News Headlines - 13 May 2017

▽U.S. nears $100 billion arms deal for Saudi Arabia: White House official | Reuters

United States is close to completing a series of arms deals for Saudi Arabia totaling more than $100 billion, a senior White House official said on Friday, a week ahead of President Donald Trump's planned visit to Riyadh.

▽Toyota decides flying cars aren't so crazy after all- Nikkei Asian Review

The project is led by a group called Cartivator. It all started in 2012 when project leader Tsubasa Nakamura won a business contest -- not an internal one. Its 30-odd members donate their free time. They have also received some outside help -- from Masafumi Miwa, a drone expert and associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tokushima University, and Taizo Son, founder of GungHo Online Entertainment, a Japanese online video game developer.

▽How Abercrombie & Fitch Went From Aspirational To Out-Of-Touch

They clearly wanted their stores to feel that way, too. The sales clerks all looked like your biggest high school crushes. Well before Buzzfeed published the corporation’s “Look Policy Guidelines” in 2013, which provided instructions on everything from the color and length of their employee’s hair to the length of fingernails, and before the Supreme Court ruled that these guidelines sounded an awful lot like discrimination practices, it was clear that the employees were “curated.”

▽Kyokujitsuki flag not discriminatory despite Frontale’s punishment - The Japan News

The rising sun flag, known as the kyokujitsuki in Japanese, is no longer related to the nation’s prewar militarism. Japan apparently needs to spread this message widely regarding what position the flag currently holds.

▽Germany Breaks A Solar Record — Gets 85% Of Electricity From Renewables | CleanTechnica

On April 30, Germany established a new national record for renewable energy use. Part of that day (during the long May 1 weekend), 85% of all the electricity consumed in Germany was being produced from renewables such as wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Patrick Graichen of Agora Energiewende Initiative says a combination of breezy and sunny weather in the north and warm weather in the south saw Germany’s May 1 holiday weekend powered almost exclusively by renewable resources.