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Antibiotics use on healthy farm animals should be banned: WHO
 Farmers must be prevented from using powerful antibiotics on animals reared for food, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned, because of the serious risks to human health that result.

New guidelines from the global body suggest farmers should stop using any antibiotics routinely to promote growth and prevent disease in animals that are otherwise healthy, a common practice in some parts of the world, including Asia and the US. Such routine use is banned in Europe, though campaigners fear the rules are sometimes flouted.

Using antimicrobial medicines on farm animals is one of the leading causes of the rise of superbugs, resistant to all but the strongest antibiotics. Medical authorities warn that the antibiotics available to treat even relatively minor human diseases are running out because of the rapid rise of such resistance.

Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, has warned repeatedly that, a decade from now, even routine, previously low-risk operations, such as hip replacements, may become dangerous because of the risk of infections resistant to medicines.

The WHO reported on Tuesday that in some countries, as much as 80% of antibiotic use is on farm animals. Even in some countries where routine use for enhancing growth is banned, more antibiotics are used on animals than on humans.

The use of the strongest antibiotics, a last resort for the most deadly infections affecting humans, should be banned altogether in animals, the guidelines advise. This should apply, according to the WHO, even in cases where an illness has been diagnosed in a food-producing animal. Implementing this could require animals to be quarantined, allowed to die, or for herds to be culled in order to halt the spread of a serious disease rather than attempting to cure it.

This recommendation is likely to be unpopular with farmers, who could risk financial loss, but is crucial to protect human health, according to the WHO, because the use of such antibiotics in animals is leading to increased resistance even to last-resort medicines, to the despair of doctors.

However, the WHO has no power to enforce its guidelines, which are up to national governments to accept or reject.

The forthright warning comes as new research, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, showed that restricting antibiotic use on farms reduced the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farm animals by up to 39%. The WHO said it had used the research to inform its new guidelines.

Restricting our remaining effective antibiotics for human use is crucial because of the lack of alternatives available. “There are very few promising options in the research pipeline” for new antibiotics to replace those that are becoming ineffective because of overuse and resistance, the WHO warned.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said: “A lack of effective antibiotics is as serious a security threat as a sudden and deadly disease outbreak. Strong, sustained action across all sectors is vital if we are to turn back the tide of antimicrobial resistance and keep the world safe.”

Animal herds treated with antibiotics can develop bacteria resistant to the drugs, and pass this on to humans directly, through contact with farm workers, or through food. A Guardian investigation found that the superbug MRSA was found in a significant sample of pork products on the UK’s supermarket shelves, risking humans becoming infected with the strain.

Kazuaki Miyagishima, director of food safety at the WHO, said the links between antibiotic use on farms and risks to human health were clear: “Scientific evidence demonstrates that overuse of antibiotics in animals can contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance. The volume of antibiotics used in animals is continuing to increase worldwide, driven by a growing demand for foods of animal origin, often produced through intensive animal husbandry.”

Dr Clare Chandler of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said: “This is a welcome set of recommendations from WHO. It will be a challenge for producers to follow these recommendations to reduce antibiotic use, but possible for larger scale producers with good biosecurity. Many smaller scale farmers around the world are dependent upon antibiotics to supplement animal feed, and actions will be needed to support them to make this change which will affect their lives and livelihoods.”

The Guardian, in a joint investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, also found a rapid increase in the number of megafarms in the UK. Megafarms across the globe are on the rise, and they have been linked with antibiotic resistance, as whole herds of many hundreds of animals are often treated at once.

Output: Farmers must be made to stop using antibiotics completely on healthy animals that are reared for food as it is causing increasingly serious risks to human health and is one of the leading causes for the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the World Health Organisation has warned. Using antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease in farmed animals is routine in some parts of Asia and the US, and, although it is banned in Europe, campaigners suggested the rule is sometimes ignored.


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Deadly Marburg virus kills three in Kenya, Uganda
 Three people in Uganda and Kenya have died from an extremely rare and deadly disease caused by the Marburg virus, the World Health Organization reported today (Nov. 7).

The Marburg virus is related to another notorious virus, the Ebola virus, according to WHO. Both viruses are members of the "filovirus" family and have high fatality rates. The fatality rate for the disease caused by the Marburg virus can be as high as 88 percent.

The Marburg virus is transmitted to people from a type of fruit bat called Rousettus aegyptiacus, or the Egyptian fruit bat, WHO says. Once a human is infected, however, the virus can be spread to other humans via direct contact with bodily fluids, or by coming into contact with surfaces and materials that have been contaminated with these fluids. [The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth]

The amount of time it takes for symptoms to appear after a person is infected with the virus — known as the incubation period — can vary from two to 21 days, WHO says. But when symptoms begin, they begin abruptly, and can include muscle aches and pain. About three days after symptoms begin, a person can develop gastrointestinal symptoms, including nausea, vomiting and severe diarrhea that can persist for a week. WHO describes patients at this phase of the infection as "ghost-like," with drawn features, deep-set eyes, expressionless faces and extreme lethargy.

Like the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus causes a condition called severe hemorrhagic fever, which includes symptoms such as a high fever and dysfunction in the body's blood vessels, which can result in profuse bleeding. These hemorrhagic symptoms often begin between five and seven days after the onset of symptoms, according to WHO. Blood may be found in vomit and feces, and patients may also bleed from the nose, gums and, for women, the vagina. Bleeding at injection sites during medical treatment can be "particularly troublesome," according to WHO.

The virus can also cause problems with the central nervous system, leading to confusion, irritability and aggression, WHO says.

In fatal cases, death occurs between eight and nine days after the symptoms begin, usually due to severe blood loss and shock, according to WHO.

In the current outbreak, which was declared on Oct. 19, the three people who died came from the same family in the Kween District in Eastern Uganda, according to WHO. One of the individuals traveled to Kenya prior to his death. Because only three people have been infected thus far, and all three died, the current outbreak has a fatality rate of 100 percent.

Originally published on Live Science.

Output: Three people have died from the Marburg virus in Uganda and Kenya, while hundreds may have been exposed to the rare and often fatal disease, according to the World Health Organisation. The Marburg virus is related to Ebola, with both carrying high fatality rates. The Marburg virus is passed on to humans by the Egyptian fruit bat, and spreads between people through the exchange of bodily fluids, either directly or after contact with external objects.


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Waymo removes safety driver from autonomous vehicles
 Eight years after launching its self-driving “moon shot,” Waymo, a k a Google’s driverless car company, is having its Neil Armstrong moment.

The company is now running its autonomous minivans around Phoenix with no human inside to grab the wheel if things go bad, CEO John Krafcik announced Tuesday. And in just a few months, it will invite passengers to climb aboard the world’s first driverless ride-hailing service.

This launch brings up a host of unanswered questions about the details and practical elements of such a service, but what’s already clear is Waymo is taking one of the final steps on the long road toward taking the human driver out of the picture and finally cashing in on the profits and safety benefits that come with the transition to robot chauffeurs.

“Fully self-driving cars are here,” Krafcik said at Web Summit in Lisbon, where he announced the move.

Waymo took its first driverless spin on public roads in October 2015, when it was still officially part of Google. (In December 2015, it launched as a stand-alone company under the umbrella of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.) Steve Mahan, a blind man, took a solo, 10-minute ride around Austin, Texas in the company’s “pod car,” the funky one without a steering wheel or pedals (Waymo retired those cars this summer in favor of its minivans).

The difference here, Krafcik says, is that the cars prowling Phoenix sans humans aren’t part of a demo. “What you’re seeing now marks the start of a new phase for Waymo,” he said in Lisbon.

Indeed, this is a massive step toward the driverless future Waymo/Google has been pursuing since starting this project in 2009. The company has been toting select riders around the Phoenix metro area since April, but with safety drivers at the wheel to make sure everything stays on track. Now, those drivers are coming out.

And once you’ve taken the driver out, putting a rider in becomes something like an afterthought. “The difference between those two things is relatively slight,” Krafcik told reporters last week. “You’ve still got a fully driverless car interacting with the world, all of the other human-driven cars, pedestrians and cyclists and other things that are on the road at the same time.”

In other words, the technology has to be damn near perfect to get to this point. Then it’s just a matter of buttoning things up—and reaping the safety benefits and dollars that come with it.

Waymo is also experimenting with self-driving trucks and will consider selling autonomous technology straight to automakers who want to implement it in their vehicles, but a ride-hailing service makes sense as a starting point.

OK, here’s the part where we go over all the things that aren’t quite clear. Waymo hasn’t disclosed how much territory its cars will cover or what kind of hours they will run, whether it will charge passengers for rides, or the timeline for announcing or figuring out any of that. (Company reps recently declined to give any such details for the existing early rider program in Phoenix.)

Output: Alphabet's Waymo has begun testing its autonomous vehicles without a human fail-safe backup. Announcing the move at Web Summit in Lisbon, CEO John Krafcik stated that “fully self-driving cars are here”. The company is testing the technology in minivans in Phoenix, Arizona, and plans to offer it in a ride-hailing service within the next few months.


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Waymo removes safety driver from autonomous vehicles
 Driverless cars are here.

Waymo, the Alphabet self-driving car company, now has cars driving on public roads in the Phoenix metropolitan area with no one in the driver's seat. Waymo CEO John Krafcik plans to announce the news today in a speech at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

For the last year, Waymo has offered free taxi rides to ordinary people who live near the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Until recently, the company's modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans had a Waymo employee in the driver's seat ready to take control if the car malfunctioned.

Waymo is now confident enough in its technology to dispense with a safety driver. The company has released a video showing Waymo cars driving around the Phoenix area with no one in the driver's seat:

At first, most of Waymo's driverless cars will have an employee in the back observing the vehicle's behavior. If something goes really wrong, they'll be able to push the "pull over" button to stop the car. In the coming months, participants in Waymo's early rider program will start getting the option to ride in fully driverless vehicles.

Some time after that, Waymo will launch a commercial driverless taxi service that's open to members of the general public in the Phoenix metropolitan area and beyond.

Waymo’s first product will be a taxi service

Industry watchers have long assumed that a Phoenix taxi service would be Waymo's first product. But as recently as last week, Waymo was still playing coy about the question, suggesting that it might get into the trucking business instead. Now, Waymo is officially announcing that its first commercial product will be a driverless taxi service.

There's a dichotomy in the industry when it comes to autonomous cars. On the one hand, you have companies like Tesla and Volvo that want to sell you a car that drives you around. Others, including Waymo, want to operate fleets of robotaxis themselves. Some car companies, including GM, BMW, and Volkswagen, are pursuing both strategies simultaneously.

Companies selling cars to customers envision a future where today's driver-assistance systems—like lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control—gradually evolve into more sophisticated self-driving software, with human drivers intervening less and less frequently over time.

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Google initially considered this same gradualist approach, which could have led to licensing partially self-driving technology to automakers. But early tests convinced the company that it was a bad idea. Google employees who got to test early prototypes started trusting the technology way too quickly. Google captured videos of test drivers looking at their smartphones, putting on makeup, and even napping in the driver's seat while cars zoomed down the freeway.

So Google changed its strategy. The company decided that instead of selling cars, it would build a taxi service built around cars designed from the ground up for driverless operation. Customers would never be required—or even allowed—to take the wheel.

This strategy allows Google—now Waymo—to pursue a different kind of gradualism. In the old model, cars could go anywhere, but at first the software would only drive some of the time. In the new model, the software drives all the time, but at first the cars can only go certain places.

Specifically, Waymo's fully driverless cars will initially only navigate in a small portion of the Phoenix metropolitan area around the southeastern suburb of Chandler. Within this zone, the cars are able to go anywhere a conventional taxi can go. But the cars will refuse any trip that would take them outside of this carefully chosen area.

To aid with navigation, Waymo has built high-resolution three-dimensional maps of its service area. Self-driving software in each car can compare the objects identified by sensors to objects on the map, allowing it to quickly distinguish stationary objects like trees and buildings from mobile objects like cars and pedestrians.

As Waymo expands its map and acquires more vehicles, it will also expand its service area. Before too long, Waymo expects to offer service across the entire Phoenix metropolitan area. Eventually, Waymo will extend service to other metropolitan areas using the same incremental approach.

Why Waymo is launching first in Phoenix

A big advantage of starting in Phoenix is the region's excellent weather. It's warm and sunny there almost every day. Tricky situations like rain, snow, and ice are rare—though Waymo says its cars are able to drive safely in light rain. Waymo recently expanded its testing into Detroit to prepare for an eventual expansion of the service into colder parts of the United States.

In addition to nice weather, the Phoenix area has wide, well-maintained streets and less traffic congestion than most major cities.

"I'm not going to say Phoenix drivers are the best drivers, but the Phoenix metro area is an easy place to drive," Phoenix resident Eric de Gaston told Ars last month.

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Perhaps the most important factor is the regulatory climate. Arizona's leaders have bent over backward to attract Waymo and other self-driving car makers to the Phoenix area. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a two-page executive order in 2015 designed to encourage self-driving car testing in the state. Besides that, Arizona doesn't have any special legislation or regulations related to self-driving cars.

Last month, I asked Ryan Harding, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation, if there were any legal barriers to launching a fully driverless self-driving taxi service in the state. "I'm not aware of any current law that would prohibit" fully driverless taxis on public streets, Harding said. "We don't have a problem with that."

In the last year, Waymo's minivans have become a common sight in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler.

"I live in Chandler. You see Waymo units all over the damn place," a Redditor wrote last month.

"When it first started, a lot of people I think were kind of afraid," said Scott Suaso, who lives near Chandler and sees Waymo cars on a daily basis. "That was a year ago. These days, no one really seems to care. Everybody has become so used to seeing them."

Ars got a preview of Waymo’s fully driverless cars last week

Last week we were invited to visit Waymo's secretive test facility in the California desert to see Waymo's fully driverless cars in action.

In a conventional car, the main user interface is the steering wheel, pedals, and other controls on the dashboard. But no one will be allowed in the driver's seat in Waymo's cars. So the company has had to think about building a user interface for a car where everyone is a passenger.

Customers hail cars with an Uber-style app, so the car itself barely needs a user interface at all. There's a pair of video screens mounted on the backs of the front seats, and a row of four buttons on the ceiling above the middle row of seats.

The main function of the video screens is to increase passengers' confidence in the safety of the self-driving software. The screens show a stylized map of the area immediately around the car, with outlines of pedestrians, other cars, bicycles, and so forth marked. Passengers will be able to compare what they see on the screen to what they see out the window and confirm that the car really does understand the road situation.

The leftmost button initiates a call to Waymo's customer service center. The second button locks and unlocks the doors. The third button causes the car to pull over—though Waymo says the car won't stop in an unsafe place, like in the middle of an intersection. The rightmost button tells the car to start the ride.

Output: Alphabet's Waymo has begun testing its autonomous vehicles without a human fail-safe backup. Announcing the move at Web Summit in Lisbon, CEO John Krafcik stated that “fully self-driving cars are here”. The company is testing the technology in minivans in Phoenix, Arizona, and plans to offer it in a ride-hailing service within the next few months.


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Trump arrives in China seeking progress on North Korea and trade
 When Donald Trump hosted Xi Jinping at his private club Mar-a-Lago in April, the American president informed his Chinese counterpart—over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake,” as Trump told reporters later—that he had ordered a missile attack against Syria.

Like that, the first Trump-Xi summit was overshadowed by the Syria strikes. Syria isn’t central to US-China relations, but by design or otherwise, the way Trump looped Xi in on such an important geopolitical development suggested he was the one in control.

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When the two leaders meet again this week in Beijing, in the middle of Trump’s 11-day Asian tour, it will be difficult for the US president to come across as the more dominant one. Since their last encounter, Xi’s domestic position has grown stronger, while Trump’s has weakened. Xi consolidated his power at the recently concluded Communist Party congress, while Trump, amid investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, failed to push through promised changes on health care and now faces a fresh battle on tax reform.

At the top of the agenda for the second Trump-Xi summit is, still, North Korea and trade—two items that, in Trump’s view, can be leveraged against each other. But the rogue regime of Kim Jong-un has become even more belligerent, conducting one nuclear and 12 missile tests since Trump and Xi met in April. Needing Beijing’s help to rein in Pyongyang, Trump, despite his threats, has yet to impose any major punitive measures against China over the alleged unfair trade practices he railed against while campaigning last year.

It’s easier to see how Xi comes out a winner from the pair’s second meeting. “Xi would be fine having a symbolism-heavy, substance-light visit, largely because he does not want or need a lot from Trump, and is broadly comfortable with the relationship as it currently stands,” wrote Ryan Hass, a foreign-policy expert at the Brookings Institution, in late October.

Below, some of the ways Xi can emerge from Trump’s visit victorious.

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Keep Trump full, flattered, and fatigued

China will welcome Trump with a lavish reception, including a military honor guard and a formal banquet, according to Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the US. Touting a “state visit-plus” experience, Cui said there will also be some “special arrangements” for Trump, without elaborating further.

“Trump is a president who loves to be flattered—and the Chinese know how to flatter,” wrote David Lampton, director of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Lampton pointed to a visit to China in the 1940s by US president Franklin Roosevelt’s special envoy Wendell Willkie. According to an account by American general Joseph Stilwell, then Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek dragged Willkie around to see and hear only what his hosts wanted him to, including factories, girl scouts, and sewing circles. The idea, Stilwell wrote, was to “get him so exhausted and keep him so torpid with food and drink that his faculties will be dulled and he’ll be stuffed with the right doctrines.”

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Lavish proceedings seemed to work out for Saudi Arabia when it hosted Trump in May on his first overseas trip as president. Trump was all smiles in the gulf kingdom while receiving gold jewelry and playing with swords.

A packed schedule of extravagant yet tedious events would also test Trump’s stamina: At 71, he is past the Communist Party’s standard retirement age of 68.

Dodge North Korea trouble

This year North Korea has annoyed Xi repeatedly with the timing of its weapons tests. Xi doesn’t want the same thing happening this week.

Pyongyang launched a missile just days before the first Trump-Xi summit, and it fired another in mid-May right as Xi was about to tout his pet project, the Belt and Road initiative, to dozens of world leaders gathered in Beijing. In September Pyongyang conducted its latest and most powerful nuclear test just as Xi was about to deliver the opening remarks for the BRICS summit in southeast China. And as Trump headed toward Asia for the current trip, South Korea’s intelligence agency reported brisk activity at missile research facilities in North Korea.

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In this context, Xi will be delighted if North Korea simply refrains from conducting a weapons test during Trump’s visit. Pyongyang did forgo a chance to interrupt the Communist Party congress—the most important event on China’s political calendar—and Kim even sent a note congratulating Xi on his re-election as party chief. Xi in turn sent Kim a note calling for stable ties between the two nations.

Trump has called on China to apply more economic pressure against North Korea, but he’s also offered praise when it’s done so. Xi will be hoping for more of the latter. China recently released data showing its trade with North Korea has fallen significantly, coming after Beijing followed through on UN sanctions.

What Xi doesn’t want is Trump pressing him for sanctions that won’t serve China’s interests—for example, an outright oil embargo that could destabilize the Kim regime to the point of sparking a refugee crisis at China’s border.

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Avoid trade issues but give Trump deals to tout

Trump will want some business wins to brag about back home. According to Bloomberg, one of the biggest deals to be announced will be a multibillion-dollar energy investment from China’s state-owned oil giant Sinopec creating thousands of jobs in Texas and the US Virgin Islands. The project, expected to be in the form of a non-binding memorandum of understanding, would include a pipeline running about 700 miles (1,126 km) across Texas.

As welcome as such one-off business deals are, Lampton noted, “they don’t move the overall economic relationship in a direction favourable to US interests or the goals Trump set for his own political base.”

Trump remains unhappy about US-China trade in general and views China as being engaged in all sorts of unfair practices, among them dumping commodities like aluminum and stealing intellectual property. He’s ordered probes into China’s IP practices and exports of steel and aluminum to the US, but so far no investigation results have been announced.

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US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters a few weeks ago that the two sides will probably announce some “decent deliverables” at the Trump-Xi summit, but it will take longer to fix complex issues such as IP and forced technology transfer.

While Xi will deny Trump the big concessions he craves on trade and North Korea, he won’t let him go home “totally empty-handed,” wrote Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, in a Nikkei column last week. The most likely outcome of the summit, Pei believes, is “a series of specific agreements between Chinese and American companies that will allow Trump to claim new job opportunities for his blue-collar voters.”

Steer clear of the South China Sea

Amid all the hand-wringing over North Korea, Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea has received less attention than merited. In his April meeting with Xi, Trump merely urged China to follow international norms in its maritime disputes with regional neighbors.

At that time, he had yet to approve a freedom-of-navigation operation challenging China’s claims in the vital waterway, which carries a large chunk of world trade but, some fear, could essentially become a “Chinese lake.” In May, however, a US warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a feature naturally submerged at high tide but now hosting a Chinese military base. The close passage, coupled with a “maneuvering drill,” signaled the US does not recognize Mischief as generating a territorial sea. More operations near other Chinese outposts have followed since—including in July, August, and October—all challenging what Washington views as China’s excessive maritime claims.

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China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, even though an international tribunal ruled last year that the claim had neither legal nor historical basis. Beijing dismissed the ruling and routinely warns the US against the operations, saying in July, for instance, that it was “firmly opposed to such flaunting of force and promotion of militarization in the region by the US, which could easily trigger accidents at sea and in the air.”

Beijing has warned the US to not bring up the South China Sea issue when Trump visits. It’ll be a win for Xi if Trump doesn’t, or if he at least keeps any reference to it generic, as he did in April.

Use the visit for a PR win

Much planning has no doubt gone into how Trump’s visit will be portrayed in China’s state-controlled media. While Beijing’s propaganda machine was relatively muted during Xi’s trip to Florida, presumably due to uncertainty over how the trip would unfold, it will be at full speed this week trying to portray Xi as the more sophisticated leader and emphasizing any show of respect from Trump toward Xi.

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After Xi was re-elected Communist Party chief at the recent national congress, nearly every front page in China looked the same, all emphasizing Xi’s powerful position. Many front pages also included another crucial indication of Xi’s status: the news that US president Donald Trump called Xi to congratulate him on his re-election. Similarly, this week we can expect to see any compliments, deference, or friendliness from Trump toward Xi played up prominently in Chinese media.

At the same time, Xi will want to appear stronger than Trump wherever possible. Comments he makes to subtly one-up his guest will likely be emphasized—for example, Xi championing global trade and warning against protectionism as the “America-first” president looks on.

Output: Donald Trump is arriving in China at a time that President Xi is in the ascendant after a successful party congress, while the US president's approval ratings are at a new low. Trump will be looking for wins in a number of areas including over America's huge trade deficit and how to rein in North Korea. He is also seeking deals in a number of sectors, such as energy, aviation and financial services, with $9bn worth of deals between the two countries already announced by commerce secretary Wilbur Ross.


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Major UK care provider Four Seasons taken over by US hedge fund
 Struggling care home provider Four Seasons, which is responsible for 17,000 elderly and vulnerable people, is set to be taken over by a US hedge fund in a complex rescue deal being closely monitored by regulators.

Four Seasons has buckled under the pressure of state funding cuts, a shortage of EU nurses since the Brexit vote, higher costs after the introduction of the national living wage and meeting repayments on a debt pile of £525m.

The UK’s second-largest care home provider, owned by multi-millionaire Guy Hands’ private equity group Terra Firma, put forward its own survival plan last month ahead of a £26m debt repayment due in December that it would have been unable to honour.

But H/2 Capital, a privately-owned hedge fund and property investor based in Stamford, Connecticut that has gradually bought up the majority of Four Seasons’ debt, countered with an alternative proposal that will see it take over ownership.

The proposals will leave Terra Firma sitting on a huge loss from an investment that this week’s Paradise Papers leaks reveal was designed to generate a near-£900m windfall via a complex system of loans facilitating legal tax avoidance.

Under H/2’s rescue plan, which has been welcomed by Terra Firma, the US firm will inject £135m of equity into the business, cancel £247m of debt and defer interest payments until March 2018.

Terra Firma will also inject £45m of new equity and will be left with just an 11% stake in the business.

H/2 also intends to spend £25m on refurbishing some of Four Seasons’ 335 care homes and its 25 hospitals and specialist care centres, and set up a £15m bonus scheme for its 25,000 staff.

It is not clear what experience the company has in running care homes. The “Strategy” section of its website focuses on investments in rental housing in the US.

But the company’s proposal offers a much-needed exit for Terra Firma from an investment that has been among the most disastrous in a portfolio that also included the collapse of EMI under its debts.

It bought Four Seasons for £825m in 2012 and has failed to turn it around despite £450m of investment, eventually being forced to write down the value of the business to a nominal sum.

Information revealed in the Paradise Papers reveals that Terra Firma hoped to extract £890m from the company by arranging costly loans from its own subsidiaries.

The private equity firm eventually had to write off the debt but interest payments have still proved unaffordable, amid a perfect storm of increased costs and lower funding from government.

The Brexit vote has added to Four Seasons’ woes as a 96% reduction in the number of nurses coming to Britain from the EU has forced it to turn to more expensive agency nurses.

Responding to H/2’s proposal, Terra Firma said: “We stand ready to agree the transfer of our interest [...] to the creditors for a nominal sum as part of this restructuring.”

Spencer B Haber, H/2 Capital’s chairman and chief executive, said: “We firmly believe that with the right stewardship, enterprises like Four Seasons best serve their investors when they best serve their residents. Responsible private capital understands the primacy of resident care and peace of mind for their families.

He said Four Seasons staff were “more than capable of setting an example here, right across the social care community. While we share a mission with these talented individuals, it is their role – and not ours – that holds the consequence and the challenge.

“We just need to do the easy part, which is to enable them by providing the bedrock of financial stability, aligned incentives, and a fair cost of capital that enables the Group to carry out the solemn responsibility of caring for 17,000 vulnerable people.”

The real estate company, which has no significant investments in healthcare or in the UK, is proposing to install Baroness Ford as Four Seasons chairman.

The cross-bench peer served as chairman of Grove Limited, the holding company of Barchester Healthcare, between 2012 and 2015.

She has also been a director of energy regulator Ofgem, the Scottish prison service and chaired the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

The Care Quality Commission, a division of the Department of Health that regulates and inspects health and social care services, said it was monitoring the situation closely.

Speaking last month, after Four Season’s original rescue plan was proposed, the CQC said the firm’s effort to refinance itself “would provoke some anxiety but is an important step in securing the long-term financial future of this company”.

Output: Four Seasons, the UK’s second-largest care home provider, is to be taken over by privately-owned US hedge fund and property investor H/2 Capital. Four Seasons, which has debts of £525m ($689m) and is responsible for 17,000 elderly and vulnerable people, has struggled due to state funding cuts, increased costs resulting from the national living wage and the loss of European Union nurses in the wake of the Brexit vote. The company is owned by Terra Firma, the private equity group belonging to multi-millionaire Guy Hands. The Care Quality Commission, which regulates and inspects care homes, is monitoring the situation.


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Input:
Department of Defense looks to shift medical authority from FDA
 FDA officials counter that creating a new pathway to approve drugs is both risky and — in the specific case cited by Thornberry — not needed. “FDA has been working closely with DoD to bring freeze-dried plasma to our troops and anticipates that these products will be fully approved for safe and effective use for our armed forces as early as 2018,” an FDA official told POLITICO.

Section 732 of the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act creates a new regulatory structure that would allow the Pentagon to sign off on unapproved devices and drugs for emergency use on military personnel and others in harm’s way. The bill is in conference committee with final language expected as early as this week.

FDA currently has sole authority to authorize drugs and devices for emergency use.

“It’s unprecedented,” said one Democratic aide who works on medical safety issues. “We’ve never had a process for where an individual agency could [approve] drugs and devices ... for its own use” and outside of the FDA. “It’s a massive shift.”

The language states that DoD would be able to approve “emergency uses for medical products to reduce deaths and severity of injuries caused by agents of war.” For instance, DoD could approve the use of freeze-dried plasma, which the department has repeatedly said can save the lives of military personnel who have suffered blood loss on the battlefield. While a small number of elite soldiers currently are deployed with access to freeze-dried plasma, the product is still awaiting full FDA approval, which hadn’t been expected until 2020.

“Traditional pathways to [FDA] approval and licensure of critical medical products, like freeze dried plasma, for battlefield use are too slow to allow for rapid insertion and use of these products on the battlefield,” according to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s conference report, defending its recommendation of the provision. “The committee believes this provision could lead to even higher survival rates from severe battlefield wounds suffered by servicemembers.”

But because the report language is so broad — for instance, “agents of war” isn’t a legal definition — staff say that it would open the door for the military to approve a wide range of products and treatments. For instance, DoD could plausibly approve a vaccine for soldiers who come down with the flu while deployed, one congressional aide said.

The conference language would create two safeguards. First, a new DoD committee of health care experts, appointed by the Defense secretary, would need to recommend emergency use of an unapproved drug or device. Second, the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs would need to authorize the drug’s or device’s use after consulting with FDA.

But congressional aides and HHS staff say those standards don’t measure up to current safety practices. Rather than base a drug or device approval on years of safety and efficacy evaluations, it “leaves the decision up to a five-man committee,” said one individual with knowledge of how the DoD committee would be staffed. The Pentagon also could ignore FDA’s advice as necessary.

Staff on congressional committees with health jurisdiction say they were blindsided by the language, backed by Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), and have fought to remove it. But the provision is expected to remain, one individual with knowledge of the deliberations said on Monday afternoon. A Senate aide noted that it has bipartisan support from defense lawmakers.

Congressional staff involved in crafting the NDAA also defended the process of preparing the conference report. Three House Energy and Commerce Committee members — Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Texas Republican Joe Barton — were appointed to help negotiate Section 732, among other provisions in the bill that affect their jurisdictions.

HHS has warned Congress that the provision would undermine decades of existing protections and processes. For instance, DoD wouldn’t have access to FDA’s data, which means a decision could be made based on limited information provided by a drug or device manufacturer. DoD also wouldn’t be collecting safety and efficacy data in the same way as FDA.

FDA offered an alternative proposal, which would have expedited drug and device reviews and approval upon a DoD request, but the language wasn’t accepted.

FDA would not comment on the agency’s reported concerns with the bill. “The FDA does not generally comment on pending or potential legislation,” spokesperson Jen Rodriguez said.

Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.

Output: The US Department of Defense may gain the power to approve drugs and medical devices under a proposed bill. Critics have said that Section 732 of the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act could "undermine" medical safety and potentially increase the risk for soldiers, but the bill's backers have said that the move is necessary and long overdue. The FDA said that introducing a new method of approving drugs could be "risky", since it empowers the Pentagon to authorise the use unapproved drugs and devices on military personnel.


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CVS plans next-day prescription drug delivery service
 Anxiety over such a market upheaval is said to have partly driven CVS to enter into talks with Aetna, the large health insurer, over a potential acquisition. Larry Merlo, the president and chief executive of CVS Health, did not discuss the potential deal in a call with analysts on Monday.

Free delivery will be available “within hours” for prescription drug orders, as well as a “curated selection of over-the-counter products” in Manhattan beginning Dec. 4, the company said. Same-day delivery would expand to Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco early next year. Next-day delivery, from local stores, would become available in the rest of the country.

A CVS spokeswoman, Erin Pensa, said delivery fees outside of Manhattan will vary by location, and have not yet been made public. She also said the company’s delivery partner has not been announced, but “we’ve been able to use our scale to negotiate low-cost, affordable options for all CVS Pharmacy customers.”

“Our goal is to meet the needs of all of our customers wherever, however and whenever they want,” Helena Foulkes, executive vice president of CVS Health and president of CVS Pharmacy, said in a statement Monday.

CVS said Monday that retail sales, which include prescription sales, fell 2.7 percent in the third quarter, although that was offset by the performance of its pharmacy services business, which manages drug benefits for employers and insurers. That unit saw revenues increase by 8.1 percent. Overall, third-quarter revenues increased by 3.5 percent, or $1.6 billion, to $46.2 billion, compared to the third quarter of 2016.

Output: CVS Health has announced plans deliver prescription drugs to customers from next year, in a bid to challenge Amazon's predicted expansion in the the sector. Deliveries will be next-day, with some larger locations even offering a same-day service. The company's retail sales decreased in Q3 2017, largely due to fallout from the three hurricanes the US endured. CVS is also entering discussions with health insurer Aetna regarding a potential acquisition deal.


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PayPal said ready to launch Indian payment services
 Currently PayPal Is Operational In India Only For Cross-border Digital Payments

Global digital payments player PayPal is expected to offer domestic payment services in India from next week, as per sources close to the development. With its new service in India, PayPal is expected to act as a payment aggregator and work with banks to offer digital payment services to its customers.

The source stated that PayPal has tied up with a dozen merchants to start off operations in India, wherein during the online checkout process customers will be shown the PayPal payment option. PayPal, with its set of expertise, could also drive digital payments at merchant locations, which are still predominantly card or cash.

However, an email query sent to a PayPal spokesperson elicited the following response, “The story is speculative and PayPal does not comment on market speculations and rumors.”

PayPal And The Exploding Digital Payments Space In India

For now, PayPal is operational in India only for cross-border payments for small merchants, entrepreneurs and freelancers selling goods and services abroad. In August 2016, it announced the launch of PayPal.me – a new peer to peer payment feature which allows users to receive payment via the click of a link in a fast, convenient and personalised way.

If the development proves to be true, it will see yet another global player entering the digital payments market in India which is getting overcrowded with domestic and global companies. If PayPal brings in its domestic payment services, then it would have to battle market leader Paytm, along with players like Google’s Tez, WhatsApp, Flipkart-owned Phonepe, Mobikwik, and Amazon Pay.

Unlike India, in the US, the company has an expanded suite of offerings, including a payment gateway business, peer-to-peer payments, merchant payments, remittances, and retail offline transactions. The company also has a credit product there named PayPal Credit.

In India, however, it might only introduce merchant payments, to begin with. While it has not applied for a prepaid payments instrument (PPI) licence from Reserve Bank of India to operate a digital wallet, but it could use the Unified Payments Interface infrastructure through banks to facilitate domestic payments.

The global player has slowly been adding to its repertoire in India. Strengthening its leadership team in India, last year the company appointed its former technology head for Asia-Pacific, Anupam Pahuja, as its Managing Director for India. In July, it hired LendingClub’s former vice president of finance, Gunjan Shukla, as Chief Financial Officer for its India business. This was followed by the appointment of Siddharth Dhamija, previously Chief Growth Officer at Razorpay, as its head of growth and large merchant acquisition in India in September.

The digital payments player also grabbed headlines when it was said to be in the race to acquire 25% stake in FreeCharge for $200 Mn in December 2016. In August this year, it has announced the launch of two Technology Innovation Labs at the Chennai and Bengaluru Tech centres. The lab is the first by PayPal in India and the third after US and Singapore.

If PayPal does bring its entire range of payments services from North America to India, Indian audience will have yet another secure and safe way to make digital payments. And it will become yet another contender in the hotly contested digital payments turf in India, which as per the recent Google and Boston Consulting Group report, is projected to reach $500 Bn by 2020, contributing 15% to India’s GDP.

Output: PayPal is reportedly ready to roll out domestic payment services in India through tie-ups with local banks. The company currently only facilitates cross-border payments for small operators in the country but sources said it has already partnered with several merchants to enable online checkouts. PayPal has not confirmed the move.


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AI poses great danger to humanity: Stephen Hawking
 The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) could be the "worst event in the history of our civilization" unless society finds a way to control its development, high-profile physicist Stephen Hawking said Monday.

He made the comments during a talk at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in which he said, "computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence, and exceed it."

Hawking talked up the potential of AI to help undo damage done to the natural world, or eradicate poverty and disease, with every aspect of society being "transformed."

But he admitted the future was uncertain.

"Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it," Hawking said during the speech.

"Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy."

Output: The advent of artificial intelligence could be the "worst event in the history of our civilisation" unless precautions are taken, according to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. Despite the technology's many potential benefits, it could bring about humanity's destruction, said Hawking, citing autonomous weapons systems and "new ways for the few to oppress the many" as specific concerns. To avoid this outcome, best practice guidelines and "effective management" must be employed, said Hawking; he pointed to recent European legislation as a step not the right direction.


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China's AI ambitions far exceed those of regional rivals
 TOKYO -- In what might be regarded as testament to China's keen interest in artificial intelligence, two of the country's universities were among the leaders in a list showing sources of the most frequently cited research papers in the AI field.

The list, compiled from an analysis of scholarly publications by The Nikkei and Elsevier -- the Amsterdam-based giant of academic publishing -- was created by counting the number of research papers that were cited between 2012 and 2016. A high citation count is generally considered to be an indicator of research quality.

Output: Chinese universities are far outpacing their Asian rivals when it comes to AI research. In a recent list of the top 100 most-cited research papers on AI globally, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the third most-cited institution on AI research, with Microsoft in first place. China's regional rivals came far behind, with Japan and South Korea's highest entries at 64th and 97th places respectively. China has recently lured back talent from the US, offering massive financial incentives to work in a thriving, competitive environment, and of the top 100 institutions, 15 are Chinese.


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The healthcare of tomorrow will move away from hospitals
 The question of what the healthcare of tomorrow will look like prompts a broad, compelling thought experiment. As healthcare professionals of all stripes gathered in downtown Washington, D.C., last week to discuss that very question, a few key ideas emerged.

Here are the most interesting ideas Healthcare Dive found at U.S. News & World Report's Healthcare of Tomorrow conference.

Care is moving back into the patient’s home

Health systems that embrace the patient movement toward consumerism are on the right track, according to several speakers at the conference. Locating services in a patient’s home or somewhere close by and easily accessible is more convenient for patients, but also produces more comprehensive and effective care.

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini (who, despite some clever questioning from the moderator, declined to comment on “market speculation or rumor” that the payer could be acquired by CVS) said the home is the least expensive and most convenient setting for care. If it can’t be in the home, it should be at a retail clinic only a few miles away, he said.

“If you have to go to the hospital, we have failed you. What if that were the way the system was designed?” he said.

One key way the home can become a primary setting for healthcare is through telemedicine. This is particularly true in rural areas, where a patient may have to drive hours to get to their doctor’s office. And it will become more and more common as telemedicine becomes more widely adopted and stops being perceived as a separate category from “regular” care.

“The novelty of telehealth has fallen by the wayside,” said Christopher Northam, vice president for telehealth at HCA. “There used to be a lot more focus on the technology. Now the focus is on clinical measurement.”

Younger people are a big part of the drive toward consumerism in healthcare, and they want to receive care at their homes, Northam said. “That will shut down hospitals,” he added.

Dr. David Tsay, associate CIO at the New York-Presbyterian Innovation Center, agreed and said a lot of changes will take place in the next 10 years. “I think hospitals will look very, very different,” he said. “Hospitals will primarily be ICUs and ORs, and the rest of care will be done in the convenience of the home.”

Bertolini said ultimately it will come down to what patients demand as consumers, so creating a compelling and enjoyable experience will be key. “Us as customers — as consumers — disrupt the industry. Because we say we no longer want that, we want this.”

Conversion to value-based care continues — but at a glacial pace

HHS under President Donald Trump has walked back some of the previous administration’s payment reform efforts. Although CMS is vocal that it wants to continue the shift from volume to value, the recently finalized Quality Payment Program rule for 2018 indicates otherwise considering the large amount of physicians the administration is exempting from the regulation. Still, albeit slowly, the industry continues to embrace this shift toward value-based care.

The openness to change has resulted in olive branches being extended across the industry as incumbents look to figure out business in the shifting environment. The result is a mix of strategic partnerships and alliances as the lines between traditional healthcare companies begin to blur.

Biotech company Amgen partnered with Humana for an outcomes-based research project that will identify high-risk patients using technology and real-world data, Dr. Jason Spangler, executive director of value, quality and medical policy at Amgen, shared at a keynote panel. “We believe these types of partnerships are where we need to be moving to provide value to patients.”

Providers may be slower to adapt to value-based care. Lori Evans Bernstein, co-founder and COO at HealthReveal, said potential customers are discussing value but also want the ability “to find the good stuff" like reimbursable procedures under a fee-for-service model.

Tom X. Lee, executive chairman at One Medical, said innovating from within the system is challenging. “We operate as if we’re in a value-based world today though the vast majority of our income is still fee-for-service,” Lee said. One Medical, a group of primary care offices that offers 24/7 connectivity with patients through video and chat services, engages with the industry at the primary care layer. This allows it to operate a little outside the system somewhat. He said organizations operating further downstream have a harder time finding such opportunities.

Julie Bietsch, VP of population health management at Dignity Health, told Healthcare Dive the industry is at a tipping point for value-based efforts. About 10% of Dignity’s revenue is accrued from population health or value-based arrangements. “I think that those not investing in population health are going to be the ones left behind,” she said, adding providers need to take the first step toward population health. “If you don’t, you won’t know what happens when it’s mandated.”

Lee believes more changes are coming in the next five to 10 years in care delivery. While the market has spent a lot of time building platforms, apps and services, he sees more changes over improving the virtualized and service experiences coming into healthcare. In addition, he sees more remote care delivery models as an oncoming disruptive force.

“Those are going to be care systems of the future … I don’t think anyone denies that vision,” Lee told Healthcare Dive. “The question is, who’s going to execute it best? Easier said than done.”

Spangler said he believes the industry could benefit from more care delivery and payment innovations. “One area I think we need to move toward is value-based insurance design,” he said during a keynote panel. “We should pay and incentivize patients toward high value care and disincentivize them against low value care.”

In healthcare, there are no shortage of opinions, and discussions around value-base care will continue. Expect them to get more vocal.

Social determinants of health — a trend that needs direction

“Everyone’s talking about social determinants but no one’s talking about how to do it,” Bietsch told Healthcare Dive.

Social determinants have been a popular topic as evidence mounts that food security and affordable housing help create good health outcomes. However, there isn’t a centralized assessment of the issue, Bietsch said. For example, if an individual tells seven people that they need a home but no one helps, then the process is inefficient.

Social determinants of health and "understanding about how they drive our health" are currently buzzword concepts in the industry, she said. “But the success of it is not there.”

Bertolini is a proponent of thinking about social determinants at every level of healthcare. He noted that a person’s ZIP code is often a bigger indication of life expectancy than their genetic code, and ignoring that reality results in an incomplete approach.

He said it makes sense for payers to be thinking about social determinants of health because that’s how diseases can be prevented and savings can be realized. “Paying for a ramp, an Uber ride, food, fuel assistance is cheaper than one ER visit,” he said.

Progress requires bipartisanship

Calling for bipartisan agreement in D.C. is nothing new and hardly controversial, but at Healthcare of Tomorrow, it was an urgent demand. Budget deals are far from clear, the Children’s Health Insurance Program has still not been reauthorized and rumblings of “repeal and replace” continue despite the unlikeliness that any such legislation could gain traction. This environment breeds more and more uncertainty, which is toxic to the healthcare environment.

Bertolini said major social programs need broad support to be successful, and Congress should shift from the idea of abandoning the ACA and work together to improve upon it. “We can fix it. The list is short,” he said. “We just need a group of people with level heads in the room to fix it.”

Legislation of the magnitude and scope of the ACA isn’t going to be perfect right out of the gate, and the problem even proponents recognize will only get worse with inattention, he said. “If you were to leave Medicare alone for six years, seven years, it would fall apart just like this is,” he said.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe had a similar message. “We’ve just got to shake up the system and we’ve got to do it together,” he said. McAuliffe said CHIP reauthorization is the most pressing issue today, and lamented that “moms and dads are going to bed tonight scared to death” their children won’t have healthcare coverage.

He also criticized the White House’s decision to stop CSR payments, and said he personally talked to the Anthem CEO to convince the payer to cover nearly 60 counties in Virginia that would have otherwise not had any plan options.

“The middle is gone,” he said, “and I come from a business background, and the middle is where you get stuff done.”

Tom Daschle, former senator and the founder and CEO of The Daschle Group, said healthcare professionals need to make their voices heard in Congress by calling their legislators. “If you don’t know the name of ... their health legislation assistant, you’re not engaged,” he said.

Blair Childs, senior vice president for public affairs at Premier, said providers in particular need to lead change and tell lawmakers what is happening now in the market and where it needs to go. “Anyone thinks the healthcare system is going to be fixed by the government or by payers is crazy,” he said. “It’s only the providers who will innovate the system.”

Output: The US News & World Report's Healthcare of Tomorrow conference discussed the future of healthcare, narrowing down the trends into four main areas: a move towards home-based care; a greater focus on value-based care; greater awareness of the social determinants of health; and the growing need for bipartisan input. The first trend, home care provision for patients, offers more comprehensive, cost-effective services in a more convenient location for patients using technology. Telemedicine can offer rural patients increased access, and is likely to be more common as a general health care channel once it is more widely used as a “regular” care path. Growing consumerism in healthcare has led to a greater focus on keeping health care at home for convenience. The change to a more value-based care system, however, has taken some time to implement. The CMS has finalized the Quality Payment Program regulation for next year, but this exempts a significant number of doctors. Private healthcare companies are partnering to offer technology and data-driven, value-based care options. Medical companies find it difficult to innovate, as the system presents as a value-based one, while still functioning as fee-for-service in terms of business income. However, the general opinion within health management organizations is that care delivery will be revolutionized within the next five to ten years through virtualized and technology-based services, offered through platforms, apps and services. Remote care delivery models could also disrupt the present system. Value-based insurance is also an area where patients can be incentivized, moving them away from lower-value care. Social determinants are an increasingly important area of focus, as evidence grows that issues such as food security, affordable housing and more affect the changes in good health outcomes. Payers should be considering how social determinants affect health as it could help to prevent issues before they arise, creating savings for ER departments and other emergency healthcare points. The final trend is the increasing call on forming bipartisan agreements for healthcare. The difficulties that recently arose with the “repeal and replace” agenda of the present administration, as well as the ongoing budget issues, create uncertainty that leads to an unstable healthcare environment. Major social programs require the support of all political groups to succeed, with healthcare advocates calling for Congress to abandon the idea of reforming the Affordable Care Act and to actively work across parties to improve it.


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UK firm Keoghs launches AI lawyer to work with insurers
 North West Business Richard Frost

Keoghs has launched what it claims is the first true AI lawyer to hit the insurance market, which the Bolton-headquartered law firm believes will revolutionise the way in which insurers interact with their legal providers.

Keoghs' AI lawyer Lauri will initially handle avoidable litigation cases, providing insurers with transformative speed and ease of service, and handing the power back to handlers while reducing cost, the firm said. Lauri can settle cases back to insurers within seconds of the instructing email being sent.

As Lauri communicates directly via email using natural language processing, there is no need for handlers to log into old-fashioned legal portals, ensuring no change in communication other than the improved speed and efficiency with which an outcome is provided.

Keoghs said that not only does this make Lauri the first truly automated AI insurance lawyer launched to the market, it also means that insurers do not need to grapple with new technologies or systems, avoiding duplication, re-keying and providing greater efficiency in the way that claims are managed.

Rather than using separate systems and processes as a standalone AI package, moreover, Lauri interacts with Keoghs' case management system Tracker. This means that Lauri's abilities can be applied across a range of claim types and services in the future.

Keoghs partner and director of product development Dene Rowe said: "There has been a lot of talk in the industry over the last year or two regarding AI, in particular solutions being discussed that almost hijack the true meaning of artificial intelligence. Our approach is to bring a true game-changer to market, a solution that is fully automated and robotic in nature but importantly delivers a quantum leap in speed, efficiency and cost reduction.

"Additionally, we did not want to simply bring a DIY litigation portal-based system to market that would create duplication and inefficiencies in our clients' own businesses. For AI to be embraced, there has to be a benefit for our clients, and replicating a human interaction with no extra systems, logins or processes is crucial. With Lauri, the claims handler simply communicates through email as they generally would at present with human lawyers.

"At Keoghs we say Lauri is the future, better handled; but this new member of our team shows that the future is already here."

Keoghs is backed by mid-market private equity firm LDC.

Output: UK multi-office law firm Keoghs has claimed it has launched the first real AI lawyer, Lauri, which it believes could completely change how insurers work with their law firms. Lauri can respond to an email in seconds, providing help on avoidable litigation cases, which it can handle with "transformative speed, efficiency and cost reduction" in comparison with a human operator. The technology is highly adaptable as Lauri uses a natural language processor. "For AI to be embraced, replicating a human interaction with no extra systems, logins or processes is crucial," said Keoghs partner Dene Rowe.


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Intel and AMD partnership takes on Nvidia's AI chip dominance
 Nvidia is the biggest name in graphic processing units, the fast, powerful computer chips originally created for video games that are increasingly behind many artificial-intelligence projects. Other chipmakers are scrambling to catch up, going so far as to partner with companies that had been their fierce rivals.

The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported Monday that Intel and AMD are working together on a new laptop chip meant to challenge Nvidia’s dominance. The chip will use an Intel processor and an AMD graphics unit and is designed to be “thin and lightweight but powerful enough to run high-end video games.” And if it’s good enough for video games, it’s likely to be good enough for many AI applications.

This is not Intel’s first effort to take on Nvidia. Intel bought Nervana, Movidius, and Mobileye in the last two years to expand its artificial-intelligence expertise. In September, the company revealed a neuromorphic chip, a new type of chip technology that is based on the human brain. It’s largely untested, but Intel is hoping to validate the neuromorphic approach by working with universities and research institutions on a product that could launch sometime next year. In October, it unveiled the Nervana Neural Network Processor family, a set of chips meant for data centers. Nvidia is still a small provider for data centers compared with Intel—but it has been creeping up, with sales tripling in 2017 to $1 billion.

Companies that aren’t traditionally chip manufacturers are also getting into the game. Google has Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), IBM is working on a chip. and Apple rolled one out recently, too. Much as Intel made a fortune becoming the dominant chipmaker for computers in the 20th century, the prize of being the chief hardware provider for the artificial-intelligence revolution is the kind of thing corporate legacies are made of—oh, and there’s a ton of money to be made, too.

Output: Intel is making another bid to take on chip manufacturer Nvidia by partnering with AMD to produce a new laptop chip. According to the Wall Street Journal, the "thin and lightweight but powerful" chip will be good enough for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, a sector where Nvidia has dominated. In September, Intel unveiled its neuromorphic chip, which has a possible launch date of next year, and over the past two years acquired Movidius, Nervana and Mobileye to expand its AI capabilities. Nvidia's sales in 2017 have tripled to $1bn.


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Grid Edge makes early-investor Sean Reel a non-executive director
 LONDON, November 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Grid Edge Ltd, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the energy costs of commercial buildings, announces the appointment of Sean Reel as Non-Executive Director.

Sean is an early stage investor in Grid Edge and brings a depth of previous boardroom experience with him including roles as Chairman, CEO and Non-Executive Director of public companies, as well as a judge and mentor for Richard Branson's Voom investments. He has also held a range of senior roles in Boots Plc., IPC Media and Haymarket. Sean is an active investor in over fifty companies with a particular interest in early stage companies.

Sean Reel commented:

"I am pleased to join the Board of this high growth business that help clients apply proven artificial Intelligence technologies to significantly reduce the energy and Co2 footprint of their buildings."

Tom Anderson, CEO, Grid Edge said:

"During this time of high growth, we are pleased to be able to benefit from Sean's experience of spearheading major strategic change and transformation in a range of business sectors. His experience is invaluable as Grid Edge continues to play leading role in the UK's £55 Billion smart energy revolution."

About Grid Edge

Grid Edge is a leading player in the Smart Energy sector using proven artificial intelligence technologies to reduce the energy costs of commercial buildings. Formed as a spinout company from Aston University, it is an early stage technology company that has developed artificial intelligence (AI) software that empowers commercial energy consumers to intelligently control and optimise their building energy loads. Their innovative AI software deploys predictive machine-learning algorithms and advanced data analytics to reduce energy costs, cut carbon emissions and unlock the revenue-generating potential of the customer's flexible energy assets.

For further information please visit http://www.gridedge.co.uk/

Output: Grid Edge, an AI-based company that reduces commercial building energy costs, has hired Sean Reel as a non-executive director. Reel invested in the early stages of the company and is actively invested in more than 50 companies, largely in their early stages. Tom Anderson, the CEO of Grid Edge, stated that Reel will be "invaluable as Grid Edge continues to play leading role in the UK's £55bn smart energy revolution". Grid Edge began as an Aston University project that uses predictive artificial intelligence and data analytics to cut energy expenses and lower emissions.


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Amazon tests separate API for brands in Amazon Marketing Services
 Amazon is beta testing an application programming interface for Amazon Marketing Services, the part of its ad business that encompasses self-served Amazon ads, including its paid search platform.

There has been an API for sponsored products reserved for sellers, but the company is now testing a separate API for brands, said an Amazon spokesperson, adding that the goal is to eventually have as much offered at a self-service and customizable level for advertisers as possible.

This development is notable, according to multiple agency buyers interviewed by Digiday. The API, which has been expected since this summer, will provide a “systematic approach to adjusting and reporting campaigns and offer capabilities to automate the ways campaigns work,” according to one buyer.

About 55 percent of online shoppers start product searches on Amazon, according to estimates by the oft-cited personalization company BloomReach. Paid search is a big part of the ad business — and adding an API that will connect it with the information and tools brands and agencies want would make it more powerful. “They have a super extensive paid search program, but tools for creating campaigns and reporting and monitoring campaigns are still basic. Any marketer wants capability or more data,” said one ad buyer.

It’s unclear who has access to the API, but one agency said eligibility depends on a combination of factors, including AMS spend.

“[Amazon] is throttled by the lack of an API,” said another buyer. “There’s so much less you can do without it.”

The company also made an API for Amazon Media Group widely available in the summer, and at the time, agencies said they expected a similar development for AMS. The API offered in beta covers Amazon Sponsored Products as well as headline search ads that lets brands programmatically manage campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, bids and budgets. “In addition, detailed reporting allows you to pull performance data to analyze sales and investments,” reads Amazon’s page explaining the API for sponsored ads.

At another holding company-owned media-buying agency, an executive said it’s had early access to an AMS API since early this year, but the agency was focused mostly on data aggregation and reporting, not optimizing. A week ago, API access was opened to headline search ads, and this executive said Amazon is moving product display ads to programmatic because it’s “less performance-driven.” “We have a wish list with Amazon,” said this executive. “We’re looking for more data, more sales-performance information; we want to be able to consolidate it when we run multiple campaigns.

This is another sign of growth for Amazon’s programmatic ad business, which has slowly but surely made progress in its offerings all year. In late August, Amazon opened up and evolved self-service for AMG, the group internal to Amazon that is more like a traditional ad buy that can include video across Kindle, sponsorships, displays and even out of home on delivery trucks. In June, it launched Advertiser Audiences, a self-serve audience-matching platform that is like Google and Facebook and lets brands build audience segments based on Amazon data.

APIs have proven to be critical to scale an ad platform. APIs let platforms compete against more mature platforms like Google and Facebook. Take Pinterest, which took a long time to put out an API, not doing so until 2015, a move that hurt it. And Snapchat, which launched an API in 2016 to let brands and agencies finally scale their ad buys.

The Amazon API is not yet widely available; one buyer said Amazon will open it to everyone in the industry early next year. It’s a pretty significant step for Amazon’s ad business. As a behemoth, Amazon is poised to break up the Google and Facebook duopoly in advertising. Between AMG and AMS, Amazon offers what both Facebook and Google provide.

The problem is that Amazon’s offerings still lack the sophistication from the back end. Agency execs have been known to compare Google to a Lamborghini and Amazon to an old, automatic car. Improvements are coming — the self-serve option on AMG and other moves like Advertiser Audiences, for example — but an API for paid search would position Amazon favorably with Google and in a good position to take market share away from it. AMS is strategically important for the company: Open to first-party vendors (not third-party sellers, who can use sponsored products and headline search ads and that too only if they’re in Amazon’s “brand registry program”), the program is now giving promotional credits to brands that sign up before Dec. 31 for a new AMS account that will expire at the end of January next year.

Amazon reported two weeks ago that in the third quarter, “other” revenue, which is mostly composed of ad sales (and to a much smaller extent, its credit card business), grew 58 percent year over year to $1.12 billion.

Output: Online retail giant Amazon is positioning itself to take on Google and Facebook's advertising duopoly as it beta tests an application programming interface (API) for Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). The move has been welcomed by marketers, who have said Amazon is "throttled" by the lack of an API. This comes following the release of Amazon Media Group's API in the summer. It is rumoured that AMS spend will be a factor in deciding which brands will have access to the API.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Austin making the Lone Star state a test-bed for US solar storage
 A battery storage project is planned for the Mueller neighbourhood, which hosts more than 250 rooftop solar installations. Image courtesy of Austin Energy.

Texas’s energy story may have been historically dominated by oil and gas, but that story is slowly beginning to change. The Lone Star State is inundated with renewable energy resources, with the largest wind and solar energy potential in the US. Indeed, Texas reached its 2025 Renewable Portfolio Standard goal of 10,000MW of new renewable energy capacity in 2010, 15 years early, and has consistently achieved green energy targets ahead of schedule ever since.

The vast majority of the state’s renewable energy success has been driven by wind power, in which Texas leads the nation with more than 20,000MW of installed wind capacity. Last year, wind accounted for more than 12% of Texan electricity production, powering the equivalent of 5.3 million homes.

Despite Texas’s size and the vastness of its solar resource (many cities in the state get a yearly average of 200 sunny days or more), solar power has lagged behind wind as a driver of its renewable energy growth. This can be partly explained by a less friendly business and legislative environment for solar in Texas, but also the discrepancy in end cost between solar and wind generation.

To help solar energy production catch up with its wind-based counterpart, efforts are ongoing in Texas to reduce the cost and improve the integration of solar power at the grid, commercial and residential scales. The key for solar as an intermittent energy source (like wind) is smart energy storage.

Austin SHINES

The key conundrum at the heart of greater renewables integration is grid reliability. Intermittent renewables such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels need to find a prominent place in energy mixes to meet decarbonisation goals, but as these technologies achieve greater penetration, there are risks that uneven power generation patterns could hamper grid function and market stability.

The US is already investing in smarter grid technologies through its Grid Modernization Initiative, but other programmes are zeroing in on renewables and energy storage in particular. The Department of Energy’s (DoE) Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) initiative is the first US federal effort specifically aimed at connecting renewables to storage technologies.

SHINES is funding the development and demonstration of integrated solar PV and energy storage systems that could better harmonise solar and reduce costs – the programme aims to move towards integrating solar plants with the grid at a system levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of less than 14¢ per KWh.

In January 2016, the DoE announced $18m in federal funding for six new integrated PV and storage projects across the US. The largest slice of the grants went to Austin Energy – America’s eighth-largest public utility with nearly half a million customers in the city of Austin, Texas and the surrounding area – to help fund the Austin SHINES project.

This initiative is in the process of developing and deploying integrated solar and storage projects in the utility’s jurisdiction, concentrating on three major themes – storage and PV projects at the utility scale, the commercial scale and the residential scale – as well as looking into new models and software systems to help reduce customer costs and balance supply and demand for distributed energy resources (DER).

Ramping up solar storage concepts

The Austin SHINES project is scheduled to run up to April 2019; the design phase has now been nearly completed, with the deployment phase just beginning and the demonstration phase set to kick off in April 2018.

“We will begin to see the assets on the ground in various applications,” says Austin Energy utility strategist Cameron Freberg. “A lot of the design phase consisted of establishing partners, contracting, fine-tuning value streams and an immense amount of planning and collaboration.”

The $4.3m award from the DoE, as well as $1m contributed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has helped to accelerate Austin Energy’s plans for DER optimisation. A large number of partners have been sourced for the project, from state-wide grid operator ERCOT to energy storage integrator Doosan GridTech and renowned tech firm and storage innovator Tesla.

“The funding for the Austin Energy SHINES system includes pairing energy storage on the residential, commercial and grid-scale levels,” Freberg says. “One will be connected to a community solar farm in East Austin. The second battery storage project is proposed for the Mueller neighbourhood, an equally important opportunity since the neighbourhood has over 250 existing residences and businesses with rooftop solar, more than 60 electric vehicle owners, smart loads and appliances throughout homes and energy efficient design for all buildings. Residential and commercial properties will also have battery storage systems connected to their solar arrays as part of the SHINES project.”

At the utility scale, on-site grid energy storage at solar power plants can help stabilise power distribution networks when dealing with intermittent supply, storing electricity when it’s not needed and dispatching it at periods of peak demand or at times when solar is not producing.

As for residential and commercial users, distributed solar on residential rooftops or on business properties can provide value to customers while adding more flexibility by making power supply less of a one-way street. “Commercial sites will partner with Austin Energy and install battery storage systems,” says Freberg. “SHINES incorporates two use-cases, aggregated and direct utility control, for direct comparison and added flexibility. Residential customers will have battery systems deployed and integrated with rooftop PV as part of the SHINES project.”

Answering key questions

So what exactly are the technical, environmental and economic benefits of distributed solar energy storage expected to be? These are the questions that Austin SHINES intends to answer.

“Energy storage can provide a lot of value to the electric grid and to our customers whether it is through increased reliability, integrating renewables,” Freberg says. “Prioritising where value can be obtained and capturing this value are two of the major goals of the Austin SHINES project. Customer value and utility value are one, so whatever benefits we can provide to the utility are good for the customer, and vice versa.”

In April, Austin Energy brought intelligent energy storage specialist Stem onboard the SHINES project to offer an aggregated fleet of customer-sited energy storage for commercial users in and around Austin. Initially Stem’s tech will be used to test how quickly storage systems can respond to an aggregator’s signal to dispatch and provide grid response services, but over time the fleet is intended to demonstrate the benefits of intelligent storage distributed over many businesses, both to the utility and for the energy bills of commercial customers.

“Where a business has on-site solar PV systems, Stem’s software and analytics tools will automatically manage those customers’ use of grid-supplied electricity against their solar production,” Stem said in an April statement. “For all customers in the network, Stem’s proprietary software will rapidly respond to spikes in electricity use, drawing on stored power to automatically reduce demand charge costs without requiring operational changes or manual input from the host.”

Obviously there are many challenges to overcome to realise the full potential of energy storage. Upfront capital costs are high while various storage technologies continue to move towards maturity, and the wide array of storage systems being developed throws up issues around interoperability with existing utility infrastructure and grid management architecture in this increasingly multi-faceted market.

Austin Energy is hoping to answer many of these questions with its exploratory approach, and Freberg emphasises extensive collaboration, open standards and pairing storage closely with solar at the source to help ease these growing pains.

It’s clear that energy storage is becoming a lynchpin technology to accelerate the deployment of renewable power generation while preserving grid equilibrium and security of supply. Austin is set to become a true test best for energy storage, and if it can act as a showcase for the benefits, it could set the solar storage template for other states to follow, especially in the sun-drenched south-west of the US.

“Energy storage improves the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity; it helps during emergencies like power outages from storms, equipment failures, accidents or other unforeseen circumstances,” says Freberg. “The game-changing nature of energy storage is its ability to balance power supply and demand instantaneously – within milliseconds – which makes power networks more resilient, efficient and cleaner than ever before.”

Output: Austin in Texas is becoming a leading test-bed for developing solar storage systems. The city's public energy company Austin Energy has received the largest grant from the US federal government's dedicated fund for encouraging such technologies. The Department of Energy has established the Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar (SHINES) initiative, which is spending $18m on six new integrated solar and storage projects across the US. Austin Energy has received more than $4m for its projects, which include residential, commercial and grid-scale storage facilities.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Pundi X to offer mobile cryptocurrency payments in Indonesia
 Business / Finance

Nov 04, 2017 | By Jonathan Ho

You might not realise this, but on 23 August 2017, a little known start-up named Pundi-Pundi with a plan to bring Alipay-style QR code payments to Indonesia raised US$4 million in their first round of Series A fund raising. Digital payments and mobile banking are not new concepts (pioneered by China’s Alipay 10 years ago) but as a way of selling and buying, QR code-payments through your smartphone is only mainstream in China. That said, Pundi-Pundi will now one-up Alipay with a brave new venture: Pundi X, a blockchain startup that aims to make cryptocurrencies an enabler of ubiquitous cashless payment environments across South East Asia.

Indonesia has Alipay QR-code Style Payments, Now Pundi X will offer seamless cryptocurrency payments in that market

The fast growing and investor-attractive Pundi-Pundi is a mobile payments and micro-loan startup banking on the blue ocean market of cashless environments in Southeast Asia. The US$4 million warchest fueled the company’s growth in its native Jakarta as well as position it to be a market leader in Indonesia, one of the biggest economies in the region. By launching Pundi X, a blockchain startup, the company is also expected to be the market leader for cashless payments using cryptocurrencies in Southeast Asia.

“Wallet” in Bahasa Pundi-Pundi had raised an angel round of capital investments in January 2017 to the tune of US$2 million followed by US$4 million in Series A fund raising. On 28 October 2017, cryptocurrency spin-off Pundi X raised fiat US$4 million through a pre-sale Initial Coin Offering garnering a total of 3,148 Ethereum (ETH), 613 Bitcoin (BTC) and 250,040 XEM .

That said, considering less than 30% of the population in Indonesia owning a debit card, but with the country on track to have 53% of its population to own smartphones in 2017, Pundi-Pundi has a definite business opportunity offering the ability to pay by scanning a QR code via a smartphone app. However, with Pundi X and a relatively blockchain tech ignorant population, they would be facing a slightly tougher challenge.

The conversion rate currently stands 1 ETH: 500 PXS. Renowned angel investors in the pre-sale ICO include David Lee Kuo Chuen, a Professor of Quantitative Finance and is an investor of ZCash, Qtum, TenX, InfoCorp and OmiseGo; and Lon Wong. the President of NEM.io Foundation (XEM coins are the 7th largest according the Coinmarketcap) and CEO of Dragonfly Fintech.

Pundi X aims to solve the last mile challenge for cryptocurrency purchases and sales. The company’s business builds on the existing Pundi-Pundi business model of cashless payment systems, which enables smartphone users to scan QR codes and makes instant payments in retail and restaurant outlets. Pundi-Pundi has already signed up more than 100,000 registered users and over 500 merchant partners in Jakarta in less than a year of operation.

Funds raised by the sale of PXS Tokens during the ICO period will be used to purchase Pundi X POS devices that will be installed in retail outlets enabling consumers to quickly and easily buy or sell cryptocurrency using fiat money (Dollars, Rupiah, Baht, etc.), bank card, mobile wallet or Pundi X Pass. Use of cryptocurrency to pay for utilities and other services will be subject to domestic regulations of each market.

The full public Initial Coin Offering (ICO) will commence on November 20, 2017. The target for this ICO is to raise 280,000 ETH which will help fund up to 700,000 Pundi X POS devices (approximately US$ 300 each with about US$ 30 million spent rolling out the first 100,000 devices. The remaining 600,000 devices will also be funded by sales proceeds from tokens and revenue from participating B2B merchants) to be installed over a three-year period in Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and other Asian markets. The pre-ICO cap for the Pundi X ICO is 5% or 14,000 ETH from a total ICO hard cap of 280,000 ETH.

Output: Mobile payments firm Pundi-Pundi has raised $4m in a series A funding round for the launch of its Pundi X blockchain payment service in Indonesia. Pundi X will use the blockchain to facilitate cashless payments using cryptocurrencies across southeast Asia using QR codes. The funding will challenge local rival Alipay by bolstering its growth in Jakarta and the wider Indonesian market. Pundi X has also raised $4m from a pre-sale initial coin offering for 3,148 ether, 613 bitcoin and 250,040 XEM, which will be used to install Pundi X PoS devices in retail outlets.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Church of England faces clergy calls to divest from ExxonMobil
 As Church of England clergy, we have a strong interest in the ethics of investments made by the Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board on our behalf.

This week, governments from around the world will meet in Bonn for the next round of UN climate talks. The Paris climate change agreement, which was signed by 195 countries in December 2015, included a commitment to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2C … and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.

A lot has happened since then. We have witnessed the shameful decision of the president of the United States to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Average global temperatures have risen to more than 1C above pre-industrial levels. Extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change, have had devastating impacts, leading to loss of life and severe destruction in the US and the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia and as close to home as Ireland.

We believe that churches and other investors can and should support the shift from fossil fuels to clean alternatives through their investment policies. Although the Church of England divested from companies involved in the extraction of coal and tar sands in 2015, it continues to hold significant investments in major oil and gas companies.

While many of us believe that the church should divest from all fossil fuel companies for ethical reasons, we are especially concerned about its continued investment in the US oil and gas company ExxonMobil.

A recent Harvard academic study shows that Exxon knew about the risks of climate change in the 1970s, yet misled the public for decades. It says that the company sought to cast doubt on the climate science, taking out paid editorials in major US newspapers questioning whether global warming was real and caused by humans. Exxon’s board of directors has advised shareholders to vote against all resolutions on climate change since 1990.

The financial risks of investing in fossil fuels are also increasing. A recent Carbon Tracker report, 2 Degrees of Separation, showed that five out of six major oil and gas companies are risking more than 30% of potential investments – with a value of $2.3 trillion – on projects that are not aligned with the Paris agreement targets. ExxonMobil risks wasting between 40% and 50% of its future spending.

Time is running out to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. While some governments and companies pursue policies that are leading us in the wrong direction, the Church of England is uniquely placed to show moral leadership through its investment policies.

Now is the time for decisive action. We call on Church of England investors to take the lead and immediately divest from ExxonMobil.

Bishop David Atkinson

Bishop Michael Doe

Bishop Maurice Sinclair

Bishop Graham Cray

Bishop James Jones

Richard Coles Peterborough

Olivia Graham Oxford

Sam Wells London

Tom Ambrose Ely

Christine Bainbridge Oxford

Richard Bainbridge Oxford

Michael Bayley Sheffield

Chris Brice London

Elizabeth Bussman Europe

Francis Buxton Wales

Ben Chase Winchester

Alan Crawley Guildford

Lesley Crawley Guildford

Barbara Doubtfire Oxford

Christopher Evans Oxford

John Flitcroft Birmingham

David Garner Birmingham

Giles Goddard Southwark

Chris Halliwell Blackburn

Keith Hebden Leicester

Margot Hodson Oxford

John Hughes Manchester

Francis Jakeman Oxford

Ian James Carlisle

Christine Latham Southwark

Andrew Lenox-Conyngham Birmingham

Jonathan Nicholas Birmingham

John Nightingale Birmingham

Bertrand Olivier London

Mike Perry Salisbury

Debby Plummer Leeds

Alan Race Southwark

Liz Radcliffe Oxford

Gordon Randall Winchester

Alex Randle-Bissell Winchester

Matthew Rhodes Birmingham

Ed Saville Blackburn

Rosemary Shaw Southwark

Tim Stead Oxford

Anne Stevens London

Val Thorne Gloucester

Julian Williams Winchester

Sonya Wratten St Albans

Andrew Yates Truro

Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Output: The Church of England should demonstrate “moral leadership” by divesting from ExxonMobil, according to a letter from a collection of bishops and other clergy published in The Guardian. The group argues accusations that ExxonMobil misled the public and funded climate change denial make its presence in the church’s £7.9bn ($10.4bn) investment fund inappropriate. A spokesman for the Church argued that it should remain a shareholder in order to exert influence on the company. On Monday, the church also launched new guidelines on investment in extractive industries, highlighting the potential harm such industries can cause to communities and the environment.