Since 10 years Retail Asia Publishing recognizes, honours and salutes the top five hundred retailers in the region through the ranking and presentation of its Retail Asia Pacific Top 500 awards .

The growth rate of the 14 top-candidates for the 2013 awards was on average 12.7 percent. The panel judging the performance and the very interesting backstage-strategies consisted out of Freddy Soon , Dr.Lynda Wee (both Singapore), Prof.Dr.R.P.Wright (Hongkong) and Prof.Dr.B.Hallier.
 

Germany did have its Federal Elections in September 2013 . The posters of the political parties asked the population to vote "ja/yes" for their candidates. The food-retailer REWE used this advertising environment to promote its private label "ja" ! In 1982 this low-price segment was introduced with 28 items , meanwhile there is a broad sustainable range of basic "ja" products throughout several store-formats of REWE as well as of its partners.

Another play of words concerned the word "Haushalt" which has on the one side the meaning "household" for the family and on the other "budget" within the public administration ! "Wir retten den deutschen Haushalt : we save the German houshold/the German budget".
 

The University of Nitra/Slovakia initiated in 2011 the Visegrad University Association (VUA) for agrarian universities. In 2013 it has 44 members from 21 countries; it arranges cross-border summer-schools and double diploma. Its Annual Meeting in 2013 took place at the Mendel University/Brno/CZ . Prof.Dr.B.Hallier used the chance to present the EU-project FORWARD and the concept of the future Green University platform uniting topics of economics,ecology and ethics.

The Annual Meeting empowered the VUA-president, Prof.Dr.Peter Bielik , to support the Green University Platform as a catalyst for the above mentioned topics and as a focus of the World Economic Youth Forum 2014 in Astana/Kazakhstan.
 

The President of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev opened in Astana a Forum with the title "Eurasia in the 21st Century - Through Renewal to Leadership". The vision of Kazakhstan is to become one of the world's most developed countries within the top 30 uptill 2050. The Forum was attended by experts from Central Asia,East and South Asia,America and Europe.

Among the team posing for the photo are the head of the presidential office K.Massimov, the prime-minister and the deputy prime-minister, the former presidents/prime ministers A.Gusenbauer/Austria,J.Quiroga/Bolivia, E.Olmert/Israel, R.Prodi/Italy,A.Kwasniewski/Poland - H.Kohli/President Centennial Group,S.Katsu/President Nazarbayev University and Prof.Dr.B.Hallier / President European Retail Academy - P.Flor/EU and E.Pilichowski/OECD.

More Info in German about retail in Eurasia see at www.lpishop.de
 

The European Retail Academy started already in 2006 a Forum Art Business (link) as a special link ; in 2012 it organized as a part of urban revitalization an international exhibition "Student Art" in the water-castle of the city of Dueren(link) . Now together with friends of art it started an Academy for Art,Therapy and PlaceEmpowerment to merge teaching of those three disciplines.

Beside ERA the other co-founders are the internationally well known artist Mary Bauermeister, E.Gebauer, M.-C.Hallier, W.C.Jung, L.Mandac, O.Pfoertner and SAXA. Chairman of the advisory board is Prof.Dr.B.Hallier, further member is Dr. Sonja Petrikova from the Tretyakow Galery in Moscow. At the photo Mary Bauermeister and Olaf Pfoertner pose for the contract together with Prof.Dr.B.Hallier and M.-C.Hallier on the water-roof of Mary's house which will be the center of the new Academy.