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Donald Trump’s Terrible Executive Order on Health Care
 President Donald Trump is now trying to break the health-care system all by himself, although he has more help than he might acknowledge. On Thursday, Trump launched an assault on Obamacare from two angles. First, the White House staged a signing ceremony for an executive order designed to push people into what are known, accurately, as “junk” insurance plans—the kind, common before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, that never seem to cover people when they are actually sick and that extort and abandon those with preëxisting conditions. Trump, in his remarks at the ceremony, referred to this choice as “fleeing the failing Obamacare plans.” And then, a few hours later, he did more to make Obamacare fail, by saying that he would withhold the cost-sharing subsidies that the government currently pays insurance companies in order to reduce deductibles and co-pays for many low-income people. Companies will undoubtedly respond by leaving the Obamacare exchanges, where such plans are now sold. Both moves had one thing in common: they recklessly target vulnerable Americans. But in doing so, they will, as with so many of Trump’s moves, increase risks for everyone.

Although Trump used the executive-order signing to goad his fellow-Republicans—“We’re going to also pressure Congress very strongly to finish the repeal and the replace”—they did much to make this day possible. Trump claimed that he had no choice but to defund the subsidies because paying them went against the will of Congress. This is the argument in a lawsuit, instigated by House Republicans, that is making its way through the federal courts. Basically, those Republicans argue that, although the plain language of the A.C.A. describes and authorizes the payment of subsidies, Congress should be allowed to vote on actually releasing the money every year. In effect, Congress promised the money when it passed the A.C.A., but now it wants the right to hold that money hostage on a regular basis. The case relies on a highly technical reading of the legislative fine print; nevertheless, the congressional challengers won a round in the lower courts, though that had been stayed pending an appeal—one that, on Thursday, the Trump Administration apparently decided to drop. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions had earlier said that he agreed with the House Republicans.) More than that, it is, at best, a technical ambiguity that any congressional majority interested in something other than utter chaos in the insurance markets could easily fix. Such a majority does not exist right now.

Indeed, the opposite is the case: the false stories that congressional Republicans told about Obamacare—a system that, whatever its flaws, has increased the number of Americans with insurance by some twenty million, and made that coverage more reliable for many times that number— fed partisan demands for Trump to savage it. The Republican Party made a destructive promise that Trump, as its candidate, has been eager to keep. It may be the only thing that the Party can rely on him for, and, although some individual Republicans, such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Florida—who, not incidentally, is retiring at the end of this term—worried about the effect on their constituents, Party leaders were quick with their gratitude. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted, “As #obamacare continues to fail Americans, I’m pleased @POTUS is promoting affordable policies to better meet the needs of families.” And the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said that Trump’s decision to end cost-sharing subsidies was a “monumental affirmation of Congress’s authority.” That may seem like an odd way to describe a move that was also framed as a response to Congress’s failure to repeal the A.C.A., and which was a flanking attempt to undermine a major piece of legislation. But, as a shorthand for the affirmation of the congressional Republicans’ ideological authority, it was not far wrong.

These two moves are not the only sabotage attempts that the Trump Administration has been engaged in. It has rewritten rules to allow plans to stop covering many forms of birth control. It has made disabling cuts to programs that help people sign up for Obamacare, and made enrollment, across the board, harder—more of a labyrinth. Information about plans that people might be able to afford has been, effectively, hidden. Perhaps this is, finally, an example of Trump bringing his business expertise to Washington: the knowledge that bad marketing can cripple a good project.

But the most Trumpian aspect of the executive order is that it makes life easier for con men. It does so by allowing the sale of insurance plans that do not meet basic standards through “associations,” which might be made up of employers, interest groups, or just entrepreneurial opportunists—the exact rules still have to be written. Obamacare plans offer certain defined essential services, such as preventive and obstetric care and hospitalization, that an insurance plan has to cover, and cover substantially, to call itself an insurance plan. In other words, the A.C.A. made it harder for employers or insurers to claim that they were covering people if, when it counted, they really weren’t. (Such a bait and switch was common in the pre-Obamacare days; many people who went bankrupt after a medical emergency actually had insurance plans.) The executive order would create a sham market alongside the real one. One concern is that young, healthy people will be drawn to association plans because they don’t “need” comprehensive coverage, and are making what they believe is a rational calculation, albeit one that will drive up premiums in the Obamacare market, by making that pool of people, on average, sicker and older. (Paul Ryan, who has complained that it is unfair that healthy people help pay for sick people—the premise of insurance—is an association-plan enthusiast.)

But health-care needs have a way of changing quickly—we might each be separated from one category or the other by a single accident, diagnosis, or pregnancy. And some people and businesses won’t so much be making a choice as settling for what that they can afford in the short term: the plan, good or not, with the lowest sticker price. And, again depending on the specific rules that the Administration comes up with, people with preëxisting conditions will likely be more exposed to rate hikes—indeed, their co-workers might be, too, since an association would be able to set higher rates for a single business with a large number of people regarded as risks, whether because they are older or more likely to have children. (This means that, as a bonus, the executive order may encourage employment discrimination.) Another disorienting aspect is that an association would be able to sell its plans across state lines, in a way that would disregard the insurance regulations in the state in which the insured person lives. This would set up, effectively, a cross-country race to the bottom.

Another aspect of the executive order that is a setup for an insurance con is its expanded definition of “temporary” plans. Basically, these are policies, exempt from many regulations (someone can be dropped upon becoming sick, for example, or denied coverage for preëxisting conditions) that are designed for people who are between other plans—perhaps because of a job change—to buy in a pinch. But they also represent a loophole, which the Obama Administration tried to close, by defining “temporary” as no more than three months. Trump’s order extends it to a year. This is in keeping with an economy in which every little foothold that working families have seems temporary—it helps to make flimsiness a permanent state.

In presenting the plan at the executive-order signing, Trump did his best impression of a flim-flam man—that is to say, he was entirely in character. The guests included members of his Administration, some small-business representatives, and Senator Rand Paul, who believed that the Senate’s last attempt to break Obamacare was not radical enough. Trump didn’t have many details other than the promise that a “nightmare” was over, that millions of people would be “very happy,” and that the whole thing would produce better plans at no expense whatsoever to the government. “That’s not too bad, right?” he said.

As Trump started to walk out of the room, though, Vice-President Mike Pence suddenly looked anxious. He hurried after his departing boss with an outstretched arm. “Mr. President, you need to sign it!” Pence said. “Oh,” Trump said, to laughter, and then added, “I’m only signing it because it costs nothing.” Not for him, maybe, unless our political marketplace comes up with some way to measure the cost, to a President and his Party, of presiding over a disaster.

Output: President Donald Trump is now trying to break the health-care system all by himself, although he has more help than he might acknowledge. On Thursday, Trump launched an assault on Obamacare from two angles.


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Pret A Manger becomes latest UK outlet to reduce plastic use
 A growing number of outlets selling food and drink in the UK are taking action to ditch plastic amid deepening concern about its effect on the environment, with drinking straws and bottles among items being phased out.

Pret A Manger has become the latest to take action, announcing that it has installed taps dispensing free filtered water and started selling empty glass bottles in its three vegetarian stores. The scheme is due to be rolled out to branches in Manchester from the end of October.

The move follows a flurry of schemes introduced by businesses and charities, from pub chain Wetherspoons to the Zoological Society of London, to curb plastic waste amid rising concern over the vast tide of containers, bottles and other paraphernalia washing up around the world.

While plastic bottles of water will still be available at the Pret stores, the company says the goal is to explore whether customers will take up the plastic-free option.

“We’ve been really surprised and encouraged by the hugely positive response on social media – we’ve even sold quite a few glass bottles already,” said Caroline Cromar, the brand director of Pret. “We’ll be listening carefully to feedback from our customers and shop teams before we decide on the next stage.”

The move, according to Pret, comes from a growing desire to tackle the impact of plastic waste on the environment.

A Guardian investigation this year discovered that a million plastic bottles are bought worldwide every minute, while recent research has revealed that of the 6.3bn tons of plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, almost 80% has ended up in landfill or in the environment – including the oceans. Plastic contamination is now found in everything from tap water to sea salt.

A staff member working in a Pret A Manger store in central London. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Pret is not alone is attempting to wean consumers off plastic. Last month Wetherspoons announced that it would stop using plastic drinking straws from 2018, while Borough Market in London promised this summer that it would end sales of single-use plastic bottles and install public drinking fountains.

Meanwhile Selfridges, which announced in 2015 that it would stop selling single-use plastic water bottles, has now gone a step further. A spokesperson said that it, too, recently phased out the use of plastic straws in its eateries and restaurants, adding that a permanent water fountain will be installed in its London store in 2018.

It is not only high-street retailers that are taking action. The media company Sky recently revealed that it is removing disposable plastic – including bottles of water and cups – from its canteen.

UK visitor attractions are also tackling the issue. “Obviously as a conservation charity the subject of plastic in the ocean is very close to our hearts,” said Kathryn England, the head of commercial at ZSL, which runs London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire.

Since the summer of 2016 ZSL has no longer sold single-use plastic bottles of water at its London and Whipsnade sites, instead installing water fountains and embracing alternative packaging.

The move, said England, was not without difficulties. “There is not that much out there that isn’t plastic at the moment,” she said. “One of the big challenges that we have as a zoo is that we can’t have glass on site for safely reasons.”

In the end, ZSL opted for cardboard cartons of plain and flavoured water with polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-free caps, as well as resealable cans of both still and sparkling water.

The transition, England said, not only stacked up commercially, but has gone down well with the 2m visitors that visit the zoos every year. “We’ve not had a single element of pushback since we rolled [the scheme] out,” she said, adding that ZSL had taken steps to explain the reasoning behind the move to visitors.

With its mission accomplished, England says ZSL is now going further. “By the end of the year, our entire drinks range across our two zoos will be 100% single-use plastic bottle free,” she said, adding that finding healthy and non-carbonated drinks with plastic-free packaging was no mean feat.

Visitors at the main entrance of London Zoo in central London. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

But not everyone is following suit. A spokesperson for Costa Coffee responded to Pret’s move by pointing out that free water was already available in its stores. “Our baristas are more than happy to provide glasses of tap water to our customers on request,” they said.

However, while a recent survey found that 61% of people “wouldn’t pay for bottled water if tap water was available”, 37% said they would be embarrassed to ask for free tap water – even if they were buying items at the same time.

England said she welcomed the announcement from Pret, but added that manufacturers and those in the field of waste management needed to facilitate the use of plastic-free options, including compostable corn-starch containers.

“I think the more brands like this can come on board, the more pressure that puts on the big manufacturers to actually switch over and start creating and developing innovation that is going to come up with an alternative solution to plastic that will work for everybody,” she said.

Output: Pret A Manger has become the latest UK food and drink outlet to reduce its use of plastic. The company will sell empty glass bottles and dispense free filtered water in its three vegetarian stores, although plastic bottles of water will still be sold. The scheme will be extended to Manchester branches from the end of October. Last month, Wetherspoons pub chain pledged to stop the use of plastic drinking straws from 2018. Selfridges, which committed to ending the sale of single-use plastic water bottles in 2015, has also recently phased out the use of plastic straws in its eateries.


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Pret A Manger becomes latest UK outlet to reduce plastic use
 Plastic bottles are a problem. We all feel it even before we hear the shocking statistics about millions of tonnes ending up in our oceans each year and imagine the devastating impact this has on marine wildlife.

Pret has always tried to lead on food waste – we’ve been donating our unsold food to the homeless every night since our first shop opened more than 30 years ago. We are making inroads on the problem of packaging waste by reducing where we can and making more of it recyclable. This includes working to find a solution to the fiendish coffee cup problem. We recognise we have lots to do.

Plastic bottles present a real challenge and there are two schools of thought within Pret. The passionate environmentalists say stop selling them altogether, while the pragmatists say make it as easy as you can for customers to use fewer plastic bottles. We are looking carefully at both options. I tend towards the pragmatist end myself.

All of our Veggie Pret and Manchester shops will now be encouraging customers to fill up their bottles for free using new filtered water stations. These shops will also start selling reusable plastic bottles alongside our regular water bottles, so the choice is clear. The aim is to understand if customers will choose to refill a bottle rather than buying a new one.

The trial of reusable bottles and taps in our Veggie Pret and Manchester shops is just the start of Pret trying to do more when it comes to packaging. As always, I welcome your views on what we can do to make the most impact in this area.

Have you or would you make the switch to a reusable bottle? Is there still a place for plastic bottles or can we do without them entirely?

Output: Pret A Manger has become the latest UK food and drink outlet to reduce its use of plastic. The company will sell empty glass bottles and dispense free filtered water in its three vegetarian stores, although plastic bottles of water will still be sold. The scheme will be extended to Manchester branches from the end of October. Last month, Wetherspoons pub chain pledged to stop the use of plastic drinking straws from 2018. Selfridges, which committed to ending the sale of single-use plastic water bottles in 2015, has also recently phased out the use of plastic straws in its eateries.


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Social Security Giveth, Medical Costs Taketh Away
 About Insight Insight provides an in-depth look at health care issues in and affecting California. Have a story suggestion? Let us know.

Retirees spent on average more than a third of their Social Security benefits on out-of-pocket medical costs in 2014, according to a recent study. Even after factoring in other sources of income, medical spending still took a substantial 18 percent bite out of seniors’ total retirement income, the study found.

In dollar terms, the typical retiree spent $4,274 per year on medical costs, not including long-term care. Insurance premiums accounted for about two-thirds of that total, according to the study, published this month by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“The premiums are huge,” said Melissa McInerney, an associate professor of economics at Tufts University and a study co-author, describing their importance in overall spending by retirees.

Insuring Your Health KHN contributing columnist Michelle Andrews writes the series Insuring Your Health, which explores health care coverage and costs. To contact Michelle with a question or comment, click here. This KHN story can be republished for free (details).

McInerney said she was surprised at the findings, however, when the team did incorporate spending on long-term care and found little difference in average spending. When researchers included survey respondents who said they or their spouse lived in a long-term care facility or received home health care services, average spending was 19.2 percent of total income, versus 17.8 percent for those who didn’t need long-term care.

For the study, researchers analyzed 2002-2014 data from the Health and Retirement Study, a national survey conducted every two years of 20,000 people over age 50. The sample was limited to people at least 65 years old and were receiving both Social Security and Medicare benefits. It included those who also had Medicaid, Medicare Advantage or private group retiree health insurance.

Overall, the average retiree’s out-of-pocket medical spending declined 9 percent over the years studied from just under $4,700 in 2004 (in 2014 dollars) to $4,274 in 2014. That’s likely due in part to the introduction of Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage in 2006 and the gradual closing of the drug coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole” that began in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act, the study found.

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However, medical costs for Medicare beneficiaries are expected to outpace the increase in Social Security benefits after 2018, and retirees will have to put a growing percentage of their Social Security income toward medical care, according to study authors, citing projections by Medicare and Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office.

“The main takeaway from the study is that right now, even for retirees who live in the community and aren’t using long-term care, medical out-of-pocket spending is high and is a big share of their income,” said McInerney. “And we might expect that to grow if spending rises at end of this decade.”

Correction: This story was updated on Oct. 13 to correct the information about the researchers’ findings when they included long-term care expenses. They calculated the costs for a group that didn’t include people with long-term care expenses and then for a group that included both those with and without long-term care expenses. The study did not look at people with long-term care expenses separately.

Please visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Output: Retirees spent on average more than a third of their Social Security benefits on out-of-pocket medical costs in 2014, according to a recent study. Even after factoring in other sources of income, medical spending still took a substantial 18 percent bite out of seniors’ total retirement income, the study found.


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Wringing Cash From Life Insurance
 “We’re going to go through a quick, ten- to 15-minute personal health assessment,” said Jay Jackson, vice president of Abacus Life Settlements in Orlando. “There are no right or wrong answers.”

We were on the phone, doing an interview that would determine whether this company might offer to buy the life insurance policy — face value: $150,000 — that I’d bought decades ago.

I actually had no interest in selling, to Abacus or to any other so-called life-settlement provider. But I wanted to see how the process would unfold if I did.

So the questions began, with Mr. Jackson asking in a conversational way about my age, smoking history, marital status, ability to handle my daily activities. How old were my parents when they died? What type of exercise did I do? Any falls or dizziness in the last six months?

Output: “We’re going to go through a quick, ten- to 15-minute personal health assessment,” said Jay Jackson, vice president of Abacus Life Settlements in Orlando. “There are no right or wrong answers.”


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Gold particle delivery could end gene editing mistakes of CRISPR
 CRISPR-associated protein Cas9 (white) from Staphylococcus aureus based on Protein Database ID 5AXW. Credit: Thomas Splettstoesser (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from the University of California and the University of Tokyo has found a way to use the CRISPR gene editing technique that does not rely on a virus for delivery. In their paper published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, the group describes the new technique, how well it works and improvements that need to be made to make it a viable gene editing tool.

CRISPR-Cas9 has been in the news a lot lately because it allows researchers to directly edit genes—either disabling unwanted parts or replacing them altogether. But despite many success stories, the technique still suffers from a major deficit that prevents it from being used as a true medical tool—it sometimes makes mistakes. Those mistakes can cause small or big problems for a host depending on what goes wrong. Prior research has suggested that the majority of mistakes are due to delivery problems, which means that a replacement for the virus part of the technique is required. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have discovered just a such a replacement, and it worked so well that it was able to repair a gene mutation in a Duchenne muscular dystrophy mouse model. The team has named the new technique CRISPR-Gold, because a gold nanoparticle was used to deliver the gene editing molecules instead of a virus.

The new package was created by modifying a bit of DNA to cause it to stick to a gold nanoparticle and then a Cas9 protein and also an RNA guide. The package was then coated with a polymer that served as a containment casing—one that also triggered endocytosis (a form of cell transport) and helped the molecules escape endosomes once inside the target cells. The molecules then set to work—the Cas9 cut the target DNA strand, the guide RNA showed what needed to be done and a DNA strand was placed where a mutation had existed. The result was a gene free of a mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

There is still a major problem to overcome with the technique, however—it only works in localized applications. Ideally, a mass of packages would be injected into the bloodstream allowing for repair of all cell types, such as muscles impaired by a mutant gene.

More information: Kunwoo Lee et al. Nanoparticle delivery of Cas9 ribonucleoprotein and donor DNA in vivo induces homology-directed DNA repair, Nature Biomedical Engineering (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-017-0137-2 Abstract

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)–CRISPR associated protein 9 (Cas9)-based therapeutics, especially those that can correct gene mutations via homology-directed repair, have the potential to revolutionize the treatment of genetic diseases. However, it is challenging to develop homology-directed repair-based therapeutics because they require the simultaneous in vivo delivery of Cas9 protein, guide RNA and donor DNA. Here, we demonstrate that a delivery vehicle composed of gold nanoparticles conjugated to DNA and complexed with cationic endosomal disruptive polymers can deliver Cas9 ribonucleoprotein and donor DNA into a wide variety of cell types and efficiently correct the DNA mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy in mice via local injection, with minimal off-target DNA damage. Journal information: Nature Biomedical Engineering

© 2017 Phys.org

Output: Researchers from the University of California and the University of Tokyo have found a potential method of minimising the number of errors made by the CRISPR gene-editing tool, according to an article in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The teams used a gold nanoparticle, rather than a virus, to deliver the Cas9 protein and RNA guide to the target cells, resulting in a mouse gene which no longer carried a mutation causing Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The team called the new technique CRISPR-Gold.


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Steve Wozniak launches online tech learning platform
 Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, is launching a new online tech education platform he’s calling Woz U, which is designed to promote technology jobs and the skills required to enter the industry. Over time, Wozniak hopes to expand the initiative to include as many as 30 physical locations around the world and courses on everything from software engineering and information technology to mobile app development and cybersecurity, among others. It’s unclear whether courses will be offered for free, or whether Woz U plans on charging for any element of the online education platform. The website does not say.

Woz U also offers access to tech companies interested in using the tools and resources provided to recruit and train employees. The platform will be available to students K-12 through partnerships with school districts too. Down the line, Woz U wants to offer one-on-one instruction to students and, later on, to offer its own accelerator program for prospective startup founders. The overall goal is to increase interest in what Woz U calls STEAM careers, or science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, with the addition of arts presumably a nod to Wozniak’s role at Apple and fellow co-founder Steve Jobs’ lifelong mission to blend technology with the humanities.

Woz U doesn’t say how much its online courses will cost students

“Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt,” Wozniak said in a statement. “People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can’t do it. I know they can, and I want to show them how. My entire life I have worked to build, develop, and create a better world through technology and I have always respected education. Now is the time for Woz U, and we are only getting started.”

Output: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has launched Woz U, an online platform aimed at "educating and training people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt", according to a statement. Woz U offers courses in technology, with an emphasis on achieving careers in science, engineering, arts, and mathematics, and is open to K-12 students and tech companies. Wozniak's ambitions for the platform include expansion to 30 global locations, one-on-one instruction and an accelerator programme. No pricing details for courses are currently available.


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China's electric vehicle boom may push oil prices to record lows
 So another week begins, and many investors may be wondering how many records will be broken now — at least those that have nothing to do with Mother Nature.

That synchronized global uptrend is looking pretty intact, with almost every major world equity index at or near record highs. Asia has kept that going, and the Dow looks set for a fresh high this morning. Note that it’s been an incredible 236 days since the S&P 500 has had a decline of at least 3%.

This so-called “euphoriameter” says it all:

But alas, not all assets have been joining the party. Oil — incidentally trekking up this morning on unrest in Iraq and questions about the Iran nuclear deal — is set to finish the year with a whimper.

That leads us to our call of the day, which predicts things won’t get better for crude prices. In fact, they will probably get much worse thanks to China, according to Nick Cunningham, who tracks oil and the renewable energy beat.

“As the world’s largest auto market, China’s EV (electric-vehicle) policy, which is still being formulated, could supercharge the race for EVs,” says Cunningham in a blog post for Oilprice.com.

He rattles off a number of signs of China’s electric-car gear-up, such as big planned investments and a growing clampdown on autos that cloud its skies with pollution.

“It will only take a small change in oil demand to upend price forecasts. After all, prices crashed in 2014, falling from $100 per barrel down to $50 in less than a year,” he says.

Cunningham points to a Financial Times report that says China plans to produce 7 million EVs per year by 2025 and to spend at least $60 billion on related subsidies between 2015 and 2020.

And a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report that predicts EVs will cut crude demand by 8 million barrels a day by 2040 should “send chills down the spines of oil executives,” he warns.

Cunningham was expanding on a prediction made by Chris Watling, who believes growing interest in alternative energy fuels could drive oil prices to $10 a barrel over the next six to eight years.

The Longview Economics chief told CNBC on Friday that a key catalyst would be Saudi Aramco’s IPO — planned for later 2018, but now looking in doubt — saying they “need to get it away quickly before oil hits $10 a barrel.”

Cunningham didn’t lay out when oil might take a hit from the Middle Kingdom’s EV push, but seemed to see it as a sure thing.

“The exact point we reach peak oil demand is obviously very debatable, but in general, the mass adoption of EVs could permanently keep oil prices low, even under some relatively modest assumptions about the growth of the EV market,” he says. Read the full post here.

Key market gauges

Stocks are up at the start of trade with the S&P 500 SPX, +0.29% and Nasdaq COMP, +0.65% and Dow industrials DJIA, +0.12% DJIA, +0.12% all hitting new records.

As mentioned, WTI crude US:CLZ7 and Brent UK:LCOZ7 prices are trekking higher, driven in part by fear fighting between Iraq and Kurdish separatists will disrupt supplies. Gold US:GCZ7 and silver US:SIZ7 are inching up.

The dollar DXY, +0.09% is moving up against the euro EURUSD, +0.03% , after Catalonia’s leader defied Madrid’s demand for clarity on independence. Spanish stocks IBEX, +0.44% are weighing on the rest of Europe SXXP, +0.17% .

In Asia ADOW, +0.61% , the Hang Seng Index HSI, +0.07% closed at a 10-year high.

See the Market Snapshot column for more.

The anniversary of Black Monday is fast approaching. Here’s a look at whether it could happen again

The chart

In among that Asia cheer, the Nikkei 225 index NIK, +0.52% nabbed another 21-year high on Monday. While it may be hard for U.S. investors to get excited about Japanese stocks, MKM Partner’s chief market technician Jonathan Krinsky says they could be missing a big opportunity here.

He explains that Japanese stocks’ secular cycles are longer than the 15-to-20 years seen in the U.S. The last bear market ran for 28 years, and that’s how long the current bear market has been around, as this chart shows.

MKM Partners Wikipedia

Here’s what he has to say about the second chart: “Whether or not you want to call an end to the secular bear in Japan, it’s clear that the Nikkei is in a strong uptrend now.”

“There is an entire generation that has not witnessed a secular bull market for Japanese equities. The fact that Japan is breaking above a 25+ year secular trading range should not be taken lightly, in our view.”

MKM Partners

Note that a snap general election in Japan is set for Sunday. Here’s all you need to know about that.

The buzz

Apple AAPL, +0.69% is getting a lift after an upgrade to overweight at KeyBanc Capital. It set a price target of $187 for the iPhone maker, citing a more “aggressive market segmentation strategy.”

A busy earnings week kicks off with Netflix NFLX, +0.10% after the close. The streaming service is forecast to report earnings of 32 cents a share — 167% higher on the year and up more than 113% on the quarter.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, -1.25% , which went roaring higher last week, is now atop $5,700. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over the weekend had this to say about a big bump he’s seen in his bitcoin investment:

An oil platform operated by Clovelly Oil exploded Sunday in Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, causing multiple injuries.

Data from China showed producer prices shot up 6.9%, the latest surprise out of the country. That news pushed copper to a new three-year high above $7,000.

Read:5 reasons why investors need to watch China’s National Party Congress

Ophelia, which was the most powerful hurricane seen so far east in the Atlantic, has weakened but is still putting Ireland on lockdown:

The economy

The data calendar is less packed this week, but we will get some updates on housing starts and sales, along with the Fed’s beige book. For Monday, the Empire State index showed a jumped to a three-year high.

Check out our economic preview for the week.

Meanwhile, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen left open the possibility of further interest rate rises in 2017, speaking at a Group of 30 banking seminar on Sunday.

And: What you need to know about the Household Economic Stress Index

The stat

Getty Images

11.3% -- That’s was Huawei’s market share of smartphones in the second quarter of 2017, meaning the Chinese handset maker is in prime position to overtake Apple, on 12%, says an analyst at research group IDC.

The quote

Civilians carry the dead body of an unidentified man in the Hodan district of Mogadishu, Somalia October 14, 2017. Reuters

“The death toll will likely rise because over 450 people were injured while many others are still missing.” — Abdikadir Abdirahman, the head of Mogadishu’s hospital and ambulance services, tells Wall Street Journal as more than 300 now confirmed dead after weekend terror blast, the worst in Somalia in a decade.

Random reads

Over 300 now dead, over 400 injured after weekend terror blasts in Mogadishu

Good news for Napa, where firefighters say they’ve “turned a corner”

But in Galicia, Spain, more than 100 fires are burning

Colin Kaepernick says NFL owners have colluded not to hire him

Larry Flint offering $10 million for info that leads to POTUS’s impeachment

Woody Allen says Weinstein scandal is “sad,” worries about a Hollywood ‘witch hunt’

Right-wing parties scored some victories in Austria this weekend

Microsoft is building tree houses for its employees

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Output: China's push to produce seven million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025 could push oil prices to historical lows of around $10 a barrel, according to market watcher Nick Cunningham. In a blog post for Oilprice.com, he cited China's plans to spend $60bn on EV-related subsidies by 2020 and predictions of crude oil demand falling by eight million barrels a day as reasons why a drop in oil prices was likely. "The mass adoption of EVs could permanently keep oil prices low, even under some relatively modest assumptions about the growth of the EV market," Cunningham warned.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Security flaw puts all Wi-Fi networks at risk of hacking
 The security protocol used to protect the vast majority of wifi connections has been broken, potentially exposing wireless internet traffic to malicious eavesdroppers and attacks, according to the researcher who discovered the weakness.

Mathy Vanhoef, a security expert at Belgian university KU Leuven, discovered the weakness in the wireless security protocol WPA2, and published details of the flaw on Monday morning.

“Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted,” Vanhoef’s report said. “This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and so on.

Vanhoef emphasised that “the attack works against all modern protected wifi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.”

The vulnerability affects a number of operating systems and devices, the report said, including Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys and others.

“If your device supports wifi, it is most likely affected,” Vanhoef wrote. “In general, any data or information that the victim transmits can be decrypted … Additionally, depending on the device being used and the network setup, it is also possible to decrypt data sent towards the victim (e.g. the content of a website).”

Vanhoef gave the weakness the codename Krack, short for Key Reinstallation AttaCK.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre said in a statement it was examining the vulnerability. “Research has been published today into potential global weaknesses to wifi systems. The attacker would have to be physically close to the target and the potential weaknesses would not compromise connections to secure websites, such as banking services or online shopping.

“We are examining the research and will be providing guidance if required. Internet security is a key NCSC priority and we continuously update our advice on issues such as wifi safety, device management and browser security.”

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (Cert) issued a warning on Sunday in response to the vulnerability.

“The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection and others,” the alert says, detailing a number of potential attacks. It adds that, since the vulnerability is in the protocol itself, rather than any specific device or software, “most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected”.

Insecure connections to websites should be considered public, and viewable to any other user on the network, until the vulnerability is fixed. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The development is significant because the compromised security protocol is the most secure in general use to encrypt wifi connections. Older security standards have been broken in the past, but on those occasions a successor was available and in widespread use.

Crucially, the attack is unlikely to affect the security of information sent over the network that is protected in addition to the standard WPA2 encryption. This means connections to secure websites are still safe, as are other encrypted connections such as virtual private networks (VPN) and SSH communications.

However, insecure connections to websites – those which do not display a padlock icon in the address bar, indicating their support for HTTPS – should be considered public, and viewable to any other user on the network, until the vulnerability is fixed.

Equally, home internet connections will remain difficult to fully secure for quite some time. Many wireless routers are infrequently if ever updated, meaning that they will continue to communicate in an insecure manner. However, Vanhoef says, if the fix is installed on a phone or computer, that device will still be able to communicate with an insecure router. That means even users with an unpatched router should still fix as many devices as they can, to ensure security on other networks.

Alex Hudson, the chief technical officer of subscription service Iron, said that it is important to “keep calm”.

“There is a limited amount of physical security already on offer by wifi: an attack needs to be in proximity,” Hudson wrote. “So, you’re not suddenly vulnerable to everyone on the internet. It’s very weak protection, but this is important when reviewing your threat level.

“Additionally, it’s likely that you don’t have too many protocols relying on WPA2 security. Every time you access an HTTPS site … your browser is negotiating a separate layer of encryption. Accessing secure websites over wifi is still totally safe. Hopefully – but there is no guarantee – you don’t have much information going over your network that requires the encryption WPA2 provides.”

There’s likely to be a delay before the vulnerability is used to actually attack networks in the wild, says Symantec researcher Candid Wuest. “It’s quite a complex attack to carry out in practice, but we’ve seen similar before, so we know it’s possible to automate.

“Small businesses and people at home should be concerned, but not too worried,” Wuest added, advising most users to simply apply the updates to their software as and when it becomes available.

The most important lesson from the weakness, he said, was that relying on any one security feature is risky. “You shouldn’t be trusting one single point of failure for all your security. Don’t rely on just your wifi, use a VPN or secure connection for anything important.”

Different devices and operating systems are impacted to differing degrees based on how they implement the WPA2 protocol. Among the worst hit are Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and Linux, due to a further bug that results in the encryption key being rewritten to all-zeros; iOS and Windows, meanwhile, are among the most secure, since they don’t fully implement the WPA2 protocol. No tested device or piece of software was fully immune to the weakness, however.

The international Cert group, based at Carnegie Mellon University, informed technology companies of the flaw on 28 August, meaning that most have had around a month and a half to implement a fix. The Guardian has asked Apple, Google, Microsoft and Linksys the status of their patches. Google said: “We’re aware of the issue, and we will be patching any affected devices in the coming weeks.” Microsoft said: “We have released a security update to address this issue. Customers who apply the update, or have automatic updates enabled, will be protected.” No other vendor has replied at press time.

Output: Operating systems including Windows, Apple, Linux and Android, among others, could be vulnerable to cyberattack, following the discovery of a vulnerability in wireless security protocol WPA2. Hackers can use this attack technique to read information that was previously considered to be safety encrypted. “This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and so on," warned Mathy Vanhoef, a security expert at Belgian university KU Leuven. However, security experts said that hackers would have to be physically close for the weakness, known as Krack, to be capable of compromising users' Wi-Fi.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
IBM partnership eyes blockchain to speed international payments
 “Buy them only if you’re prepared to lose all your money,” said Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey in May 2021. He was talking about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and one reason for his scepticism is that these next-generation virtual tokens “don’t have intrinsic value”.

But does that make them a bad investment? Indeed, are traditional currencies any better? Sterling was previously underpinned by gold, but Britain sold off half of its reserves between 1999 and 2002, when gold was at its lowest value in 20 years. When governments can make unilateral actions like that, decentralised cryptocurrencies which aren’t controlled by any single entity start to look appealing.

That’s particularly true if they’re set up to mimic a traditional gold-backed means of exchange, and Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto mimicked gold by making the currency rare and difficult to mine. To “create” a new bitcoin, a computer’s resources have to be used to crunch through equations. Most of those equations will come to nothing; just occasionally you will hit the jackpot and find a coin.

“It is its very cost of production that gives Bitcoin value (among other factors),” wrote Dominic Frisby in MoneyWeek last October. “You can’t just conjure up Bitcoins. You have to do some hard computer work first and thereby make your contribution to the network. And even if you do this, there is no guarantee you’ll get bitcoins at the end of it. There is risk.”

So, there’s a chance you could burn a considerable amount of electricity for no financial gain. That’s just one of the risks involved in mining cryptocurrency, and a big factor in the question of whether it’s worthwhile.

The biggest cost of mining: energy

Mining bitcoins consumes a lot of electricity. In evidence presented to the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2018, Princeton University’s Arvind Narayanan outlined how Bitcoin miners were at the time computing “about 50 billion billion hashes… every second.” Combined, Narayanan estimated, those operations were consuming just under 1% of the global electricity supply, “or slightly more than the electricity consumption of the state of Ohio or that of the state of New York”.

And as time goes on it takes more and more power to generate a return. By 2020, digital assets exchange Zipmex was warning that “it takes a large setup nearly 30 days to mine 1 bitcoin. After deducting the electricity cost and the overall hardware and software cost, you will be left with 0.1 BTC of profit every month at best. With the majority of setups and the electricity cost and some manpower, it would cost you a total of $73,000 to process one Bitcoin every month.”

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At the time of writing, a single Bitcoin is worth $34,471, so you’d have to bank on the value going up considerably to make any profit at all. Or, you could try mining somewhere where electricity is cheaper. In 2018, Elite Fixtures calculated the energy cost of mining a single Bitcoin across 115 different countries, and found prices ranging from from $1,190 in Trinidad and Tobago to $26,170 in South Korea. In the UK, the cost was $8,402. Unfortunately, it’s not feasible for most of us to up sticks and start mining in a different country: the costs of moving will eat significantly into any putative profits.

Generating money through mining

It’s not just the energy of cryptomining that costs money: you need to pay for the hardware too. In theory you could use your personal PC, but this is likely to yield a trickle of currency at best, and most serious operations have switched to Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designs that are custom-designed for mining.

One mining platform that uses this technology is the Antminer S19 Pro, which costs £6,500 and which can rip through 110 terahashes per second. On average this should generate approximately 0.0007 BTC per day – but with an energy consumption of around 3.25kW it’ll cost you around $18.72 per day to mine around the clock. At current rates, you can expect an operating profit of $4.25 (£3.05) per day, or $1,551 (£1,116) annually.

Clearly this setup isn’t going to make you a millionaire. It would take nearly six years just to pay off the cost of the hardware – and there’s a further complication too. The complexity of the Bitcoin mining algorithm is continually updated to compensate for technological advances in the mining hardware, to ensure that future computers can’t flood the market with cheaply generated coins.

This means that today’s state-of-the-art hardware can quickly become uneconomical. In 2018 the International Business Times reported that miners in China were selling off older mining hardware because it was no longer possible to mine enough currencies with these machines to cover their electricity costs: “a mining machine bought at a price of about 20,000 yuan ($2,885) a year ago is being sold for a price between 100 yuan to 1,600 yuan.” So if you want to keep on mining coins at a consistent rate, you need to keep investing in the latest hardware.

If you’d rather not be constantly upgrading your mining rig, an alternative is to mine in the cloud using sites like shamining.com, hashing24.com or genesis-mining.com. This lets you benefit from the expertise of dedicated teams for whom operating and refining a mining operation is a full-time job, and in many cases, you can also make responsible choices regarding energy consumption. Shamining has a focus on solar and wind energy, for example, while Genesis Mining is based in Iceland, a country where 80% of power comes from renewable sources.

Cloud mining is still an expense, though, with most services requiring an up-front payment. When choosing one, check the minimum required investment, minimum contract length, expected profit, and the terms on which you can withdraw your share of the operation’s earnings.

Can you still create Bitcoins?

If you really want to use your own computer for mining, there are sites that can help. nicehash.com is one that makes it easy, with a mining model which has (a little bizarrely) also been adopted in the latest release of the Norton 360 antivirus suite.

The idea in both cases is simple. The software runs quietly in the background, using your computer’s spare capacity to mine for cryptocurrency – in Norton’s case, Ethereum. Whatever you earn is automatically transferred into your wallet.

It sounds like a no-brainer: you might only see a small profit, but since there’s no impact on your computer usage it’s free money – right? Well, perhaps not. If you use your computer’s CPU, it’s all but certain that you’ll burn up a far greater cost in electricity than you will ever make back.

Graphics cards with their abundant cores and parallel processing are far better tuned to mining. If you have a powerful graphics card that spends most of its day sitting idle then it may be worth your while putting it to work. However, for precisely this reason, these cards are hard to come by, with mining enthusiasts snapping up stocks of high-end GPUs, leading to worldwide shortages of graphics hardware. To manage demand, Nvidia has even started shipping cards that deliberately reduce their own performance when used for mining cryptocurrencies.

Is cryptocurrency ethical?

It’s clear that, however you generate your cryptocurrency, it’s going to involve guzzling large amounts of energy, which can't be good for the environment. Cambridge university’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index recently put Bitcoin’s global electricity consumption roughly on par with that of a medium-sized European country such as Sweden or Ukraine.

Many have concluded that this alone is a good reason to ban all cryptocurrencies. “Bitcoin could be the first inefficient version of a disruptive technology,” Dr Larisa Yarovaya, a lecturer at Southampton university told the FT recently. “It should die for the common good of the planet and be replaced by a new model. It consumes more electricity than a country. All the rest is detail.”

And the societal cost of cryptocurrency mining isn’t felt only in electricity consumption. The GPUs and memory used in mining rigs are a hefty cocktail of silicon, copper, boron, cobalt, tungsten and all manner of chemicals. Some of those raw materials are in short supply, which is in part to blame for the current global CPU shortage. Rare-earth materials are – in part – being used up to mine highly volatile virtual currencies.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

There is, at least, some awareness of these issues within the cryptocurrency industry. The Crypto Climate Accord, founded earlier this year, describes itself as “a private sector-led initiative for the entire crypto community focused on decarbonising the cryptocurrency industry in record time”.

The Accord – which is backed by some big names from the crypto industry – is largely focused on making mining use 100% renewable energy, with a target date of 2030. That’s more aggressive than many climate targets, but given that much of the mining is undertaken by unofficial farms around the globe, it’s highly unlikely to clean up the entire practice.

And even if it does manage to move generation to solar, wind and other renewable electricity sources within nine years, the question remains: wouldn’t that energy still be better used to power something more beneficial?

Alternative ways to profit from cryptocurrencies

You don’t need to create coins yourself to take part in the crypto boom. The price of all cryptocurrencies is in constant flux, and as with any other currency you can invest by buying low and selling high. According to CryptoCoin News, a 2021 study by investment firm AJ Bell found that “more Brits have bought into cryptocurrency than into equity … 7% of young adults have invested into crypto over the course of the last year. The FCA estimates that 2.3 million Brits now own cryptocurrency, which amounts to 3.4% of the UK’s population.”

If you’re not among them, you might be wondering whether you’ve left it too late. We can’t advise on whether you should buy into cryptocurrency: nobody can say what will happen to the market day-to-day, let alone over the longer term, so those of us who didn’t invest in 2010 can only look back and rue what we missed. However, since fewer than one in 25 Brits has yet invested in a digital currency, the market could still see gains as interest increases.

If you do decide to invest, there are a few important factors to consider, not least of which is the environmental impact. Make sure you trust whichever institution you use to buy your currency, and consider buying when the market is down, to maximise your chances of selling at a profit later. Finally, remember where we came in, with advice from the Bank of England: there are no guarantees in the world of cryptocurrencies, so “buy them only if you’re prepared to lose all your money”.

Output: IBM has partnered with KlickEx Group, Stellar.org and several banks to develop a blockchain-based solution to making cross-border payments cheaper and more efficient. International transactions using several currencies can take up to several weeks to clear, but IBM's single-network solution, already being used in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, operates in real-time and could reduce clearing and settlement times to seconds.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Amazon hand picks ad agencies for E-commerce Training Academy
 On a breezy day in late September, Tod Harrick and his team of around 50 consultants were invited to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to take a new four-hour training course called E-commerce Training Academy. There, he and his colleagues learned how Amazon’s major advertising programs — Amazon Advertising Platform, Amazon Media Group and Amazon Marketing Services — worked, where ad placements would appear as well as targeting options and changes that agencies needed to know about.

After the training, Harrick and his team took and passed a test, becoming Amazon-certified. “I thought I would know most of the things in the training, but my bet was wrong,” said Harrick, vp of product for retail consultancy Marketplace Ignition, which was acquired this year by WPP-owned agency Possible. “For instance, I learned that AAP changed from a managed-service program to a self-service tool, and Amazon extended AAP to dynamic programmatic ads to duplicate what you can do in AMS.”

In addition to E-commerce Training Academy, Harrick’s parent agency Possible is also part of Trusted Creative Partners, a training program Amazon developed around two years ago for select agencies — most of which are creative shops — to get familiar with ad creative on the platform.

Amazon is building its advertising business and constantly updates its ad offerings. But getting training from Amazon like Harrick’s team seems to be rare, with only five out of the 13 media and retail agencies Digiday contacted for this story receiving it. And the agencies that received training have had varied experiences. Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“As a whole, Amazon doesn’t train anyone. It lets service providers figure stuff out and then educate users,” said James Thomson, partner of Amazon consultancy Buy Box Experts, who previously worked for Amazon for six years. He said his agency typically chats via phone with Amazon’s salespeople to know what the ad offering is. Amazon offers some basic training to new sellers on how to create an account and list products, for example, but the training is not particularly advanced, according to Thomson.

“Basically, think of it as a library full of books, but no librarians and no teachers to teach you to read,” he said.

Like Thomson, most agency executives interviewed for this story were unaware of Amazon’s training programs. But a few shops were invited to training programs like Trusted Creative Partners and special workshops at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

One source from an agency that wasn’t invited to training programs or workshops said Amazon has come to her office a couple times over the past few months to give search-marketing training. “There’s no regularity or a set curriculum,” said this person. “Amazon comes to our office as needed when we have questions on the platform.”

Agency iCrossing appears to be having a similar experience. Its head of search, Jacob Davis, said while he is not familiar with E-commerce Training Academy or Trusted Creative Partners, Amazon has offered trainings in the iCrossing office, and Davis’ team often visits Amazon’s New York office so the two groups can understand each other’s sales processes and Amazon’s ad products. “I don’t know if the experience that we have with Amazon is any different from other agencies,” said Davis.

Meanwhile, Angela Edwards, vp of marketing and client services for Trusted Creative Partner agency Catapult Marketing, said the program keeps Catapult informed on changes and updates on the layout of product detail pages and promotional offerings, which Amazon updates every quarter. Two Amazon executives conducted the first — and only — in-person training that Edwards’ team received from Amazon in her office around two years ago, and her team has communicated virtually with Amazon on questions and suggestions since then, according to Edwards.

“Amazon is constantly changing, so it’s important to keep abreast of those updates,” she said. “Amazon has no time to talk to you. It is usually more responsive to agencies in Trusted Creative Partners.”

The training experience of Kayla Bond, senior director of content strategy for VML-owned Rockfish, which is a member of Trusted Creative Partners, seems to go more in-depth. Bond said Amazon offers training every six months, which consists of about eight Amazon executives coming to her office for a full-day immersion.

“The training is a little bit of both ad creative and how to use Amazon’s ad programs. For the most part, it is about AMG and AMS,” said Bond. “But we do discuss additional ad opportunities for Alexa, Kindle and Brand Stores, etc.”

Bond said she has heard of E-commerce Training Academy, but her team hasn’t received any information about the program or its benefits. She said Rockfish has been invited to invite-only training sessions facilitated by Amazon Media Group for agencies in its Seattle headquarters. Each session is around a day long and focuses on how to leverage the Amazon Media ecosystem to fuel the Amazon flywheel, according to Bond. “The session is unique, as it brings in Amazon team members across disciplines to a single location to present their point of views and best practices as it relates to devices, AMG, AMS and special programs,” she said.

As Amazon’s ad offerings become more sophisticated, Thomson believes Amazon should offer every agency more clarity on things like bidding strategy for the platform’s advertising programs. For instance, for the headline ad option, which appears right below a search query on Amazon, it took Thomson’s team months to figure out that if a media buyer puts multiple keywords into the same ad campaign, Amazon averages out bid levels rather than maintaining the highest bid price, he said.

“It is rather technical stuff, but actually very important, as there is no meaningful documentation and a lot of wasted time and clients’ money figuring this stuff out,” said Thomson.

While ad training from Amazon keeps select agencies informed on new ad features, it seems to only address the basics. “You don’t come out of E-commerce Training Academy and can immediately operate Amazon’s ad platforms at a high level — it is up to you to learn and manage those things day to day,” said Harrick. “I don’t think it is in Amazon’s interest to teach agencies the ins of outs of its ad tools on a daily basis.”

Output: Online retail giant Amazon is helping select advertising agencies get the best out of its ad platform. Its E-commerce Training Academy is an invitation-only programme extended to a handful of its Trusted Creative Partners and offers deeper insights into the workings of Amazon Advertising Platform, Amazon Marketing Services and Amazon Media Group. While some agencies are visited by Amazon technicians to receive training, others have called for the platform to offer more information on how to optimise its increasingly sophisticated suite of advertising tools.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Programmatic publishers' ad revenues take hit after Safari update
 Apple is cracking down on ad tracking through Safari, and the first publishers to feel the pain are those who rely heavily on programmatic advertising.

Programmatic publishers’ ad rates have taken a hit since Apple updated its Safari browser last month to prevent third parties from tracking users for more than 24 hours after a user visited a website. Although Apple’s move hurts publishers reliant on third-party data that advertisers depend on to target niche audiences at scale, publishers that sell their inventory directly say they aren’t affected by the Safari update.

“It has already had an impact on our revenue, and that will only be compounded as adoption [of Safari’s update] increases,” said Paul Bannister, co-founder of CafeMedia, which sells more than half of its impressions programmatically. “It’s hard to quantify what it will end up as since it’s so early still and lots of other variables are at play, but it’s a [measurable] impact.”

Because users didn’t update their operating systems all at once and Apple released the update near the end of a quarter, when ad rates tend to be higher, gauging the impact of Safari’s tracking change isn’t as simple as comparing monthly CPMs. Apple did not reply to an interview request for this story.

Bannister said CPMs on Safari are about 10 percent lower than what he’d expect them to be heading into the fourth quarter. CafeMedia gets about a third of its mobile traffic from Safari, which is in line with industry averages, according to NetMarketShare.

Since Apple’s Safari update, Ranker saw the gap between its yields on iOS and Android (which doesn’t use the Safari browser) increase by 8 percent in favor of Android, said Ranker CEO Clark Benson, who estimated that Apple’s move could potentially lead to a 1 to 2 percent drop in overall ad revenue. This indicates that advertisers heavily reliant on audience targeting “have shifted slightly away from Safari visitors,” Benson said.

Danny Khatib, CEO of Granite Media, said CPMs are down 15 to 20 percent on Safari since the update. For educational publisher Slader, the number of bids it receives for the impressions tied to its Safari traffic is down about 15 percent compared to last month, said Slader co-founder Scott Kolb. Both publishers emphasized there is a lot of noise in the data since the Safari updates are recent, and it’s very difficult to isolate the impact of Apple’s move. But several publishers that rely heavily on programmatic indicated that in general, it is harder for them to make money off their audiences since Apple updated Safari.

The reason the Safari changes are affecting programmatic publishers has less to do with automation itself and more to do with audience targeting.

Compared to last month, CPMs on Purch’s website Live Science are down about 15 percent for Safari users, said Purch CTO John Potter. But on Purch’s website Top Ten Reviews, CPMs are down less than 5 percent for Safari users.

A small drop in CPMs was expected due to the change in fiscal quarters. But Live Science had a bigger drop because it relies on audience targeting, which Apple’s new limitations on third-party trackers affect. On Top Ten Reviews, the ads are sold to match the content and not the audience, which is why the review site’s CPMs haven’t been affected as much, Potter said.

Reps from New York magazine, Remedy Health Media and two comScore 200 publishers requesting anonymity said they haven’t noticed any impact from the Safari update. All of these publishers sell the vast majority of their inventory through direct sales, so they aren’t dependent on retargeting.

If publishers can make direct connections with their audiences, they can wean themselves off third-party trackers and mitigate the impact of Safari’s update, said an engineer at a business publisher requesting anonymity. But obtaining first-party data from users by getting them to sign up for a new product or fork over login information is a long-term project that might not deliver immediate results.

“Publishers should focus on what makes them unique, regardless of how Apple is changing their software,” said Namit Merchant, COO of ad tech firm Media.net. “We believe that publishers should focus less on audience and more on content to differentiate themselves from the duopoly.”

Output: Publishers relying on audience targeting could see their overall ad revenue drop by up to 2% as a result of Apple's latest update to its Safari browser, which limits third-party trackers. Although some marketers have said it is too early to assess the full impact of the update, educational publisher Slader reported a 15% drop in impressions linked to Safari traffic, while CafeMedia said CPMs were down by around 10%. In contrast, publishers selling content via direct sales, rather than retargeting, have experienced little or no downturn.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
BlackRock attempts blockchain programme for custody
 Buy Side BlackRock Tests Blockchain for Custody

Global asset manager BlackRock is in the midst of testing a blockchain-based platform for its custody relationships, said Laurence Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock during the firm’s third-quarter earnings call.

Dubbed Aladdin Provider, the offering uses a private blockchain to create more seamless processing between BlackRock and its custodians.

“It should reduce many many errors,” he said. “Let us not assume that there will no longer be errors. We do have some.”

Once testing proves successful, Fink plans to expand the platform beyond BlackRock so that clients can utilize the platform.

In the meantime, BlackRock has seen higher demand for its Aladdin Risk for Wealth Management, which it launched two years ago. There are five clients currently live on the platform, and the asset manager sees demand from Asia, Europe, and North America, according to Fink.

Digital offerings like ARWM and digital partnerships, such as , FutureAdvisor, iRetire, and Scalable Capital, are critical for BlackRock’s future growth, he said.

Fink estimated that the offerings reach tens of thousands of wealth managers who manage assets on behalf of millions of end investors.

“As our digital offerings enable financial advisors to have a more productive conversation with their clients, they are driving more investment into our iShares and other BlackRock investment strategies, he noted. “It is critical that we continue to invest in these opportunities while being mindful of the impact on our bottom line.”

BlackRock also has rolled out an ambitious plan it calls “Tech2020,” which looks to extend the more than 2,000 technologists across the firm, Rob Goldstein, COO of BlackRock, told Business Insider earlier this week.

“And we’re really excited about the opportunity to take a company like BlackRock, which is already, I’d say, at the forefront of technology in its industry, and, if anything, keep expanding that,” he added.

Output: BlackRock, the world's largest investment manager, is piloting a blockchain programme aiming to reduce errors in communications between itself and its custodians. The programme, which the company is calling Aladdin Provider, uses a private blockchain. The firm is planning to roll out a similar programme for its clients if it proves successful. BlackRock is also planning a technology-driven hiring push, looking to add 2,000 technologists to its staff by 2020.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
'Cryptoruble' rumoured to be in the works for Russia
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially stated that Russia will issue its own ‘CryptoRuble’ at a closed door meeting in Moscow, according to local news sources. The news broke through Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.

According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities. The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied. The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale. Nikiforov said:

“I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after 2 months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will.”

Embracing and rejecting

While the announcement means that Russia will enter the cryptocurrency world, it is in no way an affirmation or legalization of Bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Putin quite recently called for a complete ban on all cryptocurrencies within Russia.

The statement from Putin seemed apparently to contradict the earlier comments from other ministers who seemed pro-crypto, but only with regulations, as well as Putin’s recent meetings with Buterin and others. Now, with the issuance of the CryptoRuble, the apparent contradiction has been made clear.

Output: Russia is rumoured to be launching its own cryptocurrency, the cryptoruble. The currency will not be available for mining but will be created and tracked by the Russian government. The cryptocurrency seems to be based on blockchain technology and could be used to protect against online fraud. Rubles and cryptorubles will be interchangeable, though confirmation on how has not been given. The currency could support the online economy without requiring foreign money markets or third-party brokers for transactions, with the currency expected to require proof of origin to guard against money laundering. Undocumented cryptorubles will reportedly have a 13% tax applied when exchanged.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
EMEA property coverage much greater than cyber coverage: Aon
 Only 15 percent of potential information asset losses are covered by insurance; almost 60 percent of total physical asset values are protected

38 percent of EMEA businesses have suffered a cyber loss in last 24 months, averaging $3.3m per loss

Only 30 percent of businesses in EMEA are 'fully aware' of legal and economic consequences of EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

London (October 16, 2017) - The 2017 EMEA Cyber Risk Transfer Comparison Report, released today by Aon in collaboration with the Ponemon Institute, a leading research firm on privacy, data protection and information security, found that organizations recognize the growing value of technology and data assets relative to historical tangible assets, though they are spending four times more budget on insurance for Property, Plant and Equipment (PP&E) risks.

'Our goal is to compare the financial statement impact of tangible property and network risk exposure,' said Dr. Larry Ponemon. 'A better understanding of the relative financial statement impact will assist organizations in allocating resources and determining the appropriate amount of risk transfer resources to allocate to the mitigation of network risk exposures.'

The report found that while 38 percent of businesses surveyed confirmed they have experienced a cyber loss in the past 24 months, only 15 percent of their probable maximum loss (PML) is covered by insurance. This is in stark contrast to the policy limits purchased against physical assets like Property, Plant and Equipment, where around 60 percent of their PML is typically covered. The report also shows that the impact of business disruption to information assets is 50 percent greater than to PP&E *.

Vanessa Leemans, Chief Operating Officer for Global Cyber Insurance Solutions at Aon commented: 'This study compared the relative insurance protection of certain tangible versus intangible assets. We found that most organizations spend much more on fire insurance premiums than on cyber insurance, despite stating in their publicly disclosed documents that a majority of the organization's value is attributed to intangible assets.'

The report also found that only 30 percent of businesses are 'fully aware' of the legal and economic consequences of European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR comes into effect on 25th May 2018, and introduces a 72-hour notification for all personal data breaches - except those unlikely to pose a risk to individuals. Fines for non-compliance with the GDPR will increase to as much as €20m or 4 percent of an organization's global turnover (whichever is highest). Insurance carriers are starting to see an increase in demand for cyber coverage as cyber exposure awareness becomes an enterprise-wide issue.

Vanessa Leemans concluded: 'With 65 percent of EMEA organizations expecting their cyber risk exposure to increase over the next two years, cyber risk needs to be approached at an enterprise-wide level in order to achieve cyber resilience. This should include enterprise-wide education, assessment and quantification, preventive risk management, incident response plan, as well as cyber insurance.

To download a copy of the Aon/Ponemon Institute 2017 EMEA Cyber Risk Transfer Report, please visit our website.

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

The Aon/Ponemon Institute 2017 EMEA Cyber Risk Transfer Report is based on a survey of over 500 individuals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa involved in their company's cyber risk management as well as enterprise risk management activities. 35 percent of respondents are in finance, treasury and accounting and 25 percent in risk management. Corporate compliance/audit accounted for 17 percent of respondents and general management nine percent of respondents.

* On average, the total value of PP&E, including all fixed assets plus Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and industrial control systems is approximately $932m for the companies represented in this research. The report calculates an average total value of information assets, which includes customer records, employee records, financial reports, analytical data, source code, models methods and other intellectual property, of $1,092m.

About Aon

Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.

Follow Aon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aon_plc

Sign up for News Alerts: http://aon.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=58

Aon Media Contact:

Madeleine Little

Senior Director, External Communciations EMEA

madeleine.little@aon.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7086 0347

Output: Companies in the EMEA region have approximately 60% of physical assets covered by insurance, compared to just 15% of their informational assets, according to a report from Aon. The report also noted 38% of businesses surveyed had suffered a cyber loss within the last two years. These losses are more disruptive to business operations than losses rising from issues with firms' property assets. Additionally, the report identified less than a third of businesses surveyed fully understood the implications of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Airbnb to offer hosts loans for home improvements
 Airbnb is looking to take an increasingly active role in ensuring the homes it offers for rent on its site are pleasant to stay in, from offering loans to hosts for home improvements to actively partnering in the construction of an apartment block in Florida, according to reports.

The changes, which see the company move further than ever from its origins as a listing site connecting holidaymakers with hosts who have a spare room, could help Airbnb cement its position as an alternative to traditional hotels.

But it also risks irritating hosts who enjoyed the previously laissez-faire approach, as well as prompting awkward questions from regulators worldwide about the precise nature of Airbnb’s business.

The home improvement loans are part of a programme being trialled by the company, dubbed Airbnb Select, according to industry news site the Information. The programme will highlight homes and hosts that are more likely to appeal to travellers seeking a high-quality, hotel-like experience, the Information says, as well as offer them guidance and assistance to further iron out the wrinkles in their offering.

That can range from advice on cosmetic improvements to their homes, to help shooting the best photographs, as well as more significant aid such as the loans, which would be repaid through revenue made from future bookings.

Select is just the latest example of Airbnb’s effort to create a more standardised offering. Even its conventional hosts have reportedly come under pressure from the company to dial back on the idiosyncrasies that the site was famous for in its early days, when the key selling point for many tourists was the ability to “live like a local”, as one recent ad campaign put it.

Hosts are urged, for instance, to “learn from hotel bathrooms” – clearing bathroom counters of their own products and placing rolled-up towels in a basket – and “show personality, not personal items”. “Too many pictures of your dog and family might make [guests] feel uncomfortable,” the company notes.

Airbnb’s attempt to build a hotel-like experience goes further than simply pushing hosts to refine their homes, though. In a number of locations around the world, the company is actively partnering on the creation of hotel-like properties from construction onwards.

In Florida, for instance, an apartment building branded as “Niido powered by Airbnb” will see tenants in the 324 new-build flats, located just outside Orlando, encouraged to sublet their properties for up to half the year in exchange for paying a portion of the income to their landlord.

Partnering at the point of construction allows Airbnb hosts to offer the perks of their luxury apartments, such as swimming pools and other communal areas, to visitors without falling foul of their building’s regulations. And, of course, it allows Airbnb to dictate the design of the building to suit its travellers’ needs.

“This partnership shows how landlords, developers, and Airbnb can work together to create value for everyone and better serve tenants,” Jaja Jackson, Airbnb’s director of global multifamily housing partnerships, said in a statement on Thursday.

In Japan in 2016, Airbnb took an even more forthright step, experimenting with building a “community centre where travellers can also stay” in the village of Yoshino. The company responded forcefully to media reports that called the experiment a “hotel”, however, arguing that it wasn’t one, since “the Yoshino house is managed by and for the community, and 97% of the price charged by the hosts goes directly to the community”.

The risk for the company isn’t just that existing hosts rebel against the changes (although a job advert seeking someone to improve host quality “without driving significant churn in supply” suggests it is concerned). It is also that, as the company takes on more hotel-like aspects, it begins being asked to take on more hotel-like responsibilities, too.

Currently, Airbnb offloads the difficulty of complying with the myriad different local regulations on short-stay rentals around the world onto its hosts – a choice which some localities have welcomed, but others have fought strongly against. In New York City, that fight escalated until the company sued the city for passing a bill that made it unlawful to advertise unlawful rentals.

By arguing that it merely connects hosts and travellers, Airbnb has managed to keep on the right side of the law in most other places. But as that claim becomes less convincing, the company might find itself with more and more New Yorks on its hands.

Output: Airbnb is to offer loans to some hosts as part of a wider programme that increasingly positions the company as an alternative to hotels. Its trial service, Airbnb Select, gives hosts the opportunity to take out loans to make minor improvements or have professional-quality photographs taken, with the borrowed sum repaid via rental revenues. The launch of Airbnb Select is part of a broader campaign to standardise Airbnb's offerings and move away from the company's more individualistic approach, which invited guests to "live like a local".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Norway may remove tax exemption on EVs weighing over two tons
 This story about incentives for electric cars in Norway was first published by Gas2.

Norway charges a tax on new cars that can actually double the list price. Heavier, more powerful cars pay more. The tax on smaller, less powerful cars is more modest. Electric cars are exempt from the tax entirely, which is one of the primary reasons electric cars in Norway are so popular.

Norway also confers a number of other benefits on electric car owners, among them free charging in many cities, access to HOV lanes, and reduced tolls for the country’s many bridges and tunnels. Taken together, they make buying an electric car a no-brainer.

But all those subsidies cost the government a lot of money in lost revenue every year. Now conservatives are proposing to impose a one-time fee (another name for a tax) to register an electric car in Norway. The fee would be based on the weight of a car, the theory being that heavy cars cause more wear and tear on the nation’s roads. Only cars that weigh more than 2 tons would be affected.

The fee could add as much as $12,000 to the price of a Tesla Model X, while the Model S would pay a fee of about $5,000. Cars that are close to the 2 ton threshold would be charged about $900.

The proposal has caused an angry backlash among electric car advocates. Christina Bu, head of Norway’s Electric Vehicle Association, calls the one-time charge on new electric cars over two tons a “tax bomb,” according to Norway’s VG News.

“The government knows very well that many car manufacturers take this step to develop the electric cars with more space and increased range due largely to interest from customers in Norway. The new one time fee will make it more difficult to get families to buy electric cars. And it will be more difficult to reach the … goal of selling only zero emissions cars by 2025,” she says.

John Helmersen, head of operations for Jaguar in Norway, says about 1,000 Norwegians have paid a $1,300 deposit to get on the waiting list for the new Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV. He claims the new fee would cost buyers about an extra $3,500.

Stuff and nonsense, sniffs State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Jørgen Næsje. “Typical family electric cars are not affected by the introduction of a one time fee. We also do not know that new family cars are being launched that are so heavy that they will receive a one time fee. Both the Opel Ampera and Tesla Model 3 will be [exempt].

“That heavy luxury SUVs that cost over $130,000 get any fee is quite reasonable and it provides a good social profile. The Jaguar which weighs just over 2 tons … will hardly get the big fee. Those who can afford to buy such expensive cars can pay a small one time fee for new car purchases.”

It is regrettable that Norway is considering pulling back on some of the programs and incentives that make purchasing an electric car so popular, but the fee, if and when one is enacted, will still amount to far less than the tax buyers of conventional cars have to pay. Many Norwegians consider this idea more of a negotiating strategy the conservatives are using as discussions about the next national budget get under way.

Still, it is a signal that the benefits electric car buyers currently enjoy won’t last forever. In fact, many of them are scheduled to lapse in 2020 anyway as the country struggles to find the proper balance between promoting electric cars and fiscal responsibility.

Perhaps a hint this was coming led to the extraordinary number of Tesla automobiles registered in Norway in the third quarter of this year. In fact, an amazing 900 Teslas were registered in the last week of the quarter alone.

The conservatives’ plan has been labeled a “Tesla Tax” by opponents. Perhaps there is some truth in that. The high price of Tesla’s Model S and Model X definitely put them out of reach for many Norwegian families, and adding another fee on makes them even more so. The rationale for the plan is that heavy cars put more strain on roadways, but heavy cars also tend to be more expensive cars.

California has reconfigured its incentive program for electric cars to provide more benefits to low-income buyers after many complained that making it easier for rich people to buy expensive cars was unfair. Proposing a fee based on weight is a way of taking a swipe at the wealthy without coming right out and saying so.

In any event, the Tesla Model 3 is coming soon enough and will have the sort of range Norwegians say they crave. But it will be light enough to avoid most if not all of the new fee, whatever it turns out to be once the budgetary process is completed.

There is every reason to believe that Norway will continue to be one of Tesla’s strongest export markets, with or without a one-time fee that applies at the time of purchase. After all, paying an extra $5,000 for a Model S is still preferable to ponying up $85,000 more to buy a conventional Mercedes S-Class.

Source: Reuters | Hat Tip to Leif Hansen

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Output: Norway has floated a proposal to impose a one-off payment on electric vehicles (EVs) weighing more than two tonnes to cover the cost of wear and tear on the nation's roads. State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Jørgen Næsje, said the so-called 'Tesla tax' was aimed at the luxury SUV market, and said: "those who can afford to buy such expensive cars can pay a small one-time fee". The proposal could signal a change in government backing for EVs, which are subject to benefits including reduced tolls and free charging.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Norway may remove tax exemption on EVs weighing over two tons
 Norway is by far the world leader in electric cars. The zero-emission vehicles make up almost 30% of the total market. But now, the government is putting the brakes on some of the subsidies that revved up this market. A proposal, presented as part of next year’s budget, has been put forward to remove a tax exemption on electric vehicles that weigh more than two metric tons.

The move has been dubbed the “Tesla tax,” as it’s most likely to effect the American company’s models, particularly the Tesla Model X, an SUV. There are more than 13,000 registered Teslas in Norway, according to data from the national statistics office. The tax would increase the cost of buying a new Tesla X by about 70,000 kroner ($8,850), local media said (link in Norwegian).

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Norway’s finance minister, Siv Jensen, justified the proposal by arguing that the heavy cars caused as much damage to the road as gasoline and diesel cars, so electric-car owners should contribute more to the cost of upkeep. Still, owners of Teslas and other electric cars would still benefit heavily compared to other vehicle owners.

The Scandinavian country has an ambitious target for new vehicles sales to be exclusively zero-emission models by 2025. Countries like France and the UK hope to achieve the same by 2040. Over the years, Norway has offered enticing subsides and other perks to encourage people to buy electric cars, such as no city tolls, free parking, free charging, and permission to drive in bus lanes. In February, the number of electric cars in Norway surpassed 100,000.

The Norwegian government has been considering ways to curb the incentives for a while, amid criticisms that the perks allow rich households to buy pricey Teslas cheaply and significantly increase congestion in the capital, Oslo. However, the traditional center-right allies of the current government have spoken out against the Tesla tax, because the subsidies had been agreed to run through 2020, according to AFP.

Output: Norway has floated a proposal to impose a one-off payment on electric vehicles (EVs) weighing more than two tonnes to cover the cost of wear and tear on the nation's roads. State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Jørgen Næsje, said the so-called 'Tesla tax' was aimed at the luxury SUV market, and said: "those who can afford to buy such expensive cars can pay a small one-time fee". The proposal could signal a change in government backing for EVs, which are subject to benefits including reduced tolls and free charging.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Singapore to be site of the world's largest AI incubator
 As Singapore scales up plans of achieving a Smart Nation, private investment firm Marvelstone Group is eyeing to launch the world's largest artificial intelligence (AI) hub in the island's central business district in 2018.

According to a statement by the investment firm, the goal is to serve the current need in the market for AI technology. The hub will also make Singapore a global leader in the said technologies. The said hub will be followed by its sisters in Japan, Scotland, and Canada.

Marvelstone President Joel Ko Hyun Sik said there are a lot of ideas in the field of AI that are still research focused and need an incubator such as the said hub. This is in order to bridge the gap to commercialise them for future deployment by future government and corporates.

Aside from serving as an incubator for 100 startups in the field of AI per year, he said the business model of the planned hub includes intellectual property (IP) generation, educating 1,000 people annually, and investments to nurture ideas in improving the nascent field.

"There is a clear need for a big playground for startups, entrepreneurs, and even corporates in the field of AI. Considering the high interest and demand for AI globally, there are still relatively few places to test these new technologies," Sik said.

Multinational corporations and institutions who will partner with the hub will gain access to the innovative AI startups. These up and coming businesses will be able to market their products in a more systematic and organised manner. At the same time, the hub will join these startups in co-building products.

"We're extremely excited about this vision and believe AI will represent an unparalleled theatre of growth of the future," Sik said.

To recall, Marvelstone is behind Lattice80, a 30,000 sqft fintech hub launched in the latter part of 2016. More than 30 governments, 50 corporates, and 100 investors have visited LATTICE80.

Output: Private investment company Marvelstone Group is planning to open the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Singapore's central business district next year. According to the firm, the facility will incubate 100 AI-based start-ups a year, encouraging the generation of intellectual property and providing education for 1,000 people a year. Corporations and institutions that join the hub as partners will have access to the innovations being generated there, while offering the start-ups the benefits of their scale and marketing reach. Further hubs are planned for Japan, Scotland and Canada.