Kent State, 1970, When the Country Was Even More Divided

KENT, OH: Visiting the campus where four students were killed by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest, you can’t help but recall how divided America was 45 years ago. Strolling the grounds where America’s Asian war came tragically home, the rhetoric of Donald Trump and the gulf between political parties appear manageable when contrasted to 1970.

The issues then were civil rights and stopping a war that had gone on for more than five years, each month costing more lives including college age men drafted into the military.

A cultural divide pitted young against old, draft resisters against patriots, free thinkers against straights, militant blacks against entrenched power. Most protesters saw themselves as taking a public stand against injustice.

When President Nixon on April 30^th, 1970 ordered American troops into Cambodia protests erupted on scores of college campuses. At Kent State an ROTC building was set ablaze and burned to the ground. Shop windows downtown were broken. A panicked city mayor asked for troops to restore order and Ohio’s governor obliged, sending in 700 National Guardsmen who occupied the campus.  Governor James Rhodes called the demonstrators worse than Nazis.

commons and victory bell where protesters assembled

Despite the planned May 4^th rally being banned, at noon that day some 1,500 students assembled anyway on the university commons. Five hundred feet away stood 100 guardsmen wearing gasmasks and carrying loaded M1 rifles. When the crowd ignored the order to disperse tear gas was fired. Then the soldiers advanced as students fled ahead of them, up Blanket hill, past Taylor Hall towards a parking lot and practice field.

At 12:24 p.m. from atop the hill near the pagoda next to Taylor Hall, several guardsmen opened fire in the direction of the parking lot. In 13 seconds 67 shots were fired. Four students were killed, nine others injured.

photo montage at the memorial  

  

iconic photo following the shooting

where the shots were fired

the pagoda, today

This part of the campus is much as it was then. A May 4^th Visitors Center is situated in Taylor Hall. There is a memorial to the victims and walking tour. Beverly Warren, the president of Kent State, which today has 28,000 students, writes in the commemorative brochure that, “this learning facility transports you to one of the most turbulent times in American history.” It offers,” she writes, “compelling evidence of the never-ending need to appreciate and protect the democratic values of free expression, civil discourse and nonviolent social engagement.”

The memorial is well done, sticking to the facts as best they are known.

 A visit here is sobering, providing an opportunity—as the words engraved onthe memorial suggest—to inquire, learn, and reflect.

I departed believing that the tragedy at Kent State 45 years ago could  have occurred at any number of campuses across the country.

December 2015

Should you wish to visit, the small city of Kent is 30-miles southeast of Cleveland, near the Ohio Turnpike that crosses northern Ohio from east to west.

Congress Set to Finally Approve IMF Reforms

WASHINGTON: The massive $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill presented to lawmakers Tuesday night contains provisions for new funding and governance reforms at the International Monetary Fund. The House could vote as early as Thursday on the package, which is expected to pass. Approval is also likely in the Senate and President Obama’s signature is assured. The president pushed hard for the IMF deal, calling it vital to US leadership and security.

The measure doubles to $670 billion the resources available to the IMF to lend to countries in distress like Ukraine or Greece.  The US contribution is put at $300 million.

The legislation gives key developing countries like China, India and Brazil a bigger share of the weighted votes in the IMF while preserving the sole veto power of the United States. The US has 16% of the votes in the 188-member Washington-based IMF. China’s share rises from 4% to 6%.

The governance reforms date from 2010 but because 85% of IMF votes are needed for implementation it has been blocked by US inaction. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers blamed US delay for creating space for China to create alternative institutions that challenge the IMF. Despite US opposition, China this year led in the formation of a China-based Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank. Last year it joined other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa) in forming a new development bank as well as an arrangement for mutual financial support should it be needed.

Despite being the dominant player in the IMF, which was founded in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, congressional support for the powerful agency has always been lukewarm. In recent years some lawmakers have accused the IMF of bailing out big banks that made loans that couldn’t be repaid. Others argue that US sovereignty is diluted when US money is pooled into IMF lending.

Randall Henning, a professor at American University and specialist on the IMF, rejects that critique saying, “the IMF reflects US economic policy preferences more faithfully than perhaps any other international organization.” Henning says the IMF promotes free markets and requires borrowers to put in place appropriate, prudent economic policies. The IMF played a central role in resolving the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s and the Asian crisis in the late 1990s.

Former IMF official and financial analyst Mohamed El Erian has argued that US approval was overdue. He says the recalibration of votes “better reflect the realities of today’s global economy and entail neither new US funding commitments nor any dilution of its power within the institution.” Economic historian Liaquat Ahamed says it is absurd that tiny Belgium has had as many IMF votes as Brazil, or that Belgium and Holland together had more votes than China.

Policy makers including Chinese vice central bank governor Yi Gang and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne lamented the long delay in US action. Yi called “failure to deliver this reform a threat to IMF legitimacy.” Osborne said recently in New York that “it is a tragedy that an agreement reached across all the members of the IMF was being blocked by the US congress.”#

Antalya Is a Moveable Feast

ANTALYA, Turkey.  The skies over the Middle East and South Asia were crowded Monday night as no fewer than seven VIP aircraft carried heads of state and government from one summit to another.  It began stage two of a moveable feast.

The special planes, most of them 747s, brought President Obama and the leaders of China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia and Canada from the G20 in Antalya to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila.

John Kirton, a summit watcher at the University of Toronto, complains that leaders often spend more time flying to summits than actually talking to each other face to face.

Despite the extravagance and expense of these now annual meetings they are useful as leaders benefit from getting to know each other. Surprises are avoided. Cross-cultural interaction reduces misunderstanding. Informal chats in corridors or at social events are opportunities for unscripted communication. They’re often more important than the meetings themselves.

Such was the case at Antalya, a summit likely to remembered if at all for the unplanned 35-minute corridor meeting between President Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin.  The subject was Syria and how to stop the catastrophic civil war.

A photograph of the two leaders leaning toward each other seated in a hotel lobby, was taken by Russian summit planner (Sherpa) Svetlana Lukash.  It was an image tweeted around the world.

Following

Obama, Putin, national security chief Susan Rice, and interpreter

University of Rochester scholar Alan Wallis, a summit planner for President Reagan, defended summits as “meetings of peers who have no peers at home.” Their real value, he said, is leaders meet their counterparts as equals.”

Only the leaders and their closest advisors know what really went on over two days in Antalya. However there must have been awkward moments. What did 91-year-old Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe make of the long discussion about refugees?  Representing the African Union at the summit, up to a third of Zimbabwe’s population—some four million people-- have become refugees since Mugabe assumed power in 1980.

Not all of the dual members of the G20 and APEC have moved on to stage two of the moveable feast. Vladimir Putin chose not to travel to Manila and neither did the president of Indonesia.#

Barry D. Wood has been reporting from economic summits since 1980.

In Weimar 25-Years of German Unification Have Worked Wonders

Weimar train station, 1990 and 2015

House at 37 Albrecht Durer Street

The Hotel International … is now the Hotel Kaiserin Augusta

(all photos: Barry D. Wood)

WEIMAR, GERMANY:  While there was still a German Democratic Republic in March 1990, I traveled to Weimar, the town of Goethe and Schiller and of the Buchenwald concentration camp where 56,000 Jews and others perished. 

The article I wrote for The Financial Times was entitled Weimar’s Grey Welcome. Arriving in the evening at the Weimar train station the nearby International Hotel (photo) was full as were two or three other places. In desperation I called at a newly created office where arrangements could be made to stay in the homes of local residents. It was an early version of Air B & B.

Soon a grey Trabant arrived and I was off for #37 Albrecht Durer Strasse for what proved to a fascinating evening of conversation and hospitality.  My host was Beate Hoffmann, a youngish mother who in the months since the wall came down had turned hopeful.  As we drank tea, she rushed to the next room and returned with Mikhail Gorbachev’s book on Perestroika, the restructuring the Soviet Union and the world.

Twenty-five years later Mrs. Hoffmann still lives in Weimar where she owns two properties although she no longer lives in the renovated home on Albrecht Durer Strasse.

Today’s visitors to this city of 65,000 not far from Leipzig find a bright, modern Weimar eager to welcome visitors. They come in great numbers to see the homes of Goethe and Schiller as well as the Bauhaus where the great designers of the 1920s pursued art and architecture.

Many visitors also make their way up the hill above the city to Buchenwald, whose American liberators in 1945 required locals to file through to see the horrors done in their name.

Theo Waigel, West German finance minister in 1990, told an audience at Georgetown University on October 1 that in the months following unification 140,000 state enterprises in the east were privatized.  Arrangements were made for the withdrawal of half a million Soviet soldiers.

Today’s Weimar and other East German cities are beneficiaries of $2 trillion of fiscal transfers over 25 years from West German taxpayers.  Everywhere there is new infrastructure—highways, rail lines, hospitals, schools, telecommunications.

Waigel said the investment was worth it. Millions of East Germans and visitors to Weimar would agree. 

 

Refugees: Germany Land of Hope

GOTHA, GERMANY:  In welcoming thousands of refugees shunned by others Germany occupies moral high ground. Stories and images of desperate migrants fill television news. Nightly there are informed debates about the challenge of integrating Syrian and other Muslim asylum seekers into German society. 

The impulse to help is visceral, shared by the public and elected leaders.  Chancellor Angela Merkel probably speaks for millions when she declares, “I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope.”

Germany’s biggest political parties, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, are at one on immigration, agreeing that Germany can absorb 500,000 refugees this year.  Only Bavaria’s Christian Social Union is skeptical.

The welcome signal from the top resonates.  This week I watched youthful volunteers at the Frankfurt train station wearing “refugees welcome” shirts in English and Arabic handing out fruit and soft drinks to new arrivals. 

Germany’s affirmative stance has struck a chord elsewhere, including the Pope’s call for Catholic families to take in refugees, and Britain and France increasing the number they’re willing to accept.

But there is a limit to German generosity and of course the burden of accepting refugees must be shared.  The ongoing flood of refugees underscores a complete absence of EU consensus on immigration.  Much of the disagreement is historical and cultural.

Greece, the first EU country where Iraqi and Syrian migrants arrive after transiting Turkey, is weak politically and prostrate economically.  Greek authorities on islands adjacent to Turkey were overwhelmed. EU migration guidelines were ignored. Greece merely transported refugees to Athens and put them on trains headed north.

A single rail line links Greece with Belgrade through Macedonia. Departing from a EU country the refugees walk the final mile to the border where the Macedonians have been ill prepared to receive them. Once aboard trains—as I observed last weekend in Skopje—the refugees arrive in another non EU country Serbia, which has done well in moving them through to the Hungarian border.

It is in EU member country Hungary where the problem is most severe.  Hungary, led by a rightist nationalist party, has greeted the refugees with contempt and the ugly scenes at the Budapest station and the Serbian border have spread worldwide.

But it’s not just Hungary. Other EU countries-- formerly communist Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and the three Baltic States—oppose quotas on accepting refugees. Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest EU members, say they won’t take any. And Bulgaria—where 500 years of Turkish oppression is still talked about—is viewed as the EU country least welcoming to Muslims.

Critics of Germany’s stance say the country is naïve and foolish, that the floodgates having been opened, ISIS and other terrorist groups will have placed their people among the refugees. Germans are aware of that danger but count on strict accountability as migrants are required to study German and regularly update their status.  Unlike illegal immigrants into United States those coming to Germany seldom vanish into a marginalized shadow economy.

Much is at risk in this refugee crisis. Unless resolved soon the free movement of people within the EU’s single market—the Schengen agreement—could be modified. Germany’s asylum policies are in flux and already migrants from countries no longer labled conflict zones—Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro—are being sent back.

Germany is no stranger to mass migrations and is acutely aware of its horrific failure to protect Jews during the Nazi period. After the war Germany resettled over five million Germans expelled from lost territories. There was a wave of migration out of East Germany prior to unification. The current flood of people, however, is the greatest since the war and shows no sign of abating.

As with the euro currency crisis, Chancellor Merkel says the future of the European Union is at stake. “If Europe fails the refugee question,” she says, “then a founding impulse for a united Europe will be lost.”

For now at least Germany holds high the banner of human rights. 

Recalling Post-Communism, Romania 1996

BUCHAREST, September 18, 1996: The old Ilyushin 18 (YR-IMF) was built in 1964.  Its five-man crew from Tarom had been together a long time, including a year on contract to Cubana where the transatlantic crossing went Prague, Rekyavik, Gander, Havana. 

The crew strolled into the Timisoara airport lobby at dinnertime.  Waiting for the flight to Bucharest, I was delighted to learn that this would be our crew and the IL-18 the aircraft.  I had thought the flight to the capital was the newer BAC 11 twinjet on the tarmac.

One of the crew, a rotund man with two stripes on his sleeve, spoke English. He was pleased when I expressed enthusiasm about getting another ride in an 18 before they are retired.  He introduced me to the captain across the table who asked if I would be his guest in the cockpit during the flight to Arad and Bucharest.

My only time on an IL-18 had been with Interflug, the defunct East German carrier, from Budapest to Leipzig in mid-1982.  I remember the squishy seats that were so low that you had raise up to see out of the window.  Then there was the memorable fact that GDR passengers ignored the no-smoking sign despite the flight attendant’s command to follow instructions.  

As with the doors on other Soviet planes, the Tupolev 134 and 154, you have to duck when coming aboard.  Large lamps were spaced along the ceiling. The cabin had a big section in the middle and smaller ones fore and aft separated by the galley and lavatories. A lumpy red carpet rolled down the center aisle. The sturdy seatback tables had an uneven spackled metal surface. Unoccupied seats were folded completely forward. Thin plastic rims encased the circular windows. The overhead storage rack was a continuous narrow shelf that could accommodate coats and small briefcases. 

In the cockpit I felt I was in a John Wayne movie where he is a piloting a B-24 against the Japanese. There were white cloth covers over the floppy earphones worn by the pilots. The cockpit gauges and dials were primitive; nothing was digital.  The navigator sat squished behind the captain at a cramped table with a scope illuminated by a crane-necked lamp. The radio operator’s setup was identical behind the co-pilot, dozens of gauges were arrayed behind him. He clutched a primitive microphone in one hand. As we taxied, the throbbing and shaking from four engines made conversation difficult.

The flight engineer sat in a middle jump seat that had no back.  He seemed to be squatting on the floor as he pulled the center levers backwards and forward.  The silver-haired captain with halting English sat low to the floor and reached up to grasp the throttles as well as the yoke.  Sluggish dials got thumps from the back of his hand and once a healthy whack. A sliding window was half open as we prepared for take off.

When the brakes were released we surged forward, the engines groaning and metal vibrating as we gained speed. In the air the flying was smooth. I savored a rare experience, the thrill tempered from observing outdated technology.

During takeoff and landing I was surprised at the cackle of multiple voices from heads clustered in close proximity behind the captain.  I thought the cacophony was dangerous until I realized these were men who knew each other well and had performed these tasks hundreds of times.  Approaching Bucharest there were again several heads peering past the pilot’s shoulder. Positions and instructions were called out.

With the night sky clear it was exhilarating to cruise above the lights of the capital and then float down towards Bucharest’s domestic airport.

Having never been in the cockpit of a big plane during landing I was surprised how fast we descended. For me the lighted runway resembled the deck of an aircraft carrier.  I thought we were too high but a moment later we touched down. 

Parked at the gate, I asked the captain his impressions of the IL-18. He replied, “I like having four engines and a crew instead of a computer that does the flying. And the plane is strong and it is safe.”

It was a peak experience reminding me of the time not long ago in the States when  Eastern Airlines retired an American version of the IL-18, the Lockheed Electra, from the New York to Washington shuttle.   The full-page newspaper ads declared, “Farewell old prop.”  

Governors Sound Alarm on Pain Pill Epidemic

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WV: At last weekend’s summer meeting of the National Governors Association there was an unexpected bipartisan call to arms against drug abuse.

Oklahoma’s Republican governor Mary Fallin described the prescription drug epidemic as “the enemy within,” a threat to national security equal to Islamic terror.  Steve Beshear, Kentucky’s Democratic governor, stunned the audience with the statistic that more Americans are dying from drug overdoses than die on the nation’s highways.

As governors from up two-dozen states listened, Dr. Debra Houry from the Centers for Disease Control said drug overdoses caused 145,000 deaths over the past decade. It is an epidemic, she said, spreading at an alarming rate with “drug related deaths up by 400% since 1999.”

Despite appeals to hold back, she said physicians continue to overprescribe powerful painkillers, which in medical terms are opioids, addictive opium-related synthetic compounds whose excessive use impacts the brain like heroin. She said 260 million prescriptions for pain killers were written in 2012, “enough for every adult in the country to have his own bottle of pills.” Common painkillers are Oxycontin, Percocet and Vicodin.

Dr. Houry cited research showing that the recent upsurge in heroin use is connected to the overuse of painkillers. Pain pill abusers, she said, are 40 times more likely than others to move on to heroin. 

Connecticut’s Democratic governor Dannel Malloy said heroin use has exploded because it is cheaper than painkillers.  The heroin now on the streets, he said, is so pure that it is increasingly killing first time users, often young people between 17 and 26. This cohort, “ who think they’ll live forever,” typically become addicted by first snorting crushed pills.

Pointing to research that most abusers initially get pills from friends and relatives, Malloy called on doctors “to stop writing long-term prescriptions.” If painkillers are prescribed for only a brief period for dental extractions, he said, that should also be the case for those who have had knee or hip replacements.

Former California Republican congresswoman Mary Bono, whose son suffered from substance abuse, said if 100 dolphins washed up everyday on Florida beaches there would be a national outcry. Yet, she said, even more Americans—43,000—are dying annually from drug overdoses.

Governor Rick Snyder, Michigan Republican, agreed that the scope of the problem is huge. “When I recently asked sheriffs in rural Michigan what is their number one problem,” he said, “they replied prescription drug abuse.”

Lieutenant Patrick Glynn, a drug specialist at the Quincy, MA police department, emphasized treatment and said drug abuse is a disease and not a crime. But he said people “have too many pills in the medicine cabinet,” often the first target of addicts breaking into homes.

Glynn is a proponent of first responders carrying narcon (Naloxone), a quick response drug that reverses the effects of opioid poisoning which attack receptors in the brain, causing the user to stop breathing.

Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell told the governors the Obama administration wants to devote an additional $100 million to fight the drug addiction epidemic.

Former congresswoman Bono called the crisis an abuse of medicine, “a previously unknown silent killer,” that is impacting too many American families. 

(A version of this story appeared on marketwatch.com. See more of Barry's work at econbarry.com)

Remembering Mozambique Independence

My, how the world has changed. 

Mozambique independence in 1975 was a kind of high water mark of communism. Fresh from victory in Portugal’s 1974 military coup and its triumph in Vietnam, 'world revolution' arrived in southern Africa on June 25, 1975 with the People’s Republic of Mozambique.

In the days before the Portuguese handover, pundits in what was still Lourenco Marques wondered whether the Frelimo liberation movement would embrace Soviet communism or its rival Chinese variant. Newly arrived foreign correspondents counseled that clues would be revealed by where dignitaries were placed on the dais. Would the Russians or Chinese be seated closest to Samora Machel and Frelimo leadership?

Ian Smith in a Rhodesia, awkwardly perched between Mozambique and soon to be independent Angola, warned that the Kremlin’s objective was a belt of compliant states stretched across the subcontinent. In South Africa the Financial Mail worried that Frelimo would squeeze Smith economically by closing Mozambican ports to Rhodesian commerce.

It was in Mozambique that I observed my first revolution, if that’s the right term. In late 1974 and 1975 I made three trips to the country, always exhilarated by the ease with which blacks and whites interacted compared to the stifling constraint of apartheid. 

But the shortcomings of Portuguese rule were equally visible. Why were the cab drivers in a black majority city almost exclusively white? Why in 300 years had the Portuguese failed to build a highway between the capital and Beira, the second city 1200 km north?

Mozambique and Angola were rushed to independence because the coup plotters in Lisbon wanted a quick end to Portugal's African wars. For all of its bluster Frelimo had liberated very little Mozambican territory. By its own admission the liberation group was ill-prepared to assume power. Significantly the independence agreements for Mozambique and Angola made no reference to free elections or democracy. Mozambique was to be a one party state ruled by the vanguard party.

As independence approached Beira was curiously silent. The only activity was in the port. British frigates could be seen off shore. At the airport despondent settlers lined the tarmac awaiting refugee flights to Portugal.  On the train to Rhodesia I was one of only a dozen passengers.

Mozambique independence was my first assignment for NBC News. As the midnight hour approached for the celebratory hauling down of the Portuguese flag seasoned correspondents headed not to Machava Stadium but the suburban home of Fernando Fernandes, everybody’s L.M. stringer, to be in the queue for the telex machines that would get the story out.

Returning to Johannesburg it was strange to listen to Radio Beijing where the English program consisted of reading verbatim from Chairman Mao’s little red book. ANC broadcasts from Dar es Salaam voiced the empty rhetoric of imperialism’s retreat and the certainty of African revolution.  

Fast forward 40 years and 1975 is a time warp. Portugal rather quickly abandoned socialism and moved to democracy and eventual membership in the European Union.

Communism was repudiated by its main practioners, China and Russia.  A modernizing China moved towards a market economy in the late 70s while maintaining only the trapplngs of communism. Mikhail Gorbachev said the Russians had tried but failed to make communism work. In 1991 the Soviet Union imploded and fragmented into multiple states.

For its part Frelimo abandoned communism in 1990 and dropped ‘peoples republic’ from the country’s name. Property and enterprises that had been nationalized were privatized. With huge gas and coal deposits in the north, foreign investment is propelling rapid economic growth.

In the globalized world China has emerged as the biggest winner. Millions have been lifted  out of poverty not by communism but by free market capitalism.  China has risen to be the world's second biggest economy.

A visitor to Mozambique today witnesses a Chinese presence that is large and growing. The Chinese built Maputo’s modern airport. They are big investors in liquefied natural gas, minerals and agriculture.

One doesn’t have to see where they’re seated on the dais to know that the Chinese are winners. Hopefully, the Mozambicans are making up for lost time are becoming winners as well.

News Goes Mobile

WASHINGTON:  After years of decline, mainstream media is seeing signs of turnaround and it’s all on line, particularly mobile.  That’s a take-a-way from the World Media Congress that took place in Washington from June 1 to 3.

As any reporter still getting paid knows, the transition to digital has been brutal. In ten years the number of working journalists is down 20%, traditional media share prices fell 80% while ad revenue fell by two-thirds.

Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron says things are getting better.  New owner Jeff Bezos, says Baron, has brought, “questions, ideas, patience and money,” guiding the Post’s transition. With newly hired reporters joining veterans, Baron says its digital audience has grown dramatically to 47 million unique visitors per month, lifting the Post into the top ten digital news sites.

Larry Kramer, retiring publisher of USA Today, is similarly upbeat. He sees opportunities because “more people are reading content than ever before.” Gannett, he says, is having success integrating national and local coverage among its nearly 100 properties.

Online advertising executive, Sorosh Tavakoli sees “explosive growth” in mobile, which he believes will soon be dominant.  Video on mobile is huge, he adds, and bigger smart phone screens translate into longer views.

Dave Callaway, executive editor of USA Today, says mobile users want accurate news quickly and often. “What do we know right now?” Callaway says social is the key to mobile and “digital changes how we tell stories.”

From Brazil Marta Gleich of Zero Hora—with a string of newspapers and TV stations—emphasized productivity. Every newsroom, she said, is given a daily quota of stories and videos.  Journalists are judged on a skills map evaluating competence, story telling, facility with mobile and social, video shooting and editing,

Digital allows writers and editors to know the number of clicks and time spent on each story. The US edition of the UK’s Guardian, now among the top ten sites, uses a heat map ranking the popularity of each story on the home page. “Traffic,” says its US C.E.O Eamonn Store, “drives revenue,” and he expects the US edition to be profitable in three years.

 Journalists are encouraged to promote their stories and begin the conversation with readers.

As 1/3 of US adults consume news on mobile, it’s not a surprise that Facebook and Snapchat have launched partnerships opening their sites to content from publishers.

Facebook has a trial project with nine entities, including the New York Times, BBC, Atlantic and the German sites Spiegel and Bild.  Snapchat’s Discover is a partnership with 12 publishers, including CNN, Yahoo News, National Geographic, and ESPN.

The picture sharing site’s head of media Nick Bell describes Snapchat Discover as a continuous vertical scroll,  “a fun and easy way to explore the day’s stories.”  

Snapchat’s Nick Bell demonstrating the ‘continuous scroll’ of Discover

One presenter attribute the explosive growth of news on mobile to the 700 million iPhones Apple has sold in seven years, including 20 million iPhone 6s.

The World Media Congress drew 1,000 editors and publishers from 80 countries. 

Berkshire 2015: Notes from the Warren and Charlie Show

OMAHA: As usual the Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger show played to thousands of the faithful at Omaha’s main sports arena.  The day-long Saturday session was chock full of jokes and wisdom for investors.

This 50^th annual meeting (my fifth) was noteworthy for the principals pronouncements on the euro currency and China.

 The Young and Not So Young in Omaha

There have always been questions about the euro but this time both Charlie and Warren were more skeptical, arguing that changes are required for the system to be viable. Munger said the € has done well, but the flaws must be addressed.  “They created something that is unwise,” he said,  “they’ve got countries in there that shouldn’t be there.” Obviously referring to Greece, he said in his inimitable way,“you can’t do business with your drunken brother.”

He complained that Greece had submitted false statements (assisted by a US investment bank) to get into the system.  The Europeans, said Munger, have to face up to the system’s flaws. Surprisingly, Buffett chimed in saying, “in its present form it’s not going to work.”  Combined, this is a stronger critique than had been voiced at earlier meetings.

Munger was ecstatic about what China has achieved in boosting living standards. it’s “totally miraculous” what the country has done so far. “I would have not believed a country of that size could move so far, so fast.”

The 91-year-old Munger believes President Xi Jinping is consciously modeling the successes of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, rooting out corruption, even putting some of his friends in jail. Munger sounded almost like a member of China’s politburo, saying “they’ve found a way to unlock the potential of their people.”

Buffett agreed, saying it is amazing what China has done. “It blows me away,” he said. “As Charlie says, China and the US are going to be the superpowers for as far as the eye can see.” He said despite inevitable conflicts China and the US have to find a way to work together.

There was, of course, the usual wit. They said,”we think that any company that employs an economist has one employee too many.”

Munger had this observation about Germany: “Germans work fewer hours than a lot of people and produce a lot more.”

Buffett corrected a questioner who asked about his giving away 90% of his enormous wealth. Actually, said Warren, “I’m giving away 99%.”  Most of those billions go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Buffett quipped, “there’s no Forbes 400 in the graveyard.”

The weather was super, springtime in Omaha.  And the show goes on as neither Warren nor Charlie gave any hint of stepping down.