EFTA00673207.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 10/25/2015 Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 10:57:27 +0000 Attachments: Tunisian_group_wins_Nobel_Peace_Prize_Anthony_Faiola_TWP_Oct._09,2015.docx; Stanley_Clarke_bio.docx; 7_Ways_Canada's_Change_OfGovemment_Might_Affect_The_World_Ryan_Malhoney_H uff_Post_Oct._19„2015.docx; Hillary? s_Best_Week_Yet_TODD_S„PURDUM_Politic0_Masgazine_October_22,2015.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png; image(24).png; image(25).png; image(26).png; image(27).png; image(28).png; image(29).png; image(30).png; image(31).png; image(32).png; image(33).png DEAR FRIEND A Solution to Our Out of Control Drug Prices Inane image 1 There is universal agreement that cost of prescription drugs in the United States is out of control. The United States has the dubious honor of paying the highest costs for drugs in the world, even compared with other wealthy nations, such as Canada, Germany, and Japan. The difference in price can often be substantial, especially among the newer and very costly agents that have recently come on the market. EFTA00673207 For instance the prices for oncology agents have nearly doubled in the past decade, from an average of $5000 per month to more than $10,000 per month. The price for cancer drugs like Yervoy, Opdivo and Keytruda routinely exceeds $120,000 a year. Some other specialty drugs have even higher prices. Cerezyme for Gaucher disease costs about $300,000 per year for life. Kalydeco for cystic fibrosis also costs about $300,000 per year. Despite representing about 1 percent of prescriptions in 2014, these types of high cost drugs accounted for some 32 percent of all spending on pharmaceuticals. Many Americans can't afford their medications. While the financial burden for households has declined over the past years, it is clear that many Americans are not taking their recommended medications because of the high costs. A recent survey showed that around one in five U.S. adults did not fill out their prescription or skipped doses because of the costs of medicines in 2013. The proportion was less than one in ten in Germany, Canada and Australia. The difference is that, unlike in the U.S., health coverage in most other OECD tends to be universal. Patients often have to share the costs of pharmaceutical treatments, but they get exemptions if they are poor, severely ill or have reached a certain level of out-of-pocket payments. Overall, Americans use more medicines than people in other developed countries. They rank first for their use of antipsychotics as well as drugs for dementia, respiratory problems and rheumatoid arthritis. This is partly explained by medical needs: The burden of disease in the U.S. — as measured in "years of life lost" - is higher than in many OECD countries for the most common forms of heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. Several factors may explain this, including high levels of obesity and high rates of diagnosis. Americans also have faster access to new drugs than patients in many other countries. That's in part because the U.S. has always been a very attractive market for pharmaceutical companies: It's big, accounting for 34 percent of the world market; has low levels of price regulation; and offers few barriers to market entry once FDA approval has been secured. By contrast, in some other countries there may be a time lag between clinical approval of a drug and the point when it is added to official lists of reimbursable drugs. The result is that companies often choose the U.S. to launch new products. And, because the US market is so big and profitable, investments in research and development have long been steered towards meeting its clinical needs. Inline image 2 EFTA00673208 We don't need a polls to accept that Americans are fed up with high drug costs. A commonly proposed solution has been to let the federal government, through Medicare, negotiate with drug companies. Currently, while Medicare tells hospitals and doctors what it will pay for services, by law it cannot negotiate with companies for lower drug prices. Some independent estimates suggest that negotiated drug prices could save the federal government $15 billion or more per year. online image 3 But as oncologist is a vice provost and professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former White House advisor Ezekiel Emanuel pointed out in a recent op-ed in the New York Times this approach will not solve the problem of stratospheric drug prices, for several reasons. For many diseases, there exist only a couple of effective drugs, with little price competition. Also, Medicare would have little negotiating leverage since, unlike private insurers, it cannot maintain an approved drug list and exclude overly expensive drugs from coverage. And the bigger problem, is that Medicare negotiations would do nothing to contain drug prices for the 170 million Americans who have private health insurance, through their employer, the exchanges, or by self purchase. Also having the federal government negotiate lower prices for Medicare would most likely drive up prices on the private side as drug companies tried to recoup their "lost" profits. Almost all developed countries — including those run by very conservative governments — have an effective solution for drug prices, which is why these countries often pay less than half of what people in the United States pay for drugs. For instance, Australia's more than 6oyearold Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has been the single purchaser of drugs for the country, making drugs available at fixed prices that are now listed online. EFTA00673209  Inline image 4 We know that if the United States were to consider such an approach, drug companies would immediately raise two objections: the high risks associated with drug development and, related, the high cost of research and development. But both of these arguments are fatuous. It is true that a vast majority of drugs fail. On average, only one in every 5,000 compounds that drug companies discover and put through preclinical testing becomes an approved drug. Of the drugs started in clinical trials on humans, only ro percent secure F.D.A. approval. Regardless of the risks, many drug companies are making huge profits. Gilead, maker of Sovaldi, has profits of around 5o percent. Biogen, Amgen and other biotech firms have profits of around 30 percent. Merck and Pfizer are seeing profits of 18 percent or more. Even if profits were cut by a third or a half, there would be sufficient incentive to assume the risks of drug development. So what should be done? The United States government has created myriad special pricing arrangements that pervert incentives. For instance, Medicaid generally gets the lowest prices in the market. This discourages drug companies from experimenting with other payers on lower price arrangements, knowing that they will most likely have to give the same deal to Medicaid. Similarly, through the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 the United States created many incentives for developing drugs for orphan diseases — those with fewer than 200,000 patients nationwide. Through special tax credits and better deals on marketing exclusivity, the federal government is encouraging the companies to benefit thousands instead of millions. The result has been the development of more than 400 drugs and biologics. While it is important to find effective treatments for rare diseases, it is more important to target serious, common diseases such as stroke and antibiotic resistant infections. As outrageous as they are, prices are not the real issue. Value is. What really frustrates people are expensive drugs that do not provide a cure. For instance, Opdivo adds an average of 3.2 months of life to lung cancer patients and costs $150,000 per year for treatment. Conversely, other drugs are super- expensive but are worth it. There was an outcry over paying $1,000 per pill for Sovaldi. But it helps cure hepatitis C and has shown to be cost effective. While the Australian system of price controls is one approach, another possibility is the Swiss health system, which is frequently applauded by conservative commentators. The Swiss government includes EFTA00673210 only those drugs that are effective and cost effective on its approved drug list. It then establishes a maximum allowable price for the drug, but up to that point, companies can decide what to charge. We could cap the price based on objective, quantitative measures of value. Private payers would continue to negotiate with drug companies over prices as they do now, but there would be a ceiling to prevent prices from becoming unsustainable Everyone, including drug company executives, believes that high prices cannot continue. Indeed, that is one reason that companies are trying to maximize profits while they can. We must lobbyist and come up with a comprehensive solution now. ****** Carly Fiorina Born on Third Base but Believes that she hit a Home Run ; e2, Inline image 1 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina tells this only-in-America life story in nearly every speech. She uses this description — of how she began her business career as a secretary and went on to be the first female chief executive of a major technology company — to portray how she overcame the odds to challenge the status quo. Fiorina's PAC, CARLY for America, owns a web site dedicated to her life story. It evokes a rags-to-riches-esque narrative reminiscent of a Horatio Alger novel — where the main character, with grit, hard work and some luck, lifts himself out of humble beginnings to achieve success. But the fact is that although Fiorina's mother was an abstract artist and homemaker, her father was a law professor who taught at Stanford, Cornell and Yale universities, and became Duke Law School dean. Joseph Sneed, her father, also was appointed deputy U.S. attorney general under President Richard M. Nixon, and served as a longtime federal appeals court judge in San Francisco. Sneed was a prominent conservative judge who helped to select Kenneth Starr to investigate the Clintons' Whitewater investments. He was known for his strong work ethic and held high standards EFTA00673211 for his children, especially for his studious middle child, Cara Carleton Sneed, now known as Carly Fiorina. Fiorina grew up New York, Connecticut, California, London, Africa and North Carolina, as her father moved between schools while rising up the academic ranks. She graduated from Stanford with a major in history and philosophy. She wrote her honors thesis on medieval judicial systems. After Stanford, Fiorina went off to law school at University of California-Los Angeles to please her father, who had expected that she would follow in his footsteps. But she hated it, and dropped out after one semester. And yes, Fiorina started her career as a receptionist at the commercial property brokerage firm Marcus & Millichap after a year she quit, married her college sweetheart (whom she later divorced), moved to Italy and taught English before returning back to the U.S. and got a job at AT&T who got her management fellowships in the world, at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through her fellowship, Fiorina earned her second master's degree in business administration, and she was placed on a senior management track at AT&T. She then went on to lead a spin-off of Lucent. In 1998, Fortune Magazine named her the "most powerful woman in American business," largely as a result of her role with the spin-off. Recruiters, including from HP, began calling her after the story in Fortune. In July 1999, HP hired her as chief executive. But when you look at her career closely, Fiorina was fired by both Lucent and H.P. The Washington Post's Fact Checker gave Ms. Fiorina three Pinocchios for her "secretary to CEO" career trajectory. Yes, she worked as a secretary and became a CEO but the description glosses over important details. Her father was dean of Duke Law School when she was at Stanford, meaning Duke would have paid for most of her college tuition. She graduated from Stanford, and her elite degree and father's prestige played a role that people in most rags to riches stories don't have.... A similar story to Donald Trump, who likes to suggest that he is self-made while playing down the fact that he inherited his father's $2oo million real estate empire and that four of his companies went bankrupt. It always amuses me that people like Fiorina and Trump who are born on third base always believe that they have hit a home run. Chalk One Up to the Good Guys Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet wins Nobel Peace Prize EFTA00673212  Inline image 1 Although there is still unrest in the country, one of the biggest successes of The Arab Spring has to be Tunisia. This former North African colony of almost eleven million people which became independent of France on March 20, 1956 was led by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who took control of the country in a bloodless coup In November 1987. Ben Ali and his family were accused of corruption and plundering the country's money with the First Lady Leila Ben Ali was described as an "unabashed shopaholic" who used the state airplane to make frequent unofficial trips to Europe's fashion capitals. Tunisia refused a French request for the extradition of two of the President's nephews, from Leila's side, who were accused by the French State prosecutor of having stolen two mega-yachts from a French marina. Ben Ali's son-in-law Sakher El Mated was rumored as being primed to eventually take over the country. Independent human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Protection International, documented that basic human and political rights were not respected. The regime obstructed in any way possible the work of local human rights organizations. In 2008, in terms of Press freedom, Tunisia was ranked 143rd out of 173. The Tunisian Revolution began as an intensive campaign of civil resistance that was precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms and poor living conditions. Labor unions were said to be an integral part of the protests. But the catalyst for mass demonstrations was the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, who set himself afire on 17 December 2010 in protest at the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation inflicted on him by a municipal official. Anger and violence intensified following Bouazizi's death on 4 January 2011, ultimately leading to President Ben Ali stepping down on 14 January 2011, after 23 years in power. It was this and other protests that inspired the Arab Spring -- a wave of similar actions throughout the Arab world. Tunisia has not gone without violence as protest continued for banning of the ruling party and the eviction of all its members from the transitional government formed by Mohammed Ghannouchi. Eventually the new government gave in to the demands. A Tunis court banned the ex-ruling party RCD and confiscated all its resources, as well as a decree by the minister of the interior that also banned the "political police", (Special Forces) which were used to intimidate and persecute political activists. In March 2011, the president announced that elections to a Constituent Assembly would be held on 23 October 2011. International and internal observers declared the vote free and fair. The Ennanda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, won a plurality of 90 seats out of a EFTA00673213 total of 217. On 12 December 2011, former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected president. In March 2012, Ennanda declared it will not support maldng sharia the main source of legislation in the new constitution, maintaining the secular nature of the state. Ennanda's stance on the issue was criticized by hardline Islamists, who wanted full-blown sharia, and was welcomed by secular parties. Chokri Belaid, the leader of the leftist opposition and prominent critic of Ennanda, was assassinated in February 2015. Since then Tunisia has been hit by two major violent Islamist terror attacks on foreign tourists in 2015, first killing 22 people at the Bardo National Museum, and later killing 38 people at the Sousse beachfront. Still the Nobel Peace Prize Committee confounded expectations on October 9, 2015, when it bypassed figures such as Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and handed the award to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in the country in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011." "The quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 when the democratization process was in danger of collapsing as a result of political assassinations and widespread social unrest," the Nobel Committee said. "It established an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war. It was thus instrumental in enabling Tunisia, in the space of a few years, to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction or religious belief." The group includes a labor union, a trade confederation, a human rights organization and a lawyers group. What is great about this, is that it celebrates one of the unsung successes of the Arab Spring Movement that didn't require "regime change" or "international intervention" which as we have witnessed most often leads to disastrous consequences... Finally, as the Editorial Board of the New York Times wrote in response to the announcement -- The Nobel committee has a long tradition of awarding the prize to institutions, individuals or groups for the nobility of what they represent rather than for the efficacy of what they did. The committee broke new ground this year by selecting what is an ad hoc coalition, using this courageous effort to underscore the possibility of having Islamist and secular institutions work together. There is no guarantee that Tunisia, which is not free of political and social strife, will live up to the promise of this year's award. Whatever happens in Tunisia, the National Dialogue Quartet has demonstrated that crisis and bloodshed are not the inescapable alternative to dictatorial or sectarian rule. That is a much needed affirmation these days, and the Norwegian Nobel committee is right to make it. ****** CLINTON vs. THE CLOWNS EFTA00673214 Benghazi explained... Web Link: After the former Secretary of State's marathon testimony on Thursday, in which she endured ii hours of questioning, even conservatives now admit, the hearing accomplished very little, as not only did Hillary emerged unscathed, her performance made her look more Presidential. Without a doubt, the GOP-led committee is a political stunt targeting Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, with the main objective to hurt her credibility and brand. And as veteran Democratic consultant Bob Shrum said, "The Republicans always overplay their hand, especially when it comes to the Clinton — and they're doing it again." When they originally scheduled Thursday's hearing, House Republicans had hoped to turn the Benghazi investigation into a Soviet show trial, knocking Clinton further down after a summer that's seen her consistently playing defense. But by the time she actually sat down on Capitol Hill Thursday, Clinton didn't have to make any real effort to paint the Benghazi inquiry as partisan. In all-too-honest statements, Republicans from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on down had already done that for her — and it was left largely to the committee's ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, to attack the motives of the Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, while Clinton pleaded for statesmanship and a bipartisan approach to diplomacy in a dangerous world. Afterward, even for Republican Conservatives — Washington Examiner columnist Byron York, disappointed the hearing had been "billed as an epic, High Noon-style confrontation," concluded the day was "a bust." "In other words, no big deal. And that is very, very good news for Hillary Clinton," York wrote. Right-wing radio host Erick Erickson wrote that the hearing "was all a political spectacle" and "a waste of time." "God bless Trey Gowdy for trying to learn the facts and understand what happened. But the rest of it was just a carnival road show of back bench congress-critters playing to the cameras and Hillary Clinton working hard to play persecuted victim," Erickson wrote. As Brian Beutler pointed out in his article — This Is the Moment the Benghazi Investigation Went Off the Rails — in The New Republic that halfway through Hillary Clinton's testimony before the House Benghazi Committee, there was a moment where everyone can look back of the actually absurdity of the hearings. It was questing by Chairman Trey Gowdy about Clinton's relationship with her friend and Democratic operative Sidney Blumenthal, and the information he frequently passed along to her when she was secretary of state. Republicans have intoned darkly about this relationship and played up, in deceptive fashion, Blumenthal's influence over Clinton's policy in Libya — despite the fact that he has no Libya expertise, and has apparently never been there. Republicans even deposed him for several hours earlier this year. But here's the catch: while they EFTA00673215 continue to make an issue of Blumenthal's relationship with Hillary Clinton, and their email correspondence, they've refused to release the transcript of that deposition, where he had a full opportunity to contextualize everything. Ranking Member Elijah Cummings called Gowdy out on this inconsistency and asked for an immediate vote on whether or not to release the full transcript. Gowdy refused. In the process he lost control of the proceedings. But that's not so interesting in and of itself. What makes the moment iconic is that it crystalizes exactly how contrived and frankly farcical the whole charade of an investigation really is. Why is a Benghazi panel so taken up with a person who had nothing to do with Benghazi and knows nothing about Libya? If Blumenthal's role is important, why not release the transcript of his full deposition? At one point Gowdy claimed Blumenthal's emails are relevant because former Libya ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the Benghazi attack, had to read and vet them — as if to say, "Well, Chris Stevens read these emails, and just look what happened to him!" It doesn't come dose to passing the laugh test. And I assume Republicans know it. But for me, Trey Gowdy's latest Benghazi investigation was a clown show with only one objective — to somehow goat Hillary Clinton into a "gotcha moment" The investigation subpoenaed no other major officials to testify under oath, from the State Department, CIA or the Military. One would think that if these congressmen/congresswomen were serious about getting to the root of finding out what went wrong and should be done to make sure that attacks like this can be better neutralized, they would speaking to as many senior officials as possible. But then this was not their objective and as such, wasn't even on the agenda. Consequently, even Conservatives realize that the Hillary Clinton's Benghazi Committee Hearing was ridiculous. And as one pundit wrote, the ii hours of questions were "a waste of time." If in January 2017, Hillary Clinton is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, historians may well point to this month as the moment her campaign turned around. Like the first brisk snap of fall, Clinton's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer has morphed overnight into the best week of her campaign: Joe Biden is out, her poll numbers are up, her crisp debate performance reassured nervous Democrats and her measured resolution before the House Benghazi committee made her interrogators (of both parties) seem small by comparison. Not bad.... Michael Tomasky wrote — The GOP's Benghazi Weak Sauce - in the Daily Beast: After all that buildup, was that really the best the Republicans could do? Seriously? But this committee... Americans should be enraged by it. I am, but today, watching this, I've mostly been feeling sad. I actually grew up kind of believing in these people. I remember being 14, 15, when my sister worked in the Rayburn House Office Building, how thrilling it was to go to the office where she worked, to walk down those halls, peek into those grand hearing rooms, think about all that history. It's so debased now by these people, it makes me ashamed. I bet Hillary needs a drink. Well, I do too. ****** The Latest Scandal on American College Campuses 1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus EFTA00673216  Inline image 6 It seems like epidemics are everywhere. The latest: In four years of college, more than one fourth of undergraduate women at a large group of leading universities said they had been sexually assaulted by force or when they were incapacitated, according to one of the largest studies of its kind, released last Monday. Responding to a survey commissioned by the Association of American Universities, 27.2 percent of female college seniors reported that, since entering college, they had experienced some kind of unwanted sexual contact — anything from touching to rape — carried out by incapacitation, usually due to alcohol or drugs, or by force. Nearly half of those, 13.5 percent, had experienced penetration, attempted penetration or oral sex. The survey bolstered findings from previous studies but stands out for its sheer size — i5o,000 students at 27 colleges and universities took part last spring — and for the prominence of the institutions involved, which include many of the nation's elite campuses, including all of the Ivy League except Princeton. Last year, President Obama convened the first White House task force on college sexual assault, part of a growing demand for colleges to acknowledge, measure and address the problem. That task force, like members of Congress and victim advocates, called on colleges to conduct rigorous "campus climate" surveys, including detailed information on the frequency of assault and harassment. Previous studies have estimated that about one in five women are sexually assaulted while at college, though comparisons are difficult because the studies use varying definitions of sexual assault. The new study cautioned that only 19 percent of students responded to the survey, far below the rates of some previous studies. The A.A.U. survey found that even in the most serious assaults, those involving penetration, almost three-fourths of victims did not report the episode to anyone in authority, let alone law enforcement. The reason victims gave most often for not reporting episodes was that they did not think the episodes were serious enough to report; others said they felt ashamed, or did not think they would be taken seriously. "This survey is significant confirmation of a major problem, and it confirms what we've been saying about the mindset on campus and the reception survivors expect to encounter," said Zoe RidolfiStarr, deputy director of Know Your IX, an advocacy group that fights sexual assault. EFTA00673217 Most of the institutions in the study released their own figures from the survey, and several of the most respected ones had some of the highest rates of sexual assault by force or incapacitation for undergraduate women — 34.6 percent at Yale, 34.3 percent at the University of Michigan, and 29.2 percent at Harvard. The findings were "profoundly troubling," said Yale's president, Peter Salovey. Yale's handling of sexual assault has come under particular scrutiny in recent years, and the university has taken a number of steps to address it. Thomas Conroy, a university spokesman, said Monday that because the A.A.U. report was the first of its kind for Yale it was impossible to know whether those measures had paid off. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, praised the study but expressed impatience that Congress had not acted to force colleges to improve their handling of sexual assault. "How many surveys will it take before we act with the urgency these crimes demand?" she asked. Some previous studies have focused more narrowly on rape and attempted rape, but the A.A.U. survey included much broader categories. It found that, when including acts carried out without force or incapacitation but with coercion or a lack of consent — which some colleges now define as sexual assault — one third of senior women had experienced unwanted sexual contact during college. John D. Foubert, a professor of higher education at Oklahoma State University who studies campus sexual assault, said he was troubled by the low response rate and by the A.A.U. study's use of slightly different definitions from previous studies. "This is pretty consistent with what we've seen before,"he said. Across the 27 universities, men experienced much lower — but still significant — rates of sexual assault than women; 8.6 percent of male seniors said they had experienced some kind of unwanted sexual contact, including 2.9 percent who said they had experienced penetration, attempted penetration or oral sex, carried out by force or incapacitation. Transgender students and others who do not identify as either male or female had higher rates of assault than women. Experts said this was the first large- scale study they knew of to measure the extent of the problem for transgender students. Like every other epidemic, this latest of campus rapes is a disgrace and my outrage of the week.... WEEK's READINGS Global Poverty Will Hit New Low This Year, World Bank Says 'This is the best story in the world today." EFTA00673218  !dine image 1 Less than 10 percent of the world's population will be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2015, the World Bank forecast on Sunday. The Washington-based institution's latest projections expect the number of people who survive on $1.90 a day to drop from 12.8 percent of the human population in 2012 to 9.6 percent this year. That means 702 million people still struggle to survive. But that's a stunning decline from the numbers reported over the last 25 years. According to the World Bank, 37.1 percent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty in 1990. In 2015, that number is estimated to drop to 9.6 percent. Inline image 2 Ending Extreme Poverty and Sharing Prosperity: A Snapshot "This is the best story in the world today -- these projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a press release. "This new forecast of poverty falling into the single digits should give us new momentum and help us focus even more clearly on the most effective strategies to end extreme poverty." Eradicating poverty by 2030 -- a goal set by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations around the world -- hasn't suddenly become easy, Kim warned. "It will be extraordinarily hard, especially in a period of slower global growth, volatile financial markets, conflicts, high youth unemployment, and the EFTA00673219 growing impact of climate change," he said. "But it remains within our grasp, as long as our high aspirations are matched by country-led plans that help the still millions of people living in extreme poverty." Inline image 3 This boy must attend a school with unsanitary conditions on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal. Despite the overall decline, the number of poor is not dropping as fast in some areas entrenched in conflict or dependent on commodity exports, the World Bank noted. Suffering is becoming increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. That region, which accounted for 15 percent of global poverty in 1990, now accounts for halt The region's increased share of the world's poor is largely explained by poverty in East Asia dropping drastically from 50.6 percent in 1990 to a projected 11.9 percent by the end of 2015, but the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is exacerbated by the region's rapid population growth of 2.6 percent a year, experts say. 'The rate at which poverty is falling is less than the rate at which the population is rising, so the number of people living in poverty continues to grow," Laurence Chandy, a fellow with the Brookings Institution, wrote in May. Chandy also pointed to flawed data-collecting practices and a "mismatch between where growth is occurring and where the poor are" in Africa. That's not to say Sub-Saharan Africa hasn't made enormous strides. The World Bank predicts that poverty in the region will fall from 42.6 percent in 2012 to 35.2 percent by the end of this year. The World Bank noted the increase in pollution in the cities of developing nations as another element working against the eradication of poverty overall. "Urban air pollution emerged as a leading cause of ill-health in developing countries—more than triple the impact of malaria, HIV and tuberculosis combined," the bank said in its report. "While trends in 'traditional' water and sanitation problems show great progress over the past 25 years, trends in 'modern' problems of environmental management and sustainability point to the reverse." Lydia O'Connor— Huffington Post — 10/04/15 Who The Hell is Justin Trudeau EFTA00673220  Inline image 1 When I started this piece, I Googled Justin Trudeau and the headings were wife, age, boxing, tattoo and Israel. And if you are not Canadian, most likely you don't know who he is and have never heard of him. So just so you know, Justin Pierre James Trudeau MP (born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who is the Leader of the Liberal Party and the prime minister-designate of Canada. If you look at his pedigree it is obvious that he is going to be Canada's next Prime Minister as he is the eldest son of the 15th Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau. He was first elected as the Member of Parliament in 2008 and re-elected in 2011 and 2015. He has served as the Liberal Party's critic for Youth and Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Immigration, Post- Secondary Education, and Youth and Amateur Sport. On April 14, 2013, Trudeau was elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. And if you were around when his dad was first elected who was initially compared to JFIC, like his dad Justin Trudeau definitely represents the new generation in Canadian politics. At the age of 43 and the second-youngest person ever, Trudeau was designated the next prime minister after leading his party in the October 19, 2015, federal election to a majority government victory. He is expected to take office on November 4, 2015, at which time he will assume the honorific style The Right Honorable for life. But what is unique about Trudeau is that before his meteoric rise in Canadian Politics his resume includes, being a ski-instructor, amateur boxer, bar-bouncer, disc jockey and school teacher. So for all of you Canadian friends of mine who use to tell me that Barrack Obama's resume was too thin for an American President, I can't imagine what you think about your new Canadian Prime Minister. Trudeau first met his wife Sophie Gregoire when they were both children growing up in Montreal, as Gregoire was a classmate and childhood friend of Trudeau's youngest brother, Michel and were reconnected as adults in June 2003, when Gregoire, by then a Quebec television personality, was assigned as nucleau's co-host for a charity ball; they began dating several months later. The couple became engaged in October 2004 and married on May 28, 2005. The couple have three children: Xavier James (born October 2007), Ella-Grace Margaret (February 2009) and Hadrien (born February 2014). EFTA00673221 Born in Montreal in 1975 the future first lady of Canada became a yoga instructor in 2012. According to a bio she studied business at McGill before obtaining a bachelor of arts in communications at l'Universite de Montreal. From there, she worked as a personal shopper at Holt Renfrew and other jobs in advertising and sales, ahead of entering broadcast school. That path brought her to a job writing copy for a news ticker (the "worst job ever," she told Women on the Fence in 2011) before she found work as an entertainment reporter. A fateful meeting with CTV staffers at a 2005 event helped her secure a position as a Quebec correspondent for etalk, where she favored covering celebrities' charity work over gossip about them. Being open about here struggle with bulimia, which started when she wasi7 and carried on in her 20s, the future Canadian First Lady has philanthropic streak all her own, working with the organization called Clinique BACA, which raises awareness of eating disorders. The Quebecer has also served as an ambassador for Because I Am a Girl, a non-profit group working to end gender inequality. Other organizations she has worked with include Girlsfor the Cure, the Women's Heart and Stroke Foundation. Trudeau's ascension marks the end of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's reign as prime minister. First elected to the job in 2006, Harper is currently the second longest-serving leader in the G7. Although he steered Canada through the global financial crisis of 2008, a hallmark of Harper's legacy will be government secrecy, including the so-called muzzling of federal scientists, and cut-throat politics, marked by attack ads and wedge issues. As a result, the win also means sweet redemption for Trudeau's centre-left party. Once among the most successful political parties on the planet, the Liberals were — in the eyes of many — left for dead after years of declining support culminated in scandal and disastrous 2011 election results. A party of pragmatists, Liberals have long frustrated those on the left or right who favor ideological purity. Liberals, some charge, will pivot to where their interests are best served and stand for little beyond winning. And as Ryan Maloney wrote this week in The Huffington Post — "ready or not, they've won once more. In this campaign, they stoodfirmly infavor of spending." While his opponents pledged balanced budgets, Trudeau took the bolder option of promising three years of deficits to more than double infrastructure spending. He also vowed to raise taxes on Canada's "wealthiest one per cent" - those, including him, earning more than $200,000 — so that taxes for middle class families could be lowered. Although his plan provided fodder for those eager to dismiss him as a "tax-and-spend" Liberal, he ultimately won on the message that now is the time to invest, not cut back. How much change can the international community expect from Trudeau's government? It depends on the issue. Here are several ways a new Liberal government might affect the world. • Liberals vow to end Canada's combat mission in Iraq and Syria • A more generous approach to refugees • Yes, Trudeau wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline • Support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (most likely) • Liberals aim to make Canada the latest country to legalize pot EFTA00673222  • A fresh face at the Paris climate conference • An inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women Whether or not, the Prime Minister elect is able to deliver on his promises or changes political objectives is definitely up in the air, as few politicians keep their pre-election promises and when they do it is often to people in the background who are pulling their strings. And yes, talent and passion has played a part, but one has to believe that having the name Trudeau has helped this 43 year-old former amateur boxer, ski instructor, bouncer, disc jockey and school teacher become the next Canadian Prime Minister. ****** Holly Cow China's massive economic advantage over the world is about to disappear Inline image 6 Last month Jim Edwards wrote in Business Insider that we may have finally arrived at a point in history that economists have been dreading for years: the moment when the number of Chinese workers goes into decline for the first time in decades. Since way before the 1990s, China has had one huge economic advantage over the rest of the world. Year after year, the number of people of working age increased, coupled with cheap labor. Economic growth is closely tied to the growth in a country's working population. Simply put, the more people you have working, the more wealth and wages you are likely to create. You can get these extra workers two ways: By making more babies or by letting immigrants come live with you. For over four decades, China's industrial revolution has been pulling in new workers year after year. But that demographic wave is coming to an end, and now the total size of the workforce is about to go into decline, as this chart from Morgan Stanley chief Asia economist Chetan Ahya shows: EFTA00673223  Inline image 5 This will be disastrous for China's economy. Suddenly the country will have an increasing population of older people who don't work and must be supported by a decreasing population of people who do work. You can see the problem in this chart of China's population in 2010 broken down by age. Right now that big bulge is in the years in which people are their most productive at work. Those occupying that bulge are about to retire and stop producing, and the only workers available to support them are the children in that narrow "neck" area at the bottom of the chart: Inline image 4 The population time bomb could not have come at a worse time, because demand for China's exports has collapsed: EFTA00673224  it Inline image 3 In an attempt to get more growth out of declining fundamentals, China has been investing more and more in its businesses and government enterprises. But the more it invests, the more marginal the returns have been, as these two charts from Morgan Stanley show: Inline image 2 As demand collapses, there has been deflation in the producer price index (PPI inflation is a bit like regular consumer price inflation, except ifs for business products and services). Unfortunately for China, all of this has occurred at a time when the country has just taken on a ton of debt, as these two charts show: EFTA00673225  Inline image 1 As we explained earlier, China's debt situation is about the same size as Greece's debt situation. China is more capable of dealing with that debt than Greece is. But it is still a massive overhang on an economy that that is slowing down now and — because of the population issue — about to slow down even more. The scary part for other countries is that China's economy is so huge it functions as both an engine and a supply source for the economy of the rest of the world. These charts indicate that engine just went into reverse. NOW WATCH: Chilling predictions for what the world will look like in a decade Web Link: itoctl=ipYTMcdjpSYabcieTibr.1-L8aGDsz-MR6 ****** Ballooning Diabetes Rates Highlight the High Cost of Cheap Food at: Inline image 1 A 3 year-old weighing 77 pounds was recently diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes The recent case of an American toddler diagnosed with type 2 diabetes highlights the severity of the problems our modem processed food diet causes. According to Reuters the three-year old girl, who weighed in at T7 pounds, is one of the youngest persons ever diagnosed with this obesity-related disease. In the past, type 2 diabetes was referred to as "adult onset" diabetes, and most patients were in the senior category. But as our diets and lifestyles have changed, so has the disease. And, while lack of exercise is certainly a factor, one would be hard-pressed to accuse a two-year old of being too EFTA00673226 sedentary. Clearly, diet plays a more important role in individuals this young. So what's wrong with children's diets these days? Many Babies Are Raised on Sugar In short, most babies and toddlers are fed far too much sugar right from the start. Many parents fail to realize that infant formulas can contain significant amounts of added sugars and starchy fillers which paves the way for chronic disease from day one. Past investigations have also revealed trans fats — now known to promote heart disease — in some formulas, as well as genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, which are also suspected of causing obesity and health problems in the long term, primarily by promoting inflammation and disrupting gut flora. Last year, data3 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that more than 29 million Americans were diagnosed with full-blown type 2 diabetes a statistic researchers predicted in 2001 wouldn't be reached until 2050. A more recent study which also for the first time included estimated disease rates for certain minority groups, suggests as much as HALF of the American public may have either prediabetes or diabetes. Diabetes rates have also soared in other countries. In the UK, rates have risen by 6o percent in the last decade. When you start investigating the diets of babies and young children, these statistics become less surprising. In fact, they're to be expected. One in four Americans eats some type of fast food on a daily basis and nearly half of the money Americans spend on food is spent on fast food meals. More than one