The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has been "critically" exposed to cyberattacks since 2019, which could threaten train safety, according to a watchdog report. The report also claims the transit authority had failed to address 50 of the cybersecurity recommendations offered to it by oversight agencies. WMATA was hacked by a computer in Russia this year, the watchdog found, and has employed Russia-based IT workers. The vulnerability of transit systems to cyberattacks is well known, with transit agencies said to have the weakest cybersecurity when compared to other major sectors. There have been calls for the WMATA to beef up its cybersecurity in the wake of declining ridership during the Covid-19 pandemic and a shift towards the use of mobile fare cards and remote train piloting technology.
UK-based multi-development bank the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is set to collaborate with emerging market asset manager ILX and the European Union (EU) to improve "climate-smart solutions, digital transformation and financial inclusion" in eastern Europe. Although not strictly a blended-finance arrangement as the ILX investment is ring-fenced, the $300m project sets down a "new marker in development finance," according to Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission executive vice-president. Dombrovskis said he hoped the scheme would serve as "a new model that can inspire other international financial institutions and private investors to step up sustainable and green investment." The initiative ties into the EU's plans to invest $300bn in green projects with a view to attracting private funding.
The pound is set to record a second consecutive weekly fall against the dollar, following a 1.45% slide last week, due to the resurgent dollar and weakness in the UK economy, with Brexit negotiations and weak data releases adding further pressure. After hitting a low of $1.0327 in September 2016, the pound has held well overall, boosted by a strong performance from the economy, although the failure of the Scottish National Party to make gains in that country's recent election has made Brexit negotiations tougher.
The decline of response rates to statistics in the UK and the US, largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is making it harder for data to be "smoothed and gaps must be filled", which could skew results. In the US, the JPMorgan Asset Management note revealed declining response rates to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current employment survey and Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). Response rates for the active sample in JOLTS only improved to 64% from 58% between releases, while in the UK, the percentage of respondents to the Labour Force Survey has been steadily falling since the pandemic. While Eurostat identified issues with under-coverage in almost half the countries it contacted through the European Union Labour Force Survey, the response rate is still unclear. With less data to work with, statisticians are unable to offer broad accuracy, and data released in different formats can lead to large backwards revisions, which poses a risk to the reliability of statistics.
Twitter has become "low risk" for brands thanks to the appointment of Linda Yaccarino as its new chief executive, according to GroupM, part of global advertising firm WPP. The agency had previously warned brands against advertising on the platform after Tesla boss Elon Musk's £35bn ($44bn) takeover last year. This turmoil led 16 of the top 25 US Twitter advertisers to withdraw advertising completely in Q1 2023, according to data from Sensor Tower. Outgoing GroupM chairman Sir Martin Sorrell welcomed Yaccarino's appointment, calling her "very effective".
The Covid-19 pandemic caused 336.8 million years of life to be lost globally, according to the World Health Organisation's 2021 World Health Statistics report. Each death caused by the virus led to an average loss of more than 22 years of life, equivalent to over five years of life lost every second. The WHO said the pandemic has set back progress on Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015 that had seen notable improvements in population health until 2020. It warned that noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension, obesity and tobacco use now represent nearly three out of every four lives lost annually.
Leading Chinese internet companies, including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, have reported double-digit revenue growth in Q1 2021 from the same period the previous year. However, the companies' futures remain dependent on China's economy. Even though the country is reopening economically, Chinese consumers' low confidence levels in job prospects and future incomes could dampen sales recovery. The companies are also involved in the beginnings of a makeover that involves new growth areas, such as artificial intelligence (AI), which is driving new AI cloud divisions. However, US rivalry and tensions are limiting China's access to crucial microchips needed to develop AI, while a lucrative pool of domestic customers (China's state-owned enterprises) are preferring to use government-backed providers rather than private cloud computing providers. This is alongside client losses due to non-product reasons and investor wariness as growth cannot be expected to return to previous decades' levels.
The Federal Reserve’s June policy meeting might not result in an interest rate hike, as many traders and analysts would expect, according to this commentary. Policy makers are divided over whether to take a break in their rate increase cycle, or whether to carry on the hikes if inflation does not decrease. Much will depend on Fed chair Jerome Powell, but he may be constrained by the uncertainty surrounding debt ceiling funding.
A growing number of international events are focussed on developing recommendations for improving access to sustainable, healthy diets for all. Three such events – the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021; the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in September 2022; and the 27th annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in November 2022 – have developed a wealth of data from countries that are low income/high income, more/less vulnerable to climate change, and more/less dependent on food imports. These events have been used to identify the scale of poor nutrition and great hunger, require urgent action to improve access to healthier meals on a daily basis.
Data from countries that are high income and low income show that nearly 40% of the world’s population cannot afford to acquire healthy diets on any given day leading to endemic levels of malnutrition. For those that can afford food, meals are often rich and nutritional and contain high levels of protein, fats, and sugar. However, while providing a sense of abundance and well-being, these types of meals are frequently unhealthy, contributing to alarming levels of obesity as well as an increase in non-communicable diseases.
The UN’s Food Systems Summit was a tremendous success, bringing together governments, academics, and other diverse stakeholders to review a host of issues relating to sustainable, healthy meals. The summit resulted in the agreement of a global aspiration of sustainable, healthy diets for all. It also transformed the focus onto a broader food system lens, to identify the complete range of food supply chains, such as businesses such as food manufacturers and processors, which were noticeably absent from previous conversations on food production.
Twitter accuses Microsoft of refusing to pay for tweets and abusing its data access
CNN
23-05-19 13:37
Twitter has accused Microsoft of violating its user agreement by downloading tweets through services such as Xbox One, Bing and Azure more than 26 billion times in 2022 alone, according to a letter sent by a legal representative of Twitter CEO Elon Musk to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The letter accused Microsoft's activities of being "excessive or abusive". Microsoft asked Twitter to pay to access tweet data after Twitter erected a paywall for access, but the company has denied violating any agreements. The dispute between Twitter and Microsoft comes amid a heated rivalry between Musk and Microsoft over AI technology.
The Canadian dollar held most of its weekly gains against the US dollar, despite losing 0.1% to close at 1.3510, as official Canadian data revealed March retail sales to have fallen by 1.4% from February. However, earlier in the week it was reported that the annual Canadian inflation rate rose for April by 1.8%, its first increase in 10 months, meaning that the chances of the Bank of Canada raising its key interest rate had increased.
Rare shipment of U.S. oil heads to South Africa for Glencore refinery
Reuters
23-05-19 19:40
A shipment of US oil is heading to South Africa for the first time in two years, destined for a Glencore-owned refinery in Cape Town that has restarted operations after an explosion shuttered it in 2020. The 850,000-barrel cargo of West Texas Light was purchased by Swiss commodities trader Glencore. Glencore's majority-owned Astron Energy restarted production at its 100,000-barrel-per-day Cape Town refinery nearly three years after the explosion. South Africa gets most of its oil from West and Central Africa as well as Saudi Arabia, according to energy data provider Kpler.
Uncertainty persists over whether additional interest rate increases will be required in the US, according to the Federal Reserve’s chairman, Jerome Powell. The central bank needs to weigh the effect past rate hikes and recent bank credit tightening may have on the economy against the difficulties it faces in reigning in inflation. Powell said the Fed would have to go “meeting by meeting” in its approach but added that coming into this year it had “faced little restraint”. Policy makers will receive job and inflation data which could affect their decisions ahead of a meeting on 13 and 14 June.
Research from Australian superannuation research house SuperRatings has shown that ethical investment options provide returns that are on par with mainstream investments, or in some cases better. The research found that HESTA's Sustainable Growth investment option was the top performer, achieving an average annual compound return of 9.5% over the 10 years to March 2023. The super fund's Balanced Growth option, where most members have their money, returned 8%, ranking eighth in the balanced category. Low fees and investments in unlisted assets are likely contributors to the strong performance of ethically focused funds, the data suggested.
Investors are turning their attention to Japan, which is experiencing accelerating governance reform, strong economic momentum, and sustained inflation, leading some analysts to question whether “Japan’s Rising Sun” will finally live up to its promises. Foreign institutions have purchased the country’s Topix index, which has hit a fresh 33-year high, and the Bank of America has said the Topix could increase by a further 33% to exceed its previous peak.
The change is arguably the biggest practical and psychological shift in the Japanese economy in decades. After years of stagnation, wages are now increasing, and Japan is experiencing sustained inflation with core inflation running at 3.4% annually.
Several geopolitical factors, such as Japan’s hosting of the G7 summit, China-US decoupling, military tensions, bloc formation for a new cold war, and the country’s positioning as a stable and supply-chain friendly partner of the west, as well as its presence as the fourth-largest economy in the world, are contributing to investors’ renewed interest in the country.
According to data from councils collected by the BBC, thousands of voters failed to vote in England's local elections this year due to incorrect ID. In all, 26,165 voters were initially unable to vote at polling stations, with 16,588 returning with valid ID. The council data was collected from 160 of the 230 councils with elections. Elections monitoring group the Electoral Reform Society warned that if ID is still required for the next UK general election, due in 2024, "far more" voters will be affected unless the policy is scrapped.
Labour has claimed that more than 23,000 people died in emergency departments (A&E) in England due to record waiting times. The data was obtained through freedom of information requests. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine had warned that long waiting times can have “catastrophic consequences for patient safety and mortality”. NHS trusts provided data to Labour which appears to confirm a total of 23,316 lives were lost in emergency departments. Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the figures "were shocking and concerning, and the system was clearly not working as it should."
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned companies regarding the use of facial recognition and other biometric identifiers in transactions with customers, urging them to weigh the risks against the benefits and consider whether they really require its use. The FTC fears that companies will collect biometric data revealing personal information about consumers including attendance at political or union events or visits to medical professionals. By collecting such information, it is likely to increase the risk of malicious actors accessing consumers' personal devices or bank accounts, said the regulator. Furthermore, consumers, may be unaware their biometric data is being harvested, said the FTC, adding that it will continue to use its enforcement power against companies that do not fully inform consumers about their data collection policies and fail to protect the information collected, or assure that the technology does not disproportionately hurt any particular demographic.
The future of farming is upward for these Hamilton-area produce businesses
CBC
23-05-20 08:00
Micro Warrior Greens, a Hamilton-based indoor farm that's run by Leo Lewin, produces miniature vegetables called microgreens, which can benefit from vertical farming methods. Microgreens are early-stage vegetables that develop in just 10 days, have a high vitamin content, and are grown indoors in stacked formations and a controlled environment. Due to the dwindling availability of farmland and potential expansion of urban boundaries in the Hamilton area, vertical farming practices could serve as an essential asset for the future of agriculture. Vertical farming is water-efficient, enables multiple yearly harvests, does not use pesticides, and produces consistent products unaffected by wildlife and weather. Larger vertical farms present new challenges due to their increased energy usage. For instance, mentioned in the article, Infarm faced stiff operational costs and supply chain disruption in Europe, leading to plant shutdowns and company-wide restructuring plans.
Chinese exports to North Korea rose 69% YoY in April to $166m with wigs, hair (used in wig manufacturing), fertiliser and rice amongst the top export items. From January to April this year, Chinese exports to North Korea increased from $270.59m to $603m. The nation has been under UN sanctions since 2006 for their missile and nuclear programmes.
