Month: December 2018

China Hopes for ‘Orderly’ Brexit, Calls for More Open EU Economy

China hopes Britain’s exit from the European Union can happen in an orderly way and that the bloc will reduce hurdles to Chinese investment and keep its markets open, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has watched Brexit nervously, worried not only about potential market turmoil from a disorderly departure but about losing Britain’s supportive voice for free trade within the EU.

“China hopes to see Brexit proceed in an orderly fashion and stands ready to advance China-EU and China-UK relations in parallel,” the ministry said in a lengthy policy document on EU ties.

The EU and China are often at loggerheads over trade and other issues, with the EU sharing many of the same concerns as the United States about market access, trade imbalances and intellectual property rights protection.

The bloc is China’s largest trading partner while China is its biggest trading partner after the United States.

The EU has been pressing for better access to the Chinese market for its companies, while China has complained about what it sees as unfair restrictions on Chinese investments in the EU.

Despite events such as Brexit, China said the EU has remained committed to integration, pressed on with reforms and played a major role in regional and international affairs.

Beijing has promised to look at the possibility of reaching a “top notch” free trade deal with Britain post-Brexit.

The Brexit process is currently deadlocked with just over 100 days until Britain is due to leave the EU.

On trade, China’s white paper said the EU should ease high-tech export controls on China and facilitate mutual investment.

The government will significantly ease market access and endeavor to foster a “stable, fair, transparent, law-based and predictable business environment that protects the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment and treats Chinese and foreign firms registered in China as equals,” it said.

“China hopes that the EU will keep its investment market open, reduce and eliminate investment hurdles and discriminatory barriers, and provide Chinese companies investing in Europe a fair, transparent and predictable policy environment and protect their legitimate rights and interests.”

The EU last month provisionally agreed on rules for a far-reaching system to coordinate scrutiny of foreign investments into Europe, notably from China in the wake of a surge in Chinese investments, to end what a negotiator called “European naivety.”

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Rediscovering Truth: African Storytellers Tap Into Rich Tradition

Why don’t chickens fly? When did the moon learn to be kind? 

Those and other mysteries were unravelled by dozens of African storytellers in Nairobi on Saturday, helping keep alive oral traditions increasingly under threat in the internet and smartphone age.

“To have that storyteller in front of you with an audience being able to interact is something very precious that we are in danger of losing,” said Maimouna Jallow, who organized the one-day Re-Imagined Storytelling Festival in Kenya’s capital.

Although written history has existed for centuries in West Africa, elsewhere on the continent knowledge and morality have mostly been transmitted through performance art, including the spoken word.

Tales from East African villages

For her research, Jallow collected folk tales from East African villages. “Nearly everywhere I went people had no recollection of their own stories, and the generation who used to tell these stories are now in their 80s,” she told Reuters.

“For me it was really important to see how we preserve not only the stories but in particular the culture of telling (them).”

With nods to giants of African culture such as Thomas Sankara and Fela Kuti, those narrated in Nairobi addressed issues common to African societies, ranging from war and materialism to humility and respect for children, often with a contemporary twist.

Storytelling relevant for rapper

For Alim Bamara, a rapper from Sierra Leone who grew up in London, storytelling has never been more relevant or topical.

“There’s a story about truth, and how truth knocked on people’s doors, and was always rejected and turned away,” he told Reuters.

“One day, parable took truth home, and fed truth and clothed truth in story. “Now truth… knocked on those people’s doors and this time was readily welcomed.”

Accompanying some performances was Gambian kora (African harp) player Sanjally Jobarteh, whose family has kept alive oral histories for over seven centuries.

Why chickens don’t fly?

For Usifu Jalloh, from Sierra Leone, storytelling can help validate existence. 

“When Africans were enslaved, and when invaders came in, the first thing they did was wipe out the identity of the people that they conquered and superimposed theirs on top,” he said. “When you know your story, you have a lot of power. When you forget your story you are just like a sheep.”

So why don’t chickens fly? Because chicken squandered all the wealth given to him as king of the sky. When the other birds found out, he was banished from the air and became man’s favorite food.

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Wondrous Extinct Flying Reptiles Boasted Rudimentary Feathers

A microscopic examination of fossils from China has revealed that the fur-like body covering of pterosaurs, the remarkable flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, was actually made up of rudimentary feathers.

The surprising discovery described by scientists on Monday means that dinosaurs and their bird descendants were not the only creatures to boast feathers and that feathers likely appeared much longer ago than previously known. Pterosaurs were only distantly related to dinosaurs and birds.

Birds need feathers to fly. That was not the case with pterosaurs. Short, hair-like feathers covered their bodies and wings but lacked the strong central shaft of avian flight feathers, the researchers said. They may have provided insulation and other benefits, as hair does for mammals.

“They were not flight feathers,” said paleontologist Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University, who led the research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. “They looked fuzzy, and they didn’t have complicated feathers.”

The researchers examined beautifully preserved Jurassic Period fossils roughly 160 to 165 million years old of two small pterosaurs called anurognathids from northeastern China.

Apparently forest dwellers and insect eaters, they possessed 18-inch (45 cm) wingspans, short tails and superficially frog-like faces.

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to master flight, followed much later by birds and bats. Scientists have known since the 19th century that pterosaurs had a fur-like body covering and there has been a long-running scientific debate about how to classify it.

Many of the filaments, under the microscope, showed branching like in feathers but not hair.

University of Bristol paleontologist and study co-author Mike Benton said four types of pterosaur feathers were observed: downy feathers; single filaments; bundles of filaments; and filaments with tufts at the end. Tiny pigment-related structures indicated these feathers were ginger-brown in color.

Birds, many meat-eating dinosaurs and some plant-eating dinosaurs are known to have had feathers, though these looked different from those seen on the pterosaurs.

“We feel the simplest thing for the present is to call them all feathers because they show branching, the fundamental distinguishing character of a feather,” Benton said.

Pterosaurs and dinosaurs both appeared roughly 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period. The researchers said the appearance of feathers in both groups suggests feathers first evolved perhaps 250 million years ago in a common ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs.

Pterosaurs, the biggest of which had 35-foot (10.7-meter)wingspans, went extinct along with the dinosaurs after an asteroid impact 66 million years ago.

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Mexico to Raise Base Wage, New Leader Pledges to Lift Buying Power

Mexico’s wage commission said on Monday it planned to hike the country’s minimum wage by 16 percent to around $5 per day and leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged further increases to keep salaries apace with inflation.

The salary commission, made up of government, business and labor representatives, said the daily minimum wage would rise to 102.68 pesos from 88.36 pesos on Jan. 1, the biggest such hike since 1996.

“During many years the minimum wage has lost its purchasing power. Some say it has lost 70 percent of its purchasing power over the last 30 years,” said Lopez Obrador.

“We’re never going to have wage (increases) below inflation,” said Lopez Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1.

Low wages have helped to attract foreign companies to Mexico and create jobs, but also encourage migration to the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump argues that low wages south of the border kill U.S. jobs.

Lopez Obrador has called for doubling the minimum wage in northern states that border the United States in a bid to reduce inequality with neighboring U.S. areas.

In the area within 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the U.S. border, the minimum wage will be increased to 176.72 pesos per day, Mexican employers’ confederation Coparmex said in a statement.

Lopez Obrador’s maiden budget, delivered on Saturday, was welcomed by markets for pledging to stick to fiscal discipline, but the wage policy raised concerns that it could hit inflation and spark higher interest rates.

Benito Berber, chief economist for Latin America at Natixis, said Lopez Obrador’s new take on wages, including the commitment to keep pace with inflation, could push Mexico’s central bank to raise interest rates on Thursday.

“It seems the government is willing to accept higher inflation and perhaps stickier inflation,” Berber said. “Banxico has been clear that wage increases above productivity would entail tight monetary policy.”

($1 = 20.1160 Mexican pesos)

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Scientists Spot Solar System’s Farthest Known Object

Astronomers have spotted the farthest known object in our solar system — and they’ve nicknamed the pink cosmic body “Farout.”

 

The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery Monday.

 

“Farout” is about 120 astronomical units away — that’s 120 times the distance between Earth and the sun, or 11 billion miles. The previous record-holder was the dwarf planet Eris at 96 astronomical units. Pluto, by comparison, is 34 astronomical units away.

 

The Carnegie Institution’s Scott Sheppard said the object is so far away and moving so slowly it will take a few years to determine its orbit. At that distance, it could take more than 1,000 years to orbit the sun.

Sheppard and his team spied the dwarf planet in November using a telescope in Hawaii. Their finding was confirmed by a telescope in Chile.

 

“I actually uttered “farout” when I first found this object, because I immediately noticed from its slow movement that it must be far out there,” Sheppard wrote in an email. “It is the slowest moving object I have ever seen and is really out there.”

 

It is an estimated 310 miles (500 kilometers) across and believed to be round. Its pink shade indicates an ice-rich object. Little else is known.

 

The discovery came about as the astronomers were searching for the hypothetical Planet X, a massive planet believed by some to be orbiting the sun from vast distances, well beyond Pluto.

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Robots and Lack of Child Care Leave Women’s Wages Centuries Behind

Women must wait 202 years before they can earn the same as men and have equal job opportunities, according to a global report released Tuesday, which said the rise in robots and the lack of child care were keeping many women out of work.

Women earn about half as much as men, said the World Economic Forum (WEF), reporting a gender pay gap of 51 percent in 2018.

“It’s still a long way from parity, and it’s still a long way from reaching a point where women and men are being paid the same for the same job,” said report co-author Saadia Zahidi, head of WEF’s Center for the New Economy and Society.

There were fewer women working this year than men, mostly due to the lack of child care which kept women from jobs or from progressing to senior roles, according to the annual index ranking 149 countries on their progress to close the gender gap.

“Most economies still have not made much progress in providing better infrastructure for child care,” said Zahidi in a phone interview.

“This continues to be a major source of why women don’t enter the labor market at all or aren’t able to progress as much as they should given the talent that they have,” she added.

Women were missing at the top, the report found, with only a third of all managerial roles taken by women.

There were also just 17 female heads of state this year, with women occupying 18 percent of ministerial positions and 24 percent of parliamentary roles globally, it added.

​Robot takeover

Zahidi warned that emerging technology like robots and artificial intelligence (AI) were also taking jobs traditionally occupied by women, including administration, customer service and telemarketing.

“While a lot of the narrative in the past tended to focus on men in blue collar work in factories, there are a lot of women in blue collar or service work that are also being displaced — and that trend is starting to become more marked,” she said.

The WEF report found that only 22 percent of people working in AI worldwide were female.

According to a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think tank, the use of digital tools has increased in 517 of 545 occupations since 2002 in the United States alone, with a striking uptick in many lower-skilled occupations.

As technology advances, experts say women and girls with poor digital skills will be the hardest hit and will struggle to find jobs.

Although the number of women in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) has increased in recent years, they still only account for about 30 percent of the world’s researchers, the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO says.

“More than ever, societies cannot afford to lose out on the skills, ideas and perspectives of half of humanity,” said Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the WEF.

No country has closed the pay gap yet, WEF said, using data from institutions such as the International Labour Organization, United Nations Development Programme and World Health Organization.

Top spots

Iceland, for the tenth year in a row, held the top spot across all indicators that measured gender equality including social, economic and health, according to the WEF report.

Nordic countries Norway, Sweden and Finland were among the top scoring countries, followed by Nicaragua, which ranked fifth.

Meanwhile Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria were the worst performing countries.

Last year, WEF said women would achieve economic equality in 217 years, the widest gap in almost a decade.

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‘Roma,’ ‘Burning’ Among Foreign Language Oscar Contenders

A number of Oscar hopefuls just got one step closer to a nomination with Monday’s reveal of nine Academy Awards shortlists, including best foreign language film where Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” and Lee Chang-dong’s thriller “Burning” are among nine films in consideration.

 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday announced shortlists for a number of below the line categories including hair and makeup, score, original song and best documentary, where crowd-pleasers like the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG” and the Fred Rogers film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” made the cut.

 

Shortlists, decided on by executive committees in the film academy, help narrow the playing field in many of the categories before they are whittled down further to five final nominations in late January.

 

Many believe Mexico’s “Roma” to be a front-runner for a best picture nomination as well, while the acclaimed “Burning,” which is based on a Haruki Murakami story, could make history by becoming South Korea’s first ever nominee.

 

Other films in contention include Poland’s “Cold War,” which was snubbed by the Golden Globe Awards, Lebanon’s “Capernaum,” Japan’s “Shoplifters,” Colombia’s “Birds of Passage,” Denmark’s “The Guilty,” Germany’s “Never Look Away” and Kazakhstan’s “Ayka.”

 

Notable documentary features also included on the shortlist include “Minding the Gap,” a 12-year odyssey about a group of skateboarders growing up in Rockford, Illinois, the too-wild-to-be-true “Three Identical Strangers,” about triplets separated by adoption at birth who find each other later in life, and the intense climbing film “Free Solo.”

 

This is the first time since 1979 that the film academy has released a shortlist for the music categories. Fifteen original songs were selected from 90 submissions and include “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born,” “All The Stars” from “Black Panther,” Dolly Parton’s “Girl in the Movies” from “Dumplin’,” and two songs from “Mary Poppins Returns” — “The Place Where Lost Things Go” and “Trip a Little Light Fantastic.”

 

“Mary Poppins Returns” and “Black Panther” were also shortlisted for best original score, as was “Vice” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which were both composed by Nicholas Brittell.

 

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced on Jan. 22, with one month before the Oscars on Feb. 24.

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Jeff Bridges to Receive Lifetime Achievement Honor at Golden Globes

Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges will receive a lifetime achievement award at January’s Golden Globes ceremony for his wide range of work, from Western “True Grit” to comedy “The Big Lebowski,” the Hollywood Foreign Press Association said on Monday.

Bridges will be honored by the HFPA with the Cecil B. DeMille Award, an annual accolade given to a person who has made a lasting impact on the world of film.

The 69-year-old actor has been nominated for five Golden Globes and won once for his role as a faded country music star in 2009 drama “Crazy Heart.” That performance also earned Bridges an Oscar. He also famously played the slacker known as “The Dude” in 1998’s “Big Lebowski.”

“Bridges’ brilliant body of work across diverse genres has captured the hearts and minds of audiences worldwide for more than six decades,” HFPA President Meher Tatna said in a statement.

The DeMille Award is named after the influential Hollywood director who spanned both the silent and sound eras of film.

Past winners have included Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Robert De Niro, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford, and Meryl Streep.

The award will be handed out at the Jan. 6 Golden Globes telecast in Beverly Hills, California.

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CBS Fires CEO Leslie Moonves and Denies $120M Severance

CBS said on Monday it has fired Leslie Moonves for cause and has denied a $120 million severance package as it girds for a likely legal battle with its former chief executive who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault that allegedly took place before and after he joined the company.

The decision to deprive Moonves of his severance follows a board of directors review of the findings of an investigation into Moonves’ behavior and the CBS culture conducted by two law firms, Debevoise & Plimpton and Covington & Burling, hired by CBS.

“We have determined that there are grounds to terminate for cause, including his willful and material misfeasance, violation of company policies and breach of his employment contract, as well as his willful failure to cooperate fully with the company’s investigation,” CBS’s board of directors said in a statement that did not disclose details of the investigation.

A draft report of the investigation was leaked to the New York Times this month. It accused Moonves of destroying evidence and seeking to mollify accusers with promises of jobs at CBS.

The report also included more accusations that Moonves advanced the careers of women who had sex with him and more accusers beyond the 12 disclosed in two New Yorker investigations that led to Moonves’ forced resignation in September.

Moonves has denied any wrongdoing and has described his sexual encounters as consensual. His attorney, Andrew Levander, did not immediately return a call for comment.

The CBS board also said investigators found that harassment and retaliation were not pervasive at CBS but found that its policies and practices failed to prevent past incidents.

CBS suspended Charlie Rose, co-anchor of CBS’s morning show and “60 Minutes” in November 2017 after several women accused him of harassment and misconduct and fired him last September.

Jeff Fager, “60 Minutes” executive producer, was also fired in September after threatening a CBS News reporter investigating allegations of harassment of colleagues.

Investigators did find that the company failed to hold “high performers” accountable for their conduct, the board said.

The board said it has retained outside advisers to fix its human resources problems.

Last week, CBS named 18 recipients of a $20 million donation drawn from Moonves’s severance to support eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Country Band Alabama Mark 50 Years with New Tour

Country band Alabama will mark their 50th year together with a new tour in 2019, more than a year after founding member Jeff Cook announced that he has Parkinson’s disease.

 

The Grammy-winning trio of Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry and Cook formed in 1969 in Fort Payne, Alabama, and went on to dominate the sound of country music in the 1980s, scoring dozens of No. 1 hits, including classics like “Mountain Music” and “Dixieland Delight.”

 

Guitarist and fiddle player Cook announced in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with the chronic neurological disorder years ago and he would limit his touring with the band. Cook will perform on their new tour, which begins Jan. 10 in Detroit, as much as he’s physically able.

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Dow Takes Second Straight Two-Percent Plunge

Another day of big losses knocked U.S. stocks to their lowest levels in more than a year Monday. Investors dumped high-growth technology and retail companies as well as steadier, high-dividend companies. Oil fell below $50 a barrel for the first time since October 2017.

 

Hospitals and health insurers slumped after a federal judge in Texas ruled that the 2010 Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Other stocks wobbled in morning trading, then plunged in the afternoon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507 points after a 496 point drop Friday.

 

Amazon led a rout among retailers and tech companies including Microsoft turned sharply lower. Some of the largest losses went to utilities and real estate companies, which have done better than the rest of the market during the turbulence of the last three months.

 

“That is basically retail investors panicking,’ said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide Investment Management. “Investors basically are confusing the idea of a slowdown with a recession.”

 

But investors dumped almost everything. Less than 40 of the 500 stocks comprising the S&P 500 finished the day higher.

 

The S&P 500 index, the benchmark for many investors and funds, finished at its lowest level since Oct. 9, 2017. It has fallen 13.1 percent since its last record close on Sept. 20. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller companies, has dropped more than 20 percent since the end of August, meaning that index is now in what Wall Street calls a “bear market.”

 

Germany’s main stock index also fell into a bear market Monday as companies like Siemens and SAP kept falling.

 

Smaller U.S. stocks have taken dramatic losses as investors have lost confidence in the U.S. economy’s growth prospects. Smaller companies are considered more vulnerable in a downturn than larger companies because they are more dependent on economic growth and tend to have higher levels of debt.

 

Hackett said the current drop is similar to the market’s big plunge in late 2015 and early 2016, which was also tied to fears that the global economy was weakening in a hurry. But even though the economy is slowing down after its surge in 2017 and 2018, it should continue to do fairly well.

 

“It’s a slowdown from extremely high levels to healthy levels,” he said. “The globe isn’t going into a recession.”

 

The S&P 500 skidded 54.01 points, or 2.1 percent, at 2,545.94. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 507.53 points, or 2.1 percent, to 23,592.98. The Nasdaq composite fell 156.93 points, or 2.3 percent, to 6,753.73. The Russell 2000 index dipped 32.97 points, or 2.3 percent, to 1,378.14.

 

Following the health care ruling, hospital operator HCA dropped 2.8 percent to $123.1 and health insurer UnitedHealth lost 2.6 percent to $258.07. Centene, a health insurer that focuses on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s individual health insurance exchanges, fell 4.8 percent to $121.42 and Molina skidded 8.9 percent to $120.

 

Many experts expect the ruling will be overturned, but with the markets suffering steep declines in recent months, investors didn’t appear willing to wait and see.

 

Benchmark U.S. crude fell 2.6 percent to $49.88 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, dipped 1.1 percent to $59.61 a barrel in London. Weaker economic growth would mean less demand for oil, and traders have been concerned there is too much crude supply on the market. That’s chopped oil prices by one-third since early October.

 

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.86 percent from 2.89 percent.

 

The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again Wednesday, the fourth increase of this year. It’s been raising rates over the last three years, and investors will want to know if the Fed is scaling back its plans for further increases based on the turmoil in the stock market over the last few months and mounting evidence that world economic growth is slowing down.

 

Hackett, of Nationwide, said investors will be happy if the Fed adjusts its plans and projects fewer increases in interest rates next year. But he said investors might be startled if the Fed doesn’t raise rates this week, as has been widely expected.

 

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Parliament will vote Jan. 14 on her deal setting terms for Britain’s departure from the European Union. She canceled a vote on the deal last week because it was clear legislators were going to reject it. May insists she can save the deal, but pressure is mounting for either a vote by lawmakers or a new referendum on the issue.

 

Britain is scheduled to leave the EU in late March, and if it does so without a deal in place governing its trade and economic relationships with the bloc, it could bring huge disruptions to the British and European economies and financial markets.

 

Germany’s DAX lost 0.9 percent. That means the DAX, which represents Europe’s largest single economy, is also in a bear market. France’s CAC 40 and Britain’s FTSE 100 both fell 1.1 percent.

 

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index added 0.6 percent and the Kospi in South Korea gained 0.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was less than 0.1 percent lower. Both the Kospi and Hang Seng are in bear markets as well.

 

In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline shed 1.7 percent to $1.41 a gallon and heating oil slid 1 percent to $1.83 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 7.8 percent to $3.53 per 1,000 cubic feet.

 

Gold rose 0.8 percent to $1,251.80 an ounce. Silver added 0.8 percent to $14.76 an ounce. Copper dipped 0.3 percent to $2.75 a pound.

 

The dollar slipped to 112.75 yen from 113.29 yen. The euro rose to $1.1350 from $1.1303. The British pound rose to $1.2629 from $1.2579.

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EU Agrees to Deal to Cut Greenhouse Emissions from Cars

The European Union agreed Monday to a goal of cutting carbon emissions from cars by 37.5 percent in a decade, finally settling differences between vehicle-producing countries and environmentally-conscious lawmakers.

The 28-nation bloc has been divided for months over how strict to be on CO2 emissions from vehicles as part of its push to reduce greenhouse gases overall by 40 percent by 2030.

Germany, with the EU’s biggest auto sector worth some 423 billion euros ($480 billion) in 2017, had warned tough targets and the drive toward more electric cars could harm its industry and cost jobs.

Representatives of the European Parliament and the EU countries finally struck a compromise Monday, after nine hours of talks, to cut emissions from cars by 37.5 percent and vans by 31 percent by 2030 compared with 2021.

There was also agreement on an interim target of a 15 percent cut for both cars and vans by 2025.

“This is an important signal in our fight against climate change,” said current EU president Austria’s Sustainability Minister Elisabeth Koestinger.

But Brussels-based green lobbying group Transport & Environment expressed disappointment the deal was not even more ambitious.

“Europe is shifting up a gear in the race to produce zero-emission cars. The new law means by 2030 around a third of new cars will be electric or hydrogen-powered,” said its clean vehicles director, Greg Archer. “That’s progress, but it’s not fast enough to hit our climate goals.”

The compromise was tougher than the original EU executive proposal of an emissions decline of 30 percent compared to 2021.

Germany had endorsed that, but a push by several EU countries, including the Netherlands and France, raised the target for EU countries to 35 percent. The EU Parliament had wanted 40 percent, so in the end, they split the difference.

The German automobile association (VDA) said the new legislation would set high demands while doing little to promote or provide incentives for switching to electric vehicles.

EU countries were among nearly 200 that agreed Saturday to rules for implementing the 2015 Paris climate accord at a U.N. conference in Poland.

“Today’s successful outcome is even more important in view of this weekend’s conclusions … in Katowice. It clearly shows, once again, our unwavering commitment to the Paris Agreement,” EU Climate Commissioner Arias Canete said.

EU countries are separately considering the extent to which truck emissions should be cut, with a debate due Thursday.

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Trump Plans to Create Unified US Space Command

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order before the end of the year creating a U.S. Space Command as a major military command.

Vice President Mike Pence will make the announcement Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, two U.S. officials said, and Trump could sign the order as soon as Tuesday.

The move is separate from Trump’s goal of creating a “Space Force” as an independent armed service branch, but could be a step in that direction.

The U.S. Air Force’s existing Space Command would be a key component of the new joint entity, raising space to the same status as U.S. Cyber Command.

Pence to meet with Joint Chiefs

According to U.S. officials, Pence will be at the Pentagon on Tuesday and will meet with the Joint Chiefs. Space Command is expected to be among the issues discussed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The move would actually recreate a U.S. Space Command, which existed from 1985 to 2002. It was disbanded in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks so that U.S. Northern Command could be established, focusing on defense of the homeland. 

Although Space Command went away, its functions did not. They were absorbed by U.S. Strategic Command, and the Air Force retained its lead role in space through Air Force Space Command.

 

 

 

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Google to Spend $1 Billion on New Campus in New York

Alphabet’s Google is investing more than $1 billion on a new campus in New York, becoming the second major technology company after Amazon to pick America’s financial capital to expand and create thousands of jobs.

The 1.7 million-square-foot campus, called Google Hudson Square, will include leased properties at Hudson Street and Washington Street, the company said in a blog post Monday. The new campus will be the main location for Google’s advertising sales division, the Global Business Organization.

Google hopes to start moving into two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by a Washington Street in 2022 and will have the capacity to more than double its New York headcount, currently more than 7,000, in the next 10 years.

The company’s plans to invest outside its home base mirror those of other U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc, which said last week it would spend $1 billion to build a new 133-acre campus in Austin, Texas.

Last month, Amazon.com Inc said it would open offices in New York and the Washington, D.C. area, creating more than 25,000 jobs.

Mountain View, California-based Google’s move to invest in prime real estate on the lower west side of Manhattan also underscores the growing importance of New York as a hub for innovation and an incubator for technology companies.

With a plethora of white-collar workers and good infrastructure, the city provides a better option to other places that would require more investment.

“We’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it,” said Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Alphabet and Google.

It is a “fairly sensible” move for Google given the amount of available talent pool, Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell said.

It also makes sense for Google as New York has been the center for their core advertising business, Cordwell added.

U.S. corporations are also under pressure from the Trump administration to create more jobs domestically. Companies that have moved jobs overseas or closed factories have drawn sharp rebukes from President Donald Trump.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Google was nearing a deal to buy or lease an office building in New York City that could add space for more than 12,000 new workers.

Google’s first New York office at 111 Eighth Avenue is one of the city’s largest buildings that it bought in 2010 for $1.77 billion.

Earlier this year, the company announced a $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market. It also has leased space on Pier 57 jutting into the Hudson, which will create a four-block campus.

Google shares were down 1.7 percent at $1,032.84 amid a broader market sell-off.

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Everything You Need for Christmas

At more than one hectare under one roof, Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland promotes itself as the largest Christmas store in the world. Erika Celeste visited the store in Frankenmuth, Michigan for a tour through the eyes of some of its smallest customers, children!

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Israeli Spacecraft Gets Special Passenger Before Moon Journey

Israeli scientists making final preparations to launch the country’s first spacecraft to the moon added a special passenger on Monday that will accompany the journey.

A time capsule of three digital discs containing thousands of files was ceremoniously placed within the space pod by organizers wearing white dust coats at the plant where it is being constructed and tested.

They included drawings by children, pictures of Israeli symbols like the flag, Israeli songs and a booklet written by a Jewish man of his personal account of the Holocaust.

One of the founders of the nonprofit organization behind the launch, SpaceIL, compared the time capsule to prayers written on bits of paper that worshippers stuff into Jerusalem’s Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites.

“Today we are putting all those dreams on the spaceship like you would take a note and put it in the Kotel, wishing for a bright future,” said Yonatan Winetraub, using the Hebrew word for the Western Wall.

The spacecraft weighing some 585 kilograms (1,300 pounds) is expected to be launched in the coming months, though a precise date has not been set. Organizers are hoping for February.

It will be sent via a Falcon 9 rocket from American entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm and will take around a month and a half to arrive.

The launch will be from Cape Canaveral in the United States.

The cost of the project is some $95 million (84 million euros), with private philanthropists providing funding. SpaceIL has also partnered with state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, among the country’s largest defense firms.

‘Budget of almost $10 million’

Organizers say if successful it will not only be Israel’s first spacecraft to land on the moon, but also the first private one. Israel would be the fourth country to land on the moon.

It is called Beresheet, or Genesis in Hebrew, a name chosen by the public, and resembles a tall, oddly shaped table with round fuel tanks under the top.

It will measure the magnetic field as part of efforts to investigate how the moon was formed. The data will be shared with US space agency NASA.

“I’ve seen hundreds of kids look at the spacecraft and you see in their eyes that they say, ‘Wow, if a small country can do this maybe little old me can do almost anything’,” said Opher Doron, general manager of IAI’s space division.

The project began as part of the Google Lunar XPrize, which in 2010 offered $30 million in awards to encourage scientists and entrepreneurs to come up with relatively low-cost moon missions.

Although the Google prize expired in March without a winner having reached the moon, Israel’s team pledged to push forward.

Asked whether the project had so far gone as planned, SpaceIL co-founder Yariv Bash said “hell no.

“Back when we got started, we thought it was going to be a two-year project, the budget would be less than $10 million, and the spacecraft will weigh less than five kilograms,” he said.

“And here we are eight years later with a project with a budget of almost $100 million.”

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Popular US Outdoor Market Exudes Holiday Spirit

There’s something for everyone at the popular Downtown Holiday Market in Washington, D.C.

Spreading holiday cheer

Every Christmas season for the past 14 years, small business owners from across the United States and overseas come to the heart of the nation’s capital to sell their crafts in a festive, village environment.

Visiting the market has become a fun annual tradition for locals and a nice surprise discovery for many out-of-town visitors who chance upon the two-block-long event with its neatly arranged rows of white tents.

They come to enjoy live music and exotic street food, but also to take advantage of the chance to find the perfect holiday gift…and meet the artisans who made the one-of-a-kind products for purchase.

A personal touch

“It’s a way to find authentic things that are handmade that have meaning beyond what you can find in a department store,” says Colorado resident Barbara Joseph, who’s in town to visit her family.

Her daughter, Jessica Hutzell, describes it as a more personal shopping experience, “because you’re talking maybe directly to the artist, or the person that made the beautiful piece of wood that you’re going to serve your cheese on.”

The wooden boards she’s describing come from Jeffrey Oh, who works with wood sourced from all corners of the U.S. in his DC area shop. There’s a photo in his booth of renowned Chef Jose Andres holding one of Oh’s signature boards, which he sells in a variety of wood grains, colors and textures.

Blazing glass

Glass artist Ryan Eicher drew a small crowd as he carefully aimed an open flame at a small piece of glass he was shaping into a sphere.

“I’m doing flame working,” he explained as he rotated the object at the end of a glass rod. “I’m making a glass pendant with a torch.”

“For me, being able to be out here and meet people and have them appreciate what I do, means a lot,” he says. “And I think the fact that I’m out here actually blowing glass helps people gain an appreciation for what I do and to understand the work and the effort that goes into each piece. It can be hard to really understand that without seeing the process.”

“It’s also a good sales tactic!” he added with a smile.

Crossing borders

Hector Zarate represents 17 native Peruvian artisans whose one-of-a-kind creations include ornaments, mirrors, and hand-woven alpaca clothing.

He says people enjoy meeting — or learning about — the people behind the products. “Anybody can shop online, anybody can go to a mall, but coming here makes it a very unique experience and a chance to buy something truly unique,” he said.

 

“I think the idea of engaging one-on-one with the artist, with the sources, with the people that represent the artist here is very important to them,” he added. “They feel connected, they feel like they’re supporting local businesses in a more direct way.”

Canadian visitor Kathryn was one of those people. After perusing the shelves at Zarate’s booth, she ended up buying a hand-woven scarf made of soft wool from a baby alpaca.

She excitedly lifted the new purchase from her shopping bag and explained how happy she was to have bought it. “I’d only gotten five or six stalls in, and here I am, buying something!”

Home-grown goodies and hoodies

Like-minded customers also enjoyed the experience of browsing through the covered booths while being able to talk with vendors about their handicrafts.

One customer found it hard to choose a scent among so many choices at a specialty soap shop. Another shopper, a soon-to-be-grandmother, couldn’t decide which onesie to buy for her unborn granddaughter. So she bought all three varieties. And a group of young women seemed to enjoy debating the definition of the perfect pair of silver earrings.

And that is a win-win experience for vendors and customers alike, says event co-founder and organizer Michael Berman.

“We do something a little bit different here where we really focus on the entrepreneurs as small-businesses, the artisans, the creators of their own products. So we really have unique items and unique gifts that you can’t find anywhere else. So in addition to the customer experiencing talking to the maker that you can’t do at a mall, it’s also this great interactive, festive atmosphere outside and is joyful and is fun and there’s something for everybody.”

Trendy arts

For some vendors, this year’s market also provided an opportunity to sell items that reflected the mood of the country.

Maryland-based Chouquette Chocolates, for example, developed a new line of artisan chocolates called “Phenomenal Women,” in honor of women “who have inspired us,” said Sue Cassidy, director of sales at the company.

One of the portraits molded in chocolate is of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Our stores demanded that [her chocolates] have their own box, so she now has her own box and we can’t keep them in stock,” she said. “They are just selling like crazy!”

During its 31-day run, organizers expect more than 10,000 people will visit the market every day before it closes on December 23.

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Nissan Board Meets, no Chairman Picked to replace Ghosn

Nissan’s board met Monday but failed to pick a new chairman to replace Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested last month on charges of violating financial regulations, saying more discussion was needed.

 

Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa told reporters that the board approved a special committee of outsiders to strengthen governance at the company. A date for the selection of a chairman was not decided.

 

“We plan to be cautious in this process, and I do not plan to rush this,” Saikawa said.

 

The recommendations for beefing up governance are due in March, and Saikawa said he was willing to wait until then to choose a chairman.

 

The board meeting came amid an unfolding scandal that threatens the Japanese automaker’s two-decade alliance with Renault SA of France and its global brand, and highlights shoddy governance at the manufacturer of the Leaf electric car.

 

Ghosn and another board member Greg Kelly were formally charged last week with falsifying financial reports in underreporting Ghosn’s income by about 5 billion yen ($44 million) from 2011 to 2015. They were arrested Nov. 19 by Tokyo prosecutors and remain in detention.

 

A source close to Ghosn’s family says Ghosn is innocent, as the alleged income was never decided upon or paid. Aubrey Harwell, the U.S. lawyer for Kelly, an American, says he is innocent, and that Nissan insiders and outside experts had advised him that the financial reporting was proper.

 

The chairman must be selected from among the board members. Three outside board members — race-car driver Keiko Ihara, Masakazu Toyoda, an academic, and Jean-Baptiste Duzan, formerly of Renault — are making that decision.

 

The special committee for governance includes the three outside board members and four other outsiders, including former judge Seiichiro Nishioka.

 

One candidate for chairman is Saikawa, who was hand-picked by Ghosn to succeed him as chief executive. He has denounced Ghosn and Kelly as the “masterminds” in a scheme to falsify income reports and abuse company money and assets.

 

Renault has kept Ghosn as chief executive and chairman, saying its investigation has not found wrongdoing in the awarding of Ghosn’s compensation.

 

Nissan Motor Co.’s allegations also include million-dollar homes in several nations, including France, Japan, Brazil, Lebanon and the Netherlands, purchased by Nissan or a subsidiary and used by Ghosn.

 

Wrangling over a home in Rio de Janeiro has developed into a court battle in Brazil, with Nissan seeking to block Ghosn’s family from retrieving items.

 

Ghosn was born in Brazil of Lebanese ancestry and holds French citizenship. He was sent in by Renault in 1999 to turn around Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

 

It’s unclear when Ghosn and Kelly may be released, with Tokyo prosecutors saying they are a flight risk.

 

 

 

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