New Delhi, Oct 29 () India exported organic products worth Rs 5,151 crore in 2018-19, against Rs 3,453 crore in the previous year, registering an increase of about 49 per cent, according to the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority.

"India produced around 2.67 million tonnes (2018-19) of certified organic products which include all varieties of food products namely oil seeds, sugar cane, cereals and millets, cotton, pulses, medicinal plants, tea, fruits, spices, dry fruits, vegetables, coffee etc. The production is not limited to the edible sector but also produces organic cotton fiber and functional food products," APEDA Chairman Paban Borthakur stated.

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is a statutory body under the Commerce Ministry.

It said the major demands under the organic product category are for flax seeds, sesame and soybean; pulses such as arhar (red gram), chana (pigeon pea); and rice, along with tea and medicinal plants.

"There is a growing demand from Canada, Taiwan and South Korea in recent years, Germany is one of the biggest importers of Indian organic products. Now, many new countries are also taking interest," said Borthakur.

He said the demand for organic agricultural products is constantly increase world-wide as organic products are grown under a system of agriculture without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. As on 31 March 2019, total area under organic certification process (registered under National Programme for Organic Production) was 3.56 million Hectare.

This includes 1.94 million ha cultivable area and another 1.49 million Hectare for wild harvest collection. Among all the states, Madhya Pradesh has covered largest area under organic certification followed by Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. During 2016, Sikkim had achieved a remarkable distinction of converting its entire cultivable land (more than 76,000 ha) under organic certification, Borthakur said.

"The total volume of export during 2018-19 was 6.14 lakh MT. The organic food export realisation was around Rs 5,151 crore (757.49 million USD). Organic products are exported to USA, European Union, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and Japan," the APEDA Chairman said.

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India exports organic products worth Rs 5,151 cr in FY19: APEDA - Times of India

The Greens is predominantly a down-to-earth residential area, but its beginning to attract more visitors, thanks to its charming selection of restaurants and retail outlets

A range of tastes are catered for here. Popular neighbourhood-style cafe Arrows & Sparrows, from the same people who brought us Friends Avenue Cafe, appeals to a family-friendly crowd and serves up a decent mix of healthy and comfort food. Think acai bowls and avocado on toast next to pancakes and a pulled beef burger with six-hour slow-roasted brisket. If you prefer Japanese cuisine, there are a couple of great options. Firstly, next to Arrows & Sparrows sits Yugo Sushi, popular among those craving nigiri or maki. Theres also a branch of Wagamama, which has a quaint eatery with an outdoor terrace, where you can enjoy the British chains world-famous selection, including its relatively new vegan options. Birch Cafe & Bakery at The Greens Souk is a new addition to the area, selling homemade breads and pastries, as well as organic coffee and tea.

One of the best yoga studios in Dubai is based in The Greens. Yoga House offers a range of sessions, as well as Pilates and meditation classes, in its quaint premises in Emaar Business Park. Nearby, theres The Pad for Pilates and Dance by Yasmin Karachiwala, the fitness instructor to Bollywood A-listers. A spot of pampering while youre here wouldnt go amiss, either. There is not one, but two Tips & Toes branches, one in The Greens Souk and the other at Panorama, offering everything from mani-pedis to massages and hair styling services.

For a small area, residents have a great pick of supermarkets. Theres a Choithrams, which is handy for all the essentials and for its deli and bakery, while Organic Foods & Cafe offers a selection of organic fruits, vegetables, meats and more. Then theres 1004 Gourmet, a specialty Asian supermarket that sells everything from kimchi to imported meat cuts (even shabu-shabu) and every Korean sauce under the sun. The shop is also home to Kaffe Bloom, a casual cafe with a small selection of tasty sandwiches and salads, plus kakigori, a Japanese shaved ice dessert. Also there is Lamise Beauty, a haven for lovers of K-beauty products. There are a couple of spots for our furry friends, too: World of Pets, at Panorama Building, has all sorts of animal essentials, including those for aquatic critters; and Beauty Pets at Onyx Tower is a newer boutique focusing on health products.

Zabeel House by Jumeirah, The Greens is a boutique-style hotel. Its rooms boast an industrial, New York loft-inspired aesthetic. The property features a couple of great restaurants, too. Pan-Asian hot spot Lah Lah is packed almost every night of the week, not just because its reasonably priced food is excellent and the vibe is upbeat, but also because there are ladies nights, a brunch and other deals on offer. On the lobby level, theres also Social Company, an international all-day dining spot with an a la carte menu, regular buffet spreads, as well as grab-and-go options, plus a lounge area. Dont forget to pop by the spa while youre there.

The Greens is home to a couple of manmade lakes that are surrounded by a walking/running track, exercise machines, a childrens playground and plenty of greenery. Its a lovely place to go for a walk or a run. You could also take a blanket and find a spot on the grass to have a picnic. Theres a little book swap corner, too, if youre looking to offload a few novels.

Updated: October 31, 2019 05:08 PM

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Where to eat in The Greens, Dubai: plus things to do and the best place to stay - The National

Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson welcome Advanced Medical Integration to partner with Cardone Ventures.

CAMAS, Wash., Oct. 30, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ --In order to advance the influence of integrated medicine into the healthcare space, Advanced Medical Integration (AMI) and Cardone Ventures (CV) entered into a formal business relationship that leverages the combined network of Advanced Medical Integration, Doctors Vendors Network (DVN), and Azon, LLC with Cardone Ventures (a Cardone Capital company).

Advanced Medical Integration, http://www.amidoctors.com, a Clearwater, Florida based corporation, founded by Michael Carberry, DC and Coleen Carberry, PT, is the nation's leading consulting group for establishing holistic, philosophically-based medical integration, whether new or existing to medical integration. AMI provides systems and processes to help develop practices to a new standard in holistic medical services. They provide practitioners a proven path to make positive changes by having a principled, multi-disciplinary team under one roof, providing the best possible care for patients. AMI believes that societal healthcare trends, and the lack of responsible, holistic practitioners, have led to the current opioid epidemic in the United States.

"Due to the challenges facing health care, practices, and health care business, we need strategic partnerships aligned with helping us leverage our network of chiropractors, MDs and other licensed providers to show them how to not only survive, but to thrive in practice," said Carberry. "We feel that partnering with Cardone Ventures through the alignment of their vast knowledge, expertise and services, we'll be able to tackle the opioid epidemic and help empower our network to help patients take back their choices in healthcare."

Cardone Ventures, a Vancouver, Washington, based corporation was founded by Grant Cardone, Co-Founder and Chairman, and Brandon Dawson, Co-Founder, CEO and Managing Partner, in order to guide, advise and provide the tools to transform and scale independently-owned businesses. The company has developed a focused approach designed to evaluate business maturity by enabling a business owner to diagnose, design/redesign, and transform their organization to achieve and sustain performance excellence through transformational growth from a systems perspective. Cardone Ventures delivers business advisory services in the areas of strategic management that include expansion planning and operations, sales and marketing execution, financial modeling and reporting, and people development and alignment.

"It's always been a dream of mine to work with an elite group of healthcare providers such as Advanced Medical Integration," says Cardone. "Their dedication to providing disruptive and proven solutions to the current opioid epidemic is a mission we're fully aligned with and we plan on working side-by-side with them as they go into battle."

"It's our goal to align with independent practitioners striving to make a difference for their patients through holistic patient care," says Dawson. "At Cardone Ventures, we want to innovate alongside the team at AMI in order to elevate their network and dominate the market, while helping business owners and their staff achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals through the business."

Businesses can work directly with Cardone Ventures to develop their personalized strategic business strategy. The strategic business strategy establishes a baseline assessment of the business gaps and then develops a plan for the business's success. If a business owner would like to experience their business from a 360 perspective while working directly with Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson, there's an upcoming opportunity December 7-8, 2019 at the 10X360 event in Miami, Florida. More information can be found at http://www.cardoneventures.com/10X360

About Grant Cardone: Grant Cardone is a NY Times Best Selling Author, Entrepreneur and Private Equity Manager with $1.4 Billion in Assets Under Management. In addition to this, he is known as the #1 Sales Expert in the world today and was called by Forbes Magazine one of the top CEOs to follow on Social Media. He currently owns and operates 7 companies that do $150m in annual sales and he recently launched the Grant Cardone Foundation, whose mission is to impact the lives of children who grow up without fathers.

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About Brandon Dawson: Brandon Dawson is a self-made serial entrepreneur achieving and owner/partner in $100 million in commercial real estate, two time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur-of-the-Year semifinalist, four-time INC 500 & 5000 Fastest Growing Company Award recipient, INC National Hire Power Award recipient, and five-time Portland Oregon Top Workplaces Award Recipient and Corporate Philanthropy Award recipient. He is a business leader with a passion for helping business owners amplify their vision and impact, through belief, strategy, and team alignment.

About Advanced Medical Integration: Advanced Medical Integration (AMI) is the nation's leading consulting group for establishing a holistic, philosophically-based, medically integrated practice. Whether you are new to medical integration or already have an integrated center, AMI will help you develop your practice to the new standard in desired holistic medical services.

For more information call 310.777.0255 or email info@cardoneventures.com.

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Advanced Medical Integration and Cardone Ventures announce partnership - Yahoo Finance

Four games in and Cody Zeller has been playing on another level for the Charlotte Hornets. Despite a 1-3 start, fans can look at the bright side about things, as Zeller has been playing very well for the Hornets.

Zeller has started this season by picking up three double-doubles. Hes not played all four games because he missed the second game of the season against the Minnesota Timberwolves due to personal reasons.

So far this season, Zeller is averaging 16.0 points and 13.0 rebounds per game. Hes also averaging 30.3 minutes per game; the amount of playing time hes received is a career-high.

Cody Zeller has also has made four three-pointers so far this season, and hes shooting 44% from beyond the arc. Zeller is also close to surpassing the number of threes he made last season (he made only six).

Zeller is averaging new career-highs in many categories so far, and he seems just to get better each game. His play has surprised many fans after the ammount of playing time that hes recently missed.

Out of the past two seasons, Zeller has missed 82 games due to various injuries. Fans are hoping that they can keep Zeller on the court since hes averaging these career-high numbers.

The amount of effort that Zeller gives when hes on the court is unmatched. In the teams loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, Zeller took a hard shot to the face by Anthony Davis, got stitches, and then got right back on the court.

To me, hes a warrior when hes on the court, and his health is essential for his future success this season. If Zeller can remain healthy, he can potentially finish this season with new career statistics.

Its exciting to see Zeller finally show what hes worth after he re-signed with Charlotte in 2017 on a $56 million deal. The veteran is set to become an unrestricted free agent following the 2020-21 season.

Zeller has a chance to break more personal records on Wednesday night against the Sacramento Kings. Its safe to say that Zeller will be the best center playing between the two teams, as the Kings frontcourt is not as good as last season.

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Charlotte Hornets: Cody Zeller is paving the way for a career year - Swarm and Sting

All investing strategies have pros and cons. Take, for example, the stock market: The buying and selling of securities is an established way to make money. But along with the potential quick gains of the stock market comes a lot of risks. Stocks can jump up or take a fast dive in a day. And you, as the investor, have no control over what happens, how it happens or when it happens. It is entirely speculative.

Or, consider real estate: Many fortunes have been made in real estate, and it is a favorite among investors for many reasons. But real estate has its drawbacks. A successful investment in the real estate market requires specific knowledge. Unlike stocks, you cant simply look at the investments history and make an educated guess. You have to know the area, the comparables and the best use. Without this intimate knowledge, investment in real estate becomes a high-risk venture.

And then there are cryptocurrencies, the new frontier. What the future holds for this opportunity is yet to be realized. Weve seen significant advances in cryptocurrency over the past few years, and yet there are already rumors that the market is entering a bubble. As with all other options, theres the potential of making a fantastic return, but theres also a chance of a crash and burn.

With any investment, whether its as old as dirt or new as a snippet of code, the same questions will arise: What is the potential, and what are the risks? This leads us to business opportunities where we ask: Are they a viable investment, and if so, why?

The Business Investment

As a business advisor at a mergers and acquisitions firm, I believe a business opportunity is an often-overlooked investment, but one that can satisfy the unknowns so common to other investment opportunities. The investment in a business is an investment in you.

Buying a business is a way of investing your dollars and your talents. Its investing in your future where you control the variables. A business exists to make money, and it does that actively, by your direct input.

Unlike the stock market, which is mostly speculative, a business has variables that you control. Unlike real estate, a business is not passive, but one in which you actively generate profits. And unlike cryptocurrency, a business has an established system, where proven, specific practices bring favorable results.

When you buy a business, you are buying into yourself. You set the hours, you hire the employees, you create relationships with vendors. You oversee the financials, you make investments in equipment. The success has more to do with your personal innovation, creativity and skill than any other variable.

So how to buy a business that makes a great investment? Here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin your search:

The business must be in demand.

This might seem obvious, but a lot of people run a business because they like doing a particular thing. From my perspective, this is confusing a hobby with a business and is not always a path to success. For a business to be a wise investment, there needs to be a significant demand for its products or services. Yes, find something you like and can pour your heart into, but make sure there is a real and ongoing need for what the business produces.

The business must be improvable or innovative.

You can run a successful business essentially in two ways: improve existing operations or develop an innovative service or product.

Improve: When you buy a business, chances are it will already have things in place to generate profits. But the whole idea of buying a business is to improve it. You take what is currently working and make it better. You might hire some new staff, work deals with vendors, drop one product and start another.

Theres a myriad of things you can do to improve a business. The point is, the improvement is entirely dependent upon you because businesses are about people. Countless people have changed a business operation into something better and generated lots of money in doing so.

Innovate: Developing a new product or service is another way to build a successful business. Anything people want that can be practically produced is a business waiting to happen. Millions of successful businesses have grown out of this basic concept.

What useful product or service needs to be created and sold? How can that be produced efficiently and effectively? The successful Wrigley Company is known for its chewing gum, but that is not how it started. Wrigley sold other products and added a pack of gum as an extra gift. Over time, the owners discovered the popularity of the gum and changed operations to primarily produce gum. It was that decision that turned Wrigley into a household name and a huge success.

The business must be scalable.

Scalability is a phrase thrown around a lot in business circles. Essentially, scalability refers to a businesss ability to grow and then manage that growth. Some businesses are great at being small. They might fit perfectly into a niche market. But for a business investment to make sense, the business must be scalable. If it can be grown, profit will be commensurate with the growth.

If a business buyer plans to grow a business, he or she will want to scale the business over time, expanding into other markets and other regions. This is precisely what makes the investment a sound investment.

Summary

There are many different types of investments, all with pros and cons because of some unforeseen elements. The purchase of a business opportunity, though often overlooked by people planning their financial future, presents a few opportunities to retain control, which makes it an attractive investment. Foremost, however, the business investment is an investment in you as a person. It capitalizes on your direct input to create success. And ultimately, I believe the best investments are always investments in people.

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Why A Business Opportunity Might Be A Wise Investment - Forbes

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. --On Wednesday evening,Alabama coach Nick Sabanheld his first and only press conference of the Crimson Tide's second of two bye weeks. Below is everything Saban said during his post-practice press conference at the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility.

Sorry Im late, but we had a little function with some alumni people who support the program, and we really do appreciate what they do. It really helps us to be able to provide the resources to have the kind of program that can help our players be more successful in life relative to personal development, academic support, career development, development on the field as players, so all these things are really important.

Tuesday and Wednesday practices has gone well. The players seem to be working hard to try to improve, which is the No. 1 goal of what we would like to do. Weve also been able to expose them to some things theyre going to see down the road, which is also something that is a goal for this week and trying to create a balance between getting some guys healthy, resting them, not asking them to do too much so that maybe we can get a little healthier for this sort of stretch run at the end of the season here with some very challenging games coming up. Well practice tomorrow and move everything up an hour tomorrow, and then well give the players off a couple days. Hopefully, itll be a good break for them.

I know youre going to ask me about injuries. I think I addressed the Miller Forristall thing, which was something that really just came up on Monday that was really unexpected. But he is doing well. Tua was able -- took some snaps today in practice, did a few things on air, was not involved in any team situations. And again, this is going to be a day-by-day, game-day decision. Theres nothing really else that I can say about it. I can tell you that his mentality has been really good in terms of how hes working, the things that hes doing and how hes progressing and his attitude toward trying to get back on the field and trying to progress. So, thats always a good sign.

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Everything Nick Saban said in only press conference of bye week - 247Sports

Allyson Felix is a mom, businesswoman and Olympic sprinter who won her 12th gold medal at a track-and-field world championship last month.

Her win, which came just 10 months after giving birth to her daughter Camryn, broke Usain Bolt's record for the most track-and-field gold medals at a world championship.

Though the 33-year-old has seen a lot of success in her career, she says there is one piece of advice she wishes she knew as a young athlete who was turning pro. "I look back at when I did my first deal at 17 to where I am now," she told CNBC Make It at a recent event for personal finance company SoFi, "and I wish I was being more present in those conversations and had more knowledge about what was going on in the negotiation process."

Allyson Felix of the United States competes in the 4x400 Metres Mixed Relay during day three of 17th IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 at Khalifa International Stadium on September 29, 2019 in Doha, Qatar.

Maja Hitij | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Like many athletes, Felix said she relied solely on her agent at the start of her career to negotiate all of her business deals. "You know, you're coming in either straight from college or even younger than that, and you don't have experience in this," she said. "So, you don't know what to ask for. A lot of times I think we're just grateful to get offered something."

But being grateful for any deal that comes your way can be problematic, she said, especially when you don't know the details of the contract. Earlier this year, Felix penned an op-ed for The New York Times where she opened up about her experience with renegotiating her contract with Nike as a pregnant athlete.

Despite being one of the most decorated athletes in history, Felix said Nike wanted to pay her 70% less than before, and they didn't want to offer her maternity protection during the months following her child's birth. "I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn't be punished if I didn't perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth," she wrote. "I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike's most widely marketed athletes, couldn't secure these protections, who could?"

After facing a lot of backlash for its policies surrounding female athletes, Nike later announced that it was updating its contracts to protect its pregnant clients more. Under the new terms, the sportswear brand said that no performance-related reductions could take place for an 18-month period, starting eight months prior to a woman's due date.

Nike did not immediately respond to Make It's request for comment.

Felix, who signed a new sponsorship deal with Athleta in July, said her experience with Nike taught her that you have to be ready to negotiate for more than just money.

"I'm excited about this new partnership deal, and it's different," she told the crowd at SoFi's "Get That Raise" event. "I had been with Nike for so long, and I really don't think they thought I would leave the brand. But, I realized there are things that are more valuable than money."

College and career coach Kat Cohen agrees with Felix and explained that even if you aren't an athlete, you should still consider more than just money when negotiating with an employer.

"You should look at compensation holistically," she told CNBC Make It. "This means reviewing the retirement savings, paid time off, commuter benefits and whatever other benefits are offered."

Cohen added that in some cases, such as with tuition reimbursement, your benefits can actually help to cut down your monthly payments on a bill. In this situation, she said, it should not be a deal breaker if a company can't increase your pay.

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Don't miss: 8 successful women share how they negotiated their first big raiseand the advice they'd give others looking to do the same

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12-time gold medalist Allyson Felix on the negotiating advice she wishes she knew at the start of her career - CNBC

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We hire for success but fire for failure. We promote people with the best education and experience and then complain that they cant lead their teams, build coalitions or resolve conflict. We think of people as great leaders and then get disappointed when they dont know how to manage. Disastrous hiring and performance management methodologies are causing organizations, leaders and employees to fail.

Both sides are unhappy. Employees arent being set up for success, and supervisors report being drastically dissatisfied with employee performance. The Eagle Hill National Attrition Survey found that employers end up with average or low performers 75% of the time. This is a huge problem. We employers, hiring managers and supervisors get too excited about what people promise and too disappointed when they dont deliver.

This is the bitter truth about why people fail to succeed in their jobs.

We know that the most effective leaders and employees demonstrate superior skills in communication, conflict resolution, critical thinking, ethics and emotional intelligence. Soft skills trump hard ones, but we dont hire for them. Instead, we still prioritize candidate rankings by experience, education and school brands.

Education and experience matter, and depending on the job, hard skills such as budgeting, writing, software design, typing, engineering, etc. really matter. Hard skills are important considerations when making hiring and promotion decisions. I consider these factors when making hiring decisions, and depending on the position, the minimum education and experience requirements may be rather non-negotiable. However, the bitter truth is that soft skills provide a better metric than education and experience ever will for assessing performance and predicting success. Highly educated and very experienced employees get fired every day because they fail to demonstrate critical soft skills.

Ive worked with thousands of supervisors and executives, and they are not talking about how they need to hire people with higher levels of education and more experience. No, that is not their challenge. They tell me that they desperately need to get people who will demonstrate better behavior. They want people who can communicate better. They want people who can resolve conflicts better. They want people who think critically and who ask thoughtful questions. They want people who are ethical and demonstrate integrity. They want emotionally intelligent people who are self-aware, reflective, disciplined and motivated. They want people who will give feedback and are also happy to receive it.

Work experience is not a substitute for soft skills unless the hiring manager is able to design and apply metrics to evaluate the development level of specific soft skills. Also, a college degree cant substitute for soft skills. Supervisors and managers report that they want employees who are intentional about behavior, and a degree only shows that an employee was intentional about an accomplishment.

We can hire people for what they know (for all their education and experience), but they will fail if they dont make it a priority to manage their behaviors. Following is a list of reasons a cross-section of directors, managers and supervisors shared with me during a meeting on performance management systems.

I asked the group of about 200 to share the real reasons that they either fired, refused to promote or downgraded a performance review on an employee within the prior two years. This is an aggregate list (in order of number of responses) for what they provided.

Employees were fired, not promoted or rated poorly because they

As you probably noticed, the lack of a college degree and a lack of prior work experience arent listed as mitigating factors. It is clear that most identified issues are directly connected to deficiencies in soft skills and behavior rather than any education or experience deficiency.

Organizations absolutely have to create and apply better hiring and performance management methodologies.

Sure, employees are responsible for their own behavior, but they are not responsible for establishing the behavior or performance standards which they will ultimately be evaluated against. More often than not, the directors and managers in the group reported to me that they didnt have clearly defined performance standards and metrics for behavior or soft skills. The really couldnt properly develop or evaluate an employee for these aspects of the job, so they would find other justifiable reasons and ways to deal with the employee without ever really dealing with soft-skill deficiencies.

The bitter truth is that weve got to do better. Organizational leaders must design and apply methodologies for hiring and for effectively evaluating and managing performance. The organization deserves better. The struggling supervisors deserve better. The employees deserve better. The customers deserve better.

Organizational leaders can do better by taking these action steps:

We hire for experience, but we dont fire for it. We hire for a degree, but we dont fire for it. We hire for a particular certification, but we dont fire for it (except in instances where the person has lied about it). And we dont mitigate poor performance as a result of these credentials. Most, if not all, factors that contribute to poor performance and/or employee terminations correspond to deficiencies in soft skills and human behavior.

Until we align the primary hiring factors to the primary firing factors, nothing will change.

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The Bitter Truth About Why People Fail To Succeed In Their Jobs - Forbes

Casey Michel is a writer living in New York, and his writing has been published in outlets like Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. He can be followed on Twitter at @cjcmichel.

Until the election of Donald Trump, no sitting president had ever requested a foreign governments help to discredit a political rival. Coupled with Trumps appeal to Russia during the 2016 campaign that Moscow use its cyber power to uncover Hillary Clintons missing emails, not to mention his eldest sons eagerness to accept anti-Clinton material from Kremlin allies, Trumps willingness to allow foreign governments to influence American elections is historically unprecedented.

Just how unprecedented becomes clear when you look back at the long history of attempts by foreign powers (almost always Russia) to tip an outcome to their advantage. On multiple occasions since the start of the Cold War, Moscow has proffered money, dirt and manpower to undermine a candidate perceived to be harmful to their interests. But in nearly every instance, the interference never came to pass. And this is the starkest difference between Trump and other presidential candidatesand between Trump and every one of his presidential predecessors. Where Trump has welcomed such assistanceand, in the case of his controversial call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, demanded itother candidates, to a man, rejected the aid.

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What these examples show is that across parties and across decadeswhether or not there were laws in place banning the foreign aidaspirants to the nations highest office recognized the impropriety of the offers. Even as they knew how valuable it might be to them, especially as challengers, they understood that accepting the assistance would compromise them and the underpinnings of American democracy, should they win.

I cant think of any precedent for this kind of prima facie corrupt action on the part of an American president, Brad Simpson, an associate history professor at the University of Connecticut with a focus on U.S. foreign policy, said. I think that [this is] a president whose whole political life has been prone to conspiracy theories, but who now has the apparatus of the executive branch to try and do something about itand thats whats really novel.

Or as Dov Levin, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong and renowned expert on American interference efforts, told me. For a sitting president to do that, if its confirmed, would be something which is new, thats for sure.

We have known for decades that when it comes to foreign interference efforts, campaigns are the front-linethe first targeted, and the first to know. And for decades, the campaigns refusals have stopped interference efforts in their tracks. As we already know, hostile regimes such as Russia successfully injected themselves into the 2016 electionwithout asking permissioncoaxing armed white supremacists onto the street, stealing internal emails and planting fake news stories, and creating some of the most popular social media feeds during the election. And Russia is almost certainly gaming out how to reprise its efforts in 2020. The difference now is that the interference, after decades, has been sanctioned by the president himself.

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For most of U.S. history, other countries have largely resisted the impulse to meddle in our affairs, both out of indifference and a desire not to get on the wrong side of the other political party. There were a handful of examples in our republics early daysin 1796, in 1812of American officials reaching out to British or French counterparts to try to coax them into interfering in upcoming elections. (The historical record doesnt make it clear exactly which Americans these were, but none, obviously, were sitting presidents.) But those requests for foreign help went nowhere, and for decades afterward, European governments paid little thought to helping, say, Ulysses S. Grant or Grover Cleveland earn a second term in office.

It wasnt until after World War II that these interference efforts, driven by foreign capitals, began in earnest. By then, Americas role on the global stage had never been greater. And its primary adversary, led by a paranoid clique sitting in the Kremlin, began probing for weaknesses in Americas electoral defenses, and began looking for American candidates willing to brook foreign interference.

Henry Wallace, commerce secretary under Harry Truman, was the first candidate Moscow targeted for support, back in 1948. Broadly sympathetic to Soviet designs, Wallace set the tone for his pro-Soviet views early. The first thing we have evidence for is, in Oct. 1945, when he was still the secretary of commerce, Wallace contacted the NKVD [the forerunner to the KGB] station chief in Washington, basically telling him that the people who support him are fighting for Trumans soul, and that other people in the Truman administration are more anti-Soviet, Levin said. He basically asked, Come and help meIll be an agent of influence to make sure there will be better policies. He basically believed that [Joseph] Stalin and the Soviets had benign intentions.

Wallace carried those beliefs into the 1948 election, as the head of the third-party Progressive Party. A clear longshotthink of his run as something closer to Jill Stein, rather than Donald TrumpWallace made rapprochement with the USSR a key plank. A few months before the election, Wallace thundered in New Yorks Madison Square Garden about the need to decrease tensions between Moscow and Washington. And he immediately got a public show of support from the man presiding over the Soviet Unions efforts at ethnic cleansing, totalitarian designs, and destruction of nascent democracies across Eastern Europe: Stalin.

Stalin wrote a letter, published in newspapers across the U.S., that was straightforward. Wallaces call for easing tension was the most important political platform of recent times, the Soviet dictator wrote. As far as the government of the USSR is concerned, we believe that the program of Wallace could be a good and fruitful foundation for such understanding and for the development of international cooperation.The Soviet tyrants praise immediately reverberated. It was a big commotion, Levin said. [Stalins letter] dominated news for a whole month, with some people hoping it would end the Cold War before it started. More pertinently, Wallace wasnt surprised to receive the show of support; thanks to back channels between Wallaces supporters, members of the U.S. Communist Party, and Soviet partners, Stalin had let him know ahead of time that the letter was in the works, Levin added.

The missive didnt do much for Wallaces chances; the former commerce secretarys campaign barely registered during the 1948 election and failed to carry a single state. But to Moscow, that didnt necessarily matter. The seed of interfering in American elections was planteda plan that, over the coming decades, would try to take root time and again, but only succeed once Donald Trump announced his campaign for the presidency.

***

In 1960, with the Cold War in full bloom, the Soviet ambassador, Mikhail Menshikov, arranged a sit-down meeting with perennial Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson. According to Stevensons recollections, Menshikov got right to the point, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket with a message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

We are concerned with the future, and that America has the right President, Menshikov dictated. All countries are concerned with the American election. It is impossible for us not to be concerned about our future and the American Presidency which is so important to everybody everywhere. The Soviet ambassador continued, unspooling Khrushchevs offer:

Because we know the ideas of Mr. Stevenson, we in our hearts all favor him. And you Ambassador Menshikov must ask him which way we could be of assistance to those forces in the United States which favor friendly relations. We dont know how we can help to make relations better and help those to succeed in political life who wish for better relations and more confidence. Could the Soviet press assist Mr. Stevensons personal success? How? Should the press praise him, and, if so, for what? Should it criticize him, and, if so, for what? (We can always find many things to criticize Mr. Stevenson for because he has said many harsh and critical things about the Soviet Union and Communism!) Mr. Stevenson will know best what would help him.

Stevenson, according to his notes, blanched. Following Menshikovs bid, Stevenson offered his thanks for this expression of Khrushchevs confidence. But the red line Menshikov had crossed was undeniable: [I detailed my] grave misgivings about the propriety or wisdom of any interference, direct or indirect, in the American election, Stevenson said. I said to him that even if I was a candidate I could not accept the assistance proffered. I believe I made it clear to him that I considered the offer of such assistance highly improper, indiscreet and dangerous to all concerned.

Rejected by Stevenson, Moscow turned elsewhere. As Christopher Andrew detailed in The Sword and the Shield, his 700-page run-through of documents smuggled from former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, Khrushchev especially feared the election of Republican nominee and Cold War hawk Richard Nixon. (Nixon would leave a trail of ignominy not only for his eventual resignation, but also, in a nod to Trump and Russia in 2016, for his willingness as a candidate to set up back channels with South Vietnamese partners in the run-up to the 1968 election.) The KGB resident in Washington, Alexander Feklisov, received orders from the Kremlin to propose diplomatic or propaganda initiatives, or any other measures, to facilitate [John F.] Kennedys victory. As Feklisov added in his autobiography, his mission centered on providing ideas to Moscow that could help secure a Kennedy victory. The details on Feklisovs and Moscows ideas remain scantyet another casualty of Moscows unwillingness to allow access to archival materialbut we do know that, as part of his mission, Feklisov reached out directly to those surrounding Robert Kennedy, JFKs lead campaign surrogate. But the Kremlin again got nowhere; as Andrew wrote, Feklisov and his teams offers of help were politely rebuffed.

Nixon, of course, lost that 1960 election. But when he stood again eight years laterwith Leonid Brezhnev, the man whose policies of stagnation would eventually erode Soviet power, now overseeing the KremlinMoscow espied another opportunity. As Anatoly Dobrynin, Moscows man in Washington, detailed in his 2001 memoir, the Kremlin cooked up an idea to tilt the election once more in the Democrats favor.

Our leadership [in Moscow] was growing seriously concerned that [Nixon] might win the election, Dobrynin wrote. As a result, the top Soviet leaders took an extraordinary step, unprecedented in the history of Soviet-American relations, by secretly offering [Democratic candidate Hubert] Humphrey any conceivable help in his election campaignincluding financial aid. Dobrynin led the effort, breakfasting during the campaign with Humphrey himself. As the conversation wound toward the state of Humphreys campaigns finances, the candidate quickly discerned what was on offerand immediately put a stop to it. He knew at once what was going on, Dobrynin wrote. He told me it was more than enough for him to have Moscows good wishes which he highly appreciated. The matter was thus settled to our mutual relief, never to be discussed again.

But that wouldnt be the end of the Kremlins offers of aid. With Yuri Andropov as premier in 1983the man whose untimely demise would eventually give rise to Mikhail Gorbachev and to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itselfKGB leadership directed those overseeing American operations to begin planning active measures to ensure [Ronald] Reagans defeat in the [1984] presidential election, writes Andrew. Per the smuggled KGB archival documents, KGB agents were directed to acquire contacts on the staffs of all possible presidential candidates and in both party headquarters. And it wasnt just limited to the U.S.; KGB residencies outside the United States were told to report on the possibility of sending agents to take part in this operation. [KGB leadership] made it clear that any candidate, of either party, would be preferable to Reagan.

With KGB archives from this period remaining effectively inaccessible, the details of these 1983-84 operations remain murky. (KGB residencies around the world were ordered to popularize the slogan Reagan Means War!, Andrew wrote, highlighting one of the few particulars we know about.) However, theres no evidence that any campaigns opposing Reagan ever took the bait. If anything, Andrew added, Reagans landslide victory in the 1984 election was striking evidence of the limitations of Soviet active measures within the United States.

The Soviet Union, weighed down by a crumbling economy and fractured by nationalist movements, didnt last much longer. But Moscows presence in American elections, even during the 1990s, didnt collapse alongside the Soviet implosion. As The New York Times reported this month, a trio of Republican representatives came to President George H.W. Bush in the lead-up to the 1992 election with an idea: reaching out to the Kremlin directly for dirt on Bill Clinton, nipping his opposition campaign in the bud.

But like Stevenson, Kennedy, and Humphrey before him, Bush and his inner circle balked. They wanted us to contact the Russians to seek information on Bill Clintons trip to Moscow, James A. Baker III, Bushs White House chief of staff, wrote in a memo. I said we absolutely could not do that. Baker shut the conversation down, and with it any consideration of reaching out to Russia for help in tilting an American election. Shortly thereafter, Clinton won, resoundingly. And he brought with him a First Lady who, a quarter-century later, would be on the receiving end of unprecedented interference efforts out of that same Kremlinand who would face an opponent in Donald Trump who had no problems accepting Moscows offers of help, and who would become the first sitting president to toss the floodgates open, with all comers, and all interference, now welcome.

Read the original:
Russia's Long and Mostly Unsuccessful History of Election Interference - POLITICO

Video games were invented for humans, by humans. But that doesn't necessarily mean we're the best when it comes to playing them.

In a new achievement that signifies just how far artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed, scientists have developed a learning algorithm that rose to the very top echelon of the esports powerhouse StarCraft II, reaching Grandmaster level.

According to the researchers who created the AI called AlphaStar the accomplishment of reaching the Grandmaster League means you're in the top 0.2 percent of StarCraft II players.

In other words, AlphaStar competes at a level in this multi-player real-time strategy game that could trounce millions of humans foolhardy enough to take it on.

In recent years, we've seen AI come to dominate games that represent more traditional tests of human skill, mastering the strategies of chess, poker, and Go.

For David Silver, principal research scientist at AI firm DeepMind in the UK, those kinds of milestones many of which DeepMind pioneered are what's led us to this inevitable moment: a game representing even greater problems than the ancient games that have challenged human minds for centuries.

"Ever since computers cracked Go, chess, and poker, StarCraft has emerged by consensus as the next grand challenge," Silver says.

"The game's complexity is much greater than chess, because players control hundreds of units; more complex than Go, because there are 1,026 possible choices for every move; and players have less information about their opponents than in poker."

Add it all together and mastering the complex real-time battles of StarCraft seems almost impossible for a machine, so how did they do it?

In a new paper published this week, the DeepMind team describes how they developed a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm, which trained itself up through self-play, including playing against itself, and playing humans, learning to mimic successful strategies, and also effective counter-strategies.

The research team has been working towards this goal for years. An earlier version of the system made headlines back in January when it started to beat human professionals.

"I will never forget the excitement and emotion we all felt when AlphaStar first started playing real competitive matches," says Dario "TLO" Wunsch, one of the top human StarCraft II players beaten by the algorithm.

"The system is very skilled at assessing its strategic position, and knows exactly when to engage or disengage with its opponent."

The latest algorithm takes things even further than that preliminary incarnation, and now effectively plays under artificial constraints designed to most realistically simulate gameplay as experienced by a human (such as observing the game at a distance, through a camera, and feeling the delay of network latency).

With all the imposed limitations of a human, AlphaStar still reached Grandmaster level in real, online competitive play, representing not just a world-first, but perhaps a sunset of these kinds of gaming challenges, given what the achievement now may make possible.

"Like StarCraft, real-world domains such as personal assistants, self-driving cars, or robotics require real-time decisions, over combinatorial or structured action spaces, given imperfectly observed information," the authors write.

"The success of AlphaStar in StarCraft II suggests that general-purpose machine learning algorithms may have a substantial effect on complex real-world problems."

The findings are reported in Nature.

Read more:
StarCraft II Has a New Grandmaster, And It's Not Human - ScienceAlert