Summer World

Saving the world in 48 hours

30 MAY 2016       AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE       STUART WILLIAMS

ISTANBUL, TURKEY (AFP) -- For connoisseurs of international summitry, it's been high season recently in Turkey.  We enjoyed a G20 summit featuring Barack Obama, a Islamic summit starring the Saudi monarch and last week in Istanbul the first ever World Humanitarian Summit.  For each event, the routine for the media in our security-conscious times is familiar -- get accredited well ahead of time, circumnavigate a vast maze of metal police barriers and metal detectors to get anywhere near the venue and then rush between interviews and press conferences where everything seems to be happening at once.  And it's fair to say that summits have bred a degree of scepticism amongst most reporters, wearly used to seeing leaders arriving with great fanfare but then disappearing before the end and final communiques bringing little more than expressions of hope.

In the near utopian language of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the aim was no less than to forge "a different future".  Things had already got off to a tricky start with most key world leaders not showing up, something even the mild-mannered Ban said had left him "a it disappointed". 

I sat myself in the inevitable press centre, saw bow tied-waiters dishing out tea, coffee and food with impeccable Turkish politeness to the assembly hungry hacks, and wondered how this could be reconciled with helping the needs of the world's 60 million displaced people or 130 million in need of aid.  It was not like the problems were particularly far away -- take a few paces outside the labyrinthine conference centre venue, turn left and delegates could find in Taksim Square refugees begging or selling low value goods in the hope of making ends meet. 

Just a couple of the at least 2.7 million Syrians who took refuge in this country alone, every one a life turned upside down with expectations of the future transformed. 

It was not as if there was nothing going on with sometimes a dozen panel events proceeding simultaneously.  A helpful six screen projection in the press centre allowed the keen to follow as much as they could.  Suddenly there was the imposing frame of James Bond star Daniel Craig, an impassioned UN advocate for demining. 

And there was Sean Penn, keeping a low media profile after his film was mauled in Cannes.  On the screen below was UN education envoy Gordon Brown, once UK prime minister.  And on the screen next door International Rescue Committee chief David Miliband, once seen as a potential UK prime minister.  UN officials would announce the times of news conference, cheerfully offering an "escort" to be taken there. 

A huge amount of talking was done and it was interesting to watch harmony emerging on key issues.  There is something wrong with the current aid system.  Much more needs to be done to promote development and sustain communities before conflict erupts to prevent crises.  Aid groups need to cut their bureaucracies, stop competing against each other.  Government and other donors should not burden them with excessive reporting requirements.  Local actors need to be empowered and might stand a better chance on the ground than bigger groups.  Violations of humanitarian law such as attacks on schools and hospitals should be properly punished. 

The diagnosis was made more clearly than ever but one thing was clearly missing -- political commitment.  Politicians were going to need a "kick in the butt", one European official cheerfully told me, if the ideas were going to become reality.  Or as Norwegian Refugee Council chief Jan Egeland put it:  "It's one thing to discuss in Istanbul in a nice venue like this.  It's another thing to get armed men to change their behaviour." Read more

Futuristic Dubai office showcase 3-D printing's potential

1 JUNE 2016       ASSOCIATED PRESS       ADAM SCHRECK

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (AP) -- ... "Why 3-D printing?  Because it makes sense in terms of cost, in terms of times-saving, in terms of efficiency," the 29-year-old al-Aleeli said.  "We really believe that this technology will revolutionize the construction, the development sector as well as other sectors, (including) the medical sector (and) consumable products."  

Products made using 3-D printing are first designed on a computer and then printed out using a variety of materials, including metal, plastic and concrete. 

Developers are finding a growing number of uses for the technology as it evolves. 

European aeronautics giant Airbus just unveiled a lightweight electric printed motorcycle made from aluminum alloy particles, while a Wisconsin schoolteacher recently fashioned prosthetic feet for a duck who lost his due to frostbite. 

The technology has been used in other construction projects too, including a Dutch canal housebeing raised in Amsterdam.  But the foundation says its Dubai office is the first "fully functional 3-D printed building," constructed with full services and meant for daily use. 

The Chinese company WinSun Global used a 20-foot tall printer squirting out cement and other materials to produce the 17 building modules for the new Dubai office, according to the foundation.  The pieces were the shipped from China to the Gulf port city, where it took workers two days to piece them together. 

Further work, including the installment of the interiors and landscaping, took another three months.  Designers left open part of the finishing in the foyer so visitors can see how the 3-D printed layers came together, row after squiggly row. 

The building occupies prime real-estate between the city's iconic twin Emirates Towers and the Dubai International Financial Center, which is a stand-in for a futuristic city in the forthcoming "Star Trek Beyond" film. 

The site will serve as the temporary offices for between 12 and 20 foundation staff members for now.  Dubai hopes it will kick-start its plans to transform the sheikhdom into an incubator for emerging technologies.  It has an ambitions goal of using 3-D printing in a quarter of all buildings by 2030. Read More