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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/15/2020 6:16:57 PM
From: TobagoJack	1 Recommendation Recommended By dvdw© Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217792

In the meantime, comments about the 'trade' war ... Besides the hawks being disappointed, China opening up financial services and up game in IP were initiatives pre-dating war, and China best do for own good China buying fungible energy at competitive pricing is a matter of course except for strategic reasons, and to keep Iranians / Russians honest I am guessing a lot of what HK ‘imports’ shall be channeled to Shenzhen imports and Shenzhen exports China buying food … duh … now can hit Canada, and Australia hard, and enforce Brazil honesty as Team America has thrown them under the bus China buying anything tech … nuclear this, chips that, … let’s see Phase IV assuming we get to Phase II Canada best release Meng, and Australia best re-think 5G supplier Russia shall have to make up trade deficit by increasing weapons know-how content In the meantime, bloomberg.com China Agrees to Buy Rare Earths That U.S. Doesn’t Have to Give Luzi-Ann Javier LISTEN TO ARTICLE Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. The phase one trade deal that lists the items China agreed to buy more from the U.S. includes rare earths that are already in short supply in the North American nation. Scandium, used in missile guidance systems and other defense applications, and yttrium that goes into targeting systems are among the critical minerals that the U.S. Commerce vowed to secure at the height of the trade war between Beijing and Washington. The two are included in the long list of manufactured goods itemized in the 86-page agreement signed Wednesday. No scandium was mined in the U.S. in 2018 and the small amount produced in the country comes exclusively as a byproduct for tailings and residues of other materials, the U.S. Geological Survey said in its website. The country’s net import reliance accounts for 100% of its apparent demand of scandium, it said. Imports of yttrium are equal to more than 95% of domestic consumption, it said. Increasing U.S. rare earth exports could contradict a Commerce Department recommendation last year to secure supply of these raw materials, including improving the government’s understanding of domestic sources and expediting approvals of mining permits. “As with our energy security, the Trump administration is dedicated to ensuring that we are never held hostage to foreign powers for the natural resources critical to our national security and economic growth,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in June 2019. There is skepticism that rare earths will be shipped to China from the U.S. The minerals may have been added to the list so any potential shipments containing these elements could be counted toward Beijing’s HK$1.55 billion commitment under the agreement, Andrew Ginsburg, an analyst at RW Pressprich & Co., said Read more: U.S., China Sign Phase One of Trade Deal Three Years in Making China has “made really big commitments so they would want to count as many products as possible, even if they import a tiny amount of a specific good within each subcategory,” Ginsburg said in an email. “If it is not included in the list, they might not get credit toward their commitment totals.” The same can be said of iron and steel that were added to the list of manufactured goods, Ginsburg said. “It’s nothing super fundamental for the steel industry,” Andrew Cosgrove, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a telephone interview, ruling out a change in demand for the metal after the deal. “There’s no definitive numbers for any of it, and I don’t think it’s really going to change the capex cycle” for steelmakers, he said. — With assistance by Justina Vasquez (Adds comment from analysts beginning in 7th paragraph.) Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/16/2020 8:41:07 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217792

No particular comments, so shall refrain ... scmp.com

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/16/2020 9:07:26 AM
From: ggersh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217792

Hence voimagold.com

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/16/2020 10:10:27 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217792

Drama ... bloomberg.com The Odds of Huawei’s CFO Avoiding U.S. Extradition Are Just One in 100 Natalie Obiko Pearson Meng Wanzhou leaves her home for a court appearance in Vancouver on Oct. 1, 2019. Photographer: Jennifer Gauthier/BloombergMeng Wanzhou’s extradition hearings begin in earnest on Monday Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou has joined Carlos Ghosn in the 1% legal club. Those are the odds that the Chinese executive will win her bid to avoid extradition to the U.S., similar to the chances of acquittal for the auto titan-turned-fugitive in Japan. While Ghosn fled Japan in a big black box for Lebanon, Meng squares up to begin extradition hearings in a Vancouver court on Monday, 13 months after she was arrested on a U.S. handover request. The hearings offer her first shot -- however slim -- at release as a Canadian judge considers whether the case meets the crucial test of double criminality: would her alleged crime have also been a crime in Canada? If not, she could be discharged, according to Canada’s extradition rules. Advertisement Scroll to continue with content “There’d be nothing holding her -- bail restrictions, house arrest, all of that would be eliminated,“ said Michael Klein, a Vancouver lawyer who worked alongside Meng’s lawyers in a 2004 extradition case. “Just like if you’re acquitted in a criminal case, the Crown may appeal, but that person’s a free person.” Meng, the eldest daughter of billionaire Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, has become the highest profile target of a broader U.S. effort to contain China and its largest technology company, which Washington sees as a national security threat. The U.S. accuses her of fraud, saying she lied to HSBC Holdings Plc to trick it into conducting transactions in breach of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Meng, who turns 48 next month, is charged with bank and wire fraud, which carry a maximum term of 20 years in prison on conviction. “In most extradition cases, double criminality is an easy piece of analysis,” says Brock Martland, a Vancouver-based criminal lawyer. In Meng’s case, it’s not, which may help nudge her into the 1% of defendants in Canada who have historically beaten extradition orders to the U.S. Her defense has argued that the U.S. case is, in reality, a sanctions-violations complaint that it’s sought to “dress up” as fraud to make it easier to extradite her. Had Meng’s alleged conduct taken place in Canada, the transactions by HSBC wouldn’t have violated any Canadian sanctions, they say. Canada’s federal prosecutors counter the underlying offense is fraud because she lied to HSBC, causing them to miscalculate Huawei’s risk as a creditor and conduct transactions it otherwise wouldn’t have. Hong Kong TeahouseAnother potential sticking point is that Meng’s alleged misconduct didn’t take place in the U.S. or Canada -- it rests heavily on a 2013 meeting at a Hong Kong teahouse between Meng and an HSBC banker. “Canadian fraud laws do not have an extraterritorial reach,” said Ravi Hira, a Vancouver-based lawyer and former special prosecutor. “If you commit a fraud in Hong Kong, I can’t just prosecute you in Canada.” While the double-criminality hearings are scheduled for four days, the ruling would likely come much later -- possibly in months. Prisoner in Vancouver: Huawei CFO Awaits Fate in Splendor Being trapped in the middle of a trade war has brought the luxury of time. Before her arrest, Meng traveled so frequently for the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker that she’d gone through at least seven passports in a decade. These days, she passes her time oil painting and pursuing an online doctorate. Phone calls with her father have gone from once a year to every few days. “If a busy life has eaten away at my time, then hardship has in turn drawn it back out,” Meng wrote in a poignant letter to her supporters last month on the one-year anniversary of her arrest. “It was never my intention to be stuck here so long.” Ghosn EscapeMeng would find it harder to pull a Ghosn. She’s under 24-hour surveillance by at least two guards at her C$13 million ($10 million ) mansion. Her whereabouts are recorded continuously by a GPS tracker on her left ankle. While she’s allowed to roam a roughly 100-square-mile patch of Vancouver during the day accompanied by security, any violation -- including tampering with the device or venturing anywhere near the airport -- would automatically alert police. She’s posted bail of C$10 million , of which C$3 million came from a group of guarantors, some of whom pledged their homes as collateral. Fleeing would cost them all. If the court finds her case fails the double-criminality test, Canada’s attorney general would have the right to appeal within 30 days. In theory, she could be on a plane back to China well before that, says Gary Botting, a Vancouver-based lawyer who’s been involved in hundreds of Canadian extradition cases. Meng’s Road Map: Key Dates in the Huawei CFO’s Extradition Case Advertisement Scroll to continue with content Of the 798 U.S. extradition requests received since 2008, Canada has only refused or discharged eight, according to the department of justice. That’s a 99% chance of being handed over -- similar to the conviction rate in Japan. Another 40 cases were withdrawn by the U.S. Still, that’s fractionally better than the odds of two Canadians detained in China, where the conviction rate currently stands at 99.9%, according to Amnesty International. Canadians JailedThat’s if Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor ever make it to trial. The two men were thrown in jail on spying allegations just days after Meng’s arrest in December 2018. Last month, the Chinese government confirmed their cases were transferred to prosecutors, raising the possibility they might finally get access to lawyers. As of last week, that hadn’t happened yet for Kovrig, according to the International Crisis Group, his employer. The former diplomat has been allowed one consular visit a month; in between, he’s unreachable. Communication with his family is limited to letters exchanged in those visits, according to the group. Families of the two men aren’t speaking publicly for fear of jeopardizing their cases. Some sense of the conditions they’re enduring can be gleaned from past history. Spavor, a businessman who ran tours to North Korea from his base in a border town in northeastern China, has been held since May in Dandong Detention Centre, according to the Globe and Mail. It’s a jail familiar to another Canadian, Kevin Garratt, who was snatched along with his wife Julia by Chinese security agents in 2014, becoming pawns in an earlier high-stakes attempt by Beijing to prevent Canada from extraditing millionaire businessman Su Bin to the U.S. Garratt spent 19 months in the forbidding compound surrounded by two-story-high cement walls. Crammed into a cell with up to 14 other inmates, he slurped meals from a communal bowl on the floor. If they were lucky, they got 30 minutes of hot water a day and could exercise in a small outdoor cage, he said in a December 2018 interview. Chinese Arrests Are All Too Familiar for Past Canadian Detainees China calls Meng’s arrest politically motivated and accuses Canada of “arbitrary detention.” It rejects any suggestion that the seizures of Kovrig and Spavor were in retaliation, saying China is also a rule-of-law country. Before her arrest, Meng wasn’t happy working at Huawei and had been considering leaving, Ren has said in media interviews. But hardship has toughened her -- when released, she will resume her role, he says. “Over the past year, I have also learned to face up to and accept my situation,” Meng said in her letter. “I’m no longer afraid of the rough road ahead.“ — With assistance by Edwin Chan

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/17/2020 5:57:24 AM
From: TobagoJack	1 Recommendation Recommended By Cogito Ergo Sum Respond to of 217792

Something about team China 3-tier city moving up the value-chain, making bespoke boats elsewhere find difficult to do. Travelled to Zhuhai this day to attend a lunar new year celebration at boat factory of friend whose boat is also days away from launch. Handover targeted in 30 days in HK. Am told the craftsmanship exceptionally good, per global standard benchmark, relative to Italy Almost everything sourced in China from domestic and foreign owned companies, and no tariff would make the company relocate given realities of who does what how etc etc

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/17/2020 8:52:49 PM
From: TobagoJack	1 Recommendation Recommended By Cogito Ergo Sum Respond to of 217792

smoking gun, that HSBC cannot have been defrauded, because the bank knew exactly the goings-on; perhaps that is why the alleged fraud victim has not filed a complaint w/ any authorities for the penalty for lying in a criminal case is severe on the individuals for such lies ... scmp.com

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/20/2020 3:56:13 AM
From: TobagoJack	1 Recommendation Recommended By Cogito Ergo Sum Respond to of 217792

trending ... clear enough to make obvious to suspect MSM www-bloomberg-com.cdn.ampproject.org Chinese Scientists Are Buying Return Tickets January 19, 2020, 9:37 PM EST Chinese astronomers, phone home. Source: AFP/Getty ImagesChina’s most sprawling effort at revealing the universe’s deepest mysteries is a 1,640-foot-wide silver dish that settles comfortably between hills in a remote part of the country’s southwest. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope is more sensitive than any telescope on Earth. This month, the Chinese government announced that it had begun formal operations. FAST is expected to further human understanding of gravitational waves and cosmic rays, and — just possibly — detect extraterrestrial communications. But for the Chinese government, which spent $180 million on the massive instrument, the most important return on its investment will be the homecoming of Chinese scientists who have been living and researching abroad. According to a recent study in the journal Science and Public Policy, it’s been happening for a while. The number of Chinese scientists who departed the U.S. for China in 2017 was 69% higher than 2010 departures. The factors driving this phenomenon are complex but come down to the Chinese government’s decades-long investments in scientific education, research and facilities like FAST. Those efforts are likely to accelerate the return of China’s scientists in coming years, and they will bring economic, geopolitical and cultural benefits with them. In time, they could challenge the preeminence of American science. A rising tide of returnees was not preordained. As recently as the late 1970s, China’s universities and its science were a shambles. The Cultural Revolution had created a “missing generation” of scientists. To narrow the gap, Deng Xiaoping, China’s reformist leader, resolved to send thousands of students abroad. Eventually, he hoped, a few might come back and make improvements. As of 2017, China had allowed, and often paid for, 5.2 million students to get better educations abroad. China also invested extensively in universities and university enrollment, creating the world’s largest (and improving) population of engineers and scientists, while funding research and development at world-beating rates. From 2000 to 2017, Chinese spending on research and development grew more than 17% per year, compared with 4.3% per year in the U.S. The Americans kept a slim lead in total spending — the U.S. accounted for 25% of global R&D spending in 2017, compared with 23% for China — but that gap is narrowing (and may have flipped in China’s favor in 2019). Spending is an imperfect measure of scientific leadership, but there’s no question that China has earned dividends from its efforts. Today it’s in the global vanguard for key fields, including artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and biotechnology. Those advances won’t bring back all of the young talent that’s left China over the decades — the U.S. is still the world’s scientific superpower — but they certainly help. The FAST facility is a good example of how this might work. Chinese scientists have been involved in radio astronomy for decades. But because the biggest and best radio telescopes were all abroad — notably, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico — Chinese radio scientists were reliant upon host scientists and countries for research opportunities and collaborators. The commissioning of FAST flips the tables. Li Di, FAST’s chief scientist, earned his doctorate at Cornell University, and previously worked as a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Now he’s in China. International collaborators will be welcome at FAST, but China will set the agenda, allot the telescope time, and — ultimately — reap the bulk of the benefits. In the Science and Public Policy study released in December, researchers traced the career paths of Chinese scientists via the addresses associated with their scientific publications (a necessary approach, because of the lack of reliable data on either side of the Pacific). In 2017, 4,569 Chinese scientists left the U.S. for China, compared with 2,703 in 2010. Even more notable than the scale of the return is the quality. Twelve percent of China’s scientific publications were written by scientists with overseas experience, and the share of high impact publications — those that are regularly cited by other scientists — is higher than peers who remained in China. Those scientists, in turn, train younger Chinese scientists and connect them to the increasingly global nature of scientific inquiry in the 21st century. For now, there is still more talent flowing into the U.S. than out of it. But the quickening uptick of China’s scientific returnees should serve as a powerful reminder that scientific superpower status requires constant investment and a commitment to openness and collaboration across borders. For decades, the U.S. has attracted and benefited from Chinese scientific talent because it made those commitments. China’s research investments mean that the U.S. needs to reaffirm them, or risk ceding its accustomed role as the world's undisputed scientific leader. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners. To contact the author of this story: Adam Minter at aminter@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (152521)	1/21/2020 2:55:40 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217792

appears to be the same Poland that signed on to the ban on Huawei from the get-go, so interesting that the ban is not a ban, not exactly, and if so, by and by folks would be able to compare apples-to-apples Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei nytimes.com Poland's Play Plans 5G Roll-Out in Gdynia in Race to Offer First Services By Reuters Jan. 7, 2020 WARSAW — Polish mobile operator Play Communications is planning to roll out a 5G network in the northern city of Gdynia, its chief executive said, as the country's telcoms providers rush to be the first to offer commercial next generation services. Mobile internet on 5G networks is expected to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks and help expand connectivity. "What we are announcing today is definitely the opening of the first 5G city in Poland and when I say 5G city it's because this is not a test," Jean-Marc Harion told reporters on Tuesday. Rival Cyfrowy Polsat said on Friday its Polkomtel unit was beginning construction of the first 5G network in Poland, and aimed to start serving seven cities in the first quarter. Although Play has already put equipment in place, Harion said the company was still waiting for authorisation from the Office of Electronic Communication (UKE) to proceed. "Technically, we're waiting for UKE to provide us with the authorization to operate spectrum commercially, but this a real life roll-out of 5G. The entire city is covered." The roll-out of 5G has proved controversial with the United States pressing its allies not to use equipment from Chinese telecoms firm Huawei, citing concerns Beijing could use the equipment for spying. Harion said Play's 5G network in Gdynia would be based on Huawei equipment, while Cyfrowy Polsat will use technology from Nokia and Ericsson. Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations and industry players have warned that excluding Huawei could slow down the implementation of 5G and make it more expensive. Play also said on Tuesday that it planned to build another 800 base stations in 2020, bringing its total to 8700. Play also competes in Poland with Orange Polska and T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom. (Reporting by Anna Koper, writing by Alan Charlish; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)