LyrArc Article Gist
One survey in 2021 shows that about 73% of workers in all age groups are feeling burnout since the pandemic started says this BBC report on Work Life. The situation is the worst for young workers in their twenties who have the least work capital and the most work. For these Generation Z workers the burnout rate is higher at 80%. This presents a huge problem for mental health. Across all age groups volume of work is up over 50% with the highest for young inexperienced workers who are pushed to the limit, working late hours and not able to say no. 

This situation shows that so much has happened during the pandemic that mental health is a major priority in 2022 and beyond.

 

LyrArc Article Gist
The World Trade Organization is about to choose a new director-general to succeed Mr. Azevedo, a career diplomat from Brazil. The two candidates are a former finance minister from Nigeria,  Ms. Okonjo-Iweala supported by the European Union and the trade minister of South Korea, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee, supported by the U.S. Japan supports the Nigerian candidate because of its trade disputes with South Korea. The role of head of WTO is important today because of trade issues between countries particularly the trade issues between China and the U.S., U.S. and other countries. And the sense that the WTO arrangement is not working for many countries in recent years without a level playing field in many industries from improper subsidies. Before the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization not much attention was given by the U.S. to how it had changed after new elections. As a result non profit foundations like the Gates Foundation from the U.S. played a leading part in representation of American interests and China played a leading role leading to the crisis facing WHO today. During the coronavirus pandemic the WHO lacking adequate influence of U.S. or European Union countries was not able to act in a way that met the needs and concerns of these countries with advanced health systems. In the past pandemics were better addressed worldwide when the U.S. and EU played a major role from the beginning because of long experience and technological resources,  a role that was missing in the current pandemic. Ebola and other virus were tackled in Africa only when the U.S. or European countries played a leading and critical role. This role was sorely missed in the current crisis. This is why changes at the World Trade Organization matter. World trade is important for the world economy and can best operate when the concerns of U.S. and European Union about a level playing field and fair competition are met. This level playing field and fair competition also meet the interests of developing countries such as India which are industrializing rapidly and need to protect their own markets from unfair dumping, as well as Indonesia and other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa that are part of the supply chain for the world economy. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In the post pandemic era there is great value in introverted leadership that is thought full, ardent, fully comprehending and mindful. Leigh Thompson of Northwestern University says introverted leaders are more resilient and can find solutions to tough problems others avoid including extroverted leaders who lack the introspection needed to come up with solutions.

LyrArc Article Gist
Why the East Wing being redone can be a good thing at the White House. It sticks to a classical style says NYT, and is more in line with the White House style than the architectural style of the Obama tower and other such structures. The White House can use the new ball room as a place for gatherings of foreign leaders, and the space modernization can be a good thing overall.

LyrArc Article Gist
Mediators Pakistan, Turkey sought to separate Iranian nuclear issue to a second stage with a vague Iranian commitment to discuss the issue and future dragging of feet by Iran. The US DJT administration has made this the only issue that must be settled first before a settlement can be reached, and not by a repeat of the half hearted effort by the Obama administration that led to reconstituting Iran's nuclear effort a second time with US financial assistance. For a day on Saturday it appeared that mediators Pakistan and Turkey had accomplished for Iran just that, to the alarm of Republicans in general and in particular senior Senator Graham. Many sections of the media including the WSJ and the business community, see this as a repetition of the mistakes made by Obama and his administration. Not only did Obama not act to work with Republicans on a border policy- simply protecting himself from Republican attack by deportation policies. Obama continued the war in Afghanistan/Iraq for the same reason to protect his chances for reelection. He also used immigration policy to get the Hispanic vote in the closing months of the reelection year. Obama's other foreign policy failure was in believing Iran had been persuaded to give up nuclear weapons, and gave Iran the financial backing that could easily be shifted from economic to military uses and rebuild the nuclear program,  which he has handed to a future Republican adminstration. Obama also ignored how this would affect the economic wellbeing of the Iranian people with the kind of protests and suppression that has happened in 2026. Democrats and the media, some Republicans, are simply ignoring these errors and have never really faced up to the problems in the Middle East and asked the question why there are 5 decades of wars in the Middle East, and coups, strife, wars for the entire period since 1950. In this situation the US, China, India, EU, Brazil and other nations can learn from this experience and act to secure alternative sources of energy, speed up renewable energy transition, and rapidly end all dependence/intervention on a perpetually strife ridden Middle East, which much of the US and international media in a baffling way ignores or does not say outright. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Yousaf Humza comes from a family that immigrated from the Punjab state in Pakistan in the 1960's to Scotland. His grandfather worked at a Singer sewing machine factory in Clydesbank, and his father worked as an accountant. He studied for a Masters degree in Arts at Glasgow University and entered politics as a parliamentary assistant to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon during the early days of the SNP. He held several ministerial positions before becoming First Minister. He is a Sturgeon loyalist who defeated challenger Elizabeth Forbes 52% to 48% in a close election for leadership of the SNP party.  His election is seen as a transitional period in the same way as Rishi Sunak's winning the leadership of the Conservative party after Boris Johnson like Nicola Sturgeon lost support. This is because of divisions within the SNP and in the Conservative party, and the rising popularity of Labour during a cost of living crisis after the ravages of the pandemic had affected working families in many ways. Both are from Punjab province of the British and the two provinces of Punjab in independent India and Pakistan. In fact the election of Humza as SNP leader and First Minister, the defeat of Elizabeth Forbes, provides Labour with an opportunity to win as many as 20 seats in Scotland for Keir Starmer of Labour to make it to No. 10 Downing Street, according to reports in The Times. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Fully vaccinated people in Britain can now carry on life like normal within weeks and be free of quarantine, with no need to take daily tests.

LyrArc Article Gist
The new Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has visited India as a backpacker in his younger days and led a parliamentary delegation to India. He is committed to deepen economic, strategic, and people to people links between India and Australia. Albanese is also committed to fighting climate change and moving aggressively on renewable energy.

LyrArc Article Gist
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco say that manufacturers of PFAS forever chemicals are using a strategy to discredit good research that detail risks from carcinogens. They says that these manufacturers suppress unfavorable research and distort public discourse. Former EPA researcher Dourson is shown here with a company that gets half its funding from chemical companies. He pushes for allowing many times the permissible level of carcinogens set by the EPA, and supports use of forever chemicals, in this report in the WSJ. President Trump appointed him head of the chemcial safety unit at EPA, but Doursen withdrew when there was bipartisan criticism of ties to industry. Critics say he uses biased science that looks at cherry picked data. His company is called Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, which he founded after taking a buyout of $25,000 from EPA, according to WSJ.

LyrArc Article Gist
Within less than 24 hours of Biden's withdrawal -163 members of the House of Representatives, 36 Senators, 16 Governors have endorsed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination for president. NYT gives the details.

LyrArc Article Gist
A wonderful video on how Ukrainian refugees in Berlin are going back home some for a short time to see friends and their homes. Six buses go back and forth taking people in both directions every day says the bus driver for this bus company for Bonn to Kviv bus. There are 800,000 refugees from Ukraine in Germany. Some young women have family who are soldiers in hospitals who they will see. Most have not seen their homes for 3 months.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Indian federal elections started on April 19 and will take place in phases for 960 million voters the largest of any country in the world in mountains in Ladakh to desert around Jaisalmer to the seas around Vizag and Kotchikode. It will take about 6 weeks to complete by June 1 and final results to be announced June 4. The voting is done using portable electronic boxes. It is still one of the great wonders of the world that its crazy no one talks about it and is a demonstration that India has taken the best of its own democratic traditions dating back to the time of the Buddha 563-483 BC. "It may come as a surprise to many to know that in the assemblies of Buddhists in India two thousand and more years ago are to be found the rudiments of our own parliamentary practice of today." This is Rab Butler, who was born in Attock, India and the leading parliamentarian of Britain who set up the post war education system of the United Kingdom, the longest serving minister in Britain from 1941, Home Secretary under Churchill to Foreign Secretary during Suez Crisiz in 1956, under Macmillan as Home Secretary in 1964, the best parliamentarian Britain had to offer in the 20th century. Butler served under Viceroy of India in 1910, and worked hard as India Secretary to pass the India Act of 1935 that gave India its first parliamentary style assemblies and elections. His idea even in the 1920's was for India to gain Dominion dominion status similar to Canada and Australia with a democracy, and was opposed by Churchill. Churchill knew his own weakness and supported Rab Butler as the younger Conservative who would revive the Conservative Party- his 1977 book The Conservatives. Cooperation with Hugh Hugh Gaitskill of Labour Party right into the 1970's made Britain a stronger country, which is how the Education Act 1944 was passed to make free education to all children to age 16.  Much of it broken since 1980 in 50 years of failed Conservative policy leading to the chaos of the Conservatives today, and an effort to spread that chaos to the US. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Official currency reserves of developing world countries almost quadrupled over the last decade to $2.9 trillion. Reserves of industrialized countries went up by 150%. In 2005 reserves went up by 18% for developing countries and declined 1.5% for developed countries. 70% of total currency reserves are in developing countries. This is a huge accumulation of reserves by developing countries in a short period. In 2005 74% of overall reserves were in U.S. dollars. The reserves help countries pay bills and make investments. For developing countries having sufficient reserves helps in two other ways. The reserves are a buffer in emergencies , and means countries like Brazil and S. Korea don't have to turn to the IMF or the U.S. for assistance. Another way this helps is for countries like China to be able to use their reserves to keep their currencies from appreciating and maintain a competitive edge in exports.

LyrArc Article Gist
This report in The Times points out that the world of work is changing as employers reduce office space and shift workers to work from home with some limited time spent in the office environment to link up with colleagues. This report cites a survey that shows 45% of companies are saying they do not need 70% of office space.  The Times has been published for one year with employees not coming into the office. The Reach which publishes the Daily Mirror and Daily Express in UK has cut office space and 75% of employees in future will work full time from home. Banks are also making that move- HSBC is getting rid of 40% of global office space, Lloyds Bank is getting rid of 20% of office space. With these changes comes the question when did this idea of working out large offices start? It started in 1906 with the Larkin Administration Building in New York. It was based on the ideas of Frederick Taylor's scientific management ideas and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to recreate something like a factory floor. Later by 1970 office spaces shifted to privacy with cubicles and private offices. It then went through another transformation with a shift to open offices as in Japan in the period around 2000 which is making a comeback today. This time open offices with social distancing space for a smaller number of people coming in for a short time to the office. Simon Nixon says employers should not simply look for savings as the main motivation but at the broader picture- wellness of employees, guiding employees on how to structure work and space at home, associations in this field should also provide guidance and get involved in the transformation of office space. Productivity goes with wellness, and happy employees who have kept wellness in mind will be more productive asset for the employers. Lyrarc recommends office workers read articles on the German approach to office work called "Feierabend," which sets clearly demarcated lines between work and recreational activities that renew one for work the next day. Feierabend literally means "end of the day" in German and a specific time say 5.00 pm cuts off the days work and sets time aside for breaking away from work to take a bike ride or a walk in the garden for instance.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This very exceptional report from the city of Recife in Brazil's northeastern state of Pernambuco, comes from WSJ reporters Johnson and Jelmayer. It is about the physicians Vanessa van der Linden Mota, and Ana van der Linden Mota, her mother, who first alerted health authorites in Pernambuco about the cases of encephaly and the links to the mosquito Zika Virus in Recife, Brazil. From 147 recorded encephaly cases, and babies born with shrunken skulls or calcified brain structure in 2014 in Brazil, the cases reported jumped to 4,180 suspected cases. Estimates of cases by 2020 for such cases run up to 50,000 to 100,000 if the problem is not tackled. The family of the van der lindens come from Dutch-German immigrants settled in northeastern Brazil, a less developed region of the country. The family is unique with five doctors including neuro pediatricians Ana and Vanessa working in public hospitals in Recife , and father Helio a neuro surgeon. The entire state of Pernambuco has a total of 15 neuropediatricians, according to this report. The Ebola Virus emerged in countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia which suffered from war and neglect of health infrastructure. Here in Pernambuco state, as reporters Johnson and Jelmayer point out, the problem stems from neglect in public health infrastructure, especially sanitation and drinking water for shantytown dwellers and vast majority of poor residents in a city of 3.5 million, typical of developing countries in Latin America and South Asia, where development in some parts of the country have lagged far behind, and where needed public health infrastructure investments have not been made. Lack of dependable drinking water means collecting water in containers that are susceptible to breeding mosquitoes, such as the mosquitoes carrying the Zika Virus. A public debate on the lack of attention by socialist and worker's party led governments to this type of infrastructure and transportation services was already underway in Brazil leading to widespread protests in 2013. A $226 million investment in a soccer stadium in Recife, and similar investments in other smaller cities in the northeast were made under the Worker's Party government. Large investments for the Olympics now come as the economy contracted in 2015, and Brazil is hurt by another boom-bust cycle with the slowdown in China- with fiscal austerity policies, a loss of a third in the value of its currency, and the popularity rating of the newly elected government from the Worker's Party in single digits....

LyrArc Article Gist
Strength training and balance to supplement aerobic work and walking hiking as ways to get past age 80 healthy. Resistance training and grip strength are important in addition to hiking, walking, swimming and other aerobic exercise is the conclusion of this author of a book on longevity and healthy life.

LyrArc Article Gist
Tips on money saving from parents on childcare and groceries, and raising children.

LyrArc Article Gist
Le Monde gives a detailed look at the origins of the RN and Marie Le Pen in her father's party the Front Nationale that had it's origins in France's War in Algeria. It's first success was in town councils in the south east Cote de Azur where former French Algerians had settled in large numbers. Jean Le Pen was the son of a fisherman in the Brittany region who lost is life hitting a mine during the war in Occupied France. He was a teenager at the time and is shown here as a ward of the state. He tried to enlist in the War in Vietnam but got there just after Dien Bien Phu and worked in Saigon for a newspaper Caravelle. He returned to France and joined a paratrooper unit in the French Air Force during the Algerian War and became an opponent of De Gaulle's policy in Algeria to decolonize the region. He inherited the fortune of a French cement manufacturer who supported his party FN. Chirac and Sarkozy become his opponents. For 20 years after this he is shown to win anywhere between 2% and 10% in European and French presidential elections. His daughter Marie Le Pen and her supporters decided to rebrand the party as Reassemblement Nationale RN and win as much as 15-20% and more recently 30% of the vote in presidential and EU elections. The fatigue with Macron leads to a surge in RN support in small towns and rural France. Marie changes her stance on the EU willing to support the EU. ...