<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/tom-huddleston-jr/">By Tom Huddleston </a>



The <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/tim-berners-lee-the-web-is-dysfunctional-with-perverse-incentives.html">World Wide Web</a> is 30 years old today.



Three decades ago — on March 12, 1989, to be exact — British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for what&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/09/10-ways-the-web-and-internet-have-transformed-our-lives.html">would become the World Wide Web</a>&nbsp;to his boss at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).



Today, Berners-Lee is considered an internet pioneer. However, the feedback that Berners-Lee received from his boss for the revolutionary idea in 1989 was not quite as exuberant as you might expect.



&#8220;Vague, but exciting…&#8221; was the simple, and somewhat understated,&nbsp;<a href="http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html">hand-written reaction</a>&nbsp;scribbled on Berners-Lee&#8217;s proposal by his boss at CERN at the time, Mike Sendall.



Happily, Sendall approved Berners-Lee&#8217;s proposal and, a year later, Sendall gave Berners-Lee permission to buy a high-performance NeXT computer (built by Steve Jobs, after he left Apple, and designed for technical and scientific work) that would become<a href="http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co8232360/next-cube-computer-1990-personal-computer">&nbsp;the world&#8217;s first web server</a>.



Berners-Lee had submitted his idea in <a href="https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html">a paper</a> titled &#8220;Information Management: A Proposal,&#8221; in which he argued for the creation of an information management system he described as &#8220;a large hypertext database with typed links.&#8221; The idea was to offer universal access to use the then-nascent internet, not just to communicate, but to store and access vast troves of online documents and data.



While the internet itself already existed in 1989 — in the form of large networks of connected computers — Berners-Lee&#8217;s proposal is now credited as the first step toward the World Wide Web as we know it today. The &#8220;web&#8221; (as it&#8217;s now commonly called) refers to the way we typically navigate the internet by clicking on hypertext to visit websites and access various types of data online.



Berners-Lee built the world&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html">first website</a>&nbsp;in 1991, using the same NeXT computer to create a page simply titled &#8220;World Wide Web,&#8221; featuring links to additional pages with information on himself, his team of scientists and the history of their project, among other things.



The website&#8217;s landing page described the World Wide Web as &#8220;a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.&#8221; Today, we just call it &#8220;the web.&#8221;



Meanwhile, Berners-Lee himself has become fairly outspoken about the direction the web has taken in recent years. On Monday, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/tim-berners-lee-the-web-is-dysfunctional-with-perverse-incentives.html">he published a letter</a> saying the web is no longer a &#8220;force for good&#8221; and laying out three &#8220;sources of dysfunction&#8221; on the modern internet. Those include malicious online behavior like government hacking and online bullying, as well as companies&#8217; pursuit of advertising revenue that can result in the spread of misinformation and the exploitation of users&#8217; personal information.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/12/feedback-world-wide-web-inventor-berners-lee-got-from-boss-on-the-idea.html and is republished with its permission.

The World Wide Web turned 30 this month — this is the feedback its inventor got when he pitched the idea to his boss in 1989

ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; Jumia, the African e-commerce company of German start-up investor Rocket Internet, has filed for a New York initial public offering, which could value the firm at $1.6 billion or more. 



Jumia, founded in 2012 offers online shopping, logistics and payment services, but is losing money. The company says its business is expanding, and the continent’s development will make it a better market, with a growing young population, more infrastructure investments, urbanisation and rapid economic growth.



The New York filing did not say how many shares Jumia would sell, nor at what price. Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Berenberg and RBC Capital Markets are leading the IPO.



In December, Jumia was valued at 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion) with shares at 14.74 euros, according to the filing.



Jumia, which now counts Nigeria as its largest market, makes money both selling its own products, and taking a cut from third-party sales. In 2018, revenues were 130.6 million euros, up from 94 million euros the previous year.



However, losses also rose, from 165.4 million euros in 2017 to 170.4 million euros in 2018. By the end of December, accumulated losses were 862 million euros, the firm said.



In the IPO prospectus Jumia said that the value of goods sold on its platforms is increasing at a more rapid pace than losses &#8211; from 507.1 million euros in 2017 to 828.2 million euros in 2018.



Jumia’s active users, people who buy something at least once in the past year, increased to 4 million at the end of last December form 2.7 million a year earlier.



Apart from Rocket Internet, which owned 21.74 percent of Jumia as of the end of December, MTN Group held 31.28 percent. Other, smaller shareholders include Millicom International, AXA Africa Holding and Goldman Sachs.



($1 = 0.8857 euros)



Reporting by Paul Carsten; Additional reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Susan Fenton

African e-commerce firm Jumia set to list on New York Stock Exchange, what you need to know

NAIROBI (Reuters) &#8211; The Kenyan shilling edged down against the dollar on Wednesday due to dollar demand from the manufacturing and energy sector outweighing inflows from diaspora remittances, traders said.



At 0800 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 100.05/25 per dollar, compared with 99.85/100.05 at Tuesday’s close.



Reporting by John Ndiso; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana

Why the Kenyan shilling is under pressure against the dollar

SINGAPORE (Reuters) &#8211; Singapore suspended operations of all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in and out of Changi airport on Tuesday, and Indonesia and China grounded their fleets of the U.S. planemaker’ s latest model after it suffered a second fatal crash in less than five months. 



The scare has wiped billions of dollars off the market value of the world’s biggest planemaker, as the Boeing Co share closed 5 percent down on Monday having fallen by as much as 13.5 percent at one point.



A day after a Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet plunged to the ground, killing all 157 people aboard, the United States stressed it was safe to fly the planes.



But a statement issued by Singapore’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAAS) showed question-marks hanging over the aircraft after Sunday’s disaster could not be dispelled so fast.



“During the temporary suspension, CAAS will gather more information and review the safety risk associated with the continued operation of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft into and out of Singapore,” the aviation regulator said in a statement.



It is the first major regulator to order such an action, but the anxiety was also evident among air travellers, who rushed to find out from social media whether they were booked to fly on 737 MAX planes &#8211; the same model involved in the Lion Air crash off Indonesia that killed 189 people in October.



There has been no information yet to link the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines incidents.



Investigators in Ethiopia found two black box recorders that will provide information about what happened before the plane plunged into farmland minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa.



So long as the recordings are undamaged, the cause of the crash could be identified quickly, although it typically takes a year to fully complete an investigation.



The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a “continued airworthiness notification” for the 737 MAX late on Monday to assure operators, and detailed a series of design changes mandated by Boeing.



Boeing issued a statement as well, saying it had been working with the FAA in the aftermath of a Lion Air crash to develop enhancements to flight control software that will be deployed across the 737 MAX fleet in coming weeks.



The improvements include updates to the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">SUSPENSIONS MOUNTING</h3>



Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein urged the FAA to ground Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 fleet.



“Until the cause of the crash is known and it’s clear that similar risks aren’t present in the domestic fleet, I believe all Boeing 737 Max 8 series aircraft operating in the United States should be temporarily grounded,” Feinstein wrote.



The new MAX 8 variant of the 737, the world’s best-selling modern passenger aircraft, has bigger engines designed to use less fuel. It entered service in 2017, and by the end of January Boeing had delivered 350 of the new jets to customers.



With another 4,661 on order, and 737 Max 8s could become the workhorses for airlines around the globe for decades.



Ethiopian Airlines, which has four other 737 MAX 8 jets, said it was grounding them as a precaution.



Gol in Brazil temporarily suspended MAX 8 flights, as did Argentina’s state airline Aerolineas Argentinas and Mexico’s Aeromexico.



Singapore Airlines, whose SilkAir brand operates 6 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, said it has temporarily withdrawn its fleet and would re-accommodate affected customers.



Other airlines that operate Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to Singapore &#8211; China Southern Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Shandong Airlines and Thai Lion Air &#8211; are also affected.



The country’s Changi Airport said Shandong had cancelled its flight to and from Jinan but other airlines had replaced the jet with another type.



China on Monday ordered its airlines to suspend the use of their 737 MAX 8 jets. The country’s aviation regulator said it would notify airlines when they could resume flying the jets, after contacting Boeing and the FAA.



The current scare could jeopardise a potential commitment by China to buy more Boeing-made aircraft as part of a deal being negotiated to end a trade war with the United States.



India’s regulator ordered additional maintenance checks on 737 MAX 8 aircraft operating in the country and said a review found “no significant concern”.



Still, major airlines from North America to the Middle East kept flying the 737 MAX on Monday, though Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said he would not hesitate to take action once the cause of the crash is known.



Southwest Airlines Co, which operates the largest fleet of 737 MAX 8s, said it remained confident in the safety of all its Boeing planes even as it fielded queries from customers.



“Our customer relations team is responding to these customers individually, emphasizing our friendly, no-change fee policy,” the fourth largest U.S. airline said in a statement.



Former U.S. Federal Aviation Administration accident investigator Mike Daniel said he believed the decision by regulators to ground the planes was premature. “To me it almost surreal how quickly some of the regulators are just grounding the aircraft without any factual information yet as a result of the investigation,” he told Reuters.



However, he said more groundings were now likely due to a “snowball effect” unless Boeing or the FAA released more information.



Additional reporting by Maggie Fick, Katharine Houreld and Hereward Holland in Nairobi, Stella Qiu in Beijing, Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta, Josh Horwitz in Shanghai, Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru, Stephanie Nebehay and Michelle Nichols in New York, Eric Johnson in Seattle and Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore

While some countries grounded Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, one country says it’s safe to fly the planes

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/emmie-martin/">By Emmie Martin</a>



Despite his legendary stock-picking abilities, Warren Buffett remains a staunch supporter of index funds. He <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/why-warren-buffett-says-index-funds-are-the-best-investment.html">favors them</a> over most other investing options.



The Oracle of Omaha even said he&#8217;s instructed the trustee in charge of his estate to invest 90 percent of his money into the S&amp;P 500 for his wife after he dies, Buffett told CNBC&#8217;s Becky Quick in an exclusive interview on &#8220;Squawk Box&#8221; on Monday.



&#8220;There&#8217;s been no better bet than America,&#8221; he says.



Here&#8217;s why Buffett&#8217;s favorite investment can be a smart choice for almost anyone, especially those who are new to the market.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What index funds are</h4>



Index funds are a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06/what-is-an-index-fund.html">form of passive investing</a>. They hold every stock in an index such as the S&amp;P 500, which includes big-name companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Google, and they offer low turnover rates, so&nbsp;<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indexfund.asp">fees and taxes tend to be low</a>&nbsp;as well.



You can think of an index fund as a basket of stocks with hundreds or thousands of different ones inside, explains Nick Holeman, a certified financial planner at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.betterment.com/">Betterment</a>.



&#8220;It&#8217;s the cheapest and easiest way to diversify your money that you&#8217;re investing,&#8221; Holeman says.



The rate of return for each index fund is determined by the performance of the companies that are in it, which can balance each other out. Say you buy an index that contains only two companies, and one goes up by 3 percent but the other goes down by 2 percent. In that case, you&#8217;re still up by 1 percent overall.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Why they can be a great bet</h4>



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/24/why-an-index-fund-is-warren-buffetts-favorite-way-to-invest.html">major benefit of index funds</a>&nbsp;is that they&#8217;re low-cost. That&#8217;s because they don&#8217;t require much effort to manage: You just purchase the index and let it do its thing instead of following, buying and selling shares in particular companies.



Index funds are also tax efficient because they don&#8217;t require much trading. Managers are &#8220;not constantly buying and selling within that fund,&#8221; Holeman says. &#8220;Anytime that you do a lot of buying and selling, there&#8217;s the potential to cost yourself a lot in taxes.&#8221;



That can translate to more money in your pocket. Because you aren&#8217;t paying an advisor as much as you would for actively managed funds, you&#8217;re probably saving money in fees that could cut into your returns, Holeman says.



Another advantage to index funds is that they aren&#8217;t tied to the success of a single entity.



&#8220;The trick is not to pick the right company,&#8221; Buffett&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/12/warren-buffett-says-index-funds-make-the-best-retirement-sense-practically-all-the-time.html">told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;On The Money&#8221; in 2017</a>. &#8220;The trick is to essentially buy all the big companies through the S&amp;P 500 and to do it consistently.&#8221;



Remember, diversification is key. Always make sure that you&#8217;re <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/19/dont-follow-this-common-piece-of-investing-advice.html">doing your homework</a>, and consider working with a financial professional (as long as they&#8217;re a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/why-its-important-to-know-what-fiduciary-means.html">fiduciary</a>) to craft a investment plan that makes the most sense for you.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/warren-buffett-wants-90-percent-of-his-estate-invested-in-index-funds.html?recirc=taboolainternal and is republished with its permission.

Warren Buffett wants 90 percent of his wealth to go to this one investment after he’s gone

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/sarah-berger/">By Sarah Berger</a>



At 29, Taylor Swift has 32 Grammy nominations and 10 wins. She has seven hit albums, her concert tours&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8487606/taylor-swift-reputation-stadium-tour-breaks-record-highest-grossing-us-tour">break records</a>&nbsp;and her estimated net worth in 2018 was a whopping&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/07/11/taylor-swifts-net-worth-320-million-in-2018/#6e7341cb233f">$320 million.</a>



Swift turns 30 this year (in December) and despite her success, she says her 20s have been filled with trials and tribulations. But Swift has learned from them.



One of the noteworthy things Swift has learned is about the perils of being too nice.



&#8220;Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble,&#8221; she writes for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26628467/taylor-swift-30th-birthday-lessons/">Elle</a>&nbsp;in an article called &#8220;30 Things I Learned Before 30.&#8221; &#8220;While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life&#8217;s worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you,&#8221; she says.



&#8220;Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back,&#8221; she writes. &#8220;Be like a snake — only bite if someone steps on you.&#8221;



Swift also says she&#8217;s learned that &#8220;it&#8217;s good to mess up&#8221; and to learn from your mistakes.



At 29, Taylor Swift has 32 Grammy nominations and 10 wins. She has seven hit albums, her concert tours&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8487606/taylor-swift-reputation-stadium-tour-breaks-record-highest-grossing-us-tour">break records</a>&nbsp;and her estimated net worth in 2018 was a whopping&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/07/11/taylor-swifts-net-worth-320-million-in-2018/#6e7341cb233f">$320 million.</a>



Swift turns 30 this year (in December) and despite her success, she says her 20s have been filled with trials and tribulations. But Swift has learned from them.



One of the noteworthy things Swift has learned is about the perils of being too nice.



&#8220;Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble,&#8221; she writes for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26628467/taylor-swift-30th-birthday-lessons/">Elle</a>&nbsp;in an article called &#8220;30 Things I Learned Before 30.&#8221; &#8220;While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life&#8217;s worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you,&#8221; she says.



&#8220;Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back,&#8221; she writes. &#8220;Be like a snake — only bite if someone steps on you.&#8221;



Swift also says she&#8217;s learned that &#8220;it&#8217;s good to mess up&#8221; and to learn from your mistakes.



&#8220;Trying and failing and trying again and failing again is normal,&#8221; she says.So &#8220;take risks.&#8221;



&#8220;It&#8217;s especially good to do this in your twenties because we are searching. That&#8217;s GOOD. We&#8217;ll always be searching but never as intensely as when our brains are still developing at such a rapid pace.&#8221;



<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26628467/taylor-swift-30th-birthday-lessons/">Other things Swift says she learned</a>&nbsp;in her 20s range from the small — like how to make a Mojito and her discovery of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.command.com/3M/en_US/command/">Command tape</a>&nbsp;— to the huge. Swift says her mom&#8217;s cancer recurrence taught her not to sweat the small stuff, and she learned to heal childhood scars, like the insecurities that came from being an unpopular kid in grade school who sat alone at the lunch table.



Swift has also learned to forgive herself. &#8220;Step into the daylight and let it go,&#8221; she writes.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/taylor-swift-being-polite-can-lead-to-some-of-your-worst-regrets.html and is republished with its permission.

Can politeness lead to ‘some of your life’s worst regrets’ ? Taylor Swift seems to think so…

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/karen-gilchrist/">By Karen Gilchrist</a><a href="https://twitter.com/_karengilchrist">@_KARENGILCHRIST</a>



When Pat Brown was working in his research lab in 2009, he had “zero” intention of starting a business — much less one that would win&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/united-nations/" class="">United Nations</a>&nbsp;backing and investment from the likes of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=MSFT" class="">Microsoft</a>&nbsp;founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/bill-gates/" class="">Bill Gates</a>.



No, his goal then was “simple.”



“I basically decided I was going to look for the most important problem that I could have the opportunity of solving,” he told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/" class="">CNBC Make It</a>.



But when the former pediatrician-turned-Stamford professor discovered what that problem was — namely the “catastrophic” use of animals in our food system” — he realized he had to go “all in.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105779212-1551935159841patbrownheadshot.jpg?v=1551935287&amp;w=740&amp;h=" alt="H/O: Pat Brown Impossible Foods 190307 ASIA"/></figure>



Pat Brown, founder and CEO of Impossible Foods.Impossible Foods



Brown is the founder and CEO of Impossible Foods, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/california/" class="">California</a>-based food company attempting to revolutionize the way we think about animal agriculture with its plant-based meat substitute, commonly known as the “Impossible Burger.”



He started the business in 2011 after his academic research led him to discover the detrimental impact of meat production on the planet.



Meat production is considered by far one of the world’s greatest contributors to climate change, not only for the level of greenhouse gas it produces, but also the water and land consumption it requires. However, despite growing awareness around the issue, Brown noted that education had done little to curb consumers’ insatiable appetites for meat.



So, bailing on his academic career — and colleagues — the then 56-year-old set about creating an alternative product that could give the same experience as meat.Out for beef



“The only way to solve the problem is to give consumers what they know they want, and make it our job to find a better way to produce it and find a better technology than cows and other animals,” said Brown.



A few years later, the Impossible team believed they’d discovered the solution in a molecule called heme. Found in abundance in both animals and plants, the molecule is responsible for carrying oxygen in living organisms and giving blood its red color. By augmenting the molecule in plants, researchers found they could create a product that looks and tastes like meat.



And so, in 2016, the Impossible Burger was born.



By using plants rather than traditional meat, Impossible Food’s website claims production of one of its burgers saves the equivalent of 75 square feet of land, one half tub of bathwater and 18 miles of emissions in a car compared to a regular beef patty.



Having developed that technology, Brown said his company had to be the one to get it out to burger lovers — in spite of his own lack of business experience.



“I didn’t want to trust that just some regular business would do it right,” said Brown.



Fortunately for Brown, however, investors saw something in his proposition. Over the years, the business has&nbsp;<a href="https://agfundernews.com/impossible-foods-snags-75m-series-e-from-singapore-state-fund-temasek.html" class="">racked up $396 million</a>&nbsp;from backers including Bill Gates,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=GOOGL" class="">Google</a>&nbsp;Ventures and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures.



Of course, Impossible Food is not the only business that’s created a plant-based meat alternative.



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/how-bill-gates-backed-vegan-beyond-meat-is-winning-over-meat-eaters.html" class="">Beyond Meat is one major player which has amassed a loyal following from its plant-based “bleeding” burger</a>. Started in 2009 by Ethan Brown, the company is a joint winner, alongside Impossible Foods, of the United Nations’&nbsp;<a href="http://web.unep.org/championsofearth/laureates/2018/impossible-foods-and-beyond-meat" class="">Champions of the Earth Award, in the Science and Innovation category</a>. Both companies share a number of high-profile investors.



However, despite their shared ideologies, Brown said their products differ vastly and he currently sees little value in collaboration.



Instead, he said the business is focused on research and development to improve not only its burger, but also to develop new products including plant-based steaks and fish.



“There’s so many things that you have to get right — and the dominant thing is deliciousness. The second most important thing, I think, probably is versatility, and then, of course, nutritional value,” said Brown.Reinventing the burger



After several years of iteration, in January 2019, the company unveiled a new version of its flagship product, dubbed the Impossible Burger 2.0. In addition to containing 30 percent less salt, 40 percent less saturated fat and fewer calories, it also replaced its core ingredient, wheat, with soy protein, making it gluten-free.



The use of soy, a type of bean protein native to East Asia, has come under criticism over recent years as a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/soy" class="">key driver of deforestation</a>. But Brown insists that by using the product as a direct source of protein — rather than as animal feed, as has typically been the case — Impossible Foods can speed up an otherwise “inefficient” process and reduce the overall use of soy.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105779320-1551935694246impossible_prive_impossiblesataysliders.jpg?v=1551935802&amp;w=740&amp;h=" alt="H/O: Impossible Food 190307 ASIA"/></figure>



The Impossible Burger re-imaged as an Impossible Satay Slider by Prive Orchard in Singapore.Impossible Foods



“Pigs do a very inefficient job of turning it (soy) into meat,” said Brown.



“If we replaced all the meat in the world with our product made primarily from soy, the amount of soy cultivation would be vastly reduced,” said Brown. “We’re going to drive reforestation by greatly reducing the demand for soy, even though soy is a major ingredient in our product.”Expanding across the globe



That agenda is going to be especially important in areas that have been hardest hit by deforestation, such as parts of Asia. Incidentally, the region is also Impossible Food’s next battleground.



“Asia is responsible for more than 40 percent of global meat consumption. And so if we’re going to achieve our mission, we have to be serving consumers in Asia as soon as possible,” said Brown.



Impossible Burger started out on that path in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/hong-kong/" class="">Hong Kong</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/19/the-meatless-impossible-burger-makes-its-first-foray-outside-the-us.html" class="">in April 2018</a>.



In March this year, it reached&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/singapore/" class="">Singapore</a>, where it will initially be available in eight locations – including Potato Head Singapore, Prive Orchard, Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon Ramsey. Those outlets will offer both the original burger, as well as a host of Asian-inspired dishes.



“Burgers have always been featured; we wanted to be a bit different from the rest,” said Chef Robin Ho of Prive, who has re-imagined the ground beef substitute as a Singapore-inspired Impossible Satay Slider (around $11) and an Impossible Meatball Spaghetti (around $14).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105779178-1551934623708impossible_prive_juicylucyimpossiblemeatballspaghetti.jpg?v=1551934731&amp;w=740&amp;h=" alt="H/O: Impossible Food Prive 190307 ASIA"/></figure>



Chef Robin Ho of Prive Orchard showcases the restaurant’s new Impossible Meatball Spaghetti.Impossible FoodsBringing sustainability home



Impossible Foods’ targeted global expansion is part of Brown’s wider strategy to demonstrate the product’s versatility beyond the classic American burger.



Brown said he believes that will provide a vital step in the company’s mission to get its product onto shelves and into homes, so consumers can test it for themselves.



“Getting it into retail will give users a real at-home experience, and I think that’s going to have a major positive impact,” said Brown, who hopes to achieve that goal within the next year or two.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/105779217-1551935309845impossible_empress_foodgroupshot.jpg?v=1551935464&amp;w=740&amp;h=" alt="H/O: Impossible Empress 190307 ASIA"/></figure>



Impossible Food’s ground beef reinvented as gyoza, crisp pancakes and meatball skewers at Empress in Singapore.Impossible Foods



More than at any other point, that move will see the company come head-to-head with the meat industry incumbents it is trying to defeat.



As with the rest of Impossible Foods’ roll-out, Brown said he does not expect subsidies or government support in that battle, just the opportunity to give consumers more choice over the products they consume.



“We just want a fair chance to compete in the marketplace and let consumers choose. It’s very hard in the U.S., politically, to be against that,” said Brown.



The CEO said he’s confident that his products will be able to compete on price with higher-end meat products within two to three years.



“It’s our job to make a product that’s more delicious and better for consumers than what they make,” Brown noted. “If we succeed, everybody’s better off. And if we don’t succeed in making a better product that consumers prefer, they have nothing to fear.”



This article first appeared on CNBC and is republished with its permission: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/bill-gates-backed-impossible-burger-ceo-patrick-brown-on-fighting-meat.html

Why billionaire Bill Gates is backing this business that wants to change the way we eat

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/dustinmckissen/">By Dustin McKissen</a> 



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-agree-giving-up-this-one-thing-will-make-you-more-successful.html">Success</a> isn&#8217;t easy — and it certainly doesn&#8217;t happen overnight, but there are little things you can do every day to ensuring that you achieve your professional goals. The world&#8217;s most legendary leaders, from <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/04/self-made-millionaires-swear-by-these-5-morning-routinesand-they-all-take-less-than-10-minutes.html">Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey to CEOs</a> at <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, all view <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/tony-robbins-says-the-most-successful-people-believe-in-these-7-lies-and-psychology-agrees.html">success as a work in progress</a>.



They key is to stay patient and committed. Here are six things you need to do on a daily basis if you want to be successful in life:



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">1. Read a book that isn&#8217;t directly related to your career</h4>



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/20/simon-sinek-these-2-life-changing-books-will-train-your-brain-for-success.html">Reading</a>&nbsp;is one of the easiest ways to experience life from another perspective and develop the empathy required to be an effective leader. But it&#8217;s important to expand your knowledge beyond your expertise.



There&#8217;s a reason why <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-says-he-was-raised-by-books.html">Elon Musk</a> includes works of science fiction and biographies as some of the essentials on his reading list. &#8220;I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents,&#8221; Musk said in an interview with <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk-inventors-plans-for-outer-space-cars-finding-love-w511747">Rolling Stone</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">2. Get sweaty</h4>



No, we&#8217;re not talking about going to the sauna or doing hot yoga.



Developing the courage to do something outside of your comfort zone is a sign that you&#8217;re leveling up. Otherwise, you won&#8217;t get very far in life. If you hate public speaking, be the first to speak at your next team meeting. Although you might get so nervous that you end up with sweat stains beneath your armpit sleeves, just do it anyway. It&#8217;ll get easier.



<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/why-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-spent-years-learning-mandarin-chinese-n232266">Mark Zuckerberg spent years </a>learning Mandarin. And guess what? He did a pretty good job mastering it. Fear and growth cannot exist in the same space. One has to leave in order for the other to flourish.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">3. Exercise</h4>



In his five-year study of rich people, author&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/tom-corley-i-study-millionaires-this-is-the-secret-to-success.html">Tom Corley</a>&nbsp;found that exercising was something they all had in common. &#8220;Those who have forged the habit of exercising aerobically have tremendous competitive advantages over those who don&#8217;t,&#8221; he&nbsp;<a href="http://richhabits.net/this-is-why-self-made-millionaires-exercise-aerobically/">wrote in his blog</a>. Those advantages include higher IQ (intelligence quotient), willpower, confidence and up to 20 percent more energy.



A number of self-made billionaires, including Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sanberg and Richard Branson, incorporate exercise into their daily routines. <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/PhysicalActivityLifeExpectancy">Research</a> even found that small amounts of daily exercise can significantly help to extend your life.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">4. Give back</h4>



The myth that the lone hero succeeded because they managed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps is just that — a myth. Truly successful people understand the importance of giving back, especially to those in need.



In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-agree-giving-up-this-one-thing-will-make-you-more-successful.html">Warren Buffett</a>&nbsp;started the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/02/look-whos-joined-buffett-gates-giving-pledge.html">Giving Pledge</a>, a commitment by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/14-billionaires-signed-bill-gates-and-warren-buffetts-giving-pledge.html">wealthy individuals and families</a>&nbsp;to give away more than half their fortune to causes like poverty alleviation and global health.



But it doesn&#8217;t have to be massive amounts of money. It can be as simple as offering to help an overworked colleague or an elderly person with their grocery bags. If you&#8217;re too busy to give back or return a favor, then you&#8217;re too busy to succeed.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">5. Take a moment to remember your competition</h4>



<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QblACgAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT138&amp;lpg=PT138&amp;dq=I+play+to+win,+whether+during+practice+or+a+real+game.+And+I+will+not+let+anything+get+in+the+way+of+me+and+my+competitive+enthusiasm+to+win.&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=EmGTZJw0kt&amp;sig=ACfU3U0t4IzhywsJnkVBoO-AgzZ6BYhvIg&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiAwZ-Vz-vgAhWumeAKHeE1ASsQ6AEwB3oECAAQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=I%20play%20to%20win%2C%20whether%20during%20practice%20or%20a%20real%20game.%20And%20I%20will%20not%20let%20anything%20get%20in%20the%20way%20of%20me%20and%20my%20competitive%20enthusiasm%20to%20win.&amp;f=false">Michael Jordan once said</a>, &#8220;I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.&#8221; The professional basketball player went from getting cut from his high school basketball team all the way to six championships and creating one of the most valuable athletic brands in history.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.&#8221;-Michael Jordan</blockquote>



Failing to forgive and holding grudges can weigh you down, but acknowledging your competition and doubters (a.k.a. the haters) can be a powerful form of motivation. It pushes you to do everything in your power to succeed and prove them wrong.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">6. Get outside and think</h4>



Everyone knows we all spend way too much time on our phones (<a href="https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/05/18/987607/0/en/Smartphone-Obsession-Grows-with-25-of-Millennials-Spending-More-Than-5-Hours-Per-Day-on-the-Phone.html">what&#8217;s new, millennials</a>?), but what we don&#8217;t talk about is what so many of us fail to do: Drop the devices, get outside, walk and&nbsp;just think.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf">study from the American Psychology Association</a>&nbsp;found that outdoor walks can increase creativity and improve problem-solving skills. &#8220;When there is a premium on generating new ideas in the workday, it should be beneficial to incorporate walks,&#8221; the researchers wrote.



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/why-ceos-at-google-facebook-and-linkedin-love-walking-meetings.html">Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and CEOs</a>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>&nbsp;and LinkedIn also love holding their meetings on foot because it helps with brainstorming new concepts. &#8220;I find it to be a much quicker way of getting down to business, making a decision and sealing the deal,&#8221; Branson wrote in his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/why-you-should-stand-meetings">blog</a>. &#8220;Plus, it&#8217;s a great way to fit in a bit of exercise and stay focused on a busy day.&#8221;



Dustin McKissen is the founder of <a href="http://www.mckissen.co/">McKissen + Company</a>, a strategic communications firm in St. Charles, Missouri. He was also named one of LinkedIn&#8217;s &#8220;Top Voices in Management and Corporate Culture.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter <a href="http://www.twitter.com/DMcKissen">@DMcKissen </a>.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/bill-gates-warren-buffett-google-ceos-and-billionaires-do-these-6-things-every-day-to-be-successful.html and is republished with its permission.

Self-made billionaires like Warren Buffett and Elon Musk prove if you don’t make time for these 6 little things every day, you’ll never be successful

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/karen-gilchrist/">By Karen Gilchrist </a>



With increasing talk of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/wef-machines-are-going-to-perform-more-tasks-than-humans-by-2025.html">job disruption and automation</a>, it&#8217;s important to think about the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/hr-experts-share-the-skills-employees-will-most-need-in-the-future.html">skills that will be most in demand in the future</a>.



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=MSFT">Microsoft</a>, in its latest research, defined those as digital skills, analytical abilities and continuous learning capabilities. In particular, the tasks that require strong analytic abilities will call for a creative approach, explained Kevin Wo, Microsoft&#8217;s managing director for Singapore.



&#8220;I think there&#8217;s a need for them to learn about skills around design thinking,&#8221; Wo said of employees.



&#8220;Design thinking&#8221; is a term for a particular method of problem solving, which dictates that individuals should try and get into a customer&#8217;s shoes to generate practical, user-friendly solutions. That could mean creating a new technology or product, such as Apple&#8217;s iPhone. But the strategy can — and should — also be applied to other job functions, design thinking specialist Kasia Miaskiewicz told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/">CNBC Make It</a>.



&#8220;You can apply it anywhere,&#8221; said Miaskiewicz, a director at UBS Evolve, the Swiss bank&#8217;s center for design thinking and innovation. &#8220;As long as there is a user, a recipient – and there always is – there&#8217;s always an opportunity to apply design thinking.&#8221;



Speaking at a recent careers conference in Singapore, Miaskiewicz said the strategy can be broken down into four key steps.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What is?</h4>



First up, you need to think about the problem you are trying to solve and make sure you frame it correctly by asking the right questions, Miaskiewicz explained.



&#8220;It&#8217;s all about asking the right questions and solving for the right problems,&#8221; said Miaskiewicz, who is a director at UBS Evolve, the Swiss bank&#8217;s center for design thinking and innovation.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What if?</h4>



Next, you should consider the potential solutions that will reduce frustrations or &#8220;key friction points&#8221; for users. Miaskiewicz said that means closely observing customers to see how you can improve their experience.



&#8220;The way you develop that part is really watching your customers. From that step a lot of ideas will start popping up,&#8221; she noted.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What wows?</h4>



At that point several possible ideas should start coming to mind, said Miaskiewicz. Not all will be feasible, she noted, but you should try to be as open-minded as possible and avoid thinking too much about the &#8220;cannots.&#8221;



&#8220;If you start with constraints – time, cost etc. – your ideas of tomorrow will look the same as those of today,&#8221; said Miaskiewicz.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What works?</h4>



Ultimately, Miaskiewicz said, the workable solution will be the one that ticks the boxes for three key criteria: execution, economics and customer. Put another way, the idea that is feasible for your company to create, makes sense financially and pleases the client.



You can then start experimenting with prototypes and measuring their success before creating a final product, she noted.



&#8220;Following that process really helps you get into users&#8217; shoes and create the right solutions to the most frustrating problems,&#8221; Miaskiewicz noted.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/skills-of-the-future-how-to-master-design-thinking.html and is republished with its permission.

Microsoft calls it a key skill of the future. Here are 4 steps to mastering it

WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday extended by one year sanctions against Zimbabwe saying that the new government’s policies continue to pose an “unusual and extraordinary” threat to U.S. foreign policy.



The renewal comes despite calls by African leaders, including South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, for the sanctions to be lifted to give the country a chance to recover from its economic crisis.



“The actions and policies of these persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States,” Trump said in a notice announcing the extension, adding: “I am continuing for (one) year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13288.”



The renewal comes despite calls by African leaders, including South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, for the sanctions to be lifted to give the country a chance to recover from its economic crisis.



Trump administration officials had said the sanctions will remain until the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa changes Zimbabwe’s laws restricting media freedom and allowing protests.



According to U.S. officials, there are 141 entities and individuals in Zimbabwe, including Mnangagwa and long-time former president Robert Mugabe, currently under U.S. sanctions.



Mnangagwa has called for the sanctions to be lifted against the ZANU-PF ruling party, top military figures and some government-owned firms, which were imposed during Mugabe’s rule over what the United States said were human rights violations and undermining of the democratic process.



Reporting by Lesley Wroughton, editing by G Crosse

Here’s why U.S. president Trump extended sanctions against Zimbabwe by a year

LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus after he received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor, his doctors said.



Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection &#8211; and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs &#8211; highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man’s previous HIV infection.



“There is no virus there that we can measure. We can’t detect anything,” said Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating the man.



The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, the doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found.



Gupta described his patient as “functionally cured” and “in remission”, but cautioned: “It’s too early to say he’s cured.”



The man is being called “the London patient”, in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV &#8211; in an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany in 2007 which also cleared his HIV.



Brown, who had been living in Berlin, has since moved to the United States and, according to HIV experts, is still HIV-free.



Some 37 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV and the AIDS pandemic has killed around 35 million people worldwide since it began in the 1980s. Scientific research into the complex virus has in recent years led to the development of drug combinations that can keep it at bay in most patients.



Gupta, now at Cambridge University, treated the London patient when he was working at University College London. The man had contracted HIV in 2003, Gupta said, and in 2012 was also diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">LAST CHANCE</h3>



In 2016, when he was very sick with cancer, doctors decided to seek a transplant match for him. “This was really his last chance of survival,” Gupta told Reuters in an interview.



The donor &#8211; who was unrelated &#8211; had a genetic mutation known as ‘CCR5 delta 32’, which confers resistance to HIV.



The transplant went relatively smoothly, Gupta said, but there were some side effects, including the patient suffering a period of “graft-versus-host” disease &#8211; a condition in which donor immune cells attack the recipient’s immune cells.



Most experts say it is inconceivable such treatments could be a way of curing all patients. The procedure is expensive, complex and risky. To do this in others, exact match donors would have to be found in the tiny proportion of people — most of them of northern European descent — who have the CCR5 mutation that makes them resistant to the virus.



Specialists said it is also not yet clear whether the CCR5 resistance is the only key &#8211; or whether the graft versus host disease may have been just as important. Both the Berlin and London patients had this complication, which may have played a role in the loss of HIV-infected cells, Gupta said.



Sharon Lewin, an expert at Australia’s Doherty Institute and co-chair of the International AIDS Society’s cure research advisory board, told Reuters the London case points to new avenues for study.



“We haven’t cured HIV, but (this) gives us hope that it’s going to be feasible one day to eliminate the virus,” she said.



Gupta said his team plans to use these findings to explore potential new HIV treatment strategies. “We need to understand if we could knock out this (CCR5) receptor in people with HIV, which may be possible with gene therapy,” he said.



The London patient, whose case was set to be reported in the journal Nature and presented at a medical conference in Seattle on Tuesday, has asked his medical team not to reveal his name, age, nationality or other details.



Reporting by Kate Kelland; editing by Catherine Evans

HIV-positive patient becomes world’s second AIDS cure hope

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/cat-clifford/">By Catherine Clifford</a> 



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=FB">Facebook</a> currently has a market capitalization of $463 billion. But what&#8217;s Facebook worth to you?



A&nbsp;<a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf">study released in January</a>&nbsp;found out how much people would need to be paid to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four weeks: &#8220;The median valuation was around $100 dollars a month,&#8221; Stanford economics professor,&nbsp;<a href="https://gentzkow.people.stanford.edu/">Matthew Gentzkow</a>, who co-authored the study&nbsp;<a href="https://www.recode.net/2019/2/27/18243546/facebook-study-stanford-gentzkow-wellbeing-politcal-polarization">told Recode</a>.



&#8220;But there&#8217;s a lot of spread,&#8221; said Gentzkow. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of people all the way from $0 to $100, and then a lot of people who gave really big numbers. Sort of like, &#8216;You couldn&#8217;t pay me enough to give up Facebook.&#8217;



&#8220;I can&#8217;t say conclusively, &#8216;Has Facebook proven good or bad for society?&#8217; [but] what is clear is that the people who use it value it a lot,&#8221; Gentzkow said.



The study, which was published in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w25514">National Bureau of Economic Research</a>, was authored by four professors, three from Stanford and one from New York University. For the study, researchers recruited 2,844 Facebook users and asked some of them to deactivate their Facebook account for four weeks, starting shortly after the 2018 U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6. Some were not paid to deactivate (the control group) and other were paid.



Fifty-eight percent of study participants were willing to deactivate for less than $102.



And for the average person in the paid group, deactivating Facebook freed up to an hour per day of their time, the study says.



Being off Facebook also generally contributed to a better subjective well-being, the study found.



&#8220;Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular on self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety,&#8221; the study said.



&#8220;I was way less stressed. I wasn&#8217;t attached to my phone as much as I was before,&#8221; one study participant reported. &#8220;And I found I didn&#8217;t really care so much about things that were happening [online] because I was more focused on my own life&#8230; I felt more content. I think I was in a better mood generally. I thought I would miss seeing everyone&#8217;s day-to-day activities&#8230; I really didn&#8217;t miss it at all.&#8221;



Another said the time that had been devoted to Facebook was redistributed to offline activities: &#8220;I realized how much time I was wasting. I now have time for other things. I&#8217;ve been reading books and playing the piano which I used to do daily until the phone took over.&#8221;



For some, however, the time off of Facebook was isolating. &#8220;I was shut off from those [online] conversations, or just from being an observer of what people are doing or thinking. . . I didn&#8217;t like it at first at all, I felt very cut off from people that I like. . . I didn&#8217;t like it because I spend a lot of time by myself anyway, I&#8217;m kind of an introvert, so I use Facebook in a social aspect in a very big way,&#8221; one study participant responded.



&#8220;This is one study of many on this topic and it should be considered that way,&#8221; a Facebook spokesperson tells&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/">CNBC Make It</a>. &#8220;Our teams have been working hard on these issues. We&#8217;ve introduced several new tools so people can take greater control of their experience and made product updates to increase the number of meaningful conversations and connections people have on Facebook. We have more work to do, but we&#8217;re making steady progress.&#8221;



Those tools include controls allowing users to&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/manage-your-time/">manage the time they spend on Facebook</a>&nbsp;and a privacy check up, which lets users to review and change the settings that determine who you share what with, the Facebook spokesperson tells CNBC Make It.



The Facebook spokesperson also pointed out some study results were positive: &#8220;Our results leave little doubt that Facebook produces large benefits for its users,&#8221; the conclusion of the study says. &#8220;Any discussion of social media&#8217;s downsides should not obscure the basic fact that it fulfills deep and widespread needs.&#8221; These comments were &#8220;encouraging,&#8221; said the spokesperson.



Benefits mentioned in the study include Facebook being a source of news and information, a source of entertainment, a tool to help organize events or groups or a social outlet for those who feel otherwise isolated. 



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/stanford-nyu-study-what-youd-have-to-pay-people-to-get-off-facebook.html and is republished with its permission.

Here’s how much you’d have to pay people to deactivate Facebook for a month

<figure>
 <img decoding="async" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260156/original/file-20190221-195879-p9teee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&#038;q=45&#038;auto=format&#038;w=754&#038;fit=clip" alt="File 20190221 195879 p9teee.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1" />
 <figcaption>
 The Mediterranean diet.
 Foxys Forest Manufacture/Shutterstock
 </figcaption>
 </figure>



By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/silvia-alonso-alvarez-694393">Silvia Alonso Alvarez</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/international-livestock-research-institute-2924"> International Livestock Research Institute </a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/isabelle-baltenweck-529850">Isabelle Baltenweck</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/international-livestock-research-institute-2924"> International Livestock Research Institute </a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lora-iannotti-694346">Lora Iannotti</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/washington-university-in-st-louis-732">Washington University in St Louis</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/paula-dominguez-salas-694392">Paula Dominguez-Salas</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/london-school-of-hygiene-and-tropical-medicine-859">London School of Hygiene &#038; Tropical Medicine</a>



A <a href="https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/">team of 37 world-leading scientists</a> from 16 countries have just released the world’s first ever scientific eating plan. The <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext">“planetary health diet”</a> is designed to be healthier for people and more environmentally friendly. 

The team warns that the way we eat now threatens both our health and the long-term survival of the planet. They say the current food system dangerously overproduces <a href="https://ccafs.cgiar.org/bigfacts/#theme=food-emissions">greenhouse gases</a>, misuses <a href="https://ccafs.cgiar.org/bigfacts/#theme=food-emissions">fertiliser</a>, and causes large-scale <a href="https://ccafs.cgiar.org/bigfacts/#theme=food-emissions">food wastage</a> and massive <a href="https://ccafs.cgiar.org/bigfacts/#theme=food-emissions">land degradation</a>. 

Their solution is to shift to a diet that transforms this damaging food system. This diet would sustainably feed up to 10 billion people by 2050 and avert about 11 million premature adult deaths a year due to cardiovascular disease and other non-communicable diseases. 

The diet sounds like a silver bullet, but we have found it to be slightly problematic. It doesn’t recognise the enormous differences across the world when it comes to food consumption and production systems. 

It suggests we need less livestock in the world because they damage the environment and produce health-threatening foods – like meat. To most people in developed countries, livestock are the source of neatly packaged foods, readily available in the supermarket. To <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i0680e/i0680e03.pdf">one billion</a> people in developing countries, livestock are much, much more. They are a source of much-needed livelihoods, incomes, jobs, savings, and nutrition. In some environments, fruits and vegetables may be difficult to grow, and food security depends strongly on animal-source produce. 

The report doesn’t deny any of this: it’s simply rather quiet on it. This could easily lend itself to misinterpretation and push the international development community, donors and governments to reduce investments on increasing access and affordability of animal source foods in countries where positive contributions of these products remain essential for health and life. 

<h2>A healthy diet?</h2>

The authors describe what they call a “universal healthy reference diet” as an alternative to standard current diets which they qualify as imbalanced as reliant on red meat and sugar. 

Drawing on studies, mostly conducted in middle and upper income countries, they propose a diet that consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils – a diet that’s not very different from the so-called <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/what-is-a-mediterranean-diet/">Mediterranean diet</a>. It includes a low to moderate amount of seafood and poultry, but little to no red meat, added sugar, refined grains or starchy vegetables, and only a small amount of dairy. 

One of the issues that has provoked the <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/397606855/Two-pager-Scientific-Evidence-on-Red-Meat-and-Health">most debate</a> about the report is whether the scientific evidence base regarding what constitutes a “healthy diet” is robust enough. Most of the evidence <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2698337">it cites</a> regarding healthy diets comes from observational studies – these can’t prove a causal link between the consumption of specific products, like red meat, and health issues, like heart disease.

<h2>Needs of poor</h2>

The report also claims that its recommendations are flexible enough to be tailored to the preferences and cultures of different populations, as well as to their specific livelihoods. 

But at no point do the authors explain how the world’s less well-off – who tend to subsist on poor quality starches and who have limited access to milk, meat, eggs, fish – could follow their recommendations.

Many rural households, for example, <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/I9553EN/i9553en.pdf">have limited</a> access to markets and generally depend on rain-fed agriculture for their foods. These families consume most of their calories from staple crops such as maize or manioc, foods that lack the variety of nutrients necessary for health and well-being. Even if they produce other foods such as eggs, dairy, fish from aquaculture, or cash crops such as vegetables or fruits, they will likely sell these foods to support other needs like school fees or health care costs. And many people who live in urban areas in emerging and developing economies <a href="https://glopan.org/sites/default/files/Downloads/GlobalPanelUrbanizationPolicyBrief.pdf">face similar</a> difficulties affording a healthy diet.

Sub-Saharan Africa is mentioned a few times in the report. The report notes that because carbohydrate intake is high in many parts of the continent, 

<blockquote>
the promotion of animal source foods, including livestock products, can improve dietary quality, micronutrient intake, nutrient status and overall health. 
</blockquote>

But the report doesn’t expand on these issues and many, in Africa and Asia, need to increase rather than decrease their consumption of animal source foods.

<h2>Divisive report</h2>

Another criticism is that much of the report focuses on adult diets, yet about one in four people in the world are children less than 15 years old. As they grow and develop they have very different nutritional needs to adults. 

The report has a short section that touches on the importance of breastfeeding for infants and iron for adolescent girls and pregnant and lactating women but does not fully address nutrition in these populations or in other phases of childhood. 

By touting diets low in meat or dairy, it could even be harmful as animal source foods <a href="https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/92907/RR44_may2018.pdf?sequence=5&amp;isAllowed=y">are important</a> and provide nutrients that support rapid growth and immune protection. School-age children, in particular, require zinc, iron, iodine, vitamin A, B12, among others from animal source foods for brain development and health.

The EAT-Lancet report has done an important job in bringing global attention to the question of how to sustainably feed the world’s growing population. But now it needs to take the next step and fully incorporate the perspectives of the poorer people in developing and emerging economies and of the vast emerging global middle classes.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112238/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" />

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/silvia-alonso-alvarez-694393">Silvia Alonso Alvarez</a>, Senior scientist &#8211; Epidemiologist, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/international-livestock-research-institute-2924"> International Livestock Research Institute </a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/isabelle-baltenweck-529850">Isabelle Baltenweck</a>, Deputy Program Leader, Policies, Institutions and Livelihoods, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/international-livestock-research-institute-2924"> International Livestock Research Institute </a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lora-iannotti-694346">Lora Iannotti</a>, Associate Professor, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/washington-university-in-st-louis-732">Washington University in St Louis</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/paula-dominguez-salas-694392">Paula Dominguez-Salas</a>, Assistant Professor of Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/london-school-of-hygiene-and-tropical-medicine-859">London School of Hygiene &#038; Tropical Medicine</a>

This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-ever-global-scientific-eating-plan-forgets-the-worlds-poor-112238">original article</a>.

How the world’s first ever scientific eating plan forgot the poor

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/karen-gilchrist/">By Karen Gilchrist</a>



As the future of work changes, it&#8217;s more important than ever for employees to make sure they have the skills required to keep up. That was the message this week from <a href="https://www.techhrconference.com/">People Matters TechHR 2019</a>, Asia&#8217;s largest human resources conference.



The remarks out of that Singapore event form part of a growing discourse around the impact technology and automation will have on the jobs landscape. It&#8217;s estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 375 million workers (3 to 14 percent of the global workforce) will need to switch occupational categories,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/jobs-lost-jobs-gained-what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages">according to one McKinsey report</a>.



While&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/linkedin-careers-advice-how-to-get-ahead-at-work.html">research from LinkedIn</a>&nbsp;suggests that young people are more optimistic than any other generation about the shifting trends — after all,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/wef-machines-are-going-to-perform-more-tasks-than-humans-by-2025.html">many of those jobs are expected to be replaced by new ones</a>&nbsp;— the need to acquire new skills to keep apace with that change is undeniable.



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/">CNBC Make It</a>&nbsp;spoke to careers experts on the ground at the conference (as well as those responsible for the technology reshaping employment methods) to find out what they believe will be most important skills for the future.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Asking &#8216;why?&#8217;</h4>



&#8220;When I think about being a millennial entering the workforce,&#8221; said Peta Latimer, partner and CEO for Singapore at global human resources firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=MGL-NZ">Mercer</a>, &#8220;I think the two biggest skills that we need are the ability to ask why &#8230; and then, secondly, to listen.&#8221;



The &#8220;why?&#8221; is important for questioning norms and developing new ideas, but the listening is also crucial for understanding those norms &#8220;before you start criticizing.&#8221;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;What I&#8217;ve found is that it&#8217;s not just a learning ability but the ability to bounce back&#8221;-Nora Abd Manaf, group chief human capital officer at Maybank</blockquote>



Nora Abd Manaf, group chief human capital officer at Southeast Asia&#8217;s Maybank, agreed that employees of the future need to work on developing their skills, but she also said it&#8217;s important to develop a future-proofed mindset.



&#8220;What I&#8217;ve found is that it&#8217;s not just a learning ability but the ability to bounce back. So when you fail, know how to pick yourself up and continue your learning process,&#8221; she said.



For Rudy Karsan, managing partner at Karlani Capital, a venture capital firm, it all comes down to one word: &#8220;Courage.&#8221;



&#8220;It is the single hardest thing for young people to have because of the amount of time they spend on the screen. You forget the difficulty it takes to really, really get to know people,&#8221; he said.



Meanwhile, Aileen Tan, group human resources officer at Singaporean telecommunications firm Singtel, who has been learning the programming language Python to future-proof her career, said the answer is threefold.



&#8220;For me, the three things are agility, curiosity, and a sense of divine discontentment,&#8221; said Tan. &#8220;Because you&#8217;ve really got to be discontented with the current to change the future.&#8221;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Making future leaders</h4>



Once employees manage to master those skills, they can then start positioning themselves as leaders of the future, the experts agreed.



That will require drawing on some of the aforementioned skills, such as curiosity, as well as developing new ones, according to Duncan Hewett, a senior vice president of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/united-states/">U.S.</a>&nbsp;software business VMware.



&#8220;The key skill that leaders need in the future is both curiosity and a level of humbleness to reach down through the organization and tap into all the different skills,&#8221; he said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;For me the most important skill is to appreciate the value of people development&#8221;-Morne Swart, Vice president, global product and transformation, SumTotal Systems</blockquote>



Morne Swart, vice president of global product strategy and transformation at U.S. software company SumTotal Systems, agreed, noting the need to value your team.



&#8220;For me the most important skill is to appreciate the value of people development in your organization,&#8221; Swart noted.



Niraj Jain, group chief finance officer at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/indonesia/">Indonesian</a>&nbsp;retailer Kanmo Group, meanwhile, said leaders of the future will need to be increasingly adaptable and willing to change what they think they know as the work landscape shifts.



&#8220;It&#8217;s very important for future leaders to unlearn what they&#8217;ve learned in the past and continue to learn something new,&#8221; explained Jain.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/hr-experts-share-the-skills-employees-will-most-need-in-the-future.html and is republished with its permission.

Improperly appointed boards spell disaster for organisations

HR experts share the skills they say employees will most need in the future

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/cat-clifford/">By Catherine Clifford</a> 



Between <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=AMZN">Amazon</a> and space company Blue Origin, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/jeff-bezos/">Jeff Bezos</a> — <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime">currently worth $134.5 billion according to Forbes</a> — obviously has a lot of work to do.



So Bezos has a system to organize his time.



&#8220;I try to organize my personal time so that I live mostly about 2 to 3 years out,&#8221; Bezos said at the Yale Club in New York City in February, according to a transcript from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-wings-club-presentation-transcript-2019-2">Business Insider</a>.



Bezos has enormous goals: He wants Amazon &#8220;to be Earth&#8217;s most customer-centric company,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518121161/d456916dex991.htm">according to his 2018 annual letter</a>, and wants&nbsp;<a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/our-mission">Blue Origin</a>&nbsp;to help create a way for the solar system to support 1 trillion people (&#8220;then we&#8217;d have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins,&#8221; he said at the Yale Club).



And &#8220;vision is absolutely important,&#8221; he said. But &#8220;we&#8217;ve got to get started.&#8221;



Vision, he says, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t deserve your day-to-day attention. You need a vision, then, that&#8217;s a touchstone: It&#8217;s something you can always come back to if you ever get confused. But mostly, your time should be spent on things that are happening today, this year, maybe in the next 2 or 3 years,&#8221; Bezos said, according to the transcript.



While there may be a few goals five to seven years in the future that are on Bezos&#8217; mind, he sets his day-to-day schedule based on what he is looking to happen in two to three years.



His top leaders at Amazon also work on a similar timeframe.



&#8220;We&#8217;ll announce our Amazon quarterly results and [people will say], &#8216;Great quarter, congratulations!&#8217; And then I say, &#8216;Thank you,'&#8221; Bezos said. &#8220;But what I really think about is [how] that quarter was kind of baked and done 2 or 3 years ago, and right now the senior executives at Amazon are working on a quarter that&#8217;s going to happen in 2021, 2022.&#8221;



&#8220;I would always encourage people to hold, powerfully, a vision and be so stubborn of it. Don&#8217;t let anybody move you off of your vision,&#8221; Bezos said. &#8220;But put the vast majority of your energy and attention on things that are in a kind of 2- to 3-year timeframe.&#8221;



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/27/how-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-organizes-his-time.html and is republished with its permission.

This is how Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos organises his time

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/courtney-connley/">By Courtney Connley</a>



One of the most common pieces of career advice given to young people is to network, network, network. But if you&#8217;re following it to the letter, you might actually be wasting your time.



&#8220;We&#8217;ve all been there,&#8221; bestselling management author and CNBC contributor Suzy Welch tells&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/">CNBC Make It</a>. &#8220;You meet someone at a work-related cocktail hour, or at the end of an industry conference, and as you say goodbye, they stick a business card into your hand and you do the same.&#8221;



Though this practice is common — standard, even — Welch says that she believes this kind of networking &#8220;actually hurts your career, and you should replace it immediately with a different approach.&#8221;



&#8220;I know, &#8216;Get out there and network,&#8217; is one of the most common pieces of advice given to job-seekers and career-builders,&#8221; she says. &#8220;The idea is, you&#8217;re supposed to attend everything, make small talk with anyone who&#8217;s got a pulse, and, yep, plant a card into as many palms as possible.&#8221;



But Welch urges job-seekers to consider how often they&#8217;ve actually gained a trusted contact or a promising lead this way. Probably not often — if ever. That&#8217;s because &#8220;human beings help friends, not &#8216;contacts.'&#8221;



Ignore the idea that you have to meet and connect with everyone. Instead, &#8220;focus your energy on forging authentic business relationships.&#8221;



&#8220;They may be fewer in number,&#8221; she says, &#8220;but they are far more effective.&#8221; While this more focused approach may sound risky, the &#8220;commitment, structure and discipline&#8221; it requires pays off.



&#8220;I have a friend who started a PR business from scratch,&#8221; she says. &#8220;At the outset, she scheduled three business lunches a week. But prospecting for leads wasn&#8217;t the only thing on the menu. My friend asked about people&#8217;s career dreams and talked a lot about the Philadelphia Eagles. If someone had a cold, she checked in on them a few days later.&#8221;



Now, Welch says, that same friend&#8217;s business is nine years old and bringing in over $5 million in revenue &#8220;because she played the long game.&#8221;



&#8220;Giving a card or getting a card — that&#8217;s just not how anything of substance gets done,&#8221; explains Welch. &#8220;Don&#8217;t bother. Don&#8217;t network. Make friends instead.&#8221;



Suzy Welch is the co-founder of the <a href="http://jwmi.com/?mcv=jdg469">Jack Welch Management Institute</a>and a noted business journalist, TV commentator and public speaker. Think you need Suzy to fix your career? Email her at gettowork@cnbc.com.



This article was first published by CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/suzy-welch-to-be-successful-do-this-instead-of-networking.html and is republished with its permission.

Suzy Welch: If you want to be successful, don’t network—do this instead

HARARE (Reuters) &#8211; Zimbabwe’s commercial banks are under orders to restrict U.S. dollar transactions to companies and individuals with foreign payments to make, according to a central bank directive that demonstrates the slow progress of currency reforms. 



The document, a measure of the foreign exchange controls that remain in place six days after authorities announced moves to ease chronic cash shortages, also states such transactions should be aimed at stimulating economic growth.



It was sent to banks on Friday and seen by Reuters on Tuesday.



Zimbabwe abandoned a discredited 1:1 dollar peg for its dollar-surrogate bond notes and electronic dollars last week, merging them into a lower-value transitional currency called the RTGS dollar.



It launched the RTGS dollar in a “managed float” at 2.5 per U.S. dollar, but as of Tuesday, banks had yet to start selling hard currency in cash.



Banks were only selling U.S. dollars to firms and individuals with invoices or receipts for imports deemed a priority, such as fuel and medicines.



“All interbank market sales to individuals and corporates shall be restricted to funding of external obligations,” and banks should submit dealing reports every two hours, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) directive said.



Dealers were encouraged to take steps “to ensure efficient utilisation of foreign currency that is tilted towards the productive sectors of the economy,” it added.



The state-owned Herald newspaper reported that Botswana had offered to lend Zimbabwe $600 million to support its diamond industry and private firms.



Economists say the RTGS reform shows promise provided the government makes good on a plan to let the new currency fluctuate.



Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told Reuters in an interview on Monday that, while the market should determine the RTGS rate, the government wanted to avoid excessive volatility.



However, the current official rate values the RTGS far higher than on a thriving black market that many ordinary Zimbabweans use to buy and sell U.S. dollars.



‘SEED U.S. DOLLAR CAPITAL’The central bank has sold small amounts of U.S. dollars to banks at 2.5 RTGS in recent days, and a currency dealer told Reuters the RBZ had authorised banks to buy and sell U.S. dollars at 2.5 percent either side of that rate.



Tellers at two banks in downtown Harare said they could help clients make payments for overseas purchases at 2.5625 RTGS, the rate that other banks offered on Monday.



However, “the RBZ hasn’t given us any U.S. dollars in cash yet,” a teller at a CABS bank branch said.



The central bank sold what it called “seed foreign currency capital” to banks, but the sums in question appear to be tiny.



A senior RBZ official told The Standard newspaper around $5 million had changed hands on the interbank market on Friday.



Bureaux de change can in theory sell people U.S. dollars in cash, but they are few and far between and the central bank directive said some would have to re-apply for operating licences.



One exchange bureau at the Road Port bus station in Harare was not selling U.S. dollars in cash yet but hoped it would start making sales next Monday.



Exchange rates on the black market for the bond note &#8211; which many people still use in shops &#8211; were at 3.6 to the U.S. dollar, unchanged from Monday, informal currency traders said.



Reporting by Alexander Winning and MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by John Stonestreet

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International News

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African e-commerce firm Jumia set to list on New York Stock Exchange, what you need to know

Why the Kenyan shilling is under pressure against the dollar

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Why billionaire Bill Gates is backing this business that wants to change the way we eat

Self-made billionaires like Warren Buffett and Elon Musk prove if you don’t make time for these 6 little things every day, you’ll never be successful

Microsoft calls it a key skill of the future. Here are 4 steps to mastering it

Here’s why U.S. president Trump extended sanctions against Zimbabwe by a year

HIV-positive patient becomes world’s second AIDS cure hope

Here’s how much you’d have to pay people to deactivate Facebook for a month

How the world’s first ever scientific eating plan forgot the poor

HR experts share the skills they say employees will most need in the future

This is how Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos organises his time

Suzy Welch: If you want to be successful, don’t network—do this instead

Here’s why Zimbabwe is limiting dollar sales to foreign payments only

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