July 2016 - Page 9 of 23 - Schwartzreport

Thursday, July 21st, 2016

The US doesn’t rank so well on retirement security

Jessica Dickler , - CNBC

Stephan: I don't know what it is going to take for Americans to wake up to the fact that the quality of life in the U.S. is significantly below that of the Nordic countries. The evidence is that by every measure of social outcome data quality of life in those countries is superior. It isn't that we can't attain such a quality of living, it is that we choose not to. Ask yourself: why is that?

The retirement fantasies of relaxing on a porch swing or travelling around the world still exist, just not in this country.

Among the leading nations for retirement security, the United States didn’t even crack the top 10, according to the 2016 Global Retirement Index by Natixis Global Asset Management.

Europe, however, dominated the top spots, with Norway at No. 1, followed by Switzerland and Iceland. New Zealand ranked No. 4 and Sweden rounded out the top 5, Natixis said.

With more retirees around the world responsible for their own financial security, the countries that ranked the best had policies in place to ensure access to individual or work-based savings programs, according to David Goodsell, who directs investor research for Natixis.

Recent public spending in top-ranked Norway has bolstered the nation’s pension plans, helped in part by the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund. Other high-ranked countries, like New Zealand and Australia for example, have moved to universal, mandatory retirement savings plans.

Meanwhile, the United States ranked 14th for retirement security, according to the report.

Despite benefiting from high per-capita income, stable financial institutions, low inflation, and low unemployment, the […]

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2016

Greenland Just Lost a Trillion Tons of Ice and Nobody Noticed

Maddie Stone, - Gizmodo

Stephan: Well we now have confirmation. Four hundred American coastal cities and large parts of several states -- Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina -- will be submerged in whole or part by the time your grandchildren are your age. The same will hold true for other nations with coast lines. And some nations, such as Bangladesh may simply diasppear. While localities are beginning to wake up to what is coming, I have serious doubts that the Federal government will do much because the Republican Party will block any attempt at serious coordinated climate remediation. In any case it is all going to be too little too late. By the end of this century a map of the U.S. and maps of the other countries of the world that have coastal regions are going to look radically different than they do today.

The ESA’s Cryo-Sat satellite, hovering over our rapidly disappearing ice sheets.
Credit: ESA

Between 2011 and 2014, while humans were discovering dubstep and the wonder of selfies, Greenland was melting fast. It lost a trillion tons of ice in just three years, and the world neither noticed nor gave a damn.

That’s according to a new, open-access study published in Geophysical Research Letters, which used the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite, along with regional ice models, to show that recent melting of the Greenland ice sheet contributed twice as much to sea level rise (roughly 2.5 millimeters over the study period) as the prior two decades. In other words, Greenland—which has been visibly losing ice since the ‘90s—is melting at an accelerating rate.

This falls right in line with the picture Earth scientists have built by studying past ice sheet contractions. Namely, when ice starts melting, it doesn’t go in a plodding, linear fashion. It disintegrates quickly, resulting in large pulses of […]

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2016

Advanced prostate cancer cases skyrocket in U.S. men

Ashley Welch, Health and Wellness Reporter - CBS News

Stephan: If you are a middle-aged male, or partnered with one you should pay close attention to this report. My personal view after reading reams of research reports is that prostate cancer and, indeed, cancer in general, arises from environmental, lifestyle, and diet factors.

Credit: imgur.com

The number of new cases of advanced prostate cancer in the United States has soared by about 72 percent in the last decade, according to a new study. (emphasis added)

The report, published today in in Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, a journal from Nature, prompted researchers to question whether a recent trend of fewer men being screened may be contributing to the rise.

“One hypothesis is the disease has become more aggressive, regardless of the change in screening,” senior study author Dr. Edward Schaeffer, chair of urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Medicine, said in a statement. “The other idea is since screening guidelines have become more lax, when men do get diagnosed, it’s at a more advanced stage of disease. Probably both are true. We don’t know for sure but this is the focus of our current work.”

The researchers looked at information from the National Cancer Data Base, which included more than 767,000 men from 1,089 medical facilities nationwide […]

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2016

Electric vehicles will get a charge along Mass Pike

Donna Goodison , Reporter - Boston Herald

Stephan: Here is some excellent news about the transition out of the petroleum powered vehicle era.

Tesla 3
Credit: Tesla Motors/AP

Electric vehicles will soon be able to power up at 50-kilowatt charging stations on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

The state Department of Transportation plans to install

fast-charging stations at six Mass Pike  service plazas by the end of this year. The first — at the westbound Framingham and eastbound Natick plazas — should be ready for drivers to use by early fall.

EV charging stations at the eastbound and westbound Charlton plazas are expected to be operational by late fall. A charging station at the westbound Blandford plaza is scheduled to be in service by the end of the year, along with another location at either the eastbound Blandford plaza or eastbound Lee plaza, according to MassDOT.

“Each station is ‘fast charging’ and in about 10 minutes can charge […]

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2016

Ben Carson Ties Hillary Clinton to Lucifer as GOP Swaps Campaign for Witch Trial

Gideon Resnick, - The Daily Beast

Stephan: The Republican convention, particularly seen from Italy where I am presently, seems a manifestation of America's angry fearful, racist Id. Ben Carson sounds like a medieval bishop talking about Galileo. Second decade of the 21st century and the Republican Party is talking about Lucifer.

Ben Carson
Credit: Saul Loeb

CLEVELAND — It took Ben Carson just a few short minutes to move away from the teleprompter and toward the devil at the Quickens Loans Arena Tuesday.

About half an hour after New Jersey Governor and fellow Trump primary victim Chris Christie staged a mock witch trial for Hillary Clinton, Carson strolled to the podium, beaming from ear to ear.

“I’m not politically correct,” Carson announced. “And I hate political correctness.”

From there, he abandoned his prepared remarks to talk about Saul Alinsky, the Democratic socialist writer who met with Hillary Clinton while she was in college and who’s become a bugaboo of the right. Alinsky, said Carson—who’s been talking about this for years now—dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to Lucifer. Connect the dots.

“I’m bringing it to people’s attention,” Carson explained to The Daily Beast last month, in the context of defending Hillary Clinton’s Methodist faith from Trump’s attacks on it. […]

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