Seltzers Pop Up in the US

According to the experts, Seltzer is more pop-ular than it's ever been.

Of the 170m gallons of pop (and rising) consumed in the States every year, millennials are increasingly buying seltzer as a healthier option.

Among the brands in the now: La Croix (featured in a popular hip hop song recently), Polar, and hard seltzers like White Claw and Truly.

Hot New Trend: Green Walls

Large vertical gardens planted on walls outdoors is the latest city-cooling venture being undertaken in places like warm dry Madrid.

Right now people are talking about the wall outside the CaixaForum, on which 15,000 plants from 300 native species grow, including yucca, ferns and begonias. The wall is as long as a city block. It has been there since 2008, though, designed by French botanist Patrick Blanc.

The CaixaForum wall is built using a polyurethane sheet, a plastic mesh, and a non-biodegradable felt blanket (which acts like a sponge to hold water and provide a place for roots to take hold). Water is fed by irrigation hose lines from the top of the wall. 

How does greenery improve cities? Besides the shade it provides (keeping the sun from baking the pavement and building walls), it dampens city noise, releases water vapor into the air, increasing humidity, which can be a good thing in places that are not already uncomfortably humid, and adds oxygen to the air. City residents also like the look of the walls, and they provide a focus for tourism (visitors to cities don't often get to see the variety of plants native to the country).

Besides building roof and wall gardens, Madrid is funneling city funds (and offering tax breaks) into expanding parks, converting vacant spaces into gardens and parks (water is provided by re-paving certain areas with rainwater-capturing porous material), installing heat-deflecting windows, and painting roofs to reflect sunlight.

According to an architectural firm consulted by the city, if Madrid covered 10-25% of its roofs or walls in greenery, noise would be cut 10 decibels, particle pollution would go down 20%, and temperatures would go down 18 degrees F.

'EU Is Risking Itself' - George Soros

Multi-Track Europe - Dysfunctional institutions - Peaceful Brexit - Reinvented EU

The American billionaire warned the EU this week that it was risking its own existence because of "dysfunctional institutions, a persistent austerity policy and outdated treaties.

"If the European Union carries on with business as usual, there is little hope for an improvement," Soros said.

The Hungarian-born speculator had a lot of advice to give the EU. He said EU countries are interested in more control over their territory, not less as in the EU "ever closer union" doctrine. The UK had already voted to leave the EU, and populist trends in other countries were growing, so the EU should offer a "multi-track" Europe rather than a "multi-speed" one, in order to offer member states more options.

The three things Soros particularly stressed the EU improve their stance on: territorial disintegration, the refugee crisis, and the lack of adequate economic growth.

The upcoming Brexit negotiations would be important, Soros said, so the EU should behave with a "constructive spirit" and resist any urge to try to punish the UK. Brexit will already be damaging and harmful to both sides.

He said the EU should use Brexit negotiations to introduce far-reaching reforms and be "radically reinvented."