Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Texas closures mean half of US coal plants have shut since 2010
 Two more U.S. coal plants are being shuttered, faced with the same low energy prices that have driven half the country’s coal-fired generation fleet to close since 2010.

Because the plants are in Texas, they wouldn’t even have benefited from the policies being proposed by Energy Secretary Rick Perry that would provide cost recovery to power plants with 90 days of fuel supply on hand.

Vistra Energy announced Friday that its Luminant subsidiary will close its Sandow and Big Brown coal power plants in Texas next year. The move, which will require approval by state grid operator ERCOT, will include layoffs of about 600 people and a charge of $70 million to $90 million in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Vistra cited a familiar litany of causes, including “sustained low wholesale power prices, an oversupplied renewable generation market, and low natural gas prices, along with other factors.”

The closures will take offline about 2,300 megawatts of the 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity still operated by Luminant, which is also planning to shutter an 1,800-megawatt coal plant in East Texas. The company also operates 7,500 megawatts of generation fueled by natural gas and 2,300 megawatts of nuclear power.

The Sierra Club noted that the closures push the country over the halfway mark on coal power closures, with 262 coal plants that have announced retirement or closed since 2010, compared to 261 plants still remaining. The trend has been accelerating this year, with 14 coal plants announcing retirement so far, it noted -- meaning that “the country is moving away from coal faster since Trump was inaugurated than during the prior six years of the Obama administration.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week he is contributing an additional $64 million to move America off of coal -- an investment that will support the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.

But this week has also seen significant pushes on several key Trump administration policy efforts to support the coal industry. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s signing of a rule to rescind the Clean Power Plan is the highest-profile, although it’s unlikely to change the economics of coal-fired power.

However, DOE’s notice of proposed rule making (NOPR), seeking to secure cost recovery in wholesale energy markets for reliability and resiliency features only nuclear and coal plants can provide, could have a significant effect.

The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council (ERCC), a utility trade group, cited the NOPR in a Friday press briefing. Luminant’s plant closures “should not be read as a rejection of coal resources as a vital part of the grid, but rather as an important part of an increasing diverse array of generation sources.”

At the same time, “the federal government has begun a national conversation on the future of baseload power production in the United States. ERCC members believe that conversation is long overdue and appreciate the [Trump] administration's attention to reliability and affordable electric power,” the group wrote.

DOE’s NOPR, filed late last month, asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to create a rule that would secure some form of cost recovery for power plants that provide reliability and resiliency. The NOPR’s qualifications for this status include having 90 days of on-site fuel supply -- something only nuclear, hydropower and coal-fired power can do.

The rule, which would apply to the wholesale energy and capacity markets run by interstate grid operators under FERC’s jurisdiction, has been widely criticized by former FERC commissioners, free-market think tanks, solar and wind backers, and natural gas and oil trade groups, on the grounds that it would break with decades of federal energy policy and serve to prop up unprofitable plants and undercut more efficient alternatives.

Critics also point out that the NOPR supplies no data on why on-site fuel supply is important for grid reliability, and fails to mention data to the contrary, such as that coal piles have frozen alongside natural gas plants during cold weather events such as the 2014 polar vortex, which the NOPR cites as the key example of why it’s needed.

It also lacks data on why DOE feels it’s so urgent to act now, when utilities, grid operators and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) have found that grid reliability is sufficient today, even amidst coal and nuclear power plant retirements.

Despite this, DOE has proposed an unprecedented 60-day timeframe for taking public comment, creating a rule, and giving it to grid operators to enforce, compared to the months or years of stakeholder proceedings that it typically takes to decide much more minute changes in policy. In testimony before Congress this week, Perry defended the NOPR, saying any additional costs represent “the price of freedom” from blackouts.

This week, FERC denied a motion by 14 industry trade groups to extend this tight deadline. Still, the NOPR faces an unclear future at FERC, where at least two of five commissioners have spoken out against it.

Texas grid operator ERCOT lies outside FERC’s strict jurisdiction, since its grid lies inside the state’s boundaries. Still, it’s interesting to note that ERCOT will be conducting its reliability assessment of both plants set for closure, a prerequisite for shutting them down next year, in 60 days -- the same amount of time as DOE is asking FERC and the industry to take in crafting a rule that would alter the reliability status of hundreds of power plants across the country.

--

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Output:
Two coal plants have closed in Texas, bringing the total to 262 that have shut in the US since 2010, with 261 remaining. Vistra Energy said that its Luminant subsidiary will close its Sandow and Big Brown power plants next year. Vistra cited “sustained low wholesale power prices, an oversupplied renewable generation market, and low natural gas prices, along with other factors”, for the plants' demise. The closures represent 2.3 GW of the Luminant's 8 GW of coal-fired capacity. It is also planning to shutter a 1.8 GW coal plant in East Texas.
Technology: Advanced solar, Advanced wind


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Aon enters into workers' comp insurtech partnership
 A construction worker works on the new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011. President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass a jobs plan that would inject $447 billion into the economy through infrastructure spending, subsidies to local governments to stem teacher layoffs and cutting in half the payroll taxes paid by workers and small-business owners. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Aon has collaborated with insurtech CLARA analytics to offer workers’ compensation insurers artificial intelligence and predictive analytics tools that help injured employees return to work quickly.

The deal facilitated by Aon Benfield, the broker’s reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor, also decreases loss ratios and improves operational efficiency around claims for carriers, according to the companies.

“For carriers balancing C-suite and board level interest in innovation and cost management, CLARA can be a quick and easy win with minimal impact to expenses,” said George deMenocal, president and CEO of Aon Benfield US, in a statement. “CLARA’s analytics will be complemented by Aon Inpoint [Aon’s data aggregation platform] to improve claims outcomes and develop AI platforms to gain operational efficiencies for insurers.”

See also: Aon and OneBeacon help Uber drivers get coverage by the mile

CLARA’s core products are designed to live within carriers’ existing claims workflow. The first, PUMA, is a tool that instantly connects injured workers with medical providers. Meanwhile, CATT operates as a “control tower” for adjusters and expedites simple claims using data compiled through machine learning the day a first notice of loss occurs.

“Key decisions like finding the right doctor for an injury or prioritizing claims can be tough to make without science-based tools,” said Jayant Lakshmikanthan, president of CLARA analytics. “Our mission is to deliver easy-to-use tools like PUMA and CATT to adjusters and supervisors that are built upon cutting-edge AI technologies.”

Output: Aon has partnered with CLARA, an insurtech focusing on data analytics and artificial intelligence, aiming to aid the processing of workers' compensation claims. The two firms' platform will provide software that connects injured employees with medical providers, while also making use of analytics to process compensation claims. CLARA's analytics capabilities will be used in combination with Aon's own data aggregation platform to crate a more efficient model for insurers providing workers' compensation coverage.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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P2P insurtechs need support of big players to thrive
 We apologize for the inconvenience...

...but your activity and behavior on this site made us think that you are a bot.

Note: A number of things could be going on here.

Output: The plight of Guevara, which closed down last month, has shown that insurtech start-ups need the support of established players in order to survive. UK firm Guevara focused on motor insurance rather than the lower premium areas favoured by other insurtechs, and never achieved enough support within the industry. Guevara had difficulty fully capitalising its underwriting activities and also was perceived to struggle to gain the trust of customers who preferred to go to bigger, more established brands for cover. Gadgets and niche personal lines have been more fruitful areas for insurtech start-ups, where payouts tend to be lower, as has health insurance.


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From Hong Kong to London, first-time buyers need government help
 Securing a foot on the housing ladder may be a struggle for many in Hong Kong, but they are not alone in their plight

Output: Hong Kong's starter home scheme aims to help young families get on the housing ladder but concerns have been raised about its affordability. Households must have a monthly income of between HKD52,000 ($6,700) and HKD68,000 to qualify. By comparison, couples in Singapore can withdraw money from their mandatory Central Provident Fund to fund a house purchase, while first-time buyers of public-sector flats can also receive government subsidies. Families in Shanghai can also draw from a compulsory saving scheme. In the UK, the Help to Buy scheme offers state loans to first-time buyers who need pay only a 5% deposit.


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Lloyd's underwrites kWh guarantee from solar panel manufacturer
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A tailor-made insurance has been developed for the Dutch-based firm from international insurance specialist Lloyd’s of London. Autarco claims that it can offer the guarantee because its solution, which consists of components, design software and monitoring, removes risk.

According to Autarco, the solution ensures that all components such as solar panels, inverters and roof-mounting parts “work seamlessly” with each other. The components work in tandem with innovative software which considers environmental factors and enables installers to determine how much energy can be generated.

Autarco will monitor and analyse the system’s performance after installation. This provides end-users with reliable data about the functionality of their system, according to chief executive Roel van den Berg.

“That’s exactly the offer of Autarco: we optimize the hardware, we measure the performance, we signal possible problems, and therefore we can guarantee the performance and insure it,” he said. “This is done in five-year periods and the settlement of the policy is handled by an independent foundation.

He added: “For us, it’s about trust in solar energy and, of course, our systems in particular. With the insurance proposition, we feel that we can speed up the energy transition.”

Rigid tests

If Autarco’s promise of the calculated normal performance is not achieved, then the lost kWhs can be claimed, at a predetermined compensation price per kWh.

Autarco said that industry growth is hampered by the fact the risk of the component brand is moved to the installer and then the end user. But the solar manufacturer insists that end users will no longer have to settle for an expected guarantee without sufficient protection of their bottom-line investment.

In a statement, Lloyd’s of London said: “We have carried out rigid tests on all technology of Autarco in other to be absolutely certain that all risks are well covered by them. It is a unique insurance, which we could not issue until now, since no other market player has been able to do this.”

Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide last year, outstripping the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time and leading experts to hail a “new era”.

Despite the recent opening of the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm, the prospects for British solar are fairly gloomy: the amount of solar forecast to be installed by 2022 is a fifth of the amount installed over the last five years.

George Ogleby

Output: Lloyd's of London is underwriting a guarantee from Dutch solar panel manufacturer Autarco that states its panels will generate a predetermined amount of kilowatts per hour. The policy and guarantee have been able to be developed because of technology provided by Autarco that allows users to determine how panels will interact with existing structures, as well as weather conditions, to accurately predict how much energy should be generated. If the panels fail to generate a stated amount of energy, users can claim compensation, which is offered at a prior agreed amount.


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Climate change blamed for New Zealand ‘chipocalypse’
 A year of heavy rains has devastated New Zealand’s potato crop, prompting fears of a “chipocalypse”.

The rainfall, which included two “weather bombs” and two serious floods in both the North and South Island, has wiped out 20% of New Zealand’s annual potato crop, and 30% in the regions most affected, with the “crisping” varieties for potato chips taking the biggest hit.

The news has sent some New Zealanders into a spin with concerns that the shortage might affect their Christmas feasts and favourite rugby snack.

Some supermarkets have put up signs in their crisp sections alerting customers to the shortage, and although no panic buying has yet been reported, the shortage has been well raked over on social media.

Re: NZ #chipocalypse. Yes, there's a potato shortage. But before anyone suggests them, kale chips are an abomination. — Lachlan Forsyth (@LachlanForsyth) October 15, 2017

If we time the trademe auction right for Christmas, our 2 bags of Bluebird Chips should raise enough for a house deposit #chipocalypse — Creampuff (@ShoreGirlyGirl) October 14, 2017

If it takes a #chipocalypse to make NZers serious about climate change, then so be it — claudia (@claudiajardine) October 15, 2017

Chris Claridge, the chief executive of Potatoes New Zealand, said it was concerning for such a serious shortage to hit a staple food product that many New Zealanders relied on to bulk up their meals, and supermarkets had begun to report shortages of North Island-produced crisps.

“You can go for a week without politics but try going for a week without potatoes. It is a food staple and this is becoming a food security issue as the effects of climate change take their toll on our potato crop,” said Claridge, who said access to farming land was also becoming scarce as urbanisation ramped up.

“Potato farmers have been severely impacted. If they can’t harvest and process, they are not getting their income so there is that monetary impact. It is also quite distressing to be digging up rotting potatoes. It is a very important part of New Zealand psyche having potatoes.”

Potato crops planted last year have either rotted in the soil due to the heavy rains, or had to remain unharvested because of the torrential downpours. Next year’s crop will also be affected because the ground has not been dry enough for planting.

Potato-growing regions particularly affected by the weather include areas around Auckland and the Waikato, which have already experienced about 25% more rainfall than the annual average.

Foodstuffs, which owns New Zealand’s largest supermarket chains, said farmers had made them aware that potato products such as crisps and packaged, frozen chips might soon be affected, and the shortages could last into the new year.

“The grower community is highlighting a potential future potato shortage due to bad weather,” said Antoinette Laird, head of external relations for Foodstuffs. “This has not impacted our business as yet, and we are working with our suppliers to minimise any potential impact.”

New Zealand produces 500,000 tonnes of potatoes a year and is the ninth-biggest exporter of potatoes in the world. About two thirds of the annual crop are destined for processing, with 250,000 tonnes being made into chips (as in fish and chips) and about 75,000 tonnes into crisps.

Bharat Bhana’s family have been farming potatoes for 60 years in Pukekohe, which is south of Auckland. He said the heavy rains meant his business would run at a loss this year, with about a third of his potato crop destroyed.

“This year has been very unusual, we haven’t experienced anything like it and it has really caught a lot of us out,” said Bhana. “I don’t know how we can prepare for climate change. We could dig the spuds out earlier but then we wouldn’t have enough space to store them and we’d have to pay more to keep them cool.”

“We’ll do what we can, but what can we really do?”

Potatoes have been grown in New Zealand for 250 years, according to Potatoes NZ, and were introduced by Captain Cook who gave potatoes to two Māori chiefs in Mercury Bay. The vegetable was quickly adopted as a staple part of the local diet because it could be grown in much colder areas than kumara, which was already a staple food in New Zealand.

Output: New Zealand has seen 20% of its potato crop wiped out due to a year of heavy rain, which included two “weather bombs” and two major floods, and which has been linked to climate change. In the most affected regions, up to 30% of the crop has been lost. Varieties used to create crisps, known as chips in New Zealand, have been particularly affected, leading to shortages and fears of a “chipocalypse”. New Zealand, which is the world’s ninth-largest exporter of potatoes, produces 500,000 tonnes each year.


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Samsung steps up IoT push with mobile-coverage tracker device
 Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.

There is no shortage of little portable tracker devices that you can attach to your keys or your dog to ensure you never lose the things that matter most. But Samsung has today announced the Samsung Connect Tag, one of the first mobile consumer products that uses the fledgling narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) standard to connect devices.

For the uninitiated, NB-IoT licenses small amounts of LTE cellular spectrum to carry data for low-bandwidth devices. NB-IoT offers many benefits, including strong coverage, greater power efficiency (to preserve batteries), support for many devices, and relatively low operational costs. As its name suggests, it was very much designed with the internet of things in mind, and moving forward it will likely be used to connect myriad IoT contraptions, from smart trash cans to parking bay sensors.

At just 4.21 centimeters wide and 1.19 centimeters thick, the Samsung Connect Tag is fairly small and sports an embedded SIM (eSIM), which is basically a non-removable, programmable “virtual” SIM that consumes less space and doesn’t require the user to install a physical card.

As with similar trackers on the market, the device can be put to any number of uses, such as finding lost keys or giving parents peace of mind when their kid is out and about. The Connect Tag works with GPS, Wi-Fi-based positioning (WPS), and Cell ID (CID) to identify location data indoors and outdoors.

Building on Samsung’s push into the broader IoT realm, the Connect Tag works in conjunction with Samsung’s SmartThings Hub and the Samsung Connect mobile app so users can control and configure things remotely, while being able to integrate the tracker with other connected devices. For example, a user could set up a geo-fence zone for their home so that lights turn on automatically when the Connect Tag comes within a pre-defined perimeter. Alternatively, it could be used to notify a parent when their child arrives at school.

Though similar features and functionality already exist in other products, Samsung is touting the NB-IoT element as a key selling point. While it offers cellular connectivity for constantly tracking a specific person or product, it also promises “up to” seven days on a single charge, which is pretty good. However, we will reserve judgement until we can test one of these devices out for ourselves.

A number of companies have raised big VC funding for mobile tracking contraptions, including San Mateo-based Tile and Santa Barbara’s TrackR. Earlier this year, New York-headquartered Lynq announced a $2 million round of funding for a tracker that lets you find anyone in a radius of up to five miles. This tracker sidesteps Bluetooth, maps, Wi-Fi, and cell networks with a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) network that uses a mix of radio frequencies, a custom antenna, and a long-range low-powered chip.

Put simply, there is big demand for tracker devices, and it’s a market that Samsung is now looking to infiltrate. The company is debuting the Connect Tag at its developer conference in San Francisco later this week. But the device will first go on sale in Korea before expanding to “select countries” at a later date. Samsung hasn’t given any indication of price or launch dates.

Output: Samsung's Connect Tag uses internet of things (IoT) technology to help users keep track of possessions and people. The 4.2 cm-wide and 1.19 cm-thick device contains a programmable embedded SIM (eSIM), and works with GPS, Wi-Fi-based positioning and cell ID to identify location data. The tracker links devices using the narrowband IoT (NB-IOT) standard, which offers stronger coverage, better power efficiency and lower operational costs.


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UberEats accounts for a tenth of Uber worldwide bookings
 A self-employed UberEats food delivery courier. REUTERS/Neil Hall

Uber's food delivery service has quickly grown into a huge operation that's creating billions of dollars in sales for the San Francisco-headquartered company.

UberEats accounted for 8-10% of Uber's global gross bookings in the second quarter, according to sources cited by The Financial Times on Monday that have reportedly seen the figures.

The figures cited by The Financial Times suggest that the two-year-old UberEats service — a standalone app separate from the main Uber taxi service — will record over $3 billion (£2 billion) in gross sales this year.

Uber declined to comment.

Uber has had a tough year. There are the accusations of corporate sexism. The video of its founder angrily berating a driver. Secret "Greyball" software designed to evade authorities. Executives obtaining the medical records of a rape victim. Lawsuits around the world. The resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick. The company also lost its operating licence in London last month.

But UberEats has managed to stay out of the limelight. The service is now active in 108 cities (40 of which are in the UK) across 29 countries. It's growing quickly, targeting 200 cities by the end of the year.

The unit had a turnover of $700 million (£527 million) to $870 million (£656 million) for the second quarter of this year, according to The Financial Times. Uber's total gross bookings during the period were $8.7 billion (£6.6 billion).

Uber's food delivery operation is underpinned by Uber's existing army of 2 million drivers, which can deliver food as well as passengers in some markets, as well as dedicated UberEats courier fleets.

Each UberEats sale includes the cost of the food and the delivery fee, meaning the average UberEats order is more expensive than the average Uber taxi ride.

But UberEats is unprofitable in most of the markets it operates in, with only 27 cities currently profitable.

There's also fierce competition in the delivery market.

UberEats goes head-to-head with the likes of GrubHub in the US and Deliveroo in the UK. Amazon has also launched its own restaurant food delivery service called Amazon Restaurants, which is available to Prime members, while Facebook launched a food delivery service in the US last week.

Additional reporting by Rob Price.

Output: UberEats, the independent food-delivery arm of ride-hailing firm Uber, accounted for between 8% and 10% of the parent's gross bookings during Q2 2017, with turnover in the same period of $700m to $870m, according to figures seen by the Financial Times. According to the figures, the UberEats app is set to record more than $3bn in gross sales this year, despite pulling in a profit in only 27 of the 108 cities in which it operates.


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Asos lets users search for items using photos instead of keywords
 Two months after it started letting shoppers search its outfits using photos instead of keywords, fashion retailer Asos has seen enough to be sure visual search will help it convert those who are merely browsing.

Asos has an “upstream” problem that visual search could fix, said Richard Jones, director of product management for the site. Visitors unsure of what they want to buy discover only a fraction of the retailer’s catalog from its mobile app due to the limitations of screen size, search and site navigation. But when those same visitors upload pictures of outfits they like to Asos’ visual search tool, early results suggest it helps them more easily find what they didn’t know they wanted.

Asos has seen “great engagement” from visual search to date, and Jones stressed the feature could eventually become the way many shoppers discover outfits in its app. However, he declined to share statistics that support his belief in visual search so soon after its debut on Asos’ site. He said from the engagement he has seen, though, the feature gets people to spend longer in the app.

To use visual search in Asos’ app, people take a picture of an outfit, for which an Asos algorithm then finds the closest matches. Over time, shoppers won’t just receive similar matches, Jones said. They will also be served other products tailored to both their visual search and their preferences, which Asos’ bases on in-app purchase behavior. In the future, a visual search for a white pair of high-top Converse trainers would return other associated products such as a matching jumper the searcher might also want.

Getting those suggestions right is key to the longer journeys Asos wants from the app. Today, 70 percent of global traffic to Asos and over 50 percent of its orders come from mobile devices, with each user spending 80 minutes per month on average in its app. Jones expanded on the challenge ahead: “With something like keyword search, you almost have to know what you’re looking for before you type it. For someone that’s on more of a discovery journey, that really becomes an issue [when they’re in the app].”

There are still kinks to iron out. Some early users of the app have noted that visual searches don’t always return the items they know Asos sells. Jones downplayed the instances as teething problems that would soon improve as the algorithm and data it processes grow.

But none of these developments will matter if not enough people use visual search. Some observers have questioned whether shoppers will regularly search for products using visual search in the way Asos and other retailers hope. The fashion industry is littered with small tests as retailers ease their way into the technology.

Jones believes the tide will turn to visual search sooner rather than later, driven by the flurry of augmented reality apps that will take advantage of the iPhone’s recently updated camera lens. Additionally, Asos plans to promote the feature in the coming months after seeing much of the initial uptake for its own voice search uses driven without any marketing or signposting in the app. The more Asos can convince people to interact with visual search, said Jones, the better the tool can become.

Output: London-based fashion retailer Asos has claimed that visual search functionality could become the primary way customers look for items, two months after it launched its own version of the service. Richard Jones, director of product management, declined to give any specific figures regarding visual search, but said the tool had enjoyed "great engagement", and the company plans to promote it more heavily in the coming months. More than half of Asos' orders, and almost three-quarters of its global traffic, come from mobiles, with users spending a monthly average of 80 minutes on the site.


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Apple says it plans to roll out e-payments service in India
 In a career spanning nearly three decades at Apple, Eddy Cue, has been instrumental in helping build a number of key services such as Apple’s online store in 1998, the iTunes Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008. Cue, senior vice-president of Internet Software and Services at Apple, is now spearheading the company’s push into key areas such as TV and Hollywood programming, video content and music, at a time when Apple is reportedly preparing a push into producing original content. In an interview, Cue, who till recently was also overseeing Apple’s voice assistant service Siri, spoke about the company’s plans for Apple Pay in India, how the company plans to expand in the country and the similarities between Apple’s founder Steve Jobs and current CEO Tim Cook. Edited excerpts:

What is Apple’s near-term road map for India?

The key is you want the full set of services. And you have some unique attributes to that. The number of languages that you support, for example. There are a bunch of services that we haven’t announced yet and are working on, for example, and we want them to be available in India first…Part of this and having the engineers here is to really make sure that we are thinking of India right from the product development cycle.

The digital payments business is widely being seen as the biggest battleground in India now and in the near future. What are Apple’s plans on that front?

Our head of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, is here with me. And Apple Pay is something that we definitely want in India. The challenge with payment mechanisms is that there isn’t really a lot of global scale. You deal with individual markets at a time..but India is one of those markets where we hope to bring Apple Pay to.

Any time frame on when we can expect Apple Pay here?

We’re working on it, but no date to announce at this point. We like to announce a date that we know is a 100%.

You’ve worked with both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook over the past three decades. How do they compare as leaders?

The thing that they have that’s common and most important is products. What they cared about and what I care about is making the best products. And everything goes to that. So, that’s the focus. The attention to detail, all of the things that go into a product, is a common thing that both Steve had and Tim has and most importantly, the culture that you’re creating that Apple has that Steve created. So, I don’t see any differences in that. They are different people, but their accomplishments and successes are very similar. And when you look at the last five years that Tim’s been the CEO, there have been incredible accomplishments from Apple on the product front. And that shows the similarities. I’ve worked with both of them—I’ve worked with Steve for 20 years, I’ve worked with Tim for 20 years, so I know them both very, very well. I can’t imagine that I could’ve ever worked for better CEOs in my lifetime.

What’s Apple’s vision with TV and Hollywood programming? How does Apple plan to disrupt this space?

We’re doing some future stuff that we haven’t talked about, around it. We’ll talk more as we have more to say…I don’t think it’s about us disrupting it. The reality is that it’s going to get disrupted whether we do it or not. It’s already started and we think we can do things that are innovative and we’ll bring things to that ecosystem and platform that are unique to us. That’s the opportunity.

Till about five years ago, when TV entertainment and content was widely seen as the biggest battleground for tech companies, Apple was seen as the leading contender to disrupt that space, given its history of coming out with industry-shaping products such as the iPhone. That story hasn’t quite played out—in some sense, has Apple missed the bus with content and entertainment?

The way we look at this is the majority of customers get their content from a satellite or cable television service or antenna. That’s true in most places in the world. And though there have been some new things that have come in, that’s still the predominant way. That predominant way I believe is going to change over the next 10 years significantly. With a lot of changes come different opportunities because they’ll be replaced by other ways to get video or they’ll be replaced by other forms of entertainment around it. And that’s the opportunity that we see. So, when you look at it today, we want to help the existing players. So, while people will say that Apple was slower—as a matter of fact, we’ve been way faster because what we did is, we said ‘you have the content, you have a relationship with the customer, let’s make sure that your applications give access to the customer. And if you want to sell something to the customer, we’ll help you with that also because we have a mechanism that makes it really easy to pay.’ The next thing is when you have all these apps out there, you really want to have a centralised way. That’s where the TV app comes from. I think we’ve been addressing the things that are in the market today. Your question, bottomline, falls into Netflix.

Apple historically has a track record of coming out with industry-defining products, whether it’s the Mac or iPhone or iPod. But over the past decade, there’s a been perception that the pace of innovation and the pace at which Apple has come out with game-changing, breakthrough products has slowed somewhat. What do you have to say about that?

No way! First of all, the iPhone is 10 years old. That is the last decade. The iPad came after that and the Watch came after that. So, I disagree vehemently with that and I think we’ve been incredibly innovative. That doesn’t even take into account the work that has been done on the Mac, iOS and MacOS, from that standpoint where I think we’ve led the market. When you think of the products that we’ve built over time, you own a lot of them. And you just assume that every year was a new product. But it wasn’t. You can’t do revolutionary new products, every two months or six months or whatever. They take time.

Coming back to India, tell us a little more about where India fits into Apple’s broader scheme of things.

We view this as a very long-term opportunity but with very short-term gains that we can have here. With the services piece, we started this on three fronts. Let’s take the biggest piece of services which is the App Store.

Firstly, we want to have a vibrant ecosystem of developers. What happens with that is because we have a lot of customers in India and around the world, all of a sudden they could make some significant money.

The second one is Maps and Maps is something that we started a long time ago and when I took it over, one of the things we decided is that we wanted to make our Maps really best in class. One of the areas that we thought was a great opportunity to invest in was here. We now have over 4,000 people working on Apple Maps.

The third (piece) is call it the services like iCloud, Music, Movies, etc. One of the opportunities is the music industry here has either been free or there’s nothing much more than free. If you look at it, almost all the music scene is related to Bollywood because there is economic value there. And I think that’s great — we can help that. We sell those movies on a global scale, we sell them here. And we can do that piece of it, and we’ll obviously have music in that way. But if you’re a musician and not part of Bollywood and you’re an indie musician, it’s really hard. So, one of the things that we wanted to do was really expand the music space to allow everyone to be able to monetise and get paid from that standpoint. So, we launched Apple Music about a year and a half ago and we’re thrilled with the results.

Output: Apple Pay services are on the cards for India. Eddy Cue, senior VP of internet software and services at Apple, said the company definitely wanted to introduce its e-payments product in the country, but did not reveal an estimated launch date. Asked about Apple's roadmap for Indian expansion, Cue said it was key to launch a full set of offerings, adding that there is a number of services in the pipeline that the company wants to make available in India first.


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Santander leads $6m funding round in Mexican company ePesos
 Santander's fintech venture capital fund has led a $6 million funding round for ePesos, a Mexican mobile payments startup targeting underbanked small businesses.

VilCap Investments, Pomona Impact, and Fiinlab, the innovation lab owned by Gentera, joined Santander InnoVentures in the round.

Through its platform, ePesos offers low-cost short-term working capital through a revolving line of credit to SMEs without a bank account. Borrowers receive and repay funds through a custom built mobile wallet.

In addition, ePesos is partnering with HR software companies on payroll advances so that firms can let employees access funds instantly without going through complicated internal procedures.

Manuel Silva Martínez, head, investments, Santander InnoVentures, says: "Our investment in ePesos is a proof of our commitment to global financial inclusion and helping small businesses prosper - something Santander InnoVentures has made a priority."

Martínez adds that the deal is a stepping stone into Latin America for the $200 million fund, which has invested in 17 fintech startups since launching in 2014 but has so far focused on European and North American firms.

Output: Mexican mobile payments start-up ePesos has raised $6m in a funding round led by Santander. The ePesos platform offers short-term working capital to small and medium businesses without a bank account, with borrowers receiving and repaying funds through a mobile wallet. It has also teamed up with HR software firms to offer payroll advances, so workers can access funds without going through complicated internal procedures. VilCap Investments, Pomona Impact and Fiinlab also participated in the funding round.


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Washington Post aims to extend business model to Europe
 For U.S. publishers expanding internationally, one of the biggest challenges is brand perception. Encouraging agencies across markets to spend budget with news brands that are globally respected yet not regarded as go-to environments for local or non-U.S. campaigns is a time-consuming process. But The Washington Post is in it for the long game.

Under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ownership, the publisher has created an engineering army and its own technology infrastructure called Arc. That’s given the Post more control over load speeds and better visibility into its users, what stories they read and their preferences for video or photo-led content — information that’s fed back to the newsroom. Arc has also opened up new revenue streams, with the Post selling the tech to other publishers including Toronto’s The Globe and Mail and the Los Angeles Times. Arc is now attracting interest from European countries, with conversations happening with major publishers in Spain and Sweden, according to Jed Hartman, the Post’s chief revenue officer.

The Post has worked on altering the perception of its brand in its domestic market, too. “In the U.S., a lot of people used to think of us as a Washington, D.C., politics title. It’s taken several years to break that perception, but only 5 percent of our audience is actually in Washington,” said Hartman. “Our reputation hasn’t caught up to the facts.”

The title wants to increase both international digital subscriptions and advertising revenue. Building its overseas audience, powered by its fast-loading distribution platform, will in time fuel subscriptions and advertising, Hartman said. The Post said it generates over $100 million from digital advertising globally and claims it has 90 million monthly unique users in the U.S. and 30 million internationally. That scale afforded it the freedom to tinker with its metered paywall, Hartman said. “We’re optimizing it [the paywall] in the U.S., and then we’ll begin to roll it out around the world, in a way that’s in line with the new General Data Protection Regulation,” he added. The Post has 1 million digital-only publications globally, a figure it doesn’t break out by country.

Over the last year, the Post has heavily marketed its daily WorldViews newsletter, which puts an international lens on news and analysis on political outcomes from Washington and is led by stories such as “Ditching deals has become Trump’s main foreign policy.” There are also plans to deeply cover areas like the World Economic Forum in Davos via newsletters to further build its audience and, ultimately, subscriptions.

On the advertising side, it’ll likely take longer to build its reputation as a global news brand. “It can be a case of talking to one client, one agency at a time, to really change perception,” said Hartman. “That’s not the most efficient way, perhaps, but it’s the most effective, as long as we have the content to support it. By pushing out more content, that will help raise awareness with the agencies.”

The Post has had skeleton sales staffs in countries like the U.K., France and Singapore, relying on local sales houses to drive its advertising revenue, which has been a mix of programmatic and direct sales. But it has just hired its first London brand studio executive to build out the branded-content studio for Europe advertisers — an area of the business that has until now been handled solely in the U.S.

One of the big points of focus in the next six months will be ensuring major brands in the energy, banking and financial sectors recognize the size of the Post’s platform and feel assured their ads will be served in a fast, non-intrusive, brand-safe environment. “Internationally, we’ve been more of a transactional ad seller, but we want to become more of a content solutions provider,” said Hartman. “That’s our pivot.”

Hartman will speak in-depth at Digiday’s Publishing Summit Europe in Berlin on Oct. 24 about how to build a sustainable business model for serious news.

Output: The Washington Post will utilise is proprietary Arc technology to bring in subscriptions and advertisers as the paper expands its international digital presence. The publisher is in discussions with Spanish and Swedish counterparts about the Arc infrastructure, which improves visibility and page loading times. However, CRO Jed Hartman admitted that building the Post's reputation as a news brand outside the US could be a "case of talking to one client, one agency at a time, to really change perception".


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Dutch solar cars win annual race in Australia
 Solar Team Eindhoven's "Stella Vie" was hailed as the future of sun-powered motoring as the 3,000-kilometre World Solar Challenge wrapped up

A futuristic Dutch family car that not only uses the sun as power but supplies energy back to the grid was hailed as "the future" Sunday as the World Solar Challenge wrapped up.

The innovative bi-annual contest, first run in 1987, began in Darwin a week ago with 41 vehicles setting off on a 3,000-kilometre (1,860-mile) trip through the heart of Australia to Adelaide.

Dutch car "Nuna 9" won the race for the third-straight time, crossing the finish line on Thursday after travelling at an average speed of 81.2 kilometres per hour (55.5 mph).

It was competing in the Challenger class, which featured slick, single seat aerodynamic vehicles built for sustained endurance and total energy efficiency.

But there was also a Cruiser class, introduced to bridge the gap between high-end technology and everyday driving practicality.

German team HS Bochum was the first to arrive Friday with its stylish four-seater classic coupe, featuring sustainable materials such as vegan pineapple leather seats.

But another Dutch team, Eindhoven, was set to be crowned overall champion based on a system taking into account design, practicality, energy efficiency, and innovation, organisers said.

Their family car, "Stella Vie", carried five people at an average speed of 69 kilometres per hour, with event director Chris Selwood saying it was a practical demonstration of what the future might look like.

"These incredible solar cars have been designed with the commercial market in mind and have all the features you'd expect in a family, luxury or sporting car," he said.

"Team Eindhoven are to be congratulated on their achievement to date—clearly the most energy efficient solar car in the field, capable of generating more power than they consume.

"This is the future of solar electric vehicles. When your car is parked at home it can be charging and supplying energy back to the grid."

Cars in the race were mostly developed by universities or corporations, with teams hailing from around the world.

They were allowed to store a small amount of energy but the majority of their power had to come from the sun and the vehicle's kinetic forces.

Team Eindhoven said its vision had been to build a family car with a balance between aerodynamic, aesthetic and practical design.

"We think we succeeded very well with a car that is more efficient than its predecessors and includes some state-of-the-art technologies to not only generate energy but also supply it back to the grid," they said.

"Through a smart charging and discharging system she charges the battery when the demand of energy from the grid is high and vice versa. Any surplus energy generated can easily be supplied back to the grid."

Of the 12 Cruiser class cars that started, six finished.

As well as the German and Dutch entrants, vehicles from Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States also crossed the finish line.

© 2017 AFP

Output: Dutch solar car technology dominated this year's World Solar Challenge, a 3,000km race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia. Cruiser class-winning Team Eindhoven's family car Stella Vie was dubbed "the future of solar electric vehicles", thanks to its smart charging and discharging system, which feeds excess energy back into the grid. The Nuna 9, which averaged a speed of 81.2 kph, scooped the top prize for the third year running in the Challenger class.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Dutch solar cars win annual race in Australia
 A team from the Netherlands has won the 2017 World Solar Challenge, a gruelling 3000km solar-powered car race from Darwin to Adelaide along the infamous Stewart Highway.

The Nuon Solar team celebrates its 2017 victory

The Nuon Solar team, which is based at the Delft University of Technology crossed the finish line five days after leaving Darwin. It was almost two hours ahead of its nearest rival, a team from the University of Michigan and two and half hours ahead of the third-placed Belgian Punch Powertrain team. The win is the Nuon Solar’s seventh title.

Unfortunately, the main UK contender, Cambridge University Eco Racing (CUER) was forced to pull out of the competition following an accident during testing, resulting from a sudden loss of dynamic stability.

Second placed Novum 2 powers across the outback

Nuon took an early lead in this year’s competition, which its strategists say they maintained by carefully watching the weather, energy consumption and predicting the best way through the clouds. The team also had to adjust its strategy and driving style to “nerve-wracking” weather conditions that saw wind gusts of up to 60 kilometres per hour. Aerodynamics expert for the team, Jasper Hemmes, said drivers were instructed to position the solar car in such a way to profit from the winds as if it were a sailing ship.

The World Solar Challenge, which occurs every two years, has been running now for three decades.

The winner of this year's Cruiser class competition

Alongside the main competition, this year’s event also featured a Cruiser class, designed to stimulate and showcase ways in which solar-powered cars might one day make into the mainstream. This year’s competition was won by a team from Eindhoven whose Stella Vie car carried an average of 3.4 people over the 3021km route using just 45.7kWh of external energy. By comparison, a Tesla Model S85 (85kWh battery) has a practical range of about 400km.

Output: Dutch solar car technology dominated this year's World Solar Challenge, a 3,000km race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia. Cruiser class-winning Team Eindhoven's family car Stella Vie was dubbed "the future of solar electric vehicles", thanks to its smart charging and discharging system, which feeds excess energy back into the grid. The Nuna 9, which averaged a speed of 81.2 kph, scooped the top prize for the third year running in the Challenger class.


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Senate committee seeks answers on drug pricing
 Follow the money. If only it were that simple when it comes to understanding how much prescription drugs cost—and why.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will take another journey down the rabbit hole on Oct. 17, this time focusing on the delivery system. The committee started its probe in June with a hearing aimed at getting a basic understanding of the issue.

"More than 4 billion prescriptions are written for drugs each year for Americans who then receive those drugs at 60,000 drug stores, from doctors or hospitals and from online pharmacies. The total cost to the overall health system of these prescriptions each year is $450 billion, to be paid by taxpayers, patients, hospitals and insurers, among others," committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said during the June hearing. "This is a discussion that affects the well-being of every American family. It is important that we work together to conduct this fact-finding in a bipartisan way."

While the June hearing was billed as a bipartisan effort, several Democrats used it as an opportunity to blast the GOP's efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act.

At the Oct. 17 hearing the committee will listen to testimony from officials representing big pharma, generic drug manufacturers and pharmacists. One topic that's sure to come up is trying to understand where the money goes.

A study published in June in Health Affairs tried to trace exactly that. Looking at a hypothetical $100 prescription, researchers combed through Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other analyses and projected gross profit for branded drug manufacturers to total $58 and $18 for generic makers. The study also found that pharmacy benefit managers raked in four times as much on generic drugs versus brands.

The concern is that policymakers will rush to judge the entire industry though a single lens, rather than assessing each player differently, said Chester "Chip" Davis, CEO of the Association for Accessible Medicines, which represents generic drug manufacturers. Davis is slated to testify at Tuesday's hearing.

Output: Follow the money. If only it were that simple when it comes to understanding how much prescription drugs cost—and why. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will take another journey down the rabbit hole on Oct. 17, this time focusing on the delivery system. The committee started its probe in June with a hearing aimed at getting a basic understanding of the issue.


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Bills Would Increase Transparency In Drug Pricing
 Democratic State Representative Deb Kolste of Janesville has introduced a package of bills focused on reforming the pharmaceutical industry, including legislation to increase transparency in how prescription drug manufacturers set their prices.

One bill requires drug manufacturers to notify the state prior to price increases of more than 25 percent. They would also be required to include a justification for the price hike and detail the amount of rebates provided to Wisconsin residents. Other bills would prevent insurance companies from removing prescription drugs from their formularies while a contract with a consumer is in place.

Kolste says consumers have been given little insight into what is driving drug prices to record highs. She says consumers are simply given higher prices without any transparency from manufacturers... ".....it is at a crisis point for insurance(companies), governments, and consumers to try and get a handle on pharmaceutical drug pricing. Polls by Kaiser Foundation and Harvard point out that pharmaceutical prices are becoming the number one concern of American, a bipartisan concern by the way...."

Citizen Action of Wisconsin Director Robert Kraig says one example is NARCON, the drug used to save lives in opiate overdoses...

".....it has gone up in price from $690 in 2014, an established prescription drug, no changes, to more than $4,500 today, a price increase in more than two years. Given the opiate epidemic, that can only be described as price gouging...."

The Citizen Action of Wisconsin report is here.

Output: Democratic State Representative Deb Kolste of Janesville has introduced a package of bills focused on reforming the pharmaceutical industry, including legislation to increase transparency in how prescription drug manufacturers set their prices.


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Fires Prey On Frail Residents Living On Their Own
 They were asleep when the fire reached their home. Charles Rippey, 100, and his wife, Sara, 98, had been married 75 years. They died together, after a caregiver struggled to save them but couldn’t get them out in time.

A 27-year-old woman had spina bifida and used a wheelchair. In the hours after the fires broke out, her relatives frantically sought information about her whereabouts. When a fire inspector visited her home, he found her body.

Wildfires continue to spread through Northern California counties, already taking the lives of at least 31 people. Hundreds more are missing. Local officials and advocates fear that many among them are seniors or disabled people unable to flee, as many residents have, on a moment’s notice.

Others have been saved only by luck and quick-thinking neighbors.

Use Our Content This story can be republished for free ( details ).

In Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley community, retired firefighter RedHawk Palleson came across a disoriented elderly woman wandering in his neighborhood and an older couple in their bathrobes as flames chased them down the street, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. He drove them to safety in his truck.

The deaths and close calls illustrate the particular vulnerability of frail people living on their own during a fast-moving disaster. “The fires have raised a lot of questions about how we respond and provide safety to vulnerable people in an imminent crisis,” said Marty Omoto, executive director of the California Disability Community Action Network. “We have to ask ourselves how we respond when there’s no warning.”

Omoto said he is still trying to reach friends and colleagues living with disabilities in the region. “We’re operating on hope,” he said.

In both Sonoma and Napa conties, where the wildfires have been the most severe, about 18 percent of residents are age 65 or older, higher than the statewide percentage of 13.6 percent, according to U.S. Census data. About 6 to 8 percent of those counties’ residents have disabilities.

This week, people posted poignant queries on social media hoping to find loved ones still missing. “Has anyone seen the woman on the right?” Elizabeth Northrup wrote on Facebook, providing a picture of an older woman. “Her name is Norma Lou Peoples. She uses a red walker.”

Nursing homes aren’t fail-safe, as was tragically illustrated by the eight deaths in a sweltering Florida nursing home left without air conditioning after Hurricane Irma. But they, along with assisted living facilities and homes for the disabled, do have disaster and evacuation plans. In-home caregivers rarely get training on how to help their clients in an emergency, Omoto said, and in a disaster they may have their own families to care for. And of course some frail people don’t receive in-home care.

Marianne McBride, president and CEO of Sonoma County’s Council on Aging, said Wednesday that she and her staff were still trying to track down the agency’s social services clients, including up to 1,200 who regularly receive “meals on wheels.”

It was a challenge. Over the weekend, cellphones either didn’t work or worked only sporadically as the fire destroyed 73 cellphone towers. Internet and electricity were down in some areas. But by Monday, the agency had reached 600 seniors, McBride said.

McBride, whose brother lost his home in the fires, said seniors or disabled people should consider keeping their landlines rather than relying only on cellphones. She also said social service providers should keep paper copies of client locations as a backup when internet and electrical services fail.

McBride also recommended that family members get acquainted with the neighbors of their elderly relatives and provide them with their contact information in case of emergency. Neighbors have to look out for each other, she said.

“There’s not a service agency that can take care of all the aging individuals that we have in the community,” McBride said, choking back tears. “What the fires bring out is that the only way we’re going to successfully age is if we do so in community, and the community feels it has a responsibility to look out for neighbors and get them the resources they need.”

As developmentally disabled people increasingly live independently, they too need support both during and after disasters.

Vicki Smith, a deputy director at the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities, said the public agency in the past year has trained more than 1,100 developmentally disabled people in disaster preparedness with simplified materials, including how to assemble an inexpensive emergency backpack. She estimated that there are more than 10,000 developmentally disabled people living in Sonoma and Napa counties.

Disaster experts say the general preparedness recommendations for everyone are even more important for people with limited mobility. For instance, keep the car gassed up and put a change of clothes and an emergency kit in the trunk. And sign up for your community’s alert system (although there were some complaints from Northern California residents that they never received these alerts).

Nancy McPherson, state director for AARP California, urged people to learn ahead of time the routes to buildings likely to be used as shelters during an emergency, such as a local high school.

McPherson said the AARP has partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the past, but this year’s severe hurricanes and fires have sparked a new effort to make emergency preparedness for seniors “more robust,” she said.

Some communities have tried to develop registries of elderly and disabled people who might need rescue in emergencies, but such registries are difficult to keep current, McPherson said.

“There’s been a lot of thinking about this, but plans get put on a shelf and we tend to forget that they are there,” McPherson said.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KFF Health News' coverage of aging and long-term care issues is supported in part by The SCAN Foundation.

Output: They were asleep when the fire reached their home. Charles Rippey, 100, and his wife, Sara, 98, had been married 75 years. They died together, after a caregiver struggled to save them but couldn’t get them out in time.


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State to buy more hepatitis A vaccine after emergency declaration
 California’s multi-county hepatitis A outbreak has so strained the federal government’s supply of vaccine that the state will take its own steps to secure more doses directly from manufacturers under an emergency declaration declared by Gov. Jerry Brown Friday.

Dr. Gil Chavez, state epidemiologist and deputy director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the California Department of Public Health, said that the state has already received more than 80,000 free doses from a federal “317” emergency vaccine program run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In our communications with them, as of late, it’s been very clear that our continuous requests for additional vaccine is running into their limit of what they can share with California,” Chavez said.

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He did not elaborate on how low the state’s supply of hepatitis A vaccine has dropped and noted that local public health departments and health providers also have the ability to order vaccine outside of the federal program. But, he said, it is time for his department to start buying what is needed to keep existing vaccination campaigns in San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Cruz counties supplied with as many vials as they require.

“We have received 81,000 doses (from the CDC), and that is a big chunk of their total supply for the entire country for the year. CDC has been trying to manage their inventory to meet the needs of California,” Chavez said.

The governor’s emergency declaration, signed Friday, gives the state health department authority to “take all measures necessary to obtain hepatitis A vaccines and prioritize the vaccination of at-risk individuals.” Chavez said he did not have an immediate estimate of exactly how many more doses the state will need to buy or how much doing so might cost.

Also on Friday, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC requesting federal assistance, including any available emergency grant funding, to help fight the outbreak.

In addition to allowing San Diego and other California counties dip into its emergency vaccine supply, the CDC has already provided some personnel, flying several of its epidemiologists out to advise local public health teams on the best ways to contain the spread of hepatitis A infections. So far, however, those efforts have not been able to turn the corner. Case totals increased to 490 this week and the death total hit 18.

Other totals around in California:

71 cases in Santa Cruz County

13 cases in Los Angeles County

7 cases elsewhere in the state

The CDC has been unclear about exactly how much current outbreaks in California, Michigan, Utah and Arizona are drawing down the national vaccine supply which was already challenged by a global increase in demand due to a series of overseas outbreaks.

In late September Merck & Co. Inc., manufacturer of VAQTA, one of two FDA-approved hepatitis A vaccines, told the Union-Tribune that it “anticipates working through some manufacturing constraints” in 2017, adding that “constraints will impact availability of pediatric and adult doses of VAQTA this year.”

At a news conference in San Diego last week, a CDC spokesperson promised to clarify the vaccine supply picture, but has not subsequently provided any additional information.

The vaccine supply question persists as San Diego organizations ready for a fresh wave of inoculation activity.

On Friday morning, Mayor Kevin Faulconer stood beside paramedics to announce that a temporary modification of state law has allowed the city to create two mobile vaccination teams which will include a paramedic, a fire captain/paramedic and a supervising nurse. Under temporary permission from the state Emergency Medical Services Authority, paramedics in San Diego County are allowed to give hepatitis A shots to at-risk residents as long as they are working under the direct supervision of a registered nurse.

City fire officials and Mike Murphy, general manager of American Medical Response-San Diego, said paramedics who will be involved in vaccination efforts have received four additional hours of training on the proper technique for giving hepatitis A shots. The activity is similar to other injections they often administer answering emergency calls throughout the city.

San Diego Fire Department Battalion Chief Rick Ballard said after Friday’s news conference that he expects the city to learn where and when the two paramedic teams will work from the county Health and Human Services Agency on Monday. He said the county is working with many medical organizations, including local hospitals, to fan out to single-occupancy hotels, beaches, parks and other locations.

“They’ve identified over 100 locations that they have not been able to reach yet,” Ballard said.

The county did not respond Tuesday to a request for more information on its impending second-wave vaccination effort, and a county spokesman said Friday afternoon that he still could not make anyone available to discuss the operation’s details.

In recent weeks some in the community have questioned whether the San Diego River may be a source of hepatitis A infection among the city’s homeless. While county public health officials have insisted that river water is not a source of contamination, they told the Union-Tribune Thursday that river water has not yet been tested for contamination by one or more of the 15 unique strains of the virus that testing has found in samples gathered from infected residents.

A recent genetic test of river water, while it did not specifically check for hepatitis, did find that the total amount of human feces in the river and its tributaries quadrupled in 2017.

On Thursday San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez sent a memo to Mayor Faulconer requesting that the city test local waterways for hepatitis A. The city has no current plans to start testing, Greg Block, Faulconer’s senior press secretary, said in an email.

“The county has consulted with the Center for Disease Control and environmental sampling has not been recommended for the current hepatitis A outbreak. The county is the public health agency for the region, and we rely on their expertise in these matters,” Block said.

Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

Output: California’s multi-county hepatitis A outbreak has so strained the federal government’s supply of vaccine that the state will take its own steps to secure more doses directly from manufacturers under an emergency declaration declared by Gov. Jerry Brown Friday.


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States have already tried Trump’s health care order. It went badly.
 This analysis is part of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy , which is a partnership between the Center for Health Policy at Brookings and the University of Southern California Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. The Initiative aims to inform the national health care debate with rigorous, evidence-based analysis leading to practical recommendations using the collaborative strengths of USC and Brookings. This article originally appeared in The Washington Post on October 13, 2017.

Even after Republicans in Congress failed three times to rid themselves of the Affordable Care Act, President Trump has proved that there is no shortage of ideas for how to disrupt the health-care system.

The president signed an executive order Thursday that will allow small employers to join associations of small business — such as farm bureaus or chambers of commerce — that provide health coverage to their members. If such associations self-insure, existing law might enable them to avoid both state insurance regulations and the core of the ACA. Thus, a simple turn of the regulatory dials could free up a large portion of the most heavily regulated parts of the health-insurance market.

Like many appealing ideas, this one, proposed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has hidden land mines that are already well-mapped out based on previous failed attempts to enact them, even in Paul’s home state of Kentucky.

A version of these self-insured association health plans first became widespread in the 1980s, but they failed in droves because many were undercapitalized. More troubling, these earlier association plans had a history of becoming what the Labor Department termed “scam artists” and the Government Accountability Office reported were “bogus entities [that] have exploited employers and individuals seeking affordable coverage.” More than two dozen states reported in 1992 that these early association plans had committed “fraud, embezzlement or other criminal law” violations.

We might avoid such a fate by requiring groups to register and meet adequate solvency and consumer-protection standards. But that doesn’t solve the more ominous aspect of association health plans: market destabilization.

Because less-regulated association health plans compete with fully regulated markets, actuaries and regulators have long warned that association plans create an uneven playing field that can disrupt markets. People who don’t need to cover preexisting conditions or don’t want to pay community rates gravitate to the better deals offered by associations, leaving sicker people in the regulated markets. Naturally, regulated insurance prices increase as a result, sometimes causing a death spiral that crashes the market.

That’s just what happened in Kentucky in the 1990s when it reformed its individual market but exempted association plans from the reforms. Enrollment with associations shot up, and most insurers selling in the regulated market pulled out. Within two years, the state repealed its reforms. Association health plans were only one part of Kentucky’s failed market reforms, but they are still a major reason why the so-called Kentucky disaster now serves as a lesson for other states to avoid similar measures.

We could avoid such market disruption by making association health plans abide by the same regulations that govern individuals and small groups, but the whole point of Trump’s executive order is to sidestep existing regulations. The only other option for avoiding market disruption is to keep association plans separate from the regular market by ensuring that people cannot simply choose between association plans and regulated insurance based solely on their health status.

Employer groups avoid this kind of adverse selection because people can’t just pick an employer simply to get the health insurance they want. But many association health plans allow just that. You don’t need to be a farmer to join the Farm Bureau, and business associations can be open to any person that files a Schedule C tax form. Some groups have such skimpy fig leaves for membership qualification that they are criticized as “air breather” associations — that is, the only commonality among their members is their dependency on oxygen.

Federal and state law attempts to avoid this by exempting associations from insurance regulations only if they are “bona fide,” meaning that obtaining insurance is not the reason people join them. But as regulators will tell you, that criterion is not easy to enforce, which is why the hot potato of association “bona fides” is regularly tossed back and forth among states, insurers and the Labor Department .

Despite this troubled history, association health plans have an important place in, and alongside, regulated health-insurance markets. Still, their history counsels caution in freely expanding that role. These plans should succeed based on delivering superior value rather than serving as a vehicle to cherry-pick regulations they do and don’t want to follow. For that to happen, association health plans need a set of carefully considered rules based on lessons from the past, rather than naive belief in a quick fix.

The author did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. He is currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.

Output: Even after Republicans in Congress failed three times to rid themselves of the Affordable Care Act, President Trump has proved that there is no shortage of ideas for how to disrupt the health-care system.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Trump Acting Solo: What You Need To Know About Changes To The Health Law
 Apparently frustrated by Congress’ inability to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump this week decided to take matters into his own hands.

Late Thursday evening, the White House announced it would cease key payments to insurers. Earlier on Thursday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at giving people who buy their own insurance easier access to different types of health plans that were limited under the ACA rules set by the Obama administration.

“This is promoting health care choice and competition all across the United States,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “This is going to be something that millions and millions of people will be signing up for, and they’re going to be very happy.”

The subsidy payments, known as “cost-sharing reductions,” are payments to insurers to reimburse them for discounts they give policyholders with incomes under 250 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $30,000 in income a year for an individual. Those discounts shield these lower-income customers from out-of-pocket expenses, such as deductibles or copayments. These subsidies have been the subject of a lawsuit that is ongoing.

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The cost-sharing reductions are separate from the tax credit subsidies that help millions of people pay their premiums. Those are not affected by Trump’s decision.

Some of Trump’s actions could have an immediate effect on the enrollment for 2018 ACA coverage that starts Nov. 1. Here are five things you should know.

1. The executive order does not make any immediate changes.

Technically, Trump ordered the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Treasury within 60 days to “consider proposing regulations or revising guidance, to the extent permitted by law,” on several different options for expanding the types of plans individuals and small businesses could purchase. Among his suggestions to the department are broadening rules to allow more small employers and other groups to form what are known as “association health plans” and to sell low-cost, short-term insurance. There is no guarantee, however, that any of these plans will be forthcoming. In any case, the process to make them available could take months.

2. The cost-sharing reduction changes ARE immediate but might not affect the people you expect.

Cutting off payments to insurers for the out-of-pocket discounts they provide to moderate-income policyholders does not mean those people will no longer get help. The law, and insurance company contracts with the federal government, require those discounts be granted.

That means insurance companies will have to figure out how to recover the money they were promised. They could raise premiums (and many are raising them already). For the majority of people who get the separate subsidies to help pay their premiums, those increases will be borne by the federal government. Those who will be hit hardest are the roughly 7.5 million people who buy their own individual insurance but earn too much to get federal premium help.

Insurers could also simply drop out of the ACA entirely. That would affect everyone in the individual market and could leave some counties with no insurer for next year. Insurers could also sue the government, and most experts think they would eventually win.

Facebook Live: Trump Ends Payments For Cost-Sharing Reductions. What’s Next?

3. This could affect your insurance choices for next year. But it’s complicated.

The impact on your plan choices and premiums for next year will vary by state and insurer. For one thing, insurers have a loophole that allows them to get out of the contracts for 2018, given the change in federal payments. So, some might decide to bail. That could leave areas with fewer — or no — insurers. The Congressional Budget Office in August estimated that stopping the payments would leave about 5 percent of people who purchase their own coverage through the ACA marketplaces with no insurers in 2018.

For everyone else, the move would result in higher premiums, the CBO said, adding an average of about 20 percent. In some states, regulators have already allowed insurers to price those increases into their 2018 rates in anticipation that the payments would be halted by the Trump administration.

But how those increases are applied varies. In California, Idaho, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, for example, regulators had insurers load the costs only onto one type of plan: silver-level coverage. That’s because most people who buy silver plans also get a subsidy from the federal government to help pay their premium, and those subsidies rise along with the cost of a silver plan.

Consumers getting a premium subsidy, however, won’t see much increase in their out-of-pocket payments for the coverage. Consumers without premium subsidies will bear the additional costs if they stay in a silver plan. In those states, consumers may find a better deal in a different metal-band of insurance, including higher-level gold plans. Many states, however, allowed insurers to spread the expected increase across all levels of plans.

4. Congress could act.

Bipartisan negotiations have been renewed between Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to create legislation that would continue the cost-sharing subsidies and give states more flexibility to develop and sell less generous health care plans than those currently offered on the exchanges. Trump’s move to end the cost-sharing subsidies may bolster those discussions.

In a statement, Murray called Trump’s action to withdraw cost-sharing subsidies “reckless” but said she continues “to be optimistic about our negotiations and believe we can reach a deal quickly — and I urge Republican leaders in Congress to do the right thing for families this time by supporting our work.”

Trump on Friday urged Democrats to work with him to “make a deal” on health care. “Now, if the Democrats were smart, what they’d do is come and negotiate something where people could really get the kind of healthcare that they deserve, being citizens of our great country,” he said Friday afternoon.

Earlier Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) did not sound as if he was in the mood to cut a deal.

“Republicans have been doing everything they can for the last ten months to inject instability into our health care system and to force collapse through sabotage,” he said in a statement. “Republicans in the House and Senate now own the health care system in this country from top to bottom, and their destructive actions, and the actions of the president, are going to fall on their backs. The American people see it, and they know full well which party is doing it.”

A poll released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that 71 percent of the public said they preferred that the Trump administration try to make the law work rather than to hasten replacement by encouraging its failure. The poll was conducted before Trump made his announcement about the subsidies. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

5. Some states are suing, but the outcome is hard to guess.

Even though all states regulate their own insurance markets, states have limited options for dealing with Trump’s latest move. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia, led by New York and California, are suing the Trump administration to defend the cost-sharing subsidies. But it is unclear whether a federal court could say that the Trump administration is obligated to continue making the payments while that case is pending.

Diane Webber contributed to this report.

Output: Apparently frustrated by Congress’ inability to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump this week decided to take matters into his own hands. Late Thursday evening, the White House announced it would cease key payments to insurers.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Not Dead Yet: Obamacare Insurers Are Hanging In There
 Mr. Trump has made his disdain for the Affordable Care Act clear in a variety of policies dating to his first week in office, and for months had threatened to stop paying insurers subsidies that help them provide lower deductibles and co-payments to low-income customers. Because of the uncertainty, most states had allowed insurers to set high enough prices for 2018 to account for the risk of cutoff subsidies. That means they are largely protected from the consequences of President Trump’s decision to eliminate the payments.

But not all. While many large carriers like Centene may be willing to stay, others are nervous, and their regulators were considering options Friday. New competition from plans exempt from the A.C.A. rules and much higher rates resulting from the loss of funding are making some insurers rethink their commitment to 2018. “They’re sharpening their pencils now to see if they are going to stay in or not,” said David M. Dillon, a fellow with the Society of Actuaries.

In addition to cutting off the subsidies, the president signed an executive order Thursday that may pave the way for competing plans that would be subject to fewer rules and could draw healthy customers out of the Obamacare markets. The administration has also cut back on its marketplace advertising budget by 90 percent, and slashed funding to groups that help customers understand their options and sign up for insurance.

“It’s a deliberate pattern,” said Chet Burrell, the chief executive of CareFirst, which is faced with a $50 million loss in Maryland if regulators do not allow it to increase its rates to make up for the loss of funding. “With active sabotage, this makes it more unstable.”

Mr. Burrell says CareFirst expects to continue offering coverage in the individual market regardless of what the Maryland regulator decides. But he said the administration’s actions “create profound instability and uncertainty for the future.”

Output: Despite President Trump’s best efforts, the Obamacare market hasn’t imploded yet. While Thursday’s decisions to cut off government funding and invite competition from flimsier, cheaper plans will jostle a vulnerable market, many of the major insurance companies say they will remain in the state marketplaces next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
European commercial markets strongest in 10 years: Knight Frank
 Europe’s commercial real estate markets are in better shape than at any time since the global financial crisis, according to new research.

The Eurozone is showing good economic growth for the first time in many years and this is creating more stability and growth, particularly in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

International real estate adviser Knight Frank’s newly appointed European Capital Markets Board are optimistic for the future of the European real estate markets despite uncertainty caused by the Brexit process.

‘The Eurozone is showing good economic growth for the first time since the global financial crisis and despite the uncertainty over the Brexit negotiations, the UK is experiencing record low levels of unemployment,’ said Andrew Sim, head of Global Capital Markets at Knight Frank.

‘London in particular is continuing to power ahead, with confidence indices rising and office take-up by the tech and creative sectors actually having increased in the first half of 2017 compared with the same period in 2016. The upshot is that London remained the most active investment market in Europe in the first half of 2017, with prices having risen to pre-referendum levels despite an air of uncertainty,’ he pointed out.

‘We expect an increase in activity as the prospect of a two or three year transitional deal for Britain when leaving the European Union sinks in, leaving more and more investors expecting the return of the London capital markets status quo’,’ he added.

According to Hanns-Joachim Fredrich, head of Capital Markets Germany at Knight Frank, explained that in Germany pricing is looking sharp, with offices in central business districts trading at record levels with record demand forcing up prices. ‘Investment into Frankfurt has significantly increased due to the ongoing Brexit discussions, however a lack of suitable product is hindering its deployment,’ he said.

‘All property classes are benefiting from the strong investor demand, not only prime offices and retail but also hotels, residential and healthcare. Due to the extremely high investor demand for residential, there is a shortage of commercial developments within Germany’s top seven cities. Most office developments are pre-let two or three years before completion,’ he explained.

‘Knight Frank recommends now is the time to activate existing land with building rights and start speculative development to benefit from the shortage of existing schemes underway and the strong take-up of the dwindling office space available,’ he added.

In France there is growing demand from overseas investors, boosted by the election of President Emmanuel Macron. ‘There is belief, momentum and activity, with the vacancy rate on Paris’s Ile de France falling sharply to now sit at 6.6%. In the central business district vacancy rates are now 3.1%,’ said Vincent Bollaert, the firm’s head of Capital Markets in France.

‘Our view is that the occupational market is going to strengthen further as well, and post-Brexit we expect the tech sector to account for up to 15% of total employment in Paris. This is all underpinning a strong investment market, with prime yields sitting between 3% and 3.25% – a record low for the central business district. While French investors accounted for 63% of transactions in the first half of this year we are finding there is growing demand from overseas buyers in the second half,’ he added.

Amsterdam is becoming an increasingly attractive market for investors seeking an alternative to more expensive European markets such as London, Paris and Berlin, according to Fred Rikken, head of Capital Markets in the Netherlands.

‘High office vacancy rates were previously a concern for those looking to deploy capital, but availability is now rapidly tumbling and supply shortages have emerged in the most sought-after office districts,’ he said.

‘Combined with strong demand from the city’s vibrant and expanding technology sector, tight supply will drive rental growth, and create opportunities for new development, however, a lack of suitable core investment product would be the biggest challenge in the next 12 months,’ he added.

Output: European commercial property markets are at their strongest since the global financial crisis, according to real estate advisor Knight Frank. Much of this is down to strong economic growth in the eurozone, creating better stability and growth, especially in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. As such, Knight Frank's European Capital Markets Board is optimistic for the future of the European commercial property markets, despite uncertainty caused by Brexit.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
End to Health Care Subsidies Puts Congress in a Tight Spot
 WASHINGTON — President Trump’s decision to cut off critical payments to health insurance companies ratcheted up the pressure on Congress on Friday to take action to protect consumers from soaring premiums, while also adding a combustible new issue to negotiations to avert a government shutdown this year.

Mr. Trump’s move, announced Thursday night, could cause chaos in insurance markets, sending insurers fleeing from the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, raising the federal government’s costs and pricing out some consumers. It came just hours after he signed an executive order that also undermined the health law by encouraging the development of lower-cost insurance policies not subject to the Affordable Care Act’s rigorous coverage standards.

But the president suggested on Friday that he was trying to get Democrats to the negotiating table.

“If the Democrats were smart, what they’d do is come and negotiate something where people could really get the kind of health care that they deserve,” Mr. Trump told reporters, insisting that the subsidies were “making insurance companies rich.”

Output: President Trump’s decision to cut off critical payments to health insurance companies ratcheted up the pressure on Congress on Friday to take action to protect consumers from soaring premiums, while also adding a combustible new issue to negotiations to avert a government shutdown this year.