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Liverpool has lost its World Heritage Site status but this may not be a bad thing, says Christoph Brumann, research leader at the Max Planck Research Institute for Ethnological Research in Halle, Germany. Fewer tourists, he says in this report in DW.com, but now the city can do what it wants to modernize the docks area, and not have to worry about the World Heritage Committee or the British government interfering in its plans. The World Heritage Committee is now subject to diplomatic lobbying of many countries, and the label has lost some of its value as more countries push sites in their country. Liverpool was asked by the World Heritage Committee to stop construction on the waterfront that was helping to bring new life to the city and revitalize the docks area to keep its World Heritage status. In the end the committee that met in China with China as the chair and lobbying by other countries, deteriorating China-UK relations, and and the UK sending only a representative from the Culture Ministry not the Foreign Ministry, played a part in the vote at the World Heritage Committee, says this report. Since 1972 Europe has gained a larger share of the World Heritage Sites. After 2010 meeting in Brazil this has shifted to other countries. There is no clear idea of what a World Heritage site is- cultural, or natural. Cultural is at this point 80% of the sites. This DW report shows some of the contenders in 2021, and only a few of them can be considered to be worthy of visiting. The committee that decides this has removed Dresden for building a new bridge across the Elbe river site, a decision made in 2007, so that it is becoming more controversial. ...

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Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson and his negotiating team meet EU president Ursula Leyen for dinner in Brussels on December 8, 2020, to get over fundamental differences for a Brexit deal. This report in The Guardian describes the details of that dinner meeting.  Boris Johnson told parliament that the European Union was asking Britain to be the only country in the world not to have sovereign control over its own fishing waters. He said the EU was also asking that if the EU were to pass a new law that Britain does not comply with they would have the right to  automatically punish Britain or retaliate. On the issue of environmental and other laws that relate to the EU and Britain they are both at the same level today. The EU is worried that in future competition between Britain and the EU in trade and business Britain could relax environmental or other laws to gain an unfair advantage. Boris Johnson and his Conservative party back benchers insist that Britain should have sole right to make its own laws. France's Macron introduced the idea of automatic retaliation as a way to get Britain to keep a level playing field. Both sides see this as a negotiating tactic, hence the dinner meeting as a way to let top negotiators including the leaders to set an informal tone to the final stage of tough negotiating. Merkel made her own remarks to the German parliament saying she was willing to let the negotiations collapse if Britain rejected the EU approach. Merkel stated that if Britain insisted on certain conditions EU could not accept she was willing to let Britain leave without an exit agreement. This way if something went wrong Merkel would not take the blame.   ...

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Tokyo Electric Power says that a total of 11,125 spent nuclear fuel rod assemblies were stored at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Experts say that this is 4 times as much radioactive material as in the reactor cores combined. Germany and China do not store these spent fuel rods at their nuclear plants for safety reasons. This is the practice in Japan, at Fukushima, and at some U.S. nuclear plants.The storage pools of water needed to keep these fuel rods has leaked because of the earthquake. And there are signs that some fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Richard Lafey, Jr., is a retired nuclear engineer who supervised General Electric's safety research for the type of reactor used in Fukushima. He says the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods can catch fire if exposed to air for hours, when the storage pool of water is lost. Zirconium, after it catches fire is so hot that its hard to extinguish.

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The chief political reporter for the German daily The Bild, says Ursula Von der Leyen EU Commission president's performance on ensuring vaccine supplies is a disgrace for the EU and Germany. For once Brexiteers are proved right he says with having negotiated a better deal with vaccine suppliers, not being stingy like the EU officials, paying good money and securing supplies as early as April.  He says the EU's bureaucracy, its sluggish response, miserly attitude is now being confirmed in this health crisis and Germany is not looking good at all. Tiede says Leyen failed at the German Defense ministry and like other ministers in this situation was shifted into the EU Commission bureaucracy,only to fail again. He suggests Merkel and the heads of France, and Italy, Spain take over negotiating directly from now on with pharmaceutical companies. The EU officials are under severe criticism in Europe, shown here for different EU countries. Leyen is shown to have blundered further by creating a spat with Astra Zeneca- either she did not read the contract or was ignorant of what it meant, say critics. The EU's deal with Astra Zeneca was not with binding provisions, making EU officials at fault. Der Tiegesspiegel called EU's failure to admit its mistakes "jaw dropping" and bordered on "shamelessness." Der Spiegel calls it the worst catastrophe of Leyen's career. This now means Germany will have only 70% of its population vaccinated by September 2021, say experts. ...

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The government of Theresa May and the EU appear to be on a collision course with the release of the EU draft legal agreement that says Northern Ireland must remain in the customs union and future arbitration or appeal would be under the European Court of Justice.

Ireland favors the EU draft and sees it as a default solution to avoiding a hard border with Northern Ireland if it becomes necessary. Theresa May and the DUP party of Ireland on whom the prime minister depends for her coalition government's thin majority support in parliament, both reject the EU solution. 

The Labor Party says it would solve the Irish border issue by entering into a new customs union with the EU, so that no checks are needed at the border for people and goods. The Labor party sees it as vital to prevent any effort to undermine the Good Friday Agreement that forms the basis of the peace in Northern Ireland.

 

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A centrist 73 years, and mentor of Macron, the head of the Movement Democrate allied to Macron's Renaissance party is appointed to succceed Banrnier as PM of France. Macron hit a new low of public approval rating of 23% by Ipsos. Scholz of Germany is at 18% following reaching 65% in Jan 2022. Bayrou says-“I am fully aware of the Himalaya of difficulties that lie before us,” Bayrou says he would strive for a “necessary reconciliation” with Melenchon of France Unbowed party and Marie Le Pen of National Rally on the left and right of the centrist Macron. These are mere labels- both Melenchon and Marie Le Pen want to see higher public spending and no cuts in the Budget for 2025, Macron is not eager for cuts, Barnier wanted to cut the budget to cut the growing deficit but this is not a time to cut spending as investment is needed to grow the economy and meet needs for public services and cost of living assistance. Macron was taken by surprise by Barnier's approach leading to a no confidence vote and Barnier resigning.  ...

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Mercedes Benz is pushing sales of its newly designed small cars as part of a strategy to attract younger buyers. A retooled, sleek version of the B Class compact is part of this strategy. The average age of U.S. Mercedes buyers is 53 years, compared to 49 years for Audi and BMW. Smaller cars are also part of the strategy to meet the new fuel economy standards in the U.S. and Europe. Mercedes is investing $1.9 billion in a new Hungarian plant and expanded German capacity to build smaller cars and SUV's. Sales of the smaller size A and B class Mercedes cars increased slightly by 1.4% to 222,400 in 2010. This compares with increase in overall sales volume up by 12% to 1.26 million cars in 2010.

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Andrew Kramer reports from the front near the city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine with signs of a breakdown in the second Minsk accord. Following the breakdown of the Minsk agreement of September 2014 by February 2015, with fighting around the town of Debaltseve, leaders of Russia, Germany, France and the separatist eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk met again in Minsk, Belarus, on Feb 11, 2015. This led to the second Minsk Agreement and a ceasefire. This agreement called for release of prisoners, a zone to separate the soldiers on each side, constitutional reforms for decentralization in Ukraine giving autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, and monitoring by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Minsk II agreement is under strain as the economic blockade by Kiev, and separatist violations of the ceasefire, have created a tense situation by June 2015. The second Minsk agreement was reached under pressure from the U.S. saying it would send arms to the government in Kiev if Russia continued to send troops into Ukraine, and Germany seeking to avoid a further escalation of the conflict. In the background the U.S. and the EU continued economic sanctions on Russia, and the Russian economy suffered from a decline in oil prices as a result of Saudi pricing decisions....

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The G7 countries including the US, France and Germany  and the European Union now support setting a oil price cap of $60 per barrel for Russian oil. This price cap of $60 goes into effect December 5, 2022, and require western companies that do most of the shipping and distributing for Russian oil worldwide to comply. The US favored oil price cap of $65 set at what Russia earned historically on oil exports. Eastern European countries such as Poland wanted to set the price cap on Russian oil much lower at $30 what it costs Russia to produce oil so that it would crimp Russia's ability to wage war in Eastern Europe that has brought millions of refugees to Poland in 2022.  There were also other prices of between $65 and $70 that were proposed by the European Commission. The US wanted to give Russia some incentive to continue its oil exports which it had threatened to stop if the oil price cap was set -and avoid a situation in which oil prices that hit $120 a barrel early in 2022 would not jump to hit $140 a barrel.  Poland has called for a review every 2 months of the oil price cap so that it is close to the market cap. In November 2022 Russian oil is being sold at about $48 per barrel discounted from Brent crude at $86. The $12 difference between $48 and $60 is the US saying to Russia that it is working with moderation just as it had supported Ukraine with air defenses but acted with restraint to limit that to avoid provocative attacks on Russian soil. What does a cap on Russian oil price mean and how is it possible? Western shipping companies ship the oil out of Russia and distribute it around the world. This advantage of the G7 countries is what it intends to now use to bring an early end to the war in Ukraine by cutting into Russian oil generated funding for the war. Shipping an insurance companies that insure shipping based mostly in the west are now required to comply and not carry supplies bearing a price higher than $60.  ...

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Pusing aggressive bank lending with a steep rise in bank lending of 34% in 2009 can lead to an asset price bubble in China. Factors the Economist cites mitigating this are the follwing: only about 25% of middle class Chinese have mortgages and loan to value is less than 50%. Also Chinese regulators are more alert to the dangers than were American regulators. At the same time the pegging of theyuan to the dollar means the instrument of raising rates to cool the bubble is not existent. And the US is likely to keep rates low for alonger period which may be adverse for China and prop up a bubble there. These dangers mean China had better take firm action in letting the yuan rise now rather than later because heavy inflows from currrency appreciation can only make the bubble worse later on. This will need to be watched carefully as so much of the global economy is dependent on China maintaining growth, Germany in particular. And with the US consumer cutting back China has to manage this carefully....

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The German government has taken notice of hate speech on social media and social bots. The Justice Ministry convened a task force on hate speech on internet. Justice Minister Heiko Maas promised legal action against social media like facebook and twitter if it violated laws of libel and inciting to violence. Chancellor Merkel is bringing in a data science expert Professor Simon Hegelich of the Technical University of Berlin for consultations in Dec. 2016. Only AfD of the main parties, with its anti-immigration stance, has not come out in favor of not using social bots or paid trolls in the 2017 elections. Hegelich in talk with DW.com says it is hard to legislate on this because the whole phenomenon has not been fully understood. Article 5 of the Constitution provides for free speech. Hegelich also says the state of technology moves faster than legislation, and being international sites like facebook, twitter and others pose additional issues. He does not say laws cannot be helpful but that its not clear how best to do this. Thomas Jarzombek is a CDU member of parliament and digital media expert. He says social bots are more likely controlled by foreign countries, and fake news sites are more of a domestic problem. Making this worse is the incentive for unemployed journalists to do blogging of the crude and aggressive type to make more money. Jarzombek sees the need for the press to do more in its role for the democratic process to function properly, by functioning in the role of "enlightenment" and "awareness."  Jenna Behrends, a law student and CDU local politician for Berlin-Mitte, says it is necessary for good bots to be used to fight bad bots, in an article in Der Spiegel. Major mainstream media would then have to launch social bots themselves to fulfill their role of providing the public with correct and fair information free of excessive bias and distortion of the bad bots. One example of this is shown explicitly here of German chancellor Merkel's picture with the words " Guilty of betraying the people," with links to "Drain the swamp," and "Brexit." A more complex question is one of how to let people vent out frustration about the mainstream media itself being biased in favor of the established views and not doing enough or giving enough space to reflect alternative views, so that these can be debated without inflammatory language and deliberate distortion. A whole range of tools and modifications of behaviour may be necessary ahead of next years elections in France and Germany, now that the phenomenon is better understood following a vote in the Anglo-Saxon countries.   ...

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Everything is moving in the wrong direction in terms of sustaining growth according to Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. China's exports dependent economy will see a serious downturn as export markets in the USA and Europe dry up in 2009 as the deep recession takes shape. This could lead to growth rates going down to 6-7%.Other areas that propelled Chinese growth areinfrastructure investment and housing construction. Worried about rising housing prices the government last year out in place measures to dampen housing purchases, with tighter restrictions on second mortgages by banks and tighter lending for first mortgages. With house prices flat or falling now in Chinese cities many buyers are holding off for a better price in the future. Slower growth in housing will mean less demand for migrant labor and less demand for imports of cement and steel from other countries. China's lower imports of machinery, machine tools and heavy equipment for industry and infrastructure building will affect especially the German and Japanese economies. Germany has become the world's largest exporting nation in part by selling industrial equipment to China, its second most important market for machinery. In the first 7 months of 2008 these exports were still expanding at 20%. But these exports are likley now expanding at a rate of 10% and may slip to single digit growth in 2009, according to Olaf Wortmann, an economist with the VDMA engineering association. A good example of what is happening is the German manufacturers of textile machinery which derive 95% of their sales from overseas and mostly from China. These orders were down 42% in the first 7 months of 2008. With declining consumer demand in the US demand from China's exporting factories is declining. These figures and the accelerating slowdown in the US consumer markets suggest there will be a serious downturn in Chinese exports of textiles and other goods. The impact on German growth rates which are going below 2% in 2008 is to lead to 0% or declining growth in 2009. A similiar situation is ocurring for imports of heavy equipment from Japan. Orders of Japanese machine tools by China declined by 25% in September according to the Japan Machine Tool Builder's Association and Komatsu's shares have declined by 70% since their June peak. Part of the Chinese impact on global growth is mitigated by the fact that at market exchange rates China's economy is still only 6% of the world economy at market exchange rates and 10% at purchasing power parity. Chinese domestic consumer demand is $1.2 trillion for 2007 compared to the USA's $9.7 trillion, which also suggests how heavily China was dependent on the American consumer and how the missing American consumer will be hard to replace and the growth rates of 10-12% may be a thing of the past, with 6-7% being more realistic. ...

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The German parliament votes 439 to 119 on July 16, 2015, approving a 86 billion euro aid and loan package to Greece under an aid for reforms plan. 60 members of chancellor Merkel's CDU group voted against compared to 29 voting against the bailout extension of Feb. 2015. This included approval of 7.16 billion euros in short term funding for July 20, to meet a 4.2 billion euro payment to the ECB. This was conducted as a special session of parliament. Chancellor Merkel said: "we would be acting with crude intelligence and irresponsibility if we didn't at least try this path." Finance Minister Schauble told parliament- "We believe that there is a chance that we can bring these negotiations to a successful conclusion," yet he cautioned that after the negotiations of coming weeks "we will have to discuss whether the negotiations have shown a way that works."

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With Britain not willing to join an EU wide agreement for all 27 countries in the region, Sweden and the Czech Republic asking for time to consult its parliament, and Hungary declining, only 23 EU countries are now on board for new EU wide treaty changes for fiscal discipline. This makes new EU treaty changes unlikely, and means France and Germany will move ahead with a eurozone agreement for the 17 nation group. This can be done much faster than the cumbersome process for EU treaty revisions. The details of the new agreement will be worked out in the coming weeks and should restore confidence in financial markets. The problem now most experts say is that a new agreement might move too quickly to reduce deficits, worsening the economic prospects in the European Union countries. Fernando Fernandez, an economist at IE Business School in Madrid, says the critical question is how much time countries will be given to meet new rules. If for instance debt is to be reduced by 20 percentage points of GDP in 3 years under new rules, this would impact eurozone growth severely with sharp contractions in already fragile economies. Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland, underscores this, saying Germany is close to zero growth and economies of countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy are contracting. Higher unemployment will result with smaller tax bases, making the situation appear to improve as borrowing rates for Italy drop now, but worsening the situation in 2012-2013 as deficit projections are not attainable. This is already true in Britain where earlier deficit projections are being pushed into future years as economic growth is declining....

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The Labour leader and prime minister of Britain met Donald Trump during a trip to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 26, 2024 Starmer has misgivings that Trump may withhold support for the United Nations and its framework for maintaining peace in the world, and tackling issues of development and climate change. Britain's leader Starmer told the UN General Assembly- "People talk about an age of polarization, impunity, instability and an unraveling of the U.N. charter. And I feel a sense of fatalism has taken hold.” “But our task is to say no … This is the moment to reassert fundamental principles and our willingness to defend them. To recommit to the U.N., to internationalism, to the rule of law.” With Macron's shaky coalition government in France, and a coalition government in Germany with less popular Greens, FDP and Social Democrats, Russia engaged in a conflict with NATO in Ukraine, Starmer speaks for Europe at an important time to recommit to the UN Charter and uphold the principles of the UN for the betterment of mankind. ...

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France's Foreign Minister Ayrault says of Boris Johnson: "He lied a lot to the British. Now, he is the one with his back against the wall." He sees missing in Johnson the "clear, credible and reliable" person with whom he can negotiate. Ray Stegner, deputy chairman of Germay's Social Democrat Party says "May looks weaker after such a choice of personnel. Now he is negotiating Brexit. Enjoy the trip." In China he is seen as a celebrity not a serious person. Bildt, ZDF, see in this a part of British humor. Jurgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for Christian Democrats Party in Germany had a different take on Johnson- seeing this as an astute move because if the government one day comes to conclude that Brexit should not be completed then having Johnson on board to explain it to the people would guarantee support in her party and with the people of England. In her first speech May emphasized that she was a "Unionist." Her first important meeting was with Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland and made Scotland's agreement necessary before invoking Article 50. Her talk of "burning injustices" for the poor and the underprivileged also goes to address the root of the problems behind the Leave vote. By having Johnson on board she can focus on the issues that really matter and which were on the minds of people in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland- to ensure that the economic system works for all.   ...

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Greg Ip of the WSj points out that Britain is in a weaker position to tackle Brexit than it was when Boris Johnson called for supporting the Yes vote to Leave the EU three years ago in the referendum. Business investment is lower than France, Germany and even Italy. And today protectionism, nationalism, hostility to globalization mean that its not so easy to increase exports by signing free trade agreements with other nations. Even a treaty with a friendly Trump administration  is not certain as Mr. Trump favors looking at how he can get the best deal and reverse any advantages of other trading nations, Britain being no exception. A trade agreement with the U.S. could mean the U.S. barring Britain from signing one with China as a condition of Mr. Trump. Greg Ip also points out that it was precisely joining the EU that helped Britain catch up with German and French standards of living after a period of low growth, inflation, and balance of payments crises in the 1970's. Joining the European Economic Community was as prime minister Heath stated would " enable us to be more efficient and more competitive in gaining more markets not only in Europe but in the rest of the world."   ...