2019年5月25日 星期六

Latest News Clips 2019.05.27




1.      Theresa May’s Resignation Throws a Fractured Britain Into Further Turmoil
Prime Minister Theresa May outside 10 Downing Street in London on Friday.

       

The New York Times  May 24, 2019
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May announced her resignation on Friday after three years of trying and failing to pull Britain out of the European Union, throwing her country into an unpredictable situation and setting off a bare-knuckled contest among other Conservative lawmakers to replace her.
As she stood behind a lectern outside 10 Downing Street, Mrs. May admitted that a different leader was needed to shepherd the split, known as Brexit. But she also warned that the unyielding stance taken by the hard-line factions of lawmakers who had proved her undoing would have to change.
“To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not,” Mrs. May said. “Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.”

Whether such compromise is even possible in Britain’s polarized politics is unclear at best.
Brexit has splintered both the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party into warring factions since the referendum that narrowly approved the departure on June 23, 2016. A second referendum that could keep Britain in the European Union remains a distant possibility.

But many Conservative lawmakers have grown more hard-line during Mrs. May’s long, fractious tenure and now support leaving the bloc with no withdrawal deal at all — a move opposed by a majority in Parliament and one that most analysts warn could bring dire economic consequences.
Mrs. May’s departure, eagerly anticipated even by members of her own cabinet, is certain to mean a politically charged summer in Britain. Mrs. May said she would step down as Conservative Party leader on June 7, a few days after President Trump makes an official state visit. The contest to succeed her will begin the following week, and Mrs. May will remain in office until her successor is chosen.
Brexit, meanwhile, will remain in a state of suspended animation until a new leader is chosen. Britain was originally scheduled to leave the European bloc on March 29, but the deadline was extended to Oct. 31after Parliament refused three times to pass the withdrawal agreement that Mrs. May had negotiated with European leaders.
Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and a hard-line supporter of Brexit, on Friday signaled an unflinching attitude, foreshadowing the tone for a leadership contest. He is a leading contender to replace Mrs. May.

“We will leave the E.U. on Oct. 31, deal or no deal,” Mr. Johnson told an economic conference. “The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal.”
Opposition figures relished Mrs. May’s departure. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader who has sparred relentlessly with the prime minister in the House of Commons, described her resignation as an indictment of a Conservative Party riven for decades by the issue of Britain’s membership in the European Union.
Mr. Corbyn said she had “now accepted what the country has known for months: She cannot govern, and nor can her divided and disintegrating party.”
Lawmakers from Mrs. May’s own side were more generous, despite many of them having been involved in back-room machinations to oust her and having already begun campaigning in private to succeed her. Mrs. May’s government — deeply divided, and sometimes chaotic — suffered around three dozen ministerial resignations during her tenure.
An abandoned customs post on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The border is probably the toughest challenge in Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times

2.      How Trump Wins Next Year
What’s happened in India and Australia is a warning to the left.
The New York Times   May 24, 2019

President Trump at a rally in Montoursville, Pa., on Monday.CreditCreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
More than 600 million Indians cast their ballots over the past six weeks in the largest democratic election in the world. Donald Trump won.
A week ago, several million Australians went to the polls in another touchstone election. Trump won.
Citizens of European Union member states are voting in elections for the mostly toothless, but symbolically significant, European Parliament. Here, too, Trumpism will mark its territory.
Legislative elections in the Philippines this month, which further cemented the rule of Rodrigo Duterte, were another win for Trumpism. Ditto for Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election in Israel last month, the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil last October, and Italy’s elevation of Matteo Salvini several months before that.
If past is prologue, expect the Trumpiest Tory — Boris Johnson — to succeed Theresa May as prime minister of Britain, too.

In 2016, at a campaign rally in Albany, Trump warned: “We’re gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore.”
Tell us about it.
Trump’s name, of course, was on none of the ballots in these recent elections. His critics should take no comfort in that fact.
In India, Narendra Modi won his re-election largely on the strength of his appeals to Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment. In Australia, incumbent Scott Morrison ran against the high cost of climate action, including in lost jobs, and won a stunning upset. In the U.K., Trump surrogate Nigel Farage looks like he and his Brexit Party will be the runaway victors in the European elections. In Brazil and the Philippines, the political appeal of Bolsonaro and Duterte seems to be inversely correlated to their respect for human rights and the rule of law, to say nothing of modern ethical pieties.
The common thread here isn’t just right-wing populism. It’s contempt for the ideology of them before us: of the immigrant before the native-born; of the global or transnational interest before the national or local one; of racial or ethnic or sexual minorities before the majority; of the transgressive before the normal. It’s a revolt against the people who say: Pay an immediate and visible price for a long-term and invisible good. It’s hatred of those who think they can define that good, while expecting someone else to pay for it.
When protests erupted last year in France over Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise gas prices for the sake of the climate, one gilets jaunes slogan captured the core complaint: “Macron is concerned with the end of the world,” it went, while “we are concerned with the end of the month.”

This is a potent form of politics, and it’s why I suspect Trump will be re-elected next year barring an economic meltdown or foreign-policy shock. You may think (as I often do) that the administration is a daily carnival of shame. You may also think that conservatives are even guiltier than liberals and progressives of them-before-us politics: the 1-percenters before the 99 percent; the big corporations before the little guy, and so on.
But the left has the deeper problem. That’s partly because it self-consciously approaches politics as a struggle against selfishness, and partly because it has invested itself so deeply, and increasingly inflexibly, on issues such as climate change or immigration. Whatever else might be said about this, it’s a recipe for nonstop political defeat leavened only by a sensation of moral superiority.
Progressives are now speeding, Thelma and Louise style, toward the same cliff they went over in the 1970s and ’80s. But unlike the ’80s, when conservatives held formidable principles about economic freedom and Western unity, the left is flailing in the face of a new right that is increasingly nativist, illiberal, lawless, and buffoonish. It’s losing to losers.
It needn’t be this way. The most successful left-of-center leaders of the past 30 years were Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. They believed in the benefits of free markets, the importance of law and order, the superiority of Western values, and a healthy respect for the moral reflexes of ordinary people. Within that framework, they were able to achieve important liberal victories.
Political blunders and personal shortcomings? Many. But neither man would ever have been bested by someone like Trump.
Anyone who thinks the most important political task of the next few years is to defeat Trump in the United States and his epigones abroad must give an honest account of their stunning electoral successes. Plenty has been said about the effects of demagoguery and bigotry in driving these Trumpian victories, and the cultural, social, and economic insecurities that fuel populist anxiety. Not so often mentioned is that the secret of success lies also in having opponents who are even less appealing.
In the contest of ugly, the left keeps winning. To repurpose that line from Trump, “Please, please, it’s too much winning.”

3.      How do you get children to eat vegetables?
Try not to stress – it’s a phase most kids grow out of
The Guardian  24 May 2019 
 ‘Steams green vegetables for just long enough to get them tender, then toss them in olive oil, lemon juice, a pinch of sea salt and a hint of pepper.’ Photograph: amie Grill/Getty Images
My kids won’t eat fresh vegetables, no matter how hard I try. How do I get them to eat their greens?
Talk about asking the impossible, Annelise. Your guess is as good as mine, but at least you can take some comfort in the fact that you are not alone (and remember, anyone who says their little darling has cheerfully wolfed down cabbage since infancy is lying).
Cooks and restaurateurs are never the best people to talk to about tricky customers – they tend to get a bit sweary – but some are mothers and fathers, too, so I asked Feast’s own crew of exasperated parents how they cope. Like everyone who has ever tried to feed a recalcitrant child, Thomasina Miersresorts to underhand tactics. “I use every trick in the book,” she says. “The more children try vegetables, the more they’ll eat them … in the end.”
That includes extortion – “Bribe them with TV, sweets, anything” – as well as tough love: the Miers brood don’t get pudding unless they’ve eaten their greens (“Hardcore, maybe, but it works”). All three have now “slowly gone over to the green side”, and eat vegetables without protest. Well, almost. “It is a war of attrition, so get your tongs at the ready and wear those babies down.”

A golden rule is not to expect children to eat anything you wouldn’t put in your own mouth
Yotam Ottolenghi adopts similar covert strategies. “‘This’ll make you big and strong’ works. Sometimes,” the father of two says. Another ploy is to insist “that a particular dish ‘is only for grown-ups’. That’s like a red rag to a bull for my little boys.”
More practically, he’s learned that thinly sliced french beans tend to go unnoticed in stews and sauces; the same goes for the likes of diced carrot and courgette, so long as they’re not visible in the end result. “Best of all, they take no time to cook, so you can add them last minute.”
Another golden rule is not to expect children to eat anything you wouldn’t put in your own mouth. “Who wants mushy, over-boiled, insipid broccoli with no seasoning?” Miers asks. She steams green vegetables for just long enough to get them tender – “thereby preserving their nutrients, which, after all, is the point” – then tosses them in olive oil, lemon juice, a pinch of sea salt and a hint of pepper. “Better still, get the kids to dress and toss their greens themselves.” After that, it’s all about persevering (over and over and over again, in all likelihood).
Meera Sodha and her young daughter, meanwhile, are big fans of Veg Power’s Eat Them to Defeat Them initiative. “It’s supported by councils up and down the country, and nearly all the supermarkets, to get children eating more vegetables,” Sodha says. “The idea is, if it’s fun, kids will eat vegetables.” The vegpower.org.uk website comes complete with downloadable bright, child-friendly posters that might, just might, encourage the ungrateful little so-and-sos to open their minds, and mouths, to everything from peas to squash.
Failing that, channel Rachel Roddy and try not to stress. It’s just a phase they’ll grow out of (fingers crossed). “Paint chips green and kid yourself they’re veg,” she laughs. That’s easier said than done if, like Roddy, your seven-year-old won’t eat cooked veg at all (so much for the fabled Italian diet, eh?). “I make him try everything, but he always does this retching thing. Except, randomly, with minestrone, which he’ll eat with lots of cheese.”
Roddy Jr is less picky about raw veg. “Cucumber, red pepper, peas in their pods, carrots, little gem hearts … most kids will eat some raw veg,” his mother sighs. “I often put some out and see what happens. At the very least, I or the tortoise will eat it.”




2019年5月18日 星期六

Latest News Clips 2019.05.20




1.      I.M. Pei, Master Architect Whose Buildings Dazzled the World, Dies at 102
 
The National Gallery project helped Mr. Pei win the commission to renovate the Louvre in Paris. The 70-foot-high glass pyramid appalled preservationists, but the public eventually warmed to it.CreditClaude Paris/Associated Press

The New York Times  May 16, 2019
I. M. Pei, who began his long career designing buildings for a New York real estate developer and ended it as one of the most revered architects in the world, died early Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 102.

His death was confirmed by his son Li Chung Pei, who is also an architect and known as Sandi. He said his father had recently celebrated his birthday with a family dinner.
Best known for designing the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris, Mr. Pei was one of the few architects who were equally attractive to real estate developers, corporate chieftains and art museum boards (the third group, of course, often made up of members of the first two). And all of his work — from his commercial skyscrapers to his art museums — represented a careful balance of the cutting edge and the conservative.


   

Mr. Pei’s addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, known as the East Building, is made from massive blocks of Tennessee marble arranged around a triangular courtyard. It was a rare example of a modernist structure that appeared so permanent and well crafted that even lovers of traditional architecture were smitten.CreditCarol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge, via Getty Images

Mr. Pei remained a committed modernist, and while none of his buildings could ever be called old-fashioned or traditional, his particular brand of modernism — clean, reserved, sharp-edged and unapologetic in its use of simple geometries and its aspirations to monumentality — sometimes seemed to be a throwback, at least when compared with the latest architectural trends.

This hardly bothered him. What he valued most in architecture, he said, was that it “stand the test of time.”
He maintained that he wanted not just to solve problems but also to produce “an architecture of ideas.” He worried, he added, “that ideas and professional practice do not intersect enough.”
Mr. Pei (pronounced pay), who was born in China and moved to the United States in the 1930s, was hired by William Zeckendorf in 1948, shortly after he received his graduate degree in architecture from Harvard, to oversee the design of buildings produced by Zeckendorf’s firm, Webb & Knapp.

At a time when most of his Harvard classmates considered themselves fortunate to get to design a single-family house or two, Mr. Pei quickly found himself engaged in the design of high-rise buildings, and he used that experience as a springboard to establish his own firm, I. M. Pei & Associates, which he set up in 1955 with Henry Cobb and Eason Leonard, the team he had assembled at Webb & Knapp.

In its early years, I. M. Pei & Associates mainly executed projects for Zeckendorf, including Kips Bay Plaza in New York, finished in 1963; Society Hill Towers in Philadelphia (1964); and Silver Towers in New York (1967). All were notable for their gridded concrete facades.
The firm became fully independent from Webb & Knapp in 1960, by which time Mr. Pei, a cultivated man whose understated manner and easy charm masked an intense, competitive ambition, was winning commissions for major projects that had nothing to do with Zeckendorf. Among these were the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., completed in 1967, and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse and the Des Moines Art Center, both finished in 1968.

They were the first in a series of museums he designed that would come to include the East Building (1978) and the Louvre pyramid (1989) as well as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, for which he designed what amounted to a huge glass tent in 1995. It was perhaps his most surprising commission.

2.      Why the US-China trade war won't last
CNN   May 14, 2019

New York (CNN Business)The United States and China don't just coexist. Their massive economies are deeply intertwined in ways that make the intensifying trade war unsustainable.
China's booming middle class is a critical growth engine for Boeing (BA), Apple, Nike (NKE) and other American brands. China is expected to keep growing in importance as a buyer. And America's insatiable appetite for cheap goods has created a Chinese factory juggernaut that employs millions of workers.
The world's two largest economies are each other's biggest trading partners. Nearly $700 billion in goods were sent between China and the United States in 2018 alone. And with $1.1 trillion of Treasuries, China is America's largest foreign creditor.

The United States has legitimate complaints about China's trading practices, and persuading China to open its market to American sellers is an important goal now and for the future.
But China and America need one another. The tit-for-tat tariff battle is threatening one of the world's vital economic relationships — and because of their size, the global economy. At a time when the two nations should be forging rules for the next 20 years, they are pointing a gun at one another.
Trade wars are simply bad economics."
," DAVID KELLY, CHIEF GLOBAL STRATEGIST AT JPMORGAN FUNDS
"We have to learn how to live with each other," said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at SunTrust.
For good reason, the breakdown of the US-China relationship is spooking investors and economists alike.
The Dow plunged 617 points, or 2.4%, on Monday after China retaliated against tariffs announced last week. Beijing vowed to impose higher levies on $60 billion of US goods, everything from cotton and aircraft parts to wine and machinery.
"The risk of a full-blown trade war has materially increased," Tao Wang, chief China economist at UBS, wrote in a report to clients on Monday.
'Monstrous' risk
Tariffs are the weapons of choice as both sides attempt to improve their negotiating leverage. Consumers and businesses find themselves caught in the crossfire. The levies will increase costs, muddle supply chains and drive up debilitating uncertainty.
UBS cut its 2019 GDP growth forecast for China from 6.4% to 6.2%. While Beijing will try to soften the blow with stimulus, UBS said growth could slip below 6% in 2019 and 2020 if the trade war deepens.

"The risk is monstrous. It's very troubling," said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors.
The interconnectedness of China and the United States has been driven in part by the millions of people in China that have been lifted out of poverty.
"You have an expanding middle class wealth effect," said Kotok, who also serves as director of the Global Interdependence Center, an organization advocating for the expansion of free trade.
Sneakers, iPhones and LNG
China's customers are using their newfound wealth to buy more cars, iPhones and sneakers. That's a massive growth opportunity for General Motors (GM), Apple and Nike.
"A lot of China's rising middle class loves US brands," said SunTrust's Lerner.
And China's consumers are flying more, making the country Boeing's most important export market. But there's growing fear that Boeing could be used as a bargaining chip in the trade battle.

The United States sent $120.3 billion of goods to China in 2018, making it the No. 3 market behind only Canada and Mexico, according to the US Census Bureau.
America's energy boom makes it a great fit to help solve China's pollution problem. The United States is the world's fastest exporter of liquefied natural gas, a cleaner fuel that can help countries transition away from coal.
However, China's purchases of LNG have slowed during the trade war. And that trend may continue because Beijing on Monday raised tariffs on LNG from 10% to 25%.
China's transition to a consumer-led economy creates massive opportunities for foreign companies, especially US ones.
By 2027, rapid income growth will lift about 180 million low- and lower-middle-income households to a higher income bracket, according to a study by Bain & Co.
Much of the focus during the trade war has been about the goods exchanged between both nations. But American businesses are already cashing in by providing services to China's masses — and they're eager to sell even more as China matures.
While the United States has long had a goods deficit with China, it ran a services surplus of $40.5 billion in 2018. Leading services exports to China include travel, computer software and trademarks, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.
China has long been a tantalizing place for American banks and investment firms. Financial services companies, hungry to lend to businesses and provide investment banking expertise, are pushing for greater access to China's underserved market.
China reliant on American consumers
At the same time, American companies have relied on China as a source of relatively affordable labor and parts. Retailers import merchandise from China. Apple (AAPL) imports iPhones that are assembled in China by manufacturers like Foxconn.
All told, the United States imported $539.5 billion of goods from China in 2018, according to the Census Bureau.

3.      DEADLY GERMS, LOST CURES
Citrus Farmers Facing Deadly Bacteria Turn to Antibiotics, Alarming Health Officials
In its decision to approve two drugs for orange and grapefruit trees, the E.P.A. largely ignored objections from the C.D.C. and the F.D.A., which fear that expanding their use in cash crops could fuel antibiotic resistance in humans.
Supported by
  May 17, 2019

ZOLFO SPRINGS, Fla. — A pernicious disease is eating away at Roy Petteway’s orange trees. The bacterial infection, transmitted by a tiny winged insect from China, has evaded all efforts to contain it, decimating Florida’s citrus industry and forcing scores of growers out of business.
In a last-ditch attempt to slow the infection, Mr. Petteway revved up his industrial sprayer one recent afternoon and doused the trees with a novel pesticide: antibiotics used to treat syphilis, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and a number of other illnesses in humans.
“These bactericides give us hope,” said Mr. Petteway’s son, R. Roy, 33, as he watched his father treat the family’s trees, some of them 50 years old. “Because right now, it’s like we’re doing the doggy paddle without a life preserver and swallowing water.”
Since 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency has allowed Florida citrus farmers to use the drugs, streptomycin and oxytetracycline, on an emergency basis, but the agency is now significantly expanding their permitted use across 764,000 acres in California, Texas and other citrus-producing states. The agency approved the expanded use despite strenuous objections from the Food and Drug Administrationand the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warn that the heavy use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture could spur germs to mutate so they become resistant to the drugs, threatening the lives of millions of people.

The E.P.A. has proposed allowing as much as 650,000 pounds of streptomycin to be sprayed on citrus crops each year. By comparison, Americans annually use 14,000 pounds of aminoglycosides, the class of antibiotics that includes streptomycin.
   
An infected piece of fruit with signs of citrus greening disease. Its bitter-tasting juice made it unsellable.
Roy Petteway spraying orange groves with bactericides on his farm in Zolfo Springs, Fla.

The European Union has banned the agricultural use of both streptomycin and oxytetracycline. So, too, has Brazil, where orange growers are battling the same bacterial scourge, called huanglongbing, also commonly known as citrus greening disease.