此書有中文版。 "Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" Democracy Now 7/2/09 1 of 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8zOIBLxb0Q Fordlândia (2008) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2SpGRuwqA4
https://books.google.com › History › Latin America › South America
Jun 9, 2009 - The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the AmazonIn 1927, Henry Ford, the ...
Intel becomes major Olympics sponsor as games go digital
US chipmaker Intel has said it will showcase new technologies at the Olympics, starting next year at the Winter Games in South Korea. The deal comes a week after McDonald's and the Olympic Committee severed ties.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) partnered with fast processors instead of fast food as it announced a new sponsorship deal with US chipmaker Intel on Wednesday.
The agreement, which runs until 2024, will see the technology firm showcase a range of new technologies at the upcoming Summer and Winter Games, including 5G wireless technology, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones.
"We're very excited to be working with the Intel team to drive the future of the Olympic Games through cutting-edge technology," said IOC President Thomas Bach.
From VR to 5G, Intel use the Olympics as a platform to roll out their latest technologies.
Announcing the deal in New York late on Wednesday, Bach and Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said the deal would open a host of new experiences up to athletes, fans and viewers.
"Through this close collaboration with the Olympic family, we will accelerate the adoption of technology for the future of sports on the world's largest athletic stage," Krzanich said. "We'll allow people online to feel like they are there."
Courting younger audiences
The IOC has been trying to make the games more technology-savvy in a bid to appeal to younger viewers. Earlier this year, it signed a similar sponsorship deal with the Chinese e-commerce firm, Alibaba. Samsung has also been a prominent Olympic partner since in 1988.
Bach admitted that Olympic viewership over the past decade had trended towards older audiences.
"I got really concerned because then, you have to ask yourself, 'Why?'" he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We could see from about 2012 on that it was very much a question about the platform. The youth just weren't watching as much TV as they used to in the past."
Bach described the deal as a "novel step" and "a milestone in achieving our goals" of bringing more young people to the Olympics.
Watch video01:26
Tokyo businesses protest Olympic plans
Intel's Asia drive
Intel has in recent years sought to move beyond its core microprocessor business, which has faced declines as the personal computing market veers towards mobile devices.
Earlier this year, it acquired Mobileye, an Israeli tech firm specializing in autonomous driving technology, for just under $15 billion.
The deal will also see Intel expand its reach into Asia, which will host the next three consecutive Olympic Games. After the 2018 games in Pyeongchang, Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Games and Beijing the Winter Games in 2022.
Watch video26:00
Made in Germany - Industry 4.0: High-tech vs Tradition
McDonald's cited a change in the company priorities as the reason for terminating the deal. The company has been tightening costs as it invests in improving its food quality, restaurant service and online ordering to woo back diners in the United States, where intense competition has gnawed away at sales.
Meanwhile, the IOC faced criticism from public health campaigners for allowing sponsors such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's to use the Games as an opportunity to market their products, which contrast with the image of healthy living that the event seeks to promote.
"With McDonald's, it's very easy," Bach said. "They are changing and we are changing and this is why we agreed on going different ways."
The rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders hints at a weakening of the rich-world consensus that the less of the economy owned by the government, the better. That is a pity
Investors in Germany's second-largest carrier, Air Berlin, are meeting in London to debate ways out of a deep financial crisis the airline has grappled with in recent years. Can the troubled company really be rescued?
Every year, the aviation insights company FlightStats puts together a list of the international airlines with the best on-time performance records. It’s the capstone to the company’s year-round efforts to track delay and cancellation patterns for airlines across the globe. We’ve asked them to share all of their annual findings so we can point out the losers, too. Without further ado, here are the full results, along with yourlikelihood of getting delayed on each carrier:
Saudi Blockade Leaves Qatar's $200 Billion in World Cup Projects in Limbo
by Mohammed Sergie and Deena Kamel 2017 M06 9 05:00 GMT+8
Cuts in ties with Qatar slow construction, energy supplies
Isolation by sea, land, air may boost volumes at Oman port
Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on May 19, 2017.
Photographer: Neville Hopwood/Getty Images for Qatar 2022
Qatar is spending $500 million a week to bring the world’s biggest sporting event to the Arab world for the first time. Its neighbors, the intended spectators, are blocking supplies from cement to door handles that the country needs to pull off the feat.
The road to soccer’s 2022 World Cup has been mired in controversy since Qatar won its bid seven years ago. But the world’s richest nation per capita has soldiered on, committing $200 billion to develop at least eight new stadiums, a $35 billion metro and rail system, and a new city for 200,000 people. It also plans to double the size of its airport to handle as many as 53 million passengers a year.
Construction continues for now despite a blockade that’s stranding trucks in Saudi Arabia and cargo in ports in the United Arab Emirates. Both countries, along with Bahrain and Egypt, cut transportation links with Qatar, including roads across the peninsula’s only land border. Qatar’s neighbors accuse it of destabilizing the region by supporting proxies of Shiite Muslim Iran and the Sunni militants of al-Qaeda and Islamic State, charges the sheikhdom has repeatedly denied.
All countries in the energy-rich region depend on imports, but Qatar’s main trade routes connect by land with Saudi Arabia and by sea via ports in the U.A.E. All but one of the 26 container ships that called on Qatar last month stopped at one or more ports in the U.A.E., Bloomberg tracking data show.
Logistics Chains
To restore reliable access to imports, “dedicated feeder services would have to be set up to and from Qatar, which may take time to effect,” Neil Davidson, senior analyst of ports and terminals at London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd., said by email. “The cost of any alternative routing would undoubtedly be higher than the current set-up.”
Qatar’s dependence on U.A.E. ports and logistics chains is significant. The smaller nation accounted for almost 30 percent of the U.A.E.’s non-oil exports in the third quarter of 2016, according to the latest data from the U.A.E.’s Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority. Those shipments consisted mostly of sulfur, earths and stones, plaster, lime and cement used by the construction industry, according to the data.
More pressing than a soccer tournament in five years is the task of keeping Qatar’s oil and gas industry humming, and energy companies are stockpiling materials and equipment, two distributors in Doha said, asking not to be identified due to political tensions in the country. Qatar is the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and, like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Shipment Diverted
One of the distributors said his biggest clients, state-run Qatar Petroleum and its LNG subsidiaries, are buying up all his supplies and asking for confirmation that he can fulfill future orders. He said he’s hustling to arrange for 47 cargoes stuck in Jebel Ali port in the U.A.E. emirate of Dubai to be re-exported via Oman or Kuwait. One shipment on a vessel from China was diverted to stop first in Qatar rather than the U.A.E. so as to bypass the blockade, he said.
Qatar Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The nation’s Hamad port, which opened recently south of Doha, is big enough to accommodate large cargo ships, and companies are looking for alternative supply sources, Foreign Minister Mohammed Al Thani told reporters at his office on Thursday.
A manager at a building supplies company, who also asked not to be identified given the political tensions, said he ordered trucks that were marooned at the Saudi border to drive instead to Oman, more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) in the opposite direction. From there, he plans to arrange for ships to load the goods at Sohar or another Omani port and deliver them by sea. Some items in Jebel Ali that he needs to complete a project will come to Qatar via air freight, he said.
Qatar will endure the worst of the cut in trade links, but Saudi Arabian and U.A.E. companies can also expect some pain. The winners in the Gulf dispute appear so far to be nearby countries that are sitting on the sidelines: Oman, Kuwait and Iran.
"Jebel Ali is likely to be most affected, as it is the main hub for Qatar," Davidson said. "Sohar and Iranian ports, Bandar Abbas in particular, stand to benefit."
