The start of a new month brings new horrors to the victims of 21^st century customer service. Here are some examples from less than 4 hours after the start of the first workday of the month:

1. 8 am phone call to my emergency number from Dun & Bradstreet in the Philippines to go over the changes they are (at last) making to my mis-stated corporate listing;

2. bill from a radiology clinic for the last mammogram I had which said my insurer denied coverage and demanded over $500 for the procedure. It had been scheduled after the radiology clinic told me it was time for the an exam, and after my doctor sent them the forms to proceed with a test that is supposed to be free from women my age;

3. calling the toll-free number from the radiology clinic's billing service offered linguistic options but no way to contest the bill;

4. two of those mystery meat messages from e-trade to tell me shares I own are “in play” with no way to get further information either via the message or by logging into my account;

5. calling the broker's toll-free number, after the smarmy welcoming message, I heard news that their (haha) “Platinum Service” was down. Trying to send an email message to the brokerage produced a blockage for “invalid characters” of which there were none.

A 2nd Spanish company has signed up to escape the clutches of Gazprom. Iberdrola SA will buy $5.6 bn of natural gas from Cheniere Energy of the US. The operator of Israel's Tamar offshore gasfield, Noble Energy, will sell natural gas to Union Fenosa, a Spanish company seeking safer and cheaper gas supplies.

More follows about the in-play stock and other matters follows from The Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Pakistan, Australia, Switzerland, Britain, Colombia, South Korea, Israel, Hong Kong, and Canada. There will be no blog Weds which is a Jewish holiday.

We had technical issues posting the performance tables from Boston over the weekend but they are now up on the www.global-investing.com website. View the ones you are allowed to see.

*After US prisoner Bowe Bergdahl was released though its good offices with the Taliban, Pakistan has another new friend in America. Last month it was given a hand of friendship by India. The result is that our db e-trackers MSCI Pakistan IM Index UCITS ETF, listed in Hong Kong as 3106, are doing nicely. However, today the share fell 0.389% to HK$15.36 from 15.42 so it may be appealing to readers who haven't yet sprung for the stock. Its holdings are not disclosed, typical of an ETF.

This sub-fund is part of the tracker swap funds run by Deutsche Bank in Luxembourg, but also traded in Singapore, besides Hong Kong. The actual manage isState Street Bank, a US entity's sub in the Principality of Luxembourg. There are only 400,000 shares out and the minimum buy is 500 shares.

The invested money is actually invested in DB derivatives which may or may not actually reflect transactions taking place on the Karachi exchange, depending on how the German bank views the risks.

However, all the money reflects the performance of actual shares, not other investment vehicles other than DB's. If you do not yet know this, note that Pakistan in an emerging market, suffering high volatility of stock prices and exchange rates, as well as fixed income and interest rates. It also may impose exchange controls or restrict repatriation of funds, tax transactions or custody charges, or delay settlement. It also uses different accounting and disclosure standards than Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Germany and the US.

Moreover if there are disputes, the laws of Pakistan would apply to judgments and their enforcement, and—guess what?--they are not transparent and are subject to interference by local parties.

Furthermore the stock market in Karachi is new and has underdeveloped securities law and regulatory oversight.

War and military coups may result in investment losses. Inflation and currency devaluations have occurred in the past and if repeated can have a negative impact on the fund's performance.

Trading volumes are low and there are few listed companies so there can be liquidity issues which can affect the net asset value of our fund. The impact of exchange rate changes of the Pakistani Rupee will affect the premium or discount from net asset value of our ETF.

Pakistan imposes withholding tax on dividends, one reason why HK:3106 is not passing dividends on to its owners. The fund uses institutional investors to stabilize its deviation from net asset value. They do so at a minimum of amount of $50 mn, meaning that the discounts and premiums can remain in place for a long time until the institutions have acted. The tracking error is expected to be up to 2%.

Fees charged by DB are 0.2% per annum of the portfolio plus a management fee of 0.65% per year, or a total of 0.85% per year.

The above warnings were sent to me by my brokerage and are from a boilerplate door-stopper from DB's UCITS lawyers.

Now for a bit more upbeat news. The world of frontier markets is shrinking. Nancy Zambell writes today in Dick Davis Investment Digest that the No. 3 frontier market ETF, iShares Frontier Markets, has just been added to The Coolcat ETF Report run by Kevin Kennedy.

Like the institutional open-end frontier markets fund we and many readers own after its conversion, it aims to track the MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) Frontier Index. Our share is called Morgan Stanley Institutional Frontier Emerging Markets Fund, MFPIX, and is changing its spots and undergoing changes to reflect the index changes. Of course they had a head start over Coolcat and the Germans as they created the index. It used to be an accessible closed-end fund, how we mini- investors got into it. We are grandfathered bu new investors have to put up $5 mn. Our shares gained 42% since we bought them.

Nancy notes that at the end of May, MSCI Frontier Markets index dropped Kuwait (which had accounted for 20% of the index, the largest position); Qatar, the 2^ndlargest; and the United Arab Emirates, third. Pakistan, Nancy writes, had been number six, after Nigeria and Argentina.

More on other fund ideas below.

*Bombardier has hit another speed bump. Its C-series aircraft engine suffered “a major failure” during ground testing last week, according to The Globe and Mailof Toronto. The engine, of which there are two on each C-series plane, is made by Pratt & Whitney but it is a key to the whole plan to sell fuel efficient regional aircraft seating 100-149 passengers. The failure was “uncontained” and confirmed by P&W. I am selling half my BDRAF holding at $3.38, taking a loss. Royal Bank of Canada has cut the share to neutral form outperform, et il y aura des autres.

*Origin Energy in Oz will buy Karoon Gas's stake in the Conoco Phillips-operated Browse Basin project in Western Australia for $800 mn (US). OGFGF will sell $1 bn in new shares to finance the deal which will lead to its becoming a 40% shareholder in the offshore field alongside Conoco, with the remaining 20% held by PetroChina. OGFGF also partners with the same companies in the Australia Pacific liquefied natural gas export plant in Queensland. The stock fell on the news although having their supplies matching their LNG should improve outcomes for all the remaining shareholders in the plant.

*Nokia is adding Desti, an artificial intelligence travel-planner spinoff from SRI International, to its HERE sub. Desti finds stuff which matches your search terms using natural language. It is a relative of another SRI spinoff, Siri, the virual personal assistant bought by Apple 4 years ago. HERE is NOK's mapping and location system in the cloud for smartphones, tablets, wearable systems, and, most importantly, vehicles. It is sold as a basic system by many car-makers now. Having turned over its smartphone devices and services production facilities outside India to Microsoft, NOK is shifting strategies to car location devices, and targeted spending for this is ~$100 mn. I have no idea how much SRI got of this pot. SRI is the private arm of Stanford Research Institute.

*While we are not shareholders in Cheniere's US fields and LNG project, we are partners via Delek Group with Noble Energy. DGRLY owns via subs 31.25% of Tamar of which Noble owns 36%.

*The in-play stock is Teva (the other is a US share). TEVA, the Israeli producer of generics and ethical drugs, is splitting its business organization to reflect this and also cutting down on the size of its board. The generics and OTC business (including its jv with Procter & Gamble) will be run starting next month by Sigurdur Olafsson as its CEO; he was hired post-deal from Activis. The other arm is global specialty medicines which includes its patented portfolio led by Copaxone, to be headed by Rob Koremans. Teva also named a global head of quality, Eric Drape. Teva is up 2.5% on this news, which is why I expect to be able to find it in my brokerage account, not from Dow-Jones.

Separately, the FDA allowed Teva to launch a generic of Celebrex (celecosib) in 3 sizes. It gets an edge competing with Pfizer (PFE) as it was first to file. It also will share another strength's market with Mylan which, however, plans to sue to stop the Israel onslaught.

*Hadassit Bio Holdings is back to being traded, but oof, it is now $0.725 bid, $1.04 ask. The Jerusalem Hadassah hospitals are in bankruptcy proceedings, having lost their endowment to Bernie Madoff. This news is linked to Teva, as its American board member, Phillip Frost MD, may be one of the board members dropped. If so, he has no need to boost his Israeli credentials by having his Opko Healthget into acquiring HADSY assets. I will write these shares off by year end unless something happens. The share is also down because Tel Aviv was on half-holiday today; it will be closed Tues. and Weds.

*GlaxoSmithKline is offering private equity funds a chance to buy some 50 old products it sells which are off patent. It already sold to South Africa's Aspen Pharma for GBP 700 mn cash and a stake for GSK its thrombosis portfolio brands. Hitting the private equity route is not very original as other drugmakers likePFE, Sanofi, and Merck are also flogging their off-patent drugs.

GSK is also spending up to $350 mn (including milestones) to buy intoAdaptimmune after a bidding war for the Oxford, UK, maker of oncology drugs. The Financial Times wrote today that Adaptimmune's future finds may be marketed either by GSK or to other drug firms, which may have counted as much as the cash.

GSK is not doing well in oncology as its attempt to treat breast cancer with a combo of Herceptin and Tykerb failed to boost patients' survival rates from using Herceptin alone. GSK is selling its Tykerb to Novartis under their asset trade.

*Hikma Pharma is on a roll, up 4% last week. HKMPY is Jordanian, traded in Dubai and London, with an ADR on the latter share.

*Morgan Stanley overweighted Covidien, maker of medical devices. COV is Irish.

*Mongolia Growth Fund is moving its Canada corporate HQ from Thunder Bay to Toronto and co-founder Jordan Calonego is stepping down as chief operating office and corporate secretary. Genevieve Walkden, who had been doing IR, will replace him in the latter post but he will remain on the board and the company will find an new COO.

Earlier I got from Stockgumshoe.com, edited by Travis Johnson, a note about MNGGF which he got from a PR flack working for the company reporting that Kim Iskyan (of Stansberry publications) put a “buy up to $2.50” on MNGGF (YAK in Canada). I also write up Mongolia Growth got no such thing. I love stockgumshoe but I also compete with it. Harris Kupperman and Genevieve Walkden are aware of this. If there is news about the company they should also share it with me.

Iskaya said that MNGGF can gain from the mining boom in Mongolia without mining risks as it is a real estate firm operating in Ulaanbaatar. Moreover, the mining disputes with Turquoise Hill and its parent Rio Tinto are likely to be settled in the end.

The Kupperman failure to keep me in the loop may be related to my support for his stepping down as CEO to allow a real estate expert to run what is now a real estate company. He should not be so petty. And he should not pay for coverage by other newsletters expect by sharing news. Pay for play is a real 'no-no' not just to me, but also to Travis.

*Dutch-incorporated Schlumberger Ltd made a new 52-wk high. The well-head services group is benefiting from hype of fracking and new search technology.

*However its 20% owned Anton Oilfield Services Group ADR, ATONY, while also up, is not at a high having hit $170 right after its ipo. It is now $52, benefiting from the new business China is doing with Gazprom of Russia. This is a nice gain from the $131.88 which we paid after Vivian Ng (no relation) wrote up the stock.

*Ecopetrol and its unions have filed to make a new 5-yr collective agreement as the old one runs out at the end of the month. EC

*Swiss incorporated Coca Cola Hellenic Corp is up since following their reiteration of their forward guidance despite a tough Q1, they also declared a $0.4813 quarterly dividend last Friday payable August 5 and thereafter.

*My Tencent Group stock split is now showing on my e-trade account as the price is off over 80%. But they have not adjusted the number of shares I own. The split took place on May 23, which is rather a long time ago.

*Shinhan Group was affirmed at A1-stable by Fitch's Rat ings. SHG of South Korea is up 2% on this.

Fund news follows:

*Alliance Bernstein Global High Income Fund (AWF) closed Mar. with assets up 2% from the end of 2013 at $.13 m, but down 4.5% from the end of Q4 2013-4. (Its FY runs to Mar. 31.) In the quarter at issue net investment income fell to 25 cents from 32 cents sequentially. In addition is made 25 cents of gains in the quarter vs only 18 cents in the prior quarter, under its management investment program. AWF produced an 8.6% return in the past 12 months and is trading at a 5.2% discount from NAV, vs many fund in the high-yield sector being at premiums. It is a relative bargain for those seeking bond income and who are willing to go global. I own it and will begin to cover it.

*Beleaguered Pimco faces a State Street challenge to its dominance of actively managed bond ETFs with the SPDR DoubleLine Capital Total Return Tactical ETF which will take on Pimco Total Return ETF. I own shares of State Street in part to keep up with its new concept funds, and in part to get a fee-based return from its dominance of custody plans and support programs for the wealth management business. I like STT's new activism in forex matching. The new fund will invest based on the concepts of Robert Schiller, a Nobel economist, but will be run by Double's Jeffrey Grunlach. I prefer non-Nobel funds with simpler strategies. STT owns State Street Global Advisors and the SPDR name. In the incestuous world of fund management, STT is rated hold by Deutsche Bank, operator of our Pakistan fund.