U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT
ENFORCEMENT COORDINATOR REALIZING THE FULL POTENTIAL – ANNUAL REPORT ON GOVERNMENT-HELD SPECTRUM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
TO SPUR ECONOMIC GROWTH ENFORCEMENT
The future of the Internet of Things will be ‘EPIC’Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies (CDAIT) recently released a new paper titled “Driving New Modes of IoT-Facilitated Citizen/User Engagement.” ITU News caught up with Alain Louchez, Managing Director of CDAIT, to discuss the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for improving lives and building Smart Cities.
Ten tourists drowned when a boat capsized trying to rescue them from gale-driven forest fires which have killed at least 74 in Greece and which may have been started deliberately.
A mother and son from Poland were among the dead when the vessel flipped in the water amid rough seas after picking up guests from a hotel in Mati as forest fires tore through the resort, 25 miles from Athens.
In the same village, a number of holidaymakers and locals were burned alive, some of them trapped in their cars in traffic jams, as hundreds tried to flee the raging inferno, which also devoured more than a thousand homes.
Safety fears have been raised over a revolutionary gene-editing tool hailed as one of the greatest innovations of medicine in recent decades.
Scientists have warned the genetic damage caused by the Crispr/Cas9 technology – known as Crispr – have been ‘seriously underestimated before now’.
They have uncovered evidence the gene-editing tool causes unwanted mutations that may prove dangerous – and is ‘much less safe’ than once thought.
While many in Mexico are distracted by World Cup matches and the upcoming presidential elections, something big and strange has been going on under the radar.
Earlier this month, President Enrique Peña Nieto signed 10 decrees that essentially give transnationals like Coca-Cola and mining companies even greater access to the country’s water supply.
But there was little in the news about it. The media framed the measures as “guaranteeing water (supplies) for the next 50 years”. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also got behind the decrees, under the pretence that they protect the environment.
After academics and water rights activists analysed the legal content of what had been passed and declared their opposition, the WWF again defended the measures. It claimed the “water reserves don’t represent in any way the privatisation of a resource, nor the extinguishing of any right to use water. Rather, [the decrees] clearly establish volumes of water that should be intact for biodiversity.”
But the WWF is not impartial in Mexico, given its alliance with Mexico’s top billionaire Carlos Slim. Author Wilfried Huismann denounced the WWF saying it has been “selling its soul” and “greenwashing” business operations for companies such as Coca-Cola, Shell, Monsanto, HSBC, Cargill, BP, Alcoa and Marine Harvest.
“WWF is a willing service provider to the giants of the food and energy sectors, supplying industry with a green, progressive image … On the one hand it protects the forest; on the other it helps corporations lay claim to land not previously in their grasp. WWF helps sell the idea of voluntary resettlement to indigenous peoples,” said Huismann.
An analysis by Water for All, a Mexican grassroots organisation that campaigns for water rights, found that the recent decrees allow the government to guarantee water for mining, petroleum and private companies, at the expense of rural workers, indigenous groups and urban communities. The decrees lift a prohibition on extracting water from about 300 catchment areas.
They also declare that any water rights that have not been renewed are now invalid – meaning 50,000 towns, common land holders and communities, not realising they had to renew their right to access the water on their own land, have lost that right.
Furthermore, for the next 50 years, some states will be in charge of distributing water for public urban use through concessions. As seen in Puebla already, these concessions are essentially a privatisation of water, putting its management into the hands of corporations through a bidding process.
The Puebla government was the first state to successfully award a 60-year deal to a consortium to manage the local water. That consortium is run by corrupt business owners and money launderers — and as a result of the privatisation we have seen our water bills rise to 13 times what nearby states pay.
The company, Waters of Puebla, surprises residents with random water bill debts; refuses to fix broken connections while still charging water rates; restricts water access to some suburbs, seeing them go without water for months; and limits water to most poorer areas to just 60 minutes a week, while providing unlimited supply to wealthier suburbs and businesses such as Walmart.
In response to the WWF’s claim that the decrees have environmental goals, Water for All pointed out that the water the decrees reserve for conservation is expressed in millions of cubic metres a year, but “protecting rivers, catchment areas and their ecosystems depends more on regulating the water flow”.
The decrees also come in a context of expanding “megaprojects” in the country. Huge construction, energy and mining projects are carried out at the expense of rural and indigenous communities, and the environment.
With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, extractive industries took off in Mexico. Mexican researchers have warned that 70% of the country’s rivers are already “seriously contaminated” by extractive industry. Indigenous and rural communities suffer, as their only water sources are flooded with toxic chemicals. Already, of the 731 drainage basins, 104 are undersupplied due to overuse.
In response to Water for All’s analysis, Mexico’s private media has published several articles calling the claims of privatisation “fake news”. “The privatisation of water is false,” stated one article, while another was headlined “Peña Nieto privatising the water is more fake news”.
The coverage seems to be a clean-up campaign by the private media to quickly reframe the conversation.
Ultimately, none of these articles dispute that the decrees were passed; instead they discuss whether it is correct to label the removal of prohibitions and the concessions to private companies as “privatisation”.
The timing of the decrees is no coincidence. Left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to as AMLO) is highly likely to win the July 1 presidential election, but he will not be sworn in until December 1. That gives the national and state governments a few months to award irreversible decades-long contracts and permits to corporations.
[Tamara Pearson has been an activist and journalist for 17 years, writing and fighting from Australia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and now Mexico. She blogs at Resistance Words, and is the author of The Butterfly Prison.]
9 May 2018 | By Rod Sweet 3 Comments
Twenty-seven of 28 EU national ambassadors last month signed a report criticising the vast Chinese initiative for benefitting Chinese companies and Chinese interests, and for undermining principles of free trade through its lack of transparency in procurement.
The BRI, also known as the “new Silk Road”, was unveiled by Chinese President Xi Xinping in 2013. It envisions six infrastructure and economic corridors running through some 65 countries to expedite China’s trade with the west.
The ambassadors said BRI “runs counter to the EU agenda for liberalising trade and pushes the balance of power in favour of subsidised Chinese companies,” reported German newspaper Handelsblatt, which saw the document.
Hungary’s ambassador to the EU was alone in not signing it.
Hungary was the first European country to sign up to the BRI, in 2015, and has been in conflict with the EU over its plans for a Chinese-built and financed railway between its capital Budapest and the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
China’s influence has also extended recently to Croatia, an EU member. Its government has awarded the contract to build the 2.4km-long Peljesac bridge to a Chinese consortium, sparking a legal challenge by Austrian contractor Strabag, which claimed the Chinese bid was suspiciously low.
The ambassadors’ report, which Handelsblatt characterised as “unusually biting”, was compiled ahead of an EU-China summit in July. The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is trying to forge a common EU stance on the BRI, the newspaper said.
Chinese infrastructure diplomacy typically involves loans to governments for major infrastructure projects, conditional upon one of China’s large state-owned construction companies carrying out the work. “This bilateral structure leads to an unequal distribution of power which China exploits,” the ambassadors’ report said.
“At the same time the initiative is pursuing domestic political goals like the reduction of surplus capacity, the creation of new export markets and safeguarding access to raw materials,” said the report.
Ambassadors warned that European companies would be excluded from BRI contracts without European principles of transparency in public procurement, as well as environmental and social standards.
The German government has been particularly critical of the BRI. A study it released in February with German chambers of commerce concluded that BRI projects took place most often in politically unstable countries with weak legal frameworks, reported Handelsblatt.
A plan of its own
Meanwhile, the EU has begun formulating a plan of its own to build infrastructure links to Asia.
The European Commission released a consultation document in February soliciting opinion on “an EU Strategy on Connecting Europe and Asia”, which is expected to become official EU policy by October.
It notes an Asian Development Bank estimate that Asia needs $26 trillion in infrastructure investment between now and 2030.
Without mentioning China, the document worries about “the proliferation of bilateral initiatives” which have “raised concerns about environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability and have at times contributed to state fragility in the Euro-Asian region”.
Separately, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director Christine Lagarde warned last month that BRI projects risked saddling developing countries with unsustainable debt.
The EU wants its Asia connectivity plan to have sustainable financing and to increase the resilience of countries involved, as well as providing opportunities for European companies to participate.
It is meant to give developing countries an alternative to China’s BRI, said Frans-Paul van der Putten, a senior research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
“The EU is unhappy that many countries in Asia and eastern Europe seem to regard China as the main source of investment in greater regional integration, whereas in the view of the EU it is itself a much larger actor in this regard,” he told the South China Morning Post.
Image: The Belt & Road Initiative (also known as the “new Silk Road”) envisions six infrastructure and economic corridors, running through some 65 countries, connecting China to the west (Wikimedia Commons)
GENOCIDE – SERCO’s Covert Network of Companies Engages in Software and Poison Programs . .
http://themillenniumreport.
https://aim4truth.org/2018/04/
Summary: Open Genocide the London-NY-Axis by SERCO
Serco Group is a crown-controlled company conspiring with the Senior Executive Service (SES) to implement a soft-kill program to depopulate the world for the London-NY-Axis (the English monarch, the City of London, Wall Street and the House of Rothschild) through:
Eugenics, the world-intelligence-network, software and poison programs). On 2 Jan 2018, Serco was awarded a 610 million USD contract to manage FEMA Region IX that covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. On 16 Jul 2013, Obama awarded Serco a 1.2 billion USD contract to run the ObamaCare website. Serco also manages the air-traffic-control towers in 63 US airports, and has been paid more than 95 million USD to run the US patent and trademark examination processes. Serco has 73 subsidiaries and runs the “Internet of Things” patents filed by Richard C Walker, Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies (these patents explicitly refer to human beings as “wet-ware”). Serco’s activities are correlated with DOJ 500 (500 unelected DOJ lawyers), OPIC, MCC, USAID, Serco Inc, the Aerospace Corporation, crown-agents, the Office of Net Assessment (DoD), Andrew W Marshall, the American Inns of Court, the Five Eyes (5is = US, GB, CA, AU, NZ), the Internet of Things, the Highlands Group, the IBM Eclipse Foundation, the theft of social networking invention created by Leader Technologies, James P Chandler III and Richard C Walker’s “wet-ware” patents.
This system, called SERCO, is widely known and many researchers and authors precede us in their reporting; however, it is our intent in this series of articles and videos to show the specific rat lines that make Senior Executive Services and SERCO the evilest system in the world. We will be showing you the big picture of SERCO in this series.
TOXIC WATER ALERT: Public water in Washington, D.C., was declared unsafe to drink; warnings issued to the public –NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Many Washington, D.C., residents spent the weekend under a boil water advisory due to a contamination risk. On Friday, DC Water began advising tens of thousands of homes and businesses across a big area of Northeast and Northwest D.C. to boil their tap water before drinking or cooking with it.
Around 34,000 people were affected by the problem initially, although the actual number could be much higher because, for example, all of the residents in an apartment complex are often counted as just one customer.
The issue stemmed from a problem with the city’s water system that allowed contaminants to get into the water in the affected areas. The source was an open valve at the Bryant Street pumping station, which is situated to the east of Howard University.
After detecting a drop in water pressure at around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday evening, the emergency alert was issued at 4:35 a.m. on Friday morning. The area covered by the boil water advisory was reduced just after noon on Friday. However, a new area of land near the border with Maryland was added to the advisory.
Experts weren’t initially sure if any water had been contaminated, but they put the advisory in place as a precaution. Although the water was safe to use for bathing, customers were advised to use boiled or bottled water for purposes such as preparing food, feeding pets, drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, and preparing baby formula.Those who accidentally ingested the water need to look out for digestive issues. One area out of 13 tested positive for contamination with total coliform bacteria, but it has since been cleared. Washington, D.C., officials also closed all of the pools, water fountains and spray parks in the areas affected, despite temperatures reaching into the 80s. Bottled water was delivered to those living in area homeless shelters.
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Some residents were outraged that they only learned about the problem through the news and social media instead of being informed directly by the government or DC Water. The general manager of DC Water, David Gadis, insisted that the utility did everything it could to reach customers using methods like email and robo calls.
Washington, D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency warned residents of the advisory through Twitter and its Alert DC system. However, only those who sign up for these alerts will receive them, so many people simply didn’t get the word that their water was unfit for consumption.
The alert was lifted on Sunday, but residents were warned to run cold water through the taps for 10 minutes before getting back to their usual water usage.
Although this problem was reportedly caused by a valve issue, crumbling infrastructure in aging water delivery systems remains a huge problem throughout the nation. When water passes through corroding iron pipes, it can become contaminated with rust. These pipes can also rupture, allowing diseases and pollutants from the ground to get inside the water supply. Many waterborne disease outbreaks can be attributed to distribution system problems.
Across the nation, municipalities spend in excess of $50 million every year to bring residents “clean” drinking water. However, some experts say there is little point in cleaning up water but then delivering it to people using dirty pipes. The cost of replacing aging pipelines around the country in the decades to come could cost water utility companies hundreds of billions of dollars.
This is why people who care about their health avoid drinking tap water, regardless of how clean their municipality says it is. Aging infrastructure, the addition of fluoride, and possible contamination are just some of the issues that are driving people to increasingly turn to gravity water filters so they can feel confident that the water they are drinking is safe and clean.
Media captionValerie Rockefeller Wayne, chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, spoke to the BBC about the decisionHeirs to the Rockefeller family, which made its vast fortune from oil, are to sell investments in fossil fuels and reinvest in clean energy, reports say.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is joining a coalition of philanthropists pledging to rid themselves of more than $50bn (£31bn) in fossil fuel assets.
The announcement was made on Monday, a day before the UN climate change summit opens on Tuesday.
Some 650 individuals and 180 institutions have joined the coalition.
It is part of a growing global initiative called Global Divest-Invest, which began on university campuses several years ago, the New York Times reports.
Pledges from pension funds, religious groups and big universities have reportedly doubled since the start of 2014.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund director Stephen Heintz said the move to divest from fossil fuels would be in line with oil tycoon John D Rockefeller’s wishes,
“We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy,” Mr Heintz said in a statement.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The last major conference on climate change, in Copenhagen in 2009, ended without resultsThe philanthropic organisation was founded in 1940 by the sons of John D Rockefeller. As of 31 July 2014, the fund’s investment assets were worth $860m.
“There is a moral imperative to preserve a healthy planet,” Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, a great-great-granddaughter of Mr Rockefeller and a trustee of the fund, is quoted by the Washington Post as saying.
A climate change summit is due to start on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York, with 125 heads of state and government members expected to attend.
It is the first such gathering since the unsuccessful climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009.
At the scene: Matt McGrath, Environment Correspondent, BBC News
The event held to launch the Rockefellers’ news was more revivalist meeting than press conference. There was whooping, cheering, hollering and stamping of feet.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu appeared by video and told the assembly that the move was “a tipping point of transition to a new energy economy that was just and equitable”.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund director Stephen Heintz said dryly that “everyone noted the irony” that a foundation built on oil wealth would now be leading the charge out of fossil fuel.
Actor Mark Ruffalo, who also signed the pledge, told the conference: “These are not silly people, these are people who know how to deal with money.”
They recognised that clean energy was “the future”, he said – prompting more whooping, cheering and stamping of feet.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hopes leaders can make progress on a universal climate agreement to be signed by all nations at the end of 2015.
On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of marchers took to the streets in more than 2,000 locations worldwide, demanding urgent action on climate change and calling for curbs on carbon emissions.
Business leaders, environmentalists and celebrities also joined the demonstrations, which were organised by The People’s Climate March.
Media captionHuge crowds attended climate marches in New York and other cities around the world on Sunday