The first freight train has set off from China to the UK on the reintroduced historic Silk Road trade route.
The train, carrying household items, garments, textiles, bags and suitcases, will take around 18 days to travel more than 12,000km.
The train, which left on New Year’s Day from Yiwu in eastern Zhejiang province, will pass through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France before arriving in London.
According to the China Railway Corporation (CRC), London will be the 15th European city to receive freight train services from China.
The CRC said the service would “improve China-Britain trade ties, strengthen connectivity with western Europe, while better serving China’s Belt and Road initiative, an infrastructure and trade network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes”, China’s state-owned news agency Xinhua reported.
Under China’s officially named One Belt, One Road initiative, billions of dollars will be ploughed into infrastructure along historic trade routes in a bid to shift the world’s centre of economic gravity.
China is the EU’s second biggest trading partner after the US and in 2015 the EU imported goods worth €350.5bn from China, up 4.4% on 2014.
| From Supply Management | January 3, 2017 |
∩ Company car tax perk to return: expert
∩ Bill English leaves on Monday for nearly nine days in Brussels, London and Berlin.
∩ Japan World Smart Energy Week 2017
∩ Freight train running from China to UK is a first
∩ Bellamy's organic infant formula derails in China
∩ Amazon files patent for flying warehouse
∩ Belgian deputy PM to discuss free-trade deal with EU and NZ
∩ Fonterra milk price rises in NZ shops as world dairy prices take a hit
∩ While you were sleeping: Stocks, greenback climb
Emirates, which offers five double-decker A380 services a day out of New Zealand, is welcoming in the new year with special fares to a selection of points around its global network, including Australia, the UK, Europe and Africa.
The Hello 2017 Economy and Business Class fares are also on offer to destinations in Asia and the Middle East, as well as India and the Americas via Dubai
The five daily New Zealand flights – a non-stop service to Dubai from Auckland and three others via Australia, plus a Christchurch service via Sydney – offer the chance to travel all the way by A380 from New Zealand to 17 destinations in Europe among other cities.
From today until January 23 the Hello 2017 fares will include Economy Class return to Australia from $439, Asia $899, Indian sub-continent $1,299, Europe $1,499, United Kingdom and Africa $1,599, the Americas $1,799 and the Middle East $1,899.
Special Business Class fares are also available.
The fares are inclusive of all taxes and are valid for select travel dates. They are subject to availability on specific flights and various conditions apply.
“Emirates likes to welcome in each new year with a special treat for travellers and this year’s offering is no exception,” said Emirates’ New Zealand regional manager, Chris Lethbridge. “In all, we have special fares to more than 80 destinations, including the most popular places on our network.”
In total, Emirates offers connections at its Dubai hub to 38 places in Europe, 22 in Africa and 17 in the Middle East.
Passengers travelling on the three-class, 491-seat A380 aircraft will enjoy spacious cabins and experience a peaceful journey in the world’s quietest long-range jet. They can use the onboard Wi-Fi; indulge in food prepared by international chefs, and be entertained by Emirates’ award-winning ice system which offers over 2,500 channels of inflight entertainment across all cabins.
Emirates has redefined the core experience of premium travel. First Class and Business Class passengers will have access to the A380’s onboard Lounge, with space to mingle whilst enjoying canapés and the beverages prepared by the onboard bartender. First Class passengers can enjoy the aircraft’s First Class Private Suites and experience the aircraft’s signature onboard Shower Spa.
Emirates is the largest operator of the Airbus A380 with 89 in its fleet, and has carried over 65 million passengers on its flagship aircraft since 2008
Bookings can be made through www.emirates.com/nz or phone 0508 364 728.
Le Parisien Determined to Identify What Voters Believe in place of what elites believe they believe.
Paris’ leading daily newspaper, the tabloid Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France has outlawed from its pages all poll-based predictions on the pending presidential election.
The centrist popular daily blames unquestioning reliance on polls, known in France as “soundings” to have led to the embarrassing set of circumstances in which Alain Juppe was unanimously predicted to become the successful candidate of the right-of-centre Republican Party.
In the event, and as MSC Newswire’s European correspondent had predicted, (see our story below) the successful candidate was Francois Fillon who now becomes the favourite to win the pending presidential (i.e. general) election.
In the same forecast, MSC Newswire had also predicted that current president Francois Hollande would not be the Socialist Party candidate in the election. In the event, and several days after our prediction, Mr Hollande stood down.
Meanwhile, according to Le Parisien, the elimination of polls, soundings, and other tendentious content will be replaced by plain and simple reporting.
The objective being to report what people are in fact thinking in place of the former practice of reporting on what a narrow elite believe, or want to believe, everyday people are thinking.
According to our European correspondent, Alain Juppe’s “Happy Identity” slogan was only finding approval among the media.
Similarly Mr Juppe’s involvement with a funds scandal, which had caused him to live in Canada, was taken seriously by voters, if not the media.
Also, the idea of a Clintonesque co-presidency (see front page), while attractive to the media, nonetheless dismayed the public at large, as it did voters in the United States presidential election.
| From the MSCNewswire reporters' desk | Thursday January 5 2017 |
Our foreign correspondent forecast the Trump victory, and now previews the fall of France’s Francois Hollande ....
| Napier, MSCNewsWire, Nov 24, 2016 | - The predicted fall of France’s president Francois Hollande in next year’s election will bring to a close the initial era of political correctness. He is scheduled to become the third big-economy leader victim within less than a year of the accelerating electoral power of the non-political class.
Mr Hollande is known as the King of Consensus. His determination prior to any decision to canvass every opinion and nuance in his own Socialist Party and also in the string of other French leftward parties conveyed an impression of dithering in the face of islamic insurgency.
Instead of being seen to be heading a tough reaction Mr Hollande’s nature lead him to be more at home leading candle lit marches, vigils and uttering trite panaceas in the face of the emergency. It was left to his prime minister Manuel Valls to express the public mood about the threat throughout France of rampant religious extremism.
Worse still, Mr Hollande was viewed as being over-preoccupied by the star studded Paris climate conference with its breathtaking ritual insights into the blindingly obvious instead of with the much more visible and immediate terrorist threat
The most visible manifestation of Mr Hollande’s pending loss of the presidency is the number of his own hand-picked cabinet members who are deserting the sinking ship. The “frondeurs” as the rebels are known are setting themselves up, they are still in their 30s and 40s, for the 2022 election.
There is though in the anticipated disappearance of Mr Hollande a signal point of difference with those other landmark scupperings of the political classes, Brexit and Trump. The difference is that this time everyone is expecting it.
The winner of the French Republican Party primaries is now looked to as the winner of the presidency. This is looking, in fact, increasingly like former premier Francois Fillon.Mr Hollande’s political career has been an inch-by-inch bureaucratic progression characterised by a reverse Clinton-effect process.
His life-mate Segolene Royale (pictured above with Hollande) with whom he has four children was the glamorous one. Her attempt to crack the French version of the glass ceiling was more spectacular than anything attempted by Hillary.
In the event she lost to Sarkozy.
It was now that that the blander Francois entered the lists and in doing so streamlined his approach by parting from Segolene. The go-it-alone Francois now beat the unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy and the ElyseesPalace was his and his Socialist Party’s.
Four and a half years later he looks like a president who knows he can’t win. He is unlikely to hand over to the rather more decisive figure of his prime minister Manuel Valls.
No major economy leader, not even President Obama, personifies so closely as does Francois Hollande the twin pillars of diversity and multiculturalism which in France’s case are supercharged by the Revolutionary code of the Rights of Man.
Few doubt his sincerity of purpose. It is just that as with the other casualties of this new wave politics, the Clintons, he found himself reading from an out-of-date script.
Cinch is the brainchild of Jake Jackson, an avid camper and entrepreneur from Lancaster in the United Kingdomwho set out on the mission to find the perfect tent for festival-going.
His search was thwarted when he was unable to find one which did everything he wanted it to. Jake’s vision was ambitious, yet simple: a tent should make camping fun, easy and cheap – not suck away your time, money and sanity.
He wanted power. He wanted to access his tent from both the back and the front. He didn’t want to trip over guide ropes or tent pegs. And he wanted to be able to stand up!
So in true entrepreneurial fashion, when he couldn’t buy what he wanted, he set out to make his own. And Cinch was born.
“The concept behind Cinch came from me not being able to find what I wanted on the market,” said founder Jake Jackson, “I loved the idea of a pop up for the festivals I was attending but there was nothing out there that suited my needs fully so I went about designing my own.”
Setting off on a one-man-mission, his first step was to design his perfect tent and get some samples made, which any designer will tell you, is a challenge in itself.
“I sourced different factories and got some samples made up,” he added, “I then got a small test order which went well and made constant changes over the space of a year or two to get the tent to more of an advanced concept.
“We field tested them, listened to customers and changed them accordingly. The most difficult thing was finance to get the project off the ground. It is not really a business that you can start off with too small and scale up steadily, you have to start the business on a much larger scale for it to work.
“I tried for a good couple of years to find funding for the project but due to the economic climate there was no money available for new businesses and ideas. This is when we decided to crowd fund to get the project off the ground and it went amazingly well.”
With his designs ready, Jake took to crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in a bid to fund the project and was overwhelmed by the response. The campaign raised £30,000 in just 14 minutes and became one of the fastest raises ever to appear on the website. Jake decided to extend the campaign and went on to raise a total of £366,905 from 1,341 private investors.
“I’ve had a great experience with crowdfunding,” he said, “but not all of my experiences have been great, I’ve learned a lot along the way. I wasted a lot of time and money making the wrong decisions but always learning from them.
“It’s certainly not easy and you can’t just expect something from nothing with crowdfunding, you have to put the work in, no matter how good you think your product is. Our approach to crowdfunding was to get the product out there before the campaign and gather momentum, this is the hardest thing to do.”
Cinch is now on target to launch its first range of solar powered pop-up tents early next year and Jake has ambitious plans for the future.
He added: “The reception so far has been unbelievable, our customers are so enthusiastic and I really do think it’s got people camping that maybe would have not bothered previously which is fantastic.
“The plans are now to continue to develop the tents and the expand the range. It would be great to develop Cinch into a world wide lifestyle brand that is recognised for the coolest innovative products.”
| A Cinch press release | December 20, 2016 |
Amazon has filed a patent for massive flying warehouses equipped with fleets of drones that deliver goods to key locations.
Carried by an airship, the warehouses would visit places Amazon expects demand for certain goods to boom.
It says one use could be near sporting events or festivals where they would sell food or souvenirs to spectators.
The patent also envisages a series of support vehicles that would be used to restock the flying structures.
Continue to full article on BBCNews - December 29, 2016
∩ Company car tax perk to return: expert
∩ Bellamy's organic infant formula derails in China
∩ Amazon files patent for flying warehouse
∩ Belgian deputy PM to discuss free-trade deal with EU and NZ
∩ Fonterra milk price rises in NZ shops as world dairy prices take a hit
∩ While you were sleeping: Stocks, greenback climb
While we don't have a magic crystal ball, a combination of what we've seen in 2016, plus one or two murmurs from the supply chains, gives enough clues to be able to make some fairly educated guesses about what's ahead.
The smartphone tech of 2017
We may not see a huge leap forward in the evolution of the smartphone over the next 12 months, but that doesn't mean there won't be any surprises along the way, and here's what might be in store – though we should mention this is based mainly on leaks and rumors, so don't get your hopes up too high just yet.
Iris scanning technology hasn't appeared on many phones to date, but one handset it did show up on in 2016 was the doomed Samsung Galaxy Note 7. With the necessary components now becoming cheaper and more accurate, you can expect to see more phones feature this futuristic form of security. It's been linked with the Samsung Galaxy S8, among other handsets.
Then there's curves: If there's one running thread through all the smartphone 2017 rumors, it's curves everywhere you look. Handset makers are said to be experimenting with curved back plates, curved front screens, curved edges for displays, and more. What Samsung helped to start with the Galaxy Note Edge back in 2014 could well be the norm in 2017, whichever part of the phone you're looking at.
Continue to full article on New Atlas
Reformation in US, UK, and France Suddenly Transforms United Nations Hegemony
The old established order, the one founded in traditionally-accepted geopolitical foreign policies began to dissolve at the same time as New Zealand took its seat as a temporary member for the first time of the United Nations Security Council.
The old order was based on policies that would continue and in the United States especially would do so on a dynastic basis. In the other two western alliance members of the permanent Security Council, United Kingdom and France this too was the order of the day.
For New Zealand its willingness to follow the great power party line now that it was a guest at High Table seemed a natural thing to do.
In this special holiday-read article we now examine events of 30 years ago that in so many ways echo delayed action events in the Security Council now and especially so in regard to the way in which New Zealand’s willingness to follow Senior School policies can leave it hanging out to dry.......................
The peak of New Zealand’s world stage role in more recent times and in a sensational sense occurred in 1985 in two incidents in two vastly separated locations.
The first of these dual episodes was Prime Minister David Lange’s appearance in March 1 at the Oxford Union debate on nuclear weapons.
The second came a few months later in Auckland with the blowing up of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior. This then became compounded with the capture of the two French agents responsible for the harbour sabotage.
The very public and compounding challenge to France, a permanent member of the Security Council, one of the five great powers that won World War 2, engendered a crusading atmosphere among the New Zealand political class.
This compounded with the national craving centred on punching above “our” weight engendered such a shared feeling of empowerment that David Lange’s Labour government carried through its sweeping globalist policies that now placed New Zealand in the very front rank of economic deregulation.
Now though and at the height of international acclaim trouble manifested itself in Oceania in the form of Lieutenant General Vernon Walters (pictured with President Nixon) in Fiji on “holiday.”
General Walters at this time, 1987, was United States ambassador to United Nations.
Prior to that he had served as deputy director of the CIA.
Two military coups in succession soon followed this soldierly vacation dalliance with the result that Fiji became a republic.
That same year 1987 General Walters was inducted into the US Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.
Sabre rattling followed with the result that military intervention from New Zealand now seemed possible if not likely.
In the event, the intervention came via Australia which now instructed New Zealand not to intervene.
Another problem was that the burden of this message was delivered on a personal basis with Australian foreign office officials making high profile visits to New Zealand.
At this time the Cold War was still in progress.
This reliance on face-to-face exchanges indicated too the state of New Zealand’s military grade longer haul communications.
These were deemed to be unreliable through the activities of deep penetration agents known to have been active in the 1960s if not the 1970s, and therefore likely to have left legacies well into the 1980s.
After the world stage nuclear moral triumphs the Australian intervention over Fiji was a comedown.
Many believe now that New Zealand amplified this by its continuing coolness if not hostility and indeed, utter inability to accept the new republican regime in Fiji .
This regime in the event soon found firm friends in the form of Russia and China. These countries are the other two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council
It was now though that there was born the concept of New Zealand taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council, as one of the numerous temporary members.
As the years slipped by this became a determined goal and eventually a realisable one.
Australia had been a temporary-tier member of the Security Council on numerous occasions.
Luck now played its part as New Zealand’s debut began to take solid form. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the resulting trade sanctions of which New Zealand was and remains very much part of occurred too late in the piece to interfere in the membership process.
The China – New Zealand Free Trade Agreement was a roaring success, so no veto from there.
Britain was a natural supporter.
The United States was appreciative of New Zealand’s help with its Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.
France the other permanent Security Council member had long since buried the hatchet with New Zealand and indeed had taken over Britain’s imperial investment role in things like utilities, construction materials, electronics, financial services, urban transport and via Pernod Ricard, wine.
The permanent members, the great powers, were thus in 2014 in alignment and so New Zealand’s second tier membership went ahead..
Now and given the lead time between membership approval and admission there has taken place amid the three western power permanent members a paradigm shift akin to a reformation, and which can substantially be traced to the breakup of the state system in the Middle East.
The first indication of this shift was Britain’s announced departure from the EU and the ensuing resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron.
The second was the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
The third western permanent member of the Security Council to undergo this shift became France.
This was predicted by MSC Newswire (The End of the Politically Correct—November 24 2016)
President Francois Hollande now announced that he would not be offering himself for re-election in 2017.
As they start packing their bags for the return home the New Zealand delegation to the second tier, the impermanent one, of United Nations, and with the standing ovation accorded to their sponsored resolution, the one on Israel, still ringing in their ears, one or two veterans may cast their minds back, well, 30 years.
They will remember that time in Fiji when the United States seemed to be so present, yet so removed when the Fiji coups took place.
They will remember too just how stern and unfriendly the Australians suddenly became.
From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Wednesday 4 January 2017
More reading: The End of the Politically Correct—November 24 2016
Chicago, IL (December 30th 2016) Carbon recycling company, LanzaTech has been selected by the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) to receive a $4M award to design and plan a demonstration-scale facility using industrial off gases to produce 3M gallons/year of low carbon jet and diesel fuels.
The facility will recycle industrial waste gases from steel manufacturing to produce a low cost ethanol intermediate “Lanzanol”. Both Lanzanol and cellulosic ethanol will then be converted to jet fuel via the “Alcohol to Jet” (ATJ) process developed by LanzaTech and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The ATJ technology was initially developed with DOE funding by PNNL and subsequently scaled-up by LanzaTech to produce 4000 gallons of sustainable jet fuel from Lanzanol and other sources, as well as 600 gallons of diesel fuel, for fuel quality testing, certification and a proving flight with Virgin Atlantic.
LanzaTech is currently building its first commercial ethanol facilities using waste gases, including one in China with China’s largest steel company, Shougang, and one in Belgium with the world’s largest steel manufacturer, ArcelorMittal. In the DOE funded project, LanzaTech will work with ArcelorMittal to evaluate US opportunities for leveraging this expertise to demonstrate an entirely new pathway to low carbon fuels from industrial wastes that are either flared or underutilized.
“Economics and sustainability are key to realizing the potential of alternative aviation fuels,” said Jennifer Holmgren, LanzaTech CEO. “Jet fuel accounts for as much as 40% of an airline’s operating costs and the sector has made substantial commitments to reduce their CO2 emissions by 2025. So fuels must address both of these needs to succeed at commercial scale. Thanks to the Department of Energy, the partners in this project will accelerate the commercial production of low cost, low carbon jet, gasoline and diesel in the United States.”
To demonstrate process versatility, ethanol from other waste gas streams will be converted, including cellulosic ethanol produced via fermentation of biomass syngas by Aemetis (Nasdaq: AMTX). Ambitech, an Illinois-based engineering company, will be LanzaTech’s engineering partner with additional engineering contributions from Aemetis. Other project partners include PNNL; technology providers Petron Scientech, CRI Catalyst Company, Nexceris and Gardner Denver Nash; Michigan Technological University, who will be evaluating the environmental footprint of the fuels being produced; and Audi, who will support by evaluating diesel and gasoline fuel properties. In addition the project has received support from Airlines for America (A4A) and the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI), an aviation industry consortium focused on the near-term development and commercialization of sustainable alternative jet fuel for the aviation enterprise.
Statements of Support:
Suresh Baskaran, Chief Science and Technology Officer for the Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"The ability to produce tightly-specified aviation fuel or, alternatively, high-cetane diesel is a unique feature of this technology that will enhance its competitiveness in U.S. as well as global markets.” Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis “We look forward to deepening our relationship with LanzaTech and using our cellulosic ethanol produced from California agricultural residues, to power jet planes and diesel trucks in the future.”
Steve Csonka, Executive Director of CAAFI “We are excited to see this demonstation-scale effort moving forward, and laud BETO’s selection of LanzaTech and their unique technology for this award. The aviation enterprise remains committed to the use of competitively priced sustainable alternative jet fuel, and we look forward to continuing to work with LanzaTech on several ongoing efforts which we believe can lead to near-term full-scale commercialization.“
Professor David Shonnard, Director, Sustainable Futures Institute, Michigan Technological University “The Michigan Tech Sustainable Futures Institute is excited to continue our relationship with LanzaTech, helping them innovate and develop products that meet environmental goals in addition to technical and economic targets." Yogendra Sarin, President & CEO at Petron Scientech Inc.
“Petron is pleased and excited to be working with LanzaTech to help bring ATJ technology to commercial demonstration through the appliaction of Petron's Innovative and proprietary Ethylene technology. We believe this partnership will help greatly in the development of sustainable biojet fuels, while contributing to finding solutions to global warming.”
About LanzaTech
LanzaTech’s carbon recycling technology captures and recycles a broad spectrum of gases for fuel and chemical production. Across the supply chain, LanzaTech promotes a ‘carbon smart’ circular economy, where both gas providers and end users can be resource efficient by recycling or “sequestering” carbon into new products rather than making them from fossil reserves. Founded in New Zealand, LanzaTech has raised more than US$200 million from investors including Khosla Ventures, K1W1, Qiming Venture Partners, Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund, Petronas, Mitsui, Primetals, China International Capital Corp, Suncor and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. http://www.lanzatech.com
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242