Little options of Saudis as they push tougher foreign policy

http://www.thecrownmanagement.com/little-options-of-saudis-as-they-push-tougher-foreign-policy/

Saudi Arabia, regardless of its deep discomfort about the West’s hesitant rapprochement with Iran, seems to have some viable selection for practicing a more independent and straightforward foreign policy.

Disappointed with the United States from constructing tactical relations with other world powers to thrusting a tougher line in opposition to Iranian allies in the Arab world and, in an instance that the world powers be unsuccessful to foil Tehran’s nuclear objectives, even looking for its own atomic bomb so senior Saudis have expected at a range of possibilities.

However substitute powers are tough even to think for a nation that has been holding back to U.S. ally for decades.  Russia is on the conflicting side against Riyadh concerning the Syrian war and China’s military clout is still modest as compared with the United States’.

Robert Jordan, U.S. ambassador to Riyadh from 2001-03, said there would be limits to any Saudi alliances with other powers.

Good judgment in forecasting international affairs

http://www.thecrownmanagement.com/good-judgment-in-forecasting-international-affairs/

The Economist’s The World in 2014 issue focuses international attention on the geopolitical outcomes we can expect to see over the next 12-14 months hits the newsstand.  It features an article by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Phil Tetlock and journalist Dan Gardner on the Good Judgment Project.  That said article isa research study funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA, the U.S. government’s analog to DARPA), as a result, makes such geopolitical predictions each day.

IARPA has posed approximately 100-150 questions every year to research teams partaking in its ACE forecasting tournament on topics like the Syrian civil war, the constancy of the Eurozone and Sino-Japanese relations since 2011.  Every research team was obliged to collect individual forecasts coming from many forecasters online and to produce daily collective forecasts that allocate sensible probabilities to potential outcomes.

The Good Judgment Project came out as the evident winner and the Good Judgment Project forecasters have established the capability to produce more right forecasts that have surpassed even a few of the most positive approximation at the start of the tournament.  The supplementary graphic shows the calculation from three GJP forecasting techniques on a up to date question about whether the first round of chemical weapons inspections in Syria would be completed before Dec. 1.

Industry, labor, foes sound off during hearing on nuclear waste

http://www.thecrownmanagement.com/industry-labor-foes-sound-off-during-hearing-on-nuclear-waste

Not often carry out nuclear industry executives and hardline activists who be against them agree on anything.

Mutually the two hates the thought of continuing to stockpile highly radioactive waste the reactor cores of nuclear power plants on the site of each power-generating station.

An hour-long hearing held December 2, 2013 drew almost 200 people from Ohio and Michigan to the Hilton Garden Inn in Perrysburg’s Levis Commons was a reminder that both sides are still far apart on what the government’s next step should be.

Although it would mean putting up with the waste decades longer than expected, industry and trade unions eventually want a single, national repository. Failure to develop a solution is reason enough to shut down the industry; this is the antinuclear activists claim to the government.

Nuclear power provides 20 percent of America’s electricity.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency that oversees the nuclear industry, learned a lot of information, the 11th stop on the agency’s 12-city tour in which it ought to do just that: Get a cross section of opinions.  As an answer to the government’s decision to unfinished plans for a national repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the NRC has been asking Americans about their thoughts regarding the agency’s proposed “waste confidence” rule and its affiliated environmental impact statement,.

As a consequence, the NRC is inquiring what the public’s thoughts concerning leaving the waste where it is, at least for the time being.