With 2018 almost coming to an end, you can make the most of the year-end by going for a getaway with friends or family. Whether you want to relax and rejuvenate or want to trigger your wanderlust, it would be a great idea to ring in the New Year’s by having a good time.
As there are so many travel packages available today, it can be rather confusing which one to opt for. Instead of browsing for new vacation deals, why not make use of your credit card to get amazing travel deals? Apart from rewards and cashback, credit cards also offer festive promotions on travel and lifestyle, something that can also come in very handy when you plan for your vacations in 2019.
The credit card travel promotions include discounts and offers on flight tickets and hotel bookings among other perks. But how do you get to know about them, you might wonder.
To make your research easier, we have shortlisted 10 superb credit card travel promotions (in no particular order) that you must check out!
1. Alliance Bank promotion: Enjoy 8% discounts on Hotel.com bookings
Plan your next trip to an exotic location by booking an amazing deal on Hotel.com. Simply use your Alliance Bank credit card to book a hotel of your choice and enjoy 8% discounts. You need to enter the promo code ‘VISA8’ upon checkout to enjoy the promotion. What’s more, you can book hotels anywhere in the world!
Keep in mind The last date for booking your stay is 31 December 2018. You need to complete your stay before 31 March 2019. You have the option to book your stay at any hotels featured on the website, except IHG, Marriott, and Starwood group hotels. Check out more details here. And that’s not all! Apply now for an Alliance Bank credit card, right here on BBazaar Malaysia, and get an exciting free gift! Click HERE to check various options and apply.
2. Citibank promotion: Get up to 10% discounts on Etihad flight bookings
All frequent flyers of Etihad Airways can enjoy amazing discounts when they use their Citi credit card to book the air tickets. Get a discount of up to 10% when you book Economy and Business class tickets of the carrier. Keep in mindTo be eligible for the offer, your Citi credit card has to be issued in Malaysia. Though the travel period is until 30 June 2019, you need to make your bookings by 31 December 2018. For all bookings made from 7 to 31 December 2018, you need to make an advance purchase of 10 days before the travelling dates.
3. Standard Chartered Bank promotion: Enjoy offers on Expedia packagesScreenshot of the promotion
Surprise your loved ones by booking an incredible vacation package on Expedia using your Standard Chartered Bank credit card. You can choose any one of the following offers:
The promotions are available only on selected hotels and flights. You can use the respective promo code only once.
4. HSBC promotion: Enjoy up to 20% off on Malaysia Airlines bookings
Revel in the comfort of Malaysia Airlines by booking a flight using your HSBC Visa credit card. Get 20% off flight bookings made on malaysiaairlines.com/visa from Fridays to Sundays. You can make use of the discount only on Economy and Business flight tickets, (one-way and return flights). Keep in mindThis is an ongoing promotion that ends on 13 January 2019. So book your flight tickets before time runs out!
5. RHB promotion: Take advantage of 10% discount on eRYA honeymoon package
Getting married in 2019? How about spending your honeymoon at the eRYA hotels by Suriya? You can use your RHB credit card to book a 2-day-1-night romantic honeymoon package at any of the group’s properties and enjoy a 10% discount. The package includes breakfast for two, a romantic candlelight dinner, four-course meals, and room decoration. Keep in mind This offer is valid until 31 December 2019. You need to make a reservation at least a week in advance. For bookings, call or email any eRYA by Suria resort of your choice.
6. Maybank promotion: Get 63% discount on published room rates at the Lost World of Tambun
Celebrate the end of the year with your loved ones. Head to the Lost World of Tambun for a relaxing break and enjoy 63% off the published room rate when you pay using your Maybank credit, debit or charge card! The package includes 2 breakfasts and 2 Lost World Hot Springs & Spa by Night admission tickets. To reserve a room, call +605-540 8888 or send an email to [email protected]. Keep in mind You need to pay a surcharge of RM40 for check-ins on Fridays and Saturdays. A surcharge of RM130 is also applicable to stays booked during the eve of a public holiday, on a public holiday, on a Malaysian school holiday, and during super peak season. The promotion is until 31 December 2018, so make your bookings today! Check out more details here. 7. CIMB promotion: Make the most of 10% cashback on Booking.com Plan your next family holiday by making use of the 10% cashback offer from Booking.com. Visit www.booking.com/cimbmy, browse the accommodation of your choice, and make a booking using your CIMB credit card to get the cashback! Keep in mind The cashback offer is for all bookings made on the website before 31 December 2018. You will receive the cashback on the 65th day after the check-out date.
8. AFFINBANK promotion: Get up to 10% off halal-friendly holiday packages on halaltrip.com
Use your AFFINBANK or AFFIN Islamic Mastercard credit card to make a booking on halaltrip.com and enjoy up to 10% discounts on halal-friendly holiday packages in over 25 countries. Visit https://www.halaltrip.com/mastercard, choose your preferred package and use the promo code ‘HTMC10’ upon checkout. Keep in mind The payment must be made in Singapore Dollars. This will be converted to Ringgit Malaysia after Mastercard determines the conversion rate. You will also be charged a foreign exchange spread of 1%. You can compare different itineraries to choose the best one for you and your loved ones. Don’t forget to make your booking before 30 April 2019. Check out more details here. 9. OCBC promotion: Enjoy 5% off on room rates and 15% discount on a la carte food at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel If you don’t want to travel too far, you can book a stay at Eastern & Oriental Hotel, one of the oldest heritage hotels in George Town, Penang. Use your OCBC Bank credit card or debit card for booking, and get 5% off the best available room rates and 15% off on a la carte food. Keep in mind This promotion is valid until 31 December 2018. The discounts on room rates are subject to availability. You can book a reservation on www.eohotels.com or even walk-in to the hotel. Also, the discount on a la carte food is applicable to The 1885, Sarkies, Sarkies Corner, and Farquhar’s Bar.
10. AmBank promotion: Enjoy 5% off on packages by Harpers Travel
Get a discount of 5% on in-house packages by Harpers Travel and make your bookings using your AmBank Mastercard credit card/credit card-i. From safari packages in Kenya to a complete Europe trip, you have a range of options to choose from! Simply visit www.harperstravel.com/my/category/ambank to view the list of available packages. Keep in mindSince the promotion is valid until 31 March 2019, visit the website to choose your package and make your booking right away! To make a reservation, call 0379471388 or send an email to [email protected]. You can walk-in to any of Harpers Travel’s offices to make your payment.
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When it comes to life insurance, many millennials understand the financial risk of not having it — the need — but might not be aware of what kind of policy they need or how to procure it. Current obligations, like student loans, mortgages and other debt, also can be roadblocks. It's about affordability and share of the wallet. Equally inhibiting are the lack of awareness about what they need to secure their financial future and how to go about doing that.
As I've learned while leading digital transformation at my company, technology could help clear several of these roadblocks and enable insurers to create a personalized customer experience that includes awareness of policy issues and ongoing engagement. Artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning on rich data sources and natural language processing, and an integrated environment driven by an application programming interface are the key technology components in this context.
Let's get to the roots of life insurance: What's the purpose? At its core, insurance provides peace of mind. This fundamental realization will help insurers navigate the roadblocks and be available to help millennials meet their financial needs through a simple and intuitive approach. Here's how technology can help remove some of the roadblocks for millennials who want life insurance.
Consumer engagement For millennials, their peer networks or service providers can be their trusted channels. Chatbots driven by AI and integrated with social media platforms or retail websites can help insurers facilitate discussions with customers to determine their needs. Chatbots leverage natural language processing to engage with the consumer while applying needs analysis algorithms based on available products to provide personalized options. Through ML, chatbots can be continuously trained to enhance consumer engagement.
A simpler and faster application process
The process of data collection and underwriting could be simplified, specifically for low-face-value policies. Instead of consumers filling out applications, insurers, with consumers' consent, could prefill the application with data from different sources. Insurers could start integrating with the increasing number of data aggregators from either personal health records or data from health exchanges. A competitive risk score algorithm could be modeled based on regulatory and the insurer’s underwriting guidelines. A rules engine-based solution combined with the risk score could automate the underwriting process. There are also other innovative solutions now available to automate underwriting. For instance, Chronos from Lapetus Solutions simplifies underwriting by using selfies. With an open architecture, insurers can integrate with a partner ecosystem through which standard APIs could realize quote to policy issuing in less than five minutes.
Finding the right product
With the amount of consumer data available, insurance carriers could start by creating a risk profile for relatively smaller demographics than traditionally calculated. Make the product personal based on the customer's life stage and lifestyle at a point in time. Insurance technologies like Human API and PHR Plus provide an aggregated view of an individual’s health profile, which could be obtained with the individual's consent. Combined with publicly available demographic information, actuaries could take advantage of the ML technologies to help them model variations of a base product, which then could be configured based on individual needs. While Microsoft Excel is still the predominant tool in the actuarial world, there are explorations even beyond R and Python into machine learning technologies like DataRobot. The challenge that insurance carriers will have with the predominant legacy technology landscape is the ability to launch products and/or variations in a short time frame and the agility to experiment, learn and change rapidly. Implementing new technologies will take time and effort. To help with this process, consider leveraging an existing ecosystem with a third-party administrator that has a digital platform architecture and can extend that with capabilities from other insurance technologies and third-party services. (Full disclosure: My company is one such administrator.)
Overall, many millennials believe they need to protect their financial future. They just need a partner they can trust: someone who's interested in their well-being and not out there just to sell an insurance policy. Take interest in the overall well-being of the individual and in giving them peace of mind.
Extend the leverage for AI and ML beyond initial customer engagement and into the application process -- and even into modeling a personalized product. Use APIs integrated with ever-growing insurance technologies and third-party services for both data and the capabilities to make customers aware of how their needs can be met, reach out through customers' trusted channels, build value-added engagement, personalize the products and simplify the application process. In short, provide customers with peace of mind. Source: Forbe Tech
Etihad Airways unveils special livery to celebrate 10 years of Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
News in brief: -Etihad Airways has unveiled a new livery to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix -The aircraft with the new livery will participate in a low-level fly-by at the Formula 1 race on Sunday -The airlines has also revealed a special edition F1 themed scarf and tie for cabin crew
The design was painted on a Boeing 787-9 at the Boeing facility in Charleston, South Carolina.
The aircraft will participate in a low-level fly-by at the Formula 1 race on Sunday, accompanied by the airline’s Year of Zayed liveried Airbus A380. Etihad Airways also collaborated with renowned fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg to design a special edition F1 themed scarf and tie.
The design was inspired by Yas Marina Circuit and they will be worn by the airline’s cabin crew throughout the month of November.
The same design will appear on commemorative Economy class headrests inflight during race week.
Kiwi.com launches TEQUILA – enabling partners to expand into new verticals
Innovative new platform offering enabling travel partners to access and sell Kiwi.com’s millions of routes and deals
Kiwi.com, a leading travel technology company and a pioneer in applying state-of-the-art technological solutions to the travel industry, announces today it has launched a brand-new suite of products aimed at a wide range of global partners.
The Czech tech-startup has today unveiled TEQUILA travel solutions - a major innovation for companies around the world looking to broaden their range of travel products by providing access to Kiwi.com’s deals and routes through technology and content.
The TEQUILA platform, created by the European company’s 400+ developers, will allow partners who sign up to the system full access to all of Kiwi.com’s products, which can then be packaged as white label offerings for its clients. This will include all routes and deals using its proprietary ‘Virtual Interlining’ – a process which enables customers to automatically combine flights from more than 500 airlines, many of them budget and full-service carriers that do not normally collaborate with each other, into a single itinerary.
The breadth of this offering will also facilitate any company that wants to enter the travel industry with a wide range of opportunities that are easy to implement. However, it is not only about content, but all the other functions such as payment processing, fraud prevention, customer support and so on, allowing start-ups and non-traditional travel companies to enter the market safe in the backing and knowledge of an established industry leader.
For travel and transport providers, the TEQUILA platform will allow them to leverage Kiwi.com’s technology to sell a broader range of travel offerings and enter into new verticals without the time and expense of building their own systems, for example providing them with millions of flight combinations and multi-modal transport offerings. Kiwi.com will arrange revenue-sharing models with its partners as they look to broaden their revenue streams. The offerings can be scaled according to need and requirements.
“We were constantly being asked by our partners for wider access to all our travel products and the channels used to distribute them. We created TEQUILA as a readily accessible platform that will be of huge benefit to travel providers around the world looking to access the most innovative travel products and deals from Kiwi.com,” said CEO Oliver Dlouhy. “We want to demystify travel distribution and to make travel better for both the providers and the end users.” sources: kiwi.com
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is not a fan of enterprise blockchains.
Talking to Quartz at Devcon recently, the 24-year old cryptocurrency pioneer offered his two satoshis on several topics, expressing his particular disdain for the more centralized variants of the tech he helped promote.
Asked what he thinks has been particularly “wasteful” in the blockchain spehere, Buterin responded:
"A lot of the big corporate blockchain stuff. I read this CoinDesk article about some IBM blockchain thing. I don’t understand this deeply, but the detail that jumped out at me is they’re saying “Hey, we own all the IP and this is basically our platform and you’re getting on it.” And like, that’s… totally not the point…" More specifically, Buterin does believe that there is potential for blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies, but that it needs more time: "Cryptocurrencies and making international payments easier. All of the other ideas—whether we’re talking about products or the self-sovereign identity stuff—that’s clearly something that still needs much more time to be worked out before we can see [whether it] makes sense at scale." Adding: "I feel like actual utilities in the space are going to start getting closer to things that are more purely digital."
Talking specifically about the IBM’s blockchain platform for the food supply chain - IBM Food Trust - Buterin was somewhat sceptical - remarking that “there’s definitely something there, but whether or not any of the actors there are doing it remotely correctly, I’m much less sure.”
Blockchain Vs. Crypto As CryptoGlobe recently reported, blockchain as a distinct sector seems to be gaining some traction. Data from Google Trends show that in July of this year there were more searches for “blockchain” than for “cryptocurrency.”
While this finding is perhaps less surprising than it may appear - as most users likely search for specific crypto-assets such as “bitcoin” or “ether”, rather than the umbrella term - it does seem to capture a general warming to blockchain and DLT technology in the business sector.
A notable example of this trend came in October when Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, said that he believes blockchain to have “huge potential” and sees the tech as essential to his organization’s goals.
A couple of weeks ago, I was heading home from a coffee in downtown Washington, D.C. when I ran into a metro outage. Because the metro train wasn’t running, the traffic was so bad it took the metro bus more than an hour to go less than five miles.
I jumped off the bus at the first stop, which happened to be Reagan Airport, still known to native Washingtonians as National Airport, figuring I’d wait out the rush hour with a glass of wine.
This was the week in which American had seen, first, the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue, then the shooting at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, and the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country music venue in Thousand Oaks, Calif. While I was at the bar, I fell into conversation with a traveler from Atlanta, Ga.
When he heard what I was writing about, he asked, “Why? Do you understand why we can’t solve this problem?” It was the same question the woman I’d had coffee with earlier asked, too. I’m not an expert, but after a year of writing about the business of guns, of talking to gun owners and the owners of businesses that sell guns, or related businesses, I told them both why I think it is a more complicated issue than it seems.
A lot of people posit that the root of America’s gun violence problem is that the main group representing gun owners, or consumers, the NRA, is aligned with the gun manufacturers. This is an unusual situation: Consumer groups often serve as a check on industry groups.
This might be part of the answer – but it’s certainly not the entire answer, and it’s a convenient answer in that it enables Americans who don’t own guns to step away from responsibility for solving the problem. Gun stores had revenue of about $11 billion, IBIS World said in its 2018 report. Gun and ammunition manufacturers had revenue of $17 billion, but the majority of that revenue comes from the defense side of the equation: arms sales to the U.S. and foreign governments. These numbers just aren’t that large. A single company, Amazon, had revenue of $178 billion a year in 2017. The GDP of the United States is more than $19 trillion.
What is larger than the revenue in the gun business is the amount of money spent securing ourselves against America’s gun violence problem, though it's harder to separate.
The security alarm business alone, for instance, brings in $25 billion a year. There are 1.1 million security guards employed in the United States, according to the Department of Labor. I’m guessing the business of a company like ALICE Training Institute, which provides civilian training on how to respond to active shooters, is probably booming right now. The Washington Post estimated schools are spending $2.7 billion a year on security measures. Government spending on domestic homeland security averaged $65 billion per year from 2002 to 2017.
You can argue that all the political firms and nonprofits in this space, from the NRA to gun control groups, are part of the gun violence “industry,” with their vested interests growing the longer they are engaged in battle. (That sentence is likely to get me ostracized from the left and the right sides of my family’s Thanksgiving table). You can even argue that the amount spent on health care (estimated at $2.8 billion a year for hospitals alone), though a cost to taxpayers, is also revenue to the health care companies and therefore part of the gun violence business.
People caught up in an emotional dynamic of fear and the need to protect take all kinds of steps, more or less rational, from lobbying to buying pepper spray to buying a gun to installing six-foot-high security fences that block out the sun to telling children to throw their plastic animals at men carrying huge rifles. Fear can be a powerful subconscious addiction for some people; and people who gain a sense of self by protecting others could act to perpetuate fear in those around them. Emotional truths sometimes, or often, find expression in the companies that entrepreneurs create. In short, one of the reasons that we can’t solve our gun violence problem is that it’s complicated, emotional and deeply enmeshed with Americans’ sense of power and control. (And I haven’t even touched on the way a portion of Americans believe it’s their patriotic duty to own a firearm and encourage others to do so.) Our gun violence problem and the political conflict surrounding it have existed so long that there are now markets that have sprung up and companies making profits off the efforts to solve gun violence. At any point in an intractable conflict, there are people who figure out how to benefit from it. The profiteers of war come in many guises, even from those who are advocating for peace, to those trading on the conflict, to those obviously engaged in provoking it. Those entrenched economic interests, which can be conscious and unconscious, help perpetuate conflict.
Gun violence committed as part of a crime
Gun homicides increased 31%, from 11,008 shooting deaths in 2014 to 14,415 in 2016. In 2011, there were 467,300 nonfatal victimizations, like rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, committed with guns. The companies and organizations working on less sensational but still brutal gun crime are often working in concert with cities and police departments, like Shot Spotter. There are also programs widely seen as effective, like Ceasefire. Under Ceasefire, police teamed up with community leaders to identify the young men most at risk of shooting someone or being shot, talked to them directly about the risks they faced, offered them support, and promised a tough crackdown on the groups that continued shooting. In Boston, the city that developed Ceasefire, the average monthly number of youth homicides dropped by 63 percent in the two years after it was launched, Pro Publica reported. Many gun control groups advocate for (and raise funds for) legal solutions to stem gun crime in general. Universal background checks are one of the most prominent ideas today; Dr. Garen Wintemute argues that they can help reduce both gun violence in general and mass shootings. The Rand Corp. found that background checks might reduce gun suicides. There’s moderate evidence that firearm homicides go down when dealers are required to perform background checks, but the Rand Corp. found inconclusive evidence of the effect of private-seller background checks. Along with the idea that a money nexus between the NRA and gun manufacturers is at the heart of the gun violence problem, the other big misconception is that gun violence is all of a kind. For purposes of my reporting, I separate it into categories, because the private solutions to the problem often address what look to be discrete markets. It’s also worth noting that there are other kinds of gun violence that we have judged to be (more or less) socially acceptable: violence committed by soldiers and police to defend the country and keep law and order; and hunting. Here’s a list of the kinds of gun violence, and some of the organizations and companies actively marketing solutions in each market. No doubt there are others; but these are the ones I’ve noticed in a year of reporting, and some of the legal and political context that affects the markets. Mass and public shootings. These are defined as public attacks in which the shooter and victims were generally unknown to each other and four or more people were killed. There are still only a few a year (though the rate is likely increasing), killing at most a few hundred people, As they increase in number, they are spawning hundreds or thousands of new business that purport to have solutions. A company I wrote about, Sinterfire, makes frangible bullets that could be safer for police and security guards to use in confined areas. There are bulletproof backpacks, and here are inserts to make backpacks bulletproof. There are security and training consultancies, like one called Survival Response LLC, based in Pompano Beach, that reached out to me, and ALICE. Many shooting ranges offer special courses to teach people how to handle active shooters. One of the surprises to people who don’t own guns, and gun control advocates, is that gun owners and gun rights advocates see guns as part of the solution to gun violence. There are even gun carry cases shaped like Bibles. Mass shootings also inspire entrepreneurs like Blake Mycoskie of Tom's to take on the issue of gun violence. Many people in the business of selling or finding solutions to all kinds of gun violence uses mass shootings as a marketing tool. That’s despite the fact there’s little evidence of what works, practically speaking, to prevent mass shootings: There aren’t enough of them to study, for one thing, and for another, there’s a dearth of research on gun violence of all kinds.
People who don't own guns are surprised that gun owners see guns as one of the solutions to gun crime. Gun rights advocates often cite studies of self-defense uses of guns as evidence that guns help reduce gun crime, but there’s little consensus on even the number of incidents, much less on whether, taken together, those incidents could result in an overall reduction in gun crime.
The idea of a gun as a tool of self-defense is an idea based on the image of a law-abiding citizen confronting a criminal, when, in reality, most gun uses in the context of a crime are likely the result of an escalating argument between two people who probably are neither upstanding citizens nor purely evil people. Of course, law-abiding citizens do use guns to defend themselves and their families against criminals. As a marketing strategy, the idea of a gun in the hand of law-abiding citizen aiming at a criminal or a mass shooter is powerful. Marketing speaks to individuals in anecdotes; it usually doesn’t offer scientific evidence that affects public health, except as part of a narrative. Domestic violence. Guns were used to kill more than two-thirds of spouse and ex-spouse homicide victims between 1990 and 2005. I separate this category of gun violence out because I’m hoping to look more at companies active in this space over the next few months. There have been laws passed in the states, often supported by gun control advocates, that tighten the prohibitions on people who have been convicted of a serious domestic violence offense from buying or having guns.
Maybe there’s more out that there that I don’t know about, but it appears to me that the private sector has generated very little way of solutions for women (or men) who want protection, or at least feel safer, against an abusive spouse or partner with a gun.
The one exception are the gun ranges and gun businesses that are marketing guns and gun training as women’s empowerment, like Babes with Bullets. Women’s gun ownership is one of the bright spots of gun sales (sales to women are holding steady, while sales to men decline). One of the reasons is that gun ranges and manufacturers market guns to women as a protection against violence that might visit them personally and individually. “As a police officer, I know evil exists. I’ve seen violence. And I know how long it takes for a call to get thru 911, to me, and me to get the the scene,” competitive shooter Dianna Muller told me. “I don’t want anyone to feel helpless….and get murdered or get raped or robbed at the hands of an evil person. I want them to have a chance. I want them to have a choice to be able to protect themselves. I believe it to be the most sacred human right, to protect yourself. And I believe gun rights should be EMBRACED by women as a woman’s right.” Accidents. There were 489 people killed in unintentional shootings in the United States in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, writes Kurtis Lee. That was down from 824 deaths in 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Taking into account population growth over that time, the rate fell 48%. A long list of companies market locks for guns, including this Israeli firm, called ZORE. The market for such safety devices has expanded as more states have passed laws that include civil and criminal penalties for leaving guns unlocked or loaded around children, Lee. Massachusetts requires that guns be stored locked. Smart gun companies, like Lodestar and iGun, are also marketing to police and to a market concerned about gun safety. One of the things that drives gun owners and the gun rights organizations crazy is that they get little credit for their work on gun safety. The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s “Project ChildSafe,” for instance, distributed 37 million free safety kits that include a firearm locking device, across the United States. The GAO identified it and a handful of other nonprofits in the gun safety space, including Bulletproof Kids and the Brady Center’s ASK Campaign. A group of doctors and medical societies sued the state of Florida over an NRA-supported law that forbade pediatricians from discussing guns in the home with their patients. Suicides. Suicides account for roughly two out of every three gun deaths. The same number of people die in car crashes and by guns in the United States. That’s mostly driven by the decline in the number of car deaths since 1950, writes Christopher Ingraham. But gun deaths have also risen, especially suicides, which account for two-thirds of all gun deaths. Gun deaths are likely higher now than car deaths, because both the suicide and homicide rates have risen in the past three years, since Ingraham wrote. Suicide rates are strongly linked with rates of gun ownership; that’s because suicide is best understood as a fleeting mental illness. People succeed if they have easy access to a lethal method, like a gun.
Organizations that work on this kind of gun violence are mostly nonprofits. Some are people working across the gun rights/gun control divide, like the Colorado Firearm Safety Coalition, which includes public health researchers, doctors and gun range owners. It advocates removing guns from the homes when there is a suicide risk.
It’s only in recent years that the rising suicide rate and the connection between suicide and guns has been the subject of research and attention. A business journalist for 20 years and a freelancer for more than 10 of that, I’ve written about tobacco farmers in Amish Country, immigrants in New York City and financiers all over the world. Right now, I'm writing about the business of guns.
TOKYO: Asian shares were on a slippery slope on Monday as plunging oil prices fanned worries about a dimming outlook for the global economy as investors brace for a crucial meeting between U.S. and Chinese leaders at the end of week.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down slightly while Japan's Nikkei posted gains of 0.2 percent after initial losses.
On Wall Street, U.S. stocks closed lower on Friday, with the benchmark S&P 500 hitting its lowest close in more than six months as the energy sector was sold off in the wake of the oil slump. The benchmark S&P 500 <.SPX> fell 0.66 percent to end about 10.2 percent down from its Sept. 20 closing record high, the second time this year it has entered a 10-percent correction after a rout in early February.
Oil prices traded near their lowest levels since October last year, having dived 8 percent on Friday for the biggest weekly losses in nearly three years, with rising U.S. production intensifying fears of a supply glut.
So far this month, both WTI and Brent futures were down more than 21 percent, on track for their biggest fall since October 2008 unless they recoup some of those losses this week. In early Monday trade, U.S. crude futures <CLc1> fetched $50.53 per barrel, slightly higher though not far from Friday's low of $50.15. Brent crude futures <LCOc1> last stood at $58.99 per barrel, near Friday's low of $58.41.
The oil woes also reflected anxiety over a heated trade war between the United States and China.
"The U.S.-China summit is the biggest event for the rest of the year," said Nobuhiko Kuramochi, chief strategist at Mizuho Securities. U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks during a G20 summit in Argentina at the end of this month. Barring any deals there, the U.S. tariffs on $200 billion goods are set to be raised to 25 percent next year from 10 percent, Kuramochi said. Such a hike is likely to put a brake on the global economy, which is already showing cracks with businesses wary about investment amid the rising headwinds to earning growth.
A survey on Friday showed euro zone business growth has been much weaker than expected this month as slowing global growth and U.S.-led trade war have led to a sharp fall in exports.
IHS Markit's Flash Composite Purchasing Managers' Index for the euro zone <EUPMCF=ECI> fell to 52.4 in November, its lowest since late 2014. That put pressure on the euro. The single currency traded at $1.1335 <EUR=>, little changed in Asia on Monday after a 0.6 percent drop on Friday. Germany's 10-year bond yield also fell to 0.331 percent <DE10YT=TWEB> its lowest since early September. The British pound hardly moved at $1.2818 <GBP=> after European Union leaders sealed a Brexit deal on Sunday.
Markets are now looking to whether the deal can get through a fractious British parliament which is set to vote on it just before the next EU summit on Dec. 13-14.
The yen changed hands at 112.91 to the dollar <JPY=>. The dollar's index against at basket of six major currencies stood at 96.908, not far from this year's top of 97.704 marked two weeks ago. But it could lose momentum if Federal Reserve policy makers take a more cautious approach to future policy tightening. Chairman Jerome Powell will speak on Wednesday while Vice Chairman Richard Clarida's speech is due on Tuesday. Sources: Reuters
An Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs over an alleged conspiracy involving Malaysia's 1MDB fund.
International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) and its subsidiary Aabar Investments filed a lawsuit against the investment bank at New York state court on Wednesday.
The court summons states that the firms are seeking "damages and other appropriate relief for the significant financial exposure and losses… suffered as a result of fraudulent and illegal acts."
Goldman Sachs Group is named as a defendant, as are three of its subdivisions in Asia. Goldman Sachs is accused in the document of engaging in an international conspiracy to embezzle millions of dollars from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund, which was set up by the Malaysian government to improve the country's domestic economy. U.S. authorities claim $4.5 billion was laundered from 1MDB over six years by Malaysian government officials and others.
It is alleged that as part of that scheme, Goldman Sachs bankers bribed former IPIC and Aabar executives to join the conspiracy and act against the companies' interests. Former IPIC Managing Director Khadem Abdulla Al-Qubaisi and former Aabar CEO Mohamed Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny are named as defendants in the summons.
The companies claim both men "agreed to manipulate and mislead" their employers by misusing the firms' names, networks and infrastructure. The amount of compensation to be awarded if Goldman Sachs is found liable will be determined at trial. According to the court document, IPIC and its subsidiary are also seeking legal costs, punitive damages and further awards as the court sees fit.
Goldman Sachs and its fellow defendants have 30 days to respond to the summons, either by submitting a notice of appearance or a complaint.
In a statement emailed to CNBC on Thursday, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said: "We are in the process of assessing the details of allegations and fully expect to contest the claim vigorously." Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Department arrested two former Goldman Sachs bankers on multiple criminal charges in relation to the 1MDB scandal.
"IPIC will take any and all legal action necessary, now and in the future, to protect its business interests against the financial exposure and damages it has suffered as a result of this international conspiracy," said Michael Carlinsky, one of IPIC's attorneys, in a statement emailed to CNBC.
Source: CNBC Leap in the Blockchain Development: What Will be in Demand on the Decentralized Market in 2019?11/18/2018
2017 had the most robust crypto market ever seen. In comparison, 2018 has had quite an unimpressive run within the crypto space with almost all coins careening down by at least 80% from their all-time highs. We closed last year with both November and December seeing the highest in crypto market growth rate; Bitcoin alone made a staggering $600 billion in Market Capitalization. Consequently, its price shot up to $20,000. Since similar trends were also seen with altcoins, the market players weren’t prepared for the plunge this year. While bears might interpret this as the end of cryptocurrency as we know it, nothing could be further from the truth.
Analyzing 2017-2018: Latest Crypto Trends
Although 2018 did not see the extrapolated positive growth expected, and it can be expected that there will be no dramatic change until the end of the year, there have been some of the most important developments in the crypto and Blockchain industry. We attained considerable market stability, which could easily indicate that the market is maturing. In the early days of Bitcoin, there was a great deal of confusion as the technology was not well-developed. All we had was a White Paper and a novel technology, and 10 years later, we are yet to figure out who developed it.
It took some time for people to understand this uncharted territory until in 2017, Bitcoin exploded. In retrospect, it was quite obvious that a peak had to be reached, then a fall before plateauing at a much lower but comfortable price as we figure out “what is next?”.
Governments could not ignore the rising crypto craze and were also did not know what to make of this new market – are cryptos assets or securities? The question still lingers. Even the G20 came up with recommendations for regulations during their 2018 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Some countries went for total blanket bans, others partial (opting to ban Initial Coin Offerings only) while others took to the sidelines expressing lukewarm or indifferent stands.
Recent brain research has revealed some startling facts about the relationship between your brain and your income.
And if you’ve ever felt like your income is stuck, stagnant, or slipping… the answer to WHY this is happening can be found by what’s happening in the space between your ears.
As it turns out… high income earners… rockstar salespeople… fearless entrepreneurs… and successful business owners all seem to have one thing in common…
Their brains work a little bit differently than their less successful counterparts:
But there’s good news…
The brain science community has discovered that many of these thought patterns and habits that make up the “mindset of the wealthy” are actually skills that you can learn and develop fairly quickly. And if you’d like to learn how you can get over your fears… and ditch the negative thought patterns that are holding you back from earning more income… then check this out: John Assaraf, Founder of NeuroGym, NYT Best Selling Author and star of the movie, The Secret, is hosting a very special live training called The Brain-A-Thon.
He’s invited two of the world’s top brain science experts to help him show you how you can eliminate your fears… release your limiting beliefs about money… and learn how you can take your income to the next level.
Here’s what you’ll learn on The Brain-A-Thon:
You’d better grab your seat right now though… space is limited… and this event will fill up fast.
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