iNews Briefs
Cayman Islands Chamber boss offers to help government with workforce training
Barry Bodden, the new president of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce said the country has to address the issue of unemployment with youth unemployment being the priority.
Bodden was speaking at the University College of the Cayman Islands (UCCI) last Friday (13) where the Chamber’s Jobs Expo was taking place.
Jobs Expo is the largest event of this nature and 37 employers exhibited.
Bodden noted the Cayman economy was improving and poised for growth but there was still need to improve the chances of Caymanians finding employment.
The Chamber, he said, was in dialogue with the Cayman Islands Government, and it was enhancing its workforce training opportunities. This was helping to develop workplace skills, but the actual number of jobless locals and the problems people are facing getting work was not being accounted for properly. The time had come, he said to, “require all unemployed people to register with the NWDA.” This would then ensure the unemployed could be properly assessed, offered training and/or helped find work if they were already qualified.
If government couldn’t cope, he said, the Chamber and other private sector entities could help provide the necessary training.
Internet’s oldest dot-com address still exists – and it’s turning 30 on Sunday
By Eugene Kim From Business Insider
This is what Symbolics.com looks like now.
It’s hard to believe but the world’s oldest dot-com address still exists, and it’s turning 30 on Sunday.
The domain name, Symbolics.com, is still accessible, although there are barely any functions available.
According to CNNMoney, the domain name was first bought by a company with the same name, Symbolics, on March 15, 1985.
It was a company best-known for developing a computer language called “Lisp,” and even went public at one point. But the company ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1993, and now it’s privately held.
In 2009, Symbolics sold the domain to a company called XF.com Investments for an undisclosed amount, and moved its site to symbolics-dks.com instead.
New Haven women’s soccer team making most of spring break in Cayman Islands
By Joe Morelli, From New Haven Register
Members of the University of New Haven women’s soccer team are away together this week on spring break. The trip does involve rest and relaxation — and it certainly is expected to be fun.
The Chargers are currently in the Cayman Islands for a pair of friendlies on the pitch and some other related soccer activities.
“We are all really excited that we have been given the chance to travel to the Cayman Islands and experience a completely different culture while playing the sport that we all love,” senior forward Amber Simms said. “This is an amazing opportunity that will certainly help us grow as people and players.”
New Haven, which finished 6-9-2 last year, 5-7-2 in the Northeast-10 Conference, played the Cayman island National team on Sunday. The Chargers will also play a local club team on Wednesday night.
New Haven coach Laura Duncan said the Chargers have been fund-raising since the season began this past fall. Duncan said $40,000 was raised for the trip.
“Although I know this trip will be an amazing opportunity for our players, this would not have been possible without the support we received from player’s families, friends of UNH women’s soccer, local businesses and most importantly, the alumni that all contributed in different capacities financially to make this possible,” Duncan said.
The Chargers will conduct a youth clinic on Friday, have several practice sessions and daily excursions before returning home on Sunday.
Simms, who is from Southport, England, finished last season as the school’s sixth all-time leading goal scorer with 27 goals.
See related iNews Cayman story “Young Cayman Islands Women’s National Team poised for University of New Haven match ups” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/young-cayman-islands-womens-national-team-poised-for-university-of-new-haven-match-ups/
Lawsuit that brought GM ignition switch defect to light settled for second time
By Ashlee Kieler From Consumerist
The lawsuit filed by the family of a Georgia woman who died in a 2010 car accident that spurred the recall of 2.5 million General Motors vehicles with faulty ignition switches has been settled out of court.
The Associated Press reports that terms of the settlement, which are the result of a second suit levied by the family, were not released.
A lawyer for the family, who first filed the suit against GM in 2011, hired engineering experts who eventually discovered the ignition switch issues in several smaller model vehicles.
According to a deposition provided by the family’s lawyer, a GM engineer experienced the problem – in which the ignition switch could unexpectedly shift out of the run position, disabling safety devices and increasing the risk of a crash – while test driving one of the vehicles in 2004.
Initially, the family had agreed to settle their lawsuit with GM for $5 million, but rescinded the agreement last year; instead opting to file a second suit alleging that the company concealed the defect and withheld vital information from the family.
To date, GM has recalled millions of compact cars – including the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion– that have been linked to at least 64 deaths and 108 serious injuries.
Cayman Islands bed race for polio
Cayman Islands Rotary Central and Rotaract Blue are asking members of the Cayman community to enter a team of six, build a bed and push it down Harbour Drive. If you do this you will help eradicate polio.
You don’t have much time as Monday 16th is the last day for signup.
The race commences on Saturday 21st March at 1pm with judging with the race proper around 2:30pm and will carry on until 4pm.
Fiona Moseley, event coordinator and past president of Rotary Central, said in a press release:
“It’s a fun day where all the family can come out and participate. We expect lots of laughs, and we encourage the public to support this event.”
There will also be prizes from a $5 raffle donation, and the public can also vote on the best bed design.
Rotary is committed to the eradication of polio. With the aid of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation matching $2 for every $1 raised, Rotary in the Cayman Islands is making another “push” to raise money to eradicate the disease with this event.
Corporations and individuals are encouraged to join up at www.bedrace.ky
Caribbean animator to produce new children’s TV series
From CARICOM
Renowned animator from Trinidad and Tobago, Camille Selvon-Abrahams, will produce a children’s series as part of the Caribbean Tales Worldwide Distribution Production Support Programme.
The series, called ‘Magnificent Maggie’, exposes grade-schoolers to close up inspection of how things work, both in the technical super world and the biological. Lessons include definitions and explanations of terminologies and gadgets all woven into stories of adventure and excitement as Maggie delves into the magic world of microorganism and technology.
Maggie is a positive role model for children especially young girls as she makes new technology less scary. Research shows that boys are more drawn to technology and engineering so this is a way to balance this challenge.
Caribbean Tales Worldwide Distribution, launched in 2010, is a distribution platform for Caribbean film and television content. The Production Support Programme builds on Caribbean Tales’ vision of creating strong, original, sustainable Caribbean film and television content for the international market.
Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) content developer and experienced producer Nick Davis will be joining the Magnificent Maggie Project as Caribbean Tales Executive Producer.
For more: http://today.caricom.org/2015/03/15/caribbean-animator-to-produce-new-childrens-tv-series/
Cayman Islands hit and run driver facing prosecution charges
A 49-year-old man is alleged to have lost control of his red Ford Mustang (Shelby) and mowed down an American couple who were walking along the pavement near Villas of the Galleon on the West Bay Road, Grand Cayman, around 5pm on Sunday 25th January this year.
The male victim was airlifted to the United States, where he had reconstructive surgery to his face injuries he had received from the accident. The woman, said to be his wife, was admitted to the George Town Hospital.
The couple were visiting the Cayman Islands.
Police officers arrested the driver of the Shelby the following day.
The driver is facing charges of dangerous driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
The almost unbelievably fabulous life of Kirsty Bertarelli, the richest woman in Britain
By Lianna Brinded From BBC
Kirsty Bertarelli is Britain’s richest woman. And as a multi-billionaire she lives an enviably incredible life.
Her fortune is so vast that it eclipses Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and the Queen combined, at £9.75 billion ($14.5 billion), according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2014.
She became Miss UK as a teenager, an accomplished music writer in her 20s, and then in her 30s became the wife and the mother of three children with Switzerland’s richest man, Ernesto Bertarelli, who sold his family’s pharmaceuticals firm Serono for £9 billion to Merck in 2007.
Now in her 40s, she is trying to take the world by storm with her singing. She has already supported Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall in concert and performed for the Prince and Princess of Monaco.
Through interviews from The Telegraph, the Mirror and from her website, as well as pictures from her Instagram, we’ve put together the fairytale that is Kirsty Bertarelli’s life.
Cayman Islands government requesting bids to remove dump tyres AGAIN
The Cayman Islands Department of Environmental Health (DEH) is preparing documents for the fifth time for someone to remove the huge amount of tyres at the George Town dump.
While using them for the $360 million Ironwood community and golf resort has been much heralded as the solution, the developers have admitted they would not be removing them from the landfill until work began on their project that has not yet been approved.
The DoE want a faster solution and so they are going to try again and find someone. CNS are reporting a new Request for Proposals for the used tyres at the landfills will be published within the next two weeks quoting DEH Director Roydell Carter.
ARICOM, Germany hold talks
From Caribbean Journal
Foreign Ministers from around the Caribbean gathered in Berlin this month for a high-level conference with the German government.
The conference, held at Germany’s invitation “noted with satisfaction the steady and continuous progress in relations,” according to a joint statement.
“We value the role of CARICOM as a regional partner and coordinator of the German-Caribbean cooperation,” the two sides said.
Germany has been working with the region in a host of areas, from energy to the environment to regional integration in recent years.
Germany also addressed a longstanding concern for the Caribbean, notably the manner in which multilateral lending institutions classify Caribbean countries’ wealth.
“GDP per capita criterion does not fully reflect the specific vulnerabilities of small island developing states,” the two sides said.
Germany reportedly indicated its support for a “multidimensional poverty measurement in the context of the post-2015 agenda.”
CARICOM regularly hosts similar conferences with governments around the world, from Chile to Turkey.
Winning ‘Bachelor’ Couples: Where are they now?
By Kirsten Acuna From Business Insider
IMAGE: the bachelor chris soules ABC/Nicole Kohl Chris Soules proposed to Whitney Bischoff on the latest season of “The Bachelor.”
It’s hard to believe, but “The Bachelor” has now been on the air for more than a decade.
ABC’s hit reality series just wrapped up its 19th season earlier this week when Iowa farmer Chris Soules asked fertility nurse Whitney Bischoff to be his wife.
When “The Bachelor” launched in 2002 it was a hot watercooler discussion, critiqued for putting personal relationships so openly into the public eye and for allowing one man to date multiple women at once to find his “one true love.”
Despite that, the show has become one of ABC’s best-performing shows producing multiple spinoffs like “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor Pad,” and serving as fodder for other network series.
After 19 seasons, what has become of the many bachelors?
Shocker: The majority aren’t with the winner they fell in love with over the course of a short few months.
While Soules and Bischoff are still together, the series’ track record for successful relationships is six for 28 across every season of the two “Bachelor” shows.
For more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-bachelor-then-and-now-2015-3?op=1#ixzz3UVFTugqu
Promising Alzheimer’s treatment on mice might lead to major breakthrough for humans
By Chris Smith From BGR
Researchers from the University of Queensland, Australia, have figured out how to treat mice suffering from a form of Alzheimer’s, Ars Technica reports. While it’s not clear yet whether the same findings can be applied to human trials, the results are certainly interesting and might lead to further improvements in treating the disease.
Essentially, Gerhard Leinenga and Jürgen Götz managed to use a simple existing technology to improve the condition of mice’s brains that were suffering from Alzheimer’s. The scientists used ultrasound to stimulate the mice’s brains after they were injected with tiny air bubbles in their blood streams.
This combination had a beneficial effect on the protein-rich plaques that form in the brain affected by Alzheimer’s and that eventually end up killing the nearby nervous cells, which destroys the individual’s short-term memory.
The scientists were able to remove these plaques and observed that mice that were treated this way saw plaques shrink by 50%. These test subjects then performed better in tests meant to asses the performance of their memory.
Apparently, using ultrasound to move the plaques also has a secondary effect: Albumin leaks back into the brain in the process, generating additional responses. Albumin has an affinity for plaques, and immune cells in the brain called microglia also get activated, clearing out the plaques. The researchers observed that microglia cells were activated and contained material found initially in plaques.
The authors are apparently confident the same treatment can be applied to humans in following clinical trials, although it’s too early to tell when such procedures will be allowed.
The full study is available in the Science Translational Medicine journal, at the source link : http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/278/278ra33
For more: http://bgr.com/2015/03/14/alzheimers-ultrasound-treatment-on-mice/
Video: Insane Finns strap a parachute to a snowmobile and drive it off a mountain
By Brad Reed From BGR
We already know that the Finns are exceptionally good at developing mobile games but it turns out they have other talents as well, including coming up with exciting new death-defying stunts.
A new video posted by the StuntFreaksTeam shows a group of Finnish men who decided to attach a parachute to a snow mobile and then drive it off the side of a 1.5-kilometer mountain. The parachute managed to help the vehicle land safely on the ground, of course, but this is still something we would never try on our own unless we were being paid a healthy sum of cash.
The man riding the airborne snowmobile seems to be showing no anxiety, however — at one point he even starts munching on a chocolate bar as he’s drifting high above the ground without a care in the world.
Check out the whole video at link below.
Image Source: StuntFreaksTeam / YouTube
For more: http://bgr.com/2015/03/14/finnish-snowmobile-parachute-video/
Australia PM says to decide on China-backed bank membership soon
(Reuters) – Australia expects to make a decision within weeks on whether it will seek to join the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Saturday.
Australia’s decision on whether to become a founding member of the institution risks upsetting either key strategic allies the United States and Japan, or top trading partner China.
Britain this week said it has sought to become a founding member of the AIIB because it was in its “national interest”, making it the first Western nation to embrace the institution, which would finance infrastructure projects in the Asia-Pacific.
“Our position all along has been that we are happy to be part of some thing which is a genuine multilateral institution such as the World Bank, such as the Asia Development Bank. What we are not prepared to do is to sign onto something which is just an arm of one country’s foreign policy. ” Abbott told Sky News Australia.
“We’re looking very carefully at this and we’ll make a decision in the next week or so. I would like to think that it is possible for this to a be a genuine multilateral institution and I think it could well be an important part of bringing China fully into the international community.”
Twenty-one countries were represented at the announcement of the bank in October – Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
Indonesia later said it would join, and China said earlier this year the number of founder members had risen to 26.
But Japan, Australia and South Korea, the other notable absentees in the region, have held back ahead of a March 31 deadline.
Japan, China’s main regional rival, has the highest shareholding in the Asian Development Bank along with the United States, while Australian media said Washington had put pressure on Canberra to stay out.
Abbott said he hoped many countries, including Japan and the United States, would join the AIIB if was set up as a geniune multilateral institution.
(Reporting by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Kim Coghill)
For more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/14/australia-asia-bank-idUSL4N0WG06D20150314
The ‘1,000mph’ Bloodhound car is so fast it needs to be bulletproof
From engadget
Designing a car that can break the world land speed record is a tricky balancing act. It has to be incredibly fast and lightweight, while also offering unparalleled protection on the track. Not only in case there’s a conventional crash, either; even a tiny pebble could have devastating consequences for a vehicle travelling at up to 1,000mph. To protect the British Bloodhound supersonic car, which Andy Green will be piloting in a record-breaking attempt later this year, the team has developed special panels that are effectively bulletproof. They’re constructed from millions of woven glass fibres that intentionally fray and soak up energy when hit by a fast-moving projectile. In the video below, engineers test their durability by firing a small shard from a cannon. Thankfully they’re up to the task, giving Green one less worry when he tries to break the current record (763mph) in South Africa.
For more: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/14/super-fast-bloodhound-car/?ncid=rss_truncated
Man wins lottery without knowing it, loses ticket, probably cries
By Laura Northrup From Consumerists
A man in southern California is living the nightmare of all lottery players: he bought a Powerball ticket in September of last year, and won the game without realizing it. The California Lottery tried to identify the winner as the deadline loomed, releasing surveillance camera footage of him to news outlets. He recognized himself…but he no longer has the winning ticket.
Understandably, this man doesn’t want to come forward and admit to the entire world that he not only forgot to check the lottery numbers, but lost a $1 million slip of paper. It’s bad enough that people who know him have surely recognized him from that surveillance footage. While it’s clear that he was the person who bought the ticket, that isn’t enough to collect the $1.1 million in winnings. According to the ancient and mystical rules of Powerball, he has to present the original ticket. He doesn’t have it. The deadline passed on Thursday, and he was unable to find the ticket in time.
The California Lottery says that unclaimed prizes go to public schools. We suggest that they use it to fund a personal finance curriculum: perhaps one that includes lessons on how to play the lottery without ever losing. Or at least how to successfully use bulletin boards to keep potentially important papers from being swept into the trash.
For more: http://consumerist.com/2015/03/13/man-wins-lottery-without-knowing-it-loses-ticket-probably-cries/
Kia Recalls 200,000 Soul Compact Cars because gas pedals shouldn’t break in half
By Ashlee Kieler From Consumerist
The accelerator pedal might just be one of the more important components of a vehicle, so when reports start surfacing that the pedal might break or bend, that’s kind of a big deal. Such is the case for more than 200,000 Kia Soul vehicles that are now subject to a safety recall.
According to a notice [PDF] from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Kia is recalling 208,858 model year 2014 and 2015 gas and electric Soul compact vehicles because the gas pedal may bend or fracture.
Kia says that if the pedal becomes bent or splits, the driver would likely have difficulty accelerating, which in turn, could lead to an increased risk of a crash.
A chronology [PDF] submitted to NHTSA shows that Kia first became aware of the issue in October 2014 through vehicle warranty claims. In all, the company received 12 warranty claims related to the pedals, but no consumer complaints.
A subsequent evaluation of accelerator pedals collected by Kia found they could fracture due to excessive force. At that point, the manufacturer opted to conduct a voluntary recall.
NYPD edited Wikipedia pages on police brutality, stop-and-frisk
By Richard Lawler From engadget
Apparently it’s not just politicians that are concerned about their reputation on Wikipedia — a report by Capital found evidence of the New York Police Department digging into the crowd-sourced encyclopedia. IP addresses registered to the NYPD have been linked to edits and/or requests to delete the Wikipedia pages for well-known police shooting cases like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell. In the hours after a grand jury decided not to indict an officer for the death of Eric Garner, someone logged on via an NYPD IP address to make several changes to the corresponding article.
But it’s more than just hot-button incidents that were changed. A list of edits shows NYPD IPs significantly changed information related to its stop-and-frisk program, and the New York City Police Department entry. That includes a section on “scandals” that included a note mentioning that the NYPD had started editing the page in order to censor information. Besides requesting that the article on Sean Bell’s shooting be removed because “no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore”, edits on the network touched everything from Chumbawamba to Star Trek Generations.
Going forward, activist and graphic designer John Emerson set up a Twitter bot @NYPDedits (using code released for such purposes after the Congress edits last year) to monitor future changes from known NYPD address ranges. As far as the NYPD itself, a spokesperson told Capital the matter is under “internal review.”
Wikipedia’s rules discourage people from making edits on their own pages or for their own interest — a rule clearly overstepped here — but it remains to be seen if it will enact any type of ban on the NYPD’s address range.
US satisfied with Caribbean security co-operation
By Vernon Davidson Executive Editor From Jamaica Observer
AMID concerns that the Caribbean could be seen as a soft target for Islamic State fighters, the United States has expressed satisfaction with the region’s attention to security under co-operation agreements with Washington.
America’s confidence was clearly stated by Brigadier General Renwick L Payne of the District of Columbia National Guard during a visit to Jamaica last week.
“We’ve established security co-operation with the entire Caribbean region and we feel quite confident that our partners in the region are doing all that is within their powers to sustain security, not just for the population of their independent countries, but [to] ensure that we sustain security within the region,” Brigadier General Payne told the Jamaica Observer in an interview at the US Embassy in Kingston last Wednesday.
“We are quite confident, over the years of working with the region, that we are of a singular purpose in securing our populations,” he added.
Payne also expressed confidence in the co-operation his country is receiving from the Caribbean in combating the narcotics trade.
“We continue to build capacity across the region to ensure that not only is there a solution for the United States, but that there is a solution regionally… [that] we combine our efforts to fight narcotics and money laundering, trafficking in persons, and all that,” he said.
For more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/US-satisfied-with-Caribbean-security-co-operation_18571830
This Indian classical version of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ theme song is the best thing you will hear today
From IBNLive.com
Indian Jam Project is a collaborative platform where musicians come together to play beautiful Indo-Western adaptations of Television or movie theme songs. And their latest attempt is mind-blowing!
With Tushar Lall on the keyboards, Samay Lalwani on the tabla, Sri Sandeep Mishra on the sarangi and Prathamesh Salunke playing the flute, we have to ourselves a delightful and on-of-a-kind rendition of Hans Zimmer’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ theme. The composition was arranged by Tushar Lall and it was superbly done.
The Indian Jam Project has previously covered the ‘Game of Thrones’ theme and the ‘Sherlock’ theme, and they too are completely worth it.
For more and video: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/this-indian-classical-version-of-the-pirates-of-the-caribbean-theme-song-is-the-best-thing-you-will-hear-today/534211-79.html
Rare coral species bred and raised in lab
From Business-Standard
(IANS) In a first, researchers have successfully bred and raised in the lab a rare and threatened Caribbean coral species.
The study, published in the open access journal BMC Ecology, could provide information to help bolster local coral reef conservation.
“Now that we’ve successfully reared juvenile Pillar Corals in the lab, not only can we study them in more detail to find out what factors could be threatening their survival in the wild, but it also means that we can try to out-plant a small number back to the reef,” said lead author Kristen Marhaver from the CARMABI Foundation on the Caribbean island of Curacao.
The Caribbean Pillar Coral Dendrogyra cylindrus is rare and understudied, and small juveniles of this species have never been seen in over 30 years of surveys in the Caribbean.
“We do not know if this will work and it is certainly not a cure-all for the reef. But especially in such a rare coral species, a tiny boost of a few new individuals could make a big difference in their genetic diversity, allowing their populations to adapt and become more resilient to the changing environment in the oceans,” Marhave said.
The species is one of very few corals in the Caribbean that forms large branches, which can provide shelter for important fish species and reduce the energy of storm surge as it approaches shore.
After studying sunset times and lunar cycles taken from other spawning observations, the research team timed their egg and sperm collection around the most likely annual spawning times – exactly three nights after the August full moon and around 100 minutes after sunset.
In the lab, the team carefully adjusted several factors related to fertilisation times and seawater type and nurtured the eggs to develop into larvae.
They managed to successfully grow the embryos to the swimming larvae stage – the first time this has ever been seen – and settled them onto ceramic tripods in water tanks. The settled juveniles then survived for over seven months.
Indiana pays $650k in legal fees to marriage-law challengers
By Zoe Tillman and Mike Scarcella, From The National Law Journal
IMAGE: Bart Peterson, left, and Pete McNamara are married by Marion County Clerk Beth White in Indianapolis after a federal judge struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage. June 25, 2014. Photo: Michael Conroy/AP
Indiana has agreed to pay $650,000 in legal fees to the lawyers who successfully challenged the state’s same-sex marriage ban.
State officials negotiated an award of $325,000 to Kirkland & Ellis and $325,000 to Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said the payments have been made.
The Indiana settlement, announced on March 9, pushes the amount of money awarded by judges or negotiated through settlements in same-sex marriage cases in federal courts above $2 million. Some of those awards are still on hold pending appeals.
Chief Judge Richard Young of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in June struck down the state’s marriage statute as unconstitutional. Lawyers for Indiana unsuccessfully challenged Young’s ruling in Baskin v. Bogan on appeal. The state lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As state government’s lawyer, the Attorney General’s Office has a legal duty to defend the state laws passed by the people’s elected legislators—both in the trial court and on appeal—so long as a good-faith defense exists,” spokesman Bryan Corbin said in an email this week.
Indiana, unlike some states, did not rely on outside counsel for its defense of the marriage laws, Corbin said.
Kirkland partners Jordan Heinz and Brent Ray in Chicago, and associate Dmitriy Tishyevich in New York, were on the team that challenged Indiana’s same-sex marriage ban. Lambda Legal’s Camilla Taylor and Paul Castillo also represented the plaintiffs.
Royal Caribbean donates to cyclone relief fund
Royal Caribbean has donated recovery money to the victims of the cyclone in the south Pacific that has devastated Vanatu.
Royal Caribbean donated AUD$100,000 to the Australian Red Cross.
Royal Caribbean Australia issued a statement on what the company is doing to help.
We are deeply saddened by the devastating situation in Vanuatu. Our thoughts and prayers are with the wonderful people of this country who have long given a very warm welcome to our ships.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines will give AUD$100,000 to the Vanuatu cyclone relief efforts. We are seeking further information regarding how our friends and guests can also support the people of Vanuatu at this time.
Communication remains difficult but we are working with our partners on the ground to ascertain the situation in Vanuatu. We want to ensure that any visits from our ships will help rather than burden the people of Vanuatu.
All sailings will embark as scheduled from Australia and we will advise our guests of any itinerary changes to future cruises if they occur, in order to provide them with a safe and comfortable holiday but also support and help the people of Vanuatu in the best way possible.
The relief donation is in addition to the recently announced partnership with the Vanuatu Government under which Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines will invest AUD$3.8million in shipping infrastructure in Vanuatu.
Royal Caribbean’s donation follows fellow cruise line Carnival Cruise Line, who also donated money to aid the area.
SOURCE: Royal Caribbean
Global finance faces $9 trillion stress test as dollar soars
From The Implode Meter
2015-03-13 — telegraph.co.uk
The Fed’s zero rates and quantitative easing flooded the emerging world with dollar liquidity in the boom years, overwhelming all defences.
This abundance enticed Asian and Latin American companies to borrow like never before in dollars – at real rates near 1pc – storing up a reckoning for the day when the US monetary cycle should turn, as it is now doing with a vengeance.
The emerging market share – mostly Asian – has doubled to $4.5 trillion since the Lehman crisis, including camouflaged lending through banks registered in London, Zurich or the Cayman Islands.
The result is that the world credit system is acutely sensitive to any shift by the Fed. “Changes in the short-term policy rate are promptly reflected in the cost of $5 trillion in US dollar bank loans,” said the BIS.
Asian and Latin American companies are frantically trying to hedge their dollar debts on the derivatives markets, which drives the dollar even higher and feeds a vicious circle. “This is how avalanches start,” he said.
For more: http://ml-implode.com/staticnews/2015-03-13_Globalfinancefaces9trillionstresstestasdollarsoars.html
