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Taiwan computer and iphone maker Foxconn is setting up a new EV business with $600 million investment. GM, Toyota, Stellantis and other auto companies are making their own EV's and accumulating expertise in the manufacture of EV vehicles which have fewer parts and use software. Foxconn has operated as a supplier to Apple. It hopes to become a supplier of EV's with initial progress in Asian countries. 

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The merger between U.S. based Omnicom Group and France based Publicis Groupe SA, two of the largest ad agencies. The merger is a response to the increasing shift to digital advertising, the shift to advertising being sold in automated trading, and data driven analysis. In all these shifts digital companies such as Google and Facebook have strong advantages. Around 22% of global ad spending is now digital, according to emarketer, with forecasts showing this going up to 27% by 2017. Automated buying of ad space is taking off. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend $3.4 billion on real-time bidding. Omnicom's CEO, John Wren tells analysts: "Digital buying of media is done by machines, as if you are standing on the floor of the Nasdaq as opposed to traditional media shop. I hold the long term belief that eventually traditional media, or a lot of traditional media is going to be purchased that way." Just as computers have upended the environment for traditional players such as the NYSE creating new opportunities for Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), computers and the internet are changing the advertising environment. CEO Levy of Publicis Groupe SA says the data explosion, Big Data, is also creating a new playing field in which companies such as Google and Facebook have advantages. In a statement about the deal he says: "the communication and marketing landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, including the exponential development of new media giants, the explosion of Big Data, blurring of roles of all players and profound changes in consumer behaviour." The merger will provide the new company the scale to develop these resources to compete with digital companies like Google and new entrants such as Salesforce.com and Adobe Systems. Omnicom has agencies BBDO, TBWA Worldwide, media buyer OMD. Publicis has Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi, media buyer Starcom MediaVest and digital agency Razorfish. The new Publicis Omnicom Group will have combined revenue of about $23 billion for 2012, and passes WPP Group PLC's $15.95 billion revenue. It will still be much smaller than Google with about 3 times WPP's revenue, and Google's advantage in storing trillions of pieces of data about user behaviour....

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Amazon makes an offer to buy the whole of TikTok on April 1, 2025 before a April 1, 2025 deadline. A law passed in Congress in 2024 was upheld by the US Supreme Court requiring the sale of China based TikTok to American buyers for national security reasons or be closed to US users altogether. Amazon has connections to TikTok where TikTok users refer other users to products which can be bought on Amazon with revenue being passed on to influencers who get a cut on the transactions.

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Turkish president Erdogan says his talks with Mr. Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meetings gave him the impression that Russia would like to end the war as soon as it can. Ukraine is recovering some of the territory lost in the early days of the war in the Luhansk region as its forces advance leading to a situation in which a new phase is reached in the war.

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International aid arrives from the UK, France, US, and the European Union, as India faces a surge of the coronavirus in April 2021. A flight with oxygen and ventilators arrives from the UK. The EU is pooling resources, France is preparing flights with equipment. The United States Biden administration says it will release some of the 60 million doses of Astra Zeneca vaccine to India that remain unused in the US to address vaccine shortages.

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Problems that are emerging as the AfD takes up role of Opposition in legislatures at the state level in Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria. Finding proactive solutions to immigration, cost of living concerns and investing in infrastructure, in education, healthcare, childcare  that would improve the lives of people would go a long way to strengthening democracy at the local and state level in all parts of Germany with the help of the federal government.

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The leaders of Republicans and Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Minority leader Harry Reid, reached a budget compromise with the White House in October 2015 after long closed door negotiations, following years of deadlock in previous years. The compromise lifts sequester spending caps agreed to previously in a previous settlement of differences, and lifts the budget ceiling till March 2017. Speaker Boehner said it was time to "clean out the barn," as he did this over the opposition of Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz from the right wing of his party who opposed his efforts to compromise with Democrats. On October 28, 2015, the House of Representatives passed the two year budget agreement 266-167, and the following day Speaker Boehner passed on the Speaker's position to Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. On Oct. 29, 2015, the Senate voted 64-35 to pass the budget compromise agreement. The agreement increases discretionary spending by $80 billion over 2 years, giving half to defense spending with the increase in military threats overseas, and the other half to domestic spending programs. The domestic spending goes to limit premium increases for some Medicare Part B beneficiaries, and a prevents a 20% across the board cut to Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, set for 2016. This removes the uncertainty posed by threats of a showdown on the budget ceiling and threat of defunding Planned Parenthood posed by right wing Republicans in Congress, which were bad for the economy at a time when the U.S. and Europe faces increasing threats overseas. Without a budget agreement the U.S. Treasury Department would have seen its borrrowing authority expire on Nov. 3, 2015....

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So many Republican districts jobs depend upon the Clean Energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act. Kasey Carpenter, Republican of Dalton, Gerogia says- “So much money has been spent building these facilities. The last thing you want to do is get it all built, and then jobs disappear.”  From August 2022 to December 2024 the private company investment in clean energy is four times greater in Republican Congressional districts than in Democratic districts. NYT provides visual graphs showing this. The investments being $118 billion Republican districts vs $35 billion in Democratic districts.These are investments under the Inflation Reduction Act one of the achievements of the Biden administration that are reflected in the strong economy in 2024. This allocation was for $390 billion for Clean Energy over 10 years. A similar situation is happening for the CHIPS and Science Act investments opf the Biden administration. Lael Brainard of the Biden administration says- "They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies."   ...

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Lloyd's of London is the world's largest insurance market with 35 million pounds in gross written premiums. Payouts for coronavirus are expected to be 6.2 billion pounds, with 3.2 billion pounds reinsured to reduce the losses. Lloyd's shows a loss of 900 million pounds for 2020. Without the crisis Lloyd's would have reported 800 million pounds of profit for 2020.  

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The British government is considering effectively preventing two households from meeting indoors by limiting the number of people meeting indoors to 6 from the 30 now in place. Experts believe a second wave of infections is a distinct possibility if nothing is done especially with higher infections among younger people in Europe after reopening. People are seen as relaxing too much. Young people in Spain and other European countries are a big part of the problem today. In Germany the incidence of cases for 15-24 years is fifteen times the number of cases for 70-79 years in the first week of September, showing how completely reversed the situation has become with young people acting as spreaders of the pandemic. The incidence of new cases is 30 per 100,000 in Germany for 15-24 years compared to just 2 for the 70-79 years. In Berlin it is as high as 43 for 15-24 years and the Health Minister is concerned because in contrast to local groups these individuals can spread it throughout Berlin.  School reopenings in Europe and in America are a distinct danger so that colleges in the U.S are switching back to remote learning because of improper behaviour of young people including parties and gatherings. Tougher restrictions are seen as necessary to get people to pay attention to social distancing that was practiced earlier in April. This is true of Europe, America, and Asia. Even curfews are now being considered. ...