Podcasts about World Bank

“Torn” is a new documentary about world-renowned mountain climber Alex Lowe and how his family coped following his 1999 death in the Himalayas. “When his body was discovered and our family made the decision to go back to Tibet together to recover his remains and put him to rest, it brought all that [trauma] back to the surface for me. … I think coming out of that trip was really the impetus for me in wanting to make ‘Torn,'” says filmmaker Max Lowe.  With the Omicron variant in the U.S., President Joe Biden announced new plans today to mitigate COVID spread, which includes ensuring insurers pay back members for costs of at-home COVID tests.  Around 150 million people around the world could be forced to move because of climate change within the next few decades, according to the World Bank. Climate migration is already happening in California and reshaping political environments. Finally, critics review the newest films: “Flee,” “Benedetta,” “The Hand of God,” “Drive My Car,” and “The Power of the Dog.”

Daniela Ligiero, PhD, is the Executive Director and CEO of Together for Girls, a global, public-private partnership dedicated to ending violence against children, especially sexual violence against girls. The partnership includes five UN agencies, the governments of the U.S. & Canada, several private sector organizations and more than 20 country governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, working together to generate comprehensive data and solutions to this public health and human rights epidemic. Dr. Ligiero also serves as the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.  Before she joined Together for Girls, she served as the VP of Girls and Women's Strategy at the UN Foundation and developed the foundation's gender integration strategy. In addition, she spent over 5 years at the U.S. Department of State where she led the integration of gender issues into all foreign policy and investments in global health—working with over 70 countries and over $1 billion in investments. She helped develop the first ever International U.S. Government Strategy to End Gender-Based Violence.  Dr. Ligiero also served in leadership roles at UNICEF, as Chief of HIV and then as Senior Program Officer in UNICEF Brazil. In addition, she has held positions at the World Bank and the US Senate, and has worked directly with survivors of sexual assault in a variety of settings. She is also a survivor of sexual violence herself, and has been speaking publicly about her story for the last decade. She earned her PhD in counseling & community psychology from UMD, College Park, ranked the #1 program in the U.S. Dr. Ligiero is fluent in 4 languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish and French.See the Keep Kids Safe U.S. National Blueprint to End Sexual Violence Against Children and Adolescents (launched Nov. 18, 2021).In this episode:What do you do as the CEO of Together for Girls?What is advocacy, and how is it helping to end sexual violence?If you could implement any policies right now for prevention and healing, what would they be?What barriers do you face as you work to change policy ?How did you learn to harness the power of storytelling to further your organization's mission?Sexual violence - prevalenceHow did your interest in psychology evolve?Why did you choose to pursue your PhD in counseling and community psychology?Why did you decide not to pursue clinical work? How does that training still help you today?Clinical vs. counseling psychologyUsing your psychology degree for policy changeAs a survivor yourself, how did you cope with counseling survivors of sexual violence in your training?What was it like to work on Capitol Hill?How did you help develop an HIV response program for the U.S. Department of State?Being the HIV lead for UNICEF in Brazil and then the senior gender advisor for the Department of StateWhat does your daily life look like at Together for Girls?What skills are you using every day? Advice for audience members interested in psychology, policy, and social justiceWhat skill, quality, or general factor has served you no matter where you went in life?  Visit psychmic.com to sign up for the newsletter, where you'll get career tips, grad school resources, and job opportunities straight to your inbox! Follow @psych_mic on Instagram to submit questions for speakers and stay in the loop.Music by: Adam Fine 

With our guest Tom Kerr, Lead Climate Scientist for the South Asia region for the World Bank, we kick off a discussion around global climate policy. We'll take a look at the World Bank and its fundamental role in combating climate change and pushing for expanding prosperity globally.About The World BankTom Kerr Bio The World Bank's South Asia Climate Roadmap   For more information, please visit www.ge.com/power/gas and follow GE's Power business on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can learn more about the Cutting Carbon podcast here and please consider subscribing to the podcast on your player of choice.

Not all conversations are of equal importance. There are some that become pivotal to our life's purpose and success. But how do we know which ones they are and how should we prepare for them? That's where this show and Sarah Rozenthuler come in.  Sarah is a chartered psychologist, dialogue coach and leadership consultant with over 15 years' experience consulting to many of the biggest profit and not for profit organisations around the world, including BP, Discovery Inc, Standard Chartered Bank, the World Bank, Choice Support and Booktrust.  With deep expertise in coaching teams, making dialogue authentic and connecting people with a compelling purpose, she inspires leaders, empowers teams and strengthens organizations to generate competitive advantage and become a force for good.  Sarah is also the author of How to Have Meaningful Conversations (Watkins, 2012) and Powered by Purpose: Energise Your People To Do Great Work (FT Pearson, 2020.) Her work has been widely featured in the media including in the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian and BBC Business online.  Enjoy!   What you'll learn: Why Sarah became a business psychologist. What a dialogue coach is. The difference between authentic dialogue and normal conversation. How authentic dialogue can transform a team's performance and an individuals' well being. What a life changing conversation is. How to prepare for ‘Big' conversations. How speakers take these ways of communicating to connect more powerfully with an audience. The core skills that leaders need to develop to navigate their way through these uncertain times. Three tips for having more meaningful conversations How Sarah uses stories and speaking to grow her business.   All things Sarah: https://www.bridgeworkconsulting.com https://sarahrozenthuler.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rozenthuler-a952824/  Twitter @srozenthuler    Books:  Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch   Resources: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thespeakingclub/ https://www.saraharcher.co.uk/challenge  https://www.facebook.com/SarahArcherSpeak/ https://www.saraharcher.co.uk https://www.standoutpitch.com Thanks for listening!   To share your thoughts:                                                       leave a comment below.     Share this show on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.  To help the show out:     Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and review really help get the word out and I read each one.     Subscribe on iTunes.

China's economy is slowing while America's overheats, prompting Jerome Powell to suggest this week that the Fed could act faster than planned. As the Omicron variant triggers a fresh wave of travel restrictions, is the world economy caught between a rock and a hard place? Host Patrick Lane and Henry Curr, our economics editor, assess the threats to global growth.With Carmen Reinhart, senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank group, and Wang Tao, chief China economist and head of Asia research for UBS, an investment bank.We would love to hear from you—please take a moment to complete our listener survey at economist.com/moneytalkssurvey Sign up for our new weekly newsletter dissecting the big themes in markets, business and the economy at economist.com/moneytalks For full access to print, digital and audio editions, subscribe to The Economist at www.economist.com/podcastoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

China's economy is slowing while America's overheats, prompting Jerome Powell to suggest this week that the Fed could act faster than planned. As the Omicron variant triggers a fresh wave of travel restrictions, is the world economy caught between a rock and a hard place? Host Patrick Lane and Henry Curr, our economics editor, assess the threats to global growth.With Carmen Reinhart, senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank group, and Wang Tao, chief China economist and head of Asia research for UBS, an investment bank.We would love to hear from you—please take a moment to complete our listener survey at economist.com/moneytalkssurvey Sign up for our new weekly newsletter dissecting the big themes in markets, business and the economy at economist.com/moneytalks For full access to print, digital and audio editions, subscribe to The Economist at www.economist.com/podcastoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is "The Leading Voices in Food" podcast but today we're speaking with a leading voice in tobacco control. "How come," you might ask, "why?" So I believe for many years that the parallels between the tobacco industry and food industry practices are nothing short of stunning, and that our field would do very well to learn lessons learned from the pioneers in the tobacco wars. Our guest today is Dr. Kenneth Warner, Distinguished Emeritus Professor and former Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. Ken's research focuses on the economic and policy aspects of tobacco and health. Interview Summary   So Ken, you and I have a long history, and I thought it might be instructive to mention just a little bit of it because you really helped shape some of the ways I think about addressing food policy. So I first became familiar with your work long before I met you in person, when I was teaching classes at Yale. I was assigning papers you wrote on tobacco control and I was especially interested in work that you'd done on tobacco taxes. It really gave me the idea of pushing ahead with food-related taxes. Then finally I got a chance to meet you in person at a meeting that was hosted by the first President George Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on cancer control. You and I got to talking about similarities between the tobacco industry behavior and the way the food industry was behaving. We were both struck by the similarities. That led us to write a paper together that was published in 2009 in "The Milbank Quarterly." And I have to say, of all the papers I've published over my career, this was one of my favorites because I really enjoyed working with you. I learned a ton from it, and it really, I thought, made some very important points. And I'd just like to mention the title of that paper because it pretty much summarizes what it found. So the title was, "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?" In my mind, the playbooks are still very similar, and that's why it's really interesting to talk to you today, get a little sense of what's happening more recently, and importantly, think about what lessons are learned from tobacco control. I wanted to bring up one thing from that paper that I always found fascinating, which was the discussion about something called "The Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers." Could you describe what that was and what role you think it played in history?   Sure. Just to give you some context for it, the first two major papers that implicated smoking in lung cancer were published in major medical journals in 1950. In December of 1952 there was an article in the "Reader's Digest," which incidentally was the only major magazine that did not accept cigarette advertising, that was entitled, "Cancer by the Carton." And this was the American public's first real exposure to the risks associated with smoking, and it led to a two-year decline in cigarette smoking, a very sharp decline, something that was unprecedented in the history of the cigarette. Following that there was some research published on mice and cancer. And needless to say, the tobacco industry was getting pretty nervous about this. So the executives of all the major tobacco firms met in New York City in December of 1953, and they collaborated on what became a public relations strategy, which drove their behavior for many years thereafter. The first thing they did was to publish "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers" in January of 1954. This "Frank Statement" was published in over 400 magazines and newspapers, and it reached an estimated audience of some 80 million Americans, which would be a very good percentage of all Americans in those years. And they talked about the fact that there was this evidence out there, but they said, "We feel it is in the public interest," this is a quote, "to call attention to the fact that eminent doctors and research scientists have publicly questioned the claimed significance of this research." Then they went on to say, and I quote again, "We accept an interest in people's health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business. We believe the products we make are not injurious to health and," and this is the kicker, "we always have and always will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to safeguard the public health," end quote. They went on to say that they would support research on smoking and health, and, of course, that they would always be the good guys in this story. This was designed as part of a strategy to obfuscate, to deceive the public, basically, to lie about what they already knew about the health hazards associated with smoking. And it was essentially a first very public step in a campaign that, one could argue, in many ways has persisted ever since, although, obviously, now the tobacco companies admit that they're killing their customers and they admit that smoking causes cancer and heart disease and lung disease and so on. But that was kind of the beginning of the strategy that drove their behavior for decades.   You know, that was one of the issues we raised in our paper. How similar were the big food companies in talking about concern for the health of their customers, planting doubt with the science, pledging to make changes that were in the interest of public health, agreeing to collaborate with public health officials? All those things played out in the food arena as well. And that's just one of many places where the food industry behave very, very similar to what the tobacco industry has done. But boy, is it interesting to hear that particular anecdote and to learn of the cynical behavior of the industry. So fast forward from there, and you think about the tobacco industry executives testifying before Congress that nicotine wasn't addictive, and you have that same process playing out many years later. These similarities are really remarkable.   So let's talk about your work and some of the issues that I think apply to the food area, and let's talk about taxes at the beginning. So I worked for years on the issue of soda taxes, and these taxes now exist in more than 50 countries around the world and in a number of major cities in the US, including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Oakland. And these taxes have been shown to have really positive effects, and they seem to be growing around the world. And I'd like to understand what you see as the overall findings from the work on tobacco taxes. But before we do that, you have a very interesting story to tell about how the tobacco control community responded when you first began speaking about taxes. It turns out to be taxes on tobacco have had whopping effects. But what was the initial reaction to people in that field?   Yeah, it is kind of an interesting story. So around 1980, when I first started writing and talking about tobacco taxation as a method of reducing smoking, I used to have public health audiences booing me. If they had rotten tomatoes with them, they would have been throwing them.   You know, Ken, it's hard to imagine because now these taxes are completely routine and accepted.   Yes, they're not only routine and accepted, they are a first principle of tobacco control. They are enshrined in the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. So they really are kind of the first thing we turn to because we know that they work. We know that they reduce smoking.   But let me give you a story about how I learned that this is not only a phenomenon with people smoking. It's a phenomenon with people using all other drugs, and it turns out it's a trans-species law, the Law of Demand. And that law says, basically, that if you increase price, the demand for the commodity will decrease. Well, in the beginning, the public health audiences believed two things. They believed that smokers were so addicted that they would not be affected by price, so it was ridiculous to even think about it. And they said, you have to have intrinsic motivators to get people to quit smoking. They have to care about their kids. They want to see their kids grow up, their spouses, and so on, and not extrinsic forces like a tax. So those were their two objections. So the story that I think is really kind of fun. I was on a plane flying to a small conference in Kansas City. This is sometime in the early '80s. And I happened to be seated next to Jack Henningfield, who is probably the preeminent psychopharmacologist dealing with nicotine, maybe in the world. And we were talking about price response, the fact that cigarette taxes work. And he said, "You know, I've got something I want to show you here." And he pulled out some what are called response cost curves from the psychology literature. And this is where you take a laboratory animal, in this instance addicted to narcotics or other addictive substances, and you give them a challenge to get their drugs. So first, I should note that these animals are so addicted that if they're given the choice between food and their drug, they will choose their drug, and they will in fact end up dying because they place a preference for the drug over food. But it turns out that when you increase the price of the drug to them, they decrease the amount that they consume. So what do I mean by that? If they have to push a lever, a bar, a certain number of times to get a dose of their drug, and you raise the number of bar pushes per dose, they will dose themselves with fewer doses. I took a look at these curves, and basically, a response cost curve for these lab animals is essentially a demand curve as we economists see it. And I calculated the price elasticity of demand, which is our standard measure of the responsiveness to price. And it turns out that addicted laboratory rats have essentially the same price elasticity of demand, the same price responsiveness that human beings do to cigarettes.   That's an absolutely fascinating story. And, you know, I know Jack, and have admired his work, as you have, and it's amazing to think about that conversation on a plane, and what sort of scientific work it led to, and how that, in turn, found its way into policies that exist around the world. So tell us then about tobacco taxes, and how high do they have to be in order to affect consumption in an appreciable way, and have they worked in reducing tobacco use, and what's your overall take on that?   So we have, quite literally, hundreds of studies in countries around the world, and we know a lot but we don't know everything. So we don't know, for example, if there's a particular price above which, you know, nobody will use the product. We don't have even really good data suggesting of, you know, what's the minimum increase in price that you have to have to have a noticeable impact. Overall, the literature suggests that if you increase the price of cigarettes by 10%, you will decrease the quantity demanded by 3 to 4%. Now, what this means is that roughly half of that decreased demand reflects decreases in the number of cigarettes that continuing smokers use, while the other half represents decreases in smoking, people quitting or kids not starting. So the demand is what we call price inelastic. The price change itself is larger, proportionately, than the decrease in consumption. But that decrease in consumption is still substantial and it's enough to have a large impact.   Now, cigarette prices vary all over the world, and cigarette prices vary primarily because of taxation differences. So if you go to the Scandinavian countries, you'll find that a pack of cigarettes will run $15 or more. If you go to Australia, you're looking at $30 or more a pack. In the US, currently, we're looking at an average price in the range of about 7 to $8. In some jurisdictions, like New York City, it's $10 or more. But the prices in the US are actually relatively low among the more developed nations in the world. Any tax increase will have an impact but obviously the larger tax increases will have larger impacts. And there's some good and bad news in tobacco taxation, particularly in a country like ours, and this is, again, true for most of the developed world. Smoking is now concentrated in marginalized populations. I'm talking about low socioeconomic groups, the LGBTQ community, and racial minorities, in particular. If you think of this as an economic phenomenon, when you raise the price on cigarettes, you're going to hit the worst-off economically segments of the population hard. That's the bad news. The good news is that those people, precisely because they are poor, tend to be much more price responsive than high-income smokers, and more of them will quit. So we have this problem that the tax is regressive, it imposes a larger burden on the poor, but the health effect is progressive. It will reduce the gap between the rich and poor in terms of smoking rates. And of great importance, there's an enormous gap between the rich and poor in this country in life expectancy, and as much as half of that may be differences in smoking rates.   Ken, there's a hundred follow-up questions I could ask, and I find this discussion absolutely fascinating. One thing that came into my mind was that some years ago I looked at the relationship of taxes, state by state in the US, and rates of disease like lung cancer and heart disease. And there was plenty of data because there was a huge range in tobacco taxes. Places like New York and Rhode Island had very high taxes, and the tobacco Southern states, like North Carolina, had very low taxes. But what's the sort of recent take on that, and the relationship between taxes and actual disease?   Well, it's still true. And there are, in fact, what you suggest, the southeastern block of tobacco states have unusually low rates of taxation. And I haven't seen any recent data but one presumes that they are suffering more from smoking-related diseases because their smoking rates are higher. I mean, that has to be true. So I don't know that we have any particularly good data recently, but there have been studies that clearly relate tobacco or cigarette prices to health outcomes associated with smoking.   I'm assuming US scientists have played a prominent role in producing the literature showing the negative health consequences of using cigarettes, and yet you said the United States has relatively low taxes compared to other developed countries. Why, do you think?   I think we're going to get into a very philosophical discussion about the US right here. It has to do with individual responsibility. We know for sure that the initial reason the taxes were so low was that the tobacco block was so influential in the Senate, particularly in the days when Jesse Helms, the senator from North Carolina, was in the Senate. He was the most feared senator by the other senators, and if you wanted to get anything done for your cause, you had to go along with his cause, which was keeping cigarette prices low and doing everything they could to support smoking. So there's clearly been a built-in bias in the Senate, and basically in the Congress as a whole, against tobacco policy. You see a huge variation from state to state in tobacco policies, and it's reflective of basically their political leanings in general.   You brought up this issue of personal responsibility, and boy, does that apply in the food area. You know, the food companies are saying: if you have one sugar beverage every once in a while, it's not going to be harmful. And it's not use of the products but it is overuse of the products. Thereby saying, it's not corporate responsibility we're talking about here, it's personal responsibility. That same argument was made by the tobacco industry, wasn't it?   It was. They would be less inclined to do that today, for a couple of reasons. One is that we know that even low levels of smoking are harmful and indeed cause many of the diseases that we were referring to earlier. And I think all the companies have now admitted publicly that smoking does cause all of these diseases that we've long known it causes. And all of them are claiming that they would like to move away from a society with smoking to one that has alternative products that would give people choices and ways to get their nicotine without exposing themselves to so much risk. I mean, we have to remember, the fact that cigarettes kill their consumers is a real drawback as far as the industry is concerned because they're losing a lot of their consumers, you know, 10, 20 years before they normally would, and they have to deal with all these lawsuits. So it's unfortunate for them. Having said that, cigarettes are the goose that lays the golden egg. They cost very little to manufacture. The industry is sufficiently oligopolistic that the profits are enormous, and their profitability has continued even while smoking has dropped rather precipitously ever since the mid-1960s.   Is that because the markets outside the US have been growing?   They certainly have helped. Although now, and this is only true within the last few years, the aggregate cigarette sales in the world are declining. They've actually started dropping. So we were seeing a relatively stable situation as smoking decreased in the developed world and was rising in the developing world. The only place now where we're seeing increases in smoking are areas in Africa, which, by the way, is the one place in the world where we might be able to forego the tobacco epidemic because smoking rates are still quite low in most of the countries, not all of them, and also parts of the Middle East. But elsewhere we've been seeing smoking declining all over the world. That doesn't mean the profits have to drop because one thing that the companies can do, is, they can raise their prices. Now, if prices go up because of taxes that hurts the companies. But if they raise their own prices because demand is inelastic, what that means is that the percentage increase in the price is larger than the percentage decline in the demand for cigarettes. So they're actually adding to their profitability by doing that. They've always played this very interesting game for years of keeping price below what we would think to be the profit-maximizing price. And I think the reason for that has to do with addiction because they know that they have to have what are called replacement smokers, kids coming in to take the place of the smokers who are dying or quitting. And for years, I think, they kept their prices down because they didn't want to discourage young people from smoking. Now, I think they see the writing on the wall. Smoking is declining very rapidly. Smoking prevalence, which was 45% in the mid, early-1960s, is now a little over 12% in the US, and I think they're raising their prices with the understanding that they want to take as much advantage of the opportunity with the addicted smokers, the adults, as they possibly can, even though smoking among kids is becoming vanishingly small.   I think of so many parallels with the soda taxes that now exists in a number of places, and the companies have responded somewhat differently. And perhaps it's the level of addiction issue that kicks in here, and the need to have replacement customers. Maybe that's another key difference. But with the soda taxes, the companies have not increased prices beyond the level of the tax. You know, to delight of public health experts, the companies have tended to pass along the entire tax so the companies are not eating that difference in order to keep prices the same. Higher tax gets reflected in the ultimate price that they charge, but they're not increasing prices beyond that. Do you think it might be the addiction issue that's different here?   I don't know. I mean, that certainly could be an element of it. The other thing is that they're manufacturing other drinks that are being used in place of some of the sodas. So they've got waters, they've got juices. I mean, obviously these sugary juices are no better, but they do make other products. They make the diet drinks. And to the extent that they can find substitutes for those products within their own companies, it may be that they're content to allow people to make those substitutions.   Interesting comment. The results so far on the soda tax suggest that the most common substitution as people drink less soda, is water, which is of course better than a lot of the alternatives that people might be consuming, so that's a bit of really good news. Even though the companies do sell water, Coke and Pepsi have Aquafina and Dasani, for example, they face a basic problem. Number one is that these companies are the biggest sellers of sugary beverages but not bottled water. That happens to be Nestle. So if people migrate to bottled water, they're likely to migrate from the big companies, like Coke and Pepsi, to Nestle. Also, people tend not to be very brand-loyal to water. They tend to buy whatever is on sale or whatever they find available to them, and that creates a problem for these companies like Coke and Pepsi that do rely on brand loyalty for their marketing. So it's very interesting. And also, I wonder, based on the research on food and addiction, if the companies don't take a hit if people switch from full sugar beverages even to diet beverages that they might sell because there wouldn't be as much addictive potential, and therefore the customers wouldn't have to have as much just to keep the habit going. So it's really interesting to think this through.   That's certainly very plausible. The whole thing would also depend on the price elasticity of demand for sodas, and specifically for the brands that they're concerned about. If there is greater elasticity there than what we observe for cigarettes, then raising those prices aren't necessarily going to help them all that much.   You mentioned that the elasticity estimates for tobacco suggested that a 10% increase in price led to a 3 to 4% reduction in consumption, and the numbers are even more positive in the case of the sugar beverages, where if you get a 10%, 15% increase in price, you end up with 10, 15% reduction in consumption. So that's good news in the food arena.   That's good news but it also means that they can't do as easily what the tobacco industry can do, which is to raise their prices and expect to see profits rise. Because if they're losing as much in sales as they're gaining in price, it's no win.   So Ken, let's talk about product formulation because you mentioned that earlier, and this is a really interesting issue that, again, connects tobacco and food products. So you think about the tobacco companies mainly selling cigarettes, but now there's vaping, there's cigarettes with things like menthol and other flavors, or low-fat foods, or artificial sweeteners. The list of product reformulations in order to attract customers goes on and on and on. So I know a controversial topic in your field has been e-cigarettes. Can you explain what these are?   E-cigarettes have been around now for about a decade, let's say. Basically, they're devices that allow people to inhale nicotine and other substances, but the purpose is to give them their nicotine without combustion. And we know that the major problem associated with smoking is the products of combustion. There's 7,000 chemical compounds in cigarette smoke. 70 of them are known human carcinogens, causes of cancer in humans. Many of them are cardiotoxic. They cause lung disease and so on. The e-cigarettes have about two orders of magnitude fewer toxins in their emissions than do cigarettes. And it turns out that the amount of the comparable toxins, when they are in fact comparable, that you find in the e-cigarette emissions is much lower, usually a 10th to a 400th, of what you find in cigarette smoke.   So logically, and based on a fair body of evidence at this point, vaping, use of e-cigarettes to get nicotine, is substantially less dangerous than is cigarette smoking. However, the controversy here is incredible. This is the most divisive issue that I have witnessed in my 45 years of working in the tobacco control field. It has torn the field asunder. The mainstream of public health, and by that I'm including governmental agencies, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the Truth Initiative, the American Cancer Society, heart and lung associations, all of mainstream public health is strongly opposed to e-cigarettes, and for one reason. They're concerned about kids' uptake of e-cigarettes, which has been substantial. It's been decreasing the last couple of years, but it has been substantial. And there are a number of things they're concerned about in that regard, and they're completely ignoring the fact that there's pretty good evidence that e-cigarettes are increasing smoking cessation for a subset of smokers. And a number of us on the science side of this, believe that the net effect of e-cigarettes is beneficial, that it's actually, possibly, a tool to add to the armamentarium of things like cigarette taxation, like smoke-free workplaces, like restrictions on advertising, and that it will help a group of inveterate smokers, those who either can't quit nicotine or don't want to, to move to a less dangerous alternative to smoking. I am not saying that e-cigarettes have no risk associated with them. They almost certainly do. But it is substantially lower.   Now, historically, this is divisive within the field in part because all of the earlier attempts at, quote-unquote, tobacco harm reduction have been produced by the major cigarette companies, and they've been fraudulent. So cigarette filters were manufactured and sold, starting in the 1950s, in response to the scare that I referred to earlier about cancer. And they were sold with a message that the filters block the dangerous stuff but let the flavor through. And people bought this. That decrease in smoking in the early 1950s reversed, smoking went up sharply, as sales of filtered cigarettes went up. By the way, the first successful filtered cigarette was Kent, and it used what it referred to as the miracle Micronite filter. Well, that miracle Micronite filter turns out to have been made of asbestos. And there are lawsuits continuing to the present day by workers in the factories that made the filter tips for Kent cigarettes, who themselves ended up with lung cancer or other diseases due to the asbestos. Then came low-tar and nicotine cigarettes, and we actually have ample evidence from the documents that had been revealed by lawsuits, that the industry knew that this was a public relations device. It was not a harm reduction device. And in fact, because people believed that low-tar and nicotine cigarettes were less dangerous, it's likely that it actually increased the toll of smoking because people who would have quit, switched to low-tar and nicotine cigarettes instead. So there's some pretty awful history here that makes people legitimately concerned about alternative products. A critical element of this story is that the alternative products, in this case, the e-cigarettes were introduced by non-cigarette, non-tobacco companies, and their goal was to replace smoking. Now the major companies are all making their own e-cigarettes as well because they have to do it from a defensive point of view, but basically they don't have any great interest in slowing up the sale of cigarettes. They want to benefit from that as long as they can.   So I should know the answer to this but I don't, but are e-cigarettes taxed? And wouldn't it be optimal to tax e-cigarettes but less than regular cigarettes so you discourage use of both but discourage the use of regular cigarettes more?   That is very insightful. Two colleagues and I actually published a paper saying that in 2015 in "The New England Journal of Medicine," that we should be taxing e-cigarettes modestly, the reason being that we want to discourage kids from using them, and kids are far more price-sensitive than our adults. Kids have a very elastic response to cigarette prices. Adults do not, and in particular, older adults have even lower price responsiveness. So yes, there should be some taxation of e-cigarettes to discourage youth use of it but that taxation should be dramatically lower than the taxation of cigarettes. Some states are now taxing e-cigarettes. Not all of them. The federal government is actually looking into a proposal to double the tax, the federal tax, on cigarettes, which would take it up to $2.01 a pack, and at the same time, to establish an equivalent tax, similar to the $2 tax, on all vaping products. This would be a disaster because it would definitely discourage kids from vaping, but it would also discourage adults from using e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking, and the most addicted, the inveterate smokers, those are the ones that need these alternatives. So that's a bad policy proposal. A much better one would be to increase the cigarette tax by more than a dollar, raise it to 3 or $4 or something, and impose a modest tax on e-cigarettes. This would discourage people from smoking, both adults and kids, but especially kids. It would discourage kids from using e-cigarettes but it would create a price differential that would encourage the inveterate smokers to switch to e-cigarettes. Now, part of the problem, and this has gotten worse over time, is that the American public believes that e-cigarettes, that vaping, is as dangerous and even maybe more dangerous than cigarette smoking. Nothing could be further from the truth but so far the mainstream of public health has sold that message to the public, and the public, including smokers, believe it.   That's a fascinating story about how the public health field might be getting in its own way with this.   And maybe doing damage to public health.   So let's loop back a little bit to the behavior of the tobacco industry. So in 2017, the Phillip Morris Company funded and launched an organization called Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. So I think, hmm, a tobacco company saying they want less smoking, and one could view this with pretty high cynicism but what do you think about it?   I've always shared your sense of cynicism about it. There's an interesting anecdote related to this. The individual who negotiated the deal by which Phillip Morris offered $1 billion over a 12-year period to establish this foundation, that individual was the main actor in the World Health Organization during the development of the global treaty on tobacco control, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He also became director of the organization and served in that capacity until just the other day. He has stepped down from being director. But let me give you a little context for it. Philip Morris International that needs to be distinguished from Altria and Philip Morris Domestic, but Philip Morris International sells the leading brand of what is known as heated tobacco products, HTPs. These are products that actually have tobacco in them. E-cigarettes have no tobacco in them but these products actually have tobacco in them. But instead of burning the tobacco, they heat it. They volatilize it, and the nicotine is inhaled. Like e-cigarettes, they appear to be substantially less dangerous than smoking, although it's not clear that they're as less dangerous as, than, e-cigarettes. But they're produced only by the major cigarette companies. Philip Morris is now selling these products successfully in many countries, many cities around the world. While they actually have the authorization to sell an older version of the product in the US, it's not very popular at this point. But in Japan, over the last four years there's been a drop in cigarettes sold of about a third at the same time that there's been this great increase in the use of these heated tobacco products manufactured by Philip Morris International and by Japan Tobacco. They have a product called Ploom. Philip Morris' product is called IQOS, I-Q-O-S, which, I was told, originally stood for I Quit Ordinary Smoking. So they are the leader of the theme song that the industry is singing these days about how they want a smoke-free world and they want to move toward one. But the only way they're ever going to do that, willingly, is if they can sell other products like these heated tobacco products and make large sums of money on them. Philip Morris has a good start at that. They claim that about a third of their revenue now is coming from IQOS, this heated tobacco product.   So whether that foundation ultimately has beneficial effects or not, forget corporate beneficial effects but on the public good, would pretty much depend on who's choosing to use these e-cigarettes, I'm imagining. That if it's people switching from normal cigarettes to them, or using them instead of normal cigarettes, it's one thing. But if they're recruiting new people who otherwise wouldn't smoke, then it would be a bad thing. So how do you think that'll all play out?   That's actually a critically important question, Kelly. And one of the great concerns that the opposition to e-cigarettes has, is that they're addicting lots of kids to nicotine, and that many of them will go on to smoke, and that that will reverse the progress that we made on smoking. Now, it turns out that there is no evidence to support the latter contention. And in fact, there's evidence to the contrary. I think it's entirely possible that some kids who would not have touched a cigarette otherwise are vaping and then trying cigarettes in the future. Whether they become regular smokers, remains to be seen. But I think there certainly are some kids like that. But what we do know is that the rate of smoking among kids, what we call current smoking, and smoking among kids means that they've had at least one puff on a cigarette in the last 30 days, that number has plummeted over the last quarter century, and, and this is the interesting thing, it has gone down at its fastest rate precisely during the period in which vaping has been popular among kids.   So one theory is that vaping is displacing smoking to some extent. That kids who would've smoked are vaping instead. It's a very complicated area and we don't know the answer. Among adults who vape, and they are relatively few in number except for very young adults, we observe mostly dual use, but the question is how much of this is a transition to vaping only, and then, maybe, a transition to nothing after that. In the UK, where vaping has been advertised by the health organizations as a way to quit smoking, and they have encouraged its use, and they use it in their smoking cessation clinics, and you'll even find it in hospitals, in the UK we have seen that more than half of the people who have quit smoking by using e-cigarettes have also quit vaping. So it is no longer the case in the UK that a majority of the people who vape are also currently smoking.   In the US, the data have been moving in that direction but it's still a majority who are dual users rather than vaping only. But we have evidence of four or five completely different kinds of studies, commercial data, other products in other countries, that all lead to the conclusion that vaping is already increasing the rate of smoking cessation in the US and in the UK by probably 10 to 15%. That's a hard thing to see in the data but it is something that, if you dig into the data, you will see it, and as I say, we see it all over the place. Let me give you one example of the tobacco harm reduction story that's fabulous. 40 to 50 years ago, large numbers of Swedish males started using a smokeless tobacco product called snus, S-N-U-S. It's a relatively low nitrosamine product, nitrosamine being a carcinogenic element, and they substituted it for cigarettes largely because cigarette taxes were going way up and there weren't any significant taxes on snus. So what you observe today, some three, four decades or more later, is that Swedish males have the lowest male smoking rate of any country in Europe, and maybe in the world. They do not have a low tobacco use rate. Their tobacco use rate is pretty typical but it consists mostly of snus. And they also have by far the lowest rate of tobacco-related diseases, like lung cancer, of men in all of the European Union countries, and the second lowest is typically a rate twice or more that of what you see in the Swedish males. Swedish females, who did not quit smoking in large numbers and did not take up snus until fairly recently, have rates of lung cancer and other diseases that are average or above-average for the European Union. So that's a great example of tobacco harm reduction in action, and it's one that's been around now, as I say, for decades.   Ken, this is a remarkable history and you're just bringing it alive beautifully. But let me ask you one final question. So given that you've been working in this field for more than four decades now, and have really been a pioneer, a leader, a warrior, and a hero, all those things could be applied to you and your work, if I asked you to sum up what's been learned from all these decades of work on tobacco, what would you say?   There are a lot of lesson. Certainly, we have learned specific kinds of interventions that really matter. You and I spoke about tax at some length. That's the preeminent one. Smoke-free workplaces, including smoke-free restaurants and bars, have not only themselves had a direct impact on health but have also set the tone for a more smoke-free society. So we have seen quite dramatic changes. I mentioned we're going from a 45% rate of smoking for the nation as a whole down to a little over 12%. That, however, has taken us six to seven decades. So it's kind of a good news, bad news story. It's a very complicated area. Tobacco control was ranked by CDC as one of the 10 most important public health measures of the 20th century, and also the first decade of the 21st century. And I think that's completely legitimate, and it is something about which all of us who care about public health can feel very proud about. The problem still remains. It is an enormous problem, as you alluded earlier, in many parts of the developing world, the low- and middle-income countries, and it's a growing problem in some of those countries, and it's just not going to disappear real fast. The lesson that I've taken most recently has been a discouraging one, and that's how divisive our field has become. We really have a chasm between the people who are opposed to tobacco harm reduction and those who are supportive of it. They're good people on both sides, they believe what they're saying, but they can't talk to each other civilly at this point. I hope that that will not become the case for those of you who are fighting the good fight in dealing with unhealthy foods.   Bio   Kenneth E. Warner is the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Health and Dean Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. A member of the faculty from 1972-2017, he served as Dean from 2005-2010. Presented in over 275 professional publications, Dr. Warner's research has focused on economic and policy aspects of tobacco and health. Dr. Warner served as the World Bank's representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, WHO's first global health treaty. He also served as the Senior Scientific Editor of the 25th anniversary Surgeon General's report on smoking and health. From 2004-2005 he was President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). He currently serves on the FDA's Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. In 1996 Dr. Warner was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. He is a recipient of the Surgeon General's Medallion, the Luther Terry Award for Exemplary Achievement in Tobacco Control, and the Doll-Wynder Award from SRNT. Dr. Warner earned his AB from Dartmouth College and MPhil and PhD in economics from Yale University.  

Author Clifford Garstang stopped by the Bunker this week to talk about his latest book, Oliver's Travels. Clifford is one of those fascinating people who may slip under the radar because of his understated style, but he and Brad took a trip through his unhappy at times childhood that catapulted him into a world of travel, volunteering, and service. From the Peace Corps to the World Bank to a staple of the literary magazine world, Clifford's story is fantastic. So, pour a glass of holiday cheer and sit down for a great story! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

--{ "Billy Gatekeeper, GMO Crop World Feeder, Philanthropy Prancer for Rising Cancer: Who Put the Gatekeeper in Charge of World Food, And the Well-known Associates in Foundation Brood, Billy Boy Seems Bent on Being Satisfied When All Crops and People are Modified, Wants Us Healthy but Sterile, Wants Depopulation, His Love-Hate Relationship Causes Consternation, With Ties to CIA, NSA, Pharma, World Bank, Killed Off by Elite, We've Got Charity to Thank, There's a Massive Outfit, Billy is Not Alone, Gathering Everyone's Data, By PC and Phone, Total Information Network Collecting from Collective, Now Feeding the World, Doesn't Take a Detective, That a Glance through History, Teaches the Lesson From Times Ancient, Food's Used as a Weapon, Big Boys via Supermarkets Decide what You're Eating, Billy, Monsanto, Food War Inc. Gives Your Genes a Beating"© Alan Watt}-- Original Broadcast June 10, 2010 - Debtors' Prison - Abortion by Videolink - Pesticide-Soaked GM Food and Contaminated Inoculations, Sterilization/Depopulation Agenda - Foundation Network Running the World - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - Canada, GM Corn in Hen Feed, Food not listed as GMO - "Philanthropists" Shaping Global Society - Corporate "Watchdog" Front Groups, "Grassroots" PR Campaigns - Microsoft CIA-Pentagon-Defense Connections - Completely Intertwined Foundation-Corporation-Banking-Military Establishment - Parallel Government - Biotechnology/GM Food Mandate and Green Revolution - "Aid" for Africa - Kissinger Memorandum - Food Used as a Weapon - Modified Rice to Reduce Sperm Count - Malthusian Agricultural Organizations and Agri-Business, World Bank/UN - Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and Gates Sr. - Monsanto Terminator Seed. *Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - June 10, 2010 (Exempting Music and Literary Quotes)

It has been 100 days since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and the country is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. More than half of the country's 39 million people face acute food insecurity as prices skyrocket. Severe drought, the pandemic and the damage caused by decades of war have all helped to bring the economy to its knees. With winter approaching the World Food Programme has warned that Afghans are at risk of being isolated from life-saving assistance. Previously international aid represented around 40% of the country's GDP, but since the Taliban takeover the World Bank, the IMF, and the United States have cut off access to more than $9.5 billion in foreign reserves and loans. With the banking system frozen, aid organisations are struggling to pay their staff on the ground and calls for the United States and its allies to ease sanctions are growing. The international community is now asking itself whether it is possible to prevent the Afghan people from starving while at the same time minimising any benefits to a repressive Taliban leadership. Ritula Shah is joined by a panel of experts. Producers: Junaid Ahmed, Paul Schuster and Marie Sina.

What is ESG Intelligence is? Steven is the Executive Chairman and Founder of Veracity. He regularly advises business leaders worldwide on political and corruption risk issues in emerging markets. He has extensive experience in the mining, energy, and telecommunications sectors and has presented at venues including the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, and Harvard Business School. In July 2013, his anti-corruption advisory work in Guinea was profiled in The New Yorker magazine. Prior to founding Veracity, Steven served as a US diplomat in Burundi, France, Washington, and Algeria. He holds degrees from Princeton, Cambridge, and INSEAD, and speaks French.

Dr. Jim Young Kim is a physician and anthropologist who previously served as the President of the World Bank. As a student at Harvard he co-founded the influential non-profit Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer. Kim has received the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was named one of TIME magazine's “100 Most Influential People in the World." Dr. Kim sat for a wide-ranging conversation with the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Judith Kelley.  The two discuss China, the challenge and the need to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, and how anyone can use their own skills to make real change.

Study: Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier Oxford University, November 11, 2021 Oxford University research has today revealed that, in countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and across Western Europe, adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian diet could slash your food bill by up to one-third. The study, which compared the cost of seven sustainable diets to the current typical diet in 150 countries, using food prices from the World Bank's International Comparison Program, was published in The Lancet Planetary Health. (next) Meta-analysis concludes resveratrol beneficially modulates glycemic control in diabetics Zagazig University and Suez Canal University (Egypt), October 29 2021.  Findings from a meta-analysis of clinical trials published in Medicina Clinica (Barcelona) revealed an association between supplementing with resveratrol and improvements in glycemic control. “This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to consider resveratrol's efficacy on glycemic and cardiometabolic parameters in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).” (next) Exercise linked to better mental health Kaiser Permanente Research, November 11, 2021 Kaiser Permanente research published in Preventive Medicine showed people who exercised more during the initial lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced less anxiety and depression than those who didn't exercise. It also showed that people who spent more time outdoors typically experienced lower levels of anxiety and depression than those who stayed inside. (next) Bedtime linked with heart health University of Exeter (UK), November 9, 2021 Going to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 pm is associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease compared to earlier or later bedtimes, according to a study published today in European Heart Journal—Digital Health, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). "While we cannot conclude causation from our study, the results suggest that early or late bedtimes may be more likely to disrupt the body clock, with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health." (NEXT) Garlic compounds may boost cardio health indirectly via gut microbiota National Taiwan University, November 6 2021 Allicin from garlic may prevent the metabolism of unabsorbed L-carnitine or choline into TMAO, a compound linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, says a new study. TMAO – or trimethylamine N-oxide – has been known to be generated from dietary carnitine through metabolism of gut microbiota, and was recently reported to be an “important gut microbiota-dependent metabolite to cause cardiovascular diseases.”  New data indicated that carnitine-fed lab mice showed a “remarkable increase in plasma TMAO levels”, compared with lab mice fed a control (no carnitine). However, when allicin supplements were provided with the carnitine diet, TMAO levels were significantly reduced.   (NEXT) Drug used to prevent miscarriage increases risk of cancer in offspring University of Texas Health Science Center, November 9, 2021 Exposure in utero to a drug used to prevent miscarriage can lead to an increased risk of developing cancer, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston  The drug, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone caproate (17-OHPC), is a synthetic progestogen that was frequently used by women in the 1950s and 1960s, and is still prescribed to women today to help prevent preterm birth.  (OTHER NEWS NEXT) 2,433 Dead Babies in VAERS as Another Study Shows mRNA Shots Not Safe for Pregnant Women by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News, November 7, 2021 There have now been 2,433 fetal deaths recorded in VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) from pregnant women who have been injected with one of the COVID-19 shots. The vast majority of these have been from the Pfizer shot (1,862 deaths) and the Moderna shot (656 deaths.) There have been more fetal deaths in the past 11 months following COVID-19 shots than there have been for the past 30+ years following ALL vaccines (2,198 – Source.) Last month (October, 2021) the New England Journal of Medicine admitted that the original study used to justify the CDC and the FDA in recommending the shots to pregnant women was flawed. (Source.) Since then, researchers in New Zealand have conducted a new study on the original data, and concluded: A re-analysis of these figures indicates a cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion ranging from 82% (104/127) to 91% (104/114), 7–8 times higher than the original authors' results. (Source.) And yet, the CDC and FDA still continue to recommend the shots for pregnant women, even though a correct analysis on the original data shows that 82% to 91% of pregnant women will suffer miscarriages if their unborn child is less than 20 weeks old. (Source.) VAERS is a passive system that is severely under reported. The CDC and FDA have never conducted a study to determine what this under-reported factor is, but independent scientists have, and we have previously published the analysis conducted by Dr. Jessica Rose, who has determined that a conservative under-reported factor would be X41. See: STUDY: Government's Own Data Reveals that at Least 150,000 Probably DEAD in U.S. Following COVID-19 Vaccines This means that there have probably been at least 99,753 fetal deaths following COVID-19 injections so far. Here is a video report we made on this last month with some very unfortunate gruesome examples of what these shots are doing to unborn babies. 1,969 Fetal Deaths Recorded Following COVID-19 Shots but Criminal CDC Recommends Pregnant Women Get the Shot UPDATE – November 7, 2021 PM A couple of hours after publishing this article, a video that has been circulating on the Internet of an interview with a Funeral Director in the UK became known to me. He has been in practice for over 3 years and is identified as “Wesley,” and was interviewed by a group called “Resistance GB.” He claims that last fall was one the slowest periods of seeing deaths for all funeral directors, but when the COVID-19 shots were introduced, deaths started dramatically increasing. It started with the elderly, but then by April they were seeing large numbers of people in their 30s and 40s. Many of them were dying of myocarditis. Now, they are seeing unprecedented numbers of newborn babies, and they are piling up in hospital refrigerators. Some are full term, some are pre-term, he claims. The UK originally recommended that pregnant women and nursing mothers should NOT get the experimental COVID shots, but like the CDC in the U.S., they eventually changed their recommendation to encourage pregnant women to get the shots. (NEXT) An ethical analysis of vaccinating children against COVID-19: benefits, risks, and issues of global health equity Johns Hopkins University, Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative, Wageningen University - The Netherlands, University of Oxford, Abstract We argue that it is currently unclear whether routine COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children is ethically justified in most contexts, given the minimal direct benefit that COVID-19 vaccination provides to children, the potential for rare risks to outweigh these benefits and undermine vaccine confidence, and substantial evidence that COVID-19 vaccination confers adequate protection to risk groups, such as older adults, without the need to vaccinate children. We conclude that child COVID-19 vaccination in wealthy communities before adults in poor communities worldwide is ethically unacceptable and consider how policy deliberations might evolve in light of future developments. (NEXT) What's Driving Global Deforestation? Organized Crime, Beef, Soy, Palm Oil and Wood Products Jennifer Devine,  Counterpunch, November 17, 2021 Every year the world loses an estimated 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of forest, an area larger than the state of Indiana. Nearly all of it is in the tropics. From my research on social and environmental issues in Latin America, I know that four consumer goods are responsible for the majority of global deforestation: beef, soy, palm oil, and wood pulp and paper products. Together these commodities are responsible for the loss of nearly 12 million acres (5 million hectares) annually. There's also a fifth, less publicized key driver: organized crime, including illegal drug trafficking. The dominant role of beef Among major products that promote deforestation, beef is in a class by itself. Beef production is now estimated to be the biggest driver of deforestation worldwide, accounting for 41% of global forest losses. In the Amazon alone, cattle ranching accounts for 80% of deforestation. From 2000 to 2011, beef production emitted nearly 200 times more greenhouse gases than soy, and 60 times more than oil palm in tropical countries with high deforestation rates. Soy and palm oil: Ubiquitous ingredients Together, soy and palm oil drive nearly 10% of deforestation annually – almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares). Clearing land for palm oil plantations fuels large-scale rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia, where most of the world's palm oil is produced. Palm oil is the most commonly produced, consumed and traded vegetable oil. Some 60% of the 66 million tons produced globally every year is used to produce energy in the form of biofuel, power and heat. About 40% is used for food, animal feed and chemical products. Palm oil is an ingredient in half of all products found at the supermarket, including margarine, shampoos, frozen pizza and detergents. Soy production has doubled globally in the past 20 years. Nearly 80% of global soy is fed to cows, chickens, pigs and farmed fish. This demand reflects the tripling of global meat production over the past 50 years. Wood products Wood products are responsible for about 5% of annual global deforestation, or about 1.2 million acres (500,000 hectares) yearly. Wood is widely used for home construction and furniture, and also as a pulp source for paper and fabric. And in low-income nations and rural areas, it's an important fuel source for heating and cooking. The three largest paper-producing countries are the U.S., Canada and China. Illegal deforestation and organized crime Another industry plays an important role, especially in tropical forests: organized crime. Large, lucrative industries offer opportunities to move and launder money; as a result, in many parts of the world, deforestation is driven by the drug trade. In South America and Central America, drug trafficking organizations are the vanguard of deforestation. Drug traffickers are illegally logging forests in the Amazon and hiding cocaine in timber shipments to Europe. In my research, I have analyzed how traffickers illegally log and raise cattle in protected areas in Central America to launder money and claim drug smuggling territory. Other scholars estimate that 30% to 60% of deforestation in the region is “narco-deforestation.” Forest Trends analysis, exports tied to illegal deforestation are worth US$61 billion annually and are responsible for 25% of total global tropical deforestation. (NEXT) ‘This Must Not Happen': If Unhalted, Permian Basin Fracking Will Unleash 40 Billion Tons of CO2 by 2050 As activists at the COP26 summit continue to denounce the “massive” gap between wealthy governments' lofty rhetoric and their woefully inadequate plans for addressing the climate emergency, a new analysis of projected extraction in the Permian Basin in the U.S. Southwest exposes the extent to which oil and gas executives' refusal to keep fossil fuels in the ground puts humanity's future in jeopardy. “While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%.” Released Tuesday by Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law, the second chapter of The Permian Basin Climate Bomb warns that if the drilling and fracking boom that has turned the Permian Basin into “the world's single most prolific oil and gas field” over the past decade is allowed to persist unabated for the next three decades, it will generate nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide by mid-century. “With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the world's economy toward clean energy.” “While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%” from 2021 to 2030, said Stockman. “This must not happen.” “If left unchecked,” the report notes, “the Permian could continue to produce huge amounts of oil, gas, and gas liquids for decades to come. With global markets flush with Permian oil and gas, it can only be harder to steer the world's economy toward clean energy.” (NEXT) Wall Street's Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class By Whitney Webb A project of the multilateral development banking system, the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Stock Exchange recently created a new asset class that will put, not just the natural world, but the processes underpinning all life, up for sale under the guise of promoting “sustainability.” Last month, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had developed a new asset class and accompanying listing vehicle meant “to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth.” Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end of goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable. Though described as acting like “any other entity” on the NYSE, it is alleged that NACs “will use the funds to help preserve a rain forest or undertake other conservation efforts, like changing a farm's conventional agricultural production practices.” Yet, as explained towards the end of this article, even the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize. NYSE COO Michael Blaugrund alluded to this when he said the following regarding the launch of NACs: “Our hope is that owning a natural asset company is going to be a way that an increasingly broad range of investors have the ability to invest in something that's intrinsically valuable, but, up to this point, was really excluded from the financial markets.” Framed with the lofty talk of “sustainability” and “conservation”, media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn't avoid noting that NACs open the doors to “a new form of sustainable investment” which “has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.” Fink, one of the world's most powerful financial oligarchs, is and has long been a corporate raider, not an environmentalist, and his excitement about NACs should give even its most enthusiastic proponents pause if this endeavor was really about advancing conservation, as is being claimed. How to Create a NAC The creation and launch of NACs has been two years in the making and saw the NYSE team up with the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), in which the NYSE itself holds a minority stake. IEG's three investors are the Inter-American Development Bank, the Latin America-focused branch of the multilateral development banking system that imposes neoliberal and neo-colonalist agendas through debt entrapment; the Rockefeller Foundation, the foundation of the American oligarch dynasty whose activities have long been tightly enmeshed with Wall Street; and Aberdare Ventures, a venture capital firm chiefly focused on the digital healthcare space. Notably, the IADB and the Rockefeller Foundation are closely tied to the related pushes for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and biometric Digital IDs. The IEG's mission focuses on “pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital.” “These assets,” IEG states, make “life on Earth possible and enjoyable…They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.” Put differently, NACs will not only allow ecosystems to become financial assets, but the rights to “ecosystem services”, or the benefits people receive from nature as well. These include food production, tourism, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, carbon sequestration and much more. IEG is currently partnering with Costa Rica's government to pilot its NAC efforts within that country. Costa Rica's Minister of Environment and Energy, Andrea Meza Murillo, has claimed that the pilot project with IEG “will deepen the economic analysis of giving nature its economic value, as well as to continue mobilizing financial flows to conservation.” With NACs, the NYSE and IEG are now putting the totality of nature up for sale. While they assert that doing so will “transform our economy to one that is more equitable, resilient and sustainable”, it's clear that the coming “owners” of nature and natural processes will be the only real beneficiaries. Per the IEG, NACs first begin with the identification of a natural asset, such as a forest or lake, which is then quantified using specific protocols. Such protocols have already been developed by related groups like the Capitals Coalition, which is partnered with several of IEG's partners as well as the World Economic Forum and various coalitions of multinational corporations. Then, a NAC is created and the structure of the company decides who has the rights to that natural asset's productivity as well as the rights to decide how that natural asset is managed and governed. Lastly, a NAC is “converted” into financial capital by launching an initial public offering on a stock exchange, like the NYSE. This last stage “generates capital to manage the natural asset” and the fluctuation of its price on the stock exchange “signals the value of its natural capital.” However, the NAC and its employees, directors and owners are not necessarily the owners of the natural asset itself following this final step. Instead, as IEG notes, the NAC is merely the issuer while the potential buyers of the natural asset the NAC represents can include: institutional investors, private investors, individuals and institutions, corporations, sovereign wealth funds and multilateral development banks. Thus, asset management firms that essentially already own much of the world, like Blackrock, could thus become owners of soon-to-be monetized natural processes, natural resources and the very foundations of natural life itself. Both the NYSE and IEG have marketed this new investment vehicle as being aimed at generating funds that will go back to conservation or sustainability efforts. However, on the IEG's website, it notes that the goal is really endless profit from natural processes and ecosystems that were previously deemed to be part of “the commons”, i.e. the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. Per the IEG, “as the natural asset prospers, providing a steady or increasing flow of ecosystem services, the company's equity should appreciate accordingly providing investment returns. Shareholders and investors in the company through secondary offers, can take profit by selling shares. These sales can be gauged to reflect the increase in capital value of the stock, roughly in-line with its profitability, creating cashflow based on the health of the company and its assets.” Researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar has strongly disagreed with the approach being taken by NYSE/IEG and views NACs as a system that will only exacerbate the corporate predation of nature, despite claims to the contrary. Morningstar has described NACs as “Rockefeller et al. letting the markets dictate what in nature has value – and what does not. Yet, it's not for capitalist institutions and global finance to decide what life has value. Ecosystems are not ‘assets.' Biological communities exist for their own purposes, not ours.” A New Way to Loot The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation. Indeed, IEG makes this clear when they note that “the opportunity” of NACs lies not in their potential to improve environmental well-being or sustainability, but in the size of this new asset class, which they term “Nature's Economy.” Indeed, while the asset classes of the current economy are value at approximately $512 trillion, the asset classes unlocked by NACs are significantly larger at $4,000 trillion (i.e. $4 quadrillion). Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world. In the world currently being constructed by these and related entities, where even freedom is being re-framed not as a right but “a service,” the natural processes on which life depends are similarly being re-framed as assets, which will have owners. Those “owners” will ultimately have the right, in this system, to dictate who gets access to clean water, to clean air, to nature itself and at what cost. According to Cory Morningstar, one of the other aims of creating “Nature's Economy” and neatly packaging it for Wall Street via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years. This includes the recent land grabs made by Wall Street firms as well as billionaire “philanthropists” like Bill Gates during the COVID crisis. However, the land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs will largely target indigenous communities in the developing world. As Morningstar notes: “The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into “protected areas”, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. The tragic irony is this: while Indigenous peoples represent less than 5% of the global population, they support approximately 80% of all biodiversity.“ IEG, in discussing NACs, tellingly notes that proceeds from a NAC's IPO can be used for the acquisition of more land by its controlling entities or used to boost the budgets or funds of those who receive the capital from the IPO. This is a far cry from the NYSE/IEG sales pitch that NACs are “different” because their IPOs will be used to “preserve and protect” natural areas. The climate change panic that is now rising to the take the place of COVID-19 panic will surely be used to savvily market NACs and similar tactics as necessary to save the planet, but – rest assured – NACs are not a move to save the planet, but a move to enable the same interests responsible for the current environmental crises to usher in a new era where their predatory exploitation reaches new heights that were previously unimaginable.

FRT continues its 3-year tradition, partnering with Professor Chris Brummer on CQ Roll Call's FinTech Beat podcast as we discuss key themes and developments from the recent IIF, IMF, World Bank, and DC Fintech Week conferences.

Videos for Today: 1. DR Peter C. Gøtzsche Comments – 3 mins   2. PARENTS IN NY TAKE TO THE STREETS TO WARN IGNORANT PARENTS INJECTING THEIR CHILDREN WITH PFIZER SHOT   3, DANIEL NAGASE – EFFECTS OF CV VX ON THE IMMUNE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN   4.The Great Narrative: A call to action speaker Freeke Heijman (start 3 min mark)    5. COMMERCIAL PILOT CODY FLINT: “I DON'T KNOW IF I WILL EVER BE ABLE TO FLY A PLANE AGAIN.”   6. Study, Experts: Vaccinated Are Spreading COVID-19 start 23 seconds in    7. RFK CLIP Start 50 seconds in    Everyone missed this one… vaccinated people are up to 9X more likely to be hospitalized than unvaccinated people Australian War Propaganda Keeps Getting Crazier Are we seeing some new form of Covid-19 Vaccine induced Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome? – Official Government data suggests the Fully Vaccinated are on the precipice of disaster as their Immune Systems are being decimated $285 Billion Tax Cut for the Rich Is Now 2nd Most Expensive Piece of Build Back Better Wall Street's Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class  Court Deals New Blow to ‘Fatally Flawed' Biden Vaccine Mandates, But What Does That Mean?     Study: Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier Oxford University, November 11, 2021 Oxford University research has today revealed that, in countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and across Western Europe, adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian diet could slash your food bill by up to one-third. The study, which compared the cost of seven sustainable diets to the current typical diet in 150 countries, using food prices from the World Bank's International Comparison Program, was published in The Lancet Planetary Health. It found that in high-income countries: Vegan diets were the most affordable and reduced food costs by up to one third. Vegetarian diets were a close second. Flexitarian diets with low amounts of meat and dairy reduced costs by 14%. By contrast, pescatarian diets increased costs by up to 2%. “We think the fact that vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian diets can save you a lot of money is going to surprise people,” says Dr. Marco Springmann, researcher on the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. “When scientists like me advocate for healthy and environmentally-friendly eating, it's often said we're sitting in our ivory towers promoting something financially out of reach for most people. This study shows it's quite the opposite. These diets could be better for your bank balance as well as for your health and…the planet.” Miguel Barclay, author of the bestselling “One Pound Meals” series of cookbooks, says, “I definitely agree that cutting down your meat, or cutting it out completely, will save you money. I've written seven budget cookbooks and have costed up hundreds of recipes, and without doubt vegan and vegetarian meals consistently come in at a much lower price than recipes with meat.” The study focused on whole foods and did not include highly-processed meat replacements or eating at restaurants or takeaways. The study also found that in lower income countries, such as on the Indian subcontinent and in sub-Saharan Africa, eating a healthy and sustainable diet would be up to a quarter cheaper than a typical Western diet, but at least a third more expensive than current diets. To analyze what options could improve affordability and reduce diet costs, the study looked at several policy options. It found that making healthy and sustainable diets affordable everywhere is possible within the next 10 years when economic development, especially in lower income countries, is paired with reductions in food waste and a climate and health-friendly pricing of foods. “Affording to eat a healthy and sustainable diet is possible everywhere, but requires political will,” according to Dr. Springmann. “Current low-income diets tend to contain large amounts of starchy foods and not enough of the foods we know are healthy. And the western-style diets, often seen as aspirational, are not only unhealthy, but also vastly unsustainable and unaffordable in low-income countries. Any of the healthy and sustainable dietary patterns we looked at are a better option for health, the environment, and financially, but development support and progressive food policies are needed to make them both affordable and desirable everywhere.” The study, “The global and regional costs of healthy and sustainable dietary patterns: a modeling study,” is published in The Lancet Planetary Health on 10 November 2021. Country-level results are available here. Green One Pound Meals by Miguel Barclay is published on 30 December. It features planet-friendly recipes and includes tips and ideas for shopping smart and avoiding food waste. Meta-analysis concludes resveratrol beneficially modulates glycemic control in diabetics Zagazig University and Suez Canal University (Egypt), October 29 2021.  Findings from a meta-analysis of clinical trials published on October 16, 2021 in Medicina Clinica (Barcelona) revealed an association between supplementing with resveratrol and improvements in glycemic control. “Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a progressive meta-inflammatory disorder, which induces micro and macrovascular complications,” Ibrahim A. Abdelhaleem and colleagues wrote. “Resveratrol is a nutraceutical known to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.” “This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to consider resveratrol's efficacy on glycemic and cardiometabolic parameters in patients with T2DM.” Sixteen randomized trials that included a total of 871 diabetic men and women were selected for the meta-analysis. The trials compared resveratrol to a placebo with or without concurrent antidiabetic medications or other drug treatment. Resveratrol doses of 500 milligrams or more were associated with lower fasting blood glucose, fasting serum insulin, insulin resistance, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and diastolic blood pressure in comparison with a placebo. Resveratrol was associated with a greater reduction in hemoglobin A1c (a marker of long-term glucose control) compared to a placebo in trials of three months duration. When HDL cholesterol levels were analyzed, resveratrol was superior to a placebo in trials of less than two months duration. Resveratrol was also associated with a reduction in systolic blood pressure compared to measurements obtained in the placebo group. Furthermore, triglycerides were lower in association with resveratrol in trials that lasted six to twelve months. “We concluded that resveratrol appropriately improved insulin sensitivity by decreasing insulin resistance, fasting blood glucose, fasting serum insulin, and hemoglobin A1c,” the authors concluded. “In addition, it improved other cardiometabolic parameters, including triglycerides, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The most appropriate glycemic control effect was fulfilled when consumed for at least one month with doses of 500 mg or more.” Exercise linked to better mental health Kaiser Permanente Research, November 11, 2021 Kaiser Permanente research published on November 11 in Preventive Medicine showed people who exercised more during the initial lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced less anxiety and depression than those who didn't exercise. It also showed that people who spent more time outdoors typically experienced lower levels of anxiety and depression than those who stayed inside. More than 20,000 people participated in the survey-based study from 6 regions served by Kaiser Permanente across the United States, which included Hawaii, Colorado, Georgia, and the mid-Atlantic states, as well as Southern and Northern California. “What these study findings tell us is that even during an active pandemic or other public health crisis, people should be encouraged to be physically active to help maintain their physical and mental health,” said the study's lead author Deborah Rohm Young, PhD, the director of the Division of Behavioral Research for the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation. “Parks and other nature areas should remain open during public health emergencies to encourage outdoor physical activity.” In March 2020, COVID-19 developed into a worldwide pandemic. With no known treatment, public health officials attempted to reduce its spread by limiting human interactions through stay-at-home policies. Businesses temporarily closed or changed their practices to prevent the spread of the virus, affecting the economy and many people's jobs. These stressful factors, along with fewer opportunities to socialize with friends and family, increased symptoms of depression and anxiety for many people. Since it is known that physical activity and time spent in nature are associated with improved mental health, researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California sought to determine how exercise and time outdoors was associated with people's mental health during the height of the pandemic. In April 2020, researchers sent a series of COVID-19 surveys to more than 250,000 participants in the Kaiser Permanente Research Bank — a collection of lifestyle surveys, electronic health record data, and biospecimens, which Kaiser Permanente members volunteered. People who reported COVID-19 symptoms were not included in this analysis, resulting in 20,012 respondents. They each completed at least 4 surveys between April and July 2020. White women older than 50 accounted for a high proportion of the respondents. Most respondents said they were retired and generally adhered to the “safer-at-home” orders during the period of the survey. The study found that: Reports of anxiety and depression decreased over time Anxiety and depression scores were higher for females and younger people, and lower for Asian and Black people compared with white respondents Participants who reported no physical activity reported the highest depression and anxiety compared to people who had exercised Spending less time outdoors was associated with higher depression and anxiety scores People who had increased their time outdoors the most reported the highest anxiety scores, but the research could not explain the finding “What we learned from these findings is that during future emergencies it will be important to carefully weigh the decisions to close parks and outdoor areas against the negative impact those closures may have on people's mental health,” said Dr. Young. Bedtime linked with heart health University of Exeter (UK), November 9, 2021 Going to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 pm is associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease compared to earlier or later bedtimes, according to a study published today in European Heart Journal—Digital Health, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). “The body has a 24-hour internal clock, called circadian rhythm, that helps regulate physical and mental functioning,” said study author Dr. David Plans of the University of Exeter, UK. “While we cannot conclude causation from our study, the results suggest that early or late bedtimes may be more likely to disrupt the body clock, with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health.” While numerous analyses have investigated the link between sleep duration and cardiovascular disease, the relationship between sleep timing and heart disease is underexplored. This study examined the association between objectively measured, rather than self-reported, sleep onset in a large sample of adults. The study included 88,026 individuals in the UK Biobank recruited between 2006 and 2010. The average age was 61 years (range 43 to 79 years) and 58% were women. Data on sleep onset and waking up time were collected over seven days using a wrist-worn accelerometer. Participants completed demographic, lifestyle, health and physical assessments and questionnaires. They were then followed up for a new diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, which was defined as a heart attack, heart failure, chronic ischaemic heart disease, stroke, and transient ischaemic attack. During an average follow-up of 5.7 years, 3,172 participants (3.6%) developed cardiovascular disease. Incidence was highest in those with sleep times at midnight or later and lowest in those with sleep onset from 10:00 to 10:59 pm. The researchers analyzed the association between sleep onset and cardiovascular events after adjusting for age, sex, sleep duration, sleep irregularity (defined as varied times of going to sleep and waking up), self-reported chronotype (early bird or night owl), smoking status, body mass index, diabetes, blood pressure, blood cholesterol and socioeconomic status. Compared to sleep onset from 10:00 to 10:59 pm, there was a 25% higher risk of cardiovascular disease with a sleep onset at midnight or later, a 12% greater risk for 11:00 to 11:59 pm, and a 24% raised risk for falling asleep before 10:00 pm. In a further analysis by sex, the association with increased cardiovascular risk was stronger in women, with only sleep onset before 10:00 pm remaining significant for men. Dr. Plans said: “Our study indicates that the optimum time to go to sleep is at a specific point in the body's 24-hour cycle and deviations may be detrimental to health. The riskiest time was after midnight, potentially because it may reduce the likelihood of seeing morning light, which resets the body clock.” Dr. Plans noted that the reasons for the observed stronger association between sleep onset and cardiovascular disease in women is unclear. He said: “It may be that there is a sex difference in how the endocrine system responds to a disruption in circadian rhythm. Alternatively, the older age of study participants could be a confounding factor since women's cardiovascular risk increases post-menopause—meaning there may be no difference in the strength of the association between women and men.” He concluded: “While the findings do not show causality, sleep timing has emerged as a potential cardiac risk factor—independent of other risk factors and sleep characteristics. If our findings are confirmed in other studies, sleep timing and basic sleep hygiene could be a low-cost public health target for lowering risk of heart disease.” Garlic compounds may boost cardio health indirectly via gut microbiota National Taiwan University, November 6 2021 Allicin from garlic may prevent the metabolism of unabsorbed L-carnitine or choline into TMAO, a compound linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, says a new study from the National Taiwan University. TMAO – or trimethylamine N-oxide – has been known to be generated from dietary carnitine through metabolism of gut microbiota, and was recently reported to be an “important gut microbiota-dependent metabolite to cause cardiovascular diseases,” explained Taiwanese researchers in the Journal of Functional Foods . While antibiotics have been found to inhibit TMAO production, concerns over side effects and resistance have limited their use. This has led researchers to examine the potential of natural alternatives. New data indicated that carnitine-fed lab mice showed a “remarkable increase in plasma TMAO levels”, compared with lab mice fed a control (no carnitine). However, when allicin supplements were provided with the carnitine diet, TMAO levels were significantly reduced. “Surprisingly, the plasma TMAO levels in the mice of ‘carnitine diet + allicin' treatment group were as low as that of chow diet [control] group,” wrote the researchers. “This result indicated that the metabolic capacity of mice gut microbiota to produce TMAO was completely inhibited by allicin supplement even though provided with carnitine-rich environment in the gut. “It means the functional alteration of gut microbiota induced by carnitine diet can be prevented by addition of another substance with antimicrobial potential derived from food, such as allicin.” Garlic and heart health The study adds to the body of scientific literature supporting the potential heart health benefits of garlic and the compounds it contains. Consumer awareness of the health benefits of garlic, mostly in terms of cardiovascular and immune system health, has benefited the supplements industry, particularly since consumers seek the benefits of garlic without the odors that accompany the fresh bulb. The benefits have been linked to the compound allicin, which is not found in fresh garlic: It is only formed when garlic is crushed, which breaks down a compound called diallyl sulphide. Study details “This may offer an opportunity to take advantage of plants' delicately designed defense system against microorganisms, to protect ourselves by modulating gut microbiota to a healthier status,” wrote the researchers The Taiwanese researchers divided male C57BL/6(B6) mice into four groups: One group received only the control chow diet; the second group received the carnitine diet (carnitine added to drinking water at a level of 0.02%); the third group received the carnitine diet with supplemental allicin; and the final group received the control diet plus the allicin supplement for six weeks. Results showed that the second group (carnitine diet) had TMAO levels 4–22 times greater than those observed in the control group. However, these increases were attenuated in the carnitine + allicin group, said the researchers. “Our study suggests that antimicrobial phytochemicals such as allicin effectively neutralize the metabolic ability of TMAO production of gut microbiota induced by daily intake of L-carnitine,” wrote the researchers. “It may offer an opportunity for us to take advantage of plants' delicately designed defense system against microorganisms, to protect ourselves by modulating gut microbiota to a healthier status. “Our research also suggested that allicin and dietary fresh garlic containing allicin might be used as functional foods for the prevention of atherosclerosis,” they concluded. Drug used to prevent miscarriage increases risk of cancer in offspring University of Texas Health Science Center, November 9, 2021 Exposure in utero to a drug used to prevent miscarriage can lead to an increased risk of developing cancer, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston). The study was published today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The drug, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone caproate (17-OHPC), is a synthetic progestogen that was frequently used by women in the 1950s and 1960s, and is still prescribed to women today to help prevent preterm birth. Progesterone helps the womb grow during pregnancy and prevents a woman from having early contractions that may lead to miscarriage. “Children who were born to women who received the drug during pregnancy have double the rate of cancer across their lifetime compared to children born to women who did not take this drug,” said Caitlin C. Murphy, PhD, MPH, lead author on the study and associate professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. “We have seen cancers like colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, and many others increasing in people born in and after the 1960s, and no one really knows why.” Researchers reviewed data from the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan on women who received prenatal care between June 1959 and June 1967, and the California Cancer Registry, which traced cancer in offspring through 2019. Out of more than 18,751 live births, researchers discovered 1,008 cancer diagnoses were made in offspring ages 0 to 58 years. Additionally, a total of 234 offspring were exposed to 17-OHPC during pregnancy. Offspring exposed in the womb had cancer detected in adulthood more than twice as often as offspring not exposed to the drug – 65% of cancers occurred in adults younger than 50. “Our findings suggest taking this drug during pregnancy can disrupt early development, which may increase risk of cancer decades later,” Murphy said “With this drug, we are seeing the effects of a synthetic hormone. Things that happened to us in the womb, or exposures in utero, are important risk factors for developing cancer many decades after we're born.” A new randomized trial shows there is no benefit of taking 17-OHPC, and that it does not reduce the risk of preterm birth, according to Murphy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed in October 2020 that this particular drug be withdrawn from the market.

When we think about debt, we often think of money owed by countries in the Global South to institutions like the World Bank and IMF. But there is another kind of debt – the climate debt owed by the most polluting nations in the global north to those who have contributed the least to climate […]

About Episode: In this episode of The Idealists. (formerly Grit & Grace), host and entrepreneur Melissa Kiguwa interviews Fariel Salahuddin, the founder and CEO of UpTrade, a bartering service that enables rural communities in Pakistan to exchange livestock for solar-powered water pumps and solar home systems. Over 40% of Pakistan lives off the grid and without lights in their homes and electricity to pump water, women can spend up to four hours a day fetching water from distant wells. The BBC calls UpTrade a solution for the desert and after listening to this conversation, you'll understand why. Fariel is both a 2021 TED fellow and a 2019 finalist with Cartier's Women's Initiative. In this episode, this World Bank consultant turned self-described goat herder shares her vision for an inclusive economy that values more than just fiat currency. . . . . In the episode: - Fariel begins the conversation describing how UpTrade works and the ways she gets off-grid, rural communities to opt into bartering their goats for solar water pumps and solar home systems. - She then shares what inspired her to start UpTrade and how her model is based on community and self agency versus traditional charity focused interventions. - Fariel then describes her vision for tech-enabled marketplaces that are not bound by fiat currency. - Fariel ends the episode sharing her vision for rural, unbanked communities to be able to participate in the mainstream economy using the resources they have. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/support

After a slow start, delegates to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, found momentum. That's cause for hope. Even the reps from Green Peace seemed satisfied. The question on everyone's lips now is: What's next? Will the world go back to business-as-usual, consume-at-will, and climate-be-damned? Or this time around, has the prospect for change wiggled its way into the crevices of human complacency? This battle is far from won. And on the front lines, where change really matters, countries must now contend with how to practically meet those carbon emission obligations. This puts the developing world in a bit of a pickle. For many, obligations to their own people rival commitments to climate. And in burgeoning democracies, leaders elected to improve infrastructure, provide healthcare, and create jobs won't last the political season if they don't deliver. It's complicated. But that's why Jeff Delmon is here with me this episode to explain. Jeff is a Singapore-based Senior Public-Private Partnerships Specialist at the World Bank.

Kuwait, a leading emitter of Greenhouse Gasses and exporter of hydrocarbons, in recent years has experienced the severe impact of climate change with record breaking temperatures, deadly floods and increasingly severe dust storms. The Government of Kuwait has recognized that the global transition away from fossil fuels and efforts to limit global warming will have profound implications for the country's economy, environment and social life. The event launched 'The Quiet Emergency: Experiences and Understandings of Climate Change in Kuwait', a new report from the LSE Kuwait Programme project 'Sustaining Kuwait in Unsustainable Times' that provides a grounded account of climate change in Kuwait. It examines how the inhabitants of Kuwait (both citizens and non-citizens) understand and experience climate change, drawing on a series of focus groups, a media review, an analysis of the December 2020 Kuwait parliamentary elections, and over 30 interviews with key stakeholders based in Kuwait. The researchers discussed the key findings from the report, including the extent to which climate change is impacting daily life, how politicians are addressing the question, the generational divide, and the unequal impact of climate change within Kuwait. Deen Sharp is an LSE Fellow in Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE, whose research focuses on the political economy of urbanization in the Middle East. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds a PhD in Earth Environmental Sciences (Geography Track) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, a MSc in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and BA in Human Geography from Queen Mary University. Samia Alduaij is a Senior Environmental Specialist with experience working for the World Bank and with United Nations Development Programme. Her work has consisted mostly of operational projects and technical assistance programs related to environmental policy, management, governance, solid waste managment, marine issues, the sustainable development goals and climate change. Prior to the World Bank, she worked for Kuwait Petroleum International in Denmark and the Scientific Center in Kuwait. She is currently working for the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences in the UK and the British Embassy in Kuwait on an environmental sustainability programme, with a focus on climate change awareness and outreach ahead of COP 26 in November 2021. She is a member of the Voluntary Advisory Committee under the Supreme Council for the Environment in Kuwait. She holds a Master's degree in Environment, Politics and Globalization from King's College, London. Abrar Alshammari is a PhD student at Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies department. Her research explores sociopolitical issues relating to citizenship and inequality in the Arabian Peninsula. She graduated with an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where she wrote her dissertation on the intersection of cultural production and politics in Kuwait. She is fluent in English and her native language is Arabic. Kanwal Tareq Hameed is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, and member of the Gulf Studies department and the European Centre for Palestine Studies. She works on modern histories of the Gulf. Her interests include critical histories, gender studies, the role for academia beyond the university, and social justice. Courtney Freer is a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, Courtney was an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre.

According to the guest, Veronika Kyrylenko, the United States of America is moving a step closer to adopting a Chinese-style social credit system. It's something known as Digital ID. Get ready for your driver's license to be combined with your vaccination status, your financial records, health records and so much more.--Jim peppered Veronika with several questions. Here is a sampling---- Is this Digital ID on a mobile device--- What about professional licenses--- The public safety commissioner said this is -only the beginning.- What should we take away from this--- How would this benefit law enforcement--- Utah is making a move in 2022 for something called -mDL.- What is that--- Utah is also talking about -social credit scoring- What is that--- Will this lead to forgery--- Isn't this being promoted by the World Bank and World Economic Forum-

According to the guest, Veronika Kyrylenko, the United States of America is moving a step closer to adopting a Chinese-style social credit system. It's something known as Digital ID. Get ready for your driver's license to be combined with your vaccination status, your financial records, health records and so much more.--Jim peppered Veronika with several questions. Here is a sampling---- Is this Digital ID on a mobile device--- What about professional licenses--- The public safety commissioner said this is -only the beginning.- What should we take away from this--- How would this benefit law enforcement--- Utah is making a move in 2022 for something called -mDL.- What is that--- Utah is also talking about -social credit scoring- What is that--- Will this lead to forgery--- Isn't this being promoted by the World Bank and World Economic Forum-

I am beyond excited to introduce you to the woman who has made an indelible impact on my life, Judy Umlas. She is the founder of The Center for Grateful Leadership, Senior Vice President of the International Institute for Learning, Inc., author, keynote speaker and one of my mentors. Judy literally wrote the book on The Power of Acknowledgment and has been changing lives and the world for decades. Join me for a conversation with Judy that will change your life too. This month in November we are focusing on two pillars in The UnVeiling Method, Gratitude and Acknowledgment. I invite you to join me for the Complaint Free November and for the 20 days of Acknowledgment. Follow along on Instagram @SocialAutie and in the Private FB Group Mind Your Autistic Brain for inspiration. Watch HERE:https://youtu.be/KDNujnfrtTE https://linktr.ee/socialautie Time Stamps: 5:44 How Did the Power of Acknowledgment Begin? 15:00 Why I choose the Power of Acknowledgment 19:54 Receiving Acknowledgment-It's Hard as an Autistic ADHDer 27:22 Alexithymia & Receiving: PTSD and C-PTSD 37:00 What you may need to allow into your heart 38:00 How to Incorporate the Power of Acknowledgment into your life 47:24 What are you most grateful for today Judy? GUEST Contact INFO: Judith W. Umlas is Sr. Vice President, author and trainer at International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL), a global corporate training company. She wrote the ground-breaking book, The Power of Acknowledgment ©2006, IIL Publishing, New York, which has been credited with changing workplaces and lives by making use of the 7 Principles of Acknowledgment she developed. Her book on Grateful Leadership, Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results was published by McGraw-Hill Professional in association with IIL in early 2013 and You're Totally Awesome! The Power of Acknowledgment for Kids was published in late 2013 by IIL Publishing. In 2016 she founded the Center for Grateful Leadership (www.gratefulleadership.com ) whose members from around the world are committed to practicing and implementing the Grateful Leadership initiative in their organizations. Judith delivers inspiring, motivational and transformational keynote addresses on Grateful Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment all over the world. She also leads webinars and teaches full day virtual and traditional courses to organizations such as Volvo, the U.S. Army, Prudential, JMP Engineering, the World Bank, Fannie Mae, IBM, AT&T, Google, Amway, the New York Police Department and many others. She has trained over 100,000 people through her leading edge, highly interactive and engaging courses and keynotes – with outstanding and longlasting results. Grateful Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment are Judith's passion and purpose! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/socialautie/support

Lord Fusitu'a sits down to chat: - History of Tonga - How nations expand influence - How the World Bank and IMF works - Geopolitical strategy - Bitcoin and then some... Download Episode on My Website: pgibs.io Download Episode on PodBean Download Episode on Medium Follow Me On Twitter @MrPseu   Go to wtfhappenedin1971.com Check out my latest article published on Bitcoin Magazine, BITCOIN BLOWBACK: A HISTORY OF DOLLAR HEGEMONY, ECONOMIC WARFARE AND A BRIGHT ORANGE ALTERNATIVE Send me a tip on Strike @pgibs Check out my music video"ETF" HERE Join the band at ETF615.com Citadel21 Volume 6 https://www.citadel21.com/etf-economic-earworms-of-the-sound-money-revolutionhttps://www.citadel21.com/ To learn more about Bitcoin fundamentals... Go to: bitcoinonepager.com Hope you're saving savings by stackin' those sweet, sweet, sats at savingsavings.io (AKA) SwanBitcoin.com/philGet 10% off the SHAmory game at checkout when you use the promo code Phil10 Rate, Subscribe, and Review the show, and share it with someone who's curious about Bitcoin and needs a place to start.

Conan French, senior advisor at the Institute of International Finance, sits down with Fintech Beat to talk about the major regulatory themes and developments in the IIF, IMF, World Bank, and DC Fintech Week conferences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conan French, senior advisor at the Institute of International Finance, sits down with Fintech Beat to talk about the major regulatory themes and developments in the IIF, IMF, World Bank, and DC Fintech Week conferences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Larry Summers has been at the forefront of economic thinking for decades - a World Bank chief economist, Professor at Harvard and U.S. Treasury Secretary. He's also warned that the global economy is in the midst of secular stagnation. In this episode, he tells Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers why the economy is stagnant, in spite of low interest rates. The three economists also discuss why their field is so influential, and Larry reveals how policy makers get things done.Editor: Alastair Elphick. A Modulated Media production.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

While the field of social finance and impact investing has blossomed in recent years, most people still tend to think about donating or impact investing as discrete activities with discrete approaches or strategies.Say the word "philanthropy" and most people think of oversized cheques at black-tie galas where your donations are spent by organizations on goods, services, and programs. Say the words "impact investing" and most people think of rigorous due diligence where your money can be leveraged far more through investment and reinvestment.But what would happen if we combined the two approaches? That's what today's guest is here to discuss. Farahnaz Karim is the Founder & CEO of Insaan Group; a non-profit raising donations which the organization uses to invest in innovative businesses and solutions for the poor, a term they call "catalytic philanthropy".Farahnaz is a social entreprenur, political scientist, and humanist. She has worked with the OSCE, the United Nations, the World Bank and non-profits across a wide range of developing countries across multiple continents. Farahnaz was previously a teaching fellow at Harvard University and a faculty member at Zayed University in Dubai lecturing on global history and humanities. She holds an MPA from Harvard, a Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland) and a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University (Canada). And if all that wasn't enough she is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter (UK).During this episode, we discuss Insaan's unique approach, the contexts in which it is most effective, how Insaan makes investment decisions, the unique ways they engage donors through the process, examples of entrepreneurs they've invested in, and their current fundraising campaign. And be sure to stay tuned to the very end where we discuss how Insaan measures and manages impact.Resources from this episode:Insaan Group Website, Instagram, Facebook, and TwitterFarahnaz's BioFarahnaz's Alliance Magazine article "The Nature of Capital and Other Threats to Impact"

With major cargo interests rejecting LNG tonnage and the World Bank taking its case to stop building additional LNG bunkering infrastructure to the IMO, the decarbonising credentials of Liquefied natural gas have taken something of a battering of late. This week's edition offers the counterpoint to that criticism via Peter Keller, chairman of the pro-LNG lobby group SEA-LNG.

Be part of our community by joining our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtbehindthings Exploring reviving economy with imports and exports with the senior economist of World Bank, Gonzalo Varela. How did he end up being a senior economist for the world bank? What is the difference between the real exchange rate and the one we see? What is the world bank's latest report on Pakistan's imports? In the last decade, what's going on with the exchange rate in Pakistan? Why it is important to have import and export parody? Tune in to know more on how to increase Pakistan's exports and what are some of the export opportunities for Pakistan! Connect with us: • https://www.instagram.com/thoughtbehindthings • https://www.instagram.com/muzamilhasan Gonzalo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gonzalo-varela-6393b425 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/syed-muzamil-hasan-zaidi3/support

The COP26 UN climate conference has kicked off in Glasgow, Scotland amidst a flurry of important moments in climate-related current affairs—an energy crisis threatens global supply chains and the future of a reconciliation package in Congress could determine whether or not the U.S. will meet its climate targets.  Needless to say, it's a big week for the climate.  Here to break down his vision for how nations can seize the opportunity at hand to make a meaningful impact on climate change, both domestically and on the world stage, is Manish Bapna. Manish is the new President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the NRDC Action Fund. He has a long background trying to solve complex environmental problems at institutions like the World Resources Institute and the World Bank. In this episode, Host Bill Loveless sits down with Manish to talk about how nations can go beyond pledges and commitments to make progress on decarbonization.

--{ "Vote for......????? "We're on Par with China using Techniques Coercive, Total Surveillance on All in The Great Collective."© Alan Watt}-- Original Broadcast Oct. 20, 2019 - News is Presented with Sides to Choose From - The Dialectic Technique - People are Militarized into a Cause - Given a Fictitious History as Your Nations Rulers or Leaders Go Across the World Pillaging Resources - The Scottish Pipe Band - Culloden; Highland Clearing, Genocide; Forbidden to Wear Clan Tartans or Speak Gaelic - Given the Version of Events You are Supposed to Accept; 9/11 - The Revolutionary Movement; Your Elected Leaders are Not the Bosses - Charles Galton Darwin's book, The Next Million Years; Ruled by Wild Men who haven't Been Indoctrinated - Given So-Called Geniuses to Follow - Christian Culture; No One was Higher Than God - In the Digital Age, You're Watching History Disappear - Everything Run by Science on Behalf of a Very Rich Elite - The Banking Collective of the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and Central Banks - Bring Down Standard of Living Under Various Guises such as Sustainability - Yuri Bezmenov - NATO - Grabbing Oil and Resources for Private Corporations - Dominant Minority - Surveillance by Government and Private Corporations; Orwell's 1984 - Religion Gave Purpose - China's Social Credit System - Long Ago, We had Rights but Now We Get Privileges - Behavioural Insights Teams (BIT) - Free Trade - China was Set Up by Those Who Ruled and Still Rule the West - EU, CFR, RIIA, Cecil Rhodes, Centralized Banking - Bertrand Russell Talked about Those Bright Children Who Might Be Brought into the Agenda - Agenda 21, Off the Land into the City - Bill Clinton and the Origin of Smart Cities - The First Thing Communists Do is Restrict Movement - Fairmount Line Bus Shelter Living Roof Initiative - NGOs, Soviet Rule by Councils - Google Tool for Cities to Measure Emissions - Nearly 100 City Mayors Announce Support of Global Green New Deal at C40 Summit - Car Free Zones in Glasgow - Australia, China, France, U.S., Canada Use of Facial Recognition - Locksley Hall, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Managed with Left/Right Politics or You'd Have to Have Revolutions. *Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - Oct. 20, 2019 (Exempting Music and Literary Quotes)

Andrea Pacini is a presentation coach and founder of Ideas on Stage UK. In the last 11 years, Ideas on Stage has worked with thousands of clients, including Microsoft, Lacoste, The World Bank and over 500 TEDx speakers. They specialize in working with established business owners who want to grow their business and increase their influence through great presenting. Andrea is on a mission to change the way people think about presenting and his 10-year vision is to help 1,000 purpose-driven entrepreneurs share their message, make an impact and be memorable. Andrea connects with Lou Diamond on Thrive LOUD. *** CONNECT TO LOU DIAMOND & THRIVE LOUD

On October 28, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings and the World Bank co-hosted a panel of leading experts on these issues. The discussion was moderated by author and Financial Times Africa Editor David Pilling. Panelists discussed the implications of new measurement approaches and the limits of GDP for encouraging sustainable development.   Subscribe to Brookings Events on iTunes, send feedback email to events@brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter. To learn more about upcoming events, visit our website. Brookings Events is part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

|Welcome back SDG Talkers!! Thanks for joining us for another episode of highlighting change makers and their inspirational work towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)! Don't you know that you don't have to be a Hollywood producer to make good content? IN THIS EPISODE: - How can art be used as a primary driver of the SDGs? - How to put development into context & set goals - How to empower others to use the arts for social change - Discover unconventional art in unconventional spaces through black & brown voices Tayler Ava Friar is an art historian and international communications consultant with a passion for storytelling. Her career began in tech communication, one of her roles being editor-in-chief of “Women in Technology” initiatives at Google. Since leaving the US in 2013, she has been living abroad across Europe, Asia, and now Africa. For the last five years, she has been a communications officer at the World Bank, first supporting their Innovation Labs in Washington DC and Tokyo, and later leading communications in the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience practice. Recognizing the emerging use of art in the development agenda, Ms. Friar served as communications lead for a 500+ person summit in Bridgetown, Barbados, where she did her first curatorial collaboration with the University of the West Indies. This opening exhibition was attended by the Hon. Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley. She has recently transitioned jobs during the pandemic and now serves as Communications Advisor at the United Nations Development Programme. Additionally, she is a newly appointed contributing writer at Business Insider and founder of ART|unknown. - a platform that explores the intersection of the art, black avant-garde and travel in the African Diaspora. Ms. Friar previously served as a lecturer and is in the final year of her PhD program in Art History at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis is entitled “Black sexual politics and the erotic: The intersection of gender politics and sexuality in contemporary visual art in Africa” which will be partially published this year with Aix-Marseille University in Provence, France. Finally, Ms. Friar can be seen as a feature in Vogue Magazine's November 2020 issue, speaking to the importance of black voices in the 2020 US elections. Connect with Tayler: LinkedIn | Instagram Episode Resources: - ArtNet.com: Climate Change Research - Bloomberg.org: Public Art Pieces Responds to Climate Change - GFDRR's YouTube: Art for Resilience in the Caribbean (World Bank) Let's get SDG Talking!! Got a good story or want to collaborate? Send us an email at sdgtalkspodcast@gmail.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can! And don't forget to check out our Virtual Roundtables on our website! Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

Architecture of Opportunity We lose talent in our society when we overlook those from poor backgrounds or minority families. For example, Lost Einsteins are children who harness above-average skills, but don't have a chance to invent and create later in their lives because they lack access to opportunity. John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance provides the template for a just society where the luck of your birth need not be a factor in your life's outcomes. The Importance of Childcare Our social contract has widely depended on women to provide free labor to care for children and the household. Because of the imbalance in structures like maternity leave, the gender pay gap can largely be attributed to children. By investing in affordable and accessible quality childcare, our society will benefit from the productivity and talents of all the women who are now subject to this child penalty. The New Social Contract with Business Global corporate taxes have been lowering for decades as countries fight to attract major corporations. Using taxes to invest in our society is part of the social contract, and a minimum global corporate tax will ensure that large companies can no longer shirk this responsibility. In addition, the current economic model lacks any measurement of how we degrade our environment. If these costs were measured, a carbon tax can be designed to reflect them and incentivize sound choices about our environment. FIND OUT MORE: Baroness Minouche Shafik is the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a leading economist whose career has straddled public policy and academia. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, she received her MSc at the London School of Economics and her DPhil at the University of Oxford. By the age of 36, she had become the youngest ever Vice President of the World Bank. She's taught at Georgetown University and the Wharton Business School. She later served as the Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund from 2011-2014, and as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England from 2014-2017. Baroness Shafik has served on and chaired numerous boards and currently serves as a Trustee of the British Museum, the Supervisory Board of Siemens, the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and the Economy Honours Committee. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2015. In July 2020, she was made a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. Her new book is What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract.

*) Security tightens grip in coup-hit Sudan as global pressure bites Sudan's security forces have made sweeping arrests of critics and protesters as they seek to stamp out opposition to this week's military coup. Security personnel were seen firing tear gas and rubber bullets at dozens of protesters in Khartoum. The international community has ramped up punitive measures. The World Bank blocked aid and the African Union suspended Sudan over Monday's power grab by the army. *) Israel advances plans for over 3,000 settler homes in occupied West Bank Israel has advanced plans to build more than 3,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank. That's according to a military spokesperson who made the comments a day after the US forcefully criticised such construction. Israel gave the final green light to build 1,800 settler homes in the occupied West Bank and initial approval for another 1,344. *) Several Pakistani police killed by gunfire at rally of banned group Three Pakistani police officers have been killed and 70 people wounded during a rally of the banned group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. Officials said that eight of those wounded were in critical condition and paramilitary troops in Punjab province had been called on to help manage the situation for the next 60 days. The clash broke out at a rally of the banned TLP on a highway just outside the eastern city of Lahore, a Punjab police spokesman said. *) Taiwan president confirms US troops training soldiers on island A small number of US forces are training Taiwan's soldiers to increase the island's defence capability. President Tsai Ing-wen's comments to CNN confirm the presence of US troops on the self-governing island that China considers its own. Tensions between Taiwan and China have escalated in recent weeks as Beijing raises military and political pressure. *) Gun not thoroughly checked before Alec Baldwin fired fatal shot Investigators in the US say a .45-caliber Colt revolver used on the set of the film "Rust" was not thoroughly checked before being given to actor Alec Baldwin. Last week, Baldwin fired a live lead bullet in an accidental shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal in New Mexico. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said there was a complacent attitude toward safety on the set before the shooting.

Climate change poses a very concrete danger, especially for the island nations in the Pacific, and thus directly on our Australian doorstep. Due to the rising sea levels, many of the low-lying islands are doomed. For the Marshall Islands, a report by the World Bank now concretizes the bleak future of the Pacific nation. - Der Klimawandel stellt vor allem für die Inselnationen im Pazifik, und damit direkt vor unserer australischen Haustür, eine sehr konkrete Gefahr dar. Durch den steigenden Meeresspiegel sind viele der tiefliegenden Inseln dem Untergang geweiht. Für die Marshallinseln konkretisiert ein Bericht der Weltbank nun die düstere Zukunft der Pazifiknation.

Pressure mounts on the military to restore civilian rule as international bodies respond. Also: police say Alec Baldwin fired a live round in the fatal shooting on his film set, and the doping scandal that has rocked the world of Venetian rowing.

"Feed the world." "We are the world." "Be a light to the world." Every few years, it seems, a new celebrity benefit appears. Chock full of A-listers and inspirational tag lines, it promises to tackle any number of the world's large-scale problems, whether poverty, climate change, or disease prevention and eradication. From Live Aid in the 1980s to Bono's ONE Campaign of the early 2000s to the latest Global Citizen concerts, televised celebrity charity events, and their many associated NGOs, have enjoyed glowing media attention and a reputation as generally benign, even beloved, pieces of pop culture history. But behind the claims to end the world's ills lies a cynical network of funding and influence from predatory financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, multinationals like Coca-Cola and Cargill, soft-power organs like USAID, and private “philanthropic” arms like the Gates Foundation. This arrangement reached its high point at the turn of the 21st century and continues today, largely in response to outrage from anti-Pharma and anti-poverty activists from the global south and anti-globalization protesters in the 1990s. This Bono-Bill Gates-World Bank model has gained virtually unchallenged media coverage as the new face of slick, NGO "activism," in opposition to the unwieldy, anarchist-y and genuinely grassroots nature of the opposition it faced on America's television screens each time there was a G7 or WTO meeting. While this celebrity-NGO complex purports to reduce suffering in the Global South - almost always a monolithic and mysterious place called "Africa," to be more specific - suffering on a grand scale never meaningfully decreases. Rather, it adheres to a vague “We Must Do Something” form of liberal politics, identifying no perpetrators of or reasons for the world's ills other than an abstract sense of corruption or "inaction." Meanwhile, powerful Western interests, intellectual property regimes and corporate money - the primary drivers of global poverty - are not only ignored, but held up as the solution to the very problems they perpetuate. On this episode, we study the advent of the celebrity benefit and the attendant Bono-Bill Gates-Global Citizen model of "activism," examining the dangers inherent in this approach and asking why the media aren't more skeptical of these high-profile PR events that loudly announce, with bleeding hearts the existence of billions of victims but are, mysteriously, unable to name a single victimizer. Our guests are economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and Health Action International's Jaume Vidal.

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW, we are joined by Shihoko Goto, Meg Lundsager, andSuman Bery.  They recap the recently concluded 2021 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund and discuss how these institutions are addressing concerns such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and debt sustainability for advanced and emerging economies around the world.

The brutality and invasiveness of the capitalist imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was readily evident. With utter ruthlessness the imperial powers of the era smashed opened markets with gunboats and plundered the wealth of Asia and Africa through conquest and occupation. The process of decolonialization in the 1960s and 1970s raised hopes that a new era of peace and prosperity was about to dawn in those parts of the world that had been ravaged by imperialist exploitation. Unfortunately, those hopes have been dashed by the rise of informal networks and methodologies of imperial dominations. While the territorial empires of old no longer exist and imperialism is now a dirty word, behind the façade of independence, the peoples of the developing world continue to labor under foreign economic and political domination. However, today this domination is rarely exercised directly. Instead, it is often realized through indirect economic pressure with so-called international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank acting as the vanguard of this insidious neo-colonial order. What are the systems that perpetuate this state of affairs? How do the IMF and World Bank serve the interests of western capitalism? And what is the cost to people in the developing world? We ask these questions and more. This is Revolution. Owen Schalk Owen Schalk is a writer from Winnipeg.  His short stories have been published by Fairlight Books, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Goat's Milk Magazine, and others, and his political analyses have been featured in Alborada, People's Voice, and Protean Magazine.  He is a regular contributor to Canadian Dimension, and you can read his new essay on the culture industry and the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the November edition of Monthly Review. About TIR Thank you, guys, again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and every one of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined, BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron-only programming, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH! Become a patron now: https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, especially YouTube! THANKS Y'ALL YouTube: www.youtube.com/thisisrevolutionpodcast   Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast & www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/   Twitter: @TIRShowOakland  Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland The Dispatch on Zero Books (video essay series): https://youtu.be/nSTpCvIoRgw   Pascal Robert in Black Agenda Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/PascalRobert   Get THIS IS REVOLUTION Merch here: www.thisisrevolutionpodcast.com Get the show's music here: https://bitterlakeoakland.bandcamp.com/album/coronavirus-sessions

Peter Kirby is a long-time entrepreneur and early pioneer in the blockchain space. He co-founded a Bitcoin hardware company in 2013 and a blockchain technology company in 2014. Peter also executed one of the earliest ICOs in 2015 as CEO of Factom, Inc. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times, and Forbes. He has been a featured speaker at The World Bank, Money 20/20, The US State Department, and The US Department of Homeland Security. Peter has a BS in Biochemistry from Lehigh University, an MBA from the Acton School of Business, AND is a certified laughter yoga instructor!

Hour 1 -  Nick Reed talks about a variety of topics in the news, including: Join us every Friday at Scramblers Diner for the Friday Road Show. You can get some delicious breakfast, watch the show live, and meet like minded listeners. More than 300 Black churches across Virginia have agreed to play a video in which VP Harris urges churchgoers to vote after the services for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe — a move that some experts claim violates the law. Terry McAuliffe cut his interview short with a local Virginia TV station and told the reporter they should've asked"better questions." Former lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey, wrote an op-ed on our supply chain. "The United States is the world's largest importer, but its major ports, at Los Angeles and Long Beach, rank a dismal 328 and 333 in the World Bank's Port Performance Index. Not one US port made it into the top 50 for speed and efficiency. In contrast, Japan's Yokohama port ranks No. 1."

Millions of people in Afghanistan are living in extreme poverty as prices rise and salaries go unpaid. There are warnings that hunger will follow the devastating drought, just as the cold weather sets in. How will the world respond to calls for help? Business Weekly hears from development economist and former World Bank expert in Afghanistan Dr William Byrd. Plus, as the supply chain gets clogged across the world- we'll ask how they can be made more resilient? We also hear from Berlin, where voters have said yes to a radical plan to help make housing more affordable. And as William Shatner blasts off into space, we ask if the 90-year-old actor can be called an influencer? Business Weekly is produced by Matthew Davies and presented by Lucy Burton.

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Monica Cruz, labor reporter with BreakThrough News to discuss an international day of action led by employees of Phillip Morris, the importance of solidarity among international workers and the need to globalize resistance to exploitation, how the Phillip Morris action fits into the context of the rising tide of workers struggle in the US, and the connections between labor, class, and race and their importance in building a working class movement.In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Celina Della Croce, Coordinator of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research to discuss an upcoming anti-imperialist week of action focused on food sovereignty, the connections between food and imperialism, how food sovereignty presents a radical shift in thinking around food and community control over food.In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Sohrob Aslamy, a doctoral candidate at Syracuse University in the department of Geography and the environment to discuss the economic crisis and hunger in Afghanistan, how the US invasion and the unofficial sanctions imposed by organizations like the World Bank have contributed to the crisis, the Taliban's inability to handle these issues, and the possibility of the rise of extremist groups like ISIS as a result of these unofficial sanctions.Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Devyn Springer, cultural worker, host of the Groundings Podcast, and digital outreach coordinator at the Walter Rodney Foundation to discuss the emergence of both progressive and reactionary movements in the midst of major contradictions within the ruling class and intensifying crises of capitalism, the continued fallout from the Dave Chappelle special on Netflix and the false concern over cancel culture from the ruling class, and how capitalist culture and consumption informs politics.

--On the Show: --Consumer prices are continuing to increase in the context of inflation fears, as a holiday toy "shortage" is now a concern --How can the rich actually be forced to pay taxes? --Donald Trump's CDC created Title 42, but Joe Biden continues to use it to remove people from the United States --Donald Trump was going to appoint his daughter Ivanka to be President of the World Bank, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was able to talk him out of it --Fox Host Chris Wallace repeatedly asks Republican Congressman Steve Scalise whether Joe Biden "stole" the election from Donald Trump, and Scalise refuses to give a clear answer --Newsmax host Greg Kelly says that the Washington DC police officers who testified about the January 6 riots are "crisis actors" --Former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon says that Trump's return will be in "2022 or maybe before" --MyPilllow CEO Mike Lindell now claims that an 850-year old person voted in the 2020 election, as well as 23,000 dead people all using a prison as their address --Voicemail from possibly the most outrageous anti-vaccine caller we've had --On the Bonus Show: Producer Pat's triumphant return to the Bonus Show, John Gruden resigns as head coach after homophobic, racist, misogynistic emails revealed, NYC school vaccine mandate fully in place, FDA approves rapid COVID antigen test, much more... ❄️ Get 20% OFF any ChiliSleep sleep system at https://chilisleep.com/pakman

The UN Secretary General has urged the world to inject money directly to Afghanistan. Leaders of the G20 nations are meeting virtually on Tuesday to discuss a worsening economic situation in the country, and Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, explains the work his organisation is doing there. And Mohib Iqbal, who worked for the World Bank in Afghanistan until earlier this year tells us what the G20 nations could do to get money where it's needed. Plus, a recent referendum in Berlin approved a plan to allow the city to seize properties owned by large-scale private landlords, in a bid to make the German capital a more affordable place to live.

In China car sales drop as the industry deals with the impact from the global chip shortage. The board of the International Monetary Fund backs the head of the fund, Kristalina Georgieva, following an investigation into her role in a data-rigging scandal at the World Bank. Keith Collins hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund hold their annual meetings, the Czech Republic holds closely watched elections in the wake of the Pandora Papers leak, and the Group of Twenty (G20) convenes for an emergency summit on Afghanistan.

Lebanon's economy is in freefall. The World Bank calls it one of the worst financial crises in a century. We look back at Lebanon's optimistic years, zooming in on the one key decision that started this house of cards. And we ask what this can teach us about booms and busts in general.