Wall Street: Sjätte uppgångsveckan i rad

Aston Martin, Porsche och ett inramat American Express. På klientlistan: Katrin Zytomierska, Gunilla Persson, Bingo Rimér. – Jag lever ett extravagant liv, säger advokat Mark Safaryan i en intervju om pengarna, drivkraften från Sovjet – och att kallas ”kändisadvokat”.

Från trendiga vinområden i Australien till Sardiniens solmecka Costa Smeralda. Här är årets 10 hetaste resmål – enligt en undersökning från American Express.

New York-börsens ledande index stängde handelsveckan med nedgångar. Solenergibolag hörde till de största förlorarna efter en vinstvarning i sektorn. American Express föll trots ett oväntat starkt resultat under det tredje kvartalet.

Börsveckan ser ut att sluta i moll och New York-börsen sjunker i den inledande handeln. American Express handlas ned trots ett högre resultat än väntat under det tredje kvartalet.

Många artiklar i västerländsk media gör gällande att det skulle finnas en konsensus i Kinas politiska elit om att USA befinner sig i tillstånd av ihållande tillbakagång, skriver två Kinaexperter i The Diplomat. Skribenterna menar att det antagandet både är fel – och farligt. De tar upp en rad exempel från kinesiskspråkiga artiklar som visar på motsatsen. Denna missuppfattning kan leda till felberäkningar från USA:s sida och exempelvis missa möjligheter att deeskalera spänningar mellan länderna. It is inaccurate – and dangerous – to assume that Chinese policy elites broadly perceive the U.S. to be in perpetual decline. By Daniel Fu and Arran Hope 9 October, 2023 Western writing on China is rife with commentary and analysis suggesting that there is an established consensus among Chinese policy elites and academics that the United States is in a state of perpetual decline. This analysis accurately diagnoses increasing confidence in China about Beijing’s material capabilities and technological prowess, and often passes for conventional wisdom. However, it ignores several recently published Chinese-language articles and commentaries that suggest there is far from a uniform consensus in Beijing about U.S. decline. Many prominent Chinese elites have detailed how the United States continues to occupy a leading position in the international system, how its economic capabilities and influence have not waned and remain robust, and how it still holds sizable advantages in areas related to science and technology. An awareness of the diversity of views among those who help shape the discourse in Beijing’s policymaking circles allows for a more accurate appraisal of China’s approach to strategic competition. This in turn can help Washington craft smarter policy towards its principal strategic rival. Party rhetoric from Beijing regularly trumpets China’s rise as inevitable and part of “changes not seen for a century.” This triumphalism has been largely coterminous with Xi Jinping’s time in office, though its origins extend back to the global financial crisis of 2008, when many Chinese elites began to express skepticism about U.S. leadership and hegemony. This hubris was then amplified during the Trump administration and into the pandemic, as rifts between the United States and its allies became more apparent and as Washington’s capacity to protect its citizens at home was called into question. Prominent Chinese elites have sought more recently to dispel this common narrative. The political scientist Zheng Yongnian emphasized in 2022 that while “China has risen rapidly, the West has not fallen; it has just risen a little slower. Many people have not understood this point.” Sun Zhe, the director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations and professor of International Relations at Tsinghua University, has similarly warned that “discussion underestimating the U.S. and thinking that the importance of the U.S. has declined has restricted China’s objective judgment of the U.S. and the healthy development of U.S.-China relations.” Zhao Kejin, an associate professor of International Studies at Tsinghua University, wrote that “many people think the United States is in decline now, but I personally think the United States has not declined.” He drew attention to issues endemic within U.S. politics, but chalked these up to various kinds of “confusion” in U.S. democracy and did not suggest that these are indicative of decline relative to China. Even Jin Canrong, the associate dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University in Beijing whose views on U.S. decline are discussed extensively in Rush Doshi’s book “The Long Game,” stated in 2023 that the balance of power between the United States and China has remained unchanged, let alone the “advantage of power” enjoyed by the U.S. in the international system. The notion that the U.S. economy is in decline or that Washington’s economic influence abroad is diminishing has also received pushback. Wang Jisi, president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, argued in 2022 that he has “doubts about assertions regarding the economic decline of the United States.” He noted that the U.S. economy has consistently accounted for “25-30 percent of world GDP” and that even though it has “occasionally slipped out of this range, it always recovers within a short period of time.” He concluded that “it is illogical to think that the U.S. will decline in the short-term,” pointing to enduring advantages the U.S. possesses in its natural resources, demographic trends, and geography. Other experts such as Lu Feng, chair professor of economics at Peking University, have emphasized that the rate of China’s “catch-up” vis-a-vis the United States is “slowing down.” Lu pointed out that between 2011 and 2021, China’s “catch-up rate” vis-a-vis the U.S. slowed by 55 percent. Between 2017 and 2021, China’s GDP only grew an aggregate total of 8.5 percent against the United States while China’s annual “catch-up rate” in that period averaged only 1.7 percent per year. The decline of U.S. manufacturing over the past two decades is often taken as an indicator of American decline by observers on both sides of the Pacific. However, Ma Xue, an associate researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a government-connected think tank, has even countered this argument. In 2023, she asserted that the manufacturing industry in the U.S. has never been in “true decline,” and emphasized that the scale of U.S. manufacturing has grown rapidly in the last 40 years in absolute terms and in terms of productivity, maintaining its “competitive edge.” Claims that China is ahead in the bilateral competition over high-tech innovation and research have also been met with some skepticism by Chinese elites. Wu Guosheng, professor and chair of the Department of the History of Science at Tsinghua University, has asserted that the “gap between the U.S. and China in science and technology is still relatively large” and that only by “reversing our fundamental views on science, basic research, and innovative culture, can we truly narrow the gap.” Wu lamented what he sees as China’s “rigid, old-fashioned” teachers and a restrictive “scientific culture,” which he believes obstructs efforts to foster a culture of true innovation akin to that of the United States. Ren Zhengfei, founder of the telecoms giant Huawei, has expressed a similar sentiment. During a speech delivered at Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2023, he argued that “American politicians may come and go, but the United States’ innovative soil has lasted for hundreds of years and will not degrade because of them.” Ren added that “the soft power of the United States in science and education is something we cannot achieve in a few decades.” The scientist Shi Yigong, the former dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Life Sciences, asserted in 2023 that “American science is much more powerful than you can imagine” and emphasized that “it is not only not in decline, but it will also lead world development in coming decades.” He stated that “according to the data, the U.S. has continued nurturing leading talent” and continues to occupy a “leading position in the world in innovation and various lines of scientific research, regardless of whether it is military or aerospace technology or any other area.” Wang Wen, the executive dean of the Chaoyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, echoed Wu, Ren, and Shi, writing around the same time that while China may ultimately surpass the United States, it is necessary for China to “objectively face the basic fact that the U.S. is not declining and will not decline.” He argued that the West still holds “obvious advantages” in that Washington maintains “an absolute leading position in finance, science and technology, military, and education.” It is inaccurate and dangerous to assume that Chinese policy elites broadly perceive the U.S. to be in perpetual decline. This is not to ignore the significant contingent of U.S. declinists in academic and policy positions throughout China’s network of universities and think tanks. It may be the case that their views represent the majority of the contemporary Chinese academy. It is a mistake, however, to assume that there is a monolithic view in Beijing on Washington’s stature, position, and influence in the world. Debate in elite Chinese policy circles on the current stature and future of the United States is as contested as its inverse in the West. Assuming that there are uniform views of U.S. decline in Beijing contributes to threat inflation, by interpreting China as being convinced that it is on a trajectory, buoyed by a historical narrative, toward a successful power transition. This misperception could also lead to miscalculations on the U.S. side. As certain narratives in Washington’s strategic discourse calcify into conventional wisdom, they can go uninterrogated, and if policymakers stop critically assessing these basic assumptions, they might fail to observe significant shifts in trends that could otherwise be leveraged to deescalate tensions. The extent to which discourse has shifted in recent years, from discussion oriented around China’s ascendancy to suggestions now that China is “peaking,” is indicative of how rapidly geopolitical conditions can change. Those changes require an equally flexible ability to reevaluate some conventional views when necessary. © 2023 The Diplomat. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

De har flugit kors och tvärs över världen för att samla poäng och nu är de oroliga. Men varför ska SAS nya ägare bry sig om vad som tycks vara ett gäng välbärgade människor med ett miljöförstörande specialintresse? Svaret är att de är värdefulla, mycket värdefulla. Omni förklarar hur. Krisande flygbolaget SAS ska få nya ägare och störst är europeiska jätten Air France-KLM. I och med det händer det också saker i SAS så kallade bonusprogram Eurobonus. Ja, är man med i programmet får man bonuspoäng till exempel när man flyger. Poängen kan sedan användas för att köpa fler flygbiljetter, eller annat i särskilda poängshoppar. Särskilt idoga poängsamlare kan få guld- och diamantkort vilket ger tillträde till flygplatslounger och andra fördelar. Expressen har talat med ”Stefan” som berättar om en jorden runt-resa med stopp på tolv flygplatser där målet enbart var att få fler Eurobonuspoäng och nå guldnivån i British Airways poängsamlarsystem. Poängjagandet liknar till ytan andra specialintressen som samlande av frimärken eller Pokémon-kort. Skillnaden är att målgruppen förstås är en mer exklusiv och välbärgad skara. Men bonusmänniskorna verkar vara fler än man kan tro. Hela 20 000 svenskar är med i en Facebook-grupp med ”tips och trix för att maximera poängjakten”, skriver Expressen. På hemsidan eurobonusguiden.se går det också att hitta en ”bonusjägarskola” och recensioner av business class i olika flygplan hos olika flygbolag. Till att börja med – ingenting. Man skulle kunna tro att de nya ägarna tar tillfället i akt och stryker bonusägarnas alla poäng. De är ju ändå en slags specialvaluta som det går att köpa saker för. Men nej, bonuspoängen blir kvar, har SAS vd Anko van der Werff redan försäkrat. Förändringar kommer det däremot att bli. SAS ska byta allians. Ja, stora flygbolag har sedan länge delat in sig i olika samarbetsgrupper, och det betyder att bonuskunder kan köpa flygresor hos andra flygbolag för sina poäng. Finansiellt må SAS ha varit rangligt bygge under en lång, lång tid. Men SAS har ändå varit med i vad många ser som det ”finaste” sällskapet: Star Alliance med samarbetspartners som Lufthansa, Swiss och Singapore Airlines. SAS ska nu bli en del av Skyteam – som enligt TT har fått öknamnet ”Scary team” i vissa forum. Nu blir det i stället partners som rumänska Tarom, Vietnam Airlines och kinesiska Ziamen Air. – KLM och Air France håller dock väldigt hög klass, Virgin och Delta är väl helt okej, sedan går det dock snabbt utför, säger Mikael Robertsson, grundare av flygspårningssajten Flightradar 24, till TT. Att SAS tas ur Star Alliance har också fått en del på finansmarknaden att höja ögonbrynen. DNB-analytikern Ole Martin Westgaard säger till norska Dagens Naeringsliv att det är märkligt att SAS-köparna inte var intresserade av alliansen som bland kunder har betraktats som en av de mest värdefulla delarna av Eurobonus-programmet. – På sätt och vis kan man säga att budgivarna på SAS har beställt och betalat för en biff, men äter bara salladen, säger Westgaard till tidningen. Bonusprogrammen är big business och en riktig kassako. När Dagens Naeringsliv intervjuade SAS-chefen Eivind Roald före coronakrisen sa han rakt ut att bonusprogrammet var den mest värdefulla delen av företaget. Då fanns också planer på att bryta ut programmet och skapa ett separat ”livsstilsföretag” med ”skräddarsydda” upplevelser. Bonusprogrammens siffror är ofta hemliga, men när American Airlines och United Airlines var illa ute under coronakrisen blev de tvungna att offentliggöra hela deras räkenskaper. Själva flygdelarna av bolagen var helt värdelösa samtidigt som bonusprogrammen var mycket värdefulla, visade uträkningar som amerikanska Forbes då gjorde. Bonusprogrammen skapar förstås lojala kunder, och som fallet ”Stefan” visar, får dem också att flyga ännu mer. Men de kanske största vinsterna görs när flygbolagen kan sälja sina kunder till tredje part. Inte sällan är det kreditkortföretag. Ett vanligt erbjudande är att kunderna kan få extra bonuspoäng om de tecknar sig för ett särskilt kreditkort. Och kreditkortsföretaget måste då gå in och köpa dessa bonuspoäng av flygbolaget, skriver Forbes. Eurobonuskundernas värde talar för just det, att de nya ägarna vill försöka hålla dem så nöjda som det bara går. Det talas exempelvis redan om att norska Norwegian samt tyska Star Alliance-ledaren Lufthansa kan tänkas vilja locka över SAS tidigare trogna kunder. Men kanske blir de ändå blåsta på en del av den insamlade konfekten. Mikael Robertsson vid Flightradar 24 ser frågetecken kring konverteringskursen när tidigare Star Alliance-poäng ska bli Skyteam-poäng. Kan det bli en devalvering av SAS-kundernas poäng? – Ja, det är väl det nästan säkert att det blir, säger Robertsson till TT.

Elon Musks företag Neuralink söker efter volontärer med ALS eller ryggmärgsskador för att testa ett hjärnimplantat med 1 024 elektroder som ska kunna överföra tankar från människa till maskin. Och i förlängningen från människa till människa. Han vision är att öka ”bandbredden” för informationsöverföring med en faktor på 1 000. Menar Musk att det skulle gå att genomföra någon typ av snabbtelepati? frågar sig Antonio Regalado, som bevakar biomedicin för MIT Technology Reviews i sitt veckobrev. Nej, kommer han fram till efter att ha intervjuat flera forskare. Däremot kan det mycket väl förbättra maskinernas förmåga att avläsa mänsklig tankeverksamhet, och exempelvis kunna spåra även emotionella tillstånd som depression. I dag publicerar Omni Mer Antonio Regalado senaste veckobrev om hur tekniken förändrar medicinsk och biomedicinsk forskning. Speeding up communication between humans is surprisingly tricky. By Antonio Regalado 29 September, 2023 This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Last week, a post by Elon Musk on X (formerly known as Twitter) caught my eye. The entrepreneur claimed that sticking electrodes in people’s heads is going to lead to a huge increase in the rate of data transfer out of, and into, human brains. The occasion of Musk’s post was the announcement by Neuralink, his brain-computer interface (BCI) company, that it was officially seeking the first volunteer to receive the “N1,” an implant comprising 1,024 electrodes able to listen in on brain neurons. This volunteer, the company said, will be someone who has ALS or has been paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury. The point of the experiment is to let them “control external devices with their thoughts”—specifically, move a computer cursor, or control a phone app. There’s little doubt they can do it. Such experiments have been going on for decades. One difference is that the N1 device has more than twice the number of electrodes as used in previous implant experiments. More electrodes means Neuralink can collect more data from more nerve cells. That brings us to to Musk’s post, in which he discussed a long-term goal of vastly increasing “bandwidth” between people, or people and machines, by a factor of 1,000 or more. What did he mean, and, I wondered, is this really possible? Are we talking about some kind of fast telepathy where I could tell you about my day in nanoseconds? Here’s what his X post said: After speaking with a few scientists, I can report to you that the idea that a brain implant can speed up communication between, say, you and me, is largely hogwash. However, speeding up the rate at which machines can read from the brain is very real, and it is key to some cutting-edge uses of mind-reading interfaces, like allowing profoundly paralyzed people to “speak” via a computer. “Bandwidth” in this case simply refers to a rate of data transfer. Scientists have estimated that humans share information at a speed of around 40 bits per second, no matter what language they use. That’s pretty slow. (A computer download is a million times faster). And there are reasons why it might never speed up. Ever have two people talk to you at the same time? Your ears let the information in, but your brain can’t process it. The speed of thinking itself sets a limit on your bandwidth. “The idea that we’re going to hook up two people with bits of wire and do better than what you and I can do right now, speaking, is folly,” says Lee Miller, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who works with brain interfaces. “If that’s the plan, I’m not investing.” Yet scientists concede there are situations in which faster data transfer could allow a fundamental change in how we express ourselves. Say you’ve been mugged and you want to describe the face of your assailant to a sketch artist. Even though you can picture it clearly, it’s going to take a while for you to communicate those details at your spoken-word rate of 40 bits per second. Yet, in theory, mental images could be communicated directly between minds. Researchers pointed me to the case of Krista and Tatiana Hogan, twins conjoined at the head who share part of their brains. It’s claimed they can see through one another’s eyes, in effect sharing information coming off the retina into the optic nerveat 10 million bits a second. In fact, Neuralink has started investigating whether its implant electrodes can stimulate the visual cortex of monkeys. Vision produced in this way is extremely crude—essentially, just a few spots of light—but it could get better with more and more electrodes. One day, it might be possible to transmit a picture between two brains over a cable. “Elon thinks a lot about mental imagery, and I believe he’s imagining a future where the image that I’m thinking of could be presented to you, or stimulated directly in your cortex,” says Vikash Gilja, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. So that’s where more bandwidth could make a difference—not in speeding up speech, but in unexpected forms of thought transfer. It’s also possible, for example, to detect emotional states, like whether a person is depressed, by measuring the brain. Those feelings are not only hard to describe, but you might not even be aware of them. “I think that there are going to be profoundly interesting things that BCI can read out that people can’t, let’s say, communicate volitionally very easily right now,” says Matt Angle, CEO of Paradromics, a Texas company which has developed its own implant system with around 1,600 electrodes. “Electrodes reading from different brain areas could give access to information that’s not … consciously accessible.” But let’s return to Earth and the near-term applications of brain-computer interfaces. Do they need more bandwidth? The main use of these devices is to let a paralyzed person operate a computer by moving a cursor with their thoughts. For that, more bandwidth isn’t really required. Scientists can do that by listening in on a few neurons, and adding more will typically bring diminishing returns. Where collecting more information will behelpful—and where implants with more electrodes will help—is to unlock more natural communication. We saw some of those this year, including when two paralyzed people were able to speak through a computer, using their thoughts. This works because when the subjects imagine saying words, the electrodes measure their motor neurons, whose firing rate contains information about how they are trying to move their tongue and larynx. From these data it is now possible to determine what words people are thinking of saying with surprising accuracy. Researchers believe that with more electrodes listening to more neurons, and more bandwidth, they’ll get even better at it. “We don’t need more electrodes for cursor control, but for speech, we are in a regime where data rate matters a lot,” says Angle. “It’s very clear we need to increase the channel count to make those systems viable. With a thousand electrodes, it will be as good as a cell phone transcribing your speech. So in this situation, yes, you’re increasing the information rate by 10 or a hundred times.” Bottom line: When it comes to enhancing communication between nondisabled people my sources were skeptical that more bandwidth matters. The brain’s going to get in the way. But when it comes to restoringfunction, it does matter. It takes a lot of neurons—and a lot of data—to get a patient back to communicating at that basic 40 bits a second. In 2021, I profiled Dennis DeGray, a paralyzed man who, at that time, was the world record holder for direct brain-to-computer communication. He could type via his thoughts  at 18 words a minute “It’s almost a conversation between the device and myself,” DeGray told me. “It’s a very personal interaction.” But speed records keep falling. This August, researchers demonstrated that two people who’d lost the ability to speak–one due to a stroke, another because of ALS–were able to quickly utter words through a computer connected to implants placed in their brains. Read the report by Cassandra Willyard here.  A few years back, Adam Piore recounted the bizarre tale of Phil Kennedy, a pioneering brain-implant researcher who took the extreme step of getting an implant installed in his own brain.  A second person has received a heart from a gene-modified pig. Lawrence Faucette, a Navy vet with heart failure, underwent transplant surgery on September 20 in Maryland. The previous subject lived two months after the surgery. (Associated Press) Scientific sleuths are getting better at uncovering rotten research. (WSJ) Those new generation weight-loss drugs were prescribed to 1.7% of Americans in 2023. And you can expect the market for semaglutide to expand fast. That’s because more than 40% of Americans are obese. (CNN) © 2023 Technology Review, Inc. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Tidigare i veckan attackerades en pojke av en hund av rasen American bully XL. Inte förrän han fick hjälp av flera andra familjemedlemmar kunde pojken ta sig loss ur hundens grepp. Nu vill Storbritanniens premiärminister Rishi Sunak förbjuda hundrasen i Storbritannien. Det var Expressen först att rapportera om.  Står för hälften av alla hundattacker i Storbritannien Hundrasen American bully XL är den hundras som står för flest människoattacker i världen och utgör hälften av alla hundattacker i Storbritannien.

Den engelska ligafotbollen har kickat igång ännu en säsong när Premier League-hösten startade den 12 augusti. Ligan är dessutom en av de mest populära ligorna i Sverige och årligen åker tusentals svenskar över till öarna för att se sitt favoritlag på plats. I Sverige finns dessutom flera officiella supporterföreningar till lag som Manchester United, Liverpool och Chelsea, för att nämna några. 

Något som för många är synonymt med fotboll är att unna sig en kall öl, något som många på arenorna i England också gör. Men den stora frågan är då vilken klubb i England som har den billigaste ölen på sin arena. Prisjämförelsesajten Zmarta har presenterat vad 50 centiliter öl kostar på arenorna i ett pressmeddelande.

Här är ölen dyrast – på Premier League-arenorna

Stamford Bridge, Chelsea: 91 kronor

London Stadium, West Ham: 98 kronor

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Tottenham: 72 kronor

Molineux Stadiun, Wolverhampton: 73 kronor

St James' Park, Newcastle: 70 kronor

Old Trafford, Manchester United: 47 kronor

Selhurst Park, Crystal Palace: 85 kronor

Emirates Stadium, Arsenal: 88 kronor

Goodison Park, Everton: 63 kronor

Craven Cottage, Fulham: 98 kronor

Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth: 77 kronor

Villa Park, Aston Villa: 88 kronor

Kenilworth Road, Luton Town: 67 kronor

American Express Community Stadium, Brighton: 74 kronor

Etihad Stadium, Manchester City: 74 kronor

City Ground, Nottingham Forest: 81 kronor

Anfield, Liverpool: 49 kronor

Gtech Community Stadium, Brentford: 77 kronor

Bramall Lane, Sheffield United: 77 kronor

Turf Moor, Burnley: 70 kronor Det är alltså West Ham och Londons Olympiastadion, eller London Stadium som den kallas i supporterkretsar, och Fulhams arena Craven Cottage som har överlägset dyrast öl med en kostnad på hela 98 kronor.

Den billigaste ölen hittar du istället på Manchester Uniteds hemmaarena Old Trafford där en öl endast kostar 47 kronor.