stability.
Increasingly, firms are operating several AI models within a network to reach particular outcomes quickly. The outputs, such as actions, algorithms and unstructured or quantitative data become even more complicated. The regulator urged responsible innovation and awareness of the implications of large banks and incumbent players using these technologies.
The most critical issues industry participants faced in debiasing and enhancing accountability are around data quality. The market participants on the panel agreed that data quality is the linchpin of good modelling, which is inextricably linked to traceability and lineage. They explained that transformations occur through the lineage flow that impacts data quality. Understanding and correctly applying the controls they have on the lineage flow is an ongoing challenge. To this end, firms are using AI tools to understand logic and data flows.
AI and machine learning come with significant risks arising from bad bias. There are ongoing challenges in mitigating those risks and explaining model outputs. Understanding their data quality controls is vital to firms’ ability to tackle these issues. There is a comforting prospect in the potential panellists foresaw in the use of AI and machine learning to manage its own ills – for example, to reduce bad bias, understand data lineage and traceability, and run dynamic governance processes to maintain explainability.
The panellists were speaking in a personal capacity. The views expressed by the panel do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of their respective institutions.
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Quantitative analysis news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Risk.net’ s guide to the world’ s leading quant master’ s programmes, with the top 25 schools ranked
Risk.net’ s guide to the world’ s leading quant master’ s programmes, with the top 25 schools ranked
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UniCredit news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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The €10.8 billion cull helped improve the Italian bank’ s CET1 ratio 52bp
Italian lender has €20.8 billion of government-backed loans on its books
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China news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Also: Credit Suisse cops two cartel shops; banks get slapped in gender pay gap. Data by ORX News
Index in ‘ peak vega’ peril despite Wednesday's 12.5% rebound
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Awards news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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In this podcast, Zoi Fletcher speaks to Elisabetta Bernardini and Biagio Giacalone about the new approaches Intesa Sanpaolo has developed to credit portfolio management.
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Strained oat supply pushes Oatly to raise prices, expand sourcing | Drought conditions last year pushed North American oat harvests to near-record low levels, threatening the supply of a popular ingredient used in plant-based milk.
U.S. oat production declined 39% last year from 2020, with harvested acreage at a record low 650 thousand acres, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Canada, a major U.S. oat supplier, saw its smallest oat crop since 2010, according to Agriculture Canada.
Rail shipping issues have also added to supply woes. Floods in Western Canada at the end of last year washed out rail lines, and railroads were unable to meaningfully make progress on the resulting backlog due to a cold snap at the beginning of 2022.
`` We're going to have a very, very busy first quarter here once we get some good weather behind us, '' James Cairns, senior vice president of rail centric supply chain for Canadian National Railway, said on an earnings call in January. `` You think about the grain, you think about the coal, you think about the international imports, they're all there ready to move. ''
Rail constraints come as Oatly already expects lower production volumes in the first quarter due labor and raw material challenges.
Supply challenges have pushed up oat prices. The USDA's Economic Research Service projects the average price of oats in 2021/2022 season to hit $ 4.20 per bushel, which would top the 2012/2013 record of $ 3.89. Oatly is paying anywhere from 8% to 50% more for oats depending on the region.
The company has been rapidly building out manufacturing capacity to meet demand for oat milk and mitigate the effects of shortages. But high construction costs and supply chain delays have already disrupted those plans, pushing the company to pull back on certain investments.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
The retailer's acquisition of a middle- and final-mile carrier as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has allowed it to take more control over its delivery process.
Heightened demand put Amazon's distribution buildout into overdrive. To speed up delivery and limit costs, it will have to invest more.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
Low capacity and vessel delays are here to stay, industry insiders said at the TPM22 conference in Long Beach, California.
Both retailers leaned on their scale to get goods on shelves and keep prices low, at least relative to the industry.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more. | general |
How we kept information on Maps reliable in 2021 | In a world that’ s constantly changing, it’ s important for Google Maps to give you the freshest, most up-to-date information possible — so you can know whether the restaurant down the street from you reopened or if your neighborhood grocery store has curbside pickup. One way we do this is through contributed content.
Every day we receive around 20 million contributions from people using Maps. Those contributions include everything from updated business hours and phone numbers to photos and reviews. As with any platform that accepts contributed content, we have to stay vigilant in our efforts to fight abuse and make sure this information is accurate. Thanks to a combination of machine learning and human operators, we continue to decrease the amount of content seen on Maps that is fraudulent or abusive – in fact, it’ s less than one percent of all the content that is viewed on Maps. Today, we’ re sharing more about how we kept irrelevant and offensive information off of Google Maps throughout 2021.
A behind-the-scenes look at how we keep the local reviews on Google Maps helpful and reliable.
The world shifted throughout 2021 with the rollout of vaccines, updates to mask mandates, and new COVID variants. Our community of Maps users showed up in full force to update Google Maps with fresh information about their communities. In fact, throughout 2021, their contributions helped us add updated business information, such as a place’ s hours of operation or its health and safety protocols, for 30% more businesses than in 2020.
But sometimes fraudsters try to update business information on Google Business Profiles with abusive edits. In 2021, we blocked more than 100 million of these edits from going live thanks to our continued advancements in machine learning models that improved our ability to catch bot activity and unearth suspicious activity patterns. Here’ s a deeper look at the information we removed from Maps:
As the world reopened throughout 2021, people relied on Google Maps reviews to get the information they needed about places before visiting them — like what health and safety protocols were enforced or if there was outdoor dining and open spaces.
However, we also saw individuals and groups attempt to use fake reviews as a tactic to hurt local businesses — oftentimes spurred by public attention on differences in opinions. In 2021, to prevent violative content from appearing on Google Business Profiles, we put protections on over 100,000 businesses after detecting suspicious activity and abuse attempts. Here’ s what else we did in 2021 in our efforts to keep the content in Google Maps reliable:
Local knowledge that our global community contributes is a huge part of what makes Google Maps more than a navigation tool. We’ ll continue to invest in keeping this information fresh and reliable so you can discover information about the world around you.
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Economic Benefits of Real-Time Payments to be Revealed in ACI Worldwide's Report | Sam Jawad serves as ACI’ s executive vice president, head of banks and intermediaries. In this role, he helps lead ACI’ s product development, guiding the strategic deployment of our world-class products. Most recently, Jawad was the founding CEO of a Canadian bank’ s joint venture in digital payments. He brings nearly two decades of payments experience to ACI and serves as a board member of Smooth Commerce Inc and an advisor to Dream Payments. Jawad was also a member of the Visa Canada Advisory Board, the Canadian Bankers Association Payments Committee, the Interac Board and Mastercard Canada Region Board.
Using his expertise in the area, Jawad explains the economic benefits of real-time payments, using ACI’ s upcoming report to support his case
Depending on who you talk to, two, five or even 10 years’ worth of digital transformation has been jammed into 24 months or so of the covid pandemic.
As lockdowns and other restrictions took hold, real-time digital platforms, services and experiences stepped into the void left by restrictions on their in-person equivalents. Not only are payments not an exception to this rapid digitisation, the faster — even real-time — movement of money through digital channels has been a vital enabler of this transformation.
Understanding and responding to this change is vital for the strategic planning of any organisation engaged in payments, incumbent financial institutions ( FIs) and fintechs alike. This makes ACI’ s forthcoming 2022 Prime-Time for Real-Time global payments report, to be published in April, perhaps the most important yet.
It is also the most comprehensive.
For the third year running, we’ ve teamed up with GlobalData to produce in-depth market commentary and growth forecasts for an expanded cohort of 53 countries. A series of editorials also sees industry commentators explore the trends and emerging issues that matter most, at both global and regional levels.
And, for the first time, proprietary research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research ( CEBR) provides an unprecedented view of the economic benefits stimulated by real-time payments. Delivering detailed insights into how the use of real-time payments by corporations and financial institutions leads to an increase in productivity and uplift to the wider economy, this research adds holistic, evidence-based coverage of the economic value of real-time payments at the national and global economy levels.
The report reveals the way in which real-time transactions dominate how we now pay for goods and services. It shows that by 2026, approximately 25 per cent of all electronic payments will be made through a real-time payments system. In MEASA ( Middle East, Africa and South Asia), this figure is predicted to hit 80 per cent. In comparison, the EU’ s current real-time trajectory sits below the global average at 12.5 per cent.
Additional insights into global growth and adoption of real-time payments from this year’ s report include:
In markets where real-time payments take hold — typically those where strong government or central bank mandates are in place — we see an expansion of participants throughout the payments value chain.
As living and working converges onto digital experiences, however, offering real-time payments is about more than enabling new ways of paying. It is about embedding payments within these experiences in order to enhance those journeys, improve their convenience and increase their value. As such, the fintech space is where the real action happens — and the competition is set to intensify dramatically.
A recurring theme of the report is how incumbent FIs are closing the agility gap on fintechs, turning to the cloud to level the playing field in terms of time to market on new payment experiences. By freeing these well-resourced organisations to focus on developing added-value payment features and functions, on top of standardised infrastructure and services, competition will increase. So too will the industry’ s overall maturity when it comes to using data to improve the customer experience.
The beauty of a report that is so comprehensive in both its breadth and depth is that there is ample scope for readers to draw their own conclusions, both about what this means for their current and future business strategies and the payment modernisations they may entail.
Among our own conclusions is the contention that, as accelerated innovation and better data lead to more relevant use cases, the flywheel of real-time payments growth will develop a self-sustaining momentum.
As a result, the future development of the payments industry will mirror that of the wider world in response to digital acceleration. Meaning, if it isn’ t real-time, it isn’ t relevant.
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Best subordinated debt investor 2021 – MV Credit Partners | When asked how many times MV Credit has won the GlobalCapital “ Best subordinated debt investor ” award, Frédéric Nadal, the private credit firm’ s managing partner, CEO and co-head of origination, has to ask a colleague. He writes back the next day to confirm: 12 times, or every year between 2009 and 2020. This year, then, marks the 13th win.
“ It’ s nice to be recognised as an industry leader, although not necessarily ‘ the’ industry leader, ” Nadal says. “ We sell the fact that we’ ve been in this industry for 22 years now. The seven partners have each been at MV Credit for more than 15 years, and the founders are still here. What we have is experience and consistency. It’ s not sexy: We do the due diligence, raise money, invest the money and then get the money back. ”
Built into this practicality is ESG, which MV Credit espoused from the start. “ We launched 22 years ago with an exclusion list including few obvious industries like tobacco, alcohol and arms. Our focus is still on what companies, and humans, can do better - whether it’ s transparency, governance, social good or the environment. This isn’ t new, this is what we’ ve always done. ”
“ Even as lenders, we’ re trying to make things better, for our investors and our borrowers’ shareholders. ” Internally, MV Credit’ s staff is 60% female, and includes 16 different nationalities – not because of those characteristics, but because of their expertise, says Nadal.
It is this, the human capital side, which can often differentiate a firm from others. Yet the use of advanced technology is offering increasing value as well. “ Automation is good for compliance and back-up, and potentially building models – something which we are currently testing, ” says Nadal. “ However, 50% of our work is about the human aspect: meeting with our borrowers’ shareholders, agreeing strategy objectives, determining how assets behave in good and bad times, how transparent they are, and how quickly these shareholders can support or replace management when needed. ”
He adds: “ It is very difficult to assess these things by a formula or algorithm…and what we offer are tailor-made products. ” For instance, the firm’ s entire portfolio has been rated for ESG, with all loans and companies matched with tens of ESG criteria, with a view to creating a more formal model.
In addition to the emphasis and focus the firm places on the human aspect of its business, it is also focused on expanding internationally. The firm now has three offices: the London headquarters; the Luxembourg office; and since March 1, a Paris office, which is home to the 16-strong CLO team that it acquired from Ostrum Asset Management.
MV Credit is now also partnering with investment manager Loomis Sayles, another Natixis affiliate, which specialises in the public debt market. Together, both firms have devised an innovative hybrid product mixing illiquidity premium and the ability to get some shorter liquidity features – as compared to more traditional private debt products.
For Nadal, he expects to see more consolidation in the private debt market. In fact, MV Credit is looking at “ sizeable deals ” in western Europe over the next two to three years. “ We are in talks now, so at the beginning of our search, ” he says.
But what about the firm’ s strategy during these uncertain, turbulent times? Nadal says its focus “ continues to be on stable geographies and investments, ” with 70% of the portfolio comprising healthcare and software, sectors in which the firm has been active in for 22 and 12 years, respectively.
“ We’ ve always focused on industries and investors that would like to grow and expand internationally. We are more interested in financing growth than just lending money, ” he says.
For Nadal, Covid triggered massive disruption in terms of evergreen growth and extended quantitative easing. However, he feels that the global economic impact of the war in Ukraine has possibly given rise to an extended period of inflation, and even potentially a recession.
“ This won’ t impact our standards of lending money, since we avoid GDP-reliant investments, but will surely affect other areas such as staffing and energy prices for these credits, ” he says.
Whatever the headwinds, the big question is: will MV Credit win again next year? “ I think that people keep voting for us [ in the GlobalCapital awards ] because we are consistent, treat people well - internally and externally, are transparent, and don’ t overpromise, ” says Nadal. | business |
Moderna reports early success with COVID vaccine in children under 6 | Biotech company Moderna has announced the first interim data from a clinical trial testing its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in children under the age of six. The results show similar antibody responses after two doses to those seen in adults. Moderna plans to apply for US Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) emergency authorization very soon.
Moderna’ s announcement is the first positive clinical trial data for a COVID-19 vaccine in children after Pfizer recently extended its pediatric trials to three doses following reports of weak immune responses to two doses. The Moderna data covers two cohorts of children: approximately 2,500 children aged between six months and two years, and 4,200 children aged between two and six.
The trial tested a 25 microgram mRNA dose in children under the age of six. This compared to 50 micrograms in the six to 12 year old group and 100 micrograms in those 12 and older.
Moderna reports two vaccine doses administered in the child cohorts, separated by 28 days, resulted in a neutralizing of antibody responses similar to what was seen after two doses in adult trials. The side effect profile was also consistent with those seen in older cohorts.
Mild fever was the most prominent side effect detected in the trial, seen in 14.6 percent of the two to six year cohort and 17 percent of six month to two year cohort. No other safety concerns were detected, including no cases of myocarditis and no cases of MIS-C, a multisystem inflammatory syndrome.
The trial was not set up to focus explicitly on efficacy at preventing infection, however, Moderna does calculate the two dose protocol reduced infections from Omicron by 37.5 percent in the two to six group and by 43.7 percent in the six month to two years group. These numbers are inarguably low, but efficacy is the same as what is currently seen in adults after two doses against Omicron according to Moderna.
All vaccine breakthrough infections detected in the trial were mild and there were no reports of severe disease, hospitalization or death. In terms of the vaccines preventing severe disease or death, Moderna said it can not estimate efficacy due to a lack of data. Because those events are rarer in children than adults, the trial would have needed to enroll tens of thousands of children to determine those effects.
`` We believe these latest results from the KidCOVE study are good news for parents of children under 6 years of age, ” explained Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel. “ We now have clinical data on the performance of our vaccine from infants six months of age through older adults. Given the need for a vaccine against COVID-19 in infants and young children we are working with the U.S. FDA and regulators globally to submit these data as soon as possible. ”
One question that arises from this preliminary data is whether these younger cohorts would benefit from a third vaccine dose, in much the same way researchers have discovered a third dose is crucial for effective protection against Omicron in adults. Moderna’ s pediatric trial is ongoing, and will explore the effect of third doses in all young populations.
Pfizer, the other big player in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine field, has skipped any attempt at FDA approval for a two dose vaccine in young children. Several months ago it revealed it was adding a third dose to its trial protocol after early data indicated two doses did not produce effective immune responses in children under the age of five.
It has been suggested that Pfizer’ s conservative dosage choices may have limited the efficacy of its mRNA vaccine in children. Pfizer has always worked with much lower mRNA doses compared to Moderna.
Pfizer's adult vaccine works with 30 microgram doses, compared to Moderna’ s 100 microgram doses. But in children aged five to 11, the dose is reduced to 10 micrograms. And in Pfizer's recent trials with children under the age of five it has been focusing on 3 microgram doses.
So while Pfizer seems to be working on finding the lowest mRNA dose that can produce an effective immune response, Moderna has been working at the other end of the spectrum, looking for the highest dose that can be tolerated with minimal side effects.
A study published last month found the efficacy of Pfizer’ s mRNA vaccine in children aged five to 11 seems to be waning much faster than what is seen in 12 to 17 year olds. Experts commenting on the study hypothesize this discordance to be significantly influenced by dose differences between the two age groups.
Pfizer expects its interim third dose data for children under the age of five to arrive sometime in April. Moderna, on the other hand, will move immediately on an FDA application for its two dose protocol in all adolescent age groups from two months up. So parents of young children could possibly have access to a COVID-19 vaccine for their kids by the end of April or early May.
Source: Moderna | science |
Health insurer post $ 58 million loss, citing COVID-19 expenses | Highmark of Western and Northeastern New York lost $ 58 million last year – its first loss in six years – as the health insurer grappled with rising expenses from Covid-19, the Buffalo News reports. Buffalo, New York-based Highmark, which changed its name from HealthNow New York a year ago after completing its affiliation with Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc., also posted revenue of $ 3.1 billion.
Highmark of Western and Northeastern New York lost $ 58 million last year – its first loss in six years – as the health insurer grappled with rising expenses from Covid-19, the Buffalo News reports. Buffalo, New York-based Highmark, which changed its name from HealthNow New York a year ago after completing its affiliation with Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc., also posted revenue of $ 3.1 billion. | general |
Pinnacol distributes $ 50M in dividends | For the sixth consecutive year, Colorado workers compensation insurer Pinnacol announced it is distributing general dividend checks to 53,000 customers, totaling $ 50 million. Ninety-five percent of Pinnacol’ s policyholders are eligible to receive a dividend, receiving an average dividend of $ 949 in 2021, according to an announcement issued Monday. “ During this year when Colorado businesses and their employees are facing significant financial hardships, we’ re glad to be in a position to return some money to our policyholders, ” Pinnacol’ s president and CEO Phil Kalin said in a statement. “ We’ re also pleased that we have been able to reduce our customers’ rates by more than 32% since 2016. ” Counting this year’ s distribution, Pinnacol has returned $ 320 million in total dividends to Colorado’ s business community since 2016, which equals approximately 10% of premium, according to the announcement. In 2020, Pinnacol distributed $ 70 million in dividends to its customers during the coronavirus lockdown.
For the sixth consecutive year, Colorado workers compensation insurer Pinnacol announced it is distributing general dividend checks to 53,000 customers, totaling $ 50 million.
Ninety-five percent of Pinnacol’ s policyholders are eligible to receive a dividend, receiving an average dividend of $ 949 in 2021, according to an announcement issued Monday.
“ During this year when Colorado businesses and their employees are facing significant financial hardships, we’ re glad to be in a position to return some money to our policyholders, ” Pinnacol’ s president and CEO Phil Kalin said in a statement. “ We’ re also pleased that we have been able to reduce our customers’ rates by more than 32% since 2016. ”
Counting this year’ s distribution, Pinnacol has returned $ 320 million in total dividends to Colorado’ s business community since 2016, which equals approximately 10% of premium, according to the announcement. In 2020, Pinnacol distributed $ 70 million in dividends to its customers during the coronavirus lockdown. | general |
FDA grants full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine | — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday gave full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and German partner BioNTech SE for use in people over the age of 16. The vaccine has been authorized for emergency use since December, and more than 204 million people in the United States have received it, based on Sunday's data. But none of the three authorized COVID-19 vaccines had previously received full FDA approval. Public health officials hope it will convince more unvaccinated Americans that Pfizer's shot is safe and effective. Vaccine hesitancy among some Americans has hindered the United States’ response to the novel coronavirus. “ While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated, ” said Janet Woodcock, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's acting commissioner. Roughly 51% of Americans have been fully vaccinated so far, even as a recent surge of infections spurred by the contagious Delta variant ravages parts of the country with low vaccination rates.
( Reuters) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday gave full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and German partner BioNTech SE for use in people over the age of 16.
The vaccine has been authorized for emergency use since December, and more than 204 million people in the United States have received it, based on Sunday's data. But none of the three authorized COVID-19 vaccines had previously received full FDA approval.
Public health officials hope it will convince more unvaccinated Americans that Pfizer's shot is safe and effective. Vaccine hesitancy among some Americans has hindered the United States’ response to the novel coronavirus.
“ While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated, ” said Janet Woodcock, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's acting commissioner.
Roughly 51% of Americans have been fully vaccinated so far, even as a recent surge of infections spurred by the contagious Delta variant ravages parts of the country with low vaccination rates. | general |
SAIF announces $ 210 million dividend | The State Accident Insurance Fund of Oregon announced on Wednesday that it would pay out a $ 210 million dividend to policyholders — its second since the start of the pandemic. Salem, Oregon-based SAIF said the nonprofit comp provider will base the dividend on premium for policies whose term ended in 2020; the dividend will be distributed in July. SAIF issued a $ 100 million dividend in 2020. This year’ s dividend marks the 12th consecutive year that SAIF has offered a dividend and its 24th since 1990. More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here.
The State Accident Insurance Fund of Oregon announced on Wednesday that it would pay out a $ 210 million dividend to policyholders — its second since the start of the pandemic.
Salem, Oregon-based SAIF said the nonprofit comp provider will base the dividend on premium for policies whose term ended in 2020; the dividend will be distributed in July.
SAIF issued a $ 100 million dividend in 2020. This year’ s dividend marks the 12th consecutive year that SAIF has offered a dividend and its 24th since 1990.
More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here. | general |
State Fund declares 10% dividend for 2020 | The State Compensation Insurance Fund of California will distribute $ 39 million — approximately 10% of its estimated annual premium — in a dividend to qualifying policyholders, the Pleasanton, California-based workers compensation insurer announced Monday. The dividend will apply to policies that took effect between Aug. 27 and Dec. 31, 2020. In August, the State Fund announced a $ 75 million mid-year dividend for all policies enacted between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26, 2020, to help policyholders affected by COVID-19 shutdowns. More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here.
The State Compensation Insurance Fund of California will distribute $ 39 million — approximately 10% of its estimated annual premium — in a dividend to qualifying policyholders, the Pleasanton, California-based workers compensation insurer announced Monday.
The dividend will apply to policies that took effect between Aug. 27 and Dec. 31, 2020.
In August, the State Fund announced a $ 75 million mid-year dividend for all policies enacted between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26, 2020, to help policyholders affected by COVID-19 shutdowns.
More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here. | general |
Oregon’ s SAIF declares $ 100 million dividend | Policyholders of Oregon’ s State Accident Insurance Fund will share a $ 100 million dividend to be distributed in October, the workers compensation insurance company said in a statement Wednesday. SAIF’ s dividend will be based on premium for policies with a 2019 term end. This is the 11th consecutive year the insurer has offered a dividend and the 23rd dividend in the past 30 years. “ Oregon's employers and their employees make dividends possible by working together to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses, ” said Kerry Barnett, SAIF’ s president and CEO, in the statement. SAIF also created a $ 25 million coronavirus fund and has distributed money to more than 3,400 policyholders to help offset expenses for making workplaces safer against the coronavirus. More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here.
Policyholders of Oregon’ s State Accident Insurance Fund will share a $ 100 million dividend to be distributed in October, the workers compensation insurance company said in a statement Wednesday.
SAIF’ s dividend will be based on premium for policies with a 2019 term end. This is the 11th consecutive year the insurer has offered a dividend and the 23rd dividend in the past 30 years.
“ Oregon's employers and their employees make dividends possible by working together to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses, ” said Kerry Barnett, SAIF’ s president and CEO, in the statement.
SAIF also created a $ 25 million coronavirus fund and has distributed money to more than 3,400 policyholders to help offset expenses for making workplaces safer against the coronavirus.
More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here. | general |
Long COVID symptoms: A new study reveals long COVID symptoms include memory and concentration issues | Seven out of ten patients reported difficulty concentrating.
A recent study published by researchers at the University of Cambridge has found that seven out of ten patients affected with long COVID face memory and concentration problems that aren't getting much attention from clinicians as well.
Loss of smell and taste, breathlessness, fever were defining symptoms of COVID when the disease first appeared on the global stage. The risk of a rapid decline in the health of an infected individual led to clinicians prioritizing those with severe symptoms. Individuals whose symptoms did not warrant hospitalization were asked to stay at home and recover. However, in either set of patients, there are many who continue to live with symptoms of COVID for months following the infection, a condition recognized as long COVID.
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Even the World Health Organization is unsure how long the condition can last. In a post last year, the health organization suggested that the condition could last from as little as three months to as many as nine months while stating that further studies were needed to understand the condition better.
Amongst the symptoms of long COVID, the most common three are shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction ( brain fog), and fatigue.
However, this is far from an exhaustive list as more than 200 symptoms have been reported in patients. Other symptoms that have been reported are:
As seen in these listings, the impact of long COVID on mental wellbeing has received very little attention. So, the researchers at Cambridge University decided to probe into this and recruited 181 long COVID patients, and monitored their symptoms for a period of 18 months.
The study also found that the severity of these symptoms was higher in individuals who faced severe headaches, dizziness, or fatigue soon after being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as compared to those who had milder symptoms. Additionally, those who continued to experience these symptoms fared poorly on cognitive tests.
Interestingly, half of the study's participants found that medical professionals were not taking their complaints of loss of cognitive function seriously.
`` Long COVID has received very little attention politically or medically, '' said Dr. Lucy Cheke, an author of the paper and a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the university. `` It urgently needs to be taken more seriously, and cognitive issues are an important part of this. When politicians talk about ‘ Living with COVID’ – that is, unmitigated infection, this is something they ignore. The impact on the working population could be huge. ''
The Office of National Statistics in the U.K. estimates that up to 25 percent of those infected with COVID have some degree of chronic illness. The researchers warn that the society at large will face a 'long tail ' of workforce illness due to Long COVID, and therefore it is important to be able to identify and treat issues associated with the conditions.
Study Abstract: Since its first emergence in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 ( COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 ( SARS-CoV-2), has evolved into a global pandemic. Whilst often considered a respiratory disease, a large proportion of COVID-19 patients report neurological symptoms, and there is accumulating evidence for neural damage in some individuals, with recent studies suggesting loss of gray matter in multiple regions, particularly in the left hemisphere. There are a number of mechanisms by which COVID-19 infection may lead to neurological symptoms and structural and functional changes in the brain, and it is reasonable to expect that many of these may translate into cognitive problems. Indeed, cognitive problems are one of the most commonly reported symptoms in those experiencing “ Long COVID ” —the chronic illness following COVID-19 infection that affects between 10 and 25% of patients. The COVID and Cognition Study is a part cross-sectional, part longitudinal, study documenting and aiming to understand the cognitive problems in Long COVID. In this first paper from the study, we document the characteristics of our sample of 181 individuals who had experienced COVID-19 infection, and 185 who had not. We explore which factors may be predictive of ongoing symptoms and their severity, as well as conducting an in-depth analysis of symptom profiles. Finally, we explore which factors predict the presence and severity of cognitive symptoms, both throughout the ongoing illness and at the time of testing. The main finding from this first analysis is that that severity of initial illness is a significant predictor of the presence and severity of ongoing symptoms, and that some symptoms during the initial illness—particularly limb weakness—may be more common in those that have more severe ongoing symptoms. Symptom profiles can be well described in terms of 5 or 6 factors, reflecting the variety of this highly heterogenous condition experienced by the individual. Specifically, we found that neurological/psychiatric and fatigue/mixed symptoms during the initial illness, and that neurological, gastrointestinal, and cardiopulmonary/fatigue symptoms during the ongoing illness, predicted experience of cognitive symptoms.
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By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. | tech |
New cyberespionage campaign targeting ISPs, research entities | ESET Research discovered a still-ongoing cyberespionage campaign using a previously undocumented Korplug variant by the Mustang Panda APT group. The current campaign exploits the war in Ukraine and other European news topics.
Known victims include research entities, internet service providers ( ISPs), and European diplomatic missions mostly located in East and Southeast Asia. Researchers named this new Korplug variant Hodur due to its resemblance to the THOR variant documented in 2020. In Norse mythology, Hodur is Thor’ s blind half-brother.
Victims of this campaign are likely lured with phishing documents abusing the latest events in Europe such as Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine. This has resulted in more than three million residents fleeing the war to neighboring countries according to the UNHCR, leading to an unprecedented crisis on Ukraine’ s borders. One of the filenames related to this campaign is “ Situation at the EU borders with Ukraine.exe ”.
Other phishing lures mention updated COVID-19 travel restrictions, an approved regional aid map for Greece, and a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council. The final lure is a real document available on the European Council’ s website. This shows that the APT group behind this campaign is following current affairs and is able to successfully and swiftly react to them.
“ Based on code similarities and the many commonalities in Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, ESET researchers attribute this campaign with high confidence to Mustang Panda, also known as TA416, RedDelta, or PKPLUG. It is a cyberespionage group mainly targeting governmental entities and NGOs, ” explains ESET malware researcher Alexandre Côté Cyr who discovered Hodur. Victims of Mustang Panda are mostly, but not exclusively, located in East and Southeast Asia with a focus on Mongolia. The group is also known for its campaign targeting the Vatican in 2020.
While researchers haven’ t been able to identify the verticals of all victims, this campaign seems to have the same targeting objectives as other Mustang Panda campaigns. Following the APT’ s typical victimology, most victims are located in East and Southeast Asia, along with some in European and African countries. According to ESET telemetry the vast majority of targets are located in Mongolia and Vietnam, followed by Myanmar, with only a few in other affected countries, namely Greece, Cyprus, Russia, South Sudan, and South Africa. Identified verticals include diplomatic missions, research entities, and ISPs.
Mustang Panda’ s campaigns frequently use custom loaders for shared malware including Cobalt Strike, Poison Ivy, and Korplug ( also known as PlugX). The group has also been known to create its own Korplug variants. “ Compared to other campaigns using Korplug, every stage of the deployment process utilizes anti-analysis techniques and control-flow obfuscation, to make the investigation more difficult for us malware researchers, ” concludes Côté Cyr.
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Nordstrom hires off-price vets to bolster Rack supply chain | To accelerate growth at its stumbling Rack banner, Nordstrom is pulling talent with a depth of off-price experience to lead merchandising and supply chain efforts.
In its announcement of the three new hires, Nordstrom emphasized the synergies of its banners by stating how customers shop at both its namesake and Rack brands.
`` Many customers are choosing to pick up their Nordstrom.com orders at our Rack locations, '' the retailer said in a statement. The company said one-third of its next-day Nordstrom online orders were picked up at a Rack location in the most recent quarter.
Nordstrom is tying those efforts to its Closer To You campaign, which it introduced in the fall of 2020, and is referred to as a `` brand promise '' rather than solely a marketing strategy. It focuses on an integrated approach to bring customers `` closer to the things they need and want through convenience and connection '' by highlighting services like order pick-up, returns, and tailoring and curated product selection.
During the fourth quarter earnings call earlier this month, Erik Nordstrom addressed the company's missteps at Rack, including problematic changes last year, and rolled out plans for improvements. That includes bringing in additional premium brands, boosting marketing efforts and bolstering leadership.
`` To be clear, we are confident in our ability to profitably grow our Rack business and won't be satisfied until we do, '' he told analysts.
Last December, the company reportedly hired consulting firm AlixPartners to explore possible improvements for its Rack business. Nordstrom did not comment on rumors that could include exploring a Rack spinoff. However, a month earlier Erik Nordstrom did say during the company's Q3 earnings call, `` We are not satisfied at all with our Rack business, as clearly our recovery is lagging what we think it should be. ''
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
The retailer's acquisition of a middle- and final-mile carrier as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has allowed it to take more control over its delivery process.
Retail supply chains have transformed into a complex web of goods movement and technology, with more touchpoints to the consumer than ever before.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
The retailer's acquisition of a middle- and final-mile carrier as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has allowed it to take more control over its delivery process.
Retail supply chains have transformed into a complex web of goods movement and technology, with more touchpoints to the consumer than ever before.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more. | general |
ADRs End Higher; China Eastern Airlines Traded Actively | International stocks trading in New York closed higher Thursday.
The S & P/BNY Mellon index of American depositary receipts rose 0.9% to 157.59. The European index was up 1.1% at 144.03. The Asian index increased 0.7% to 195.12. The Latin American index rose 1.4% to 223.39. And the emerging-markets index improved 0.5% to 331.96.
China Eastern Airlines Corp. was among those whose ADRs traded actively.
ABB Ltd. said Thursday that it plans to launch a new share-buyback program worth up to $ 3 billion. ADRs closed 0.1% lower at $ 34.78.
AstraZeneca PLC said Thursday that its Evusheld drug for Covid-19 prevention has been recommended for marketing authorization in the European Union. ADRs rose 2.6% to $ 66.02.
Search and rescue teams on Thursday discovered engine parts from the plane carrying 132 people that crashed in a mountainous area in southern China, as the hunt continued for the second black box. With no signs of survivors three days after the crash, all aboard the Boeing 737 operated by China Eastern Airlines -- nine aircrew and 123 passengers -- are feared dead in what would be China's worst air disaster in nearly three decades. ADRs closed down 2.9% at $ 17.22.
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Music Academy of the West Partners with London Symphony Orchestra - The Santa Barbara Independent | Multi-Year Project Produces Concerts to Celebrate Music Academy’ s 75th Anniversary
The Music Academy of the West turns 75 in 2022, and this week, a series of three concerts at The Granada Theatre featuring the London Symphony Orchestra will jump-start their anniversary celebration. Four years in the making, these concerts are the result of a massive operation involving three distinct groups: the London Symphony Orchestra; the Music Academy’ s Keston MAX All-Stars; and the choristers of Sing!, the Academy’ s new program for elementary students in Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, and Goleta schools.
The Thursday, March 24, program focuses on the London Symphony Orchestra ( LSO) as a touring unit and is co-sponsored by CAMA. Following other recent appearances at Stanford, Berkeley, and in Costa Mesa, Sir Simon Rattle will lead the group in an ambitious program that includes the Symphony No. 7 of Jean Sibelius, Bartók’ s Miraculous Mandarin, Ravel’ s La Valse, and The Spark Catchers, a composition by Black British composer Hannah Kendall that Rattle calls a “ real firecracker. ” This one is sure to attract all the classical fans, as there is no better orchestra anywhere right now, especially for this music.
On Saturday afternoon, the Academy invites families to join the LSO for How to Build an Orchestra, a concert with audience singalong featuring Rattle and LSO Discovery presenter/animator Rachel Leach. Dozens of elementary school children will be there representing Sing! The choristers will perform songs they have learned in advance in order to experience what it is like to sing with an orchestra.
Sunday brings the Music Academy’ s Keston MAX All-Stars on stage alongside the LSO. Chosen for their excellence in the Academy’ s summer programs over multiple years, this group of fellows became apprentices to mentor musicians in the LSO. Depending on what year they earned the honor, they either spent time in London playing and rehearsing with the orchestra or will come to London later in 2022 to undertake their exchanges, which were postponed due to COVID.
The three sections that follow will give you an idea of what each of these three events has to offer and provide context about the goals of the Music Academy and the London Symphony.
Presented by the Music Academy of the West and CAMA.At the Granada on Thursday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m.
Touring has been an integral part of the London Symphony’ s mission since it began in 1904. The group’ s first tours were train trips to the provinces in 1905, led by Sir Edward Elgar. Today, in addition to its residency at London’ s Barbican Center, the LSO plays the world’ s most distinguished concert halls regularly. Following this North American trip, which concludes with Sunday’ s event at the Granada, the orchestra will rest for just one week before performing in London, then heading out again to a series of concerts in Germany with their Principal Guest Conductor François-Xavier Roth.
The Music Academy’ s collaboration with the London Symphony builds on Simon Rattle’ s impact since he started as the LSO music director in 2017. Before that, Rattle served 16 years as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. His proven ability to lead an elite orchestra and his expertise across a broad range of repertoire made Rattle an ideal candidate for the LSO position, and he’ s taken advantage of the opportunity to produce some extraordinary music.
The LSO will release a live recording from Rattle’ s 2017 debut season at the Barbican on Friday, March 25, featuring three Stravinsky ballets. This thrilling concert put The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring together on the same program. There’ s a great video of the Rite of Spring performance on YouTube.
When I spoke with Rattle by phone in February, he described the gratitude that he and the performers have experienced as a result of appearing in front of packed audiences again: “ The first time we saw a full audience sitting next to each other was in Aix-en-Provence at the end of the summer. Somehow we hadn’ t realized it would be full — that people would no longer be socially distanced. And many of us started weeping. It was the feeling that, ‘ Oh my God, yes, this is what we do!’ Yes, and you will never again take even one note for granted. ”
This epiphany in Provence has its corollary here in Santa Barbara, where the return to live performance has been a joyous revelation. No introduction to these three concerts would be complete without recognizing the critical role that the Granada has played in reviving the performing arts in the wake of the worst of the pandemic. Whether we’ re talking about Kismet, Opera Santa Barbara’ s Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, or appearances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Roxane Gay, the Santa Barbara Symphony, and State Street Ballet ( SSB), the Granada has made it all possible. The rapturous responses of audiences to such recent triumphs as SSB’ s Sleeping Beauty and the S.B. Symphony’ s “ Sonic Boom ” concert testify to one thing: The Granada is essential to the cultural life of our city.
Conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and featuring Rachel Leach.At the Granada on Saturday, March 26, 4-5 p.m.
This one-hour family concert comes from the London Symphony’ s Discovery program and is suitable for children ages 7-12. In addition to music by Prokofiev, Mozart, Copland, and Beethoven, there will be explanations of the various instruments that make up an orchestra and opportunities for audience participation.
The How to Build an Orchestra concert marks a milestone in developing the Music Academy’ s new choral program, Sing! Located within the public elementary schools of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, and Goleta, Sing!, which began in 2018, offers free choral instruction to all students in the region as an afterschool program. Sing! students have copies of the LSO’ s book How to Build an Orchestra, and 100 of them will be present at the Granada on Saturday to sing as part of the concert.
Music Academy President and CEO Scott Reed describes the motivation for a new partnership with the Young People’ s Chorus ( YPC) of New York City in 2021 as in part a result of the holistic program reevaluations that took place during the pandemic. “ We started thinking about how we wanted to go back into the schools after the period of working virtually, and we thought it was important that it reflect the changes taking place in the world. ” Through Jamie Broumas, the Academy’ s chief artistic officer, the administration and the board of the Music Academy met Francisco Núñez, the visionary leader of the YPC.
Núñez, a 2011 MacArthur Fellow and Music America’ s 2018 Educator of the Year, came to Santa Barbara in December 2021 to assist in the transformation of Sing! into a YPC-informed program that took place this season. Throughout, the team led by program director Erin McKibben and choral directors Christine Hollinger and Marta Hovhannisyan has delivered choral training every week to students from 33 different schools at six locations in Santa Barbara County.
The YPC approach to choral training derives from Núñez’ s lived experience as the child of immigrant parents from Haiti and the Dominican Republic growing up in New York City. After his father died, his mother cleaned houses to support the family. To give young Francisco something to keep his mind off of what was happening in the streets, his mom bought a used piano from the Salvation Army and exchanged cleaning services for piano lessons for her son.
Núñez thrived as a music student and earned a scholarship to New York University. All along the way, in addition to his piano performance studies, Francisco sustained an entrepreneurial spirit that led him to a high-ranking position at the New York Children’ s Aid Society when he was still in his twenties. Faced with the challenge of providing meaningful services to as many as 100,000 schoolchildren, Núñez developed the choir that would eventually become the Young People’ s Choir of New York City.
From these humble beginnings, this underdog organization grew into a sophisticated international program that helps thousands of young singers travel, compete, and perform worldwide. In addition to composing his own choral works specifically for children’ s choirs, Núñez has commissioned several hundred works suited to these treble voices from some of the top composers in the world. His understanding of developing singers and his dedication to putting young people side by side in choirs made Núñez a compelling partner for the Music Academy.
Reed sees the YPC approach as an especially exciting way of activating the whole Santa Barbara community through music. “ We had been looking for years at how best to contribute to Santa Barbara, ” he told me, “ and this is what we found: taking kids from all different backgrounds and putting them next to each other with the idea of blending their voices. I love it — it’ s profound. ”
In addition to providing these students with after-school choirs to sing in, Reed and the Academy’ s staff felt it was essential to include the Sing! kids in the residency with the London Symphony. As Reed puts it, “ [ Sing! ] is a program that has to integrate with everything else that we’ re doing. It has to evolve with everything else, and it has to leverage everything else. ”
After they sing with the London Symphony at the family concert on Saturday, these students will have a chance to meet other young musicians this summer when YPC comes to Montecito as part of the Music Academy’ s summer program. YPC Lab is a workshop that invites young singers from New York and other countries to participate on location in group rehearsals and concerts. Thanks to its ongoing relationship with Westmont College, the Music Academy can host one of these labs this summer. Stay tuned for more information about that program in the coming months.
Featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and the MAW’ s Keston MAX All-Stars.At the Granada Sunday, March 27, at 7 p.m.
No single event expresses the ambition and scope of the Music Academy’ s mission more fully than Sunday’ s Community Concert. Take approximately 100 members of the London Symphony Orchestra, add 36 of the best students from the Music Academy’ s summer programs, and put them all on stage in front of Sir Simon Rattle. You know something exciting will happen. Since its inception in 2014, the apprenticeship model offered to certain high-achieving fellows through these orchestra partnerships has represented the artistic ideal of the organization. The Music Academy’ s mission to train the best and most well-rounded musicians of the 21st century comes to a mini-crescendo every time one of these All-Stars connects with a principal musician at a great orchestra.In trying to imagine what it takes to organize and execute such a massive undertaking, I turned to Indigo Fischer, the flutist who holds the position of Artistic Operations Coordinator at the MAW. Fischer pulls the strings and parses the data in motion, making the whole giant operation possible. Using an advanced software suite called ArtsVision, which is specifically designed for symphony orchestras, opera companies, and music schools, she schedules everything from the first rehearsal to retrieving the last auxiliary instruments after the big concert.
According to Fischer, what’ s happening behind the scenes this week makes everything audiences see and hear possible. Initial rehearsals called “ sectionals ” bring the Keston MAX All-Stars into one-on-one coaching with their LSO mentors. Fischer told me that this is where the musicians learn about “ the nitty-gritty details that they otherwise would not be able to address in a full orchestra rehearsal. ”
The orchestra will then gradually assemble into larger groups until the conductor’ s final dress rehearsal. Fischer coordinates everything from obtaining the auxiliary instruments for double bass players who are flying in from the East Coast and don’ t want to bring their own to making sure that the kids from Sing! know when their parents need to get them to the Granada. She said that what she loves most about her work is the feeling that comes when the public musical performance finally begins. “ If you’ re doing your job right, no one will know what went into it during the performance. It all serves the music-making. We’ re all in it for the ultimate creation of art. ”
Contemplating the sheer size of Sunday’ s event, with nearly 140 musicians scheduled to take the stage together, Fischer acknowledged another profoundly important aspect of the work: keeping everyone safe and healthy. “ It has been wonderful that we’ ve been able to be safe about it throughout the pandemic, ” she said. “ That’ s been a whole other layer of details that have had to be factored in, the COVID protocols that make sure that the musicians can be safe to make this music happen. ”
There are still a small number of tickets available for Sunday’ s community concert, and they are all just $ 10. To purchase tickets to any of these events, go togranadasb.com. | general |
TestRAMP to extend testing beyond COVID-19 | Two years ago a COVID-19 not-for-profit, TestRAMP was established to which help UK COVID testing laboratories, and has generated around £2.4 million for good causes.
The company is now expanding to work with the same labs on tackling other diseases, and has started a charitable foundation, TestAID.
In spring of 2020, with no COVID vaccines on the horizon, the WHO told the world to “ Test, Test, Test ”. Then health secretary Matt Hancock implored UK laboratories to help so the UK could test more.
Mike Hudson’ s partner, a GP, was working in a Covid hub and he was frustrated he couldn’ t do as much to help in the pandemic. So, he started TestRAMP, with the idea of encouraging as much COVID testing as possible. He reached out to numerous labs, finding those who could already do PCR, and helping other labs to start.
In time, the government required all international arrivals to pay to be PCR tested. COVID testing had become commercial. TestRAMP set up a marketplace to connect companies who needed to carry out testing with the PCR labs that could do it for them and started charging fees. TestRAMP arranged subcontracting between labs to manage supply and demand and helped source sequencing.
All positive PCR tests are genomically sequenced to find potentially dangerous new variants. TestRAMP worked with labs to make sure testing works smoothly, and where labs have had problems it has stepped in to help. The company set up an industry initiative, Labsure, to help make the system more resilient.
During the pandemic TestRAMP generated approximately £2.4 million in fees. Hudson hasn’ t taken a salary, so most of this will be donated, less taxes. TestRAMP has already given £1 million to Alzheimer’ s Society and ZSL, jointly, £50,000 to Pilgrim’ s Hospices, and has provided an initial donation of £400,000 to TestAid, Hudson’ s new charitable foundation. Most of the rest will follow soon.
TestRAMP is now expanding into diagnostic testing for other serious diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’ s. After helping UK labs with Covid, the company hopes to help them roll out innovative new tests for other diseases, at the same time reducing pressure on the NHS.
In February the TestAid Foundation was established, a restricted fund operating under the auspices of Prism the Gift Fund, registered charity no. 1099682. TestAid aims to partner with other donors in the diagnostics industry to support good causes relevant to the life sciences. | tech |
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The Stans want nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’ s invasion of Ukraine | IT WAS ONCE part of the Soviet Union, shares a long border with Russia and counts among its citizens a large ethnic-Russian minority. Russian nationalists lay claim to swathes of its territory and President Vladimir Putin has in the past cast aspersions on its statehood. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Russia’ s Communist Party, has accused it of Russophobia and the oppression of Russian-speakers. Little wonder then that Kazakhstan is watching Mr Putin’ s invasion of Ukraine with apprehension verging on horror.
The war has set nerves jangling across Central Asia. The “ Stans ”, as the region’ s five post-Soviet states are known, are, broadly speaking, allies of Russia. But the aggressive expansionism of their former colonial master is testing that friendship to the limit. None of the countries has condemned the invasion. But nor has any offered public support or succumbed to pressure to follow Mr Putin’ s lead and recognise the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. At a vote in the UN General Assembly deploring the invasion, on March 2nd, three abstained and two simply did not show up.
Kazakhstan, the biggest and richest of the lot, has long cultivated warm relations with Russia. It is a member of a collective-security treaty with its bigger neighbour, along with a handful of other countries including Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In January, when protests in several cities turned violent and threatened to destabilise the country, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, Kazakhstan’ s president, invoked the treaty’ s mutual-defence clause and asked for help from Mr Putin, who duly delivered. But the country also enjoys good relations with the West and has no desire to join Russia as an international pariah. Mr Tokayev has said that his priority is to safeguard Kazakhstan’ s “ security, sovereignty, territorial integrity ”. He is the only Central Asian leader to have spoken to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’ s president, since the invasion began. ( He has regular chats with Mr Putin.) He has offered to mediate.
Most countries are treading a fine line. Authorities in Almaty, Kazakhstan’ s largest city, have allowed anti-war protests—though only once—and Kazakh police have fined drivers displaying the letter Z, a symbol of Mr Putin’ s invasion. Yet two bloggers known for anti-Russian rhetoric have been jailed, too. Uzbekistan has supported Ukraine’ s territorial integrity and declined to recognise the breakaway republics. But it has also leant on journalists who are noisily sympathetic to Ukraine.
Kyrgyzstan, which hosts a Russian military base, has come closest to offering ( muted) support for Russia. Mr Putin’ s recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk may have been “ a necessary measure to protect the civilian population ”, mused Sadyr Japarov, the president, on Facebook. But that was before the invasion. Since then his public stance has been one of neutrality. Uppermost in his mind may be the position of millions of Kyrgyz migrants working in Russia. That is also a concern for remittance-dependent Tajikistan, which has maintained a studied silence. So has isolationist Turkmenistan, which barely acknowledges what is happening in the outside world and is in any case busy establishing a political dynasty as Serdar Berdymukhamedov, its new president, assumes power from his father, Gurbanguly.
Whatever their leaders’ diplomatic manoeuvres, it will be hard for the Stans to avoid the economic fallout. The rouble’ s collapse has dragged down their currencies. The Kyrgyzstani som has plunged by 15% since the invasion started and the Kazakhstani tenge by 14%. In part, that is because remittances from Russia are likely to slump, too: by a third in Kyrgyzstan and a fifth in Tajikistan, reckons the World Bank. That will hurt. Remittances are worth nearly a third of GDP in Kyrgyzstan and over a quarter of GDP in Tajikistan.
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are energy-rich and may hope to cash in on buoyant oil and gas prices. But even that can be held hostage. Russia says a pipeline, which crosses its territory to the Black Sea and carries most Kazakh oil, may close for repairs for two months. The move is seen by many as a response to sanctions, with Kazakhstan as collateral damage. “ There is this famous saying that if Russia sneezes, Kazakhstan gets a cold, ” says a senior Kazakh official. “ This will be not a sneeze but perhaps pneumonia, and we will get covid or something. ” ■
Yoon Suk-yeol wants to move the presidential office. Citizens would rather he focus on the economy
Yoon Suk-yeol wants to move the presidential office. Citizens would rather he focus on the economy
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
The extraordinary manpower behind China’ s zero-covid strategy | THE THIRD fall was the one that finally put Gao Ying in the hospital. As a community health worker, she had been helping Hangzhou, her home city, fight a surge in covid-19 cases. She had not slept in her own bed for two weeks. She was exhausted. Still, on March 18th she set off for a meeting on local covid-control measures. That’ s when she collapsed three times in a lift, the third time smacking her head on the wall. Video of the incident was captured by a CCTV camera and shared on social media.
Ms Gao’ s tireless efforts were in response to an outbreak that most countries would consider trivial. Hangzhou, with 12m people, had recorded just 54 symptomatic cases of covid in the two weeks before her fall. ( Ten more were asymptomatic.) Overall, China has logged around 27,000 new local symptomatic cases in March, fewer than America recorded most days this month. Still, it is the biggest outbreak in China since the early days of the pandemic ( see chart). And it is straining the country’ s “ dynamic zero-covid ” policy, which aims to stamp out the virus with mass testing, extensive contact tracing and strict lockdowns. Those efforts involve millions of workers like Ms Gao.
Technology, such as tracking software, helps. But much of the work involves clipboards, telephones and barricade tape. An important role is played by some 110,000 neighbourhood committees—legacies of the Mao era, when they helped China’ s Communist Party keep order. Each committee has between five and nine members, as well as many volunteers. Today they keep tabs on residents, help enforce lockdowns and organise testing.
A neighbourhood committee member might, for example, ask a person who has just travelled from another city to take a test or stay inside for a few days. During targeted lockdowns of, say, a housing compound, they control who gets to go where. ( Security guards and China’ s 7.7m food-delivery workers are also important during these times.) Smaller cities, of 5m people or fewer, are supposed to be able to test everyone in just two days. That involves a lot of door-to-door visits by committee members, as well as volunteers who organise people in queues.
Contact tracing, in particular, is labour-intensive. The city of Shanghai alone has 3,000 workers devoted to the effort. Most are public-health officials. During outbreaks they can be on call 24 hours a day. Some sound a little worn out. “ In a week of continuous battle with the virus, everyone stayed up all night several times, pushing our bodies to the limit, ” says one. “ So please can everyone who receives a call be patient and co-operate. ”
If some people are frustrated with the state’ s zero-covid footsoldiers, it is perhaps because there are so many of them—and they don’ t always co-ordinate. A person might receive a call from several different officials: one from where they work, another from where they live and yet another from where they have been recently. The police, neighbourhood committees and businesses work the phones, too, checking on people’ s whereabouts. Scammers have tried to take advantage of the situation. Real contact tracers will not ask for your bank details, warns an official guide to the process.
Before the pandemic, neighbourhood committees did not have much power. Now, though, they can confine people to their houses for weeks. Invasions of privacy are common. Cameras are often placed outside flats to ensure compliance with isolation protocols. A person might receive a visit after buying drugs that suggest he has a fever. Some high-profile abuses have left people outraged. Health workers in the central city of Xi’ an beat up a young man who violated lockdown to buy a steamed bun. Local officials in some provincial cities killed the cats and dogs of quarantined residents out of fear that the animals might spread the virus.
But for the most part the public has been supportive of those implementing the zero-covid policy. For many Chinese, the country’ s relatively low number of cases and deaths justifies the overall strategy. If anything, they feel sympathy for the workers involved. The video of Ms Gao attracted much attention. “ It’ s the third year of the epidemic. Can’ t we find a way to slowly reduce the burdens on front-line workers? ” said one commenter.
The highly transmissible Omicron variant will make that difficult. Provinces have tended to share workers, depending on where there is an outbreak. But with Omicron spreading across the country, resources are limited. Chinese doctors hint that changes to the zero-covid policy are coming and that the state’ s most stringent measures will eventually be lifted. For now, though, China’ s politicians are merely tweaking the strategy. “ From beginning to end ” China must “ put lives above all else ”, President Xi Jinping told the Politburo’ s seven-member Standing Committee on March 17th. The footsoldiers of zero-covid will remain busy. ■
They like to be seen in pretty shops. They might even buy a coffee
They like to be seen in pretty shops. They might even buy a coffee
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Weaning Europe off Russian energy will mean making changes | AT LAST, the spring. For months Europeans have lived with the threat of losing the Russian gas that keeps their homes warm. The prospect seems less daunting now that daffodils are blooming. But despite the seasonal serenity, a wrenching energy transition is under way. Europe wants to cut imports of gas from Russia by two-thirds within a year. Behind the scenes, politicians and companies are already scrambling to work out how to cope next winter. The obvious upshot, one might expect, would be a change in consumer behaviour not seen since the 1970s, when dizzying oil prices caused a rethink of how the West lived. Not so. While European leaders exude an air of war-time concern, the public is living as if nothing were amiss in a continent at peace.
Energy prices, whether of petrol, gas or electricity, have rocketed in Europe. Some people might barely have noticed. In France, the authorities have essentially capped electricity and gas bills. Italy on March 18th added €4.4bn ( $ 4.8bn) in subsidies to limit power-price rises for companies and consumers, on top of the €16bn already agreed in recent months. Several countries have cut petrol duties, a much-needed source of tax income. European leaders meeting in Brussels as The Economist went to press were due to discuss new state largesse to households and industry. This is the “ whatever it takes ” approach at work. As with covid-19, government is paying first and will ask questions later.
What is startling is how little is being asked of Europeans. Even simple measures that might barely inconvenience people are treated as taboo. Earlier this month the International Energy Agency ( IEA), which advises rich-country governments, suggested that Europeans might consider turning down the thermostat by just one degree centigrade. What might seem like mere virtue-signalling greenery would actually cut consumption by 10bn cubic metres of natural gas over a year. That is roughly one month’ s worth of Russian imports. This modest appeal was relayed by precisely nobody in office.
Some EU governments want to ban Russian oil, the Kremlin’ s biggest money-spinner. Yet no one is seriously considering the obvious way of using less of it. Lowering motorway speed limits by 10kph would trim fuel use in the rich world by around 15%, not to be scoffed at when Europe is scrambling for any hydrocarbons it can get. Throw in subsidies to boost the use of public transport, a plea to work from home one day a week where possible and a ban on car use in cities on Sundays, and Europe could save perhaps a fifth of the Russian oil it imports, according to IEA figures and Charlemagne’ s guesswork. These may or may not be sensible ideas. The point is that they are not being discussed.
Why is Europe not rediscovering the spirit of the 1970s? Back then the European public was expected to accept some discomfort and inconvenience. Speed limits went from the exception to the norm ( except on German autobahns, of course). Dutch and German cities were among those that went pedestrian one day a week. France decreed public buildings should be no warmer than 20°C, two degrees lower than today’ s European average. Television broadcasting was shut off at 11pm, an idea that could usefully be revived for social media. Daylight-saving schemes adopted during the world wars were soon revived across the continent. “ Whatever it takes ” involved people donning jumpers.
Lots of ideas to cut back energy use tomorrow are being mooted. But few Europeans are even being nudged to use less energy today. One reason may be that the rich world has changed in 50 years. Past crises have helped make modern economies more energy efficient. The current oil and gas shock is not so painful, especially since the world has become used to seesawing crude prices. But recent history outside Europe suggests that rapid change is possible. After Japan shut down its nuclear plants in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, a public-information campaign beseeched people to cut back energy use. Trains were slowed, air-conditioners were turned down and employers moved shifts to save power. A similar campaign is nowhere to be seen in Europe.
The absence of such measures reflects three factors. The first is that Europe may not truly be committed to weaning itself off Russian hydrocarbons. More storage of gas at EU level, as looks likely to be agreed, could dent Russia’ s stranglehold on Europe. Some might think that will solve the problem, at least if the war ends soon. Keeping the option, if not the necessity, of importing Russian gas would avoid a painful pivot away from cheap power.
Second, energy is a politically toxic topic. The mere mention of speed limits or dearer petrol triggers accusations of urban politicians ignoring the plight of car-dependent provincial folk. Spanish farmers are protesting about energy prices. France’ s president, Emmanuel Macron, wants no more gilets jaunes protests ahead of an election next month. Europe is on a glide path to “ net zero ” emissions, to which the Ukraine crisis has given fresh impetus. Sensible long-term policy might be derailed by rash short-term measures in reaction to transient ( albeit traumatic) events.
The third, and most depressing, possibility is that politicians now think their electorates are incapable of sacrifice. Two years of pandemic-era nagging has tested the public enough. The end of covid-19 restrictions ( if not the virus itself) was meant to presage a new Roaring Twenties. That is no time for hair-shirt preachiness. “ A Europe that protects ” is a recent Brussels mantra: citizens must not be inconvenienced by a changing world.
This is a shame. Ukrainians are daily making sacrifices on an extraordinary scale. A growing number of Europeans are opening their homes to them and making donations. The public mood in Europe is of defiance towards Vladimir Putin. Nobody needs a politician’ s blessing to lower the thermostat or skip a flight. But it is depressing that none of them has even thought to ask. ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Millennial demand helps stoke the housing boom | HOME OWNERSHIP had long been a distant dream for many millennials. But after years of putting off marriage, delaying parenthood and battling student debt, the so-called Generation Rent is at last emerging as a big driver of the housing boom in the rich world.
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Typically defined as those born between 1981 and 1996, millennials make up the largest generation ever in America. As more of them reach their peak buying years, they are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the property market. In America they represent the fastest-growing segment of buyers and have accounted for more than half of all mortgage applications over the past two years. CoreLogic, a research firm, estimates that millennial homebuying was responsible for more than 60% of property-sales growth in 2020. British millennials are now more likely to own their home than to rent. And nearly half of adults aged 25-35 in Canada have bought property.
More millennials will reach the age of 32, the median age for first-time buyers, over the next two years than ever before. If the additional demand is to be satisfied American builders will need to construct as many as 2m houses each year, according to Jefferies, an investment bank. That compares with housing starts of 1.6m in 2021.
But the homebuying frenzy reflects more than millennials simply getting older. Following lockdowns and other sweeping changes to daily life during the pandemic, a growing number of millennials want larger family homes with more dedicated office space for remote work. Those who already own property are trading up for more space. This, in addition to stamp-duty tax cuts, helped push the number of first-time buyers in Britain to its highest level in nearly two decades in 2021. Some have brought forward plans to buy. In America nearly a third of young adults polled by Clever Real Estate, a property firm, said that covid-19 had nudged them into house-hunting earlier than planned.
The millennial push is reshaping property markets. For one thing, millennials are swapping flats for family homes. The vast majority of young buyers in America bought a single-family home in 2021. Many are also leaving cities, or trading expensive areas for cheaper ones. Young adults are less tied to London, says Lucian Cook of Savills, a property firm. The number of millennials in Britain’ s smaller cities, such as Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol, is growing far more quickly than that in the Big Smoke.
Remote work is also opening up more affordable places to live. In America buyers are flocking to sunbelt hotspots, like Phoenix and Tampa. Zillow, a property firm, estimates that a typical renter in San Francisco would have to set aside 2.4% of their income for six or seven years to save enough for a 20% deposit on a starter home in Austin or Phoenix. For a similar property in San Francisco they would have to save for more than 70 years.
Will millennial home ownership continue to power the market? The growing number of millennials entering their buying years will keep momentum going, and flexible work could continue to make cheaper areas more attractive. The question is what happens to affordability. Interest rates in many places are going up: the Federal Reserve expects to raise rates six more times this year. That could cool demand and increase mortgage-servicing costs. Rising interest rates in the 1980s, for instance, depressed housing markets just as baby-boomers reached their peak buying years. The difference now, though, is that rates are low by historical standards and expected to rise only gradually.
Severe constraints on housing supply, however, may mean that affordability remains strained. Shortages of labour and materials will make it harder for builders to put new homes on the market. Record-low inventory and fierce bidding wars could mean fewer homes to choose from. For some millennials, the dream of home ownership may still prove out of reach. ■
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Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Morocco scents victory in Western Sahara | THE BATTLE over Western Sahara has long felt as sluggish as the region’ s barely shifting sand dunes. It is almost half a century since Morocco claimed sovereignty over the slice of desert, previously a Spanish possession, that runs 900km ( 560 miles) along the Atlantic coast, south of Morocco proper. The Polisario Front, an indigenous guerrilla group backed by Morocco’ s rival, Algeria, is still fighting for independence. For several decades the rest of the world has looked away, parking the dispute with the UN and promising the mirage of a referendum on self-determination to settle the issue. In fact, it has been frozen in the baking desert, seemingly for ever. But of late the sands have been swirling.
On March 18th Spain abandoned its long-held neutrality and tilted in favour of Morocco. Its prime minister called Morocco’ s plan to give the Saharans autonomy within the kingdom “ the most serious, realistic and credible ”. The EU gave a cautious thumbs-up to Morocco, too. ( The Americans had already recognised the kingdom’ s claim in the last days of Donald Trump’ s presidency.) Morocco cheered the latest shift. Algeria fumed.
Morocco’ s diplomatic success is partly thanks to its mischief-making. In the past year it has repeatedly let migrants from Morocco and elsewhere in Africa pour into Spain’ s north African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, upping illegal migration into Spain by 40%. A BBC poll of young Moroccans in 2019 suggested that 70% wanted to emigrate—and that was before the rains failed, tourism slumped under covid-19 and the prices of basics like flour soared after Russia invaded Ukraine. In addition, Morocco, seizing a chance to squeeze Europeans harder, reduced intelligence co-operation, boycotted Spanish ports and exports, and withdrew its ambassadors from several European countries. Once a bulwark of pro-Western solidarity in forums such as the UN, this month it failed to vote when the UN General Assembly castigated Russia over Ukraine.
Polisario, meanwhile, is drooping. Its forces have been hammered. Israel has aided Morocco militarily, passing on tanks seized in wars with other Arab armies and helping build a defensive wall through the Sahara modelled on its Sinai fortifications. Its supply of combat drones, soon to be made in Morocco, has turned the tables on Polisario and its backer, Algeria.
The energy crisis should have given Algeria some leverage. It is southern Europe’ s closest big source of hydrocarbons. Pipelines link it to Spain and Italy. Europeans worry that Russia may use its influence in Algeria and eastern Libya to gain control over supplies to southern as well as eastern Europe. But Algeria is in a bind. It needs European revenue and Western finance to expand production. And its ageing generals are paralysed by infighting. Algeria recalled its ambassador from Spain, while Morocco’ s returned to her post.
Still, the struggle is not over. Spain stopped short of fully recognising the kingdom’ s sovereignty over Western Sahara. Though Morocco has agreed to stop the flow of migrants for now, relations with Spain are still dogged by rows over Morocco’ s port expansion along its Mediterranean coast and the pittance the EU pays Morocco for fishing off its Atlantic coast.
Meanwhile the kingdom continues to create “ facts on the ground ”. Its settlers now outnumber local Saharans three to one. Officials from the north often get the best land. A motorway will soon run south to the border with Mauritania. The Moroccans hope that the huge port they are building at Dakhla, the territory’ s second city, will enhance trade with sub-Saharan Africa, while cables may bring energy from solar and wind farms to Europe. And if pesky locals still demand independence? One of Dakhla’ s largest new developments is a towering prison on the edge of town. ■
Many people have no jobs. Others, nose jobs
Many people have no jobs. Others, nose jobs
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Car-washing was done by machines, then immigrants, and now machines again | WHAT WARM weather is to ice-cream vans and popcorn is to dentists, Saharan dust storms are to car washes. A big dust cloud like the one that reached Britain on March 16th boosts revenues by about a quarter, according to Kevin Pay of Wilcomatic, which runs about 800 automatic car washes in Britain. “ You love to see it, ” he says, as a dusty red Ford Ka joins the queue in Hove in East Sussex, on the south coast.
Until recently Britain’ s drivers usually took their dirty motors to car parks and disused petrol stations, where eastern European immigrants had at them with sponges. In 2018 a parliamentary committee was informed that Britain had 10,000-20,000 hand car washes, compared with 2,000 automatic “ rollover ” machines and about 4,000 do-it-yourself jet washes. Hand car washes were more convenient—drivers simply handed money through the window rather than traipsing into a petrol station to buy a six-digit code—and often cheaper than machines. The industry was a rare example of de-automation.
It is now re-automating. Mr Pay says that Wilcomatic’ s car-washing revenues in 2021 were 15% higher than in 2019, before covid-19 arrived. “ It’ s starting to turn, ” agrees Chris Scott of Istobal, another car-washing firm, who says that sales of the chemicals used by machines are higher than they were before the pandemic. At Parkfoot Garage in Kent, David Charman says his four jet washes have been “ absolutely flat out ” since the dust storm. He has acquired another car-wash site and is seeking a third.
Automatic car washes and jet washes have improved, with contactless payment, superior brushes and theatrical foam. But the main reason for their popularity is that hand car washes are disappearing. The informal ones can be lousy employers: in 2016 a study of Leicester by two academics, Ian Clark and Trevor Colling, found that many paid less than the legal minimum wage. Car washing is a typical first job for an unskilled immigrant. And Brexit means that Britain has fewer newly arrived unskilled immigrants these days.
Covid-19 further tilted the market towards machines. The government shut down hand car washes for longer than automated ones, on the ground that they posed a higher infection risk. The pandemic also discouraged drivers ( and everyone else) from paying with cash. That hurt informal car washes, which love cash in part because it allows them to dodge tax.
Alexander Russell of the Car Wash Association, a trade group, says that the industry has gone in a circle. Some petrol stations are now putting automatic car-washing machines into bays that were originally built for them, but were then occupied by hand car washes. Car washing has been in a lather, but it is emerging cleaner.
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
A peninsula that makes waves in policy formation | IT IS BEST known as the home of “ Florida Man ”, infamous for oddball residents committing dubious deeds involving alligators and the like. Yet Florida has a record of creating policies that catch on elsewhere. An early example came in 1889, when it became the first state to adopt a poll tax, requiring people to pay to vote, in effect keeping black voters away from the ballot box, says Darryl Paulson, an academic. There are many other examples of pioneering policies, for worse or better. In 1967 lawmakers passed the first highly regarded “ sunshine ” law requiring public meetings to be open. This became one of America’ s first open-meetings laws. Voters added to it in 1992 through a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of access to government meetings and records.
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Other policies are more problematic. In 2005 Florida was the first state to pass a “ stand-your-ground ” law at the urging of the National Rifle Association, which makes it easier for people to claim self-defence. It has since spread to other states, with troubling consequences. Recently the law was invoked at a murder trial in Pasco County, Florida. The defendant was a former cop who shot a man in the chest at a cinema after a bag of popcorn was thrown at him. ( In February, a jury found him not guilty.)
Education is another example of policy innovation. Jeb Bush, governor from 1999 to 2007, pushed through school choice, allowing students to use vouchers to attend charter and private schools with public funds. In 1999 Florida started America’ s first statewide voucher programme. Under Rick Scott, Mr Bush’ s successor, it was also the first to offer vouchers for students who were bullied to switch schools. Today almost half of Floridian students, from kindergarten to high school, participate in school choice. Florida’ s public schools are in the middle of the pack, ranked 23rd out of 50 by Education Week. But its education initiatives have been popular, especially in poor families, says Bob McClure, president of the James Madison Institute, a think-tank.
California has been an incubator of progressive policies and Texas of conservative ones. Florida’ s record is more mixed, befitting a closely divided state. With the state legislature under Republican control since 1996, policies that emerge from Tallahassee have tended to skew to the right. “ Time and again, we lead the charge when it comes to conservative innovation, ” says Kevin Cabrera of Mercury, a public-affairs firm, who was Donald Trump’ s campaign director in Florida in 2020. Voters have been more progressive. Ballot initiatives have approved constitutional amendments to re-enfranchise felons and bar gerrymandering.
Political meddling has often obstructed change. Lawmakers voted to keep some government information out of public reach. Giving ex-felons the right to vote is another example. As of 2016, Florida claimed more than a quarter of America’ s disenfranchised population, with one-fifth of black people unable to vote due to their felony records. In 2018 nearly two-thirds of voters approved restoring voting rights to ex-felons, but in 2019 the legislature passed a law requiring all court fines to be paid first, in effect blocking many from the ballot box.
Covid led to more new policies. Mr DeSantis has used his governorship to position Florida as a state of resistance against the federal government. He was early to outlaw mask and vaccine mandates. Florida was the first state to pass a law fining firms that imposed vaccine requirements and is now penalising school districts that defied the governor’ s orders and required masks, a policy that some believe to be unconstitutional.
By taking a hardline stance, Mr DeSantis put prosperity and popularity ahead of public health. It is a wager that has paid off politically, elevating his and Florida’ s profile, even though more than 70,000 Floridians died of covid. Yet predictions that Florida would lead America in deaths proved false: the state has a total death rate of 332 per 100,000 people, the country’ s 15th-highest, close to New Mexico, which had stricter stay-at-home policies.
Is Florida visionary or merely haphazard, responding to political currents and day-to-day pressures? Mr Schale, the Democratic strategist, says the motive behind Florida’ s policymaking is a will to be taken seriously. “ There’ s the sense we’ re the unrespected stepchild of big states, and there’ s the desire to be seen in the big boys’ club, ” he says. Others see Florida’ s record as mixed and inconsistent. Because population growth has been so rapid, policymakers have struggled to keep up with sensible and consistent policies, says Mr Paulson. Florida once led America in pushing for standardised testing and accountability for public-school students. But recently Mr DeSantis led the campaign to do away with annual testing, to boost his popularity. In Florida, one first plus another can sometimes equal zero. ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
CP response for Children from Ukraine | The recent crisis in Ukraine has disrupted the lives of many children and families. Since late February, the worsening crisis has resulted in the displacement of millions of people, many of whom are crossing borders into neighboring countries. A large number of these are children, some of whom are unaccompanied or separated from their families.
Please find Child Protection Resources listed below:
Alternative Care in Emergencies Toolkit [
Child Protection Risks in Emergencies:
Child Protection Minimum Standards:
Standard 10 - Mental Health and Psycosocial Support [
Standard 13 - Unaccompanied and Separated Children [
Standard 15 - Case Management [
Standard 17 - Child-Friendly Spaces [
Standard 18 - Children Facing Adversity [
The 2019 Edition of the CPMS Summary [
Convention on the Rights of the Child:
Engaging Children and Adults with Disabilities:
COVID-19 Response: Considerations for Children and Adults with Disabilites [
Risk Communication & Community Engagement for COVID-19 - Engaging with Children and Adults with Disabilities [
UNHCR Children with Disabilities Brief [
Explosive Ordance Risk Education:
Q & A on Explosive Ordnance Risk Education for Ukraine [
2019 Mine Victim Assessment Needs [
How to Talk to Children About War Series:
INSPIRE 7 Strategies to End Violence:
Mental Health and Psychosocial Support:
Child Emotional Suppoert during Active Bombing [
Doing What Matters in Times of Stress [
IASC Guidelines on MHPSS and Emergencies [
IASC RG MPHSS Assessment Guide [
Individual Psychological Help for Adults Impaired by Distress in Communities Exposed to Adversity [
Interagency MHPSS Referral Form and Gudiance Note [
MPHSS in Emergencies: What Should Protection Prgram Managers Know? [
MHPSS General Support Group Curriculum [
MHPSS Support Humanitarian Response in Ukraine and Neighbouring Countries
`` My Hero is for You '' Storybook for Children [
Psychological First Aid Facilitators Guide [
Psychological First Aid Guide for Field Workers [
Rapid Psychosocial Assessment of Children [
Save the Children Stress Busters [
COVID-19 Public Service Announcement for Parents [
Protection of Children during COVID-19:
Technical Note on the Protection of Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic [
`` Listen to Us '' Children's Version Colouring Sheets [
`` Listen to Us '' Girls ' and Boys ' Gendered Experiences of the Conlfict in Eastern Ukraine [
`` Listen to Us '' Girls ' and Boys ' Gendered Experiences of the Conlfict in Eastern Ukraine Summary [
Unaccompanied and Separated Children:
Interagency Handbook and Toolkit [
UNHCR Family Tracing and Reunification Brief [
Roadmap to Resilience: Supporting Children Experiencing Stress and Trauma [
The Harvard Resilience toolkit [
Coursera MOOC: Resilience in Children Exposed to Trauma, Disaster and War: Global Perspectives [ | general |
What Florida can teach America | AFTER SHE published her anti-slavery novel “ Uncle Tom’ s Cabin ” and watched the country wage a civil war, Harriet Beecher Stowe became a snowbird, spending winters in the Jacksonville area. She was enchanted by the state but enraged by visitors’ exploitation of it, as they slaughtered wild birds to use their feathers in fashionable hats. “ Florida has been considered in all respects as a prey and a spoil to all comers, ” she wrote in “ Protect the Birds ”, published in 1877. She complained that Florida’ s “ splendid flowers and trees, its rare and curious animals have been looked upon as made and created only to please the fancy of tourists ”.
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Florida is still “ prey ” and “ spoil ” but to many more people than Ms Stowe could have imagined. Florida’ s rapid growth has defied expectation and even reason. Replete with swampland and whipped repeatedly by extreme weather, Florida is among America’ s least hospitable long-term habitats for humans, yet they continue to flock there. “ There are two overwhelming conclusions we’ ve drawn about migration to Florida: people know the risk and they move there anyway, ” says Glenn Kelman, boss of RedFin, an online property firm.
Florida’ s environmental fragility is one of the fault-lines in the state’ s history. Southern Florida is but one catastrophic hurricane away from devastation. Even Flagler’ s fortune could not withstand the impact of a big hurricane on his Overseas Railroad. “ People are constantly ruining Florida; Florida is constantly ruining them back, ” writes T.D. Allman in “ Finding Florida ”.
Some Floridians might be forgiven for paying less attention to the future. Retirees may just want to enjoy a sun-soaked life now, not to worry about the environment decades hence. But other people look farther beyond the horizon to see what storms might be brewing—whether actual or figurative.
What can Florida reveal about America? In many ways, it is a land apart from the rest of the country. Yet a state as diverse as Florida is also a mini-America, with its political divisions condensed into single blocks. The rise of minor parties and voters with no-party affiliation should be a reckoning for the two main national parties. Immigrants and transplants want a positive message about the future, not a dire one, which should be a wake-up call to Democrats to refine their campaigning to signal optimism and opportunity. The lurch to the right of Mr DeSantis and other Republicans, who prioritise social issues such as abortion over practical economic concerns of ordinary Floridians, is a political calculation that may yet backfire.
Nowhere are the intergenerational divisions that scar America clearer than in Florida. The elderly who retire there feel little connection to the state or much desire to invest in its future. Meanwhile, the young require more than “ freedom ” ( Florida’ s favourite rhetorical export) to thrive. With such austere investment in citizens and good government, there is a vast gulf between older migrants who import their fortunes and savings into Florida and those who want to build lives there, but face lower wages.
Florida is a test-bed for the limits of libertarian policies. The early 2020s may be remembered as America’ s “ Florida years ”, with Mr DeSantis’ s embrace of policies, such as anti-lockdown provisions, that put his state on the national stage. But now that Florida feels the pain of soaring house prices and displacement of the labour force by new arrivals, some voters’ faith that the free market alone is enough to fix things has been shaken.
Republicans don’ t like talking of inequality and affordability because they think it plays into the hands of Democrats, says one lawmaker in Tallahassee. So Florida’ s leaders are doing little to resolve the acute problems of the average voters, such as affordable housing. If Mr DeSantis is going to use Florida as a showcase for what he can do for the country as president, there are early warning signs. Having a covid policy that favoured businesses staying open should not be mistaken for having a comprehensive, strategic plan for economic and social success.
Many big challenges do not line up with particular administrations. The state, like America-writ-large, needs long-term investment and better planning. Environmental concerns are a prime example. Florida’ s leaders subscribe to the philosophy that “ more is more ”. Mr DeSantis continues to celebrate growth, but adding the equivalent of a new Orlando every year will come at a cost, especially if it is ill-managed. With the department that once oversaw this having been scrapped, there is no longer an agency or person developing a growth strategy for the state, looking at where developers should build and where people should be encouraged to move. The result is a free-for-all that worsens environmental problems.
Americans may roll their eyes at Florida’ s sun-seekers and see it as a far-off state with little relevance to their lives. That is short-sighted. Although politicians with ties to Florida have a dismal record of running for president ( Mr Trump, former New York resident, notwithstanding), Washington may see another. Four Floridians—Mr Trump, Mr Scott, Mr Rubio and Mr DeSantis—are possible presidential contenders in 2024. The chance that either Mr Trump or Mr DeSantis could make it to the White House is on a par with the chance of a hurricane striking that year: not guaranteed, but not improbable.
The cycle of nature continues to humble those who have set their sights on Florida. The state is early to experience the effects of global warming—but hardly alone. Property-insurance rates are one indicator. Dramatic rises reflect a negative outlook and concern from insurance companies about hitching their financial future to Florida’ s.
If, against the odds, Florida makes the essential investment and other changes necessary to protect it from the worst effects of severe weather and climate change, it will hold lessons for the country. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, an environmental activist, once called the Everglades a test: “ If we pass it, we get to keep the planet. ” Jonathan Webber of Florida Conservation Voters has a new twist: “ If we save Florida, we get to keep the country. ” ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Who Turned Carrier Into Africa's Largest Is Stepping Down | Get exclusive stories and unlimited access to Skift.com news
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Dawit Endeshaw and George Obulutsa, Reuters
Today at 4:30 AM EDT
It's a pivotal moment for Africa's aviation industry. Will Tewolde Gebremariam's successor be able to continue on the airline's unprecedented path to growth and resilience amid a pandemic, internal conflict and global geopolitical shifts?
Lebawit Lily Girma
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam, who transformed the airline into Africa’ s biggest carrier, said on Wednesday he had resigned to focus on his medical treatment.
In an internal memo to employees seen by Reuters he said he had had health issues for almost a year and had been working from the United States for the past five months and was not able to return to the head office any time soon.
“ I am retiring early due to health issues, ” he told Reuters in a text message, echoing the language in the memo which said he would focus on his treatment.
In his 11 years at the helm, Tewolde grew the carrier from just 33 planes into a fleet of 130 planes operating on local and international routes, and from 3 million passengers to 12 million passengers, pre-COVID, the airline said in a statement.
“ Mr. Tewolde led the airline for over a decade with remarkable success reflected in its exceptional performance in all parameters including but not limited to exponential growth from 1 billion USD annual turn-over to $ 4.5 billion, ” the state-owned carrier said.
“ Under his leadership, the airline group has grown by four fold in all measurements. ”
The airline confirmed the board had accepted his request for early retirement and said a successor would be announced shortly.
Tewolde led the company through the coronavirus pandemic without bailouts by pivoting to cargo, keeping the company profitable and cash positive.
Tewolde also helped the airline recover from the crash three years ago of flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX bound for Kenya, killing all 157 passengers and crew.
Tewolde’ s career saw him win a number of accolades including “ African CEO of the Year ” and “ Best African Business Leader ”, according to the Ethiopian Airlines website.
“ Tewolde is one of the best performing CEOs of a multinational anywhere in the world. He has more than delivered on every performance matrix, ” said Zemedeneh Negatu, global chairman of Fairfax Africa Fund, a Washington-based investment and transaction advisory firm.
( Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw Additional reporting by George Obulutsa; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Mark Potter and Alison Williams)
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Booking.com's Europe Recovery Lifted by Neighbors Traveling Cross-Border | Get exclusive stories and unlimited access to Skift.com news
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Matthew Parsons, Skift
Today at 7:50 AM EDT
A new type of travel corridor is emerging, particularly between France, Germany and the UK, as tourists stay close to home when booking their first international trips in a long time.
Matthew Parsons
Europe’ s tourists may be collectively cautious, but they’ re booking summer holidays at levels not seen since the start of the pandemic. That’ s the viewpoint from Booking.com, one of Europe’ s largest online travel agents, which has seen cross-border sales recover to above 2019 numbers since the start of the year.
“ People just can’ t wait to travel, there’ s a strong appetite, ” said Carlo Olejniczak, vice president and managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa, at Skift Forum Europe in London on Thursday. “ There’ s been a strong trend since January for summer. ”
Travel corridors in pandemic times used to consist of countries allowing reciprocal travel, but with strict testing restrictions. Today, Olejniczak described a new kind of travel corridor where tourists book travel to a neighboring country.
France, UK and Germany are currently driving double digit growth in Europe, and like Expedia for Business’ s Arian Gorin, who earlier spoke at the forum, the Booking.com exec was optimistic for the summer.
Speaking at The Londoner hotel, Olejniczak added he was in charge of his company’ s coronavirus recovery plan, and saw first-hand new trends emerge.
“ We had to adjust our plan, towards hyperlocal travel, more domestic. People were running away from urban centers, ” he told Skift founding editor Dennis Schaal. “ We had to make all these changes at the same time, testing and learning at the same time. ”
As well as shepherding bookers from cities, greener travel looks to be an emerging theme in 2022 and beyond. In a recent Booking.com consumer poll, 69 percent of respondents said the travel industry should help them travel in a more sustainable way.
Olejniczak said his company was now trying to better understand the intent of its customers, and had set up a new program that aggregated 30 certifications and 32 best practices, such as waste management or electricity consumption, across its properties to create a “ virtuous circle. ”
However, Booking.com, which is headquartered in Amsterdam and currently has 28 million listings and 100 million monthly active users for its app, could be be caught up in a regulatory showdown. In late 2020, European Union antitrust czar Margrethe Vestager mentioned Booking.com as potentially being a Digital Markets Act target.
Booking.com has long been viewed as the largest accommodations site in the world, but rejects the label.
“ Do you have power or influence over hotel commissions? ” asked Schaal.
Olejniczak pointed out that there were 130 travel websites in Europe, and Booking.com covered 13 percent of hotel rooms. “ We’ re not against the regulation, it should address the bigger players, ” he argued.
Meanwhile, Booking.com is playing its part in helping refugees fleeing Ukraine. It has built a technology platform to help refugees find a place to stay, and has been working with United Nations’ refugee committee.
“ The idea was to find a quick solution to find a room. We have rooms we want to give away for free, but have to find a way to distribute them, to make sure the rooms find the right people, ” he said. He did not encourage bookings to be made in Ukraine, as a way of trying to move money into locals’ hands like Airbnb, and instead urged donations to be made to the Red Cross
And suspending operations in Russia and Ukraine was having little impact on its business, as the destination, both inbound and outbound, represented low, single digit percentage of its total market.
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Expedia Still Predicts a Big Travel Boost in Europe This Summer | Get exclusive stories and unlimited access to Skift.com news
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Peden Doma Bhutia, Skift
Today at 7:15 AM EDT
Learning to live with Covid, Expedia expects an amazing summer for its Europe business, but is wary of the kind of restrictions that may come back, if at all they do.
Peden Doma Bhutia
Expedia expects an “ amazing summer ” in Europe while still maintaining caution. Addressing the Skift Forum Europe 2022 in London on Thursday, Ariane Gorin, president of Expedia for Business, in conversation with Dennis Schaal, executive editor at Skift, said the online travel company is witnessing demand coming back.
“ People are keen to spend the money that they have saved during the pandemic on travel, ” Gorin said. “ UK, France and Germany were already back to the pre-pandemic trends of a mix of international versus domestic shoppers. The numbers of U.S. travelers are searching to come to Europe, has also gone up and booking windows are expanding. I think we will be having a great summer. ”
Historically, Expedia has been quite strong in the U.S. and with Covid disrupting the interntional long-haul market, the company got stronger in its home market as a lot of its business in Europe and Asia was international long-haul and international short-haul.
Not too concerned about the next variant dampening the summer season, Gorin chanted the “ learning to live with Covid ” mantra. “ The question would be how much friction will there be in travel — what kind of restrictions come back in place, if at all they do. ”
Expedia witnessed a 65 percent increase in booking for the Easter period as countries announced the removal of restrictions, Gorin said.
Being among the first — if not the first in the online world — to announce halting of operations in Russia and Belarus. Some of their competitors took more than a week after to do likewise, Gorin said the company very quickly realized they would stop travel in and out of Russia. “ Many of us have job opportunities in Europe and the next step is for us to look at refugees who are getting displaced, what can we do to help place them in jobs. ”
With things reverting to a semblance of 2019, Gorin also mentioned the comeback of cities. “ During the pandemic, people were mostly travelling to secondary and tertiary destinations, but in our shopping patterns we are now seeing a lot of demand into the cities. ”
The company has also witnessed a comeback of business travel. “ It’ s going to be longer trips — probably a mix of work and pleasure. And as we start to see companies bringing employees back to the office, we will see what the trends show, ” Gorin said.
The sale of Egencia to American Express Global Business Travel, while retaining an equity ownership, was dubbed as a “ groundbreaking deal ” by Gorin. “ It’ s great for the company because we’ re now owners of what’ s going to be a really successful corporate travel business and we simplified our company. ”
Expedia has also been doing a lot of work in re-platforming its technology stack, said Gorin. “ When we do develop things, like our virtual agent, travelers will have better experiences across all of our brands. ”
The company will also soon be making an announcement on its customer loyalty program offerings across its portfolio of brands, hinted Gorin.
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Singapore Drops Most Travel Restrictions in Shift to 'Living With Covid ' | Get exclusive stories and unlimited access to Skift.com news
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Chen Lin, Aradhana Aravindan, Reuters
Today at 3:37 AM EDT
As Asia learns to live with the virus, Singapore is making sure it is not too far behind in the race to woo tourists with travel-friendly policies after some of the strictest protocols in the region.
Peden Doma Bhutia
Singapore said on Thursday it will lift quarantine requirements for all vaccinated travelers from next month, joining a string of countries in Asia moving more firmly toward a “ living with the virus ” approach.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the financial hub will also drop requirements to wear masks outdoors and allow larger groups to gather.
“ Our fight against Covid-19 has reached a major turning point, ” Lee said in a televised speech that was also streamed on Facebook. “ We will be making a decisive move towards living with Covid-19. ”
Singapore was one of the first countries to shift from a containment strategy to new Covid normal for its 5.5 million population, but had to slow some of its easing plans due to subsequent outbreaks.
Now, as infection surges caused by the Omicron variant begin to subside in most countries in the region and vaccination rates improve, Singapore and other nations are removing a host of social distancing measures designed to stop the spread of the virus.
Singapore began lifting quarantine restrictions for vaccinated travelers from certain countries in September, with 32 countries on the list before Thursday’ s extension to vaccinated visitors from any nation.
Japan lifted this week restrictions imposed on Tokyo and 17 other prefectures that had limited hours of eateries and other businesses.
South Korea, where Covid infections this week topped 10 million but appear to be stabilizing, pushed back a curfew on eateries to 11 p.m., stopped enforcing vaccine passes and dropped quarantine for vaccinated travellers arriving from overseas.
Indonesia dropped quarantine requirements for all arrivals from overseas this week, and its Southeast Asian neighbours of Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia took similar measures, as they seek to rebuild tourism sectors.
Indonesia is also lifting a ban on travel for a Muslim holiday in early May that traditionally sees millions of people head to villages and towns to celebrate Eid al-Fitr at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Australia will lift its entry ban for international cruise ships next month, effectively ending all major Covid-related travel bans after two years.
New Zealand this week ended mandatory vaccine passes to visit restaurants, coffee shops and other public spaces. It will also lift vaccine mandates for a number of sectors from April 4 and open the borders for those on visa-waiver programmes from May.
Hong Kong, which has registered the most deaths per million people globally in recent weeks, plans to relax some measures next month, lifting a ban on flights from nine countries, reducing quarantine and reopening schools after a backlash from business and residents.
Singapore travel and movement related stocks surged on Thursday, with a gain of nearly 5 percent for airport ground-handling firm SATS and 4 percent for Singapore Airlines. Shares in public transport and taxi operator Comfortdelgro Corp rose 4.2 percent, their sharpest one-day gain in 16 months. The Straits Times index was up 0.8 percent.
Lee said Singapore officials would continue to remove restrictions at a measured pace.
“ After this major step, we will wait a while to let the situation stabilise, ” he said. “ If all goes well, we will ease up further. ”
As well as allowing up to 10 people to gather, Singapore will remove a 10.30 p.m. curfew on dining and alcohol sales, and allow more employees to return to their workplace.
Still, mask wearing mandates remain in place in several places including South Korea and Taiwan, while facial covering is almost ubiquitous in Japan.
China remains a major holdout, sticking to a “ dynamic clearance ” policy to stamp out flare-ups as quickly as possible. It reported around 2,000 new confirmed cases for Wednesday. The latest outbreak is tiny by global standards but the country conducts rigorous testing, seals off hotspots and isolates infected people in quarantine facilities to prevent a surge that could strain its healthcare system.
( Reporting by Chen Lin and Aradhana Aravindan, additional reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Ed Davies and Jane Wardell)
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Accor CEO Explains Why He Won’ t Close Hotels in Russia | Get exclusive stories and unlimited access to Skift.com news
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Brian Sumers, Skift
March 24th, 2022 at 3:15 PM EDT
A couple of regions are performing well for Accor, the France-based hotel company. But let's not confuse this with those booming pre-pandemic times. The Covid hotel industry recovery still has a long way to go.
Brian Sumers
Despite calling the war in Ukraine a “ tragedy, ” Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin said the company does not plan to pull out of Russia, noting it never has stopped operating in a war-torn country in its 50-year-history, including most recently in Myanmar, site of a bloody 2021 coup.
“ We have been in countries of war probably 30 to 40 times over the last 50 years on different continents, ” Bazin said Thursday at Skift Forum Europe in London. “ Accor never pulled out of any hotel activities at the time employees needed Accor the most. ”
At least in Russia, Bazin argued profit has nothing to do with the decision. Accor long has struggled in Russia, he said, where occupancy is 35-40 percent and where the company “ does not make a dime. ” Instead, he said, Accor is staying because the company is betting it can provide a valuable service to Russia’ s remaining visitors, some of whom are loyal Accor customers.
This includes journalists, non-governmental organization employees and Western diplomats staying in Russia hotels. Bazin said they need a safe place to go during the day, where they can trust hotel employees to take care of them, and where they know their gear will not be stolen.
“ Otherwise, you won’ t have any Bloomberg or CNN or any people basically on the news, ” he said in conversation with Skift CEO Rafat Ali. “ They believe that the brand will be a caretaker of their belongings. ”
In addition, Bazin noted Accor’ s employees in Russia should not be punished for government actions.
“ This is not their decision, ” he said. “ I’ m making a very distinct decision between the Kremlin and Mr. Putin and the population of Russia. And I can tell you, being on the phone with them, they are in tears. Those employees in Russia. they don’ t understand what’ s going on. ”
While the company still operates most of its Russian hotels, it has made some changes to its operations. Accor has suspended new hotel openings in Russia and closed five of 56 hotels in the county because the hotels owners were sanctioned by Western governments, Bazin said.
In other regions, Accor’ s properties in the Middle East are “ on fire, ” with travelers and locals in Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai paying robust room rates while spending substantial sums on food and beverage, Bazin said.
“ Pricing is through the roof, and traffic is extraordinary, ” he said. “ The Middle East is just very robust. ”
The United States is another bright spot, Bazin said, even if the company is undersized there. Bazin said the U.S. market is “ almost on fire, ” with average room rates up 18-25 percent, an increase that outpaces rising U.S. hotel labor costs, which have gone up by roughly 12 to 18 percent. Other relatively strong markets include France, England and Canada, the CEO said.
Elsewhere, though, including in the rest of Europe, the news is less rosy. Southeast Asia is improving, as more countries open, but the base is low — the region for a long time saw occupancy rates of 10 percent, Bazin said — so full recovery will take time. Meanwhile, Japan, China and South Korea remain effectively closed to many foreigners, making a hotel recovery impossible. In addition, Accor continues to struggle in India, Bazin said.
“ It’ s a large domestic market, and we never made any money in India, ” he said. “ We probably will never make any money in India. But we happen to be a large operator. ”
While Bazin said he’ s generally bullish about an overall industry recovery, he said he still predicts a substantial amount of business-related traffic will not return, arguing hotels need creative solutions to replace corporate visitors.
“ We stand to lose 20 to 25 percent of the international business travelers forever, ” he said. “ And we will because the CEO or the CFO will tell the guy, ‘ why don’ t you start on Zoom and then if you feel there’ s something travel. ' ”
To replace them, Bazin said he recommends hotels cater to locals, who can eat in the hotel restaurant, work from the lobby, or even rent a room. He notes people who can work from anywhere will need new places to spend time.
“ That clientele will be additive to lifestyle and will be a new clientele for the legacy brands, ” he said. And that is heaven. ”
It also could be beneficial for the environment.
“ I can promise you this planet friendly because a lot of those will come by bike by foot 10 minutes away from the home, ” he said.
In some ways, Bazin admitted this new post-pandemic local business will provide him some vindication. In 2017, to great fanfare, he unveiled what he called Accor Local, a platform that would connect more local residents with a nearby hotel’ s services. Bazin wanted to compete with new lifestyle hotels that earned a significant portion of their revenues from locals, including Hoxton, Mondrian and Mama Shelter.
But at Accor, it never caught on. Bazin told the Skift Forum Europe audience that his hotel general managers never bought into the idea, even though hotel brands like Hoxton make as much as 55 percent of their revenue on people who do not stay in a room.
“ They couldn’ t give a damn, ” he said. “ They said to me, ‘ of course. Yes sir.’ But they didn’ t mean it and it got no traction whatsoever. ”
| general |
Alder Hey partners with Isansys for home patient monitoring trial | Alder Hey Children’ s NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with digital health company Isansys Lifecare as part of a trial to support at home patient monitoring and reduce pressures on the healthcare system.
The collaboration will see Alder Hey make use of the Patient Status Engine ( PSE) - wireless patient monitoring system - as part of a new research trial, led by its iDigital department and community division.
The technology will allow clinicians at Alder Hey to monitor young patients at home as if they were in hospital, providing the patients’ vital signs continuously at a central monitoring station or on mobile devices 24 hours a day and ultimately integrating this key data into the electronic medical record system. With this information clinicians and community care teams can work together to provide personalised care plans for the young patients at home, eliminating the stress and disruption of admission, or readmission, to the hospital.
The PSE is a wireless patient monitoring platform incorporating unobtrusive wearable sensors which allows clinicians to monitor patients in hospital and at home by automatically collecting real-time physiological data such as heart rate, respiration rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure and body temperature. Real time analysis of this data provides intelligent alerts and early warnings to care teams back in the hospital or in the community. This information enables faster and more certain decision making, providing opportunities for earlier and potentially simpler interventions. Knowing when a patient is in need of on-site support and when they aren’ t is a powerful way of reducing stress for the care team.
Carol Rowlands, head of nursing, community and mental health division at the Alder Hey Children’ s NHS Foundation Trust, said: “ We are very excited to be teaming up with Isansys to deliver a first-of-its-kind technological solution that will enable our clinicians to safely monitor patients remotely, collecting data around the clock for timely intervention.
“ Our patients and families will benefit from being in the comfort of their own homes with the assurance that our clinicians are regularly reviewing the data and being alerted if any vital signs are out of the ordinary. ”
With seasonal illnesses circulating, including respiratory syncytial virus ( RSV), norovirus, flu, - alongside COVID-19 – the i-digital project will ensure that the hospital can continue to treat sick patients and promptly discharge those who could be monitored in community settings.
Keith Errey, CEO Isansys, based in Oxfordshire, said: “ Isansys is excited to collaborate with Alder Hey to help to build a healthier future for children and young people using digital technology.
“ Our PSE will enable more patients to leave hospital safely and be monitored in their own homes by healthcare professionals.
“ Our technology is designed not only to help doctors and nurses to improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care, but to make it easier for them to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.
“ It is a privilege for us to be working with all the amazing and dedicated people at the Alder Hey and surrounding community. We look forward to supporting their great efforts in improving the lives of their young patients and families. ”
Alder Hey Children’ s NHS Foundation Trust is one in only four stand-alone children’ s hospitals in the UK and provides care to more than 330,000 children, young people, and their families every year. It is a Global Centre of Excellence in children’ s health, providing integrated healthcare for children and young people, as well as specialist services for patients across the UK. | tech |
International news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
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Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
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Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
There is still a lot to do ahead of the Libor cessation deadline, and predicting the story’ s closing chapter is not easy. This webinar explores what is left to prepare, who’ s ahead, what they’ ve done and how they’ ve done it.
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© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation ( DTCC) news and analysis articles | The transition from LIBOR to RFR has brought challenges for structured products. There are still legacy IBOR products to consider and at the same time the pricing and risk systems need to be upgraâ¦
To ease the pain associated with meeting compliance targets, global institutions are exploring ways to become more efficient by integrating regulatory and business initiatives.
Wire payment fraud is a major growing risk for financial institutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases of fraud donât just hurt finâ¦
Asia Risk is proud to present Asia Risk Live, a face-to-face event in Hong Kong and Singapore. An opportunity to reconnect in person to learn and exchange new ideas.
View our latest in market leading training courses, both public and in-house.
The Energy Risk Awards recognise the leading firms in energy risk management. Corporates, financial players, technology and data firms, consultancies, brokers and exchanges are all welcome to submit â¦
The Asia Risk Awards recognize best practices in risk management and derivatives use by banks and financial institutions around the region.
Take a look at the wide variety of events and training on offer.
This eBook is based on the 2021 industry research by Acuiti, as well as the FIS Readiness Report. Youâll find plenty of support for a move to AI-powered cloud computing, a modular approach that ensurâ¦
Maximising value from better risk management and deal efficiency This Risk.net survey and white paper, commissioned by SS & C Intralinks, assesses the outlook for the CMBS market in the US and Europe, â¦
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Edited by Bill Coen and D. R. Maurice
By waiving a $ 2.2 billion cash call for Robinhood, members worry the NSCC may have dug itself a trap
© Infopro Digital Risk ( IP) Limited ( 2022). All rights reserved. Published by Infopro Digital Services Limited, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX. Companies are registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09232733 & 04699701.
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Fluence to Deliver Grid-Forming Energy Storage System for | MELBOURNE, Australia, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fluence ( NASDAQ: FLNC), a global market leader in energy storage products and services and digital applications for renewables and storage announced today that it has been chosen by AGL to deliver a 50 MW / 50 MWh energy storage system with advanced grid-forming capabilities for Broken Hill Battery Energy Storage System, an ARENA-funded battery project.
The project will use Fluence’ s Gridstack™ product and contribute to AGL’ s planned 850 MW national battery rollout and demonstrate the capability of latest inverter technology to support stable operation in areas of low system strength. The effective partnership between AGL, ARENA, UNSW and Fluence has enabled the first system of this level of complexity, which will provide a range of system security and reliability services to the grid at Broken Hill.
Unlike grid-following or other grid-forming energy storage systems in Australia’ s National Electricity Market ( NEM), AGL’ s Broken Hill energy storage system will start and remain in grid-forming mode, with all inverters operating as a voltage source. The system will inherently resist changes in voltage and frequency on the grid and provide synthetic inertia, also known as Virtual Synchronous Machine ( VSM) mode, and fault current contribution, along with standard energy storage services like FCAS, FFR and PFR. The project will also provide storage and firming capacity to the NEM and may assist AEMO to connect other inverter-based renewables nearby, supporting the West Murray region.
AGL Chief Operating Officer, Markus Brokhof said the Broken Hill battery project was another step forward as AGL becomes a leading orchestrator of energy storage deployments in Australia.
“ As Australia moves forward with its energy transition, we know that firming technologies like energy storage will be the backbone of renewable energy supply, ” Mr. Brokhof said.
Aaron McCann, Fluence General Manager for Australia commented: “ Broken Hill battery is the first project Fluence is delivering to AGL within the framework agreement announced in January 2021. We are excited to support AGL and ARENA to bring Australia’ s energy transition to a new level by offering market-leading functionality with advanced grid-forming inverters. The Broken Hill battery project’ s full power dispatches instantaneously to quickly respond to large changes in voltage and/or frequency, delivering the fastest response of all battery-based energy storage systems currently available in the market. This fast response will enable the system to operate stably and damp voltage oscillations after a fault in weak grid areas the West Murray region, which will enhance the system strength on the grid. ”
The project, with expected completion in 2023, will be delivered by Fluence in conjunction with its local consortium partner, Valmec and in partnership with EPC Power and its latest grid-forming inverters.
Fluence ( Nasdaq: FLNC) is a global market leader in energy storage products and services, and digital applications for renewables and storage. With a presence in 30 global markets, Fluence provides an ecosystem of offerings to drive the clean energy transition, including modular, scalable energy storage products, comprehensive service offerings, and the Fluence IQ Platform, which delivers AI-enabled digital applications for managing and optimizing renewables and storage from any provider. The company is transforming the way we power our world by helping customers create more resilient and sustainable electric grids. For more information, visit our website, or follow us on Linkedin or Twitter.
The information in this press release includes a “ forward-looking statement ” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, expected timing for the project to be fully operational and anticipated benefits of the project.
These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results. Most of these factors are outside Fluence’ s control and are difficult to predict. Factors that may cause such differences in expected results include but are not limited to the following: delays in the completion of the commissioning phase as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather, and related delays in readiness to enter the Broken Hill battery storage system into the NEM, and the outcome of testing and commercial operation of the Broken Hill battery storage system. Fluence cautions that the foregoing list of factors is not exclusive.
Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Fluence disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release. Should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results and projections could differentiate materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements.
Adele ZhangHead of Marketing & Communications, APAC+61 406529688 Adele.Zhang @ fluenceenergy.com Investor Relations
Lexington May Sr. Manager, Investor Relations+1 713-909-5629 InvestorRelations @ fluenceenergy.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/db1680d3-39f0-4cd7-9962-5548f190197c | general |
MPs Discuss the Use of Air Purifiers in UK Schools After | LONDON, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The recent MedicAir installation at a local school has helped illustrate how air purification technology reduces disease transmission, decreases staff and pupil absences, and improves learning outcomes and attainment.
Forward-thinking schools have been leading the way with the protection of staff and pupils throughout their facilities. Local governments and schools themselves have purchased air purification technology in the wake of the COVID pandemic in order to protect pupils and staff within the classroom.
At the front line of protecting schools is British air purification company MedicAir. Their combination of medical-grade filtration and virus-killing UVC provides the best protection on the market.
One school benefitting from this technology is Inkersall Primary School, part of the Spencer Academies Trust. The Principal, Sarah Allison, has been impressed with the difference the units have made. `` I can't thank MedicAir enough for them. With MedicAir in our school, it has been great, especially in our year 5 classroom, where cases numbers were high. We have had no cases since MedicAir was installed, and there has been a general reduction in sickness and absence too. ''
Local MP Toby Perkins is also pleased with the differences these technologies make. `` We welcome that we have this technology at Inkersall, and I would like to see this technology rolled out throughout my constituency. The government does not have a strategic plan behind the rollout of this technology, and there are simply too few units in classrooms in the UK, especially when compared to our European neighbours who have been prolific in supplying this technology to schools. ''
Dr.Connor Bryant, co-founder of MedicAir, agrees to say, `` MedicAir provides simple, out-of-the-box protection for anyone within the room. Its use in classrooms is entirely justifiable, especially with an end to mandatory testing and isolation. We are proud to protect thousands of hospitals, schools, offices, and medical facilities throughout the UK and overseas. ''
To learn more about air purification, head over to www.medicair.co.uk or contact hello @ medicair.co.uk
Image 1: MP Toby Perkins, Connor Bryant and Sarah Allison with MedicAir MP Toby Perkins, Connor Bryant, and Sarah Allison with the MedicAir medical-grade air purifier.
This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. | general |
argenx raises $ 700 million in gross proceeds in a global | Breda, the Netherlands — argenx SE ( Euronext & Nasdaq: ARGX), a global immunology company committed to improving the lives of people suffering from severe autoimmune diseases, announced today the pricing of a global offering of ordinary shares represented by American Depository Shares ( “ ADSs ”) in the United States and certain other countries outside of the European Economic Area and a simultaneous private placement of ordinary shares in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom. The Company anticipates total gross proceeds of approximately $ 700 million ( approximately €637 million) from the sale of 1,551,044 ADSs at a price of $ 300.00 per ADS and the sale of 782,290 ordinary shares at a price of €273.10 per ordinary share. Each of the ADSs offered in the offering represents the right to receive one ordinary share, nominal value of €0.10 per share. The U.S. offering and the European private placement are currently expected to close simultaneously on March 28, 2022, subject to customary closing conditions.
In addition, argenx has granted the underwriters of the offering a 30-day option to purchase up to 350,000 ordinary shares ( which may be represented by ADSs) on the same terms and conditions.
argenx’ s ADSs are currently listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ ARGX ” and argenx’ s ordinary shares are currently listed on Euronext Brussels under the symbol “ ARGX ”.
J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Cowen and SVB Leerink are acting as joint bookrunning managers for the offering. Wells Fargo Securities, Kempen & Co, H.C. Wainwright & Co., Raymond James and Wedbush PacGrow are acting as co-managers for the offering.
The securities are being offered in the United States pursuant to an automatically effective shelf registration statement that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ( “ SEC ”). A preliminary prospectus supplement relating to the securities was filed with the SEC on March 22, 2022. The final prospectus supplement relating to the securities will be filed with the SEC and will be available on the SEC’ s website at www.sec.gov.
When available, copies of the final prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus relating to the U.S. offering may be obtained for free from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by telephone at ( 866) 803-9204, or by email at prospectus-eq fi @ jpmchase.com; from Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014, Attn: Prospectus Department, by email at prospectus @ morganstanley.com, or by telephone at ( 866) 718-1649; from Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, Attn: Prospectus Department, by email at PostSaleManualRequests @ broadridge.com, or by telephone at ( 833) 297-2926; or from SVB Securities LLC, Attn: Syndicate Department, 53 State Street, 40th Floor, Boston, Massachusetts 02109, by telephone at 1-800-808-7525, ext. 6105, or by email at syndicate @ svbleerink.com.
A request for the admission to listing and trading of the ordinary shares ( including the ordinary shares underlying the ADSs) on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels will be made.
This press release is for information purposes only and does not constitute, and should not be construed as, an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale is not permitted or to any person or entity to whom it is unlawful to make such offer, solicitation or sale. Reference is also made to the restrictions set out in “ Important information ” below. This press release is not for publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into any state or jurisdiction into which doing so would be unlawful or where a prior registration or approval is required for such purpose.
argenx is a global immunology company committed to improving the lives of people suffering from severe autoimmune diseases. Partnering with leading academic researchers through its Immunology Innovation Program ( IIP), argenx aims to translate immunology breakthroughs into a world-class portfolio of novel antibody-based medicines. argenx developed and is commercializing the first-and-only approved neonatal Fc receptor ( FcRn) blocker in the U.S. and Japan. The Company is evaluating efgartigimod in multiple serious autoimmune diseases and advancing several earlier stage experimental medicines within its therapeutic franchises.
The contents of this announcement include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, “ forward-looking statements. ” These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms “ believes, ” “ estimates, ” “ anticipates, ” “ expects, ” “ intends, ” “ may, ” “ will, ” or “ should, ” and include statements argenx makes concerning the anticipated total gross proceeds and closing of the proposed offering. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. argenx’ s actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic conditions will have on argenx’ s operations and business; argenx’ s expectations regarding the inherent uncertainties associated with competitive developments, preclinical and clinical trial and product development activities, regulatory approval requirements and commercialization of its products; argenx’ s reliance on collaborations with third parties; estimating the commercial potential of argenx’ s product candidates; argenx’ s ability to obtain and maintain protection of intellectual property for its technologies and drugs; argenx’ s limited operating history; and argenx’ s ability to obtain additional funding for operations and to complete the development and commercialization of its product candidates. A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties and other risks can be found in argenx’ s SEC filings and reports, including in argenx’ s most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC as well as subsequent filings and reports filed by argenx with the SEC. Given these uncertainties, the reader is advised not to place any undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of publication of this document. argenx undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise the information in this press release, including any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law.
The preliminary prospectus supplement in respect of the U.S. offering does not constitute a prospectus within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation and has not been approved by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets ( Stichting Autoriteit Financiële Markten) or the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority ( Autoriteit Financiële Diensten en Markten) or any other European Supervisory Authority.
No public offering will be made and no one has taken any action that would, or is intended to, permit a public offering in any country or jurisdiction, other than the United States, where any such action is required, including in the European Economic Area. In the European Economic Area, the offering to which this press release relates will only be available to, and will be engaged in only with, qualified investors within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation.
No action has been or will be taken to offer the ordinary shares to a retail investor established in the European Economic Area as part of the global offering. For the purposes of this paragraph:
a. The expression “ retail investor ” means a person who is one ( or more) of:
b. the expression “ offer ” means any communication in any form and by any means of sufficient information on the terms of the offer and securities to be offered so as to enable an investor to decide to purchase or subscribe these securities.
In addition, in the United Kingdom, the transaction to which this press release relates will only be available to, and will be engaged in only with persons who are “ qualified investors ” ( as defined in the Prospectus Regulation as it forms part of domestic law in the United Kingdom by virtue of the European Union ( Withdrawal) Act 2018 ( the UK Prospectus Regulation) ( i) who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19 ( 5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act ( Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended ( the Order), and/or ( ii) who are high net worth companies ( or persons to whom it may otherwise be lawfully communicated) falling within Article 49 ( 2) ( a) to ( d) of the Order ( all such persons together being referred to as “ relevant persons ”). The securities referred to herein are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such securities will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this communication or any of its contents.
In connection with the offering, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC ( the “ Stabilization Manager ”), or any of its agents, on behalf of the underwriters may ( but will be under no obligation to), to the extent permitted by applicable law, over-allot ordinary shares or ADSs or effect other transactions with a view to supporting the market price of the ordinary shares or ADSs at a higher level than that which might otherwise prevail in the open market. The Stabilization Manager is not required to enter into such transactions and such transactions may be effected on any securities market, over-the-counter market, stock exchange ( including Euronext Brussels) or otherwise and may be undertaken at any time starting on the first trading date and ending no later than 30 calendar days thereafter.
However, there will be no obligation on the Stabilization Manager or any of its agents to effect stabilizing transactions and there is no assurance that stabilizing transactions will be undertaken. Such stabilization, if commenced, may be discontinued at any time without prior notice. Save as required by law or regulation, neither the Stabilization Manager nor any of its agents intends to disclose the extent of any over-allotments made and/or stabilization transactions under the offering. | general |
Moody’ s to Withdraw Credit Ratings on Russian Entities | Moody’ s Corporation ( NYSE: MCO) announced today that Moody’ s Investors Service ( MIS) intends to withdraw its credit ratings on Russian entities.
On March 5, 2022, Moody’ s announced the suspension of commercial operations in Russia.
Moody’ s ( NYSE: MCO) is a global integrated risk assessment firm that empowers organizations to make better decisions. Its data, analytical solutions and insights help decision-makers identify opportunities and manage the risks of doing business with others. We believe that greater transparency, more informed decisions, and fair access to information open the door to shared progress. With over 13,000 employees in more than 40 countries, Moody’ s combines international presence with local expertise and over a century of experience in financial markets. Learn more at moodys.com/about.
Certain statements contained in this document are forward-looking statements and are based on future expectations, plans and prospects for Moody’ s business and operations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements in this document are made as of the date hereof, and Moody’ s disclaims any duty to supplement, update or revise such statements on a going-forward basis, whether as a result of subsequent developments, changed expectations or otherwise. In connection with the “ safe harbor ” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Moody’ s is identifying certain factors that could cause actual results to differ, perhaps materially, from those indicated by these forward-looking statements. 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Ohio to begin distribution of $ 5B comp dividend | The Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation will begin issuing $ 5 billion in dividends to employers in the state to ease COVID-19’ s impact on businesses, the bureau announced Wednesday. More than 178,000 public and private employers covered through Ohio’ s State Insurance Fund are eligible to receive the dividend, which will be distributed through a combination of checks in the mail and credits to BWC accounts. According to the BWC, approximately $ 4.3 billion in dividends will go to private employers and $ 687 million will go to local government taxing districts, such as counties, cities, townships and schools. BWC will first apply the dividend to an employer’ s unpaid balance, then send a check for the rest. Checks will be mailed in several batches over the next week. This is the third dividend approved in Ohio this year. In April, the BWC distributed $ 1.54 billion to employers, and in October another $ 1.3 billion was distributed. More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here.
The Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation will begin issuing $ 5 billion in dividends to employers in the state to ease COVID-19’ s impact on businesses, the bureau announced Wednesday.
More than 178,000 public and private employers covered through Ohio’ s State Insurance Fund are eligible to receive the dividend, which will be distributed through a combination of checks in the mail and credits to BWC accounts.
According to the BWC, approximately $ 4.3 billion in dividends will go to private employers and $ 687 million will go to local government taxing districts, such as counties, cities, townships and schools. BWC will first apply the dividend to an employer’ s unpaid balance, then send a check for the rest. Checks will be mailed in several batches over the next week.
This is the third dividend approved in Ohio this year. In April, the BWC distributed $ 1.54 billion to employers, and in October another $ 1.3 billion was distributed.
More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here. | general |
China CITIC Bank's Net Profit Rose 14% in 2021 | China CITIC Bank Corp. said its net profit rose nearly 14% in 2021 amid an improvement in both asset quality and business scale.
Net profit rose to 55.64 billion yuan ( $ 8.74 billion) compared with CNY48.98 billion in the prior year, the bank said late Thursday.
Operating income also rose to CNY204.55 billion versus CNY195.40 billion in 2020.
The lender's net interest margin fell slightly to 2.05% compared with 2.26% in 2020.
China CITIC's nonperforming loan ratio decreased to 1.39% from 1.64% in 2020 and its nonperforming-loan balance fell 8.2% to CNY67.46 billion as of end-2021.
The bank's total assets rose 7.1% to CNY8.043 trillion in 2021 and it guided for its assets to grow by 6% -8% in 2022.
`` Asset quality kept improving and risk resistance ability further enhanced '' over the year, the lender said.
China CITIC Bank flagged the resurgence of Covid-19 and the likely `` shifting the extremely loose monetary policy '' as risks in its outlook. `` The mounting protectionism and unilateralism, the growing geopolitical tensions and the slow recovery of the global industry chain and supply chain all pose challenges, '' it added.
China CITIC proposed an annual dividend of CNY3.02 for every ten shares.
Write to Yongchang Chin at yongchang.chin @ wsj.com
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To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.
Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. | business |
CPGs deepen supplier relationships as disruption spurs collaboration | Food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers are collaborating more than ever to get products to market fast.
Once viewed as just another part of their business, disruption is bringing food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers closer together as they grapple with changing consumer tastes and demand to get products to market faster, the head of Ingredion said in an interview.
CEO Jim Zallie said in the past, CPGs often took several months to enter into contracts with his business that today are regularly completed in a matter of days or weeks. Food companies also used to be hesitant to source more than one ingredient from a single supplier because they didn't want to become too dependent on one provider, and in many cases they were reluctant to share how much they spent on a particular additive.
The rapid shift in the marketplace has quickly made these once-standard practices obsolete.
Zallie said many companies have reduced their R & D budgets, making them more eager to partner with Ingredion and others to source ingredients and discover the right formulations — a dependence that is further compounded by trends like gluten free, plant based and clean label. Labor shortages, supply chain disruptions and a growing urgency to get products to market faster have only served to create `` more intimate relationships '' between CPGs and ingredient providers, he said.
`` It's a win for them, a win for us, '' Zallie said. `` We become a reliable supplier, a more intimate supplier. They take steps out of their manufacturing process. ''
Zallie noted one customer who wanted to create gluten-free cakes and muffins. Ingredion offered potato, rice and tapioca as options to replace the wheat, and then xanthan gum as a substitute for the lost gluten needed to retain moisture and provide texture for the crumb structure.
Ingredion also can play in multiple parts of the same category. In ice cream, for instance, it has plant-based protein to replace dairy protein, high-intensity sweeteners to provide taste while replacing sugar and calories, and hydrocolloids to control ice crystal formation and impart a rich, creamy and indulgent mouthfeel.
`` We literally could not play in any of those categories before, '' Zallie said. `` And today, we're just seen differently and we're engaging with customers in new and different ways. ''
The ingredient space has been a hotbed of M & A activity as companies look to combine their research and development capabilities and areas of expertise to churn out new offerings faster and with higher quality than they likely would have on their own. In addition, businesses are moving quickly to become more complete, integrated suppliers. Flavor companies, for example, are expanding into areas like texture.
Few deals have underscored the acquisition frenzy as much as the $ 26.2 billion merger between DuPont's nutrition business and International Flavors & Fragrances that closed last February. The combination created a mega company with dominant positions in taste, texture, nutrition, enzymes, cultures, soy proteins and probiotics.
Zallie said acquisitions will `` continue to play an important role for us to grow '' and that Ingredion has `` a lot of firepower '' to enter into both small and large deals.
He said the Illinois-based company is targeting transactions that expand its geographical reach or help it scale up its portfolio in categories it has identified as growth categories. In plant-based proteins, it's looking for ingredients that provide taste, texture and nutrition. For sugar reduction, Ingredion is eyeing natural offerings not mired in a long regulatory review process as well as ingredients that solve some of the challenges that can occur when sugar is removed or reduced, such as improving the mouthfeel or providing bulk.
The robust dealmaking throughout the ingredients space has created high valuations in some cases. Zallie said Ingredion maintained financial discipline in 2021 and passed on two deals in 2021 because the asking price was too expensive.
`` We 've been very disciplined in our M & A activity and we 've done well with all the acquisitions we made, '' Zallie said, noting he doesn't regret missing out of some of the other deals. `` We were totally comfortable at the end of the day with what those businesses sold for. Because the number was just too high. We were not willing to pay. ''
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
The retailer's acquisition of a middle- and final-mile carrier as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has allowed it to take more control over its delivery process.
Retail supply chains have transformed into a complex web of goods movement and technology, with more touchpoints to the consumer than ever before.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more.
The retailer's acquisition of a middle- and final-mile carrier as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has allowed it to take more control over its delivery process.
Retail supply chains have transformed into a complex web of goods movement and technology, with more touchpoints to the consumer than ever before.
Topics covered: logistics, freight, operations, procurement, regulation, technology, risk/resilience and more. | general |
FTSE 100 Closes Up 0.1% Helped by Fresnillo, BAT, M & G | The FTSE 100 rose on Thursday, closing 0.1% higher. Fresnillo led the index, with shares in the Mexican gold miner up 5.7%. British American Tobacco jumped 4.0% after being raised to overweight by J.P. Morgan on the potential of the vaping market, which also helped peer Imperial Brands, CMC Markets said. Shares in investment manager M & G rose 2.5% after announcing a 500 million pound ( $ 660.4 million) share buyback program. On the red end of the U.K. market, clothing retailer Next fell 3.3% after reporting earnings for the year ended Jan. 30 and lowering guidance for the current period due to the effects of the Ukraine war.
Games Workshop Group PLC said Thursday that business in the three months to the end of February met its expectations, and declared a dividend of 70 pence ( 92.4 cents) a share.
Arbuthnot Banking Group PLC on Thursday reported a swing to a pretax profit in 2021 on the back of lower costs after the integration of Asset Alliance, and declared a dividend payout.
Kin & Carta PLC said Thursday that pretax loss for the first half of fiscal 2022 narrowed on year while revenue rose on strong demand and increasing spending from clients.
EnQuest PLC said Thursday that it swung to a pretax profit on increased revenue as oil prices rose, which was partially offset by lower production.
Bridgepoint Group PLC said Thursday that 2021 pretax profit and revenue rose, driven by its core businesses of private equity and private debt.
International Public Partnerships Ltd. said Thursday that its 2021 profit and revenue rose due to a recovery from coronavirus pandemic-driven disruption, and declared an increased dividend.
Playtech PLC said Thursday that it swung to a pretax profit on increased revenue, driven by Snaitech and B2B online, particularly in Latin America.
Next PLC reported Thursday a rise in pretax profit for fiscal 2022 ahead of management views, but said it has lowered its sales and profit guidance for fiscal 2023 due to the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and general inflation.
CVS Group PLC on Thursday reported a rise in pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2022 and said that it expects to close the year with full-year earnings in line with management views.
Eve Sleep PLC shares fell on Thursday after the company reported a widened pretax loss for 2021 as the group booked more expenses.
Robinson PLC said Thursday that it swung to a 2021 pretax loss after booking higher costs, and that the substantial uncertainty and volatility it experienced last year is likely to continue through 2022.
Shares in Tungsten Corp. jumped 19% on Thursday after Pagero Group AB said that it is considering a potential 56.9 million pound ( $ 75.1 million) offer for the London-listed digital financial-management company, trumping an agreed takeover by Kofax Parent Ltd.
Big Technologies PLC said Thursday that 2021 revenue and pretax profit rose as it booked new contract wins and an increase in revenue from existing customers.
1239 GMT - Although airlines look highly exposed to energy costs, they are hedged at 55% to 80% of 2022 fuel budgets, Stifel says. If current fuel prices prevail, the direct 2022 EBIT impact is 5% to 35% versus pre-war estimates, however, the ultimate profit hit depends on the ability to pass on higher fuel costs to customers, Stifel says. Strong post-pandemic demand will make it relatively easy for airlines to pass-through higher energy costs -- net of hedging -- without choking off demand. Shares have recovered from initial losses when the Ukraine-Russia war broke out, and Stifel analysts expect airlines to be able to regulate prices and benefit from the sector's recovery and pent-up demand. Stifel's top picks are IAG and Jet2, both rated buy.
1203 GMT - Shares in Drax have risen 80% since the onset of the current gas crisis and therefore the stock now offers a more balanced risk-reward, especially as affordability issues may bring spotlight on generation companies and limit further power price upside, Jefferies says as it downgrades the stock to hold from buy. While there is no specific measure right now, Jefferies says that profiting from the current energy price situation is likely to come under increasing scrutiny. Still, the bank forecasts that Drax's Ebitda will rise from GBP398 million in 2021 to GBP736 million in 2023 and GBP923 million in 2025 under its medium-case scenario -- which assumes a 2025 power price of GBP72 a megawatt hour.
1142 GMT - Although Robinson's 2021 results were in line with finnCap analysts ' expectations, underlying volumes fell 5% as 2020 had excess demand relating to hand sanitizer, disinfectant and other pandemic-driven sources. The plastic and paperboard packaging manufacturer's gross margins fell, affected by rising costs relating to energy, labor and resin, the U.K. brokerage says. The company is expected to return to underlying growth and begin to restore margins as the Schela Plast acquisition builds momentum, new orders come through and resin price rises are increasingly passed through to customers, the broker says. `` We are reintroducing a target price of 125 pence a share, implying a 50% + upside, '' finnCap says.
1138 GMT - The market continues to price in a steeper path of interest-rate rises in the U.K. than the Bank of England is likely to deliver, says Morgan Stanley. Given the scale of the near-term inflation overshoot, the U.S. investment bank expects the BOE to lift the base rate to 1% in May and focus on engaging in active sales of the bonds it holds, it says, adding that a rate rise in August is also likely. Details of bond sales could be announced in August and start in the second half of this year, when economic growth is likely to slow, prompting a deceleration of the tightening cycle, it says.
1130 GMT - Shares in Energean rise 3.8% after it said it expects to start dividend payments no later than the fourth quarter, following first gas production from its flagship Karish field in Israel. Initially, the energy company will pay $ 50 million a quarter, which will rise to $ 100 million as production increases. This is well ahead of market expectations of $ 155 million a year, and the 15% annualized yield is at the upper end of the sector, Berenberg says. `` In our view, this is [ a ] strong update from Energean which should be taken well. The dividend is ahead of consensus and significantly ahead of the peer group, and will be underpinned by cash flow from Karish, '' the bank says.
1117 GMT - A lower-than-expected gross gilt issuance projection for the fiscal year 2022-23 may open the door to earlier active sales of the Bank of England's bond holdings, says Morgan Stanley. The U.K. Debt Management Office announced Wednesday that it expects gross gilt issuance for the upcoming fiscal year of GBP124.7bn, undershooting market expectations. `` The volume of supply to be absorbed by the market in 2022-23 should decline vs 2021-22, potentially opening the door to earlier active quantitative tightening, '' the U.S. investment bank says. `` We maintain a modest bearish bias on gilts as we look for 10-year yield fair value to increase, '' it says.
Contact: London NewsPlus, Dow Jones Newswires; Write to Sarka Halas at sarka.halas @ wsj.com
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We sell different types of products and services to both investment professionals and individual investors. These products and services are usually sold through license agreements or subscriptions. Our investment management business generates asset-based fees, which are calculated as a percentage of assets under management. We also sell both admissions and sponsorship packages for our investment conferences and advertising on our websites and newsletters.
How we use your information depends on the product and service that you use and your relationship with us. We may use it to:
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Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investor’ s point of view. We also respect individual opinions––they represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.
To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.
Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. | business |
A food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war – but taking these three steps could help the most vulnerable | Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’ s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the global food system.
Yet there were concerns that this system was creaking at the seams as far back as 2007. At that time there were steeply rising food prices driven by rising oil prices, explosive demand for corn-based biofuels, high shipping costs, financial market speculation, low grain reserves, severe weather disruptions in some major grain producers, and a swathe of nervy trade policies leading to further shocks that worsened the problem.
The World Food Program’ s director general described it as a “ perfect storm ” Prices spiked again in 2011-12 before gradually receding.
In retrospect, those storms might now appear temperate in comparison to that we face in 2022. Even before the current crisis unfolded, food, fertiliser, oil and shipping costs were rising steeply.
The FAO cereal price index showed prices hit their 2008 level in 2021, and since the invasion they have exploded. Between 2019 and March 2022, cereal prices increased by 48%, fuel prices by 86% and fertiliser prices by 35%.
Here are three factors that we think make the situation in 2022 much worse, and three measures that could help prevent a global food supply system collapse.
Back in early 2008, both the developed and the developing world had just experienced an unprecedented period of rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, in some cases after decades of stagnation. The global financial crisis of 2007-08 only briefly halted growth in the developing world. Many governments and international institutions recognised the need to re-invest in agriculture, and found resources to do so.
But fast-forward to 2022, and the world has not yet recovered from the tailwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst economic crisis since the second world war. There are no truly rigorous estimates of COVID’ s impact on global poverty, but the World Bank has estimated that 2020 saw an extra 97 million people thrown into poverty.
Household surveys and economic models consistently find that the pandemic had the most severe economic impact on the urban poor, while agriculture and the rural economy remained remarkably resilient to lockdowns and other demand shocks. Higher food prices may even have had a poverty-reducing effect in rural areas. But the urban poor lose out and, after two years of turmoil, are being hit hard again, now by food price inflation.
Both developed and developing economies are weaker today than in 2008. To their credit, governments in the developing world provided unprecedented protection for households and businesses and digital innovations for reaching the poor during the pandemic.
But as a result, many economies face large debt burdens relative to national income, as well as growing deficits, weak exchange rates, uncertain near-term economic growth prospects, and foreign investors and development partners that are also short of cash.
Africa is undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable regions. North Africa is a huge net importer of wheat, most of which comes from Russia and Ukraine, so it faces a particularly acute food crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly rural, but its growing urban populations are relatively poor and more likely to consume imported grains.
Farmers in many parts of Africa are struggling to access fertilisers, even at inflated prices, due to shipping and foreign exchange problems. Exorbitantly high costs will erode farmers’ profits and could reduce incentives to increase production, dampening the poverty-reduction benefits of higher food prices.
Countries already affected by conflict and climate change are exceptionally vulnerable. War-ravaged Yemen is heavily dependent on imported grains. Northern Ethiopia is one of the poorest regions on Earth, facing ongoing conflict and a humanitarian crisis. And Madagascar was slammed by successive tropical storms and cyclones in January and February, leaving its food system broken.
In Afghanistan, child mortality rates are soaring due to the collapse of the economy and basic health services. Myanmar’ s GDP shrunk by 18% after the military coup in February 2021, and food prices have since increased by 19%.
The 2007-08 food crisis was relatively short lived, and the global food system responded swiftly with increased supply. But who can say with any confidence whether the effects of the Ukraine crisis on food, fuel and fertiliser prices will end any time soon?
Russia and Ukraine account for more than 30% of global grain exports, Russia alone provides 13% of global fertiliser and 11% of oil exports, and Ukraine supplies half of the world’ s sunflower oil. In combination, this is huge a supply shock to the global food system, and a protracted war in Ukraine and the growing isolation of Russia’ s economy could keep food, fuel and fertiliser prices high for years.
First, major grain producers must do everything they can to increase food supply: resolve logistical bottlenecks, release stocks and resist the urge to impose food export restrictions. In particular south-east Asian countries must band together and avoid avoid the crisis spreading to rice markets through trade restrictions.
Second, in the short term the world needs oil-producing nations – often huge net importers of food – to increase fuel supplies to help bring down fuel, fertiliser and shipping costs. This will benefit the entire global food system. Oil exporters can also step in to increase foreign assistance, especially for humanitarian aid. But in the long term we need to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels, including in agriculture.
Third, governments, international institutions and even the private sector must offer social protection via food or financial aid. The pandemic’ s effects hit the poor and vulnerable hard, and for much longer than expected.
Despite their sometimes dire fiscal circumstances, governments must again reach deep into their treasuries to reinvigorate this protection – and the international community must help them. There is simply no other alternative for averting a humanitarian disaster that will hit the developing world hard this year, and conceivably well in to years to come. | business |
Once called cellular debris, tiny bubbles may play key role in understanding, treating diseases: Researchers used roundworms to discover extracellular vesicles carry RNA-binding proteins -- ScienceDaily | The study, which appears in the journal Current Biology, could help to develop treatments for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Cells share good news and bad news with each other, and one way in which they do that is through tiny bubbles called extracellular vesicles ( EVs). Once considered to be cellular debris, EVs carry beneficial or toxic cargo that promotes good health or disease. In the human brain, for example, EVs carry disease-causing proteins that may influence the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
`` Although EVs are of profound medical importance, the field lacks a basic understanding of how EVs form, what cargo is packaged in different types of EVs originating from same or different cell types and how different cargos influence the range of EV targeting and bioactivities, '' said lead author Inna Nikonorova, a postdoctoral researcher.
EVs, which are found in human fluids including urine and blood, may be used in liquid biopsies as biomarkers for disease because healthy and sick cells package different EV cargo.
The Rutgers ' research team decided to use a simple experimental animal -- C. elegans, or roundworms -- and cutting edge genetic, molecular, biochemical and computational tools to study the unknown function that EVs have within our bodies.
Maureen Barr, a professor in the Department of Genetics, and Nikonorova developed a large-scale identification project that identified 2,888 EV cargo candidates.
Given the importance of EVs in the human nervous system, Nikonorova focused on EVs produced by cilia, the cellular antennae that transmit and receive signals for intercellular communication. Specifically, the researchers focused on EV cargo produced by nerve cells and discovered that EVs carry RNA-binding proteins as well as RNA, whose role in effective therapies is seen in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
Nikonorova and Barr hypothesized that neurons package RNA-binding proteins and RNA into EVs to drive communication between cells and between animals. A fundamental understanding of EV-RNA biology is important for developing tailor-made EVs for RNA-based therapies.
`` We developed an innovative method to label, track and profile EVs using genetically encoded, fluorescent-tagged EV cargo and conducted a large-scale isolation and protein profiling, '' Nikonorova said. `` Using this strategy, we discovered four novel cilia EV cargo. Combined, these data indicate that C. elegans produces a complex and heterogeneous mixture of EVs from multiple tissues in living animals and suggests that these environmental EVs play diverse roles in animal physiology. ''
Future efforts in the Barr laboratory will be directed toward understanding EV-mediated RNA communication. Research in the Barr laboratory is funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. | science |
Exor Swung to Profit in 2021 | Exor N.V. on Thursday reported a profit for 2021 and proposed to pay an unchanged dividend.
The investment company, which holds stakes in a number of companies such as car makers Ferrari N.V. and Stellantis N.V., said full-year net profit came in at 1.72 billion euros ( $ 1.89 billion). In 2020, Exor posted a loss of EUR30 million mainly because its subsidiaries were hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
Net asset value was EUR31.07 billion at Dec. 31, 2021, compared with EUR24.04 billion a year earlier.
Exor proposed a dividend of EUR0.43 a share, unchanged from the previous one.
Write to Kim Richters at kim.richters @ wsj.com
Transparency is how we protect the integrity of our work and keep empowering investors to achieve their goals and dreams. And we have unwavering standards for how we keep that integrity intact, from our research and data to our policies on content and your personal data.
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Why Telegram became the go-to app for Ukrainians – despite being rife with Russian disinformation | For weeks, Russia’ s military assault on Ukraine has been complemented by full-fledged information warfare. The Kremlin has propagandised Russian state media, and is trying to control the narrative online too.
We’ ve seen a bombardment of “ imposter content ” circulating – including fake news reports and deepfake videos – while Ukranians and the rest of the world have scrambled to find ways to tell the real story of the invasion.
The instant messaging app Telegram has surfaced as one of the most important channels through which to do so. But what is it about Telegram that has millions flocking to it amid the chaos?
Read more: Fake viral footage is spreading alongside the real horror in Ukraine. Here are 5 ways to spot it
Telegram is one of the most popular social apps in Ukraine and Russia, and has been since before the invasion began. It’ s a free cloud-based app that allows users to send and receive messages, calls, photos, videos, audio and other files.
The platform was first created in 2013 by Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov – a figure who has butted heads with the increasingly authoritarian Russian state on numerous occasions.
Now Telegram is providing some clarity in a foggy environment of ( mostly Russian) disinformation. It has even been a go-to point of contact for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Telegram has several key features that make it an appealing option for communications relating to the war.
It facilitates public and private groups of up to 200,000 users ( where individuals can send messages and interact), and channels ( which allow one-way broadcasting to channel subscribers).
Through these groups and channels, organisations can reach hundreds of thousands of people with messages and audio/video live streaming – all of which is encrypted and stored on the Telegram “ cloud ”.
However, while both public and private communications on Telegram are encrypted, the default encryption setting is not end-to-end encryption, and instead happens on a client/server basis.
The data is stored ( albeit in an encrypted form) on the cloud, and distributed across multiple data centres throughout the world. These centres are controlled by legal entities in various jurisdictions, and subject to the laws of those jurisdictions. This data could be decrypted, although doing so would be difficult.
But Telegram does offer another layer of security through its “ secret chat ” feature. When this is enabled, the communication between two users becomes end-to-end encrypted.
This data isn’ t stored anywhere apart from the sender’ s and receiver’ s device. Not even Telegram can access it. Users can also set a “ self-destruct ” timer on secret chats. Once the timer ends, the communication disappears forever.
Telegram claims to be even more secure than similar apps such as WhatsApp and Line.
One feature that differentiates it from WhatsApp is anonymous forwarding. When this is enabled, any message forwarded by a user is no longer traceable back to them. The message includes their display name in plain, unlinked text, but this display name can easily be changed or deleted.
Also, while users do need a phone number to create a Telegram account, the number doesn’ t have to remain linked to the account ( whereas a phone number will always remains linked to a WhatsApp account).
Telegram has a history of being leveraged as a protest tool in times of conflict and oppression.
In 2020, people in Belarus opposing the Russian-supported authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko used the platform to organise a mass protest of around 100,000 people.
It’ s likely similar actions have taken place in the context of the war on Ukraine. President Zelenskyy has openly used Telegram to urge men to take up arms and resist the invasion.
Many Russians have also turned to the app for independent information, following the Kremlin’ s clamp down on free media. Russian journalist Ilya Varlamov used Telegram to live stream the invasion, and has acquired 1.3 million subscribers since the war began.
According to Time, there has been a 48% increase in the number of Russian subscribers on Telegram since February 24 when Russia’ s invasion began. Presumably the bulk of these people are looking for independent news. Western outlets including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have also joined.
Telegram is also valuable for Ukraine’ s military, as it can help circumvent Russian surveillance and conduct intelligence operations. Russia’ s penetration of Ukraine’ s telecommunication networks has been pervasive during the invasion.
As is the case with any powerful technology, the privacy afforded by Telegram is also a problem in the wrong hands.
The Russian government is running Telegram channels for state-affiliated media, including Sputnik and RT news, and has encouraged users to turn to the app for pro-Kremlin content.
Meanwhile, Russian bot accounts are spreading disinformation, often by posing as fake “ war correspondents ” supporting the Kremlin’ s narrative.
Historically, Telegram has been profiled for all the wrong reasons. End-to-end encryption has enabled illegal activity on the app ( including by extremist groups such as the Islamic State).
One study found the number of Telegram groups or channels shared in darkweb cybercrime and hacking forums increased from 172,035 in 2020, to more than one million in 2021.
Telegram provides criminals and hackers the same opportunities as the Darknet, VPNs and proxy servers: all of these tools make it difficult to trace the location of a cybercriminal, and therefore hinder efforts to gather intelligence.
Read more: The hacker group Anonymous has waged a cyber war against Russia. How effective could they actually be?
For example, the private Telegram channel “ combolist ” – on which hackers sold and circulated large amounts of stolen data – had more than 47,000 users before it was taken down.
And last year, a US non-profit group sued Apple and demanded it remove Telegram from its app store ( just as it removed Parler) for failing to prevent violent content spreading after the January 6 2021 Capitol attack. Telegram remains available on both the Apple and Google app stores.
Telegram has a record of refusing calls to moderate content ( perhaps due to Durov’ s libertarian view of how such technologies should be governed).
Moreover, the way the platform is built means there is a limit to how much it can be moderated. In many cases, Telegram won’ t be aware of illegal activity until it is notified.
And with end-to-end encryption, it’ s difficult to know just how much harmful content is making the rounds. Telegram can only intervene in a limited number of cases, and with narrow capacity.
Still, it seems mounting threats and legal concerns have started to chip away at Durov’ s resolve.
A ban on Telegram was enacted by Brazil’ s Supreme Court on Friday, in a bid to stop fake news spreading ahead of Brazil’ s October elections.
The ban was lifted two days later, after Durov took actions to comply with the court’ s requirements. He deleted posts by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, removed one supporter account and promised the monitoring of others.
Similarly, Germany threatened to shut down Telegram in February to prevent “ hate and incitement ” from far-right groups and COVID conspiracists. It’ s reported more than 60 channels were removed in response.
It seems Telegram finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It’ s limited, by design, in how much it can filter content. Yet despite the social and enforcement challenges, it continues to be a lifeline for those resisting the Russian invasion.
A Telegram spokesperson contacted The Conversation following the publication of this article. Their response is in the comments below. | business |
Machines are once again doing the car-washing in Britain | WHAT WARM weather is to ice-cream vans and popcorn is to dentists, Saharan dust storms are to car washes. A big dust cloud like the one that reached Britain on March 16th boosts revenues by about a quarter, according to Kevin Pay of Wilcomatic, which runs about 800 automatic car washes in Britain. “ You love to see it, ” he says, as a dusty red Ford Ka joins the queue in Hove in East Sussex, on the south coast.
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Until recently Britain’ s drivers usually took their dirty motors to car parks and disused petrol stations, where eastern European immigrants had at them with sponges. In 2018 a parliamentary committee was informed that Britain had 10,000-20,000 hand car washes, compared with 2,000 automatic “ rollover ” machines and about 4,000 do-it-yourself jet washes. Hand car washes were more convenient—drivers simply handed money through the window rather than traipsing into a petrol station to buy a six-digit code—and often cheaper than machines. The industry was a rare example of de-automation.
It is now re-automating. Mr Pay says that Wilcomatic’ s car-washing revenues in 2021 were 15% higher than in 2019, before covid-19 arrived. “ It’ s starting to turn, ” agrees Chris Scott of Istobal, another car-washing firm, who says that sales of the chemicals used by machines are higher than they were before the pandemic. At Parkfoot Garage in Kent, David Charman says his four jet washes have been “ absolutely flat out ” since the dust storm. He has acquired another car-wash site and is seeking a third.
Automatic car washes and jet washes have improved, with contactless payment, superior brushes and theatrical foam. But the main reason for their popularity is that hand car washes are disappearing. The informal ones can be lousy employers: in 2016 a study of Leicester by two academics, Ian Clark and Trevor Colling, found that many paid less than the legal minimum wage. Car washing is a typical first job for an unskilled immigrant. And Brexit means that Britain has fewer newly arrived unskilled immigrants these days.
Covid-19 further tilted the market towards machines. The government shut down hand car washes for longer than automated ones, on the ground that they posed a higher infection risk. The pandemic also discouraged drivers ( and everyone else) from paying with cash. That hurt informal car washes, which love cash in part because it allows them to dodge tax.
Alexander Russell of the Car Wash Association, a trade group, says that the industry has gone in a circle. Some petrol stations are now putting automatic car-washing machines into bays that were originally built for them, but were then occupied by hand car washes. Car washing has been in a lather, but it is emerging cleaner.
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Anti-infection measures kept British prisoners safe during the pandemic | WHEN COVID hit, Britain’ s ageing prisons could have been sites of mass infection and death. Many of the 118 in England and Wales were built during the Victorian era and are poorly ventilated. Seventy-two were holding more prisoners than their theoretical maximum capacity. Prisoners were often doubled up in cells meant for one—typically three metres by two metres. A trend towards longer sentences meant a growing number of inmates were older, and therefore more at risk of severe illness. Officials estimated that without rigid anti-infection measures, most of the 83,000 they held might catch the disease, and more than 2,000 could die.
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Prisons immediately locked down. For the early months of the pandemic, prisoners spent an average of 22 and a half hours per day in their cells. Gym sessions, in-person education, worship and libraries were halted. Family visits were suspended.
As far as limiting infections and deaths was concerned, the lockdowns worked. The most recent figures, published in February, show that only 189 prisoners died for reasons related to covid. Over 35,000 had tested positive. But even as Britain re-opens, prisoners’ lives are not back to their pre-pandemic normal. In some facilities, says Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, they are still in their cells for up to 22 hours each day.
The Ministry of Justice now permits prisons to remove all but the least intrusive covid restrictions—quarantining new arrivals, separating the most vulnerable inmates from the rest of the population and limiting mixing in large groups. But by March 7th just two adult prisons had done so. The rest were still operating restrictions that complicated access to education, gyms, worship, libraries or family visits, either because some facilities were closed or because of limits on how many prisoners could use them at one time.
Many prisoners without a cellmate have just spent two years in de facto solitary confinement. The harm done to mental health can be permanent after just two weeks locked up alone, says Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust, a campaigning charity. And the continuing restrictions make it less likely that prisoners will receive family visits, which are known to reduce recidivism. According to research by the Ministry of Justice, prisoners who are visited by their family are 39% less likely to offend again.
Many prisons installed in-cell telephones and provided video calls for inmates during the pandemic—both welcome upgrades. But they are no substitute for an in-person visit, says Mr Taylor. And where restrictions make visits more inconvenient—some prisons allow them only on weekdays, when working family members or schoolchildren can not come—prisoners have missed out. A troubling pattern is developing of visitor slots going empty, says Mr Taylor, possibly because of inconvenience or because families have lost the habit of visiting.
Austerity measures under the coalition government of 2010-15 saw the number of prison staff fall from nearly 25,000 to a total of just 18,000. That has since rebounded to just over 22,000. But the number will have to rise further if prison life is to return to something closer to normal. Moving prisoners around in smaller groups requires extra supervision, as does keeping gyms, libraries and chapels open for longer so that anti-crowding measures do not reduce access overall.
Another difficulty is high staff turnover. Nearly a third of officers have less than three years’ experience, and a substantial number have never worked in a prison without covid restrictions. A report from the prisons inspectorate in September 2021 on Wandsworth Prison found that a quarter of officers had been there for less than a year. The facility was so short-staffed and prisoners allowed so briefly out of their cells that they needed to choose between showering, ordering necessities and getting some exercise.
The Ministry of Justice has launched a recruiting scheme at short-staffed sites. But on top of high turnover and continuing covid restrictions, a further problem is that the prison population is expected to rise—to 98,500 by 2026, according to official predictions. As criminal trials came to a halt during the pandemic, the flow of new prisoners slowed and the total behind bars fell: in February it stood at around 80,000. Courts are now working through a massive backlog in hearings, which is sure to lead to more custodial sentences. A government plan to hire 20,000 new police officers may also lead to an increase in criminal charges—and convictions. ■
All our stories relating to the pandemic can be found on our coronavirus hub. You can also find trackers showing the global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by country and the virus’ s spread across Europe.
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
The new Russian cult of war | ON MARCH 22ND, in a penal colony 1,000km north-east of the front lines around Kyiv, Alexei Navalny, the jailed leader of Russia’ s opposition, was sentenced to another nine years imprisonment. To serve them he will probably be moved from Vladimir, where he has been kept for more than a year, to a yet harsher maximum-security jail elsewhere.
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The crime for which he was sentenced is fraud. His true crime is one of common enterprise with that for which the people of Ukraine are now suffering collective punishment. The Ukrainians want to embrace many, if not all, the values held dear by other European nations. Mr Navalny wants the same for Russia. Vladimir Putin can not countenance either desire. As Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’ s foreign minister, told The Economist, “ If Russia wins, there will be no Ukraine; if Ukraine wins, there will be a new Russia. ” That new Russia is as much a target of Mr Putin’ s war as Ukraine is. Its potential must be crushed as surely as Mr Navalny’ s.
This crusade against a liberal European future is being fought in the name of Russkiy mir— “ the Russian world ”, a previously obscure historical term for a Slavic civilisation based on shared ethnicity, religion and heritage. The Putin regime has revived, promulgated and debased this idea into an obscurantist anti-Western mixture of Orthodox dogma, nationalism, conspiracy theory and security-state Stalinism.
The war is the latest and most striking manifestation of this revanchist ideological movement. And it has brought to the fore a dark and mystical component within it, one a bit in love with death. As Andrei Kurilkin, a publisher, puts it, “ The substance of the myth is less important than its sacred nature…The legitimacy of the state is now grounded not in its public good, but in a quasi-religious cult. ”
The cult was on proud display at Mr Putin’ s first public appearance since the invasion—a rally at the Luzhniki stadium packed with 95,000 flag-waving people, mostly young, some bused in, many, presumably, there of their own volition. An open octagonal structure set up in the middle of the stadium served as an altar. Standing at it Mr Putin praised Russia’ s army with words from St John’ s gospel: “ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ”
His oration, delivered in a $ 14,000 Loro Piana coat, made much of Fyodor Ushakov, a deeply religious admiral who, in the 18th century, helped win Crimea back from the Ottomans. In 2001 he was canonised by the Orthodox church; he later became the patron saint of nuclear-armed long-distance bombers. “ He once said that the storms of war would glorify Russia, ” Mr Putin told the crowd. “ That is how it was in his time; that is how it is today and will always be! ”
In both his broad appeals to religion and his specific focus on the saintly Ushakov Mr Putin was cleaving to Stalin’ s example. After the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in 1941, the sometime seminarian turned communist dictator rehabilitated and co-opted the previously persecuted Orthodox church as a way of rallying the people. He also created a medal for outstanding service by naval officers called the order of Ushakov and arranged for his remains to be reburied.
This was not a mere echo or emulation; there is a strand of history which leads quite directly from then to now. Links between the church and the security forces, first fostered under Stalin, grew stronger after the fall of Communism. Whereas various western European churches repented and reflected after providing support for Hitler, the Moscow Patriarchate has never repented for its collusion with Stalin in such matters as the repression of Ukrainian Catholics after 1945.
The allegiance of its leaders, if not of all its clergy, has now been transferred to Mr Putin. Kirill, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, has called his presidency “ a miracle of God ”; he and others have become willing supporters of the cult of war. An early indication of this possibility was seen in 2005, when the orange and black ribbons of the Order of St George, a military saint venerated by the Orthodox church, were given a new pre-eminence in commemorations of the 1941-45 struggle against Germany, known in Russia as the “ great patriotic war ”. Its garish culmination can be seen in the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces in Kubinka, 70km west of Moscow, which was inaugurated on June 22nd ( the day Hitler launched his invasion) in 2020 ( the 75th anniversary of the war’ s end) with Mr Putin and Kirill in attendance.
The cathedral is a Byzantine monstrosity in khaki, its floor made from melted-down German tanks. But it is not devoted solely to the wars of the previous century. A mosaic commemorates the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the country’ s role in Syria’ s civil war: angels smile down on the soldiers going about their holy work.
In keeping with this attitude Kirill has declared the current war a Godly affair and praised the role it will play in keeping Russia safe from the horrors of gay-pride marches. More zealous churchmen have gone further. Elizbar Orlov, a priest in Rostov, a city close to the border with Ukraine, said the Russian army “ was cleaning the world of a diabolic infection ”.
As the cathedral shows, the Russian people’ s sacrifice and victories in the great patriotic war, which saw both the loss of 20m Soviet citizens and the creation of an empire greater in extent than any of the Tsars’, are central to Mr Putin’ s new ideology of the Russian world. Today, though, the foes and allies of the 1940s have been shuffled around, allowing the war to be reframed as part of an assault on Russia’ s civilisation in which the West has been engaged for centuries. The main culprits in this aggression are Britain and America—no longer remembered as allies in the fight against Nazis, but cast instead as backers of the imaginary Nazis from which Ukraine must be saved.
More important to the cult even than the priests are the siloviki of the security services, from whose ranks Mr Putin himself emerged. Officers of the FSB, one of the successors to the KGB, have been at the heart of Russian politics for 20 years. Like many inhabitants of closed, tightly knit and powerful organisations, they have a tendency to see themselves as members of a secret order with access to revealed truths denied to lesser folk. Anti-Westernism and a siege mentality are central to their beliefs. Mr Putin relies on the briefs with which they supply him, always contained in distinctive red folders, for his information about the world
In this realm, too, a turn towards the ideology now being promulgated was first seen in 2005, when a faction within the FSB produced an anonymous book called “ Project Russia ”. It was delivered by courier services to various ministries dealing with security and Russia’ s relationship with the world, warning them that democracy was a threat and the West an enemy.
Few paid much heed. Though Mr Putin’ s ascension to the presidency in 2000 was helped by his willingness to wage war in Chechnya, his mandate was to stabilise an economy still reeling from the debt crisis of 1998 and to consolidate the gains, mostly pocketed by oligarchs, of the first post-Soviet decade. His contract with the Russian people was based not on religion or ideology, but on improving incomes. Only dedicated Kremlin watchers, astute artists such as Vladimir Sorokin and a few political activists paid much attention to the new ideology of isolationism appearing in some of the darker corners of the power structure. At a time of postmodernist irony, glamour and hedonism it seemed marginal at best.
Two years later the new way of thinking became much more obvious to the outside world. In his Munich speech in 2007 Mr Putin formally rejected the idea of Russia’ s integration into the West. In the same year he told a press conference in Moscow that nuclear weapons and Orthodox Christianity were the two pillars of Russian society, the one guaranteeing the country’ s external security, the other its moral health.
After tens of thousands of middle-class city dwellers marched through Moscow and St Petersburg in 2011-12 demanding “ Russia without Putin ” the securocrats and clerics started to expand their dogma into daily life. A regime which sustained, and was sustained by, networks of corruption, rent extraction and extortion required religion and an ideology of national greatness to restore the legitimacy lost during the looting. As Mr Navalny remarked in a video which revealed Mr Putin’ s palace in Sochi, covering up things of such size requires a lot of ideology.
At that point it was still possible to see the ideology as a smokescreen rather than a product of real belief. Perhaps that was a mistake; perhaps the underlying reality changed. Either way, the onset of the covid-19 pandemic two years ago brought a raising of the ideological stakes. At the time, the most discussed aspect of the constitutional changes that Mr Putin finagled in July 2020 was that they effectively removed all limits on his term in office. But they also installed new ideological norms: gay marriage was banned, Russian enshrined as the “ language of the state-forming people ” and God given an official place in the nation’ s heritage.
Mr Putin’ s long subsequent periods of isolation seem to have firmed up the transformation. He is said to have lost much of his interest in current affairs and become preoccupied instead with history, paying particular heed to figures like Konstantin Leontyev, an ultra-reactionary 19th-century visionary who admired hierarchy and monarchy, cringed at democratic uniformity and believed in the freezing of time. One of the few people he appears to have spent time with is Yuri Kovalchuk, a close friend who controls a vast media group. According to Russian journalists they discussed Mr Putin’ s mission to restore unity between Russia and Ukraine.
Hence a war against Ukraine which is also a war against Russia’ s future—or at least the future as it has been conceived of by the Russia’ s sometimes small but frequently dominant Westernising faction for the past 350 years. As in Ukraine, the war is intended to wipe out the possibility of any future that looks towards Europe and some form of liberating modernity. In Ukraine there would be no coherent future left in its place. In Russia the modernisers would leave as their already diminished world was replaced by something fiercely reactionary and inward looking.
The Russian-backed “ republics ” in Donetsk and Luhansk may be a model. There, crooks and thugs were elevated to unaccustomed status, armed with new weapons and fitted with allegedly glorious purpose: to fight against Ukraine’ s European dream. In Russia they would be tasked with keeping any such dream from returning, whether from abroad, or from a cell. ■
Russia’ s atrocities in Mariupol have not brought it closer to victory. But they have not yet spread farther afield, either
Russia’ s atrocities in Mariupol have not brought it closer to victory. But they have not yet spread farther afield, either
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Wealth Management Platform Market Size Worth $ 9.19Bn, | New York, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Insight Partners published latest research study on “ Wealth Management Platform Market Forecast to 2028 – COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis – by Advisory Model ( Human Advisory, Robo-Advisory, and Hybrid), Business Function ( Performance Management, Risk and Compliance Management, Portfolio Accounting and Trading Management, Financial Advice Management, Reporting, and Others), Deployment Type ( Cloud and On-Premise), and End User ( Investment Management Firms, Trading and Exchange Firms, Banks, Brokerage Firms, and Others) ”, the global wealth management platform market growth is driven by the rising adoption of robo advisors in wealth management. The human advisory segment led the market with share of 51.0% in 2020 and expected to account for 43.4% of the total market in 2028.
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Wealth Management Platform Market: Competitive Landscape and Key DevelopmentsBroadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.; Comarch SA; FIS Global; InvestCloud; Fiserv, Inc.; InvestEdge, Inc.; PROFILE SOFTWARE S.A; SEI Investments Developments, Inc.; SS & C Technologies, Inc; and Temenos Headquarters SA are among the key players profiled during this market study. In addition, several other essential market players were studied and analyzed to get a holistic view of the global wealth management platform market and its ecosystem.
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In January 2021, FORTUNE magazine named Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. to its list of the World’ s Most Admired Companies in the financial data services category.
In 2022, FIS Named to FORTUNE’ s 2022 most admired company list. FIS received high marks for global competitiveness, financial soundness, innovation, quality of products and services, people management, social responsibility, and use of corporate assets.
Long-term financial planning is a procedure of aligning the financial capacity of an individual with long-term service goals by financial forecasting. Different governments globally have an overall long-term financial planning process that encourages the discussion of a long-range perspective used by decision-makers. Wealth management tools help minimize financial difficulties by generating long-term and strategic thinking. They are essential for effective communication with external and internal stakeholders. Adoption of Al and analytics provides the analysis phase to provide information that aids in the strategizing and planning. The analysis phase comprises financial and forecasts analysis, often associated with long-term financial planning. It also involves information gathering, trend forecasting, and analysis. These analyses create awareness about long-term financial planning among the masses, which would create lucrative opportunities for the wealth management platform market during the forecast period.
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In North America, changing consumer categories and engagement rules, rapid technological advancements, and shifting competition dynamics are likely to bring significant changes in the wealth management business in the next 10 years. The structure of the wealth management platform industry in the region has changed dramatically with the further democratization of trading in the first decade of the 2000s because of increased access to technologies. Similarly, the last two decades have witnessed the convergence of banking and investment businesses, and the emergence of fee-based managed accounts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional financial institutions ( FIs) began seeking ways to speed up their digital transformation as consumers closely monitored their finances and moved their focus to wealth management platform.
Wealth Management Platform Market: Business Function OverviewThe wealth management platform market, by business function, is segmented into performance management, risk and compliance management, portfolio accounting and trading management, financial advice management, reporting, and others. Portfolio accounting refers to tracking the performance of individual securities in a stock portfolio, evaluating which investments might be increased or decreased, and assessing the portfolio to ensure that it meets the investor's growth expectations. Portfolio accounting and trade management assists high-net-worth ( HNW) people in successfully and safely managing their financial assets.
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Due to the rising number of high-net-worth people worldwide, the market for portfolio accounting, and trade management platforms would continue to grow during the forecast period. This business function also contributes to the provision of real-time data and analytics, which aid in making better investment decisions and improving management performance while maximizing operational agility. It also contributes to the delivery of tools assisting in active decision-making, trading, and portfolio management across a variety of programs such as unified managed accounts, mutual fund advice, separately managed accounts, exchange-traded funds, and others.
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China has honed its justifications for taking Russia’ s side | A MONTH AFTER Vladimir Putin plunged Europe into war, China is ready to explain why it sees no urgent need to stop Russia—its closest strategic partner—from killing Ukrainians. After fine-tuning arguments and propaganda lines for weeks, China’ s Communist Party bosses and their envoys now have talking points for every audience.
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The most common argument is built on deflection and anti-Americanism. This is used for Chinese domestic consumption and in public contacts with Western governments. As Chinese officials tell it, Russia is defending itself against American aggression and a long campaign of encirclement by NATO. Chinese officials think it is unfair of Western leaders to ask their government to intervene, because only American concessions to Mr Putin can bring lasting peace. Moreover, if the war is going slowly, that is because American interests profit from drawn-out agonies, Chinese diplomats charge. Spelling out the accusation, a deputy foreign minister, Le Yucheng, told a gathering at Tsinghua University that “ arms dealers, bankers and oil tycoons ” from a certain big country ( ie, America) are making “ highly immoral ” fortunes out of the war, while Ukraine suffers. This hard line comes from the top. China’ s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has given instructions that Russia is to be defended and America held responsible for Ukraine’ s woes, leaving underlings to “ backfill a foreign policy ” around that decision, a foreign diplomat based in Beijing explains. To dramatise America’ s obligations, Mr Xi reached for a Song-dynasty saying during a two-hour video call with President Joe Biden on March 18th, declaring: “ He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off. ”
Mr Xi’ s scolding, literary tone is striking because, according to American briefings given to foreign ambassadors in Beijing, Mr Biden used the call to convey his concerns that Russia may be contemplating attacks with chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. His warnings were not a surprise to the Chinese. A few days earlier Mr Biden’ s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, shared American intelligence about Russia’ s possible intentions with China’ s foreign-policy chief, Yang Jiechi, during a seven-hour meeting in Rome. Mr Sullivan told Mr Yang that Chinese support for Russian aggression would have a lingering impact on bilateral ties and on Mr Xi’ s legacy. Mr Yang, it is related, responded with anger and complaints about America’ s support for Taiwan, the democratic island that China claims as its own. Other officials have since copied that same rhetorical pivot to Asia. Mr Le called the crisis in Ukraine and NATO enlargement a mirror for observing American alliance-building in Asia and the Pacific, a trend which if unchecked would push the region “ into a pit of fire. ”
To Europeans, it might seem a bit parochial for China to draw parallels between a war under way in Ukraine and long-standing Chinese resentments of American alliances in Asia. But seen from Asia, there is a logic to China’ s framing of the war in Ukraine as the latest example of global disorder provoked by the West, with a special emphasis on the sanctions being imposed on Russia. In their video call Mr Xi told Mr Biden that intensifying sanctions may gravely disrupt food and energy markets and global supply chains. After meeting African and Asian foreign ministers, China’ s foreign minister, Wang Yi, spoke of a common disquiet among developing nations at being asked to take “ black or white ” moral positions on complex international questions.
Such ultra-pragmatic talking points, crafted to woo countries from the global South, reflect a Chinese horror of being isolated. But they also resonate with many governments, says a foreign diplomat in Beijing, describing meetings at which ambassadors from non-aligned countries swallow Chinese arguments “ like candy ”. China has a keen sense of countries with long-standing grievances about the West, or that have been placed under sanctions themselves for rights abuses, notes the diplomat. Against that, some South-East Asian governments, from Singapore to Cambodia, have voiced concerns about the dangerous precedent set by Russia’ s attack. China’ s growling about alliances cuts both ways, says a second diplomat. “ China is worried about an Asian NATO. The only player that could make it happen, guaranteed, is China. Just invade a neighbour and see what happens, ” he suggests.
A final talking point is offered more discreetly by Chinese officials and scholars. This coldly realist argument asserts that China’ s interests are simply not served by breaking with Russia. Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the People’ s Liberation Army, now at the Centre for International Security and Strategy and its China Forum at Tsinghua University, insists that China is taking a balanced approach to the war. But he predicts that if China were to condemn Russia’ s actions, Western governments would pocket the concession and call it China merely doing the right thing. There is little chance that broader, long-term American pressure on China will ease, because China is not about to change its political system, adds Mr Zhou. As a result, “ If China ditches Russia, it is only a matter of time before America comes after China once more. ”
Wu Xinbo, dean of the international-studies institute at Fudan University, calls it natural that in his conversation with Mr Biden, Mr Xi stressed Chinese concerns about American support for Taiwan. “ Russia may worry about Ukraine joining NATO, but Ukraine is an independent sovereign country. Taiwan is part of China. So in this sense, the Taiwan issue is far more important to China than Ukraine is to Russia, ” he says.
Western governments are frustrated that China calls itself a peace-loving giant but will not condemn Mr Putin. That is to misread China, a country at once certain that its rise is unstoppable, and sure that America is bent on stopping it. China has ambitions to bestride the world one day. But it remains exceptionally self-absorbed. Suffering in faraway Ukraine will not change that. ■
All our stories relating to the pandemic can be found on our coronavirus hub. You can also find trackers showing the global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by country and the virus’ s spread across Europe.
They like to be seen in pretty shops. They might even buy a coffee
They like to be seen in pretty shops. They might even buy a coffee
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Kibali Powers Ahead While Barrick Plans Further Investments | KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Barrick Gold Corporation ( NYSE: GOLD) ( TSX: ABX) – Africa’ s largest gold mine, Kibali, has made a strong start to 2022 and is on track to equal its 2021 production this year. Last year it again replaced the reserves depleted by mining and its prolific KZ trend of orebodies continues to deliver opportunities for significant open pit and underground growth.
Speaking to media here today, Barrick president and chief executive Mark Bristow said Kibali had notched up a number of other key deliverables during the current quarter. These include the signing of a cahier de charge with the surrounding communities to formalize their role in identifying and overseeing the mine’ s investment in social development projects.
Another section of the Durba road to Watsa has been completed and the resettlement of the Kalimva-Ikamva and Pamao villages has started with the first group of people moving into their new homes. On the health and safety front, there have been zero lost time injuries during the quarter so far, the malaria and HIV programs continue to deliver infection rate reductions and 60% of our employees have been vaccinated against Covid-19, versus a national average of 1%.
In addition to Kibali’ s long-standing support for conservation measures in one of DRC’ s leading national parks, African Parks and Barrick are looking to reintroduce the white rhino to the Garamba national park. In what will be the largest exercise of its kind, the plan envisages the relocation of around 50 white rhinos to Garamba creating a new population group which is critical in the long-term plan to protect this species. In line with Barrick’ s development strategy, the mine also launched the Garamba Alliance in partnership with the US Agency for International Development ( USAID).
Since the project that became Kibali was acquired in 2009, its probable mineral reserves were doubled to more than 10 million ounces1 of gold in 2010. Construction then started the following year, three hydropower plants were built and the infrastructure – including the road to the Ugandan border – was developed. The mine went into production in 2013 and still today has more than 10 years of mine life ahead, with 2021 total proven and probable mineral reserves of 83Mt at 3.60g/t for 9.6Moz2 of gold, before considering extensions to known orebodies and new discoveries. Since 2009, Kibali has invested almost $ 4 billion in the DRC in the form of royalties, taxes and permits; infrastructure and community development; salaries; and payments to local suppliers and contractors, which have created a thriving regional economy.
“ Barrick is continuing to invest in the DRC, not only by developing the many new growth opportunities which are extending Kibali’ s life, but also through pursuing greenfields exploration and other opportunities across the country as we search for our next world-class discovery, ” Bristow said.
Investor and Media RelationsKathy du Plessis+44 20 7557 7738Email: barrick @ dpapr.com
Technical InformationThe scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Simon Bottoms, CGeol, MGeol, FGS, FAusIMM, Mineral Resources Manager, Africa & Middle East and Rodney Quick, MSc, Pr. Sci.Nat, Mineral Resource Management and Evaluation Executive.
Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information Certain information contained or incorporated by reference in this press release, including any information as to our strategy, projects, plans, or future financial or operating performance, constitutes “ forward-looking statements ”. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words “ ahead ”, “ on track ”, “ continue ”, “ envisage ”, “ strategy ”, “ pursue ”, “ expect ”, “ will ”, “ maintain ”, “ growth ”, “ opportunities ”, “ design ” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking statements including, without limitation, with respect to: Kibali’ s production guidance and performance; opportunities to grow reserves net of depletion and extend Kibali’ s mine life; the potential for significant open pit and underground growth from the KZ trend of orebodies; the anticipated environmental and operational benefits from Kibali’ s investment in its infrastructure including hydropower stations and roads; Kibali’ s health, safety and environmental protection programs, including the resettlement of the Kalimva-Ikamva and Pamao villages, its Covid-19 prevention protocols and initiatives to secure Covid-19 vaccines as well as the Garamba Alliance; Barrick’ s plan to reintroduce white rhinos to the Garamba national park in partnership with USAID; and Barrick’ s commitment to the DRC and potential further growth opportunities.
Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions including material estimates and assumptions related to the factors set forth below that, while considered reasonable by the Company as at the date of this press release in light of management’ s experience and perception of current conditions and expected developments, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements and information. Such factors include, but are not limited to: fluctuations in the spot and forward price of gold, copper, or certain other commodities ( such as silver, diesel fuel, natural gas, and electricity); the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development; changes in mineral production performance, exploitation, and exploration successes; the possibility that future exploration results will not be consistent with the Company’ s expectations; risks that exploration data may be incomplete and considerable additional work may be required to complete further evaluation, including but not limited to drilling, engineering and socioeconomic studies and investment; risk of loss due to acts of war, terrorism, sabotage and civil disturbances; steps required prior to the distribution of cash and equivalents held at Kibali in banks in the Democratic Republic of Congo; risks associated with projects in the early stages of evaluation, and for which additional engineering and other analysis is required; failure to comply with environmental and health and safety laws and regulations; timing of receipt of, or failure to comply with, necessary permits and approvals; uncertainty whether some or all of Barrick’ s targeted investments and projects will meet the Company’ s capital allocation objectives and internal hurdle rate; changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and/ or changes in the administration of laws, policies and practices, expropriation or nationalization of property and political or economic developments in the DRC and other jurisdictions in which the Company or its affiliates do or may carry on business in the future; damage to the Company’ s reputation due to the actual or perceived occurrence of any number of events, including negative publicity with respect to the Company’ s handling of environmental matters or dealings with community groups, whether true or not; risks associated with new diseases, epidemics and pandemics, including the effects and potential effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic; litigation and legal and administrative proceedings; employee relations including loss of key employees; increased costs and physical risks, including extreme weather events and resource shortages, related to climate change; and availability and increased costs associated with mining inputs and labor. Barrick also cautions that its guidance may be impacted by the unprecedented business and social disruption caused by the spread of Covid-19. In addition, there are risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining, including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins, flooding and gold bullion, copper cathode or gold or copper concentrate losses ( and the risk of inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance, to cover these risks).
Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, us. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. Specific reference is made to the most recent Form 40-F/Annual Information Form on file with the SEC and Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities for a more detailed discussion of some of the factors underlying forward-looking statements and the risks that may affect Barrick’ s ability to achieve the expectations set forth in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.
Barrick disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. | general |
Bellicum Reports Fourth Quarter 2021 Financial Results and | March 24, 2022 16:05 ET | Source: Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
HOUSTON, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ( Nasdaq: BLCM), a leader in developing novel, controllable cellular immunotherapies for cancers, today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2021 and provided an operational update.
“ Bellicum made great progress in the past year in the clinical development of our GoCAR-T® cell therapies and in broadening the impact of our technology via licensing, ” said Rick Fair, President and Chief Executive Officer. “ In 2021, we opened the BPX-601 trial in prostate cancer and reported a confirmed response in the first cohort treated, initiated the BPX-603 trial in HER2+ solid tumors, signed licensing agreements for our CaspaCIDe safety switch for use in six new CAR-T and CAR-NK programs, and raised additional capital expected to fund the company beyond our next data milestones for our GoCAR-T programs. The Omicron COVID-19 variant had a significant impact on our clinical trial sites and trial enrollment over the last two quarters, but we have recently seen an uptick in site activation and screening activity as cases decline. We believe we are well positioned to further demonstrate the value of GoCAR-T in the coming year. ”
Revenues: Bellicum reported revenue of $ 0.5 million and $ 6.2 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively, compared to $ 0.5 million during each of the comparable periods in 2020. The increase in revenues was due to agreements executed with external parties during the year. In the first quarter of 2021, Bellicum entered into a multi-year supply agreement with Takeda Development Center Americas, Inc. for the supply of rimiducid for potential use in clinical trials of TAK-007. Initial clinical trial supply was fulfilled in the second quarter of 2021 generating revenue of $ 0.7 million. Revenues from up-front and annual maintenance payments related to CaspaCIDe licensing agreements were $ 0.5 million and $ 5.5 million for the fourth quarter and full year 2021, compared to $ 0.5 million in 2020.
R & D Expenses: Research and development expenses were $ 4.0 million and $ 23.6 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively, compared to $ 8.7 million and $ 39.1 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2020, respectively. The decrease in R & D expenses for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, compared to the prior year, was primarily due to reduced expenses related to rivo-cel related activities, the sale of the manufacturing facility, and the reduction in force that was implemented in the fourth quarter of 2020, partially offset by an increase in expenses related to Bellicum’ s GoCAR-T programs. This resulted in $ 12.3 million reduction in employee-related expenses and a $ 3.2 million reduction in other R & D expenses.
G & A Expenses: General and administrative expenses were $ 1.6 million and $ 7.0 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively, compared to $ 3.4 million and $ 15.5 million for the comparable periods in 2020. The decrease in G & A expenses for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, compared to the year ended December 31, 2020, was primarily due to the reduction in force that reduced employee-related expenses by $ 6.8 million as well as the reduction in rivo-cel related commercialization activities that reduced expenses by $ 1.7 million.
Loss from Operations: Bellicum reported a loss from operations of $ 5.1 million and $ 24.9 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively, compared to $ 13.0 and $ 51.7 million for the comparable periods in 2020. The results for the year ended December 31, 2021 include loss on dispositions of $ 0.5 million whereas for the year ended December 31, 2020, a gain on dispositions of $ 3.7 million was recognized.
Net Income/Loss: Bellicum reported net income of $ 2.5 million and a net loss of $ 9.7 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively, compared to net income of $ 18.8 million and a net loss $ 7.7 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2020, respectively. The results included gain from change in fair value of warrant derivative liabilities of $ 7.6 million and $ 15.1 million for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021, respectively.
Shares Outstanding: As of March 21, 2022, Bellicum had 8,552,207 shares of common stock and 452,000 shares of preferred stock outstanding. Each share of preferred stock is convertible into 10 shares of common stock.
Cash Position and Guidance: Bellicum reported cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash totaling $ 47.7 million as of December 31, 2021, compared to $ 37.0 million as of December 31, 2020. Based on current operating plans, Bellicum expects that current cash resources will be sufficient to meet operating requirements into the second quarter of 2023.
Bellicum is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company striving to deliver cures through controllable cell therapies. The company’ s next-generation product candidates are differentiated by powerful cell signaling technologies designed to produce more effective CAR-T cell therapies. Bellicum’ s GoCAR-T® product candidates, BPX-601 and BPX-603, are designed to be more efficacious CAR-T cell products capable of overriding key immune inhibitory mechanisms. More information about Bellicum can be found at www.bellicum.com or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Bellicum may, in some cases, use terms such as “ predicts, ” “ believes, ” “ potential, ” “ proposed, ” “ continue, ” “ designed, ” “ estimates, ” “ anticipates, ” “ expects, ” “ plans, ” “ intends, ” “ may, ” “ could, ” “ might, ” “ will, ” “ should ” or other words that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Bellicum’ s intentions, beliefs, projections, outlook, analyses or current expectations concerning, among other things: Bellicum’ s positioning for demonstrating the value of GoCAR-T in the coming year; the timing of data updates from Bellicum’ s ongoing BPX-601 and BPX-603 clinical trials; the use of proceeds from Bellicum’ s December 2021 private placement; and Bellicum’ s expected cash runway. Various factors may cause differences between Bellicum’ s expectations and actual results, including, among others, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Bellicum’ s clinical trial sites and trial enrollment, other factors, such as safety issues, may impact Bellicum’ s clinical progress, actual expenses incurred may be higher than anticipated, and trial results may be different than anticipated, as discussed in greater detail under the heading “ Risk Factors ” in Bellicum’ s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation Bellicum’ s annual report on Form 10-K the year ended December 31, 2021 and in Bellicum’ s subsequent filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that Bellicum makes in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. Bellicum assumes no obligation to update Bellicum’ s forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release.
Investors: Robert H. UhlManaging DirectorICR Westwicke 858-356-5932Robert.uhl @ westwicke.com | general |
Italy’ s digitisation minister has big goals and a big budget | THE HOMELAND of Galileo and Marconi has proved unexpectedly resistant to digital technology. Many Italians adopted mobile phones while they were still a rarity in other countries, including America. Yet the share who regularly use the internet is no higher than in Turkey.
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That partly reflects Italy’ s elderly population: it has the EU’ s highest median age. But Riccardo Luna, formerly his country’ s representative in the European Commission’ s Digital Champions Expert Group, says other factors have also played a role. For eight of the ten years from 2001 to 2011, Italy’ s prime minister was Silvio Berlusconi, a TV magnate for whom the internet represented a commercial danger. Telecom Italia, the country’ s dominant land line operator, had an interest in slowing the introduction of broadband to maintain the value of its main asset, a copper cable network. In 2020 the share of Italian adults who had used the internet in the previous three months was just 78% —the second-lowest in the EU.
The man charged with changing that is Vittorio Colao, once the boss of Vodafone. Last year Mario Draghi, the prime minister, recruited Mr Colao to be his minister for digital transition. Thanks to the EU’ s colossal post-pandemic recovery fund, Mr Colao has more than €40bn ( $ 44bn) to work with. One goal is to help industry digitise. Another is to bring extra-fast broadband to schools and health clinics, as well as providing broadband and 5 G mobile networks to remote areas. Mr Colao also wants to help the 3m or so Italians who have been left behind by the digital revolution acquire basic computer skills, and to streamline public access to government, largely through smartphone apps.
In that realm, Italy has made impressive progress. Matteo Renzi, a techno-evangelist who was prime minister in 2014-16, launched several projects that have been implemented under his successors. Mr Colao flourishes his smartphone and points to an app called Io ( “ I ”): “ I can now pay my social-security contributions for my domestic help directly from this. I showed it to a German politician. He was open-mouthed with astonishment. ”
Io and a clutch of similar apps appeared just as covid-19 was spreading in Italy, confining Italians to their homes and encouraging them to become more digitally savvy. The pandemic has helped in other ways too. “ We were not a nation of e-shoppers, ” says Mr Colao. “ And yet [ e-commerce ] has now become absolutely normal. ”
One of his biggest challenges, he says, is convincing businesspeople to invest in digital initiatives. The other is getting officials to integrate systems and harmonise procedures. Digitisation in the public sector has been haphazard. There are an estimated 11,000 databases spread across national, regional, provincial and municipal government. “ We spend our time arguing with other ministries and local authorities, ” says Mr Colao. “ Digital does not need to be centralised, but it does need to be homogenous. ”
The rewards are potentially immense. Two of the biggest reasons why the Italian economy has stagnated since the turn of the century have been low productivity and a stubbornly inefficient bureaucracy. Tens of billions of euros will help to tackle both. As Mr Colao admits, ensuring they are spent wisely can be frustrating. “ But I always say that if I weren’ t frustrated I wouldn’ t be doing my job. ” ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Tuberculosis infection protects mice from developing COVID-19: Discovery may explain why tuberculosis and COVID-19 double infections are rare in humans -- ScienceDaily | Currently, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, are the leading causes of death from infectious disease worldwide. Tuberculosis is widespread, and scientists have questioned whether the immune response triggered by this serious respiratory infection might protect people from developing COVID-19. To find out more, researchers worked with two different strains of mice and infected them with M. tuberculosis. Then they exposed the mice to the COVID-19 virus and monitored them for signs of infection. They discovered that mice with tuberculosis showed no signs of COVID-19, likely because the pre-existing immune response to tuberculosis prevented the virus from proliferating in the lungs.
Altogether, the findings demonstrate that tuberculosis infection makes the lungs inhospitable to the COVID-19 virus in mice. If the same is true for humans, then this discovery may be one reason why there have been few reports of individuals with both tuberculosis and COVID-19 in the absence of other complications. The findings may also explain why countries tend to have high rates of infection of COVID-19 or tuberculosis, but not both. The researchers propose that future research should focus on the interaction between COVID-19 and tuberculosis infections in humans.
`` TB and COVID are pandemics that affect every part of the world, '' Robinson adds. `` Our study reflects the work of a diverse and talented group of OSU scientists to better understand how these two diseases influence one another, a surprising observation being that mice with TB are resistant to COVID in a lab setting. '' | science |
How campus design and architecture influence interaction among researchers -- ScienceDaily | Do all these design elements truly help people to work together? A study led by MIT scholars reveals new details about collaboration on the Institute's campus. Overall the study, which looks at email traffic between faculty, researchers, and staff on campus, confirms that physical proximity does matter for workplace collaboration, but it adds new wrinkles about how this happens.
People are more likely to communicate via email after running into each other at a campus eatery, for instance, than in a crowded corridor. The study also found that email exchanges occur more often among researchers whose workspaces are connected through indoor halls rather than outdoor paths. And greater physical proximity may not replace email communication among people who don't know each other well -- they are more likely to email each other even when working in close proximity.
`` Studying how spatial relationships may influence social ties has been of interest to scholars of the built environment and sociologists alike for a long time, '' says Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning ( DUSP), and co-author of a new paper detailing the study's results. While past work often used survey data to account for interactions, here the campus email information added hard data to the research.
`` We were interested in taking this idea of spatial relatedness further and examining its more nuanced aspects that have not been well-covered in prior research, '' Sevtsuk notes.
Those findings apply to not only MIT but other organizations as well.
`` These ideas could be explored analogously in other work environments beyond MIT, such as companies, organizations, or even public sector institutions, '' says Bahij Chaucey, a researcher at the MIT City Form Lab and a co-author of the paper.
The paper, `` Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus, '' was published in advance online form in March, by the journal Social Networks.
The authors are Chancey; Rounaq Basu, a doctoral candidate in DUSP; Martina Mazzarello, a postdoc at the MIT Senseable City Lab; and Sevtsuk, the Charles and Ann Spaulding Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in DUSP and head of the MIT City Form Lab.
The Allen Curve and onward
A large body of scholarship has examined workplace interactions -- often influenced by the late Thomas Allen, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management whose interest in the subject was spurred in part by a stint working at Boeing. Allen's research in the 1970s and 1980s found that greater proximity has a strong relationship with greater collaboration among engineers, a phenomenon represented by the `` Allen Curve. ''
To conduct this study, the researchers used anonymized email data collected by MIT's Information Systems and Technology group in February 2020, a month before the Covid-19 pandemic altered campus routines. The data track how many bilateral email exchanges occurred between research units on campus, such as departments or labs; the scholars examined the number of individuals in a unit to estimate the typical amount of person-to-person exchange.
The team then examined the spatial relationships between research units, to see how the built environment might interact with email patterns. Overall, the study spanned 33 different departments, labs, and research groups, and 1,455 office occupants.
The scholars also modeled the likely walking routes to the office or lab of MIT workers, based on MIT's 2018 Commute to Work survey, while also estimating the total foot traffic or crowdedness of each corridor and eating venue on campus. Sevtsuk's research has included extensive modeling of pedestrian routes in city settings using such methods.
More food for thought
Many specific, granular findings emerged from the study -- especially the idea that proximity matters along with the specifics of the built environment. For starters, other things being equal, workers in research units located near the same dining facilities are more likely to email and interact.
`` Cafeterias are spaces where verbal and visual communication is an important part of eating culture, especially in a research environment like MIT, '' says Basu.
Not having to venture outside also influences behavior -- at least, it did during the wintery Massachusetts weather during the study period. For research units that are basically an equal distance apart, those linked by interior corridors tended to communicate more than those separated by outdoor space, even when that communication was in the form of email.
`` We clearly saw that if people's offices are linked via the indoor Infinite Corridor system, they are more likely to engage in email exchange than if the logical connections between their offices require outdoor paths, '' Basu says.
As an added wrinkle, however, really busy corridors seem to generate brief greetings more than exchanges that lead to follow-up communication. `` We found that if the corridor where person A may be walking past person B's office on the way to work tends to be more crowded, then it reduces the likelihood of A and B engaging in email exchange, '' Sevtsuk says.
However, this does not seem to be the case with very crowded cafeterias, which if anything seem to encourage more subsequent contact. `` A more crowded cafeteria could provide more opportunities to engage in group conversations, where new social ties can emerge between people who are introduced by mutual connections, '' Sevtsuk observes.
Not least, the effects of physical proximity are themselves related to preexisting relationships. For people already familiar with each other, the research suggests, proximity leads to more face-to-face interactions; for those previously unfamiliar with each other, meeting people due to proximity tends to lead to a greater proportion of emails being exchanged, at first.
Many pathways ahead
The researchers believe their methodology could suggest ways to place new faculty or staff in useful spots where they would be able to interact easily with others.
`` It is possible to use our findings to identify where such locations are within each department and school, '' Sevtsuk says.
Campus planners could also continue to build on ideas evident in the Stata Center and Sloan building, which have large ground-floor cafeterias and `` strategically position social lounges or dining facilities at locations where access from surrounding offices, and the likelihood of passing [ by ] is highest, '' Sevtsuk adds.
In universities and tech-firm campuses, Sevtsuk suggests, when new building projects are being considered, it makes sense to `` strategically evaluate their locations and circulation systems vis-a-vis spatial connectivity to surrounding departments with which they have the most potential for joint research. ''
Certainly, MIT, other universities, and large companies can not always quickly reconfigure themselves. But over time, good planning and design can enhance interdisciplinary work, collaboration, and generate serendipitous meetings between people. Or, as the authors state in the paper, `` Planning environments to encourage greater interaction across different groups may offer a pathway to bridge siloed social networks and encourage information exchange between otherwise unlikely parties. '' | science |
Intense light protects against lung damage, research finds: Study says it stimulates proteins that can protect against acute lung injury as seen with COVID-19 -- ScienceDaily | `` Acute lung injury has a mortality rate of 40%, '' said the study's lead author Tobias Eckle, M.D., professor of anesthesiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. `` No specific therapy exists, and novel treatment options are needed. ''
The study was published this week in the American Journal of Physiology -- Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.
Eckle's team, which previously demonstrated that light can protect against cardiovascular disease, housed mice under intense rather than ambient light for seven days. This prompted a strong increase in the trough and peak levels of the pulmonary circadian rhythm protein -- Period 2 or PER2.
If the protein was deleted in a specific lung cell known as the alveolar type 2 cell, acute lung injury was fatal. If the protein was not deleted, 85% of the mice survived. Alveolar type 2 cells have long been recognized as playing an important role during acute lung injury but have never been linked to the light regulated protein PER2.
The study also showed that intense light therapy reduced lung inflammation or improved the function of the alveolar barrier -- the blood-air barrier -- in lung infections. Researchers saw the same reaction when using the flavonoid, nobiletin, found in orange peel, which also enhances the amplitude of PER2.
At the same time, the researchers found that intense light stimulated production of the BPIFB1 protein, known to be anti-bacterial and secreted within the mucus membranes of the large airways. They believe this also likely plays a role in protecting the lungs.
Discovering that intense light can protect against lung damage, Eckle said, is important due to the lack of therapies currently available to treat the condition.
`` If you develop lung injury there is essentially no good therapy left, '' he said. `` Our study has shown that intense light elicited lung-protective mechanisms could lead to new therapies even after the onsetof acute lung injury in the future. '' | science |
Haitians Being Returned to a Country in Chaos | Help us continue to fight human rights abuses. Please give now to support our work
Humanitarian, Security Crisis Makes Deportations Unsafe
( Washington, DC) – The United States and all other countries should stop expelling or deporting people to Haiti, where they face a high risk of violence and have no effective access to protection or justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Haiti is suffering alarming levels of killings and kidnappings by gangs that control strategic areas of the country, in a situation compounded by longstanding impunity for human rights abuses and crime amid a humanitarian crisis.
“ It is unconscionable that any government would send people to Haiti while it experiences such a deterioration in security and a heightened risk to everyone’ s life and physical integrity, ” said César Muñoz, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “ No government should return people to Haiti. And the United States, which accounts for the vast majority of returns, should end the unnecessary and illegitimate use of a public health regulation for abusive expulsions of Haitians. ”
Human Rights Watch interviewed 49 people during a visit to Haiti in December 2021. They included 9 Haitians expelled from the US and the Dominican Republic; representatives of United Nations agencies; civil society members; and Haitian justice and executive branch officials. The officials included Prime Minister Ariel Henry, Justice Minister Berto Dorcé, Interior Minister Liszt Quitel, Ombudsperson Renan Hédouville, and Inspector General of Police Fritz Saint Fort. Human Rights Watch interviewed an additional 16 people remotely before and after the visit, and reviewed data and reports by the UN, civil society, and media.
Returns to Haiti are life-threatening now, and will continue to be so, until security conditions in Haiti improve, Human Rights Watch said. Haiti is experiencing a dire security situation, including loss of government control over strategic areas to the hands of dangerous armed gangs, widely believed to be financed by politicians and to have police officers on their payroll. Violence has worsened an already severe humanitarian crisis.
Haiti is also enduring a deep political and constitutional crisis. Prime Minister Henry, the putative head of government, was not elected but rather appointed by former President Jovenel Moïse, two days before Moïse’ s assassination on July 7, 2021. The prime minister governs by decree, without a constitutional mandate. Parliament has ceased to function, and the justice system can barely operate in a context of security and institutional breakdowns.
Impunity for crimes is the norm. “ In Haiti, threatened judges have two options: to leave the country or continue with the investigation and have themselves killed for it, ” a member of the Superior Council of Justice, the body that manages the justice system, told Human Rights Watch.
Given the security conditions in Haiti, civil society groups and organizations assisting returnees expressed concern that people expelled or deported to Haiti are at risk of kidnapping and extortion by criminal gangs, which may believe returnees have money for travel or relatives abroad who can pay ransoms. However, there is currently no system in place to track and support returnees.
From January 1, 2021 through February 26, 2022, 25,765 people were expelled or deported to Haiti, data collected by the International Organization for Migration ( IOM) show. Of those, the US returned 79 percent – 20,309 people – while The Bahamas, Cuba, Turks and Caicos Islands, Mexico, and other countries returned the rest.
From September 19, 2021 – when the IOM started collecting detailed data – through February 14, 2022, the US returned about 2,300 children born abroad to Haitian parents, the majority of them in Chile.
Most people returned by the US had left Haiti years before, escaping an already difficult security and economic situation, and had lived in Chile or Brazil before traveling to the US. Some suffered violence, including sexual abuse, on their way to the US.
The United States should immediately stop its inappropriate use of Title 42, a section of US health law, to expel people to Haiti and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said. IOM data show that, from September 19 through the end of February, 6 percent of those the US repatriated to Haiti were deported and the rest were expelled under Title 42, which the administration of former President Donald Trump deployed during the Covid-19 pandemic to deny families, children, and adults arriving at the southern border their right to seek asylum in the United States, and which the administration of President Joe Biden has continued to use. On March 11, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) terminated its authorization of Title 42 expulsion authority with respect to unaccompanied children.
The US has typically not given people returned to Haiti under Title 42 an opportunity to express their fears of persecution or violence or to apply for asylum, in violation of international law.
On March 4, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that “ from a public-health perspective, based on the limited record before us, it’ s far from clear that the CDC’ s order serves any purpose, ” in reference to the March 2020 order from the CDC to apply Title 42.
In a decision that could go into effect in April, the court ordered the Biden administration to stop using Title 42 to summarily expel families with children to countries where they would face persecution or torture.
UN agencies and the Biwo Nasyonal Migrasyon ( Haitian National Office of Migration) provide some assistance to returnees at the airport, including cash assistance, food, and hygiene products, but they do not monitor their situation after they drop them off at bus stations or hotels, UN officials and Haitian authorities told Human Rights Watch.
A survey conducted by IOM staff among 383 returnees who could be reached by phone in January and February showed that 69 percent of them did not feel safe in Haiti. Of those interviewed, 84 percent wanted to leave the country again because of the economic and security crisis.
In addition to stopping repatriations, foreign governments should work with Haitian authorities, UN agencies, and donors to create a comprehensive returnee reintegration program for those who have already been returned, Human Rights Watch said. The program should address the returnees’ specific needs, including work, security, family reunification, services for survivors of gender-based violence, including access to emergency contraception, and support for children on the basis of best-interest assessments. An IOM representative told Human Rights Watch on March 3 that they have designed a reintegration program and are seeking donor support to put it into operation.
“ Haitians and their children, many born abroad, are being returned to a country in chaos, ” Muñoz said. “ Foreign governments should stop all repatriations and should help set up a reintegration program, in collaboration with Haitian authorities, to monitor the situation of those already returned, help them access basic services, provide assistance to their children, and step in if their lives are at risk. ”
For further information on Human Rights Watch findings, see below.
Summary of Human Rights Watch Findings
Countries in the region, most particularly the United States, continue to send thousands of people back to Haiti, including children born abroad, despite the dire conditions in the country. The following sections provide data on expulsions and deportations to Haiti, as well as descriptions of detention conditions in US border facilities. Human Rights Watch also detailed the compounded severe crises that make it unconscionable to send people back to a country that is clearly unsafe. Brutal gangs control and terrorize whole neighborhoods, especially around Port-au-Prince; democratic institutions have collapsed; the justice system is unable to provide justice; and impunity is overwhelming. The security, political, and justice crises have aggravated a severe humanitarian situation.
Detention and Expulsion or Deportation to Haiti
From January 1, 2021 through February 26, 2022, 25,765 people were returned to Haiti by flight or boat, including 4,674 children, according to the IOM. In total, 18 percent of returnees were children, although that proportion increased from 16 percent in 2021 to 25 percent in the first months of 2022.
IOM data also show that from January 2021 through the end of February 2022, 1,142 people were returned by sea: the US Coast Guard intercepted 794 at sea and sent them back, and Cuba sent 348 Haitians back by boat after they had reached its territory, also by boat.
The vast majority have been returned since September 2021, when the US started repatriations to Haiti from Del Rio, Texas.
The US has sent 20,309 people back – amounting to 79 percent of all repatriations – including 5,004 children. The US has not sent unaccompanied children on flights to Haiti, but at least two children on boats were intercepted and sent back by the US Coast Guard, the IOM said. At least another 10 unaccompanied children were returned by Cuba and The Bahamas.
From September 19, 2021 through February 14, 2022, the US sent to Haiti about 2,300 children born abroad to Haitian parents, the IOM said. Of those, about 1,600 were born in Chile; about 580 in Brazil, and about 140 in other countries, including The Bahamas, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela.
Most Haitians returned by the US left their country years ago, fleeing violence, the lack of economic opportunities, or the aftermath of a devastating 2010 earthquake, according to the IOM and returnees Human Rights Watch interviewed. Most lived in Chile or Brazil. They said they left those countries because of discrimination, the Covid-19-related economic slowdown, and the difficulty, in Chile, of obtaining legal papers. Knowing of the security and economic crisis in Haiti, they told IOM and Human Rights Watch, they decided to head to the United States, crossing the hemisphere by bus and on foot.
Haitians detained at US border jails – who were later expelled under Title 42 – have reported harsh conditions, including insufficient food, lack of access to showers or hygiene products for weeks, and lack of health care, even for children severely weakened by the trip across the hemisphere, UN agencies and interviewees told Human Rights Watch. IOM personnel in Port-au-Prince told Human Rights Watch they had to treat some arriving children for dehydration.
Some returnees have reported that US border agents took clothing, phones, cash, and their personal documentation, and that they received some but not all of their belongings back upon return to Haiti. One family told Human Rights Watch that a US guard ripped up their personal documents in front of them, including their children’ s Chilean birth certificates.
IOM and Human Rights Watch received testimony that couples are separated and held in different US border detention facilities, and not informed of each other’ s situation. People expelled from Texas – but not from some other states – were shackled on the plane, returnees and IOM representatives told Human Rights Watch. Haitian officials took off the shackles when the returnees arrived.
US Violations of International and Domestic Law
US and international refugee and human rights law requires the authorities to screen asylum-seekers individually to make sure they do not return people to places where they would be exposed to torture or persecution or where their lives or freedom would be threatened. Human Rights Watch interviewed nine returnees at the Port-au-Prince airport upon arrival, all expelled by the US under Title 42. They all said they had no such screening.
One said he told a guard at the US detention center where he was held that he wanted to request asylum, and the guard replied: “ Here, you have no rights. ” IOM collected similar testimony, indicating that US authorities did not let Haitians in custody apply for asylum or call a lawyer or the Haitian consulate, according to a summary reviewed by Human Rights Watch.
Some returnees told IOM staff and Human Rights Watch that US officials put them on planes without telling them where they were being taken. They received no warning that they were going to Haiti.
The Biden administration is aware it is sending Haitians to a country that is not safe. In May 2021, the US Department of Homeland Security re-designated Haiti for Temporary Protected Status ( TPS) “ due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent nationals from returning safely. ” While TPS only applies as a matter of law to Haitians already in the country at the time of the designation, the underlying logic and rationale behind the designation is based on country conditions in Haiti that prevent any Haitian nationals from returning in safety for the duration of the temporary status. If Haiti is too dangerous to return Haitians who were in the US at the time of the TPS designation, it is equally dangerous for Haitians entering the US after the TPS designation.
A US embassy level 4 travel warning, the most severe, has been in effect for Haiti since August 2021. The warning says: “ Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and Covid-19. ”
Several US officials and agencies have expressed strong concerns about US policy on returns to Haiti.
In August 2021, the Department of Homeland Security’ s civil rights office warned of the “ strong risk ” that sending people back to Haiti violated US human rights obligations under domestic and international law because of the danger they faced there. In September 2021, Daniel Foote, US special envoy for Haiti, resigned, denouncing the “ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti. ”
Upon leaving his post in October 2021, Harold Koh, who was advising the State Department’ s legal office, called the use of Title 42 “ inhumane ” and “ illegal ” – a violation of the legal obligation “ not to expel or return ( ‘ refouler’) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti. ”
UN agencies have also raised the alarm.
In September 2021, the IOM, the UN Refugee Agency ( UNHCR), the United Nations Children’ s Fund ( UNICEF), and the UN Human Rights Office ( OHCHR) said that countries should refrain from expelling Haitians without proper assessment of their individual protection needs, uphold their fundamental human rights, and offer protection mechanisms or legal access to regular migration pathways. UN human rights experts warned, the following month, that “ systematic and mass deportations ” and “ collective expulsions ” by the US to Haiti not only violate international law, but “ continue a history of racialized exclusion of Black Haitian migrants and refugees at US ports of entry. ”
Rampant Gang Violence
The security situation in Haiti has dramatically deteriorated in recent years, as brutal gangs strengthen throughout the country. Gangs control strategic areas of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, commonly known as “ red zones ” or “ lawless zones ” in Haiti, partially encircling the capital. Control of coastal areas of Port-au-Prince allows gangs to receive weapons by sea, civil society representatives said.
Gangs severely disrupted economic activity throughout Haiti between mid-October and mid-November by blocking the fuel supply from the capital’ s port, affecting hospitals, water supply, communications, waste disposal, and humanitarian assistance, health workers and UN representatives told Human Rights Watch. Gangs remain capable of obstructing the country’ s main supply routes and fuel terminals “ at will, ” UN agencies warned in February.
Gangs control the two roads that connect the capital to the Dominican Republic, to the east, and to Haiti’ s southern peninsula, jutting westward from Port-au-Prince, which suffered a devastating earthquake in August 2021. They have thus “ separated ” the four southern provinces from the rest of the country, Justice Minister Berto Dorcé told Human Rights Watch in December.
The approximately 1.1 million people who live in “ lawless zones ” are at the mercy of the gangs. In disputes with other gangs over control of neighborhoods, armed men have attacked buses and used snipers to shoot indiscriminately at civilians, UN agencies have reported. In some of the “ lawless zones, ” there is no government presence, UN agencies, nongovernmental groups, and health workers told Human Rights Watch – no schools, no police, and no health services, not even emergency care.
About 19,000 people have fled the violence in such neighborhoods, the IOM told Human Rights Watch, and some are surviving in improvised encampments elsewhere in the city. Some encampments are within unsafe areas, where UN agencies are unable to provide them with assistance, IOM representatives said.
Police reported 1,615 killings and 655 kidnappings in 2021 in the country, but civil society and UN representatives said that many crimes go underreported.
The National Episcopal Justice and Peace Commission, a nongovernmental organization, said that it had documented 659 killings in 2021, in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince alone, not including cases in the lawless zones, where they are unable to enter to count.
The Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights ( CARDH), another Haitian nongovernmental group, collected a list of 949 kidnappings in the country in 2021 – counting only cases that appeared in media or were reported to the organization directly. Targets of kidnapping for ransom include not just the wealthy but virtually anyone. Women who are kidnapped are routinely raped, UN and health sector sources said.
Gangs reportedly use sexual violence to terrorize and control neighborhoods, and subject young men to sexual abuse as an initiation ritual, UN agencies said. More than 20 percent of girls and boys in the country have suffered sexual violence, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights ( OHCHR) reported.
Survivors often fear reporting crimes to the authorities, suspecting links between gangs and police. Haitian Inspector General of Police Fritz Saint Fort, who oversees disciplinary investigations, told Human Rights watch that some officers work as intermediaries between arms traffickers and gangs, while others are informants for gangs. “ They are very dangerous. They pass information about police operations to gangs, ” he said.
Various officials described links between gangs and politicians. Renan Hédouville, director of Haiti’ s Office of Citizen Protection, said, “ Gangs can do anything, because they are protected. ” Robert Sanders, political counselor for the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, said, “ Gangs are funded by politicians for business and political aims. ” The OHCHR has said that the Haitian government needs to tackle “ the political patronage of armed gangs. ”
Collapse of Democratic Institutions
A gradual collapse of democratic institutions has left Haiti without elected leadership. The country does not have a functioning parliament, as former President Moïse refused to organize legislative elections in 2020, when the terms of two-thirds of the 30 senators expired. The 10 senators whose terms have not expired are the only officials now holding national elected positions in Haiti.
Haiti’ s Superior Council of the Judiciary ruled on February 6, 2021 that former President Moïse’ s term ended that day, after concluding that he had started his term in February 2016, after winning the October 2015 elections. But former President Moïse refused to abide by the decision. He contended that, since voter fraud allegations had led to a second nationwide vote in November 2016, which he had also won, his term had only started in February 2017 and would end on February 7, 2022.
President Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021. A few days before, he had appointed Ariel Henry as prime minister.
Prime Minister Henry did not receive parliamentary approval, as the Constitution requires before a nominee can be seated. “ We are outside of the Constitution, ” Prime Minister Henry told Human Rights Watch in December.
In September, Chief Prosecutor Bedford Claude alleged that Prime Minister Henry had made phone contact with one of the main suspects accused of organizing the assassination of former President Moïse, hours after the killing. Claude asked a judge to approve charges against Prime Minister Henry in connection with the assassination.
Prime Minister Henry, who denies the allegation, fired Claude. A New York Times investigation said the suspect met with Prime Minister Henry twice at the prime minister’ s residence after the killing, while the suspect was wanted by police. There has been no judicial decision regarding Claude’ s request to approve the indictment of Prime Minister Henry.
Even after what former President Moïse had said would be the end of his own term, Prime Minister Henry – who was appointed by Moïse, not elected – continues to lead the government. No date has yet been set for presidential elections. There is no consensus over who should be a member of the Provisional Electoral Council, the body tasked with organizing elections, and the grave security situation throughout Haiti poses big challenges to holding a vote. It is now unsafe for candidates to campaign in much of the country – and for people to vote. Even senior government officials are being targeted. In January 2022, armed men opened fire on Prime Minister Henry and his entourage as they left the cathedral in Gonaïves, killing one person and injuring two.
Lack of Justice
Haiti’ s justice system is barely functioning. President Moïse arbitrarily removed three Supreme Court justices in February 2021 and appointed new justices without following procedures established in the Constitution. Only 5 of 12 justices remained in their roles in January 2022, and they could not rule, because a minimum of 7 judges is needed to decide a case. The terms of two of the five remaining justices lapsed in February.
In Haiti, the president needs to renew the terms of the judges who lead judicial inquiries ( juges d’ instruction), but former President Moïse failed to keep up with that task. Two-thirds of those judges now have lapsed appointments, a member of the Superior Council of Justice said. They continue to be paid but can not take official action of any kind.
The security crisis has compounded such problems. Some judges have not gone to their offices in six months for fear of kidnappings and stray bullets, several judicial sources said. “ They have literally abandoned their posts, because courts are located in red zones and there is no way to protect them, ” a judicial authority said. The road leading to the Palais de Justice, Haiti’ s main justice complex – housing several courts – is controlled by gangs, making it impossible to hold hearings there, a representative of the National Association of Haitian Legal Clerks told Human Rights Watch.
The representative said that thieves routinely break into criminal courts in Port-au-Prince to steal case files. Such files are only on paper, he said, without a digital backup. On October 27, 2021, for instance, thieves entered the Palais de Justice and stole the case file of the investigation into the August 2020 assassination of Monferrier Dorval, the head of the Port-au-Prince Bar Association. The thieves also stole the asset declarations of many high-level government officials. All copies of both the case file and the asset declarations were kept in the same safe, justice officials said.
Several judges, clerks, and lawyers have been threatened, UN representatives – as well as clerks and lawyers – said. A member of the Superior Council of Justice said powerful economic interests that employ and finance armed gangs instruct them to threaten justice officials, to block investigations.
Among those who have been threatened are two judges and two clerks investigating the killing of former President Moïse. They received calls telling them to implicate certain people in the assassination or they would themselves be killed, a judicial official said. None have received police protection, justice officials told Human Rights Watch. At least one of the four reported the threats to the chief prosecutor and police in writing in July 2021, but justice officials with knowledge of the case said in December that they were unaware of any action by the police. One of the judges has left the country.
In October 2021, assailants shot at a car belonging to the judge who was in charge of the Moïse case at the time. They broke into the judge’ s office and tried, but failed, to open the safe where he kept sensitive documents.
The political and institutional crisis has worsened already rampant impunity.
Since 2018, Haitian civil society organizations have documented the killings of hundreds of people in at least 18 massacres, allegedly committed by gangs, in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The US government has issued sanctions against a police officer-turned-gang leader and two former government officials in connection with the slaughter of 71 people in the La Saline neighborhood in 2018. Nobody has been charged for that massacre, or any of the other 17.
From October 2020 through September 2021 – the last judicial year – only 226 criminal trials were held in the country of 11 million people, the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains ( National Human Rights Defense Network or RNDDH), a Haitian nongovernmental group, said. In some jurisdictions, courts have not held any hearings on criminal cases for three years, the OHCHR reported.
Meanwhile, 81 percent of the more than 11,000 people in detention are awaiting trial. Some of them have been held for years. Jails and prisons hold more than three times the number of detainees they were built for. A June 2021 UN report said detainees were held in “ inhumane ” conditions and subjected to ill-treatment and torture.
Corruption continues to mar the justice system, justice officials said. In 2017, former President Moïse obtained legal authority to appoint the head of the Unité Centrale de Renseignements Financiers ( Financial Intelligence Unit or UCREF), which is tasked with fighting corruption in the justice system and elsewhere. Representatives of RNDDH and Nou Pap Dòmi, another nongovernmental group, said that the unit’ s lack of independence from the executive branch makes it ineffective. Haiti’ s national anti-corruption strategy ended in 2019, and the country has failed to adopt a new one.
Dire Humanitarian Situation
The security and political crisis is aggravating a critical humanitarian situation.
On August 14, 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti’ s southwestern peninsula, killing over 2,200 people and affecting over 800,000. It caused damage and losses equivalent to 11 percent of Haiti’ s GDP, including damage to or destruction of 59 health facilities and over 137,000 houses. It heavily damaged or destroyed 308 schools, affecting 100,000 children and teachers. Since the earthquake, more than 30,000 people from the southern peninsula remain displaced.
Gangs are making matters worse. Their fuel blockade in October and November disrupted the delivery of assistance, and for almost two months, gang control of the only road from Port-au-Prince made it impossible for UN agencies to send aid to the peninsula by land, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) said. Under armed escort, the agencies were able to start sending aid again in early December.
In the country as a whole, nearly 24 percent of the population earns below the extreme poverty level of US $ 1.23 per day, the OHCHR reported. About 4.4 million people, or nearly 46 percent of the population, face acute food insecurity. Some 217,000 children suffer moderate to severe malnutrition.
“ The government does not provide basic services, ” Prime Minister Henry said. Under international law, countries are obligated to progressively realize and ensure minimum essential levels of economic and social rights, including the rights to health and food, as well as access to water and sanitation.
The Haitian government has estimated it needs $ 2 billion to recover from the earthquake. Donors pledged $ 600 million at a conference in February.
Children and Families Sent to Harm by the US ‘ Remain in Mexico’ Program | general |
One in four women experience domestic violence before age 50, analysis finds: Governments are not on track to meet global targets to eliminate violence against women and girls -- ScienceDaily | `` Intimate partner violence against women -- which includes physical and sexual violence by husbands, boyfriends, and other partners -- is highly prevalent globally, '' says McGill University Professor Mathieu Maheu-Giroux, a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling.
According to the finding published in The Lancet, one in seven women ( or 13 per cent) experienced intimate partner violence within the last year of the study period between 2000 and 2018. The analysis also found high levels of violence against young women, estimating that 24 per cent of those between the ages of 15 to 19 experienced domestic violence in their lifetime.
While the numbers are alarming the true scale of violence is likely even higher, the researchers say, noting that the studies were based on self-reported experiences. Given the stigmatized nature of the issue, women can be hesitant to report their experiences, they explain.
High-income countries reported lower rates of domestic violence
The researchers found regional variations, with high-income countries having lower prevalence of both lifetime and past year violence. The lifetime prevalence among women aged 15 to 49 was highest in Africa, South Asia, and parts of South America. The regions with the lowest estimated lifetime domestic violence against women were Central Asia and Central Europe.
The proportion of women who experienced intimate partner violence in the last year was around 5 per cent for North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. In regions of Africa, this number was as high as 15 per cent to 30 per cent.
Canada among countries with lowest rates of domestic violence
`` While Canada is among the top 30 countries with the lowest rates of intimate partner violence, it's still a problem that affects 1 in 25 women, '' notes Professor Maheu-Giroux. `` Some provinces in Canada are looking at different ways to address domestic violence. In Quebec, for example, the government approved a pilot project in 2021 to create a special court for victims of domestic and sexual violence, '' he adds.
Calls to strengthen response in pandemic rebuilding efforts
`` Overall, our research shows that governments are not on track to meet global targets to eliminate violence against women and girls. An important takeaway is that even in some high-income countries the prevalence of intimate partner violence is relatively high, which calls for investment in prevention at local and global levels, '' says Maheu-Giroux.
`` In Québec alone, we witnessed a wave of 17 intimate partner feminicides in 2021 -- the most extreme consequence of intimate partner violence and the highest number in more than a decade, '' he says.
Globally, the problem is likely to have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers explain. There's an urgent need to strengthen the public health response to intimate partner violence, and ensure it's addressed in post-COVID-19 rebuilding efforts, they conclude. | science |
IgA antibodies seem to protect unvaccinated against COVID-19, study finds -- ScienceDaily | To understand how the immune system builds up its defenses against COVID-19, a group of researchers at the University's Sahlgrenska Academy monitored 156 employees at five primary care health centers, belonging to the Nötkärnan group in the Gothenburg area, for six months.
Recruited during April and May 2020, none of them had been vaccinated against COVID-19, and most of them met infected patients daily.
The reason why some of the staff did not contract the disease seems to have been that IgA ( immunoglobulin A) was present in their respiratory tract. These antibodies, found naturally in the secretions of mucous membranes in the airways and gastrointestinal tract, can protect the body by binding to viruses and other invading organisms.
One in ten protected
The results of the study, published in the European Journal of Immunology, show that a third of the care workers developed antibodies to COVID-19. These subjects fell into two distinct groups based on antibody patterns and COVID-19 incidence.
One group, who had IgA antibodies only, never succumbed to COVID-19. Participants in the other group had both IgG antibodies and T cells, and contracted the disease. The acquired immune system also includes IgG antibodies and T cells, which serve to recognize viruses, for example, and protect us against them.
Those responsible for the study were, first, Christine Wennerås, Professor of Clinical Bacteriology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, and senior physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital; and, second, Kristina Eriksson, Professor of Viral Immunology at Sahlgrenska Academy.
`` We all have IgA. It's found on the mucous membranes, and COVID-19 is an infection that spreads via those membranes. We thought it was important to investigate what happened when completely healthy people encountered the coronavirus, before vaccines became available, '' Wennerås says.
`` Of the participants in our study, none whom contracted Covid-19 required hospitalization. A lot of other research has concerned the most seriously ill patients, who have been hospitalized and in neediof ntensive care. ''
Focus on health factors
The present study focused on identifying health factors that appeared to afford protection against COVID-19. Numerous factors were found by means of extensive questionnaire surveys, blood tests and more. As soon as a participant had nasal congestion, a cough, red eyes, changes in the sense of taste, or anything else that could be an infection, they had to answer questions and undergo a PCR test.
What the subjects who neither tested positive nor fell ill had in common, then, were IgA antibodies, which bind to the coronavirus. Being female and having a respiratory allergy were other factors affording protection against becoming infected. However, the study provides no support for the idea that people without antibodies against COVID-19 have protective T cells.
`` A lot of the Covid-related research has been about IgG antibodies and T cells. The interesting thing is that when we now examine other people's articles and tables, we find evidence for the conclusion we 've arrived at about IgA ourselves. But it's not something those studies have highlighted, '' Wennerås says. | science |
No increase in pregnancy complications after COVID-19 vaccination, study finds -- ScienceDaily | The study, which comprised almost 160,000 pregnancies, found no increase in the risk of preterm birth, growth retardation, low Apgar scores at birth or the need for neonatal care after vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy.
`` The results are reassuring and can hopefully make pregnant individuals more willing to get vaccinated, '' says co-first author Anne Örtqvist Rosin, researcher at the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet ( Solna).
Earlier studies have shown that pregnant women belong to a risk group for serious COVID-19 requiring intensive care with a higher risk of death than non-pregnant women of a fertile age. Pregnant women with severe COVID-19 are also more likely to have preterm births. Since January 2021, efficacious COVID-19 vaccines have been available in Sweden and Norway, and in May 2021 Sweden recommended all pregnant individuals to have a COVID-19 jab, followed in August by Norway.
`` We're still seeing that vaccination rates are lower than in the rest of the population, so it's likely that there's some concern about how the vaccines affect the pregnant individual and the fetus, '' explains Dr Örtqvist Rosin. `` When the vaccines were produced, pregnant women were not included in the large clinical studies, and until now there have been no population-based data about any risk there might be to them. ''
The researchers linked Sweden's Pregnancy Register and Norway's Medical Birth Register to each country's vaccination register to obtain data on if and when pregnant individuals were vaccinated and with which vaccine. The study included a total of 157,521 individuals who gave birth between January 2021 and January 2022, of whom almost one fifth ( 18 per cent) had been vaccinated. It was found that vaccinated individuals were at no higher risk than unvaccinated of developing one of the studied complications.
The majority of the pregnant individuals included in the study were vaccinated after week 12 in accordance with current recommendations. 95 per cent received an mRNA vaccine ( Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna). This should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results, which were similar for the different mRNA vaccines irrespective of whether one or two doses were given. Vaccination during the third trimester and vaccination with the Moderna vaccine was associated with a slightly lower risk of neonatal care.
One potential advantage of vaccination during pregnancy is that the antibodies thus formed pass through the placenta, providing the newborn baby with a certain degree of protection against COVID-19.
`` We're now planning to study how long this protection lasts, and if SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination during pregnancy has any other lasting effects on the child's health, '' says joint last author Professor Olof Stephansson at the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet ( Solna).
The study was a collaboration between researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It was supported by grants from the Research Council of Norway, NordForsk and the European Research Council ( ERC). Co-author and KI researcher Rickard Ljung has received a fee from Pfizer beyond the scope of this study and is an employee of the Swedish Medical Products Agency. No other potential conflicts of interest have been reported. | science |
Exercise holds even more heart health benefits for people with stress-related conditions: Study underscores the brain’ s role in deriving cardiovascular benefits from physical activity -- ScienceDaily | The research findings add to mounting evidence that exercise improves cardiovascular health by helping to activate parts of the brain that counteract stress. Overall, the study found that people who achieved the recommended amount of physical activity per week were 17% less likely to suffer a major adverse cardiovascular event than those who exercised less. These benefits were significantly greater in those with anxiety or depression, who had a 22% risk reduction vs. a 10% risk reduction in those without either condition.
`` The effect of physical activity on the brain's stress response may be particularly relevant in those with stress-related psychiatric conditions, '' said Hadil Zureigat, MD, postdoctoral clinical research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and the study's lead author. `` This is not to suggest that exercise is only effective in those with depression or anxiety, but we found that these patients seem to derive a greater cardiovascular benefit from physical activity. ''
Rates of both depression and anxiety have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, and heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. The study findings underscore the important role of exercise in maintaining heart health and reducing stress, according to the researchers.
For the study, researchers analyzed health records of more than 50,000 patients in the Massachusetts General Brigham Biobank database. Just over 4,000 of the patients had suffered a major adverse cardiovascular event, which included experiencing a heart attack, having chest pain caused by a blocked artery or undergoing a procedure to open a blocked artery in the heart.
Researchers first assessed the rates of major coronary events among patients who reported in a questionnaire that they exercise at least 500 metabolic equivalent ( MET) minutes per week -- aligning with the ACC and American Heart Association primary prevention guideline recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week -- with those who exercise less. MET-minutes are a unit of exercise that represents the amount of energy expended during various activities. The analysis revealed that people who got at least 500 MET-minutes or more per week were 17% less likely to suffer an adverse cardiovascular event.
They then analyzed how this pattern played out among patients who had a diagnosis of depression or anxiety compared with those who did not have depression or anxiety. This second analysis revealed that patients with depression derived more than double the benefit from exercise in terms of reduced cardiovascular risk compared with people who did not have depression. A similar benefit of exercise was found for patients with anxiety.
The research expands upon previous studies by the research team that used brain imaging to determine how exercise improves cardiovascular health by helping to keep the brain's stress response in check. Individuals with depression or anxiety have higher stress-related neural activity and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
`` When one thinks about physical activity decreasing cardiovascular risk, one doesn't usually think of the brain, '' Zureigat said. `` Our research emphasizes the importance of the stress-related neural mechanisms by which physical activity acts to reduce cardiovascular risk. ''
Even though the study used 500 MET-minutes as a cutoff for the analysis, researchers noted that previous studies show people can reduce their heart disease risk even if they do not achieve the recommended amount of physical activity. Even a little bit of regular physical activity can make a difference in terms of cardiovascular risk.
`` Any amount of exercise is helpful, particularly for those with depression or anxiety, '' Zureigat said. `` Not only will physical activity help them feel better, but they will also potently reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. It can be hard to make the transition, but once achieved, physical activity allows those with these common chronic stress-related psychiatric conditions to hit two birds with one stone. ''
Zureigat will present the study, `` Cardiovascular Benefit of Exercise is Greater in Those with Anxiety and Depression, '' on Saturday, April 2, at 10:00 a.m. ET / 14:00 UTC in Prevention and Health Promotion Moderated Poster Theater 4, Hall C. | science |
Programmable button speeds triage process for faster heart attack care: One-click technology streamlines a key step in assessing patients presenting with chest pain -- ScienceDaily | According to researchers, the study represents the first time programmable button technology -- designed to help consumers easily order products online -- has been applied in a medical setting.
`` Often in medicine you need a rapid response, but there are many processes that require numerous laborious steps that take time, and in the setting of a potential heart attack, time is muscle. The longer the wait, the more damage there is to the heart muscle and less chances for recovery, '' said Milind R. Dhond, MD, medical director of cardiovascular medicine at NorthBay Healthcare in Fairfield, California, and the study's lead author. `` This approach potentially can cut out many steps. It's using innovative technology in an innovative way by bringing together the technology and the application to improve the process. ''
To diagnose a heart attack, doctors look at the level of troponin in the blood as an indicator of damage to the heart muscle. Drawing blood and sending it to the lab for analysis is integral to the process used to determine whether a heart attack is occurring before clinicians intervene to open the blocked artery.
Researchers adapted the Internet of Things ( IoT) button developed by Amazon Web Services to page an on-call phlebotomist for a blood draw whenever a patient arrived in the hospital's emergency department with chest pain. The device is a physical, handheld button that communicates wirelessly, triggering a pre-programmed process when pressed -- a process similar to the `` Buy now with 1-click '' option Amazon developed for its web-based product ordering system. Having the button handy allowed triage nurses to rapidly summon a phlebotomist for patients with chest pain while continuing the rest of the patient intake process.
For the study, researchers compared the records of 2,098 patients who presented to the NorthBay emergency department with chest pain between January 2020 and April 2021, when the IoT button was in use, with records from 1,614 patients who presented to the same emergency department with chest pain in 2019 prior to the implementation of the button. The demographics and cardiovascular risk factors of the two groups were similar.
Analysis showed that use of the button significantly reduced the time it took to diagnose a heart attack by an average of 14%. The largest gains were in the period between the patient's arrival at the emergency department and when the nurse ordered a troponin test, which was reduced by an average of seven minutes after the button was implemented.
Using the button also reduced the time between placing the order and having blood drawn by 2.5 minutes and the time between drawing blood and delivering the sample to the lab by about two minutes, on average. There was no significant difference in the time it took to receive lab results once the blood sample arrived at the lab for analysis.
The total process from start to finish was about 11 minutes shorter after the IoT button was implemented, representing an increase in efficiency given that hospitals aim to begin interventions to open a blocked artery within 60 minutes or less after a patient arrives at the hospital with a heart attack.
`` We were pleasantly surprised to see quite a significant reduction in time just by introducing such a simple concept, '' Dhond said. `` If you get the lab results sooner, you can admit the patient sooner or discharge them sooner. ''
Dhond said that the approach should be scalable and cost effective for a variety of other time-sensitive areas of health care delivery, such as cardiac arrest and stroke treatment.
The study was limited to a single medical center and used a retrospective analysis as a control, although researchers noted that the study's large sample size strengthens the conclusion that the button resulted in significant improvements. Researchers noted that the hospital's cardiac testing protocols did not change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged a few months after the button was implemented, and said it was unlikely that the pandemic had any effect on the study results.
Dhond will present the study, `` Novel Use of Amazon 1-Click Button to Significantly Reduce Time to Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction in Emergency Department Patients, '' on Saturday, April 2. | science |
Bangladesh: International Consultant ( Child Protection) | UNICEF works in some of the world’ s toughest places, to reach the world’ s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
Children experience violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect throughout the life cycle from conception. This violence is experienced in the home, in the community, on the streets, at school and online; perpetrated by parents and/or other caregivers, including service providers ( in schools, health facilities, child facilities including detention centres, drop-in facilities, etc.) These adverse childhood experiences ( ACE) leave lifelong impacts on the wellbeing of a child and can result in a child not being able to survive and thrive through life.
The most common forms of violence affecting children in Bangladesh takes place in a home and family setting that starts through violence during pregnancy. According to the MICS 2019, 9 out of 10 children experience some form of violent disciplining by their parents or immediate relatives and there is an increasing trend of violence against children aged between one and 14 years. The same study showed that physical and psychological violent practices in 2019 was 88.8 per cent, an increase of more than 6% from 5 years earlier. It is also estimated that violence against children and women further increased by 35% [ 1 ] due to lockdown for COVID-19.
Children are also victims of other harmful practices due to the wide acceptability of certain social norms including child marriage, child labour, violent ways of disciplining children and intimate partner violence. Child marriage is prevalent with 51.4 per cent of women aged 20-24 years first married before their 18th birthday ( MICS 2019). A recent rapid assessment [ 2 ] on child marriage during COVID showed that a total number of 13,886 child marriages have been reported from 20,575 respondents and they mentioned that there is an increasing trend of early marriage due to school closure during COVID pandemic and multidimensional risks.
The health service seeking for care and development of children and adolescents is also very poor in the country. Only 37% of pregnant women receive the recommended four antenatal care visits, while just 65% of new mothers receive post-natal care. Among children 2-4 years, only 47% of mothers and 11% of fathers engage their children in learning. The situation is even worse among the marginalized and vulnerable people, particularly those with disabilities. Disability prevalence in the total population is 9.1 per cent as per Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2010, while 2011 National Census found only 1.7 per cent prevalence and reliable data on disability in Bangladesh is limited. Stereotype belief systems and discriminatory behaviour across all levels affect access to services and care, health, nutrition, education, and participation.
While the home and family can be the primary setting where “ family violence ” and “ intimate partner violence ” occurs, helping parents, caregivers, extended family and communities is vital to strengthen a community-led child protection system. This enables family and extended community to understand the importance of positive, non-violent discipline in child development, reducing physical corporal punishment, c – all factors that help prevent violence against children, especially in family settings.
Family support programs, coupled with enhanced community-based child protection mechanisms, led by community leaders, religious leaders, children, including adolescents, focuses on enhancing child protection prevention and response to violence at the community and village level. This bottom-up approach, fully community-driven aims at enhancing community members’ capacity to prevent violence against children and women and all sorts of harmful practices and changing the social structures and protective mechanisms. These established mechanisms play also the role of identifying potential cases of children, including adolescents at risk and referring them to child protection services and social workforce system.
The family support program is grounded on an evidence-based approach to programming along all life cycle. Evidence showed that families and communities play a critical role in facilitating early experiences through the provision of nurturing care, to improve holistic outcomes for children, which constitutes five domains: caregiving, stimulation, support and responsiveness, structure, and socialization. Global Evidence ( GAGE 2019) results [ 3 ] reflected that family support programmes reduced adolescent behaviour problems through improved communication of parents/caregivers and children/adolescents including reduced experience of violence and improved mental health indicators.
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in terms of policy and legislative reforms for addressing violence against children and women. The country has adopted several legislative measures including Children Act 2013, Prevention of Oppression against women and children 2000 with rules, Domestic Violence Prevention and Protection Act 2010 with rules; Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 with an amendment in 2013 and 2018, Anti Trafficking Act 2012 and 104 special tribunal for women and children repression prevention which are directly related to preserving the protection rights of children; Some national-level policies are adapted as well including National Children’ s Policy 2011, National Policy for Women’ s Advancement 1997, NPA to prevent trafficking, National Policy on Domestic Workers’ Rights, Child Labor Elimination Policy 2010, Circular on banning 38 categories of hazardous labour, high court directives on preventing and addressing sexual harassment etc. National Plan of Action to Prevent and Respond to Violence against Women and Children ( NPAEVAWC), which is led by the MoWCA. The NPA has been developed in line with the national and international human rights policies and legal frameworks, national constitutions and addressed a range of issues including VAW/C at home and in public places ”.
Bangladesh has very limited programs on family support and those that do exist mostly are focused on health, nutrition, early learning etc. however, adverse effects of violence, neglect, abuse, and maltreatment are ignored. Also, family and community support for the prevention of harmful practices is virtually non-existent. Caseworkers, community workers and/or volunteers are not available to engage at the village level to support families in making positive choices for their children and to support communities in influencing families positively as drivers of social change.
In line with the new CPD, Child Protection PSN and action plans with MoWCA and MoSW, Child Protection aims at hiring aninternational consultant who will work with the Child Protection Section to develop a comprehensive Family Support Program including a package for capacity building and for use by the new community-based system workers, approved by MoSW.
It is important to note that, the Communication for Development ( C4D) section has hired a national consultant, NOD level, to conduct a mapping the existing resources, packages and tools of parenting; mapping of the existing adolescent engagement platforms in Bangladesh and; to provide technical support for the development of context-appropriate integrated and standardized Parenting Package ( SPP).
As mentioned above, the existing parenting education programmes do not include the impact of violence, neglect, abuse, and maltreatment.
To ensure child protection inputs are comprehensively captured in the SPP, the consultants support the Child Protection Section to contribute to the work of the C4D positive parenting education by providing inputs as the standardized and integrated parenting education package is developed. This will be a supplementary role for the consultants.
[ 1 ] http: //www.manusherjonno.org/mjf-newsletter-march-2021
UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability ( CRITA).
To view our competency framework, please visit here.
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential ( s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.
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JD.com Announces JD Logistics’ Proposed Financing | BEIJING, March 24, 2022 ( GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- JD.com, Inc. ( “ JD.com ”) ( Nasdaq: JD; HKEx: 9618), a leading supply chain-based technology and service provider, today announced that JD Logistics, Inc. ( “ JD Logistics ”) ( HKEx: 2618), a consolidated subsidiary of JD.com, proposes to conduct a placing of new ordinary shares for an aggregate amount of up to approximately US $ 400 million ( the “ JDL Placement ”). In addition, JD.com intends to enter into a subscription agreement with JD Logistics concurrently to subscribe for new ordinary shares to be issued by JD Logistics, at the same per share price for the JDL Placement, for a total purchase price of up to approximately US $ 700 million in cash ( the “ JD Subscription ”). The JDL Placement and JD Subscription are both subject to market conditions, and are not inter-conditional.
The proposed JDL Placement and JD Subscription will be subject to the execution of definitive transaction documents, including placing agreement and subscription agreement, respectively. Further, the completion of JDL Placement and JD Subscription will be subject to certain closing conditions, including the approval of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Stock Limited ( the “ Hong Kong Stock Exchange ”) for the listing of the newly issued shares, and the closing conditions for the JD Subscription will also include the approval of JD Logistics’ independent shareholders.
There can be no assurance that the definitive agreements for any of the proposed transactions will be executed, or any of the proposed transactions will be completed. See “ Safe Harbor Statement ” below for the risks and uncertainties for the proposed transactions, including risks and uncertainties on the timing of the execution of the transaction documents or consummation of the transactions and the risk that certain closing conditions of the transactions may not be satisfied on a timely basis, or at all.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any securities, nor shall there be a sale of the securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
JD.com is a leading supply chain-based technology and service provider. JD.com’ s cutting-edge retail infrastructure seeks to enable consumers to buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it. JD.com has opened its technology and infrastructure to partners, brands and other sectors, as part of its Retail as a Service offering to help drive productivity and innovation across a range of industries.
This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the “ safe harbor ” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “ will, ” “ expects, ” “ anticipates, ” “ future, ” “ intends, ” “ plans, ” “ believes, ” “ estimates, ” “ confident ” and similar statements. JD.com may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ( the “ SEC ”), in announcements made on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about JD.com’ s beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: the risk and uncertainties as to the timing of the execution of the transaction documents and the consummation of the transactions; the risk that certain closing conditions of the transactions may not be satisfied on a timely basis, or at all; potential adverse reactions or changes to business relationships resulting from the announcement or completion of the transactions; adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; actions by third parties, including government agencies, that may adversely affect the proposed transactions; JD.com’ s growth strategies; its future business development, results of operations and financial condition; its ability to attract and retain new customers and to increase revenues generated from repeat customers; its expectations regarding demand for and market acceptance of its products and services; trends and competition in China’ s e-commerce market; changes in its revenues and certain cost or expense items; the expected growth of the Chinese e-commerce market; laws, regulations and governmental policies relating to the industries in which JD.com or its business partners operate; potential changes in laws, regulations and governmental policies or changes in the interpretation and implementation of laws, regulations and governmental policies that could adversely affect the industries in which JD.com or its business partners operate, including, among others, initiatives to enhance supervision of companies listed on an overseas exchange and tighten scrutiny over data privacy and data security; risks associated with JD.com’ s acquisitions, investments and alliances, including fluctuation in the market value of JD.com’ s investment portfolio; impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; natural disasters and geopolitical events; change in tax rates and financial risks; intensity of competition; and general market and economic conditions in China and globally. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JD.com’ s filings with the SEC and the announcements on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. All information provided herein is as of the date of this announcement, and JD.com undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.
Investor RelationsMs. Ruiyu Li+86 ( 10) 8912-6805E-mail: IR @ JD.com
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To appreciate the SNP’ s dominance, look at what it has done to the Tories | TALK TO A Scottish Conservative for five minutes, and you will hear that he or she lives in a one-party state, gripped by what their leader, Douglas Ross, terms the “ dead hand of nationalism ”. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, has been in office for seven years; her Scottish National Party ( SNP) has been in power continuously for nearly 15. On the sidelines of the Scottish Conservative Party’ s annual conference in Aberdeen on March 18th and 19th, Tories warned darkly that universities, charities and businesses are either run by nationalists or too cowed to dissent. They lament expansive new laws inhibiting free speech and meddling in family life. It is a vision of East Germany without the naturists.
There is a crumb of truth in these complaints. Yet if nationalists dominate Scotland, nowhere is that more obvious than in the Scottish Conservative Party. Just as securing independence has been the SNP’ s purpose since its founding in the 1930s, so stopping it has become the raison d’ être of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, to give its full name.
Scottish unionism has a long history: before 1965 the country’ s Tories had a separate Unionist Party, with the union flag as its symbol. Yet a decade ago Scottish Conservatives were a marginal force, mocked and loathed. Their recovery is thanks to the 2014 referendum in which Scots voted to stay in the United Kingdom, and the polarisation that followed as the SNP pursued a second vote. Scots vote according to their constitutional preference: 96% of Scottish Tory voters say they would vote against independence, while 90% of SNP voters would back it. The Conservatives have scooped up unionist voters with a simple slogan: “ No to Indyref2 ”.
Publicly, senior figures decry the constitutional stalemate. Privately, they admit they must prolong it. In his speech in Aberdeen Mr Ross declared that Scotland needed to junk the “ referendum obsession ” and “ move on from this toxic debate ”. Afterwards he declared he would continue to speak out for the union. Any decision to hold a second referendum lies with the prime minister—and the incumbent, Boris Johnson, has found nationalism a useful bogeyman, warning that voting Labour in England will result in a repeat vote. Just as spy agencies can sometimes inflate threats to sustain their budgets, the party of the union has an interest in warning of break-up. The SNP could not ask for better propaganda.
Scottish Tories used to deride the monomania of nationalists, for whom no issue was too grave or too trivial to serve as a proxy for independence. Now they imitate it. Nationalists saw covid-19 as evidence that Scotland is better governed alone; Tories cite it as proof of the union’ s might. Ludicrously, the SNP’ s president drew parallels between Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine and Scotland’ s quest for self-determination; Tories exult that the war showcases the importance of Britain’ s nuclear weapons, NATO membership and oil reserves, all of which would be thrown into flux by separation. If Russian missiles obliterated Edinburgh, the survivors would crawl from the rubble to explain why it proved them right.
The SNP and Tories have feasted on the Scottish Labour Party, which has seen its voters split on the constitution. That has transformed both. SNP members, once known as the Tartan Tories for their stuffy small-statism, have embraced left-wing economics and social liberalism. Scottish Tories, once a genteel bunch in tweeds and red corduroys, court working-class unionists in former mining and steel towns battered by Thatcherism. Like Brexit, the constitutional question has become a gateway for unlikely new voters: less Range Rovers, more Rangers Football Club.
In his recent book “ Standing up for Scotland ”, David Torrance, an academic, argues that for more than a century the Scottish Tories have practised “ nationalist unionism ”, according to which the union can be defended only by those who are proudly Scottish and stick up for the country. Under the SNP’ s dominance the Tories’ Scottishness has become more ostentatious, but the strategy harder to execute. They must demonstrate that they are no mere branch office of the national party and can be relied upon to stand up to Mr Johnson’ s unpopular government. But that inevitably lends credence to the notion that Scotland is a land apart in which London has no legitimate role. Either way, the SNP wins.
The result is endless, fruitless debate about rebranding and restructuring—and, on occasion, farce. The Scottish Tories disliked Brexit, but now must defend it. Mr Ross called for Mr Johnson to resign over parties in Downing Street, then declared he should stay during the war in Ukraine, but now refuses to say whether he should fight the next election. It is hard to defend your country’ s territorial settlement when your party is a mess.
In elections, competition for voters is supposed to force parties to produce better candidates and policies. But when communities vote as blocks, that process fails. If nationalists can continue to hold half the electorate, no matter what, there is no punishment for Scotland’ s failing schools or hospitals. And because nothing can be allowed to undermine the cause of independence, risky reforms are avoided.
At his party’ s conference, Mr Ross lamented how the promise of an independence referendum was enough to sustain a “ hollowed-out shell of a government ”, bereft of ideas and lacking ambition. He hopes to widen the Tories’ appeal with social-care reforms and tough measures against sex offenders. But privately his colleagues admit that the permanent campaign against independence has squeezed out any distinctive policy agenda. Nationalist policies—free university tuition and “ shooting galleries ” for heroin addicts—have been embraced. The result is a party that is wholly unionist, but with precious little conservatism. If Ms Sturgeon were suddenly to announce that the SNP had abandoned the idea of a referendum, says a senior Scottish Tory, “ we’ d say, my God, what do we do now? ” ■
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Monarch butterflies increasingly plagued by parasites: The analysis drew from 50 years of data -- ScienceDaily | The analysis drew from 50 years of data on the infection rate of wild monarch butterflies by the protozoan Ophryocystis elektrosirrha, or O.E. The results showed that the O.E. infection rate increased from less than one percent of the eastern monarch population in 1968 to as much as 10 percent today.
`` We're seeing a significant change in a wildlife population with a parasitism rate steadily rising from almost non-existent to as high as 10 percent, '' says Ania Majewska, first author of the paper and a post-doctoral fellow in Emory's Department of Biology. `` It's a signal that something is not right in the environment and that we need to pay attention. ''
The O.E. parasite invades the gut of the monarch caterpillars. If the adult butterfly leaves the pupal stage with a severe parasitic infection, it begins oozing fluids from its body and dies. Even if the butterflies survive, as in case of a lighter infection, they do not fly well or live as long as uninfected ones.
The rise in parasitism, the researchers warn, may endanger the mass migration of the monarchs, one of the most spectacular displays in the animal kingdom, involving hundreds of millions of butterflies. Each fall, the western monarch population flies hundreds of miles down the Pacific Coast to spend the winter in California. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, eastern monarchs fly from as far north as the U.S.-Canadian border to overwinter in Central Mexico, covering as much as 3,000 miles.
`` Our findings suggest that tens of millions of eastern monarch butterflies are getting sick and dying each year from these parasites, '' says Jaap de Roode, Emory professor of biology and senior author of the study. `` If the infection rates keep going up, fewer and fewer monarchs will be able to survive to migrate to their overwintering sites. ''
One contributor to the rise in the parasitism rate is the increased density of monarchs in places where they lay their eggs, the study finds. The researchers posit that the increased density may be due to many factors, including the loss of wildlife habitat; the widespread planting of exotic, non-native species of milkweed; and by people raising monarchs in large numbers in confined spaces.
Co-authors of the paper are Sonia Altizer and Andrew Davis of the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology.
Majewska began studying monarchs eight years ago while a graduate student at the University of Georgia. She joined the De Roode lab at Emory in 2019, funded by the NIH program Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching.
`` Monarchs are incredible animals, '' she says. `` Each one is only as heavy as a paperclip but they can fly so far and they are incredibly resilient. ''
The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, where the eastern monarchs overwinter in pine and fir forests, is a World Heritage Site and an important generator of tourism income. `` The trees can become so heavy with monarchs that sometimes branches break off and fall, '' Majewska says. `` When sunlight hits the clusters the monarchs explode like confetti. It's a magical sight. ''
The butterflies arrive in large numbers in Mexico near the Day of the Dead, when families gather around the gravesites of their loved ones. For traditional cultures in the region, monarchs have come to represent the souls of ancestors returning to visit for the celebrations.
In addition to the monarch migration's natural beauty, economic and cultural significance, it plays an ecological role, as the butterflies pollinate plants and provide food for wasps, ants and other invertebrate predators.
Birds, however, tend to avoid the monarchs, as the butterfly's striking coloration of orange, black and white is a warning sign that it may be poisonous to them.
When monarchs leave their overwintering sites in the spring, they fly north and lay their eggs. Their caterpillars feed on any of dozens of species of milkweed plants, including some species that contain high levels of cardenolides. These chemicals do not harm the caterpillars, but make them toxic to some predators even after they emerge as adults from their chrysalises.
In 2010, Jaap de Roode discovered that monarchs also use cardenolides as a kind of drug. Experiments in his lab showed that a female infected with the O.E. parasite prefers to lay her eggs on a toxic species of milkweed, rather than a non-toxic species. Uninfected female monarchs, however, showed no preference. While cardenolides do not cure the caterpillars of parasites, they can lessen the severity of an infection.
For the current paper, the researchers wanted to investigate the O.E. infection rate in monarch populations over time. They accessed multiple available data sets, which were mostly for the eastern monarchs. The data included samples going back to 1968 collected by the late Lincoln Brower, an entomologist who specialized in monarchs, and by other researchers through the decades.
The results showed the rise in the parasitism rate remained low in the eastern monarch population for several decades before shooting up beginning in the 2000s, then making a slight dip in recent years.
Among the factors that may be contributing to the increased monarch density associated with the rise in parasitism, the researchers note, is the loss of natural habitat and agricultural practices that have reduced the places where milkweed is found. Milkweed used to proliferate amid crops in the Midwest, for instance, but farmers increasingly use genetically engineered herbicide-resistant crops. That allows them to spray their fields to eradicate weeds.
Since milkweed is the sole source of food for monarch caterpillars, and fewer of the plants are available, the female monarchs must cluster more densely to lay their eggs and the butterfly `` nurseries '' become more crowded with caterpillars.
`` One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic taught us is that social distancing can help reduce the spread of an infectious disease, '' De Roode says. `` The same holds true for monarchs and the O.E. parasite. ''
Around the year 2000, the researchers note, conservation groups began planting exotic species of milkweed to try to support the monarch population, which has been declining. Ironically, this conservation effort may have fueled more parasitism.
`` The exotic species of milkweed tend to have more cardenolides than native species, '' Majewska explains, `` so infected female monarchs may be seeking the exotic species out, adding to the density problem. ''
The researchers further hypothesize that people raising monarch caterpillars in large numbers -- to support conservation efforts or for commercial purposes -- may be keeping them in crowded conditions that foster the spread of the parasite.
`` Ultimately, a continuing rise in the monarch's parasitic infection rate could cause the species to suffer significantly, '' Majewska says. `` If tens of millions of them are dying annually from parasitic infections, then an extreme weather event during the winter in Mexico might reduce the population to a level that could be dangerous for their genetic diversity. ''
`` Parasitism is often overlooked in conservation efforts, '' de Roode adds, `` but our findings show how parasites can have a massive impact on wildlife. ''
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. | science |
The growing threat of Synthetic ID fraud and how behavioral biometrics enables organizations to stop it before the damage is done | Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial services industry was experiencing a significant increase in synthetic ID fraud. Per a report published by Aite-Novarica Group, US credit card synthetic identity losses were expected to increase by over 55% from $ 580M in 2015 to a projected $ 1.3B in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many fraudsters shifted their focus to easier ways of maximizing their ROI, such as taking advantage of taxpayer funded Paycheck Protection Loans ( PPP). In an article written by frankonfraud.com, it is mentioned that up to 15% of all PPP loans may have been fraud, which equates to $ 76B of potential money stolen. Fraudsters have also taken the opportunity during the pandemic to increase their efforts on social engineering scams. Per the FCC, the industry saw a wide variety of social engineering tactics, such as robocall scams re: health and financial concerns, text scams on false advertisements for cures or bogus tests, vaccine scam calls with intent to steal valuable personal or financial information, and more.
However, as the world continues to open back up and COVID-19 relief programs subside, fraudsters are turning their attention back to Synthetic ID fraud. According to an article published by Aite-Novarica Group, Synthetic ID fraud for unsecured U.S. credit products is expected to grow from $ 1.8B in 2021 to $ 2.42B in 2023. Further, fraud executives are expressing that synthetic ID fraud is a top concern, according to the recent survey completed by Aite-Novarica Group below:
Not only do we expect to see an increase in synthetic ID fraud, but we also expect to see an increase in sophistication by fraudsters to stay ahead of traditional controls used to detect synthetic ID fraud. In this frankonfraud.com article, it is noted that “ In 2021, identity thieves proved they could defeat Driver’ s License checks with realistic-looking masks. They proved they could fake their credit history with virtually undetectable fake tradelines. And they were given a plethora of online tools such as generated.photos to create an endless array of fake images for identities. ” It was also noted in this article by pymnts.com that “ FIs traditional fraud detection approaches failed to flag between 85 percent and 95 percent of credit applicants believed to be using synthetic IDs ”.
With synthetic ID fraud on the rise and the increase of sophistication used by fraudsters to circumvent traditional fraud controls, it is imperative that organizations invest in tools, such as behavioral biometrics, to stay ahead of this threat. Here at BehavioSec, organizations are using our deep behavioral biometrics technology to effectively detect synthetic id fraud applications, real-time, before any damage is done. If a synthetic ID is used to successfully open an account ( i.e. credit cards, personal loans, etc.), the risk is significant to an organization because a fraudster’ s intent is to access those funds and not pay them back. BehavioSec mitigates this risk by analyzing and identifying behaviors that are consistent with synthetic ID fraud during the application process. Specifically, BehavioSec analyzes how a user physically interacts with a mobile device or desktop computer, such as how familiar a user is with entering PII ( name, address, SSN, DOB, email, phone, etc.). A genuine user typically enters his/her PII that is consistent with behaviors of data familiarity and long-term memory. However, a fraudster’ s behavior typically indicates he/she is not familiar with the data being entered and is using short term memory.
We also detect other high-risk behaviors such as copy and pasting of PII, where a fraudster is working off a list of synthetic IDs to open multiple accounts. Further, fraudsters may demonstrate advanced knowledge of the application process and navigate pages very differently than a genuine user, such as using advanced key combos, or we may see BOTs used to automate and scale their attacks.
BehavioSec also helps improve the onboarding experience, reduce friction for genuine users, and reduce false positives/manual reviews for fraud ops teams by identifying genuine behaviors. BehavioSec passively collects all this information, with no additional steps for the user to take, and provides organizations with highly accurate risk scores and factors to make informed, real-time, decisions on how to proceed with the session or application.
BehavioSec is trusted by the largest financial institutions and fortune 100 companies across the globe, where we protect over 200M users and 30B transactions on an annual basis. BehavioSec customers have seen tremendous success with our New Account Fraud solution, which detects synthetic ID fraud as well as other new account fraud types such as ID theft and bot/automation attacks. Our customers have experienced over 96% accuracy in detecting new account fraud while reducing false positives by over 80%. If you would like to learn more, please contact me at [ email protected ], check out my youtube talk about Synthetic ID fraud, or visit our website at www.behaviosec.com.
The post The growing threat of Synthetic ID fraud and how behavioral biometrics enables organizations to stop it before the damage is done appeared first on BehavioSec.
* * * This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from BehavioSec authored by Chris Ralis. Read the original post at: https: //www.behaviosec.com/the-growing-threat-of-synthetic-id-fraud-and-how-behavioral-biometrics-enables-organizations-to-stop-it-before-the-damage-is-done/ | general |
US: Don’ t Roll Back New York Pretrial Reforms | Help us continue to fight human rights abuses. Please give now to support our work
Improvements Should Be Bolstered and Supported, Not Undermined
( New York, NY, March 24, 2022) – New York lawmakers should not, as the governor has proposed, further undermine recent reforms to criminal laws that have improved pretrial justice in the state, Human Rights Watch said today. The reforms, which took effect in 2020, have made pretrial procedures fairer by preventing many people charged with low level crimes from being locked up while their cases are pending because they can not afford bail.
“ New York’ s pretrial justice reforms have allowed hundreds of thousands of presumed innocent people to stay out of jail, keep their jobs, and lead more stable lives while they await their court dates, ” said Laura Pitter, deputy US program director at Human Rights Watch. “ Lawmakers should be considering ways to preserve and strengthen the reforms, which data show have not harmed public safety, not roll them back. ”
Governor Kathy Hochul proposed changes to the reforms as nonfiscal elements of the state budget, which must pass by April 1, 2022. The changes include making many more criminal charges, including misdemeanors, bail eligible, even though in New York City only 12 percent of misdemeanor charges result in a criminal trial and only 9 percent in jail time.
They also would give judges significantly more discretion to detain people while their cases are pending; and allow police to arrest people instead of giving them Desk Appearance Tickets ( DATs) in many more cases, including when the person received a DAT in the previous 18 months, even for something minor.
Human Rights Watch supported the original reforms, passed by the state legislature in 2019, which went into effect in January 2020. They required judges to release people charged with most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies while their cases were pending but permitted judges to detain those arrested for violent crimes. The reforms were important because people held in pretrial custody face hardships not faced by people accused of the same crimes who can afford bail.
As Human Rights Watch has documented, those held in jail or who can’ t pay bail can lose their jobs and homes and can no longer go to school. Their children can be taken from them. This makes people who can not pay far more willing to plead guilty regardless of actual guilt just to obtain their freedom. The reforms contributed to a 40 percent reduction in New York City’ s bloated pretrial jail population as of March 2020.
State legislators then amended the reforms, effective July 2, 2020, allowing more cases to be eligible for bail and pretrial detention. This led to a 7 to 11 percent increase in the pretrial jail population by the end of the year, with New York City judges overall setting bail more often.
Even with the amendments, Mayor Eric Adams and many officials in law enforcement continue to be highly critical of the reforms, often wrongly blaming them for an increase in gun violence and other crime. Though some crime, particularly the number of homicides, rose in 2020, it also rose in many other cities that did not enact similar reforms. The rise also correlates to the social and economic upheaval related to the Covid-19 pandemic and a dramatic increase in gun purchases nationally, which could have contributed to it. According to the New York Police Department’ s own data, bail reform is not responsible for the spike in gun violence. Looking at longer term trends, though some crime has gone up in recent years, crime is dramatically down overall compared with its peak in the 1990s.
The state’ s pretrial data shows that the vast majority of those released since the reforms went into effect, 95 percent, were not rearrested on any additional charges. Of those who were rearrested, most were charged with misdemeanors or nonviolent offenses, and fewer than 1 percent for violent felonies. The same data shows little change in rearrest trends since 2019.
Further rollbacks to these reforms are not necessary. Pretrial reform has made New York’ s system fairer by limiting punishment prior to a conviction, by allowing people to contest charges against them without the pressure of being in jail, and by removing wealth as a factor in determining outcomes. It has allowed people to keep their jobs and homes, to maintain family connections, and to access health care while contesting accusations against them.
Rollbacks are likely to compound existing racial disparities in policing, arrests, and incarceration. For example, making people who have been arrested or given a DAT in the past 18 months bail eligible if they are charged with anything, even with another DAT-eligible offense, which is generally minor, during that period, is likely to disproportionately affect Black and brown communities that experience heavy policing.
In New York City, 91 percent of people jails are nonwhite. Increasing the ability of judges and police to detain even more people pretrial will also, as it did before, increase pretrial detention. The city’ s jail population is already nearly back to prepandemic levels.
Rikers Island, where New York City sends people to wait for their day in court, is in a crisis state. In 2021, 16 people died there, and, three people have died already during 2022, two in just the last week. A federal monitor overseeing the jail recently said the complex is “ trapped in a state of persistent dysfunctionality, ” calling it “ unstable and unsafe. ”
Other provisions of Hochul’ s plan are also problematic. Hochul proposes to substantially undermine the discovery reform law that had finally put New York in line with every other state in the US. Hochul’ s plan would allow prosecutors to withhold evidence from people accused of crimes, limiting disclosure just to what prosecutors intend to present at trial, and allowing them to avoid penalties for nondisclosure if they can convince a judge that they “ substantially ” complied with the rules. These changes would open the door to abuse that could deny due process and fair assessments of the charges.
She also proposes narrowing the recently passed “ raise the age ” laws to allow some children to be charged as in adult rather than in youth or family court, in direct contravention of the science that originally informed the laws, recognizing the difference in adolescent brain development and the damaging effects of jail and criminalization on children. There is also research showing that youth are less likely to commit new crimes if prosecuted in the juvenile, instead of the adult, system.
Hochul’ s plan also expands the possibility that someone will be committed involuntarily including when they refuse care, food, or shelter being offered by the city, regardless of the reason for the refusal, in violation of international human rights standards on the right to legal capacity of people with disabilities. The plan to increase funding for mental health treatment should be supported but it deserves much more than the $ 21 million increase proposed.
“ New York took a step forward when it enacted transformative criminal reforms in recent years, ” Pitter said. “ Instead of reversing that trend and sending more people to jail, it should be investing in affordable housing, access to health care, education, and other support that communities need to thrive and stay safe. ”
Systemic Police Brutality and Its Costs in the United States | general |
‘ It could have gone horribly wrong’: Pioneer Point on launching their debut fundraise just as Covid-19 struck | Sustainable infrastructure firm Pioneer Point picked a perilous time to switch from deal-by-deal investing to launch its debut fund – March 2020, just some weeks before the UK locked down as the Covid-19 crisis worsened. Firm partner Rupert Shaw shared with AltAssets the ups and downs of the two-year debut fundraise, which it closed this month on €575m, and his insights into the sector’ s future. | business |
Africa’ s ambitious trade plan needs to speed up | IN 1963, AS decolonisation swept through Africa, politicians heady with pan-African ideals called for a common continental market. They saw it as a way to transcend colonial economic models based upon extracting and exporting natural resources. Sadly there has been all too little progress since. Intra-African trade remains small compared with the continent’ s external trade. Primary commodities account for more than 70% of Africa’ s exports. Just 18% of exports by African countries are to others on the continent—a lower share than equivalent figures for Asia ( 58%) and Europe ( 68%).
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The African Continental Free Trade Area ( AfCFTA) is meant to help change this. This ambitious pact has been ratified by 41 of Africa’ s 55 countries. Making it easier for them to trade with one another should boost manufacturing, incomes and growth. The World Bank estimates that, if implemented, by 2035 the AfCFTA would enable an additional 30m people to escape extreme poverty, increase intra-African exports by 81% and boost wages by 10%. Although the AfCFTA has in theory been operational since the beginning of this year, in practice no trade has happened under its terms because of continued political wrangling. Africa’ s leaders risk squandering the promise of freer trade.
Some of the potential benefits of the AfCFTA come from lower tariffs. To realise these, the continent’ s trade negotiators still have work to do in agreeing on rules of origin, the bedrock of any trade area. They need to get their skates on.
The biggest prize, however, will come not from lower tariffs but from lower “ non-tariff barriers ” —by pulling down more of the other obstacles that make it hard for, say, a Ugandan farmer to export chickens to Kenya or for a Beninese weaver to sell fabric to Nigeria. These barriers include corruption, shoddy infrastructure, red tape at border crossings, sloth-like customs bureaucracies and expensive logistics. Because of them, transporting goods within Africa can be three to four times as costly as in other parts of the world. In 2017 it took an average of 251 hours to ensure paperwork was in order when importing goods into sub-Saharan Africa, versus nine hours in rich OECD countries.
Many of these problems can be fixed. Potholes could be filled; ports expanded. Paperwork could be digitised and sent in advance of time. More countries could build one-stop border posts, instead of making lorry drivers queue separately for migration, road taxes, vehicle inspection and customs clearance. In east Africa such streamlining has cut crossing times from 12 hours to four. Not requiring covid-19 tests would let lorries spend more time ferrying and less time tarrying. Countries should make it easier to establish logistics startups, such as firms that cut costs by matching loads with empty vehicles. Cheaper transport means cheaper goods in shops.
Yet all this is easier said than done. One obstacle is that vested interests, such as trucking cartels and customs bureaucracies, profit from inefficiency. Ghana has shown that these can be weakened. Another problem is that for all their homilies about free trade, many African politicians are protectionists at heart. No country seems to want to move first in ongoing talks about implementing the free-trade deal. Even though they stand to benefit the most, the largest economies in each region—Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa—are proving pitifully slow to embrace the trade pact.
A third political challenge relates to outsiders, including America, China and the European Union. Though they say they want to support the AfCFTA, they often undermine it by signing bilateral deals which then complicate Africa’ s efforts to harmonise its own trade rules.
Each of these problems requires the sort of leadership that has so far been in scant supply. But if politicians seize the opportunity, the AfCFTA can help the continent climb out of the economic slump it has been pushed into by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It would also send a message to the rest of the world. At a time when protectionist noises are growing louder, Africa has a chance to be an inspiring outlier. ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
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