LyrArc Article Gist
Micheal Martin, prime minister of the Irish Republic, says the 2011 visit by Queen Elizabeth to Ireland helped in "lightening the load of history." A history which has seen the British rule over the island of Ireland since 1603. The use of Irish language was banned the period of The Plantations with British settlements began in the Northeast and south east, and of British law, leading to great resentment by the Irish. The Queen spoke words of Irish during her visit to Dublin Castle for state dinner and laid a wreath at the Dublin Garden of Rememberance, a park that is dedicated to the Irish men and Irish women who fought against British rule.  One of these Irish women is remembered in India as Sister Nivedita, who helped organize the early efforts of Swami Vivekanada's mission to revive the effort for practice of yoga and for Swaraj or self rule in British India.

LyrArc Article Gist
A group of oil producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia stall progress on climate change goals at the conference in Belem, Brazil. Even deforestation goals are left out. A standoff between European nations and oil producing countries leads to lack of agreement on how to phase out fossil fuels. The US is not present.  

LyrArc Article Gist
The US is facing a new pattern of demographic changes and their impact on Medicare and Social Security programs. The number of people on Medicare will grow in 2 decades, 2010- 2030, from 47 million to 80 million for Medicare, and from 44 million to 73 million for Social Security, according to this estimate. The workforce will grow more slowly and the tax base wiill shrink accordingly during this period. This pending worker-pensioner imbalance and the jump in the cost of the bill for Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the federal health benefit for poor people, create a major problem for the US. At the same time the group of people over 65 will rise in these 2 decades from 17% of the voting age population to 26%. This group and the people who expect to soon join this group will resist any changes to Medicare or Social Security programs, making it that much harder for the political process to tackle these issues to make the programs sustainable in the long run.

LyrArc Article Gist
Rachel Reeves is Shadow Chancellor in Britain, that is a way of saying Finance Minister when Labor currently in the Opposition forms a new government. Speaking at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC she says how Labour will bring about a transformation of Britain's economy with ambitions that borrows from and matches what Biden is doing in the US, and Scholz in Germany. This is very different from anything Britain has seen in its history. The Labour government of Clement Attlee made some institutional changes such as setting up the Bank of England as Britain's central bank in 1946, creating the structures that would help workers and families and the British economy recover from the war, and declaring in parliament that Britain would leave India by June 1948. Blair's response to the Thatcher government did not rival the changes brought by Attlee by any comparison. What Britain following the US is facing today is an FDR or Attlee moment because of the scale of changes needed to create an American or British economy that matches the aspirations of the people, and creating a meaningful role in the world economy and supply chains. Investments have to be made in public goods such as renewable energy, health, education and transportation infrastructure that have no parallel in history including that of FDR or Attlee. Biden is investing on a scale that is designed to overcome two decades of neglect of infrastructure and public goods such as education, health care, and public services. The same is true for Britain. The same is true for Germany and for the European Union.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
As part of the trade deal with the Trump administration China agreed to buy $54 billion of oil and liquified natural gas from the U.S. by the end of 2021. This is showing up in U.S. oil making up 7% of China's imports by mid September 2020 from 0.4% in January. By the endo of October forecasts show U.S. exporting 700,000 barrels a day to China. The U.S. is displacing Saudi and Middle East oil as Saudi exports now make up 15% of China's oil imports from 19%. This also shows that president Trump's trade deals are working to help balance trade with China and remove the disadvantageous position the U.S. was placed in by three previous administrations.

LyrArc Article Gist
Contrast the slow US vaccine export response with that of India, Russia, EU and China. Only in May 2021 after India's daily Covid cases were close to 400,000 a day did the US make a serious offer of vaccines to other countries in need of assistance. U.S. president Biden says that 80 million vaccine doses would be exported by the end of June 2021. The WSJ says citing Airfinity, a London research firm, as of May 10 more than 333 million doses of vaccine were produced by the US and only 3 million vaccine doses were exported. Contrast that with the European Union which has shipped 111 million doses overseas one third of its total production, Russia which has exported 27 million doses.  India has exported 66 million doses according to the Ministry of External Affairs website as of May 17, 2021. This includes 4 million doses to Brazil, 4 million to Nigeria. Within its own region Bangladesh received 10 million and Sri Lanka 1.2 million doses, Afghanistan 1 million. Mexico received about 1 million doses. In Africa the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has suffered from many epidemics including Ebola virus received 1.7 million doses, Nigeria 4 million doses, Kenya 1 million, Uganda 1 million. Of the 66 million about half of it is a direct grant assistance and Brazil, Mexico, Morocco received all vaccine as grant assistance, 70% of Bangladesh's is grant assistance. The list on the Ministry of External Affairs site of the Government of India shows 95 countries including many of the most struggling nations of Latin America and Africa, bringing hope to countries which are struggling to hold onto hope for a better life beyond the pandemic. Sending help overseas through vaccine supplies is suspended for the moment but will resume in July after India has pulled in all of its pharmaceutical manufacturing industry under a government guided effort to go all out. Never has so much help bringing much needed hope gone to so many countries of the world in the twentieth or twenty first century from a nation that is struggling to meet its own needs. The US in pursuing a US first policy of vaccinating all its citizens has not taken into account the need to bring this evolving vaccine technology into the hands of as many qualified pharmaceutical manufacturers as possible. This in a rapid response to expand manufacturing capabilities to meet world wide demand. The risks of not doing so were not taken on early- the very same way the virus spread in January to March of 2020 can be repeated as people travel around the world particularly for tourism, business family reasons. This risk takes on anew dimension of contagious mutations of the virus which are 50% more- the Indian variant being 50% more contagious by some estimates than the UK variant, which itself was estimated to be 50% more contagious than the original one.  The result a pandemic that stretches out indefinitely unless billions of doses are made in a short timetable to beat the timetable of Nature through the coronavirus. India is doing this for the first time with plans to produce billions of doses by engaging the whole of the Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the effort in a rapid response so that July to December would see 1.2 billion people vaccinated. The US effort, the European effort is left to the individual effort of pharmaceutical makers in the US and Europe, not a government guided effort to engage the entire pharmaceutical industry of the US and Europe in a rapid response timetable of 2-6 months.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Spain and Italy, the New York region, delayed their response, just as Japan and Sweden are doing today, resulting in the severity of the pandemic in these countries and regions. This pandemic is showing the earlier you act to lockdown, quarantine, use contact tracing and isolation of clusters method, the better it is with fewer people infected and fewer deaths. This is the single most important lesson of this crisis, which health experts worldwide, including Dr Birx, head of the White House Response, and Dr. Fauci, never get tired of repeating.

LyrArc Article Gist
The US and the EU, China, poor developing countries are following diverging paths. The US in investing heavily in its infrastructure rebuilding under president Biden and its economy is growing, unemployment declining compared to Germany and China where the economy is slowing and facing hurdles. Poor and middle income developing countries in Africa and Asia, Latin America face the hurdles from high interest rates and rising debt burdens. India is also increasing growth by building  infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities.

LyrArc Article Gist
Judo4Balance exercise for falling down safely are popular in Sweden and Netherlands where volunteer instructors help seniors practice falling safely. This is important for older adults so that they can live lives to the fullest without the fears that restrict activities and lead to mental heath issues from isolation or restricted activity. There are no judo based fall prevention programs in the US and this report shows the need to help seniors in the US with similar programs.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Paris climate change agreement involved 195 countries. Agreed to on December 12, 2015 it was seen as a major step forward to limit global warming to 2 degrees celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Progress has been slow in taking action since then. Because of covid 19 the Glasgow conference was cancelled. Hope stems from the goals set for carbon neutral economy of Japan, the EU, UK, China, and the U.S. as it enters the agreement after withdrawing.  Much will depend on action taken as the pandemic has pushed economic goals of recovery to the forefront. As India has shown in renewable energy, particularly in solar energy targets and bold vision, there is a lot that can be done by each country acting on its own without the hype of the agreement. India now sees huge opportunities in solar energy because it is cheaper and pollutes less than coal. This is a game changer that comes from investing in new technologies and taking advantage of India's abundant access to sunny weather and the lower labor and other costs. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
China and Huawei lack the manufacturing capabilities needed to make some of the component parts that go into 5G systems. The U.S. Commerce Department in May restricted chip makers globally who use U.S. technology from supplying semiconductors to Huawei. This means Taiwan's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which uses U.S. technology in manufacturing 5G component parts cannot supply Huawei.

This gives the U.S. and Japan, South Korea to catch up with initiatives of their own to match China's state subsidies model that finances its semiconductor companies and 5G companies. 

U.S. Undersecretary of State Keith Krach says "We've utilized the strengths of semiconductor equipment companies and electronic design software companies to eliminate Huawei's access to the necessary sophisticated chips to build 5G systems and their most sophisticated smartphones." Huawei he says is a security threat to the U.S.

LyrArc Article Gist
Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, points to the need to reallocate the resources that are tied down in Afghanistan, to other needs in the area of national security. This especially true he says, considering the limited US interests in Afghanistan and the other threats in national security that the US needs to address around the world. He points to the grave threat to national security arising from the US deficit and the country's finances, with the $125 billion allocated to Afghanistan being a significant contributor to this. Savings in Afghanistan can be used to strengthen defense needs in other areas such as North Korea and Iran , modernization, and for reducing the deficit. He sees the resources spent in Afghnistan being a strategic distraction when other threats are building with nuclear developments in Iran and N. Korea. He cites the intelligence findings that the situation in Afghanistan will not improve with the Taliban connections in Pakistan, and the lack of a good partner in the government there. As for Pakistan, Haas says that the situation there is not to be understood through Afghanistan. The threats there are not external, they come from deep divisions within Pakistani society, and poor governance for most of the period since independence in 1947. The US should scale down to counter terrorism operations with a smaller force closer to the troops before the surge of 30,000, and not engage in the state-building that it is currently doing. On the efforts by Gen. Petraeus to get more resources, Haas says Petraeus is looking at the situation from the area of operations in Afghanistan, whereas the President has a different role. The President has to address all the challenges the US is facing now and will face in the near and medium term future, and he has to do this with the limited resources available for national security....

LyrArc Article Gist
Depleting ground water reserves are leading to water shortages in India's cities. About 40% of India's people lack drinking water by 2030, according to government think tank NITI Aayog 2018 report. Water shortages are hitting cities such as Chennai. This report looks at the water shortage in remote Himalayan region Ladakh. WOrld Resources Institute points out that India is the 13th most water stressed country in the world, with a population three times the combined population of 16 countries that are water stressed. By 2030 water demand will double in India. The government is giving drinking water top priority in its plan for the next 5 years as key to development.  One of the problems is that farmers in the northern plains pay little for gorundwater use resulting in the planting of water intensive crops. The government plans to promote conservation of water as a national priority with education on this subject of water critical to achieving its objective of providing 100%  access to drinking water for Indians. Drip irrigation with minimal water use is also being encouraged to conserve water. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mohamed Bin Zayed was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the UK and graduated in 1979. He is a strong proponent of US leadership in the Gulf region and Asia. He is now the third president of the United Arab Emirates with which India has significant trade and economic relations with 8 million Indians living in the Gulf region. Of the approximately 10.1 million people in UAE about 1.1 million are citizens and the rest are foreign workers. Mr. Modi has thanked Mr. Zayed for the good treatment given to Indians in the Gulf region by Zayed and his administration. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Pope Francis appears healthy and active, says this report in BBC News, even though he is now eighty, the age when other senior church officials are expected to retire. Pope Francis plans to continue for a few more years to complete his reforms for "a church of the poor." In 2016 he has replaced about one third of the cardinals in the electoral college. Francis lives a simple life in a tiny suite in the Vatican guest house. CastelGandolfo, a summer residence of the popes, has been turned into a museum for the public. Some cardinals from Italy, Germany and the U.S. say the pope is not following traditional teachings, yet Francis in his open gregarious style says he doesn't lose sleep over this. His style is marked by directness, and the use of short phrases of the Buenos Aires dialect with which he is most familiar.

LyrArc Article Gist
This report in WSJ says 4 months before becoming China's president in 2012 Xi Jinping issued a Communist party directive as head of the party committee overseeing the former British colony. The directive cautioned officials about a growing separatist sentiment in Hong Kong. It said "we must dare to struggle and be good at fighting," a retired official describes as Xi's approach. Another facet of Xi's views on Hong Kong are that his father as a party leader for the southern province of Guangdong in 1978 to 1980 near Hong Kong was the first after the Cultural Revolution to set up ties between the mainland and the British colony of Hong Kong. China was experimenting with a different model for the economy and Xi's father set up the early links with Hong Kong so that the flow of economic refugees from mainland China to Hong Kong could be reduced and the gap in living standards could be narrowed. He set up the first "Special Economic Zone" and met delegations to start the Sino-British talks on Hong Kong's future. Xi Jinping grew up in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. His father Xi Zhongzun, was jailed in 1962 in internal party struggles, and his family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966. The Cultural Revolution that went on till 1976 ironically was an attempt to stamp out possible capitalist or imperialist influences from the colonial period and the opium wars with Britain. He was later rehabilitated under premier Deng. During the turmoil Xi with some difficulty was admitted to University after spending some years in the countryside. His father remained loyal to the ideals of the Chinese Revolution even though he had suffered from the internal party struggles, an experience remains a strong memory for Xi Jinping. It is as if the period is seen as a period of experimentation and failure for the party not for its ideals of China rising from the colonial period after its failure to engage with the world before the colonial period leading to backwardness. The unity of the country had to be maintained bringing Hong Kong and possibly Taiwan together with the mainland. Rejuvenation was happening and stability was essential for Chia to grow and emerge into the "China Dream" a word coined by Xi for its emergence in the community of nations as an equal to western powers after the colonial period of oppression and cultural backwardness. In this way he is different than other leaders before him who followed premier Deng who started the experimentation with markets and economic structures. The leader preceding him was party secretary in Tibet with a prime minister who was an engineer working on public projects, in sharp contrast to Xi who had the the sense of authority from seeing different phases of Communist party experimentation in his early years. The Bo Xi Lai incident during the transition before 2012 also influenced Xi. This was an attempt similar possibly to the attempt by Lin Piao under Mao to subvert Communist Party leadership into a new direction bringing China under Soviet influence after the break by Mao. Bo Xi Lai, a party secretary for an interior less developed region Chongqing, who rose from being Mayor of Dalien to governor of Liaoning province. Bo Xi Lai attempted to subvert the process operating since the Cultural Revolution of leadership by consensus within the party ensuring stability and continuity needed for development and pushing the trauma of the Cultural Revolution out of memory. He did this by seeking high party office for his own ambitions not for the party and China's interests that guided leaders after the Cultural Revolution. This incident and the period of two decades of growth of market economy had led to growing corruption and Xi was convinced that "corruption would doom the Communist Party and the State" and the resulting instability was bad for China. During this period in 2012 Xi Jinping said that it was necessary to remove "tigers and flies" who could endanger the party's ideals and the future growth and stability of the country.  About 10,000 party officials were removed for corruption, and the rule of Politburo Standing Committee immunity (PSC) of the party operating after the Cultural Revolution was removed. The PSC is the body that at the top of the organization structure that runs China. On Hong Kong Xi now believes that the problem is best tackled by the Hong Kong government not by intervening from Beijing. There is increasing perception in Beijing and Hong Kong that the local government, business leaders have messed things up, by getting into the habit of telling Beijing planners what they wanted to hear, and failing to communicate with the 7 million people of Hong Kong. These leaders are also in a bind because Xi believes that Beijing exercized "overall governance authority" over Hong Kong. A 2014 government white paper warns against "confused or lopsided perceptions" of Hong Kong's status, saying that its partial autonomy comes "solely from the authorization of the central leadership."     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A 93 year old from Ireland who started rowing at age 73. He shows that our body does not have to lose muscle with aging. He is the subject of this case study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, shown in The Washington Post. He is a one time baker and battery maker who does curls and lunges with small wieights and does rowing with 30% rowing of some intensity the rest at a steady pace. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Daniel Camacho reminds us that being spiritual increases life's satisfaction. It is about being constantly amazed at life and the world outside, and looking at it in new ways fired by spirituality and imagination. It is about the spirit, and it takes in everyday life and what we see in new ways. One can be non-religious and have spirituality, and be somewhat religious yet skeptical of some things in religion without being cynical and have spirituality. One in five Americans are spiritual, and many of these people feel inspired while reading a book or listening to music.

LyrArc Article Gist
This New York Times Editorial Board says the Indian border with Pakistan is a more dangerous place for escalation into nuclear conflict than North Korea. The lull and the calm after the initial hostilities is deceiving says NYT. It says the Trump administration needs to take an active role to reduce tensions and China needs to take firm action in opposing terrorist activities conducted from Pakistan into India. 

It also points out that even though this is seen as not possible there is still the need for India, Pakistan and Kashmir to talk about solutions that could work instead of just giving up and continuing as before. Without mentioning it NYT appears to be saying that other intractable conflicts have been resolved including in the Balkans (religious conflict), in Ireland (religious conflict), with the right kind of effort and determination, and men of goodwill on all sides.

LyrArc Article Gist
Decriminalizing hard drugs led to all sorts of problems in Portland Oregon and citizens feeling unsafe with and increase in homelessness and increase in drug activity. Mike Baker talks to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler about how a Proposition Measure 110 in 2020 decriminalized drugs with three fourths of Portland supporting it. Not anymore as most people still feel unsafe. Governor Gina Kotek has reimposed criminal penalties for possession of drugs. And Wheeler now supports expanding the police force. It is a three year experiment that went wrong also creating a sense that there a personal safety problem for ordinary residents of the city. The lack of behavioural facilities to help people affected added to the problem. This has lessons for all parts of the country, Wheeler also says the politics also went awry. Safe streets, safe neighborhoods is part of the infrastructure that America is building across the country under the Biden administration, safety and ease of living are what infrastructure and rebuilding America is about. And the perception of the need for good law enforcement and safe neighborhoods, safe transportation is now embraced across America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The $2.3 billion pounds (2.6 billion euros) the UK paid to the EU for not collecting legitimate customs duties for imports from China, could finance a UK travel pass like the popular 9 euro travel pass in Germany. That 9 euro pass was a sixth of the cost to travel in Berlin, one way the German government helped people face the cost of living crisis. It cost the German government 2.5 billion euros. One more missed opportunity in Britain by the Tory government to help people with the cost of living crisis. The UK gets hit first with a loss of the customs duties revenue that would have been collected as well as any penalties for fraud from importers. Add to this the $2.3 billion pounds in settlement with the European Union for not collecting legitimate customs duties from imported textiles and shoes into Britain from China. Blunders and missed opportunities to help people  with cost of living crisis is a mark of the Conservative government in Britain. The Guardian reports that the case goes back to 2017 when the EU anti-fraud office said British authorites had allowed criminals to evade customs duties by making false claims about imports of clothes and shoes from China. It says that the EU found over half of all textiles and footwear imported from China were below the lowest acceptable prices.  ...