Richard John Luh

Can a remote Canadian island become a potential refuge for Americans trying to escape the current administration? The emails started coming into Cape Breton Island just after Donald Trump won his first presidential primary last year. They still arrive from Americans who think they might be willing to relocate to a place with short days and frigid temperatures five months of the year.

“I am so sick of what has happened to my beautiful country,” one resident of the Lower Forty-Eight wrote.

The first sign of what Rob Calabrese would come to think of as America’s unmooring began last year. Just after Donald Trump won his first presidential primary, Calabrese published a $28 website that he’d designed in 30 minutes. “Hi Americans!” What followed was a sales pitch for an island where Muslims could “roam freely,” and where the only walls were those “holding up the roofs” of “extremely affordable houses.”

“Let’s get the word out!” Calabrese wrote, adding a photo of an pristine coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. “Move to Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins!”

It was initially a joke but seven hours after Calabrese linked the site to the Facebook page of the pop radio station where he works as a DJ, in came an email from America. “Not sure if this is real but I’ll bite.” And then another: “It pains me to think of leaving, but this country is beyond repair.”

Yankees quickly realized Calabrese’s effort was not a joke. The Calabrese response about housing: “You’ll find it one of the, if not the most, affordable in North America! If you want to take a look at some of the latest listings,” he emailed to The States some websites of Cape Breton Island real estate companies.

He started answering questions about immigration…“The process has changed, some people say it is much less complex, let’s get started”…and dual citizenship…“Every country decides whom it considers to be a citizen. If more than one country recognizes you as a citizen, you have dual citizenship. Find out more here.”

Some asked if Cape Breton Island was offering a special program. “No,” said Calabrese. “There is no special program. The immigration process would happen in the conventional way. The purpose of the web site is to show that if you are interested in coming to Canada, that Cape Breton Island would be a place where you would be welcomed with open arms!”

Calabrese started answering questions about retirees immigrating, (“There are many paths to permanent residency and citizenship) and the economic climate in Cape Breton Island. He was candid: “Cape Breton’s economy has suffered for many years. In the past we depended on coal mines and steel production but those industries are gone. We have a burgeoning IT sector and some great new tech businesses are starting here.”

Calabrese increased his trolling: “Want more information, Google Cape Breton Island if Donald Trump Wins.”

The U.S. side of the phenomenon was “unsettling,” according to the Washington Post: “The toll of the president’s proposals has been swift on the nation’s tourism industry, with tour group organizers saying that people suddenly have an unsettling sense that the United States isn’t as welcoming a place as it once was. One industry expert projected lost revenue for 2017 at $7.4 billion.”

A-E will apprise Greater Jasper residents of any mass emigration to a beautiful but chilly destination. Google Cape Breton Island Tourism website for stunning photographs of the beautiful part.

The future of coal
The quick erosion of most markets for U.S. and Cape Breton Island coal are inescapable. Just look at markets for West Virginia and Kentucky coal. Despite the President’s campaign pledges, the first two sentence in this paragraph are inevitable.

More insight into inevitability: earlier this month, the Harlan County, Ky., Coal Museum switched to solar power.

Sam Khorramian and Oliver Graf give us their three tips on what to do when an enterprise goes south, and how you can turn your vision into a reality.

After years of honing their craft as master salesmen, Sam Khorramian and Oliver Graf have turned the business of real estate on its head by introducing a brokerage that not only lets agents keep 100 percent of their commission, but also provides 24/7 support. At Big Block Realty, the agents are the customers, and the customers are treated like family.

Clearly, this all-new business model is working! Big Block Realty has been named San Diego’s Best Real Estate Brokerage four years running. While munching on the epitome of comfort food (a tantalizing Mac ’N’ Cheeseburger) at Grub Burger Bar, Khorramian and Graf give us their three tips on what to do when an enterprise goes south, and how you can turn your vision into a reality.

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Oil slumped to a two-week low on Wednesday, after U.S. data showed a smaller-than-expected drop in overall crude stocks and a surprising build in gasoline inventories, which raised worries about excessively high global supply.

U.S. crude futures settled down $1.97 to $50.44 a barrel, a 3.8 percent drop, the worst-one day decline since March 8, as investors bailed out of long positions in response to the bearish inventory figures.

U.S. crude stocks fell 1 million barrels in the latest week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, less than anticipated. Gasoline stocks posted a counter-seasonal build of 1.5 million barrels, despite heavier refining activity.

The surprise build in gasoline, along with an increase in U.S. production and imports from OPEC nations, pressured prices.

A global crude glut has persisted even as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producing countries have worked to reduce output under an agreement to cut supplies almost 1.8 million barrels per day in the first half of 2017.

U.S. stockpiles and production have cast doubt on whether the OPEC cuts were enough. U.S. production rose to 9.252 million barrels a day in the most recent week, the highest since August 2015.

“They drop production, we add production, and so at end of the day it’s ugly,” said Robert Yawger, energy futures strategist at Mizuho Americas.

SHENZHEN, CHINA–Huawei Technologies is readying plans to offer public cloud services beyond its domestic market, venturing into some on its own, but its focus on US remains measured and uncertain.

The Chinese networking giant had positioned itself as “an enabler” of intelligent worlds, building more connections, widening data pipes, and facilitating digital transformation, said Eric Xu, Huawei’s deputy chairman and rotating CEO.

Speaking at the company’s annual global analyst summit here this week, Xu noted that an “all-cloud ICT infrastructure” was key to enabling organisations in their digitisation journey and Huawei was looking to help telcos build cloud-based capabilities and run digital operational systems.

Noting that cloud services was now a basic business model, he said: “Beginning in 2017, Huawei will focus on public services. We will invest heavily in building an open and trusted public cloud platform, which will be the foundation of a Huawei cloud family [that] will include public clouds we develop together with operators, and public clouds that we operate on our own.”

A new cloud business unit had been set up to drive such efforts, he said, which also would focus on key verticals including healthcare and financial services.

This marked Huawei’s first move to offer public cloud services outside its domestic Chinese market, where it launched such services in 2015. In a previous ZDNet report, Xu had said the vendor had no plans to do so, preferring instead to work with overseas telcos including Deutsche Telekom and Orange. Company executives added that Huawei needed to ensure it could properly run public cloud offerings in China before looking towards overseas expansion.

Xu acknowledged that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) already were entrenched in the public cloud market and had strong advantages in the US and other developed markets. However, he pointed to Huawei’s strong telco partnerships in Europe and its focus on building “local, secured, and trusted” public cloud, which were key considerations for enterprises in these developed markets.

He said Huawei’s wide global footprint and capabilities would prove a competitive advantage in emerging markets against the likes of AWS and Microsoft.

According to Zheng Yelai, president of Huawei’s new cloud unit, plans were underway to hire 2,000 employees for the business group this year.

Clement Teo, Ovum’s principal analyst who was at the summit, said Huawei also had targeted emerging markets with its mobile strategy and was “smart” to adopt the same strategy for its public cloud services.

While developed markets already were crowded with players such as Google and Microsoft, Teo told ZDNet that markets such as Middle East, Africa, and India were “still an open game” and Huawei had well established relationships with telcos that it could leverage to grow its business.

He noted, though, that Huawei appeared to be overemphasising its telco services business and should offer more details about how it was driving its enterprise business. And while the creation of a cloud business unit was “interesting”, it was still too early to assess what this could mean for the vendor.

In addition, he said the Chinese vendor needed to look at establishing further credibility in the enterprise space in order to address any doubts that might have lingered from its legal tussles with Cisco Systems over intellectual property rights.

Huawei in 2003 admitted to having duplicated Cisco’s source codes in its routers, but said it had done so inadvertently and less extensively than the US vendor had claimed.

Huawei previously targeted to hit US$10 billion in global revenue from its enterprise business by 2017, but later revised this to 2018. This was again pushed to 2019, according to a 2016 report.

The business unit, though, remained the company’s fastest growing, clocking a 47.3 percent year-on-year growth rate last year to hit 40.7 billion yuan (US$5.89 billion) in sales revenue. Yan Lida, president of the enterprise business group, said last month at Cebit 2017 that Huawei was expecting the unit’s annual revenue to double every other year and likely to hit the US$10 billion target by 2018.

US FOOTPRINT STILL SMALL
Teo also highlighted Huawei’s small footprint in the US, where it was missing out on a potentially huge revenue stream that could accelerate its target to hit US$10 billion in revenue for its enterprise business. “US will be important for them and, at least, in the long-term, they will need to be in the market. And right now, they’re not there or have a very small footprint,” the analyst said.

The Americas accounted for 8 percent of Huawei’s revenue last year, down from 10 percent in 2015, though actual revenue dollars climbed from 38.9 billion yuan (US$5.63 billion) to 44.08 billion yuan (US$ 6.38 billion) in 2016. The region saw the smallest year-on-year revenue growth of 13.3 percent, compared to 41 percent in China.

The Chinese market remained its largest market, contributing 45 percent of Huawei’s overall revenue last year, up from 42 percent in 2015, while EMEA accounted for about a third.

According to Xu, the company’s US strategy remained unchanged across its three business units: telco, enterprise, and consumer. Carriers in the US were not a high priority market for Huawei, he said, adding that it would take a “step by step” approach with its US enterprise business. Smart devices currently also were not a priority focus for Huawei in the US, though, he noted that it would be in the future.

With the US currently under an administration that favoured an “America first” mentality and protectionist policies that encouraged bringing jobs back to the country, ZDNet asked Huawei executives if the Chinese vendor might be better off diverting its investment from US and towards friendlier markets such as those in Asia-Pacific.

Catherine Du, Huawei’s director of marketing for enterprise, reiterated Xu’s comments on approaching the US enterprise market “step by step”. She also noted that Huawei was focused on addressing the needs of its customers and this meant the vendor would do whatever, or wherever, they needed Huawei to be.

Asked if that included manufacturing its products in US, Du said it had yet to hear of any request to do so.

Huawei in the past had faced significant challenges and security concerns in the US, where the government accused the Chinese vendor of spying on its government’s behalf and urged a ban on its products. Furious over the allegations, Huawei in July 2013 described the US market as a “”commercial disappointment” and declared it was no longer interested in it, instead shifting its focus on expanding in Europe. It later backtracked on its claim to leave the US market.

Based in Singapore, Eileen Yu reported for ZDNet from Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2017 in Shenzhen, China, on the invitation of Huawei Technologies.

As influencer advancing advances from a murmured about push to an exhibited technique, promoters need to take supply of what they know is effective. The changes which came up in the area of influencer marketing are listed below with the steps to be taken in the furtherance.

1) Sponsored posts must be scrutinised for guidelines spell:
Government Trade Commission rules require that sufficient displays must be named as commercials, which implies that brands ought to be continuously varied when the influencers post for their purpose.
It is still an accepted fact that if the marketing is uncovered then it is good for the marketers. This is myth. According to Kristin Hersant, VP of Linqia, “Sponsors are still under the inclination that if it’s not uncovered when a post is upheld, it’s all the more convincing, which is not the circumstance,” Proceeding, that lead won’t fly. “Sponsors ought to be harder with what they require of their influencers,” she said.

2) The crucial players today are the micro and the centre players.
Enormous name backings may work for Super Bowl promotions, however, a couple brands are seeing greater achievement with scaled downscale influencers that have up to 10,000 enthusiasts and “focus” influencers with up to 250,000 followers.
Gil Eyal, the originator of influence exhibiting stage HYPR Brands said that “Working with popular individuals has ended up being through and through less capable. Their engagement rates are regularly lower than practically identical influencers with a more diminutive social occasion of individuals.”
The reason behind this was deeply explained by Mallorie Rosenbluth in the following way “Purchasers can see straightforwardly through it. A post from a man with countless about a brand they’ve never examined seems, by all accounts, to be misleading”.

3) The most preferred channel today is Instagram.
YouTube has since a long time prior ruled as a go-to channel for influencer content, yet Instagram is getting up to speed quickly. In a November 2016 survey, influencer exhibiting motorization firm TapInfluence asked 268 US influencers, with a typical reach of 259,000, which social stage had the most potential for advancement as to influencer promoting. Instagram ascended as the unmistakable victory.
Brands share that evaluation. “Instagram is tremendous for us in light of the rich data and because you really turn out to be more familiar with the influencers,” Delilah Nuval, advancing overseer at H2O+ Beauty, said.

4) Sponsored posts are supplemented by videos.
There’s no one gauge fits all system for choosing the right substance for a specific influencer advancing exertion, however, brands and influencers are slanting toward video to grow the genuine feel of bolstered posts.
“We require influencers to highlight Mezzetta by making content that feels individual and begins from whatever vitality they have for the thing,” Rajiv Doshi, head of cutting edge displaying at CPG association Mezzetta, said. Much of the time, the video is the best course.

5) Effective Content Will Require a Leap of Faith
For influencer exhibiting to work, brands need to make sense of how to trust in their influencers—that suggests giving up the reins on substance creation. One of the troubles that publicists have is that they micromanage influencers.
That makes the presents show up on be less bona fide, and they end up being basically one more piece of brand publicising. The key is to allow influencers to do what they exceed expectations at.

One out of every two passengers who fly from India to the US transit through airports in the Middle East like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and from Saturday they will need to check in all electronic devices sized larger than a smart phone like laptops, tablets, e-readers, cameras, electronic games, DVD players, etc. Apart from not having their personal device for work or entertainment at airport lounges and on board ultra-long haul flights, air travellers will have to worry about the possibility of their e-gadgets getting lost, misplaced or stolen from their checked-in bags.
On Friday, the US department of homeland security banned “all personal electronic devices larger than a cell phone or smart phone” from the carry on bags (bags carried on board by the flyer) of passengers who board direct flights to the US from the airports in Amman (Jordan), Cairo (Egypt), Istanbul (Turkey), Jeddah and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Kuwait, Doha (Qatar), Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Airlines were notified by the US government at 3am EDT (12.30pm IST, Friday) about the ban and have been given 96 hours within which to comply.
As for the passengers who transit from any of these airports, they will have to pack their electronic goods into their check-in bag at their airport of origin.
So a passenger booked on a Mumbai-Dubai-Dallas flight will have to check in the laptop at Mumbai itself. The new security measures don’t apply to passengers booked on Air India. But those booked on Jet Airways will need to check if their flights will transit through any of the above listed airports.
Apart from passengers from the countries that are on the list, it will be those from India who would be the most hit as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha are popular transit halts for passengers from India flying to the US. The US National Travel and Tourism office data on international travellers to the US and the countries they come from has Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China and European nations in the top ten list. Passengers from none of these countries would generally transit through any of the 10 listed airports to reach the US. But that’s not the case with India, which stands at the 11th position on the list. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), in the fiscal year 2016, of the 2.69 million passengers who flew from India to the US, 1.3 million flew on airlines like Emirates, Etihad, Qatar that transit through airports like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha.
Kapil Kaul of CAPA said that he sees the new security measures as a “serious passenger inconvenience and nothing more”. He added that it might result in some business class traffic moving to carriers that are not affected but given the very high demand and high passenger load factors there won’t be any significant movement. “It’s poorly executed and communicated but we expect it to be a short term measure,” Kaul added.
Anil Punjabi, president of Travel Agents’ Federation of India, said: “The restriction, first by the US and then by the UK, has scared travellers. They feel that if intelligence agencies believe that terror outfits may explode a bomb on a plane that originates from the Gulf, they should avoid it altogether. Even elderly people travelling to their children living abroad want to avoid the flights. Though most of them don’t carry the restricted items, there is fear of delay at airports in the Gulf.”

Diplomatic and economic measures taken to rein in North Korea’s missile program have not had the desired effect, a senior U.S. military commander said on Thursday after the North’s latest test triggered a flurry of calls among world leaders.

U.S President Donald Trump led calls with leaders and senior officials from Japan and South Korea on Thursday to discuss the latest provocation from Pyongyang, hours before Trump begins a much-anticipated summit with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

“Up to this point I think it is fair to say … that economic and diplomatic efforts have not supported the progress people have been anticipating and looking forward to,” U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift said in Tokyo, where he was meeting Japanese Self Defence Force commanders and foreign ministry officials.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs will be high on the agenda when Trump and Xi meet at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida later on Thursday, with anger in Beijing simmering over the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea.

Analysts have said Wednesday’s launch of a ballistic missile from North Korea’s east coast probably took place with the Trump-Xi summit in mind as the reclusive state presses ahead in defiance of United Nations resolutions and sanctions.

In a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday, Trump again said that all options were on the table when it came to North Korea’s continued missile tests.

Swift said a military response remained among those options.

“That decision would be up to the president,” he told reporters. “The military was always an option.”

Tensions on the Korean peninsula and the Trump-Xi summit began to worry markets on Thursday, with the dollar and Wall Street shares slipping.

“The market is only starting to factor in recent developments regarding North Korea, and it now wants to figure out the geopolitical implications of the U.S.-China summit,” said Shusuke Yamada, a senior strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Tokyo.

“DANGEROUS PROVOCATION”

Abe said the two leaders had agreed that North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch was “a dangerous provocation and a serious threat”.

He told reporters at his Tokyo residence he was watching to see how China would respond to Pyongyang after Xi meets Trump.

The White House said in a statement after the Abe call Trump “made clear that the United States would continue to strengthen its ability to deter and defend itself and its allies with the full range of its military capabilities”.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants China to do more to exert its economic influence over its unpredictable ally in Pyongyang to restrain its nuclear and missile programs, but China denies it has any overriding influence on North Korea.

On Sunday, Trump held out the possibility of using trade as a lever to secure Chinese cooperation, while suggesting Washington might deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs on its own if need be.

Any launch of objects using ballistic missile technology is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North has defied the ban, saying it infringes on its sovereign rights to self-defense and the pursuit of space exploration.

In another call on Thursday, Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster told his South Korean counterpart that Washington remained committed to the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea.

South Korea and the United States say the sole purpose of the THAAD system is to defend against missile launches from North Korea but China says the system’s powerful radar could penetrate into its territory.

The United States began deploying the first elements of the THAAD system in South Korea last month, despite angry opposition from China.

South Korean officials said McMaster discussed the North’s latest missile launch and the Trump-Xi summit in a call with his counterpart in Seoul, Kim Kwan-jin.

“Both sides agreed to pursue … plans in order to substantially strengthen the international community’s sanctions and pressure on North Korea,” South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement.

” … both agreed to push forward the deployment of THAAD by U.S. forces in Korea,” it said.

U.S. officials said the missile launched on Wednesday appeared to be a liquid-fueled, extended-range Scud missile that only traveled a fraction of its range before spinning out of control.

They said it flew about 60 km (40 miles) from its launch site near Sinpo, a port city on the North’s east coast where a submarine base is located.

As well as a growing list of ballistic missile launches, North Korea has also conducted two nuclear weapons tests since January 2016. (For a graphic on North Korea’s missile launches, see: tmsnrt.rs/2m9l4oj)

(This story has been refiled to correct spelling of Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategist’s first name to Shusuke in paragraph 10)

(Additional reporting by William Mallard, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Shinichi Saoshiro in TOKYO Eric Beech in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait)

SEOUL, South Korea — Greg Brooks-English used to shrug it off when family and friends asked whether he felt safe living on the doorstep of the world’s most fortified and, some say, most dangerous border.

“You know, South Koreans just take it all in stride,” he said, even after North Korea last year launched two nuclear tests and some twenty missile tests.

“They’ve been living under this pressure for seven decades now,” said Brooks-English, a soft-spoken Portland native. “I’ve kind of adopted that.”

Until a few months ago.

For the first time in his 12 years living in South Korea, the 46-year-old assistant professor at Yonsei University is now filled with growing dread.

“When I start hearing [U.S. President Donald] Trump talk about a preemptive strike, or that all options are on the table [or] try to take out [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un, that would be total war,” he said, referring to widespread news coverage suggesting or predicting President Trump might take preemptive action against North Korea.

Last month, Secretary Rex Tillerson told a news conference in South Korea that “all options are on the table.”

The conversation with his parents is now the reverse of what it used to be: “I’m actually telling them this is dangerous.”

Brooks-English is one of nearly 140,000 Americans living in South Korea, according to the Korea Immigration Service. Of those, 28,500 are U.S. military personnel stationed here to help defend this nation of 55 million against the threat of war with the North.

A threat that seems to have grown recently thanks to Pyongyang’s “uncertainty of intent,” U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Scott Swift calls it, and its advancement of missile technologies.

“I have never seen a greater concern from a regional perspective of the threat that is being posed by North Korea,” said Swift.

But the overwhelming majority of Americans in South Korea have nothing to do with the U.S. military and are focused instead on making the tiny and densely populated country their home.

Take the Rigbys, who landed on the peninsula in 2014 — driven by a dream to teach in Asia but also by one serious practicality.

“It was hard, being newly married and working all the time, never seeing each other,” said Leah Rigby, a bubbly 27-year-old redhead from Downington, Pennsylvania. She and her 27-year-old husband, Steven Rigby, graduated from Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2012. Not only did they acquire degrees in English and secondary education, they also accumulated school loans in the six figures.

“We were both teaching full-time and holding second jobs working in restaurants, but we still couldn’t make ends meet,” she said. After listening to friends who were teaching in South Korea and were raving about the experience, the young couple decide to move to Asia as well.

This month, they are marking their third year in South Korea. They’ve reduced their college loans by more than a third. The school pays for their apartment in trendy Gangnam neighborhood. They’ve adopted a dog, Pretzel. And they’ve embraced Korean life — so much so that Steven Rigby enthuses to his friends about the local cuisine.

“Kimchi is a lifestyle. It’s not a food, it is a state of being,” he said.

Documenting their day-to-day in Seoul on a YouTube channel, the couple say they hardly ever give a second thought to regional tensions.

“Correctly or incorrectly, I think more about gun violence in the U.S. than I think about a nuclear threat here,” said Steven Rigby. “I don’t think about North Korea except when I read the headlines.”

The Rigbys told NBC News that the constant aggressive rhetoric makes the threat seem empty.

“It’s not like we’re ignorant of a threat being there, but because these threats are made so often, it gets to a place where you just roll your eyes and say, ‘Oh, it’s another threat, okay, we’ll see what happens this time,'” Leah Rigby said.

Whatever they may think of their own safety, all three Americans — Leah and Steven Rigby and Greg Brooks-English — fear much more for their students.

“The biggest impact we see as teachers is that the male students that [are] preparing for college, they have to do military service,” said Leah Rigby. “And so they’re really frustrated that the effect of North Korea is that they don’t get to pursue their education right away.”

Brooks-English is more blunt.

“My students would be the ones being killed,” he said. Even possibly his 9-year old son, Noah, who as a dual American-Korean citizen would be expected to serve compulsory military service in South Korea once he reaches the age of 18.

But the immediate future is what concentrates Brooks-English’s attention. While the Rigbys may speak lightly about having to move, Brooks-English said half of his friends advise him to have a Plan B.

“I pray to God that it doesn’t come to that,” said Brooks-English. “South Korea has given me everything. It has given me my wife, my son, my money, my job. I love South Korea.”