In Davos, a World of Big, Unintelligible Ideas

This week the world’s wealthiest and the best-connected have gathered in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. An exceedingly diverse group of business and policy titans are schmoozing, paneling, and work-shopping their way through the world’s top intractables: climate change; a tattered euro zone; and who could forget the eternally vexing problem of “Catalysing Multistakeholder Value”?

Unfortunately, we may never know if the galactically rich and erudite membership of the WEF actually hashes out good ideas at their meetings, for those ideas are always cloaked in the most abstruse business jargon. The program for this year’s Davos summit is practically a B-school tone poem. “Sailing Towards a Circular Economy.” “The Values Context.” And, neatly dovetailing with the meeting’s overall theme of ”Dynamic Resilience,” an address by Christine Lagarde is titled, “Resilient Dynamism.”

Is this an outbreak restricted to Davos? Sorry, close but no deliverable: Materials posted for the WEF’s Summit on the Global Agenda, which takes place a few months before Davos, explain how the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils meet to discuss “how to transform new models into collaborative, sustained processes.” At the Global Meeting of Regional Organizations, more “thought leaders” meet up for an “ongoing dialogue to catalyse international cooperation in the global public interest.”

Feel those actionables synergizing yet? The yearly “summer Davos” in China, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, is “a unique platform for multistakeholder exchange and learning among global leaders.”

Maybe words are just not the WEF’s strong suit. These are “ideators,” not writers. Possibly with that in mind, the WEF tried to sum up the conclusions from this year’s Rebuilding Europe’s Competitiveness with one of those live whiteboard sketching services. Alas, the results, while fun to look at, don’t really clear things up.
Courtesy World Economic Forum

Come January, all the clear-as-carbon ideas spawned at the WEF’s lesser meetings are tossed into the Davos thresher, where the most influencing of the influencers shell out a few hundred thousand to attack the real questions. Sadly, those questions include head-scratchers like “how can jazz serve as a strategic model for diplomacy, leadership, collaboration and innovation?” While they mull that one, the world waits with bated breath to see what truths the forum will carry down from the Alps. Actually, that last one doesn’t seem silly once you consider the similarities between jazz and the WEF: It’s all about the buzzwords they’re not saying.

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Canadian natives vow to battle on as chief hospitalized

(Reuters) – Canadian native leaders vowed on Thursday to carry on the fight for better living conditions as a chief at the center of a simmering aboriginal protest movement was hospitalized after ending her six-week hunger strike.

Chief Theresa Spence, from a remote northern Ontario reserve, ended the strike after holding negotiations with other aboriginal leaders and opposition lawmakers in the Canadian Parliament.

“There was an awakening here,” Danny Metatawabin, a spokesman for Spence, told a news conference in Ottawa. “Now we have to move forward.”

“The fight does not end because the hunger strike ends.”

Spence, who survived on a liquid diet while living in a tepee, was hospitalized for observation and could be released later today or Friday, Metatawabin said.

Spence traveled to Ottawa from her remote northern Canadian reserve in December and set up camp on an island in the Ottawa River in view of Parliament to raise awareness about poor living conditions for natives across Canada.

She was a flashpoint in a boisterous Canadian aboriginal protest movement called “Idle No More.” It began with four women in the province of Saskatchewan turning to Twitter and other social networks in a bid to rally North American natives.

They were protesting legislation by Canada’s Conservative government that they say promotes resource development while reducing environmental protection for lakes and rivers on their lands.

“These acts, these bills, they will kill us,” said Raymond Robinson, an aboriginal elder from Manitoba who also ended a six-week hunger strike on Thursday. “We just need our equal opportunities.”

Ottawa spends about C$ 11 billion ($ 11.1 billion) a year on its aboriginal population of 1.2 million. But living conditions for many are poor, and some reserves have high rates of poverty, addiction, joblessness and suicide.

Canadian native groups staged a day of action earlier this month with protests that included blocking a rail line and slowing traffic across an Ontario-to-Michigan bridge crucial to U.S.-Canadian trade.

(Reporting By Russ Blinch; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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2nd NY hospital warns of insulin pen infection

OLEAN, N.Y. (AP) — A second western New York hospital is notifying patients that they may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C through the improper sharing of insulin pens, hospital officials said Thursday.

Olean General Hospital was mailing letters to 1,915 patients who received insulin at the hospital from November 2009 through last week, advising them to call to arrange for blood testing. The risk of infection is very low, hospital officials said, but they wanted patients to be aware of the possibility.

Hospital officials said the action follows an internal review conducted after the Veterans Affairs hospital in Buffalo discovered more than 700 patients may have been exposed to blood-borne pathogens over a two-year period when multi-use pens intended for use by a single patient may have been used on more than one person.

“Interviews with nursing staff indicated that the practice of using one patient’s insulin pen for other patients may have occurred on some patients,” said Timothy Finan, president and chief executive of Upper Allegheny Health System, the parent company of the Olean hospital.

Olean General had not identified any specific patients who may have received an injection from another patient’s pen and knew of no cases of infection, Finan said in a news release.

“Regardless, to the extent there may be a chance, however remote, that any patient was provided insulin from an insulin pen other than their own, Olean General Hospital has decided to be proactive and aggressive with respect to notification of our patients,” the release said.

As was the case in Buffalo, needles were changed with each use of the insulin pens, the Olean hospital said. The risk of infection remained, however, because stored insulin in the pen cartridge could have become contaminated by a back flow of blood with each use.

“We are very aware that while the risk of infection from insulin pen re-use is extremely small, cross-contamination from an insulin pen is possible,” Finan said.

Federal health agencies have been warning against sharing insulin pens for several years. The Food and Drug Administration issued an alert in March 2009 after learning that more than 2,000 patients may have been exposed at a Texas hospital between 2007 and 2009.

A clinical alert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year came amid continued reports of the practice.

The pens have been removed from use at Olean General. They were never used at a second hospital in the Upper Allegheny Health System, Bradford Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania, Finan said.

Revelations of the issue at the VA hospital led the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General to initiate a review of the Buffalo hospital.

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AT&T subscriber growth beats but profit margin misses

NEW YORK (Reuters) – AT&T Inc‘s fourth-quarter profit was lower than expected but the telephone company promised earnings and revenue growth this year even if the economy does not improve.

Along with growth from its existing business, Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said on Thursday that AT&T is also eyeing overseas opportunities. He said the idea would be to profit from wireless expansion in countries where services are not yet as advanced as in the United States.

“The question is if there are opportunities for us to participate in that growth around the world” Stephenson said on a conference all with analysts. “There’s just a lot of different ways to think about it. There’s a lot of options.”

Stephenson declined to say if AT&T would make overseas acquisitions in response to a question about a recent report that it was considering European transactions. Instead, he listed options such as international roaming deals for AT&T customers traveling overseas and the possibility for overseas expansion of a home security business AT&T is developing.

AT&T, the No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider, posted stronger than expected fourth quarter subscriber growth but this also put pressure on its wireless profit margin as it spends heavily on every new subscriber it signs up.

It added 780,000 mobile subscribers in the quarter compared with the average expectation for 699,200 from 10 analysts, with the lowest estimate at 475,000 and the majority of estimates at 700,000 or higher.

AT&T’s wireless growth was slower than bigger rival Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, which reported subscriber additions of 2.1 million on Tuesday. Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider, does not report its results until February 7.

AT&T’s fourth quarter loss was $ 3.86 billion or 68 cents per share, compared with a loss of $ 6.68 billion or $ 1.12 per share in the year-ago quarter when it shouldered big charges including the break-up fee for its failed purchase of T-Mobile USA, a Deutsche Telekom unit.

Excluding unusual items earnings per share was 44 cents per share, a penny lower than Wall Street analysts had expected, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

“When you have better subscriber growth its understandable your earnings miss a little,” said Guggenheim Securities analyst Shing Yin, adding that the results overall were “acceptable.”

While AT&T’s sale of 8.6 million Apple Inc iPhones in the quarter helped subscriber numbers it hurt profits as AT&T pays Apple a big subsidy for every iPhone it sells so it can offer discounts to customers who commit to contracts.

AT&T’s wireless service profit margin based on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization was 29.1 percent, compared with the average expectation for 31.29 percent from ten analysts contacted by Reuters.

Stephenson said he would keep a close watch on a strategy outlined by smaller rival T-Mobile USA to offer smartphone installment plans under which consumers would pay for their smartphones gradually. If it followed this plan, AT&T would not have to pay a big upfront subsidy for phones.

“That’s something we’ve looked at on several occasions. I kind of like that idea,” Stephenson said. “Its something we’re going to be watching.”

AT&T forecast 2013 earnings per share growth in the upper-single digit percentage range or higher and revenue growth exceeding 2 percent based on strength in wireless and its wireline consumer business. It said that the growth assumed “little improvement” in the economy.

“Guidance was good but not dramatically good,” said Hudson Square Research analyst Todd Rethemeier.

Revenue rose to $ 32.58 billion from $ 32.5 billion and compared with Wall Street expectations for $ 32.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

AT&T shares were down 2 cents in late trade at $ 33.73 after closing at $ 33.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Additional reporting by Nicole Leske; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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Obama inauguration TV viewership down by 17.2 million from 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Some 20.6 million Americans watched President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony and related events on television, according to ratings data on Wednesday. That’s down sharply from his first inauguration in 2009.

TV ratings company Nielsen said 18 U.S. television networks and cable channels carried live coverage over about six hours of Monday’s swearing-in ceremony, speech and parade in Washington.

Monday’s TV audience was a drop of 17.2 million from 2009, when 37.8 million Americans – the highest number since Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration – watched Obama formally take office as the first black president in U.S. history.

The Nielsen figures did not measure viewers who watched Monday’s daylong ceremonies online via live streaming on many TV channels, nor overseas audiences.

Second-term inaugurations of U.S. presidents have traditionally drawn smaller numbers of viewers than those for first terms.

Reagan’s 1981 inauguration drew the biggest television audience of the past 44 years, attracting some 41.8 million U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Trott)

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34-Year Prison Sentence in Colorado Child Porn Case

According to the United States Attorney’s Office , District of Colorado, an Indiana man has been sentenced to serve more than 34 years in a federal prison this week after pleading guilty of attempted coercion and enticement to engage in unlawful sexual activity with a minor child and distribution of child pornography in Colorado. Here are the details.

* Steven Raines, 35, of Fort Wayne, Ind., was first charged by criminal complaint on July 2 and was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on July 9, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported. He pleaded guilty to those charges in October and was sentenced on Tuesday.

* On April 1, Raines began chatting online with an undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent out of Glenwood Springs, Colo., after the agent entered a publicly accessible chat room whose topic focused on sex with children. The agent was pretending to be a single mother of two daughters under the age of 16.

* An individual, later identified as Raines, engaged in a conversation with the agent and expressed interest in having sex with the agent and the two minor children, stating that he had been searching for 20 years for someone like the agent who would provide access to her children, the attorney’s office reported.

* For the next three months, according to the attorney’s office, Raines continued chatting and emailing with the agent via his smart phone. He began sending pictures depicting child pornography and making plans to travel to Colorado to have sex with the two young girls, including one who was under the age of 6.

* Raines admitted that he had been a pedophile since the age of 15, the attorney’s office stated.

* Raines made plans to bring his child pornography with him to Colorado in order to “teach” the girls, the attorney’s office reported. He made statements about his own children and admitted to sexually molesting another child and producing pornographic images of his sexual abuse of that child.

* In late June, Raines began traveling to Colorado, arriving on June 30 to a residence in Garfield County, Colo., which was the address the agent had provided to him.

* According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Raines was taken into custody at that address and agents and officers discovered approximately 130 images and 84 videos of child pornography on a cell phone that was seized from Raines at that time.

* Further discs containing child pornography were discovered at Raines’ home and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children identified 23 known series of child pornography on his phone and email.

* According to U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado, Raines will receive a severe penalty of decades in prison followed by a life term of supervised release.

* The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, the attorney’s office reported. The Homeland Security Investigations Resident Agent in Charge in Indianapolis and the United States Attorney’s Office in Fort Wayne, Ind., also assisted in the investigation and prosecution.

* According to an October press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, Raines’ plea agreement stipulated that he would receive a sentence of at least 30 years. He was ordered held without bond until sentencing.

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Cricket-Williamson’s unbeaten ton boosts New Zealand

KIMBERLEY, South Africa, Jan 22 (Reuters) – A brilliant undefeated innings of 145 from Kane Williamson propelled New Zealand to 279 for eight after a slow start in the second one-day international against South Africa on Tuesday.

The Black Caps, who won the first game of the three-match series, were asked to bat first by South African captain Faf du Plessis and lost two early wickets after failing to score in the first three overs.

However, a partnership of 127 between Williamson and Grant Elliott (48) changed the momentum of the innings and, despite a middle-order collapse, the hosts will face a target of 280 from their 50 overs.

Earlier, Martin Guptill was dismissed for his second consecutive duck when he fell in the third over to Rory Kleinveldt. (Reporting by Michael Todt; Editing by Mark Meadows; [email protected]; +44 20 7542 7933; Reuters Messaging:; [email protected])

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“Zero Dark Thirty” heads to Europe: will torture controversy follow?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Best Picture Oscar nominee “Zero Dark Thirty” rolls out in several Western European countries starting Wednesday, absent – at least for now – the firestorm of criticism that has accompanied its U.S. release.

The movie has been a lightning rod for detractors in the U.S. over its perceived endorsement of torture, an allegation that director Kathryn Bigelow and Sony executives have repeatedly denied.

“Overall, I believe Europeans are far less ambiguous than Americans when it comes to the use of torture,” Bruce Nash of box-office tracking service TheNumbers told TheWrap.

“To the extent that the film is perceived as pro-torture — whether it is or not, and I don’t believe it is — if that somehow became how the film is defined, that would hurt it at the box office,” Nash said. “But I don’t think that’s the case.”

Bigelow, screenwriter Marc Boal and several others involved with the picture have been in Europe for the past two weeks to promote the film. Boal told the New York Times that interviewers in France seemed to regard the torture issue as belonging to the Americans, and in fact appreciated the film’s head-on approach.

Indeed, the film begins its foreign run with a lot of momentum. The dark thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden was No. 1 in its first week of wide release on January 11 and has finished a strong second for the past two weeks.

Of course, the publicity surrounding the torture issue hasn’t hurt it at the box office in the U.S. The domestic haul for “Zero Dark Thirty” to this point is nearly $ 57 million, ahead of pre-release projections and likely heading for $ 100 million.

The film’s five Oscar nominations and the critical acclaim it has received have helped, too, but even Sony has acknowledged the flood of news stories raised the film’s profile.

Universal will be handling the film’s release in most countries in Western Europe, after buying rights to those territories from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, which financed it and cut distribution deals territory by territory.

It will open in France and Switzerland on Wednesday and in the U.K and Finland on Friday. Its debut in Germany will be on January 31, and Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Norway and South Africa will follow in February. Regional distributors will handle the film’s February releases in Russia and Latin America, and the Annapurna is still considering a China run.

“Zero Dark Thirty” is one of three Best Picture Oscar nominees that is currently hitting overseas theaters with a distributor different than the one that handled its U.S.release.

Sony, which along with the Weinstein Company co-financed “Django Unchained,” is overseeing the foreign release of Quentin Tarantino’s slave saga. It opened last weekend and took in $ 48 million from 54 overseas markets.

DreamWorks’ “Lincoln,” distributed by Disney in North America, debuted in Spain and Mexico this past weekend via Fox.

With an explanatory preamble approved by director Steven Spielberg added, “Lincoln” opened to $ 2.3 million on 344 screens in Spain and to $ 729,000 on 259 screens in Mexico. “Lincoln” goes much wider next weekend, when it opens in 19 markets including Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia and the U.K..

As for the torture controversy that accompanied “Zero Dark Thirty’s” U.S. release, it doesn’t seem to have caused the slightest ripple.

Indeed, the fact that torture has been used in the war against terror has been seen as a reality in Europe for some time.

In December, Europe’s highest court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, concluded that techniques used routinely by the Bush-era CIA in connection with its extraordinary-renditions program constituted torture.

If torture does not become an issue, The Numbers’ Nash said it should do solid business. He pointed out that other U.S. films about the war on terror have done pretty well overseas. In 2006, “United 93″ made $ 31 million domestically and nearly $ 45 million overseas. Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” did $ 70 million in the U.S. and went to make $ 92 million abroad that same year.

Bigelow’s last movie, “The Hurt Locker,’” was about a U.S. bomb squad in the Iraq war, and it nearly doubled its $ 17 million domestic take, with $ 32 million from abroad in 2009. The bulk of that foreign run came after its surprise victory over “Avatar” for the Best Picture Oscar, however.

This weekend’s U.K. and France debuts will be telling, but Universal quietly opened “Zero Dark Thirty” on just 250 screens in Spain on January 4. With a minimum of criticism, politicians’ ire or public furor, the movie has taken in nearly $ 4 million over three weekends.

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Intimidating debt collectors push Britons to suicide: report

LONDON (Reuters) – Irresponsible lending and intimidating debt collectors are pushing thousands of people in Britain into depression and suicide, a report said on Wednesday and separate data showed more people are taking their own lives.

Many people already struggling with the economic slowdown, wage freezes and benefit cuts were often overwhelmed by tactics used by some money lenders, including persistent phone calls and threatening letters, said the paper.

“Debt clients frequently feel humiliated, disconnected and entrapped, with the process of debt collection having a clear impact on people’s mental health,” the report by researchers from England’s University of Brighton said.

“The government must take urgent action to tackle the problem of irresponsible lending and intimidatory collection tactics which has left thousands of people trapped in a spiral of debt and at risk of depression and even suicide,” it said.

Separately, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released on Tuesday showed a “significant” rise in suicides in 2012.

The Brighton report, launched on Wednesday by British parliamentarian Molly Meacher, said there were cases of individuals not eating properly and asking their young children for money to tide them over.

One individual who owed money described the effect of his wife’s credit card lapsing.

“I was very close to calling the doctor to her because she is that close to breaking because of … these continual phone calls,” the man was quoted as saying.

SIGNIFICANT RISE

The total number of suicides in the UK hit 6,045 in 2011, a 7.8 percent increase on 2010 with deaths among men accounting for the largest proportion, according to figures from the ONS.

A total of 4,552 men took their own lives in 2011 compared with 1,493 women.

British mental health charity SANE said the downturn in Britain, which is struggling to maintain economic growth, was behind a “significant” rise in the number of suicides, reflecting a trend seen in other Western countries.

“These figures … reveal the profound human consequences of the economic downturn, in which unemployment, debt and the relationship breakdowns that often follow can push people who may be already vulnerable to take their own lives,” said Marjorie Wallace, SANE’s chief executive.

Suicide rates in the United States have also risen more steeply in recent years.

“It is also worrying that the group most at risk should be middle-aged men, who are not usually perceived to be at risk,” said Wallace, commenting on the ONS figures.

Among men aged between 45 and 59 years old, the suicide rate increased significantly between 2007 and 2011 to 22.2 deaths per 100,000 people, the ONS said.

(Editing by Kate Kelland and Andrew Heavens)

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Bank chief calls for further action

22 January 2013 Last updated at 15:53 ET

Mr King was speaking to CBI delegates in Belfast

Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King has called for further action to boost the UK’s ailing economy, in a speech in Belfast.

He said much has been done by the government and the Bank, but more was needed, particularly to restore confidence in banks.

Sir Mervyn said there were signs a “gentle recovery” was under way.

He also defended the Bank’s inflation targeting but said to review it given recent events would be sensible.

Sir Mervyn, who steps down from his post in June, said the Bank had allowed inflation to remain above the target 2% rate, as raising interest rates to tackle price rises would have created a deeper recession and pushed up unemployment.

But he said the Bank’s current remit did not specify how it should “strike a balance between growth and inflation in the short run”.

This, he said, meant there were “certainly aspects of the inflation targeting regime to consider”.

His comments come after his successor, the current Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, said the Bank’s 2% target rate might need be more flexible to allow for higher growth.

‘Squeeze’

Speaking to CBI delegates in the Northern Irish capital, Sir Mervyn highlighted how the economic recovery in the UK has been “noticeably slower” than in many other countries.

He said this was largely down to a “deep and protracted squeeze” on many people’s real incomes, as inflation outstrips pay rises and energy and food prices increase.

He also highlighted the extent to which UK banks were forced to rein in lending after borrowing too much in the run-up to the financial crisis, and the impact on exports of the eurozone debt crisis.

To combat all this, the Bank has cut interest rates to record lows and pumped £375bn into the economy to try and stimulate demand under the programme known as quantitative easing (QE).

QE was “crucial in avoiding a depression,” he said.

In conjunction with the government, the Bank has also made about £60bn available to banks on the condition they lend it on to businesses and individuals.

Higher inflation

But Sir Mervyn said more needed to be done.

“There remains spare capacity – certainly in the labour market,” he said.

“So should we do more to revive the patient? The short answer is yes.”

He talked of the need to restore confidence in the banking system and to implement reforms to boost investment and spending by companies and individuals.

He also expressed disappointment at higher-than-expected inflation, which stands at 2.7%, but reiterated the Bank’s belief that the rate would come back down to its target rate of 2% over the next two years.

Sir Mervyn argued, in the long run, the Bank must maintain its 2% target, as price stability must remain the primary responsibility of all central banks.

He also said low interest rates simply encouraged spending today at the expense of spending tomorrow, and so were not a sustainable way to achieve long-term growth.

Sir Mervyn also pointed to a “gentle [economic] recovery” and some grounds for optimism, such as improving credit conditions and lower mortgage rates, and the fact that companies were sitting on large piles of money.

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