The German Armed Forces have apparently been having a hard time supplying troops with new footwear, the Defense Ministry revealed, blaming a deadline missed by two years on ineffective industry.
Responding to the parliamentary inquiry, the ministry said that the quest to provide soldiers with two pairs of ‘heavy combat boots’ and one pair of ‘light combat boots’ has been derailed due to the “limited production capacity in industry.”
The project was launched in 2016 and was supposed to be fully implemented by 2020. However, this is not going to be the case, and the deadline has been shifted to mid-2022, the ministry said in its response to Free Democratic Party (FDP) MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, as reported by Der Tagesspiegel.
Around 160,000 out of the 183,000-strong Bundeswehr have received one pair of heavy combat boots so far, but are still lacking the other two pairs. The luckiest 31,000 have been given a pair of light combat boots.
When asked how many servicemen have the complete set, a ministry spokeswoman told Tagesspiegel that “only a few”are currently in possession of all three pairs. She has not provided the exact number, however.
The intent of the project, championed by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, was to replace the so-called “all-season shoe” with “heavy” and “light” boots, but something apparently went awry in the process. The extensive delay seems even more baffling considering that Germany is renowned for its shoe industry, boasting a plethora of well-known brands churning out high-quality, comfortable footwear.
The government’s attempt to pin the blame on the overstretched industry did not sit well with Strack-Zimmermann, who pulled no punches denouncing the embarrassing setback.
It seems grotesque that it takes eight years to equip the entire troops with new footwear. After all, this is not a question of fashion, but one of safety. Imagine firefighters extinguishing fires in slippers.
The footwear debacle is by far not the only mishap plaguing the army, which has been making international headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent years, primarily for its faulty hardware, including a combat aircraft grounded over “loose screws” and combat vehicles that were taken out of service by “dust and rocky roads.”
In January, military Inspector General Eberhard Zorn said that the Germany Army would most likely lack necessary equipment and arms until at least 2031.
Back in 2017, Walmart launched a pilot project that made some of its old-school brick-and-mortar retail stores seem like futuristic testbeds. The chain began trialing robots that could scan shelves to make sure items display the correct price and that they’re in stock, a test that started out in 50 stores.
This year, those robots will have rolled out to 350 Walmart stores, making robots an increasingly familiar presence in the store’s aisles as shoppers hunt for the retail giant’s signature low-price deals.
What’s more, Walmart — which also happens to be the world’s largest retailer, making this project an interesting one to follow — announced just a few months ago that it’s going to have floor-scrubbing robots in a little less than half of its 4,700 US stores. Separate from the inventory-scanning robots, there will also be bots at some 1,700 stores that automatically scan boxes as they’re unloaded from delivery trucks so that they can be sorted on conveyor belts.
If it all sounds incredibly dystopian to see robot “workers” alongside customers — well, we can’t say Walmart didn’t warn us.
“The overall trend we’re seeing is that automating certain tasks gives associates more time to do work they find fulfilling and to interact with our customers,” CEO Doug McMillon said last year.
You can imagine where this is headed. Unfortunately, Walmart’s US CFO Michael Dastugue said in a recent conference call with analysts that “As we evolve, there are certain jobs that will go away.” Efficiency generated from automated robots seems to be part of the reason for that expectation.
As we said, this is an interesting project to watch unfold partly because of how mainstream this will make robotics feel to members of the general public. Consider: Some 90% of the US population lives within just 10 miles of a Walmart store. Relying on an increasingly robotics-heavy workforce is also expected to save Walmart a ton of money. That’s partly due to the simple fact of its size — and the size of its sprawling stores.
When you realize how big its supercenters can be (178,000 square feet) you can then start to imagine how expensive it is to operate one, in terms of paying employees as well as other costs. Walmart spent more than $2 billion in 2018 remodeling stores, money that was spent as a function of the retailer’s awareness that its stores need to change as economic forces around them likewise change.
Makes four A popular sandwiches in Florida and though normally cooked with a sandwich press, we are going to use the grill. Ingredients 4 good Italian or French rolls 1/3 cup yellow mustard 1/3 pound deli ham, thinly sliced 1/3 pound cooked pork tenderloin, thinly sliced 4 dill pickles, in thin slices 1/3 pound Swiss cheese, thinly sliced 1/3 cup butter Directions Heat grill to medium Slice each roll leaving a hinge Spread mustard on one side of the bun and add the ham, pork, pickles and Swiss cheese Close up sandwich and press down to flatten a little and brush one side with butter Put sandwich butter side down on grill and put something heavy on top to flatten Grill sandwiches until golden brown, butter the top, flip, put heavy thing back on and continue until both sides are beautiful and the cheese has melted Remove, cut in half and serve Watch the video to learn more
🍔🍟☕ Please recommend this page and be sure to follow TCW
TORONTO -- Google parent company Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL:UN) and affiliate Sidewalk Labs are partnering with the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to launch a new company that invests in North American infrastructure.
The spin-out of Sidewalk Labs called Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, plans to hold, operate and invest in advanced infrastructure for the digital age.
"Sidewalk Infrastructure will give cities an opportunity to deploy next-generation infrastructure," said Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff in a statement.
The company will focus on five areas including advanced mobility, energy, water and waste, digital infrastructure and social infrastructure.
The infrastructure could include technology-enabled systems for stormwater management, neighbourhood-scale heating and cooling, advanced traffic controls and other initiatives like the ones that Sidewalk Labs hopes to deploy at the Quayside side on Toronto's waterfront..
The new venture will help transform infrastructure through the use of technology, Olivia Steedman, senior managing director of the Teachers' Innovation Platform said in a statement.
"We will bring our infrastructure and investment expertise to the table, while leveraging our partners' world-leading capabilities in technology, to enable sustainable, intelligent and efficient physical infrastructure."
The company's co-CEO's are Brian Barlow, who will be based in its Silicon Valley office, and Jonathan Winer, who lives in New York.
Sidewalk Infrastructure's launch comes as Waterfront Toronto continues to evaluate Sidewalk Labs' proposal for Quayside and the eastern waterfront, which included a $1.3-billion spending commitment from the company.
The proposal, which would see Sidewalk develop both Quayside and a separate eight hectare site, has come under criticism for overstepping the criteria set out by Waterfront Toronto.
Sidewalk has also faced wider criticism over concerns of data collection and monitoring as part of its plan for the waterfront development.
The company has recommended that an independent, government-sanctioned trust be established to set guidelines and oversee data collection, while also committing not to sell personal information or use it for advertising.
12 Manitoba RMs declared a state of agricultural emergency Thursday.
Getty Images , 12 Manitoba RMs declared a state of agricultural emergency Thursday.
Several Manitoba rural municipalities declared a state of agricultural emergency Thursday, thanks to a severe drought in central Manitoba. Twelve RMs, mostly in the Interlake and Parklands regions, declared the emergency after dry weather has left producers unable to produce enough hay to feed their cattle, among other problems. The RMs include Alonsa, Armstron, Bifrost0Riverton, Coldwell, Ethelbert, Fisher, Grahamdale, Lakeshor, McCreary, Ste. Rose, West Interlake and Woodlands. “The lack of volume and frequency of precipitation in 2019 has caused considerable damage to the agriculture industry within the Interlake and Parkland regions,” reads a statement from the RMs. “Due to the extremely dry conditions, grain, hay and straw producers have faced severely reduced crop yields and pastures have also been adversely affected throughout the growing season. These factors have led to diminished feed resources. “The severity of the feed shortage has been compounded by a depleted inventory of carryover feed in 2018 due to dry conditions last summer and the latest long, cold winter.” The RMs said farmers are becoming increasingly desperate as they have to pay to transport hay for their livestock or drill additional wells for water. Some farmers are considering selling their livestock.
The RMs are asking the province to “prioritize a meeting with local producers” to talk about current subsidy programs, which they say are inadequate.
Dianne Riding feeds her bull Diana Foxall/Global News, Dianne Riding feeds her bull cows Thursday afternoon.
Both Manitoba Beef Producers and Keystone Agricultural Producers warned earlier this month that the hot and dry weather has led to far lower yields on feed this year.
They urged local farmers with any extra hay to consider selling it to struggling producers.
Dianne Riding, VP of the Manitoba Beef Producers, said she likely won’t have enough feed for her 130 cows and is considering downsizing.
“We are on the second year of not having enough moisture,” she said. “Last year I had 500 bales of hay that we made, and this year I only have 250.”
In a normal year, her farm produces about 1,800 bales of hay, she added.
“My hay reserve disappeared last year and I know a lot of my friends and neighbors, their reserve has also disappeared.”
Downsizing is difficult for most producers, Riding said.
“If you’re going to run cattle you absolutely enjoy cattle. You enjoy working with them … I probably have the best job in the world. But it’s really hard that Mother Nature might put us out of business.”
Recommend this post and follow TCW
r bull cows Thursday afternoon.
Dianne Riding feeds her bull cows Thursday afternoon.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum in Des Moines, Iowa, August 10, 2019. (Gage Skidmore)The handmaiden of failed socialist regimes has always been ignorance of the past and present.
‘Socialist!” is no longer a McCarthyite slur.
Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.
Five years ago, septuagenarian Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate — Vermont’s trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness.
But in 2016, Sanders’s improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.
After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.
Sanders, like the members of the Squad, has limited political power. But the celebrity and social media influence of these new and retread socialists has been on the upswing — especially in the current 21st century climate of radical transformations in economic and political life.
Note the shock over Clinton’s 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak, and ineffectual. And there are still other undercurrents that explain why currently socialism polls so well among young Americans.
College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans. Many of these debtors despair of ever paying the huge sums back.
Canceling debt is an ancient socialist rallying cry. Starting over with a clean slate appeals to those “oppressed” with college loans.
A force multiplier of debt is the realization that many students borrowed to focus on mostly irrelevant college majors. Such degrees usually offer few opportunities to find jobs high-paying enough to pay back staggering obligations.
Asymmetrical globalization over the last 30 years has created levels of wealth among the elite never envisioned in the history of civilization. In addition to these disparities, “free” but unfair trade, especially with China and to a lesser extent with the European Union, Japan, and South Korea, hollowed out the interior of the United States, impoverishing and diluting the once-solid middle class. Warped free trade and Chinese buccaneerism, not free-market capitalism per se, impoverished millions of Americans.
Lots of young people claim to be socialists but are instead simply angry because they cannot afford a home, a new car, or nice things in their “woke” urban neighborhoods.
Usually, Americans become more traditional, self-reliant, and suspicious of big government as they age. Reasons for such conservatism have often included early marriage, child-raising, home ownership, and residence in a suburb, small town, or rural area.
Today’s youth are generally marrying later. Most have few if any children. Twenty- and thirty-somethings are not buying homes as quickly or easily as in the past.
They are concentrating in the urban centers of big- and medium-sized coastal blue cities, such as Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle — but often at dead-end jobs that pay them just enough to get by and enjoy the appetites and perks of cool life in the big city.
These are the ingredients for a culture that emphasizes the self, blames others for a sense of personal failure, and wants instant social justice.
Finally, schools and colleges have replaced the empirical study of economics, history, and politics with race, class, and gender indoctrination.
Few young activists of the old Occupy Wall Street bunch, and few of the current violent Antifa street fighters, know the 20th century history of “socialists” who were actually hardcore communists. Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, Soviet Union strongman Joseph Stalin, and Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong each killed millions of their own people.
Today’s students romanticize Che Guevara and Fidel Castro because they are clueless about their bloody careers. The Castro government for over a half-century was responsible for the murders of thousands of Cubans and Latin Americans in efforts to solidify Cuban “socialism” throughout Latin America.
When our schools and colleges do not teach unbiased economics and history, then millions of youth have no idea why the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan became wealthy and stable by embracing free-market capitalism and constitutional government. Few learn why naturally rich nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela — or entire regions such as Central America, Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia — have traditionally lagged far behind due to years of destructive central planning, socialist economics, and coerced Communist government.
The handmaiden of failed socialist regimes has always been ignorance of the past and present. And that is never truer than among today’s American college-degreed (but otherwise economically and historically illiterate) youth.
This is the heartwarming moment a determined duck retrieved a boy's
flip-flop and handed it back to him. The youngster was playing in a
field when his shoe dropped down the small slope in a remote village in
Quezon Province, the Philippines on August 15. Instead of clambering
down through the mud, he watched as the white duck picked up his white
rubber footwear.
In the video, the determined duck drops the left
flip-flop three times but keeps picking it back up in its beak while
waddling up the bank. The duck finally reaches to the top and hands back
the slipper to the relieved boy. Onlooker Myla Aguila said she was
walking around the mountainous Sitio Madaguldol village when she noticed
the endearing scene.
