Free Republic

CHINESE consumers’ spending on luxury goods is set to double to 1 trillion yuan (US$147 billion) by 2025, or 37 percent of the overall global luxury market, McKinsey said in a report yesterday. Chinese consumers will account for most of this 2.7 trillion yuan growth in value of the global luxury goods market, with more sophisticated Chinese buyers being a major force behind the rise. Around 7.6 million Chinese households spent an average of 71,000 yuan on luxury goods per year, according to McKinsey. Most of the luxury shoppers are turning from affluent consumers to wealthy consumers with average annual...

Least terns. A federal lawsuit. Greenpeace. Vandals. Industrious beavers. Angry homeowners. Bureaucratic delays. These were among the obstacles and setbacks that had to be overcome before the Creek Turnpike was built. At one point, the chairman of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority declared it a “total disaster” and exclaimed: “The Creek Turnpike in Tulsa, God only knows when that’ll be completed,” John Kilpatrick said, as reported by the Tulsa World’s Wayne Greene on Oct. 19, 1990. “If we had it to do all over again, we wouldn’t do that project,” the exasperated Kilpatrick said after federal bureaucrats held up construction of...

Outdoor shopping centres are drawing in customers who long ago wrote off the traditional mall experience through a modern mix of food, fashion and practicality. ATLANTA, United States — Pull into the parking lot of the Westside Provisions District, the mixed-use development in Atlanta’s gentrified Westside neighborhood, and you might have to hand your keys over to a valet to help you find a spot — especially on a Saturday afternoon. That’s because, unlike the downtrodden, two-penny outdoor shopping centres and abandoned enclosed malls weighing down the suburbs of the US, Westside Provisions is giving people a reason to swing...

Remember how well Kathy Griffin’s little “prank” where she symbolically decapitated the President went over? Oh, man. What a hoot. She’s a real cut-up, isn’t she? (Er… sorry.) Rather than being embraced by the Left in a unified block, nearly everyone turned on her and declared that we didn’t need that sort of thing in our national discussion. Even CNN cut her loose, and corporate sponsors quickly moved away from any projects with her name associated with it. Well now we may have the next example of this phenomenon. A performing arts group known as The Public Theater, based in...

Some of the reasons Japan loves vending machines have nothing to do with an aging society of love of robots. Video series Vox Borders recently came to Tokyo, taking a look at aspects of everyday life in Japan. Something that caught host Johnny Harris’ eye, as with many new arrivals to the capital, is the incredible number of vending machines to be found in Japan. The purpose of vending machines is pretty self-explanatory (to sell things), but Harris wondered why Japan has so many, and seeks to answer that question in the straightforwardly titled video “Why Japan has so many...

Eliminating the Problem How difficult is it to test autonomous vehicles (AVs) on public roads? Uber can probably tell you all about it. Much of the difficulty in obtaining the permits necessary for such tests comes from fear. Because self-driving technology is new, because the systems have been involved in incidents in the past, and so on, people aren’t quite ready to trust the tech. The governor of Washington state, however, has a different perspective. Governor Jay Inslee signed an order on Wednesday that would allow for autonomous vehicle tests without a human driver behind the wheel. According to the...

“No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of 'Julius Caesar' at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values," the airline said in a statement. Just hours before the theater world gathered for the annual Tony Awards, Delta Air Lines revoked its four-year-old sponsorship of New York's Public Theater, according to reports. The airline found issue with the summer production of Julius Caesar, featuring the assassination of the title character, who in this staging bears an unmistakable resemblance to Donald Trump. "No matter what your political stance may be, the...

In a column from December of 2015, the Wall Street Journal’s Mary O’Grady unveiled a rather inconvenient fact that poverty warriors on the American left and right would perhaps prefer remain hidden: from 1980 to 2000, when the U.S. economy boomed, the number of Mexican arrivals into the U.S. grew from 2.2 million in 1980 to 9.4 million in 2000. The previous number is a clear market signal that the U.S. is where poverty has always been cured, as opposed to a condition that requires specific U.S. policy fixes. O’Grady’s statistics came to mind while reading a recent New York...

President Donald J. Trump was in Ohio last week to gin up support in Middle America for his plan to modernize the nation’s infrastructure. The President, who overwhelmingly carried the Buckeye State, said it was “time to rebuild our country” and to “put America first.” “America must have the best, fastest and most reliable infrastructure anywhere in the world,” President Trump said. “We will fix it,” said Trump, standing along the Ohio River. “We will create the first-class infrastructure our country and our people deserve.” While his national numbers have taken a dive, the PPD Buckeye State Battleground Poll shows...

HOLLY HILL -- Dozens of community, business and education leaders packed the Holly Hill Depot on May 31 to learn more about the economic impact the new Volvo automotive plant will have on the area. “In terms of its operations here, over the next several years (Volvo) will employ about 2,000 people at the plant,” said David McNair, president of The McNair Group, a South Carolina-based public relations group working with Volvo. “In the next year, there will be about 1,600 people hired.” McNair emphasized the number of people working in the plant itself represents only the tip of the...

Former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "encouraged me to actively seek her old job. 'Don't let your differences with Trump scare you off,' she told me. 'I had differences with Obama, but I put those aside to take the job.'" "She was very sympathetic to the fact that I had spent tens of millions of dollars of my own money running against Obama for the presidency," Romney recalled her saying. "'You can get that back and more just like I did. When you're Secretary of State you have say-so over...

Boeing, the largest US exporter by dollar value, faces a tough environment for commercial jetliners. In 2016, net orders dropped 13% from 2015 and 53% from 2014, to just 668 planes, the lowest level since 2010! Through June 6, 2017, Boeing has just 208 net orders. The company is under pressure to cut costs. So there has been wave after wave of job cuts through voluntary buyouts and involuntary layoffs last year and this year. Its payroll has shriveled by about 30,000 workers over the past five years. At the end of May it was down to 145,000. So Boeing...

BOSSIER CITY, LA (KSLA) - Sabre Industries Incorporated has announced 50 new direct jobs are coming to Bossier City. The company made a $1.6 million investment to create 50 new jobs at its Sabre Building Systems by CellXion Manufacturing facility on Friday. The new jobs will provide an average salary of $47,000 plus benefits. Louisiana Economic Development (LED) estimates the project will result in an additional 13 indirect jobs for a total of more than 60 new jobs in Northwest Louisiana. “Manufacturing continues to be a mainstay of the Louisiana economy, and we are excited to help one of our...

Tacoma Washington is likely to do away with its ban on electric weapons. The Supreme Court decision in Caetano PER CURIAM decision (pdf) is the reason why.  From Caetano: The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v.Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010). Caetano was directly about electronic weapons.  Lawsuits against...

Four states–California, Connecticut, Washington and Oregon have joined together to form the United States Climate Alliance. The objective is to bypass Trump’s decision and implement the terms of the Paris Accord on climate. California was the first to take action by ratifying a separate climate pact with China. “We had to pick a side,” Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared. “Looking at the options we determined that Trump is the greater threat. So we made our own deal with China.” The deal reportedly will increase the importation of “green technologies” manufactured in China. The irony is that Chinese factories are among...

In March of 2016, members of Michigan Gun Owners and Michigan Open Carry were illegally expelled from a booth they had rented at the DeVos Place Convention center. They were expelled because they were openly carrying holstered pistols. The organizations filed a lawsuit against the DeVos Place Convention Center and its management company for violation of Michigan state law. On Friday, May 26, 2017, Judge Joseph Rossi of the Kent County Circuit found for Michigan Open Carry (MOC) and Michigan Gun Owners (MGO). It did not take long. The Judge listened to the arguments for about an hour, and...

NEW YORK – The sons of President Donald Trump have said their company is launching a new hotel chain inspired by their travels with their father’s campaign. The Trump Organisation is calling the new mid-market chain “American Idea” and said it will start with three hotels in Mississippi. At a party at Manhattan’s Trump Tower, Donald Trump Jr said he and his brother, Eric, got a “crash course in America” while travelling across the country with their father’s presidential campaign. “We saw so many places and towns and so many stories,” he said. The first of dozens of hotels in...

Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, “Orange Is the New Black” producer Jenji Kohan revealed that she is working on a new film about Jesus Christ as a teenager. She also said that Netflix, which will show the film, has purchased “terrorism insurance” for fear that people may retaliate against the production. “We’re developing a teen Jesus project that got some people nervous,” Jenji told THR. “It’s like ‘The Wonder Years’ but with Jesus, and there are all sorts of things where we cross lines — and there are crazies out there.” “The Wonder Years” was an ABC television show that...

A Turkish textile company that purchased the assets of the former Microfibres firm is seeking $125,000 worth of incentives from the city of Winston-Salem and plans to create up to 390 jobs, according to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal. The newspaper reports that the Winston-Salem City Council will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. June 19 for Tukek Holdings Inc, which has requested the incentives to offset the costs of a startup called HPFabrics Inc. Tukek plans to invest $3.85 million over five years to upgrade the former Winston-Salem facility of Microfibres. The local jobs would pay $31,310,...

Something funny happened on the way to the bank for investors who were trying to cash in on President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and the $110 billion for US defense contractors that White House Press Secretary Spicer had touted on May 20 as the “largest single arms deal in US history.” But those deals were “fake news,” according to Bruce Riedel, at Brookings: I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or...