Month: November 2018

Calgary Formally Ends Canada’s 2026 Winter Olympic Bid

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Corts

The Calgary city council on Monday unanimously declared Canada’s 2026 Winter Olympics bid dead, after residents roundly rejected its proposal to host the Games in a referendum.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said ahead of the council vote that he was “disappointed” in the outcome of the referendum — after nearly two years of bid preparations — but accepted the will of the people.

Calgary’s withdrawal now leaves only Milan and Stockholm in the running when the host city is announced in June in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The council’s announcement came after residents of the city at the foot of the Rocky Mountains last week came out 56.4 percent to 43.6 percent against bringing the event back to Calgary, which staged the 1988 Winter Games.

A tally of 304,774 ballots released by the city showed 171,750 voting against staging the Games, with 132,832 in favor.

The referendum result came after frenzied campaigning which saw pro-bid campaigners fail to convince residents that the city should bankroll a Can$390 million ($295 million US) chunk of the bill for hosting the event.

Bid officials had said bringing the Olympics back to Calgary would provide an economic boost to the city while giving it a chance to shine under a global spotlight.

But opponents cast doubt on the projected revenues from the Games, fearing massive cost overruns, higher property taxes and less funding for other municipal projects.
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Climate Change Holds Grim Future, New Study Says

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Cosc

A new report has taken the results of thousands of papers on the impacts of climate change and put them together into a giant assessment detailing the multiple ways that climate change will impact humanity in the coming century.

Lead researcher Camilo Mora says the report shows what he calls a “massive domino effect” of bad news as climate change intensifies in the coming century if the world doesn’t mitigate the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere.

In the report being published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Mora says there is literally no place on the planet that’s safe.

Putting all the data in one place

The study is unique in that it doesn’t produce any new information, but is basically a mother of all spreadsheets that takes all of the predicted effects of climate change and puts them into one place.

Mora told VOA he and his team of dozens of researchers spent six months gathering and inputting data on climate change into their system and watching how all of these impacts would affect individual sites around the world.

What they came up with was exactly 467 ways that climate change is going to negatively impact the weather, from localized changes like more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and storms, to the global changes like sea level rise, and changes in ocean chemistry.

Mora also looked at how climate change is expected to impact everything from food supplies, to increased susceptibility to disease, as well as more difficult to gauge effects like climate insecurity’s impact on mental health.

What he found was surprising, “I couldn’t stop being mind blown every single day,” he told VOA, mainly by the fact that the dangerous and damaging effects of climate change are already impacting humans all over the globe. “We think this is going to happen later,” he says, “but we found that this is already happening.”

“Last year, for instance, Florida recorded extreme drought, record high temperatures, over 100 wildfires, and the strongest ever recorded hurricane in its Panhandle: the category 4 Hurricane Michael,” Mora says. “Likewise, California is currently experiencing ferocious wild fires and one of the longest droughts, plus extreme heatwaves this past summer.”

And he says if carbon levels in the atmosphere continue to increase on pace there will no place on earth that isn’t affected.

Take New York, for instance. Mora lays out a future scenario in which in 2100 New York will be constantly dealing with the potentially devastating effects of four different climate hazards, including extreme weather and sea level rise.

All of these effects are measurable and in the future a city like Miami might be dealing with drought, extreme heat, sea level rise and more numerous and more powerful hurricanes. “Any coastal area in the tropics is going to be on fire” Mora says. Sydney, Los Angeles, Brazil and Mexico City are all at risk as the effects of climate change stack up.”

Mora’s study is impressive in its detail, noting, “Planes can’t fly during heat waves … wires short circuit during heat waves,” Mora says. And for people who work outdoors it can literally get too hot and “their livelihoods depend on their job ability to work out doors.”

All of these impacts add up and have a profound economic effect. Mora says they create stressed communities that have less economic ability to deal with change, plus higher financial costs thanks to the infrastructure damage and repair associated with predicted extreme weather events.

Is it too late?

But despite all of the bad news in this assessment, Mora is bullish on our ability to head off the effects of climate change.

“This is not game over,” he says. “We are not too late to turn this around and we have pathways to reduce emissions what we need to do is implement them.”

Mora says the solution to the world’s carbon problem will not come from the world’s leaders, despite agreements like the Paris Accord for which hundreds of the world’s leaders came together to commit to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

He says the real change to mitigate climate change through gradual cutting of emissions will come from the public, and he points to efforts like Hawaii’s decision to become a carbon neutral state by 2045 and to shift to 100 percent renewable energy.

Mora is also involved with tree planting efforts in Hawaii that he says if done worldwide could help the planet actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, not just stop putting it in. He calls it one of “many simple steps to clean our footprint all together.”

Finland Inspired to ‘Rake America Great Again’

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Cosc

People in Finland are using social media to mock U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that they “spend a lot of time raking” in forests in order to prevent wildfires.

Trump said Saturday while visiting the area of the deadliest wildfire in California history that Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told him of that method when the two met last week.

In an interview published Sunday in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper, Niinisto said he only told Trump about the country’s warning system and had no recollection of discussing raking.

The reaction from Finland included many people posting on Twitter with the hashtag “haravointi,” Finnish for raking.

There were lots of posts rebranding Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan as “Rake America Great Again.”

Some took a more creative approach to the task, employing more efficiency to cleaning the forest floor.

And from Canada, a suggestion that the whole process could be even easier.

UN: Afghan Opium Cultivation Down 20 Percent

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Coeco

A new United Nations survey finds that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 20 percent in 2018 compared to the previous year, citing a severe drought and falling prices of dry opium at the national level.

The total opium-poppy cultivation area decreased to 263,000 hectares, from 328,000 hectares estimated in 2017, but it was

still the second highest measurement for Afghanistan since the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began monitoring in 1994.

The potential opium production decreased by 29 percent to 6,400 tons from an estimated 9,000 tons in 2017.

The UNODC country representative, Mark Colhoun, while explaining factors behind the reduction told reporters in Kabul the farm-gate prices of dry opium at the harvest time fell to $94 per kilogram, the lowest since 2004.

The decreases, in particular in the northern and western Afghan regions, were mainly attributed to the severe drought that hit the country during the course of the last year, he added.

“Despite these decreases, the overall area under opium-poppy cultivation is still the highest ever recorded. This is a clear challenge to security and safety for the region and beyond. It is also a threat to all countries to and through which these drugs are trafficked as well as to Afghanistan itself,” said Colhoun.

He warned that more high-quality low-cost heroin will reach consumer markets across the world, with increased consumption and related harms as a further likely consequence.

“The significant levels of opium-poppy cultivation and illicit trafficking of opiates will further fuel instability, insurgency and increase funding to terrorist groups in Afghanistan,” he said.

Colhoun noted that while there is no single explanation for the continuing high levels of opium-poppy cultivation, rule of law-related challenges such as political instability, lack of government control and security as well as corruption have been found to be among the main drivers of illicit cultivation.

The UNODC survey estimated that the total farm-gate value of opium production decreased by 56 percent to $604 million, which is equivalent to three percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, from $1.4 billion in 2017. The lowest prices strongly undermined the income earned from opium cultivation by farmers.

The study finds that 24 out of the 34 Afghan provinces grew the opium-poppy in 2018, the same number as in the previous year.

The survey found that 69 percent of the opium poppy cultivation took place in southern Afghanistan and the largest province of Helmand remained the leading opium-poppy cultivating region followed by neighboring Kandahar and Uruzgan and Nangarhar in the east.

It noted that opium poppy weeding and harvesting provided for the equivalent of up to 354,000 full-time jobs to rural areas in 2017.

A U.S. government agency, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has noted in its latest report that as of September 30, Washington’s counternarcotics-related appropriations for the country had reached almost $9 billion.

“Despite the importance of the threat narcotics pose to reconstruction and despite massive expenditures for programs including poppy-crop eradication, drug seizures and interdictions, alternative-livelihood support, aviation support, and incentives for provincial governments, the drug trade remains entrenched in Afghanistan, and is growing,” said Sigar, which monitors U.S. civilian and military spendings in the country.

Nissan Chairman Faces Arrest in Japan

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Coeco

Japanese automaker Nissan says it has determined that its chairman, Carlos Ghosn, falsified reports about his compensation “over many years.” The company said its internal investigation also found Ghosn had used company assets for personal purposes.

Japanese media are reporting Monday that Ghosn is being questioned by Tokyo prosecutors on allegations that he underreported his income and that he will likely be arrested.

Ghosn is suspected of failing to report hundreds of millions of dollars in income.

Nissan says Ghosn will be dismissed from the company.

The Ashai newspaper reported that prosecutors have raided Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama.

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is of Lebanese descent and a French citizen, was the rare foreign top executive in Japan.

Ghosn was sent to Nissan in the late 1990s by Renault SA of France, after it bought a controlling stake of Nissan. He is credited with rescuing Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

In 2016, Ghosn also took control of Mitsubishi, after Nissan bought a one-third stake in the company, following Mitsubishi’s mileage-cheating scandal.

“If he is arrested, it’s going to rock the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance as he is the keystone of the alliance,” said Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm.

Shares in Renault fell more than 12 percent in late morning trading in Paris after the news about Ghosn came out.

Lithuania: Russia’s UBER Could Be Used For Spying

Posted on 11/19/2018 by Cobiz

In the Baltic country of Lithuania, there’s growing debate over a Russian-owned taxi ride-sharing service that Lithuanian government officials warn could be spying on users through their smartphones. So, could an ‘app’ be the latest tool in Kremlin hybrid tactics, or has fear of all things Russian gone too far? From Vilnius, Charles Maynes reports.
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Pence, Xi Sell Competing Views to Asian Regional Economies

Posted on 11/18/2018 by Coeco

The United States and China offered competing views to regional leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Papua New Guinea, trading sharp words over trade, investment, and regional security. Washington said it can provide a better option for regional allies under is “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy. as VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports, the APEC gathering ended without a formal leaders’ statement.
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Gene Editing Having Impact on Farming World

Posted on 11/18/2018 by Cosc

Humans have been genetically modifying foods for centuries. Wild tomatoes or carrots for instance don’t look much like the mass produced foods we eat today. But in these days of genetic modification, consumers have tended to keep so called “Frankenfoods” at arms length. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports a new generation of precision editing techniques may change that.
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Art Thrives Among Hunters, Fishers in Northernmost Alaska

Posted on 11/18/2018 by Corts

The small town of Utqiagvik, Alaska, is the northernmost town in the United States. Entertainment is scarce and so is the list of jobs. A lot of locals still hunt and fish, and there is room for art here as well. As Natasha Mozgovaya reports, indigenous carvers have been creating beautiful figurines, intricate miniature sculptures and jewelry from very Alaskan materials.
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Marvel Superheroes and American Pop Culture

Posted on 11/18/2018 by Corts

While the Space Needle may be the most recognizable structure in Seattle, Washington, there is another spectacular and futuristic building nearby: Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. Initially built as a tribute to the legendary Seattle rock musician Jimi Hendrix, it now celebrates American contemporary pop culture as a whole. One display is dedicated to the Marvel Comics Super Heroes, whose creator, Stan Lee, died at 95 earlier this week. Natasha Mozgovaya gives us a look.
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British-based Startup ARC Debuts First Motorcycle for $117,000

Posted on 11/18/2018 by Cobiz

British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it’s for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Climate Change Protesters Block off 5 London Bridges

Posted on 11/17/2018 by Cosc

Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.

A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country.

Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest.

About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to gates outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Space Station Supplies Launched, 2nd Shipment in 2 Days

Posted on 11/17/2018 by Cosc

A load of space station supplies rocketed into orbit from Virginia on Saturday, the second shipment in two days.

And another commercial delivery should be on its way in a couple weeks.

“What an outstanding launch,” said NASA’s deputy space station program manager, Joel Montalbano.

Northrop Grumman launched its Antares rocket from Wallops Island before dawn, delighting chilly early-bird observers along the Atlantic coast. The Russian Space Agency launched its own supplies to the International Space Station on Friday, just 15 hours earlier.

The U.S. delivery will arrive at the orbiting lab Monday, a day after the Russian shipment. Among the 7,400 pounds (3,350 kilograms) of goods inside the Cygnus capsule: ice cream and fresh fruit for the three space station residents, and a 3D printer that recycles old plastic into new parts.

Thanksgiving turkey dinners — rehydratable, of course — are already aboard the 250-mile-high outpost. The space station is currently home to an American, a German and a Russian.

There’s another big event coming up, up there: The space station marks its 20th year in orbit on Tuesday. The first section launched on Nov. 20, 1998, from Kazakhstan.

“As we celebrate 20 years of the International Space Station,” Montalbano noted, “one of the coolest things is the cooperation we have across the globe.” Then there’s the U.S. commercial effort to keep the space station stocked and, beginning next year, to resume crew launches from Cape Canaveral. “To me, it’s been a huge success,” he said.

This Cygnus, or Swan, is named the S.S. John Young to honor the legendary astronaut who walked on the moon and commanded the first space shuttle flight. He died in January.

It is the first commercial cargo ship to bear Northrop Grumman’s name. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in June. SpaceX is NASA’s other commercial shipper for the space station; its Dragon capsule is set to lift off in early December.

Experiments arriving via the Cygnus will observe how cement solidifies in weightlessness, among other things. There’s also medical, spacesuit and other equipment to replace items that never made it to orbit last month because of a Russian rocket failure; the two men who were riding the rocket survived their emergency landing. Three other astronauts are set to launch from Kazakhstan on Dec. 3.

Art and the Meaning of Jewelry: New Exhibit Opens at the Met

Posted on 11/17/2018 by Corts

Fashion changes, trends come and go, but jewelry is always present in people’s lives in one way or another. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened a new exhibition dedicated to the history of jewelry and the role it plays in people’s lives. Headdresses and earrings, brooches and belts, necklaces and rings, old and new, traditional and provocative, jewelry never cease to surprise and amaze. Nina Vishneva reports. Anna Rice narrates.
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Review: ‘Creed II’ Goes More Than the Distance; It’s a KO

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Corts

The weight of legacy hangs heavily over Creed II. Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories, but also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one.

Creed II pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the luster of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honor its past, resurrecting unfinished business from Rocky IV and adding a dash of Rocky III. Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor.

Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time, but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa. Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as color commentator.

The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in Rocky IV. That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise. Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago, but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos. This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point, Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and — laugh if you must — it feels sort of right here.

Desire — or lack of it — plays a key role in Creed II since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top. Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption. “My son will break your boy,” Ivan Drago threatens Rocky, who sort of agrees. “When a fighter’s got nothing to lose he’s dangerous,” he warns Creed. “Listen, that kid was raised in hate. You weren’t.” Dolph Lungren returns as the elder Drago and there’s even an appearance by Brigitte Nielsen, who plays Drago’s wife in 1985 and was a real-life wife of Stallone. (Talk about keeping it in the family.)

Caple matches Coogler’s moody, gritty vision of a brutal sport conducted by mostly honorable men trying to outwit each other. There’s plenty of gore, slo-mos of smashed heads and Rocky trademarks — the glorious montages with uplifting music as fighters prepare for their shot in the ring. (Prepare to look away if you are fans of massive truck tires — many get horrible beat downs.)

Stallone got his mitts on the script — after having had a role penning all the Rocky films but sitting out writing Creed — and teams up with Cheo Hodari Coker, creator of the Netflix superhero hit Luke Cage. Onscreen, Stallone returns with his dark fedora and small bouncing ball, shuffling about and mumbling, allowing his sad eyes to do the bulk of his acting. It’s in the small moments between crusty Stallone and cocky Jordan where the film finds its sweet spot. “What are you fightin’ for?” the elder man asks the younger.

Jordan proves again that he’s a film force to be reckoned with, capable of searing and savage intensity and yet also goofy softness. This time, his swagger is tested and he must overcome intense pain and anguish. Watching him get up off the canvas again and again will make even the most uncharitable viewer cheer. As Adonis, he wants to carve his own legacy away from his father’s: “This is our chance to rewrite history. Our history,” Creed tells Rocky.

Thompson and Rashad both temper the piles of testosterone onscreen as women who steer and guide the young Adonis. Thompson’s character is battling progressive hearing loss and that is handled intelligently by the writers. There’s even a scene when Adonis is punched so hard that he falls in silence and looks over at her, both connected for a moment in enveloping quiet.

The filmmakers, meanwhile, are creating their own family legacy. Both Creed films share the same composer (Ludwig Goransson), art director (Jesse Rosenthal), special effects coordinator (Patrick White), costumer (Rita Squitiere) and location manager (Patricia Taggart). The films even have the same barber for Jordan (Kenny Duncan). And Coogler didn’t go far — he’s an executive producer.

But while a Creed III is almost guaranteed, there may be dangers ahead if the filmmakers choose to keep reopening old wounds or plundering story lines from the past. And the creep toward more cinematic bombast needs to be watched vigilantly. (Remember how nuts the last few Rocky films got?) Having said that, this spin-off franchise is clearly in very good hands — ones that are heavily wrapped, protected by a glove and aiming for your gut.
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‘A Private War’ Underscores Risks Journalists Take

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Corts

Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman has often put his life on the line while filming award-winning documentaries such as Cartel Land, chronicling wars of Mexican drug cartels, and throwing a light on the atrocities of the Islamic State group in City of Ghosts.

Now, Heineman is releasing his first feature film, A Private War, about another subject close to his heart: Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, who staked her life on the war fronts of Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria in order to bring attention to the plight of war victims.

In A Private War, Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike transforms herself into Colvin, a gritty, fierce, inquisitive American journalist who dedicated her life to reporting on atrocities around the world.

Pike evokes the journalist’s inexorable drive to cover wars to show the world the plight of war victims and bring truth to light. She also portrays Colvin as a person suffering from PTSD and addiction to alcohol and to her job. And there was the physical toll. Colvin lost her left eye in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Sri Lanka in 2001.

Her actions, presence

“Getting into her physicality, which meant changing everything, I had to learn to smoke convincingly, because for Marie, everything was better with a cigarette — every conversation, every car drive,” Pike told VOA. “I had to see the way with which she gestured with her hands — she had these wide-apart fingers. I had to work out how the eye patch made her angle her head differently — how she could penetrate you and sear you with one eye as good as someone else could dress you down with two.”

In an onscreen soliloquy about her inner demons as Colvin, Pike outlined the personal conflicts that defined the British journalist.

“I fear growing old, but then I also fear dying young,” she said. “I am most happy with a vodka martini in my hand, but I can’t stand the fact that the chatter in my head won’t go quiet until there is a quart of vodka inside me. I hate being in a war zone, but I also feel compelled, compelled, to see it for myself.”

WATCH: ‘A Private War’ Examines War Correspondent’s Physical, Psychological Scars

Regarding Colvin’s heavy drinking, Pike said, “Should we even call it alcoholism? I really had to judge and walk a very fine line and find out where the truth lay, because it is not that we are defining her by a drinking problem. But she clearly had one.”

Filmmaker Heineman described his deep connection to Colvin. A storyteller who took grave risks to document drug cartels and IS to the world, he wanted to do justice to the complexity of Colvin’s character and her courage as she unflinchingly reported from Homs, Syria, in 2012 during Bashar al-Assad’s heavy bombardment of the city.

This is where Colvin lost her life. Through Colvin’s commitment, Heineman said he wanted to show the risks that journalists take to uncover the truth to the world.

Power of storytelling

“Journalists are the bedrock of a free and independent society. You might not always agree with what they say, but the fact that journalism has been politicized, as our whole world has been politicized and our countries have been politicized and divided, is really sad to me,” the filmmaker said. “The fact that journalists have been demonized in this country, in other countries, the fact that a journalist was recently obviously killed, in Turkey [Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi], I think that’s one of the reasons why I make films.

“I think film, journalism, storytelling has the ability to bring people together to create dialogue, to create two sides of a conversation,” he told VOA.

As a documentarian, Heineman wanted to give this real-life texture to his film. In a scene where Colvin discovers a mass grave in Iraq, the local women and men gathered around mourning are real victims of war.

“The women in that scene were Iraqi women crying about real trauma that they experienced, and at the end of that scene, like in any documentary that I made, something unforeseen happened: They started chanting and doing this prayer for the dead,” Heineman said.

Pike related a similar experience she had while filming an unscripted scene with a refugee woman huddled with her kids in a safe house. The scene was depicting the siege of Homs.

Through an interpreter, the woman told Pike how she fed her baby only sugar and water because she could not produce milk to breastfeed after the trauma of losing one of her kids to a bomb attack.

“Then the woman said to me as Marie — and it was caught on camera — she said, ‘I don’t want this, please, I don’t want this just to be words on paper. I want the world to know that a generation is dying here. I want the world to know my story.’ ”

Pike said that at that moment, she felt what drove Colvin — the journalist’s grave responsibility to bear witness to people’s suffering, no matter the cost.
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‘Private War’ Examines War Correspondent’s Physical, Psychological Scars

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Corts

Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman’s film “A Private War,” about Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, brings attention to the danger journalists face reporting on the plight of war victims. VOA’s Penelope Poulou describes how and why “A Private War” was a labor of love, a docudrama delving into Colvin’s psyche.
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Federal Reserve Policymakers See Rate Hikes Ahead, Note Worries

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Coeco

Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled further interest rate increases ahead, but raised relatively muted concerns over a potential global slowdown that has markets betting heavily that the Fed’s rate hike cycle will soon peter out.

The widening chasm between market expectations and the rate path the Fed laid out just two months ago underscores the biggest question in front of U.S. central bankers: How much weight to give a growing number of potential red flags, even as U.S. economic growth continues to push down unemployment and create new jobs?

“We are at a point now where we really need to be especially data dependent,” Richard Clarida, the newly appointed vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said in a CNBC interview. “I think certainly where the economy is today, and the Fed’s projection of where it’s going, that being at neutral would make sense,” he added, defining “neutral” as interest rates somewhere between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent.

But that range that implies anywhere from two more to six more rate hikes, and Clarida declined to say how many more increases he would prefer.

He did say he is optimistic that U.S. productivity is rising, a view that suggests he would not see faster economic or wage growth as necessarily feeding into higher inflation or, necessarily, requiring higher interest rates. But he also

sounded a mild warning.

“There is some evidence of global slowing,” Clarida said. “That’s something that is going to be relevant as I think about the outlook for the U.S. economy, because it impacts big parts of the economy through trade and through capital markets and the like.”

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan, in a separate interview with Fox Business, also said he is seeing a growth slowdown in Europe and China.

“It’s my own judgment that global growth is going to be a little bit of a headwind, and it may spill over to the United States,” Kaplan said. .

The Fed raised interest rates three times this year and is expected to raise its target again next month, to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. As of September, Fed policymakers expected to need to increase rates three more times next year, a view they will update next month.

Over the last week, betting in contracts tied to the Fed’s policy suggests that even two rate hikes might be a stretch. The yield on fed fund futures maturing in January 2020, seen by some as an end-point for the Fed’s current rate-hike cycle, dropped sharply to just 2.76 percent over six trading days.

At the same time, long-term inflation expectations have been dropping quickly as well. The so-called breakeven inflation rate on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, has fallen sharply in the last month. The breakeven rate on five-year TIPS hit the lowest since late 2017 earlier this week.

Those market moves together suggest traders are taking the prospect of a slowdown seriously, limiting how far the Fed will end up raising rates.

But not all policymakers seemed that worried. Sitting with his back to a map of the world in a ballroom in Chicago’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans downplayed risks to his outlook, noting that the leveraged loans that some of his colleagues have raised concerns about are being taken out by “big boys and girls” who

understand the risks.

He told reporters he still believes rates should rise to about 3.25 percent so as to mildly restrain growth and bring unemployment, now at 3.7 percent, back up to a more sustainable level.

Asked about risks from the global slowdown, he said he hears more talk about it but that it is not really in the numbers yet.

But the next six months, he said, bear close watching.

“There’s not a great headline” about risks to the economy right now, Evans told reporters. “International is a little slower; Brexit — nobody’s asked me about that, thank you; [the slowing] housing market: I think all of those are in the mix for uncertainties that everybody’s facing,” he said.

“But at the moment, it’s not enough to upset or adjust the trajectory that I have in mind.”

Still, Evans added, the risks should not be counted out: “They could take on more life more easily because they are sort of more top of mind, if not in the forecast.”
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Report: Russia Has Access to UK Visa Processing

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Cobiz

Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider are suggesting that Russian intelligence has infiltrated the computer infrastructure of a company that processes British visa applications.

The investigation, published Friday, aims to show how two suspected Russian military intelligence agents, who have been charged with poisoning a former Russian spy in the English city of Salisbury, may have obtained British visas.

The Insider and Bellingcat said they interviewed the former chief technical officer of a company that processes visa applications for several consulates in Moscow, including that of Britain.

The man, who fled Russia last year and applied for asylum in the United States, said he had been coerced to work with agents of the main Russian intelligence agency FSB, who revealed to him that they had access to the British visa center’s CCTV cameras and had a diagram of the center’s computer network. The two outlets say they have obtained the man’s deposition to the U.S. authorities but have decided against publishing the man’s name, for his own safety.

The Insider and Bellingcat, however, did not demonstrate a clear link between the alleged efforts of Russian intelligence to penetrate the visa processing system and Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, who have been charged with poisoning Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March this year.

The man also said that FSB officers told him in spring 2016 that they were going to send two people to Britain and asked for his assistance with the visa applications. The timing points to the first reported trip to Britain of the two men, who traveled under the names of Alexander Petrov and Anatoly Boshirov. The man, however, said he told the FSB that there was no way he could influence the decision-making on visa applications.

The man said he was coerced to sign an agreement to collaborate with the FSB after one of its officers threatened to jail his mother, and was asked to create a “backdoor” to the computer network. He said he sabotaged those efforts before he fled Russia in early 2017.

In September, British intelligence released surveillance images of the agents of Russian military intelligence GRU accused of the March nerve agent attack on double agent Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. Bellingcat and The Insider quickly exposed the agents’ real names and the media, including The Associated Press, were able to corroborate their real identities.

The visa application processing company, TLSContact, and the British Home Office were not immediately available for comment.
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Take A Weight Off: ‘Grand K’ Kilo Being Retired

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Cosc

In a historic vote, nations on Friday unanimously approved a groundbreaking overhaul to the international system of measurements that underpins global trade and other vital human endeavors, uniting behind new scientific definitions for the kilogram and other units in a way that they have failed to do on so many other issues.

Scientists, for whom the update represents decades of work, clapped, cheered and even wept as the 50-plus nations gathered in Versailles, west of Paris, and one by one said “yes” or “oui” to the change, hailed as a revolution for how humanity measures and quantifies its world.

The redefinition of the kilogram, the globally approved unit of mass, was the mostly hotly anticipated change. For more than a century, the kilogram has been defined as the mass of a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy kept in a high-security vault in France. That artefact, nicknamed “Le Grand K,” has been the world’s sole true kilogram since 1889.

But now, with the vote, the kilogram and all of the other main measurement units will be defined using numerical values that fit handily onto a wallet card. Those numbers were read to the national delegates before they voted.

Scientists at the meeting were giddy with excitement: Some even sported tattoos on their forearms that celebrated the science.

Nobel prize winner William Phillips called the update “the greatest revolution in measurement since the French revolution,” which ushered in the metric system of meters and kilograms.

Jon Pratt of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology said the vote left him “a basket case” and “extremely emotional.”

“Those units, those constants chosen now, include everything we know, everything we have always known and provide that springboard for us to go pursue those things that we don’t know,” he said. “That was just leaving me in a puddle of tears.”

The Grand K and its six official copies, kept together in the same safe on the edge of Paris and collectively known as the “heir and the spares,” will be retired but not forgotten. Scientists want to keep studying them to see whether their masses decay over time.

Benefits of the change

The change will have no discernable impact for most people. Bathroom scales won’t suddenly get kinder and kilos and grams won’t change in supermarkets.

But the new formula-based definition of the kilogram will have multiple advantages over the precision-crafted metal lump that set the standard from the 19th century to the 21st, through periods of stunning human achievement and stunning follies, including two world wars.

Unlike a physical object, the new formula for the kilo, now also known as “the electric kilo,” cannot pick up particles of dust, decay with time, or be dropped and damaged.

It is expected to be more accurate when measuring very, very small or very, very large masses and help usher in new innovations in science, industry, climate study and other fields.

With time, as the science behind the new definition becomes more accessible and affordable, it should also mean that countries won’t have to send their own kilograms back to France to be checked occasionally against Le Grand K, as they have done until now, to see whether their mass was still accurate.
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South Africa Cannabis Ruling Leads to Pot-Themed Products

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Coeco

Marijuana is getting its time in South Africa’s spotlight after being decriminalized in September.

The landmark constitutional court ruling, which still needs to be translated into law, allows South Africans to legally grow and consume their own cannabis at home.

The ruling explicitly forbids dealing in marijuana products, meaning if you don’t already have it, you can’t buy or sell it.

But the buzz around this long-forbidden plant is sparking a slew of pot-themed products on South African shelves.

Poison City Brewing released a popular cannabis-infused beer right after the court ruling.

“We sold out of our first batch of stock within 10 days of its release, and at the moment we brewed 100,000 liters for the next batch, which we’ve sold out already, so we’ve doubled that to 200,000 liters for the next batch. So it’s absolutely incredible,” said sales manager Natasha Nkonjera.

None of these store-friendly products contain tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that causes marijuana’s “dazed and confused” effects, which is still considered a prohibited narcotic.

Cannabis advocate Connor Davis released a hemp-infused gin through his family distillery, Monk’s Gin. He says these novelty drinks are just the start of pot products in South Africa.

“There are over 100,000 products that can come from cannabis,” he said. “The industrial benefits of it — I mean, you can build an entire house from cannabis alone. From the insulation to the actual brickwork to your carpeting, to your linen, everything can be made from hemp. So that has incredible potential.”

South Africa — with its sunny and temperate weather and rich, arable land — has long been one of the world’s top growers and exporters of illegal cannabis.

But, with the change in law, the government’s Department of Trade and Industry is now studying the economic potential of the plant.

Davis says he believes the cannabis industry can help address South Africa’s severe unemployment rates.

“The statistics we have been comparing, from the United States to South Africa, potentially, immediately from day one, we’ve got at least 200,000 jobs to be given in the cannabis industry,” he said.

Julian Stobbs and Myrtle Clarke are longtime marijuana advocates who led the push for South Africa’s landmark ruling. They see a number of commercial uses for marijuana, such as the lucrative beauty market.

“I think the cosmetic potential of cannabis is enormous,” Clarke said. “I use a one-percent THC-infused moisturizer, which is absolutely amazing. And everything from balms for your tattoos to hair products — I think that has got huge potential to try and get rid of as many of the chemicals that we put in our skin and our hair.”

Stobbs is less optimistic about commercialization, but sees marijuana entering the culture in a way it never has before.

“I see quite a scary future. I see different cultures trying to get in on the deal, now that it’s hip to the groove, and not a scaly thing to be doing, smoking skanky joints. And now it’s really hip, and you’ve got beautiful vaporizers and stuff, and epic glass, and Beverly Hills chicks doing it on chat shows,” he said.

But that, Stobbs admits, is the point of legalizing cannabis: Once you plant that seed, it grows like, well, a weed.
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South Africa Cannabis Ruling Leads to Pot-Themed Products

Posted on 11/16/2018 by Coeco

Now that South Africa’s highest court has relaxed the nation’s laws on marijuana, local entrepreneurs are trying to cash in on the popular herb. Among the latest entries to the market: several highly popular cannabis-laced alcohol products, which deliver the unique taste, though without the signature high. Marijuana activists say this could just be the beginning and that the famous plant could do much more for the national economy. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Johannesburg.
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