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Marc Gagnon of Quebec meets Waco of Hokkaido on travels together. He makes maple syrup in Tobetsu for a store he opens in Sapporo. Hokkaido sets up his work in the forests of Hokkaido with plans for 200 maple trees in 2007. NHK looks at a remarkable couple and the work making maple syrup using Canadian technology in the forests of Hokkaido, Japan in the NHK series "We are at Home."

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WSJ's Greg Ip points out the realities on the ground for housing inflation- Austin 11% higher prices for housing 2020-2024, for NYC 20%, supply up 17% in Austin NYC only 3%. Austin avoided rent control route in elections even when prices were up 23% in 1 year, rent control freeze is not allowed in Texas. Prices eventually dropped as supply increased. This is a warning sign for NYC primary winner Mamdani's rent freeze and rent control in NYC. This is not to say that landlords have to get their act together and fix homes, and moderate pricing. It is to say that the supply of housing matters and adding supply to housing as the British Labor government is doing in Britain under a socialist/private enterprise oriented government matters. For this to happen a comprehensive policy is needed cutting time to build reducing permit times, and incentivising builders, as well as cutting costs, and building affordable housing. It is a reflection of the degree of desperation that New Yorkers- created by the same educated and the professional workers among them, the rich and the elites- that the vast number of young college educated people are now pushing free buses, rent freeze, and city run grocery stores. And so little discussion is taking place on the comprehensive plan to increase supply of housing and building the new infrastructure in a city where roads and pavements, whole neighborhood infrastructures are crumbling as in Brooklyn. So little discussion on creating a rising tide that lifts all boats. ...

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If only there was some way to get this farm produce to homes. For the government to buy the farm produce and Kroger, Walmart, or some other volunteer agency to distribute it to homes and food banks. Much of it is now being destroyed, even as people stocking up canned foods in their pantry are not able to eat healthy for months, as fresh fruits and vegetables are  needed now more than ever with so much time spent inside. The ample time to cook and learn, to try new recipes, also makes this waste of fresh fruit and vegetables a poor national response in this crisis. A supplement to the government farm aid program should be set up and money set aside for the purpose of getting this produce out of farmers hands and into homes at little cost to families, in the effort to keep them healthy with so much time spent inside. 

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With more vaccines available from Pfizer and Moderna, and the poor SinoVac Chinese vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant, Brazil and other countries in Latin America and Asia are shifting away from Chinese vaccines. Brazil's federal government has halted negotiations for additional doses of Chinese vaccines. In the early stages in 2020 Chinese vaccines helped Brazil cope with the devastating rise in cases. The slow pace of vaccinations in US and Europe has freed up more vaccine doses of Pfizer for other countries including Brazil. From accounting for 80% of vaccines in Brazil early in 2020, SinoVac vaccines now make up only 35% of Brazil's vaccine doses. At that time Brazil bought 100 million doses of SinoVac vaccine which were delivered. The local producer of SinoVac vaccine, the Butantan Institute will no longer make Chinese vaccines. While Sinovac vaccines are effective at preventing deaths, the vaccines have a low effectiveness rate for symptomatic infections. ...

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The Space Shuttle with astronauts Behnken and Hurley makes a sea landing in the Gulf of Mexico after a 64 day trip to the Space Station orbiting the earth. 

After the retirement of the Space Shuttles in 2011 NASA relied mainly on Russia to send astronauts up into orbit to connect with Space Stations. Under the Obama administration two private companies were hired by NASA to operate Space Shuttles SpaceX and Boeing to take astronauts up to the space station in orbit. Much of the work to build the spacecraft is financed by NASA. 

Space exploration was not a priority for the Obama administration after the financial crisis resulting from banking behaviour in 2009.The U.S. under the Trump administration is renewing America's efforts for space exploration for science and out of a curiosity for what lies outside our planet.

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The higher risk of infection in counties in the U.S. that did not impose stay at home orders and enforce them is shown in this report in the NYT. Florida has counties in the list and the state only imposed a lockdown in the state as a whole on March 25. People in Jacksonville and Tampa continued to travel at a higher rate than people in other parts of the country says this report in NYT. In Louisiana not till March 20 weeks after after Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans was travel reduced significantly. 

It takes 2-3 weeks of this higher travel to show up in data about infected people. Dr Fauci, the leading health expert on the crisis, says the impact of following the stay at home lockdown shows up in the reduced level of new cases in many areas, making this change in behaviour very critical.

 

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U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell tells the Washington Post in an exclusive interview that the dynamics surrounding the Trans Pacific Agreement pushed by president Obama have changed. He sees little prospect of it passing Congress before president Obama leaves office, and says it will be up to the next president to take it up after Obama leaves office in Jan. 2017. McConnell said that there is a lot of pushback all over the place. The Republican frontrunners Trump and Cruz both oppose the TPP, and all Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton oppose it. In addition tobacco interests in McConnell's home state of Kentucky and pharmaceutical interests backing Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican Finance chairman also oppose aspects of the negotiated deal. Labor unions, the automobile industry, environmental groups, and public interest groups, have strongly opposed provisions of the TPP that hurt workers and the public interest from the beginning, making it a risky proposition for Congressmen coming up for reelection in 2016. The divergence between the Republican establishment and the presidential front runners Trump and Cruz also have diluted support in Congress on the Republican side, making it a no win proposition....

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Microsoft's Satya Nadella got his start at age 24 at Bing search engine. He is now 56 years. During this period he worked with both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer who succeeded Gates at Microsoft. He is now remaking the Bing Search engine by using AI. This has happened since 2018 when he met Altman at the Sun Valley Tech conference in Idaho. He invested $1 billion in Altman's OpenAI, and has recently brought in Suleyman of Inflection who is a competitor of  Altman's OpenAI into Microsoft with the idea of setting up an internal AI business as well. To do this he has invested $10 billion in advanced AI chips that he has bought from chipmakers which have reduced the capital available for Microsoft's other businesses. This WSJ report by Dotan and Jin says Altman started his venture because he did not want to let AI to be led by Google silently developing its own version and doing leapfrog over competitors. A At this point in 2024 Google, Facebook and Amazon are building their own AI talent and making large investments in the chips that support AI. It is rapidly becoming an oligopoly of a few tech companies that makes deals among themselves for strategic advantage and protect themselves from public or government regulatory scrutiny. The controversy surrounding the firing and rehiring of Altman at OpenAI has brought new scrutiny from the FTC. The monopolistic behaviour of tech companies and their splitting the tech market among themselves as Google and Apple have done show the need for government action to prevent a repeat of this in AI. And to take action to break up existing monopolies in Search engines and in the Internet as Theodore Roosevelt did at the turn of the century for the oil business, breaking up Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Esso. Only when that happens can the true potential of the Internet be realized for Education, Health and other fields. Who can say that the iPad or iPhone or Google's Search engine has increased global literacy or American literacy? By freeing up these technologies- that belong to the people of America and the world- for education, health and other fields of human development mankind can advance once again. By regulating provide the ground rules for good use instead of the current danger of the Internet acting in ways to reduce public knowledge to levels that cannot sustain democratic process, and create stratified society where each group only sees what it has seen before and does not explore the world or knowledge in all its variety, all its ability to surprise us with new discoveries. ...

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Dealogic reports show 64 U.S. listed IPO's raised $16.8 billion in the first 5 months of 2013, up from the $13.1 billion raised by 73 companies in the same period in 2012. Recent price gains by IPO's are driven by the lack of alternatives to stocks for investors in a low interest rate environment.

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Worst performing are Nissan and Renault cars, says this report in The Times, going up to 11 times the legal limit for emissions, according to a study for the UK.

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Rate of diabetes is rapidly going up in India. In addition scientists have shown that Indians are more prone to diabetes if they are obese to the same extent as someone from Canada or the U.S. This is called thin-fat diabetes- a higher impaired glucose intolerance- and comes from centuries of body changes following famine in parts of the country from failure of monsoon rains. The obesity rate is going up dramatically and with it diabetes is up significantly.  From 6.4% obese or overweight in 1990, by 2017 18.8% are obese or overweight, according to Health Metrics and Evaluation Institute of the University of Washington. The International Diabetes Federation now predicts 123 million with diabetes in India by 2040. By 2017 diabetes rates went up from 1990- from 5.5% to 7.7% or 63 million people. The major problem in South Asian countries and in China is the growing use of packaged and processed foods, fast food and carbonated drinks. Efforts to prevent the sale of junk foods is a battle being fought between private citizens and the large processed foods companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle. This is the subject of this article with Mr. Verma taking the case to the Delhi High Court facing large opposition. Mr. Verma left his job as a marketing executive as he took care of his sick child. He filed a case in the Delhi High Court in 2010, and faces the opposition of the India Food Processors Association- so far there is little progress.   ...

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Sophie Egan has put together this wonderful clarification of what works well in foods and what one should eat by taking apart some myths. Myth No.10 is that stuff on nutrition is always changing. It isn't and she gives Michael Pollan's seven words as an example- "Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants." A recent book has title Ikigai, on people with healthy bodies and minds well into their nineties. It pulls together information from persons in Okinawa, Japan, who passed one hundred years and they say not eating too much, eating plant foods, and community spirit, a passion for doing something worthwhile that you enjoy doing and do well referred to in Japanese as Ikigai, is a way to keep healthy. Other myth clarification- Sophie Egan offers is that soy based foods are good for us, and that plant protein when consumed in different forms can give complete nutrition. Not all fats are bad olive oil and seeds nuts are good for us, and white potatoes are also healthy eaten with the skin. All this adds up to good common sense without getting tied up into knots by too much attention to studies. ...

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Ashwini Bhide was first shown by Corinne Abrams of the WSJ, for the bold vision she was putting forward for meeting the aspirations of young Indians for a better place to live in, in one of India's largest cities Mumbai. As head of the Mumbai Metro Rail project, IAS 1995 batch, Ashwini Bhide worked tirelessly to make a dream of Mumbai residents to move quickly through new state of the art rail services with modern technology come true. A dream held up for decades in which millions of Mumbai residents put up with old, dilapidated, and incomplete rail services. Abrams called it a most audacious project to break open Mumbai's belly to make this happen. On the way Bhide had to overcome many hurdles, including a two year gap in 2020-2022 that reflected the way things had slowed down for decades. It is a top priority today for the federal and state governments and is to be completed in 2024.This is meeting the aspirations of young Indians for a better country, a better future. It is work that Mohandas Gandhi would be proud of for Young India a century later. ...

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This WSJ report on developers and home buyers in Tianjin show how the government policy of controlling speculation in housing prices affects ordinary home buyers when prices drop. A homebuyer from Hebei province hoped to find a better life in Tianjin, better education for her children. She used her entire savings and borrowed from relatives to pull together funds to buy an apartment for 1.5 million yuan. She is desperate paying the mortgage of 3700 yuan, works several part time jobs, and is mortified at the drop in price of the apartment, in this report. For decades housing prices were going up, now the government has sent clear messages that housing speculation has to stop and home prices for the first time are moderating to increases of about 4% a year and are falling in some cities including Beijing, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. The governments message is that people should use apartments for living, not for speculative price increase and profit. Local governments have their own reasons to prop up this speculation as they have for decades now depended on land sales to meet economic growth targets, a situation unique to China, which has financed a lot of the local infrastructure including overspending. ...

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A sense that the U.S. and Britain have still not got contact tracing right. Contact tracing is key to controlling the pandemic and letting jobs come back to normal. We've got to get contact tracing right say communities and experts across the U.S.  About 30 per every 100,000 people are needed. but the U.S. has got only a fraction of this. By the time it is organized more people can get infected, and this is a very serious problem. Indiana for instance needs 2000 contact tracers for six million people. With this so disorganized communities are taking up the task themselves. The Mt. Carmel Indian fire department is putting its 171 fire fighters on this job as additional work as contact tracers.States need to take up this task and do this quickly following the German example where speed is what counts and low tech is the way to go, requiring only a computer with a central database and a phone, and most important the good human relations skills to make calling work with people facing a strange formidable virus. Too much time is being wasted on high tech apps. See the German example by searching for "Germany contact tracing." ...

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In speaking about Indian democracy and human freedom not mentioned was the unprecedented food security or freedom from hunger that was offered to one sixth of the world's population in India since March 2021, year of the pandemic. Not mentioned was the unprecedented health security or freedom from viral epidemic that was offered to the same people in that period with 900 million vaccine doses. Not mentioned was the freedom of expression in 15 Indian languages including freedom to write about the government at local, state and federal levels in the country with a wider spread of language and regional dialects than Europe for 75 years since independence. Not mentioned was the struggle within this democracy to give the younger generation of people under 30 who make up the biggest part of the population an opportunity for the first time in about one thousand years to take charge of their own future. All this one can see with open eyes and open mind. These are also the young people who have the most to gain or lose from the wrong actions at the wrong time, as they take up the challenges of modernization of a clean and vibrant infrastructure friendly India of the future.  ...

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The Truss government UK budget in September 2022 does little for the most vulnerable populations in the cost of living crisis. It also fail to take any significant steps to build up energy supplies. Of all the governments in the G-7 countries France, Germany, Italy, Canada, it is the weakest when it comes to promoting social cohesion or taking action to promote both energy supplies and renewable energy for the transition during climate change. Spain has just introduced a wealth tax for the 1%. Nothing like this is seen here, instead the highest tax of 45% is scrapped at a time when the wealthiest are seen by most people in all the G-7 countries as the most able and even willing today after the pandemic to provide help to the vulnerable and weakest parts of the population. It is seen as delusional by some as it does not inspire much confidence in the financial markets and many in the Conservative party itself. It fails the test even Mr. Boris Johnson set himself of leveling up in Britain between the well off and the less well off in society which led to his election and the election of the Truss government with Johnsopn's support. ...

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$700 million loss on a clean beauty brand during the pandemic by Carlyle taking money from investors. During the pandemic Carlyle private equity invested $700 million of investor's money in Beauty Counter, a direct seller of a clean beauty brand started by Mrs Renfrew. The product and concept failed. This is $700 million that could have been invested in much needed nation's infrastructure projects, in climate change action, in renewable energy, in healthcare, in education, with reasonable returns. Capital market misallocation is a huge problem for the last 2 decades, with hundreds of billions of dollars lost or wasted in dubious products such as $100 million for a new golf ball with hundreds of such projects and products that are not vital needs for the American people. Tax benefits for such dubious projects and ideas lead to more revenue that is diverted away from the essential needs of the Nation and the American people. Over two decades this adds up to huge losses which would mean a lot of the Nation's infrastructure could have been replaced by now using this money. The capital allocation system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up to meet the vital needs of the Nation and the American people. ...

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As the first military plane with 100 deportees from the US lands in Amritsar in the Punjab state, there is this reflection in India on why migrants decide to come mostly from Gujarat and Punjab two of India's prosperous states, and Gujarat a centre for industrial development under Vikshit Bharat 2047. Modi visits Washington Feb 12 for meetings with DJT.  Times of India says agencies that track illegal migrants report 90,415 migrants illegally entered the US from Mexico or Canada between October 2023 to Sept 2024. Half of the 90,415 migrants were from Gujarat. The two leading states for migrants are Punjab, Gujarat followed by Haryana, UP and Maharashtra.  In the Punjab this report shows business communities and urban professionals as part of the illegal migrant flow looking for better life- for reasons of governance, and social security, including people from well to do families. And not for reasons of job scarcity. And this is changing demographis with decline in population in Punjab with it being made up by migration from Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar states into Punjab.     ...

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This report in The Times shows how Africa is tackling malaria by using modern methods such as drones. Drones are used in Ghana to send medicine to remote parts of the country. The rollout of the world's first malaria vaccine is taking place in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya. The Glaxo developed vaccine requires 4 doses over 18 months. Gavi is a partnership that brings UNICEF and WHO in partnership with private companies to  buy vaccines in bulk and distribute them where it is not affordable. Gavi supported 66 million vaccines in 2018 for children, yet about 20 million children in Nigeria, Congo and other parts of Africa lacked routine immunizations in 2018. UPS and health service workers are joining in the effort for administering this vaccine correctly.  Software that tracks the taking of the vaccines by children is essential for success and this is being implemented with Ghanian authorites. This report shows how it is done in Dateng, Ghana, a town of 800 people 3 hour drive from Accra.  ...

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Labor Department reports U.S. created 209,000 jobs in July 2014. The unemployment rate goes up slightly to 6.2%. Wages went up only by a penny and remain only 2% higher than a year ago. Retail was up by 27,000 jobs, manufacturing by 28,000 in July. Economists say the steep drop in the unemployment rate to 6.2% does not reflect the true conditions in the labor market, as the labor force participation rate is at 62.9%. One economist called this disturbing as some of the youngest workers are dropping out of the labor force. The Alliance for American Manufacuring pointed out that the U.S. manufacturing sector has recovered only about 30% of jobs lost during the recession following the 2009 financial crisis. It said the the lack of investment in infrastructure, high trade deficits and currency manipulation by China and Japan, remain obstacles for American manufacturing's resurgence.

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Dr. Laurie Glimcher of Weill Cornell Medical College talks to Adam Bryant of NYT on the leadership qualities required in scientific fields. She says inspiration and daring has to be backed up with a lot of persistence and perseverance. Many ideas says Glimcher, are wrong. It takes time and effort for scientists to get acceptance of new ideas to replace old beliefs. In the history of science this can be seen as a recurring pattern with each discovery, each scientist struggling to get new ideas tested and proved to win acceptance.

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The present grid was conceived 100 years ago so it cannot accomodate the transmission demands of wind energy turbines. First the location of these wind farms is in places like upstate New York or in places in the prairies like Kansas and possibly in places like Wyoming where the wind blows relentlessly and the major population areas are farther away, the transmission capacity of lines in these sparsely populated areas is small and so getting the wind energy out to where its needed is a problem. Building bigger transmission lines runs into getting support from different states and property owners as the states have jurisdiction and not the federal government over transmission lines and this requires a lot of people giving approvals thus holding up a rapid improvement except in Texas where Pickens is trying to get energy from the western parts to the Dallas area and has the full support of the state apparatus.

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Making stuff- machining and other skills -are now cool in American schools. You Tube reality show "Clash of Trades" and building up prestige of machining skills and machining jobs in the trades from a young age. Young people are getting excited about making things again.Other articles in NYT and elsewhere in media this month show how the big tech companies have become huge and  bureuacratic, so big that no one cares for the individual, its just get on with it. Computer coding jobs not just in the US but also in India are not glamorous anymore, as companies employ tens of thousands of programmers in many locations and are not responsive. 

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Plaid Cymru leader says "decades of complacency caught up with them," and he derides Starmer's "managerial politics." Lucy Powell is shown on this page charting a new course for Labour as deputy leader elected by 54% amidst all this chaos of the Starmer leadership years. A sense of conviction and doing what is right with all the conviction and hard work that backs it is missing in the Starmer leadership. Labour needs to get back to listening to its grassroots and be what it truly is a party of the working classes, the middle class and the vast segments of the whole people of Britain.