No final decision on Greece next week, slower austerity assumed

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - - Euro zone finance ministers are unlikely to release a new tranche of loans to Greece on Monday as there is no agreement yet on how to make its debt sustainable but Athens is set to get two more years to cut debt, officials said.

Euro zone finance ministers, called the Eurogroup, meet on Monday in Brussels where the main topic of their discussions will be unfreezing lending to Greece, held up after Athens went way off track with promised reforms and fiscal consolidation.

Even though Greece passed a structural reform package in parliament on Wednesday and is to vote through an austerity budget for 2013 on Sunday, the ministers are not in a position to make a final decision.

"There is a very, very high ... probability of a second round of discussions to finalize everything," a senior EU official said.

The ministers will analyze all the reform commitments Greece will have made by then via parliamentary votes, to judge whether an austerity programme promised in exchange for the loans was back on track.

Key to a final agreement is an analysis of how to make Greek debt, which is forecast to reach almost 190 percent of GDP next year, sustainable again after the country's spendthrift ways started the euro zone sovereign debt crisis in 2010.

International lenders -- the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, called the troika -- cannot yet agree on the way to do that.

Estimates of the debt level by 2020 differ by 10-20 percentage points, officials have told Reuters.

Even if the analysis were ready for Monday, it would still need to be sent to national parliaments, notably Germany, which would then give their go-ahead to governments to approve the disbursement of the next, 31.5 billion euro tranche for Greece -- money it needs desperately to pay off loans and shore up its banks.

TWO MORE YEARS

One thing the lenders do agree on now is that Greece, which will see its sixth year of deep recession in 2013, needs at least two more years to reach a primary budget surplus that would put its debt on a downward path.

The extra time would allow the economy to start growing again, otherwise it would never produce enough for the country to repay its debt.

This surplus target was set in March at 4.5 percent of GDP in 2014 and while there is no final decision yet, officials say it is likely to be moved to 2016 because of delays with reforms and a deeper than expected recession.

"The troika has been producing all of its reports and fiscal analyses and adjustment paths on the basis of an additional two years to reach a primary surplus of 4.5 percent of GDP," the senior official said.

The extra time would mean the euro zone would have to provide extra financing for Greece, which officials have put at 30 billion euros. This is politically difficult in Germany, the Netherlands and Finland where public opinion is weary of bailouts.

The two extra years would also mean that the targeted Greek debt-to-GDP ratio, set by lenders in March at below 120 percent in 2020, would be shifted to 2022, officials said.

Among the new instruments under consideration to reduce Greek debt are the removal of the 150-basis-point interest above financing costs on 53 billion euros of bilateral government loans to Greece, and lengthening the maturity of the loans.

Greece may also borrow from the euro zone permanent bailout fund to buy back its privately held debt, of which there is 50-60 billion euros, taking advantage of the deep discount it traded at to save money on redemptions and interest payments.

The IMF has been pushing for governments to write off some of the official loans to Greece, but Germany, the European Commission and other officials have said it is not legally possible.

Time pressure for a deal on Greece is growing because Athens has to redeem 5 billion euros worth of treasury bills on November 16 and has been counting on cash from the next euro zone aid tranche to help cover that.

Since the money will not come in time, Greece wants to roll over the bills. The senior EU official said euro zone ministers were aware of the November 16 Greek redemption and that there would be no "accidental" default.

Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said on Friday the country had no reason for worry.

"Greece is doing whatever it should be doing, and Europe is doing what it should be doing... and the tranche will (eventually) be released," he said. "On Monday, we are expecting a political statement."

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Deepa Babingtin and Harry Papachristou in Athens. Editing by Rex Merrifield/Mike Peacock)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eurogroup-unlikely-final-decision-greece-monday-095920795--business.html

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Jobless claims fall; Sandy distorts data

6 hrs.

Reuters

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, a sign the labor market's slow recovery was gaining traction although a severe storm distorted the data.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 355,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 370,000.

An analyst from the department said Sandy, a mammoth storm that slammed into the East Coast on October 29, boosted claims in some states by leaving people out of work, but also reduced claims in at least one state because power outages kept the state from collecting claim reports.

The impact of the storm is likely to be temporary. It was unclear if the storm's net effect was to boost or reduce claims, the analyst said.

The storm could continue to affect the claims report for several more weeks, the analyst said.

The storm killed at least 121 people in the United States and Canada and left more than 8 million homes and businesses without electricity in the Northeast.

The four-week moving average for jobless claims, which smoothes out volatility, rose 3,250 to 370,500. Economists generally think a reading below 400,000 points to an increase in employment.

The U.S. economy has recently shown some signs of health, with consumers spending more freely and home construction picking up. But business investment sank in the third quarter, a sign companies lack confidence in the strength of the economic recovery.

Continuing claims for jobless benefits fell 135,000 in the week ended October 27 to a seasonally adjusted 3.127 million, the lowest level since July 2008, the Labor Department said.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/jobless-claims-fall-sandy-distorts-data-1C6929093

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A New Approach and a - NeuView - Treating PTSD

Untreated PTSD is a prime contributor to the "One A Day" suicide rate in our U.S. Military. The difficulties involved in accessing treatment has meant that most veterans have received little, if any, help in healing their deep psychological wounds. NeuView Glasses are a self-help tool that lower anxiety and can help someone with PTSD.

Hastings-on-Hudson, NY (PRWEB) November 09, 2012

"The problem is huge and it's not going away - and unless we are prepared to address it more aggressively and creatively, it's only going to get worse." That's Robert Buck, psychotherapist and inventor of NeuView Glasses, talking to a colleague about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And the problem is huge - with the Sidran Institute reporting that more than 13 million Americans are suffering with PTSD. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken, and continue to take, an enormous toll on our young men and women stationed there. It is estimated that more than 30% of them will return with PTSD.

"Clearly" Buck goes on to say, "we don't have and we won't have, enough mental health personnel to address this problem in any meaningful way. And, while medications have helped some they have only compounded the problem for others. We can't just pop another pill and believe everything will be ok in the morning."

So, where are we to look and what can we hope to find that will help?

Buck and his colleague, Sid Kalcheim, have worked with scores of PTSD sufferers through the years - both are convinced that, at least part of, the answer is to be found in their NeuView Glasses.

Based upon the Harvard Medical School research of Dr. Fredric Schiffer, the NeuView Glasses provide a safe, simple, and non-pharmacological way of increasing neuronal activity in either of the brain's hemispheres.

According to Buck, "With PTSD the brain's ability to accurately perceive reality is sorely compromised. This is a result of an impaired ability of the brain's hemispheres to communicate with one another. With the glasses, we are able to selectively stimulate the hemispheres helping to restore the balance needed in order to accurately process and integrate information from the outside world. So for someone with PTSD the clanking noise of a garbage truck driving over a manhole cover can be recognized to be just that - and not interpreted as an I.E.D. that's about to explode and rip their Humvee apart back in Kabul."

NeuView Glasses can be used as a part of a formal therapy process - but, because they are safe, direct and non-invasive they can also be used as a self-help tool. And they are available - without an appointment - 24/7/365 days of the year.

In order to be able to make the glasses available to the public they will need to obtain FDA approval. A team of top neuro-researchers at Harvard's McLean Hospital have written the protocol and look forward to conducting the required study.

Buck and Kalcheim are hoping that they can finance this research through the http://www.indiegogo.com/neuviewPTSD crowd funding program they have just launched.

ROBERT BUCK
RBUCK@NEUVIEWGLASSES.COM
914 478-4200
Email Information

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/approach-neuview-treating-ptsd-081849091.html

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Gene find turns soldier beetle defense into biotech opportunity

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2012) ? New antibiotic and anti-cancer chemicals may one day be synthesised using biotechnology, following CSIRO's discovery of the three genes that combine to provide soldier beetles with their potent predator defence system.

CSIRO researchers, and a colleague at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, published details of the gene identification breakthrough and potential applications recently in the international journal Nature Communications.

"For the first time, our team has been able to isolate and replicate the three genes that combine to make the potent fatty acid that soldier beetles secrete to ward off predators and infection," said CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences research leader Dr Victoria Haritos.

"This discovery is important because it opens a new way for the unusual fatty acid to be synthesised for potential antibiotic, anti-cancer, or other industrial purposes," Dr Haritos said.

Soldier beetles exude a white viscous fluid from their glands to repel potential attacks from predators, as well as in a wax form to protect against infection.

The team found this fluid contains an exotic fatty acid called dihydromatricaria acid, or DHMA, which is one of a group called polyynes that have known anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties.

While DHMA and similar polyyne fatty acids are found in a wide variety of plants, fungi, liverworts, mosses, marine sponges and algae, these compounds have proved very difficult to manufacture using conventional chemical processes. However, Dr Haritos and her team have developed a way to achieve this.

"We have outlined a method for reproducing these polyyne chemicals in living organisms like yeast, using mild conditions" Dr Haritos said.

Soldier beetles are the only animals reported to contain DHMA. This, together with the observation that the beetles forage on plants (such as daisies) which contain a lot of these types of fatty acids, led to previous incorrect conclusions that the DHMA in soldier beetles was derived from their diet.

"Through our research and the gene differences we have discovered, we now know soldier beetles have evolved this same defensive compound entirely independently of its production in plants and fungi," Dr Haritos said.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by CSIRO Australia, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Victoria S. Haritos, Irene Horne, Katherine Damcevski, Karen Glover, Nerida Gibb, Shoko Okada, Mats Hamberg. The convergent evolution of defensive polyacetylenic fatty acid biosynthesis genes in soldier beetles. Nature Communications, 2012; 3: 1150 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2147

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/BML7UCV9S70/121108104415.htm

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Sprint picking up spectrum, customers in Midwest from US Cellular

Sprint this morning announced that it will acquire from US Cellular 20 MHz of spectrum in the 1900 MHz band in Midwest markets including Chicago, South Bend, Ind., and Champaign, Ill. It'll also get 10 MHz of spectrum in St. Louis. The moves, which are costing Sprint $480 million, will affect some 585,000 USCC customers

Source: Sprint

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/IQ0CYJXwbfU/story01.htm

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Resilience and Flood Risk ? State of the Planet

By Adam Yukelson and Pablo Freund Lanfranco

Earlier this year, we could count with our hands the number of New Yorkers seriously interested in the topic of flood insurance.

Most of them, in fact, were our colleagues: a team of graduate students at Columbia University?s Earth Institute, who spent a semester researching the potential for flood insurance markets to serve as a tool for risk mitigation from coastal flooding in New York City. The work was commissioned by the Mayor?s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability.

Only half of homes in flood zones, such as Zone A in New York City (which was ordered to evacuate prior to Hurricane Sandy), are insured against flooding.

With an overwhelming majority of scientists projecting increases in the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events, and after Hurricane Irene struck New York City in the fall of 2011, this was certainly of interest to the mayor?s office.

None of us, of course, could have imagined that less than six months after completing our study, New York City would experience its worst hurricane since its founding in 1624. The unprecedented storm brought water levels to 13.88? at the Battery, smashing the record 11.2? water level set in 1821 ? crippling utilities, bringing the local and regional mass transit systems to a standstill, and leaving untold numbers of people to rebuild their lives.

Now, the event that was dubbed ?Frankenstorm? has brought our research on flood insurance, disturbingly, to life.

As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged last Tuesday, ?We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns; we have an old infrastructure, we have old systems. That is not a good combination.?

This is exactly why the flood insurance market, as a tool for change, is of interest to the mayor?s office, and should be considered more widely by other coastal cities. Replacing existing policy won?t be easy. But policymakers would be wise to examine the irreparable damage Sandy has brought to lives and possibly infrastructure, and use this moment to consider the alternative.

As a starting point, we offer the following picture of the current reality in the market for flood insurance:

Our research indicates that New York City, and other vulnerable areas throughout the United States, are significantly underinsured. Only half of homes in the flood-zones, such as Zone A in New York City (which was ordered to evacuate prior to the storm), are insured against flooding. Outside this zone, coverage drops to a mere 1 percent. The problem is that the designated flood-zones have not been updated in years, despite the Federal Emergency Management Agency?s continued effort to do so, and extreme weather events expected to occur every 100 years have become more frequent over the past years.

More importantly, since flood events affect large geographic areas, covering losses in one home with the premiums of other insurance clients in the area is impossible. Moreover, a market failure known as adverse selection occurs, driven by the fact that only those who perceive themselves to be most at risk purchase insurance, resulting in low participation in insurance programs. The result is an almost complete lack of flood insurance products offered by private insurance firms for residential properties. Due to this market failure, the federal government provided a ?patch,? the National Flood Insurance Program.

The federally backed flood insurance program offers policies where no one else will, and extends subsidized premium rates to 1-in-5 policyholders. But this program is not without its pitfalls. One year policy maximums, low awareness of the program and slow progress with reforming building codes have hampered the National Flood Insurance Program from improving flood risk resilience, and since Hurricane Katrina, the program has carried an $18 billion deficit due to the magnitude of losses. The damage from Hurricane Sandy will surely to extend the deficit significantly.

As we see the pictures and listen to the stories of the devastation caused by Sandy, we are reminded that in New York City alone, more than 30,000 properties in the 100-year floodplain are uninsured for flood damage. On top of that, increases in the frequency of these catastrophic events will lead to mounting losses for the federal program, and discourage even more the participation of private insurers in this market.

We hope that our research can help policymakers in New York City and communities that face similar circumstances overhaul the flood insurance markets locally, regionally and perhaps nationally in order to effectively mitigate the growing risk evidenced by the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Rebuilding after the storm will be a long process, but the policies that incentivize the fundamental risk mitigating mechanisms must be rebuilt from the ground up in order for New York, and the countries? vulnerable locations, to emerge with a more viable and resilient path to face nature in the future.

Our research has led to some very specific recommendations for policy makers:

1. Conduct a detailed market analysis in order to determine the exact number of properties at risk, value at risk and number of insured properties.
2. Educate the public about the risk of flooding and the availability of insurance.
3. Improve local government?s cooperation with NFIP program and integrate flood resiliency standards to building code.
4. Engage the reinsurance industry to activate the private market for flood insurance products and overcome market failures.
5. Explore the use of catastrophe bonds.

To access the full report, follow the link (pdf).

Adam Yukelson, a graduate of the M.S. Sustainability Management program ?12, is working on a variety of projects aimed at generating societal well-being in the face of disruptive change. Pablo Freund, a graduate of the MSc Sustainability Management program ?12, is managing director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, working to promote design science to solve humanity?s most pressing problems.

Source: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/11/06/resilience-and-flood-risk/

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White Label App Rush: It's All About Choice? | Bluefire Reader

The holiday season is shifting into high gear and so are we. You probably already know about our recent app updates and the great new features we?re delivering. But there?s more! We?ve also been rolling out new white label apps for our growing list of customers worldwide.

While we continue to add new customers in North America, most of our new business is coming from abroad. The growing availability of ebooks from publishers worldwide, the growing range of compelling devices at a variety of price points and the availability of cost effective, branded mobile reading/retailing apps (from Bluefire) are giving booksellers of all kinds a shot at competing in this fast growing market.

Here are the new white label apps that we?ve shipped in the last two months:

International

• Booktopia Reader (Australia) ??iOS
• eB?kur?from D3 Midlar ehf (Iceland) ??Android?/?iOS
• eKitabu (Kenya) ??Android
• eBook.de Reader from Libre.de Internet GmbH?(Germany) ??Android?/?iOS
• Kalahari.com Reader from MIH Internet Africa (Proprietary) Limited (South Africa) ??Android?/?iOS
• Saxo Reader from Saxo.com (Denmark) ??Android?/ iOS
• VLeBooks Reader from The Little Group (United Kingdom) ??Android?/?iOS

North America

• Better World Books ??Android?/?iOS
• HMH eTextbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ??Android?/?iOS
• Reader ? eBooks from Sony ??iOS

We think this is an impressive list?and it will grow quite a bit over the next few weeks as we release more new partner apps and update our existing customers to the latest iOS and Android builds.

We?re also seeing our customers use their branded apps to expand their reach beyond the traditional app distribution channels (e.g. the iTunes App Store and the Google Play store). For example,?Hastings?preinstalls their branded app on devices that are sold online and in their stores?giving new device owners an easy way to connect with the company?s impressive goHastings.com online store.

Device manufacturers are also using the Bluefire platform to expand their reach. The?release of the iOS?Reader? app?? eBooks from Sony?gives iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users access to their Reader Store by Sony purchases, helping?Sony deliver on their goal of giving their customers the freedom?to read the content they love, anytime and anywhere.

Over the past few years we?ve championed the notion of choice. We?re pleased to see that readers have a growing choice of retailers along with a growing choice of reading devices and apps. It?s a good way to start out the holiday season!

- ?Cliff

This entry was posted in Customer Profiles, News by Cliff. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://www.bluefirereader.com/blog/?p=308

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