When the Cold War ended, the nuclear threat diminished. But.....
Termination of the superpower standoff generated hope for a world in which cooperation would prevail over competition and conflict. In 1991, the Doomsday Clock, which provides an easily understood assessment of the risk of a nuclear war, was reset and the minute hand moved from 10 to 17 minutes before midnight. Only eight years earlier, in 1983, the world was gripped by fears of nuclear war and the clock registered 23:57. Tensions are again growing. So too are nuclear arsenals. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), after a marginal decrease in the number of warheads in 2021, nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decade. SIPRI estimates that there were 12,705 nuclear warheads worldwide at the start of 2022, with over 90% of them — 11,405 — in the United States and Russian stockpiles. Some 2,000 warheads, virtually of them U.S. or Russian, are in a state of high operational alert, meaning that they can be used at a moment’s notice. All nuclear-armed states — the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — are modernizing their arsenals, and several continue to grow the number of their weapons. China’s nuclear development program appears set to yield a qualitative shift in its capabilities while North Korea is reckoned to have assembled up to 20 warheads — and has sufficient fissile material for 45 to 55 warheads. Not only are the numbers expanding, but governments appear committed to making nuclear weapons more usable, a new capability that is increasingly reflected in nuclear policy and doctrine. Talk of fighting a war with nuclear weapons is more and more common. Russia has made repeated reference to its nuclear capabilities throughout the war in Ukraine, an especially ominous sign. Those weapons represent a ghastly diversion of resources. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimated that the nuclear powers spent $82.4 billion on those weapons in 2021, an increase from $76 billion in 2020. That massive spending failed to deter a war in Europe. These disturbing and dangerous developments make even more important the forthcoming Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, or RevCon, that is scheduled to be held in August in New York City. The RevCon is held every five years to assess progress toward the goals of the NPT: continuing nonproliferation by states without nuclear weapons; the availability of peaceful nuclear technology to those same states; and the movement toward nuclear disarmament by states with those awesome weapons of mass destruction. This meeting was supposed to have been held in 2020 but was postponed because of the pandemic. The SIPRI report makes clear that the five states allowed by the NPT to possess nuclear-weapons — the U.S., Russia, China, France and the U.K. — are not honouring their part of the bargain in which the nuclear “have-nots” commit to not acquiring those weapons in exchange for progress toward nuclear disarmament among the nuclear weapon states. The failure to follow through is not new. Frustration and disappointment prevented the last RevCon, held in 2015, from reaching consensus and producing a final report. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to attend the RevCon, the first Japanese prime minister to do so. (His attendance depends on the outcome of the Upper House election scheduled for July.) He joined the 2015 RevCon as foreign minister. Kishida’s interest in a world free of nuclear weapons also reflects his family’s Hiroshima origins; that city’s tragic history as the first city in the world to experience a nuclear bombing has reinforced his commitment to nuclear disarmament. Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will boost that effort with his attendance at the ministerial meeting of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative, a 12-member coalition committed to promoting those two prongs of the NPT. The group will convene prior to RevCon to help generate momentum for a successful conclusion to that meeting. There is a new instrument in the disarmament toolkit: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January 2021. It’s an ambitious document that prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to prohibited such activities. Nuclear armed states that join the treaty have a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of their nuclear weapons program. Impressive as it sounds, its effectiveness is limited: No nuclear weapon state has signed up. Neither has Japan, despite its unique historical experience with and knowledge of the effects of these weapons. Kishida said that Japan will not even take part as an observer in the first meeting of parties to the treaty that will be held in Vienna later this month, noting that no nuclear powers have acceded to the convention. Kishida’s reticence reflects the dilemma faced by Japan and other U.S. allies. In the abstract, disarmament is an appealing goal. Facing a potential adversary with a modern military, its own nuclear forces, a long and contentious history with Japan as well as an ongoing territorial dispute, the maintenance of a nuclear capability makes a great deal of sense. As Kishida argued when he explained why his government would not send a representative to the Vienna meeting, “Japan should promote nuclear arms control and nonproliferation realistically based on its relationship of trust with the United States, our only ally.” His logic makes sense. But Japan must remain committed to the goal of disarmament: because it is enshrined in the NPT, because nuclear weapon states have committed to that objective and because rising tensions make the possession of those weapons even more fraught. Japan can help by building up its conventional military forces to reduce the need to rely on U.S. nuclear weapons. It will take time but every contribution to the cause of disarmament is to be valued and pursued.
0 Comments
Russia is willing to "sacrifice" part of its budget to intervene in the foreign exchange market and weaken its currency, the ruble. This was stated by the Russian finance minister on Wednesday. The ruble is at its highest level since 2015. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dollar was worth more than 80 rubles, today only 52 rubles. This situation has been created by the measures taken by Moscow to protect the Russian economy against Western sanctions and by the fall in imports. However, a strong ruble is putting pressure on the Russian government as it undermines exports.
"The exchange rate of the ruble is vital for exporters, so we have decided within the government to study proposals on this next week," said Finance Minister Anton Siluanov during a forum with representatives from the business world. Profit from oil and gas The minister said the government is "willing to sacrifice part of the budget" by "using excess oil and gas revenues to intervene in the foreign exchange market" and contain the ruble. Specifically, this would involve buying currencies from "friendly" countries - which Moscow did not impose sanctions on after Russia's invasion of Ukraine - to weaken the ruble against foreign currencies, including the dollar and the euro. "I see that as the ultimate measure with the heavy artillery," said Siluanov, who emphasized that no final decision has been made yet. Economic Development Minister Maxime Rechetnikov already openly criticized his colleague's plan on Wednesday. "We do not see this proposal as a solution to the current situation," he said. Zimbabwe is set to introduce gold coins that will enable investors to store value within the country as inflation spirals out of control and the local currency continues to rapidly devalue against major currencies. The move comes after inflation for June jumped to 191.6% from 132% in May. In a statement on Monday, the southern African country’s central bank chief John Mangudya announced the new gold coins would be available through normal banking institutions.
“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) resolved to introduce gold coins into the market as an instrument that will enable investors to store value,” Mangudya said. “The gold coins will be minted by Fidelity Gold Refineries (Private) Limited and will be sold to the public through normal banking channels.” Fidelity Gold Refineries (Private) Limited is the sole gold buying entity and refining entity in the country and is owned by the central bank. The central bank’s monetary policy committee expressed “great concern on the recent rise in inflation”, which increased by 30.7% on a month-on-month basis for June 2022. Authorities are struggling to pull Zimbabwe from the grips of an economic crisis characterised by high inflation, a rapidly devaluing local currency, 90 percent unemployment and declining manufacturing output. The country’s inflation has been on an upward trend in the past three months as inflation pressures rise, driven by the continued weakening of the Zimbabwean dollar which is trading at $1:650 on the black market. The printing of new money by the central bank has also worsened the situation, reversing gains made in the past two years that saw inflation decrease from a peak of 800 percent in 2020 to 60 percent in January this year. As part of measures to stabilise the economy, the central bank will more than triple the lending rate from 80 percent to 200 percent per annum and raise the interest rate from 50 percent to 100 percent per annum.
The resonance switch is an even more valuable escape hatch—or portal to weirdness. It takes the place of a resonance or feedback knob that you’d see on many flangers. Generally, replacing a knob with a switch that moves between presets means diminished flexibility.
G7 nations are to invest as much as $600 billion into the infrastructure of less-prosperous nations around the world, with the US footing one third of the bill over the next five years. The announcement was made on Sunday in Germany, with the money supposed to rival the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. Flanked by other leaders of the G7 group, US President Joe Biden said Western countries were committing to “financing for quality, high-standard, sustainable infrastructure in developing and middle-income countries.” Without mentioning China by name, he said that what the G7 were doing was “fundamentally different because it’s grounded on our shared values”.
The US has long accused China of weaponizing its wealth by investing heavily into countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Trump administration claimed Beijing was pursuing “debt trap diplomacy” towards its borrowers, offering loans that the recipients ultimately can’t pay back and taking already built infrastructure as collateral. China rejects the claim, saying that its global infrastructure investments, which are estimated at $2.5 trillion, benefits both itself and the target countries. Much of the money goes into things like roads and ports, giving China increased physical access to foreign resources and markets. Since its launch almost a decade ago, the US and its allies have struggled to offer an alternative to the Chinese program. Last year, during a meeting in Cornwall in the UK, G7 nations announced their own version, named “Build Back Better World” (BBBW) to mirror the domestic plan of the Biden administration that was ultimately shunned by Republicans and some Democrats. BBBW was then renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). “This isn’t aid or charity,” Biden said on Sunday, during his speech in Schloss Elmau in Germany. “It’s an investment that will deliver returns for everyone, including the American people and the people of all our nations.” “It’ll boost all of our economies, and it’s a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future and let communities around the world see themselves – and see for themselves the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies,” he said.The $200 billion commitment from the US is to be covered by a combination of federal government money with private capital from investors like pension funds, private equity and insurance funds. The EU announced its own €300 billion ($317bn) answer to Belt and Road in December last year. The White House said PGII investments will focus on four key areas, including climate resilient infrastructure and energy sources, secure communications, projects advancing gender equality and healthcare. Biden said there were “dozens of projects already underway” and gave a handful of examples. Those included, $14 million in support of Romanian efforts to build a small modular reactor (SMR) plant; a $600 million contract to build an undersea telecommunications cable to connect Singapore to France via the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and a $320 million private development project to build hospitals in Cote d’Ivoire. Some publications like Politico noted that the Western investment plans were already undermined in terms of combating climate change. While still relevant, they took a backseat due to hiking energy prices and the EU’s plans to decouple from Russia, which led some members to rely again on coal-fired power plants instead. There is also the issue of high inflation in the US and the EU, which affects the value of the dollar and the euro, potentially reducing the actual impact of the allocated funding in the long run. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Sunday that an embargo on Russian gold exports will strip Moscow of around $19 billion in annual revenue. Pressed over the West’s failure to hurt the Russian economy with sanctions thus far, Blinken predicted that the effects will be seen next year. The US, UK, Canada, and Japan will announce a ban on the import of Russian gold during the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Germany on Sunday, according to a statement from the British government.
Gold is “the second most lucrative export that Russia has, after energy,” Blinken told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “It’s about $19 billion per year, and most of that is within the G7 countries. Cutting that off, denying access to about $19 billion of revenue a year, that’s significant.” Blinken's statement was factually incorrect. In reality, Russia's second most valuable export is food. Foreign sales of agriculture products were worth over $37 billion in 2021, according to Moscow. It is unclear whether the rest of the G7 nations will sign on to the ban, with European Council President Charles Michel saying on Sunday that the EU would first need to determine whether it would be “possible to target gold in a manner that would target the Russian economy and not in a manner that would target ourselves.” US President Joe Biden has said that a gold ban would impose “unprecedented costs on Russian President Vladimir Putin,” and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed that it will “strike at the heart of Putin’s war machine.” However, both leaders said the same about the multiple rounds of sanctions imposed on Russia by their countries and their EU allies. Yet, while Biden promised in March to “crater” the Russian economy, Moscow is reporting record profits from oil and gas sales, and the Russian ruble currently stands at a seven-year high against both the dollar and the euro. Meanwhile, inflation is at its highest level in 40 years in the EU and the US, and customers on both sides of the Atlantic are paying record high fuel prices. Despite agreeing on a Russian oil embargo last month, the EU is reportedly importing more Russian crude now than at any point over the last two months. Russia will also still have the option to sell its gold to refiners, or to look for new buyers in China, India, or the Middle East, as it has done with its fossil fuels. “The US said that Western sanctions against Russia would devastate its economy but that doesn’t seem to be happening. When are these sanctions going to start having the effect that the West and President Biden has promised?” Tapper asked Blinken. In the aftermath of the war, refugees flooded south to the Kowloon Peninsula. The only trace of the old city was the derelict shell of the Mandarin’s house. Yet people gravitated almost instinctively to this rough rectangle of ground. Perhaps it was the feng shui. The Walled City had originally been laid out according to the ancient principles of Chinese philosophy: facing south and overlooking water, with hills and mountains to the north. This ideal alignment, it was said, brought harmony to all citizens. In their desperate plight some refugees may have believed that Kowloon would be a much-needed source of luck and prosperity. Others, however, recalled that this had once been a Chinese enclave in British colonial territory. The stone walls of the “Walled City” had gone, but the refugees were convinced the diplomatic ones remained.By 1947 there were more than 2,000 squatters camped in Kowloon, their ramshackle huts arranged in almost the exact footprint of the original city. No one wanted to find themselves outside the borders—those on the wrong side of the line risked losing the protection of the Chinese government. The people kept coming, and the camp grew ever more squalid and overcrowded. Appalled by the conditions, the Hong Kong authorities made plans to clear the refugees. On January 5, 1948, the Public Works Department, supported by a large police presence, removed the squatters and demolished all the slum housing. Within a week, however, the occupiers had returned to rebuild their shacks. When the police attempted to intervene, a riot broke out. News of the disturbances spread across China, and the plight of the “residents” of Kowloon became a cause célèbre. The British consulate in Canton was set on fire, and a group of students in Shanghai staged a protest strike. Officials from the Chinese government traveled to the Walled City—and officially encouraged the refugees to continue the struggle against their British oppressors. The provincial Canton government sent a delegation on a “comfort mission” to the region, supplementing the distribution of food and medical aid with messages advocating militant action. The Chinese Foreign Ministry continued to argue that they retained jurisdiction over the city and its people. Amid mounting tension, the Hong Kong government relented. The eviction program was halted, and the police withdrew. From a temporary refugee camp, Kowloon now began to evolve into something more permanent. A new city was being founded on the ruins of the old. What kind of city? Naturally, the judgment of Sir Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong from 1947 to 1957, was damning. Kowloon, he wrote, had become “a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavoury.” The Chinese claims to sovereignty over Kowloon did not extend to any day-to-day administration; they merely used its uncertain status as a convenient tool for political point-scoring. After the disturbances in 1948, the Hong Kong government had settled on a similar policy of non-intervention. The result was a city outside the law: There was no tax, no regulation of businesses, no health or planning systems, no police presence. People could come to Kowloon, and, in official terms, disappear. It was little surprise that criminal activity flourished. Five Triad gangs—the King Yee, Sun Yee On, 14K, Wo Shing Wo, and Tai Ho Choi—took up residence. Kowloon’s extralegal status made it the perfect place for the manufacture, sale and use of drugs such as opium and heroin. The city that had been founded to police the traffic of opium became the epicenter of Hong Kong’s narcotics trade.
Organized crime may have dominated much of Kowloon, but it did not define the city. Entrepreneurs, attracted by low rents offered by private landlords, saw a unique opportunity. Hundreds of factories were established, with entire families manning the production lines. Conditions were often appalling, yet productivity—and profit—remarkable. Goods made in Kowloon were exported throughout Hong Kong, China, and even, in some cases, the world. Plastics and textile manufacturing were a specialty, as was food production. To the blissful ignorance of Hong Kong’s well-heeled residents, the dumplings and fish balls served in their restaurants were frequently sourced from Kowloon. The citizens of the Walled City demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for change and adaptation. The boundaries of their world were tightly constrained, yet, as more people continued to enter the city, their architecture met the demand. As modern high-rises grew up in Hong Kong, the builders of Kowloon copied what they saw, erecting tower blocks of their own. Thin columns, established on foundations often consisting of thin layers of concrete poured into shallow trenches, started to extend skywards. With no requirement for planning permission, structures were thrown up with amazing speed. Subsidence and settlement were common. Because the high-rises would often lean against each other, residents called them “lovers’ buildings.”As the blocks began to merge together, the city became less a collection of buildings and more a single structure, a solid block filled with thousands of individual units designed to meet every requirement of a city: living, working, learning, production, commerce, trade, and leisure. Increasingly, residents were physically sealed off from the outside world. Light did not penetrate down to the narrow lanes leading between the high-rises. It was the beginning of the City of Darkness. A system of self-government gradually emerged. In 1963, for the first time in over a decade, the Hong Kong authorities attempted to intervene in Kowloon, issuing a demolition order for one corner of the city, and proposing to relocate the displaced residents to a new estate development nearby. When the plans were made public, the community instantly formed a “Kowloon City anti-demolition committee.”
Things are different over on the digital voice. In this domain, repeats ring with clarity, and the ghosts of bum notes will haunt you if you’re not careful. But the clear repeats also expand the potential for punchier beat-centric and repetitive patterns and riffs. Analog 2 is my favorite voice. Its mid-forward repeats excite a more prominent, shimmering set of harmonics. It’s a great environment for enjoying the mix of those extra overtones and a dose of extra motion from the pedal’s modulation section. The modulation can be dialed up to amazingly queasy levels of intensity at high depth and repeat settings. In general, though, I like the modulation depth at more modest levels. And the Delay sounds nice enough to require little in the way of modulation dressing. That said, I strongly suggest this mode with the Hammertone Chorus. It’s a yummy combo.
There are more immaculate digital delays and more authentic digital takes on bucket brigade echo. But to me, the Delay’s quirks are big plusses. That they so interestingly color the pedal’s broad range of personalities make it a true bargain. Following the first Opium War of 1839 to 1842—sparked, in essence, by the Chinese government’s attempts to prevent the East India Company from importing narcotics—China signed a treaty ceding a portion of its territory to Great Britain: a near-deserted, mountainous island with a sheltered, deep-water harbor at the entrance to the Canton River, opposite the Kowloon Peninsula. Hong Kong.In 1843, the Chinese began to build a fort at the very tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, with an office for the Mandarin (the government official) and a barracks for 150 soldiers, surrounded by a wall that was 700 feet long and 400 feet wide. Known as Kowloon Walled City, it was intended as a visible Chinese military presence near the new British colony. In 1860, disputes over trade sparked a second Opium War. British and French forces devastated the Chinese, and a new treaty granted the whole of the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain, with a solitary exception—the Walled City. Over the next 30 years, British authorities attempted to negotiate control of the city, but the Chinese remained firm. Even a new treaty in 1898, which granted Hong Kong, Kowloon, and further territories in Canton to Britain for 99 years, kept the Walled City under Chinese control. A year later, in May 1899, rumors circulated that Chinese soldiers were massing again in the Walled City, so the British sent troops across the water. They expected battle—perhaps another war—but found only the Mandarin. The irate official left too, and the British took the city, though the Chinese never renounced their claim. Missionaries moved in and built churches and schools, pig farmers from the surrounding hills took plots of land within the walls. There was almost no administrative control, and the city became a slum. Yet whenever the Hong Kong government tried to clear it to turn it into a park—evicting the residents in the process—the Chinese government always stepped in. After all, this tiny rectangle of land was still officially their territory. The situation remained unresolved until the outbreak of World War II. Japanese forces occupied the Kowloon Peninsula and tore down the walls of the city to build a new runway for nearby Kai Tak Airport. In the aftermath of the war, refugees flooded south to the Kowloon Peninsula. The only trace of the old city was the derelict shell of the Mandarin’s house. Yet people gravitated almost instinctively to this rough rectangle of ground. Perhaps it was the feng shui. The Walled City had originally been laid out according to the ancient principles of Chinese philosophy: facing south and overlooking water, with hills and mountains to the north. This ideal alignment, it was said, brought harmony to all citizens. In their desperate plight some refugees may have believed that Kowloon would be a much-needed source of luck and prosperity. Others, however, recalled that this had once been a Chinese enclave in British colonial territory. The stone walls of the “Walled City” had gone, but the refugees were convinced the diplomatic ones remained.By 1947 there were more than 2,000 squatters camped in Kowloon, their ramshackle huts arranged in almost the exact footprint of the original city. No one wanted to find themselves outside the borders—those on the wrong side of the line risked losing the protection of the Chinese government. The people kept coming, and the camp grew ever more squalid and overcrowded.
Appalled by the conditions, the Hong Kong authorities made plans to clear the refugees. On January 5, 1948, the Public Works Department, supported by a large police presence, removed the squatters and demolished all the slum housing. Within a week, however, the occupiers had returned to rebuild their shacks. When the police attempted to intervene, a riot broke out. News of the disturbances spread across China, and the plight of the “residents” of Kowloon became a cause célèbre. The British consulate in Canton was set on fire, and a group of students in Shanghai staged a protest strike. Officials from the Chinese government traveled to the Walled City—and officially encouraged the refugees to continue the struggle against their British oppressors. The provincial Canton government sent a delegation on a “comfort mission” to the region, supplementing the distribution of food and medical aid with messages advocating militant action. The Chinese Foreign Ministry continued to argue that they retained jurisdiction over the city and its people. Amid mounting tension, the Hong Kong government relented. The eviction program was halted, and the police withdrew. From a temporary refugee camp, Kowloon now began to evolve into something more permanent. A new city was being founded on the ruins of the old. WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been treated “very unfairly” to the shame of the entire world, and Mexico has offered to take him in, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Tuesday. He said he would bring up Assange’s case with his US counterpart Joe Biden when they meet in July. The UK announced last week it would extradite the jailed journalist to the US, where he faces espionage charges and up to 175 years behind bars if convicted. The decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel was “very disappointing,” said Lopez, who also goes by his initials AMLO. He also said he intends to ask Biden to drop charges against Assange when they meet next month. Such an action would go counter to the “hardliners in the US” but “humanity must prevail,” AMLO added. “Julian Assange is the best journalist of our time in the world and he has been treated very unfairly, worse than a criminal,” AMLO said. “This is a shame for the world.” Mexico is willing to provide Assange sanctuary if and when he is released, the president added, reminding reporters that he had called on the previous US administration to drop charges against Assange as “a prisoner of conscience.”
Assange, an Australian citizen, sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012, suspecting that Washington wanted him arrested and extradited over WikiLeaks publishing the documents about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. He spent the next seven years trapped at Ecuador’s embassy in London – as the UK refused him safe passage – until his asylum was revoked by a new US-friendly government in Quito. British police dragged Assange out of the embassy in April 2019 and put him in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in south London, where he remains to this day. Within a month of his arrest, the US unsealed an indictment charging him of offenses under the Espionage Act, for which he could face 175 years in prison. Assange has denied all allegations, and a key witness in Washington’s case against him admitted he lied in his testimony. Canberra has not spoken up for Assange’s release, even though the recently elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had opposed the charges against the journalist during the election campaign. Albanese said Monday that he still believed Assange should go free, but that his government would not publicly intervene with the US on his behalf, because it “engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners.” Jumbo floating restaurant, a once famed but financially struggling Hong Kong tourist attraction, sank in the South China Sea after being towed away from the city, its parent company said Monday. It capsized on Sunday near the Paracel Islands after it “encountered adverse conditions” and began to take on water, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises announced in a statement.
“The water depth at the scene is over 1,000 meters, making it extremely difficult to carry out salvage works,” it added. The company said it was “very saddened by the incident” but that no crew members were injured. It said marine engineers had been hired to inspect the floating restaurant and install hoardings on the vessel before the trip, and that “all relevant approvals” had been obtained. The restaurant closed in March 2020, citing the Covid-19 pandemic as the final straw after almost a decade of financial woes. Operator Melco International Development said last month the business had not been profitable since 2013 and cumulative losses had exceeded HK$100 million ($12.7 million). It was still costing millions in maintenance fees every year and around a dozen businesses and organizations had declined an invitation to take it over at no charge, Melco added. It announced last month that ahead of its license expiration in June, Jumbo would leave Hong Kong and await a new operator at an undisclosed location. The restaurant set off shortly before noon last Tuesday from the southern Hong Kong Island typhoon shelter where it had sat for nearly half a century. Opened in 1976 by the late casino tycoon Stanley Ho, in its glory days, it embodied the height of luxury, reportedly costing more than HK$30 million to build. Designed like a Chinese imperial palace and once considered a must-see landmark, the restaurant drew visitors from Queen Elizabeth II to Tom Cruise. It also featured in several films — including Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion”, about a deadly global pandemic.
2022 FORMULA 1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CONSTRUCTOR STANDINGS
First impressions of the Chorus’s controls are that they can be twitchy. And the boundary between pleasantly aqueous modulations and downright seasick ones at certain depth settings can be hard to navigate until you get a feel for how the depth and level controls work together. Ultimately, though, the Chorus provides intuitive routes to many modulation ends.
Fernando Alonso has been handed a time penalty for weaving during today's Canadian Grand Prix, and as a result drops to 9th position. Between turns 10 and 12, on the penultimate lap of the race, the Spaniard made repeated changes of direction to defend against Valtteri Bottas who had to lift at one point and briefly lost momentum. Whilst noting the Spaniard's point that at no stage was any point of Bottas' car alongside his Alpine, the Montreal stewards considered this to be a clear breach of 2 b) of Chapter IV Appendix L of the FIA International Sporting Code and consequently imposed a 5 seconds time penalty in line with that imposed for a similar incident in Australia.
The penalty drops Alonso from 7th to 9th behind the two Alfa Romeos. In addition to the time penalty, Alonso was given a penalty point bringing his twelve month total up to 6. Starting from the front row, the Spaniard's race was compromised by the failure to react strategically to the virtual safety cars, and a subsequent engine issue which saw him fall into the clutches of Bottas and the ensuing DRS train that had built up after the safety car period that followed Yuki Tsunoda's accident. "We had an engine problem on lap 20 where we cut the energy very early on the straights, as soon as we exited the corners," explained the Spaniard at race end. "It was just a case of trying to survive, trying to get the DRS, driving kamikaze in the corners before the detection, because the DRS was my only safety on the straights after that."
2022 Formula 1 World Championship Drivers' Standings
|
Thank you for choosing to make a difference through your donation. We appreciate your support.
This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesCategories
All
Archives
April 2024
|