2014

Looking forward, 2014 will be an important year for many reasons around the world. Starting with politics, many countries celebrate it's presidential elections. Topics like Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and north Africa will be exposed and will be the center of world's edge.

In sports, Soccer will mark an important point this year. Starting with the FIFA World Cup in June, in Brazil. Also soccer will include all the preparation against the world cup. An interesting UEFA Champions League and important players that will be known during the world cup. Sports will includ World Winter Games that will be developed in Sochi (Rusia). Formula 1 will have an important year (taking into account the changes in the teams) and Moto GP will be exciting (Lorenzo vs Marquez will be a good scenario).

In technology, Smartphones will mark an important year for Apple, Android and Windows. Blackberry will try to stay in the top. So will be amazing to pay attention for it. CES 2014, in Las Vegas, showed the good start of this year.

Many other things will be done this year. So This and more topics will be analyzed in this blog.

Keep connected!

Juan.

Reality that surpasses fiction

Picture taken of Capatin Phillips in Facebook

By this days, in movie listings, there is a movie that tells a true history that is happening nowadays, and that happened some years ago.

Starring by Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips tells the history of a cargo ship (property of a big Shipping company) that is kidnapped, by 'pirates' in the sea close to the called Africa horn (Somalia). The movie has an excellent production. Effects and all the actors develop great secenes.

But there's a huge problem. People are taking big ships (using guns), that contains hig value goods. Then the ask for money (big quantities) to leave free the ship.

In the movie, US Navy did a good job to liberate the ship. But in the real life, when the ships arrive in the costs?

The article below describes the pracy actions.

Article By The Economist (Nov. 2nd 2013)

PIRACY remains a concern for ships passing the Horn of Africa, even though the number of incidents has plummeted since 2011, when armed protection was beefed up on board many large vessels. The topic grips the public imagination. Witness the success of “Captain Phillips”, a film in which a vessel captained by the actor Tom Hanks is hijacked by Somalis. Yet the pirate economy is poorly understood. A report*, to be released on November 4th by the World Bank, the UN and Interpol sheds new light.

The authors interviewed current and former pirates, their financial backers, government officials, middlemen and others. They estimate that between $339m and $413m was paid in ransoms off the Somali coast between 2005 and 2012. The average haul was $2.7m. Ordinary pirates usually get $30,000-75,000 each, with a bonus of up to $10,000 for the first man to board a ship and for those bringing their own weapon or ladder.

During operations, pirates spend with abandon. Interest rates on loaned goods and services are high: $10 of mobile-phone airtime is charged generally at around $20. The men on the anchored ships also pay up to three times the market price for qat, driving up prices on the coast. “With piracy everything became more and more expensive,” complains a fisherman-turned-pirate. Some locals (including former pirates) offer services to potential and actual victims of piracy, for instance as consultants, negotiators or proof-of-life interviewers. Some of these “companies” openly advertise their services, sometimes contacting victims directly.

Financing pirate expeditions can be quite cheap by comparison. The most basic ones cost a few hundred dollars, which may be covered by those taking part. Bigger expeditions, involving several vessels, may cost $30,000 and require professional financing, This comes from former police and military officers or civil servants, qat dealers, fishermen and former pirates. They take anywhere between 30% and 75% of the ransom.

Chile looking forward

Elections in Chile, next sunday november 17th, are important in several ways.
Current president, Sebastian Piñera, did good things during his time in the Palacio de la Moneda.Obviously with many critics but he moved Chile to be a referent of South America as a leader (can say as Brazil).
Michelle Bachelet (former President) want to return. She was a good president forsure. She started in a good way that engine called Chile. Nowdays many factories conquered the continent and Bachelet  started that fact.

Picture: emol.com

There are many questions about the new chilean president. Maybe she will be a good president? she will be a 'neutral' pole, talking about left or right in South America? Why she? because the possible president will be a women.

South America is changing year by year and many presidents want to stay as leaders. Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia presidents are doing that. If Bachelet win, she will stay many years? Probably not, but its important to mention that she is trying to be president for third time.

Chile is looking forward, not back as Venezuela, but the elections will tell what the chileans want.

The Washington Post Sold

After this important newspaper was sold it's impotant to know why.

This was published in The Washington Post on august 6

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth presented her uncle, company chief executive Donald E. Graham, with a once-unthinkable choice at a lunch meeting at downtown Washington’s Bombay Club late last year.

The paper was facing the like­lihood of a seventh straight year of declines in revenue, with one preliminary budget estimate showing the possibility of $40 million in losses for 2013. And despite years of heavy investment in new digital offerings, there was little sign that robust profits were about to return, she reported.

That left three choices, Weymouth told Graham. The family could continue presiding over the gradual decline of the newspaper they loved. They could move more aggressively to cut the paper’s staff more deeply than ever, hoping that they could return The Post to sustained profitability by sacrificing its longtime excellence.
Or they could sell, cutting ties to one of America’s iconic news organizations after four generations of family control in the hopes that The Post could thrive again under a new, deep-pocketed, civic-minded owner.
That meeting triggered months of remarkably quiet maneuvering for a company that ordinarily prides itself in dragging other people’s secrets into the light. Eight months after Weymouth first raised the possibility, Graham arranged to sell The Post to Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos in a $250 million deal — after two key face-to-face meetings with a man who has scant journalistic experience.

Several factors allowed the deal to come together with relative speed. They included a long-standing friendship between Bezos and Graham, 68, an executive steeped in traditional newspaper publishing who had become a respected elder for a newer generation of tech magnates. Bezos was among the most successful of those, and the two men had on several occasions traded insights on their businesses.
“The Post is his baby,” Weymouth said of Graham. “He was not going to give his baby to anybody who he thought would not care for it properly.”
But also propelling each step was his reluctant acceptance that continuing to own The Post — so long synonymous with the Graham name — probably meant years more of cuts, with significant profits perhaps never returning for the family or the company’s other investors. He long has demanded that each of The Washington Post Co.’s divisions — including ones focusing on education, cable television and other markets — stand alone as viable businesses.
“You wouldn’t mind losing money if you thought you were building toward something two or three years from now, but that was not what Katharine was saying,” Graham recalled. “She was saying the decline in revenue was going to go on, so, you know, the only choice was lose money or cut costs. . . . It’s certainly an option to lose money for three or four years. The question was what would happen in three or four years.”

Continue reading...

 

The Economist on Internet

LeMans 2014

Last LeMans 24 hours race was simply nice. The best version in the last years. Audi won with a great car and after a hard race. But the only fact that darkened the race was the death of a pilot starting the race: Allan Simonsen.

Property of Audi AG/FB

Back in Costa Concordia

More than a year after Costa Concordia crash in italian sea, near Giglio island, the trial against the captain Francesco Schetino will start soon. More than 5 people dead and one of the newest ships around the world dumped in the sea are more than arguments to take a decision in Costa Concordia`s accident.

This 'incredible' story started on janury 13th 2012, when Costa Concordia were in Meditarranean sea. Starting the night a maneuver by the captain Schetino did the ship became so close to the island. The big ship ran aground Giglio island and there started a huge emergency. They were close to the island, an advantage to save quickly many people. But the process of evacuation were slow.

Schetino left the ship fast, many witnesses told. And navigation failures are the most probably arguments against the captain.

Costa Concordia's story is incredible but it happened.

The ship robably will be rescued after a long process. Read here how. 

Image AFP - Getty Images- BuzzFeed

Picture by Flippo Monteforte - Getty Images - BuzzFeed

Image by Stringer/Reuters - BuzzFeed