Forex Archives - Business Insider Journal

Google is helping pilots route flights to create fewer contrails, which is better for the climate

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 19:55:47 +0000

A plane flying over Barcelona airport in March 2023. | Photo by Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Google has been working with American Airlines and Bill Gates’ climate investment fund, Breakthrough Energy, to chart more sustainable flight routes. The aim is to help pilots limit a flight’s impact on the climate by avoiding routes that create contrails, those white streaks in the sky that planes sometimes leave behind.

Contrails are a big problem for the planet because they trap heat, accounting for about 35 perce nt of aviation’s global warming impact. Using satellite imagery and AI, they developed a way to forecast where contrails are most likely to form. That could give pilots a chance to avoid them and minimize aviation’s environmental footprint in the process.

Contrary to what conspiracy theorists say, the streaks behind are not…

Japan’s Tokyo-Osaka bullet train ends snack cart service

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:12:35 +0000

Passengers on Japan’s super-fast bullet trains have long enjoyed ordering coffee, ice cream or boxed lunches from staff pushing a snack cart, savoring the treats as they whipped past landmarks such as Mount Fuji.

But faced with a looming labor shortage and a trend for more people to buy food before boarding the train, on-board snack cart services between the cities of Tokyo and Osaka will reach the end of the line on October 31.

Central Japan Railway said on Tuesday it would phase out the famed on-board snack cart services, in which a uniformed vendor dispenses beverages and light refreshments, pushing their cart through the aisles of the moving train and bowing as they enter or leave the carriage.

Snack and food sales have been a mainstay on the Shinkansen, or bullet train, since it began running in 1964, the year Japan hosted the first Tokyo Olympics, a railway spokesperson said, but it was not clear when the cart services began.

The online response was despondent, with “Super-Cold Shinkansen Ice Cream” trending 5th on the X platform formerly known as Twitter and “In-Train Service” 6th within hours of the announcement.

“I remember that I enjoyed the ice cream every time I got on the train, and when I jumped on the last train without eating, I was saved by the sandwiches sold there,” one user said.

Passengers in first-class cars will be able to order food and drink using QR codes starting November 1, the railway company said.

“While cost reductions are important for a company, on-board snack cart services are also important for the enjoyment of the traveler’s experience,” another user wrote.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Why airplane passengers enter cell phone ‘dead zones’

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:12:32 +0000

Cell phones are not allowed to be used while on a plane because they can interfere with the airplane’s navigation instruments and cause various safety and social issues.

As soon as the plane lands, we’re permitted to turn off flight mode, but at some airports we can’t get much of a signal. That’s because airports are known as phone signal “dead zones” due to a lack of mobile towers – they can’t be placed at the airport itself due to height restrictions.

Any nearby cell towers would be located away from the airport’s runway systems to avoid interfering with the airplane’s flight path, especially takeoff and landing direction. Most airports put up indoor repeater antennas within the airport terminal; these help increase the phone signal strength coming from the nearest cell tower somewhere near the airport.

But you won’t be allowed to make calls while walking away from the plane, anyway.

Why can’t I use my phone?

As we are taxiing in, the cabin crew remind us not to smoke outside of designated areas at the terminal and not to use our cell phones until we are inside the terminal building.

If you exit the plane down the rear stairs, why aren’t you allowed to use your phone once away from the airplane, if you can get a signal? Surely it won’t affect navigation.

The answer is manifold, and regulations aren’t the same across the world.

In my home country of Australia, a government regulation prohibits the use of cell phones on the runway or the airplane parking area of the airport.

You won’t be fined if you whip your phone out while walking to the terminal, but the airline may admonish you for not following the rules. However, if you decide to run around on or near the runway, you could get arrested by federal police.

The airport apron is very busy not just with aircraft, but also baggage carts, catering trucks, airplane waste removal trucks and fuel trucks. Getting passengers off the airfield apron and into the terminal building quickly and safely is a priority for the staff.

If you are distracted while walking to the terminal building because you’re talking on your phone, it can be highly dangerous and even deadly if you end up too close to an operating plane. An operating jet engine is extremely hot and has a strong exhaust. Additionally, the front of the engine has a low-pressure area called an ingestion zone that can suck in a person. Ground staff are trained to stay at least 10 meters away from this area. However, this information is not shared with the passengers.

A myth about fuel

You may have heard that cell phones are a fire hazard near fuel, and airplanes are, of course, refueled at airports.

However, the chances of fuel catching fire during this process are extremely low, because the refueling truck is bonded and “grounded” to the plane: the operator attaches a wire to the aircraft to move built-up static electricity to the ground to prevent any chance of a spark.

There have been stories in the press about cell phones sparking fires at petrol stations in Indonesia and Australia, but these turned out to be inaccurate. There is no evidence a phone can spark a fire at a fuel pump, despite the warning labels you might see.

Either way, the chances of a mobile phone causing this on the ground with a refueling truck that is grounded to the airplane are extremely low, not least because the passenger-permitted areas and refueling areas are completely separated.

Why are we told not to take photos?

This rule varies from airport to airport depending on their security processes.

Such restrictions are carryovers from the changes to airport security following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The now federalized security teams, TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in the United States and the Department of Home Affairs in Australia, change their processes frequently to prevent having any identifiable patterns that could be used to create a security breach.

The increased security measures also mean new technologies were introduced; airport security sections do not want photos taken of how they operate.

The airport security process is a major choke point in the flow of passenger movement due to the screening process. If a passenger is perceived to be slowing the process down by taking photos or talking on their phone, they will be reminded to turn off their device and/or stop taking photos of security personnel and equipment.

If you refuse to follow the rules of the screening process, you will be denied entry into the airport terminal gate area and miss your flight. Can you also get arrested for using your phone? Depends on the airport and country. I, for one, do not want to find out.

Editor’s Note: Doug Drury is professor/head of aviation at CQUniversity Australia.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Saudi’s MBS wants more than peace at his Ukraine summit

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:12:29 +0000

Saudi Arabia’s ancient Red Sea port city Jeddah, stewing in the steamy heat of the world’s hottest summer on record, is not the obvious pick to cool the world’s fiercest conflict, currently raging in Ukraine.

Yet, the desert kingdom’s king-in-waiting, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – MBS for short – thinks he can help. Last fall he had a role in the release of Western mercenaries captured by Russian forces while fighting in Ukraine. Now he is hosting a summit to discuss peace in the country.

Ukrainian officials say the venue is a boon for them “that completely destroys the narrative of Russia” that Ukraine is only supported by “countries of the collective West.” They expect as many as 40 nations to be represented, including the US and India.

In the days ahead of the summit, the Ukrainians set out their intent. “Our goal in Saudi Arabia is to develop a unified vision of the formula and to work out the possibilities of holding the future Global Peace Summit,” they said, referring to Ukraine’s peace plan.

That Moscow will only “monitor” and not attend risks the summit becoming a desert snowflake, momentarily awesome and inspiring, but blink and it’s gone.

Even so Ukrainian officials are pinning their hopes on it, “to unite the world around Ukraine.” The White House is sending National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

US State Department officials are billing it as “Ukraine in the driver’s seat,” an opportunity to find a “potential diplomatic resolution to the war” and for nations who might otherwise not hear directly from Kyiv to talk face-to-face with Ukrainian officials.

The first session of this series was quietly hosted by the Danes in June, and gathered 15 nations, many from the global south whom to varying degrees are sympathetic to Putin’s argument the war was “necessary,” that NATO forced him to invade Ukraine.

That summit produced no major headlines, nor a discernable drift to Ukraine’s prerequisite for peace that Russian troops exit Ukraine. So what is different this time?

For one, Saudi Arabia, unlike Denmark, has not overtly taken a side in the war. More significantly MBS has leverage. Like the roads that led to Rome in its day, Saudi Arabia is increasingly at the confluence of competing global interests.

President Biden came in July last year, China’s President Xi visited a few months later. Both had business with MBS.

Biden was able to build on their shared diplomatic achievement, a peace deal in Yemen a few months earlier. Xi talked business, and signed memorandums of understanding worth billions of dollars, but unbeknownst to most they were only a few months away from a seismic diplomatic breakthrough.

In spring this year, Saudi Arabia and China announced a confidence-building peace plan with Iran to repair their hostile relationship. So far it has worked. Iran’s proxies in Yemen, the Houthis, have stopped attacking Saudi with Iranian-made ballistic missiles.

The two nations have reopened diplomatic missions in their respective capitals and come fall will likely extend their newfound cooperation into commerce.

What MBS wants most is a stable oil market and stronger trade relations throughout the Gulf. Disagreements in the region alone are dangerous. The war – between oil-rich, nuclear-armed Russia and Ukraine – could be catastrophic.

If he can tame that tiger, he can better plan how to deliver his otherworldly and insanely expensive visions of a future Saudi Arabia diversifying from oil yet employing the country’s huge young population.

His ambition is what drives him every day. In his ideal world, Saudi Arabia would be a dominant geopolitical player.

Part of Biden’s pitch to MBS when they met last year was: Don’t cut oil production, it hurts my citizens at the gas pumps at home, and by the way, helps Russia fund its war in Ukraine by driving up oil prices.

So what did MBS do a few months later? Cut oil production. Saudi officials say they are reading the oil markets correctly and only changed production to suit their own “national interests.”

That point didn’t go down so well in Washington. Yet today the cardinal law of diplomacy would say MBS has potential leverage over Russia. If the Saudi potentate can raise oil prices he could also lower them. Not to say that he will, but he could, and Putin will know that too.

The sort of diplomacy MBS is involved in is reimagining the role of Gulf Arabs. Stakeholders with real clout, not the rivals at each other’s throats of yesteryear.

It’s a work in progress, but he sees where he wants to go and part of that involves one of the Middle East’s thorniest issues: Saudi’s rapprochement with Israel.

On that, Saudi negotiations with the US are underway, and reportedly include domestic energy nuclear power plants, F-35 fighter aircraft and security guarantees for the desert kingdom.

The US wants compromises from the Saudis, and vice versa.

All of this of course is way outside the scope of the Jeddah peace summit and Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine. Yet it shows where there are a lot of pieces in flux, a cornucopia of potential quid pro quos, and growing possibilities of what can be achieved.

Not least, as Ukraine’s biggest backer, US appreciation that Saudi stepped off the diplomatic sidelines to help Zelensky.

There are other areas beyond Iran where China and Saudi interests align, not least their mutual concerns about the risks to their economies of an untamed war escalating out of control on the edge of one of their biggest markets, Europe.

Without China’s economic support, Russia’s economy and its ability to wage war in Ukraine could crumble. To a lesser extent some of the global south nations who may be around the table in Jeddah also help prop up Putin’s war by buying gas, oil and other commodities he can no longer sell in Europe.

It is exactly these countries the Ukrainians most want to impress with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 10-point peace initiative in Jeddah. Although it was published in December last year they think it has been rubbished by Russian propaganda and hope to reverse the damage.

Only last week Putin ignored his own illegal invasion and blamed Ukraine for a lack of peace when African Union representatives at a Kremlin-sponsored Africa conference in St Petersburg pressed him to seek a ceasefire.

In a typical Kremlinesque inversion of logic and reality, he told them that “in order to start the process an agreement is needed from both sides,” that “a ceasefire is hard to implement when the Ukrainian army is on the offensive.”

Countering Putin’s revisionist lies will likely keep Ukraine’s representatives in Jeddah extremely busy, with officials saying they plan to meet individually and collectively with other delegates about “each point of the [10-point] Peace Formula.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Peso sinks to P52:$1 level on hawkish Fed, ongoing war

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:00:39 +0000

BW FILE PHOTO

THE PESO sharply retreated to return to the P52 level versus the greenback on Monday amid hawkish signals from the US Federal Reserve and expectations of a prolonged war between Russia and Ukraine.

The local unit closed at P52.05 per dollar on Monday, shedding 46 centavos from its P51.59 finish on Friday, based on Bankers Association of the Philippines data.

This is the peso’s weakest close in almost two weeks or since it ended trading at P52.075 per dollar on March 29, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. Chief Economist Michael L. Ricafort said in a Viber message.

The peso opened at P51.70 against the dollar. Its weakest showing was at P52.08, while its intraday best was at P51.69 versus the greenback.

Dollars exchanged increased to $1.635 billion on Monday from $1.056 billion on Friday.

The peso weakened after a Fed official said inflation could remain elevated until 2023, giving it a reason to tighten its policy stance more aggressively, a trader said.

Reuters reported that Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester in a TV interview said the Fed’s policy tightening will help to reduce excess demand and in turn bring price pressures down.

“It is very important that we get inflation under control. That is the biggest challenge right now,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ricafort said the market also reacted to US officials warning that the war in Ukraine could take weeks or years.

World Bank in a report released on Sunday said Ukraine’s economic output will likely shrink by 45.1% this year amid the Russian invasion that has shuttered businesses.

For Tuesday, Mr. Ricafort gave a forecast range of P51.95 to P52.15 per dollar, while a trader said the peso could move within P52 to P52.25. — Luz Wendy T. Noble with Reuters