LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump poses a serious threat to the continued existence to the European Union because he is working with far-right groups on the continent to engineer the bloc’s disintegration, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said Monday.

Guy Verhofstadt, a former prime minister of Belgium and now a liberal member of the European Parliament, said the EU had “fewer friends than ever in the United States today.”

Trump and his political advisers had joined with European far-right movements in undermining the EU, he said in a speech at London think-tank Chatham House. Trump himself had spoken “very favorably of the fact that other countries will want to break away” from the 28-member bloc.

Under the “enormous political influence of his chief political adviser Steve Bannon, he has sent people to Berlin, to Paris to prepare the ground for similar referenda as Brexit” Verhofstadt said, referring to the 2016 British vote to leave the EU.

Asked about what he referred to as Trump’s “anti-Muslim” policy to ban refugees and citizens of selected Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., Verhofstadt said Trump has been influenced by the European far-right, rather than the other way round.

“We invented nationalism in the 19th Century in Europe but we apparently have forgotten what disaster, what atrocities that so-called national identity thinking and nationalism has created in Europe. The problem is not national identity itself, it’s when national identity is based on ethnicity and not values, that the problems start in Europe.

“Twenty million people have died because of nationalism in Europe. So putting your political thinking and the future organization of Europe on nationalist ideas is the most stupid thing that you can do. It’s playing with fire, knowing what it has created in the past,” he said.

Verhofstadt said Trump is just one of three serious existential threats to the EU, alongside “radicalized political Islam” and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, he said is trying to undermine the EU from inside with cyberattacks and financing anti-European far-right political parties including the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and France’s National Front.

(You should understand Europe’s definition of a “far right group” is “any group that is not Marxist /socialist.” They do not have any “{near right groups or centrist groups in Europe!)

Matthew and Doc,
NGD is down 20% today on news that Rainy River’s opening will be delayed 3 months till Nov. and cost more. And Oliphant is no longer CEO. How low can it fall? Time to buy?

Meanwhile behind the rusting iron curtain:
DUBROVSKOYE, Russia (AP) — Russian businessman Oleg Sirota is such a big fan of Donald Trump that he’s built a snowman of the new U.S. president outside his factory.

It’s an irony then that he fears Trump could spell his business’ ruin.

Sirota is one of Russia’s winners from international sanctions. A ban on Western food imports has made it possible for the former programmer to fulfil his dream of becoming a cheesemaker.

Sirota has become something of a darling in Russian media with his patriotic gestures, notably his wheel of cheese that is inscribed with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s name. Sirota insists it must be collected in person.

Demand is so high that Sirota has a three-month waiting list for new customers and he plans to increase production 10 times over this year with new facilities and a hiring push — provided the warm words between his two political heroes, Trump and Putin, don’t bring about an end to sanctions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times local):

11:10 a.m.

Growing numbers of Republican lawmakers are expressing concerns about President Donald Trump’s executive order cracking down on immigration.

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina say in a joint statement that “the manner in which these measures were crafted and implemented have greatly contributed to the confusion, anxiety and uncertainty of the last few days.”

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says that while he supports increased vetting, “Unfortunately, the initial executive order was flawed — it was too broad and poorly explained.”

And Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas says that he supports thorough vetting, but does not support restricting the rights of lawful permanent residents. Moran adds, “Furthermore, far-reaching national security policy should always be devised in consultation with Congress and relevant government agencies.”

CFS Comments:
The Trump executive order was quite broad, but mentioned no countries by name.
The actual implementation of the order was performed by mostly Obama-appointed apparatchiks. I ask two questions:
1. Why is it that Saudi Arabian and Egyptian Refugees are not considered risky?
(After all those were the supposed countries of origin for 911 terrorists.)
2. Why is it that NONE of the 57 Islamic countries in the world have no official plan to permanently accept ANY Islamic refugees?

It’s a slow news day.,…..

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even before George Jetson entranced kids with his cartoon flying car, people dreamed of soaring above traffic congestion. Inventors and entrepreneurs have long tried and failed to make the dream a reality, but that may be changing.

Nearly a dozen companies around the globe, including some with deep pockets such as European aircraft maker Airbus, are competing to be the first to develop a new kind of aircraft that will enable commuters to glide above crowded roadways. A few of the aircraft under development are cars with wings that unfold for flight, but most aren’t cars at all. Typically they take off and land vertically like helicopters. Rather than a single, large main rotor, they have multiple small rotors. Each rotor is operated by a battery-powered electric motor instead of a conventional aircraft piston engine.

It’s no sure bet that flying-car dreams will turn into reality. There are many obstacles, including convincing regulators that the aircraft are safe, figuring out how to handle thousands of new low-flying aircraft over cities without collisions and developing batteries that will keep them aloft long enough to be useful.

But entrepreneurs are moving forward. They see a vast potential market for “air taxis” and personally owned small aircraft to transport people from the fringes of metropolitan areas to city centers as urban areas grow more congested and people spend more time stuck in traffic. They envision tens of thousands of one or two-person flying taxis delivering passengers to the rooftops of office buildings in city centers and other landing pads during rush hours.

“In as little as 10 years, products could be on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people,” said Zach Lovering, the leader of Airbus’ project to develop an autonomous flying taxi called the Vahana. The name means the mount or vehicle of a Hindu deity.

Uber released a 98-page report in October making the business case for air taxis, which the company sees as the future of on-demand transportation. Uber doesn’t have any plans to develop a flying car itself, but the online transportation network is advising several companies that have aircraft in the works.

“The role we want to play is as a catalyst for the entire industry,” said Nikhil Goel, an Uber project manager for advanced programs.

Some of the aircraft are drones that passengers will be able to program for flight using a smartphone. Others will be operated from the ground or a command center, and some are designed for human pilots.

It’s unclear yet how much the aircraft will cost, although prices are likely to vary significantly. Some of the aircraft are designed to be individually owned, while others are envisioned more for commercial use. Designers hope that if demand is high, prices can be kept affordable through economies of mass production.

Several recent developments could make these aircraft possible. Advances in computing power mean the rotors on multi-copter drones can be adjusted many times per second, making the aircraft easy to control. Drones have also benefited from advances in battery and electric motor technology. Some companies, like Chinese dronemaker EHang, are scaling-up drones so that they can carry people.

Another aircraft under development, Santa Cruz, California-based Joby Aviation’s S2, looks more like a conventional plane except that there are 12 tiltrotors spread along the wings and tail. And some, like the Vahana, a cockpit mounted on a sled and flanked by propellers in front and back, don’t really look like any aircraft in the skies today.

“In terms of what you can make fly in a reliable manner, the solution speed gateway that (computer) chips have gone through recently have literally opened the door to a whole new world of flying machine possibilities,” said Charles Eastlake, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor emeritus of aerospace engineering.

But he also cautioned: “My best engineering guess is that people actually using autonomous air taxis in the next 10 or 15 years is possible, but definitely not certain. The challenges are big.”

Key for many of the designs will be the development of longer-lasting lightweight batteries. Currently available batteries could probably keep an air taxi aloft about 15 to 30 minutes before it would have to land, experts said. Depending on how fast the aircraft flies, that probably isn’t quite enough to transport passengers between nearby cities or across metropolitan areas, experts said.

Another hurdle will be winning Federal Aviation Administration certification for any radical new kind of aircraft when approval of even small changes in aviation technology can take years.

The FAA said in a statement that it is taking a “flexible, open-minded, and risk-based approach” to flying cars. FAA officials have discussed with several manufacturers the certification of aircraft that will be flown with a pilot in the beginning, and later converted to an autonomous passenger aircraft.

While further research is needed to ensure that autonomous aircraft are safe, “we believe automation technology already being prototyped in low-risk unmanned aircraft missions, when fully mature, could have a positive effect” on aviation safety, the agency said.

Reducing noise is another challenge since air taxis will be taking off and landing in densely populated areas. So is creating enough landing pads to handle lots of aircraft at the same time. A new air traffic control system would also likely be needed.

“It’s pretty clear that the existing air traffic control system won’t scale to the kind of density at low altitudes that people are talking about,” said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who chairs the FAA’s research and engineering advisory committee.

NASA is developing an air traffic control system for small drones that perhaps could be expanded to include flying cars.

“There’s no question we can build the vehicle,” Hansman said. “The big challenge is whether we can build a vehicle that would be allowed to operate in the places where people want to use it.”

This recent article mentions the same conclusion as Chris’ friend about Februarys following elections. Will it happen????

Pasinex gets plug from Thom

http://thomcalandra.com/underground-zinc-turkey/

Nice technical charts

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article57961.html