France plans to unilaterally impose a 0.1 percent tax on financial transactions starting in August, President Nicolas Sarkozy said, brushing aside opposition from the nation
European officials said the euro region
Several times each year, the nation faces a widespread, food borne illness crisis. But there’s an easy, cheap technological solution that could stop scares and outbreaks in their tracks.
A relatively simple system of QR codes — those funny-looking, two-dimensional barcodes you see everywhere today — could instantaneously link a product sold on store shelves back to the farm where it was grown or raised with a snap of a smartphone camera. It would no longer take days or weeks to determine what food is safe and what isn’t.
The system could even prevent the contaminated food from reaching store shelves in the first place.
IBM (, Fortune 500) has developed a technology called the InfoSphere Traceability Server, which assigns unique barcodes to every step of the food distribution chain.
The farms, slaughterhouses, food palates, shipping containers, trucks, grocery stores and individual products that are using InfoSphere are all affixed with QR codes and tracked. Even specific animals are being tagged and scanned, so you could find out which specific cow your milk came from or which pig became your pork.
Using this system, the orange juice crisis could have potentially been avoided. Rather than halting all shipments of orange juice to test for a fungicide and testing OJ at grocery stores, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done, the juice could have been scanned and instantly linked back to a particular farm.
How RFID tags will change the future
"Someday soon, this will become the minimum requirement to participate in the food supply chain," said Paul Chang, IBM’s traceability program director.
But the system has yet to be widely adopted. There are some high hurdles to mass-adoption, most notably that for the system to work, every actor in the supply chain has to participate. And participation requires some level of investment in order to feed data into the network and extract results.
IBM already has a small handful of large retailers in the United States and Europe on its system, including Germany’s Metro Group, the third-largest food retailer in the world. But IBM believes it has found a way to get even the smallest mom & pop shops and farms on board as well.
IBM developed the InfoSphere system as a cloud-based service, meaning the only infrastructure needed to operate it is an Internet connection and a smartphone.
Though IBM’s Chang wouldn’t get specific about pricing, he said the costs are "minimal," pointing to the fact that that there are already small, rural farms in Thailand using the system no fax needed payday loans.
"We’ve developed the technology in such a way that it’s just a nominal cost to share and access information," Chang said. "We’re at an inflection point where this could be deployed more broadly."
But even if the majority of vendors, farms, shipping companies and grocery stores adopt it, it would really take everyone to join in to link your OJ to a particular farm.
To make such a global food traceability network a possibility, the food industry has developed an open standard for data recording and tracking. That means customers using IBM rivals’ systems could communicate with the InfoSphere server so a farm, a supplier and a grocery store all doing business with one another would not necessary need to be using the same system.
IBM says a very small percentage of companies in the food industry have adopted the technology so far. But with recalls happening on a weekly basis, and costs of technology falling, some regulators are becoming tempted to impose requirements that companies adopt traceability systems. IBM said is currently working with a small number of government regulators from around the world.
If widespread adoption does occur, it may help stop outbreaks before they start.
Today, testing products for contamination is a difficult and ineffective process. Food companies can’t test every batch, so choosing which ones to test is essentially random.
For instance, Coca-Cola (, Fortune 500) tested its batch of orange juice and found that the fungicide was present. But it also noticed that competitors’ juice was contaminated as well and had gone unnoticed.
Using advanced analytics, companies could know exactly which batches to test. As an example, a sensor in a shipping container of tomatoes that is several degrees warmer than normal could tip off the company to check the product that was shipped on that vessel. With QR tags, testers could know which palates were on that container and test them before they reach store shelves.
The technology is cheap and easy to implement. But until everyone adopts it, contaminated food outbreaks will continue.
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
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The European Commission backed the introduction of jointly issued eurobonds, coupled with stricter budgetary discipline, as the best way out of a debt crisis that’s threatening the 17-country eurozone.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday that the countries using the euro currency needed to work more closely together to dovetail their budgetary policies and avoid having one nation endanger all others by not living by its financial commitments. The crisis, which started in Greece nearly two years ago, has now spread to much-bigger economies such as Italy and Spain and there was a hint Wednesday that not even Germany is immune.
Barroso, who heads the executive arm of the European Union, said there was a need to “embrace deeper integration for the euro area” and that “implemented in the right way, the joint issuance of debt in the euro area could bring tremendous benefits.”
Barroso said it could lead to greater financial integration and to the creation of a much larger bond market, comparable to that of the United States treasuries.
Germany has opposed the use of eurobonds and has long called on profligate member states to clean up their own houses with as little outside intervention as possible. A big worry for Germany is that its low borrowing costs would get diluted if eurobonds came into issue and it would then be forced to pay higher rates to tap bond markets.
Anticipating the proposal, Chancellor Angela Merkel poured cold water on the idea in the German Parliament earlier in the day.
“It is extremely troubling, I might say inappropriate, that the Commission is now focusing on proposals on eurobonds in different varieties,” she told legislators.
Merkel argued that it was a pretense to suggest that a “collectivization of the debt would allow us to overcome the currency union’s structural flaws.”
While Merkel was voicing her opposition to the idea of eurobonds, Germany suffered what many in the markets are describing as a failed bond auction.
Despite being touted as the European bedrock of financial stability and rigor, Germany failed to raise as much money as it hoped in its latest bond auction, in a sign that even it may not be immune from the debt crisis raging across the continent.
Germany’s Financial Agency said its latest euro6 billion ($8.1 billion) auction of 10-year bonds met with only 60 percent demand. It blamed “the extraordinarily nervous market environment” for the weak demand.
Since Greece pushed the eurozone into its ever-worsening financial mess last year, many member states have seen their cost of government borrowing rise to record levels. Germany’s borrowing rates though have dropped sharply as investors buy up its bonds as a safe haven.
Germany has long been reluctant to bail out member states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, insisting it was up to their governments to live by sound economic principles and win investor confidence.
Barroso said that eurobonds, or so-called stability bonds, “will not solve our immediate problems.”
Still he said “stability bonds are examples of reinforced governance, of a strong will to live together in the euro area and a good example of discipline.”
_____
Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.
The government delivered a blow to some desperate patients Friday as it ruled the blockbuster drug Avastin should no longer be used to treat advanced breast cancer.
Avastin is hailed for treating colon cancer and certain other malignancies. But the Food and Drug Administration said it appeared to be a false hope for breast cancer: Studies haven’t found that it helps those patients live longer or brings enough other benefit to outweigh its dangerous side effects.
“I did not come to this decision lightly,” said the FDA’s commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg. But she said, “Sometimes despite the hopes of investigators, patients, industry and even the FDA itself, the results of rigorous testing can be disappointing.”
Avastin remains on the market to treat certain colon, lung, kidney and brain cancers. Doctors are free to prescribe any marketed drug as they see fit. So even though the FDA formally revoked Avastin’s approval as a breast cancer treatment, women could still receive it _ but their insurers may not pay for it. Some insurers already have quit in anticipation of FDA’s long-expected ruling.
However, “Medicare will continue to cover Avastin,” said Brian Cook, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The agency “will monitor the issue and evaluate coverage options as a result of action by the FDA but has no immediate plans to change coverage policies.”
Including infusion fees, a year’s treatment with Avastin can reach $100,000.
The ruling disappointed patients who believe Avastin is helping to curb their incurable cancer.
“It’s saved my life,” said a tearful Sue Boyce, 54, of Chicago. She’s taken Avastin in addition to chemotherapy since joining a research study in 2003. Her breast cancer eventually spread to her lungs, liver and brain, but Boyce says she is stable and faring well.
“So I’m hoping the insurance company will grandfather me in to continue taking it,” she said.
The Avastin saga began in 2008, when an initial study suggested the drug could delay tumor growth for a few months in women whose breast cancer had spread to other parts of the body. Over the objection of its own advisers and to the surprise of cancer groups, FDA gave Avastin conditional approval _ it could be sold for such women while manufacturer Genentech tried to prove it really worked.
The problem: Ultimately, the tumor effect was even smaller than first thought. Across repeated studies, Avastin patients didn’t live longer or have a higher quality of life. Yet the drug causes some life-threatening risks, including severe high blood pressure, massive bleeding, heart attack or heart failure and tears in the stomach and intestines, the FDA concluded. In two public hearings _ one last year and one this summer _ FDA advisers urged the agency to revoke that approval.
“The science is clear: Breast cancer patients are more likely to be harmed than helped by Avastin,” said Diana Zuckerman of the National Research Center for Women and Families in Washington.
Genentech had argued the drug should remain available while it conducted more research to see if certain subsets of breast cancer patients might benefit, and some patients and their doctors had argued passionately for the drug.
“There certainly are patients who benefit tremendously,” said Boyce’s oncologist, Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. “We’ll just be battling with the insurance companies.”
“For those not fortunate enough to be on Medicare or an insurance plan that covers it, it’s a death sentence,” Christi Turnage of Madison, Miss., said of the FDA’s decision. Her breast cancer had moved into her lungs before she began Avastin three years ago and the spreading stopped, but Turnage said her insurer is ending coverage and she will seek financial help from Genentech’s access program.
Hamburg said that she considered those arguments but that scientifically there are no clues yet to identify who those rare Avastin responders would be _ putting a lot of people at risk in order for a few to get some as-yet-unknowable benefit. She urged Genentech to do that research, saying the FDA “absolutely” would reconsider if the company could find the right evidence.
Genentech, part of Swiss drugmaker Roche Group, pledged to begin that research.
“We are disappointed with the outcome,” said company chief medical officer Dr. Hal Barron. “We remain committed to the many women with this incurable disease and will continue to provide help through our patient support programs to those who may be facing obstacles to receiving their treatment in the United States.”
The breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure said that it respected the FDA’s decision and that it was time for researchers to concentrate on finding so-called biomarkers that would tell which drug is right for which patient.
“Each type of cancer is very different from another in important ways, and in the end it’s no surprise that Avastin’s effectiveness may not be equivalent against all types of cancer,” said Dr. Neal Meropol of University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who has long used Avastin for colon cancer.
World stocks climbed Wednesday, bolstered by receding inflation in China and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s promise to resign once a new budget is passed that could prevent the country becoming engulfed in a debt crisis.
Benchmark oil rose to nearly $97 per barrel as the Chinese inflation numbers reinforced expectations that the world’s second-largest economy can continue robust growth and strong demand for crude. The dollar gained against the euro but slipped against the yen.
European shares advanced in early trading on the heels of broad gains in Asia, where Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.2 percent to close at 8,755.44. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.4 percent to 5,587.13, Germany’s DAX rose 1.1 percent to 6,027.96, and France’s CAC-40 added 0.6 percent to 3,163.50.
But Wall Street was set to fall, with Dow Jones industrial futures losing 0.4 percent to 12,076 and S&P 500 futures dropping 0.6 percent to 1,265.90.
Italy became a key focus for investors this week after doubts emerged that the country would go through with a tough package of austerity measures. Many investors saw Berlusconi as an obstacle to sweeping economic reforms needed to help Italy avoid sinking into a debt crisis.
Berlusconi is the second recent political casualty of the European debt crisis. In Greece, a new interim government _ one that won’t be led by the current prime minister, George Papandreou _ is to be announced Wednesday. New leadership was needed for the passage of an austerity plan in Parliament that would entitle debt-laden Greece to euro130 billion ($179 billion) in new European rescue money.
Some analysts said the political shakeup in Italy won’t stem the tide of debt the country faces. Italy’s borrowing cost spiked to nearly 7 percent this week. That number is important because Greece, Portugal and Ireland were forced to receive financial lifelines after their rates rose above 7 percent. Unlike those countries, Italy is too large to be bailed out by its European neighbors.
“It doesn’t matter who the politician is. They still have the same debt,” said Martin Hennecke, associate director of investment advisers Tyche Group in Hong Kong. Greece’s situation is “peanuts” compared to the financial devastation that could be wrought should Italy default.
“That would sink the whole eurozone rescue process in an instant. That would sink France, too, because of the exposure of French banks to Italy. It’s about seven times more than their exposure to Greece,” Hennecke said.
Yet the optimism generated by Europe’s efforts to contain its debt crisis led investors to plow money back into emerging market equity funds, which posted their biggest weekly inflow since early April, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based fund tracker EPFR Global payday lenders.
For the week ending Nov. 2, equity funds posted net inflows of $4.9 billion for the week. Emerging market funds took in 70 percent of that total, EPFR said.
Among Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi added 0.2 percent to 1,907.53 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.7 percent to 20,014.43. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.2 percent to 4,346.10.
Benchmarks in India, Indonesia, New Zealand and the Philippines were also higher, while those in Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand fell. Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.8 percent to 2,524.92 and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index rose 1.6 percent to 1,071.04.
Another market cue came from China, with the release Wednesday of data showing the country’s stubbornly high inflation fell in October as rapid rises in food costs eased. The decline was seen positively by investors as it gives Beijing more room to stimulate China’s economy.
Japan’s Olympus Corp. fell 20 percent as it may be booted off the Tokyo stock market after it admitted Tuesday it covered up investment losses dating back to the 1990s. Brokerage firm Nomura Holdings rose 4.1 percent, a day after hitting its lowest price of the year amid fears that securities companies might have been involved in the coverup.
Hong Kong-listed PetroChina Co. rose 3.3 percent and China National Offshore Oil Corp., known as CNOOC, gained 4 percent. In mainland China trading, China National Software & Service Co. gained 6.1 percent while several media companies hit the daily limit of 10 percent.
U.S. stock indexes fell early Tuesday after Berlusconi narrowly survived a confidence vote. But the market turned higher immediately after news reports said Berlusconi had promised to step down after economic reforms are passed, likely next week.
On Wall Street on Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.8 percent to close at 12,170.18. The S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent to 1,275.92. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.2 percent to 2,727.49.
Benchmark crude was down 10 cents at $96.66 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.28 to settle at $96.80 on Tuesday.
In currencies, the euro slipped to $1.3789 from $1.3835 in late trading Tuesday in New York. The dollar fell to 77.67 yen from 77.70 yen.
A lawyer for protesters camped outside London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral said Wednesday that authorities have offered to let the tent city stay until next year, as the leader of the world’s Anglicans backed a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions to alleviate the global economic crisis.
The loosely organized demonstration against capitalist excess, inspired by New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement, has wrong-footed both city and church officials since it began last month, defying pleas to leave and the threat of legal action.
Authorities have suspended legal bids to remove the tents. On Wednesday John Cooper, a lawyer for the protesters, said that local government had offered the protesters a deal “to stay on site until the new year,” then leave on an agreed date.
“My client is considering this offer,” he said on Twitter. Cooper confirmed the offer in an email to The Associated Press.
A spokesman for the local authority, the City of London Corporation, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
While police and bailiffs have removed protest camps in some cities around the world, the London demonstrators have endured, in part due to their location in front of one of the city’s most famous buildings. Their proximity to Christopher Wren’s 300-year-old icon has embroiled the church in a conflict between bank-bashing protesters and the finance industry.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams entered the debate Wednesday, saying “it was time we tried to be more specific” in finding answers to the vague demands represented by the protests.
“The protest at St. Paul’s was seen by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign at all of diminishing,” he wrote in a commentary published in the Financial Times.
“There is still a powerful sense around _ fair or not _ of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of messages not getting through; of impatience with a return to ‘business as usual’ represented by still soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices.”
The transaction tax _ often called a “Tobin tax” _ was proposed in the 1970s by the late James Tobin, an American economist and Nobel Prize winner. Williams said a low tax rate _ 0.05 percent on each transaction _ could raise more than $400 billion globally each year.
The European Commission supports the tax, estimating that it could raise euro30 billion ($41 billion) a year, but the British government has firmly opposed it, preferring a direct tax on bank assets.
Williams called for a “robust” public debate “to probe how far the government’s preferred option will guarantee the domestic and international development goals central to the ‘Robin Hood ‘ proposals.”
Williams wrote approvingly of three proposals offered last week by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: separation of high-risk investment banking from retail banking; recapitalizing banks with public funds; and a tax on financial transactions.
“If religious leaders and commentators in the U.K. and elsewhere could agree on these three proposals, not as a fixed agenda but as a common ground on which to start serious discussion, the struggles and questionings alike of protesters and clergy at St. Paul’s will not have been wasted,” Williams wrote.
The British Bankers Association opposes a transaction tax, arguing that unless it was applied worldwide it would harm the financial industry in higher-tax countries.
The archbishop’s call for a transaction tax drew a lukewarm response from the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who is now leading St. Paul’s response to the hundreds of protesters occupying tents outside the cathedral.
“Well, he (Williams) is an intellectual of European standing and I’ll certainly read what he says with great attention,” Chartres said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper.
“He has studied the subject in some detail and, like any other citizen, it’s a totally legitimate thing to do.”
The Anglican church was caught by surprise when demonstrators against corporate greed and banking excess pitched tents outside St. Paul’s on Oct. 15. They had hoped to protest in front of the London Stock Exchange, but were evicted from the private property and moved on to the nearby cathedral.
Since then cathedral officials have appeared uncertain how to respond. They at first welcomed protesters before asking them to leave; closed the building on health and safety grounds then reopened it a week later; and announced legal action to remove the tent city before suspending it and promising dialogue.
The cathedral’s dean and a senior priest have both resigned over the mishandled crisis.
The Corporation of London, the local authority for the cathedral and surrounding area, also has suspended plans to evict the protesters, and the campers say they are prepared for a long stay.
Stuart Fraser, the corporation’s policy chairman, said officials were meeting protesters for the first time Wednesday, “and we will take things day by day.”
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