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This report in The Guardian looks at vaccine misinformation in TikTok videos that are viewed by children. The spread of vaccine misinformation on social media aggravates vaccine hesitancy problem creating severe health risks for everyone during the pandemic. Vaccine drives have stalled in US and Europe causing grave concern about new waves of the pandemic.

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Spain's cabinet announced new changes to labor laws to provide incentives to business to hire. Spain has some of the most restrictive labor laws in Europe and high unemployment. The unemployment rate reached 23% in December 2011, and about half of the people under 26 are unemployed. The cost of downsizing is so high in Spain that Spain's representative on the executive committe of the European Central Bank, Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo, says companies prefer to close rather than downsize. The World Bank has singled out the labor laws as one of the main reasons for Spain's rising unemployment rate. New rules will reduce severance payments to 33 days per year of employment from 45 days. Severance packages will be reduced to a maximum of 24 months from 48 months. To encourage companies to hire permanent workers and depend less on temporary workers the new rules say employers must switch temporary workers to permanent contracts after two instead of three years. As an incentive for companies with a maximum of 50 employees to hire young people the rules give a 3000 euros corporate tax break for each new person hired under age 30. If the hired person was jobless he can still collect 25% of previous unemployment benefits for a limited period with 50% of the unemployment benefits going to the employer. Companies having losses for three consecutive quarters are allowed to pay less in severance payments- only 20 days per year of employment. Companies will now find it easier to leave collective bargaining agreements and make deals with their own staff. Luis Garicano, a professor at the London School of Economics, says this is a good step forward. He finds missing from the new rules subsidies to train young and unemployed people given the high dropout rates in Spanish schools. The government approved the rules by decree, but they will be discussed in the Spanish parliament. The government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy was recently elected with an overwhelming majority in parliament. This makes making major changes different from the process in Italy where a consensus has to be established....

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Some of the airlines that are seeing significant increases in airline passengers are Etihad Airways, and Quatar Airways, others like Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Southwest, singapore, Cathay and LAN airlines are seeing increases in passegers. This separates them from airlines especially in the USA that are having to pay higher fuel prices with a weaker dollar, and lower proportion of international traffic and a very competitive market. As some airlines are shrinking others are buying new fuel efficient planes and moving into routes left by the shrinking airlines, and using their cash reserves to hedge fuel costs, and some like Singapore Airlines are attracting customers with premium services for premium prices.

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Renault's low cost entry cars which were originally designed with emerging markets in mind, are now popular in France and other countries in Europe. Renault gets 30% of its market share, up from 15% in 2006, from low cost cars like the Logan, which cost conscious buyers buy for around $10,000, instead of buying a used car. This has helped Renault at a time when other segments are not doing so well, and when Peugeot had to arrrange a 1 billion euro emergency capital increase. The profit margin on these low cost cars is 6%, compared to 2-3% profit margin on other Renault models. Renault manufactures the cars under the Renault label or the Dacia lavel depending on where they are sold, and uses a factory in Romania. Renault's model is to set the margin first and then ask suppliers such as LG and others to try to come up with a low cost design that meets its margin requirement. This eliminates features that add cost and may be dispensed with for the customer in mind. It requires a fresh approach. Cutting edge is replaced by working with parts designed for older models that cost less. Renault also used the experience gained in the Romanian factory where some of the tasks are done manually instead of using robots, and waste is reduced. The process has taken time because the Dacia Romanian factory was acquired under a previous CEO Louis Schweitzer in the late 1990's, and the first Dacia Logan was made in the Romanian factory at Pitesti, near Bucharest, in 2004. The reliability of the Dacia made cars is well established, say experts. On the sales side the Logan is sold on a no discount basis with fixed price. Dealers are told no discounts are permitted. Total sales of these cars reached 814,000 in 2011 and are expected to cross 1 million in 2012. This is similiar to the achievement of Toyota with its low cost multipurpose vehicles for emerging markets, which is expected to cross 1 million in 2012. The difference is that Renault has achieved this with European buyers in a bold strategy. Tata Motors which pioneered the effort to build low cost small cars with its $2000 vehicle is planning its own entry in Europe, the Pixel as a low cost city-car in European markets in 2015. And Renault is moving further down in cost than the Logan, as its next step, with such a car manufactured in India by Nissan-Renault and regional partners....

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The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact led by Japan and the U.S. moves to the next stage with legislation introduced by Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden in the U.S. Congress for granting trade promotion authority to the U.S. president. This would facilitate the negotiation of an agreement leading to concessions by different countries. Talks between Japan and the U.S. intensified with the U.S. president Obama saying in his 2015 State of the Union message that China wanted to write the rules for trade in Asia, and asking why the U.S. should not work to write its own rules. Defense Secretary, Aston Carter, called it more important than another aircraft carrier. Support from Europe, India and other countries for the China sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, as a rival to the U.S. dominated World Bank and IMF, also give urgency to the TPP. The TPP countries, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Peru and Chile, make up over $400 billion of about $4 trillion in U.S. trade, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The TPP is now seen not just a free trade pact, but also as away to counter China's influence in Asia. Experts see the Obama administration as having bungled its handling of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which the U.S. did not join, and its allies in Europe, other Asian countries including India, decided to join as founding members. Democrats in Congress led by Senator Schumer, Warren, oppose the legislation granting fast track for free trade pacts citing the loss of jobs and lowering of wages for workers in manufacturing in the U.S., with only about a dozen Democrats favoring the legislation, leading to a split in the party. Projections by Peter Petri, Michael Plummer, Fan Zhai, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, show a net negative impact on depressed wage sectors such as U.S. manufacturing with additional $45 billion in U.S. imports and $35 billion in exports for heavy manufacturing from the TPP free trade pact, and additional $33 billion of U.S. imports and $10 billion exports in light manufacturing by 2025. Higher wage sectors such as U.S. Services including IT get a boost with additional $42 billion in exports and $ 8 billion imports. Agriculture shows insignificant gains with additional exports of $2 billion and imports of 0.5 billion. The auto and transport sector disproportionately favors Japan with $33 billion in additional U.S. imports and $8 billion in exports. ...

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Russian president Putin tells the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, before his visit to Italy, that the failure to carry out the agreement of Feb. 2015 called Minsk II- following the eruption in fighting at Debaltseve and Mariupol in eastern Ukraine- is because of the Poroshenko government in Kiev. He called on the U.S. and Europe to pressure the government in Kiev. The Ukrainian position is that the local elections cannot move forward until pro-Russian fighters and weapons are withdrawn, and the control of the border with Russia is given back to Ukraine. As western sanctions on Russia over intervention in Ukraine are coming up for renewal at a meeting of the G-7, Putin said he was committed to the Minsk II agreement for autonomy to be given to the region of the Luhatsk and Donetsk republics, which were established in the east with Russian assistance. Putin told the newspaper in an interview: "The document we agreed upon in Minsk, called Minsk II, is the best agreement and perhaps the only unequivocal solution to this problem. We would never have agreed upon it if we had not considered it to be right, just and feasible. On our part, we take every effort, and will continue to do so, in order to influence the authorites of the unrecognized, self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics. But not everything depends on us. Our European and U.S. partners should exert influence on the current Kiev administration, We do not have the power, as Europe and the U.S. do, to convince Kiev to carry out everything that was agreed on in Minsk." That the two sides are far apart on issues is shown by Ukraine president Poroshenko's position that for an election to take place for implementing decentralization in the eastern region of Donetsk and Luhansk - "It is impossible to provide the election when the bandits and terrorists with guns are on the street. This is not free and not fair." Putin's position is that " Specifically there needs to be a constitutional reform to ensure the autonomous rights of the unrecognized republics. The Kiev authorites do not want to call it autonomy- they prefer different terms, such as decentralization. Our European partners, those very partners who wrote the corresponding clause in the Minsk agreements, explained what should be understood as decentralization. It gives them the right to speak their language, to have their own cultural identity and engage in cross-border trade- nothing special beyond the civilized understanding of ethnic minorities' rights in any European country." ...

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The US Fed under Jerome Powell stress tests of 31 banks for 2024 shows the banks can withstand a rise in unemployment to 10% and 36% drop in house prices. This is relevant now that the new administration of DJT makes another effort to correct the huge trade imbalance with China, Mexico and Canada, which itself is destabilizing in the long run and needs to be addressed. The first term of DJT failed to correct the imbalance with new tariffs kept in place by the Biden administration. This is not just one's imagination, reports suggest China has poured $230 billion of subsidies into its EV industry since 2003 mandate given by premier Jen Biao to dominate that industry. And now has capacity of 20 million car production a year, twice the domestic demand in gasoline cars, wanting to send the surplus production to the US and Europe. This isn't the 1930's type of tariffs, it is simply to get a fair even playing field for trade, where no one side is massively subsidizing and dumping which is one of the principles of WTO free trade that is being broken by China and Mexico. Specifically the anti dumping clause in Article 6 of the 1994 GATT agreement on free world trading mechanism to ensure free and fair trade. ...

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Michio Suzuki of Hammamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan, comes across as a rare figure in Japan's industrial history as one who spanned the entire period of Japan's rise as industrial power running a major textile and automobile company from 1909 when he founded Suzuki to 1978. Starting with manufacture of textile looms Suzuki saw the potential of motorized transportation in the 1920's. After the war it shifted from wartime production to introduce the first e-bike Power Free in 1952. He was succeeded by his son in law Osamu Suzuki who became another icon in automobiles by running Suzuki from 1978 to 2021 for 43 years. Between the two Michio and Osamu it spans a period 1909-2022 of 113 years, the period of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and Asia. In 1979 Osamu introduced the car for small spaces, the Alto, that is one of the most sold cars. In 1980 Osamu started the partnership of Suzuki with Maruti of India, that brought the Alto to Indian streets changing the industrial landscape of India. Here he is shown with PM Modi in 2022 celebrating 40 years of Maruti partnership with Suzuki. The writer remembers Maruti Suzuki from visits in the 1990's with higher management of the company in India on TQM education project.  ...

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 China exports to the US $438 billion vs $143 billion the US sends to China - the US deficit with China 2024 equals $295 billion. This is the fact that the media continues to ignore. Behind this is the gutting of the industrial base of the US shipped offshore to China since 2000 by American companies. 5 million jobs lost and tens of thousands of factories destroying the backbone of the economy, America's middle class.  Much of the US exports are oil and gas which can be shipped to Europe, India and other places. The soyabeans and grain from America's farmers is the other part of exports of $13 billion. The US can find other markets for the farm products including India under a trade agreement, and farmers can be supported with agricultural subsidies. It only makes sense to rebuild America's industrial base and pull back from an unfair trade arrangement that can only be the result of serious neglect of their responsibilities of previous administrations before DJT in 2016. The piecemeal efforts 2016-2024 have not worked to rebuild America's middle class,  recover jobs and factories, as a result a new bolder approach is needed in 2025 to rewrite the rules for world trade for an even playing field where everyone is treated with fairness. ...

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Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. Here he looks at the origins of the term "people of color" and to what extent there are changes in America that relate to the relevance of the use of the term in American vocabulary. He says the "people of color" term in our vocabulary was based on the idea that America was a white supremacist society that would not give average people, disadvantaged people a fair chance for a better life, whether they be the 48 million black people, 62 million Spanish speaking people, or the 25 million Asian people. To a large extent as America moves into the middle of the 21st century most Americans see themselves as part of the creation of the Modern World, with science and technology at its core.  Even Spain which early in the 16th century settled this continent, for two centuries lost its place in the Modern World created in Northern Europe after the Renaissance, falling into poverty, then recovered its origins when it joined the modern world in the 1970's by joining the European Union. A science museum  financed with EU funds in the ancient city of Valencia, Spain, brings Spanish children in every day to know Spain's own achievements in science and the advancing world of technology. ...

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The US view of the response by India to a terrorist attack in Phalgam, Kashmir, Indian Union territory with strikes on terrorist camps. J.D. Vance US vice president says- “Our hope here is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict.” “And we hope, frankly, that Pakistan to the extent that they’re responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with.” Vance was forced to cut short his visit to India after visiting Jaipur, Rajasthan in India when the terrorists with a history of aid from Pakistan killed 31 tourists in Phalgam, Kashmir. A long history of terrorist or militia trained in Pakistan has led to  terrorist incidents all over the world for the last three decades including the Kashmir and Afghanistan conflicts, the last having drawn Russia and the US into long wars which depleted their resources and led to loss of many lives. Yet much of the media remains oblivious of this in the US and Europe, and how it has led to the rise of China using this period of conflict under Bush and Obama since 2000, and the access to US, EU technologies and assistance. ...

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Yuen Yuen Ang presents the view that China is an autocracy with democracy characteristics. Her view of Xi is conventional reflecting contemporary ideas. Yet Xi was profoundly influenced by his father Xi Zhongxun and mother Qi Xin, revolutionary heroes in the fight against the British, Japanese and Chiang Nationalists which shape his view of the world. Zhongxun also shaped the response to the struggle for modernization after failures of the Maoist period, in efforts he made under Deng. In this sense he adapted to different conditions. This view of China's leaders is that they are intuitive and human, that China is simply responding intuitively under Xi to the conditions it faces and perceptions about these conditions to maintain the wellbeing of the vast majority of the Chinese people after the century of struggles 1850-1950 and later missteps. The experiment with capitalism and a new generation with no memories of the past meant to Xi and other Chinese leaders that everything that an earlier generation (his own parents) had fought for in the struggle against the British and Japanese invasions could be lost quickly, if China was allowed to fall into the kind of corruption and self-seeking leaders that marked the Chiang regime of the 1930's. This led to the effort to consolidate the gains of the Chinese nation made over 2 centuries since the rise of the British in Asia in 1800, with Xi seeing no choice but to take responsibility and the initiative as his father Zhongxun had done in the 1930's and 1940's to breakout of isolated regions in the north of China. The sudden shift to adapt to open covid policy is also apparent from Zhongxun's ability to adapt to and lead the changes after Deng's experiment with a market economy. A report by Rohan Premkumar in the Hindu on Jan 25 on a British sub-jail in the Nilgiri hills of Tamilnadu shows prisoners from the Opium wars with China sent to this jail by the British. These events still shape Chinese perceptions of the world- the backwardness in faceoffs with the west and the cost to the mainland Asian nations India and China. Inland river based civilizations on the Ganges and the Yangtze that failed, as Adam Smith says in The Wealth of Nations, to change in ways that the Renaissance  and the Industrial Revolution changed Europe. ...

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Mira Patel provides this report in great detail on how Indians living in the UK have grown from a tiny minority of 30,000 before independence in 1947 with little recognition in the UK to a population of 250,000 by 1961. In the years after 1945 many of the Sikhs and Punjabis in the British Army stayed in the UK. Two more waves of migration followed one with the East African Indians coming to the UK and one with Sikhs going to the UK. Race Relations Act of 1968 and a bill in 1961 changed the nature of immigrants to more professional people and students to maintain racial balance. By 1971 there were 483,000 Indians in the UK. Even today with 1.4 million Indians in the UK this forms only 2.5% of the UK population. Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel have important positions in the 2 year old Boris Johnson government yet too much can be read into this. Both are not deeply popular among the British public. Penny Mordaunt is the favorite at the grassroots of the Conservative Party. When one looks at the immigrant communities of Indians in the UK at one time in the 1880's only one MP Dadabhai Naoroji was in the British parliament. Today there are several ministers but mostly in a collapsing Conservative party administration of Boris Johnson. By comparison most of the Indian community migration in America has developed deeper roots and merged with the consciousness of the American society and public. Sunak and Patel are seen by most of the Labour grassroots as elitist, a kind of Macaulay class that Mira Patel describes. Macaulay a Britisher of the period of the British East India Company described the need in 1800's for a class of Indians "Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect." This Indian diaspora is a distinct Indian entity which is why it is a class of Indians that Macaulay coveted says Mira Patel, but one that she says forms leaders in Britain not leaders in India. In some ways the US is different with less of the class society that the Empire and the Tory party represent. And in this way formed under a country that fought this very same Empire the Indian community in the US seems to have integrated into the vision of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln in ways that cannot be imagined in Britain or in Europe. ...

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This report in WSJ says China's government faces severely strained government finances. Local government entities sale of land financed 40% of local government revenues in China, and most of these have dried up with the very real loss of confidence in property sector. Government now faces $900 billion in shortfall in revenues says this report. There may be psychological hurdles in China's growth with the effects on mental health from lockdowns in major cities, the revolt in the property sector with home buyers losing confidence in developers, the loss of confidence of foreign investors from US and EU. The dependence on the property sector to carry so large a burden of growth for the last 2 decades in China may now look like an error. The dependence on foreign investment may also be an error as the loss of confidence could mean some withdrawal and a lack of sustained investment.  It could even be said that restraints on both sectors property and foreign investors could have created alternative paths to growth, and reduced the shift of factories from the US and Europe to China that have now caused trade friction and and a reverse shift of investment back to home countries of US and EU. Trade friction has it appears backfired in a way that extends to the overall relationship which could have been prevented by preventing the hyper growth that happened. Greg Ip of the WSJ has argued that compared to Japan's growth in the sixties and seventies from a country of 100 million the hyper growth for a country of 1 billion for 2 decades created a massive impact on communities in US and EU that were dependent on factories that were lost to China. This has alienated large sectors of the public in the US and EU which could have been prevented by restraints on hyper growth in China. Ip says the growth was too large and too fast for the US to cope. It may have permanently damaged the relations between the two countries showing that trade and globalization had unintended effects when left to business which has no comprehension of how the macro developments can affect the relations between the peoples if the other effects in the relationship such as community impacts are ignored which business says is not its role,  and governments staying away from keeping an eye on how it was happening and adjusting for ill effects with restraint and redirection of business policies. ...

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After 2 years of the pandemic's devastating effects on health, governments around the world decided to protect ordinary people from the effects of higher prices for staples and food with the increase in inflation. This WSJ report takes a detailed look at different countries and how they after coping with the effects on total debt and debt servicing needs of moves such as subsidies and tax cuts. The situation is exacerbated by the Ukraine war which affects wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia, and the high oil prices as a result of the war. The effects shown by country are- China- consumers are protected from high oil prices by regulated retail gasoline prices. As oil prices keep going up state owned refineries will bear a disproportionate share of the burden of high prices. India- The government has set aside $40 billion in aid as subsidies for oil and fertilizer. This will support farmers and consumers for fiscal year to March 2023. It will make it harder to cut the budget deficit from 6.9% of GDP to 6.4%. Pakistan - A subsidy of $1.5 billion was given for diesel, gasoline and electricity by the Imran Khan government. This did not have IMF approval and talks are taking place on the IMF program between the government and IMF for it to continue. Rampant inflation has led to reduced popularity of the Imran Khan government. Argentina- A new program to refinance $44 billion in debt with IMF assistance is being affected by the subsidies for oil and electricity. About 800,000 tons of grain are being diverted to the domestic market from exports. Agricultural producers such as Argentina have better protection from higher food prices. In Argentina 40% of the people are living below poverty and the country has 50% inflation.  Malaysia and Indonesia- Both countries are exporters of commodities and higher prices could provide additional revenues to meet higher import prices, says the WSJ. Egypt- higher prices for wheat imported from Ukraine and Russia where Egypt gets 70% of its wheat needs have increased cost of subsidies by $1 billion. Kenya- Fuel subsidy costs will increase by $500 million over 2 years. Europe- In France 400 million euros relief package and in Spain 500 million euros relief package for energy price increases. In Germany cash payments to taxpayers, heavily discounted transportation tickets, and price caps on gasoline and diesel.   ...

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Warnings to governments and leaders in industry and pharmaceutical research about epidemic preparedness by Bill Gates were ignored. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new vaccines and create disease tracking systems. But only governments could tackle this problem. He tells the WSJ in an interview that he feels terrible and that he wishes he had done more. His fear that a once in a century pandemic has come true. Governments did respond to the public health preparation needs as reported in France 24 to both SARS and the H1N1, both in Britain and France. It was the disbanding of this effort in the period of the global financial crisis and the eurozone financial crisis that led to the level of unpreparedness that Western Europe finds itself in today. This was caused by irresponsible banking practices. The response was austerity measures in Britain, France, Germany and Spain that led to leaving public health system investment being neglected, without fixing the original source of the problem. Misallocation of capital and lopsided priorities continued through most of the period leading up to the pandemic. There is a lot that Gates and other public spirited leaders could do now do in the new reordering of priorities and shifting the allocation of capital to public services and investments in infrastructure, and supply chain renewal to safeguard national interests. Today he is working with pharmaceutical executives and governments to produce billions of doses of vaccines while they are being tested. His foundation has reserved space in a manufacturing plant so that production can begin quickly once an effective vaccine is found. He says nobody has made 7 billion vaccines so that it will need all the help that it can get and international cooperation.  In an earlier interview with WSJ he told the interviewer in November 2014 that the world as a whole did not have preparedness. France and Britain prepared and then abandoned the effort for epidemic response by 2012 following the global financial and eurozone financial crises. Gates repeated the warning to 2016 presidential candidates in the U.S.  In 2017 at the Munich Security Conference he reminded people- "getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe." One focus of Gates was to come up with faster ways to a vaccine by using ready made components and then customizing it. This is an approach being adopted today by Oxford scientists and by Quidel Corp. in the U.S.   ...

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A nuclear plant in a war zone with repeated shelling? This is taken up in this debate video of 44 minutes in FR24 which you can click on. The world has not seen this since the start of nuclear energy from plants in the 1950's. Calder Hall the first UK nuclear power station and the first in western Europe started in 1956. Eisenhower opened the first US nuclear power station Shippingport on the Ohio river in Pennsylvania, 50 kilometres from Pittsburgh in 1958 as part of the Atoms for Peace Program. The US built 54 nuclear plants that are operating today in 2022 generating 50% of the renewable energy in use today in the US. The question is what does the unthinkable conducted by the Russians and Ukrainians, by weaponizing a nuclear plant do to public perception of the safety of the Atoms for Peace Program initiated by president Eisenhower in 1954? What does this damaging of public safety perceptions after Fukushima do to the Atoms for Peace type of programs in China India, and European Union that are part of the emissions cutting programs in the world? These are serious questions at a time when climate change is not simply a word but means floods, fires, drought, and declining food production all over the world from Spain to Pakistan, from Germany to China. China and India are affected. China has 53 nuclear plants in 2021 with 50 GW and plans to double this by 2030. India has 22 nuclear plants  with 8 GW in 2021 and plans to triple this to 22 GW by 2030. How will climate change be tackled with public safety perceptions affected with another nuclear accident like that in Fukushima arising from shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. As the president of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun of China clearly stated at the UN SC meeting last week that China opposed use of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant by Russia (or Ukraine) in any way that could lead to damaging nuclear safety leading to an unintended accident. China only gets about 5% of its energy from nuclear, India about 3%, and this will need to increase multiple times to tackle climate change. France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, the US 20%, by comparison. Nuclear energy safety and clear rules to prevent weaponizing of nuclear plant zones is essential and a solution like that developed for the food grain shipments from Odessa through Black Sea to the Mediterranean has to be arranged quickly. ...

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The economic downturn in the US is also spreading to Europe hitting countries like Spain especially hard with the bankruptcy of Martinsa-Fedesa S.A. a construction group with assets of 10.8 billion euros.

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In an hour long interview at the Moncloa palace in Madrid, Zapatero, Spain's prime minister, talks to NYT reporters Rachel Donadio and Victoria Burnett. He is standing firm when it comes to protecting labor rights and upholding th social welfare state. Zapatero says "my goal is to make this an innovative, creative, entrepreneurial country while upholding the social welfare state." He sees the need for government to invest in the economic crisis facing Europe and America. And he sees opportunities for Spain to create jobs and growth in sectors like renewable energy, biotechnology, civil engineering and high-speed railroads. About 4 million immigrants entered the country during the years of 3.8% growth from 1997 to 2007. Four million people are now unemployed, and the burden of unemployment has fallen hardest in construction and on immigrants and younger workers. The government has expanded unemployment benefits coverage and about half of the unemployed 4 million receive benefits. Zapatero's government turned down an effort by business leaders to roll back the payment to laid off workers from 30-45 days for each year worked to 20 days....

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Areva will take a writedown of 1.46 billion euros on the value of its uranium mining business. It will take an additional writedown of 800 million euros for the nuclear business following the nuclear accident in Japan. Areva expects a 2011 full year operating loss of 1.4-1.6 billion euros. Areva's new CEO, Luc Oursel, says he plans to reduce the company's debt load. About 1.2 billion euros of assets will be put on sale. The French sovereign fund, SFI, says it will buy Areva's 26% stake in mining group Eramet. Areva faces losses on its acquisition for $2 billion of uranium mining company UraMin, which has declined in value by 80% as uranium prices dropped and uranium reserves in African mines turned out to be less than estimated. Areva's new plans show organic growth of 3-6% from 2012 to 2013, increasing to 5-8% in 2015. Areva's shares at 19.20 euros on Dec. 12, 2011, were down 45% since the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Britain and the Czech Republic in Europe, China and India in Asia, plan to invest in nuclear energy....