US and EU mull new Russia sanctions: Why employers will stop offering health insurance; Global death sentences rise; Resurgence of Jihad Inc.

1 US and EU mull new Russia sanctions (BBC) The US and EU are discussing "deeper sanctions" against Russia if there are "further incursions into Ukraine". US President Barack Obama said "energy is obviously a central focus of our efforts", acknowledging it "will have some impact on the global economy". He said Russians "will recognise that they cannot achieve security, prosperity and status... through brute force".

Tensions are high between the West and Russia after Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russian forces earlier this month after a referendum which Kiev and its Western allies considered illegal. Mr Obama, along with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso, stressed EU and US unity on the issue of Ukraine.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26746106

2 Why employers will stop offering health insurance (Robb Mandelbaum in The New York Times) Here’s a prediction: By 2025, “fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance.” The source of this claim? Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, in his just-published book, "Reinventing American Health Care".

In it, Mr. Emanuel argues that in the next two or three years, “a few big, blue-chip companies will announce their intention to stop providing health insurance. Instead, they will raise salaries substantially or offer large, defined contributions to their workers. Then the floodgates will open.” He says that few small businesses will join the SHOP exchanges set up for them and that most of those that offer coverage are even more likely than big companies to drop it, since those who employ fewer than 50 workers face no mandate to offer it in the first place, which Mr. Emanuel thinks is fine.

Mr. Emanuel acknowledges that the fact that workers don’t pay taxes on the premium benefit from their employers is a big obstacle to this vision — the tax break is the second-biggest deduction in the tax code, and employees won’t be eager to give it up. But, he argues, the so-called Cadillac tax on especially generous health plans, set to take effect in 2018, will help pave the way by discouraging companies from offering those plans.

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/why-employers-will-stop-offering-health-insurance/?module=BlogPost-ReadMore&version=Blog%20Main&action=Click&contentCollection=The%20Agenda&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

3 Global death sentences rise (Saeed Kamali Dehghan in The Guardian) Iran and Iraq are responsible for a sharp rise in capital punishment, accounting for more than two-thirds of the world's executions last year. Although significantly fewer countries use the death penalty today than two decades ago, "killing sprees" in Iran and Iraq helped cause a 15% increase in the number of executions globally, according to Amnesty International's annual survey on death sentences and capital punishment.

At least 778 executions were known to have been carried out globally in 2013, 538 of them in Iran and Iraq alone, showed the 62-page report. It was up from 682 executions in 2012. Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary general, said "The long-term trend is clear – the death penalty is becoming a thing of the past. We urge all governments who still kill in the name of justice to impose a moratorium on the death penalty immediately, with a view to abolishing it."

China is believed to have executed several thousand people – more than the rest of the world together – but exact figures are unavailable as Beijing authorities classify execution statistics as a state secret. Saudi Arabia practiced beheading as a method of execution, while the US used electrocution. Hanging was used in a wide-range of countries such as Afghanistan, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia and India. Iran was among the countries that carried out public executions, drawing much international condemnation. Lethal injection (in China and the US) and firing squad (in Somalia and Yemen) were among other methods.

More than 23,000 people were on death row by the end of last year and nearly 2,000 people were given death sentences in 57 countries in 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/iran-iraq-global-rise-capital-punishment

4 Resurgence of Jihad Inc. (Zahid Hussain in Dawn) Pakistan's resurgent jihad factory seems to be working overtime, supplying well-trained and highly motivated fighters for the Syrian and Afghan war theatres. There’s no dearth of radicalised volunteers to take part both on the internal and external front. Though theoretically still proscribed, the militant groups are back in business exploring new frontiers for jihad.

Pakistanis form one of the largest contingents of foreign combatants in Syria and their number is likely to rise with the growing Saudi influence in this country. Meanwhile, the Afghan front is also heating up with the approach of the 2014 deadline for withdrawal of the US-led foreign forces, attracting a greater number of militants for what is described as the most critical phase of the battle for Afghanistan.

There’s a long history of Pakistani holy warriors fighting foreign wars from Afghanistan to Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, even getting involved in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region in Azerbaijan. But the avenue for external jihad shrank after 9/11, with Pakistan pulling back from its policy of using militancy as a tool of regional policy. Outraged by this change of tack, militant groups turned to internal jihad by declaring war on the Pakistani state.

A Pakistani Taliban fighter in Syria was quoted by a foreign news agency as saying that there was a higher reward from God for fighting evil at home as well as outside. All these groups have close ideological links with Al Qaeda and are most likely to be fighting along groups like Al Nusra. The most dangerous scenario presents itself once these fighters return to Pakistan.

A highly volatile situation in the Middle East calls for a more prudent policy approach by the government and for maintaining strict neutrality on the widening sectarian war. Instead, the prime minister has decided to take sides, with extremely grave consequences for the country. That gives a huge boost to the jihadis. The resurgence of Jihad Inc. and the increasing involvement of Pakistani militants in foreign conflicts presents a grave challenge to the country’s stability and security.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1095640/resurgence-of-jihad-inc

How America loses a job every 43 seconds; US sees Russia as regional power; Is the world more depressed?; Air pollution linked to seven million deaths

1 How America loses a job every 43 seconds (Matthew J Slaughter in The Wall Street Journal) April 1 is when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services begins accepting new H-1B visa petitions for 2015. An H-1B visa allows a company to create a new job for a highly-educated foreigner in the US for at least three years. The H-1B program, which accounts for nearly all of America's skilled immigration, imposes an annual cap of 85,000 new visas: 65,000 with at least a bachelor's degree and 20,000 with at least a master's degree. In many recent years, demand for H-1B visas has far exceeded supply.

The US's skilled immigration policy hurts American workers, companies and the economy. Immigrants have long been a key part of America's talent pool, helping drive the innovation that creates jobs and higher standards of living. Their most significant contributions have been in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Foreign-born individuals make up about 20% of today's US STEM workers with bachelor's degrees and 40% of those with advanced degrees.

There is a real, tangible cost to the US economy of allocating far fewer skilled-immigrant visas than companies need. Most immediately, the cost is forgone jobs created in the companies and beyond. More broadly, the cost is forgone ideas, innovation and connections to the world. Restrictive skilled-immigration policy costs US jobs every single day. How many? Start with an estimated 100,000 jobs lost directly this year from H-1B visa applications that were either not filed or not approved beyond the current cap of 85,000. Then add 400,000, a ballpark estimate from research of additional jobs not created at immigrant-hiring companies and at these companies' suppliers.

That's 500,000 jobs lost thanks to too-restrictive US immigration policy. Spread across 50 five-day workweeks, this translates into 2,000 US jobs not created a day. That is a new job lost about every 43 seconds, around the clock, every single day that America is open for business. In 2013, the US economy created 2.37 million new payroll jobs. This tally could have been more than 21% higher had US immigration restrictions not existed. Wise reform could bring a welcome end to the damage restrictive immigration policy inflicts on the country's own economic vitality.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579451122421049340?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303802104579451122421049340.html

2 US sees Russia as regional power (Julian Borger in The Guardian) President Barack Obama has described Russia as no more than a "regional power" whose actions in Ukraine are an expression of weakness rather than strength, as he restated the threat from the G7 western allies and Japan that they would inflict much broader sanctions if Vladimir Putin went beyond annexation of Crimea and moved troops into eastern Ukraine.

Obama rejected the suggestion made by Mitt Romney – his Republican challenger in the last president election – that Russia was the US' principal geopolitical foe. The president said he was considerably more concerned about the threat of a terrorist nuclear bomb attack on New York. He said that the US was committed to the defence of its Nato allies but that for non-member states along Russia's borders, Washington and the rest of the international community would use non-military pressure to counter Russian encroachment.

"Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbours, not out of strength but out of weakness," the president said. The US also has influence over its neighbours, he added, but: "We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them. "The fact that Russia felt it had to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more," Obama said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/barack-obama-russia-regional-power-ukraine-weakness

3 Is the world more depressed? (TM Luhrmann in The New York Times) Is there more suicide and depression these days across the globe? Possibly. The World Health Organization reports that suicide rates have increased 60 percent over the past 50 years, most strikingly in the developing world, and that by 2020 depression will be the second most prevalent medical condition in the world.

The Global Burden of Disease 2010, an extensive study published last December in the British medical journal The Lancet, set out to quantify time lost to healthy years of life through disability (a complex calculation) and found a 36.7 percent increase in the “burden” of mental illness and substance abuse disorders across the globe compared with 1990, although researchers concluded that this was a result of population increase and aging. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the rate of antidepressant use in the US rose by 400 percent between 1988 and 2008.

The number of diagnoses of depression in Japan more than doubled between 1999 and 2008. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates, at 21 people per 100,000, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; the US' rate is 12 per 100,000. Last year, the rate in Tamil Nadu, India was 25 per 100,000.

There is reason to believe that mental illness is indeed increasing around the world, if only because urbanization is increasing. By 2010, for the first time in history, more than half the world’s population lived in cities. Cities are places of possibility. But cities also break traditions and fracture families, and they breed psychiatric illness. In a city you are more likely to be depressed, to fall ill with schizophrenia, and to use alcohol and drugs. Poverty and rapid urbanization sharpen these effects.

We know that social position affects both when you die and how sick you get: The higher your social position, the healthier you are. It turns out that your sense of relative social rank predicts many health outcomes, including depression, sometimes even more powerfully than your objective socioeconomic status. 

What has exploded in India over the past few decades, but also everywhere else in the world, is information about other people. As we watch television, surf the Internet and follow events around the world, we become intimately aware of other ways of living and of others who are richer and more powerful. We place ourselves in a vast social order in which most of us are ants. It may truly be a depressing reflection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/opinion/a-great-depression.html?gwh=B7A2506D2F5058D4D246C912452F6870&gwt=regi

4 Air pollution linked to seven million deaths (Helen Briggs on BBC) Seven million people died as a result of air pollution in 2012, the World Health Organization estimates. Its findings suggest a link between air pollution and heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer. One in eight global deaths were linked with air pollution, making it "the world's largest single environmental health risk", the WHO said.

Nearly six million of the deaths had been in South East Asia and the WHO's Western Pacific region, it found. The WHO said about 3.3 million people had died as a result of indoor air pollution and 2.6 million deaths were related to outdoor air pollution, mainly in low- and middle-income countries in those regions. The WHO assessment found the majority of air pollution deaths were linked with cardiovascular diseases.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26730178

Russia warns of investor flight; UK inflation at four-year low; India media gains in election spending

1 Russia warns of investor flight (BBC) Russia expects investors to move up to $70bn of assets out of the country in the first three months of this year. The sign that investors are becoming nervous about Russia comes amid sanctions and tensions over Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters, Andrei Klepach, Russia's deputy economy minister, also warned of stagnant growth and rising inflation. He expects growth in the first quarter to be "around zero". The Russian economy grew by just 1.3% last year, but Mr Klepach said it was "too soon" to talk about "a recovery from stagnation".

The Russian economy ministry forecasts suggest $65-70bn of assets would be taken out of Russia this quarter, but Mr Klepach said the figure was likely to be closer to $70bn. That would mark a significant rise on 2013, when capital outflows for the entire year totalled $63bn.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26725905

2 UK inflation at four-year low (Julia Kollewe in The Guardian) Chris Williamson, chief economist at data group Markit, notes that the fall in inflation to 1.7%, a four-year low, enables the Bank of England to keep interest rates low for longer. “The big uncertainty for the outlook for inflation lies with wages and salaries, which are finally starting to show signs of rising. The question is whether they will rise enough to worry policymakers into tightening policy sooner than currently envisaged.

The general expectation is that inflation is likely to continue to run at or below the Bank of England's 2.0% target for some time, subdued by lower import costs, resulting in turn from sterling's appreciation this year, as well as lower global commodity and energy prices.

This means policymakers have greater leeway to keep interest rates at the record low of 0.5% for longer, as the economy goes through a 'sweet spot' of robust economic growth, falling unemployment and low inflation."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/mar/25/german-business-confidence-uk-inflation-focus

3 India media gains in election spending by parties (R Jai Krishna in The Wall Street Journal) As most Indian firms are struggling, newspaper, television and radio companies are expected to flourish this year as the world’s largest democracy spends a record amount on national elections. In the federal polls which will run from April through May, political parties are likely to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their candidates and causes to India’s more than 800 million eligible voters. This pre-monsoon shower of advertising could end a long drought at many media firms.

Companies that depend on advertising dollars have been struggling through a stint of stagflation which has crimped consumers’ spending power as well as consumer product companies’ advertising budgets.
The spending will “prove to be a lifeline” to some news television channels, said Jehil Thakkar head for media and entertainment practice at KPMG.  “The print industry is also likely to benefit significantly from election spending.” Politicians and political parties are expected to spend at least 20 billion rupees ($329 million) in advertising to campaign for votes as the south Asian nation heads to polls from April 7, according to one estimate by Kotak Securities Ltd.

Of the total campaign spend, KPMG estimates around 30% will go to newspapers and magazines and most of that slice of the political advertising pie will go to local language publications that speak to voters in their native tongues.

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/03/25/media-to-pocket-more-than-300-million-in-political-spending-spree/

More signs of China slowdown; India vote and irrational exuberance; A nanny for drivers

1 More signs of China slowdown (Sydney Morning Herald) A Chinese manufacturing index unexpectedly fell, underscoring the risk that leaders will need to add stimulus to meet this year's economic-growth goal. The Purchasing Managers' Index from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics dropped to 48.1 in March, the companies said.

Weakening manufacturing would make it more difficult for Premier Li Keqiang to meet a growth target of about 7.5 per cent this year amid efforts to curb pollution and financial risks from surging debt. The State Council, or cabinet, said this month that China will speed up construction projects and other measures to support the world's second-largest economy after a slowdown in industrial-output and investment expansion.

"Weakness is broadly-based with domestic demand softening further," Qu Hongbin, Hong Kong-based chief China economist at HSBC, said in a statement. "We expect Beijing to launch a series of policy measures to stabilize growth. Likely options include lowering entry barriers for private investment, targeted spending on subways, air-cleaning and public housing, and guiding lending rates lower."

The recent economic data and retention of the same growth target as last year have spurred speculation that China will loosen monetary policy. Eleven of 21 economists surveyed by Bloomberg this month see a cut in banks' reserve-requirement ratio in 2014, compared with six out of 18 analysts in February. Premier Li, speaking March 13 at an annual press briefing, said there's some flexibility around the growth target this year, without specifying how much of a slowdown he would tolerate. He also indicated confidence in achieving the goal without stimulus.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/china-economy-shows-more-signs-of-slowdown-20140324-35d3g.html

2 India vote and irrational exuberance (Sadanand Dhume in The Wall Street Journal) Every five years, another Indian election represents the world's largest democratic exercise. The upcoming general election, staggered across five weeks in April and May, involves 814 million eligible voters, 930,000 polling stations in 35 states and territories, and 28 major political parties plus scores of minor ones. Given the stakes—the chance to rule a nation of 1.2 billion people—the contest will supply the sort of drama, spectacle and backstabbing usually reserved for the movies.

While any election involving a sixth of humanity matters, the upcoming one matters more than most. A decade of policy drift under the populist Congress Party has cooled India's once red-hot economy. And for the first time in a generation, a series of staggering corruption scandals spanning telecom, coal and real estate have placed graft center-stage in an Indian election. Will India's voters—still largely poor—punish the weak governance and reckless populism of the past decade? Most likely, yes. And will the new government that emerges after votes are counted May 16 have the will and capacity to put the country's economy back on the rails? Only maybe.

Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies estimates that the ruling Congress Party will suffer its worst ever defeat, winning only about half of its current 206 seats in Parliament, while the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party will win between 192 and 210 seats, putting it within striking distance of the 272 seats needed to form a government. The US-based Pew Research Center found that the BJP's prime ministerial hopeful, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, has a favorability rating of 78%. Nationally he is 28 percentage points ahead of the Congress Party's vice president and putative prime ministerial nominee Rahul Gandhi. India's stock markets, buoyed by optimism that the business-friendly Mr. Modi is on his way to the prime minister's office, have surged.

But markets should temper their exuberance. The chances of Mr. Modi implementing the sweeping policies needed to return India's growth to the double-digit rates it enjoyed until a few years ago depend on two unknowns: the nature of the coalition he will lead, and his willingness to go beyond the relatively cautious positions he has offered on the campaign trail.

To be sure, Mr. Modi boasts a stellar pro-business record in Gujarat and is the first grassroots politician in India to master the art of communicating reformist ideas such as low taxes to a lay audience. (He likens the government to a honey bee and the economy to a flower). He also has the backing of business and most of India's most prominent market-friendly economists. But until we know the final contours of India's next government and the policy positions of the prime minister once in office, euphoria about India's economic comeback will be more sentiment and guesswork than anything we can bank on.

http://online.wsj.com/news/article/SB10001424052702303802104579450663229117956?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_sections_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303802104579450663229117956.html%3Fmod%3DWSJINDIA_hpp_sections_opinion

3 A nanny for drivers (Khaleej Times) Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, have now developed a new device that can actually track your emotions and try fix them as you try to get from point to point, stuck in the confines of your car. The institute, which specialises in facial expressions, monitoring and analysing them, will use their expertise to figure out exactly what is going through the driver’s mind when he/she is behind the wheels.

Working with auto people PSA Peugeot Citroen, the scientists have made a device that will use an infra-red camera behind the steering wheel to track facial expressions on the driver’s face to catch signs of rage, irritation and fatigue, among other things. It is when they are in highly emotional states that drivers usually get into incidents on the road that can lead to accidents or danger to them or other drivers on the road.

“Additional research aims to explore updating the system in real-time — to complement the static database — a self-taught human-machine interface or a more advanced facial monitoring algorithm,” one of the researchers on the project said recently. We think any device of this kind, that will help avert the daily tragedy that we witness on roads, will find a ready market.

http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=/data/editorial/2014/March/editorial_March46.xml&section=editorial

US infrastructure deficit; Global warming to hit Asia hardest; Long-time unemployed may never work

1 US infrastructure deficit (Khaleej Times) American vice-president Joe Biden quipped recently that if a passenger were to be taken blindfolded to Hong Kong, he would on arrival feel he was in America, looking at the modern airport. But if the same person was brought to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, he would say: “I must be in some Third-World country.” America’s ranking in terms of infrastructure in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness report has fallen sharply. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the US needs to spend $3.6 trillion over the next six years to boost its infrastructure, especially in roads, highways, bridges and urban facilities. President Barack Obama wants Congress to allot $302 billion for upgrading the nation’s roads and railways. Unfortunately, unlike in many other parts of the world, much of the spending on infrastructure in the US is done by the federal and state governments, with insignificant public-private initiatives. 

Many Americans are also reluctant to pay toll on roads; consequently, governments do not want to introduce such fees on interstate highways, though many of the roads are nearing the end of their 50-year life span. Traditionally, building and repairing of roads is funded by a federal tax on petrol, but with a gradual decline in the number of vehicles, the money is inadequate to fund improvements. The crisis in America calls for new thinking and a greater role for private players to bridge the widening infrastructure deficit.

http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=/data/editorial/2014/March/editorial_March44.xml&section=editorial

2 Global warming to hit Asia hardest (Robin McKie in The Guardian) People in coastal regions of Asia, particularly those living in cities, could face some of the worst effects of global warming, climate experts will warn this week. Hundreds of millions of people are likely to lose their homes as flooding, famine and rising sea levels sweep the region, one of the most vulnerable on Earth to the impact of global warming, the UN states.

The report – Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability – makes it clear that for the first half of this century countries such as the UK will avoid the worst impacts of climate change, triggered by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. A combination of a high-risk region and the special vulnerability of cities make coastal Asian urban centres likely flashpoints for future conflict and hardship as the planet warms up this century. Acrid plumes of smoke – produced by forest fires triggered by drought and other factors –are already choking cities across south-east Asia. In future, this problem is likely to get worse, say scientists.

Other potential crises highlighted by the report include the likelihood that yields of major crops such as wheat, rice and maize are likely to decline at rates of up to 2% a decade, at a time when demands for these crops – triggered by world population increases – are likely to rise by 14%. At the same time, coral reefs face devastating destruction triggered by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide dissolving in sea water and acidifying Earth's oceans.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/22/global-warming-hit-asia-hardest

3 Long-time unemployed may never work (Binyamin Appelbaum in The New York Times) The long-term unemployed “are an unlucky subset of the unemployed.” They tend to be a little older, a little more educated, a little less white – but really they’re not that different from the broader pool of people who have lost jobs in recent years. Except for one thing: There is a good chance they’ll never work again.

These are the sobering conclusions of a new paper by three Princeton University economists including Alan B. Krueger, the former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.  The paper is part of a growing body of research showing that the prospects of people who lose jobs deteriorate rapidly unless they find new jobs quickly.

The basic argument made by the new paper, and others like it, is that the long-standing relationship between movements in inflation and unemployment, which appeared to break down during the Great Recession and its aftermath, can be restored by writing off long-term unemployment. People are only counted among the long-term unemployed if they say they are still looking for jobs. As time passes, people tend to give up, and those who do are no longer counted as members of the labor force. 

So why do the people who persist in trying become less successful with time? “Either because, on the supply side, they grow discouraged and search for a job less intensively or because, on the demand side, employers discriminate against the long-term unemployed, based on the (rational or irrational) expectation that there is a productivity-related reason that accounts for their long jobless spell,” the new paper says.  

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/unemployed-you-might-never-work-again/?_php=true&_type=blogs&src=rechp&_r=0