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Australia’s Gun Laws and Homicide: Correlation Isn’t Causation

In the wake of the March 15 New Zealand shootings, advocates for new gun restrictions in New Zealand have pointed to Australia as “proof” that if national governments adopt gun restrictions like those of Australia’s National Firearms Agreement, then homicides will go into steep decline.

“Exhibit A” is usually the fact that homicides have decreased in Australia since 1996, when the new legislation was adopted in Australia.

There are at least two problems with these claims. First, homicide rates have been in decline throughout western Europe and Canada and the United States since the early 1990s. The fact that the same trend was followed in Australia is hardly evidence of a revolutionary achievement. Second, homicides were already so unusual in Australia, even before the 1996 legislation, that few lessons can be learned from slight movements either up or down in homicide rates.

A Trend in Falling Rates

As noted by legal scholar Michael Tonry,

There is now general agreement, at least for developed English-speaking countries and western Europe, that homicide patterns have moved in parallel since the 1950s. The precise timing of the declines has varied, but the common pattern is apparent. Homicide rates increased substantially from various dates in the 1960s, peaked in the early 1990s or slightly later, and have since fallen substantially.

This was certainly the case in the United States. US homicides hit a 51-year low in 2014, falling to a level not seen since 1963. This followed the general trend: peaking in the early 1990s, and then going into steep decline. And yet, we can’t point to any new national gun-control measure which we can then claim caused the decline. In fact, the data suggests gun ownership increased significantly during this period.

Source.

Australia followed the same pattern, although national homicide data collection was spotty before the early 1990s:

Source: Standardized homicide rates per 100,000 population, four English-speaking countries, various years to 2012. See “Why Crime Rates Are Falling Throughout the Western World” by Michael Tonry.

Part of the reason that the collection of homicide data in Australia is so recent a phenomenon is because it has tended to be so rare. Politically, it simply wasn’t a national priority. Australia is a small country, with only a few more million people than Florida, spread out over an entire continent. In the relatively high homicide days of the early 1990s, Australia’s homicides totaled around 300. This means in a bad crime year, in which homicides increase by only 20 or 30 victims, it could swing overall rates noticeably.

This brings us to our other problem with using post-1996 homicide data as definitive proof of anything. The numbers are too small to allow us to extrapolate much. As data analyst Leah Libresco wrote in 2017 in The Washington Post:

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths…

This doesn’t stop many reporters in mainstream outlets from claiming that any decline in homicides can with certainty be attributed to whatever the most recent gun-control restrictions were.

But it rarely works in the opposite direction. For example, during the 1990s, many American states liberalized gun laws considerably, allowing more conceal-carry provisions and lessening controls in general. Needless to say, The New York Times doesn’t point to this and say “American homicide rates decreased in response to loosening of state gun laws.”

Of course, I’m not saying that these changes in gun laws by themselves indisputably “prove” that more conceal carry laws reduce homicides. But, if I subscribed to the same standards of rigor as most mainstream journalists, I’d likely have no scruples about doing this, in spite of what other factors ought to be considered.

Faced with a lack of evidence that 1996’s law caused Australia to follow the same trend in homicides as both the US and Canada, advocates for laws like Australia’s then fall back on the strategy of pointing out that Australia’s homicide rates are lower than the US’s. The problem with this strategy, of course, is that Australia’s homicide rates were not comparable to those in the US either before or after 1996. The causes of the difference in rates between the two countries obviously pre-dates modern gun regulation measures in both countries. (We might also point out that several US states — some of which have very lax gun laws — have very low homicide rates comparable to Australia’s.)

Attempts to explain this away have been numerous, and in many ways, justifying gun control policy has come down to endless attempts at using regression analysis to find correlations between gun policy and homicide rates. These can often be interesting, but their value often rests on finding the right theoretical framework with which to identify the most important factors.

Those who work in public policy, and who lack a good foundation in broader issues around criminality tend to just go directly to legal prohibitions as the key factor in homicide rates. But this isn’t exactly the approach taken by those who engage in more serious study of long-term trends in homicides.

Famed crime researcher Eric Monkonnen, for example, in his essay “Homicide: Explaining America’s Exceptionalism,” identified four factors which he thought most likely explained the higher rates in the United States: the mobility of the population, decentralized law enforcement, racial division caused by slavery, and a generally higher tolerance for homicide. Monkonnen concludes: “To assume that an absence of guns in the United States would bring about parity with Europe is wrong. For the past two centuries, even without guns, American rates would likely have still been higher.”

Monkonnen’s conclusions on this matter don’t necessarily make him laissez-faire on gun control. But they do illustrate his recognition of the fact that factors driving differences in homicide rates between two very different societies go far beyond pointing to one or two pieces of legislation. And if gun control laws are to be posited as the cause of declines in homicide, there need to be a clear “before and after difference” in the jurisdiction in which they are adopted. Comparisons with other countries miss the point.

Suicide Rates Are Back at Pre-1996 Levels

Perhaps recognizing that homicide rates haven’t actually changed all that much in the wake of 1996, some defenders of Australia’s gun legislation have tried to gild the lily by claiming that an additional benefit of legislation has been a decline in suicide rates. This is a common strategy among gun control advocates who often like to claim gun control is a suicide prevention measure.

[RELATED: “Guns Don’t Cause Suicide“]

For example, it’s not difficult to find media headlines proclaiming “suicide figures plummeted” in Australia after the adoption of the 1996 law. But Australia runs into a similar problem here as with gun control: suicide rates fell substantially during the same period in Canada, the US, and much of Europe.

Moreover, in recent years, suicide rates in Australia and the US have climbed upward again. There’s little doubt that suicide rates fell from 1995 to 2006, dropping from 12 per 100,000 to under 9 per 100,000. But after that, suicide rates climbed to a ten-year high in 2015, rising again to 12 per 100,000, or a rate comparable to what existed before the 1996 gun measure. In other words, suicides are back to where they were. But as recently as 2017, we’re still hearing about how gun control also makes suicides decline.

Overall, this is just the level of discourse we should expect from the media and policymakers on this matter. Even the flimsiest correlation to the passage of a gun control law is assumed to have been the primary factor behind a decline in homicides. Meanwhile, any easing of gun laws that coincides with declining homicides (as happened in the US) is to be ignored. In both cases, the situation is more complicated than reporters suggest.

But don’t expect this to be a restraining factor on the drive for new gun laws in New Zealand. In Australia, the 1996 gun-control measure was passed only 12 days after the massacre used to justify the new legislation. New Zealand politicians look like they’re trying to take an even more cavalier attitude toward deliberation and debate. Meanwhile, in Norway, where Anders Brevik murdered 77 people in 2011 — 67 of them with semi-automatic firearms — the national legislature didn’t pass significant changes to gun control regulations until 2018.

How Wage Work Liberated Women (and Men)

In her essay “Redeeming the Industrial Revolution” Wendy McElroy notes how industrialization provided choices to women which had never been available before:

When women had the opportunity to leave rural life for factory wages and domestic work, they poured into the cities in unprecedented numbers. … The women themselves believed that flight into the city was in their self-interest, otherwise they would have never made the journey or they would have returned home to farm life in disillusionment. To say factory work “harmed” 18th- or 19th-century women is to ignore the demonstrated preference that they themselves expressed. It ignores the voice of their choices; clearly, the women believed it was an improvement.

This view is in contrast to the anti-capitalist view often promulgated by both Marxists and traditionalist conservatives: namely, that people had been far more happy as farm laborers, but that industrialization wrenched people away form their idyllic and bucolic lives, forcing them to degrade themselves with wage work.

The Historical Importance of Wage Work

The idea that people — and especially women — rarely left rural occupations willingly for wage work in the cities isn’t supported by the historical evidence. Moreover, the trend toward urban wage work is much older and more established in Western European culture than is often assumed.

While many associate urban wage work with only the Dickensian images of nineteenth century factories, Europeans — especially Europeans in northern and western Europe — began moving to cities in the late Middle Ages, and these trends accelerated over time. By the early modern period, a majority in many areas was engaged in wage labor. According to Tine de Moor and Jan Luiten van Zanden, by the sixteen century, in “Holland and the Guelders River area, up to 60 per cent of the working population were dependent on wage labour.” And even before the sixteenth century, in England “being a wage labourer was a normal part of the life cycle of a very large part of the population.”1

It should not be assumed, however, that this was seen by the workers themselves as a problem. For over a century and a half after the Black Death ended in the mid 14th century, wage rates grew substantially, and for both men and women, “there were a variety of options to choose from.” Men had more options than women, but for women, options in various times and places included brewing, silkweaving, spinning, and embroidering.

Life in the city held other attractions as well. According to Retha Warnicke, “Urban women probably had less restrictive routines than their country counterparts, for early sixteenth century visitors were amazed at their freedom. … While unmarried girls of propertied classes were more closely confined, apprentices and lower-class women seem to have danced in the streets, to have played rather rough games, and to have drunk beer and ale with the men.”2

Effects on Marriage, Sex, and Family Formation

These new economic realities were important factors in the rise and endurance of what has come to be known as the “western European marriage pattern.” Contrary to the commonly held idea that most people in the past married while in their teens or very-early twenties, John Hajnal in 1965 asserted instead that the people of western Europe, from the Middle Ages onward, often married much later than this, with the average marriage age being 23 or more for women, and 26 for men.3 The amount of time that passed for western Europeans between the onset of puberty and the beginning of marriage was longer than in any other region. Western Europe was also notable, Hajnal continued, for the unusually high number of people — sometimes as high as 20 percent — who never married at all. This same marriage pattern did not hold in southern Europe, such as in Sicily, or in eastern Europe. And it certainly wasn’t the case in places like China.

The relative ease of finding wage work for young people meant that the opportunity cost of early marriage increased. Young people could hope to experience a period of relative economic independence in their youths that preceded marriage, and many wage workers elected to prolong their pre-marriage working period. For women, this allowed for some economic leverage which afforded more bargaining power in finding a suitable husband, and in establishing financial independence from parents.4

By itself, of course, these economic trends would not have been enough to provide independence for young women. Outside western Europe, civil governments and social convention placed young women both under the control of parents, and marriage was often a matter of a family handing over the young woman (or girl) to a man who would take her into his home.

By the early modern period, this was not the case in western Europe. In the Middle Ages, Roman Catholic legal scholars had begun to move toward a “consensus” model of marriage in which the validity of a marriage depended on the consent of both the man and woman. While the opinions of parents remained important, families could no longer impose a marriage contract on spouses. Van Zanden, et al write:

The fact that both the man’s and his future wife’s consent was necessary for marriage meant that it was a contract between ‘equals’ since neither one could impose consensus upon the other partner. This means that in principle the bargaining position of women in such a marriage pattern [i.e., the western European marriage pattern] is relatively strong: a woman could (try to) select the kind of husband that suited her.5

In practice, this meant that women could, of their own accord, elect to enter in marriage later, even if their parents wished otherwise. Other legal changes ensued which also guaranteed women better inheritance rights if the woman became widowed. This, in turn, encouraged women to continue with wage work, even after marriage, since she stood to maintain ownership over the fruits of her own labor in case she was widowed.

This relatively advanced degree of equalization was enhanced by earlier changes in thinking about sex within marriage. By the late Middle ages, some Catholic legal scholars began to argue for raising the age of consent for marriage, and for the equalization of the so-called “marital debt.” According to James Brundage in Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe:

canonists in this period [i.e., the thirteenth century] also insisted that marriages contracted before the parties reached the age of puberty were not binding unless the individuals were capable both of assenting to marital obligations and of fulfilling them. Alanus favored adopting a further distinction based on Roman law that would have made the validity of marriage depend upon the parties having reached “full puberty” which civil law set at age seventeen, rather than “incomplete puberty,” which girls were presumed to reach at twelve and boys at fourteen. Alanus’s proposal found little support, and most commentators continued to assert that twelve and fourteen were canonical minimum ages.

Marriage may have been permitted at twelve, but as we have seen, in the following centuries, many couples elected to wait much longer.

Moreover, being built on consent between only the two parties entering into the marriage agreement, married couples enjoyed prerogatives which made them immune to outside demands if they threatened the couple’s relationship. Brundage continues:

[A] married serf whose wife demanded that he make love to her at the same time that his manorial lord required his services in the field ought to obey his lord, unless there was imminent danger that his wife might commit fornication. If the wife insisted, however, he was obliged to comply with her demand — the wife’s rights took precedence over the lord’s. … The obligation of the marital debt was so serious that in the view of one Anglo-Norman glossator it constituted a telling argument against polygyny, for, he declared, no man could hope to satisfy more than one woman.

Significantly, the woman’s right to “intercourse on demand” was legally equal to that of the man’s, although canonists admitted women were less likely to invoke this right in disputes. The legal commentary here, however, is illustrative of how the marriage bond could be immune from outside demands — even those of a lord.

This independence for married couples is another characteristic of marriage within the western European marriage pattern. Outside western Europe, family relations were far more likely to be subject to outside influence and to fit into what is known as a “joint family” pattern. Joint families occurred when younger married couples within an extended family were expected to remain in the same household as an older patriarch, and subject to his wishes. By the end of the Middle Ages, this sort of family was becoming rare in western Europe and gave way to the nuclear family in which new married couples were expected to form an entirely new household upon becoming married.

But this could be done only after a woman freely consented to marriage, and if the couple had access to resources which could fund this new household. Urban wage work made this possible for both men and women.

None of this should be interpreted as creating a situation in which women were at a legal advantage over men. That wasn’t the case. Compared to women in eastern Europe and China, however, western European women enjoyed a remarkable level of autonomy.

But even under these conditions, many doubted marriage was always the most desirable option. Roman Catholic views of marriage were less enthusiastic about the institution than was the case outside the west, and this led to fewer marriages in the west, and more warnings about marriage overall. Warnicke, for example, describes “[a] homily of the thirteenth century [which] had warned young girls against marrying a ‘man of clay’ who would enslave them and force them into the ‘drudgery’ of housework.”6 The implication, of course, was that celibacy was preferable to an undesirable man, or, as sixteenth-century poet Anna Bijns put it more forcefully: “Unyoked is best! Happy the woman without a man.“

Ultimately, a critical element in all of this was the move toward an economic system that allowed both women and men to establish economic independence through wage work. The changes were quite revolutionary. As De Moor and Van Zanden conclude, the shift to wage work allowed for growth in formal schooling, and for new institutions designed to “address issues of old age or single parenthood.”7 These changes helped set western Europe apart as it built the foundation for the even greater advances in standards of living which would come latter. It was “the long-term dynamism of this structure which helps to explain the long-term success of this region in the world economy of the early modern period.”8

Nevertheless, to this day, anti-capitalists both left and right continue to attempt to paint a picture of the past in which urbanization and a move to wage work presented a step down for workers who, we are told, would have preferred to remain in the countryside. Many people who lived during this period would likely have disagreed.

1. Tine De Moor and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period,” The Economic History Review, 2009. p.12.
2. Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation, Praeger Publishers, 1983.
3. This varied within western Europe, but overall, western and northern Europe, and especially the North Sea region, experienced far higher rates of later marriage, and cases of people never marrying at all.
4. See De Moor and van Zanden, “Girl power…”
5. Jan Luiten van Zanden, Tine De Moor, Sarah Carmichael, Capital Women: The European Marriage Pattern, Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe 1300-1800. Oxford University Press. 2019.
6. Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation, Praeger Publishers, 1983.
7. Tine De Moor and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period,” The Economic History Review, 2009. p.3
8. Ibid., page 4.

Aluminum producer Hydro hit by cyber attack, shuts some plants

March 19, 2019

By Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik

OSLO (Reuters) – Norsk Hydro, one of the world’s largest producers of aluminum, was battling on Tuesday to contain a cyber attack which hit parts of its production, sending its shares lower.

The company shut several metal extrusion plants, which transform aluminum ingots into components for car makers, builders and other industries, while its giant smelters in countries including Norway, Qatar and Brazil were being operated manually.

The attack, which began on Monday evening and escalated overnight, affected the company’s IT systems for most of its activities.

“Hydro is working to contain and neutralize the attack, but does not yet know the full extent of the situation,” the company said in a statement.

It added that the attack had not affected the safety of its staff and it was too early to assess the impact on customers.

The event was a rare case of an attack on industrial operations in Norway. The last publicly-acknowledged cyber attack in the Nordic country was on software firm Visma, when hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached its network to steal secrets from its clients.

Companies and governments have become increasingly concerned about the damage hackers can cause to industrial systems and critical national infrastructure following a number of high-profile cyber attacks in recent years.

In 2017, attacks later blamed by the United States on Russia and North Korea caused millions of dollars of damage to companies worldwide, crippling computers in industries from shipping to sweet making. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the allegations.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, authorities have seen hackers knock electricity grids and transport systems offline, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company’s computers.

FROM CARS TO CONSTRUCTION

Hydro makes products across the aluminum value chain, from the refinement of alumina raw material via metal ingots to bespoke components used in cars and the construction industry.

“Some extrusion plants that are easy to stop and start have chosen to temporarily shut production,” said a Hydro spokesman.

The company’s hydroelectric power plants were running as normal on isolated IT systems unaffected by the outage.

The Norwegian state agency in charge of cyber security said Hydro contacted them early on Tuesday and that it was assisting the company.

“We are … sharing this information with other sectors in Norway and with our international partners,” said a spokeswoman for the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM). She declined to comment on the nature of the attack.

Norsk Hydro’s main website page was unavailable on Tuesday, although some of the web pages belonging to subsidiaries could still be accessed. The company was giving updates on the situation on its Facebook page.

“Hydro’s main priority now is to limit the effects of the attack and to ensure continued people safety,” it wrote in a Facebook post.

Hydro’s shares fell 3.4 percent in early trade before a partial recovery to trade down 0.9 percent by 1121 GMT. It was still lagging the Oslo benchmark index, which was up 0.9 percent.

Hydro, which has 36,000 employees in 40 countries, recorded sales of 159.4 billion crowns ($18.7 billion) last year, with a net profit of 4.3 billion crowns.

(Additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo, Jack Stubbs and Barbara Lewis in London; editing by Keith Weir, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Kirsten Donovan)

Brush or die: Adult tooth loss linked to early death

(Natural News) Brushing your teeth is not just for a fresh breath or gorgeous smile. According to a study published in the journal Periodontology 2000, the number of teeth we lose can be a key indicator of a person’s life expectancy. The researchers found clear evidence that tooth loss is closely related to some life-threatening health…

Alan Krueger, Economic Advisor To Clinton And Obama, Dead From Suicide

Update: There was some confusion earlier as to what the cause of death was to take someone as young as Krueger. We now know the sad answer: suicide. This was revealed in the statement published later on Monday from his family.

“It is with tremendous sadness we share that Professor Alan B. Krueger, beloved husband, father, son, brother, and Princeton professor of economics took his own life over the weekend,” a statement from his family reads. “The family requests the time and space to grieve and remember him. In lieu of flowers, we encourage those wishing to honor Alan to make a contribution to the charity of their choice.”

His passing was initially announced Monday by Princeton, which praised him as “a true leader in his field, known and admired for both his research and teaching.”

Krueger was chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Clinton from 1994 to 1995, and chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama from 2011 to 2013.

* * *

Alan Krueger, a regular fixture on financial TV and prominent labor market economist who was James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton, as well as a respected economist under both the Obama and Clinton administrations, passed away over the weekend at the age of 58. “Alan was recognized as a true leader in his field, known and admired for both his research and teaching”, Princeton University wrote this morning.

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More from the brief Princeton obit published this morning:

In addition to his scholarship, Alan’s life exemplified a commitment to public service. His contributions to the nation included serving as President Clinton’s Chief Economist at the Department of Labor, and as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama.

A valued member of the Princeton University community for over three decades, Alan will be deeply missed by his students and colleagues. The University asks that the privacy of the Krueger family be respected at this difficult time.

Information regarding a public celebration of Professor Krueger’s life and legacy will be released at a future date.

In addition to his extensive academic track record, Krueger was an assistant secretary of the Treasury from 2009 to 2010 during Barack Obama’s administration. Later, he was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the early days of the economic recovery, from 2011 to 2013, according to the NYT.

From 1994 to 1995, he was the Labor Department’s chief economist under President Bill Clinton.

Krueger, a labor economist by training, was known for his early work finding that the minimum wage did not reduce employment among low-wage workers. More recently, he studied the role of the opioids epidemic in reducing employment among men. He also studied less serious topics, including the rising price of concert tickets.

Senator Gillibrand formally launches presidential campaign

March 17, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand formally launched her presidential bid on Sunday morning, announcing she will deliver her first major speech next week in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City.

Gillibrand, who launched an exploratory committee earlier this year as a precursor, joins more than a dozen other Democrats who have already formally entered the contest to win the nomination to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.

“We need a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices. Someone who isn’t afraid of progress,” Gillibrand says in a video released Sunday morning to formalize her entry into the campaign. “That’s why I’m running for president. And it’s why I’m asking you for your support.”

Gillibrand, 52, had already been campaigning in key states that hold early primary contests. She has struggled to see her polling numbers increase in the wake of her initial announcement, a benefit some of her other opponents enjoyed after starting their campaigns. Gillibrand remains at 1 percent in most public opinion polls of the Democratic primary.

Gillibrand opted to use a video instead of a speech at a rally, the traditional method, to formally launch her campaign. She will travel on Monday to campaign in Michigan, followed by stops in key early contest states of Iowa and Nevada.

On March 24, Gillibrand will deliver a launch speech in her home state in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City, to take “her positive, brave vision of restoring America’s moral integrity straight to President Trump’s doorstep,” her campaign said.

The launch video released Sunday morning alludes to several policy debates, including immigration, gun control and climate change.

“We launched ourselves into space and landed on the moon. If we can do that, we can definitely achieve universal health care,” Gillibrand said in the video. “We can provide paid family leave for all, end gun violence, pass a Green New Deal, get money out of politics and take back our democracy.”

Gillibrand has sought to position herself as a unifying figure who can appeal to rural voters.

Some in the Democratic party believe an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters is the way to victory. Others argue a fresh face, and particularly a diverse one, is needed to energize the party’s increasingly left-leaning base.

Gillibrand was a member of the centrist and fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition while in the House of Representatives. Her positions became more liberal after she was appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton in New York when Clinton became former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Gillibrand then won the seat in a special election and was re-elected to six-year terms in 2012 and 2018. She has attributed the ideology shift to representing a liberal state versus a more conservative district.

As a senator, Gillibrand was outspoken about rape in the military and campus sexual assault years before the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault first arose in 2017.

In late 2017, as she pushed for a bill changing how Congress processes and settles sexual harassment allegations made by staffers, some prominent party leaders criticized her for being the first Democratic senator to urge the resignation of Senator Al Franken, who was accused of groping and kissing women without their consent.

During the same period, Gillibrand said Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, should have resigned from the White House after his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment by the House. Some criticized the senator for attacking the Clintons, who had supported her political career.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

PG&E to name new CEO as early as next week, overhaul board: WSJ

March 16, 2019

(Reuters) – PG&E Corp is likely to name a new chief executive officer as early as next week and to announce an overhaul of its board backed by some of its largest investors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Bill Johnson, retiring head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, is the front-runner to get the job of PG&E’s new CEO, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Johnson’s new role has not been finalized and other candidates were still being interviewed, the newspaper added.

The utility filed for bankruptcy protection in January in anticipation of liabilities from the wildfires, including the catastrophic 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Sadly, the “Murder Cycle” Continues

Got up early to work on Peoplenomics for tomorrow and blam! First news story was about how nearly 50 people were killed in two shootings at mosques in New Zealand. NY Times coverage here has lots of detail. There’s a lot of anti-immigrant sentiments to be found in this latest case: NZ manifesto resembles Norway […]

The post Sadly, the “Murder Cycle” Continues appeared first on UrbanSurvival.

Sadly, the “Murder Cycle” Continues

The post Sadly, the “Murder Cycle” Continues appeared first on UrbanSurvival.

‘Jackscrew’ Found At Ethiopian Crash Site Confirms Boeing 737 Max Was Set To Dive

Having seen the satellite-based trajectories of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max jetliner before its crash, it was clear, as one experienced pilot noted, that “something was extraordinarily wrong.“

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And now, as Bloomberg reports, a screw-like device found in the wreckage of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 8 has provided investigators with an early clue into what happened:

The so-called jackscrew, used to set the trim that raises and lowers the plane’s nose, indicates the jet was configured to dive, based on a preliminary review, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

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The evidence helped convince U.S. regulators to ground the model, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the inquiry.

The jackscrew, combined with a newly obtained satellite flight track of the plane, convinced the FAA that there were similarities to the Oct. 29 crash of the same Max model off the coast of Indonesia.

In the earlier accident, a safety feature on the Boeing aircraft was repeatedly trying to put the plane into a dive as a result of a malfunction.

The jet’s flight recorders are in France, where they are being analyzed at the BEA’s laboratories. The agency posted a photo of the mangled hardware and has yet to comment on any progress on getting the data.

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“The investigation process has started in Paris,” Ethiopian Airlines said in a Twitter post on Friday.

‘Jackscrew’ Found At Ethiopian Crash Site Confirms Boeing 737 Max Was Set To Dive

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And now, as Bloomberg reports, a screw-like device found in the wreckage of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 8 has provided investigators with an early clue into what happened:

The so-called jackscrew, used to set the trim that raises and lowers the plane’s nose, indicates the jet was configured to dive, based on a preliminary review, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

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The evidence helped convince U.S. regulators to ground the model, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the inquiry.

The jackscrew, combined with a newly obtained satellite flight track of the plane, convinced the FAA that there were similarities to the Oct. 29 crash of the same Max model off the coast of Indonesia.

In the earlier accident, a safety feature on the Boeing aircraft was repeatedly trying to put the plane into a dive as a result of a malfunction.

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“The investigation process has started in Paris,” Ethiopian Airlines said in a Twitter post on Friday.

Painting as Metaphysics: Hilma af Klint and the Birth of Abstract Art

The Guggenheim’s strange and wonderful exhibition of Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking, yet largely unknown body of abstract art is an important event – one that challenges us to not only rethink the early history of twentieth century abstract art, …

The post Painting as Metaphysics: Hilma af Klint and the Birth of Abstract Art appeared first on Global Research.

Distorting American History: Jefferson Exhibit Generates Racial Controversy in Detroit

An historical exhibit designed to examine various aspects of the life and people of the Monticello plantation in Virginia during the late 18^thand early 19^thcenturies, which was owned by Thomas Jefferson, has prompted protests in …

The post Distorting American History: Jefferson Exhibit Generates Racial Controversy in Detroit appeared first on Global Research.

Worried about next downturn? U.S. credit funds may offer early clues

March 12, 2019

By David Henry

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It seemed like an opportunity a lender would not want to miss.

The loan paid 10.25 percent interest which would go up if a benchmark rose. The borrower was Trident USA Health Services, a growing company which provided bedside medical testing in nursing and assisted living centers.

Trident was buying similar companies across the country targeting cost savings from consolidation. Trident filed for bankruptcy last month. It had taken on too much debt to cope with reduced Medicare and Medicaid payments, equipment upgrades and other issues. A new billing system for the expanded company failed and it never collected millions of dollars. Trident’s lenders face estimated losses of 50 to 100 percent. “We were wrong,” Michael Mauer, chief executive of CM Finance Inc, <CMFN.O> one of the lenders, said in a Feb. 7 call with stock analysts.

After the Great Recession, regulators squeezed much of the risk out of U.S. banks. But risk has not gone away. Much of it now resides in non-bank financial entities, including commercial loan companies, such as CM Finance, private credit funds, and structured finance vehicles, many of which have yet to be tested by a broad recession after a nearly decade-long expansion.

The borrowers include mid-sized, speculative-grade companies that have loaded up on debt to fund their expansion. Sometimes one setback can push them over the edge, as happened with Trident’s botched billing system roll out.

“We think credit losses will rise,” said Matt Carroll, a credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings. His reasons: A lot of money has flowed into private credit, pushing down lending standards in a benign economy.

Some $900 billion in non-bank loans to mid-sized companies sit alongside another $1.1 trillion of speculative-grade loans that have been made by bank syndicates to larger companies and mostly resold to institutional investors. These amounts are dwarfed by the $11 trillion in outstanding U.S. home mortgage loans and probably are not enough to drag down the financial system, as mortgages did during the 2007-2009 crisis.

However, rising non-bank debt has fueled concerns it could make a recession worse because loan losses could cripple many non-bank lenders, leaving companies most in need without access to credit. “When you have a real recession, the lender will not be there. So, a lot of these borrowers will be stranded,” JPMorgan Chase & Co chief Jamie Dimon told analysts in January.

SPECIAL STATUS

The publicly listed funds that lent to Trident are among several dozen known as business development companies. BDCassets have quadrupled since the crisis to $100 billion, according to data from Wells Fargo analysts. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2V2ZCSl) Those funds attracted investors by offering yields topping 10 percent because they were making loans that were riskier than those banks were allowed to make.

BDCs hold special status under a 1980s federal law designed to support small business. The law limits their leverage. They are allowed to bypass taxes by paying out 90 percent of profits to shareholders. Unlike most non-bank lenders, business development corporations must disclose estimated values for each loan and say which ones are going bad. Their reports give analysts looking for signs of trouble in commercial lending a glimpse into a bigger pool of an estimated additional $800 billion in unlisted funds and private accounts managed by many of the same firms.

“You can learn a lot by looking at the BDCs for what they might mean for other private credit,” said Carroll of S&P Global Ratings.

In 2013, for example, one such investor called THL Credit Inc <TCRD.O> made loans, starting at 9 percent, for Charming Charlie, a retailer of women’s fashion accessories arranged by color in as many as 26 different hues. The founder used the loans to buy shares of the business from a private equity firm and add more stores, according to S&P Global. But the company went too far in stocking the stores with items of different colors and got stuck with unsold merchandise. Constrained by its debt, the company ran short of cash to properly stock the stores and filed for bankruptcy in December 2017. THL declined to comment for this story, but in a March 7 call its executives told investors they have diversified their portfolio to include 42 companies and reduce the risk of losses like those on Charming Charlie.

These days some BDCs are doing better than others. Six of 39 BDCs tracked by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods recently traded at premiums of more than 10 percent to net asset value, a sign of good lending records. Eight, however, traded for less than 75 cents for each dollar of net asset value – suggesting they had enough problems with loans to make investors doubt the values shown will hold up.

As BDCs doubled in size since 2013, Refinitiv data shows levels of debt relative to profits have risen to 4.75 times from 4.2 times for mid-sized companies that borrowed to finance buyouts, according to Refinitiv data. That, combined with some lenders willingness to dial up the risk to boost returns, could spell more trouble ahead.

“It has become harder for BDCs to deliver compelling returns without taking more risk,” Finian O’Shea, a BDC analyst at Wells Fargo, said.

CM Finance, for example, in the last half of 2018 acquired loans coming due within two years and issued by low-rated Techniplas, a supplier of highly engineered plastic parts to the auto industry. The appeal of the loans? A 14 percent yield. Yet, last month Standard & Poor’s put a negative outlook on the loans because of the risk that company will not be able to refinance them in time.

(Reporting by David Henry; Editing by Neal Templin and Tomasz Janowski)

New Numbers Confirm That The Global Economy And The U.S. Economy Are The Weakest They Have Been Since The Last Recession

Even mainstream economists are admitting that economic activity is slowing down. And at this point that fact would be very difficult to deny, because the numbers are very clear. We haven’t faced anything like this in a decade, and many are deeply concerned about what is coming next. Will it be just another recession, or will it be an even greater crisis than we faced in 2008? According to Bloomberg Economics, the global economy experienced a “sharp loss of speed” over the course of 2008 and global economic conditions are now “the weakest since the global financial crisis”…

The global economy’s sharp loss of speed through 2018 has left the pace of expansion the weakest since the global financial crisis a decade ago, according to Bloomberg Economics.

Its new GDP tracker puts world growth at 2.1 percent on a quarter-on-quarter annualized basis, down from about 4 percent in the middle of last year. While there’s a chance that the economy may find a foothold and arrest the slowdown, “the risk is that downward momentum will be self-sustaining,” say economists Dan Hanson and Tom Orlik.

This is definitely the worst condition that the global economy has been in since I started The Economic Collapse Blog, and I am personally very alarmed about where things are heading. The tremendous economic optimism of early 2018 has given way to a tremendous wave of pessimism, and the speed at which the economic environment is changing has stunned a lot of the experts.

In fact, Bloomberg economists Dan Hanson and Tom Orlik openly admit that they are “surprised” by how quickly the global economy has shifted…

“The cyclical upswing that took hold of the global economy in mid-2017 was never going to last. Even so, the extent of the slowdown since late last year has surprised many economists, including us.”

Of course the U.S. has not been immune from the changes. The U.S. economy is rapidly slowing down as well, and this is something that I have been heavily documenting on my website.

And now we have just received more confirmation that the economy is decelerating. The Atlanta Fed has just updated their GDPNow model yet again, and with this new revision they are now projecting that the U.S. economy will grow at a rate of just 0.2 percent during the first quarter of 2019…

Moments ago we got another confirmation of this, when following the latest retail sales report which saw a dramatic cut to December retail sales even as January surprised modestly to the upside, the Atlanta Fed slashed its Q1 GDP nowcast, and after rebounding modestly from 0.3% to 0.5% a week ago, it has once again slumped, and is now at the lowest recorded level, and just 0.2% away from economic contraction.

This is how the AtlantaFed justified its latest Q1 GDP cut, which as of March 11 was just 0.2 percent, down from 0.5 percent on March 8: “After this morning’s retail sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the nowcast of first-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth declined from 1.5 percent to 1.0 percent.”

In other words, we are just a razor thin margin away from entering an economic contraction.

Last week, we learned that U.S. job cut announcements were up 117 percent in February when compared to last year. All of the economic momentum is in a negative direction right now, and it is going to be exceedingly difficult to avert a recession at this point.

And of course a lot of analysts believe that what is coming will be a whole lot worse than just a recession. The greatest debt bubble in the entire history of our planet is in the process of bursting, and the consequences are going to be absolutely horrific. I really like how financial expert Egon von Greyerz recently made this point…

People must understand that the world has never faced risk of this magnitude. We are now in the final seconds of the global mega bubble, the likes of which the world has never seen before. What will happen next will be worse than the fall of the Roman Empire, much worse than the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, and will create a disaster that will dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The problem is simple to define and is all based around debts and liabilities. At the beginning of this century, global debt was $80 trillion. When the Great Financial Crisis started in 2006, global debt had gone up by 56% to $125 trillion. Today it is $250 trillion.

There is no way that a 250 trillion dollar bubble is going to burst in an orderly fashion. Essentially, we are looking at the sort of apocalyptic financial scenario that I have been warning about for a long time, and most people have no idea that it is coming.

And if people only listened to the financial authorities, it would be easy to get the impression that everything is going to be just fine.

For example, Fed Chair Jay Powell just told 60 Minutes that the outlook for the U.S. economy “is a favorable one”. The following comes from Fox Business…

Jay Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, says he does not see a recession hitting the U.S. economy anytime soon.

“The outlook for our economy, in my view, is a favorable one,” Powell said Sunday in an interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley for “60 Minutes.”

If you are tempted to believe Powell, let me remind you of what former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke told Congress in early 2008…

“The U.S. economy remains extraordinarily resilient,” the U.S. central bank chief said in answering questions after testifying before the House of Representatives Budget Committee.

Bernanke added that growth will be worse this year. “We currently see the economy as continuing to grow, but growing at a relatively slow pace, particularly in the first half of this year,” he said.

Of course we all remember what happened next. The U.S. economy plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and we are still dealing with the aftermath of that crisis to this day.

Nobody is going to ring a bell when the next recession starts. It is just going to happen, and just like last time, most Americans are going to be blindsided by it.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post New Numbers Confirm That The Global Economy And The U.S. Economy Are The Weakest They Have Been Since The Last Recession appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Ilhan Omar: Challenging Establishment Politics in Washington

Though way too early to judge her after barely over two months in Congress, her forthright outspokenness is encouraging. She supported what demanded rejection – HR 676, the NATO Support Act, banning use of federal funds for withdrawal, requiring …

The post Ilhan Omar: Challenging Establishment Politics in Washington appeared first on Global Research.

Ilhan Omar: Challenging Establishment Politics in Washington

The post Ilhan Omar: Challenging Establishment Politics in Washington appeared first on Global Research.

China and Indonesia halt Boeing 737 MAX 8 after Ethiopia crash

March 11, 2019

By Aaron Maasho and Stella Qiu

ADDIS ABABA/BEIJING (Reuters) – China, Indonesia and Ethiopia grounded their Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 fleets on Monday while investigators found the black box from a crash that killed 157 people in the second disaster involving that airplane model in six months.

The Ethiopian Airlines jet bound for Nairobi came down minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing all on board. The victims came from 33 nations and included 22 United Nations’ staff.

The discovery of the black box with both the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data, reported by Ethiopian state TV, should shed light on the cause of the crash.

At the scene, men in Red Cross jackets picked through the dirt, putting items in black paper bags, while investigators hunted for the black box voice recorders.

“Although we don’t yet know the cause of the crash, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution,” Ethiopian Airlines said. It has four other 737 MAX 8 jets, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

The 737 line is the world’s best selling modern passenger aircraft and viewed as one of the industry’s most reliable.

CHINA’S ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’

China on Monday also ordered its airlines to suspend operations of their 737 MAX 8 jets by 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) following the second crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet since one run by Indonesia’s Lion Air went down in October.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said it would notify airlines when they could resume flying the jets, after contacting Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“Given that two accidents both involved newly delivered Boeing 737-8 planes and happened during take-off phase, they have some degree of similarity,” the CAAC said, adding the step was in line with its principle of zero tolerance of safety hazards. The 737 MAX 8 is sometimes referred to as the 737-8.

Indonesia also said it would temporarily ground Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft for inspection.

In October, a 737 MAX 8 operated by budget carrier Lion Air crashed 13 minutes after take-off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on a domestic flight, killing all 189 on board.

Cayman Airways sad it had grounded both of its new 737 MAX 8 jets temporarily too, while India announced a safety review.

A senior U.S. official said it was too early to tell if there was any direct connection between the two accidents but assessing that was a priority for investigators.

By January-end, Boeing had delivered 350 of the 737 MAX family jets to customers, with 4,661 more on order.

Boeing shares slid almost 10 percent in early trading on Monday. The move, if maintained through normal trading hours, would be the biggest fall in Boeing’s stock in nearly two decades, halting a surge that has seen it triple in value in just over three years to a record high of $446 last week.

MOURNING

Ethiopia’s parliament declared Monday a day of mourning.

A global summit in Nairobi opened with a moment of silence as some wept for the U.N. members killed in one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the organization’s history.

The dead include a 28-year-old Norwegian Red Cross worker, three Austrian aid workers on their way to Zanzibar, a Nigerian-Canadian professor known for mentoring young colleagues, and an Italian archaeologist, employers and foreign ministries said.

The pilot Yared Getachew, who was a joint Ethiopian-Kenyan national, had a “commendable record” and more than 8,000 hours of flying experience, Ethiopian Airlines said.

Kenyan authorities had managed to contact the families of 25 of the 32 Kenyan passengers, cabinet secretary for transport James Macharia told journalists at the airport on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in Singapore, Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta, Katherine Houreld in Hereward Holland in Nairobi, Josh Horwitz in Shanghai, Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

SoftBank’s Son finds more love for early-stage investing, new fund planned

March 10, 2019

By Hyunjoo Jin and Sam Nussey

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – SoftBank Group Corp has expanded its appetite for early-stage startups, with a venture capital unit set to launch its biggest fund for early investments as it opens new offices in Asia.

The global fund from newly rebranded Seoul-based SoftBank Ventures Asia will be worth as much as $500 million and could launch next month, its CEO JP Lee told Reuters in an interview.

By contrast, the average size of similar funds raised last year was just over $100 million, according to data provider Preqin.

SoftBank, South Korea’s National Pension Service as well as other companies and asset management firms will provide funding, Lee said, declining to provide further details on investors.

“It’s an important signal within the SoftBank Group that SoftBank thinks early-stage investments are important and will make continued efforts on them,” said Lee.

The move comes as SoftBank rapidly transforms beyond telecoms into a tech investing giant.

In addition to the $100 billion Saudi-backed SoftBank Vision Fund that has made big investments in firms like Uber, SoftBank said on Thursday it was launching a $5 billion fund focused on Latin America.

The bigger remit for SoftBank Ventures Asia, which describes itself as the group’s global arm for early-stage investing, came after a successful presentation to SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son last October, Lee said.

Tasked by Son to explain why the SoftBank should keep investing in early-stage startups, Lee on a visit to the group’s Tokyo offices invoked the words of Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma: “small guys become big guys”.

In doing so, he harkened back to Son’s most spectacular startup jackpot – his 2000 investment of $20 million in the Chinese e-commerce firm. SoftBank’s current Alibaba stake is worth around $130 billion.

Three months later, SoftBank Ventures Korea was relaunched as SoftBank Ventures Asia and it now plans to open offices and hire investment managers in Singapore and Shanghai. It currently has teams in Seoul, Beijing, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv.

Son provides guidance while individual investment decisions are made by Lee and his team, Lee said. The unit declined to comment on how many new people may be hired.

The unit was born in 2000 at a boom time for South Korean startups, expanding its focus beyond that country in 2011. Around half of its investments have been early stage.

SoftBank Group and its portfolio companies also make early-stage investments. Many of these are not disclosed by SoftBank and lack of clarity on their valuations complicate investors’ efforts to quantify SoftBank’s worth, said Dan Baker, an analyst at Morningstar.

The new fund, called the SoftBank Acceleration Fund, follows the launch of a $300 million China-focused fund in September. The unit, which has $1.1 billion under management, had until then focused on funds worth under $200 million.

To date, the unit has taken stakes in over 250 companies across 10 countries, including South Korean gaming company Nexon Co, which listed in Japan in 2011, and Indonesian e-commerce firm Tokopedia.

It currently concentrates on firms involved in artificial intelligence, connected devices and robotics.

In keeping with Son’s practice of promoting ties between portfolio companies to boost their growth, Lee said Singapore-based used car trading platform Carro, which the unit has a stake in, had been introduced to SoftBank portfolio company Grab for potential collaboration.

And another company it has invested in, camera app operator Snow China, is using technology from artificial intelligence firm SenseTime.

SoftBank and its Vision Fund have invested more than $600 million in SenseTime, valuing it in the most recent round at $7.6 billion, a source familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified because the information is not public. SenseTime declined to comment.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in Seoul and Sam Nussey in Tokyo; Additional reporting by Julie Zhu in Hong Kong; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

‘Brexit in peril’ as PM May faces heavy defeat

March 10, 2019

By William James and Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) – Brexit could be reversed if lawmakers reject the government’s exit deal, British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Sunday after two major eurosceptic factions in parliament warned that Prime Minister Theresa May was facing a heavy defeat.

Just 19 days before the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29, May is scrambling – so far unsuccessfully – to secure last-minute changes to an EU exit treaty before parliament votes on Tuesday on whether to approve the deal.

If she fails, lawmakers are expected to force May to seek a delay to Brexit which some fear could see the 2016 decision to leave the bloc reversed. Others argue that without a delay Britain faces an economic shock if it leaves without a deal.

“We have an opportunity now to leave on March 29 or shortly thereafter and it’s important we grasp that opportunity because there is wind in the sails of people trying to stop Brexit,” Hunt told the BBC. “We are in very perilous waters.”

The United Kingdom’s labyrinthine crisis over EU membership is approaching its finale with an extraordinary array of options including a delay, a last-minute deal, no-deal Brexit, a snap election or even another referendum.

The ultimate outcome remains unclear, though most diplomats and investors say Brexit will define the United Kingdom’s prosperity for generations to come.

The government has previously tried to use the risk of Brexit being reversed as a way to convince eurosceptics to back May’s deal despite their deep reservations about it.

“If you want to stop Brexit you only need to do three things: kill this deal, get an extension, and then have a second referendum. Within three weeks those people could have two of those three things … and quite possibly the third one could be on the way.”

Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which props up May’s minority government, and Steve Baker, a leading figure in the large eurosceptic faction of her Conservative party, warned “the political situation is grim”.

“An unchanged withdrawal agreement will be defeated firmly by a sizeable proportion of Conservatives and the DUP if it is again presented to the Commons,” they wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.

The Sunday Times said May was battling to save her job as aides were considering persuading her to offer to resign in a bid to get the deal approved. The newspaper also said cabinet ministers have spoken about whether to insist she goes as early as this week.

“TOTAL UNCERTAINTY”

Parliament rejected May’s deal by 230 votes on Jan. 15, prompting the British leader to return to Brussels in search of changes to address the so-called Irish backstop – an insurance policy designed to prevent the return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Many British lawmakers object to the policy on the grounds that it could leave Britain subject to EU rules indefinitely and cleave Northern Ireland away from the rest of the country.

But, May’s attempts to get the clause rewritten have so far failed to yield any result, with EU negotiators unwilling to meet her demands, and Britain rejecting a compromise offer.

Hunt said Tuesday’s vote would definitely go ahead, and that it was too soon to say that negotiations with the EU had “run into the sands”. He said realism and a lot of work was needed from both Britain and the EU to get a deal.

If lawmakers reject May’s deal on Tuesday, she has promised to let them vote the next day on whether to leave without a deal on March 29. If they reject that, then on Thursday they are due to vote on a “limited” delay.

“In the event of this vote on Tuesday not going through, nobody knows what would happen. In everything that followed there would be total uncertainty – that would be the only certainty,” health minister Matt Hancock told Sky News.

Britain’s opposition Labour Party should support staying in the EU if there is a second referendum, the party’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, said on Sunday.

However, Starmer said the party would not be seeking to secure support in parliament for a second referendum on Tuesday.

Amid the political chaos, many company chiefs are aghast at London’s handling of Brexit and say it has already damaged Britain’s reputation as Europe’s pre-eminent destination for foreign investment.

“Business is holding its breath ahead of the votes in parliament this week, knowing that if Brexit has taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected,” said James Stewart, head of Brexit at KPMG UK.

“Companies are now split on whether an extension to the Brexit timeline is a good thing. Some of those who prepared early are locked into March specific contingency plans. Those carrying additional inventory know an extension will squeeze their cashflow for longer.”

(Writing by William James and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Lack of sleep alters adolescent behavior: Study finds it reduces brain activity, compromises judgement leading to increased risk of addiction, depression

(Natural News) Teenagers are often highly susceptible to chronic sleep deprivation. Their busy schedules at school and sometimes at home can often lead to many nights of staying up late, while still needing to wake up early the next morning. This is a huge problem for a number of reasons, but the biggest one of all…

Vietnam’s Energy Dilemma Is About To Become A Crisis

Authored by Tim Daiss via Oilprice.com,

Vietnam can’t seem to get a break. The country lies just beneath China, its giant neighbor to the north, and shares many of the same socialist ideals that Beijing promulgates. However, Sino-Vietnamese relations have been a source of tension for years dating back to the colonization of Vietnam by China centuries ago – a historical fact that the average Vietnamese citizen has never forgotten. Even after the protracted and costly war between North Vietnam and the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government, that ended more than 40 years ago, China (which had proven a valuable ally for Hanoi during the war) turned on its smaller communist ally and invaded the country in 1979. It was a brief but bloody border war which showed Beijing that Vietnam could still hold its own.

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Fast forward several decades and Hanoi is still trying to placate Beijing while at the same time rapidly improving relations with one-time adversary Washington. In fact, U.S.- Vietnamese relations, both trade and bilateral, have improved so much recently that the two sides could now arguably be called allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, much of that alliance, similar in some respects to the decades-old U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, is born of necessity. The U.S.-Saudi alliance was berthed in the aftermath of World War 2, held together amid shared concerns during the cold war, and remains amid worries over Iranian hegemony ambitions in the Middle East. The U.S.-Vietnamese alliance is largely held together over the mutual aim of both Washington and Hanoi to keep China’s economic and military ambitions in check in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the volatile South China Sea, where Beijing claims as much as 90 percent of the troubled body of water.

Vietnam’s energy quandary

However, Hanoi’s angst with Beijing isn’t just political, it also related to Vietnam’s energy sector.

China’s increased muscle-flexing in the region has negatively impacted Vietnam’s ability to develop its own offshore natural gas resources.

Last March, according to a BBC report at the time, state-owned Petro Vietnam ordered Spanish energy firm Repsol to suspend an oil and gas project, which was in its final stages, off the country’s southeast coast within Vietnam’s, own 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The pull-out cost Repsol some $200mn in lost investment, an amount that the company has to date been unsuccessful at recouping. It was the second time in less than a year that Hanoi had bowed to Chinese pressure in its own waters. In July 2017, Hanoi also ordered Repsol to stop oil drilling operations at an adjacent location, Block 136/3, in response to what media at the time called “threats from China.” The geopolitical squabble in 2017 came just days after Repsol reportedly made a major gas discovery in the area.

Consequently, to offset both its blockage of developing its own gas resources and to help Vietnam meet its growing energy demand amid stellar economic growth, the country needs to turn to renewables. However, it’s still in the early stages of developing renewable energy sources and needs to introduce more incentive policies to attract more investment, media in the country reported last week, citing both domestic and international experts.

Hoang Quoc Vuong, Vietnam’s deputy minister of industry and trade, said that the rapid increase in energy demand and consumption of around 10 percent per year is having negative impacts on the environment, exhausting natural resources and also impacting the country’s energy security. Nonetheless, he reasoned, Vietnam’s clean energy development still has limitations, including unstable supply, difficulty in energy transmission and high costs. He added that the ministry was studying solutions to efficiently develop renewable energy towards a low-carbon economy.

For more than a decade, Vietnam’s economic growth has been second only to China as the country continues to develop and modernize. According to a report by the country’s Central Economic Commission, Vietnam’s economic growth stood at 7.08 percent last year. Vietnam ranks second among Southeast Asian countries with a total power system capacity of nearly 50,000 MW and is ranked 23rd on a global scale.

However, Vuong added that it’s necessary for Vietnam to develop a structure of energy supply sources, including hydroelectric, thermoelectric and renewables. Promoting an energy transition towards a low-carbon economy was critical, he said. By the end of last year, total hydropower capacity in the country of more than 90 million reached 22,000 MW, while solar capacity and wind power capacity is estimated to reach 1,000 MW and 1,500 MW, respectively. Vuong added that the ministry was also receiving a number of proposals to develop wind and solar power projects in the country.

However, hurdles remain to achieve those goals. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently said that Vietnam in the early stages of developing renewable energy, thus the government needed to develop appropriate mechanisms to reduce risks for investors in renewable energy development. Pham Huong Giang, deputy head of the Renewable Energy Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said the ministry was studying mechanisms to promote investment in developing renewable energy.

Reasons for Optimism? Hahaha!

Good one! (*can we deliver a punchline, or what?) While the early futures were indicating another pullback in the Dow and other major indices at the open, we keep staring at the junction ahead for markets and ask the only question that matters: What’s the reason for optimism? The negatives are pretty clear: The attacks […]

The post Reasons for Optimism? Hahaha! appeared first on UrbanSurvival.

Royal Wedding Got Triple the Media Coverage of Yemen in 2018

That ratio is symptomatic of negative trends at the major networks, writes Jim Lobe. By Jim Lobe Inter Press Service The ongoing war in Yemen, called the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster” by the United Nations and independent aid agencies since early last…

Deutsche Post plays down impact of trade tensions on its business

March 7, 2019

By Emma Thomasson

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – Deutsche Post DHL Group on Thursday forecast profit growth for this year that lagged analysts’ expectations, but played down concerns over global trade, saying more complex supply chains could in the near term benefit its business.

In an industry seen as a bellwether for the global economy, U.S. rival FedEx Corp jolted investors in December with a steeper-than-expected cut in its 2019 profit forecast, warning of weakening freight demand as the global economy slows.

But Deutsche Post Chief Executive Frank Appel said he was not worried, saying the business had a broad base both geographically and operationally that made it resilient even if global economic growth weakened.

“We have not seen any signs of a noticeable slowdown on the horizon,” Appel said. “The fundamental growth from globalization and digitalization will continue.”

FedEx executives said they had noted a sharp slowdown in Britain due to uncertainty over the country’s departure from the European Union, Germany’s economic contraction, protests in France and a cooling of the Asian economy.

Appel said however that disruptions to trade such as a possible “hard” Brexit could even benefit the company in the short term as supply chains became more complicated, although protectionist moves would be negative in the long term.

“Complexity is good for our business. We are very good at managing complex logistic streams,” he told a news conference.

Deutsche Post DHL said last month it had hired hundreds of workers to deal with new customs procedures expected to be imposed when Britain leaves the EU.

The German postal and logistics group reported a 5.1 percent rise in fourth-quarter sales to 16.9 billion euros ($19.11 billion), versus analysts’ forecast for 16.65 billion, while operating profit was in line at 1.1 billion euros.

Deutsche Post said operating profit should rise to between 3.9 billion euros and 4.3 billion euros in 2019, and confirmed its guidance for the metric to reach at least 5 billion by 2020.

The 2019 guidance compares to average analyst forecasts for 4.1 billion euros, according to Refinitiv data, but includes a 400 million-euro gain from the disposal of its China supply chain business.

“As a result, the midpoint of the underlying guidance range is 8 percent below consensus,” wrote Jefferies analysts.

Shares in Deutsche Post, which have fallen by a quarter in the last year, had turned slightly positive by 1130 GMT after falling more than 1 percent in early trade.

The group issued a profit warning for 2018 last June and started a restructuring program at its Post – eCommerce – Parcel (PeP) division, including an early retirement program, as well as splitting its post-and-parcel delivery division into a German and an international unit.

It could take several months until the measures had a positive impact on its figures, but they should help profitability for the year and longer term, Appel said.

(Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Edmund Blair and Jan Harvey)