As Cubans head out to the beach to escape the summer heat of crowded cities, many are making the drive in relics from another era.

Tens of thousands of vintage American cars remain scattered throughout the country, manufactured before the revolution and subsequent US embargo in 1960. In the summers and at classic car shows, the old American models end up on display.

With no automobile imports coming in, the cars are preserved by Cuban mechanics and improvised fixes by the owners themselves.

Some Cubans have already started renting these cars to tourists who love them.

Poland’s new ambassador is a scar-faced hit man armed with two swords and potions against monsters and dragons. His name is Geralt, hero of a Polish role-playing video game bewitching the world.

The cover of The Witcher 3, featuring lead character Geralt.

The Witcher is the brainchild of CD Project Red, one of a growing number of cutting-edge Polish IT firms out to dominate global gaming. It sold four million copies of the game worldwide within two weeks of its May 2015 release. Two earlier instalments in the Witcher series have sold some eight million copies since hitting the market in 2007 and 2011.

 “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the best games ever made,” said website Gamespot of the game, which is the top seller in most of the 109 countries where it was released.

 “They created the largest open world in the history of video games and filled it with realistic dialogue and characters that are full of life,” said leading Polish game developer Pawel Miechowski of the game’s creators.  “Plus the graphics are staggering.”  Video Games in Poland

If sanctions are lifted, business will go back to normal in Iran.  It will take a year, but if this deal goes through, carpets that will exported again.  This is a half a billion dollar business.  In the past, even if you could figure out how to export, the importer could not find a bank to take your money.  SWIFT, the international money transfer system, could not deal with money to or from Iran.  Practically speaking, transactions have to become routine.

The prospect of doing business in America are tantalizing.

Iran experienced its worse period from 2010 to 2012.  Inflation went through the roof to 40 percent.  Unemployment to 14 percent.

Sanctions limited trade significantly.  From medicine to laptaps, you could buy these goods through smuggling. The prices were exorbitant.

Oil revenues were cut.  Shipping companies could not bring goods into ports.

Businesses are lining up to get into Iran, the biggest untapped market currently.

Debora L. Spar writes:  Sometime in the next few years, the Cuban people will be faced with a huge decision: how to develop their nation. As the Castro brothers fade from the scene and relations with the United States continue to thaw, a new generation of Cuban leaders will be forced to grapple with the inevitable challenges of political and economic reform. Like the governments of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they will have to plot a path from communism to capitalism; like their neighbors across Latin America and the Caribbean, they will have to juggle a historical distaste for Western (and particularly U.S.) imperialism with a desire for Western goods, technology, and capital. And like leaders everywhere, they will almost certainly have to strike a balance between the demands of economic prudence and political expedience, forming institutions that will serve their country over the long run while heeding their citizens’ call for more immediate change.

The Singaporean model is more powerful than dreaming and more likely to achieve results. And it is widely replicable, not with regard to the details of what Lee and his colleagues did, of course, but with regard to how. They were honest and clear about what their country did and did not have; methodical in their planning and execution; and steadfast in their follow-through. These are lessons that Cuba’s next generation of leaders, unshackled from their predecessors’ ambitious but ultimately unrealistic goals, would be well-advised to consider. They should build gradually from the assets that Cuba has—fertile land, an enviable location, and an eager and wealthy diaspora—rather than aim for utopia.   Can Cuba Be the Singapore of the Caribbean

The world’s third largest brewery, Heineken International, recently launched a US$60 million brewing facility in Hmawbi, near Rangoon, marking the Dutch company’s comeback to the Burmese market economic sanctions forced its exit in 1996.

The new Burma brewery is operated by a joint-venture called APB Alliance Brewery, between local Alliance Brewery Co. (ABC) and Heineken’s Asia Pacific Breweries. Dutch premium beer Heineken will be available in the market later this year, while its local brand—Regal Seven—will be distributed beginning in August. Heineken’s local beverage, with a five percent alcohol content, is dedicated to the seven people who established the APB Alliance Brewery.

At a launch event earlier this week, The Irrawaddy spoke with the brewery’s managing director, Lester Tan, about how Heineken might fare in Burma’s battle of the beers, which has long been dominated by the locally loved Myanmar Beer, manufactured by the military-owned Myanmar Breweries. These days, however, it seems there’s always room for one more drink as new brands like Tuborg and Yoma start springing up at local watering holes.  Heineken Invests in Burma

Beer in Burma

John Cassidy writes: One night not long ago, in a new restaurant in Havana called VIPs, the owner, a white-haired Catalan named Jordi, was speculating about what life might be like in Cuba after a reconciliation with the United States. “Come, let me show you,” he said confidingly, leading the way to a large outdoor space between the neighboring building and his own, an eighteenth-century villa built for a Spanish marqués. Gesturing with his hands, Jordi indicated where he was building an open-air bar and eatery, a wine cellar, a “chill-out area.” “It will be a club for friends,” Jordi said. “Friends with money.”

Inside, Hugo Cancio, one of Jordi’s friends in the new transnational élite, sat at a corner table. A Cuban-American businessman, Cancio lives in Miami but shuttles to Havana so often that the VIPs menu has named his favorite dish for him: the Don Hugo Paella. Cancio is fifty-one, tall, with an athlete’s shoulders and a limber gait. He was accompanied by his daughter Christy, who had recently finished college in the U.S. Their table looked out on a square bar, a dozen tables full of smartly dressed people, and a huge screen, with Chaplin’s “Modern Times” on a continuous loop. On his iPhone 6, Cancio showed me a selfie that he and Christy had taken earlier that day with Conan O’Brien, who was in Havana taping his show. O’Brien had invited them to join him at El Aljibe, an open-air restaurant that is popular with diplomats and Cuba’s senior nomenclatura. “What do you think?” Cancio asked me, smiling. “Cuba’s changing, man.”

Last December, after five decades of Cold War enmity and eighteen months of secret talks, the United States and Cuba announced that they had agreed to normalize relations. It was a rapprochement so long in coming that younger generations, without much memory of invasions, embargoes, and the threat of nuclear obliteration, barely knew why the bad feeling was so ingrained in the politics of both countries. Cancio is a casualty, like many others, of all that preceded this tentative settlement. He left Cuba in the Mariel boatlift of 1980, in which as many as a hundred and twenty thousand Cubans made a traumatic exodus to the United States. Thirty-five years later, as the C.E.O. of a holding company called Fuego Enterprises, he moves freely between Cuba and the U.S. After spending years cultivating connections in both countries, he has become an intermediary sought after by the increasing numbers of Americans—investors, politicians, celebrities—who are going to Cuba. He is pleased to tell you about his private meeting with Sting, or with Paris Hilton. When Google visited Havana recently, a delegation came to his office to discuss the local situation. In February, Cancio spoke to a gathering of political conservatives in Washington, D.C., and in April he addressed an audience in New York at a conference about Cuba organized by the Wharton School of Business. Cuba for Entrepreneurs

Goldman Sachs and Prudential are investing in vertical urban gardening.  Entrepreneurs envision selling fresh produce to high end restaurants and discounting to low income neighbors.  Land costs high, but some in the sky.  Entpreneurial opportunities abound.

Efforts to grow green business in New Jersey’s largest city Newark were bolstered by the announcement of a $30 million public-private commitment to create the world’s largest indoor aeroponic garden in Newark’s Ironbound, a community in serious need of investment, good jobs, and fresh produce.

Essentially, aeroponics is a plant-cultivation technique that doesn’t require soil or sun: Roots are exposed to the air and nutrition delivered via a fine mist.