Bye bye downtown Vancouver stations. It was nice gassing up at you

Gas stations in downtown Vancouver are quickly going the way of the dodo bird, driven out by the city's astronomical real estate values.

Chevron announced last year it was considering selling off one of the last two remaining downtown stations on West Georgia Street near Bidwell.

That would leave the Esso at Davie Street and Burrard Street as the last downtown gas station standing, although word is a "for sale" sign may soon go up at that location as well.  

"My understanding is that station is also being marketed so we're likely to have zero in the near future," said Mehdi Shokri of Avison Young Real Estate.

"We've has such a bull market here on the residential land side ... the numbers are getting so incredibly high that gas stations can't make sense of their business model any more," he said.

The land value of the West Georgia Chevron was pegged at $32.8-million by B.C. Assessment earlier this month, more than triple the value of its 2016 assessment of $10.2-million.

New tax, same story

Mehdi says the drag that was expected on real estate prices when the 15 per cent foreign buyers tax was introduced this past summer hasn't materialized in the Coal Harbour neighbourhood where the Chevron station is located. 

"A block away [developer] Bosa went to market with their Cardero project just after the 15 per cent tax so everyone was looking at that project as a sign of where land and condos could be going," said Mehdi. "They basically sold out that project averaging $1,800 a square foot.

"You're still seeing presales at historic levels."

Mehdi says downtown grocery stores and banks are also changing the way they evaluate their businesses as the value of the land they occupy soars.

"Some of the traditional stores like Safeway are sitting on sizable properties ... and they realize there's a lot of value there. So you're finding a lot of pension funds and development partners giving them an understanding of how they can realize more value by not only selling it, but by becoming part of the development."

Gone for good?

While online banking is making brick and mortar banks less relevant, and grocery stores are moving into ground floors of new high rises, Mohdi believes the downtown Vancouver gas station may truly be on the verge of extinction. 

"There's been a trend here with a lot of the downtown condos that parking isn't being used any more. Most of the people who chose to live here do so because of the amenities and, frankly, they don't want to be in a car — they want to walk or ride their bike," he said.

"I really don't think there will be much of an impact from not having a gas station downtown, particularly for local residents."

TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT FARADAY FUTURE’S (SUPPOSED) TESLA-KILLER

Faraday Future is nothing if not ambitious. The Los Angeles startup promises to do more than make electric vehicles even cooler than Elon Musk did, steal his customers, and deliver a fully autonomous ride. It promises to change how the auto industry works, and how people get around.

Changing the world is hard, especially for a company that has in just the past year lost a slew of key executives, fallen behind on payments for its new factory, and been accused of running a Ponzi scheme by a Nevada official. Company brass remain unfazed. They rolled into CES earlier this month with what they promise will be Faraday’s first production vehicle, the FF91.

Your skepticism is warranted. History has seen no end of upstart automakers with big plans to shake up the industry. Remember Preston Tucker? John DeLorean? Henrik Fisker? Put aside your doubts, and this super-luxe electric limo—which would cost as much as a Bentley—shows some serious style. No wonder it attracted sizable crowds at CES. It’s outfitted for autonomous tech, it sports touchscreens built into the interior, and those doors open themselves at the touch of a button.

Saudi royal family is still spending in an age of austerity

TANGIER, Morocco — Behind a tall perimeter wall, studded with surveillance cameras and guarded by Moroccan soldiers, a sprawling new palace for King Salman of Saudi Arabia rose on the Atlantic coast here last summer.
Even as the Saudi government canceled a quarter of a trillion dollars’ worth of projects back home as part of a fiscal austerity program, workers hustled to finish bright blue landing pads for helicopters at the vacation compound and to erect a tent the size of a circus big-top where the king could feast and entertain his enormous retinue.
The royal family’s fortune derives from the reserves of petroleum discovered during the reign of Salman’s father, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, more than 75 years ago. The sale of oil provides billions of dollars in annual allowances, public-sector sinecures and perks for royals, the wealthiest of whom own French chateaus and Saudi palaces, stash money in Swiss bank accounts, wear couture dresses under their abayas and frolic on some of the world’s biggest yachts out of sight of commoners.
King Salman serves as chairman of the family business unofficially known as “Al Saud Inc.” Sustained low oil prices have strained the economy and forced questions about whether the family — with thousands of members and still growing — can simultaneously maintain its lavish lifestyle and its unchallenged grip on the country.
“The people have less money than before, but the royal family have the same,” said Prince Khalid bin Farhan al-Saud, a dissident member of the extended family living in Germany. “There is a lot of state money which is concealed from the budget, which is determined by the king alone.”
These are anxious times for the royals, led by an 80-year-old who has already had at least one stroke and is likely to be the last of six sons of the founding monarch to serve as sovereign. He must wrangle a band of relatives, from the merely well-off to billionaires, who are accustomed from birth to privilege and plenty.
In his two-year reign, King Salman has upended the traditions of succession, creating rifts after bypassing several brothers to position the next generation — a nephew and a favorite son — in line for the throne. He has ousted prominent members of other branches of the family from governorships and top ministry jobs, consolidating power but sowing some discontent in a family that demands unity.
While there are serious problems beyond the borders — a costly war in Yemen, violence in Iraq and Syria, an emboldened Iran — it is the country’s economic troubles that risk roiling ordinary citizens, if their own cradle-to-grave benefits are cut too much. Many royals are wary of any disclosures about their wealth that could provoke public criticism.
Revenues from the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, have long been the lifeblood of government spending. Some in the family have resisted a proposal by the king’s son Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to partly privatize it, since listing it on stock exchanges in New York or London would bring new audits of Aramco and possibly more insights into government funding, and in turn, money for the royals.
That concern has led some senior family members to quietly explore alternatives to the privatization plan, though Saudi officials said it remains on track.
Facing huge budget gaps, the government has cut public-sector pay along with subsidies, sending gasoline, electricity and even water bills higher. The kingdom has begun borrowing by the billions both at home and abroad. And hiring by the government — a large and sought after employer for Saudis — has been cut, instilling fear for the future in younger people who cannot find work.

Royals are sharing the pain, according to Anas al-Qusayer, the spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Information, who said that their allowances had been reduced. At least some royals, though, have seen no decline in their stipends, according to several Saudis close to the family.

“Under Salman, princes again appear to enjoy a lot more material privileges, and the core allowance system has not been changed,” said Steffen Hertog, an associate professor at the London School of Economics who wrote a book on the political economy of Saudi Arabia, “Princes, Brokers and Bureaucrats.” 

Some Saudi royals are still spending big. Dania Sinno, a real estate agent with Belles Demeures de France, said that multiple family members had been buying property in Paris in the last year. She recently sold a nearly 11,000-square-foot apartment on the exclusive Rue Octave-Feuillet for more than $30 million to a Saudi princess.

King Salman already had significant holdings in France. Property records there show that he owns a dozen apartments in the affluent 16th Arrondissement of Paris, worth an estimated $35 million. He also maintains a luxury chateau on the Côte d’Azur in France and a palace in Marbella on Spain’s Costa del Sol. 

The king, of course, does not lack for options at home, with a network of marble-columned palaces and countryside retreats stretching from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. But the Tangier compound appears to be his current favorite getaway.

During his visit this summer, some hundred black Mercedes sedans and Range Rovers were waiting to chauffeur the royal party around town. The palace complex includes its own medical facilities and top-flight restaurant kitchens that turn out dishes with lobster, caviar and truffles flown in from France. 

Many staff members had to leave their phones at the gate so photos did not leak out. But a Twitter gadfly working under the pseudonym Mujtahidd, who has successfully predicted some major royal news in the past, broadcast to his 1.7 million followers details about the construction, luxury cars and five-star hotels for the entourage. Mr. Qusayer, the spokesman, said in a written statement that the costs were covered from the king’s personal account, not by the government. 

Some on the household staff, who did not want to be identified so they could continue working for the Saud family, said they received an unusual gratuity when they handed in their ID badges: a free trip for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

A Kingdom of Oil

From the beginning, the social contract between commoners and royals constituted a trade-off: a share of the country’s wealth in exchange for absolute rule by the Saud monarchs. A Life magazine correspondent visiting in 1943 described how, as King Abdulaziz waited on a roadside while a flat tire was fixed on his Packard, he gave a shepherd passing on camelback several gold pieces. In Riyadh, the king supported a soup kitchen for the poor, the correspondent wrote, with “an oven large enough for a camel.”

Salman bin Abdulaziz was born in 1935, just three years after his father proclaimed the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The power and legitimacy of the new state rested on the twin pillars of the royal family and their allies in the ultraconservative Wahhabi religious leadership. Oil, discovered in the country’s east in 1938, provided a growing source of funding for both. 

As a young prince, Salman recalled when the family still lived in tents part of the year, as he has recounted to Secretary of State John Kerry. He could not have assumed as a boy that he would someday rule his father’s dominion. King Abdulaziz entered into numerous marriages — with 17 known wives, producing at least 36 sons — to cement alliances with the many Arabian tribes.

Salman, believed to be the 25th son, had one advantage in this sprawling, competitive family, where royal succession does not always follow a straight line. His mother, Hassa al-Sudairi, was a favorite wife of the king, and Salman was one of seven full brothers, a powerful bloc known as the Sudairi Seven.

In contrast to the traditional robes and headdresses King Salman wears in public today, an early photo shows a dapper young man in a well-cut Western suit. In nearly half a century as governor of Riyadh, he presided over the explosion of a modest desert way station into a metropolis with millions of inhabitants, along with skyscrapers, multilane highways and palaces for the newly rich royals. 

The global shock of the oil embargo in 1973 sent prices soaring and petrodollars flooding into the country. Despite imposing rigid adherence to a strict version of Islam on their subjects, some Saudi princes became fixtures at high-rolling pleasure capitals like Monte Carlo.

Through dozens of interviews with diplomats and money managers, economists, real-estate and travel agents, interior decorators and members of the House of Saud and by reviewing court records and real-estate documents, The New York Times has pieced together details of the family’s spending.

The scale of the clan’s fortune is a closely guarded secret. The money is divided among many relatives and spread across several continents, making a precise accounting difficult. The funding mechanisms are opaque by design. The share of the Saudi budget that ultimately makes its way into royal coffers is not disclosed. Even people who closely follow the Saudi royal family said they could not estimate its total assets. 

While chinks in the wall of secrecy appear through legal cases and tabloid reports overseas, the royals have learned not to flaunt their wealth before the nation’s 30 million commoners. The family members have erected high walls around their palaces, bought overseas assets with shell companies, used intermediaries for large investments and demanded nondisclosure agreements from employees.

The so-called Panama Papers released in April revealed that King Salman was involved in offshore companies in Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands. The records linked him to a yacht and multimillion-dollar properties in London — one a majestic home with a balustraded balcony near Hyde Park in the tony Mayfair district. 

Saudi Arabia is not nearly as affluent on a per-capita basis as Qatar or Kuwait, which are also rich from oil and gas but support far fewer people than their large neighbor. (Both also have been hit hard by the low oil prices.) Despite a robust social safety net — including free education and health care — there are poor Saudis, and many in the middle class barely make ends meet.

Princes and princesses can take advantage of privileges like special hospital wings decorated like palaces with five-star hotel service, and royal airport terminals with enormous chandeliers, intricate tilework and rich carpets. But even among royals, there are big differences between direct heirs to the kings and cousins on the fringes. Some younger princes live in large, but not palatial, modernist homes outside Riyadh that would not be out of place in upscale California neighborhoods. They drive Range Rovers and boxy Mercedes S.U.V.s rather than the Lamborghini or Bugatti supercars their better-off cousins race around the Knightsbridge section of London.

And their ranks continue to swell. The founding king’s many children had many of their own — King Saud, the second king, alone had an estimated 53 sons. “Only a stadium suffices to hold the ever-expanding Al Saud clan,” an American diplomat wrote in a memorandum in 2009.

First Ghost Shark

Dive deep deep down into the ocean, long past the point where the sun’s rays can penetrate, and you will enter the realm of the ghost sharks.

Also called chimaeras, ghost sharks are dead-eyed, wing-finned fish rarely seen by people.

Relatives of sharks and rays, these deep-sea denizens split off from these other groups some 300 million years ago. Even though ghost sharks have been gliding through the depths since long before the dinosaurs, we still know very little about them. Now, video recently released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California has shined new light on these mysterious creatures.

In 2009, the institute sent a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, on several dives to depths of up to 6,700 feet in waters off California and Hawaii. They weren’t looking for ghost sharks: “The guys doing the video were actually geologists,” says Dave Ebert, program director for the Pacific Shark Research Center at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. (See more amazing shark pictures.)

“Normally, people probably wouldn’t have been looking around in this area, so it’s a little bit of dumb luck,” he says.

One fish the ROV kept running into looked like a new ghost shark, since it did not resemble ghost shark species known to frequent either of these regions.

To find out its identity, the institute reached out to Ebert and other chimaera experts. The team analyzed the video and now believe it's a pointy-nosed blue chimaera (Hydrolagus trolli), a species usually found near Australia and New Zealand, according to a recent study in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records.

Though the ghost shark is not new to science, it's still exciting: The video is the first time the pointy-nosed blue chimaera has been seen alive in its natural habitat.

UNCOVERING LOST SHARKS

If Ebert and colleagues are correct, the video is also the first discovery of this species in the Northern Hemisphere.

But they can't be sure unless they get DNA from an actual specimen, which is not easy. Ebert will scour local fish markets for new specimens, but one of the best—and only—ways is to use a trawling boat to scrape the depths. (The fish is usually dead by the time it makes it back up to the surface.) 

Even without a physical specimen, the video has provided a wealth of information. First, unlike many creatures of the deep, pointy nosed blue chimaera seemed to be a ham for the ROV's camera and its bright lights. (See more pictures of odd deep-sea animals.)

“It’s almost a little comical,” says Ebert. “It would come up and bounce its nose off the lens and swim around and come back.”

In addition, rocky outcrops in the background of the video suggest that pointy-nosed blue chimaeras prefer this habitat to the flat, soft-bottom terrain that's usually the domain of other ghost shark species, says Ebert, a specialist in what he calls lost sharks, or species that don’t tend to garner the attention of great white sharks and hammerheads.

Unlike those more well-known sharks, chimaeras don’t have rows of ragged teeth, but instead munch up their prey—mollusks, worms, and other bottom-dwellers—with mineralized tooth plates.

A pattern of open channels on their heads and faces, called lateral line canals, contain sensory cells that sense movement in the water and help the ghost sharks locate lunch.

And perhaps most fascinating, male chimaeras sport retractable sex organs on their foreheads. (Also see "Two-Headed Sharks Keep Popping Up—No One Knows Why.")

"WATER BUNNIES"

At least three other species of chimaera likely live across the world's oceans, so it's not that surprising that the pointy-nosed blue would as well, says Dominique Didier, a marine biologist and chimaera expert at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.

“The only way we can collect these species is by trawling,” she says. “So, it's like a snapshot. Imagine trying to understand species distribution in Lake Michigan and you sample the lake using a Dixie cup. Trawling the ocean is like that.”

“I suspect many species are wide-ranging—we just don't have the data.”

Whether you call them chimaeras, ghost sharks, ratfish, or even “water bunnies”—which is what Hydrolagus roughly means in Greek—the fish “are just one of the many beautiful and poorly studied species that shares this planet with us," Didier says.

North Dakota Oil Production Hits two years low

Rail shipments of petroleum from Midwestern oil fields to East Coast refineries have plummeted as North Dakota’s oil production has fallen to a two-year low.

Production dropped below 1 million barrels per day for the first time in more than two years, officials said Thursday — yet another reminder that the drilling boom is over in the country's No. 2 oil state due to the slump in world oil prices.

The state produced an average of 981,039 barrels of oil daily in August, down from 1.029 million in July, the state Department of Mineral Resources said. Oil production numbers typically lag at least two months.

Those numbers are reflected in the crude shipment data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which show rail shipments from the Midwestern region were down 49 percent from the previous year in July.

Shipments from the Midwest to the East Coast — which represent more than half of the region’s production and move over rail lines crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin — were down by similar numbers.

The 5.4 million barrels that traveled to East Coast refineries in July was even 15 percent lower than in July 2013 when production was on the rise. That works out to fewer than three trains per day, about half the number that railroads reported to state officials in 2014.

East Coast shipments peaked in November 2014 at 13.8 million barrels, according to the EIA.

SpaceX, Boeing land NASA contracts for manned space flight

LOS ANGELES—Boeing and SpaceX have landed NASA contracts worth a total of $6.8 billion (U.S.) to launch an astronaut into space, the agency announced Tuesday.
The contracts are aimed at continuing the final development of spacecraft that will take astronauts to the International Space Station.
Under the contracts, the companies will have a goal of performing a test flight to the space station with a NASA astronaut in 2017.
Since NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011, it has been paying the Russian government about $70 million a seat to transport U.S. astronauts to the space station. That arrangement, which was always intended to be temporary, has become strained in recent months amid tensions between Russia and the West over the situation in Ukraine and Crimea.
SpaceX, whose name is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is based in Hawthorne, Calif., and helmed by entrepreneur Elon Musk. It already has a $1.6-billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the space station.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. has built nearly every manned spacecraft in U.S. history.
Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., which has been building a space plane that closely resembles a miniature space shuttle, had also been in the running for the NASA contract.

Want to fight global warming? Watch some car racing this weekend

Here’s the most important thing you can do this weekend: Turn on the television.
Formula E, a new motor racing championship, begins in Beijing tomorrow. The E stands for electric. As in electric cars. And there’s a lot riding on its success.
The money put in by sponsors is one thing. The investment by the participating teams is another, as are the jobs that have been created as a result. But if the new championship is a success, the most important outcome will not be profits for firms or continued employment for drivers, but the very future of private mobility.
The thinking goes something like this: Motor races in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drove some of the most major advancements in automotive technology. Developments by Peugeot in the 1910s had big effects on engine design. Later, things like fuel injection, commonplace in modern cars, were a direct result of innovations on the race track, says John Heitmann, president of the Society of Automotive Historians and a professor at the University of Dayton. Heitmann sees a similar revolution if electric car racing takes off. “There’s inordinate promise for technology transfer to go from racing to production,” he says.
The question of sustainability has been dogging motor sports for years. Even as Formula 1 has grown into a global behemoth, it has tried to reduce its environmental impact by changing engines to be more efficient. But that is incremental change. Formula E presents the chance to rethink engines altogether, and to create a market for innovation in electric cars and batteries.
“Motor sport has been losing a bit of its relevance. So this was a way to come back to where the mainstream is and to bring relevance to motor sport and do something useful for society,” says Alejandro Agag, a former Formula 1 man who owns the rights to Formula E and runs the company handling and promoting the championship.
Agag and his team have faced criticism along the way. Purists complain that the cars are too silent (hear for yourself in the video above), and that audience engagement tactics such as giving an extra power boost to the driver who receives the most tweets—perhaps materially altering the outcome of the race—are too gimmicky. But Agag argues that such innovations are necessary for a sport created in the 21st century. “It’s a designed media strategy consistent with the way media works in the modern world,” he says.

You May Have Been A Lab Rat In A Huge Facebook Experiment

A newly published paper reveals that scientists at Facebook conducted a massive psychological experiment on hundreds of thousands of users by tweaking their feeds and measuring how they felt afterward. In other words, Facebook decided to try to manipulate some people's emotional states -- for science. The research involved Facebook's News Feed -- the stream of status updates, photos and news articles that appears when you first fire up the site. For a week in January 2012, a group of researchers, variously affiliated with Facebook, Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco, altered the algorithm that determines what shows up in News Feed for 689,003 people. One group was shown fewer posts containing words thought to evoke positive emotions, such as "love," "nice" and "sweet," while another group was shown fewer posts with negative words, like "hurt," "ugly" and "nasty." The findings were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific journal.
The researchers were studying a phenomenon called "emotional contagion," a fancy psychological term for something you've almost certainly experienced: If you spend more time with a happy-go-lucky friend, you end up being more of a ray of sunshine yourself. (Same goes for sadness: Hang with a Debbie Downer, and you likewise become a vector for gloom.) Researchers have found that emotions can be contagious during face-to-face interactions, when a friend's laugh or smile might lift your spirits. But what happens online? Facebook was trying to figure that out. It turns out that, yes, the Internet is just like real life in this way. People who were shown fewer positive words on Facebook tended to turn around and write posts of their own that contained fewer positive words (and more negative words). And people who were shown fewer negative words tended, in turn, to write posts with fewer negative words and more positive words.  Hypothesis: proven!  In the PNAS article, lead researcher Adam Kramer and his team note that "the effect sizes from the manipulations are small." And in a statement to The Huffington Post, Facebook offered justification for doing the research. "This research was conducted for a single week in 2012 and none of the data used was associated with a specific person's Facebook account," a company spokesperson told The Huffington Post. "We do research to improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible. A big part of this is understanding how people respond to different types of content, whether it's positive or negative in tone, news from friends, or information from pages they follow. We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process." Facebook employs a group of data scientists to study user activity and publish their findings, often pegged to events like Valentine's Day and national elections. But until now, the research has mostly fallen into the category of "observational studies" -- that is, research that involves someone poring over existing data and trying to draw conclusions from it.  The News Feed manipulation, though, is a different beast. It's an experiment, in which scientists create the data by tweaking one variable to see if it affects another. That's what's disconcerting: The "things" being manipulated in this case are people on Facebook -- i.e., basically everyone with an Internet connection. If you don't remember agreeing to being a Facebook guinea pig, well, you must not have read all of the site's mind-bogglingly complex terms of service when you set up your account. Within those TOS is language specifying that Facebook members consent to having information about them used for “internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.” Even though this research was not illegal, Susan Fiske, the Princeton University psychology professor who edited the study for PNAS, was queasy about it. Fiske told The Atlantic: I was concerned until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review board had approved it -- and apparently on the grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people's News Feeds all the time. 

Neymar doubtful for Brazil's World Cup quarter-final

When Brazil takes on Colombia in the quarter-finals at the FIFA World Cup, the home team may be without star striker Neymar.
Brazil's leading goal scorer is suffering from a thigh injury. His leg is swollen and coach Luis Felipe Scolari is preparing for the reality that Neymar won't be fit in time for Friday's match.
Neymar suffered the injury early in Brazil's match against Chile. Although he played the full match and scored the deciding penalty, Neymar was hobbled for good portions.
Neymar is tied for second in World Cup scoring with four goals.

WTO to examine US solar trade spat with India

Washington on Friday took its battle to get India to open its solar market a step further, demanding that the WTO create a panel to review the dispute.
The United States told the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement board that consultations with India had gone nowhere, insisting the global body step in.
Washington maintains New Delhi’s requirement that only locally made products be used in its solar industry impedes competition.
India, which has some of the world's most ambitious plans for expanding solar power, expressed disappointment at the move, saying that "the United States has chosen to litigate rather than negotiate."
Friday marked the second time the United States has asked the WTO to set up a panel of experts to review the dispute.
India blocked the first request, but the WTO, which polices global trade accords in an effort to offer its 159 member economies a level playing field, is required to grant any panel request made a second time.
In its statement to the WTO, the United States said that it had repeatedly tried to resolve the problem, but to no avail.
"Not only did these consultations fail to resolve the dispute, but India actually chose to expand the scope of the domestic requirements following initial consultations in 2013," it said.
It insisted that such requirements were "inconsistent with WTO obligations and do not promote solar power."
India, whose solar industry has grown rapidly in the past few years as the government looks to ease reliance on imported fossil fuels and coal, has meanwhile defended its solar policies as compliant with WTO regulations and stressed that a number states in the US have similar rules.
On Friday, it insisted it had "participated in the consultations with an open mind and had shown willingness to explore all options for a mutually satisfactory solution."
WTO panels are in general composed of three people tasked with investigating complaints and providing recommendations to resolve the dispute.
In principle the investigating panel has six months to deliver its findings, and can authorise retaliatory trade measures by the wronged party.

Planes, ships chase new leads in search for Malaysian jet

PERTH/KUALA LUMPUR - New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas on Wednesday also reported seeing potential wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean,Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.
Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.
But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.
"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.
Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.
"The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.
"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."
Wednesday's good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
"This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday, which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front," Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth.
Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.

PASSENGER RELATIVES DISTRAUGHT

An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-metre (66 ft) waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were also in the search zone.
Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
The so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.
Malaysia said on Tuesday that the U.S. "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.
At the Pentagon, the U.S. and British defence chiefs acknowledged the incident remained a mystery.
"On the terrorism question, I don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. I think we have to continue to search," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
"Unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for certain," British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.
FBI Director James Comey said at a Washington hearing on Wednesday he expected his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the flight in the next day or two. He did not say what results he expected.
The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".
Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese special envoy Zhang Yesui met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.

Two objects spotted possibly related to MH370: Australia

Two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been sighted, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Thursday in a potential breakthrough.
Abbott told parliament "new and credible information" had come to light nearly two weeks after the plane vanished.
He said an Australian air force Orion had already been diverted to look into the objects with three more surveillance planes to follow. He did not specify where they were but Australia has taken charge of the search in the southern Indian Ocean.
"The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has received information based on satellite information of objects possibly related to the search," Abbott said, adding that he had informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified."
But he warned against drawing any premature conclusions.
"We must keep in mind the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370," he said.
AMSA was due to hold a news conference with more details at 0430 GMT.
Authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Monday asked Canberra to take responsibility for the "southern vector" of the operation to locate the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
The Malaysian government believes the jet was deliberately diverted and flew for several hours after leaving its scheduled flight path -- either north towards Central Asia, or towards the southern Indian Ocean.
Australian, US and New Zealand long-range surveillance planes have been scouring a vast tract of the southern Indian Ocean since Tuesday with the search focused on an area of 305,000 square kilometres (122,000 square miles), some 2,600 kilometres southeast of Perth.

The ever-increasing cost of being an Olympic sponsor

Advertising has always been part of the modern Olympics, but it was a "Games-changing" move in 1984 that created the expensive, exclusive sponsorship program that we see today.
At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the International Olympic Committee reduced the number of advertisers from hundreds of brands down to 35.
For the benefit of exclusivity, the cost of being a sponsor went up. But being an official, exclusive Olympic sponsor was a big enough draw that it allowed the IOC to charge much higher rates.
The strategy was so successful that the L.A. Games posted a huge profit, which in turn led the IOC to create a global sponsorship program known as TOP – standing for "The Olympic Partners."
It gave a small, select group of advertisers the rights to use Olympic symbols worldwide during a particular Olympic period in return for lucrative fees.
In 2012, these TOP sponsorship corporations paid over $100 million each to participate, with the next tier paying $40 million each.
Prior to this, competing brands were allowed to advertise at the same event. And perhaps the most extreme example occurred at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
The Adidas and Puma shoe companies were owned by feuding brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler.
Their sibling rivalry exploded into a full-fledged war during these Games when their respective shoe companies furiously tried to outbid each other to induce track athletes to wear their brands.
As author Joseph Turrini details in his book The End of Amateurism in American Track and Field, the competing footwear companies offered cold hard cash to athletes to switch brands — usually in the form of thousands of dollars — stuffed into their shoes.
The shoe companies blatantly ignored Olympic amateur regulations and distributed over $100,000 in cash, and over $350,000 in shoes and equipment during the 1968 Games.
In spite of the public scandal the bribes caused, most athletes were unrepentant.
They felt they were providing publicity for the shoe companies, and should be rewarded.
The Olympic committee realized it would be impossible to police the situation, so it mandated that only all-white non-branded shoes could be worn in competition.
But the athletes protested, stating that they wanted to wear the shoes they trained in.
Black athletes also rebelled at having to wear all-white shoes, and the shoe companies simply ignored the mandate.
Brand wars at the Olympics escalated for a time as sport apparel sponsorships expanded exponentially.
'Exclusivity' today
Flash forward, and we see what "exclusive" sponsorship have brought about.
In one of the funniest moments of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, the London Symphony Orchestra started playing Chariots of Fire.
As the familiar, repetitive organ note began, onlookers saw that it was comedian Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, sitting in with the orchestra, playing the note with one finger.
In true Mr. Bean fashion, he becomes bored and pulls out his Samsung phone. He checks emails, becomes completely distracted, and starts taking selfies.
It was a virtuoso performance (and a big YouTube hit subsequently) — starring Samsung.
The official and exclusive worldwide partner for wireless communications equipment at the 2012 Olympics, Samsung gave out 2,500 free phones to the athletes, who then used them in the opening and closing ceremonies to take pictures and videos in front of millions of viewers worldwide.
At the London Games, BMW supplied the cars, Coke the sodas and McDonald's was the only restaurant allowed to sell French fries on the grounds.
In addition, all ATM machines were changed to VISA, and Omega provided all official timing.
Still, all that sponsorship revenue only covered 40 per cent of the cost of staging the Olympic Games.
Ticket sales provide only a small portion of the revenue, and even though Philadelphia-based Comcast, one of the largest communications companies in the world, just bid $4.4 billion for the broadcast rights to the next four Olympics, that is still not enough to pay the bill.
I predict we'll see sponsorship money tip over the 50 per cent mark by 2018.
Otherwise, there is no other way to pay for the Olympics, unless we all agree to scale down our expectations.
But that won't happen, as the Olympics demand spectacle, spectacle demands sponsors and sponsors demand international audiences.
One thing is for certain — the cost of the Sochi Olympics will set a new world record.

U.N. nuclear agency may press Iran on rare isotope in probe

VIENNA - The U.N. nuclear watchdog says it wants Iran to clarify past production of small amounts of a rare radioactive material that can help trigger an atomic bomb explosion, but which also has non-military uses.
The comment about polonium by U.N. atomic agency chief Yukiya Amano at a weekend security conference in Munich suggested the issue may be raised at talks between his experts and Iranian officials on February 8.
It also signaled his determination to get to the bottom of suspicions that Iran may have worked on designing a nuclear warhead, even as world powers and Tehran pursue broader diplomacy to settle a decade-old dispute over its atomic aims.
The silvery-grey soft metal polonium gained notoriety eight years ago in the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, in London. The interest of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. agency, stems from its potential role in atomic arms.
"The separation of polonium-210, in conjunction with beryllium, can be part of a catalyst for a nuclear chain reaction," the Arms Control Association, a U.S. research and advocacy group, said on its web site.
It was not immediately clear why Amano would bring up polonium-210 now. The IAEA had said in a report as far back as 2008 it had discussed the substance and Iran had answered its questions about it.
Back then, it cited Iran as saying that some of its scientists had proposed a research project on the production of the material in the 1980s but that the chemist working on it left the country before its completion and it was aborted.
The IAEA said in 2008 it had concluded that the Iranian explanations were consistent with its own findings: "The agency considers this question no longer outstanding at this stage."
Robert Kelley, a former senior IAEA official, said the matter had been settled at the time and that it was a question of "minor experiments that weren't part of any organized programme".
Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank said one possibility was that the IAEA had received new intelligence information regarding polonium-210. Hibbs said it had been his understanding that the issue was not seen as urgent and essential by the U.N. agency.
IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said it was not a new issue, but an example of one "that the agency is keeping an eye on and that would benefit from further clarification." Amano referred to it in response to an audience question, Tudor added.
An IAEA investigation into Iran's behavior is running in parallel with new measures to curb Iran's nuclear programme under a deal negotiated with world powers in November in return for limited easing of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
The big powers' interim agreement focused mainly on preventing Tehran obtaining nuclear fissile material to assemble a future bomb, rather than on the question of whether Iran sought atom bomb technology in the past.
The U.N. body has made clear it wants Iran to start addressing long-standing allegations that it may have researched how to make a nuclear bomb, a charge it denies.
Amano's statement offered a hint that polonium-210 may be among topics it wants to discuss at the February 8 meeting: "Polonium can be used for civil purposes like nuclear batteries, but can also be used for a neutron source for nuclear weapons. We would like to clarify this issue too," he said.
A U.S. think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said Iran had admitted to producing small amounts of polonium-210 in a Tehran research reactor in the early 1990s.
"Iran claims that the polonium was produced as part of a study of the production of neutron sources for use in radioisotope thermoelectric generators and not for use in a nuclear weapons neutron initiator," it added on its web site.
Often strained in the past, ties between Iran and the IAEA have improved since last year's election of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as new Iranian president on a platform to ease Tehran's international isolation.
The IAEA's investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme is separate from, though still closely linked to, the more wide-ranging negotiations between Tehran and the six major states - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
Under an agreement signed just weeks before the powers reached their own agreement to cap Iran's nuclear activity, the U.N. agency has already visited a heavy water production plant and a uranium mine in Iran. However, those first steps do not go to the heart of the IAEA's investigation.
Western diplomats say the U.N. body's investigation will be taken into account during talks, due to start on February 18, between Iran and the major powers on a long-term agreement to scale back Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.

Seattle Seahawks beat Denver Broncos 43-8 to win first Super Bowl title

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The Seattle Seahawks have won their first Super Bowl title, crushing the favoured Denver Broncos 43-8.
Linebacker Malcolm Smith returned an interception of Peyton Manning 69 yards for a touchdown late in the first half Sunday, and Percy Harvin returned the opening kickoff of the second half 87 yards for another TD.
The Seahawks led 36-0 before Denver finally scored on the last play of the third quarter.
Manning was 34 of 49 for 280 yards, but most of that came after Seattle had all but put the game away. He was flustered by Seattle's fierce defence for most of the first half, throwing two interceptions. The second fluttered into Smith's hands after Cliff Avril struck the five-time NFL MVP's arm as he was releasing the ball.
Second-year quarterback Russell Wilson was coolly efficient for the Seahawks, throwing for two touchdowns.

Canada's 'shocking' natural gas prices expected to continue to rise

Natural gas customers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia who were facing record bills in January are being warned to expect another wave of increases in February, the fifth increase in the price of natural gas since September.
Daniel Picard's natural gas metre didn't record any unusual consumption at his Fredericton townhouse in January, so his record natural gas bill caught him off guard.
"I had never seen $400. I have seen maybe $250 or $200 — that's shocking," he said.
Picard is among thousands in the region coping with runaway natural gas prices that have ambushed northeastern North America this winter, according to New Brunswick government energy consultant Jon Sorensen.
"We've seen a record world price - the highest price we've seen for natural gas in the world from New Jersey to Nova Scotia. It's been like a horror movie," he said.
In Halifax, Heritage Gas passed along gas price increases of 110 per cent between September and January. That’s a bargain compared to New Brunswick where prices quadrupled for customers of Irving Energy and quintupled for customers of Park Fuels.
Enbridge executive Gilles Volpe said buying gas on spot markets this winter has been like high stakes roulette.
"Within two or three days we saw price swings from $5 to $75," he said.
Dave Young with New Brunswick's Energy and Utilities Board is warning even worse is on the way.
"The prices you had in January are very likely to be higher in February, so consumers should take whatever action they think they can take to prepare for that," said Young.
Natural gas is the most widely-used form of heating on the continent, heating about half of all homes. The second-most common — electricity — is also vulnerable to the price of natural gas because many power plants that generate electricity are gas-powered.
"This winter looked to be slightly colder than normal, but no one was really screaming for this kind of cold weather,” said Aaron Calder, a market analyst at Gelber & Associates.
All the cold air is resulting in a draw-down of supplies of gas in storage. They’re down 20 per cent from where they were this time  a year ago, the U.S. Department of Energy said last month.
At the same time, drillers are struggling to produce enough to keep up with the demand for new gas.
The supply situation has been exacerbated by the fact that in the past, much of gas production was in the Gulf of Mexico. There, weather only plays a role during the Atlantic hurricane season in the summer and fall.
New sources of gas are on the mainland and they’re vulnerable to freezing, ice and snow. Wells that are not designed for such extreme conditions can freeze, halting production.

US Athletes Cautioned on Wearing Team Gear Outside Sochi Venues

The US Olympic Committee has advised athletes taking part in the upcoming Sochi Games to avoid wearing their uniforms or Team USA logos outside Olympic venues, the State Department said.
The warning, released Friday, came amid growing concerns in Washington over security at the Games and as Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said the United States would work with Russian authorities on "appropriate arrangements" if an emergency required evacuating Americans from Sochi.
On advice from the State Department, the US Olympic Committee told athletes in a memo not to call attention to their nationality outside the Olympic village as a safety precaution, officials said.
"I think it is just common sense that perhaps if you are an American Olympic athlete, perhaps you don't want to advertise that so much, far outside of the venues," a senior administration official told reporters.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that "we are in very close contact with the US Olympic Committee on issues related to security."
But she added that Russia was not a unique case and that the US government often provides similar advice at "big international events."
The White House has signaled concern over Russia's security preparations for next month's Winter Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, with officials privately complaining about Moscow's reluctance to share intelligence on terror threats.
The United States has repeatedly offered to provide help to Russia to ensure security for the event, a question that came up in a telephone conversation between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
But Hagel, speaking at a news conference after talks with his French counterpart, said Russia had not taken up the US offer so far: "Right now, there has been no request from the Russian government."
The Pentagon has announced it is deploying two warships to the Black Sea as a "precaution" in case of a terror attack.
When asked if the US military had contingency plans in place to evacuate Americans in the event of a terror attack, Hagel said: "If we need to extract our citizens, we will have appropriate arrangements with the Russians to do this."
US officials later said that a potential evacuation might not require a role for the military as commercial planes might be used. And in any emergency, American authorities would need to work closely with the Russian government, officials said.
"First and foremost, Russia has the responsibility in responding to and coping with situations that might affect the safety, security and the presence of their guests," a senior administration official told reporters.
"All the American citizens there are their guests," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The US government will work with the Russian government on the various options should they need to be implemented."
As with previous Olympics, Washington has set up an operations center in Sochi with various security experts and a clear "chain of command" that would apply in any contingency, officials said.
Signaling its concern, the State Department issued an updated travel alert for Russia, urging all Olympics-bound US citizens to "remain attentive regarding their personal security at all times."
"Large-scale public events such as the Olympics present an attractive target for terrorists, and the US government continues to monitor reported threats of potential terrorist attacks in Sochi or in Russia in general," it said.
Insurgents based in North Caucasus republics such as Dagestan who are seeking their own independent state have vowed to disrupt the Games in a bid to undercut Putin.
In a recent video threat posted on a prominent North Caucasus extremist website, two men sitting in front of a jihadist flag warn of planned attacks at the February 7-23 event.

Coca- Cola Laptop Theft could have Comprimised Info

A theft of company laptops could have compromised info for 74,000 people.
A spokeswoman for the company said the laptops were stolen by a former employee responsible for maintenance and disposal of equipment, the business daily reported. The company on December 10 learned that personal information was stored on the laptops after recovering them, the newspaper said.
Coca-Cola could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.
The world's largest soft drink company has alerted domestic and Canadian employees about the security breach through a memo, the Journal reported.
Personal details such as social security numbers, driver's license numbers and credit-card information may have been compromised, the Journal said.
The company, which has managed to recover the laptops, which were not encrypted, contacted law enforcement authorities, while saying it could not confirm whether the information has been misused, the newspaper reported.

How do the Knicks Decide Who gets Courtside Seats?

The Knicks stink. But celebs still flock to Madison Square Garden to sit courtside at games. You see them every night: How do they get those tickets? Do they pay for them or are they free? And what if every celeb in the city wants to sit courtside to see LeBron? Who gets a seat and who gets a "sorry"? And who makes the decision?
Well, first off, some celebs pay for their seats. Even Carmelo Anthony's wife, LaLa. But for the rest of them, there's an entire celebrity-handling team with a SERIOUS system in place to determine who gets a seat, and where that seat is.
“If you’re an A-level person and we know the fans are going to go bananas when your picture goes up on the scoreboard, then there’s a value having you there,” Barry Watkins, the executive vice president for communications and administration for MSG's parent company, told The New York Times.
“We think it’s a big part of the brand. Win or lose, it’s one of the reasons people come to the games.”
So the A-listers get the seats on Celebrity Row, along with the celeb perks -- a special entrance and elevator, an usher who shows them to their seats, plus access to Suite 200, where they can enjoy an open bar, fine cuisine and other amenities.
Of course, nothing is really free. Celebs usually are asked to do promo spots for the team, appear at employee events or perform other small services. James Gandolfini appeared in character as Tony Soprano to woo LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire when they were free agents.
And if you don't play ball, well, prepare to face the consequences. Woody Allen apparently is banned from Suite 200 because he refused to film a short promo, according to his spokesperson. And Allen "understood completely," she added.

New York Seeks to Double Recycling by 2017

More than 40,000 tonnes of waste a day, 7,000 employees and a fleet of more than 2,500 trucks: New York faces an uphill task in trashing its garbage and doubling recycling by 2017.
It is the US city that generates the most garbage: a dizzying 2.5 kilos (5.5 pounds) per person per day compared to two kilos in the rest of the country, according to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"Sanitation is the most important uniformed force on the street," writes Robin Nagle, anthropologist at New York University in her book "Picking Up".
"If sanitation workers aren't there, the city becomes unlivable, fast."
But New York, in so many other respects a municipal policy trailblazer for the United States, lags woefully behind its West Coast and European rivals on the issue of recycling.
Ron Gonen, New York recycling czar, says the amount of waste rises each year and that the city spends $330 million on trucking off its refuse to places like Ohio or North Carolina.
But in the last two years the city of 8.4 million, where businesses organize their own separate waste collection, has made serious if belated efforts to improve recycling.
Of the 11,200 tonnes of daily rubbish collected by the city, it is committed to increasing the rate of recycling from 15 to 30 percent by 2017, organic waste not included.
Private companies discard another 29,000 tonnes a day.
The city has partnered with private investors to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art recycling plant in Brooklyn.
The city has extended a pilot program to collect organic waste from 300 schools this year, up from 90 in the last.
From July 2015 restaurants, delis and grocers will also have to separate out organic waste and recycling.
"In the last two years there was phenomenal dedication. There is a lot of potential," Gonen told AFP.
'Catching up quickly"
Eric Goldstein, an expert from the Natural Resources Defense Council also working with the city, agrees.
"We are in an early stage of transformation,"
"We had a slow start, we are still not one of the leading cities, as Seattle or San Francisco. But we are catching up quickly by good steps forward."
He blamed the delay on being too focused on the short-term and shying away from long-term investments.
"The biggest challenge is that the progress of the Bloomberg administration continues with the new mayor," Goldstein told AFP, referring to the just-finished reign of billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg.
In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics
In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics opened in Brooklyn, operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, a world leader in the sector.
It took 10 years and $110 million from private and state investors to build the 44,515 square meter Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility along the East River.
"This is the largest sorting system of this type, to my knowledge, in the world, certainly in the United States," said Tom Outerbridge, general manager of the Sims plant.
The machinery is mostly Dutch and German. There is an educational center for students but at the moment it functions only eight hours a day with the plan to go 24-seven by spring.
Of the approximately 800 tonnes of plastic, glass and metal that the city collects each day, the plant currently treats about 272.
The rest goes to another plant in neighboring New Jersey. The two plants combined can recycle 1,180 tonnes a day according to Outerbridge, who has 25 years experience in the sector.
Recycling is not just good for the environment. It also generates revenue: an aluminum cube produced by Sunset Park weighing around 680 kilos can be resold for $1,000.