Roughly 30 percent ($750 billion) of all medical spending in the U.S is wasted on unnecessary treatments, poor administration, fraud and other forms of pervasive inefficiencies each year, claimed a report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on Thursday, with nearly 75,000 deaths in 2005 believed could have been averted if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state.
In the European Central Bank’s (ECB) strongest commitment to date to tackle the European debt crisis, ECB President Mario Draghi pledged on Thursday to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds from struggling economies, though he admitted that there had been some dissention on the ECB board for the initiative.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the nation’s top economic planning agency, has approved the construction of 25 new railway projects that will cost more than $126 billion over the next eight years and, more importantly, boost infrastructure investments to stabilise economic growth, reported the China Daily on Thursday.
Nearly 556 million people around the world have fallen victim to cybercrimes such as computers viruses or email scams over the last twelve months, claimed the latest Norton Cybercrime Report by Symantec on Wednesday, with an average victim believed to be spending over $197 in order to remedy the problem.
Nearly 17 million Americans, or 5.5 percent of the population, have to skip meals or not eat for a day due to a lack of money to buy food, said a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, with a record 46.7 million Americans now enrolled for food stamps in the country.
Greece’s troika of lenders – namely the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – have called on the Greek government to introduce a six-day workweek for its citizens, reported several British publications on Wednesday, in an effort to improve worker productivity and increase government revenue ahead of the country’s second bailout in three years.
U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s will open its first ever vegetarian-only restaurant in India by the middle of next year, said a report by AFP on Wednesday, in an attempt to retake the top spot as the world’s largest fast food chain, which it lost to Subway last year.
The China Development Bank (CDB), one of the nation’s three policy banks known primarily for making big loans to other state-owned entities, has begun lending large amounts of cash to private firms around Asia, reported the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, while other banks cut back on lending amid the present economic climate.
Facebook shares fell to a record low on Tuesday after several analysts, including those at Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter of the company’s initial public offering, cut their price targets on the stock – citing reductions in the social network’s revenue projections.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, is at risk of becoming a net importer of oil within the next 20 years, said a study by Citigroup analysts on Tuesday, with the nation’s consumption rate growing much faster than what the nation can produce each year.
