Day 2 in Hong Kong started with an excellent buffet breakfast. For lunch in the Club Lounge, the feature was, of all the things. Spaghetti Bolognese. Not the standard SB, but good enough.   Decided then to look around the environs of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong hotel, which is an anchor tenant with the newish Kowloon Station in West Kowloon, linked to a sprawling and grandiose shopping mall.  Hard to find total costs, but perhaps $10 billion has been spent, and another $10 billion will probably be needed to complete the development.  The International Commerce Center, which was built in 2010 with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at the top, paved the way for this all.  There is the old Hong Kong around the Peninsula and Sheraton hotels, but the West Kowloon Cultural District, with the tallest building and Kowloon Station, which opened in 2018, is already the Hong Kong of the future. A stroll around the outside. As we were about to leave, we noticed a free tram that took yo...

First, some news of the day. President Donald Trump is in the UK today . There is a preliminary deal to  divest TikTok from ByteDance. The wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine are not close to being settled. The  U.S. stock market slid today,  awaiting the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. The   S&P 500   traded 0.13% lower to close at 6606.76, after hitting a fresh record earlier in the session. The   Nasdaq Composite   lost 0.07% to finish the session at 22,333.96. The   Dow Jones Industrial Average   dropped 125.55 points, or 0.27%, to close at 45,757.90. Guns kill.  Florida finally allowed the open carrying of firearms, the LAST Republican state to do so.  Actually, only three states prohibits this:  California, Illinois and New York, plus Washington, D.C.  Hawaii is one of those states that allows, but you need to first obtain a county-issued license, which requires specific training and eligibili...