[PHOTO] Corner store at Yonge and Wellesley, in the evening

[ISL] "As Cuba Rises, Puerto Rico Falls"

There may be a certain amount of trolling in James Gibney's Bloomberg View article--Cuba has to catch up quite a bit of ground with its neighbour in the Hispanic Caribbean. I wonder, though, if he might not be right about Cuba's greater potential for growth.

President Barack Obama dangles U.S. dollars before the Castros while Congress stonewalls Puerto Rico’s pleas for debt restructuring. The Tampa Bay Rays take the field in Havana as San Juan fends off New York hedge funds wielding legal baseball bats. The Rolling Stones play a free concert for Cubans; Puerto Rico can’t get no satisfaction.

As Cuba rises and Puerto Rico falls, it’s worth considering the diverging trajectories of these two ex-Spanish colonies that the Puerto Rican poet Lola Rodríguez de Tió described more than 100 years ago as “two wings of the same bird.” Even as the resumption of diplomatic ties with the U.S. opens new possibilities for Cuba, Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. commonwealth has turned into an ugly dead end.

Puerto Rico is defaulting in slow motion on $70 billion worth of debt. Its economy has shrunk 9 of the past 10 years. A few hundred miles to the west, meanwhile, economic reforms are creating new livelihoods for self-employed Cubans, whose material conditions are improving. Buoyed by the arrival of new tourists, remittances, and foreign investments, Cuba’s economy grew by 4 percent last year.

And when the U.S. embargo is lifted, Cuba – which for much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the Caribbean’s predominant economy -- is likely to take a growing bite out of Puerto Rico’s fortunes, in tourism, manufacturing and services. And that's before accounting for Puerto Rico's existing fiscal straits, which will lead to shrinking government services, higher costs imposed by utilities under siege from creditors and a string of broken social promises and busted pensions.

True, Cubans don’t have democracy. Then again, at the national level, neither do Puerto Ricans: Despite being U.S. citizens, they can't vote for president or in Congress, which these days mostly ignores them. Cubans may face the threat of arbitrary detention and abuse. But they’re much less likely than Puerto Ricans to be shot dead on the street, or to be victimized by drug traffickers or other criminals.

[LINK] "Brazil in free fall"

Open Democracy's Fernando Betancor outlines Brazil's annus horribilis.

This was supposed to be a triumphal year for Brazil and its President, Dilma Rousseff. The first woman to be elected to that office, Mrs. Rousseff was the protégé and successor to the popular Luíz Inácio (Lula) da Silva; she had inherited in 2011 a government with sound finances, a burgeoning middle class and the opportunity to host the wildly popular World Cup in 2014. This year, Brazil is supposed to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, which would have been the showcase for a modernized country that had successfully escaped the “middle income” trap of developing nations. Instead, the Brazilian economy has been in freefall for almost 8 consecutive quarters, the country is facing a new and frightening pandemic disease, the work for the Olympics is far behind schedule and Mrs. Rousseff’s Administration is being rocked by such horrendous corruption scandals that the Congress is weighing her impeachment. Instead of a triumphal year, Brazil has entered the year of ungovernability.

The political trouble started almost as soon as she had been sworn in for her second term; an investigation in the south of the country led the Federal Police to a known money launderer, Alberto Youssef, who had made a “gift” of a Range Rover to the Director of Supplies of Petrobras, Paulo Roberto Costa. As arrests were made and bargains were struck, the trail led to a clique of corporate executives, middle men and politicos who were engaged in a number of illicit activities including: money-laundering, price fixing, illegal campaign contributions, and bribery, sums totaling over 2.1 billion reais (USD 1.3 billion at 2012 exchange rates). This led to the arrest and indictment of 11 senior executives from four Petrobras suppliers, 3 top Petrobras executives and more than 50 politicians, all but one of them related to the Rousseff coalition. To find so extensive a list of allegedly corrupt public figures, one would have to go to Spain, where there are over 2,000 under varying degrees of indictment. These were not minor officials either; implicated are the President of the Senate, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the Treasurer of the Worker’s Party, and numerous other Senators and Deputies. The list continues to grow and this Friday, the popular former President Lula da Silva had his house searched by the Federal Police while he was taken into temporary custody to make a declaration.

The implications of this magnitude 9 political quake go far beyond Petrobras or the Rousseff Administration. It highlights the way things are done in the country, the virtual impunity with which major corporations can carry-on their “business as usual” shenanigans and the insignificance of the well-being or wishes of the average Brazilian amongst all the sordidness. In November 2015, a retaining dam burst at an iron mine belonging to BHP Billiton and Brazilian JV partner Vale. The resulting flood of toxic waters, containing fatal concentrations of arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals, flowed down the Rio Doce, killing 17 people and destroying aquatic life for 500 miles until emptying into the South Atlantic, where it has also played havoc with coastal fisheries and ecosystems. The companies have recently agreed to a settlement of USD 1.55 billion in damages, but there will be no investigation of possible criminal negligence in the dam rupture; and while the damages are certainly large, they represent less than one quarter of profit for Vale SA, which earned USD 1.68 billion in the second quarter of 2015 alone.

[LINK] "Climate change, the elephant in the Gulf"

Open Democracy's Ian Sinclair notes the literally self-destructive ignorance, by the Gulf States, of the effects of climate change on the Middle East.

Speaking to me after the December 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change, Professor Kevin Anderson, the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, noted the world is still on course for 3-4°C warming on pre-industrial levels (“and probably the upper end of that”).

In 2012 the World Bank summarised what this will look like in its suitably titled report Turn Down The Heat: Why A 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided. “The 4°C scenarios are devastating”, the foreword explained. “The inundation of coastal cities, increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates, many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter, unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in the tropics, substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions, increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones, and irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.” Professor Anderson believes a 4°C world will likely be “incompatible with an organized global community”, while Naomi Klein, the author of the seminal book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, states that “climate change is an existential crisis for the human species”.

All this is frightening enough but here is the real kicker: according to the scientific consensus 75 percent of known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground if we are to have any chance of stopping dangerous levels of climate change.

Which brings us to the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), who control around 30 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and over 20 percent of the world’s gas reserves, and in particular Saudi Arabia, which holds around 16 percent of the planet’s oil reserves.

According to numerous NGOs and newspaper reports, Saudi Arabia, along with the Arab Group of countries it unofficially leads, worked to sabotage a robust deal in Paris, attempting to water down temperature limits and remove mention of human rights from parts of the agreement.

[LINK] "Argentina’s ‘Shale Capital’ Suffers from Slowdown"

The Inter Press Service's Fabiana Frayssinet notes that in the Argentine town of Añelo, a centre of shale oil and gas exploration that sounds a lot like Argentina's equivalent to Fort McMurray, the local economy has cratered with falling oil prices.

The dizzying growth of Añelo, a town in southwest Argentina, driven by the production of shale oil and gas in the Vaca Muerta geological reserve, has slowed down due to the plunge in global oil prices, which has put a curb on local development and is threatening investment and employment.

Vaca Muerta, a 30,000-sq-km geological reserve rich in unconventional fossil fuels in the province of Neuquén, began to be exploited in mid-2013 by the state-run oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales (YPF) in a joint venture with U.S. oil giant Chevron.

“We had an interesting growth boom thanks to the strategic development plan that we were promoting, to get all of the oil services companies to set up shop in Añelo. That really boosted our growth, and helped our town to develop,” Añelo Mayor Darío Díaz told IPS.

The population of this town located 100 km from the provincial capital, Neuquén, in Argentina’s southern Patagonian region, rose twofold from 3,000 to 6,000.

And that is not counting the large number of machinists, technicians, engineers and executives of the oil companies who rotate in and out of the area, along with the truckers who haul supplies to the Loma Campana oilfield eight km from Añelo.

[LINK] "Ancient Pluto May Have Had Lakes And Rivers Of Nitrogen"

Universe Today's Evan Gough notes that ancient Pluto seems to have had a much warmer climate, allowing for flowing nitrogen lakes and rivers.

The New Horizons probe revealed the surface features of Pluto in rich detail when it reached the dwarf planet in July 2015. Some of the features look like snapshots of rivers and lakes that are locked firmly in place by Pluto’s frigid temperatures. But now scientists studying the data coming back from New Horizons think that those frozen lakes and rivers could once have been liquid nitrogen.

Pluto has turned out be a surprisingly active place. New Horizons has shown us what might be clouds in Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains that might be ice volcanoes, and cliffs made of methane ice that melt away into the plains. If there were oceans and rivers of liquid nitrogen on the surface of Pluto, that would fit in with our evolving understanding of Pluto as a much more active planet than we thought.

Richard Binzel, a New Horizons team member from MIT, thinks that lakes of liquid nitrogen could have existed some 800 or 900 million years ago. It all stems from Pluto’s axial tilt, which at 120 degrees is much more pronounced than Earth’s relatively mild 23 degree tilt. And computer modelling suggests that this tilt could have even been more extreme many millions of years ago.

The result of this extreme tilt is that much more of Pluto’s surface would have been exposed to sunlight. That may have warmed Pluto enough to allow liquid nitrogen to flow over the planet’s surface. These kinds of changes to a planet’s axial tilt, (and precession and eccentricity) affect a planet’s climate in what are called Milankovitch cycles. The same cycles are thought to have a similar effect on Earth’s climate, though not as extreme as on Pluto.

According to Binzel, Pluto could be somewhere in between its temperature extremes, meaning that if Pluto will ever be warm enough for liquid nitrogen again, it could be hundreds of millions of years from now. “Right now, Pluto is between two extreme climate states,” Binzel says.

[LINK] "French's ketchup plans to move production to Ontario"

The Toronto Star's Vanessa Lu reports on the latest stage in the ketchup wars, with French's planning to shift production of ketchup as well as the harvesting of local tomatoes to Leamington.

French’s ketchup, which has made headlines for boasting of using Canadian grown tomatoes from the Leamington area, says it’s now looking to move production across the border from Ohio.

“We are currently in negotiations on moving bottling and expanding our food service business to Canada,” said Elliott Penner, president of the French’s Food Company, owned by British conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser.

An announcement is expected in the next week. It plans to purchase 8.1 million kilograms of tomato paste for the 2016 growing season – up from anticipated order of 3.1 million kilograms just a week ago.

At stake is the ability to truly declare itself Canadian made. Although its ketchup packets are made in Toronto with Canadian tomatoes, French’s ketchup bottles sold in Canada have in very small print on the back label that they are imported.

[LINK] "Quebec's maple-syrup industry being challenged"

I learned from the Toronto Star's Allan Woods that Québec's dominance of the maple syrup industry is being challenged by the province's near neighbours, in Canada and the United States.

A sprouting maple-syrup industry in the United States is challenging Quebec’s superiority, the province’s tree-tappers are nervous about the future and rebel suppliers are rising up against the union that sets prices, handles sales and disciplines those who try to go it alone.

With such uncertainty around the popular cans of sticky, golden sweetness, the bitter side of Quebec’s maple syrup industry can be difficult to confront. But ignoring the problem risks ruin in a fast-changing market where Quebec producers remain the dominant player—for now.

That was the message contained in a sharply contested report to the provincial government last month, which confirmed for a wider public a trend that some producers say they have been seeing for years.

“The maple industry . . . has become a flagship of Quebec agriculture,” wrote Florent Gagné, a former Quebec deputy minister. “However, the greatest danger it could face is . . . refusing to see that real threats are looming on the horizon and have begun taking shape.”

The main threats to Quebec’s dominance are from the United States as well as New Brunswick and Ontario, which have swaths of largely untapped maple forests that are increasingly being put to use.

[URBAN NOTE] "UPX boss resigns over troubled airport train service"

The Toronto Star reports that heads are continuing to roll in the upper ranks of the Union-Pearson Express.

The head of Toronto’s troubled airport train service has resigned in the midst of an organizational review examining if the Union Pearson Express should be rolled into GO Transit operations.

On Monday, Kathy Haley, president of UPX, announced she would step down as of March 31, just nine months after the highly-touted express train service was launched in June – and flopped with low ridership. Ridership has increased after fares were slashed by half earlier this month.

A spokesperson of Metrolinx, the provincial transportation agency, confirmed the information but could not comment if Haley would be eligible for any severance package with her resignation. Haley also turned down an interview request from the Star.

“We are not able to speak to this any further as it is a personnel matter,” said Anne Marie Aikins of Metrolinx. “We are continuing to work on the organizational review. In the meantime, until the completion of the organization review work, there will be interim reporting relationships for UPX staff within other divisions of Metrolinx.”

Haley, an alumnus of Dalhousie University, joined Metrolinx in July 2011 to head the $456-million airport train with “pedigree in customer experience transformation,” said her UPX biography, including stints at Royal Bank of Canada, Canada Post, Allianz Group AG and Imperial Oil Ltd.

[URBAN NOTE] "After decades of ‘woe is us,’ there’s a new spirit of optimism in Buffalo"

If, as Paul Attfield suggests in The Globe and Mail, Buffalo is starting to revive this is all for the good. I just hope that the growth will be inclusive of everyone in the city.

For sports fans, Buffalo might be best known as the home of the National Football League’s Bills and National Hockey League’s Sabres, which have the unenviable record of a combined zero wins and six losses in championship series. For others, Buffalo might be known as the third poorest city in the United States, trailing only Cleveland and Detroit, and yet one more example of a former industrial behemoth fallen on hard times in the heart of the U.S. rust belt.

But something seems to be stirring in Western New York. The area is undergoing more than $5.5-billion (U.S.) in new economic development, mostly in downtown Buffalo. Projects such as the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, the recreational facilities at the Canalside park and SolarCity’s gigafactory, the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere, are generating more than 12,000 new jobs over the next three years.

“It’s a really good problem to have and it’s changed the way we think about our community,” says Thomas Kucharski, president and chief executive officer of Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, a private, non-profit economic development organization. “We went from the whole four Super Bowls and two [Stanley] Cups and woe is us to [now] where people are a lot more optimistic than they have been.”

The business community buoys a large part of that optimism, with mixed-use buildings in the city – either proposed, under construction or completed – representing more than $990-million of investment. Among those are Avant, Buffalo’s first mixed-use hotel-office-luxury condominium high rise situated in a former federal building, and the Larkin Center of Commerce, which was previously a soap factory and is now home to almost 100 businesses and service providers.

The seven-storey Conventus Center for Collaborative Medicine, part of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, was completed last year by Ciminelli Real Estate Corp. on a two-acre site. Located on the northern edge of Buffalo’s central business district, Conventus will act as the link between the University at Buffalo school of medicine and biomedical sciences and John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, when they are completed.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• D-Brief reports on Ceres' bright spots.


• Dangerous Minds celebrates the video game arcades of the 1980s.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper speculating that tightly-packed globular clusters might be good cradles for life.


• The Dragon's Tales examines the processes by which gravel is formed on Mars and Titan.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog wonders about the extent to which college alienates low-income students.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of Hillary Clinton's speech at AIPAC.


• The LRB Blog features an essay by an American expatriate in Belgium on the occasion of the Brussels attacks.


• Steve Munro analyses the quality of service on the 6 Bay bus.


• The NYRB Daily reflects on the films of a Syrian film collective.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer points out that the rate of terrorism in Europe now is substantially lower than in the 1970s and 1980s.


• Savage Minds considers secrecy as it applies to the anthropological writer.


• Strange Maps reflects on the BBC's Shipping Forecast weather service.


• Whatever's John Scalzi reflects on the prospects of human survival into the future.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are on the verge of fighting a border war.