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crimped construct leaves no room for the very different perspective of someone like architect Charles Kelley in Portland, Oregon

“Portland,” Kelley said, “has become responsible for setting the frame for how China will look at urbanism for the next 50 years.”

consult with cities around the world to develop sustainable communities through everything from promoting renewable energy to opening bike lanes.

Islamic State fired crude chemical weapons on US troops – Pentagon

Islamic State forces have fired crude chemical weapons at US troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has confirmed, a startling disclosure that US officials promptly downplayed as resulting in no deaths or injuries.

Mustard, a banned chemical weapon, is relatively easy to manufacture and has a low incidence of lethality in all but extreme doses, such as the bombardment that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used on Kurdish civilians and Iranian soldiers in the 1980s and early 1990

what will happen when the Trump tariffs come?

There will be retaliation, big time. When it comes to trade, America is not that much of a superpower — China is also a huge player, and the European Union is bigger still. They will respond in kind, targeting vulnerable U.S. sectors like aircraft and agriculture.

And retaliation isn’t the whole story; there’s also emulation. Once America decides that the rules don’t apply, world trade will become a free-for-all.

the real reason to support the TPP wasn't economics so much as geopolitics. It was about keeping an economic foot firmly planted in China's backyard, and writing the trade rules so they couldn't.

this kind of logic was a part of almost all our trade deals the past 70 years. Initially, these were about setting a system to promote prosperity abroad so fragile postwar democracies could resist Communist pressure. But even after the Berlin Wall came down, they were still a way to not only open up markets, but also reward countries for reforming their economies like we wanted.

that was why NAFTA made more sense than any economic model would have told you. If we rejected Mexico's liberalizing government, it might have collapsed — and an anti-American one could have taken its place.

It is little wonder that corporations and investors have been happy. This traditional Republican embrace of trickle-down supply-side economics will mostly favour corporations and wealthy individuals, while doing almost nothing to create jobs or raise blue-collar workers’ incomes.

According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, almost half of the benefits from Trump’s proposed tax cuts would go to the top 1% of income earners.

Trump’s honeymoon with investors might be coming to an end. There are several reasons for this.

In 2000, the United States forged its current economic relationship with China by permanently granting it most-favored-nation trade status and, eventually, helping the country enter the World Trade Organization. The unspoken deal, though, went something like this: China could make a lot of cheap goods, which would benefit U.S. consumers, even if it cost the country countless low-end manufacturing jobs. And rather than, say, fight for an extra bit of market share in Chicago, American multinationals could offset any losses because of competition by entering a country with more than a billion people — including the fastest-growing middle class in history — just about to buy their first refrigerators, TVs and cars. It was as if the United States added a magical 51st state, one that was bigger and grew faster than all the others. We would all be better off.

European companies have done much better than American ones because they’ve had to practice selling across borders and cultures for decades.

China’s households save more than a quarter of their money, while Americans save less than 4 percent.

Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two," according to a new paper

The question is: Which half?

Where do machines work better than people?

About one of every two computers sold today is running Android. Google’s once underappreciated side bet has become Earth’s dominant computing platform

Google’s version of Android faces increasing competition from hungry rivals, including upstart smartphone makers in developing countries that are pushing their own heavily modified take on the software. There are also new threats from Apple, which has said that its recent record number of iPhone sales came, in part, thanks to people switching from Android.

Hanging over these concerns is the question of the bottom line. Despite surging sales, profits in the Android smartphone business declined 44 percent in 2014

Germany's process has worked pretty well ever since Otto Von Bismarck set it in motion in 1889. But by 2009, the system started to break down. Drug manufacturers were introducing new drugs—knowing they'd be reimbursed by the sickness funds—but the new drugs weren't necessarily any better than the earlier ones. The result: Drug prices spiraled.

nter 2010's Pharmaceutical Market Restructuring Act, or Arzneimittelmarkt-Neuordnungsgesetz, abbreviated in German as AMNOG. As in "AMNOGonna pay drug companies for new meds that are more expensive but not any better than the old ones."

s soon as a new drug enters the market, manufacturers must submit a series of studies that prove it heals patients better than whatever was previously available. If the new drugs don't seem any better than their predecessors, the sickness funds will only pay for the price of the earlier version. Patients can still buy the newer medicine, but it's up to them to make up the price difference out of pocket.

A state government in India promised to introduce a bill to grant coveted “backward” status to a relatively prosperous caste group, officials said Monday, in an effort to quell protests that have raged for the past four days.

The protesters, members of the Jat caste group, had blocked roads around the capital, set fire to railway stations and cars, and temporarily shut down a crucial canal that is a major source of the city’s water. Nineteen people were killed in the violence in surrounding Haryana State, and fears of water shortages led New Delhi to close its schools to conserve its supply.

The main thoroughfare in the area, Grand Trunk Road, which had been reopened on Sunday, was blocked again by fighting on Monday morning, the police said. Still, a state official said, 80 percent of the roads that had been closed were open again on Monday morning.

The economic forces driving this year’s nomination contests have been at work for decades. Why did the dam break now?

The share of the gross national product going to labor as opposed to the share going to capital fell from 68.8 percent in 1970 to 60.7 percent by 2013

the number of manufacturing jobs dropped by 36 percent, from 19.3 million in 1979 to 12.3 million in 2015, while the population increased by 43 percent, from 225 million to 321 million.

The rich middle- and high-school kids Luthar and her collaborators have studied show higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse on average than poor kids, and much higher rates than the national norm.

They report clinically significant depression or anxiety or delinquent behaviors at a rate two to three times the national average

The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania warns of the dangers of insisting that admission to an elite college is necessary for a successful life.

The stability (and even monotony) associated with German politics under Ms. Merkel appears to be coming to an end. Her looming retirement marks a deepening crisis of the German political system that threatens not just the future of the country, but of the European Union.

Thirty years later, this society has vanished. Average real incomes declined for nearly 20 years beginning in 1993. Germany not only grew more unequal, but the standard of living for the lower strata stagnated or even fell. The lowest 40 percent of households have faced annual net income losses for around 25 years now, while the kinds of jobs that promised long-term stability dwindled.

on the surface Germany appears to be an economic success story. Its G.D.P. has grown consistently for nearly a decade; unemployment is at its lowest since reunification in 1989. In amassing trade surpluses, Germany has enjoyed several advantages: an advanced manufacturing sector; the ability to get primary products and services from other members of the European Union; and being in the eurozone, which effectively gives the country a devalued currency, making its exports more attractive.

it is having second thoughts about some of those sales because they don’t make money—and is pushing big brands to change how they use its site.

Inside Amazon, the items are known as CRaP, short for “Can’t Realize a Profit.” Think bottled beverages or snack foods

The products tend to be priced at $15 or less, are sold directly by Amazon, and are heavy or bulky and therefore costly to ship—characteristics that make for thin or nonexistent margins

The AI revolution will have two engines — China and the United States — pushing its progress swiftly forward. It is unlike any previous technological revolution that emerged from a singular cultural setting. Having two engines will further accelerate the pace of technology.

WorldPost: In your book, you talk about the “data gap” between these two engines. What do you mean by that? Lee: Data is the raw material on which AI runs. It is like the role of oil in powering an industrial economy. As an AI algorithm is fed more examples of the phenomenon you want the algorithm to understand, it gains greater and greater accuracy. The more faces you show a facial recognition algorithm, the fewer mistakes it will make in recognizing your face

All data is not the same, however. China and the United States have different strengths when it comes to data. The gap emerges when you consider the breadth, quality and depth of the data. Breadth means the number of users, the population whose actions are captured in data. Quality means how well-structured and well-labeled the data is. Depth means how many different data points are generated about the activities of each user.

From afar, one might assume the picture is rosy: Indiana has an unemployment rate of just 3.3 percent, and for people without a college degree, few employers offer the kind of salary and benefits that Carrier does. But when I got to Indianapolis in July, I found that the factory Mr. Trump is often credited with saving is plagued by rising absenteeism and low morale.

What’s ailing Carrier isn’t weak demand. Furnace sales are strong, and managers have increased overtime and even recalled 150 previously laid-off workers. Instead, employees share a looming sense that a factory shutdown is inevitable — that Carrier has merely postponed the closing until a more politically opportune moment.

In some ways, the situation is a metaphor for blue-collar work and life in the United States today. Paychecks are a tad fatter and the economic picture has brightened slightly, but no one feels particularly secure or hopeful

For Aldi, the panic and rush is an integral part of the shopping experience for two reasons. The first is the happy realisation once you have left the store, and your heartbeat has settled, that you have spent less time shopping than you would have in a typical supermarket. The second, and most important, is what Aldi managers describe, straight-faced, as “the thrill at the till”: your trolley full of goods has cost less than you thought it would. The rushed, no-frills experience isn’t something you merely endure for the sake of saving money; the awareness of your savings makes that experience a pleasure in itself.

Aldi is still relatively low-tech: without a loyalty programme, it knows little about individual customer preferences and you can’t buy its groceries online. What it has done is disrupt a mindset: the settled wisdom about how we think of ourselves as shoppers, and the basis by which we identify with a particular supermarket. Aldi’s victory was to show that there was no shame – and in fact there was satisfaction – in shopping at a discount supermarket

“Aldi’s customer profile is now classless,” said Hyman. “The supermarket is as strong with affluent people as it is with people on low incomes.”

n theory, Amazon is a site meant to serve the needs of humans.

But when you type hangers into Amazon’s search box, the mega-retailer delivers “over 200,000” options. On the first page of results, half are nearly identical velvet hangers, and most of the rest are nearly identical plastic. They don’t vary much by price, and almost all of the listings in the first few pages of results have hundreds or thousands of reviews that average out to ratings between four and five stars. Even if you have very specific hanger needs and preferences, there’s no obvious choice. There are just choices.

Amazon’s success has pushed retailers such as Walmart and Target to carry even more stuff—especially online—and to get that stuff to shoppers even faster