2014 Skoll Foundation World Forum. In Oxford, we’ll explore how to hit the impact jackpot: getting services to the rural poor.

About two months ago, I bought a lotto ticket in Florida. I don’t do that. Ever. But the huge prize ($425 million) called out to me from a 7-11 storefront. I reasoned that winners of things like the ‘Mega Millions jackpot’ always seem to have bought their ticket at a 7-11 in Florida, right?

My odds were 1 in 259 million.

As I’ve partnered with Skoll Foundation to design the session I will moderate at the 2014 Skoll World Forum, I find myself thinking about that jackpot. The session will focus on basic service delivery to the very poor. You could say ‘the last mile’ but it might even be the last hundred meters. At Mulago, we believe that’s the impact jackpot: figuring out a way to reach – really reach – the poorest of the poor. It’s not easy, but the potential impact pay off is huge.

Unmet basic needs – clean water, household energy, healthcare, sanitation, education, livelihood – exacerbate each other in a dark synergy of entrenched poverty.  Those who are malnourished are more vulnerable to dirty water. Those who stand to gain the most from studying have the most to lose when there is no light.   Farmers with tiny plots have the most to lose when there are no agricultural support services.  Every health issue becomes a financial crisis. Severe poverty isn’t just a bad hand; it’s the whole deck stacked against you.

Most of the world’s poorest people are rural.  In Oxford, we’ll explore how to hit the impact jackpot: getting services to the rural poor. A high-stakes topic to honor the 2014 theme: ambition. Ambition is not just setting your eyes on the prize; it’s clawing, sweating, screaming, schmoozing, debating, influencing, persuading, clearing and paving a path to it. Ambition is the drive to transform aspiration into actions that have impact.

I had ambitions to win the Florida lottery. But I had no reasonable way to make it happen. Government, NGOs and private sector actors all share ambition to reach the poor. But what channels really work to make it happen? The answers may be different for different sectors; in Oxford, we’ll push on how they’re different and what we might be able to learn across them.

From Mulago’s vantage point, we’re lucky to see these differences in models that combine ambition and ability to package and deliver services that address basic needs in our Scalable Solutions Portfolio. Off.Grid::Electric provides clean energy as a service without transferring the risk of asset purchase to the poor. myAgrohelps farmers save for seeds, fertilizer and training via a scheme that works like the mobile airtime cards people use every day. Jacaranda Health delivers quality, cost-effective care at a chain of maternity clinics. Sanergy is building an integrated sanitation value chain to serve urban slums – from toilet design and franchising to waste collection and organic fertilizer sale. Groups like D-Rev andProximity Designs are doing more than designing high impact products for health and livelihood; they’re also ensuring they make it to the people who need them and are used correctly. mothers2mothers is partnering with governments to more rapidly scale its model of HIV+ peer support to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV; Komaza is bundling access to inputs, finance and training to pioneer microforestry that boosts smallholder incomes; and Development Media International is leveraging mass media to change health behaviors and save lives.

Can you guess which of the above are for-profit organizations, NGOs or hybrid legal structures? It’s a true mix. These organizations have variously identified the market or government as the ultimate route to scale, and they have different perspectives on the role of subsidy required to achieve it. It’s worth having a real debate about the right actors, subsidies, and distribution channels to package and deliver services at scale to the very poor.

We’re going to have that debate in Oxford with folks paving the path to the poorest of the poor, going all the way from innovation to impact, includingAndrew Youn, Co-Founder and Director of One Acre Fund, who continues to push our field on how to bundle and deliver products and services to smallholder farmers in a systematic and cost-effective way; Steve Davis, CEO of PATH, who brokers partnerships across sectors to ensure innovations in global health don’t get stuck in the r&d phase; and Neal Keny-Guyer, CEO of Mercy Corps, who leads the organization’s efforts across 40 countries to address basic needs of the poor in some of the toughest to reach places.

You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. But the best part about the impact jackpot?

The prize is shared among all of us.

Source: by Kristin Gilliss Associate Portfolio Director, Mulago Foundation

Stocks tumble, oil prices jump on Ukraine standoff

Stock prices plummeted while oil prices shot up on Monday as escalating tensions between Russia and the West after Russia bloodlessly seized a part of Ukraine.

Kiev mobilized for war on Sunday after Russia declared its right to invade its neighbor, with their forces already controlling strategically important Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow has a naval base.

The Group of Seven countries (G7) condemned Russia's move, cancelling for now preparations for the G8 summit that includes Russia and had been scheduled to take place in Sochi in June.

U.S. stock futures fell 1.0 percent from a record high hit on Friday while Japan's Nikkei average tumbled 2.3 percent .N225. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 1.0 percent.

"It's a reaction to the escalation in tension in Ukraine over the weekend ... the traditional risk proxies are getting hit, and the safe havens are getting bid," said ANZ currency strategist Sam Tuck in Auckland.

The dollar dropped to as low as 101.255 yen, its weakest in almost a month, and last traded at 101.36 yen, about 0.4 percent below levels late last week.

Against the Swiss franc, another traditional safe-haven currency, the dollar slipped near Friday's two-year low of 0.8782 franc.

"No one wants a full confrontation between the NATO and Russia. That's the worst scenario. Even Putin would probably not want it," said a senior proprietary trader at aJapanese bank.

"My hunch is that, in the end, the West will be resigned that Crimea falls into the hands of Russia, given the historical background. But it will take some time, at least a month, for the issue to be quieted down. Until that will have happened, the markets will be unstable," he added.

The euro also shed 0.2 percent against the dollar to $1.3778, slipping from Friday's two-month high as the euro zone economy is seen as vulnerable because of its dependence on gas supplies from Russia via Ukraine.

Concerns about gas supply disruption as well as threats of war were enough to boost oil prices sharply.

Brent crude, the European oil benchmark, rose as much as two percent to a two-month high of $111.24 per barrel.

The U.S. crude futures hit a five-month high of US$ 104.65

On top of concerns about a military confrontation, it was not clear Ukraine's new interim government, formed only about a week ago after pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovich had been ousted, can secure funds to avoid default.

Concerns over Ukraine sent the 10-year U.S. debt yield falling to one-month low of 2.592 percent, compared to 2.66 percent late last week, ahead of release of important economic data this week, including manufacturing data on Monday and payrolls data on Friday.

Source: Reuters

China's February official services PMI rises to three-month high

China's services sector grew at its fastest pace in three months in February, data showed on Monday, a positive sign for the world's second-largest economy following a string of indicators suggesting a loss in momentum.

The official non-manufacturing purchasing managers' index, a survey of sentiment, rose to 55.0 from January's 53.4, comfortably above the 50 level that separates expansion and contraction.

"I'm not surprised it's up," said Ting Lu of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, noting that the Lunar New Year, a prime travel and holiday, fell in early February.

"They're supposed to adjust for the seasonality."

February has previously been a bad month for non-manufacturing PMI. In 2011, it dropped 12 points, only to rebound by 15 points in March. Large February slides followed by March gains have occurred four times since 2008.

The pick-up in the services PMI contrasted with Saturday's drop in the official manufacturing PMI to an eight-month low of 50.2 in February.

China's services industry contributed 45 percent of gross domestic output in 2012, and it overtook manufacturing as the country's biggest employer in 2011. It has weathered the global slowdown much better than the factory sector.

A separate PMI survey of the services industry by Markit Economics and HSBC will be released on Wednesday. That survey covers more smaller, private firms than the official PMI.

Source: Reuters

China HSBC manufacturing PMI hits seven-month low in February

China's factory activity shrank again in February as output and new orders fell, a private survey found on Monday, reinforcing concerns of a slowdown in the world's second largest economy.

The final Markit/HSBC manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to a seven-month low of 48.5 in February, the third straight monthly decline, from January's 49.5. The figure was in line with the 48.3 reported in the preliminary version of the PMI released on Feb 20.

A reading below 50 indicates a contraction, while one above 50 shows expansion.

"Signs are becoming clear the risks to GDP growth are tilting to the downside," said Hongbin Qu, chief economist for China at HSBC, in a statement accompanying the PMI results.

"This calls for policy fine-tuning measures to stabilize market expectations and steady the pace of growth in the coming quarters."

The PMI, which measures sentiment, found that new orders and output both contracted for the first time in seven months, while new export orders contracted less than in January.

Output was likely affected by manufacturers closing for China's biggest annual holiday, the Lunar New Year festival, which began on January 31 and covered early February, although the PMI results are seasonally adjusted.

The employment sub-index also fell for a fourth straight month to 47.2, its lowest point since March 2009.

That sub-index is one of the few indicators to measure the health of China's labor market, a priority area for Beijing, which wants to keep unemployment low in order to maintain social stability.

The official government PMI, released on Saturday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showed that activity in China's factory sector slowed to an eight-month low in February.

The official survey is weighted more towards bigger and state-owned enterprises and tends to paint a rosier picture than the HSBC/Markit survey, which focuses more on smaller firms and those in the private sector.

China's economic indicators have been mixed of late. Weak investment and declining PMI readings have been countered by surprisingly buoyant exports and bank lending.

The government has been trying to reduce the economy's dependence on exports and enhance the role of domestic consumption, but it is unclear how much growth it might be willing to sacrifice to reach that goal.

Some analysts have said weak PMI numbers would encourage the government to loosen monetary policy in order to keep the economy growing at 7.5 percent, a level that government economists have said could again be the official target, as it was in 2013.

Source: Reuters

Venezuela opposition musters thousands for march despite Carnival holiday

While many Venezuelans went to the beach to enjoy the Carnival holiday, thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched in the capital on Sunday, trying to keep up the momentum from weeks of protests demanding President Nicolas Maduro resign.

There are no signs that Maduro, who says the protests are part of a U.S.-backed coup plot, could be ousted in a Ukraine-style overthrow despite widespread discontent with soaring inflation and chronic product shortages.

Government leaders have urged Venezuelans to skip the protests and make their traditional trips to the beach during the Carnival holiday. State television was filled with images of packed beaches and smiling holidaymakers.

Opposition marchers that ranged from students to middle-aged professionals and senior citizens filled a square in the east of Caracas to protest problems including 56 percent annual inflation and one of the world's highest murder rates.

The unrest evolved from sporadic regional protests into nationwide movement after three people were shot dead following a February 12 march. At least 17 people have been killed in the South American nation's most violent unrest in a decade.

Maduro sought to take the steam out of the protests by extending the usual four-day Carnival holiday by two days.

Opposition moderates question the demonstrator's tactics of blocking streets, setting up barricades and exchanging volleys of rocks with police and security forces. They say this may backfire and boost support for Maduro.

Violent street protests helped briefly drive late socialist leader Hugo Chavez from power in a 2002 coup.

The opposition repeatedly staged street protests later that year as well as in 2004, but they fizzled out as protesters grew weary of blocked streets and barricades made from smouldering trash.

Maduro's adversaries, tweeting to stars under the hashtag #OscarsforVenezuela, sought to persuade Hollywood stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Penelope Cruz, to make statements of solidarity during Sunday's broadcast of the Academy Awards.

Celebrities including Madonna and Cher have chimed in over social media, criticizing the government for what they called excessive use of force against protesters.

Maduro counters that security forces have in fact been restrained in the face of violent attacks. He also says barricades set up by protesters caused deaths by preventing patients from receiving emergency health treatment.

"They want to prohibit Carnival what do you all think about that? Never. The people ofVenezuela have been victorious," Maduro said in televised comments from a state-run market selling subsidized groceries. "Venezuelans are enjoying the beach, the rivers, and the mountains."

The state prosecutor's office said on Sunday it had released 41 people who were arrested on Friday night in a melee involving protesters and police at the upscale Plaza Altamira, where clashes have been taking place almost every day. At least 500 people have been arrested in the violence, most of whom have been released.

Source: Reuters

China’s social media landscape in 2014 (INFOGRAPHIC)

For every leading social site or app in Silicon Valley and the West, China has a few – sometimes a dozen – comparable web services. It’s a sign of a strong local tech ecosystem married to a preference for China-made services – or, in several cases, they’re replacements for things that have been blocked by the Great Firewall. Either way, China’s social media landscape is a hard one to navigate.

That’s why social business intelligence company CIC makes a helpful infographic each year showing the comparable Chinese apps to popular services like Instagram, Fancy, Match, Yelp, and WhatsApp. The newest one is below.

There’s a clear shift towards mobile this year – and not just in CIC’s use of app icons rather than company logos in the infographic (for reference, here’s last year’s). Here are some things to note as you look at the graphic:

• WhatsApp is used very little in China. The main messaging app is WeChat, with a small but growing rivalry from Alibaba’s Laiwang. The top dating/flirting type of chat app is Momo.
• YouTube is blocked in China – and services like Hulu are not available – but China’s web users have a huge array of video sites to choose from, such as Youku, PPTV, Sohu Video, and iQiyi (all shown on the graphic). They have licensed movies and TV shows. The newest series of House of Cards is currently exclusive to Sohu Video, where it’s a big hit.
• Note that even where the Great Firewall doesn’t interfere, rival Chinese apps still prove more popular. That’s the case with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Vine – none of which are blocked in China.
• LinkedIn is one of the very few western social sites to have an impact in China. It has grown well even without a Chinese-language site. But this week LinkedIn rolled out a beta China site, showing that it’s serious about China.

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WSJ MARKETS BRIEF

At the New York close on Friday, for the month of February: S&P 500 up 4.3% at 1859.45. DJIA up 4% at 16321.71. Nasdaq Comp up 5% at 4308.12. Treasury yields fell; 10-year at 2.660%. Nymex crude oil up 5.2% at $102.59. Gold up 6.6% at $1,321.40/ounce.

How We Got Here: February was the revenge of the dip-buyers. After a dank January, U.S. stocks surged in February, with the Dow putting its best performance (largest point and percentage gain) since January 2013. With the S&P 500 at a fresh record high, the bulls seem to have retaken the reins here (albeit, the index is up a scant 0.6% on the year).

But the last session was a wild one. The Dow rose early on Friday, despite a fourth-quarter GDP report that was marked lower. After setting a new record on the S&P 500, equities looked like they’d been flung by a slingshot.

“Reaching new S&P closing high removed a primary bear caution,” UBS’s Art Cashin wrote in a mid-afternoon note on Friday. “Today, there looks to be a modicum of short covering in a thin market.  Little to no resistance.”

The momentum died in the afternoon, around the same time headlines hit that Russian troops had taken over two airports in Crimea. That ratcheted up the geopolitical pressure, and the Dow, which had been up 126, tumbled into the red before recovering to finish modestly higher.

Coming Up: Russia has taken control of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and appears to be preparing to occupy the territory, a senior Obama administration official saidSunday. Safe-haven currencies like the yen and the U.S. dollar are benefiting early in Asia as markets remain focused on events in Ukraine.

Investors will also be reacting Monday to China’s official February manufacturing data. Released over the weekend, it came in with a reading of 50.2. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal on average expected a reading of 50.1, just above the line that separates expansion from contraction. A preliminary gauge released earlier this month by HSBC indicated activity had dropped to a seven-month low, catching investors off guard and adding to China growth fears.

Source: WSJ

College, the Great Unleveler by Suzanne Mettler

When the G.I. Bill of Rights of 1944 made colleges accessible to veterans regardless of socioeconomic background.It was only the first of several federal student aid laws that, along with increasing state investment in public universities and colleges, transformed American higher education over the course of three decades from a bastion of privilege into a path toward the American dream.
Something else began to happen around 1980. College graduation rates kept soaring for the affluent, but for those in the bottom half, a four-year degree is scarcely more attainable today than it was in the 1970s. And because some colleges actually hinder social mobility, what increasingly matters is not just whether you go to college but where.
More Americans than ever enroll in college, but the graduates who emerge a few years later indicate that instead of reducing inequality, our system of higher education reinforces it. Three out of four adults who grow up in the top quarter of the income spectrum earn baccalaureate degrees by age 24, but it’s only one out of three in the next quarter down. In the bottom half of the economic distribution, it’s less than one out of five for those in the third bracket and fewer than one out of 10 in the poorest.
That’s before we even begin differentiating by type of college. Higher education is becoming a caste system, separate and unequal for students with different family incomes. Where students attend college affects their chances of graduating and how indebted they will become in the process.
Nearly three-quarters of American college students attend public universities and colleges, historically the nation’s primary channels to educational opportunity. These institutions still offer the best bargain around, yet even there, tuition increases have bred inequality. For those from the richest fifth, the annual cost of attending a public four-year college has inched up from 6 percent of family income in 1971 to 9 percent in 2011. For everyone else, the change is formidable. For those in the poorest fifth, costs at State U have skyrocketed from 42 percent of family income to 114 percent.
The worst problems, though, occur at for-profit schools like those run by the Apollo Group (which owns the University of Phoenix), the Education Management Corporation or Corinthian Colleges. These schools cater to low-income students and veterans.
Nearly all of their students take out loans to attend, and the amounts are staggering. Among holders of bachelor’s degrees, 94 percent borrow. They take on median debt of $33,000 per student, compared with just $18,000 at the nonprofits and $22,000 at the publics. The for-profit graduates have trouble finding jobs that pay enough to afford their debts, and 23 percent of borrowers default within three years, compared with just 7 percent from nonprofits and 8 percent from publics.


Ordinary young Americans who hoped college could be their route to a better future are the victims of a perfect storm of political winds. 

Now Congress is more polarized than at any point in modern history, and it’s not just decisions on nominations and the debt ceiling that suffer. I examined votes on amendments to higher education bills and found that between the 1970s and 1995-2008 the partisan split doubled in the House and quadrupled in the Senate. Such division on minor adjustments to policies indicates why Congress has failed to address larger issues.

That’s not the whole story, either. Plutocratic governance intensifies the dysfunction, as powerful industries still have the strength to bring politicians together across the aisle in a parody of true bipartisanship.

Most of us were raised to believe that going to college was the surest path to a better life, but for many today that belief can be perilous. Unless we can claw back polarization and plutocracy enough to restore opportunity in higher education, the United States will become a society in which rank is fixed and our ideal of upward mobility but a memory.

 by Suzanne Mettler, The New York Times

Alain Resnais Interview, 1961

L'Annee Dernier a Marienbad Trailer with english subtitles

Film Hiroshima Mon Amour Trailer(with english subtitles)

Film Hiroshima Mon Amour Realisateur Alain Renais Trailer

Alan Resnais, experimental French director, dies aged 91

Acclaimed French director Alain Resnais, whose film career spanned more than 60 years, has died at the age 91.

His producer, Jean-Louis Livi, confirmed the director died in Paris on Saturday.

Resnais was often associated with French New Wave cinema but he also embraced modernism and surrealism.

esnais first drew attention with his documentary Night and Fog (1955), which focused on Nazi concentration camps.

Sabine Azema starred in the majority of her husband's films from 1983

His first feature film would also draw on the horrors of conflict, this time the Hiroshima atomic bomb for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).

In devising the film with novelist Marguerite Duras, he deduced that the sheer devastation caused by the attack could not be dramatised, so he used the theme of the impossibility of speaking about the event.

The film was nominated for a best-screenwriting Oscar and won a number of critics' awards for best foreign film.

The film was brought under the umbrella of the emerging French New Wave, which also included directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, although Resnais said he did not consider himself completely a part of the movement.

Resnais won a number of awards at major film festivals.

He won a Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1969 for L'Annee Dernier a Marienbad, and Berlin Festival Silver Bears for Smoking/No Smoking and On Connait la Chanson.

He was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.

And this year, The Life of Riley was awarded the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for a feature film that opens new perspectives. 

MomentCam, A Photo-editing App That Makes Your Cartoon Lookalikes

People in China have probably noticed that people on their social networks have been sharing vintage-looking caricature avatars featuring themselves. From tech-savvy young people, selfie-lovers to moms and pops who just start to get the hang of social networking, a wide demographic is using MomentCam, allegedly the world’s first photo-editing app that generates caricatures from real portraits.

MomentCam has gone viral in the past three months. In August, it rolled out on Android and accumulated 20 million users within 70 days; in September, it raised 20 million RMB series-A funding; on October 22, it launched its iOS version and since then new accounts per day has averaged 2-3 million; on November 10, it landed on Baidu’s app distribution platform and saw a significnat boost in visibility, aggregating more than 80 million per day.

Snap your own portrait and let the app cartoonize it, then you can share the tongue-in-cheek portrait on QQ, Weibo, WeChat, even Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Remarkably, the Chinese app has 20% of its users overseas, mostly in Thailand.

Why is it so popular? Huang Guangming, maker of MomentCam and a member of the entrepreneurship club, Dark Horse, sees two killer features of the app: city dwellers/multitaskers want entertainment that is fast and easy to start. No kidding, I asked my parents to try it and they merrily sent back their artworks within ten minutes. There are other aspects that make MomentCam stand out from existing photo-editing apps like Meitu or Baidu PhotoWonder. First off, the app is a self-mocking experience, freeing people from their hyper self-awareness daily routine. Second, there is little concern about privacy since faces are hardly recognizable, so people feel comfortable sharing their caricatures on social media – free advertising. It is also addictive. Users keep anticipating what funky creatures they will turn into. Lastly, the caricatures are high-quality works from trained artists and people can pay for premium versions as they please.

Source: TechNode

WSJ Argentina Plans Measures Against Businesses Raising Prices

         The Wall Street Journal reports,"Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner has pledged tougher measures against businesses that raise prices, as her administration tries to stabilize an economy suffering from double-digit inflation and hard currency shortages''.

"I think that among the many things that will be on the legislative agenda this year, we in the executive and the congress are going to have to approve measures that for once and for all defend consumers from abuse by powerful sectors, oligopolies and monopolies," Mrs. Kirchner said on Saturday in a televised speech in Congress.

The most recent private-sector estimates put Argentine annual inflation at around 30%.

The wave of price increases following the 15% devaluation of the peso in mid-January are unjustified and constitute the looting of Argentines' pocketbooks, Mrs. Kirchner told law makers on Saturday during the inauguration of the 2014 legislative session.

Most economists say annual inflation has been running above 20% for years due in part to the government's reliance on money printing to cover deficits. Capital flight by inflation-weary investors and debt payments have depleted the central bank's foreign currency reserves, which forced Mrs. Kirchner's administration to break a long standing promise and devalue the peso this year.

Many economists think the economy grew about 3% last year. But inflation and dollar shortages that have forced the government to cut imports are hurting growth. Most economists expect the Argentine economy to grow just 0.9% this year, according to a survey by FocusEconomics. Some are more pessimistic, with Barclays and Bank of America  Merrill Lynch forecasting a recession.

In recent months, the government has grudgingly adopted more conventional economic policies like raising interest rates to head off a potential financial crisis before Mrs. Kirchner steps down in December 2015.

Still, the Kirchner administration will continue to reduce subsidies for wealthy people who don't need them, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said last week. In a more than three hour speech, Mrs. Kirchner defended the redistributive economic policies that have characterized the combative, left wing style of populism espoused by the Kirchners.

On pace with Alibaba and Tencent, Baidu will continue its acquisition spree in 2014

Baidu's revenues rose 50.3 percent year-on-year last quarter to RMB 9.52 billion (US$1.55 billion), according to its latest earnings report. Despite that strong performance driven largely by advertising, net profits dipped 0.4 percent to RMB 2.78 billion (US$454 million).

The stunted profits were largely due to the Chinese search giant’s efforts to keep pace with Alibaba and Tencent (HKG:0700). The three companies, collectively known as BAT, went on an acquisition spree in 2013 that led to some of the biggest deals in the history of China’s tech industry.

Last year alone, Baidu bought Android app store 91 Wireless, group-buying site Nuomi, video portal PPS, and e-bookstore Zongheng. In late 2012, it also bought a full rather than partial stake in video portal iQiyi.

Baidu reports mobile accounted for more than 20 percent of its total revenues. It runs the fourth most popular Android app store in China.

Shareholders seemed pleased with the report – Baidu stock prices rose 8 percent in after-hours trading as of press time. The company projects revenues will hold strong through Q1, and CEO Robin Li says more acquisitions are on the way in 2014.

Source: TECHINASIA

Prime Minister: Ukraine on Brink of Disaster

    The Wall Street Journal reports,"Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Sunday that his country was "on the brink of disaster" and personally blamed Russian PresidentVladimir Putin for bringing the two nations to the verge of war.

With more than 6,000 airborne and naval forces, Russia has taken complete operational control over the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and appears to be preparing to occupy the territory, a senior Obama administration official said Sunday".

"Russian forces now have complete operational control of the Crimean peninsula, some 6,000-plus airborne and naval forces, with considerable materiel," the official said in a briefing for reporters. "There is no question that they are in an occupation position in Crimea, that they are flying in reinforcements, and they are settling in."

Tencent Restructures E-Commerce Business. Yixun Will Have to Go.

Employees of Tencent’s e-commerce business group were told this afternoon that there has been a restructure and some of them have been assigned to other business units.

Now it’s not a secret that Tencent is in talks with JD.com, one of the biggest online retailers in China that just filled for an IPO in the US, to buy a stake in the latter and possibly pay it with Tencent’s own online retail service Yixun and other resources.

Although it’s not confirmed, some Tencent employees learned that the online services of Yixun will be merged into JD.com and the new JD will replace Yixun to enjoy the access to WeChat users. Currently Yixun is selling selected items through Specials, the only official channel for m-retail on WeChat.

Tencent never figured out a way to make its e-commerce marketplaces or online retailing business as successful as other services like gaming or virtual item sales. Yixun’s market share was less then one fifth of JD’s in Q3 2013, according to a iResearch report. Compared to Tencent’s virtual item offerings or some other services, online retail is a const-intensive and low margin business.

For JD.com, it will be a hugely positive factor for its IPO: 1) Yixun will add more market share into it, 2) WeChat, with a huge user base and convenient payment solution, is regarded as a huge opportunity for m-commerce, and 3) Tencent’s endorsement must encourage investors.

Source: TechNode

Comcast Is Acquiring Video Ad Company FreeWheel For $320 Million

Over the years, FreeWheel has become the go-to ad-serving platform for many TV networks that stream their content online. And it’s about to become part of one of the biggest distributors of content online and off.

That’s because FreeWheel is about to be acquired by Comcast, our sources say. The deal, which should be announced soon, is rumored to be priced at around $320 million, according to one source. (UPDATE: A source close to the situation confirms the deal is nearly completed, but financial terms haven’t yet been finalized.)

FreeWheel is one of the largest platforms used by TV networks and major video distributors to serve ads alongside their content online. Since being founded in 2007, the company has racked up clients that include MLB.tv, ESPN, FOX, NBC Universal, Sky, Turner, and VEVO, among others.

Recently, it also signed up Amazon to begin serving ads alongside its streaming videos.

Comcast, of course, is interested in owning the technology for its own video ad platform. That said, FreeWheel is expected to continue serving outside clients, particularly the networks that the cable company has partnered with for its own TV Everywhere services.

An acquisition by Comcast might seem like a conflict of interest among some of FreeWheel’s customers — in particular satellite TV provider DirecTV, which is a competitor to Comcast and an investor in FreeWheel.

Then again, this wouldn’t be the first tech platform that Comcast has bought and run as a standalone subsidiary. In 2006 Comcast bought online video distribution startup thePlatform, which has continued to serve a number of cable providers and TV networks to deliver online streams of their content.

Other strategic investors in FreeWheel include Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Turner Broadcasting System. The company had also raised institutional money from Battery Ventures and Foundation Capital over the years.

Source: TechCrunch

Medical: Switzerland the avant-garde in anti-aging treatment

There are a range of anti-ageing injections available. To find out more, we talk to Dr Blum, cosmetic doctor at the Clinic Lémanic, about the advantages of the different treatments available.

1. What kind of injections are available to improve our looks?

Most people will think of botox when beauty injections are mentioned, but there is a whole range of less well-known anti-ageing treatments which might be a better solution for your beauty needs.Some examples: fillers, such as hyraluronic acid; bio-stimulants such as Sculptra; bio-agents like Platelet Rich Plasma or stem cell treatments.

2. How do they work and what are the benefits?

Each treatment works in a different way and has different benefits, depending which problem is being targeted.A filler or a bio-stimulant will help you recreate volume lost from your face
A bio-agent or stem cell treatment helps the skin to regrow and also improves the quality of the new growth. Another treatment is carboxitherapy, which is a procedure involving carbon dioxide
This anti-ageing treatment improves the circulation and drainage of the skin, so toxins and waste are removed.

There is a whole range of less well-known anti-ageing treatments which might be a better solution for your beauty needs than Botox.

Dr Blum, Clinic Lémanic

3. Are there any disadvantages to these types of injections?

There should be no disadvantages at all as long as they are carried out by well-trained, experienced professionals who have taken the time to understand the patient’s conditions, needs and expectations.The quality of the product is also highly important. A good quality, bio-degradable product will produce the optimum results.

4. Which treatment is right for me?

Choosing the appropriate treatment depends on a number of factors, including general health, age and the condition of the skin.The injections should also be a part of a whole treatment package, including in depth analysis before the treatment and adequate information for follow-up

Medical: Berkeley researchers find evidence for a "molecular fountain of youth"

The quest for longer and healthier life, if not immortality, has been part of the human experience since we evolved the ability to recognize the total annihilation of individual death. Our understanding of the biology of aging at the molecular level is advancing so rapidly that it appears inevitable that another decade or two of life will be enabled before long. A new step in what may be the right direction has just been published by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The ravages of aging appear to be related to oxidative stress combined with telomere exhaustion, along with many other known and unknown factors. The subject of the new Berkeley study is a class of proteins called sirtuins that are known to play a central role in regulating aging and longevity in many non-human models (such as mice).

There is good evidence that these proteins also play a similar role in humans. For example, research has shown that, of two variants of the SIRT3 sirtuin protein (known to have strong anti-oxidant properties), humans who live past 90 years of age only have one of the variants in their bodies, the variant that enhances production of SIRT3. The difference between the two variants results from a change of one gene by one mutation, and appears to be sufficient to significantly affect an organism's longevity. This suggests a strong link between SIRT3 and longevity.

The genetics of longevity are quite interesting, but still more interesting would be finding an approach to offset the hand you were dealt at birth, or better yet, to stack the deck. The authors of the Berkeley study decided to see if SIRT3 could rejuvenate blood stem cells extracted from old mice.

Their first step was to see what happened as mice, which did not possess the SIRT3 gene, aged. When young, these "knockout" mice followed the same course of aging as did a set of normal control mice. However, when the mice were two years old (about an average lifespan for a lab mouse), the knockout mice had far fewer blood stem cells than did the control group.

What causes the difference in the course of aging? Young cells have low levels of oxidative stress (the generation of reactive oxygen species during metabolism), low enough that the body's normal anti-oxidants can keep up with the resulting damage. When they get older, they can't keep up, and need a boost of SIRT3 to help them. When there is no SIRT3, the progress of old age occurs sooner and more rapidly.

“When we get older, our system doesn’t work as well, and we either generate more oxidative stress or we can’t remove it as well, so levels build up,” said Chen. “Under this condition, our normal anti-oxidative system can’t take care of us, so that’s when we need SIRT3 to kick in to boost the anti-oxidant system. However, SIRT3 levels also drop with age, so over time, the system is overwhelmed.”

So it appears that age-related degeneration speeds up in the absence of SIRT3 in the system – at least among mice. The Berkeley team decided to see if increasing SIRT3 levels could rehabilitate the blood stem cells. This was done by infusing the blood stem cells with the SIRT3 protein, following which their ability to make new blood cells did indeed return.

Further studies will address if SIRT3-induced rejuvenation will apply to whole organisms, so that they might live longer when so treated, even after experiencing normal aging events.

Source: University of California at Berkeley

Mobile: Huawei unveils high-end MediaPad X1 phablet

China's Huawei has launched a new 7-inch HD alternative to the still mightyNexus 7 or Amazon's similarly-sized Kindle Fire HDX at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but one with the added bonus of full mobile telephony capabilities. The flagship MediaPad X1 phablet packs high resolution cameras front and back, offers a choice of operating environments and promises a long battery life.

The 3G/LTE-capable X1 features a 7-inch, 1200 x 1920 resolution (323 ppi) LTPS display with 178 degree viewing angles and is capable of supporting up to 10 simultaneous touch points. It can play 1080p high definition movies at 30 fps, and boasts a Glove Mode, where users will be able to use the touchscreen while wearing thick gloves.

Processing oomph comes in the form of 1.6/1.8 GHz HiSilicon Kirin 910 quad-core processor with Mali450-MP4 GPU, backed up by 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 16 GB of solid state storage with microSD expansion. Users can choose to run stock Android 4.2 or the company's Emotion UI 2.0, and the 5000 mAh Li-Pol battery should be good for five online movies, 15 hours of surfing or 125 hours of audio playback between charges. If another mobile device needs a refill, the Reverse Charging function allows users to share some of the MediaPad X1's own juice.

The device comes with a 13 megapixel rear-facing camera with a Sony Exmor RS BSI sensor and an F2.2 wide-angle lens, and a whopping 5 MP webcam with 22 mm aperture at the front. Photos can be taken using voice commands, and audio notes added to captured images. The 183.5 x 103.9 x 7.18 mm (7.2 x 4.1 x 0.3 in), 239 g (8.4 oz) phablet also benefits from DTS sound technology and a built-in noise-reduction microphone. 802.a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technologies also feature.

The MediaPad X1 was priced at €399 (US$545) at the Huawei press conference in Barcelona, and will be released to Chinese, Russian, Western European, Middle Eastern, Japanese and Latin American markets from next month.

Source: Gizmag, Huawei