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Facebook, Google and Twitter asked to testify to US Congress
 Executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been asked to testify to the United States Congress as lawmakers continue to investigate Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election, committee sources have said on Wednesday.

The Senate intelligence committee asked that the executives testify at a public hearing on November 1, 2017.

"In the coming month, we will hold an open hearing with representatives from tech companies in order to better understand how Russia used online tools and platforms to sow discord in and influence our election," the committee's Democrat representative Adam Schiff and Republican representative Mike Conaway said.

While the representatives did not specify which technology companies would be testifying, Facebook and Google confirmed they had received invitations from the Senate committee.

Some US lawmakers -- increasingly alarmed by the evidence suggesting Russian hackers used the internet to spread fake news and otherwise influence the 2016 election in favour of US commander-in-chief Donald Trump -- have been pushing for more information about the influence of social media platforms.

Early Wednesday, Trump posted a tweet accusing Facebook of always being "anti-Trump", adding that television networks and publications such as The New York Times and the Washington Post, have also been anti-Trump.

"But the people were Pro-Trump! Virtually no President has accomplished what we have accomplished in the first 9 months-and economy roaring," he added.

Facebook founder and frontman Mark Zuckerberg subsequently responded to Trump's tweets in the form of a Facebook post, saying both Trump and liberals are accusing the social media giant of influencing election results.

"Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don't like. That's what running a platform for all ideas looks like," Zuckerberg said in the post.

He went on to explain Facebook's influence in the 2016 presidential election, saying that "more people had a voice in this election than ever before", with "billions of interactions" about a variety of issues that "may have never happened offline". Some of these issues were not reported in the media, Zuckerberg added.

"[The] data we have has always shown that our broader impact -- from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote -- played a far bigger role in this election," he said in his post.

The CEO also said it was the "first" US election where the internet was the primary medium of communication between candidates and the electorate.

"Every candidate had a Facebook page to communicate directly with tens of millions of followers every day," he said, adding that campaigns spent "hundreds of millions" advertising online, which is "1000x more than any problematic ads we've found."

Facebook revealed earlier this month that suspected Russian trolls purchased more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on its platform between June 2015 to May 2017, a revelation that triggered calls for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

Facebook said the purchases came from around 500 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that seemed to be affiliated with each other. The social media giant shut down the active accounts and pages -- which it said appeared to have been operating from Russia -- for violating its policies.

Facebook last week said it will turn over to the US Congress Russian-linked ads that may have been intended to sway the 2016 US election.

"We support Congress in deciding how to best use this information to inform the public, and we expect the government to publish its findings when their investigation is complete," Zuckerberg said at the time.

In his recent post, Zuckerberg additionally recalled Facebook's efforts in encouraging people to vote.

"[Our efforts] helped as many as 2 million people register to vote. To put that in perspective, that's bigger than the get out the vote efforts of the Trump and Clinton campaigns put together," he said. "That's a big deal."

Zuckerberg said Facebook will do its part to "defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections".

"We'll keep working to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, and to ensure our community is a platform for all ideas and force for good in democracy," he added.

The Daily Beast, citing anonymous sources, also reported that a Facebook group called the "United Muslims of America" was a fake account linked to the Russian government. The group was reportedly making false claims about politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Senate and House intelligence committees are the main congressional panels investigating allegations that Russia interfered in the latest US presidential election, as well as possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.

The general consensus of law enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the conclusion of the Central Intelligence Agency's own investigations suggest Russia was involved in election scheming, something that Trump and Russian officials have continued to dismiss, with the latter describing the allegations as "amusing rubbish".

Russian president Vladimir Putin had also insisted that Russia as a country never engaged in hacking activities, but conceded that some "patriotic" individuals may have, likening a hacker's free will to that of an artist, in a speech delivered to news agencies in June.

At the time, Putin lamented what he described as "Russo-phobic hysteria" in the US, saying such rhetoric makes it "somewhat inconvenient to work with one another or even to talk", adding that "someday this will have to stop".

He also alleged that some evidence pointing at Russian hackers' participation in cyber attacks -- although he did not specify which -- could have been falsified in an attempt to smear Russia.

"I can imagine that some do it deliberately, staging a chain of attacks in such a way as to cast Russia as the origin of such an attack," Putin said in June.

"Modern technologies allow that to be done quite easily."

Earlier this week, Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said it will block access to Facebook next year if the social media giant does not comply with a law requiring websites to store personal data of Russian citizens on Russian servers.

With AAP

Output: Representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google have been invited to publicly testify before the Senate intelligence committee investigating the extent of Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. While the Trump administration and Russia have both dismissed the allegations of interference, Facebook recently revealed that Russian-aligned parties bought $100,000 worth of ads between June 2015 to May 2017, and will hand over to Congress details of Russian-linked ads aimed at swaying voter intention. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the site would "defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections".


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UN sees robots as potential threat to world peace
 The UN has warned that robots could destabilise the world ahead of the opening of a headquarters in The Hague to monitor developments in artificial intelligence.

From the risk of mass unemployment to the deployment of autonomous robotics by criminal organisations or rogue states, the new Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics has been set the goal of second-guessing the possible threats.

It is estimated that 30% of jobs in Britain are potentially under threat from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, according to the consultancy firm PwC. In some sectors half the jobs could go. A recent study by the International Bar Association claimed robotics could force governments to legislate for quotas of human workers.

Meanwhile nations seeking to develop autonomous weapons technology, with the capability to independently determine their courses of action without the need for human control, include the US, China, Russia and Israel.

Irakli Beridze, senior strategic adviser at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, said the new team based in the Netherlands would also seek to come up with ideas as to how advances in the field could be exploited to help achieve the UN’s targets. He also said there were great risks associated with developments in the technology that needed to be addressed.

“If societies do not adapt quickly enough, this can cause instability,” Beridze told the Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf. “One of our most important tasks is to set up a network of experts from business, knowledge institutes, civil society organisations and governments. We certainly do not want to plead for a ban or a brake on technologies. We will also explore how new technology can contribute to the sustainable development goals of the UN. For this we want to start concrete projects. We will not be a talking club.”

In August more than 100 robotics and artificial intelligence leaders, including the billionaire head of Tesla, Elon Musk, urged the UN to take action against the dangers of the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry, sometimes referred to as “killer robots”.

They wrote: “Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at time scales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways.”

Last year Prof Stephen Hawking warned that powerful artificial intelligence would prove to be “either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity”.

An agreement was sealed with the Dutch government earlier this year for the UN office, which will have a small staff in its early stages, to be based in The Hague.

Beridze said: “Various UN organisations have projects on robotic and artificial intelligence research, such as the expert group on autonomous military robots of the convention on conventional weapons. These are temporary initiatives.

“Our centre is the first permanent UN office for this theme. We look at both the risks and the benefits.”

Output: The United Nations has established an institution to study the potential dangers of AI, including the threat to world peace and stability. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics is based in the Netherlands, and will study technological advances in the field to look for possible threats and opportunities. A major concern is the application of AI in warfare, a goal which a number of countries are understood to be pursuing. A group of over 100 AI and robotics experts, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, warned the UN about the danger in August, urging them to take action.


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Tesla sales surge forecast under China's EV tax proposals
 Foreign automakers have long been disincentivized to sell in China, where imports see a 25-percent tax and locally produced cars must be sold through 50/50 joint ventures with domestic entities. But the Chinese government, prioritizing a shift from fossil-fuel to electric vehicles, is reportedly considering a loophole.

A recent proposal would allow nonnative brands to set up wholly owned EV segments in free-trade zones, and Tesla Inc TSLA is positioned to win big, according to Piper Jaffray.

“It seems possible that Tesla will be allowed to book 100 percent of the profit associated with locally-produced EVs, while most global competitors will probably continue booking only 50 percent (due to their entrenched JV structures),” analysts Alexander Potter and Winnie Dong wrote in a Wednesday note.

Tesla’s Play

If Tesla capitalizes on potential regulatory changes, it could see growth in China notably steeper than this year’s estimated 136-percent year-over-year delivery increase.

In fact, China could become Tesla’s biggest revenue source, according to Potter and Wong.

The company could benefit from China’s growing demand for luxury cars, standard vehicle sales that far outpace U.S. records, and non-competitive environment. China has little exposure to foreign brands, and although its firms lead global markets in EV production, with unit sales up 70 percent year over year, none pose a veritable threat to Tesla.

“We find most of China's EVs are chintzy in comparison to Tesla's products (with the exception of NIO's soon-to-be-released SUV), and realistically Tesla's most capable global peers are probably years away from releasing locally-built luxury EVs,” Potter and Wong wrote. “In the meantime, traditional (gas) luxury vehicles constitute TSLA's primary competition.”

And the government’s phasing those out.

Big Upside

Considering Tesla’s potential in the Chinese market, Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating on the stock with a $386 price target.

“There's still plenty of uncertainty, but all else equal, we think recent developments have unfolded in TSLA's favor,” the analysts wrote. “The company was wise to delay investment, but once these JV-related policy details are finalized, we expect Tesla to announce its China strategy in relatively short order.”

Related Links:

Gene Munster Goes The Distances On Tesla: A Look At Short- Vs. Long-Term Expectations

A Better Idea? Ford In Talks To Build Electric Cars With Chinese Giant

Output: Tesla could see sales surge if the government in Beijing decides to allow the skirting of import and sales rules for electric vehicles (EVs) manufacturers in China. A new tax proposal is being considered to incentivise foreign brands to set up wholly-owned EV segments in Chinese free-trade zones. Analysts at investment bank Piper Jaffray say Tesla, in particular, could benefit from the move, with China potentially becoming its biggest revenue source.


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TalkTalk TalkTalk second most complained about fixed broadband service
 BT and TalkTalk are the providers most moaned about, according to UK comms regulator Ofcom's quarterly whinge data between April and June – a result that will surprise no one.

Ofcom receives 300 complaints a day for mobile, broadband, phone and paid TV services.

Out of every 100,000 customers for fixed broadband services, BT generated the most gripes (28), mainly due to faults, service and provision issues, but also bill handling, pricing and charges. TalkTalk came second (24) followed by BT's subsidiary Plusnet (20).

In contrast, Virgin Media and Sky generated the fewest grumbles, with 13 and 7 respectively.

TalkTalk once told GCHQ: Cyberattack? We'd act fast – to get sport streams back up READ MORE

Jane Rumble, Ofcom's director of consumer policy, said complaints about telcos are dropping this year but added that "some providers are falling a long way short on customer service."

"There can be no room for complacency. We expect providers, particularly those who have been consistently underperforming, to make service quality and complaints handling their number-one priority."

An Ofcom report earlier this year found that just over half of broadband and mobile customers who complained to their provider were satisfied with how their issues were handled.

The regulator has proposed requiring providers to pay automatic compensation to landline and broadband customers who suffer slow repairs, late installations or missed engineer appointments.

Last week TalkTalk was named the worst UK internet provider in a biannual survey by consumer association Which? for the fifth consecutive time. ®

Output: UK telecoms company TalkTalk has been named the country's second most complained-about broadband provider, beaten only by BT, according to a quarterly report from regulator Ofcom. Covering April-June this year, the data revealed that although complaints had dropped, some providers were still "falling a long way short on customer service". Ofcom has previously suggested implementing automatic compensation for customers experiencing delays or missed appointments. About 300 complaints a day are made to Ofcom.


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TalkTalk Talktalk downgraded by Credit Suisse to 'underperform' rating
 TalkTalk was under the cosh on Thursday as Credit Suisse downgraded the stock to 'underperform' from 'outperform' and cut the price target to 170p from 210p saying that structural headwinds are growing.

The bank pointed out that since the change of management and strategy, the shares have recovered 25% year-to-date, materially outperforming the European telecoms sector and trading on a significant premium.

"Whilst we agree with the renewed focus on core broadband, the stock has recovered to our previous target price of 210p, and we are now cutting longer-term forecasts as structural challenges are growing, and establishing a new target price."

Among the challenges facing the company, CS highlighted a material slowdown in growth in the UK broadband market over the last two years as UK household broadband penetration approaches 90%, which has coincided with deteriorating economic growth.

According to Credit Suisse, the slowdown in UK broadband market growth accelerated in the first half of 2017,with the market adding only 162,000 subscribers in the three months to the end of March and just 66,000 in the three months to the end of June. It attributed the slowdown to a deteriorating UK economy and fixed-to-mobile substitution.

In addition, it noted TalkTalk is exposed to the challenges from fibre-to-the-home. CS said the pressure on European telcos to invest in FTTH is growing as demand for speed rises, cost to build falls, financing becomes more available and government policy shifts to gigabits speeds.

"BT is now considering a 10m FTTH build which would favour those telcos willing to co-invest, and present a challenge to DSL unbundlers. TalkTalk already has thinner margins in the FTTc market than DSL, whilst margins available to TalkTalk in FTTH would likely be yet lower with Ofcom seeking to create investment incentives."

At 0925 BST, the shares were down 3.1% to 203.80p.

Output: UK telecommunications company TalkTalk has been dealt a blow by Credit Suisse, having its stock downgraded to the "underperform" rating. The financial institution blamed increasing "structural headwinds", including the near-saturation of the UK broadband market and small margins in the fibre-to-the-home sector. The move came in spite of Credit Suisse praising changes in management and strategy which led to a 25% year-to-date increase in TalkTalk's shares.


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Lloyd's pays first of $4.5bn hurricane claims
 Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market, has started paying out the first of $4.5bn (£3.6bn) of claims related to tropical storm Harvey and Hurricane Irma, which wreaked havoc in the southern US and Caribbean.

Inga Beale, the Lloyd’s of London chief executive, said: “The market is assessing claims and starting to make payments that will help local communities and businesses get back on their feet as quickly as possible.”

Catastrophe modelling companies have estimated the insured damage caused by Harvey and Irma at $50bn to $70bn (£37bn-£52bn). Hurricane Maria, which recently ripped through Puerto Rico, is estimated to have caused $40bn-$85bn in insured losses.

Beale said Lloyd’s was using those estimates to work out its share of the losses, about $4.5bn for Harvey and Irma. The market is still working out its liability for Hurricane Maria, the earthquake in Mexico and typhoons in Asia.

Analysts at Jefferies estimate a further $1bn hit for Maria and the Mexican earthquake. They expect that Lloyd’s has the capital to absorb these losses without drawing on its central reserves. The cost of property insurance cover in the US is likely to rise “materially” as a result, but Asian prices should be unaffected.

“It is clear that 2017 is a major catastrophe year,” said Simon Kilgour, an insurance partner at the law firm CMS. “The current-year losses are expected to wipe out industry earnings and impact capital for the first time since 2005.”

Lloyd’s is closely monitoring the impact of climate change. Beale said rising sea levels raised the losses caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by 30%.

Another big challenge is Brexit. As part of its planning, Lloyd’s is about to file an application with the Belgian authorities to set up a subsidiary in Brussels. Beale said this was “a bit more complex” for a market with 83 syndicates than it would be for an individual company, but she still expects the new subsidiary to be up and running by the middle of 2018.

Beale welcomed Theresa May’s plan for a two-year transition period. “The transition would be very helpful for the financial services sector,” she said.

While the Brussels subsidiary will ensure that Lloyd’s can write new business in EU countries after the UK leaves, Beale stressed that it was vital for insurers to be able to fulfil their liabilities for existing policies, adding that the outlook was “still very uncertain”.

Lloyd’s has thrown its weight behind proposals for a free trade agreement for financial services that would ensure UK and EU companies can trade in each other’s countries without tariffs or quotas.

Beale’s comments came as Lloyd’s reported a pretax profit of £1.2bn for the first half of this year, down from £1.46bn a year ago. It excludes the impact of the storms and other recent natural disasters.

Output: The largest insurance market in the world, Lloyd’s of London, has begun to pay the first of the claims arising from the damage caused by storm Harvey and Hurricane Irma, totalling $4.5bn. Catastrophe modelling companies have estimated totals of between $50bn and $70bn in insured damage caused by the two events, a statistic Lloyd's has used to calculate its own payout. Hurricane Maria, which recently hit Puerto Rico, is thought to have resulted in between $40bn and $85bn in insured losses. Analysts at Jefferies expect Maria and the Mexican earthquake to cost Lloyd's an addition $1bn.


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Marine plastic enabling coastal species to cross oceans
 When the massive tsunami waves of the 2011 eastern Japan earthquake rolled back out to sea, they pulled with them fragments of docks, boats, and buoys that sometimes contained living stowaways. These hitchhikers—including crustaceans, mollusks, and fish—rode debris "rafts" through ocean currents over thousands of kilometers before finally washing ashore on Hawaiian and North American coastlines, sometimes years later. Now, researchers who studied hundreds of Japanese marine species living in and on this tsunami debris conclude that they were witnessing a "transoceanic biological rafting event with no known historical precedent," they report today in Science . The scientists studied more than 600 pieces of tsunami-ejected debris—mostly nonbiodegradable fiberglass and polystyrene foam—that had swept up along Hawaiian, U.S. mainland, and Canadian shores. They counted nearly 300 Japanese species colonizing the debris, including roughly 80 different species on the largest piece, a 170-ton section of dock. In many cases, the scientists found that the animals had successfully reproduced along their journey. That's evidence that the relatively slow movement of the debris (2-4 kilometers per hour) helped species adapt to changing conditions across the Pacific Ocean, the team wrote. But life hitching a ride between continents might have a dark side, the researchers noted: Debris could transport invasive species, forever changing ecosystems.

Output: Plastic waste is enabling communities of coastal species to cross oceans, for the first time in recorded history, according to marine scientists. Almost 300 species from Japan reached North America alive between 2012 and 2017, after travelling on plastic objects such as crates which entered the pacific after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Whilst this disaster was an extreme example of such transit, scientists believe that storm surges are causing many non-native species to travel on “rafts” of marine plastic aided by storm surges. Mollusks, bryozoans, crustaceans and worms were the species most likely to have survived transit.


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UK’s major chicken supplier alters food safety records
 Update: Since this story was published, Marks and Spencer and Aldi have stopped taking fresh chicken from the 2 Sisters factory featured in this investigation. Read more here

You probably haven't heard of the 2 Sisters Food Group but, if you like chicken, the chances are you have eaten some of the meat it processes.

2 Sisters is the largest supplier in the UK of chickens to supermarkets but an investigation by ITV News and the Guardian has uncovered a series of potential breaches of food safety rules in one of the company’s factories.

Our undercover reporter got a job at "Site D" in the West Midlands, which processes fresh chicken for Tesco, Sainsbury's, Aldi, Lidl and Marks and Spencer. But he found evidence that suggests some of the chicken 2 Sisters produces from this factory may not be as fresh as the use by date suggests.

Our reporter filmed workers changing both the date of slaughter and the source codes on crates of chicken crowns in such a way that artificially extended the meat’s shelf-life and rendered it almost untraceable in the event of an outbreak of food poisoning.

On several occasions he witnessed workers returning chicken to the production line after it had fallen to the floor. This may have caused it to become contaminated.

He saw meat of different ages being mixed together and he filmed Tesco's "exclusive" Willow Farms range being topped up with drumsticks that were originally packaged for Lidl.

We have spoken to more than 20 workers, past and present, who have stated that such practices take place.

Some also claim that the chicken supermarkets reject is often repackaged at the factory and sent out again.

2 Sisters employs people to patrol the production line and enforce food safety rules but the quality assurance workers we spoke to told us that they are intimidated by production managers and fear being sent home if they intervene.

2 Sisters is the largest supplier in the UK of chickens to supermarkets. Credit: ITV News

A former employee told us they were treated like "the enemy" by production staff and that they felt their job was "pointless".

We shared our findings with Professor Chris Elliot, a food scientist at Queen's University Belfast, who led the government's inquiry into food safety following the horsemeat scandal in 2013.

"There are major concerns about food hygiene...I think [your] report absolutely calls out for a full investigation," he told us. "I think the Food Standards Agency will take this very seriously, they will inspect and look at the premises and see if there are grounds to close the facility down."

Professor Elliot has inspected many food businesses in the past four years and insists he's never seen such poor standards. More generally, he believes government spending cuts have damaged the effectiveness of local authority inspections.

"It is my view that the environmental health services in the UK have been cut to the bone and cut to such an extent that things like this are probably happening more frequently than they should," he said.

Our reporter uncovered a series of potential breaches of food safety rules. Credit: ITV News/the Guardian

Dr Richard Hyde, an expert in food law at the University of Nottingham, told us: "If you are placing a use by date that is incorrect, that is a breach of law. If you place food on the market that doesn't have the correct traceability information, that is a criminal offence.

"There are a basket of potential offences here that the regulators need to look at and decide whether further action is required".

2 Sisters Food Group was founded in West Bromwich in 1993 by Ranjit Singh Boparan, who has built the business into one of the UK's largest food producers, employing 23,000 staff.

The 2 Sisters empire is vast but Ranjit Singh Boparan is still known in the West Midlands as "The Chicken King" and the bulk of the group’s sales come from processing poultry.

Boparan and his wife, Baljinder, own the business and The Sunday Times estimates their wealth to be £544 million.

Experts were shocked by the footage we showed them. Credit: ITV News

2 Sisters is dependent on the five biggest supermarkets for its income. The group’s accounts note that the loss of any of these “key customers” as a potential risk to the business. The same section notes that “product quality and safety issues are paramount to the groups’ success”.

2 Sisters Food Group told us that it takes these allegations extremely seriously. It said: “Hygiene and food safety will always be the number one priority within the business, and they remain at its very core.

"We also successfully operate in one of the most tightly-controlled and highly regulated food sectors in the world.

"We are subject to multiple and frequent unannounced audits from the FSA, BRC, Red Tractor, independent auditors as well as our customers. By example, our facility in the West Midlands under investigation received nine audits (five unannounced) in the months of July and August alone.

Employees at the factory told us about what it is like working there. Credit: ITV News

"However, we are never complacent and remain committed to continually improving our processes and procedures. If, on presentation of further evidence, it comes to light any verifiable transgressions have been made at any of our sites, we will leave no stone unturned in investigating and remedying the situation immediately.”

We took our findings to the supermarkets supplied by 2 Sisters Food Group. They told us that they take hygiene and traceability very serious. All said they would be investigating the allegations.

The responses from supermarkets to our investigation

There is no suggestion the supermarkets were aware of these practices.

They told us:

We take hygiene and traceability very seriously and have extremely high production standards. We are now looking into these allegations with our supplier. Marks & Spencer

We operate to the highest possible food quality and safety standards, carrying out our own regular audits at all of our suppliers to ensure these standards are maintained. As such, we take these allegations extremely seriously and will be carrying out our own rigorous investigation. Tesco

Lidl UK takes the issue of food safety extremely seriously and, as such, we conduct independent audits to ensure that our high quality and safety standards are met. Therefore, we are very disappointed to learn of these allegations and will be urgently investigating this matter with the supplier. Lidl

All of our suppliers are expected to meet our high standards. We are concerned by these findings and are investigating. Sainsbury's

We require all suppliers to adhere to the highest possible food hygiene and traceability standards at all times. Aldi

The response from the FSA

Output: 2 Sisters Food Group, the biggest supplier of chicken to UK supermarkets, has altered food safety records to sell meat that's past its use-by date, according to an investigation by the Guardian and ITV News. The group, which supplies Aldi, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, produces a third of all the poultry consumed in the country. It is part of a £3bn ($4bn) operation that also includes Bernard Matthews, Fox’s Biscuits, Giraffe and Goodfella’s pizza.


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UK’s major chicken supplier alters food safety records
 The largest supplier of chicken to UK supermarkets has been tampering with food safety records in moves that could dupe consumers into buying meat past its use-by date.

An investigation by the Guardian and ITV News recorded undercover footage of workers altering the slaughter date of poultry being processed at a 2 Sisters Food Group plant. The group produces a third of all poultry products eaten in the UK and supplies top grocers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, Aldi and Lidl.

When informed of the evidence, all five retailers responded to say they would launch immediate investigations.

The discovery comes just four years after the 2013 horsemeat scandal, which has resulted in prison sentences for those convicted of a conspiracy to pass off cheaper horsemeat as beef.

Experts said the practice of changing “kill dates” could artificially stretch the commercial life of meat products by triggering the food processor to print incorrect use-by dates on supermarket packaging.

Chicken being relabelled to change the date of kill at the 2 Sisters plant. Photograph: Guardian/ITV

Workers at the company confirmed they had been asked to switch these labels on other occasions. It is illegal to place incorrect use-by dates on food, which are set for safety reasons and differ from “best before” dates.

The joint investigation, which involved taking secret recordings during a spell of 12 working days inside 2 Sisters’ plant in West Bromwich, also captured evidence that:

Chicken portions returned by supermarket distribution centres are being repackaged by 2 Sisters and sent out again to major grocers.

Workers drop chickens on the floor of the processing plant and return them to the production line.

Workers alter records of where chickens were slaughtered, potentially hindering authorities from recalling contaminated meat during food scares.

Chickens slaughtered on different dates are mixed on the production line. Workers said use-by dates printed on the packets of the mixed chicken tended to reflect the age of the freshest, rather than oldest, meat in the batch.

Chicken is picked up from the floor for processing in the West Midlands plant. Photograph: Guardian/ITV

Having been shown the evidence, Prof Chris Elliott, a food safety academic from Queen’s University Belfast who led the UK government’s independent review of food systems following the 2013 horsemeat scandal, said: “Over the past three to four years I have conducted many inspections of food businesses right across the UK. I have never seen one operate under such poor standards as your video evidence shows.

“I think [this] absolutely calls out for a full investigation. We need to get environmental health officers, we need to get the Food Standards Agency to do a thorough investigation. The Food Standards Agency will take this very seriously. They will look at the premises and see if there are grounds to close the facility down.”

The company said it had not been given enough time or detail to respond to the allegations, which it described as “false”.

2 Sisters Food Group's response to our investigation We have been made aware of several broad allegations made by the Guardian/ITV in relation to inappropriate procedures, food safety and hygiene issues at two of our poultry processing facilities. We view these allegations extremely seriously. However, we have not been given the time or the detailed evidence to conduct any thorough investigations to establish the facts, which makes a fulsome and detailed response very difficult. What we can confirm is that hygiene and food safety will always be the number one priority within the business, and they remain at its very core. We also successfully operate in one of the most tightly-controlled and highly regulated food sectors in the world. We are subject to multiple and frequent unannounced audits from the FSA, BRC, Red Tractor, independent auditors as well as our customers. By example, our facility in the West Midlands under investigation received nine audits (five unannounced) in the months of July and August alone. However, we are never complacent and remain committed to continually improving our processes and procedures. If, on presentation of further evidence, it comes to light any verifiable transgressions have been made at any of our sites, we will leave no stone unturned in investigating and remedying the situation immediately.

A letter from 2 Sisters Food Group’s legal advisers, Schillings, said: “Food safety and hygiene are 2SFG’s top priorities. To the extent that you have identified any shortcomings (which is not admitted), these could only be isolated examples which our clients would take very seriously, and they are investigating the allegations made.”

During the course of the investigation, the Guardian and ITV interviewed more than 20 workers at 2 Sisters about standards within the company.

One worker said: “I have [changed the slaughter dates] lots of times when I was working in that area. My supervisor, he asked me do it … If you are buying fresh chicken it can be older chicken.”

A second worker claimed that 2 Sisters quality control staff in the West Midlands were working in a “pointless job” and could feel intimidated and be overruled by production supervisors who treated them as “enemies”.

On one occasion the Guardian/ITV footage captured workers altering the “kill date” of hundreds of chickens to one day later at the group’s West Bromwich plant in August. Other workers added that they had witnessed dates being altered by more than a day.

Supermarket products typically have a use-by date around 10 days after the bird has been slaughtered.

Speaking about how chicken is returned by supermarket distribution centres, a third 2 Sisters worker said: “They will repack [the returned meat] like [it is] today’s production ... It is sent back on [the line] like today’s production. They mix it with today’s production.”

Supermarkets return chicken to suppliers for a variety of reasons that can include packaging and labelling errors. Being returned does not mean it is unfit to eat. However, if older meat is mixed with fresher meat, the use-by date should reflect the age of the oldest meat in the batch.

A fourth worker added: “I try to make them change the [use-by] date to [reflect the] older DOK [date of kill] but that doesn’t happen – they mix.”

The footage shows chicken that has been processed and packed for Lidl being reopened and mixed with other pieces of poultry. The drumsticks re-emerge at the end of the line showing in packets saying they have come from Tesco’s Willow Farms. The labelling on the pack says the contents are “reared exclusively for Tesco”.

Schillings said: “The Willow Farms brand is exclusive to Tesco, but the raw material is not. 2SFG meets the raw materials specifications for the Willow Farms brand.”

The Guardian and ITV showed the undercover footage to four government meat inspectors, who would speak only on condition of anonymity. All of them said they believed the film showed potential breaches of food regulations.

Food law experts also added that the film amounted to prima facie evidence that the company had potentially committed offences.

The 2 Sisters plant in West Bromwich. Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian

Dr Richard Hyde, an expert in food law at Nottingham University, added: “If you are placing a use-by date that is incorrect that is a breach of law. If you place food on the market that doesn’t have the correct traceability information that is a criminal offence. There are a basket of potential offences here that the regulators need to look at and decide whether further action is required.”

The food processor said that Elliott and Hyde had not visited 2 Sisters sites or considered its policies, so their comments “cannot be, in any way, objective expert evidence, but are completely unbalanced, based on biased selective information”.

2 Sisters Food Group is the UK’s second largest food company by turnover and claims to process around 6 million chickens every week.

It is owned by Ranjit Singh Boparan and his wife, Baljinder Kaur Boparan, and the chicken operations – which include 12 sites in the UK – are part of a sprawling £3bn food empire that separately includes the turkey producer Bernard Matthews, the restaurant chains Harry Ramsden, FishWorks and Giraffe, plus food brands such as Fox’s Biscuits and Goodfella’s pizza.

The Boparans, who have always shunned publicity, are worth £544m, according to the Sunday Times rich list.

The company added: “2SFG ensures all staff are fully trained on hygiene and safety matters, and enforces a number of policies to ensure compliance with all regulations. It is subject to regular audits in these areas and staff have a number of ways in which to voice their concerns.

“2SFG has reviewed its [whistleblower hotline] records for Site D from the previous 12 months and there are no complaints from any quality assurance staff resembling those cited.”

The five big supermarkets supplied by 2 Sisters’ West Bromwich plant all said they took quality and safety standards very seriously and were investigating.

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We operate to the highest possible food quality and safety standards, carrying out our own regular audits at all of our suppliers to ensure these standards are maintained. As such, we take these allegations extremely seriously and will be carrying out our own rigorous investigation.”

A Lidl spokesperson said: “Lidl UK takes the issue of food safety extremely seriously and, as such, we conduct independent audits to ensure that our high quality and safety standards are met. Therefore, we are very disappointed to learn of these allegations and will be urgently investigating this matter with the supplier.”

Output: 2 Sisters Food Group, the biggest supplier of chicken to UK supermarkets, has altered food safety records to sell meat that's past its use-by date, according to an investigation by the Guardian and ITV News. The group, which supplies Aldi, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, produces a third of all the poultry consumed in the country. It is part of a £3bn ($4bn) operation that also includes Bernard Matthews, Fox’s Biscuits, Giraffe and Goodfella’s pizza.


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Input:
Cenovus sells Suffield assets to IPC for $512m
 Canada's Cenovus Energy Inc has reached an agreement to sell its Suffield oil and gas assets for $512 million to International Petroleum Corp, striking its second deal this month as it pushes ahead with its debt reduction plan.

Calgary-based Cenovus said on Monday proceeds from the sale will be used to cut the $3.6 billion in debt it took on to buy oil sands assets from ConocoPhillips this year. Cenovus is targeting $5 billion from asset sales to pay down the debt and so far it has announced $1.5 billion in divestitures, including the latest sale.

Cenovus shares rose as much as 3.9 per cent to $13.18 in early morning trade, before retreating to $12.71 by late morning. The benchmark Canada share index was flat..

Analysts said the price tag for Suffield was within estimates, and that while the sale was positive for the company, other assets for sale may not be as attractive to buyers.

"On balance, we continue to recommend investors take a cautious stance toward the broader asset sale process for Cenovus," said Raymond James analyst Chris Cox, adding that other sales may "disappoint to the downside."

The $16.8 billion ConocoPhillips deal effectively doubled Cenovus' producing assets, but dented its pristine balance sheet and sent Cenovus shares tumbling. It prompted some investors to revolt and resulted in the resignation of chief executive Brian Ferguson.

International Petroleum Corp, a spinoff of Norway's Lundin Petroleum AB, said the acquisition more than triples its production and reserves. Its shares jumped 6.5 per cent to $5.22.

Earlier this month, Cenovus agreed to sell its Pelican Lake heavy oil operations in Alberta for $975 million to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

Other assets Cenovus plans to sell include the company's Weyburn and Palliser oil assets, which it hopes to announce by the end of the year. It may also sell some of the Deep Basin natural gas assets that it acquired from ConocoPhillips.

Reuters reported in July the company hopes to raise as much as $2.5 billion by selling Weyburn and Palliser oil assets, in-line with analysts' valuations.

Desjardins analyst Justin Bouchard said Deep Basin's infrastructure assets could be sold for up to $1.5 billion, helping the company meet or even surpass its divestiture target.

Output: Canada's Cenovus Energy has reached an agreement to sell its Suffield oil and gas assets for $512m to International Petroleum Corp., its second deal this month as it pushes ahead with its debt reduction plan following the $16.8bn acquisition of oil sands assets from ConocoPhilips earlier this year. Cenovus is targeting $5bn from asset sales to pay down the debt $3.6bn of debt it took on to finance the Conoco deal. So far it has announced $1.5 billion in divestitures, including the latest sale. Analysts said the price tag for Suffield was within estimates, and that while the sale was positive for the company, other assets for sale may not be as attractive to buyers.


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Input:
Out-of-pocket health costs hit old, poor, women hardest
 Sisters Shaylin Sluzalis, left, and Brittani Sluzalis, members of the disability rights group ADAPT, embrace while waiting in line before a Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposal in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.

Low-income Americans, older people and women pay a greater share of their incomes toward out-of-pocket health costs than do others, according to a new report issued Tuesday.

The broad analysis of spending by more than 2 million Americans also found that there is a strong correlation between when people tend to pay their out-of-pocket health costs and the months of March and April, when most people get their income tax refunds.

And the report from the JP Morgan Chase Institute found that out-of-pocket health spending was highly concentrated among relatively few families.

"The top 10 percent of health-care spenders contributed 49 percent of total out-of-pocket spending in 2016," the report said. That top 10 percent on average spent 9 percent of their take-home pay on out-of-pocket health costs.

Out-of-pocket costs are health expenses not covered by a person's insurance plan, and include charges such as co-payments, deductibles and coinsurance.

"The reality is that many American families don't have the cash buffer to withstand the volatility created by out-of-pocket health-care payments," said Diana Farrell, president and CEO of JP Morgan Chase Institute.

"We need to better understand the correlation between financial health and physical health."

The report comes as Republican leaders in the Senate are pushing a last-ditch bill to repeal and replace much of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Health experts have predicted that the bill, known as Graham-Cassidy, could greatly weaken, or eliminate in some states, ACA rules that mandate health insurance plans cover a minimum set of so-called essential health benefits, without imposing out-of-pocket charges on patients.

The institute for the report looked at spending from 2013 through 2016 by about 2.3 million Chase checking account customers. That data was "de-identified," meaning it was not linked to people by name.

The time period examined includes the first three full years of implementation of Obamacare. Critics of that law predicted it would lead to increased health costs.

However, the Chase report found that overall out-of-pocket health spending rose modestly during the time frame, by 4.3 percent on average, and ended up being less of a share of take-home income over time.

In 2013, average annual out-of-pocket health-care spending by a family stood at $629, representing 1.7 percent of take-home pay, the report said.

That grew to $645 per family in 2014 — a 2.6 percent increase — and to $690 per family in 2015, a rise of 6.9 percent.

In 2016, out-of-pocket spending grew to $714 per family, up 3.6 percent from the prior year.

However, from 2014 through 2016, the total spent on out-of-pocket costs on average in each of those years was 1.6 percent of the average family's household take-home pay — slightly less than the level seen in 2013.

But the burden on certain groups of people was much higher.

Families that earned less than $24,000 annually spent, on average, 2.8 percent of their take-home pay on out-of-pocket costs in 2016. That was up from 2.6 percent of take-home pay in 2015.

The next highest average burden was among families earning between $24,000 and $38,000 annually, which paid 1.6 percent of their take-home pay to out-of-pocket costs. As incomes rose after that, the burden of out-of-pocket costs dropped.

In households where the primary checking account was held by a woman, families paid, on average, 1.8 percent of their take-home pay toward out-of-pocket health costs in 2016, according to the report.

That compares to 1.5 percent among families where men were the primary checking account holders.

The report also found out-of-pocket cost burdens increased in direct correlation to a person's age.

While people 18 to 25 years old paid just 1.2 percent of their pay toward such costs in 2016, that rose to 1.6 percent for people 35 to 44 years old, and to 1.9 percent for people 55 to 64 years old, the report said.

Farrell, the CEO of the JP Morgan Chase Institute, said that while the overall average burden from out-of-pocket health costs remained stable in the past four years, many people were feeling more pinched from those costs.

"What we hear all the time.. is that these costs are increasing quite significantly, and we note that, too," Farrell said.

"But why is the burden stable? ... By and large people are spending a certain fraction of their income on out-of-pocket health care spend, and then they won't spend anymore," she said.

"That means if they get the health care — fine. If that means they won't pay for something that they're due to pay, they're probably not doing it, because we see this tight linkage between ability to pay, and pay," Farrell said. "It's almost as though people cap how much they will spend on health care... so when they have more ability to pay, when incomes go up, they pay. When they don't, they won't get the health care or they won't pay for the health care."

Farrell also said that if the Graham-Cassidy bill that would replace Obamacare becomes law, it will increase the burden on low-income people who already are struggling with out-of-pocket health costs.

"The demographic groups that are really carrying the heavier burden are the ones more likely to feel the impact of the changes," she said. "Because the last several years have been relatively helpful to those groups, even though the outcome is more burdensome to them."

Output: JP Morgan Chase Institute has found that older US citizens, low-income people and women pay more of their incomes for out-of-pocket healthcare expenses than others. The Institute’s report also found that there was a strong correlation between the period of time when Americans get their income tax refunds, the months of March and April, and when people pay their out-of-pocket health expenses. The report took into account the spending habits of over two million Americans between 2013 and 2016, finding that the top 10 percent of healthcare spenders represented 49 percent of all the out-of-pocket spending in 2016, putting around 9% of their take-home pay on these costs. The Institute has said that many Americans and their families do not have the financial buffer to accommodate these types of unexpected payments. The proposed Graham-Cassidy bill could cause extra pressure on Americans to pay these out-of-pocket expenses, removing the protection from the Affordable Care Act that mandates that a minimum of “essential” benefits are covered without incurring extra expenses. Out-of-pocket expenses rose by 4.3 percent on average during that three-year period, with the average annual spend on out-of-pocket spending being $629 for families in 2013 and rising to $714 in 2016. The average percentage of take-home pay for a family was 1.6 percent, but was higher for female-led households (1.8 percent) and for those aged 55 to 64 (1.9 percent). The report found that when citizens had the ability to pay, they paid for health care, but when there was a lack of income, healthcare was either neglected or unpaid. The Graham-Cassidy bill could increase the burden on lower-income people already without the means to pay for out-of-pocket expenses, with the report stating that the demographics experiencing the most burden will be the ones to see the greatest negative effect of the proposed changes.


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Senate Republicans Say They Will Not Vote on Health Bill
 WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday officially abandoned the latest plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, shelving a showdown vote on the measure and effectively admitting defeat in their last-gasp drive to fulfill a core promise of President Trump and Republican lawmakers.

The decision came less than 24 hours after a pivotal Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, declared her opposition to the repeal proposal, all but ensuring that Republican leaders would be short of the votes they needed.

“We haven’t given up on changing the American health care system,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said after a lunchtime meeting of Republican senators. “We are not going to be able to do that this week, but it still lies ahead of us, and we haven’t given up on that.”

Mr. McConnell said Republicans would move on to their next big legislative goal: overhauling the tax code, a feat that has not been accomplished since 1986.

Output: Senate Republicans have officially stated that they will not vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill for the alteration of the Affordable Care Act, signaling the end of the last attempt to meet the promise of the Trump administration. Republican leaders would have been short of the number of votes necessary to pass the repeal proposal. Thirteen lawmakers across 12 separate states have resisted at least one of the five past efforts to repeal the ACA since the initiation of the Trump administration. The next vote to take place will likely be on the tax code overhaul, another Republican target. Democrats’ reaction to the news was to encourage the new opening of bipartisan negotiations for health insurance market stabilization, which had been put aside in favor of the repeal proposal. The decision not to vote may be the final nail in the coffin for the battle over health insurance in the US, a long debate that will likely be shelved for some time. However, there will likely be a revival of the discussion in the 2018 midterm elections, particularly as premiums are due to increase next year. The bill was due to take the regular funding for insurance subsidies on a state level, as well as the expansion of Medicaid, and to change the funding to a block grant. The bill would have lowered the spending on Medicaid by $1 trillion over a 10-year period, and putting millions of beneficiaries out of insurance. Democrats are hoping to pass the Alexander-Murray stabilization package which would send money for subsidies currently given to insurance companies as a reimbursement for lowering out-of-pocket costs for low-income citizens, and giving states more leeway to reform their insurance markets. The bill may prove unpopular with Republicans, who view the payments as a “bailout”.


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Insurtech Lemonade launches no-punishment claims product
 Lemonade, the insurance company powered by artificial intelligence and behavioral economics, has launched a new product called Zero Deductible which offers new and existing Lemonade members a ‘zero deductible’ upgrade, so they can make up to two claims each year with no deductible payments, and no rate hikes. The launch of Lemonade’s Zero Deductible also marks the company’s first year anniversary. Launched in New York in September 2016, Lemonade has since expanded to California, New Jersey, Illinois and Texas, and has been licensed- and will launch soon- in 15 more states, reaching more than 50% of the US population.

“One of the motives behind Lemonade was to rebuild insurance around what makes sense to people, not insurance companies. That’s how Zero Deductible was born,” explained Lemonade cofounder and CEO Daniel Schreiber. “People resent being ‘punished’ for using the product they paid plenty to use. Zero Deductible is something new and different. It allows you to truly receive your full replacement value, twice per year, every year, all without your rates jumping. There’s nothing like it in market.”

[clickToTweet tweet=”[email protected]_Inc celebrates 1st anniversary with zero deductible @crowdfundinside @daschreiber” quote=”Lemonade’s new Zero Deductible allows customers to receive full replacement value, twice per year, every year, all without rates jumping. “]

With today’s launch of Zero Deductible, the platform aims to move from rethinking the fundamental business model of insurance and its customer experience, to tackling the underlying policy, and ensuring its alignment with consumers’ wishes. Zero Deductible is the closest thing to truly “undoing” a loss.

“We want people to think about their Lemonade insurance as an Undo button for their life. You pay a premium to have that undo button at hand, and you expect it to work as advertised when bad things happen,” added cofounder and Chief Lemonade Maker Shai Wininger. “No gotchas, no paperwork, no faxes and no phone calls. Lemonade’s Zero Deductible is a seamless, technology-powered product that undoes losses, in seconds.”

In the year since launching, Certified B-Corp Lemonade has attained a notable market share, especially among first time insurance buyers. In New York State alone, Lemonade reportedly overtook Allstate, GEICO, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, State Farm, USAA and all other legacy insurers among first time buyers of renters insurance. New users can opt for Zero Deductible when getting a policy, simply by choosing the Zero Deductible option before purchasing a policy. Existing users can upgrade to Zero Deductible instantly thanks to Lemonade’s Live Policy.

Lemonade is on the radar for new competitors and disruptors; German Insurtech company ONE (part of the Wefox Group) yesterday pledged to outgrow US based Lemonade in service growth soon after its late September launch.

________________________________________________________________________________

Output: To mark its first anniversary, insurtech Lemonade is allowing new and existing customers to buy a "zero deductible" policy that allows two claims a year at no extra cost and with no effect on premium rates. Since its launch, the firm has leapfrogged established carriers among first-time rental-home insurance buyers in its New York home state. Allstate, GEICO, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, State Farm and USAA are among the legacy insurers it's said to have overtaken in terms of market share among the demographic.


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Robo-adviser assets could top $1.5tn in next five years
 Robo advisors are neither going away, nor are they dying off.

Instead, they will get much stronger, expected to collectively top $1 trillion in assets under management in fewer than five years.

The booming popularity of micro-investing firms will partly feed such growth. With over 60% of millennials already subscribed to apps like Acorns, the sector will expand as they devote more money to investing, reports Boston-based consulting firm Aite Group.

“Digital advising will become less focused on Generation Y and begin to resemble the traditional investor,” says Javier Paz, a senior analyst with Aite and the author of “U.S. Digital Advice,” a study released in September.

Robos will become the norm within a decade, he suggests, joined by virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, as comfort with automated investing increases.

The research estimates AUM from robo advisors will hit the $1 trillion milestone by 2020 and will rise to $1.5 trillion the following year. Taking a conservative approach, the research did not account for AUM on upcoming digital platforms by Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and UBS expected later in 2017.

“We’re being bombarded with digitization,” Paz says. “This is just one more form.”

The firm conducted a year-long study that wrapped up in July. As part of their research Aite interviewed industry executives from some of the industry’s largest firms and analyzed public filings. (The study projected its 2017 data).

Click through the slideshow to see how mobile-first investing will change the investment landscape in the coming years.

Output: Assets managed by robo-advisers could top $1.5tn in the next five years after reaching $1tn in 2020, according to research from Boston-based consultants Aite Group. Robo-advisers could become the default form of investing over the next decade, particularly if paired with home-assistant devices like Amazon's Alexa. The potential growth suggests younger clients are comfortable with an automated investment process.


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Marijuana-related injuries in Canada could initiate GL policies
 Insurers would be well-advised to track the evolving marijuana risk to determine if impairment-related loss history could trigger defence and indemnification obligations under employers’ general liability policies, it was suggested Tuesday during a session at the RIMS Canada Conference in downtown Toronto.

“An employee who is under the influence of marijuana while at work could injure others, including customers, third parties or employees,” Leszek Bialy, vice president and head of alternative risk transfer for Zurich Canada, noted during the conference session, Joint Accountability: A Risk and Insurance Focused Marijuana Primer.

“An employer’s general liability policy would typically provide defence and indemnification to the employer for alleged injuries to an injured party on or off of the premises,” Bialy explained.

Use of medicinal marijuana is already legal in Canada and the impending legalization of recreational marijuana, which could be next July 1, means associated risks and possible insurance implications are receiving plenty of attention.

Are insurers currently redrafting underwriting applications in light of the evolving marijuana risk? Bialy asked attendees.

“At this time, I’m going to say no. However, the risk is deemed to be an evolving risk and insurers are watching. If there’s a loss history suggesting impairment, don’t be surprised if an insurer asks more questions and looks to confirm guidelines and policies to manage risk,” he pointed out.

The form would likely be “no different than they would for auto claims and looking at MDRs for alcohol use today,” said Bialy (pictured right).

Related: Marijuana legalization raises legal issues related to property policies, liability coverage and auto insurance, ARC Group Canada event hears

To address the risk, “from an underwriting perspective, the biggest issue underwriters are going to have is the lack of data,” suggested Alexis Moulton, a partner with McLennan Ross LLP.

“There’s simply not enough information out here right now. It makes pricing hard; it’s going to take a big effort on the part of the insurers, the brokers, the underwriters, the clients, the insured, etc. to understand this risk,” Moulton told attendees.

“Underwriters need to consider the what ifs, but you can’t price it out of the range of what the growers can afford,” she emphasized.

Consider if there are bad strains, effects from taking edibles or health side effects after using marijuana recommended by a dispensary employee, said Moulton.

If a person has a severe side effect, for example, “he’s going to sue. He’s going to sue the employee, he’s going to sue the dispensary, he’s going to sue the landlord, he’s going to sue the tenant. It goes on and on,” she argued.

Bialy suggested GL issue could be “closely tied to workers’ compensation and employment practices in terms of being able to mitigate the risk.”

His advice? Take account of the human element and put in place health and safety workplace guidelines. “By enforcing those guidelines, you’re going to be able to have control over those third parties, especially those of you in industries like construction or those industries that have contractor-type exposures,” he suggested.

With regard to third-party contractors, “how far do you take this focus as far as medical marijuana? Will there be – should there be – an element of contractual liability to address this risk?” Bialy asked.

“When you’re going to write a cannabis policy, you’re going to be writing policies to cover security, E&O (errors and omissions), property, crop, liability, fire, transportation, distribution,” Moulton (pictured left) told session attendees.

Related: With marijuana legalization impending, now is not the time to lower the legal alcohol limit, CAA-Quebec argues

Noting that “growers can have 50 to 60 different strains of cannabis, with multiple growing cycles,” how these crops are insured will be different, she added.

Other types of insurance policies that could potentially come into play with marijuana include property and auto, Bialy said.

In both Canada and the U.S., “your firm can be held responsible for damages stemming from an auto incident or accident involving an employee or yours who tests positive for marijuana impairment,” he pointed out.

For example, south of the border, “most state laws legalizing some aspect of marijuana use does not mean a business cannot set workplace drug policies, again, particularly with safety-sensitive positions,” Bialy said.

Related: One in 10 polled Canadians admit to driving under the influence of marijuana, State Farm Canada survey finds

More coverage of the 2017 RIMS Canada Conference

Brokers placing fidelity coverage should be ‘involved early on’ in fraud investigations: RIMS speaker

Autonomous vehicles will require a reassessment of liability: RIMS Canada Conference speaker

ORIMS presents Tony Lackey with 2017 Donald M. Stuart Award at RIMS Canada Conference

Cyber attacks could include ‘extorting a security guard to look the other way,’ RIMS Canada speaker warns

Cybercriminals will shift focus from data to threatening human life, cybersecurity expert predicts

Third-party drone services developing, immediate post-incident use still a challenge

Output: If employees of Canadian businesses, impaired by the legal use of marijuana, cause injury to third parties, it could trigger general liability insurance policies, according to Leszek Bialy, vice president and head of alternative risk transfer for Zurich Canada. While insurers are not presently redrafting underwriting applications, they are being urged to monitor the emerging risk posed by usage of the drug. Medical marijuana is already legal in Canada, with legalisation for recreational use slated to come into law next year.


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Is Health Care a Right?
 No other country in the world has built its health-care system this way, and, in the era of the gig economy, it’s becoming only more problematic. Between 2005 and 2015, according to analysis by the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, ninety-four per cent of net job growth has been in “alternative work arrangements”—freelancing, independent contracting, temping, and the like—which typically offer no health benefits. And we’ve all found ourselves battling over who deserves less and who deserves more.

The Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild spent five years listening to Tea Party supporters in Louisiana, and in her masterly book “Strangers in Their Own Land” she identifies what she calls the deep story that they lived and felt. Visualize a long line of people snaking up a hill, she says. Just over the hill is the American Dream. You are somewhere in the middle of that line. But instead of moving forward you find that you are falling back. Ahead of you, people are cutting in line. You see immigrants and shirkers among them. It’s not hard to imagine how infuriating this could be to some, how it could fuel an America First ideal, aiming to give pride of place to “real” Americans and demoting those who would undermine that identity—foreigners, Muslims, Black Lives Matter supporters, feminists, “snowflakes.”

Our political debates seem to focus on what the rules should be for our place in line. Should the most highly educated get to move up to the front? The most talented? Does seniority matter? What about people whose ancestors were cheated and mistreated?

The mistake is accepting the line, and its dismal conception of life as a zero-sum proposition. It gives up on the more encompassing possibilities of shared belonging, mutual loyalty, and collective gains. America’s founders believed these possibilities to be fundamental. They held life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be “unalienable rights” possessed equally by all members of their new nation. The terms of membership have had to be rewritten a few times since, sometimes in blood. But the aspiration has endured, even as what we need to fulfill it has changed.

When the new country embarked on its experiment in democracy, health care was too primitive to matter to life or liberty. The average citizen was a hardscrabble rural farmer who lived just forty years. People mainly needed government to insure physical security and the rule of law. Knowledge and technology, however, expanded the prospects of life and liberty, and, accordingly, the requirements of government. During the next two centuries, we relied on government to establish a system of compulsory public education, infrastructure for everything from running water to the electric grid, and old-age pensions, along with tax systems to pay for it all. As in other countries, these programs were designed to be universal. For the most part, we didn’t divide families between those who qualified and those who didn’t, between participants and patrons. This inclusiveness is likely a major reason that these policies have garnered such enduring support.

Health care has been the cavernous exception. Medical discoveries have enabled the average American to live eighty years or longer, and with a higher quality of life than ever before. Achieving this requires access not only to emergency care but also, crucially, to routine care and medicines, which is how we stave off and manage the series of chronic health issues that accumulate with long life. We get high blood pressure and hepatitis, diabetes and depression, cholesterol problems and colon cancer. Those who can’t afford the requisite care get sicker and die sooner. Yet, in a country where pretty much everyone has trash pickup and K-12 schooling for the kids, we’ve been reluctant to address our Second World War mistake and establish a basic system of health-care coverage that’s open to all. Some even argue that such a system is un-American, stepping beyond the powers the Founders envisioned for our government.

In fact, in a largely forgotten episode in American history, Thomas Jefferson found himself confronting this very matter, shortly after his Inauguration as our third President, in 1801. Edward Jenner, in England, had recently developed a smallpox vaccine—a momentous medical breakthrough. Investigating the lore that milkmaids never got smallpox, he discovered that material from scabs produced by cowpox, a similar condition that afflicts cattle, induced a mild illness in people that left them immune to smallpox. Smallpox epidemics came with a mortality rate of thirty per cent or higher, and wiped out upward of five per cent of the population of cities like Boston and New York. Jefferson read Jenner’s report and arranged for the vaccination of two hundred relatives, neighbors, and slaves at Monticello. The President soon became vaccination’s preëminent American champion.

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But supplies were difficult to produce, and the market price was beyond the means of most families. Jefferson, along with his successor, James Madison, believed in a limited role for the federal government. They did not take expanding its power and its commitments lightly. By the time Jefferson finished his two terms as President, however, city and state governments had almost entirely failed to establish programs to provide vaccines for their citizens. Thousands of lives continued to be lost to smallpox outbreaks. Meanwhile, vaccination programs in England, France, and Denmark had dramatically curbed the disease and measurably raised the national life expectancy. So, at Jefferson’s prompting, and with Madison’s unhesitating support, Congress passed the Vaccine Act of 1813 with virtually no opposition. A National Vaccine Agent was appointed to maintain stocks of vaccine and supply it to any American who requested it. The government was soon providing free vaccine for tens of thousands of people each year. It was the country’s first health-care entitlement for the general population. And its passage wasn’t in the least controversial.

Two centuries later, the Affordable Care Act was passed to serve a similar purpose: to provide all Americans with access to the life-preserving breakthroughs of our own generation. The law narrowed the yawning disparities in access to care, levied the taxes needed to pay for it, and measurably improved the health of tens of millions. But, to win passage, the A.C.A. postponed reckoning with our generations-old error of yoking health care to our jobs—an error that has made it disastrously difficult to discipline costs and insure quality, while severing care from our foundational agreement that, when it comes to the most basic needs and burdens of life and liberty, all lives have equal worth. The prospects and costs for health care in America still vary wildly, and incomprehensibly, according to your job, your state, your age, your income, your marital status, your gender, and your medical history, not to mention your ability to read fine print.

Few want the system we have, but many fear losing what we’ve got. And we disagree profoundly about where we want to go. Do we want a single, nationwide payer of care (Medicare for all), each state to have its own payer of care (Medicaid for all), a nationwide marketplace where we all choose among a selection of health plans (Healthcare.gov for all), or personal accounts that we can use to pay directly for health care (Health Savings Accounts for all)? Any of these can work. Each has been made to work universally somewhere in the world. They all have their supporters and their opponents. We disagree about which benefits should be covered, how generous the financial protection should be, and how we should pay for it. We disagree, as well, about the trade-offs we will accept: for instance, between increasing simplicity and increasing choice; or between advancing innovation and reducing costs.

What we agree on, broadly, is that the rules should apply to everyone. But we’ve yet to put this moral principle into practice. The challenge for any plan is to avoid the political perils of a big, overnight switch that could leave many people with higher costs and lower benefits. There are, however, many options for a gradual transition. Just this June, the Nevada legislature passed a bill that would have allowed residents to buy into the state’s Medicaid plan—if the governor hadn’t vetoed it. A similar bill to allow people to buy into Medicare was recently introduced in Congress. We need to push such options forward. Maintaining the link between health coverage and jobs is growing increasingly difficult, expensive, and self-defeating. But deciding to build on what’s currently working requires overcoming a well of mistrust about whether such investments will really serve a shared benefit.

My friend Betsy Anderson, who taught eighth-grade English at Athens Middle School for fifteen years, told me something that made me see how deep that well is. When she first started out as a teacher, she said, her most satisfying experiences came from working with eager, talented kids who were hungry for her help in preparing them for a path to college and success. But she soon realized that her class, like America as a whole, would see fewer than half of its students earn a bachelor’s degree. Her job was therefore to try to help all of her students reach their potential—to contribute in their own way and to pursue happiness on their own terms.

But, she said, by eighth grade profound divisions had already been cemented. The honors kids—the Hillary Clintons and Mitt Romneys of the school—sat at the top of the meritocratic heap, getting attention and encouragement. The kids with the greatest needs had special-education support. But, across America, the large mass of kids in the middle—the ones without money, book smarts, or athletic prowess—were outsiders in their own schools. Few others cared about what they felt or believed or experienced. They were the unspecial and unpromising, looked down upon by and almost completely separated from the college-bound crowd. Life was already understood to be a game of winners and losers; they were the designated losers, and they resented it. The most consistent message these students had received was that their lives were of less value than others’. Is it so surprising that some of them find satisfaction in a politics that says, essentially, Screw ’em all?

I met with Mark, a friend of Arnold’s, at the Union Street Diner, uptown near the campus of Ohio University, which makes Athens its home. The diner was a low-key place that stayed open twenty-four hours, with Formica tables and plastic cups, and a late-night clientele that was a mixture of townies and drunken students. I ordered a cheeseburger and onion rings. Mark ordered something healthier. (He asked me not to use his last name.) The son of a state highway patrolman, he had graduated from Athens High School five years ahead of me. Afterward, he worked as a cable installer, and got married at twenty-three. His wife worked at the Super Duper grocery store. Their pay was meagre and they were at the mercy of their bosses. So, the next year, they decided to buy a convenience store on the edge of town.

Mark’s father-in-law was a builder, and he helped them secure a bank loan. They manned the register day and night, and figured out how to make a decent living. It was never a lot of money, but over time they built up the business, opening gas pumps, and hiring college students to work the counter part time. They were able to make a life of it.

They adopted a child, a boy who was now a twenty-five-year-old graduate of the local university. Mark turned fifty-seven and remained a lifelong conservative. In general, he didn’t trust politicians. But he felt that Democrats in particular didn’t seem to recognize when they were pushing taxes and regulations too far. Health-care reform was a prime example. “It’s just the whole time they were coming up with this idea from copying some European model,” he said. “And I’m going, ‘Oh shit. This is not going to end up good for Mark.’ ” (Yes, he sometimes talks about himself in the third person.)

For his health coverage, Mark trusted his insurance agent, whom he’d known for decades, more than he trusted the government. He’d always chosen the minimum necessary, a bare-bones, high-deductible plan. He and his wife weren’t able to conceive, so they didn’t have to buy maternity or contraceptive coverage. With Obamacare, though, he felt forced to pay extra to help others get benefits that he’d never had or needed. “I thought, Well, here we go, I guess I’m now kicking in for Bill Gates’s daughter’s pregnancy, too.” He wanted to keep government small and taxes low. He was opposed to Obamacare.

Then, one morning a year ago, Mark’s back started to hurt. “It was a workday. I grabbed a Tylenol and I go, ‘No, this isn’t going to work, the pain’s too weird.’ ” It got worse, and when the pain began to affect his breathing he asked his wife to drive him to the emergency room.

Output: The United States' current debate over healthcare has led to the question of whether healthcare is a fundamental right. The high cost of healthcare, even with insurance, is prohibitive for many Americans. However, some see healthcare access as a right, but the cost is a burden that individuals should pay, rather than the taxpayer. A right to healthcare, from a conservative standpoint, would allow both the deserving and the undeserving to benefit. A more liberal approach sees healthcare as a necessity, much like the potable water that the government must provide. The balance must be found over maintenance of the belief that collective action results in collective benefit. Medicare, as a system where everyone pays in, is perceived more favorably to Medicaid, as all Americans benefit from the system past age 65.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
XL Catlin launches accident and health solution in Italy
 THIS AXA WEBSITE USES COOKIES

AXA XL, as a controller, uses cookies to provide its services, improve user experience, measure audience engagement, and interact with users’ social network accounts among others. Some of these cookies are optional and we won't set optional cookies unless you enable them by clicking the "ACCEPT ALL" button. You can disable these cookies at any time via the "How to manage your cookie settings" section in our cookie policy.

Output: XL Catlin launched an accident and health insurance solution for Italian clients. The solution consists of three distinct products: group policy accident insurance, business travel accident insurance and health care coverage for clients' employees and their families.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Global economies still at risk and ill-prepared for robots: WEF
 Hans-Peter Merten | Getty Images

Global economies remain at risk from further shock and are "ill-prepared" for the next wave of "automation and robotization," according to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) latest global competitiveness report. The Switzerland-based organization's 2017 Global Competitiveness Index, published Wednesday, assesses various factors driving countries' productivity and prosperity – including its institutions, infrastructure, education, innovation and labor market efficiency, among others, and showed a sharp divide between major global economies. "Ten years on from the global financial crisis, the prospects for a sustained economic recovery remain at risk due to a widespread failure on the part of leaders and policy-makers to put in place reforms necessary to underpin competitiveness and bring about much-needed increases in productivity," WEF stated of its findings. In 2017, the report found that Switzerland retained top spot as the most competitive economy, closely followed by the U.S. and Singapore. Also in the top 10 were the Netherlands in fourth place, followed by Germany, Hong Kong, Sweden, the U.K. (which had fallen from sixth to eighth place), Japan and Finland. With the usual suspects populating the rankings again this year, Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, head of Economic Progress at the World Economic Forum, told CNBC on Wednesday that there had not been much effort at structural reforms that would improve competitiveness.

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"Global growth has been mainly fueled by monetary policy and low interest rates over the last few years so we do not see much progress on productivity, so that is reflected in the ranking. At the same time, we should be seeing more (productivity) in order to keep growth going forward," she told CNBC Wednesday. Major BRICS economies lagged far behind, however, with China standing at number 27 in the forum's ninth year of competitiveness rankings, Russia at 38, India at 40, South Africa at 61 and Brazil at 80. There was also much divergence between the high-ranking northern European economies and southern European ones, including Spain (34), Italy (43) and Greece (87). The organization said that that its 2017 report highlighted three key areas of concern, including the robustness of the financial system, a lack of flexibility in labor markets and an imbalance between investments in technology and efforts to promote their adoption in the wider economy.

The 'Age of Talentism'

Output: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has called on governments and business to boost productivity, warning that worldwide economies remain vulnerable to financial shocks a decade after the financial crisis. In its latest competitiveness report, the WEF also said economies were woefully unprepared for incoming "automation and robotisation". "The prospects for a sustained economic recovery remain at risk due to a widespread failure on the part of leaders and policy makers to put in place reforms necessary to underpin competitiveness and bring about much-needed increases in productivity," the WEF warned. It urged governments to create more flexible labour markets that can cope with encroaching robotisation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Climate change may make some assets uninsurable
 Europe is turning to Africa’s gas, while the US, China and Russia are racing for economic influence on the continent.

Output: There is a fear among risk assessors that an increasing frequency of substantial storms during the Atlantic hurricane season may render some assets uninsurable as the impact of extreme weather causes the rate and size of claims to rise ahead of the income generated by premiums. One solution, according to Swiss Re, is to prepare adequately for a payout in the wake of significant storms, while interacting closely with clients and brokers.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Experts accused of hiding epilepsy drug links to birth defects
 Warnings to young women who might become pregnant that the epilepsy drug sodium valproate could cause birth defects and developmental problems in their babies could have been made public more than 40 years ago, according to campaigners.

“These warnings could have and should have been given in 1974,” said Catherine Cox from the Fetal Anti-Convulsant Syndrome Association at a public hearing of the European Medicines Agency, which is conducting a risk assessment of the drug. “However, there was a deliberate decision not to publish them.”

Regulators knew about the risks when they were considering licensing sodium valproate for the control of seizures in epilepsy. But documents from 1973 show they thought telling patients “could give rise to fruitless anxiety”.

A “Dear Doctor” letter warned health professionals: “This compound has been shown to be teratogenic in animals, meaning it could harm the human foetus.”

But the then Committee on Safety of Medicines said the warning should “not (go) on the package inserts, so that there would be no danger of patients themselves seeing it”.

The EMA’s risk assessment committee will decide what extra measures should be taken to safeguard young women who might become pregnant and their children from sodium valproate. The drug, used to treat epilepsy but also bipolar disorder and migraine, has long been controversial.

While many campaigners would like an outright ban for women of childbearing age, doctors say there are some for whom it is the only drug that will control their epileptic seizures. Campaigners estimate that up to 20,000 children in the UK may have been harmed.

Babies whose mothers are given the drug during pregnancy run a 11% risk of birth defects and a 40% risk of developmental problems. Karen Keely, from the Organisation for Anti-Convulsant Syndrome in Ireland, told the EMA that her three sons, Lee, Lorcan and Harry, all have birth defects after she was prescribed Epilim, one of the brand names of sodium valproate.

“Two of my three boys require life-long care and will never live a normal life, will never be able to have children or get married,” she said. “The effects of sodium valproate have been unbearable.

“I have been mourning my children since the day they came into my life and I’m determined to not let this injustice happen to other families in the same way that it has happened to mine.”

Women are still unaware of the risks of the drug, even after a “toolkit” was produced last year for doctors and patients by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which replaced the Committee on the Safety of Medicines, with the help of stakeholders.

But Clare Pelham of the Epilepsy Society said a survey last month of 2,000 young women with the condition found that 68% did not know about it, which was a slight increase on the 64% from the years before when the toolkit had only just been introduced.

She called on the inquiry to make warnings to women mandatory, rather than voluntary. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, should require GPs to review any woman on the drug face to face every 12 months. “It is a very straightforward measure,” she said.

Output: Regulators knew that epilepsy drug sodium valproate could cause birth defects and developmental problems in babies more than 40 years ago but kept it quiet for fear it "could give rise to fruitless anxiety". Catherine Cox of the Fetal Anti-Convulsant Syndrome Association accused medical experts at a public hearing of making a "deliberate decision not to publish" warnings. The drug, manufactured by Sanofi, is also used to treat bipolar disorder and migraines. Campaigners estimate that around 20,000 children in the UK may have been affected by the drug, which is undergoing a risk assessment by the European Medicines Agency.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
First film funded and distributed via blockchain in production
 The Story of Blockchain

Dozens of clips claim to explain the blockchain or tell you everything you need to know about Bitcoin. But the story of cryptocurrencies and the technology that makes them possible demands more explanation than is possible in a cursory two-minute animation.

These topics may be garnering a lot of mainstream attention right now thanks to skyrocketing valuations and interest from multi-billion dollar organizations like IBM and Microsoft, but they've actually been around for decades. The story of how they managed to land in the spotlight in 2017 is both compelling and complex.

Luckily, filmmaker Alex Winter has taken on the daunting task of telling it.

Winter's face isn't new in the entertainment industry. He began his career as an actor, starring in several popular films such as The Lost Boys and, perhaps most famously, the Bill and Ted franchise. He then moved behind the camera to direct several narrative features and award-winning documentaries. His recent work reflects his interest in decentralization and the rise of internet-based communities — two of his documentaries, Downloaded and Deep Web, center on these themes. His next project, the "Untitled Blockchain Film," is a feature specifically focused on the blockchain and its potential to change the world.

"This film is an opportunity to examine the future as opposed to the distant past or the immediate past: where we are, where we're going, and the frenzied, exciting, and precarious world that we are currently in, particularly as that relates to the blockchain and crypto," Winter explains in an interview with Futurism.

To do that, the director will travel the world, interviewing the investors and innovators playing a major role in the evolution of blockchain and decentralization. He'll also seek out those using the technology to address important real-world problems, such as world hunger and income inequality.

Winter notes that he has been studying the rise of cryptography and its impact on global culture since the late 1980s. But he is excited to see where the process of creating this film takes him. "Every movie is a journey of discovery and disorientation for me," says Winter. "That's what I love about making them."

Could blockchain upend the film industry? Get ready. This award-winning director just announced the world’s first blockchain film. Posted by Futurism on Thursday, September 28, 2017

An Industry Redefined

The subject of Winter's new documentary isn't the only thing about it that's cutting-edge — everything from how the film is being funded to how it will be distributed is forward-thinking, thanks to SingularDTV, the EnTech company producing the film alongside Futurism Studios (a wholly owned subsidiary of Futurism LLC).

SingularDTV's Ethereum-based production and distribution platform utilizes blockchain technology to give filmmakers and artists everything they need to bring their projects to fruition.

"We're creating the ecosystem for entertainment industry artists and creators to be able to do everything — raise funds, market their projects, rent equipment — through a tokenized ecosystem," Kim Jackson, president of entertainment at SingularDTV, tells Futurism. "The different applications we're building support artists all the way from development to distribution."

Geoff Clark, president of Futurism Studios, notes that this pivotal moment for blockchain technology makes this an especially exciting time for filmmaking. "We have the rare opportunity to redesign our finance and distribution models from the ground up, ensuring a more sustainable and equitable future," he says. "I believe Blockchain represents the next evolution of content creation, and we are excited to partner with top technologists and creatives to bring that vision to life.”

Scheduled for release in Spring 2018, the "Untitled Blockchain Film" is the first project in SingularDTV's slate of original productions, and Jackson says she was thrilled Winter was available to direct it. "He was just such an obvious choice for this project given his background," Jackson says. "He totally understands the different avenues to explore with this new technology, and it was just really serendipitous that he was available to direct this film."

Winter hopes the film will clear up some of the public's misconceptions of the blockchain, but in this project, as in those before it, he seeks to entertain as well as inform. "I hope the audience comes away with a deeper understanding of this seemingly confusing and impenetrable world," says Winter. "That being said, I make movies, not journalism or infotainment, so more than anything I want the audience to feel they've watched a good, satisfying story."

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

Output: New York-based entertainment production company SingularDTV, which uses blockchain technology to support the film-making process, is set to release its first documentary next spring exploring blockchain's potential to change the world. The as-yet-untitled film will be directed by Bill and Ted star Alex Winter and its production process is intended to demonstrate how blockchain and a tokenised ecosystem can enable the creative process, from development to distribution. "Blockchain represents the next evolution of content creation," said Geoff Clark, the president of Futurism Studios, which is co-producing the documentary.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Bauer finds branded videos 10 times as interactive as unbranded
 Bauer Media is trying to show its ads can drive sales with shoppable videos for clients such as Adidas and Very.

This month, Bauer launched a two-month campaign for online fashion retailer Very that included 25 videos where viewers choose which items they want stylists in the video to wear. The first in the series shows different ways to wear a leather jacket: Viewers choose whether the stylist wears a floral print shirt or a Breton-style jumper; ripped jeans or floral embroidered jeans; and Chelsea boots or three-strapped heels. The items get more seasonal as the series continues; the second video is on how to style knitwear.

Output: Bauer Media found its branded videos receive 10 times as many interactions as its unbranded videos after it launched a two-month campaign for fashion retailer Very. The videos, distributed on both Bauer and non-Bauer sites, are designed to raise brand awareness and provide shoppable videos for consumers. Bauer has not yet released the number of sales made through the videos; however, for its recent campaign for Adidas on its Grazia site, dwell times on the videos were 200% higher than the average for other videos.