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Post #10 11/27/17-Self Driving Trucks May Be Closer Than They Appear

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Post #10 11/27/17-Self Driving Trucks May Be Closer Than They Appear

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The article talks about how Tesla, and Embark are set to announce and showcase their new autonomous technology soon, making autonomous vehicles more of a reality than ever. One of the industries expected to be affected first is the trucking industry, as the cost for drivers, insurance, and accidents is extremely high. Autonomous vehicles could mitigate much of these costs long term as the technology progresses and becomes more viable.

This technology goes well beyond just the logistics of trucking and I would argue will affect almost every industry out there. If heavily congested countries as cities such as Japan, New York, L.A., Mexico City, etc. become more autonomous in regards to vehicles, it's possible that we see traffic heavily reduced as vehicles move in unison without as much stopping and going, increasing efficiency through better logistics.  I would argue that as workers are replaced and the rich are less dependent on them, they will only get richer as the less rich get poorer, increasing social stratification.

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Drivers Training Trucks

One afternoon in Florida, a 59-year-old career truck driver named Jeff Runions sat alertly in the cab of an 18-wheeler watching the road while his 11-ton cargo of stone tile made its way up the Ronald Reagan Turnpike. He was watching his steering wheel, too, but his hands were at his side: A computer was in control.

Mr. Runions works for Starsky Robotics, a San Francisco start-up that for the past two years has been testing its self-driving technology by running freight up and down Florida. The runs help collect data and hone the technology, in hopes of convincing regulators and the company itself that self-driving trucks are ready for business.

There are still plenty of kinks. Sitting next to Mr. Runions was an Irish engineer named Rebecca Feeney Barry. As the vehicle spent hours driving past swamps and billboards for accident lawyers, Ms. Feeney Barry balanced a laptop on her knees and watched how the truck's sensors interpreted the road and nearby cars.

At one point the computer's "vision" briefly lost sight of the freeway because an overpass shaded the road. Later, the truck didn't take a turn hard enough, prompting Mr. Runions to grab the wheel. Ms. Feeney Barry logged all of it. Later, after some computer code had been altered to tell the truck to tug the wheel a bit harder, it made a similar turn more smoothly.

"Sometimes it kind of messes me up when I go back to driving because now I'm used to the truck driving," Mr. Runions said.

Starsky's ultimate plan, of course, is to eliminate Mr. Runions's job. But they do not want him to be out of one. Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, Starsky's 27-year-old chief executive, foresees using self-driving technology to replace long-haul drivers on freeways, but having people like Mr. Runions navigate at either end of the trip with remote control consoles that look like an arcade racing game.

Drivers would go off to work in offices and might spend their day driving trucks through the last few miles of several different routes in several different cities before heading home for dinner.

"One driver can drive 10 to 30 trucks per day," Mr. Seltz-Axmacher said.

The March of Automation

Starsky's vision of a remote operation is unique. But the basic idea - having trucks drive themselves on highways and letting human drivers take over in complicated city environments - is something of an industry consensus.

"One of the big misconceptions about self-driving technology is that it is going to emerge and be able to drive all the time in all circumstances," said Alden Woodrow, the product manager for Uber's self-driving truck unit.

As part of their partnership, Embark, Ryder and Electrolux are conducting what amounts to elaborate dry runs to imagine what self-driving-truck routes will look like. The runs start with human drivers leaving an Electrolux warehouse in El Paso and driving to the edge of the city, where they hitch the trailer to one of Embark's autonomous trucks.

From there the truck drives itself for 650 highway miles (with a safety driver in tow) to Ontario, Calif., where the Embark drivers transfer their trailer to another Ryder driver, who drives the final few miles to one of Electrolux's California warehouses.

"It's a mirror of what we would do if there weren't a driver inside," said Mr. Rodrigues, the Embark chief.

A few miles from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a company called Peloton Technology is betting that there is a business to be built in a less radical version of automation. Peloton is on the cusp of rolling out a system that will make it easier and safer for trucks to travel one after the other on the highway, in a formation called platooning, helping them save gas by reducing wind drag.

Trucks with drivers already do this. But Peloton's technology aims to make platooning safer with a mix of cameras, sensors and networking equipment, allowing the trucks to talk to each other and helping to prevent the second driver from ramming into the first truck after a sudden stop.

Josh Switkes, the company's chief executive, said that because Peloton's technology helps drivers get better at doing something they are familiar with, he thinks it can be quickly commercialized.

"Our basic approach is let's bring real value to the fleet and society now," Mr. Switkes said.

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Self-Driving Trucks May Be Closer Than They Appear

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Drivers Training Trucks One afternoon in Florida, a 59-year-old career truck driver named Jeff Runions sat alertly in the cab of an 18-wheeler watching the road while his 11-ton cargo of stone tile made its way up the Ronald Reagan Turnpike.

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Post #9 11/27/17-Norway's Wealth Fund Considers Diverging From Oil Shares

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Post #9 11/27/17-Norway's Wealth Fund Considers Diverging From Oil Shares

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While Norway has been a major oil producer in the past and probably will be in the short term future it has begun divesting some of it's investments into other ventures such as offshore wind power. Norway believes that oil production only provides short term financial security and wants to secure it's future beyond that.

This is (potentially) tremendous for Norways long term economic security as assuming they make intelligent investments they will be a strong economic power once their, or the worlds oil resources run dry. I am skeptical if their oil deposits will run dry in 10 or 20 years but there seems to be no question that eventually they, like the rest of the world will run out of oil so it seems a wise decision to begin to look for alternative sources of income, unlike countries like Saudi Arabia who depend on FDI to maintain their economy.

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Although it is Europe's top oil producer, Norway is also a leader in the movement to control climate change. With hefty incentives, roughly 40 percent of cars bought in Norway last year were electric, and the government plans to phase out diesel- and gasoline-fueled cars in the next decade.

The Norwegian Central Bank said in a letter to the Finance Ministry that the nation needed to diversify its investments. The fund, with Parliament's approval, decided in 2015 to begin selling off its investments in mining companies and utilities that depend on burning coal.

The potential Norwegian divestment of oil is not expected to happen until late 2018 at the soonest.

But on a day when oil prices were down moderately and most global stock markets soared, shares of several large oil companies were down by up to 1 percent.

"It sends a signal that others could follow, and if this becomes a growing movement it could have a material impact," said Brian M. Youngberg, senior energy analyst at Edward Jones Investments. "It shows the global environmental movement continues to gain steam."

Environmentalists praised the potential divestment as historically important.

"With Norway's move, the campaign to divest from dirty fuels will graduate from environmental groups and small businesses like Ben & Jerry's and colleges to the big time," said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, based in Washington. "Norway's move will fuel divestment even more because Norway is a major oil country."

Religious institutions, pension funds and other financial institutions in more than 70 countries controlling more than $5 trillion in assets have already committed to dropping some of their fossil-fuel holdings in recent years. The movement gained a major push from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Another movement by investors has pressured European and American oil companies to disclose how climate change and future carbon taxes might affect the sustainability of their reserves, arguing that there is a risk to investors that many resources will need to be left in the ground.

The future of oil will also be dependent on demand and prices. There is a hot debate among analysts about exactly when demand for oil will peak. Some note that with the economies of China and other developing countries growing, there are decades more of growth for oil. BP has projected that the global auto fleet will double by 2035 to 1.8 billion vehicles.

But others say the electric cars and more efficient internal combustion engines will dominate transportation in the future, and deeply depress demand in gasoline and diesel. Several major car companies are investing in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, and Exxon Mobil is investing in advanced biofuels.

Royal Dutch Shell has projected that gasoline demand is likely to peak by the 2030s. Chevron's departing chief executive, John Watson, recently said he was confident of demand growth for oil over the next decade or two.

"There is no sign of peak demand right now," he said.

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Norway's Wealth Fund Considers Divesting From Oil Shares

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Although it is Europe's top oil producer, Norway is also a leader in the movement to control climate change. With hefty incentives, roughly 40 percent of cars bought in Norway last year were electric, and the government plans to phase out diesel- and gasoline-fueled cars in the next decade.

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Post #8 11/27/17- Chinese Phone Make Bets Big with Premium Price

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Post #8 11/27/17- Chinese Phone Make Bets Big with Premium Price

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Huawei, the second largest phone manufacturer in the world has launched it's first "premium flagship" phone the Mate 10 Pro with a price tag of almost $1000. This is a huge deal as it marks the first premium flagship phone to be produced and sold by a Chinese company.

This directly contradicts those who say Periphery or Semi Periphery countries can't move into the status of being a Core country. If China becomes a place where premium products can be made and sold it shows progress towards competing with other rival 1st world countries. China going from mass production to both that and flexible specialization will allow it to compete with the U.S. in many more sub markets, many of which have much higher profit margins per item. Using Rauch's three relationships between trade and growth in the article "trade" China seems to be experiencing both a handmaiden of growth and and engine of growth.

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Huawei (pronounced HWA-way) is already well known at home. The company outsells all others in China, the world's largest smartphone market. And it is nipping at Apple's heels to be the No. 2 phone maker worldwide. According to the research firm Canalys, Huawei shipped 39 million phones in the latest quarter; Apple shipped 47 million. But those Huawei devices were mostly low or midrange.

"We see good signs that people have seen the brand change to a large degree," to one that is "stylish and innovative," said Glory Cheung, Huawei's marketing chief for consumer devices. "I think that's a very good sign for us."

Still, Ms. Cheung said, Huawei would rather spend on developing smarter features and better technology than on marketing, even as she acknowledged the importance of building an emotional bond with users. The challenge for the company on that last front is significant: Compared with Apple or Samsung, Huawei has much further to go in forging that elusive something that leads someone to commit to a brand.

Even in China, many people still view Huawei devices as good value for the money and not much else.

Li Haoran, a 24-year-old accountant in Beijing, is a longtime Apple user. Would she switch to Huawei?

"Not for myself," she said. "But I'd consider buying Huawei phones for my family, because they are relatively cheap."

As for the Mate 10 series, Li Weitao, a 40-year-old marketer in Shanghai who is no relation to Li Haoran, said that for more than $600, "you should probably get an iPhone."

Founded in Shenzhen three decades ago, Huawei was already one of the world's largest suppliers of telecommunications equipment when it released its first Android smartphone in 2009. Its earliest handsets were run-of-the-mill in looks and performance. But Huawei has since invested more in design and technology, opening a design center in London and a research and development facility in Finland.

With the Mate 10 series, Huawei is debuting one of the fruits of its research: a processor dedicated to artificial-intelligence tasks such as identifying people in photos and translating text.

Christophe Coutelle, vice president of software marketing for Huawei, said the new processor let the phones perform such tasks more quickly, with less power and - as no data needs to be sent to a faraway server - with better privacy protection.

"Not everyone is willing to share all of their information, pictures and everything with cloud-based services," he said.

The emphasis on privacy could help Huawei crack its last big untapped market: the United States. The company's experience there has been fraught.

Its network-equipment business has effectively been banned in the United States since a congressional report said in 2012 that Huawei gear could be used by Beijing to spy on Americans. The company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, was once an engineer in China's military. Huawei has said its products pose no threat to security.

The company has also been in hot water in the United States over patent infringement and for failing to inform the authorities before acquiring American companies. The New York Times reported this year that United States officials were widening an investigation into whether the company broke trade controls on Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

Huawei's international presence and diverse work force make it more of a global company than a Chinese one, Ms. Cheung said. Whether Huawei is a global name - and an appealing one - is another matter.

"The brand still lacks personality," Thomas Husson, an analyst at Forrester, said in an email. "The focus is still too much on technical specifications and functionalities."

Figuring out how to strike a chord with ordinary consumers was never going to be easy for Huawei, which has spent most of its existence selling back-end equipment to mobile carriers.

It has enlisted Scarlett Johansson to star in ads, and teamed up with Porsche and Leica on design. Yet Huawei still has "very much of an engineering culture," Mr. Coutelle said. In conversation, employees rarely fail to mention how much the company spends on research and development (more than 10 percent of revenue) or the number of its workers involved in research (nearly half).

The company's attitude, Mr. Coutelle said, had long been that its products spoke for themselves - that there was no need to hard-sell anyone on their superiority. "But I think this is changing."

Huawei has been touring the world introducing users to its devices' clever but low-key features. To take a screenshot, for instance, you knock twice on the screen with your knuckle. Drawing an S with your knuckle takes a screenshot of the entire length of a website or app - the better to share paywalled newspaper articles like this one.

Under-the-hood advancements may not drive sales unless Huawei brings them to the less expensive, midtier phones that will almost surely remain its biggest sellers, said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst at the research firm IDC.

Mr. Jeronimo said he had laughed when he heard Huawei executives talk, years ago, about becoming a top-three phone maker. Today, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if they become No. 1."

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Chinese Phone Maker Bets Big With a Premium Price

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Huawei (pronounced HWA-way) is already well known at home. The company outsells all others in China, the world's largest smartphone market. And it is nipping at Apple's heels to be the No. 2 phone maker worldwide. According to the research firm Canalys, Huawei shipped 39 million phones in the latest quarter; Apple shipped 47 million.

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Post #7 11/27/17-Key European Agencies Move to Continent, Signs of Brexit’s Toll

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Post #7 11/27/17-Key European Agencies Move to Continent, Signs of Brexit’s Toll

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Two Key agencies currently in the UK, The European Medicine Agency, and the European Banking Authority are set to move to Amsterdam and Paris respectively. This is a huge blow to Britains Economy as the European Medicine Agency currently employs almost a thousand employees and has an annual budget of roughly 300 million. The European Banking authority on the other hand only employees about 150 people however there are fears that they could encourage other banks to leave Britain for other European countries furthering damaging the British economy.

While England will most likely always be a Core country for the foreseeable future moves like these definitely endanger their economic dominance in the European region. It's likely that many "lesser" countries will take much of England's industry and businesses into their own. This article reminds me of Porters article on Trade where it talks about the negative side effects of isolation brought on by the Trump movement in the U.S. I think Britain is a good example of what the U.S. might be soon in terms of isolationism and economic trouble/backlash.

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From Britain's point of view, the European Medicines Agency is the larger of the two losses in tangible terms, as it has around 890 staff members. It oversees the approval of drugs for use across Europe, has an annual budget of more than $300 million and generates significant additional revenue for London. For example, on most weekdays its visiting experts fill 350 hotel rooms in the city.

Its departure also underscores continuing questions about how British pharmaceutical companies will be regulated after the country's withdrawal from the bloc, known as Brexit, a shift scheduled for March 2019.

The sector is an important one, and enjoys substantially more public support among Britons than finance, the image of which has been tarnished in recent years.

Charles Tannock, a Conservative Party lawmaker in the European Parliament, described the relocation of the medicines agency on Twitter as a "huge loss to UK pharma," adding that he was "heart broken" to lose the organization.

I'm heart broken as a doctor & London MEP to lose EMA and torn between Milan and Bratislava because of close ties to both countries but agree CEEC are owed an EU agency in fairness terms & Bratislava has huge potential for expansion.
- Charles Tannock (@CharlesTannock) Nov. 20, 2017

"The relocation of the E.M.A. away from London will be a bitter pill to swallow," added Rory Palmer, the health policy spokesman for the opposition Labour Party's lawmakers in the European Parliament. "Our economy will suffer. Our health sector will suffer. Our successful pharmaceutical industry will suffer.

"But most of all, patients will suffer, from delays and the potential loss of access to medicines and research, if we are to crash out of the E.U.," Mr. Palmer said in a statement, referring to the possibility that Britain might quit the bloc without an agreement to stay within European regulatory structures.

Before the discussion on relocation, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, wished all the candidates to host the agencies luck but added on Twitter: "Whatever the outcome, the real winner of today's vote is EU27. Organized and getting ready for #Brexit."

Best of luck to all the candidates to host EMA and EBA.
Whatever the outcome, the real winner of today's vote is EU27. Organised and getting ready for #Brexit.
- Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) Nov. 20, 2017

Compared with the European Medicines Agency, the banking authority is a minnow in size, with only about 150 employees.

The decision to move the European Banking Authority, though, underlines the risks facing London's lucrative financial industry from Brexit. The European Central Bank has suggested it might impose extra regulations on eurozone banks operating in London, in effect pressuring them to move to the Continent.

After Britain's exit from the European Union, for example, large numbers of transactions in euros would be taking place outside the reach of European regulators. London dominates currency and derivatives trading in Europe.

In a measure of the prestige attached to the competition to be the new home of the banking authority, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, lent his name to Paris's campaign. In a glossy brochure Mr. Macron argued that because of its quality of life, "Paris is a safe bet for attracting the very best talent."

The decision was a blow to Frankfurt, which is probably a more important financial center and is the home to the European Central Bank, but lacks Paris's charm or breadth of cultural and entertainment opportunities.

Numerous big banks are already expanding on the Continent. Goldman Sachs will add employees in both Frankfurt and Paris, Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of the investment bank, said in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro published Sunday.

Mr. Blankfein said on Twitter last week that he was "struck by the positive energy here in Paris." He added, "And the food's good too!"

The Goldman Sachs executive also had kind words for Frankfurt after a visit in October. "Great meetings, great weather," he said on Twitter, apparently unaware that Frankfurt is rainier than London. "Really enjoyed it. Good, because I'll be spending a lot more time there."

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great britain withdrawal from eu (brexit)

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Key European Agencies Move to Continent, Signs of Brexit's Toll

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From Britain's point of view, the European Medicines Agency is the larger of the two losses in tangible terms, as it has around 890 staff members. It oversees the approval of drugs for use across Europe, has an annual budget of more than $300 million and generates significant additional revenue for London.

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Post #6 11/27/17-Workers Lured to Australia Find Low Pay and Tough Conditions

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Post #6 11/27/17-Workers Lured to Australia Find Low Pay and Tough Conditions

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This article talks about the low wage conditions immigrants to Australia face. It talks about the exploitation of those immigrants due to their often inability to speak and understand English fluently, along with their lack of knowledge of national laws.

This article reminds me of both human migration and the teachings on core countries and periphery countries. Some argue countries places within this context are static and this article somewhat backs that up. That even when citizens of other countries (often periphery) emigrate (in this case to Australia) they often don't enjoy the same rights and privileges of those who have been born in a core country. However I would argue that over time generally those who live in a country over multiple generations more often than not trend towards equality with other "more" native groups. I say more native because rarely do you find people who you can trace their earliest ancestry to the area they live now.

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A report prepared for lawmakers last year, A National Disgrace, described low pay and long hours for many temporary migrant workers. Local news reports have highlighted the working conditions of foreign workers at convenience stores and farms.

The discussion is also part of a broader debate over how many foreign workers to admit into the country and whether they should be allowed to stay permanently, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and others arguing that many foreign workers displace Australians looking for work.

The survey released Tuesday, called Wage Theft in Australia, covers an estimated 900,000 migrants with the right to work here. It found that roughly a quarter of international students made less than 12 Australian dollars, or $9, per hour, and almost half made 15 Australian dollars or less.

In Australia, the national minimum wage is 18.29 Australian dollars, or $13.84, per hour. Casual employees, who are not entitled to vacation or sick leave, typically make more.

The worst paid jobs were in fruit and vegetable picking and farm work, according to the survey.

"We know now that this is entrenched, it's widespread, and for many of these migrant workers, wage theft is severe," said Bassina Farbenblum, a co-author of the report and a lecturer in law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Many of the workers knew they were being underpaid, the survey found. Because of their visa status, the authors said, they probably did not expect to receive the legal minimum wage.

"We've got an invisible, large, low-wage labor market," said Laurie Berg, a law lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney and a co-author. "The issues are disguised and we're not addressing that."

The authors, who worked with local migrant and worker groups, acknowledged flaws in the survey, which included about 4,300 workers and was translated into 12 languages other than English. It was conducted online, which could exclude some groups, and because it was anonymous it could be completed more than once. Participants were invited to apply for a drawing for a total of about $1,000 in Amazon gift cards.

Still, its conclusions roughly match those of some Australian government officials. Young people and people from migrant backgrounds may be more susceptible to exploitation in the workplace, said Mark Lee, a spokesman from the Fair Work Ombudsman, an independent government agency that investigates workplace complaints and enforces labor law.

He added that this was because of a variety of factors, including "language barriers, lack of understanding of their workplace rights, limited knowledge of where to go for help and concerns over their visa status."

Ms. Cho, the Lidcombe salon worker, said she was unaware of her rights until her husband pointed out a news article about a Sydney sandwich shop that the Fair Work Ombudsman accused of underpaying South Korean employees on working holiday and student visas by more than $100,000. She filed a complaint with the ombudsman's office, which declined to comment on her complaint.

"This is a big issue in Korea," said Ms. Cho's husband, Andy Rim, a South Korean national who works as a warehouse supervisor. "They're sending people overseas to work as slaves."

Mr. Rim said he and his wife came to Australia through an employment program supported by the South Korean government.

Workers from Asian countries appeared particularly susceptible to tough labor conditions, the study suggested. Workers from Asian countries including China, Taiwan and Vietnam received lower wage rates than those from North America, Ireland and Britain, the survey found.

Daniel Song, 28, moved to Australia in April on a working holiday visa from a small town in the Chinese province of Shandong. He thought Australia would be a good place to learn English, he said, and he had heard that wages were higher than in China.

Working in construction in the central business district in the city of Brisbane, Mr. Song said he was paid 15 Australian dollars per hour. More than a third of workers at his site are Chinese or Taiwanese and on working holiday or tourist visas.

"The salary difference doesn't seem fair," he said. "But it makes sense, and I don't feel I have a choice."

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Workers Lured to Australia Find Low Pay and Tough Conditions

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A report prepared for lawmakers last year, A National Disgrace, described low pay and long hours for many temporary migrant workers.

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Post #5 10/07/17-Ghanas economy soars the past few years, but encounters a new obesity crisis

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Post #5 10/07/17-Ghanas economy soars the past few years, but encounters a new obesity crisis

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This video mainly discusses the obesity crisis forming in Ghana after much new development within the country has taken place. Fast food, and shopping malls have cropped up across the country with the rising economy of Ghana.

While it's not the focus of the article, the development of Ghana relates much to the five stages of development, where it sounds like Ghana is somewhere between preconditions for takeoff and the takeoff stage. It doesn't sound like they have much manufacturing specifically aside from oil but it does sound like they have a lot of infrastructure and a flourishing economy now. It wouldn't be surprising if they did, or do develop a stronger manufacturing sector as the average citizen wealth seems to be increasing rapidly the past few decades.

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Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.

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The growing popularity of fried chicken and pizza in parts of Africa underscores how fast food is changing habits and expanding waistlines.

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Post #1 10/07/17-Engineers fight Himalayan water crisis

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Post #1 10/07/17-Engineers fight Himalayan water crisis

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This video is relevant because it talks about how the Himalayan engineers are laying basic water pipes to siphon water from some of the mountains, and transfer it into man-made glaciers resulting in "3 million liters of water" so they can survive through the water crisis when they need water most.

This article reminds me of Rostow's five stages of development, with these people most likely occupying the
preconditions for Takeoff as they're starting to build minimal infrastructure but yet seem to still somewhat occupy a traditional society as their technology seems very limited.

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The engineers trying to solve the Himalayan water crisis

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Could creating manmade ice structures to store water help protect farmers in the Himalayas and beyond?

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Post #4 10/07/17-North Korea and the US might not be able to reach an agreement on nuclear weapons

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Post #4 10/07/17-North Korea and the US might not be able to reach an agreement on nuclear weapons

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The article focuses on how North Korea is very much dug in and attached to the proliferation of a nuclear arsenal and how the U.S. sees that as a unacceptable outcome, possibly leading to an eventual war.

The way this relates to the material we've been learning is that Core countries often have tremendous political and economic control (we've leaned more towards the economic aspect) over other countries outside of the core, especially in the periphery. North Korea understands this as they've been through terrible economic crisis including a famine, and so they feel that acquiring nuclear weapons is their way of forcing themselves into the semi periphery, and maybe the core, as countries will be then most likely be forced to give into what they want whether it be trading or political independence.

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"I think the problem we have right now is no one wants to blink or look weak in any way," said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. She added: "The positions of the United States and North Korea are extremely far apart."

"If it were easy," she said, "we would have done it already."

Bridging that gap has fallen largely to Mr. Tillerson, a former chief executive of the oil giant Exxon Mobil, with no experience in diplomatic negotiations or with North Korea in particular. He must contend not only with the North's brash 33-year-old leader, Kim Jong-un, but also an American president prone to issuing impromptu threats.

Speaking in Beijing on Saturday, Mr. Tillerson said he was trying to cool the bellicose rhetoric over the standoff but skirted any direct criticism of Mr. Trump. "I think everyone would like for it to calm down," he said.

The president undercut Mr. Tillerson the next day, belittling his efforts to start a dialogue. But State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert asserted again on Twitter later in the day that, "Diplomatic channels are open for #KimJongun for now."

She added, "They won't be open forever."

The North has shown little interest in starting talks, at least not if giving up its weapons is the price of admission. Some analysts argue the North may be waiting until it has finished building a nuclear missile that can hit the United States, which would allow it to negotiate from a much stronger position.

In a personal response to Mr. Trump's speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Mr. Kim said that the president's threat to "totally destroy" North Korea had "convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last."

Many analysts say Washington will have to give up its demand that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons program to get negotiations started.

"If our opening bid is denuclearization, that just seems like a Western fantasy at this point," said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "What incentive does Kim have to give them up at this point? If that's our only acceptable end point, I don't see any way that he willingly gives up his nuclear weapons."

A more realistic opening goal would be to negotiate a freeze in missile and nuclear tests, said Suzanne DiMaggio, a director and senior fellow at the New America research group who has been involved in unofficial talks with North Korea. Ms. DiMaggio said that such a freeze could be an interim step. "This way it implies that there will be more agreements to come," she said.

In exchange, Ms. DiMaggio suggested, the United States could discuss scaling back the joint military exercises it holds with South Korea, which are scheduled to resume again in the spring. The North considers these war games threatening, particularly components that target the country's leadership in the event of war.

The United States could also offer to send fewer B-1B long range bombers on patrols near the Korean Peninsula, to withdraw certain sanctions or to open an embassy in Pyongyang.

But the Trump administration does not appear willing to discuss such concessions without a commitment by Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear program. North Korea wants the United States to acknowledge that it is a nuclear state, a demand that analysts say would be difficult for any American president to accept.

"That is so inimical to U.S. national security interests," said Daniel R. Russel, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asia during the Obama administration. "It would have such a devastating effect on both the international nonproliferation system and on the credibility of the U.S. as an ally, not to mention our relationships with South Korea and Japan, that I view it as unimaginable."

Mr. Russel argued that the United States should continue to apply pressure through sanctions on North Korea until Mr. Kim concludes he has no choice but to negotiate.

"People are fond of saying that North Korea will never negotiate denuclearization," he said. "But I think that there's an important adverb missing, which is that North Korea will never negotiate denuclearization willingly."

Others said North Korea was uniquely prepared to withstand economic isolation.

"This is a country that didn't collapse during the height of a famine, and they are doing better now, so you think you are going to squeeze them some more?" said David C. Kang, director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California.

If North Korea refuses to surrender its nuclear arsenal, he said, the United States will have to learn to live with it.

"We did this with Pakistan," Mr. Kang said, noting Washington tries to limit the scope of the Pakistani arsenal. "There are plenty of countries where we did this. Let's try to find a way to live with each other without killing each other."

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arms control and limitation and disarmament

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A Nuclear Deal With North Korea May Be Tillerson's Mission Impossible

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"I think the problem we have right now is no one wants to blink or look weak in any way," said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. She added: "The positions of the United States and North Korea are extremely far apart."

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Post #2 10/07/17-Why it took 9 days for help to arrive in Puerto Rico

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Post #2 10/07/17-Why it took 9 days for help to arrive in Puerto Rico

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As one man in the beginning of the video surmises, had the Puerto Rico been a US state instead of a  US possession he thinks help would have arrived much quicker.  Puerto Rico was without water, electricity, and food often for much of this time.

If what the man says is true about why the U.S. did not lend aid (which I agree with) the situation reminds me much of metropoles and satellites where the metropoles take from the satellites in very much a one sided relationship indicative also of how the core takes more from the periphery states. Had Puerto Rico been apart of the core (in this case the U.S.) it's doubtful this crises would have played out the same way.

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'Why did help take nine days to arrive?'

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Supplies of food and water reach an old people's home that lost power when a hurricane hit Puerto Rico.

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Post #3 10/07/17-London's new subway symbolized the future, now it might symbolize the past. 

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Post #3 10/07/17-London's new subway symbolized the future, now it might symbolize the past. 

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The past three decades London has been the heart of the European economy flourishing in that time. With Brexit that puts that in jeopardy. London had plans to put a new subway system in to handle the increases in population and tourism yet with Brexit those needs might not be as strong as they once had. On the other hand with Brexit it's vital that England flourish now more than ever. The article makes special mention of how many Megaprojects have taken place in recent past.

The article reminds me of both Rostow's five stages of development and the core-periphery concepts. Clearly England, and thus London occupy the Core and Stage 5 High Mass Consumption, however it sounds like within that stage, and within the ranking of countries within the Core, they might both be in jeopardy of trending downward due to Brexit.

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LONDON - Up an alley, beyond some hoarding, through what can feel like Harry Potter's secret portal, the underworld of an unfinished Crossrail station sprawls beneath the traffic and commotion of Tottenham Court Road. Escalator banks descend through a sleek, silent black ticket hall where towering, empty, white-tiled passageways snake toward the new, vaulted train platform, curving like a half moon into the subterranean darkness.

Crossrail is not your average subway. London's $20 billion high-capacity, high-frequency train line, which plans to start taking passengers late next year, is billed as Europe's biggest infrastructure project.

It will be so fast that crucial travel times across the city should be cut by more than half. The length of two soccer pitches, with a capacity for 1,500 people, its trains will be able to carry twice the number of passengers as an ordinary London subway. While Londoners love to moan about their public transit network, by comparison New York has barely managed to construct four subway stops in nearly three decades and its aged, rapidly collapsing subway system now threatens to bring the city to a halt.

But standing one recent morning on that empty Crossrail platform, where construction workers in orange gear and hard hats hauled shiny metal panels to line the walls, I still couldn't help wondering whether the new train leads toward another glorious era for this city, or signals the end of one.

Before Britain voted last summer to leave the European Union, Crossrail was conceived for a London open to the world and speeding into the future. Now, with Brexit, the nightmare scenario is that this massive project, to provide more trains moving more people more quickly through a growing city, ends up moving fewer people more quickly through a shrinking city.

Crossrail was built by a Britain whose strength grew, for better and worse, out of a longstanding, stodgy but reliable confidence that the country knew itself and where it hoped to go in the century ahead. It is no longer even certain that Prime Minister Theresa May will survive the year.

It was an especially unpromising sign this spring when Mrs. May's Conservative government, as if fearing exactly what anti-Brexiters predicted about an economic downturn, issued a campaign manifesto that conspicuously omitted funding for Crossrail 2, the long-planned, $39 billion critical north-south sequel to Crossrail's east-west line.

Since then, the government's transport secretary has endorsed the project - provided that the city pay half the whopping cost, upfront. The semi-reversal suggested a grudging acknowledgment that, whatever the political fallout or economic prospects, Britain ultimately needs a thriving London all the more after Brexit.

During the past three decades, London has been transfigured by wild growth, much of it the consequence of government-sustained megaprojects: Along with Crossrail, there have been the stupendous renovations to King's Cross and St. Pancras Stations, the wholesale invention of Canary Wharf, the addition of the Jubilee subway line, the Olympic makeover at Stratford in East London and the expansion of Heathrow Airport.

These megaprojects, in different ways, helped remake London into the great global city-state of Europe, a 21st-century melting pot and Sybaris of culture and free-market prosperity - at the same time that they clearly exacerbated underlying urban inefficiencies and stirred resentment elsewhere in England toward the city.

Crossrail was intended as a kind of democratizing corrective, at once shrinking the city and expanding on a vision of London as a great, inclusive metropolis. While it will whisk bankers at new speeds from their office towers and multimillion-dollar aeries to Heathrow, it will also help millions of now-marginalized, lower-income workers, unable to afford runaway home prices in and around the center of the city, to live in cheaper neighborhoods often far from their jobs.

But what if the flow of incoming bankers slows, if immigrants look elsewhere, if the excesses of European money and human capital that helped drive growth begin to dry up? As Brexit skeptics warned, the pound has lost value and inflation is starting to rise. Some companies are already making plans to move employees out of London.

And as London goes, so goes Britain.

A New Spine for an Old City

I spent a few days traveling the Crossrail route, trying to decipher what it might mean for London. In one respect, the train underscores and extends the city's centuries-old, traditional identity as a sprawling, horizontal capital, an agglomeration of disparate, far-flung villages.

Extending roughly 70 miles, it is built to speed about 200 million passengers a year in a kind of Y from far to the west of the city, in the county of Berkshire, through Heathrow, to the heart of London, forking east to Shenfield in Essex and to the neighborhood called Abbey Wood, on the historically neglected southeast side of the River Thames. Linked with the existing Underground subway network, it will be rechristened the Elizabeth Line, inserting what is in effect a new steel-and-wheels spine into Britain's capital.

"Crossrail is a culmination of years of serious thinking by experts and public officials about what London needs, the imbalance of east and west and how to unite the city," said Ricky Burdett, an architect, city adviser and director of LSE Cities at the London School of Economics.

London, Mr. Burdett noted, is historically poor in the east, rich in the west and along the periphery, although that east-west distinction has eroded as gentrification has seeped outward. Underserved and long-disconnected East London neighborhoods like Shoreditch and Whitechapel in recent years have become chic and largely unaffordable to many Londoners. The city has added light-rail lines to help some of those areas, but only Crossrail is capable of "tying together many of the developments that have transformed London," Mr. Burdett said.

No development on the west end of the Crossrail line is more ambitious than Heathrow. John Holland-Kaye, the airport's chief executive officer, met me one morning in an empty conference room near the airport and instantly ticked off some figures.

The Elizabeth Line will link Heathrow Airport with central London and East End neighborhoods. It will begin running in December 2018, and will be fully open by late 2019.

The Elizabeth Line

Opening Dec. 2019

Heathrow is not only Britain's busiest airport. It is hoped that t he airport's expansion, based on the prospect of a new runway, might generate up to 180,000 new jobs across Britain, roughly 40,000 of them in London. Crossrail now promises to bring six million people and 80 percent of London's corporations within an hour's commute of the airport, up from three million and 50 percent today.

"When Crossrail is done, our employees could just as easily come from East London as from our local community," Mr. Holland-Kaye said. "The train effectively opens up the whole of the city."

Transit as Economic Engine

But Brexit threatens Heathrow's economy with more restrictive customs and immigration rules. Mr. Holland-Kaye acknowledged the threat but framed Crossrail as a kind of hedge against Brexit. He cited as a precedent the area around King's Cross, once notorious for drugs and prostitution, metamorphosed after the renovation of the decrepit King's Cross station and its neighbor St. Pancras, now serving the Eurostar express train to Paris and other cities in Europe.

King's Cross today is home to an art school, The Guardian, a cluster of high-tech medical research centers and Google's future European headquarters. The point: Major, long-term infrastructure projects support game-changing investments. Crossrail proves Britain's continuing commitment to this steel and concrete approach, Mr. Holland-Kaye said.

From Heathrow, riders will need just over a half-hour via Crossrail to travel east to Canary Wharf, the defunct docklands turned world financial hub, which today employs more than 112,000 people. When the site opened in the late 1980s, the aptly named Narrow Street was its only real access road. Canary Wharf went belly up. Then London broke ground for the Jubilee subway line, linking Canary Wharf by mass transit to the heart of the city, and international banks started moving in.

This is one reason George Iacobescu, Canary Wharf's longtime chairman, helped lead the push for Crossrail. "London's future prosperity depends on it," he said. He summoned me into a big, bright white office where he stood behind a giant tabletop display of London (think Goldfinger's model of Fort Knox). Mr. Iacobescu flicked switches on the table. One by one, they lit up various rail lines that today serve Canary Wharf, each line coinciding with increases in jobs and revenues. Theatrically, he paused before the last switch.

It illuminated Crossrail.

"We are home to many of the world's great financial institutions," Mr. Iacobescu said, pointing on the model to where Foster & Partners, the celebrated London-based architecture firm, has designed Canary Wharf's Crossrail Station, a spectacular glass and timber tubular structure, docked like a giant cruise ship beside the firm's HSBC tower. Nearby, Canary Wharf plans to build thousands of new luxury (and some affordable) homes and other developments by high-end architects like Herzog & de Meuron to turn Canary Wharf into more of a neighborhood. "We expect to create thousands more jobs," Mr. Iacobescu said.

"The danger with Brexit," he added, "is that if Britain gets out of the European Union and doesn't keep the U.K. an attractive place for financial institutions, they will think twice about growing here. The issue isn't banks leaving Canary Wharf. Most of them have long-term leases. The issue will be the pace of growth."

But that's not quite true. Because of Brexit worries, construction plans for several of Canary Wharf's new buildings have already been put on hold. And long-term leases can always be broken.

"The bottom line is that nobody has the faintest idea yet what the Brexit effect will be," Tony Travers, a veteran urban policy expert, told me. "Investments from the European Union may shrink. But why would investors from India or Canada or the United States be put off? If anything, Brexit may make Britain more likely to give them what they want."

Lately, the Leadenhall Building, otherwise known as the Cheesegrater, the tallest tower in the old, central financial district called the City of London, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, sold to a Chinese property tycoon for $1.5 billion, the second-highest-ever sale of a building in Britain. Qataris were behind the Shard, the Renzo Piano-designed tower that is London's sleekest skyscraper. Malaysians are developing the former Battersea Power Station, where Apple is an anchor tenant.

"The trajectory of real estate investment here is not only based on Europeans," Mr. Burdett stressed.

So, Crossrail or Brexit?

Connectivity is destiny in the farthest reaches of East London. Thamesmead, a social housing development from the 1960s, lies a half-hour or so by bus beyond the train's final stop and its ripple effects. Equivalent in area to all of central London, it is home to just 50,000 residents, once nearly all of them white and working-class, but today, increasingly, Nigerians. Peabody, a nonprofit housing organization, has announced plans to build hundreds more apartments in Thamesmead. Some lovely, neatly tended homes already exist alongside Brutalist blocks, rundown but now stylish (this is where "A Clockwork Orange" was filmed). That said, with the lowest average income in London, Thamesmead has few stores, little street life and an abundance of sewage treatment plants and prisons. It suffers from its isolation.

"Thamesmead was built on a promise of transit connectivity that never happened," Teresa Pearce, a member of Parliament who represents the district, told me. "You see the results."

By comparison, the final stop on that southeast spur of Crossrail is Abbey Wood, where Sainsbury's, the chain store and a bellwether of gentrification and commercial investment, has lately opened a shop in anticipation of the train. Streets here are lined with terrace houses now occupied by plasterers and truck drivers. Record numbers of landlords in the area have been filing applications for renovations, believing that Crossrail will attract bankers and lawyers. Property values are expected to rise on average 10 percent around all future stations along the Crossrail route.

Change is even more acute one stop before Abbey Wood, in Woolwich. The Berkeley Group, a big British real estate company, is building 5,000 sleek, mostly high-end apartments around the future Crossrail station, which the developer paid millions to help construct.

Hugging the Thames, Woolwich is the former site of the Royal Arsenal and Henry VIII's dockyard, where Charles Darwin's Beagle was built. Historically working-class, it, too, used to be all white but has come to attract Caribbean and Asian immigrants, with nearly 40 percent of residents today living in social housing. Berkeley's development and the Woolwich Crossrail station are separated from the rest of Woolwich by a highway called Plumstead Road. On one side of the road, old Woolwich is a warren of modest shops and aged social housing.

On the other, baristas now dispense macchiatos on leafy patios. Signs advertise luxury apartments. A single, 31-year-old corporate lawyer employed in the City, Calum Docherty, who is hunting for a home, was intrigued by the Berkeley development. "But I'm still looking," he told me. "Woolwich wasn't anywhere on my radar before Crossrail. The train has expanded my concept of London.

"That said, it's a bit of a mental jump to commit to borrowing half a million pounds," he added. "With Brexit and all."

Correction: August 1, 2017

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

A Rothschild Building in London

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great britain withdrawal from eu (brexit)

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London's New Subway Symbolized the Future. Then Came Brexit.

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LONDON - Up an alley, beyond some hoarding, through what can feel like Harry Potter's secret portal, the underworld of an unfinished Crossrail station sprawls beneath the traffic and commotion of Tottenham Court Road. Escalator banks descend through a sleek, silent black ticket hall where towering, empty, white-tiled passageways snake toward the new, vaulted train platform, curving like a half moon into the subterranean darkness.