Global Warming: Who are the Global Warming Skeptic Organizations - who also have lobbyists in Bruxelles?

Global warming is for real - Vested Interest fights change

An overwhelming majority of scientists agree — global warming is happening and human activity is the primary cause. Yet several prominent global warming skeptic organizations are actively working to sow doubt about the facts of global warming.

These organizations play a key role in the fossil fuel industry's "disinformation playbook," a strategy designed to confuse the public about global warming and delay action on climate change. Why? Because the fossil fuel industry wants to sell more coal, oil, and gas — even though the science clearly shows that the resulting carbon emissions threaten our planet.

Who are these groups? And what is the evidence linking them to the fossil fuel industry?

Here's a quick primer on several prominent global warming skeptic organizations, including examples of their disinformation efforts and funding sources from the fossil fuel industry. Many have received large donations from foundations established, and supported, by the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers.

American Enterprise Institute

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has routinely tried to undermine the credibility of climate science, despite at times affirming that the “weight of the evidence” justifies “prudent action” on climate change. [1]

For years, AEI played a role in propagating misinformation about a manufactured controversy over emails stolen from climate scientists [2], with one AEI research fellow even claiming, “There was no consensus about the extent and causes of global warming.” [3] A resident scholar at AEI went so far as to state that the profession of climate scientist “threatens to overtake all” on the list of “most distrusted occupations.” [4]

AEI received $3,615,000 from ExxonMobil from 1998-2012 [5], and more than $1 million in funding from Koch foundations from 2004-2011. [6]

Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) frequently provides a platform for climate contrarian statements, such as “How much information refutes carbon dioxide-caused global warming? Let me count the ways.” [7]

While claiming to be a grassroots organization, AFP has bolstered its list of “activists” by hosting “$1.84 Gas” events, where consumers who receive discounts on gasoline are asked to provide their name and email address on a “petition” form. [8]

These events are billed as raising awareness about “failing energy policies” and high gasoline prices, but consumers are not told about AFP’s ties to oil interests, namely Koch Industries.
AFP has its origins in a group founded in 1984 by fossil fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch [9], and the latter Koch still serves on AFP Foundation’s board of directors [10]. Richard Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, also serves as a director for both AFP and AFP Foundation. [11]

Koch foundations donated $3,609,281 to AFP Foundation from 2007-2011. [12]
American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) maintains that “global climate change is inevitable” [13] and since the 1990s has pushed various forms of model legislation aimed at obstructing policies intended to reduce global warming emissions.

ALEC purports to “support the use of sound science to guide policy,” but routinely provides a one-sided platform for climate contrarians. State legislators attending one ALEC meeting were offered a workshop touting a report by a fossil fuel-funded group that declared “like love, carbon dioxide's many splendors are seemingly endless." [14, 15] Another ALEC meeting featured a Fox News contributor who has claimed on the air that carbon dioxide “literally cannot cause global warming.” [16, 17]

ALEC received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil from 1998-2012 [18], and more than $850,000 from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [19]

Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University

From its position as the research arm of the Department of Economics at Suffolk University, the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) has published misleading analyses of clean energy and climate change policies in more than three dozen states.

These economic analyses are at times accompanied by a dose of climate contrarianism. For example, BHI Director David Tuerck has claimed that “the very question of whether the climate is warming is in doubt…” [20] Claims such as “wind power actually increases pollution” can be found in many of BHI’s reports.

BHI has publicly acknowledged its Koch funding [21], which likely includes at least some of the approximately $725,000 the Charles G. Koch foundation contributed to Suffolk University from 2008-2011. [22]

Cato Institute

Cato acknowledges that “Global warming is indeed real…” But when it comes to the causes of global warming, Cato has sent mixed messages over the years. Cato's website, for instance, reports that “… human activity has been a contributor [to global warming] since 1975.” [23] Yet, on the same topic of whether human activity is responsible for global warming, Cato’s vice president has written: “We don’t know.” [24]

Patrick Michaels, Director of Cato’s Center for the Study of Science, has referred to the latest Draft National Climate Assessment Report as “the stuff of fantasy.” [25] The most recent edition of Cato’s “Handbook for Policymakers” advises that Congress should “pass no legislation restricting emissions of carbon dioxide.” [26]

Charles Koch co-founded Cato in 1977. Both Charles and David Koch were among the four “shareholders” who “owned” Cato until 2011 [27], and the latter Koch remains a member of Cato’s Board of Directors. [28] Koch foundations contributed more than $5 million to Cato from 1997-2011. [29]

Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has at times acknowledged that “Global warming is a reality.” [30] But CEI has also routinely disputed that global warming is a problem, contending that “There is no ‘scientific consensus’ that global warming will cause damaging climate change.”  [31]

These kinds of claims are nothing new for CEI. Back in 1991, CEI was claiming that “The greatest challenge we face is not warming, but cooling.” [32] More recently, CEI produced an ad calling for higher levels of carbon dioxide. [33] One CEI scholar even publicly compared a prominent climate scientist to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. [34]

CEI received around $2 million in funding from ExxonMobil from 1995-2005 [35], though ExxonMobil made a public break with CEI in 2007 after coming under scrutiny from UCS and other groups for its funding of climate contrarian organizations. CEI has also received funding from Koch foundations, dating back to the 1980s. [36] 

Heartland Institute

While claiming to stand up for “sound science,” the Heartland Institute has routinely spread misinformation about climate science, including deliberate attacks on climate scientists. [37]

Popular outcry forced the Heartland Institute to pull down a controversial billboard that compared supporters of global warming facts to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski [38], bringing an early end to a planned campaign first announced in an essay by Heartland President Joseph Bast, which claimed “… the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” [39]

Heartland even once marked Earth Day by mailing out 100,000 free copies of a book claiming that “climate science has been corrupted” [40] – despite acknowledging that “…all major scientific organizations of the world have taken the official position that humankind is causing global warming.”

Heartland received more than $675,000 from ExxonMobil from 1997-2006 [41]. Heartland also raked in millions from the Koch-funded organization Donors Trust through 2011. [42, 43]

Heritage Foundation

While maintaining that “Science should be used as one tool to guide climate policy,” the Heritage Foundation often uses rhetoric such as “far from settled” to sow doubt about climate science. [44, 45, 46, 47] One Heritage report even claimed that “The only consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these days is that there is no consensus.” [48]

Vocal climate contrarians, meanwhile, are described as “the world’s best scientists when it comes to the climate change study” in the words of one Heritage policy analyst. [49]

Heritage received more than $4.5 million from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [50] ExxonMobil contributed $780,000 to the Heritage Foundation from 2001-2012. ExxonMobil continues to provide annual contributions to the Heritage Foundation, despite making a public pledge in 2007 to stop funding climate contrarian groups. [51, 52]

Institute for Energy Research

The term “alarmism” is defined by Mirriam-Webster as “the often unwarranted exciting of fears or warning of danger.” So when Robert Bradley, CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), and others at his organization routinely evoke the term “climate alarmism” they do so to sow doubt about the urgency of global warming.

IER claims that public policy “should be based on objective science, not emotion or improbable scenarios ” But IER also claims that the sense of urgency for climate action is due not to the science that shows the real and growing conequences of global warming. Rather, IER suggests that researchers “exacerbate the sense [that] policies are urgently needed” for monetary gain, noting that “issues that are perceived to be an imminent crisis can mean more funding.” [53]

IER has received funding from both ExxonMobil [54] and the Koch brothers [55].

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

The Manhattan Institute has acknowledged that the “scientific consensus is that the planet is warming,” while at the same time maintaining that “… accounts of climate change convey a sense of certitude that is probably unjustified.” [56]

“The science is not settled, not by a long shot,” Robert Bryce, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow has written in the Wall Street Journal [57]. At other times Bryce has expressed indifference to the science on climate change. “I don’t know who’s right. And I really don’t care,” he wrote in one book. [58]

The Manhattan Institute has received $635,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998 [59], with annual contributions continuing as of 2012, and nearly $2 million from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [60] 

Read more : Global Warming Skeptic Organizations | Union of Concerned Scientists

Trade Agreements: Even Mainstream Economists Starting to Admit that "Free Trade Agreements" Are Anything But ..- by Robert Reich

During the US Presidential campaign Trump and Sanders have whipped up a lot of popular support by opposing “free trade” agreements.

But it’s not just politics and populism … mainstream experts are starting to reconsider their blind adherence to the dogma that more globalization and bigger free trade agreement are always good.

UC Berkeley Economics professor Robert Reich – Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor – wrote last month:

    "Suppose that by enacting a particular law we’d increase the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. But almost all that growth would go to the richest 1 percent.

    The rest of us could buy some products cheaper than before. But those gains would be offset by losses of jobs and wages.
    This is pretty much what “free trade” has brought us over the last two decades.
   
    I used to believe in trade agreements. That was before the wages of most Americans stagnated and a relative few at the top captured just about all the economic gains.  Recent trade agreements have been wins for big corporations and Wall Street, along with their executives and major shareholders

    But those deals haven’t been wins for most Americans. The fact is, trade agreements are no longer really about trade.

Indeed, while it’s falsely called a “trade agreement”, only 5 out of 29 of the Trans Pacific Partnership’s chapters have anything to do with trade.  And conservatives point out that even the 5 chapters on trade do not promote free trade."

Reich continues: "Worldwide tariffs are already low. Big American corporations no longer make many products in the United States for export abroad.

    Google, Apple, Uber, Facebook, Walmart, McDonalds, Microsoft, and Pfizer, for example, are making huge profits all over the world. but those profits don’t depend on American labor – apart from a tiny group of managers, designers, and researchers in the U.S.

     To the extent big American-based corporations any longer make stuff for export, they make most of it abroad and then export it from there, for sale all over the world – including for sale back here in the United States.

    The Apple iPhone is assembled in China from components made in Japan, Singapore, and a half-dozen other locales. The only things coming from the U.S. are designs and instructions from a handful of engineers and managers in California.

     Apple even stows most of its profits outside the U.S. so it doesn’t have to pay American taxes on them.
    
This is why big American companies are less interested than they once were in opening other countries to goods exported from the United States and made by American workers.

     They’re more interested in making sure other countries don’t run off with their patented designs and trademarks. Or restrict where they can put and shift their profits.

     In fact, today’s “trade agreements” should really be called “global corporate agreements” because they’re mostly about protecting the assets and profits of these global corporations rather than increasing American jobs and wages. The deals don’t even guard against currency manipulation by other nations.

     According to Economic Policy Institute, the North American Free Trade Act cost U.S. workers almost 700,000 jobs, thereby pushing down American wages.

     Since the passage of the Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, America’s trade deficit with Korea has grown more than 80 percent, equivalent to a loss of more than 70,000 additional U.S. jobs.

     The U.S. goods trade deficit with China increased $23.9 billion last year, to $342.6 billion. Again, the ultimate result has been to keep U.S. wages down.

     The old-style trade agreements of the 1960s and 1970s increased worldwide demand for products made by American workers, and thereby helped push up American wages.

     The new-style global corporate agreements mainly enhance corporate and financial profits, and push down wages.

     Global deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership or the TTIP with Europe will boost the profits of Wall Street and big multi-national corporations, and make the richest 1 percent even richer."

Bottom- line - but they are not beneficial for the citizens of the countries which have signed these treaties. 

Read more: Even Mainstream Economists Starting to Admit that "Free Trade Agreements" Are Anything But ... | Zero Hedge

GLOBAL BANKING INDUSTRY: - CTI: The one per cent of the one per cent: An inside look at Citi’s secret client list - by L J.Keller, D,Campbell, A.Marsh and S.Morris

There’s a secret list that Citigroup Inc. keeps on its equity-research desk at its swank new campus in Tribeca.

And if you’re not on it — well, you might as well be nobody.

At the top is a handful of hedge-fund giants, the “Focus Five,” that bring in big money for Citigroup: Millennium, Citadel, Surveyor Capital, Point72 and Carlson Capital, according to a person with direct knowledge of the list. It represents a growing trend on Wall Street where the most-lucrative clients get the best service: the top trade ideas, hours-long calls with analysts, intimate soirees with executives, bespoke trading models, on and on.

Across the global financial industry, a new class system is emerging. Banks are jettisoning the we-do-everything model to cater to prized clients that generate the most revenue while turning others away. At Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, HSBC Holdings Plc and more, entire businesses are being focused on the wealth and influence of a new financial elite — what amounts to the one per cent of the one per cent.

And with the rise of this 0.01 per cent, one thing is clear: Even on Wall Street, the divide between the privileged few and everyone else is growing — and fast.

“It’s a rude awakening when you find out that research isn’t readily available” from Wall Street banks, said Jeff Sica, who oversees about US$1.5 billion as the president of Circle Squared Alternative Investments in Morristown, N.J.

Scott Helfman, a Citigroup spokesman, said the bank doesn’t comment on its relationships with clients, while Morgan Stanley’s Tom Walton declined to comment. HSBC said in a statement that it’s “reducing the number of dormant and low-revenue clients” to help the firm build a more sustainable business.

Whether it’s in equities or fixed-income, the shift in priorities is undeniable.

Morgan Stanley now ranks its most-profitable European fixed-income customers in three groups — “supercore,” “core” and “base,” said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. Everyone else — about 2,000 firms in total — has limits on their access to the company’s management, sales and research departments.

At HSBC, about half of its 3,000 financial institution customers across the currency, debt, equity and trade finance businesses have been cut in the past 18 months, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Europe’s largest lender also created a group of less than 200 institutional and other financial clients that are its highest priority.

Even smaller banks have come up with their own client lists targeting a select number of investment firms, with Stifel Financial Corp. dubbing a roster of 21 top-tier targets as its “Blackjack” list. Chief executive officer Ronald Kruszewski, whose firm bills itself as the biggest provider of equity research in the U.S., said in an interview that his equity sales unit had compiled such a list about three years ago, but that it’s currently not in use.

“I would be surprised at any firm that is trying to sell a product that didn’t have a list,” Kruszewski said.

In some ways, the banks have little choice.

In the post-crisis world of stricter regulations and rock-bottom interest rates, banks are struggling to boost profitability. Income that commercial banks get from making loans has slumped, while new rules have made it much harder to earn easy money from trading bonds, currencies and commodities — long the biggest source of industry profits — by curbing the firms’ risk-taking and forcing them to hold more capital.

This year, the bank winnowed its favoured list to fewer than a hundred to devote more attention to its top-paying clients and discouraged analysts from spending time on anyone else, the person said. The analysts have quotas to ensure they keep in touch regularly. They must track their progress on a spreadsheet.

To make the cut, firms typically need to generate at least US$2 million annually in equity trading revenue with the bank. Though precise numbers are hard to come by, the “Focus Five” shops may trade multiple times that amount. The hedge-fund firms, which held roughly US$120 billion of U.S. stocks at the end of last year based on filings compiled by Bloomberg, are some of the biggest and most well-known in the business.

They include: Israel Englander’s Millennium, a multi-strategy manager known for making millions of trades a day and picking off tiny profits from each; billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel empire, whose market-making business is one of the U.S. stock market’s biggest automated traders; Point72, which oversees the personal fortune of billionaire Steven A. Cohen, who once captivated Wall Street with an almost preternatural knack for reading the markets while running SAC Capital.

Carlson Capital, the Dallas-based hedge fund founded by Clint Carlson, who helped manage the Texas oil fortunes of the famed Bass brothers, and Surveyor, a separate Citadel hedge-fund unit that trades equities across 29 teams, round out the group.

Representatives for the hedge funds declined to comment.

It’s not just equities. Citigroup keeps lists of accounts across its businesses, some ranked by assets, others by trading volume, said another person with knowledge of the bank’s internal practices. The company identifies favoured clients by “platinum,” “gold” and “silver” status. On the credit research desk, a priority list includes BlackRock Inc., Fidelity and Franklin Resources Inc.

At Morgan Stanley, the firm’s European list of “supercore” clients includes BlackRock and Pacific Investment Management Co., the people familiar with the matter said. The bank began analyzing its client base in 2012 and looked at every interaction its sales team had with customers, from instant messages to phone calls and meetings. They found about 75 per cent of revenue came from roughly 25 per cent of clients, the people said.

While providing the top-paying funds with the best service is well within the rules, the various rankings and methodologies highlight just how far banks are willing to go as they shift toward a model that relies exclusively on a small number of clients.

“If you want to sit down and talk to an analyst or strategist, clearly the biggest clients are the ones that get first cut,” said Voya Investment Management’s Paul Zemsky, referring to prevailing Wall Street practices. The head of multi-asset strategies at Voya helps oversee US$210 billion.

One money manager, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, says she doesn’t even bother calling up top analysts at the major banks. She’s come to understand that her firm doesn’t have the pull to get her calls returned, even though it oversees billions of dollars.

Some say it’s just the reality on Wall Street, where banks are under pressure to restore profitability in a business that’s become increasingly regulated over the past 15 years. That makes favouring their best clients a no-brainer.

“It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” said Kevin Kelly, the chief investment officer at Recon Capital Partners in New York. “It’s tough but that’s just how it works.

Read more: The one per cent of the one per cent: An inside look at Citi’s secret client list | Financial Post

United States: The End of Establishment Orthodoxy - by Richard Phillips

When Trump took his escalator ride, the Republican Party had become little more than a Ronald Reagan fetish, a parody of Reagan’s construct of “smaller government, lower taxes and stronger defense.”

Reagan’s acolytes, seeking to outdo each other and then to outdo Reagan himself, decided that if “smaller” government was good, “no” government was ideal.

Republicanism became a race to the right, fueled by the anger, acrimony and sulphur-laden rhetoric of the right- wing media. Going into the election, GOP policy had been reduced to a series of impractical ideological slogans. It subsisted on a steady diet of “Barack Obama.”

This approach did not serve the Republican electorate well. The Republican base, which had grown increasingly disenfranchised economically, was ripe for a politician who spoke in absolutes, challenged convenient assumptions and demolished all concept of orthodoxy.

Right-wing media dutifully teed up the balls for Trump. Meanwhile, mainstream media acted as if they were deer caught in headlights.

All Trump needed to do in order to win a big part of the Republican electorate was to make “policy” pronouncements that were even more extreme than any of his competitors.

But as outrageous as many of the positions Trump took were, they came down right in the middle of the fairway for a plurality of GOP primary voters.

And so it was that Trump went further right than any of his opponents on issues like “the Mexicans,” “the Muslims” and “the Chinese.”

The important point to realize is this: Donald Trump did not take the Republican Party to this place; the Republican Party took Donald Trump there! All he did was throw away the dog whistle.

When Trump discredits the (mainstream) media – which Sarah Palin and her cohorts call the “lamestream” media — for treating him unfairly and enforcing “political correctness,” he is merely trumpeting Republican dogma.And what is the Republican alternative? Until Trump came down that escalator to announce his candidacy, no one seemed capable of getting further right than Cruz.

But now he is considered the moderate one, even though his policy proposals mirror Trump’s. Cruz is merely Trump without the flexibility Trump promises when he touts his deal-making prowess.

Insanely, Cruz is the last best hope for the GOP to get back to a sane course!

On the other side of America’s political divide, we find an unabashed exercise in political correctness. But in spite of the relative civility with which the Democratic primary campaign has been conducted, deep fissures have been revealed within the Democratic Party.

Americans seem to rankle at the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Many are unable to identify any of her accomplishments — other than those accomplishments that benefited Hillary herself.

She stands for the status quo. But because Hillary Clinton is unwilling to say outright that she stands for the status quo, she seems to stand for nothing – nothing tangible, at least.

Read more: United States: The End of Establishment Orthodoxy - The Globalist

Can NATO finally be made obsolete in Europe? : European Defense Cooperation needs to be expanded and reinforced

It is high time for a strong EU Defense Force

It has become quite obvious that European governments need to cooperate more seriously on defense matters .

European nations face an unprecedented confluence of security crises, ranging from unpredictable US and to a lesser extend also Russian military involvements across the Middle East and Eastern Europe, which are generating internal security dangers, including terrorist attacks and a large influx of refugees .

Since it is obvious that no EU country can cope in putting this together it has to be a defense force which includes all the military forces of the EU nations, with a central command..

One new but key dimension of the security challenges facing the EU is that the EU now has to simultaneously defend not only the territories of the EU, but also manage external crises. Another important aspect in this picture  is that the lines between internal and external security have become  increasingly blurred.

Against this backdrop, at a summit in June 2016, the EU is expected to adopt a new global strategy, which will set out priorities and guidelines for EU foreign, security, and defense policies.

This summit and other institutional processes are important, even though right now European defense cooperation is being pushed more by the amalgamation of national priorities than just by the efforts of the EU.

European defense cooperation will continue, but it is mainly bottom up—driven by national governments—not top down, meaning directed and organized by the institutions in Brussels.

For example, although the previous decline in European defense spending has stopped, national budgets have fallen by around 15 percent since 2008. Institutional orthodoxy holds that reduced national budgets, especially for military equipment, should spur more cross-border collaboration.

In fact, the opposite has been true.

Between 2006 and 2011, EU governments spent around 20 percent of their equipment budgets on pan-European collaboration each year. By 2013, this figure had fallen below 16 percent, according to the European Defense Agency.

Similarly, European governments have become less willing to send soldiers abroad for peacekeeping operations and more selective about which missions they participate in. All the European members of NATO contributed to the alliance’s operations in Afghanistan during the 2000s, but less than half took part in NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya. The EU has deployed over 30 peace operations since 2003, but 24 of these were initiated before 2009, and the pace and size of new missions has dropped considerably since then.

European funding of NATO’s central role in European territorial defense has been reinvigorated since 2014, mainly as result of the Ukraine tribulations between the US and Russia. Conventional deterrence is back in Europe as a core task for European governments. But so far, even these efforts have remained relatively modest.

With a strength of only 5,000, the multinational Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, under the flag of NATO prompts questions about the unit’s usefulness in an event of a military confrontation  with Russian forces.ccording to one recent war-gaming study, the longest it would take Russian military forces to reach the Estonian and Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga is sixty hours.

However, even if the EU is struggling to encourage much deeper collaboration among their members, it would be wrong to think that there is no progress on European defense cooperation. There are now nearly 400 ongoing military cooperation projects in Europe. These include initiatives such the European Air Transport Command in the Netherlands, which manages the missions of almost 200 tanker and transport aircraft from seven countries, and the Heavy Airlift Wing based in Hungary, which has helped eleven European countries procure and operate a fleet of C-17 transport planes.

Some countries are also working more closely in regional formats, such as Baltic, Nordic, and Visegrád (Central European) cooperation. And a number of European governments are pursuing deeper bilateral cooperation, including the integration of parts of their armed forces in some cases. Examples include Franco-British, German-Dutch, and Finnish-Swedish initiatives.

European governments are increasingly picking and choosing which forms of military cooperation they wish to pursue, depending on the capability project or military operation at hand. Sometimes they act through NATO or the EU, but almost all European governments are using other formats as well, whether regional, bilateral, or ad hoc coalitions. The combination of more complex security crises and reduced resources has meant that European governments are more focused on their core national interests than before, and both more targeted and flexible about how they wish to cooperate with the US or even among themselves.

The success of European defense cooperation will depend on the convergence or divergence of national policies, in particular the abilities of France, Germany, and the UK (who collectively account for almost two-thirds of EU defense spendin)  to not only agree among themselves but to also convince other European governments to support a common approach.

It is high time for the EU to get their act together in the area of military cooperation, so it won't continue to be at the mercy of NATO and dragged into military adventures based on US foreign policy objectives. 

The expansion and improvement of an independent EU Defense force must also become an integral part of well defined Global EU foreign policy objectives, in order to become truly effective.

EU-Digest

US Minimum Wage: On the front line of the fight for $15 - by Katie Johnston

 The fast-food workers took turns detailing the indignities they endured on the job: taking the subway to work only to be sent home before a shift started, making $7.25 an hour after 10 years on the job, getting fired for eating a chicken nugget on the clock.

Then a man rolled up his sleeves, revealing burns from making french fries. Within moments, everyone in the room was doing the same. Their arms were covered in fresh wounds and old scars, from grease, from the grill, from hot coffeepots.

“What do we have to lose? We’re already working for pennies,” said LeGrand, who would go on to represent the fast-food workers at the White House and on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” “This could be a breakthrough to something different in our life, to actually be worth something.”

The groundwork for the movement was laid in 2011, when the Occupy movement started drawing unprecedented attention to the growing chasm between haves and have-nots. Around the same time, the Service Employees International Union launched a campaign called Fight for a Fair Economy.

The SEIU, which represents 2 million health care, janitorial, and other service workers, formed a coalition of 15 labor and community groups to reach out to low-wage workers and address concerns such as job creation and foreclosures, then running rampant through working-class communities.

Advocacy groups around the country were also stepping up efforts to help struggling residents. One of them, New York Communities for Change, started surveying low-income residents about affordable housing and other issues. Many of the most destitute — and vocal — people they met worked in fast food.

These cooks and cashiers were not teenagers working part time for extra cash, but parents struggling to feed their children. Some had worked in fast food for years, while living in public housing and relying on food stamps.

Read more: On the front line of the fight for $15 - The Boston Globe

Turkey: Tourist Industry: Turkish tourism sector expects $12 bln loss in revenue - by Erdal Sağlam

Istanbul -European side Bosphorus

Tourism representatives have said 2016 has been “much worse” than the predicted “worst case scenario,” noting the revenue loss in the sector would likely surge to $12 billion over the year.

The current problems, which have risen amid escalating security concerns and a significant decrease in the number of Russian tourists, will likely impact other sectors, including the agriculture sector, and push up the unemployment rate across the country, according to sector representatives.

The head of the Antalya Chamber of Trade and Industry (ATSO), Davut Çetin, said the number of Russian tourists has almost zeroed over this year and they expected a significant drop in the number of arrivals from Europe, mainly from Germany, after a series of terror attacks which recently hit Turkey.

He noted the organization submitted various scenarios to the government after the Russian crisis erupted, but only optimistic scenarios were shared with the public.

“We are at a point which is much worse than what we had earlier predicted in our worst case scenario,” he noted at a meeting late March 18.

The vice president of the organization and the head of the Mediterranean Touristic Hoteliers’ Association (AKTOB), Yusuf Hacısüleyman, said they predicted a loss of $8 billion in revenue in their previous scenario upon the predicted loss of around 4 million tourists following the jet crisis with Russia, by presuming the spending per capita at $1,000 plus the multiplier effect at 1.87.

“With the addition of the expected losses from the European market, we have now revised our potential revenue losses to $12 billion,” he said one day before another terror attack in Istanbul, which killed at least four foreign nationals in central Istanbul on March 19.

Hacısüleyman said the rising number of security warnings for Turkey by Western countries has spurred further losses in the sector, noting that the German Travel Association (DRV) canceled a four-day meeting scheduled in April in the Aegean resort of Kuşadası.

“When travel agencies canceled their meetings over security concerns, we cannot wait for arrivals from Germany to Turkey,” he added.

He noted that the number of European tourists may decline by almost half over this year, adding that the number of Iranian tourists is expected to decrease to 30,000 over this year from around 45,000 last year.

Spain will lure much more tourists than it did earlier this year, and may reach around 80 million tourists, according to sector representatives. Another popular destination will be Greece, they added.

Çetin noted many hoteliers would not open their hotels this year, and around 80,000-100,000 job losses are expected in Antalya alone.

He said the problems in the tourism sector have already started to spillover to other sectors, mainly the agricultural sector, and the losses will become more visible by May and the following months. 

Read more: Turkish tourism sector expects $12 bln loss in revenue - TOURISM

Semiconductors: The United States leads growing global industrial semiconductor market

The industrial semiconductor market will post an 8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), as revenue rises from $43.5 billion in 2014 to $59.5 billion in 2019. Increased capital spending and continued economic growth, especially in the United States, will spur demand and industrial semiconductor sales growth, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight. Commercial aircraft, LED lighting, digital video surveillance, climate control, traction and medical devices are driving most of the global demand for industrial semiconductors.

The greatest semiconductor growth will come from LEDs, which is expected to reach $14.5 billion in 2019, stemming from the global LED lighting boom. Discrete power transistors, thyristors, rectifiers and power diodes are expected to hit $7.8 billion in revenue, due to the policy shift toward energy efficiency in the factory automation market.

According to the IHS Industrial Semiconductors Intelligence Service, analog application-specific integrated circuits (ICs) can expect strong growth through 2019, reaching $4.7 billion in industrial markets, especially in factory automation, power and energy, and lighting. Growth will primarily come from various power management product portfolio offerings and device integration from Texas Instruments (TI), Analog Devices (ADI), NXP and other leading semiconductor firms. Microcontrollers (MCUs) are also expected to experience robust growth in the long term, growing from $4.4 billion to $6.3 billion, thanks to advances in power efficiency and integration features.

Total industrial original equipment manufacturing (OEM) factory revenue is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 5 percent, reaching $670 billion in 2019. Industrial OEM factory revenues specifically grew 6 percent in 2015 driven by increased sales in building and home-control, and military and civil aerospace sectors. High-growth categories include LED lighting, climate control, digital video surveillance products and commercial aircraft.

With its comparatively strong global economy, the United States accounted for 30 percent of all semiconductors used in industrial applications in 2015. China was the second largest industrial chip buyer, purchasing about 16 percent of all industrial semiconductors last year.

“Robust economic growth and increased capital spending in the United States is good news for industrial semiconductor suppliers, because they have the world’s largest industrial equipment makers, including General Electric, United Technologies and Boeing,” said Robbie Galoso, associate director, industrial semiconductors, IHS Technology. “Strong industrial equipment demand will further boost sales of optical semiconductors, analog chips and discretes, which are the three largest industrial semiconductor product segments.”

Read more: The United States leads growing global industrial semiconductor market | Solid State Technology

EU Security A Complete Mess : No Organization - No "Chiefs" - No "Indians" - and extremely poor coordination

EU Security  Coordination In Poor Shape

Belgian authorities actually had accurate advance warnings that terrorists planned to launch attacks at the Brussels airport and subway — yet failed to act, according to several reports.

Despite the knowledge, the intelligence and security apparatus in Brussels — home to most of the European Union agencies — was limited and ill-prepared to handle the alert,

In other developments Wednesday, March 23, Turkey’s prime minister said his country last year arrested one of the Brussels attackers and deported him to the Netherlands, but Belgium ignored warnings that he was a militant.

“One of the Brussels attackers was detained in Gaziantep (in southern Turkey (close to the Syrian border) and then deported” to the Netherlands, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters about Ibrahim El Bakraoui.

Turkey said it warned both Belgium and the Netherlands that Ibrahim was a “foreign terrorist fighter.”

Dutch authorities later allowed him to go free because Belgian authorities could not establish any ties to terrorism, an official in the Turkish president’s office said.

Turkey formally notified Belgium of the 29-year-old Belgian national’s deportation on July 14, 2015.

The announcement came after authorities said they discovered a cache of explosives in a house and a farewell note from an airport suicide bomber — one of two brothers identified in the attacks.

The brothers were identified as Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, both of whom had extensive criminal records but had not been on watch lists as potential terror threats.

What Europe does not have is any cross-national agency with the power to carry out its own investigation and make its own arrests.

This means that cross-border policing in the European Union has big holes. It depends heavily on informal cooperation rather than formal institutions with independent authority.

Sometimes this works reasonably well. Sometimes this works particularly badly. Belgium is a notorious problem case, because its policing arrangements are heavily localized.

In the past, many Belgian policing forces have had difficulty cooperating with each other, let alone with other European forces.

Europe has to put some serious thought into setting up a "Pan European Security Network" to coordinate, trace, find, capture and if need be, eliminate security threats to its citizens. This has to happen pretty quickly.

Insure-Digest 

Citizen Power: The hunting season is open 24/7 on "persona non-grata", also known as terrorists

The hunting season on Terrorism  is open

H. P. Lovecraft wrote: "Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity ".

 Muslims who kill in the name of their religion frequently evade punishment in Western courts by pleading insanity or mental incompetence. Jurors, judges, and forensic psychiatrists are prone to accept the claim that some form of mental incapacity, not religious belief, accounts for "homegrown" jihadist terrorism in North America and Europe.

This state of affairs results from the failure by prosecutors to frame acts of jihadist violence as expressions of faith. This failure to prosecute jihadists vigorously stems from several sources: a deep-rooted, Western reluctance to impugn religion; a cult of political correctness; and culturally naïve wishful thinking.

Viewing jihadists as crazy offers a comfortable conceit for our Western Society that ignores the stark reality that disaffected but sane Muslims are seduced by an ideology that espouses violent hatred of Western civilization.

Jihadism is a supremacist ideology that seeks to bring about the establishment of a global Islamic state and the application of Islamic law, the Shari'a. It relies both on political efforts and on acts of violence against "infidels." According to terrorism specialist Steve Emerson's review of Justice Department statistics,  radical Islamists account for more than 80 percent of all terrorist convictions since the 9/11 attacks

In the past, most jihadist violence was carried out by organized terror networks. Today, however, the most effective means of striking Europe or the US is to convert and radicalize EU and U.S. citizens and residents into carrying out terrorist attacks on their own.

So-called "lone wolf" jihadists are typically radicalized through local, Islamic institutions, including Mosque's and the Internet (chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, etc.) where religious teaching, propaganda videos, and bomb-making directions are disseminated widely. Some go abroad ( Syria, Iraq)  for further instruction; others simply download a "how-to" manuals.

What ever way one wants to look at it or call these deranged monsters killers they deserve no pardon, no pity- no house arrest, no special status .

They must be treated as  "persona non-grata" and locked up with a minimum sentence of at least 25 years without the possibility of  parole.

In addition Sharia-law must be outlawed in the EU, because it does not have a place in a modern democratic society where men and women are considered equal.

Hunting season is now officially opened on these mentally deranged  derelicts. Please report any suspicious activity to your neighborhood to local police.

In order to destroy this pestilence we have come to know as terrorism, we the citizens must become as Rudyard Kipling wrote \'the backbone of the Army is the noncommissioned man.'
-

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity. H. P. Lovecraft
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/crime.html

 EU-Digest 

Cuba-USA: A new chapter in Cuba -US relations: History happening again right before our eyes - by RM

Viva Cuba - Viva USA

History is  happening right before our eyes - Cuba-USA: March 21, 2016 . The first day of Spring and also signalling a new beginning in a long-rime historic and often turbulent relationship between the USA and Cuba,

For me personally it brings back many memories, going back to when I was a kid visiting Havana, Cuba in 1957, with my parents ( two years before the Castro Revolution) - on the way from La Guaira, Venezuela to Le Havre, France.

Cuba-USA  -A new Chapter -Raoul Castro and Barack Obama -  

Cuba at that time was a US backed "Republic" ruled by Fulgenca Batista, a ruthless dictator with close links to the US Mafia. He ruled Cuba with an iron hand, while the mob controlled all the night-life, prostitution and other criminal activities. 

The "real economy" of Cuba at that time was mainly in the hands of US multi- nationals, as was over 50 % of the sugar industry, 

The US multi-national communications giant of that time, ITT,, controlled all the communication systems on the Island. 

Fast Forward to 1980 - working for a multi-national aluminum corporation based in Pittsburgh, I was assigned to organize a "strategy planning" meeting for our Caribbean External Relations Managers. We chose the beautiful Florida Island of Key-West to hold the meeting.

Again history happened right before our eyes, when we literally saw from the hotel we were staying in Key West how droves of Cuban refugees started arriving on Key West shores - this eventually became known as the Mariel Boat Lift. 

And here today we are again in Florida, April 21,2016, watching live scenes form Cuba, with Raoul Castro and Barack Obama starting a new chapter in the Cuban US relationship - we can only hope that Cuba and the US will have learned from their past mistakes, and that greed will not, once again, become the driving force of this relationship.  

Viva Cuba, Viva USA !

 
EU-Digeswt

Insurance Industry: Low Rates Are Tormenting Insurers—and Their Customers - by Leslie Scism

 Life-insurance companies are scouring their policies to identify ways to raise rates and fees and lower the amount of interest they have to pay on savings products as low interest rates cut into their profits.

The average pension among companies in the S&P 1500 was funded at just 78.1% of its liabilities at the end of February, down from nearly 95% in late 2013, according to the most recent numbers from human resources consultant Mercer L.L.C., a part of Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.

At some companies, the funding levels are much lower: The pension plan at Delta Airlines Inc, which has the worst funding status among large corporate pension plans, only has enough assets to cover 45.4% of its pension obligations.

In September 2015, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission decided to allow companies to adopt a different way of measuring their discount rates, which can bring the immediate funding needs down. The only problem with this way of seeking relief is that their longer-term obligations remain the same, according to David Zion, a veteran accounting and pensions analyst at Credit Suisse.

So far, 19 companies in the S&P 500 have either adopted or are planning to adopt the new so-called spot rate approach, Zion said. They range from auto parts retailer Autozone Inc. to media company Walt Disney Co. and tractor maker Deere & Co. The savings vary, with telecom giant AT&T saying that it expects to get a $1 billion pre-tax boost to its bottom line while Disney expects a $137 million reduction in costs, both in the current fiscal year.

The plans concerned are usually what are known as defined benefit plans. Many companies now only offer 401K defined-contribution plans that are largely funded by employees rather than their employers and therefore don't create such corporate obligations.

Many of the companies that have legacy defined benefit plans are older companies in industrial businesses, particularly manufacturing businesses whose workers belong to labor unions.

Federal law requires a company with an underfunded pension to eventually make additional payments into their plans to make up the difference, rather than requiring retirees to accept fewer benefits.

The main culprit behind the dramatic decline in funding levels is exceptionally low interest rates that continue to eat into the bond income that pension plans have long relied on to meet, or at least measure, their future obligations.

The so-called discount rate — the proxy that pension plans use as the expected income they will make annually from a corporate bond — is at 4.06%, compared with nearly 5% two years ago and 6.2% at the end of 2008. Pension funds have in the past had to use that discount rate to calculate the net present value of their obligations.

“You've just seen a ballooning effect of liabilities” as the discount rate continues to fall to new lows, said Zorast Wadia, a principal at actuarial firm Milliman.



Read more: Low Rates Are Tormenting Insurers—and Their Customers - WSJ

Cruise Industry: The Cruise to end all cruises from Miami, Florida : 180 day cruise visiting 5 continents

Globetrotters — here's an epic world adventure for you to consider in 2018.

Oceania Cruises has announced its 180-day Around the World cruise from Miami will depart PortMiami aboard its 684-passenger Insignia ship on Jan. 3. It will traverse five continents visiting 87 ports in 40 countries and 56 Unesco World Heritage Sites.

The cruise also will offer 16 overnight stays in 13 destinations including Yangon, Myanmar; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Bora Bora, French Polynesia and Cape Town, South Africa.

"This is the fifth time we've offered this epic 180-day voyage around the world, and the feedback from our guests has been overwhelmingly positive," said Jason Montague, company president and chief operating officer. "This truly is a landmark itinerary for Oceania Cruises."

Prices for the world cruise range from $39,999 to $129,999 per person double occupancy, based on type of stateroom booked, according to the Miami-based cruiseline's website.

The lower cruise fare applies to a 160-square-foot inside stateroom, while the higher fare is for the 1,000-square-foot Owners Suite, which comes with 24-hour butler service, a shoe shine service, a bar, fresh fruit daily, a laptop computer with wireless Internet, an iPad, cashmere lap blankets and a daily newspaper.

Insignia has four open-seating restaurants, a fitness center and spa, eight lounges and bars, and a casino. Nearly 70 percent of the 342 suites and staterooms have private verandas, according to Oceania.

The 2018 world cruise will return to Miami on July 1.

To book or for further info go to:  oceaniacruises.com.

Read Oceania Cruises plans world cruise from Miami - Sun Sentinel

EU - TTIP : Big business and US to have major say in EU trade deals, leak reveals-by Paul Gallagher

Say No To TTIP

The European Commission will be obliged to consult with US authorities before adopting new legislative proposals following passage of a controversial series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret.

A leaked document obtained by campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and the Independent from the ongoing EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations reveals the unelected Commission will have authority to decide in which areas there should be cooperation with the US – leaving EU member states and the European Parliament further sidelined.

The main objective of TTIP is to harmonise transatlantic rules in a range of areas – including food and consumer product safety, environmental protection, financial services and banking.

The leaked document concerns the “regulatory cooperation” chapter of the talks, which the European Union says will result in “cutting red tape for EU firms without cutting corners”. It shows a labyrinth of procedures that could tie up any EU proposals that go against US interests, according to analysis by CEO.

The campaign group said the document also reveals the extent to which major corporations and industry groups will be able to influence the development of regulatory cooperation by making what is referred to as a “substantial proposal” to the working agenda of the Commission and US agencies.

The plans revealed by the document will give the US regulatory authorities a “questionable role” in Brussels lawmaking and weaken the European Parliament, CEO argues.

Read more: TTIP: Big business and US to have major say in EU trade deals, leak reveals | Business News | News | The Independent

Medical Research: Drug derived from marijuana to treat epilepsy: GW's Epidiolex - by Lydia Ramsey

By now, you've probably heard of medicinal marijuana. What you may not have heard of is a drug derived from marijuana that could be approved to treat epilepsy.

The drug, Epidiolex, may be on its way to becoming the first of its kind to win FDA approval for the treatment of rare forms of childhood epilepsy. Epidiolex contains cannabidiol, one of the active chemical compounds found in marijuana. Unlike marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, THC, cannabidiol (or CBD) does not cause feelings of euphoria or intoxication, the characteristic "high" associated with pot. Cannabidiol has been linked for years with different kinds of pain relief and even studied in several clinical studies.

The phase 3 trial data that came out this week showed positive results of the drug in children with Dravet syndrome, a rare, lifelong form of epilepsy that begins in infancy.

After the major results, which are just the first of four expected to come out this year, Business Insider caught up with GW's Vice President of Investor Relations Steve Schultz to learn more about the drug and what its approval could mean for the US.

Epilepsy affects roughly 4.3 million people, but the types of epilepsy and kinds of seizures that people with the illness may experience completely vary. That means not every person with epilepsy will respond to certain treatments, including those with cannabidiol. GW is specifically exploring cannabidiol for its potential use in people with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a rare form of childhood-onset epilepsy that's associated with multiple types of seizures.

Read more: Drug derived from marijuana to treat epilepsy: GW Pharmaceuticals Epidiolex - Business Insider

Real Estate: Global Market Perspective

US Real Estate Market looking up 
For additional info.on this beautiful  Maine (5 bedroom 
B&B property )write to: real_estate@eclipso.eu 

LL's Global Market Perspective has chronicled the journey of the world’s dominant real estate markets since the depths of the Great Recession in 2008, a journey that has been led throughout by strengthening investment markets as a huge weight of money targets real estate assets.

But, as we move into 2016, the dynamics have started to shift, with the occupational markets now registering greater momentum.

Market fundamentals are improving across all major global regions and property sectors, and recent leasing activity has surprised on the upside. Geopolitical and economic headwinds will weigh on business activity over the coming months, but for now, corporate occupiers remain in growth mode which, combined with tightening supply, will support rental value growth during 2016 in most major markets.​​

Improved consumer confidence and healthy retail sales are fuelling optimism in the U.S., Europe and selectively in Asia Pacific. Several

U.S. markets, primarily gateway cities, are now witnessing conditions typical of a peaking market as rents see assertive growth and vacancy continues to compress. Meanwhile, UK regional markets and Berlin
experienced the strongest rental growth over the year’s final quarter in Europe, while increases were also recorded in the recovery markets of Italy and Spain.

In Asia Pacific the demand picture remains varied, with the acceleration in retail spending in Australia contributing to  leasing demand, although rental growth has been limited in most regional markets over the quarter.

For the complete report click here:  Global Market Perspective | JLL

USA Aviation: Portland, Maine Jetport named best airport in North America

The Portland International Jetport in Maine has been named 2015's Best Airport in North America, according to Airports Council International's annual Airport Service Quality Awards.

Airports Council International, the only global trade representative of the world's airports, also ranked PWM globally in overall customer satisfaction for airports that serve fewer than 2 million passengers.

"This is an amazing honor," said Paul Bradbury, PWM's director. "This award validates that our continued focus on meeting and exceeding passenger expectations is working."

PWM's high satisfaction score from its customers was the result of the highest rankings in areas like efficiency and wait times for check-in, courtesy of airport staff, cleanliness of terminal, as well as ground transportation.

"This award is shared by all of the dedicated employees and business partners that make the Jetport great," Bradbury said in a prepared statement. "This recognition is a reflection of their commitment to providing a world-class experience for our passengers from the curb to the gate and we are very grateful for their exemplary efforts."

Read More: Portland Jetport named best airport in North America | Mainebiz.biz

The Netherlands: Dutch should go for real transparency in corporate ownership - by Arjan Al-Fassed and Anne Scheltema Beduin

In the Netherlands it’s still possible to create legal companies without revealing the identity of the actual owner, Criminals abuse such constructions for purposes of corruption, fraud, money laundering, organised crime and cartels. A public registry, the so-called UBO registry, aims to change all that. But it can only happen if the registry is accessible to all.

A UBO registry is a central registry which contains the names of the ultimate beneficiaries and other legal corporate entities. A ‘UBO’ or Ultimate Beneficial Owner, is the person who is pulling the strings, openly or behind the scenes. Openness about the identity of the UBO strengthens confidence, increases accountability and gives the market, stakeholders, investors, businesses and consumers a proper insight into who exactly they are dealing with. Corruption, money laundering and the financing of terrorism are international problems and that is why, before June 26 2017, all EU countries have to have a registry in place.

Recently, finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem presented an outline of the Dutch version of the UBO registry. Although Dijsselbloem is an advocate of a registry, his version is far from offering real transparency. Not only does the government want to erect a paywall, it also wants to know who wants the information: every visitor needs to log in. Moreover, the general public’s access to the registry is limited to a minimal data set.

Shadowy constructions The data from a UBO registry are only properly useful if access is unlimited and equal for all. Obscuring information about companies, foundations, associations and organisations is part of the problem.

The minister’s obstructions are also flying in the face of what the registry is meant to achieve; i.e. putting a stop to the creation of shadowy constructions used for illegal purposes. In order to do that, the complete data set needs to be accessible. In Myanmar, for instance, a criminal chain made up of military elites, drug barons and money laundering organisations related to the jade industry was discovered. This was only possible because the complete data set was publicly accessible, machine readable and programmatically compatible. Public watch dogs, among them Global Witness, were thus able to reveal the hidden ties between the jade industry and the most important players.

A pay-per-view system is problematic because it impedes the use of the complete data. If you have a list of administrators who have been convicted for money laundering and you want to combine it with the Dutch UBO registry to check if any of the people appearing on the list is on the board if a Dutch company, the costs of your research will mount considerably. The finance minister is silent on the subject of open data in its UBO registry proposal. He is hiding behind the privacy argument, which is a questionable one since it is at odds with transparency. The minister does admit that a strict access limitation would be difficult to achieve and monitor and would be expensive – both for the administrators and the users of the registry – and not in line with the purposes of the Directive.

Read more: Dutch should go for real transparency in corporate ownership - DutchNews.nl

Global Shipping: Shipping rates hit new lows on excess supply - by Luke Graham

Port Of Rotterdam, the Netherlands

The global shipping industry continues to fall victim to weakening demand and excess supply with freight rates on some routes hitting all-time lows, latest figures show.

Average spot freight rates fell to a record low of $701 per 40-foot shipping container last week, according to the World Container Index (WCI) which tracks 11 global shipping routes. This was the lowest reading since the index started tracking rates in 2011.

The WCI index is 60 percent below the five-year average and has fallen 62 percent in the past year, according to the WCI's director, Richard Heath, in a press release.

One of the worst hit lines is the Asia to Europe route. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index showed shipping costs on the route have fallen 82 percent over the past 10 weeks to $211 per 20-foot container.

Along with weakening demand from markets such as China, the glut of container ships plying the world's seas has been a major factor hitting freight rates, Philip Damas, director at Drewry, told CNBC in a phone interview. The current rates are not sustainable, he added.

Maersk echoed these reasons in their recent full-year financial reports.

"The continued lack of demand and over-capacity resulted in sharply declining rates from the second quarter and onwards," said Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk Line, in the company's annual report.

Red more: Shipping rates hit new lows on excess supply

EU Refugee Crises: ‘Refugees can help revive EU economy’

Press TV has interviewed Pam Bailey, a Washington-based member of Euro Med Monitor Human Rights Monitor, to discuss a deal between Turkey and the European Union (EU) to control the flow of refugees to Europe.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of this new Turkish-EU deal that seems to be in the works?

Bailey: My concern is that there is a lot of talk about the self-interest of the countries involved. You know, Turkey is clearly doing this so it can get better terms in terms of entering the EU, in terms of getting better treatment for its residents.

I do not hear a lot of concern or talk even about the details of the Syrians and how they are going to fare and what their interests are. My concern would be just the process of bringing in what they call irregular migrants; these are individuals or families, taking them back, making them basically leave to go back to Turkey, I mean how is that going to be handled?

That opportunity would be rife with chances for mistreatment. Where are they going to be put? They can’t go back to Syria… so there is a lot of opportunity here for some real humanitarian concerns and I don’t see anybody talking about that.

Press TV: It is more of a concern first and foremost by the EU not to have more Syrians enter the continent and by Turkey, many would say, because one of the money that they have been given and two because of, as you said, the opportunities for entering the EU. What you think has to be done? Who should be monitoring now this situation?

Bailey: There really should be. What I see today is a bunch of individual countries who are all arguing their own point of view and they are each advocating their own position. There is not an overall body that is looking at it from a holistic point of view and not just from one country being concerned about their borders.

So in the ideal world, the Europe would agree to one body that would look at all aspects not only the concerns about the refugees but the opportunities; a lot of those countries in Europe by the way are suffering older populations, they are lacking a labor force and there are opportunities, there have been lots of studies that show that refugees could actually reinvigorate economies where Europe is lacking and no one is talking about that at all. It is all this fear, this reflexive fear.

So they need a more regional holistic conversation instead of everybody having this knee-jerk response about protecting their borders.


Read more: PressTV-‘Refugees can help revive EU economy’

The euro zone is marching along nicely, with ECB leading the way - by ERIC REGULY

euro-zone hanging in there

How many blows can the euro zone take before it collapses into a great, bleeding sovereign heap? A lot, apparently.

Every few years, indeed, every few months, the euro zone is written off as a failed experiment. Every monetary union since the Roman empire has blown up or simply faded away and the euro zone will be no exception, its detractors insist; just give it time. Nineteen countries running at 19 different speeds, with jobless rates ranging from 5 per cent to 25 per cent can’t possibly stick together.

The European Central Bank’s response on Thursday to waning inflation and growth seemed to prove the detractors right. Almost eight years after the 2008 financial crisis, the euro zone remains such an indolent economic sloth that the ECB actually invented a way to pay the banks to make loans to businesses and consumers. The novel scheme was part of yet another stimulus package, one that knocked interest rates to zero and boosted the ECB’s quantitative easing bond purchases to €80-billion ($118-billion) a month, that was flung on top of piles of stale stimulus packages that basically didn’t work.

The ECB’s new and seemingly desperate attempt to juice up the economy was an overreaction, although not massively so, and the euro zone is not as utterly hopeless as the headlines suggest. The euro zone may look like it’s dancing drunkenly through a field of land mines, never more than a stumble away from destruction. But the dance is not the suicide run it seems to be.

Take the Sentix Euro Break-up index. The index shows how investors rate the probability of a breakup of the euro zone (such as Greece hitting the road) within 12 months. The latest reading was 19.9 per cent, which looks pretty high. In comparison to previous peaks, it’s not. In 2012, at the height of the euro zone crisis, the index hit 70 per cent. Last summer, when Greece again taunted the euro zone with its exodus, the index reached 50 per cent. From the investors’ point of view, the breakup scare, while far from absent, is now relatively low.

More evidence that the euro zone is not doomed comes from the fairly strong growth rates in some countries and the rocket-like performance in a few. Ireland, which sued for a bailout in 2010, is taking on Celtic Tiger status again. Its gross domestic product grew a stunning 9.2 per cent, year-over-year, in the last three months of 2015, outranking India and China. Spain, the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, grew 3.2 per cent in 2015. It, too, had been a basket case during the crisis.

Portugal, another bailout victim, eked out growth of 1.5 per cent last year. Greece, now grinding through its third bailout, remains the lone euro zone country in recession (Finland entered a technical recession last year, defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction, but is expected to bounce out soon). Italy is expanding painfully slowly, but managed to report good news on Friday: Industrial production in January jumped 1.9 per cent, month-on-month.

Over all, euro zone growth is not great, but it’s improving. The ECB expects growth of 1.4 per cent this year and 1.7 per cent in 2017. No crisis here. So what made the ECB president haul out the bazooka this week? His stimulus package was more aggressive than economists had expected.

In a word, inflation. Or more precisely, the lack thereof. In February, inflation turned negative, at minus 0.2 per cent compared with a 0.3-per-cent rise in January. Mr. Draghi wants headline inflation at close to, but not beyond, 2 per cent. But the figure seems arbitrary. There is no compelling rationale to argue that inflation of, say, 1.5 per cent or 2.5 per cent is inherently evil, and falling inflation rates are not always terrible to behold. 

In this case, they are largely owing to the collapse in energy and commodity prices in the last year and a half, which have given consumers extra spending power. If energy and seasonal food prices are excluded, “core” inflation actually rose by 0.7 per cent in February.

Inflation, in other words, hasn’t disappeared. The ECB expects more or less flat inflation this year, rising to 1.3 per cent in 2017 and 1.6 per cent in 2018, and those figures could prove conservative if oil prices, which have climbed by almost 50 per cent since January, keep rising. Mr. Draghi’s big, fat stimulus package seems more like an insurance policy than a panic response to a new crisis. There is no new crisis.

To be sure, the euro zone and the wider European Union face serious problems, from Britain’s potential departure from the EU to the refugee crisis. But Britain probably will vote to stay put and, even if it goes, the euro zone’s integrity would not be compromised since Britain doesn’t use the euro. The refugee crisis has not killed the EU’s passport-free zone, known as Schengen, in spite of endless predictions that it would. The loony populist parties of the far right and the far left have yet to form governments (Greece’s far left Syriza party wasn’t loony enough to ditch the euro). There is no war in the EU countries.

Growth and inflation are not dead. On the whole, the euro zone is in much better shape than it was three or four years ago, even two years ago. The new stimulus package is bound keep things moving in the right direction. For that, you can thank the ECB.

Read more: The euro zone is marching along nicely, with ECB leading the way - The Globe and Mail

Cancer Research and treatment : Chemotherapy, Treatments for Lymphoma and Other Cancers - by Elizabeth Agnvall

Unleashing a patient's own immune system to fight cancer cells. Reengineering cells to attack tumors. Targeting genetic mutations with medications that block unbridled tumor growth. If it sounds like scientists are waging an all-out war on cancer, that's because they are.

And for the first time in almost 15 years, they're winning. Cancer deaths are down 23 percent since their peak in 1991, according to the American Cancer Society. People are living long-term with bone marrow cancers that a decade ago might have killed them in 2or 3 years. The 5-year survival rate for breast cancer is 90 percent, up from 75 percent in 1975. And, miraculously, patients who would have died within a few months from metastatic melanoma are seemingly cured.

"It is the moment I've been dreaming of in my 30 years practicing medicine," says Louis M. Weiner, director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington. D.C. "To be able to sit down with a patient who has a disease that in the past couldn't be effectively treated and tell them, 'We have a therapy that could allow you to live your life, watch your grandchildren be born, and help raise them."

Here are the advances in cancer treatments that are offering patients new hope:

Immunotherapies: Typically, when our immune system is faced with a threat — germs or viruses, for instance — it makes antibodies to target and kill the bugs. Cancer researchers have now created manmade antibodies, called monoclonal antibodies, designed to attach to and kill cancer cells by marking them for destruction by the immune system.

Monoclonal antibodies have been effective in treating a wide range of cancers, including lung cancer, breast cancer and lymphoma.

One of the first of these man-made antibodies, Herceptin, changed the landscape for treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer from one that was "the worst type of breast cancer" to one that nearly always responds to treatment if caught early, says Gordon Mills, professor of medicine and immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In the last year, doctors have seen great success with a new type of monoclonal antibody called a checkpoint inhibitor. First approved for treating metastatic melanoma in 2014 and non-small cell lung cancer in 2015 and for metastatic melanoma a few months later, checkpoint inhibitors were used to treat former President Jimmy Carter, who was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in the fall of 2015; his cancer is now in remission.

Checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking the signal — called a checkpoint — that cancer cells send out telling the immune system not to attack. "The drugs allow the immune system to recognize the tumor," says Svetomir Markovic, an oncologist and hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Even when patients stop therapy after a few months, the immune system is no longer fooled by the misleading signal. "The early successes of the checkpoint inhibitors have absolutely ignited the scientific community."

Much work lies ahead. The new immunotherapy drugs still only work in about 20 percent of patients overall. But "this advancement of therapeutic strategy where the body's own immune system is the hammer that kills the tumor" has made many oncology practices "literally unrecognizable" from where they were 15 years ago, Markovic says.

Targeted gene therapies: One of the great discoveries in cancer treatment is that cancer tumors have their own genetic footprint. In the last few years, doctors have been able to use that information to test for genetic mutations within an individual's cancer cells and subsequently determine which tumors will be responsive to new medications.

The introduction of these drugs signaled the arrival of a new era particularly in the treatment of leukemia and lymphoma — blood and bone marrow cancers that claim the lives of more than 56,000 people a year. Before 2001, patients with chronic myeloid leukemia had a life expectancy of 3 to 5 years. Today, many patients who began treatment with one of the first targeted therapy to be approved by the FDA — Gleevec — are still alive 15 years later.

Scientists began searching for other mutations that made the tumors sensitive to new drugs, says Mayo Clinic thoracic surgeon Dennis Wigle.

Several of these new gene-targeted drugs are finally making a difference in lung cancer — by far the nation's deadliest cancer — resulting in "sea change" in how that cancer is treated today, Wigle says. While the drugs don't cure the cancer, in some cases, they can force it into remission, he says. The downside? Many of these drugs have to be taken for a lifetime.

Powerful combinations: For some cancers, using a combination of immunotherapy and targeted medications offers the best chance for success.

The blood cancer multiple myeloma is one of the best examples of this approach, says S. Vincent Rajkumar, a hematologist and oncologist at the Mayo Clinic. Using medications that cut off a tumor's blood supply, man-made antibodies that target molecules on the surface of cancer cells, medicines that trigger cell death, and bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy, doctors have drastically increased the prognosis for these patients, from 2 years to a decade or more.

"With the newer therapies, we're turning cancer from a lethal disease into a curable disease," adds Michael Atkins, deputy director of Georgetown's Lombardi Center.

From: : Chemotherapy, Treatments for Lymphoma and Other Cancers AARP

European Insurance Industry - Germany: Friendsurance brings P2P concept to insurance

Since crowdsourcing became popular, the concept has been adapted to purchase real estate, lend money, and even fund tuition.

These ideas flourished because the pioneers in each space saw inefficiencies that could be removed to create a better, more affordable process. Trim the unnecessary to leave the truly important.

One area where we do not always see bang for our buck is insurance. Many pay premiums for decades but never file a claim.

That got a group of people in Germany thinking. Was there a way to use the power of the crowd to create a better insurance product?

The team at Friendsurance thinks so. Leveraging the power of the peer group, Friendsurance rewards small groups with a claims-free bonus each year no member files a claim.

Friendsurance Co-Founder and Managing Director Tim Kunde explains the concepts behind the company and why it works.

Describe what led the founders to create Friendsurance. What were the experiences that shaped your desire to solve this problem?

In 2010, the founders of Friendsurance realized that many people own insurance that they don’t or only rarely use.

However, insurers don’t reward caution and fair play – even though this means less work and lower costs for them. We don’t think this is fair.

This is why we have developed a revolutionary peer-to-peer insurance concept, which rewards small groups of users with a cash-back bonus at the end of each year they remain claimless: the claims-free bonus. Currently, the claims-free bonus is available on a range of retail products in Germany: private liability, home contents and legal expenses insurance.

Our concept can also be added to existing contracts very easily, creating the most convenient way of saving insurance premiums – without any change in coverage, premium or provider.

With our P2P insurance model we have created a worldwide trend. Currently a new insurance segment is rising.

Purchasing insurance can be a difficult process. What were some of the areas in that process you believed you could improve?

The insurance industry has not seen much digital innovation over the last decades because traditional insurance companies lack digital knowhow. Traditional players can learn a lot from Fintech companies such as Friendsurance as we are very customer-focused and have the ability to iterate quickly.

Our claims-free bonus creates value not only for customers but also for insurance companies. Without any additional costs, the claims-free bonus allows policy owners to get back up to 40 percent of their premiums if no claims are submitted. Therefore insurance not only becomes cheaper for the consumer but also provides a clear financial benefit for careful and fair behavior, which in turn reduces fraud.

Accordingly, Friendsurance records a claim frequency below market average.

At the same time Friendsurance helps insurance companies. Improved behavior reduces claims and processing costs. Additionally, the claims-free bonus helps to increase customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty. Our idea was already awarded as one of best digital innovations in Germany in the “UN World Summit Awards.”

How did you come up with the idea to have small groups of people linked together? Is it accountability? The concept seems to have similar aspects to the use of affinity groups in crowdfunding and accessing peer groups in money pools and similar concepts from Latin cultures.

Based on a shareconomy approach, policy owners with the same insurance type form small groups. A part of their premiums is paid into a cash-back pool. If no claims are submitted, the members of the group get some of their money back at the end of the year.

In case of claims, the cash-back decreases for everyone. Small claims are settled with the money in the pool. In the event of bigger claims, the standard insurance company covers any amount that exceeds the coverage through the group. In case there is insufficient money left in the pool to cover a claim, a stop-loss insurance covers the rest. As a result, policy owners always enjoy full coverage and never pay more than they would without Friendsurance.

How are people grouped together? Do they know each other before hand?

The groups have between four and 16 members – depending on the insurance type. New customers are connected automatically online with other policy owners with the same insurance type (e.g. home contents). However the insurance can be by different providers and include different services.

Customers who prefer to create their group individually can connect with people they know: They can invite friends and family or match their Facebook and LinkedIn contacts with the Friendsurance members.

Insure-Digest