20 World economies warn of global risks English

English 20
ALANBAA
Tuesday, 14 October, 2014
“Discover America Week”
Oct. 13–21 Events
Business
Speaker
Series
Time: October 14 - 16,
Every Day, 11:30 am
- 1:00pm
Place: Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, 11th floor
Tuesday, October 14
"Living in a Cloud First,
Mobile First World by
Microsoft"
Cyril Voisin
Cyril is the Regional
Technology Officer for
Microsoft Gulf. He will
speak about Microsoft’s
vision of the new Cloud
First, Mobile First world
we live in. This busi-
Richard Litman
ness session will offer
examples of how people and enterprises are
embracing these new
ways of living, playing
and working and where
technologies are heading in the future . Business development managers and IT managers
should attend.
Wednesday, Oct. 15
"What is the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance (FATCA)"
Hannah Shipley
Hannah Shipley is the
Director for Business
Tax Advisory of Ernst
and Young in Dubai. She
leads the U.S. Foreign
Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) initiative for the Middle
East North Africa region
for Ernst and Young.
Cyril Voisin
She will speak about
what is FATCA; give
an update an intergovernmental approach to
FATCA compliance for
Kuwait; and discuss implications for regulators, financial institutions, and individuals
(dual-nationals).
Thursday, Oct. 16
"Intellectual Property
and Brand Management
Strategies"
Richard Litman
Richard Litman is Legal Counsel for the International Intellectual
Property Institute (lIPI).
He will discuss the types
of intellectual property
rights (IPR) and brand
management strategies
available to companies
to increase their bottom
line, the role IPR plays
in the development and
commercialization of
innovations, and collaboration opportunities available to Kuwaiti
companies seeking to
expand their IPR portfolio. All companies
will benefit from this
talk, particularly those
in emerging technologies, ICT, health care,
and eCommerce.
PARTICIPATING UNIVERSITIES
Creighton University
DePaul University
Emerson College
Fairleigh Dickinson
University
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola University Chicago
Middle Tennessee State
University
Northwestern University in
Qatar
Parsons The New School for
Design
San Jose State University
State University of New York
- University at Buffalo
University of San Francisco
University of Washington
Health
Texas worker tests positive
for Ebola
(Reuters) - A health worker in Texas
at the hospital where the first person
diagnosed with Ebola in the United
States died last week has tested positive for the deadly virus in a preliminary test, the state’s health department said on Sunday.
U.S. authorities are stepping up efforts to stop the spread of the virus,
with medical teams at New York’s
John F. Kennedy Airport on Saturday
beginning the screening of travelers
from the three West African countries hardest hit by the worst Ebola
outbreak on record.
The worker at the Texas Health
Presbyterian Hospital reported a lowgrade fever Friday night and was
isolated and referred for testing, the
Texas Department of State Health
Services said in a statement.
“We knew a second case could
be a reality, and we’ve been preparing for this possibility,” said Dr.
David Lakey, commissioner of the
health service.
The worker tested positive in a
preliminary test at the state public
health laboratory in Austin.
“Confirmatory testing will be conducted by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta,” the department said. The worker is believed to be the first person
in the United States to test positive
for Ebola who has not been to West
Africa.
Thomas Eric Duncan, who had recently arrived from his native Liberia, died in an isolation ward of the
same Dallas hospital on Oct. 8, 11
days after being admitted.
Liberia is the country worst affected by the virus with 2,316 victims,
followed by 930 in Sierra Leone,
778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and
one in the United States, the World
Health Organization said on Friday.
Some 4033 people are known to have
died in seven countries from the outbreak, it said.
The U.S. government has ordered
five airports to start screening U.S.bound travelers for fever from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
John F. Kennedy Airport began
the screening on Saturday and will
be followed on Thursday by four
others: Newark Liberty, Washington
Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an affected
person or contamination from objects
such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.
The United Nations said on Friday that its appeal for $1 billion to
respond to the West Africa outbreak
was only 25 percent funded and a
surge in trained healthcare personnel was also needed to help tackle
the crisis.
Economy
World economies warn
of global risks
Reuters - The International Monetary Fund’s
member countries on Saturday said bold action was
needed to bolster the global economic recovery and
they urged governments
not to squelch growth by
tightening budgets too drastically, although Germany poured cold water on
the idea of a new global
“crisis.”
With Japan’s economy floundering, the euro
zone at risk of recession
and even China’s expansion slowing, the IMF’s
steering committee said
focusing on growth was
the priority.
“A number of countries
face the prospect of low
or slowing growth, with
unemployment remaining unacceptably high,”
the International Monetary and Financial Committee said on behalf of
the Fund’s 188 member
countries.
The Fund this week cut
its 2014 global growth forecast to 3.3 percent from 3.4
percent, the third reduction
this year as the prospects
for a sustainable recovery
from the 2007-2009 global
financial crisis have ebbed,
despite hefty injections of
cash by the world’s central banks.
The IMF has flagged Europe as the top concern, a
sentiment echoed by many
policymakers, economists
and investors gathered in
Washington for the Fund’s
fall meetings.
European officials sought
to dispel the gloom. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the
drag from fiscal tightening
in the euro zone was set
to fade, while German Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schaeuble downplayed the
idea that the region’s largest economy was at risk of
recession.
“There is no reason to
talk about a crisis in the
global economy,” Schaeuble said. The IMF committee called for fiscal policy flexibility, but efforts
to provide more room for
France to meet its European Union deficit target
looked set to founder on
Germany’s insistence that
the agreement on fiscal rectitude was set in stone and
that the bloc would not be
writing any new checks.
The United States has been
a relative bright spot in the
otherwise darkening global economic picture, and
investors have rushed into
dollars as a result.
Still, while U.S. growth
has picked up, soft inflation
and wage growth suggest
the slowest-ever postwar
recovery is not delivering a
sustained boost to demand,
and concerns are growing
that the global slowdown
will undercut the U.S. economy as well.
Top officials from the
U.S. Federal Reserve highlighted growing risks, with
the central bank’s No. 2 saying the global slowdown
could delay plans for a U.S.
interest rate hike.
“In determining the
pace at which our monetary accommodation is
removed, we will, as always, be paying close attention to the path of the
rest of the global economy
and its significant consequences for U.S. economic prospects,” Fed Vice
Chairman Stanley Fischer said at a conference of
the Institute for International Finance.
The IMF panel urged
nations to carry out politically tough reforms to
labor markets and social
security to free up money to invest in infrastructure to create jobs and lift
growth.
“Our key concern is to
look ahead so that we avert
.... the very real risk of a
prolonged period of subpar growth,” said Singaporean Finance Minister
Tharman Shanmugaratnam,
the panel’s chairman.
The committee also
called on central banks to
be careful when communicating changes in policy
in order to avoid financial
market shocks. While not
naming any central banks,
the warning appeared aimed
at the Fed, which is set to
end its current bond-buying program this month.
Its next step, expected in
mid-2015, would be to raise
rates. The Fed has debated a change to its commitment to holding rates near
zero for a “considerable
time” at its recent policy
meetings, but is stepping
gingerly to avoid roiling
financial markets. It does
not want a repeat of the
“taper tantrum” it touched
off last year when it signaled its easing of monetary policy was drawing
to a close.
Education
College is now a buyer’s market
Reuters - Colleges
are increasingly worried
about getting enough enrollments, and students can
use the situation to their
advantage.
A survey of college admissions directors by news
website Inside Higher Ed
found that 79 percent were
either very or moderately
concerned about not meeting their enrollment goals
this year, up from 76 percent last year. Anxiety was
particularly high among
private nonprofit colleges,
with 48 percent admitting
to being very concerned,
compared with 43 percent
in the 2013 survey.
The increasing competition for students has created
a buyer’s market at most
schools, said college consultant Lynn O’Shaughnessy,
author of the book “The
College Solution.”
Families willing to look
beyond the most selective
colleges should have plenty of options for both admission and financial aid,
she said.
“If you believe the media
reports, it looks like everyone’s getting turned away,”
said O’Shaughnessy, who
offers online classes on college admissions to financial advisors and parents.
“This is not the reality ...
most schools are feeling
petrified that they’re not
going to fill their classes.”
The colleges struggling
the most are what Scott
Jaschik, editor of Inside
Higher Ed, called “the nonfamous privates,” schools
that do not have big en-
dowments and that rely
almost totally on tuition
to pay the bills.
Among private nonprofit
colleges, 65 percent failed
to meet their enrollment
targets by May 1, compared with 56 percent a
year earlier. Seven out of
10 private undergraduate
colleges missed their targets this year, compared to
six out of 10 last year.
“People hear ‘private
college’ and they think
‘Harvard,’ but that’s the
one percent,” said Jaschik. “Most colleges are
not competitive in admissions. Most colleges need
students.” In recent years,
some private colleges struggling with declining revenue have laid off faculty, eliminated programs
or pursued mergers with
other institutions. Several
have had their credit ratings downgraded.
A smaller pool of high
school students is partly
to blame, college admissions officials said, and
more families are balk-
ing at the price of higher
education, particularly at
more-expensive private
colleges.
Private colleges also are
experiencing increasing
competition from public
universities, which are adding faculty and enrollment
slots as states begin to restore some of the funding
slashed during the recession, Jaschik said.
Eighty-nine percent of
private college admissions
directors said they were
losing potential applicants
because of concerns about
accumulating student loan
debt, while 64 percent of
public college admissions
directors said the same.
Heavy discounting has
also backfired on some of
these colleges, Jaschik said.
Offering bigger bargains
has left some colleges with
more students to educate
but lower overall revenue,
Jaschik said.
Gallup, which conducted
the Inside Higher Ed poll,
collected 406 surveys representing 187 public col-
leges, 192 private institutions, and 16 for-profit
schools.
Most colleges, public
and private, plan to increase their efforts to recruit beyond their states,
respondents said. At public colleges, these students
typically pay higher tuition
than in-state residents, Jaschik said, while private
schools want them simply to fill seats.
Most private nonprofit
colleges said they would
also woo more applicants
who do not need financial
aid. At the same time, a majority of public and private
schools said they would
continue using merit aid
as a recruitment tool. This
somewhat controversial
form of aid, not based on
need, is often used to woo
desirable candidates away
from other schools.
A recent report by the
New America Foundation
charged that many schools
divert institutional funds
that should be going to
needier applicants and
instead use it to attract
students from wealthier
families.
Understanding these
trends can help families
negotiate better financial
aid offers, O’Shaughnessy
said. Colleges that need students, particularly private
colleges, may be willing
to offer bigger discounts
or to match competing
schools’ offers of financial aid, she said.
“You shouldn’t assume
the first offer you get is the
last one,” she said.