South Africa Topics
South Africa Government
Building a Capable State – Hellen Zille, Premier of Western Cape
Marcopolis presents the South Africa Report focused on topics such as investments, doing business, economy and regional integration, featuring interviews with various South African leaders. The sectors under review in this issue are agriculture, hospitality, industry, oil & gas, retail and many more.
Top Interviews
Helen Zille, Premier of Western Cape
Interview with Helen Zille, Premier of Western Cape
First of all, Cape Town as a metropolis has a character which is very different from any other city in Africa. How well positioned is South Africa’s “Mother City” for the rapidly changing global business environment?
I think very well, and we’re also the best prepared city in Africa for the global business environment. That is because we’ve put an enormous amount of investment into preparing for the knowledge economy of the 21st century. We’ve made absolutely sure to invest in broadband, high-speed universal broadband. We’ve created an ecosystem for the development of technologies, very specifically. We are looking at competitive areas. Not only looking at, but created an environment for them to flourish, especially tourism and agro-processing. We’ve got a very big agricultural sector and all of the institutions, especially the financial institutions and others that are necessary to form the basis of the venture into the interior. As it were, African company is doing business with the rapidly developing market of Africa.
Why is it, do you think, that some provinces seem to be performing so much better than others? And of the nine, where would you currently rank the Western Cape?
The Western Cape is number one on every single indicator, including economic growth, and including employment. So we do rank number one, and it’s because we’ve put an enormous effort into building a capable state. Very few people appreciate just how important a capable state is in creating a conducive business environment, and we’ve put an enormous effort into doing just that.
So to what extent would you attribute the provincial success, then, as a consequence of your strong brand of governance?
Well, there is a very close link, because in all the analysis that is currently being done about what creates a context for success in a democracy, it’s the combination of a capable state, the rule of law, accountability and an open market system. And those are the factors that we’ve tried to bring together, and have succeeded in bringing together in the Western Cape.
The Western Cape is number one on every single indicator, including economic growth, and including employment... and it’s because we’ve put an enormous effort into building a capable state.
Would you say that a strong presence of public confidence forms, really, the root of long-term stability in investment?
Absolutely. Long-term confidence is the heart of an economy. But long-term confidence only exists if people have confidence that the government is capable, that services work, that education functions, that hospitals function, that public transport works, that roads are accessible and available. All of these things are a function of good government. So public confidence is a direct outflow of competent government.
Do you believe that the Western Cape has a higher degree of business confidence from an international perspective?
There is a business index done of business confidence in the various provinces and cities of South Africa. And again, the Western Cape ranks number 1, at least 10 percentage points higher than the rest of the country.
And what are the specific reforms needed, do you think, for the province to meet your intended goals of obviously increasing export, and creating jobs, and attracting higher rates of investment?
We have to make it easier to invest, and that requires changes in national government policy. But we’re using every opportunity we can to make those changes locally, and we’ve created a much more conducive environment. For example, by cutting red tape to a minimum. We have an anti-red tape unit that has an 85% success rate. It has done an enormous amount of work with businesses to cut red tape. We are absolutely sure to create an infrastructure environment that works very well. We have incentives for investment in particular locations. And, perhaps, top of the list at the moment is that we offer energy security, which every single company needs in South Africa. Energy security. We have alternative energy sources developed here to ensure that we don’t go into stage 1 load shedding when the rest of the country does. And equally, we have very good institutions for skills development, that make it possible for many businesses to invest in the Western Cape, because we can create the power plan of skills they need to make that investment profitable.
What’s the key framework of the Western Cape Government’s Provincial Strategic Plans? Can you just outline those for us quickly?
Yes. Well, we have an overall goal of becoming the best-run regional government in the world, and we are putting enormous effort into that using all the international metrics that we can, and I’m very confident that we’re on our way. We have various key provincial strategic goals. The first one covers the area of growth and jobs. The second covers the area of education and skills development. The third covers the area of health and safety. The fourth covers the area of the built environment, and the integration of our city, and the infrastructure. And the fifth is the underpinning of the administration that has to be superbly well-run. So all of those together create the Provincial Strategic Plan, and then we also have a number of game changers that we’ve lifted out of that.
One is, for example, energy security, and we’ve made major strides in that, and energy is now secure in this city and, by and large, in the province. Secondly, broadband and Internet access and e-learning, very particularly. A huge game changer, which is coming to fruition very well. Thirdly, a better living model for the integration and the densification of large, underdeveloped areas of our city. Fourthly, we have a very important game changer in the afterschool area, where we are ensuring that young people can stay in the afternoon and have creative and functional activities, so they don’t drop out and get into the clutches of gangs, don’t get into drugs, etc. And then very crucially we have a game changer on alcohol abuse, because in that particular context we find that substance abuse is one of the big drags on people’s potential and on our potential to grow. So those are the game changers and specific areas that we’ve pulled out, and that we are working on very hard to change the game, as it were, within the framework of the strategic plan that I’ve just spoken about.
And South Africa’s export-orientated industries, they’ve obviously tended to shift towards the port cities and the coastal industrial belts. In light of this, what is your vision for the role of, for example, the Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone as the basis for the Western Cape heavy industry? How much more momentum is this going to add to that shift?
Well, the entire West Coast belt, from Cape Town through Atlantis up to Saldanha Bay, is the entire industrial hub that we’re going to be developing, and is, in fact, developing very quickly. So not long ago, Atlantis was effectively a ghost town. Now you can hardly get industrial land there anymore as people understand that this corridor, from Cape Town to Saldanha Bay, with this magnificent deep-water port and the special economic zone and all the incentives that are brought to bear on investment there, what potential that holds.
The deepest in the Western Hemisphere.
Yes, it’s an amazingly, natural deep-water port, which opens up that entire hinterland. And so, it’s a great natural opportunity for us, and we’ve put all the infrastructure in to ensure that it works really well.
The Project Khulisa, which is the centrepiece of your economic strategy, is tasked with accelerating growth and jobs, and obviously tourism, agri-business, oil and gas exploration, and production of upstream services. Firstly, is it on schedule? And to what extent do you think this program will maintain and increase the overall economic momentum and competency of the Western Cape?
Good. Super. I’ll tell you a little bit about Khulisa. As long as I don’t have lipstick on my teeth, I’ll tell you about Khulisa. Khulisa is a word in isiXhosa and it means “cause to grow,” to create the context for growth. And we used that specific word because it means what it says. Now we have identified the key areas of great competitive advantage for the Western Cape. One is our incredible environment. We have what I think, and what many other people think, is the most beautiful city and the most beautiful province in the world. And many, many people want to come and see it. We’ve been ranked the number one tourist destination in the world by many, many rating agencies, and newspapers, and other outlets. And so, our tourism is way ahead of schedule. Tourism has been one of the key pillars of our economy, and it’s growing exponentially. But we’ve added other legs to that tourism strategy, particularly with our magnificent conference centre. It’s the world’s favourite long-haul conference centre and destination. It’s a wonderful venue and it’s fully booked up years in advance. So it’s a really extraordinary facility that we have here. So the tourism leg of Khulisa is not only well on schedule, it’s ahead of schedule, and it’s diversifying into all areas of tourism, not just holiday tourism.
Then the second area is agri-processing. Now we’ve got a terrible drought in South Africa at the moment, but fortunately the Western Cape has not been as badly hit as the rest of the country, which means that our key areas--particularly, for example, deciduous fruit, grapes, wine, various others such as lamb, Karoo lamb, other things like canola oil, the wheat fields on the Swartland and other things--they’ve been doing very well. And what we’re trying to do is beneficiate our agriproducts, and of course the export of beneficiated products is going extraordinarily well, including the beneficiation of waste of the agricultural products. So we’re getting to do a lot with the waste and create a new product base from that. Then more and more we’ve got the big logistics companies in the Western Cape, which means that even for the agriproduce that is produced in the rest of the country, most of it is transported through the Western Cape because of the sophistication of our logistics infrastructure. So, for example, we produce now bananas, but 85% of South Africa’s bananas are exported through the Western Cape. So that’s another very important part of the value add that we do.
Then the third crucial component is the specialized markets in Africa. One of the big under catered for markets is the halal market, and the Western Cape is known to be very halal friendly. So we have a big halal capacity, a big halal industry, and we’re working with the Malaysians currently to develop a big halal food processing plant around the airport that will service a lot of Africa. It’s an enormous market. Very little of the halal food sold in Africa is actually certified halal, but we have everything that’s needed to certify food being halal. And that is one of the big, for example, niche areas of beneficiation that we’re getting into.
To come back specifically to Saldanha, because it’s obviously kind of a core plank of the Khulisa aspect—do you think this project will gain international recognition for the Western Cape as a hyperdynamic investment destination destination?
I have absolutely no doubt that with good governance, and increasing investor confidence, and Africa being the one hinterland that still has a massive undeveloped, but developing, market, Saldanha is set to take off. It’s beautifully positioned, it has got extraordinary infrastructure, and there are lots of incentives attached to investment in Saldanha. It should have gone a bit quicker if we hadn’t had the plummet of the oil price. So we’ve got these huge gas reserves off the West Coast, but I’ve noticed through my six decades of life that prices of commodities are not statistic. They go up and down. And we’ll be perfectly positioned on the next upturn of, for example, liquefied natural gas and other gas sources, which are rapidly replacing fossil fuels or the traditional oil fossil fuels, that we’ll be extraordinarily well-situated and located to drive that throughout Africa. So I think it’s a little bit of a lull, but I have very little doubt that when that comes on-stream again we’ll be booming. The best investments are at a downturn in the cycle, because that’s when you prepare for the upturn. And when the upturn comes and everybody else is scrambling to get in line with the upturn, you’ve already got the platform for liftoff.
South Africa is known for being highly innovative when it comes to energy, technology, and so forth, to come on to another other couple of issues now. How much emphasis & importance does your administration place on the role of ICT, medical R&D, and other high-tech processes in further broadening the industrial core of the Western Cape, and what are some of the key catalysts for this?
We put a very strong emphasis on hi-tech, and indeed, that is precisely what our broadband rollout has been about. We want to enable ICTs, Information and Communication Technologies, as the bedrock of why services work so well in the Western Cape. Now we have a very advanced medical sector. You will remember that not only was the first heart transplant conducted in South Africa, buy many, many Nobel laureates from the Western Cape in medicine have really taken the world by storm with the CAT scan and various other things that were developed here. And equally, we have world-class hospitals for third world diseases, which is a unique position for us. So, for example, at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, which is a world-leading paediatric hospital, we have state-of-the-art technology, but we’re also developing state-of-the-art mechanisms for conditions that you don’t see often in developed countries. So, for example, there was a whole new technique developed to replace a child’s oesophagus, because we have the phenomenon where the children still drink paraffin and the entire oesophagus gets burnt out. And we’ve been able to develop a mechanism to reconstruct the oesophagus, which is unique in the world, as well. And there are many, many other areas that we’re working on, including HIV/AIDS research, which we have a very advanced treatment regime. In fact, it’s the most advanced in the world. So we’ve got…
In the Western Cape.
Yes. So we’ve got an extraordinary amount of expertise being brought to bear on the developing challenges, health challenges, of a country such as ours. And the rest of the world and first world countries can benefit from them because many of the challenges we face aren’t confined to Africa, and they’re going to become internationally globalized sooner than most people think.
And you’re on record as saying that it’s been downhill for the ANC since 2004.
Do you believe the DA can go on to be a party of national government in 2019, and would the ANC even accept defeat at the national level?
I have no doubt that the DA can be a national government, that’s why I’ve been working on what I’ve been working on for so many years. Because if you can’t have a change of government with the ballot box, democracy can’t succeed, and accountability can’t work. And if you don’t have accountability, you don’t have a capable state. And if you don’t have a capable state, you don’t have a growing economy. So of course I believe the DA can become a national government, and we will become a national government. I can’t predict exactly when, but I do think that it’s been downhill for the ANC since 2004, and I think that will accelerate. And I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if we had the conditions necessary for a coalition government, at the very least, nationally by 2019.
Finally, it’s been said that in a country devoid of many present-day role models, your only real equals are Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. We’d just like to know what’s driven you as a leader?
Well, I would not try ever to make that kind of comparison. What’s driven me in my life is the belief that South Africa can be a really successful democracy, and that no other country has ever managed to make a transition to a successful democracy with a growing economy starting off the same base as we did, with the inequality, with the history of oppression, with the plurality of our society, with the cultural contestation in our society, with the complexity of our history. And it has to be possible, because a lot of people depend on us succeeding. Not only in South Africa, but on the continent of Africa as well. I was brought up in a home which valued concepts such as the open society, the rule of law, valued democracy very, very highly, and understood that partition was not an option for South Africa, and that we had to make a government in one country in which everybody could live a life they valued and use their freedoms. And I believe that is possible against all the odds, and that’s what drives me.
South Africa seems to consistently have bad press. We saw the recent skulduggery over the finance ministry. Do you think that Zuma really has crossed the Rubicon now that he can never really recover from?
I think Jacob Zuma crossed that Rubicon a long time ago, that he won’t be able to recover from. It takes a long time, though, for it to become apparent in the African National Congress because it is essentially an authoritarian organization. So long after a ruler has lost credibility in that organization, people are still paying homage and making obeisance because that’s the culture internally of the ANC. We’re an open-society party in the DA, and so when, as leader, I made a mistake, people wouldn’t hesitate to tell me and challenge me because that was the entire internal culture of the party. In the ANC, long after the leader has lost credibility and support, people are still doing their salaams and bowing and scraping.
He seems to posess an iron grip, and given his former role as the head of Inkanda knew where all the bodies were buried. But fundamentally, as outsiders looking at South Africa, we’ve been in your country for several months now, and it seems to us that it’s essentially a one-party state. The only thing really holding the government to account is the Judiciary, even the minutiae of government policy is scrutinized by the Judiciary.
Well, we have a constitution and a constitutional court. That was the real revolution in South Africa: constitutional court. And no government can pass any law or any regulation if it doesn’t pass constitutional muster. But to make the constitutional court function you need active citizenry. And I believe it’s quite wrong to say that the constitutional court is the only thing holding the government to account. In 1994, we were a 1.7% party. We now touch 25%, which is one out of four voters. We have pulled the ANC close to 50% in several provinces, and I have no doubt that we will pull them under 50% in metropolitan areas. For the very first time, the ANC is frightened of the voters, and that is what you need to make a democracy work. Do you think that if President Zuma wasn’t frightened of the voters in this coming election, he would even be considering paying back any of the money? No, he wouldn’t. It’s because for the first time they see defeat potentially looming in critical metropolitan areas such as Nelson Mandela Metro around Port Elizabeth and Tshwane Metro around Pretoria. That is why they are running scared; they’re going to start losing elections.
Do you think he will pay any actual attention to this grassroots “Zuma must fall”? Does that resonate with him?
Well, the only meaningful “Zuma must fall” movement is through the ballot box. So let’s see if that translates adequately into the ballot box. People must understand that protesting in the street and a hashtag on Twitter is no substitute for their vote. And so, we’ll see in the local government election whether people are serious about accountability.
Who is his most likely successor?
In terms of his most likely successor, President Zuma would like his ex-wife to be. My husband always says to me, “Who would want their ex-wife to succeed them?” I don't know, but he clearly would like his ex-wife to succeed him. I suppose keeping it in the family is always helpful. But many people prefer Cyril Ramaphosa, and of course I prefer Mmusi Maimane. So we’ll see.
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1MATCH URL: https://assets.rappler.com/9A1B9ECFAF8A4077AB46DECAA39F0201/img/83C72AB3E4604946B6E420798DD13BCE/afp-chile-pinera-000_1LN6WT-20191023.jpg
Chile's president says police may have violated protocols
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's statement comes after Amnesty International released a report denouncing a 'deliberate policy' of wounding protesters during the unrest that broke out last month, resulting in 22 deaths
@afp
Published 6:53 PM, November 22, 2019
Updated 6:54 PM, November 22, 2019
SEBASTIAN PINERA. Handout picture released by the Chilean Presidency showing Chilean President Sebastian Pinera speaking to the nation in Santiago, on October 22, 2019. Handout photo by the Chilean Presidency/AFP
SANTIAGO, Chile – Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Thursday, November 21, that police may have broken protocols in responding to a month of protests, and prosecutors will investigate whether they violated human rights.
His comments came after Amnesty International released a report denouncing a "deliberate policy" of wounding protesters during the unrest that broke out last month and has so far resulted in 22 deaths.
"If those protocols were not met, and I think it is possible that in some cases they were not met, that will be investigated by the prosecutor's office and will be sanctioned by the courts of justice," Pinera said in a meeting with foreign media.
Furious Chileans have been protesting against social and economic inequality, and an entrenched political elite, among other issues.
The National Institute of Human Rights has reported about 2,000 injuries, while health organizations claim that more than 280 people have suffered eye damage from shotgun pellets.
No police officers have been killed in the demonstrations but the human rights institute said some 1,600 officers have been wounded.
The prosecutor's office reported that from October 31, around 1,089 criminal investigations have been opened into allegations of police violence, 24 for alleged instances of torture and 9 for cases of alleged sexual abuse or rape.
Pinera has previously condemned what he said were abuses committed by police, and promised "there will be no impunity" for both protesters and security forces.
Chile's police had on Tuesday announced they would suspend the use of birdshot against protesters, following an outcry over the more than 200 demonstrators who have suffered eye injuries.
The Amnesty report released Thursday said Chilean security forces are "carrying out widespread attacks using unnecessary and excessive force with the intention of injuring and punishing protesters."
"The intention of the Chilean security forces is clear: to injure demonstrators in order to discourage protest, even to the extent of using torture and sexual violence against protesters," Amnesty's Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a statement.
The report also found 23 instances of human rights violations, which it said were "not isolated or sporadic incidents, but reveal a consistent pattern of violations throughout the country, indicating the modus operandi of the security forces."
The Chilean government "categorically rejects" the Amnesty report, Chile's human rights under-secretary Lorena Recabarren said in a press conference, while the Chilean police said that it had no "intention to harm" protesters.
Chile's military, which was deployed on the streets for the first nine days of the unrest after Pinera declared a state of emergency, also hit back at the Amnesty report.
"There was no armed forces policy of directing widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population," the army, navy and air force said in a joint statement.
Demonstrations continued on Thursday, with protesters looting and burning stores in a shopping center in the capital Santiago amid a demonstration against police abuses.
In Antofagasta in northern Chile, local television broadcast footage of a driver running down a group of people who were protesting, then fleeing the scene.
Police told AFP that the attack injured five people. The driver turned himself in hours later and was placed under arrest.
Lootings and riots were also reported in the port city of Valparaiso and in Concepcion, southern Chile's largest city. – Rappler.com
Filed under:Chile•Chile Police•Chile protests•Sebastian Pinera


UCLA makes all the adjustments in blowout win vs Huskers
UCLA scored a late touchdown in the first half to cut the Nebraska’s halftime lead from 21-3 down to 21-10. After a sluggish start, that touchdown allowed the Bruins to get to halftime with a little less pressure on them. UCLA also made the adjustments. The Bruins outscored the Huskers 28-0 in the third quarter and made it look as easy as that number would indicate. From there, the Bruins were set to score a bit of a statement with a 41-21 win at Nebraska.
UCLA was dominant after digging an early hole, perhaps a result of flying east to play an early game when the bodies were still on west coast time. As well as UCLA played, Nebraska played just as poorly. Quarterback Brett Hundley got off to a rough start but ended his day completing 16 of 24 passes for 294 yards and three touchdowns. He also added 61 yard on the ground and running back Jordan James led the Bruins with 105 rushing yards and a touchdown. The defense also cranked it up in the second half, limiting Nebraska running back Ameer Abdullah to 98 yards and not allowing a rushing touchdown. Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez had a solid first half with three touchdown passes but he and the entire Huskers offense stalled in the second half. Nebraska had to punt four times, lost a fumble and turned the football over on downs in the second half. Nebraska managed to put together just 140 yards of offense in the second half, 69 of which came on the lone promising possession that ended with a lost fumble. UCLA had over 200 yards of offense in the third quarter alone.
You can say a lot about UCLA’s ability to dig deep and gut this win after the week the team combined with having to play an early game on the road. But looking at the big picture for the Bruins, this could just be the next building block to emerging as a top threat out of the Pac 12.
Does this make UCLA the team to beat in the Pac 12? Not yet, but this is a pretty significant performance that could make them he obvious team to beat in the Pac 12 South. UCLA has played in the Pac 12 Championship Game each of the first two years it has existed and they could very well be on their way to a third trip. UCLA’s schedule is going to be challenging moving forward. Back-to-back games on the road in mid-October at Stanford and Oregon should not be wished on anyone, but UCLA has shown they can go on the road and compete in a big game and they are only improving.
Nebraska will get a chance to regroup a little bit next week with one more home game before hitting the bye week. South Dakota State will visit Lincoln next week, which would normally be penciled down as an automatic win. Unfortunately for Nebraska, South Dakota State entered this weekend ranked sixth in the FCS rankings, so the match-up may not be quite the pushover contest we typically expect when a power program takes on an FCS squad. Given the track record of some of the ranked FCS teams this month, who knows?
Tags: Ameer Abdullah, Brett Hundley, NEB, Taylor Martinez, UCLA


The Atlantic Hotel, Jersey has been featured in a short film for Barclays latest mortgages campaign in Jersey. In the film, Patrick Burke, owner and managing director of the family owned business, tells the story of the hotel and what makes it tick. The film serves as a window into the world of The Atlantic, where the team is described by Barclays as ‘Masters of their Craft’ and making hospitality an art.
Recounting the history behind the development of The Atlantic almost 50 years ago by his late father, Henry Burke, Patrick’s pride in continuing Henry’s legacy shines through. He explains how the story of The Atlantic is a story of Jersey; he is a passionate ambassador for his adopted home which he moved to with Henry 60 years ago. The more Patrick travels, the more he realises what a special place the island is, from its spectacular landscapes to its fiercely independent residents.
Patrick shares his belief that hotels are all about people, from those who own them, to those who work in them, supply them and of course, stay in them. He believes that his principal role as proprietor of the family owned Atlantic Hotel is to create a stage on which some very talented people can express themselves.
Patrick Burke comments: “Growing up in a hotel family it just seemed natural for me to follow in my father’s footsteps. Having trained in some of the best hotels in the country it was so special to spend time learning about the business from my father when I returned to the island in 1985. Henry’s vision was to create a hotel of international standard on one of the most stunning sites in the Channel Islands. I have now been in charge of the business for over 30 years and what I’ve done if anything over those years is to continue to evolve the property to maintain those standards. The Atlantic is a very special place and I am fortunate indeed to be surrounded by an incredibly talented team who make the hotel what it is. Ahead of the hotel’s 50th anniversary next year, we are thrilled to bits to have been recognised by Barclays as masters of our craft and we thank them for giving us this opportunity to tell our story.”
The Atlantic film is live on the Barclays Overseas website and social media channels as well as within the bank’s branch in St Helier.


New Grocery Stores Eyed for 2 Downtown Spaces; Could One Be Whole Foods?
Stephen Babcock
Grocers are among the many businesspeople who see opportunity in the new development sprouting up around downtown Baltimore. But even as deals in a pair of separate spaces on Fleet St. and N. Charles St. supposedly develop, officials haven’t been willing to put names to these potential grocery suitors.
Even though Whole Foods has already staked out territory in Harbor East, past talk suggests that the upscale, organic-focused chain could be the as-yet-unnamed grocery store that’s set to occupy a new development at the edge of Fells Point.
According to the Baltimore Guide, officials with The Bozzuto Group said a grocery store would be on the first floor of a new mostly-residential development that’s in the works for the corner of Central Ave. and Eden St. Residents from Fells Point asked if the grocer was a Whole Foods, but officials declined to comment.
The new development is moving onto the property as H&S Bakery is moving a distribution facility out (Baking operations will remain in Fells Point). In a 2013 Baltimore Sun article, H&S officials indicated they were planning to build a Whole Foods that was three times the size of the current location on the parking lot adjacent to the distribution center. Along with more space for healthy stuff, there could also be a 280 ft. building inspired by the sails of tall ships. If Whole Foods moves, that will trigger a new round of shuffling for the current Whole Foods space at Fleet and S. Exeter Sts.
Over on N. Charles St., a space that once housed a Fresh & Green’s also appears poised for redevelopment. According to the Baltimore Business Journal, an unnamed “regional grocery store chain” wants to take over the space at 222 N. Charles St.
There’s a central location, plenty of space and lots of potential customers. So what’s the problem? Turns out, the deal is on hold as Fresh & Green’s also wants to pass along the debt owed for the building’s 2007 renovation. Downtown Partnership’s Kirby Fowler tells BBJ he is attempting to negotiate with the building’s landlord. But until a compromise is worked out, it looks like the mystery chain can remain in the shadows.
Stephen Babcock is the editor of Technical.ly Baltimore and an editor-at-large of Baltimore Fishbowl.
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Avenches inauguration: a milestone in Nespresso success
08 June 2009 | Paudex, SWITZERLAND – Nestlé Nespresso today inaugurated its new Production and Distribution Centre in Avenches, Switzerland. The state of the art, CHF 300 Million facility brings together key elements of what has driven Nespresso’s success to date – highest quality, innovation and a passion for excellence – and places them at the heart of Nespresso’s future growth.
“Quality is fundamental to our continued success – our new Production and Distribution Centre brings quality and capacity to support our growth. Avenches provides the physical and technological resources together with leading expertise to manage – and further improve quality, at every step of the value chain, from cherry to cup, said Mr Richard Girardot, CEO of Nespresso.”
“The new Nespresso Production and Distribution Centre will function as a Coffee Centre of Excellence, by bringing together both the sensory expertise and operational processes at the highest possible level of quality to deliver the Nespresso ultimate coffee experience that consumers the world over enjoy and expect,” he said.
The new facility of 400,000 m3 is dedicated to the production and distribution of Nespresso business-to-consumer and business-to-business capsules. The site will generate 340 full-time jobs by the end of this year. This number will increase to up to 600 employees by the end of 2012. Nespresso will export to 50 markets from the Centre.
At the Inauguration Ceremony, Mr Girardot, accompanied by Petraea Heynike, Executive Vice President of Nestlé S.A. and Chairman of Nestlé Nespresso, hosted the Swiss Economic Affairs Minister Doris Leuthard and Jean-Claude Mermoud, Minister of Economic Affairs of the Canton de Vaud.
Built and operational in just 18 months, the Production and Distribution Centre in Avenches represents the passion for continuous innovation that are the hallmarks of Nespresso as a company. Incorporating leading technology, modern architectural design and the practical inclusion of sustainability principles such as rainwater collection for utility water and local community heat exchange, the Avenches Production and Distribution Centre illustrates the Nestlé Nespresso corporate philosophy of creating shared value.
Nespresso continues to invest in coffee excellence with the start of its planned extension
New Nestlé Nespresso Production Centre in Avenches, Switzerland


Lindsey Graham draws a Democratic challenger who mocks his ties to Trump
National reporter leading The Post's breaking political news team
May 29, 2019 at 1:54 PM EDT
Jaime Harrison, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, formally kicked off his campaign Wednesday to topple Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) with a video that highlights his humble roots and Graham’s evolving views on President Trump.
Harrison, who was the state party’s first black chairman and is a former aide to Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), has been encouraged to run by national party leaders in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998.
In his announcement video, Harrison highlighted his birth to a 16-year-old mother, his upbringing by his grandparents, his education at Yale University and Georgetown Law School and his return to South Carolina.
Boosted by Pence, Graham plays up his loyalty to Trump as he seeks a fourth term
The video also included clips of derogatory comments that Graham made about Trump as they both were pursuing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, including Graham labeling Trump “a kook,” “crazy” and “not fit to be president of the United States.”
“He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” Graham said in one highlighted clip.
In subsequent clips, Graham is shown saying, “No, I don’t think he’s a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot,” and that Trump “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”
“Here’s a guy who will say anything to stay in office,” Harrison said in the video. “Lindsey Graham can’t lead us any direction because he traded his moral compass for petty political gain.”
Graham, who is serving his third term, defeated his Democratic challenger in 2014 by more than 16 percentage points. Trump carried the state over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 14 percentage points.
In an interview with The Washington Post in March, as he was considering a Senate bid, Harrison said that Graham’s reelection “is not a slam dunk for him” given his emergence as a strong Trump ally.
“The refrain these days is: What’s happened to Lindsey?” Harrison said. “He’s won in the past with a coalition of country club Republicans, independents and some moderate or conservative Democrats. But he’s lost some of those middle-of-the-road voters.”
Graham kicked off his reelection campaign in March with a visit from Vice President Pence, who emphasized Graham’s loyalty to Trump.
Following Harrison’s announcement Wednesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sought to downplay his prospects.
“Harrison is a looney liberal who was hand-picked to run by radical Washington Democrats,” said NRSC spokesman Nathan Brand. “Lindsey Graham is one of the most popular U.S. Senators in the country because South Carolina voters know that he has delivered results and has been a tireless fighter for Palmetto State values.”
Robert Costa contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost


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FROM INDUSTRY PIONEERS TO CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS.
Mobile Systems Expert
The following are expert witnesses for mobile systems matters. Our experts cover the technologies of: wireless networks, wireless security, cellular, UI with deposition and testifying experience.
#1022 Professor in Computer Science this Expert has litigation experience in over eight cases, has three patents, recipient in over 63 grants and contracts. He has given or been on over 96 invited talks and panels and has written close to 300 publications.
Wireless Networks and Mobile Systems
Internet Quality of Support
#1027 Professor in Computer Science has written books and numerous papers covering computer and network security, operating systems, distributed systems, computer networks, and mobile computing.
Network security (IP spoofing, DDoS defense, botnets, worm defense)
Wireless networks and mobile computing
File systems and optimistic replication
Distributed systems security
Optimistic concurrency control mechanisms for parallel and distributed systems
#1030 Broad operating experience in senior technical roles at Fairchild, Intel, ESL/TRW, GTE, and three startup companies spanning the semiconductor, printing, and defense industries. Author and owner of 21 issued patents. Semiconductors and Electronic Packaging, Electro-mechanical systems and mobile systems/smart phones and ancillary devices. . He has written expert reports.
Electro-mechanical systems
Electronic packaging
Semiconductors packaging
#1041 Expert has a broad background includes 802.11 wireless, Linux and Android operating systems for smartphones. His litigation experience includes trial and deposition testimony, expert reports, as well as infringement and invalidity analysis, prior art searches, source code reviews, lab testing, and patent portfolio review. He holds 4 patents and has litigation experience in over 30 cases.
#1046 Consultant has over thirty years of experience in the field of electrical, RF and telecommunications engineering. He has worked for private organizations and has been a founder of several successful start-up telecommunications companies. Expert holds over 35 US and International Patents in the telecommunications field. He has a great deal of litigation experience along with testifying experience.
GPS technologies
Phones: standards, services, and systems
Wired technologies
#1051 Consultant holds an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. and has over 40 years of wireless telecommunication industry experience. He has invented over 30 patents and applications, lectured at respected institutes and has a great deal of litigation along with testifying experience.
Mobile phones and networks: LTE (4G), WCDMA – UMTS (3G), 3GPP HSDPA – HSUPA, Wimax (4G) LMDS OFDMA based
3GPP and 3GPP2 protocol stack MAC/RRC/RLC, smartphones, low power design, GUI
Software technologies: Voice applications, Parallel computing, Distributed computing, Mobile applications, C, C++, Matlab, Assembly, Client Server, Remote desktop, Voice streaming, Media streaming
Alliance: 3GPP HSPA/WLAN, Blue Tooth, BTLE, UWB, 802.16 WiMax
LBS: 3GPP GPS / 3GPP2 A-GPS, Location Based Services, LBS tracking, GPS database
Computer architecture: Processor design, DSP, RISC/CISC, Memory, hardware abstraction, Virtualization, Virtual machines
Mobile computing: 3GPP baseband processing, channel coding and modem, application processors, graphics processors, Display and power management
Music, Voice and Video coding and encoding, including MP3, MP2, VoIP, 3GPP AMR, 3GPP2 EVRC, WB
#1057 Consultant is a Professor Emeritus and specializes in the full spectrum of computer and network technologies. He has served as an expert witness on numerous cases where the technology has been applied to general computing platforms including: mainframes, servers, workstations, notebooks, set-top boxes, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, eBook readers, and embedded computers. He has a great deal of testifying experience.
Computer architecture and systems
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
Distributed objects
Distributed programming
Network applications and protocols
Web support and applications
#1072 Expert has been a fact witness and expert witness in half a dozen high profile patent cases in the mobile technology area that involved Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Motorola, Google, etc.
He was one of the initial developers who created one of the world’s first tablet computers in the late ‘80s and worked on the architecture of the ASP.Net. He holds several patents and has litigation and testifying experience.
PDA designed
#1073 Expert is a researcher in human‐computer interaction, he creates useful and usable interactive technologies that improve people’s access to and interaction with computers and information, particularly for impaired users or users in impairing situations. He combines computer science, interaction design, and psychology to invent new user interface technologies for desktop, web, mobile, and surface computing platforms. He also formally measures and models human performance with computing systems. Many of his contributions concern input via text entry, pointing, touch, and gesture, often but not exclusively for people with motor or sensory disabilities. He holds many patents and publications. He has expert witness experience.
Touch Gesture
#1081 Experience as a patent consulting expert for the Global Positioning System, GIS, Navigation, Telecom, Storage, and Embedded Computing industries. Expert has been deposed for an ITC matter.
User Interface design – embedded graphical and menu interfaces for mobile, GPS, robotic and security applications
GIS mapping software interface and design including Google Maps, Microsoft MapPoint – Bing Maps, Know-Where Systems, ArcView
GPS, Teleconferencing, Radar and wireless circuit design and signal processing algorithms
Software / algorithm development using C, C++, Java, Python, Perl
High performance computing architectures and switched fabrics
Database development using MySQL and Oracle
Communications protocols including TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, NTP, CDMA, GPRS, GSM and CDPD
Textual and Natural Language processing in Python
Enterprise network applications development using BSD sockets on Linux/Unix
Audio and Video CODECs
8/16/32/64 bit microprocessor circuitry design
#1082 Consultant holds a E.E. Ph.D. from a top Massachusetts university and is currently a professor teaching in the Electrical and Computer Engineering; Professor of Computer Science.
#1088 Consultant is a professor who has over 50 years of experience in communications research and development. In the last 20 years, his work has concentrated on new emerging mobile and wireless communications networks. His areas of expertise include communication theory and techniques, systems engineering, communication networks, digital telephony, wireless communications, radio-wave propagation, spread- spectrum, secure communications, and digital signal processing. He holds two U. S. Patents related to reliable digital transmission over wireless channels. He has published numerous journal and conference papers, and co-authored three books, as well as chapters in multi-author handbooks and encyclopedias.
#1102 Professor in Computer Science who focuses his research on wireless data communications mobile computing as well as software wed applications. This expert has numerous publications as well as books. He has a great deal of litigation experience with testifying experience.
Wireless Data Communications
#1103 Consultant is a professor with over 20 years of experience in the software industry and has been a contributor to multiple commercially successful consumer and enterprise applications. He is the author of numerous academic publications including a book on web technology. Consultant has a considerable amount of litigation experience and testifying experience.
Collaborative Filtering (Recommender Systems)
Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)
Information Retrieval and Web Search
Information Seeking and Web Use
Informetrics, Analytics and Behavioral Log Analysis
Knowledge Discovery in Databases / Data Mining
Knowledge Management Systems
#1116 Consultant is a professor of Electrical Engineering whose expertise is:
Computer Networks and Protocols, TCP/IP
Internet Applications, Web, Client-Server, VoIP, CDNs, and Video/Multimedia Networking
Networking Devices and Interfaces, Switches, and Routers
Telecommunication and Telephone Networks, PSTN and SS7, Internet Media Gateways
Wireless and Mobile Networks
He has worked on many litigation matters including ITC matters.
#1118 Consultant is a professor in Computer Science and Engineering which research interests are Network, Internet, telecommunications, and systems security, with interests in language-based security, voting systems, provenance, secure storage, cell phone operating systems and privacy. Consultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.
#1123 Consultant is a professor in electrical and computer Engineering He researches on wireless communications, mobility management, fast protocols, optical networks, and optical switching. Consultant is an author of numerous technical papers and holds eighteen patents in the fields of high-speed networking, wireless networks, and optical switching. His interests include: mobile and wireless communication and networks, biologically-inspired networks, and modeling of complex systems. This consultant has a great deal of litigation experience with testifying.
#1137 Consultant has over 35 years’ experience in electronics design, computer systems, communications systems, hardware, and software. He worked on packet-switching networks, including the ARPAnet and early TCP/IP systems at BBN in the 1970’s, custom Very-Large-Scale Integrated Circuits at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1981, designed the production Xerox single-chip Optical Mouse, assisted Jim Clark (later founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc.) in testing his first Geometry Engine chips, and led the custom chip design efforts for the Apple Macintosh team in 1982 – 1983. He also led Apple’s efforts to support TCP/IP, and ran Apple’s first internet commerce pilot program. He was Director of Technology at Netscape from 1996 – 1997. At Xerox, he also led initial deployment and internal communications efforts related to Ethernet. At Apple and at Netscape he was very active with standards efforts. He studied packet voice in a graduate seminar at MIT, and has also worked on wired and wireless communications systems, including 802.11. He combines a strong understanding of technology with an in-depth approach to business needs.
Consultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.
#1164 Consultant is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has over 25 years of experience in embedded systems development as a project/ development manager. His expertise includes: embedded systems, microprocessors, wireless, mobile communications, telecommunications and robotics. He has expert witness experience.
#1212 Consultant is a professor who has testified in federal court as an expert witness in the fields of computer science, computer engineering and software engineering. His research interests are primarily the many aspects of concurrent processing, with an emphasis on its formalization by means of programming, prototyping and specification formalisms with supporting tools.
#1457 Consultant is a professor in the department of electrical and computer Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of mobile and wireless networks with a focus on protocol design, performance evaluation, and at-scale field trials. Consultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.
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Temporarily out of stock: usually despatched in 10-14 days
The History of Oscar®-Winning Women
Stephen Tapert (author) Roxane Gay (Foreword by)
Publication Date: Nov 2019
The list of women who have won the coveted and legendary Academy Award for Best Actress is long and varied. This lavishly illustrated coffee table book offers a vital examination of the first 75 women to have won the Best Actress Oscar over the span of 90 years.
Ingrid Bergman. Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor. Jane Fonda. Meryl Streep. The list of women who have won the coveted and legendary Academy Award for Best Actress is long and varied. Through this illustrious roster we can trace the history of women in Hollywood, from the rise of Mary Pickford in the early 20th century to the #MeToo and Time's Up movements of today, which have galvanized women across the world to speak out for equal pay, respect, power, and opportunity.
This lavishly illustrated coffee table book offers a vital examination of the first 75 women to have won the Best Actress Oscar over the span of 90 years. From inaugural recipient Janet Gaynor to Frances McDormand's 2018 acceptance speech that assertively brought women to the forefront, Best Actress: The History of Oscar®-Winning Women serves to promote a new appreciation for the cinematic roles these women won for, as well as the real-life roles many of them played – and still play – in advancing women's rights and equality. Stories range from Bette Davis' groundbreaking battle against the studio system; to the cutting-edge wardrobes of Katharine Hepburn, Diane Keaton and Cher; to the historical significance of Halle Berry's victory; to the awareness raised around sexual violence by the performances of Jodie Foster, Brie Larson, and others.
Showcasing a dazzling collection of 200 photographs, many of which have never before been seen or published, Best Actress honors the legacies of these revered and extraordinary women while scrutinizing the roadblocks that they continue to overcome.
Reviewed in the New York Times:
"Open Tapert's elegant doorstopper of a coffee-table book and you'll find yourself face to face with Frances McDormand looking as if she has a trick up her sleeve. With her unspackled skin and gold ball earrings – the kind you get from the piercing kiosk at the mall – the two-time Oscar winner sets the real-life tone for Best Actress. Tapert, a film studies professor and an eight-year veteran of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is not a purveyor of headshots and puff pieces. He presents stars the way we want to see them: in action. There's Anne Bancroft wearing protective padding backstage while filming 1962's "The Miracle Worker"; there's Halle Berry gripping her statuette as she becomes the first – and so far only – black woman to win the best actress Oscar. The accompanying profiles are textured and timeless (Grace Kelly was fighting gender discrimination back in 1955), and Roxane Gay's frank foreword acknowledges the women who are not represented in these pages – and challenges the academy to right that wrong. Immediately."
97 black & white photographs, 103 colour photographs
Individual actors & performers Media studies Popular culture Gender studies: women Film guides & reviews Feminism & feminist theory
Stephen Tapert earned his M.A. from the University of Chicago. He worked for eight years at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where, as a museum researcher, he provided foundational work for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He subsequently curated an exhibition on the Best Actress Oscar winners at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Italy, and at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, Germany. He currently teaches film studies at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.


USDA's Censky Touts EPA Waivers Plan
Biofuel Leaders Point to Positives From Rocky 2019
The leader of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association said the industry needs to repair its relationship with the EPA.
Harvey Survivors Feel Grief, Distress
1/6/2018 | 12:06 PM CST
DALLAS (AP) -- Deb Eberhart couldn't sleep and was easily moved to tears as she worked to coordinate repairs to her Houston home in the months after flooding from Hurricane Harvey besieged it with 3-feet of water.
She clenched her jaw so hard that it hurt. She couldn't eat.
"I thought: 'Well, I'm not handling things as well as I should be,'" the 69-year-old retired teacher said.
Eberhart realized she needed help that had nothing to do with construction crews and insurance adjustors. So she joined storm survivors seeking help from therapists in the wake of the destructive winds and heavy rains in August that caused more than 80 deaths and an estimated $150 billion in damage in Texas.
Experts say the emotional distress caused by such an event can take many forms — grief, anxiety, depression, even fear of storms — and progress through several stages over a year or longer. Even months after the storm hit, new patients have been coming to free counseling being offered by private and government-funded programs.
In the small coastal town of Port Aransas, which experienced major destruction after Harvey made landfall nearby, psychologist Andrew Reichert said he began noticing a shift about a month ago in what was bringing people in.
"It's gone from kind of the immediate stress and shock to more just kind of a chronic stress and long-haul type of thing," Reichert said. "A lot of my work is helping people prioritize and focus on what they can control versus what they can't."
Eberhart headed to Austin before the storm hit, even though she thought her Houston home would be fine. She later received photos of the flooding at her house from a neighbor who used a boat. When she returned home, she was heartbroken by what she found: "Mud and slush, and everything just gone."
She lived with her son and his roommates in Houston for about three weeks, then she moved into a starkly furnished apartment near her home. The stress increased amid the frustrations of being displaced, remodeling work and the grief from losing irreplaceable items such as furniture that belonged to her mother and childhood photographs.
"I think after a while you just have to accept the fact that maybe you're just stuck in a place, and somebody can just get you over the hump and it would be a therapist," Eberhart said.
She had her first counseling session in November with Judith Andrews, a psychologist who co-chairs the Texas Psychological Association's disaster resource network. Eberhart said talking to Andrews helped her realize she shouldn't be mad at herself for still being upset and that she needed to takes steps to deal with the stress, such as starting to exercise again.
Andrews, whose organization is offering free counseling sessions, said survivors feel grief over the loss of both property and stability. "They're grieving about the loss of what was," she said.
They usually first experience the survival-focused "heroic phase," when people are responding with high intensity, helping others to survive or being rescued, Andrews said. A few weeks later comes the "honeymoon" phase, which can last up to six months as people are buoyed by feelings of solidarity and bonding from their shared experience.
But anger, resentment and feelings of isolation and abandonment can creep in during the "disillusionment" phase, when survivors struggle to rebuild. The "reconstruction" phase follows — and can last for years — as victims learn to accept that everything won't be the same.
"What happens when people don't process it by talking, then they really don't get rid of it," Andrews said. She noted that most people won't need long-term counseling but many "would certainly benefit by short-term therapy."
The Texas Education Agency is heading a task force to mobilize the mental health response in schools. One goal is to help teachers understand how to spot children who might benefit from talking to someone, said Andy Keller, a psychologist and president and chief executive officer of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, which is collaborating with the state on task force.
Megan Davis took her 3-year-old and 6-year-old daughters — who escaped their Houston home by boat with their mother — to sessions with Andrews to make sure the girls were OK.
Davis said she was encouraged to hear her girls were "age-appropriately handling the large changes in their lives." The 34-year-old attorney said she also was given tools to talk to her daughters and to know how to let them guide the conversation.
"I think that oftentimes we focus on the immediate effects of disasters, and that's really a small portion of what's important in terms of looking at mental health, especially with respect to kids," said Jeff Temple, a psychologist at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has been working with mental health care providers to offer free counseling across affected areas in Texas until Jan. 24 through a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The state has applied for additional funds to extend the services.
"Recovery takes time," said commission spokeswoman Kelli Weldon.


Turkey plans to produce five models of its own electric cars
Only recently in Turkey there was the first in its history automobile company, and already announced the development of just five electric cars. This was reported by the Turkish portal Anadolu with reference to Minister Faruk Ozlyu.
Faruk Ozlu is the head of the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology of Turkey. It was he who said that the plans of Türkiye’nin Otomobili Girişim Grubu Sanayi ve Ticare originally meant the creation of five models of electrified cars. Production facilities are expected to produce 200,000 cars.
The minister adds that the electric cars of Turkish production will be designed for the average and high prosperity of citizens, that is, it is class C and B.
The price will be lower than foreign cars by 5% minimum. Thus, by 2021 the Turks intend to catch up and even outrun foreign brands not only in quality, but also in price.
Within the framework of the project, four thousand vacancies for specialists will open, and in total about 20 thousand employees will provide the work. It is assumed that the production of a domestic electric vehicle will bring the state treasury around 50 billion euros.
Recall that the Turkish company was created with the direct initiative of the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Perhaps the creation of an electric car the head of state discussed with Elon Musk, during his visit to Ankara.
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MLUI / News & Views / Articles from 1995 to 2012 / 420 Million: America’s New Population Boom
420 Million: America’s New Population Boom
Smart Growth can cut congestion, pollution in emerging ‘supercities’
A nightime satellite view of the United States shows supercities are already emerging along the East and West Coasts, Florida, and across the Midwest.
Just like rising energy demand, global warming, and racial distrust, America’s population boom is escaping serious attention from both presidential candidates. This is happening —or rather, not happening — even though the United States is growing more rapidly than it ever has before. By 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 420 million people will live here, 140 million more than in 2000.
Is the country prepared for adding 50 percent more people in 50 years? Hardly. Just look at how America responded to the 33 million more people that joined us here in the 1990s: We paved millions of acres of open land, suffered from record levels of traffic congestion, overwhelmed sewage plans and polluted countless rivers and lakes with storm water runoff. We also widened the economic and social gulf between the outer suburban “haves” and just about everybody else.
If the country continues to spread out as it has, with developed acreage growing seven times faster than the population, roads and parking lots and buildings will cover 157 million acres. That’s about the size of Texas and nearly three times more land than is already developed today. In other words, if we do not change how we grow over the next 46 years, the United States will become an unrecognizable mess.
That is why the country must face up to its demographic future and install a new development policy that assures that America doesn’t choke on its growth. Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association in New York and one of the country’s most prominent planners, says the country has a long tradition of developing such national plans.
The first such growth plan arrived in 1807, following the Lewis and Clark expedition, when President Jefferson drew up a plan to incorporate the 863,072-square-mile Louisiana Purchase into the rest of the country. In December 1861, President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act to encourage westward settlement, and the Morrill Land Grant College Act, to provide for the development of higher education in “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” In 1906 and 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a series of national park, forest, and game reserve laws that conserved 230 million acres of the country’s most beautiful wild lands. And in 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act that authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile Interstate Highway system.
In effect, every half-century or so demographic and economic trends converge so significantly that they force the country to think in novel ways about where it’s heading. That moment has arrived once again.
Earlier this year, faculty and graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the Census Bureau’s 50-year population projections and separate projections from Woods and Poole Economics, a Washington-based research firm. The group came to some portentous findings: They concluded that, by 2050, 307 million Americans, 71 percent of the population, will live in just 8 “supercity” regions that today have roughly 175 million people. In other words, most of the population increase will come in a handful of urban regions that will bleed across state boundaries like the Boston-to-Washington corridor does today.
California will have two supercities — one stretching from San Diego to north of Los Angeles and the southern Central Valley, the other encompassing the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley and reaching inland to Modesto and Sacramento.
A third supercity will permeate the Pacific Northwest, including Portland, Takoma, and Seattle. A fourth, in Texas, will encompass San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. Almost all of Florida will be a supercity. The South’s supercity will reach from Birmingham through Atlanta to Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham. The Midwest’s will start in Cleveland and include Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The East’s will reach from Richmond all the way up the Atlantic Coast to Portland, Maine.
Immigration will drive much of the growth, demographers say. The Hispanic population will almost triple, from 35.6 million to 102.6 million, or nearly 25 percent of the population. The Asian population will more than triple, from 10.7 million to 33.4 million, or 8 percent of the population. By contrast, the white population will grow by less than 7 percent, or 15 million people, bringing that group’s total to 210 million, or half the population.
As this multi-cultural future unfolds, America will face levels of sprawl, traffic, pollution, and competition for economic and natural resources that it simply has never seen before. As the South’s supercity triples the region’s population, the Bay Area’s population doubles, southern California’s grows by more than half, and the other megalopolises show similar dramatic gains, the need for new infrastructure will be immense. That is why using the same sprawling designs we use today simply will not work and why we must drastically change our patterns of development.
Take transportation: Highway construction alone will not come close to solving the gridlock that comes with putting 100 million more vehicles on the road. But a national network of high-speed rail lines linking airports to downtowns can ease traffic congestion and make America more mobile and energy efficient, and less polluting. So will a federal transportation policy that encourages building many more regional commuter rail systems, which both relieve traffic jams and foster more compact development around station stops. This will ease competition for open land and make it possible for families to get by with one instead of three or four expensive autos.
Achieving even these obvious, greatly needed changes in transportation policy seems a daunting challenge in this era of lower taxes and less public investment. But America is waking up to the realization that it simply cannot meet one of its chief challenges — fitting many more people on the land — with more tax and spending cuts. If anything, the country must do the opposite, and quickly, to avoid the much greater congestion, chaos, taxes, and spending that using the current approach will surely engender. Wise investments in planning, housing, transportation, and conservation will help ensure that 2050 America is both globally competitive and a good place to live.
Keith Schneider is a journalist and deputy director of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Reach him at keith@mlui.org.


South Carolina Jury Should Have Been Instructed Concerning Lack of Presumption of Intoxication for .018% BAC in Train-Car Collision – Stephens v. CSX Transportation, Inc.
The right to a jury trial is very important to our civil justice system. That said, jury trials can be complex and lengthy because of all of the procedural safeguards that are in place to make sure that the jury, presumably made up of laymen, considers only admissible evidence and is instructed accurately concerning the law.
It is not uncommon for appellate courts to review jury verdicts on appeal and come to the conclusion that the trial judge tainted the jury by an erroneous ruling or instruction. When this happens, the case must be remanded for a new trial, basically starting the process anew.
Facts of the Case
In the case of Stephens v. CSX Transportation, Inc., the plaintiff was the guardian ad litem of a minor child who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a collision between a train and an automobile in which the child was riding. The accident occurred at a passive-grade crossing in the town of Yemassee, South Carolina in Hampton County. There were no lights or gates at the crossing, only a stop sign, a stop line, and a “Railroad Crossing” sign.
At the time of the accident, the child was the back seat passenger in her mother’s car. Her mother testified that she stopped at the stop sign and pulled forward to the stop line, but she claimed that she did not see or hear the train until she drove onto the track.
The guardian filed suit against the owner of the train, alleging that the train operator had failed to sound the train’s horn at the right time and had neglected to remove trees and vegetation that obstructed the mother’s view of the track. The guardian also named the state department of transportation as a defendant in the suit, averring that it had failed to properly inspect the crossing and had installed the stop sign and stop line in the wrong places.
The case was tried to a jury, which found in favor of the defendants. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s order in the defendants’ favor.
On Appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court
On further appeal, the supreme court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded the case for a new trial. With regard to the guardian’s argument that he should have received a judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), the supreme court found that the court of appeals had correctly ruled that the guardian’s failure to renew his motion for a directed verdict after his offer of rebuttal evidence precluded him from requesting a JNOV.
The supreme court agreed with the lower appellate court with regard to certain jury instructions that the lower court had provided, finding that the lower court had committed reversible error in restricting its analysis to jury charges related to the defendants’ alleged breach of the duty of reasonable care. According to the court, there were other instructions that should have been considered. Since these instructions were erroneous and may have tainted the jury’s consideration of the issues, the court found that the guardian was entitled to a new trial.
Specifically, the trial court should not have instructed the jury that “it is always train time at a railroad crossing,” nor should it have issued certain confusing instructions concerning the distance at which the mother should have stopped her car prior to crossing the tracks. Furthermore, given the mother’s blood alcohol content of .018%, the court found that the trial court should have instructed the jury not only on the criminal statute involving driving under the influence but also on another statute that would have shown that, given the relatively low level of alcohol in the mother’s blood, there was no presumption that she was impaired at the time of the accident.
To Speak to an Experienced South Carolina Injury Lawyer
Being involved in a motor vehicle collision or other accident can be one of life’s most stressful events. It helps to know that an experienced, assertive attorney is on your side of the case, fighting for your right to maximum compensation for your injuries. To schedule an appointment with a knowledgeable South Carolina car accident attorney, call the Law Offices of Patrick E. Knie at 864-582-5118 and ask for a free consultation. We accept cases throughout South Carolina and have offices located in Greenville and Spartanburg.
Subcontractor’s Employee Who Was Killed While Returning to South Carolina After Making a Delivery Was a Statutory Employer of an Upstream Contractor – Collins v. Seko Charlotte
Rosekind promises action on issue involving truck speeds
Posted in: Car Accidents and Negligence


By Dominika Sanda on December 18, 2018
Warragamba plan a 'sad state of affairs'
A former NSW government official has described the treatment of national parks under a plan to raise the wall of Warragamba Dam as a "poor" state of affairs.
Under the coalition's proposal, part of the Greater Blue Mountains Area will be flooded, putting at risk more than a dozen threatened species - including a bird on the brink of extinction - and one of the most endangered ecosystems in the country.
An ex-Office of Environment and Heritage officer warns the heritage area will be destroyed under the proposal to raise the dam wall 14 metres through what the government insists will be a "controlled release" of water.
"It will drown the majority of the surviving woodlands area ... which is one of the most intact examples of this ecosystem in southeast Australia," the former staffer told AAP.
They asked not to be named for fear it could hurt their future employment prospects.
The critically endangered White Box-Gum Woodland in the catchment is rare because it's home to predators such as dingoes which live with grazing mammals such as the brush-tailed rock-wallaby in a functioning ecosystem.
"For the government to be putting at risk the conservation of such a unique area that sits in a world heritage area, and to be treating national parks so poorly, is a sad state of affairs," the ex-officer said.
At least 15 threatened species live in the national park including the critically endangered regent honeyeater which was recently found to breed in the area.
That discovery is described by ornithologist Martin Schulz as significant because the bird only breeds and feeds in certain habitats.
"They (the government) couldn't have found anything more significant than breeding regent honeyeaters in the area," he told AAP. "If that doesn't stop it - nothing will."
The bushland has a rich Aboriginal history with Gundungurra traditional owners arguing that raising the wall will lead to the destruction of more than 50 recognised indigenous heritage sites.
One includes the only known intact cave art of a waratah linked to the Dreamtime, Gundungurra woman Kazan Brown told AAP.
"They are our sacred sites, there are handprints on cave walls, there are Dreamtime stories - you flood it and it's like we were never there," she said.
The Blue Mountains world heritage listing could also be under threat with the group that advises the UNESCO World Heritage Committee cautioning both the federal and NSW governments.
The NSW parliament earlier this year passed legislation permitting flooding of the national park which allows the dam wall to be raised.
But the ALP national conference on Sunday passed a motion promising that if elected next year a federal Labor government would introduce laws to protect world heritage sites from damming.
While raising the wall will have "very significant" benefits in reducing the flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley it's important governments understood the potential impact of the proposal, an Infrastructure NSW spokeswoman told AAP.
Flora, fauna and indigenous cultural heritage assessments are underway as part of the project's environmental impact statement.


https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bellaire-sports/article/Keyes-reboots-Houston-Hurricanes-tradition-in-4367556.php
Keyes reboots Houston Hurricanes tradition in growing NPSL
By Jeff Jenkins
Published 2:57 pm CDT, Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Houston Hurricanes owner Brendan Keyes welcomes new signing midfielder Rico John Pardo.
Photo: Courtesy Houston Hurricanes
The Houston Hurricanes are back and, hopefully, the third time will be charmed for the city's newest soccer franchise.
Long-time area soccer fans probably remember the original Houston Hurricane, which competed in the now-defunct North American Soccer League from 1978 to 1980 before folding, playing its games at the Astrodome.
Owner Joey Serralta brought back the Houston Hurricanes in the 1990s as a member of the United Soccer League before the team folded.
The latest version of the Houston Hurricanes recently conducted tryouts and completed their roster for the upcoming National Premier Soccer League season. These Hurricanes will compete in the NPSL's South Region in the four-team South Central Division.
But Houston Hurricanes Football Club President Brendan Keyes wants to see if his squad can draw on the road. The Hurricanes will travel to San Antonio to face the NASL's San Antonio Scorpions in a pre-season game at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 30.
"It's a tremendous test for us," Keyes said. "There are currently four soccer leagues in the U.S. and there's plenty of talent in all of them. The Scorpions have beaten a couple of Major League Soccer teams in the past. It just shows that anything can happen on a given day."
Keyes had hoped that the Hurricanes would get the opportunity to play at Toyota Field, the Scorpions' new stadium. However, construction probably will not be completed in time, forcing both teams to battle at Heroes Stadium.
Hurricanes file
Change of address: The Houston Hurricanes are the city's newest sports franchise. The Hurricanes competed as the Galveston Pirates, winning the National Premier Soccer League's South Central Division as an expansion team last season.
Luck of the Irish: Brendan Keyes, a native of Dublin, Ireland, has taken over as the Houston Hurricanes Football Club's team president. Keyes is a former professional soccer player who played for the now-defunct Houston Hurricanes of the United Soccer League in the 1990s. He also is a sanctioned professional trainer and operates his own soccer academy.
On the road: The Hurricanes will play a preseason scrimmage at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 30, against the North American Soccer League's San Antonio Scorpions in San Antonio.
"Hopefully, we can get a few thousand fans to make the trip to San Antonio," Keyes said. "That would help build some excitement for the season."
Previously known as the Galveston Pirates, the Hurricanes are re-inventing themselves with Keyes at the helm. A native of Dublin, Ireland, Keyes is a former pro soccer player starred for the USL's Houston Hurricanes among his many stops duirng his long playing career. Keyes also is a sanctioned professional trainer and runs his own soccer academy.
Keyes said the Hurricanes have retained only three players from the Galveston Pirates, which finished 13-2-2 and claimed the NPSL's South Central Division as an expansion team in 2012.
"I feel like we've upgraded at every position," Keyes said. "We'll put a strong product on the field."
The Hurricanes, who are based at Lutheran South Academy (12555 Ryewater Drive), retained Thiago Costa Reis as head coach, but there are plenty of new faces.
Rico Pardo, a former member of the Puerto Rican national team, joined the Hurricanes. Pardo, an attacking midfielder, is the son of former USL Houston Hurricanes coach Richie Pardo.
"Rico is only 22 years old, but he's an explosive player with unlimited potential," Keyes said.
In addition, the Hurricanes made history on both ends of the age spectrum, inking 15-year-old goalkeeper Tyler Garner and 39-year-old defender Adam Randecker. Garner is the youngest player in the NPSL, while Randecker is among the oldest.
"I'd say 90 percent of our players are under 23, but we have a couple of veterans," said Keyes, who also noted that the teams are amateur and primarily comprised of high school, college and former professional athletes.
One of Hurricanes' most popular players is sure to be midfielder R.J. McNair, nephew of former Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair. R.J. McNair, one of the few holdovers from the Galveston outfit, is a team captain.
"R.J. is a lightning-fast right winger," Keyes said. "I'm sure the fans will love him."
Keyes promises fans that they will be impressed with the style of play in the NPSL, which is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, the sport's governing body in this country. MSL clubs such as D.C. United, the New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire have entered teams in the NPSL.
"The NPSL added nine new teams and there are more than 60 in the league this year," Keyes said. "We're probably the fastest-growing sports league in the U.S."
The Houston Hurricanes will officially kick off the 2013 season against the Liverpool Warriors at 7 p.m. Friday, May 24, at Lutheran South.
For more information on the Houston Hurricanes Football Club, including tickets to the upcoming game against the San Antonio Scorpions, visit www.houstonhurricanesfc.com or call 832-748-1001.
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Viewpoint: Federal Officials Should Be Accountable for Their Wrongdoing
And judges need to be the ones to make them pay.
Leah Litman,
Waste, Fraud & Abuse
By Leah Litman
American government officials enjoy an extraordinary amount of immunity when it comes to liability for wrongdoing. If, for example, a Bureau of Land Management employee trespasses onto private property and harasses the property owner, the officer probably can’t be sued in federal court. Likewise, if a prison official denies a prisoner adequate medical care, he too stands little chance of being held accountable in federal court.
Federal officials’ special status results not from federal statutes but from common law; it is the nation’s judges who have, over time, made it harder for victims of government wrongdoing to hold the government accountable, rather than easier. Judges have fashioned sweeping doctrines of immunity that insulate federal and state officials from facing any liability. Under these doctrines, victims of government wrongdoing cannot recover damages from government officials unless they can point to some prior case that has found the government conduct unlawful.
Courts have also made it harder to sue federal officials at all. In a series of cases over the past several decades, the Supreme Court has questioned whether federal courts may allow private citizens to sue rogue federal law-enforcement officers if Congress has not allowed them to. Most recently, the Supreme Court held that a group of Southeast Asian men who were detained in the course of the government’s response to September 11th could not sue the federal officials who kept them incommunicado for an extended period of time, allegedly on the basis of their race and religion, and subjected them to violence and abuse.
But it has not always been this way: When the Constitution was drafted and ratified, there was a rich tradition of judicial remedies against government officers who violated the law. That was a part of “the judicial power” that the Constitution gave to the federal courts. At the time of the founding, judges relied on the system of judge-made common law to provide relief to those who were harmed by unlawful government action. Chief Justice John Marshall, the author of Marbury v. Madison and the architect of much of America’s constitutional law, once held that a U.S. Navy officer was liable for damages under judge-made common law when the officer acted pursuant to an unlawful executive order: “The law must take its course,” he wrote, and the officer “must pay such damages as are legally awarded against him.”
Consider just some of the cases in which federal courts awarded relief against federal officers by relying on judge-made common law. In one case, a U.S. Navy officer wrongfully seized a ship; in another, a federal officer had illegally entered someone’s home in order to collect an unlawful fine. The issues in the cases varied; so did whether the victims relied on state or federal law to sue the officers. But there was little doubt that federal courts had the authority to rely on judge-made law to fashion remedies for victims of government wrongdoing.
Under this common-law system of government accountability, government officials, including federal officials, were routinely subject to damages liability in federal court when they violated federal law. Judges’ role in this system was to fashion remedies to enforce the Constitution and other federal laws. The Constitution ensured that the United States was a government of laws, not of men, through this tradition of “suits for damages for abuse of power.” Damages liability kept the government within the bounds of the law. And judges made sure that damages liability remained available.
The common-law tradition of government accountability is part of the Constitution’s system of separated powers. “The judicial power” included was the authority to fashion remedies, under judge-made law, for government misconduct. As Justice Joseph Story would say in The Apollon, many years after Chief Justice Marshall, the federal courts “can only look to the questions, whether the laws have been violated; and if they were, justice demands, that the injured party should receive a suitable redress.” The judicial power included the power to remedy government wrongdoing that hurt individuals.
Other justices over the centuries have agreed. In 1971, Justice John Marshall Harlan explained why the federal courts, in particular, were uniquely suited to remedy constitutional wrongs by executive officers: “It would be at least anomalous to conclude that the federal judiciary is powerless to accord a damages remedy to vindicate social policies which, by virtue in their inclusion in the Constitution, are aimed predominantly at restraining the Government as an instrument of the popular will.”
Harlan understood that the Constitution’s system of separated powers gave the federal courts an important role to play in righting government wrongs, including relative to other branches of the federal government. The Constitution sought to restrain the impulses of the majority—impulses that are often reflected in the branches that are most subject to majority will, and particularly the presidency. The Constitution therefore gave to the federal courts, the branch of government that is less subject to majority will, the power to restrain the excesses of the majority when those excesses hurt people.
But in the past few decades, the Court’s understanding of the judicial power has changed. Instead of recognizing that federal courts have the power to remedy constitutional wrongs committed by rogue executive officers, the Court has come to believe that it is up to Congress or the executive branch to decide whether rogue executive officers will ever be accountable to people they harm. The Court has reasoned that in the absence of a statute authorizing victims to sue the officers who wronged them, the courts lack the power to afford the victims any relief.
These more recent decisions fail to appreciate the special role of the courts within the system of separated powers that Harlan, Marshall, and Story recognized are part of the Constitution. The Constitution is an instrument that restrains the popular will and majoritarian impulses. But as an institution, Congress is supposed to represent the popular will, at least relative to the federal courts. It is not up to Congress, and it should not be up to Congress, whether constitutional guarantees are enforceable. That falls to the federal courts.
The expansion of officials’ immunity is significant not just because of what it says about America’s constitutional structure, but because of its effect on underlying constitutional rights such as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and, consequently, the people whose lives are shaped by these rights. The Fourth Amendment prevents unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth Amendment prevents government officials from depriving persons of life or liberty without due process of law—or, at least, they are supposed to prevent those things. But if there are no remedies for violations of constitutional rights, then it’s not clear that there are constitutional rights either.
This term, the Supreme Court is set to decide another case about federal courts’ authority to right government wrongs. Hernandez v. Mesa involves a Customs and Border Patrol officer who shot and killed a 15-year old Mexican national, Sergio Hernandez. (I am one of the lawyers representing the Hernandez family.) At the time of the shooting, the officer was policing the border at the culvert that separates El Paso, Texas, from Juarez, Mexico, while the 15-year-old boy and his friends were playing a game in which one of them would run up to and touch the United States side of the border fence. After the officer grabbed one of the boys, Hernandez fled and tried to hide under the bridge that spans the border. The CBP officer pointed his weapon, fired, and killed Hernandez.
The question the Supreme Court will answer is whether the Hernandez family can sue the officer who shot and killed their son, depriving him of life without due process (in violation of the Fifth Amendment) and using excessive deadly force (in violation of the Fourth Amendment). The answer to that question turns on which conception of the separation of powers—and, thus, judicial power—the Court adopts. (The fact that the child was a Mexican national is one reason the court of appeals held that the Hernandez family could not sue, as if the federal courts’ authority to hold government officers accountable depends on the citizenship of the officer’s victim.) Will the Court recognize that the Constitution’s system of separated powers rests on a system of common-law accountability that allows the federal courts to fashion relief against federal officers who violate the Constitution? Or will the Court instead shrink the judicial power to include only the ability to follow Congress’s commands as to whether the Constitution is enforceable?
This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.
NEXT STORY: Creating a Critical Mass of Talent and Resources


Le Tour De France 2016: Stage 1
Mont-Saint-Michel / Utah Beach Sainte-Marie-du-Mont 188KM
In the wake of the Grand Départ in Corsica, Yorkshire and Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2015, a spectacular visual sequence will be on the program for the pack’s first kilometres of the 2016 Tour de France, starting from the foot of the Mont-Saint-Michel. The riders will ride along the bay then, after having crossed the Cotentin peninsula from west to east, will head to Utah Beach, one of the Normandy landing beaches on D-day, 6th June 1944, located in the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, passing through towns that have left their mark on history such as Sainte-Mère-Église. This essentially costal route will expose the riders to possibly gusty winds, but the entirely flat profile should definitely be an advantage for the main sprinters’ teams.
The Mont-Saint-Michel! Who could have dreamt of a more spectacular Grand Départ to a Tour de France under the sign of esthetics? From there, it'll be a rather smooth start: fl at terrain on all the stage. At the fi nish, the riders will have a meeting with history, arriving at Utah Beach, one of the beaches chosen on the 6th of June 1944 for the D-Day Landing operations. The sprinters should have the fi nal word…
The three million tourists visit the Who Mont-Saint-Michel every year Almost always leave With Their souvenir photography. And in terms of pictures, Tony Martin Certainly Has the Most prestigious one, wearing the World Champion's rainbow jersey and flying to victory During The first individual time-trial of the 2013 Tour. The first winner at the foot of the 'Western Marvel' was belgian Johan Museeuw. It was back in 1990.


GE, Hitachi Sign Formation Agreement For Global Nuclear Energy Business Alliance
WEBWIRE – Saturday, May 19, 2007
GE (NYSE: GE) and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT / TSE : 6501) have signed a formation agreement to proceed with previously announced plans to create a global alliance of their nuclear businesses. Based on this agreement, GE and Hitachi will form cross-shareholding companies in U.S., Canada and Japan, subject to government approvals.
The alliance, when formally completed, will combine GE and Hitachi’s nuclear businesses to create one of the world’s foremost nuclear power plant and services operations. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2007.
Under the formation agreement, GE and Hitachi will forge an alliance that will enable both companies, as well as their customers, to benefit from their combined capabilities and resources.
GE and Hitachi will capitalize on their decades of experience in new plant construction, such as proven modularization and standardization capabilities together with the latest generation reactors including GE’s advanced ESBWR design.
With new reactor fleets being built or planned around the world, the transaction will bring together the type of experience, capacity, and capability that is vital to the delivery of new nuclear power plants on time, within budget and at the highest quality levels.
GE and Hitachi first announced their intent to create a nuclear business alliance in November 2006.
GE’s nuclear business, which recently marked its 50th anniversary in the industry, develops advanced light water reactors and provides a wide array of technology-based products and services to help owners of both boiling and pressurized water reactors safely operate their facilities with greater efficiency and output.
Hitachi has regarded nuclear power systems to be a core business of the Hitachi Group ever since establishing a nuclear systems group at the Hitachi Works in 1955. Since entering into a technology licensing agreement with GE in 1967, Hitachi has worked with GE in the fields of BWR plant construction and maintenance services for BWR plants in operation.