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Rajneesh Goel, Bangalore's chief civil servant, says the city never followed scientific landfill practices. Instead as Bangalore expanded with new business campuses for Infosys and other companies, the garbage was trucked out to sites with little planning and no interest on the part of companies on where this was ending up. Most of the landfill sites outside the city are now filled and the city is running out of places to dump the garbage. About 4000 tons of garbage needs disposal every day, over a millon tons a year now that the city is no longer the smaller garden city it used to be, a place where people looked to go for retirement years in the early post 1947 period. A new effort is being made in crisis conditions by NGO's and business to come up with better disposal practices that are good for the environmental air quality and water quality.

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UniCredit announced plans to reorganize its Central European and Eastern European banking operations and increase its capital by 7.5 billion euros. Unicredit showed a third quarter 2011 loss of 10.64 billion euros after losses on Greek bonds and goodwill writedowns. The Italian bank said the capital increase will bring its Tier 1 ratio to above 9% as required by Basel III rules. UniCredit is listed as one of the globally systemically important financial institutions or G-SIFI's. Unicredit plans to make the placement of the rights issue to raise capital in 1st quarter 2012. Pricing remains a difficult matter considering that Unicredit shares have dropped precipitiously since 2007 when it had a market capitalization of 100 billion euros. Its market capitalization is now about 15.3 billion euros. Just in the last year the shares have dropped 50% to 0.68 euros a share in Sept. 2011.

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U.S. health insurance company WellPoint Inc. will offer higher payments to primary care physicians. This is part of new strategy to reduce emergency room visits and costs after deterioration in a patients condition by relying on primary care physicians for better care at the outset. Payments to primary care physicians will be increased by 10%, with higher payments when the results show better quality and preventive care. WellPoint has a network of 100,000 primary care doctors. Physicians who meet certain goals such as lowering the overall cost of a patient's health care costs will be given an incentive of 20-30% of the savings realized. The new effort will add 1-2 percentage points to the 6-8% of the $100 billion that Wellpoint pays for claims processed each year. WellPoint's management sees a reduction in medical costs of about 20% by 2015 as a result of such efforts.

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Farmer resisting a land grab in Zhejiang province is runover by a truck. The gruesome scene of the accident appears on the internet in China and thousands of people viewing the picture accuse local government officials of silencing Qian Yunhui. In 2004, the city government approved construction of a power plant in Zhaiqiao Village. The company building the plant was given most of the best land in the village, with the 4000 villagers receiving no compensation, according to a blog post on Tianya, a popular online forum for discussing Chinese social issues. Mr Qian, the former communist party representative in the village went to Beijing to file a petition with the central authorites. Mr Qian was arrested and imprisoned twice. The incident ocurred after he was released from prison. The significance of the incident lies in the fact that land grabs have become common in China.

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The air quality around Chinese cities is worsening because of coal fired plants and increasing demand for energy, and because of exhaust from automobiles filling the highways. The air quality around Beijing violated the WHO standards more than 80% of the time during the fourth quarter 2008 period. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection says in a report that more than 25% of China's rivers, lakes and streams are too polluted to be used for drinking water. And acid rain is a problem in 200 of 440 cities it has monitored. Efforts to control the exhaust pollution from cars by putting driving restrictions in Beijing are not as effective. One report says that even after 20% of private cars are taken off the road each weekday, the 250,000 new cars that were added to Beijing's streets in the Jan-April 2010 period, have left things as bad as they were before.

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T-Mobile plans to spend $4 billion to upgrade its wireless network to LTE. The failed plan to merge with AT&T has affected T-Mobile because plans to upgrade its network were put on hold. As a result T-Mobile will be 2 years behind Verizon in upgrading to LTE and will be the last wireless network upgrading. Contract customers declined in the 4th quarter of 2011 by 802,000 with all the uncertainty surrounding the merger. AT&T made a cash payment to T-Mobile of 2.3 billion euros for the failed merger. However the situation has turned out negatively for Deutsche Telekom because of a 2.3 billion writedown in the value of T-Mobile USA ,and an additional 800 million euro writedown in Europe. If T-Mobile decides to offer the Apple iPhone to attract contract customers additional financial commitments will have to be made.

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The 2012 Camry, is very much like the 2011 Camry, other than the Entune multimedia system in the dashboard. The big difference is in the price. Toyota has dropped the price on the 2012 Camry- the 4 cylider XLE starts at 25,535, about $2000 lower than the 2011 price, the LE Hybrid with 41 mpg fuel economy, starts at $26,750, and the V6 XLE is about $30,000. It offers quieter ride and dependable quality, but it lacks the new technological advances such as turbocharged motors, direct fuel injection, stop-start systems, and lithium battteries on new hybrids, features on the new Ford Fusion models. Ford, GM, Hyundai and VW are all competing with newly designed models. With the fierce competition it is difficult not to see Toyota struggling with the same problems Ford faced when it failed to innovate with the old Ford Taurus model two decades earlier.

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Feldstein says its important to raise taxes, and this does not mean raising tax rates. He says a lot of revenue is lost through deductions and exclusions, or tax expenditures as they are called. Recovering a large part of this lost revenue was recommended by the President's Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission. He has a definite proposal that he and his colleagues have studied carefully- limit the reduction in taxes from deductions and exclusions or tax expenditures to 2% of a taxpayers AGI or Adjusted Gross Income. Feldstein says the impact of this proposal would be that taxpayers with incomes between $25,000 and $50,000 would pay an additional $1000 in taxes, and the taxpayers with incomes above $500,000 would pay $40,000 more in taxes. He says the 2% cap is about the reduction in an individual's taxes, not the size of the tax deduction or exclusion.

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Apple is investing $700 million in a new material called sapphire that will replace glass to provide better breakage protection for the iPhone. The first sapphire screens will be coming off a manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona, that Apple runs with GT Advanced Technologies. Apple is using sapphire, a harder and more corrosion resistant material that is costly to produce, for the cover on the fingerprint reader and iphone camera lens. About 11% of iPhone owner screens have cracked or broken screens, according to warranty provider SquareTrade. Compared to Gorilla Glass costing $3 per screen, the sapphire screen would cost $16. Apple paid $113 million for a 1.4 million square foot Mesa facility from a solar panel producer and leased it to GT, a manufacturer of furnaces to produce sapphire. Apple is paying GT $578 million to install furnaces at the factory and run the plant.

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For the first time since the 1995 Srebrenica massacres of 8000 Muslims the Serbian police has made arrests of persons involved in the killings. Serbia is trying to make amends and come to terms with the past and set the path to the future as a new member of the European Union. This is a major step for reconciliation in the Balkan region through efforts for closing this troubled chapter in its history. Serbia's deputy war crimes prosecutor, said about the 8 arrests- "We have never dealt with crimes of this magnitude. It is very important that Serbia take a clear stance toward Srebrenica through the judicial process. We have sent a clear message that the Srebrenica victims, perpetrators or even potential war crimes will not be forgotten." For Serbia and the region this long awaited step brings the Balkans back into the fold of civilized Europe.

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The U.S. birthrate edged up slightly for the first time since the recession of 2008 led American families of childbearing age to defer having children. There were 62.9 births for every 1000 women of childbearing age in 2014, increasing from 62.5 in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The total fertility rate also increased slightly to 1.862 children in 2014 from 1.858 in 2013. This is below the rate of 2.1 children a woman would have over her lifetime to keep population at the same level, without immigration. Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, estimates about 2.3 million more births if the 2008 recession had not led women to defer having babies. In 2014 U.S. births increased 1.4% to 3.99 million children from 3.93 million in 2013. Women over 30 and better educated are showing a larger increase in births.

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The NASDAQ Internet Index is up 46% in April 2014 over the past year, even though it was down 12% in March-April 2014 as investors grew wary over high price rises for stocks in the "cloud," "big data" and "social" fields. Investors turned to old tech stocks such as Microsoft which were seen as value stocks because of lower price and valuations. Gallagher suggests watching the IPO market for signals of where this market is headed. In the 1st quarter 2014 companies raised $10.6 billion in the U.S., the busiest quarter since 2000. 103 companies submitted initial IPO filings in the same quarter. Venture Capital has invested $29.4 billion in 2013, an increase of 7% from 2012, according to MoneyTree Report. Even though the NASDAQ Composite Index is down 5% over the last 30 days, Gallagher points out that the NASDAQ has witnessed 4 drops of about 10% since 2010.

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Catalans formed a 400 kilometer human chain from the foothills of the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean to show their support for a secession referendum on Catalonia's independence from Spain. About 1.6 million people are said to have participated according to Catalan government officials. Spain's central government seeks to delay the issue to 2016 because of the financial crisis and high unemployment in Spain. The Convergence and Union Party of Arturo Mas takes a moderate position on this issue citing the concerns of the the government in Madrid, and the the ERC party which is the second largest party is firm about its demand for Catalan independence. Sentiment in Catalonia favors more autonomy, and a better deal for Catalonia in finances from the central government. Spain has setup a decentralized system of government following the long period of Franco's dictatorship, when Catalan language and culture were suppressed.

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Javier Fernandez describes the experiences that led to Bill De Blasio's decision to run for Mayor in 2013- his education in New York at NYU and Columbia, the family's background in liberal politics, involvement in Latin American politics, helping Bill Clinton's campaign organizing in New York and running Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000, a run for City Council in 2009. Blasio was close to his Italian mother after the parents divorced, and he made it a point to develop a close family life after he married a co-worker at City Council in New York. The family life and his passion for fairness in the economic issues facing New York City, played a part in giving a sense of authenticity to his effort to convince voters to break from the past- to move in a progressive direction that creates better opportunities for all New Yorkers.

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Former Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino joins the Board of Directors of Twitter as its first female director. Scardino was the first woman to become CEO of a FTSE 100 company in the UK when she was appointed head of Pearson in 1997. Her reflection on the progress since then is one of disappointment. She told the Telegraph newspaper when she left Pearson that not much had changed in the 16 years since 1997, with few women on the board of directors, chairmen or CEO positions in the corporate world. Yoree Koh points out in this report that only 8.4% of Silicon Valley companies have women directors, according to an annual study put out in Dec. 2012 by the Universiy of California, Davis. About 40% of the tech companies in the S&P Composite 1500 index have no women on their boards, according to an Ernst & Young report.

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Of the estimated 14,400 candidates for provincial elections in Iraq, about 4000 are women. And security improvements have enabled women even in Basra to stand up for elections. In the current Iraqi constitution there is amandate for 25% of seats in Parliament to be reserved for women, but there is no such provision for provincial elected parliaments. This does not imply that years of lack of representation in the last 50 years under dictatorships, and the rule of religious parties and militias, is going to be easily overcome. Many qualified women simply don't want to risk standing for election because of threats to their safety and the male dominated culture that prevails. Its the courageous ones who are standing. The hope is that women can also put adent in the deep corruption that prevails in government and bring a new perspective and better representation of society.

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The 2002 decision for HSBC, a British bank, to buy Household International, which was into subprime lending in the USA, has turned out to be a disaster. Now it will close the 800 offices of Beneficial and Household Financial. HSBC's losses from Household are a big reason for the need to raise $18 billion in new capital. In getting into this business of subprime lending HSBC also sullied its high credit rating and its reputation. In doing so it also added its reputation to make it look like the subprime business was a good one and got it going in a big way. With the securitization process older standards of safety disappeared, as so called financial engineering and its engineers made it believable that inherent risk of a borrower's weak ability to pay could just be reduced or eliminated by packaging it differently and spreading it all around.

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China's assembly work accounts for just $3.70 of the Apple I Pod's value, The display module costs$20 made by Toshiba-Matsushita and of the $224 wholesale price $80 consisted of Apple's gross profit. This is from a study by 3 economists of the University of California at Berkeley and Irvine, Linden Dedrick and Kraemer. Out of electronic and IT exports of $300 billion China's value added was about 15% or $45 billion according to Leo Branstetter of Carnegie Mellon University. Foreign firms account for the largest share of exports and all of the top ten are overseas firms. In India mostly the IT business is a services business and it has not made the breakthrough to create original software products that are marketed worldwide.. In this sense there are a lot of missing pieces in both countries efforts and a lot remains to be done.

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The struggle of France's newspaper "Le Monde" to survive after losses for the last seven years to 2008. Daily circulation has declined 9% from 2003 to 354,000 in 2008. Compared to Germany and the U.S., newspapers draw a smaller number of readers, with 181 per 1000 people subscribing to newspapers in France, 371 in Germany, 274 in the U.S. Strategies pursued are to sell stakes to Lagardere, and Spanish media group Prisa. Le Monde was started in 1954 with directions from Charles de Gaulle to be the "conscience of France." As a result its sharehoders are mainly its journalists holding a 60.4% stake. Prisa and Largardere each hold a 18% stake. Losses in 2007 were 15 million euros. Strategies are to focus on news and world events and reduce sports coverage, and integrate the newspaper with the website, Lemonde.fr., which has 4.5 million unique vistors per month, according to Mediametrie.

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Zardari is asking for $100 billion when Pakistan has in its central bank enough foreign currency reserves for 2 months of imports of oil and food. He also wants to defeat the Taliban and militants and find those responsible for the death of Benazir Bhutto. This interview with Bret Stephens who gives an account of it and his own comments, ends with some remarks by Zardari about wanting to defeat the militant elements that killed Mrs Bhutto in a manner where "not letting them get away with it" referring to those responsible, is something he wishes to do before his own life ends. It suggests that this war is likely to take a new turn as the military in Pakistan takes on the militants and Taliban and as General Petraeus looks for a way to reverse Taliban gains in southern Afghanistan and other parts of the country.

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The early efforts by EU countries were each on his own thinking it would cost more and not be tailored to their individual countries if coordinated and done together. This failed as events of the crisis worsened and finance ministers fell behind in their actions. At that point coordinated action was critical and the countries came togeter with big initiative by Gordon Brown and the EU countries following suit. How much capital is needed to recapitalize the banks in Europe and the USA. In Europe about $400 billion and in the USA about $275 billion and private capital alongside government capital can do this. The capital exists because of the huge size of western stock and capital markets which can absorb these costs along with the government over time. But only the government could take the first urgent steps and inject capital in large amounts to get things moving again.

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Slowdown in drug sales growth in USA and Europe. Top seven emerging markets will account for 34% of global sales growth upfrom 7% in 2000. And the USA accounted for 40 to50% of growth in global pharmaceutical sales each year early in this decade, in 2009 the sales in the USA will account for just 9%. Forecasts and figures are from IMS consulting firm. USA sales will rise only 1-2% if at all, while emerging markets will grow by 4.5% to 5.5%. With the economic troubles American consumers are less likely to fill prescriptions and insurers are not covering new drugs and favoring generics. Intense competition among generics drug makers is reducing prices. IMS predicts that the global generic market will grow by 5 to 7% in 2009 to $68 billion, slowing from double digit growth. This is from total sales forecast for pharmaceuticals globally of $830 billion.

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With prices of iron ore jumping from a little above 50 dollars to $200 per metric ton between 2006 and 2007 and now back to alittle above $50 in November 2008, mining companies around the world are pulling back according to Thomson Reuters. China's building boom is seeing a big slumo with new floor space up 30%in 2007 now down close to 40% from peak according to data from Macquarie Securities. And the Australian dollar up almost 30% in 2007 is now down about 50% from peak. The last time the mining companies saw such a slump was after the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the US recession of 2001, with metals coming back only after Chinese demand kicked in in 2003. This affects mining in Africa which was seeing boom times in places like S. Africa where there were electricity shortages because of huge demand from mining.

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Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute questions the value of QE II when it pushed up commodity prices, lowered the value of the dollar, and acted as an anti-stimulus by slowing growth in the private economy.