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Post #1 (11/17/19) Could drone deliveries help the environment? Let's unpack that 

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Post #1 (11/17/19) Could drone deliveries help the environment? Let's unpack that 

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This article is about e-commerce and the way that goods are shipped from factories to home destinations. The environment is at risk because transportation makes up 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through the use of delivery trucks. The idea of drone delivery would be more environmentally friendly.

This is an example of technological and environmental globalization. Although, the idea of drones aims to reduce transportation industry’s emissions problem it can reduce the number of jobs available to working people. There are significant environmental benefits to this technological advance as well as room for economic improvement because risk and expense play a huge factor.

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In the era of e-commerce, it takes a single click to order anything you'd like. But it takes a lot of energy to bring it to your door.

Items are shipped from factories, shuttled between warehouses and finally trucked to your home. This convenience comes at an environmental cost - transportation accounts for 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with medium- and heavy-duty trucks accounting for nearly a quarter of that.

Technology enables this problem - and some will tell you that technology can help solve it.

Drones have been touted as a clean, fast way to appease our demand for quick deliveries. When Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new design in June for its Prime Air delivery drone, it framed the initiative as part of its vision to make half its shipments net zero carbon by 2030. Wing, a division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., heralded its service as helpful in easing greenhouse gas emissions. After UPS first publicly flew a drone from the top of a delivery truck to drop off a package at a home, an executive called the test a "big step" toward reducing UPS' emissions.

Drone delivery operations could indeed be more environmentally friendly than trucks, according to two recent studies. But that depends on how and where they are deployed.

Where they plug in

Small drones have a lower environmental impact than ground-based delivery methods, including diesel trucks, trucks powered by natural gas or even electric vans, according to a study published last year in Nature Communications. But drone batteries need to be charged, and that power has to come from somewhere.

For drones to live up to their green potential, plugging into clean power sources is vital. Access varies from state to state and from utility to utility.

Thanks to solar power, California frequently generates more electricity than people can use. The study in Nature Communications concluded that a one-pound package delivered by a small drone in California would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54% compared with a diesel truck. The same delivery in Missouri, which gets most of its electricity from coal, would result in a reduction of just 23%.

"When you have low-carbon electricity and you're moving small packages, drones could have the lowest carbon footprint per package delivered," said Costa Samaras, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-author of the study. "It's much greener to have a drone flying through the air to deliver you a set of headphones than for you to get in your gasoline-powered car or even your electric car and drive to the store and get it."

Companies testing commercial drones are already experimenting in regions with varied power sources.

Wing operates commercial drone delivery service in Christiansburg, Va.; Canberra, Australia; and Helsinki, Finland. In Canberra, Wing is powered by nearly 100% renewable energy, while Helsinki uses a mix of nuclear energy, renewable energy and fossil fuels, said Jonathan Bass, Wing's head of marketing and communications. Virginia, on the other hand, is predominantly powered by natural gas and nuclear energy. All three locations' power sources are getting cleaner over time, he said.

The fewer warehouses, the better

The longer a drone can stay in the air and deliver packages, the more useful it is.

But drones have much shorter ranges than trucks, and charging stations are far less common than gas stations.

So delivery companies will need a vast network of charging stations. It's easy to put those stations in warehouses, where the drones go anyway to load up on packages.

Because of our desire for quick deliveries, the nation is already seeing a warehouse boom. One billion square feet of warehouse space was built nationwide over the last decade, with a big boom in the Inland Empire, a CBRE study found last year.

Building a broader network of warehouses to accommodate drones' needs would have serious environmental repercussions. More warehouses means more lighting, heating and air conditioning systems, not to mention the energy required to charge drones between flights, all of which add to the overall emissions from the service.

Rather than building new warehouses, drone delivery companies could use existing facilities - for example, drones carrying food could take off from the top of a grocery store. Amazon would be well positioned to do that, as it already has more than 500 Whole Foods stores and is experimenting with new grocery concepts.

Developing higher-capacity batteries for drones could also help: If drones could fly farther, the network of warehouses and chargers could be less dense. (Currently, drone use in the United States is limited by rules against flying over humans or beyond the operator's line of sight. But those rules are expected to loosen in the years ahead, and some companies already have waivers.)

Another option is deploying drones from delivery trucks when removing a few packages could streamline a driving route. The truck covers much of the distance - then takes a big load of packages one way while a drone carries some the other. Then the drone can meet up with the truck to make other such deliveries and eventually be returned to the warehouse.

A study published last year in the journal Transportation Research Part D concluded that drones are best at delivering a few packages at a time, while trucks are better at taking large quantities to more densely populated areas.

"It's important to remember these modes can be used in complement," said Anne Goodchild, a co-author of the study and director of the supply chain transportation and logistics center at the University of Washington. "We shouldn't just compare drones versus trucks."

Off the beaten path

The logistics industry has inched toward some environmentally minded solutions in urban areas, such as Amazon Lockers, where a single gas-powered truck might drop off packages for dozens of customers. But that approach doesn't necessarily work in rural areas, where residents are more spread out and trucks haul packages to every doorstep.

That's where drones could be a more efficient way to carry packages on the "last mile" of delivery, researchers say, especially since there are fewer obstacles - such as power lines and buildings - for them to avoid.

"A drone can't really compete with a very full truck making 100 deliveries in a fairly small space," Goodchild said. "The farther apart those customers are, the less room for consolidation, the more competitive a drone can be."

But they won't be able to handle everything, at least initially. The current crop of drones envisioned for delivery service are lightweight, meaning they can only carry small, light packages over short distances.

Although drones may end up improving on the traditional ways of delivering packages, they aren't a silver bullet to vanquish the transportation industry's emissions problem. For example, Wing's drones can carry packages of up to 3 pounds, which could replace some trips to the store but not a delivery truck's entire route.

"We do not expect them to replace delivery trucks for delivery of larger items, but rather to make them more efficient," Wing's Bass said in an email.

Drone delivery is not just a gimmick - companies will use it widely if it saves money, said Tyler Reeb, director of research and workforce development at the Center for International Trade and Transportation, based at Cal State Long Beach.

"It's more of a calculation of risk and expense, with environmental benefits being a nice byproduct," he said.
Times staff writer Suhauna Hussain contributed to this report.

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Could drone deliveries help the environment? Let's unpack that

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In the era of e-commerce, it takes a single click to order anything you'd like. But it takes a lot of energy to bring it to your door. Items are shipped from factories, shuttled between warehouses and finally trucked to your home. This convenience comes at an environmental cost - transportation accounts for 29% of U.S.

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Post #2 (11/27/19) The new family separation: Migrant parents stranded on border send kids across alone 

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Post #2 (11/27/19) The new family separation: Migrant parents stranded on border send kids across alone 

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This article is about the program the U.S. created called, Remain in Mexico and it was put in place to ban asylum to those from other countries other than Mexico. However, the key point here is that children who come with parents are exempt from the program and are allowed entrance to the U.S. and transferred to U.S. Health and Human Services shelters.

This is an example of globalization through transnational migration because families leave their home land in search of the American Dream only to suffer of family separation. The consequences of these actions cause asylum families to endure not only physical hardships, but political obstacles due to the long process of deportation appeals and court hearings.

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When 10-year-old Honduran asylum seeker Jose Lopez approached U.S. customs officers on the border bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville this month, they allowed him to enter Texas as an unaccompanied minor.

In fact, Jose had arrived at the border with his father Aug. 18 and requested asylum, but both of them had been sent back across the border under the Trump administration program known as Remain in Mexico. On Nov. 1, a U.S. immigration judge at a tent court near the bridge ordered them deported, his father, Delmer Lopez, said last week.

Lopez decided to give his son a chance to reach the United States on his own.

"He didn't want to go alone," Lopez, 36, a refrigeration technician, said as he stood near his tent in a sprawling migrant camp next to the bridge. "But as a father, I didn't want him living like this. So I decided to take him to the bridge."

During the last year, the Trump administration has cracked down on adult asylum seekers and families, many of them Central American. Officials stationed U.S. customs officers at the midpoints of border bridges, forcing migrants to wait to apply for asylum. They issued an asylum ban for those from countries other than Mexico and created the Remain in Mexico program, officially dubbed Migrant Protection Protocols.

The program as of this week had required almost 54,000 migrants to stay south of the border until U.S. immigration judges rule on their asylum claims, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

But children who arrive at the border unaccompanied by an adult are exempt from Remain in Mexico. By law, unaccompanied minors must be allowed into the U.S., transferred to U.S. Health and Human Services shelters within 72 hours and released to relatives or other sponsors.

In recent weeks, the exemption has led Central American asylum seekers at the largest migrant camp on the U.S. border in Matamoros to leave children on the bridge, a practice first reported by the Intercept. Critics are calling it the latest version of migrant family separation.

Health and Human Services last month started to track how many of the children who had arrived at the southern border with their families and been returned to Mexico were later referred to them by Homeland Security: at least 135, officials told congressional staffers at a briefing last week. At least 50 children from the Matamoros camp have presented themselves on the bridge as unaccompanied minors, migrant advocates estimated.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman declined comment on the issue this week, saying only that the agency "experiences ebbs and flows with migration patterns."

Lopez, who like most asylum seekers under Remain in Mexico doesn't have a lawyer, appealed the deportation order issued to him and his son, but their next hearing wasn't scheduled until Dec. 16. Conditions had deteriorated in the tent camp of more than 2,500 asylum seekers. Sometimes they didn't eat, he said.

After hundreds of migrants last month temporarily blocked the border bridge to protest filthy conditions, Mexican child-protection workers threatened to take children into custody if families didn't move to a new 300-bed city shelter miles from the bridge.

Many migrants resisted, including Lopez, preferring to stay at the bridge to more easily attend court and meet lawyers offering pro bono services. His chances of receiving asylum were slim: Through September, 9,974 Remain in Mexico cases had been completed, but only 11 migrants had received asylum, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center at Syracuse University.

Lopez thought about his wife, who had crossed the border with their now-6-year-old daughter four years ago, claimed asylum and settled in Houston. As temperatures dropped below 40 degrees, he decided his son should cross the border by himself to reunite with them.

After Jose crossed Nov. 7, he was transferred to a federal youth detention center in Houston, his father said. Lopez's wife found Jose a lawyer at Catholic Charities, but they were not sure when he would be released.

"She said the boy called crying for me" from the shelter, he said.

Lopez knows several other parents who recently sent their children to cross the bridge alone.

"We do it because we don't want our children to suffer," he said. "There are lots of parents doing it."

Children continued to arrive at the bridge daily without adults this week, advocates said.

"In less than an hour, I saw five kids cross," Jodi Goodwin, a Brownsville attorney who represents migrants at the camp, said Tuesday.

As Goodwin waited for a client at the center of the bridge, she saw a teenage boy approach with a little girl clutching his belt loop and her toddler brother in his arms, sucking a pacifier. He was a 14-year-old from El Salvador; she was a 4-year-old from Nicaragua, Goodwin said.

A U.S. customs officer asked the older boy where the younger children's parents were, and he said they had been deported, then disappeared, Goodwin said.

The customs officer asked if they had documents, Goodwin said, and the girl eagerly replied in Spanish, "I have mine! My mother gave them to me in case of an emergency." She lifted her shirt to reveal the papers, wrapped in a plastic bag and tucked in her pants.

Goodwin said she feared her clients, a Honduran couple whose request to stay in the U.S. was refused Monday, would send their three children - ages 14, 9 and 7 - to the bridge, too.

"They should not have children out living in such a way that their parents are forced to make this kind of a choice," she said.

At the camp last week, food, water and medicine were scarce. Parents and children bathed in the polluted Rio Grande.

Helen Perry helped set up a camp clinic last month as operations director for Global Response Management, an international nonprofit that works in war zones. The clinic sees about 60 patients a day, including dehydrated and malnourished children.

The group plans to vaccinate babies against the flu in coming days, after U.S. Customs and Border Protection decided not to vaccinate migrants before returning them to Mexico. The agency has routinely turned adults and children away from the Brownsville tent court for being sick, prolonging their immigration cases.

Perry knows two mothers who sent their small children to the bridge alone, but she and other clinic staff counsel migrants against it, worried the children could go missing.

"Until they can guarantee the safety of those kids, that's just sending your kids to a worse fate," she said. "We do not support the separation of parents and children under any circumstances."

Honduran asylum seeker Jackie Cruz Rivas said she sent her 12-year-old son, Josue Cruz, to cross the bridge about three weeks ago because "he wanted to study, and you can't study here."

They don't have an attorney and had been waiting at the camp for a ruling in their asylum case since August, she said. Their next U.S. immigration hearing is scheduled June 24.

Now Josue is being held at a federal shelter for migrant youths in Miami, where his mother has cousins she hopes will be allowed to claim him. Last Thursday, he called her for the first time from the shelter.

"He's very calm there," said Cruz, 32, a homemaker, near her empty tent at the camp last week. "At least he's not suffering."

Marili, 29, an asylum seeker at the camp who asked to be identified only by her first name because she had fled gang threats in Honduras, said she sent her two children - ages 5 and 3 - to the border bridge Nov. 14.

They had been waiting for a judge to rule on their asylum case since August after being kidnapped on their way to the border and held for two weeks until they paid $7,000 ransom. Their next hearing is scheduled March 5.

Marili said she hoped her children could join their father, an asylum seeker in Lodi, Calif., whom she called to alert before they crossed the bridge. She worried about their health and safety at the camp, where her 3-year-old daughter, Madeline, had already lost weight.

"Anything can happen here. You see how we live," Marili, a former supermarket cashier, said as she sobbed beside her tent.

"It was the hardest decision I had to make in my life. But it's the position the U.S. government has put us in," she said.

Marili left the children at the bridge entrance with a 14-year-old Honduran boy from the camp to lead them to U.S. customs officers. She gave her 5-year-old son, Josue, a blue backpack containing their birth certificates and their father's contact information in the U.S.

Josue resisted.

"I'll be a good boy," she recalled him saying, through tears. "He thought it was a punishment."

She promised her son that his father was waiting for him in the U.S. with food and toys, she said, but he didn't believe her.

After they crossed the bridge, the children were sent to a shelter in Houston, where Josue was allowed to call his father, Marili said. He asked why she had not claimed them.

"He's just 5. Think what he must think of me," she said.

Some youths at the camp have crossed on their own, without their parents' permission, especially 17-year-olds about to lose the option to cross as minors once they turn 18.

Honduran asylum seeker Denis Hernandez, 17, said last week that he was planning to cross "as soon as I have the opportunity" even though his mother wants him to stay with her.

"He can't go without my permission," said Marielena Quintero, 37, but that hasn't been the case.

They arrived at the border Aug. 1, were sent back under Remain in Mexico, and their next U.S. immigration court date, their third, is scheduled Jan. 24.

Denis worried that the judge at their third hearing would order them deported, as others at the camp had been. Some of his friends had left the camp to join relatives in the U.S. and stayed in touch on social media.

He hopes to claim asylum on his own at the border bridge and join his uncle, a U.S. citizen in Virginia, but said, "It's hard to go without my mother, not knowing what happens to her."

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The new family separation: Migrant parents stranded on border send kids across alone

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When 10-year-old Honduran asylum seeker Jose Lopez approached U.S. customs officers on the border bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville this month, they allowed him to enter Texas as an unaccompanied minor. In fact, Jose had arrived at the border with his father Aug.

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Post #3 (12/02/19) Saudi Arabia Embraces Western Sports to Rehabilitate Global Image

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Post #3 (12/02/19) Saudi Arabia Embraces Western Sports to Rehabilitate Global Image

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This post is about Saudi Arabia incorporating Western sports to diversify their economy and global image. Women are also being allowed to participate in the sport of WWE, which was prohibited to them before due to Saudi Arabia's strict laws concerning women be fully covered and oppression of women's rights.

This relates to economy, gender, and cultural globalization that we learned in class. Saudi Arabia is culturally changing by incorporating Western culture into their own culture. Global sports are allowing Saudi Arabia to reform gender roles and are becoming Americanized by using Western culture in the form of sports, which could ultimately have a benefit in their economic growth through the creation of jobs.

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Critics accuse the kingdom of "sportswashing" as international entertainment businesses shrug off human rights concerns.

Lacey Evans, at top, takes down Natalya Neidhart as they engage in the first-ever WWE women's match in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, on Halloween. Credit... Amr Nabil/Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - On Halloween, as two female WWE wrestlers battled inside a roaring King Fahd International Stadium, Najla Ibrahim stood with a hand on her heart and another in the air, capturing the moment with her smartphone. For years, the nurse from Riyadh followed wrestling from afar and yearned for the day when women would take the ring in her country.

"I'm very proud because they are making history," Ms. Ibrahim, 23, dressed in a black abaya and seated next to her older sister, said as the match ended under a shower of fireworks. "I've been waiting for this for so long."

A year after the state-directed assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian dissident columnist for The Washington Post, the government of Saudi Arabia is accelerating efforts diversify its economy, cultivate domestic spending and polish its global image by broadening cultural offerings centered on Western sports and entertainment.

Staging a women's wrestling match is no small feat in a kingdom where strict interpretation of Islamic law has long dictated that women be segregated, wear full-body coverings and have a male guardian. While the moment was notable, it was also carefully manufactured, stirring debate about whether Saudi Arabia is progressing or just glossing over its past.

"It's definitely 'sportswashing,'" said Philippe Nassif, Amnesty International's advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa. "In the case of Saudi Arabia, they are infamous for the oppression of women's rights and ethnic and racial minority rights. What better way to attempt to change that image than an all women's wrestling match?"

The relationship between international brands like WWE and the Saudi government is symbiotic, as companies seek untapped markets while the kingdom tries to move its economy beyond dependence on oil production.

But the push comes with complications. Western businesses and stars have faced backlash and boycotts amid accusations that they are aiding a public relations initiative from an oppressive Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia made sports a priority in 2016, as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's "Vision 2030" economic development program. To lay the groundwork, Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, now Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, last year worked with an American lobbying firm to set up meetings with the National Basketball Association, Major League Soccer, World Surf League and Formula One auto racing to discuss bringing international sports to the kingdom.

Big money soon flowed. In July, Saudi Arabia's General Sports Authority announced a $650 million investment to develop local athletes and teams and to attract international events. Speaking at an investment conference in Riyadh in October, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, the chairman of the General Sports Authority, explained how making Saudi Arabia a hub of global sports can lift economic growth and create thousands of jobs.

"A big part of the change within the kingdom is the sector of sport, and growing the sector of sport," he said.

Wrestling is one sliver of Saudi Arabia's new appetite for athletics.

This month, Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr. will travel to a custom-built arena in Diriyah, outside of Riyadh, for a heavyweight boxing title fight billed the "Clash on the Dunes." February brings the debut of the Saudi Cup, a horse race with a $20 million purse - the richest in history. A Ladies European Tour golf tournament is being planned for March.

"We are in a really huge transformation, softening the image," Majed Al-Sorour, chief executive of the Saudi Golf Federation, said on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh in October.

The sports expansion is part of Prince Mohammed's attempt to bring in foreign investment and increase the financial potential of a country whose population skews young. Of the kingdom's 22 million citizens, about two-thirds are under 30.

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled according to Shariah law. After Prince Mohammed was elevated to crown prince in 2017, he pursued a campaign aimed at convincing the world that Saudi Arabia was changing culturally with a series of reforms that were methodically rolled out to burnish its image. In the last 18 months, movie theaters opened for the first time in more than 35 years, women gained the right to drive and segregation of the sexes was relaxed in public places.

On a Monday night in late October, Saudi men and women in their 20s swayed to hip-hop music at a fashion boutique that opened for Riyadh's Design Week. As with international companies, young people in Saudi Arabia are also adjusting to new boundaries and calibrating their ambitions.

At the event was Mohammed Alhamdan, who five years ago was an aspiring actor working at a McDonald's in Riyadh before he started creating satirical music videos that went viral on YouTube. Now he has more than 7 million followers on his social media networks and is paid to create and perform in advertisements for brands like McDonald's and Pepsi, which operate in the kingdom.

"Everything is new, for us and the country," said Mr. Alhamdan, 25, who goes by the online persona Warchieff.

Saudi Arabia's growing circle of social media influencers still tread cautiously when approaching cultural taboos. Mr. Alhamdan said he was careful to create videos that grab attention without veering into cultural criticism that will get him in trouble with a government that aggressively stifles online dissent.

Critics of Saudi Arabia contend that its embrace of Western sports and entertainment is a diversion to distract from a grim human rights record. "I see all of this more as a way for the government to generate revenues from things other than oil than a genuine effort by the government to grant freedom," said Hala Aldosari, a Saudi scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Central Intelligence Agency concluded last year that Prince Mohammed personally ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. Since then, the kingdom has worked with international public relations firms to rehabilitate its reputation, and the Crown Prince said he has said he takes "full responsibility" for the murder. But international observers say human rights violations continue.

Amnesty International in October condemned the kingdom for arresting and detaining civil society activists and criticized the Saudi government for cloaking in secrecy the trial of those involved in the Khashoggi killing and for mass executions in April of Shiite Muslims who participated in anti-government protests.

A Human Rights Watch report last month said despite advances for Saudi women in the last year, numerous women's rights advocates continue to be detained, charged with criminal offenses and tortured for speaking out.

Conditions for journalists who call for reform remain risky. The human rights group ALQST said last Monday that Saudi authorities arrested at least eight bloggers and journalists in five cities across the country in November, raiding their homes and seizing their laptops and cellphones.

"They are trying to cover up their abuses by holding high-profile sporting events and spectacles supported by businesspeople, politicians and sporting figures around the world," ALQST said in a statement.

For Western athletes and entertainers, doing business in Saudi Arabia remains fraught. Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal faced criticism last year for planning to play an exhibition match in Jeddah. The tennis stars eventually withdrew, citing an injury to Mr. Nadal.

In July, the rapper Nicki Minaj withdrew from a music festival after an outcry from critics of Saudi Arabia's treatment of women and its ban on homosexuality.

For corporations, boycotting Saudi Arabia is more difficult.

Netflix came under fire this year for pulling an episode of Hasan Minhaj's show "Patriot Act " in Saudi Arabia because of the show's criticism of Prince Mohammed and the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, offered a blunt assessment of the decision at a New York Times DealBook conference in November, saying the company was "not in the truth to power business."

Formula E, the electric motor sport racing series, also faced questions about its decision to open its season in Saudi Arabia last year, weeks after Mr. Khashoggi was murdered. Last month, the event was back again, drawing thousands of fans and musical entertainers from Britain and Norway.

"I think Saudi is going through a period of change and I think we need to support the change," Alejandro Agag, the founder of Formula E, said in an interview in Riyadh. "Sport is a neutral thing that brings people together."

Ernie Els, the champion golfer from South Africa who is helping the Saudi government establish itself as a global golf destination, offered a similar rationale. Despite backlash for his involvement with the Saudis, he said he hoped golf could help the country in the same way rugby helped unite South Africa, under the leadership of President Nelson Mandela, in the 1990s after apartheid.

"I understand the concern from the international community, but you have to start somewhere," Mr. Els said in an interview.

Introducing American sports to the kingdom has not gone smoothly.

WWE, which held its first match in Saudi Arabia in 2014, signed a 10-year deal with the government last year that is rumored to be worth nearly $500 million. The company has faced backlash from fans on social media for accepting what they called the kingdom's "blood money" and for excluding women from matches. In 2018, a company executive said that moving forward with an event weeks after Mr. Khashoggi was killed was "incredibly tough" but "at the end of the day it was a business decision."

Asked about the women's wresting match, Matthew Altman, a WWE spokesman, said in a statement that the company had operated in the Middle East for nearly 20 years. "Our partnership with the General Entertainment Authority further strengthens our fan engagement through large-scale events and action-packed programming while being at the forefront of change that is taking place in the region," he said.

Last April, during a WWE "Greatest Royal Rumble" in Jeddah, a promotional video displayed between matches showed women wrestlers scantily clad, prompting the Saudi General Sports Authority to issue a statement apologizing for the scenes. Male wrestlers perform bare-chested in Speedo-style shorts.

Arranging a women's match was complicated, and WWE officials said they held extensive talks with the Saudi government about the appropriate time to allow the athletes, Natalya Neidhart and Lacey Evans, to perform. Attire was also a major concern: To pass muster, the women swapped revealing costumes for loose-fitting T-shirts worn over long black sleeves and leggings.

Fahad Saeed Khan, an engineer in the audience dressed in Adidas track pants and a Polo shirt, said wrestling is a welcome alternative to Riyadh's staid entertainment options of going to a mall or socializing in a park. "It's good," Mr. Khan, 27, said, adding that men and women in Saudi Arabia have been kept apart for too long. "Things need to open up."

Tasneem Alsultan contributed reporting from Riyadh.

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Saudi Arabia Embraces Western Sports to Rehabilitate Global Image

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Critics accuse the kingdom of "sportswashing" as international entertainment businesses shrug off human rights concerns. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - On Halloween, as two female WWE wrestlers battled inside a roaring King Fahd International Stadium, Najla Ibrahim stood with a hand on her heart and another in the air, capturing the moment with her smartphone.

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Post #4 (12/02/19) Trump Says U.S. Will Impose Metal Tariffs on Brazil and Argentina

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Post #4 (12/02/19) Trump Says U.S. Will Impose Metal Tariffs on Brazil and Argentina

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This article is about President Trump imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum that comes from Argentina and Brazil. The result of imposing tariffs would be that it would cancel out any prior agreement and open the gates for a global trade war. This news comes at the same time of both Argentina and Brazil's currency decreasing in value in comparison to the dollar.

This relates to economic globalization because the U.S., Brazil and Argentina all work together for a commodity. The tariffs will cause companies of all three countries to suffer and more importantly hurt American producers because Brazil and Argentina are their main suppliers. As a result, the fluctuating economies of both Argentina and Brazil along with the decrease in their currency will lead to unemployment and a stagnant economic growth.

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The president, in a move that would shatter previous agreements with those countries, accused them of weakening their currencies and hurting American farmers.

A worker moving a roll of aluminum cable at a plant in Barcarena, Brazil. Last week the country's currency fell to a record low against the dollar. Credit... Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON - President Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina, a move that would shatter previous agreements with those countries and widen a global trade war that the president had appeared ready to scale back.

Mr. Trump, in a message on Twitter, accused Brazil and Argentina of manipulating their currencies and hurting American farmers. "Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries."

Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers. Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries. The Federal....
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2019

The United States exempted Brazil, Argentina and other countries from the president's sweeping metal tariffs in March 2018, with the United States saying it would continue negotiations with those countries to improve their trade terms. In May 2018, the United States announced that it had reached an agreement with Brazil and Argentina that would cap their metal shipments at a specific volume each year.

But the president's move suggested that neither previous agreements nor political alliances would guarantee insulation from Mr. Trump's trade wars. Brazil and Argentina are also facing serious economic troubles, but those too were no defense.

The new clash with South America came on the same day that a report from the Office of the United States Trade Representative declared a French tax on technology so onerous that retaliatory tariffs as high as 100 percent on French wines, cheeses and handbags would be justified. The report did not impose such tariffs but cleared the way for Mr. Trump to do so if he chooses.

Mr. Trump's announcement on steel and aluminum was particularly jarring to Brazil's conservative populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, who had gone to great lengths to strengthen ties with the Trump administration, with little to show for it.

"Aluminum?" Mr. Bolsonaro asked when reporters presented him with Mr. Trump's tweet. "If that's the case, I'll call Trump. I have an open channel with him."

Dante Sica, Argentina's minister of production, called the move "completely unexpected."

"I was in Washington last week, and I talked to a lot of people, and there was no sign whatsoever that there would be any kind of change," he said.

On Wall Street, stocks dropped by the most since early October, after economic reports suggested that the American economy continues to face significant headwinds. The latest gauge of manufacturing activity from the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group, showed a contraction for the fourth consecutive month in November. The S&P 500 index closed down 0.9 percent. Real estate, industrial and technology companies suffered the steepest drops.

It is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump to reverse previous agreements. But last week the Brazilian currency, the real, fell to a record low against the dollar after the country's economic minister signaled that he was not concerned about exchange-rate fluctuations.

Argentina's peso has weakened with the country in the midst of an economic crisis.

Economists and government officials have rejected the idea that Brazil and Argentina are intentionally manipulating their currencies. But currency movements have made Brazilian and Argentine goods cheaper to purchase abroad, a dynamic that is particularly important for the agricultural sector and the United States' trade war with China.

China is a major purchaser of American pork, soybeans and other agricultural goods. As the United States and China have slapped tariffs on each other's products in a more than yearlong trade war, China has shifted to purchasing products from Brazil and Argentina instead, a move that has rankled Mr. Trump and other American officials.

"I gave them a big break on tariffs, but now I'm taking that break off because it's very unfair to our manufacturers and very unfair to our farmers," Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday. "Our steel companies will be very happy, and our farmers will be very happy."

As of Monday evening, the White House had not issued any formal notice that would put tariffs on Brazil and Argentina into effect.

If they are imposed, the tariffs stand to do considerable damage to South America's two biggest economies as Argentina is in recession and Brazil confronts high unemployment and anemic growth.

Mr. Sica, of Argentina, scoffed at the claim that Brazil and Argentina have been deliberately devaluing their currencies.

"Our currency has a flexible exchange rate and adapts itself to global changes," he said.

Brad Setser, a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, said neither Brazil nor Argentina was manipulating its currency. In fact, both countries had been selling foreign exchange reserves to prop the value of their currencies up. He added that Argentina was in a "full blown" economic crisis and was close to running out of such foreign exchange.

The announcement on Monday was the latest escalation in Mr. Trump's global trade war. Mr. Trump has also threatened new tariffs on products from China, Mexico, the European Union, Vietnam and elsewhere.

With next year's election approaching, the Trump administration has appeared to be working toward a resolution on several of these fronts. It reached an agreement to lift metal tariffs on Canada and Mexico and declined to impose devastating car tariffs on the European Union. It has been trying to seal a first-phase trade deal with China, though the two sides are continuing to grapple over terms. And the administration has been pushing for Congress to approve its revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which would check off a major campaign promise for Mr. Trump.

But the tariffs on Brazil and Argentina suggest that Mr. Trump has not abandoned his confrontational approach.

On Monday, he said on Twitter that American stock markets "are up as much as 21%" since he announced the metal tariffs on March 1, 2018, and that the United States was taking in "massive amounts of money" in tariff revenue.

Any new tariffs would likely face legal challenges, however.

The president imposed the metal tariffs to stop a flood of imported steel and aluminum that his administration has claimed threatens American producers and thus American national security. The idea has been disputed, with several countries bringing cases against the United States at the World Trade Organization.

And in a recent decision, the United States Court of International Trade, a federal court, ruled that Mr. Trump could not raise tariffs on steel exports from Turkey, because a 180-day deadline set for that decision had already elapsed.

Jennifer Hillman, a senior fellow for trade and international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the law that the president had used to issue the tariffs, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, did not give him the authority to alter tariffs outside of certain time limits.

"Trump cannot legally convert the current quotas to tariffs," she said. "Changing a quota to tariff more than a year and a half after the original action is outside those limits."

Supporters of Mr. Trump's tariffs say they have provided some protection against cheaper metals imported from abroad.

"Congress and trade experts have ignored exchange rate moves in crafting trade policies for too long," said Michael Stumo, the chief executive of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a trade group that supports the metal tariffs. "The president's action is a next step, after declaring China a currency manipulator earlier this year, to connect exchange rates and trade."

But other economic factors have continued to weigh on the steel industry, including China's large-scale production and a weakening manufacturing sector in the United States and abroad.

The tariffs have also angered American manufacturers of automobiles, machinery, food packaging and other products, who must pay more for the metal they purchase.

The Brazil Steel Institute, which represents the interests of steel exporters, said in a statement that it found the new tariffs "perplexing" and warned that it would harm companies in both countries.

"The decision will end up harming the American steel producing companies, which need the semifinished products exported by Brazil to operate its plants," the institute said.

Manuela Andreoni contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, Daniel Politi from Buenos Aires and Matt Phillips from New York.

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Trump Says U.S. Will Impose Metal Tariffs on Brazil and Argentina

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The president, in a move that would shatter previous agreements with those countries, accused them of weakening their currencies and hurting American farmers. WASHINGTON - President Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina, a move that would shatter previous agreements with those countries and widen a global trade war that the president had appeared ready to scale back.