Baltic Dry Index. 1391 -04 Brent Crude 76.50
"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader
that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then
tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," trade adviser
Peter Navarro told Fox News.
Talking about Prime Minister
Trudeau. Team Trump Loses It.
It is June 2018, and lucky us, we have hit
summit season. First it was the G-7 Finance Ministers, where the G-6 ganged up
on the G-1. Then came the Car Crash “Great Leaders” summit in Quebec Canada,
where President Trump took on a paranoid dislike of Canada’s Prime Minister
Trudeau. With Trump as his enemy, things have never looked better for Trudeau
in Canada.
Below, the G-7 if it continues at all, will
never be the same again.
The whole history
of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at
first, and deadly afterwards.
Walter Bagehot.
'Special place in hell': Trump advisers blast Trudeau for comments at G7 summit
PM didn't respond to reporters' questions on the matter Sunday morning
· CBC News ·
June 10, 2018 / 5:24 PM / Updated
an hour ago
U.S.-Canada dispute escalates after tense G7; Trump renews criticism of Trudeau
Trudeau takes his turn as Trump’s principal antagonist, and Canadians rally around him
June 10 at 5:47 PM
June 10, 2018 / 8:49 PM / Updated
8 hours ago
Merkel - EU will act against U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminium
BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe will implement
counter-measures against U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium just like Canada,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, voicing regret about President
Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw support for a G7 communique.
----The summit did not mark the end of the transatlantic partnership between Europe and the U.S., Merkel said. But she repeated that Europe could no longer rely on its ally and should take its fate into its own hands.
Like Canada, the European Union is preparing counter-measures against
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, in line with World Trade
Organisation rules, Merkel said.
More
Today is the final day of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation summit, where a much friendlier tone prevails among
China, Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan, among others. More on that below in
Crooks Corner.
June 11, 2018 / 4:09 AM / Updated
an hour ago
Chinese newspapers contrast security summit success with G7 disarray
SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - State-run Chinese newspapers on Monday crowed about a weekend
meeting of a regional security bloc hosted by China, painting it as a
harmonious, anti-protectionist counterpoint to the G7 summit in Canada that was
marred by acrimony.
The Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid run by the ruling Communist
Party’s main newspaper, the People’s Daily, asked why the G7 had “ended in
disarray” while the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the port
city of Qingdao was “full of enthusiasm and ambition”.
“The key lies in that the Shanghai Spirit, featuring mutual trust,
mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and
pursuit of common development, echoes the theme of the era, in which
unilateralism can hardly prevail,” it said.
More
Tomorrow, President Trump summits with North
Korean dictator, mass murderer Kim. Sort of Henry the 8th summits
with Ivan the Terrible. Outcome unpredictable.
It is likely to be the big news all day, all
week, and if it all goes horribly wrong, or fantastically right, all summer. We
can all only hope for a much more successful summit in Singapore.
If President Trump really can finally end the
Korean war and denuclearise the Korean peninsula, he will probably be the most
deserving recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize of all time, although disgracefully,
he’d probably have to share it with Kim Jong Un.
Domestically, Republicans
would probably sweep the November mid-term elections.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
June 10, 2018 / 4:48 AM / Updated
31 minutes ago
North Korean, U.S. officials meet to narrow differences on eve of Trump-Kim summit
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. and North
Korean officials were in talks in Singapore on Monday in a late bid to narrow
differences before their leaders hold an unprecedented summit meeting aimed at
finding ways to end a nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in the
tropical city-state on Sunday for the historic meeting, which will be the first
time leaders of the two countries have come face-to-face.
Key gaps remain over what denuclearisation would entail for two
countries that have been enemies since the 1950-1953 Korean War, and the
officials were trying to push the agenda forward before the leaders meet on
Tuesday.
Commenting for the first time on the agenda, North Korea’s state-run
KCNA news agency said the two sides would exchange “wide-ranging and profound
views” to re-set relations. It heralded the summit as part of a “changed era”.
Discussions would focus on “the issue of building a permanent and
durable peace-keeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula, the issue of realising
the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and other issues of mutual
concern,” KCNA said.
In the lead up to the summit, North Korea
rejected any unilateral nuclear disarmament, and KCNA’s reference to
denuclearisation of the peninsula has historically meant that Pyongyang wants
the United States to remove its “nuclear umbrella” protecting South Korea and
Japan.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is also in Singapore, said in a
tweet that Washington was “committed to the complete, verifiable, irreversible
denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.
Many experts on North Korea, one of the most insular and unpredictable
countries in the world, remain sceptical Kim will ever completely abandon its
cherished nuclear weapons. They believe Kim’s latest engagement is aimed at
getting the United States to ease the crippling sanctions that have squeezed
the impoverished country.
More
Thankfully a little “normality” surfaces on
Thursday, when the World Cup tournament commences in Russia, US sanctions or
not. Two thirds of the world’s attention gets diverted from summits to, in the
age of Trump, something slightly more predictable.
Russia’s World Cup Is a Windfall in Spite of U.S. Sanctions
By Andre Tartar,
Sam Dodge and Jeremy Scott Diamond
June 8, 2018
The World
Cup is expected to draw millions of fans to matches over the course
of the 2018 tournament. To get ready, Russia has spent more than $11 billion on
infrastructure, including money that went toward construction, renovation and
preparations at 12 stadiums and 13 major airports.Among those 25 critical facilities, at least 12 are tied to people or companies who are now under U.S. sanctions. Such infrastructure improvements are often key to successful tournament bids, and long outlive any short-term spending and tourism boost tied to the games themselves.
Fans and teams won’t be violating any sanctions by coming to the championship, but the map below shows how inextricably linked the now-sanctioned entities have been to the production of this World Cup.
Thirteen Russian individuals and firms with World Cup ties have been
included on the U.S. Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked
Persons List (normally abbreviated as SDN) over the past four years, related to
Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine or its alleged meddling in the U.S.
presidential election. Under the sanctions, their assets are blocked and
U.S.-based parties generally can’t do business with them. The most notable are
Russia’s sixth-richest man, Viktor Vekselberg, who controls airports in four
World Cup-match cities through his Renova group plus Gennady Timchenko, the
country’s 11th-richest man, who owns a contractor that helped build the Nizhny
Novgorod and Volgograd stadiums. Moscow’s Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports and
Spartak Stadium are also linked to SDN-listed persons and entities.
Of the companies tagged with more limited Ukraine-related sectoral
sanctions, the most prominent is state-run Gazprom, the world’s biggest
natural-gas exporter and the only Russian World Cup FIFA partner. The Saint
Petersburg Stadium was transferred to the FC Zenit soccer team, backed by
Gazprom, as part of a concession agreement.
More
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't
resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow
naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
Lao Tzu
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks today, there’s plenty of time for them
later this week. Today, with all eyes on tomorrow’s USA – N. Korea summit in
Singapore, and the G-7 Canadian car crash summit fading from memory, (some
hope,) today we focus on the other annual summit that gets very little western
coverage.
The annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
summit, taking place this year in China. With President Trump not a member, the
summit has a pretty good chance of being polite, civilised, and successful.
Whatever is in the final communique can probably be relied upon for more than a
few hours too. Ever so slowly but happening, our planet is becoming
multi-polar.
SCO Summit 2018: Xi Jinping says China rejects 'selfish' trade policies, calls for building an open global economy
Jun 10,
2018 11:01:59 IST
Qingdao: Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose country is locked
in a high-stakes trade dispute with the United States, on Sunday said China
rejects "selfish, shortsighted" trade policies, and called for
building an open global economy.
Xi did not mention the United States during a speech at a summit meeting
of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security bloc led by
China and Russia.
“We reject selfish, shortsighted, closed, narrow policies, (we) uphold
World Trade Organisation rules, support a multilateral trade system, and
building an open world economy,” Xi said in a speech in the port city of
Qingdao.
The United States and China have threatened tit-for-tat tariffs on goods
worth up to $150 billion each, as President Donald Trump has pushed Beijing to
open its economy further and address the United States’ large trade deficit
with China.
Xi spoke hours after Trump said he was backing out of the Group of Seven
communique, thwarting what appeared to be a fragile consensus on a trade
dispute between Washington and its top allies.
“We must... discard Cold War thinking, group confrontation; we object to
acts of getting one’s own absolute security at the cost of other countries'
security,” Xi said.
The SCO was launched in 2001 to combat radical Islam and other security
concerns in China, Russia and across Central Asia.
It added two new members, India and Pakistan, last year and Iran has
been knocking at the door. Tehran is currently an observer rather than a full
member of a bloc that also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics.
Xi also said China would offer the
equivalent of 30 billion yuan ($4.7 billion) in loans under a framework formed
by SCO countries.
SCO summit 2018 LIVE updates: New people-to-people mechanism on cards
Modi and Xi are expected to explore ways to deepen ties in areas of trade and investment, besides reviewing overall India-China bilateral cooperation. Catch all the live updates here
BS Web Team | Agencies | New Delhi
Last Updated at June 9, 2018 20:54 IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on
Saturday met Chinese President Xi Jinping soon after his arrival in the port city
of Qingdao, in China, where the two leaders are to take stock of the progress
in implementing the decisions they had taken at their informal summit in Wuhan.
India and China also signed agreements in the presence of PM Narendra Modi and President of China Xi Jinping.
India and China also signed agreements in the presence of PM Narendra Modi and President of China Xi Jinping.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit,
which will explore concrete ways to bolster cooperation in the fight against
terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation, besides deliberating on pressing
global issues.
Modi and Xi are expected to explore ways to deepen ties in
areas of trade and investment, besides reviewing the overall India-China
bilateral cooperation.
The meeting is taking place weeks after the two leaders held
an informal summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan during which they
exchanged views on solidifying the relationship between the two Asian powers.
Modi and Xi are likely to take stock of progress in the
implementation of the decisions they had taken at the Wuhan informal summit,
official sources said.
Modi is expected to hold nearly half a dozen bilateral
meetings with leaders of other SCO countries.
It is for the first time that the Indian prime minister will
be attending the SCO Summit after India, along with Pakistan, became
a full-fledged member of the grouping, which has been increasingly seen as a
counter to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
June 10, 2018 / 8:16 AM
Russia's Putin would be ready to host G7 in Moscow
QINGDAO,
China (Reuters) - Russia did not choose to leave the G7 and would be happy to
host its members in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday when asked
about U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Russia should have been at
its latest meeting.
Trump said on Friday that Russia should have attended a Group of Seven
summit in Canada over the weekend, an idea that even Moscow seemed to reject saying
it was focused on other formats. Russia was pushed out of the then G8 due to
its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea four years ago.
“We did not (choose to) leave it, our colleagues refused to come to
Russia due to known reasons at some point. Please, we will be glad to see
everyone here in Moscow,” Putin told reporters at a briefing in China’s city of
Qingdao.
He, however, added that the combined purchasing power of the Russia and
China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a meeting of which he was
attending in China, outstripped the G7. The latter currently includes the
United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Italy, France and Germany.
----He said a meeting could take place as soon as the United States was ready and that many European countries had offered their help in making it happen.
Putin, who has previously told Europe he had warned them about the trade
threat Washington posed to them, also said that if Trump imposed new tariffs on
imports of foreign cars it would have serious consequences for the global
economy and especially for Europe.
China, Russia Cementing Rising Eastern Bloc as Trump Rattles G-7
Bloomberg News
Updated on 11 June 2018, 03:57 GMT+1
"We
are in a world of irredeemable paper money - a state of affairs unprecedented
in history." John Exter
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as
they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy
mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
Engineers upgrade ancient, sun-powered tech to purify water with near-perfect efficiency
Low-cost device -- shaped like a birdhouse -- could help provide drinking water to people affected by natural disasters
Date:
May 3, 2018
Source:
University at Buffalo
Summary:
The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water is ancient.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle reportedly described such a process more than
2,000 years ago. Now, researchers are bringing this technology into the modern
age, using it to sanitize water at what they report to be record-breaking
rates.
The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water is
ancient. The Greek philosopher Aristotle reportedly described such a process
more than 2,000 years ago.
Now, researchers are bringing this technology into the modern age, using
it to sanitize water at what they report to be record-breaking rates.
By draping black, carbon-dipped paper in a triangular shape and using it
to both absorb and vaporize water, they have developed a method for using
sunlight to generate clean water with near-perfect efficiency.
"Our technique is able to produce drinking water at a faster pace
than is theoretically calculated under natural sunlight," says lead
researcher Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, associate professor of electrical engineering in
the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
As Gan explains, "Usually, when solar energy is used to evaporate
water, some of the energy is wasted as heat is lost to the surrounding
environment. This makes the process less than 100 percent efficient. Our system
has a way of drawing heat in from the surrounding environment, allowing us to
achieve near-perfect efficiency."
The low-cost technology could provide drinking water in regions where
resources are scarce, or where natural disasters have struck. The advancements
are described in a study published on May 3 in the journal Advanced Science.
The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was a
collaboration between UB, Fudan University in China and the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. UB electrical engineering PhD graduate Haomin Song and PhD
candidate Youhai Liu were the study's first authors.
Gan, Song and other colleagues have launched a startup, Sunny Clean
Water, to bring the invention to people who need it. With support from the NSF
Small Business Innovation Research program, the company is integrating the new
evaporation system into a prototype of a solar still, a sun-powered water
purifier.
"When you talk to government officials or nonprofits working in
disaster zones, they want to know: 'How much water can you generate every day?'
We have a strategy to boost daily performance," Song says. "With a
solar still the size of a mini fridge, we estimate that we can generate 10 to
20 liters of clean water every single day."
Modernizing an age-old technology
Solar stills have been around for a long time. These devices use the
sun's heat to evaporate water, leaving salt, bacteria and dirt behind. Then,
the water vapor cools and returns to a liquid state, at which point it's
collected in a clean container.
The technique has many advantages. It's simple, and the power source --
the sun -- is available just about everywhere. But unfortunately, even the
latest solar still models are somewhat inefficient at vaporizing water.
Gan's team addressed this challenge through a neat, counterintuitive
trick: They increased the efficiency of their evaporation system by cooling it
down.
A central component of their technology is a sheet of carbon-dipped paper
that is folded into an upside-down "V" shape, like the roof of a
birdhouse. The bottom edges of the paper hang in a pool of water, soaking up
the fluid like a napkin. At the same time, the carbon coating absorbs solar
energy and transforms it into heat for evaporation.
----Using
this set-up, researchers evaporated the equivalent of 2.2 liters of water per
hour for every square meter of area illuminated by the regular sun, higher than
the theoretical upper limit of 1.68 liters, according to the new study.
More
If you do not change
direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May.
DJIA: 24,416 +201 Down. NASDAQ:
7,442 +276 Down. SP500: 2,705 +180 Down.
All
three slow indicators moved down in March and have continued down in April and
May. For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash
signal.
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