Group items tagged

“The amount of change that we’re going to see—whether it’s serious, whether it’s dangerous, whether it’s devastating, whether it’s civilization-threatening—the amount of change we’re going to see is up to us,” she continued. “It depends on our choices today and in the next few years.”

Houston’s starting to get hot. It’s now about one degree fahrenheit warmer in Houston than it was in the second half of the 20th century. Houstonians can expect especially balmy falls this decade, as autumns are warming faster than other seasons in Texas.

This decade, St. Louis is expected to be more than two degrees fahrenheit warmer than it was, on average, during the latter half of the 20th century. While locals have endured more sweltering summer days, they have felt the change the most during the cold months.

Warmer air holds more water, which can lead to more severe rainfall. In recent years, rainstorms have pummeled the Midwest and led to widespread flooding across the region. In 2019 in St. Louis, rivers reached near-historic levels, and floodwaters inundated the area around the city’s iconic Gateway Arch.

For San Franciscans, the beginning of the decade will feel only a little different from past years. In 2020, it’s expected to be less than one degree fahrenheit warmer in San Francisco than it was, on average, between 1950 and 2000.

But there are new worries for the city. Rising temperatures have fueled ongoing drought in recent years, which has, in turn, led to more wildfires. Fires now burn more regularly across the Sierra Nevada as well as coastal mountain ranges.

By 2030, temperatures are expected to have warmed almost two degrees fahrenheit in Houston. Seas are expected to have risen a little more than a foot, enough to occasionally flood some low-lying areas outside the city.

“While a sentiment of nationalism has helped to bolster Huawei in China, solid relationships with the local channel players has been key, offering favourable distributor terms and a well-rounded product portfolio. Nevertheless, there will be challenges ahead with 4G inventory to clear while consumers wait for affordable 5G products to hit the market.”

All that said, Huawei’s performance in pushing out smartphones in the third quarter was extraordinary.

“this is Huawei’s sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth amid a gloomy China market.” The company posted 66% annual growth, reaching a staggering 42% smartphone market share.

Apple has been desperate to hold onto a sensible market share in China, but this latest drop of 28% on the same quarter a year before takes it down to its lowest quarterly level for five years.

And given this is the world’s largest smartphone market, that dominance carries significant weight. The overall China market has shrunk slightly year-on-year, down 3%.

But of the 97.8 million devices that did ship in the quarter, Huawei had its brand stamped on a staggering 41.5 million of them.

“Huawei is in a strong position to consolidate its dominance further amid 5G network rollout.”

Clearly, Apple’s year-on-year quarter three drop has been a year in the making, But its challenge is that with a 5G offering a year away, it risks further China slippage as the market adopts smartphones capable of a generational shift in network speeds.

Most analysts still expect Huawei to start to take a hit as its newest devices reach the international markets absent core U.S. tech—read Google and full-fat Android. But no-one had expected the level of performance at home that Huawei has managed.

Germany’s foreign intelligence chief, has warned that Huawei should not be trusted as a core network supplier.

The 13th US case was confirmed overnight in Humboldt County, California. County officials offered few details but said a close contact with symptoms was also undergoing testing, and both are self-isolating at home.

"I think the folks on the ground did just the right thing, by -- out of an abundance of caution -- moving those 14 people into an isolation area where they pose no threat to themselves or anyone else, to provide room for a robust inter-agency discussion between not just CDC and state, but really the operational elements of HHS,"

"At the end of the day, the State Department had a decision to make, informed by our inter-agency partners, and we went ahead and made that decision," Walters said. "And the decision, I think, was the right one in bringing those people home."

The World Health Organization has warned that the window of opportunity to contain the international spread of the epidemic that has killed more than 2,200 people was closing, as the virus has spread to some 26 countries with a large cluster in South Korea and recent outbreaks in Iran, Lebanon and Italy

“If we do well, we can avert any serious crisis, but if we squander the opportunity then we will have a serious problem on our hands,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

The United States currently has 13 cases of people diagnosed with the virus within the country and 21 cases among Americans repatriated on evacuation flights from Wuhan, China, and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, CDC said.

“It’s not just the numbers of tourists – it’s that they spend quite a lot because of the way they travel with packages, how they get around and spending on shopping,” he says. “If that gets cut off it’s a material impact on the economy in Australia.”

However, some partial data released on Friday suggests the scale of the problem that is emerging, with figures showing that property sales in China’s so-called first-tier cities fell by 93% on 3-5 February compared with the same days last year. Railway passenger traffic was down 89% on 5 February.

"The US taking out a top Iranian leader may cause Pyongyang to rethink the scale of its next provocation," Leif-Eric Easley, an associate professor of international studies at Seoul's Ewha University, wrote in a Tuesday note published on The Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank. "Pyongyang may now point to Iran's case to justify resisting denuclearisation and enhancing its self-avowed strategic deterrent for regime survival," he continued.

In September, the White House slapped sanctions on various Chinese people and companies, including two COSCO Shipping Corporation units, for "knowingly engaging" in the transport of Iranian crude in breach of US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Telecommunications giant Huawei, deemed a national security risk by the US, has also come under fire over alleged sanctions violations. Its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is currently battling extradition to the US on charges of fraud and misleading HSBC Holdings over Huawei's business in Iran.

Given the riskiness of US foreign policy actions, other countries may be unwilling to continue cooperating with Washington, he warned: "With the current escalation in Iran-US ties, other countries with an interest in seeing a nuclear-free North Korea may be less willing to trust the US' good faith." "This is particularly true as China and Russia continue to set themselves up as an alternative force for North Korean denuclearisation in contrast to the US-led campaign of sanctions," Rinna said.

While health minister Katsunobu Kato said there is "no reason for changing the government position that it has yet to reach a state of epidemic in Japan," infection of a Hokkaido resident in his 50s with no recent history of traveling abroad has been confirmed, the Hokkaido government said. The man is being treated at a hospital where he remains in serious condition.

Elsewhere in Japan, a female taxi driver in her 60s in Okinawa tested positive for the virus, becoming the first confirmed case of infection in the country's southernmost island prefecture or the Kyushu region, local authorities said.

The government has already sent four chartered planes and repatriated a total of 763 people from Wuhan and other areas of Hubei Province amid a wide-scale lockdown of the area. It is planning to send a fifth plane on Sunday to bring home more Japanese and family members who wish to leave the city, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said.