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Apple drops plans to build its own self-driving car
 These days, Apple's automotive ambitions are more modest. The company has put off any notion of an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle and is instead working on the underlying technology that allows a car to drive itself. Timothy D. Cook , the company's chief executive, said in an interview with Bloomberg in June that Apple is "focusing on autonomous systems."

SAN FRANCISCO — As new employees were brought into Apple 's secret effort to create a self-driving car a few years ago, managers told them that they were working on the company's next big thing: A product that would take on Detroit and disrupt the automobile industry.

The project's reduced scale aligns Apple more closely with other tech companies that are working on autonomous driving technology but are steering clear of building cars. Even Waymo, the Google self-driving spinoff that is probably furthest along among Silicon Valley companies, has said repeatedly that it does not plan to produce its own vehicles.

Five people familiar with Apple's car project, code-named "Titan," discussed with The New York Times the missteps that led the tech giant to move — at least for now — from creating a self-driving Apple car to creating technology for a car that someone else builds. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about Apple's plans.

A notable symbol of that retrenchment is a self-driving shuttle service that ferries employees from one Apple building to another. The shuttle, which has never been reported before, will likely be a commercial vehicle from an automaker and Apple will use it to test the autonomous driving technology that it develops.

The Apple Campus 2 is seen under construction in Cupertino, California in this aerial photo taken January 13, 2017.

Apple's testing vehicles will carry employees between its various Silicon Valley offices. The new effort is called PAIL, short for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, the address of the company's main office in Cupertino, Calif., and a few miles down the road from Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple's in-house shuttle service, which isn't operational yet, follows Waymo, Uber and a number of car companies that have been testing driverless cars on city streets around the world.

Apple has a history of tinkering with a technology until its engineers figure out what to do with it. The company worked on touch screens for years, for example, before that technology became an essential part of the iPhone.

But the initial scale of Apple's driverless ambitions went beyond tinkering or building underlying technology. The Titan project started in 2014, and it was staffed by many Apple veterans. The company also hired engineers with expertise in building cars, and not just the software that would run an autonomous vehicle.

It was a do-it-all approach typical of Apple, which prefers to control every aspect of a product, from the software that runs it to the look and feel of the hardware.

From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays.

The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lidar sensors normally protrude from the top of a car like a spinning cone and are essential in driverless cars. Apple, as always focused on clean designs, wanted to do away with the awkward cone.

Apple even looked into reinventing the wheel. A team within Titan investigated the possibility of using spherical wheels — round like a globe — instead of the traditional, round ones, because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement.

But the car project ran into trouble, said the five people familiar with it, dogged by its size and by the lack of a clearly defined vision of what Apple wanted in a vehicle. Team members complained of shifting priorities and arbitrary or unrealistic deadlines.

There was disagreement about whether Apple should develop a fully autonomous vehicle or a semiautonomous car that could drive itself for stretches but allow the driver to retake control.

Steve Zadesky, an Apple executive who was initially in charge of Titan, wanted to pursue the semiautonomous option. But people within the industrial design team including Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer, believed that a fully driverless car would allow the company to reimagine the automobile experience, according to the five people.

A similar debate raged inside Google's self-driving car effort for years. There, the fully autonomous vehicle won out, mainly because researchers worried drivers couldn't be trusted to retake control in an emergency.

Even though Apple had not ironed out many of the basics, like how the autonomous systems would work, a team had already started working on an operating system software called CarOS. There was fierce debate about whether it should be programmed using Swift, Apple's own programming language, or the industry standard, C++.

Mr. Zadesky, who worked on the iPod and iPhone, eventually left Titan and took a leave of absence from the company for personal reasons in 2016. He is still at Apple, although he is no longer involved in the project. Mr. Zadesky could not be reached for comment.

Last year, Apple started to rein in the project. The company tapped Bob Mansfield, a longtime executive who over the years had led hardware engineering for some of Apple's most successful products, to oversee Titan.

Mr. Mansfield shelved plans to build a car and focused the project on the underlying self-driving technology. He also laid off some hardware staff, though the exact number of employees dedicated to working on car technology was unclear.

More recently, the team has grown again, adding personnel with expertise in autonomous systems, rather than car production.

Apple's headlong foray into autonomous vehicles underscores one of the biggest challenges facing the company: finding the next breakthrough product. As Apple celebrates the iPhone's 10th anniversary, the company remains heavily dependent on smartphone sales for growth. It has introduced new products like the Apple Watch and expanded revenue from services, but the iPhone still accounts for more than half of its sales.

In April, the California Department of Motor Vehicles granted Apple a test permit to allow the company to test autonomous driving technology in three 2015 Lexus RX 450h sport utility vehicles. There will be a safety driver monitoring the car during testing.

While many companies are pursuing driverless technology and see it as a game changer for car ownership and transportation, no one has figured out how to cash in yet.

With expectations reset and the team more focused, people on the Titan project said morale has improved under Mr. Mansfield. Still, one of the biggest challenges is holding onto talented engineers because self-driving technology is one of the hottest things in Silicon Valley, and Apple is hardly the only company working on it.

Output: Apple has shifted its attention away from developing commercially available autonomous vehicles, according to an article in the New York Times. Apple is now looking to work with car makers in order to offer its autonomous vehicle technology and has shelved plans to build its own self-driving car. The company is planning to use conventional vehicles fitted with autonomous technology to ferry employees back and forth at its Silicon Valley offices in both Palo Alto and Cupertino.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Apple drops plans to build its own self-driving car
 Apple is following the road taken by Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, and downshifting on its still-unannounced self-driving car project, according to a report in the New York Times.

The company has been working on its automotive technology under the internal code name “Project Titan” since at least 2014, and once intended to build its own vehicle from start to finish, creating a true “Apple Car”.

Now it’s put the car-building side of the project on hold, perhaps indefinitely, as it instead focuses on creating and perfecting the software and hardware necessary to get a self-driving car on the streets.

Apple is now planning on working with other car-makers to get its self-driving tech into the garages and driveways of customers, according to the paper. One upcoming example of that collaboration: an autonomous shuttle service that will ferry employees back and forth between the company’s Silicon Valley offices in Palo Alto and Cupertino.

That project, which will use conventional cars with self-driving kit bolted on, is known as “Pail”, standing for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, the street address of the company’s main campus. The name highlights the delays in the project, since Apple’s main campus is already in the process of being moved to Apple Park, an enormous ring-shaped office down the road.

It’s a similar switch to that announced by Waymo in December 2016. Then, as the company announced its new name and status, separate from Alphabet’s X labs, it also revealed it was partnering with car firms, starting with Fiat Chrysler, to provide the bodies to go with its brains.

“We are a self-driving technology company,” Waymo’s incoming chief executive John Krafcik said. “We’ve been really clear that we’re not a car company, although there’s been some confusion on that point. We’re not in the business of making better cars. We’re in the business of making better drivers.”

As recently as August that year, the company had been explicitly focused on building its own vehicle, and only releasing its creations to the public when they were capable of full automation, also known as “level-five” automation.

That is the tier of competence at which a car can travel from A to B without ever needing human intervention, which engineers at the firm said was crucial for safety. They claimed relying on a human to take control in the rare situations they are required to is less, not more, safe, since it’s nearly impossible to force a passenger in an autonomous vehicle to remain alert enough to drive safely with a moment’s notice.

Apple did not respond to request for comment.

Output: Apple has shifted its attention away from developing commercially available autonomous vehicles, according to an article in the New York Times. Apple is now looking to work with car makers in order to offer its autonomous vehicle technology and has shelved plans to build its own self-driving car. The company is planning to use conventional vehicles fitted with autonomous technology to ferry employees back and forth at its Silicon Valley offices in both Palo Alto and Cupertino.


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Thousands of salmon escape from US farm, threatening native fish
 Thousands of Atlantic salmon may have escaped into Pacific waters after a net pen holding 305,000 of the fish was damaged at a farm in Washington state, leading wildlife officials to call for anglers to catch as many of the fish as possible.

The fish farm’s owner, Cooke Aquaculture, said on Wednesday that several thousand Atlantic salmon may have ended up in the waters around the San Juan Islands after part of a net suffered a “structural failure”.

The Canada-based company – which purchased the 30-year-old farm last year – blamed Saturday’s incident on “exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with this week’s solar eclipse”.

The company initially told wildlife officials that an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 of the fish in the net pen had escaped, but said that the exact number would be determined once tidal conditions improved enough to allow divers to fully assess the farm. On Wednesday, the company told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the number could be “much higher”.

“It appears that many fish are still contained within the nets,” the company said in a statement. “Farm crews are on site, working to stabilize the farm and to recover as many fish as possible, when conditions permit.”

Fishermen in the region – out hoping to catch Chinook salmon in recent days – said the Atlantic salmon had already been turning up in their nets. “It’s a devastation,” Ellie Kinley, whose family has fished Puget Sound for generations, told the Associated Press. “We don’t want those fish preying on our baby salmon. And we don’t want them getting up in the rivers.”

Despite being listed in Washington State as an invasive species capable of preying on native populations of fish and spreading disease, Atlantic salmon are a major aquaculture species in Washington state as well as in British Columbia.

Washington state’s fish and wildlife department said it was working closely with the company to address the incident. On Tuesday the department encouraged anglers to join them in the effort by catching as many of the fish – which weigh up to 4.5kg (10lb) as possible.

“Our first concern, of course, is to protect native fish species,” Ron Warren of the department said in a statement. “So we’d like to see as many of these escaped fish caught as possible.”

As environmentalists voiced concerns that the Atlantic salmon could crossbreed with the Pacific salmon or compete with them for food, researchers were divided on the potential impact.

“These things are kind of couch potatoes,” Michael Rust of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the Seattle Times. “They are domesticated. Imagine a dairy cow getting lost out in the Serengeti. It doesn’t last very long.”

Others warned that there was not enough research to confidently predict what might happen next. “Everybody wants to know, what does it mean? And the honest answer is we don’t know,” said John Volpe, a University of Victoria professor who has studied Atlantic salmon released in the Pacific. “Impact is definitely on the table. But it runs from something quite modest all the way to something very serious.”

He pointed to research he had done more than a decade ago which suggested that Atlantic salmon was capable of surviving, spawning and producing viable offspring in Pacific waters. But a dearth of research in recent years meant little was known about how well the fish had managed to establish themselves in the wild.

This weekend’s escape was large, but not unprecedented, he said, pointing to the deliberate release of Atlantic salmon on the west coast in the early 1900s. A 2001 memorandum from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted that during a three-year span in the late 1990s, some 600,000 Atlantic salmon had escaped into the Pacific.

But this latest incident is different, said Volpe, as it comes at a time when many Pacific salmon populations are struggling to survive against a backdrop that includes urbanisation and climate change.

“The last thing they need is yet one more challenge to their long term viability,” he said. “Given the very precarious state of most Pacific salmon populations – they’re basically teetering on the edge – you don’t need some catastrophic event to push them over. All they need is a nudge.”

Output: Thousands of Atlantic salmon may have escaped from a farm owned by Canadian company Cooke Aquaculture in the US’s Washington state after a net was damaged. The company, which blamed the escape on unusual tides and currents related to the solar eclipse, originally estimated that up to 5,000 fish may have escaped, but now admits the number could be “much higher”. The fish may have entered Pacific waters where they could prey on native species and spread disease. Anglers are being encouraged to assist by catching as many of the fish as possible.


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How nickel mining for EVs is costing the environment
 As countries the world over legislate to phase out petrol and diesel cars, attention is turning to the environmental impact of mining the materials needed for electric vehicle batteries.

This additional scrutiny has largely focused on ethical concerns with cobalt and lithium supply chains, despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s observation last year that the lithium ion batteries his vehicles use are mostly made of nickel and graphite, with lithium itself merely “the salt on the salad”.

But the extraction of nickel – predominately mined in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia and the Philippines – comes at an environmental and health cost.

Plumes of sulphur dioxide choking the skies, churned earth blanketed in cancerous dust, rivers running blood-red – environmental campaigners have painted a grim picture of the nickel mines and smelters feeding the electric vehicle industry.

The Philippines this year closed or suspended 17 nickel mines because of environmental concerns.

Miners struggling with low nickel prices have welcomed rising demand from an industry that the International Energy Agency estimates will deploy up to 70m electric vehicles by 2025 (pdf).

It is coming on too slowly for some – the Ravensthorpe mine in Western Australia became the latest in a long line of nickel projects to be marked for closure in September. But on the same day in the same state, Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton unveiled plans for a $43m (£33.5m) processing plant to supply 100,000 tonnes of nickel sulfate per year to the emerging battery market.

Carey Smith, a senior analyst at Alto Capital, says BHP Billiton has deep enough pockets to hold on for the electric vehicle boom, but notes it is only doing so after failing to sell its unprofitable Nickel West business due to an estimated A$1bn (£616m) in environmental clean-up liabilities.

“They’ve got 40 years worth of slag, which isn’t the cleanest material in world,” Smith says. “It needs to be disposed of carefully, burying it somehow or covering it with clay.”

South32, which spun-off from BHP Billiton in 2015, runs the Cerro Matoso mine in Colombia, where residents of nearby communities and mine workers have reported elevated rates of deformities and respiratory problems associated with exposure to pollution generated by nickel mining and smelting (pdf).

A BHP Billiton spokesperson told the Guardian all the company’s projects met environmental approval requirements.

Dr David Santillo, a senior scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories, says : “The mining of nickel-rich ores themselves, combined with their crushing and transportation by conveyor belt, truck or train, can generate high loadings of dust in the air, dust that itself contains high concentrations of potentially toxic metals, including nickel itself, copper, cobalt and chromium.

“We have to get smarter at recovering and reusing the vast quantities that we have already extracted from the earth, rather than relying on continued pursuit of new reserves of ever poorer quality and at substantial environmental cost.”

French carmaker Renault, producer of the Zoe, Europe’s best-selling electric vehicle in 2016, said that it recycles almost 70% of the battery weight, although did not specify what proportion of nickel is recycled.

Tesla claims that the nickel in its vehicles is 100% reusable at the end of life, but refused to disclose to the Guardian where the nickel in its car batteries is sourced from.

In a statement a Tesla spokesperson said suppliers were “three or four layers removed from Tesla. It is obviously quite difficult to have perfect knowledge about everything that happens this far down in the supply chain, but we’ve worked extremely hard to gather as much information as possible and to ensure that our standards are being met.”Robert Baylis, from the mining consultancy Roskill, says entering the electric vehicle supply chain will see nickel miners attract additional scrutiny over carbon emissions.

A 2009 study published in PLOS One concluded that the global warming potential of mining and processing nickel was the eighth highest of 63 metals over the previous year. However, a 2016 Union of Concerned Scientists study (pdf) found that the manufacture and operation of electric vehicles produced less than half the carbon emissions of comparable petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel has responded to pressure on carbon emissions and claims to have reduced its use of coal-fired energy by 49% in 2016 (pdf).

“It is of strategic importance to us as a key player in the supply chain that is enabling the growth of electric vehicles and clean energy solutions,” says Larisa Zelkova, vice-president at Norilsk Nickel.

The company has a lot of ground to make up – its home city of Norilsk is rated one of the most polluted cities in the world, thanks largely to the 350,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide emitted annually by the city’s nickel factory, which was decommissioned last year. In 2016, Norilsk Nickel made headlines when an overflow of oxidised nickel waste turned the city’s Daldykan river red.

Andy Whitmore of the London Mining Network, a coalition of anti-mining campaign groups, says nickel producers should sign up to international standards such as the Initiative on Responsible Mining Assurance.

“I am not sure that nickel has got the attention it deserves,” he says. “Although the mining industry has responded to its critics over the years, mainly we would argue by changes in policies rather than true change in practice, I don’t believe the pressure around [electric] cars has made a difference to date.”

Output: As adoption of electric vehicles becomes more widespread, the impact of mining the materials required is becoming increasingly apparent. The material is predominately mined in Australia, Canada, Russia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The process of mining nickel-rich ores generates significant amounts of waste material, such as slag and significant amounts of dust, containing copper, cobalt and chromium.


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Audi to put rooftop solar panels on future EVs
 Audi has revealed that it has developed some new solar technology with Chinese solar specialist Hanergy that will bring solar roofs to future cars in their electric vehicle range.

This new solar roof will give Audi’s electric vehicles and extended range and can be used for things like air conditioning heated seats and more.

Thin-film solar cells in panoramic glass roofs of Audi models: Audi and Alta Devices, a subsidiary of the Chinese solar-cell specialist, Hanergy, are working together on this development project. With this cooperation, the partners aim to generate solar energy to increase the range of electric vehicles. The first prototype is to be built by the end of 2017. As the first step, Audi and Hanergy want to integrate Alta Devices’ thin-film solar cells into a panoramic glass roof. In the future, almost the entire roof surface is to be covered with solar cells. The electricity they generate will flow into the car’s electrical system and can supply for example the air-conditioning system or the seat heaters – a gain in efficiency that has a direct positive impact on the range of an electric vehicle.

You can find out more information about these new solar panels that Audi will be using in their electric vehicles at the link below.

Source Audi

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Output: Audi has partnered with Chinese solar specialist Hanergy to develop new technology to put solar roofs on its electric vehicle (EV) range. It plans to integrate thin-film solar cells into a panoramic glass roof, to give Audi’s EVs an extended range and to power air conditioning and heated seats. The first prototype is expected to be built by the end of 2017.


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Uber bookings increase in Q2 despite string of scandals
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Uber on Wednesday reported a 16 per cent increase in quarterly bookings and a smaller loss than the previous period as the ride-services company showed signs of inching toward profitability.

The shrinking losses reflect Uber's efforts to rein in massive spending on subsidies for both drivers and customers even as it battles rivals in tough markets like South Asia.

The San Francisco-based company said it lost $645m in the second quarter, 9 per cent less than the $708m loss in the first quarter and 35 per cent less than the $991m loss in the fourth quarter of last year. For all of 2016, Uber lost about $3bn.

Read more Uber hikes taxi fare prices 80% in Hong Kong amid more legal battles

As a private company, Uber is not required to publicly report its financial results, but earlier this year it began offering a glimpse of its performance by disclosing certain numbers.

The continued growth in ridership suggests Uber's core business has so far weathered a string of scandals. But the scale of its losses are unprecedented in Silicon Valley and executives have declined to offer a timetable for profitability.

Uber is facing allegations of sexual harassment, a lawsuit alleging trade-secrets theft and a federal criminal probe over its use of software to evade city regulators, among other alleged misconduct.

Some investors have eyed Uber's $68bn valuation with scepticism, and four mutual fund investors disclosed this week that they had marked down the value of their Uber shares by as much as 15 per cent.

Uber said its gross ride bookings for the second quarter reached $8.7bn, up from $7.5bn in the first quarter. The number of global trips on its service increased 150 per cent over the previous year, with growth strongest in developing markets.

Those numbers include trips in Russia, where Uber last month merged its operations with local rival Yandex.

Adjusted net revenue, which reflects Uber's cut of ride fares, rose to $1.75bn from $1.5bn in the first quarter, Uber said.

Since 2010, Uber has raised more than $15bn from investors, allowing it to operate at a significant loss. The company said it has $6.6bn in the bank, down from around $7.2 bn in the first quarter.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 / 13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled – leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: “Europe’s largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid £3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, cautioned that Uber's reporting is selective and excludes parts of the business's financial model that may show the company in a less favourable light.

"There's clearly growth in the numbers reported by Uber here," Dawson said, but they should be taken "with a big pinch of salt."

The company is searching for a new chief executive and also lacks a chief financial officer, highly unusual for a company of its size. The former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick was ousted in June, and it is unclear how the absence of a CEO will affect the current quarter's financial results.

News website Axios first reported Uber's second-quarter results on Wednesday.

Output: Uber has reported a 16% increase in bookings and a reduced loss in Q2 2017, despite the company being embroiled in several harassment cases and a string of million-dollar losses. Uber is dealing with a lawsuit over theft of trade secrets, a federal investigation over evasion of regulators and numerous sexual harassment allegations. Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, cautioned that Uber's reporting is selective and that the numbers should be taken "with a big pinch of salt".


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Brazil abolishes Amazon reserve containing metal deposits
 The Brazilian president Michel Temer has abolished an Amazonian reserve the size of Denmark, prompting concerns of an influx of mineral companies, road-builders and workers into the species-rich forest.

The dissolution of the Renca reserve – which spans 46,000 sq km on the border of the Amapa and Para states – was described by one opposition senator Randolfe Rodrigues of the Sustainability Network party, as the “biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years”.

Conservationists said it will open the door for mining companies to enter Renca – the Portuguese acronym for the National Reserve of Copper and Associates – which was set up in 1984 and encompasses nine protected areas.

More than 20 domestic and multinational firms have expressed an interest in the region which is thought to contain deposits of gold, copper, tantalum, iron ore, nickel and manganese.

The government said the reserve is being abolished to attract foreign investment, improve exports and boost an economy that has been struggling to emerge from its deepest recession in decades.

It claimed the change of status would not affect conservation areas and indigenous territories in the region, but Amazon activists warned commercial exploitation by big companies in the past has been followed by illegal land grabbers, artisanal miners and road builders.

Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch said Temer’s decision had to be seen in the context of wider efforts by his government to erode protected areas, weaken environmental licensing, and diminish indigenous rights in the interests of wealthy supporters in the extractive industries.

“The abolition of Renca will wreak havoc on the forest and indigenous communities in the interests of the small group of economically powerful groups who are keeping Temer in power,” he said. “This is the largest assault so far in a package of threats.”

“A gold rush in the region will create irreversible damage to local cultures,” warned Mauricio Voivodic, executive director of WWF-Brazil. “In addition to demographic exploitation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and water resources, this could lead to an intensification of land conflicts and threats to indigenous peoples and traditional populations.”

VERGONHA!Estão leiloando nossa Amazônia! Não podemos destruir nossas áreas protegidas em prol de interesses privados https://t.co/WvtHdaKYYX — Gisele Bündchen (@giseleofficial) August 24, 2017

Since plotting the impeachment of his running mate Dilma Rousseff last year, Temer has moved rapidly to unravel environmental protections to please the powerful agricultural and mining lobbies. The only pause in this policy came earlier this year when Temer vetoed a bill that would have opened up swathes of forest to development. At the time, the president said he was responding to an appeal on Twitter by the supermodel, Gisele Bündchen.

But Temer has since approved several similar measures, including the latest one this week, which prompted an angry response from Bündchen. “SHAME! We are auctioning off our Amazon! We can’t destroy our protected areas for private interests,” she tweeted.

Output: An Amazonian reserve the size of Denmark has been abolished by Brazil’s president in what one opposition senator has described as the “biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years”. Michel Temer dissolved the Renca reserve, which spans 46,000 sq km, in a move that campaigners fear will lead to an influx of mineral and mining companies and road-builders. The reserve, which was established in 1984, includes nine protected areas and is believed to contain deposits of copper, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel and tantalum. Over 20 firms have already expressed interest in the area.


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Oaktree Capital makes Vistra Energy its largest holding
 According to aggregated second quarter 13F filing data, the second-largest stock buy among significant value funds last quarter was Vistra Energy Corp. ( VST, Financial). Vistra made it into the top 10 thanks to activity from one large investor, Howard Marks (Trades, Portfolio).

During the quarter Marks acquired 50.3 million shares of the company at an average price of $16.80 per share, making it the largest holding in his equity portfolio accounting for 25.3% of the $3.34 billion equity portfolio managed by his firm Oaktree Capital Management.

One of the greats

Marks is one of the greatest value and distressed debt investors alive today, and his ownership of more than 50 million shares of Vistra is a huge vote of confidence in the company and its management. It also signals that he believes the firm is significantly undervalued.

So what's to like about Vistra?

Well, at first glance there's nothing that stands out. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.6 billion and an enterprise value of $11.2 billion. The company is an energy company that is focused on energy and power generation markets in Texas via two subsidiaries, Luminant and TXU Energy. Luminant generates and sells electricity and related products from its fleet of generation facilities totaling approximately 17,000 megawatts of generation in Texas while TXU Energy sells retail electricity and services to approximately 1.7 million residential and business customers in Texas.

Based on figures for the end of 2016, the company is currently trading at a price-book (P/B) value of 1.1 and a price to tangible book value of 4.2. Wall Street estimates suggest the firm will earn 59 cents for 2017 giving a forward price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 23.7.

Recovering from the lows

Vistra's back story is an interesting one. The company was formerly known as TXU and was taken private in 2007 following a leveraged buyout that left the company with more than $40 billion in debt; Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK.A, Financial)( BRK.B, Financial) invested $2 billion in the debt and in 2013 lost nearly half of its investment. Plunging natural-gas prices tipped the company into bankruptcy in 2014. After restructuring, the new, leaner Vistra emerged from the ashes of TXU last year, and after strengthening its balance sheet, the company looks like a cheap defensive investment. Net gearing is around 54% or two turns of estimated 2017 EBITDA. Peers such as NRG ( NRG, Financial), Dynegy ( DYN, Financial) and Calpine ( CPN, Financial) have ratios of around six times.

As well as a strong balance sheet, the company also has a robust free cash flow, which is estimated to come in at around $745 million to $925 million for 2017, giving a free cash flow yield of around 12.2% at the high end. Wall Street estimates of how much the company could pay out in dividends in the bull case are as high as $2 per share, giving a yield of around 11.4% (a more conservative projection is $1 per share giving a yield of 5.6% and leaving room for expansion through acquisitions).

Cheap, high-quality growth

For Marks, Vistra seems to be a simple bankruptcy recovery play. The company has a strong balance sheet with room for growth as well as plenty of free cash flow, putting the company in prime position to take advantage of the depressed Texas power market. Any recovery in energy prices would be a boon for Vistra. Electricity is around $25 per megawatt/hour in Texas; the 2017 average is expected to be about $30. A $5 per megawatt/hour, or 16%, increase in Texas power prices would lift Vistra’s annual EBITDA by about $270 million.

What's more, wholesale supplier Luminant's largest customer is residential supply company TXU, which means income is sticky and Vistra can offer customers better prices through vertical integration.

As an example of what the company can do, management recently closed a $350 million deal to buy a 1,054 MW gas power plant in West Texas to boost capacity, grid flexibility and give the company exposure to deeply discounted gas supply from the Permian Basin.

Disclosure: The author owns no share mentioned.

Output: Oaktree Capital Management acquired 50.3 million shares in Vistra Energy at an average price of $16.80 each, making the company the largest holding in its $3.34bn equity portfolio. Oaktree founder Howard Marks is considered one of the great value and distressed debt investors, making the acquisition a significant show of support for Vistra, which is focused on energy and power generation markets based in Texas.


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Musk said to have overruled concerns about self-driving cars
 When Elon Musk announced last fall that all of Tesla’s cars would be capable of “full autonomy,” engineers who were working on the suite of self-driving features, known as Autopilot, did not believe the system was ready to safely control a car, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ report sheds more light on the tension that exists between the Autopilot team and Musk. CNN previously reported in July that Musk “brushed aside certain concerns as negligible compared to Autopilot's overall lifesaving potential,” and that employees who worked on Autopilot “struggled” to make the same reconciliation.

Some employees have left Tesla over the way the company markets Autopilot

A major cause of this conflict has apparently been the way Musk chose to market Autopilot. The decision to refer to Autopilot as a “full self-driving” solution — language that makes multiple appearances on the company’s website, especially during the process of ordering a car — was the spark for multiple departures, including Sterling Anderson, who was in charge of the Autopilot team during last year’s announcement. Anderson left the company two months later, and was hit with a lawsuit from Tesla that alleged breach of contract, employee poaching, and theft of data related to Autopilot, though the suit was eventually settled.

A year before that, a lead engineer warned the company that Autopilot wasn’t ready to be released shortly before the original rollout. Evan Nakano, the senior system design and architecture engineer at the time, wrote that development of Autopilot was based on “reckless decision making that has potentially put customer lives at risk,” according to documents obtained by the WSJ.

When reached for comment, a Tesla spokesperson referred back to the company website, where a disclaimer for Autopilot reads that “self-driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval.”

In between those two particular inflection points mentioned in the report, a driver died while using Autopilot for the first time. Last summer, 40-year-old Joshua Brown’s Model S collided with an 18-wheeler on a Florida highway, killing him instantly. In January of this year, an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found no defects in the Autopilot system, and that the feature dropped crash rates by 40 percent. Meanwhile, the US National Transportation Safety Board is set to vote on the cause of the crash in September.

Output: When Elon Musk announced last autumn that all Tesla’s cars would be capable of “full autonomy” engineers who were working on the suite of self-driving features, known as Autopilot, did not believe the system was ready to safely control a car, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Key employees have also reportedly left Tesla over concerns about how the company markets Autopilot as a “full self-driving” solution. A Tesla spokesperson referred to a disclaimer on the company’s website for Autopilot that reads “self-driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval”.


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Engie buys 605 MW Brazilian wind project from Renova
 Renova Energia SA (BVMF:RNEW11) announced on Wednesday it has signed a deal to sell the rights to the 605-MW Umburanas wind complex project in Brazil’s Bahia state to a unit of France’s Engie SA (EPA:ENGI).

The Brazilian renewables company said in a statement it will assign the project-related rights, obligations and other covenants to Engie Brasil Energia SA in exchange for a payment of BRL 15 million (USD 4.8m/EUR 4m), subject to adjustments. The deal includes the rights to the 355.5-MW Umburanas I Project, the 108.9-MW Umburanas II and the remaining wind potential in the region.

Renova noted that the sale of the scheme will reduce its capital expenditure (Capex) requirements for the next 18 months, during which period the company was supposed to invest in the Umburanas II Project. That scheme was scheduled for completion by January 2019 under a contract won in an energy auction in 2014.

The company once again stressed that this development does not affect its ongoing discussions with Brookfield Energia Renovavel SA, a unit of Canadian asset manager Brookfield Asset Management Inc (TSE:BAM.A). Last month, Brookfield Energia Renovavel won a 60-day exclusivity period to conduct due diligence ahead of a possible stake buy in Renova.

(BRL 1.0 = USD 0.318/EUR 0.270)

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Output: Engie Brasil Energia, a unit of French utility Engie, has signed a deal to acquire the 605 MW Umburanas wind complex project from Brazilian firm Renova Energia. The BRL15m ($4.8m) deal includes the 355.5 MW Umburanas I Project and the 108.9 MW Umburanas II, as well as the remaining wind potential in Brazil’s Bahia state region. Renova said the move will reduce its capex requirements for the next 18 months, but does not affect its negotiations with Brookfield Energia Renovavel, a unit of Canadian asset manager Brookfield Asset Management.


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Iberdrola enters Mexican solar market with 275 MW of projects
 Iberdrola has begun to build two PV projects in Mexico: Hermosillo Solar Plant, a 105 MW project located in the state of Sonora, and Santiago Solar Plant, a 170 MW project in San Luis de Potosi.

These projects are Iberdrola’s first moves into large-scale solar, although the company has been active in Mexico for several years, and has already installed around 6 GW of wind and gas generation capacity in the country.

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The two PV plants are covered by long term PPAs with private customers, to whom Iberdrola will supply electricity and clean energy certificates. Iberdrola states that it chose Mexico thanks to its ‘excellent regulatory and solar resource conditions’, and names the country as a strategic location in its internationalization strategy.

Output: Spanish utility Iberdrola will make its first foray into the Mexican solar market with two large-scale projects: the 105 MW Hermosillo solar plant in the state of Sonora, and the 170 MW Santiago Solar Plant in San Luis de Potosi. Both are covered by long-term power purchase agreements with private customers and add to Iberdrola's existing Mexico portfolio of 6 GW of wind and gas generation capacity.


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EON starts first of 60 foundations for Baltic wind farm
 German energy company E.ON says it's deployed the first of 60 "monopiles" for a wind farm in the Baltic Sea. Photo courtesy of E.ON

Aug. 24 (UPI) -- German energy company E.ON said Thursday it laid the first of the 60 foundations for a wind farm development in national waters of the Baltic Sea. The German company said it's deploying the 60 so-called monopiles about 25 miles offshore. Foundations for a common substation were installed last month and the entire project could start generating energy for German consumers by 2019. Advertisement

Nine countries that share a border with the North Sea -- Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden -- agreed last year to improve infrastructure to support offshore wind. Germany leads among European nations in terms of offshore wind energy growth, though Great Britain has more offshore wind capacity installed.

Germany has one of the more ambitious renewable energy objectives in the European Union. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks stressed the importance of implementing the multilateral Paris climate deal and said in July that "we intend to further expand our commitment in line with international pledges."

The Arkona wind farm at peak capacity will be able to meet the energy needs of around 400,000 average households from 2019 onwards.

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"Compared to conventionally produced electricity, Arkona will save up to 1.2 million tons of CO2 annually," the German company said.

E.ON added it was also introducing new steel foundations for offshore wind farms that have a new coating that prevents corrosion and is therefore more environmentally friendly.

The Arkona project is the result of a joint venture between E.ON and Norwegian energy company Statoil.

"Being partner in Arkona windfarm is in line with Statoil's strategy to gradually complement our oil and gas portfolio with profitable renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions," spokesperson Elin A. Isaksen said in a statement to UPI.

Statoil is one of the top natural gas suppliers to the German economy.

Output: German electricity company EON has begun work on the Arkona wind farm, located in the Baltic Sea, by laying the foundations for the first of 60 monopiles. The project, a joint venture between EON and Norwegian firm Statoil, could meet the energy needs of 400,000 German households from 2019 onwards, and save up to 1.2 million tons of CO2 annually.


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Facts fail Rick Perry's attempts to show Obama killed coal
 When Energy Secretary Rick Perry launched a study of the country’s electric grid earlier this year, he did not hide the fact that the Trump administration hoped the study would help the coal industry.

In a memo ordering the review, Perry suggested the coal industry was struggling because of “continued regulatory burdens, as well as mandates and tax and subsidy policies” — in other words, President Obama’s environmental agenda. And in remarks following the launch of the study he suggested that America’s electric grid may be unreliable because of our increased reliance on renewable energy, leading to national security concerns.

But those claims apparently did not hold up under scrutiny. The Energy Department released an official version of the study late Wednesday saying that cheap natural gas prices, driven by a boom in domestic natural gas production, have led to the decline in coal-fired power plants. The report also acknowledges that renewables have not threatened grid reliability.

“We got into this position because the administration violated one of the cardinal rules they teach young lawyers in law school,” said Don Furman, a former executive at the PacifiCorp electric utility and director of Fix the Grid West, a nonprofit that advocates for renewables. “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.”

The Department of Energy’s report calls for federal support to keep coal-fired and nuclear power plants running, describing the current moment as a “critical juncture” for many of those struggling plants. The report also suggests that coal and nuclear plants are more reliable in extreme circumstances like natural disasters or cyber attacks because they tend be to located near the places where the power is used and store their fuel on-site, unlike renewable energy plants, the report authors say.

“The core objective of electricity regulation has always been, and should continue to be, to ensure a reliable and resilient electric supply system,” Perry said in a letter accompanying the study. “It is important for policy makers to consider their intended and unintended effects.”

Publication of the study, originally scheduled for June, was delayed after a draft showing that renewable energy sources like wind and solar did not threaten reliability was leaked to the media. Renewable energy advocates expressed concern that the administration might change the report along political lines, and the leak created pressure to avoid drastic revisions.

What — if any — effect the official study will have is far from certain, in part because of the somewhat muted report findings and its disjointed nature. The study authors suggest a number of measures that could keep coal-fired power plants running, including a rethinking of electricity markets and use of the Federal Power Act to “ensure system reliability and resilience,” which could be a precursor to a moratorium on the closing of coal-fired power plants. (The Trump administration reportedly rejected a request for a moratorium earlier this month). But implementing many of these findings would be unprecedented — the federal government typically leaves most decisions about electricity production to state authorities. Changing that — even with a strong scientific basis — is easier said than done.

Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com.

Output: US Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s attempts to demonstrate that the Obama administration obstructed the coal industry have failed, after a review found that renewable energy was, in fact, a reliable source of grid power. Perry’s view that “continued regulatory burdens”, taxes and subsidies from the previous administration, as well as an increased focus on renewable sources, jeopardised the grid was proven to be false by an Energy Department study. The report encourages further federal support for coal and nuclear plants, given their reliability during crises.


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Consumers uncertain about using autonomous vehicles
 A lot of people may still have serious reservations about riding in fully autonomous vehicles, a new survey from Gartner indicates.

The Gartner Consumer Trends in Automotive people surveyed about 1,500 people in the United States and Germany from April through May, and found that 55 percent of the people they spoke to would not ride in a fully autonomous car.

However, just over 70 percent would ride in a car that was partially autonomous. Gartner defined partially autonomous vehicles as those that could drive autonomously, but allow a driver to retake control of the car if needed.

Advocates of autonomous driving have said the technology will actually make driving safer, since statistics indicate human behavior is the major cause of most auto crashes.

But many consumers familiar with the tendency of other electronic devices to sometimes malfunction or perform erratically still seem to have trouble accepting the idea of being held in a vehicle that could fail.

"The big issue is that people are afraid of being in vehicles where they cannot exercise some control," said Gartner research director Mike Ramsey, in an interview with CNBC.

Output: Roughly 55% of consumers would not be comfortable riding in a fully automated vehicle, according to the Gartner Consumer Trends in Automotive survey. More than 70% would accept a car that was partially autonomous, though. Automation advocates believe the tech can reduce danger, given that human behaviour is the top cause of crashes. However, consumers have expressed concern over a total lack of control, as well as worrying about the tech malfunctioning or being unable to handle emergency situations.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Real-world climate conditions offer reality check for perovskite
 Research published by AMOLF has shown that in cloudy climates, such as that of northern Europe, tandem perovskite/silicon solar cells do not perform significantly better than standard silicon cells. The research also outlines a series of optimizations to improve perovskite quality, electrical contacts and light management, which could allow the cells to realize their potential and perform at much higher levels.

The researchers developed a model to simulate state-of-the-art perovskite solar cells, by combining an optical model based on EQE measurements with an analytical electrical model based on current-voltage characteristics.

Results showed that, even with cells rated at higher efficiencies, performance of tandem perovskite/silicon cells would only be marginally higher than that of the silicon cell alone, in the cloudy climates of the test locations in Utrecht, the Netherlands and Denver, USA.

Discounting all parasitic absorption in the transparent contacts of the perovskite cell, say the researchers, the tandem cells exhibited efficiency advantages of between 1.8% and 3.3%, far less than expected under ideal conditions.

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“This has been a surprising finding,” states lead author of the study Moritz Futscher. “We have always thought that tandem cells operate at lower efficiency under low light conditions, but we are surprised that the effect is this large.

The research, published in ACS Energy Letters, also shows that tweaking factors such as the parasitic cell resistance, optical losses and nonradiative recombination could boost this efficiency by as much as 14%, including in cloudy or low light conditions.

“Perovskite solar cells have shown breathtaking development in efficiency in recent years,” states the research publication. “Yet, our results highlight the need for a concerted effort in material development, device design and light management strategies to further increase the efficiency of perovskite cells, and develop highly efficient perovskite/Si tandem solar cells.”

Output: Tandem perovskite/silicon solar cells perform only slight better than silicon-only cells in cloudy conditions in the Netherlands and the US, according to researchers from the AMOLF institute in Holland. However, adjustments including parasitic cell resistance, optical losses and nonradiative recombination in the tandem cells can boost efficiency by as much as 14 percentage points to above 38%


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Solar brick powers UK homes
 Just months after the debut of Tesla’s long-awaited Solar Roof tiles, which it has begun installing on the homes of its employees, a group of researchers from the University of Exeter have come up with another BIPV solution – a glass block, which can be incorporated into the fabric of a building, replacing traditional brick and mortar, and is designed to collect solar energy and convert it to electricity.

The block, called Solar Squared, has intelligent optics that focus the incoming solar radiation onto small solar cells, enhancing the overall energy generated by each solar cell. The electricity generated in this way is then available to power the building, be stored or used to charge electric vehicles.

The researchers believe that in addition to powering the building while allowing greater amounts of light in, their blocks provide improved thermal insulation.

Solar Squared has been spun off from the University as an independent start-up company called Build Solar, which is now looking to encourage investment in its patent pending technology to carry out commercial testing, and then aims to take it to market in 2018.

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“BIPV is a growing industry with a 16% annual growth rate. Setting up a company, which can cater to this growing market shall prove beneficial for the UK economy in the long term,” said Dr Hasan Baig, founder of Build Solar and Research Fellow from the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute.

As the PV applications for building continue to gain traction, a recent study authored by independent energy consultant Andris Bankovskis, examining BIPV deployment across the U.K., showed that households-as-power-stations could reduce energy consumption by more than 60%, saving the average household over GBP 600 a year.

Output: UK start-up Build Solar, spun out of the University of Exeter, has developed a building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) solution, a glass brick that collects solar energy and converts it into electricity. The company is now seeking investment to undertake commercial testing with a view to taking a product to market by 2018. Converting households into power stations could reduce energy consumption by more than 60% and save the average household more than £600 annually, according to a study by independent energy consultant Andris Bankovskis.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Optimism grows in bond insurance market as two majors boost deals
 System unavailable at this time. Please try again later, or call a Fidelity Representative at 800-544-6666.

Output: Optimism appears to be returning to the bond insurance market, with two of the three main players seeing an increase in business in the first half of the year. Although total deals by the three were down 8.5% year on year in the first half, Assured Guaranty said it had been the guarantor of more than half of all transactions and insured $7.01bn of par in 435 transactions in the muni bond market. National Public Guarantee also saw an increase in par insurance, up from $376m to $609m. By contrast, Build America Mutual saw its principal amount slide.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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No satisfaction as Rolling Stones insurer denied case dismissal
 This past Monday, August 14, a federal magistrate judge explained to an insurer that “you can’t always get what you want” when he denied the carrier’s motion to dismiss claims arising from a July 4, 2015 Rolling Stones concert, concluding that the facts in the complaint allege a properly pled claim.

The claim at issue in Indianapolis Motor Speedway, LLC v. Global Live, Inc. et al., No. 1:17-cv-01743-JMS-MPB (S.D. Ind. Aug. 14, 2017) involved a claim for defense and indemnity under a general liability policy specifically tailored for the Rolling Stones concert.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, LLC (“IMS”), and Global Live, Inc. (“Global Live”) entered into a Special Event Agreement in April 2015 that allowed Global Live to host a concert featuring the Rolling Stones on July 4, 2015 at IMS’s racetrack. As part of the Special Event Agreement, Global Live was required to provide Event Insurance to IMS. New York Marine and General Insurance Company, also referred to as ProSight Insurance Group, Inc. (“ProSight”), issued a commercial general liability policy to Global Live, and the Certificate of Insurance listed IMS as the Certificate Holder.

The underlying claimants, Pamela and William Shepard, attended the concert and were injured when they tripped over a curb while walking through a tunnel at IMS. They filed suit against IMS alleging that IMS breached its duty of care by failing to provide adequate illumination for business invitees exiting the concert.

IMS subsequently sued Global Live and ProSight alleging claims for breach of contract against both companies and breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing against ProSight. IMS additionally sought a declaratory judgment that ProSight is obligated to provide insurance coverage for any and all claims arising in the underlying lawsuit. Global Live and ProSight moved to dismiss IMS’s complaint for failure to state a claim arguing IMS was not an additional insured under the policy and that coverage is limited to claims arising from Global Live’s negligence, not the negligence of IMS.

Analyzing only the allegations of the complaint, the court distilled the parties arguments to whether the complaint stated a valid cause of action. The court found that it did, concluding that,

IMS allege[d] in the Complaint that Global Live was obligated under the Event Agreement to obtain event insurance for all claims arising from the Event, that the Policy was to provide coverage for Global Live’s obligations to IMS, that the Policy was to explicitly include IMS “as an additional insured under the Policy,” and that the coverage provided to IMS was to be “primary to any other coverage(s) available to IMS.”

Consequently, the allegations supported IMS’s claims for breach of contract and breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing. Additionally, the court stated that the resolution for associated issues was better saved for discovery.

With large performances come large crowds. So, too, comes a large risk of injury and resulting third-party liability claims. While many entertainment-related insurance products are designed to protect producers, promotors, landlords, vendors, and others from first-party losses, such as business interruption and related commercial property losses when events are cancelled or postponed, vendors still need to ensure protection against third-party claims. Companies in the entertainment industry should contact experienced coverage counsel to assist in drafting policy language covering specific events to ensure that they are protected from claims arising from large performances and to pursue the claims, if needed, to ensure that policyholders maximize their insurance coverage.

Output: The insurer of a Rolling Stones concert has failed in an attempt to have a claim arising from the gig thrown out of court. The case centres on a couple who were injured when they tripped over a kerb at a Stones gig in Indianapolis in 2015. They claimed the venue breached its duty of care by failing to provide enough lighting. The venue sued the promoter and its insurer, New York Marine and General Insurance Company. However, the carrier's assertion that the claim was not properly made was dismissed by a federal magistrate judge


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Aviation client safety programme unveiled by XL Catlin
 NEW YORK, Aug. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- To help their aviation clients heighten safety protocols and enhance risk management plans, XL Catlin has introduced its new Safety Optimization and Aviation Resource program or SOAR, for its select general aviation insurance clients.

According to Eric Donofrio, North America regional manager of XL Catlin's aviation insurance business, "Aviation businesses take their safety records very seriously, but building a strong safety culture requires considerable time and attention. Through our SOAR program, we're taking on some of the leg work for our clients, vetting and partnering with pre-qualified vendors and putting together quite a network of aviation safety and training experts."

"In the end, our clients have a lot of choices and easy access," said Doug Tibbs, eastern regional manager on XL Catlin's aviation insurance team. "They can choose a service partner that is right for their business, focusing on areas they want to strengthen or initiate an entirely new risk management strategy to address emerging risks like political and country risk intelligence, kidnap & ransom or perhaps executive etiquette or personal awareness training."

Through partnerships with industry-leading aviation safety and risk management companies, XL Catlin is offering clients access to a comprehensive menu of services and assistance including:

Emergency Response Planning, with options for on-scene accident advice, emergency response drill design, gap analytic and vendor selection, among others.

with options for on-scene accident advice, emergency response drill design, gap analytic and vendor selection, among others. Crew Training and Survival which various training options for upset prevention and recovery, altitude awareness and hypoxia, motion sickness desensitization, water survival, night vision, situational awareness and spatial disorientation.

which various training options for upset prevention and recovery, altitude awareness and hypoxia, motion sickness desensitization, water survival, night vision, situational awareness and spatial disorientation. Executive and Personal Protection including aircraft crew safety training, risk analysis and threat vulnerability assessments, and threat management resources.

including aircraft crew safety training, risk analysis and threat vulnerability assessments, and threat management resources. Safety Management with access to resources for safety managing support services, flight data management, flight operations quality, pre-audit support and GAP analysis, management software, among others.

with access to resources for safety managing support services, flight data management, flight operations quality, pre-audit support and GAP analysis, management software, among others. Crisis Management including help with political & country risk intelligence, security risk assessment & management kidnap & ransom as well as cybersecurity concerns.

including help with political & country risk intelligence, security risk assessment & management kidnap & ransom as well as cybersecurity concerns. Upset Recognition and Recovery Training (URRT) including professional helicopter, flight attendant/flight technician, professional jet, professional turboprop, light aircraft training, with the option for custom designed courses.

including professional helicopter, flight attendant/flight technician, professional jet, professional turboprop, light aircraft training, with the option for custom designed courses. Professional Presence and Executive Etiquette: Training and development to enhance pilots' skill levels and confidence; dining savvy and conduct; presentation skills and international protocol and awareness.

With underwriters and dedicated aviation claims specialists based in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Calgary, XL Catlin's North America aviation team offers a suite of aviation insurance coverages for traditional and specialized companies, including major and regional airlines and corporate fleets, through to component manufacturers and fixed-base airport operators.

About XL Catlin's Insurance Operations

XL Catlin insurance companies offer property, casualty, professional, financial lines and specialty insurance products globally. Businesses that are moving the world forward choose XL Catlin as their partner. To learn more, visit xlcatlin.com.

About XL Catlin

XL Catlin is the global brand used by XL Group Ltd (NYSE:XL) insurance and reinsurance companies which provide property, casualty, professional and specialty products to industrial, commercial and professional firms, insurance companies and other enterprises throughout the world. Clients look to XL Catlin for answers to their most complex risks and to help move their world forward. To learn more, visit xlcatlin.com.

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xl-catlin-looks-to-help-us-aviation-businesses-take-safety-efforts-to-new-heights-with-soar-program-300506657.html

SOURCE XL Catlin

Output: Insurer XL Catlin has announced a new programme for its aviation clients, aimed at helping them improve their safety and risk management plans. The Safety Optimization and Aviation Resource (Soar) programme uses partnerships with leading aviation safety and risk management companies to offer services including emergency response planning, crew training and personal protection, safety management, country risk assessment and assistance with cybersecurity threats. The North America-based company is aiming the programme at clients from airlines to component manufacturers and airport operators.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Sport insurance specialist Protectivity opens e-trade portal
 Sport and leisure specialist says portal gives brokers access to its commercial combined products.

Online sports and leisure specialists Protectivity Insurance has launched a new e-trade portal system for brokers.

The insurer stated that the portal would give brokers access to its specialist commercial combined products including sports club, business and event policies.

Sports

Protectivity’s commercial director, Andy Brownsell said: “We are extremely excited to be able to offer brokers an easy-to-use solution for managing their clients and risks.

“Our portal leads the way in bringing a

Output: Online sport and leisure insurer Protectivity Insurance has launched an electronic portal for brokers. The company, which offers sports and leisure products underwritten by XL Catlin, said the new system will provide an easy-to-use solution for brokers in the sector to manage their clients and risks, and will include products covering sports clubs and events.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Agents can reap riches from high rollers if they do their homework
 The high net worth (HNW) specialty insurance market is a lucrative and developing segment of the insurance industry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 25 percent of Americans hold 74 percent of the country’s wealth, and this number is rising. Amassing this wealth takes hard work, determination and time, and the demand for HNW specialists will grow as these individuals become more affluent.

Proof of increased prosperity is highlighted by the fact that an estimated one of every 10 homes in the U.S. is worth at least $1 million. Since 2008 alone, the quantity of million dollar homes in America has escalated by four million. As fortunes flourish, there is an opportunity for prosperous clients to enter the specialty market for the first time — paving the way for a massive opportunity for insurance brokers and agents.

Understanding a Lifestyle and Gaining Access

The affluent individual, in general, has many unique exposures that come with their lifestyle. Becoming an expert in this area requires knowledge of their way of life and experience in asking the right questions to ensure proper coverage.

Annual risk assessments are imperative and set the stage to find answers to questions about net worth, assets, collections and perhaps the purchase of a summer cottage. Brokers and agents may find more coverage is placed in standard markets than should be.

For brokers not working with specialty carriers every day, getting approval – or even access – can be difficult. HNW carriers want to work with firms who have expertise to underwrite policies properly. Brokers looking to properly insure HNW clients should partner with dedicated experts who understand the needs of wealthy clientele.

It Takes Time

High net worth coverage is not as simple as one phone conversation. It takes time and relationships to build networks.

Once a broker understands the insurance marketplace and what is available from a coverage, service and risk management perspective, learning the client’s risk tolerance is a subsequent hurdle. The broker or agent should work with a trusted specialty insurance underwriter to tailor coverage and pricing to meet clients’ pre-requisites.

HNW exposures can be similar to commercial exposures, as both may need to insure multiple locations, in-home employees and non-profit work. The main takeaway is this cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach.

Networking

Developing relationships with other professions that serve HNW individuals will provide a better understanding of exposures. Networking with lawyers, accountants and financial advisors can aide in the process. Make a point to ask these professionals what clients request of them. Not all professions can see a liability exposure. A lawyer may be aware of employees on staff and the need for workers’ compensation or disability coverage. A seasoned high net worth specialist can provide additional value, recommending employment practices liability insurance to cover legal costs related to sexual harassment, wrongful termination or discrimination cases – whether they are legitimate claims or not.

Having conversations with various professionals and offering valuable advice in high net worth insurance will build trust and showcase expertise, which can open the door for future client recommendations. Being introduced through a reliable source can lower the barrier to entry. High net worth clients spend years building amazing wealth and legacies that need to be protected. Due to the high amount of exposures, brokers need to be educated on all liabilities and dig deep to find the best coverage, working with trusted partners to guide them through the process. As the wealth in America and across the globe increases, so will the need for more high net worth specialists.

Topics Agencies

Output: Brokers and agents selling insurance policies to high rollers have a lucrative opportunity to tap into a growing market but need to learn more about their potential customers to flourish, according to Heather Posner, assistant VP at Burns & Wilcox in the US. High-net-worth clients' needs are different to customers in the regular markets and it takes time to understand their risk tolerance and the lifestyle characteristics that will determine what policies best suit each individual, she said. Agents and brokers should also do their homework and consult with lawyers, accountants and financial advisers on their clients first.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Cincinnati extends high-net-worth policies to two more states
 The Cincinnati Insurance company has expanded its Executive Capstone programme for high net worth personal insurance clients to Massachusetts and Washington.

The Executive Capstone programme offers cover features, limits, and options to tailor insurance for clients with homes valued at more than $1 million, yachts, high-end cars, collector cars and personal articles.

The programme includes options of up to $50 million umbrella liability cover, employment practices liability endorsement for umbrella liability, green coverage, primary and excess flood, and family shield recovery expenses.

Will Van Den Heuvel, senior vice president of personal lines, said; “even though Cincinnati Insurance is new to agents and policyholders in Massachusetts, enthusiasm for our Capstone product matches that of many Washington agents who have worked with our business insurance counterparts for the past decade.

“Continuing the steady roll out of this product suite across the country demonstrates our commitment to being a leader in the high net worth personal lines market place.”

Although Massachusetts is a new territory for the firm to expand operations into, Cincinnati said Washington agents and business policyholders have been serviced by the firm since 2007.

Output: High net worth individuals in Massachusetts and Washington can now benefit from Cincinnati Insurance's Executive Capstone coverage as the company rolls the high-earner policies across the states. The product is offered to clients with property valued at more than $1m and also covers yachts, high-end cars and collectors cars. Policyholders can opt for $50m umbrella liability, primary and excess flood, and family shield recovery expenses.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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UK-based healthtech Medopad seeks $30m investment
 2 min read

Medopad, backed by pharmaceuticals giant Bayer AG, is looking to raise new funds, joining a throng of fast-growing UK startups that are applying artificial intelligence to healthcare.A London-based mobile platform for healthcare companies, insurers, doctors and patients, Medopad is working with UBS Group AG to raise as much as $30 million from private investors, according to sources. The business could be valued at a few hundred million dollars after the fund-raising, which is still in its early stages, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.The new funds will be used to expand Medopad’s analytics and machine learning teams. The company also has a presence in countries such as Germany and in the United States, and it’s considering expanding in Scandinavia and the Middle East. The company has offices in Salt Lake City in the U.S.Representatives for Medopad and UBS declined to comment.The United Kingdom has spawned a number of startups that focus on using artificial intelligence to improve a range of healthcare issues, from diagnosis to drug discovery. Babylon Healthcare Services, which offers a healthcare app using both AI and online consultations, raised $60 million in April. Its backers include the founders of DeepMind and Swedish investor Kinnevik AB.London-based drug-discovery startup BenevolentAI, valued at $1.7 billion and backed by Lansdowne Partners, is one of five private artificial intelligence companies that have reached a valuation of more than $1 billion, according to data firm CB Insights.Medopad was founded in 2011 by Dan Vahdat and Rich Khatib, who attended the University of Oxford. It is expected to reach a market valuation of more than $1 billion, according to a report from consulting firm KPMG. Medopad counts a range of U.K. hospital trusts as clients and has announced partnerships with Bayer and Intel Corp.Its patient-monitoring apps help boost communication between doctors and patients suffering from cancer, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. It also offers an app for health insurance companies to help with reimbursement costs as well as attracting and retaining customers.

Output: Medopad, a London-based mobile platform for healthcare companies, insurers, doctors and patients, is working with UBS Group to raise $30m from private investors. The new funds will be used to expand Medopad’s analytics and machine learning teams. Medopad already has support from Bayer AG and has expanded into Germany and the US.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Washington Post turns to AI to boost native content
 Publishers are running into a wall with so-called native ads. Once seen as the panacea for declining digital ad rates, these ads that are designed to mimic editorial content have turned out to be costly to make and distribute and hard to scale, which makes them a tough sell with advertisers and also eats into publishers’ profit margins. Meanwhile, marketers are also getting more comfortable sidestepping publishers, creating branded content on their own and distributing it themselves.

The Washington Post is trying to solve the problem with artificial intelligence. It built an ad product called Own that lets brands use their own content but promises to improve its chances of being seen and read (or watched) with the aid of Heliograf, a news-writing bot the Post built for the editorial side.

Own works by serving an ad to people based on their past reading/viewing behavior on the site. It uses Heliograf to generate a personalized welcome message, as shown in the mockup below. It’s a form of content recommendation, which the Post has done before with its customizable native ad units called Post Cards, but more personalized.

Jarrod Dicker, vp of commercial product and innovation at the Post, said Own is aimed at brands that don’t want to pay a publisher to build a custom campaign but still need distribution for their branded content.

“There’s a ton of dollars publishers don’t pay attention to because the studios are built to build content that lives on the publisher’s site,” said Dicker. “However, many publishers have ignored brands that already have content and want to syndicate it.”

Creating branded content can be a low-margin business for publishers because of the high cost and labor involved, which seems to keep increasing as clients ask publishers for ads that have the latest features like augmented reality and virtual reality. Other ways publishers are trying to get more competitive is by offering to let them run the publisher-created branded content on other sites and by offering more video and other features, said Tom Blim, partner and chief strategy officer at Group SJR.

The Post’s Own works by automation, which Dicker said should result in 80 to 90 percent profit margins — comparable to the high rates publishers get for display or pre-roll video.

“Not only are margins extremely high, but this can be done in 24 hours turnaround time,” Dicker said. “So this is solving for margins and managing turnaround times.”

The Post is just starting to offer the product to existing clients. Like other Post ad products, Own will be available to other publishers that license the Post’s Arc Publishing content management system.

At the end of the day, the challenge will be for the Post to demonstrate it’s as good or better than Facebook at distributing branded content by showing it has the desired audience and knows how to make that audience engage with the content, said Andy Seibert, managing partner of Imprint, a custom content arm of branding agency Sullivan.

Another limitation of Own is the quality of the brand’s content in the first place. When the quality is poor or not a fit for the Post’s audience, the Post will be ready to try to upsell the advertiser to use its brand studio to improve on the campaign. “We could say, ‘this doesn’t have a big audience or won’t resonate, and we can make it better,’” Dicker said.

Output: The Washington Post has built an ad product that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to serve brand-created content to people, based on their past reading behaviour. The product, which is called Own, is aimed at brands that require distribution of native ads but don't want to pay a publisher to build a custom campaign, said Jarrod Dicker, vice-president of commercial product at the Post. By making native ads more targeted, the Post aims to attract marketers that are decreasing native ad spend in favour of publishing and distributing their own content.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Too much vitamin B may increase lung cancer in men, finds study
 Taking too much vitamin B6 and B12 could dramatically increase lung cancer in men, according to a new study.

By looking at more than 77,000 patients over 10 years, researchers found men who consumed high doses of B6 and B12 (often advertised as an energy-booster) doubled their risk of developing lung cancer. In men who smoked, the risk increased four times, according to results published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Tuesday. Women who took the same amount of vitamin B didn't see an increased risk.

The National Institutes of Health recommends adults only consume about 1.5 milligrams of vitamin B6 a day and 2.4 micrograms of vitamin B12. But, vitamin B supplements are available up to 5,000 micrograms per dose. A microgram is one-millionth of one gram.

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“It’s very easy to get all the vitamin B you need in this country, from eating meats, chickpeas and foods like cereal that are fortified with them, so there really is no reason to supplement your vitamin B intake at these levels, and certainly not for years on end,” Theodore Brasky, who led the study at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, said in a statement.

This research comes after a 2010 study suggested taking vitamin B supplements could lower the risk of lung cancer.

Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets

Output: Too much vitamin B6 and B12, which are advertised as energy boosters, may dramatically increase the risk of lung cancer in men, a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology has warned. The risk was increased four times if they smoked as well. Women who took the same amount of vitamin B did not have an increased risk.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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DoubleVerify sells £200m stake to private equity firm Providence
 Digital measurement outfit DoubleVerify has agreed to sell a majority stake to private equity fund Providence Equity Partners in the latest round of adtech mergers and acquisitions.

Former Starcom Mediavest Group chief executive Laura Desmond is set to join DoubleVerify's board as part of the deal.

The terms of the transaction have not been publicly disclosed by either party, but media reports have pegged the financial value of the deal at $200m. The DoubleVerify management team is set to continue in its existing guise once the transaction has been closed, with Desmond having been appointed lead director of its board.

Wayne Gattinella, president and chief executive of DoubleVerify said Providence Equity has demonstrated an ability to help accelerate the growth of data-led adtech companies.

"With Providence's sector expertise and strategic insight, DoubleVerify is well positioned to capitalize on the outsized set of market opportunities and to launch new services that define the future of digital advertising engagement," he added.

Davis Noell, managing director, Providence Equity Partners, said the growing importance of DoubleVerify’s services in the online advertising market meant the investment posed “significant opportunities.”

He added: “The world's largest brands are facing significant transparency challenges in digital advertising and DoubleVerify’s software and data solutions are helping solve these critical pain points.”

DoubleVerify was founded in 2008 and provides advertisers with third-party measurement in areas such as: the viewability of online ads; brand safety; plus anti-fraud services.

Commenting on the deal, Desmond said: “I've spent nearly two decades working alongside the world's largest brands and have seen first-hand the need for third party measurement from all digital media and social platforms.”

She added: “Today media quality is the number one issue impacting digital ad performance and DoubleVerify helps to deliver the transparency clients need to make smart and safe advertising investments.”

The terms of the deal mean that Blumberg Capital will remain an investor in the company, while David Blumberg has also been appointed to the DoubleVerify board of directors.

Update:

The transaction is the latest in the ongoing round of mergers and acquisitions in the ever-evolving adtech sector, with recent weeks witnessing the sale of nToggle to Rubicon Project. This period also saw fellow publicly-listed outfit Rocket Fuel agreeing a sale to Sizmek, Outbrain purchasing Zemanta, plus Tremor Video selling the demand-side platform area of its business to Taptica. Meanwhile, Media iQ struck a similar deal to DoubleVerify’s move with a significant investment from private equity house ECI Partners.

As brands spend more of their advertising budgets online, plus marketers under increasing pressure to show a return-on-investment for their media spend, the third-party measurement sector is proving more-and-more attractive to investors.

DoubleVerify has spent the last 12 months capitalizing on this trend, inking several measurement deals with high profile outfits such as AOL, Snapchat and GroupM, as well as YouTube. This deal came about after the Google-owned video sharing site incurred the wrath of advertisers following a high-profile investigation which underlined the ongoing problem of ads being served against questionable content.

Earlier this year Moat, an adtech outfit providing similar services to DoubleVerify, sold to Oracle in a deal estimated to be worth in excess of $800m, with industry commentator and adtech advisor Ciarán O’Kane, chief executive of ExchangeWire, stating that other providers of third-party measurement services are likely to be the subject of M&A in the near-to-mid term future.

Commenting on the DoubleVerify deal, he added: “Although it’s less than the Moat deal, I think it’s a real vindication of the space, and it’s interesting that we have private equity taking more of an interest in it.

“Adtech keeps evolving, and this deal shows that it continues to provide solutions to problems that advertisers need solved,” he added, casting doubt on commentaries espousing the death knell of adtech players.

Output: Digital measurement company DoubleVerify is to sell a majority stake of £200m ($256m) to private equity fund Providence Equity Partners. DoubleVerify will appoint former Starcom Mediavest CEO Laura Desmond as lead board member as part of the deal. Providence's involvement will assist DoubleVerify in launching "new services that define the future of digital advertising engagement", said Wayne Gattinella, CEO and president of DoubleVerify.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Insurance fraudsters prey on environment disaster victims
 In testimony on Capitol Hill in early August, Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak told federal lawmakers that fraud across all lines of insurance costs the industry an estimated $80 million to $100 million annually.

Testifying on insurance fraud issues at a U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee hearing on Aug. 3, Doak represented the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) as chair of the NAIC’s Antifraud Task Force. He told members of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security that in property/casualty insurance lines alone, more than 10 percent of claims are estimated to be fraudulent.

Doak said contractor and adjuster fraud following natural disasters is one of the more troubling trends faced by state insurance commissioners when it comes to insurance fraud.

“State insurance departments have seen a number of instances of contractor and adjuster fraud recently that have occurred immediately after floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters. Contractors or insurance adjusters have required advance payments from consumers for services or advance assignment of insurance policy benefits. In these cases, the contractors sometimes disappear without ever doing the work. In other cases where repairs are made, the contractor engaging in this conduct does substandard work using substandard materials,” Doak said in his prepared statement.

State insurance departments have seen a number of instances of contractor and adjuster fraud recently that have occurred immediately after floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters

Responding to a question from the subcommittee chairman, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, Doak said that unfortunately many of the people who are taken advantage following natural disasters are seniors.

Citing Oklahoma’s experience following the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado in May 2013, after which more than 80,000 claims were filed, Doak said “you have folks that go through these neighborhoods [who] really prey upon unsuspecting consumers that have never had this size of a catastrophe.” The scammers will put a tarp on roof of a hail or tornado-damaged home, “then they’ll put liens on [the insured’s] property and they’ll find out later through the claims process that there is a lien on the property.”

Asked by Sen. Moran how such activity constitutes insurance fraud as opposed to other kinds of fraud, Doak explained that “when it deals with the insurance policy, when they are doing work and billing it back to the insurance company for some type of fraudulent activity, that’s where it crosses the line into insurance issues. No matter what state they’re in, if they’re getting payment from the insurance companies, that’s where the fraud is happening.”

Doak said that in Moore contractors now are required to be registered with the municipality even if they are from out of state. He called that a “best practice” that provides consumers with a recourse if disputes occur. Contractors have to register at the local level and “show they have liability insurance and there’s recourse if someone gets injured on the insured’s property. That there’s some recourse to find them, they’re just not fly-by-night,” he said.

Other insurance-related activities that are of increasing concern include medical equipment and identity theft schemes targeted at seniors, opioid abuse-related insurance fraud, auto windshield replacement scams and life insurance fraud, Doak said.

“These examples are a few of the recent trends that we have observed, but other fraudulent scams have been around for some time, such as staged auto accidents with the resulting fraudulent automotive and medical claims, faked workers’ compensation claims and arson by homeowners,” he said.

Also speaking at the hearing, which was titled “Insurance Fraud in America: Current Issues Facing Industry and Consumers,” were Dennis Jay, executive director of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud; Sean Kevelighan, CEO of the Insurance Information Institute; Tim Lynch, director of government affairs for the National Insurance Crime Bureau and Rachel Weintraub, general counsel for the Consumer Federation of America.

Topics Catastrophe Trends USA Fraud Contractors Oklahoma

Output: Senators in the US have been told that fraud following natural and environmental disasters are among the more egregious forms of insurance abuse. A Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee heard that the problem has centred largely on contractors and insurance adjusters' activities, part of a broader fraud problem that costs the industry and estimated $80m to $100m annually. In many cases, contractors and adjusters have demanded payment up front to make repairs that are never carried out, the subcommittee was told.