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The pandemic brings together companies in three countries U.S, Italy and France with the merger of Fiat Chrysler with PSA. Fiat Chrysler is owned by the company Exor owned by the Agnelli family in Italy. PSA is owned by the Peugeot family in France. In addition the government of France and Dongfeng Motors in China have stakes in PSA.  During the 2008-2009 crisis Chrysler merged with Fiat with the help of the Obama administration which pursued a policy of promoting small cars. Instead the merger saved jobs but led to the PR effort for small Fiat cars and the focus on the Jeep Cherokee and SUV's like the Dodge Ram. Today one hardly ever hears about small Fiats from Fiat Chrysler that was the basis for government help on the merger. 

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Tensions on the India China border as India builds roads and infrastructure in the mountainous Himalayan area close to the border in Ladakh to match the Chinese buildup of roads in the region over the last decade. India has also built up its troop presence in the region to match China's troop presence along the border in Ladakh.

India has supported a call from Australia for an investigation into the early origins of the coronavirus. The call was supported by many countries around the world and by the U.S., Japan and France. The 350,000 deaths from coronavirus and the 5.5 millions confirmed cases, the economic damage, most of them in western nations in North America and Europe, have  led to growing tensions between China and the rest of the world. 

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A detailed story on Fethullah Gulen, once an ally of president Erdogan in his effort to reduce the influence of the nation's military but now seen by him as a rival. Gulen lives in Pennsylvania. The recent coup in Turkey, and the efforts by Erdogan to reduce the influence of Gulen supporters in Turkey, has increased tensions between Turkey and the U.S. This is happening just as Turkey's relations with Germany are worsening after the failed coup, the  Erdogan response, and what is seen as a drift to authoritarian rule. Earlier corruption inquiries in 2014 critical of the Erdogan government by judges in the Gulen faction of the AK Party led to the split between the two factions, followed by Erdogan controlling judicial appointments and controlling the media.

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Contact tracing apps in the U.S. Britain and France have failed. Contact tracing app in Germany was downloaded 12 million times in the first week. Yet much of the contact tracing in Germany and cluster isolation has been achieved using low tech methods- using a computer with database, and teams of people in district offices all over Germany calling people.

The NHS App in Britain failed to get the cooperation of Apple. In the U.S. Google and Apple planned to have a contact tracing app ready but failed to come up with one. Tech has failed to come up with solutions during coronavirus and low tech solutions have worked well as in Germany and in places such as Kerala, India, when implemented quickly with very little delay.

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FR24 reports from a teashop in the old Turkish city of Gaziantep before the Turkish elections on May 14, 2023 in which the two decade rule of Mr. Erdogan is contested by a civil servant from the Republican party of Kemal Ataturk Mr. Kilicdaroglu. Ataturk was the founder of the Republican party, became president in 1923, and modernized Turkey. 

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Cities that drop in the Livability Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit include New Delhi with poor air quality and petty crime slipping 6 places to 117  and Mumbai for culture downgrade by two places to 118. Karachi is at 136 place and Dhaka is the third lowest with weak infrastructure. Melbourne, Australia and Vienna, Austria are the top 2 places.

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U.S. president Trump will host NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg at the White House on April 12, 2017, as tensions between Russia and the U.S. increase following the U.S. missile strikes in Syria. White House officials say Trump is "100% committed to NATO." In May Trump will meet other heads of government at a NATO meeting in Brussels. 

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On the Matterhorn mountain at night the messages "Stay at Home,"  "Hope," and the Swiss flag are beamed on snowy slopes, as Switzerland enters the 11th day of quarantine. It is about working hard at following simple rules and staying at home, an appeal to Swiss people who believe in working hard and being sensible.

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The peace plan calls for the establishment of an International Stabilization Force. IDF, Israel Defense Forces would hand over parts of Gaza to the ISF made up from troops from Egypt and possibly Jordan, and other countries that would along with the US be responsible for demilitarizing Gaza removing tunnels and munitions and weapons so that it no longer poses a threat. An Economic Plan supported by the Saudis, UAE and the US would step in to rebuild Gaza for the benefit of the people of Gaza. No militant group would be allowed, complete demilitarization assured, the focus would be on economic develoipment for the area and other areas of Palestinian territory in West Bank. 

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Importance of hearing aids and using ear plugs near loud noises in avoiding early dementia. Other actions to prevent early dementia are wearing helmets to protect from brain injury, getting vision checked, engage your core when sitting and getting every 20 minutes, long walks or hikes, checking cholesterol, maintaining good sleep habits. The expression "use it or lose it" is key if vision, hearing, body movement is not used one loses it and with it the paths to social connections that the brain needs for stimulating its function. Maintaining good sleep and food, exercise habits shows that overall health has much to do with mental health.

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Sophie Landrin's Le Monde report on Sri Lanka Ditwah cyclone devastation December 9 2025. Her report with pictures of the destruction wrought by the cyclone show parts of the Kandy region in the mountainous uplands in the central part of Sri Lanka, including the University of Peradeniya. There was no warning when the cyclone hit with 10,000 of 16,000 student on the campus. This is the worst cyclone to hit Sri Lanka in the last hundred years. Sri Lanka is a island nation that is Buddhist located at southern tip of India. It has been hit by a civil war, financial crisis with no central bank reserves, the pandemic, and now the cyclone. 

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More than 6.7 million persons are displaced inside Ukraine most of them from the war torn eastern part of Ukraine, and most of them women and children. In addition over 3 million are refugees in neighboring countries such as Slovakia and Poland. 

The war is now extending to the Donetsk region with about half of the population of the population in eastern Ukraine having left that region for safety in central and western Ukraine. The rolling farmland and old coal mines of the region, the destroyed infrastructure and industrial facilities, make the area of no use to Russian forces. A fraction of the Russian population in the area has also left says this report in the NYT. 

The scale of the damage and the refugee situation is hard to imagine and can be seen in the pictures in this NYT report. Boarding trains and buses civilians have poured out of cities in eastern Ukraine where the war has intensified.
 

 

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A study and analysis in the One Earth journal for climate change action shows oil companies owe about $209 billion annually to pay for damage caused from climate change. The leading companies accounting for about 10% of global emissions are Gazprom and Saudi Aramco. These companies have benefited greatly from the oil price surge. The US and European oil majors who also have profited greatly from the oil price surge come next. Further distorting the effects of wars, financial crises since 2010, the war in Ukraine creates price surges from which oil companies benefit while the vast majority of people in the world are affected by a cost of living crisis made worse by higher energy prices. This is what is important to keep in mind as the US under president Biden prepares to play a leadership role in correcting these unneeded and bad distortions on how it affects the lives of workers and families in the US and Europe, as well as in Asia, Latin America, Africa. ...

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Conditions such as these are simply unacceptable for average young American families and their children when they rent apartments. A business called syndicated apartments which pools together small investors with promises of high returns in apartment real estate is the focus of this report by the WSJ. As the mayor of Houston has pointed out it has created deplorable conditions for renters in his city, with similar conditions in other cities. In pursuit of profit apartment quality deteriorates creating difficulties for ordinary Americans who rent. This report shows the collapse of this as a business activity with losses for investors with the Fed's increase in interest rates. Another article in the NYT this week shows what a city friendly to renters can look like- Vienna, Austria, which is next on this page. With the increase in mortgage rates doubling home ownership payments more average Americans will look to rent. Conditions such as these are a gross violation of what America's implicit promise is to its people for quality of life. ...

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How are royals educated? Elizabeth Paton gives a glimpse of how girls from royal families are educated in Europe in 2023. Two are graduating from Atlantic College in a small castle on the southern Welsh coastline, with a focus on diversity, internationalism and peace. Students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds go to the school which makes them more diverse than a typical Ivy League school in US or Europe which is a good thing. Princess Leonore of Spain shown here with her parents and princess Alexia of the Netherlands. Both girls just graduated at the age of 17. Princess Sofia of Spain is next to go to the college.  It is part of United World Colleges Group. In the modern age it is important for royals to have a deep awareness of their country's problems. Spain and Netherlands have had their convulsions, Spain in the Civil War and the role the two girls grandfather former King Carlos had in restoring democracy in Spain, Netherlands during occupation in the 1940's. ...

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Gerard Baker in the WSJ says there is a dizzying collapse in the quality of leadership in  Britain and also in the US and other countries of Europe.  we are led by too many inferior people, he says. Liz Truss, Johnson and Sunak in Britain are examples of this, he says. They lack the experience and the capabilities needed. This is also true of Meloni in Italy, Macron in France and Merkel in Germany, ineffectiveness of Obama and Trump in some ways in the US.

Yet he says there is another problem for Brexiters in Britain and for Trump Republicans in the US. This is one of the abject chaos that emerges from trying to reconcile the desire for strong government and government support of working class supporters and the tradition of lower taxes and no deficit spending in the Conservative and Republican parties. This is he says a warning for the Republicans from what he sees happening in Britain with Truss, Johnson and Sunak after Brexit.

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BBC News looks at the Judge who will be handling the Trump New York indictment, Juan Merchan. He began his legal career in 1994 after graduating from Hofstra University School of Law. He worked in the Nassau County District Attorney's Office before becoming deputy assistant attorney general for Nassau County in 1999, and assistant attorney general for Nassau and Suffolk counties. He has served as a justice in the New York County Supreme Court since 2009. Merchan is described as a serious jurist, smart and even tempered, and a no-nonsense judge who is always in control of his courtroom.

Merchan has already handled a case against the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg. In that courtroom he is reported to have said that he would not in any way allow anyone to bring up a selective prosecution claim, or claim that this is some sort of novel prosecution, that Weisselberg was somehow being targeted because of his association with Mr. Trump.

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India's 135 thermal power plants ahve just 4 days of coal stocks as of October 1, says the Financial Times, citing the power ministry. The power ministry has instructed plants to build up stocks. China is already facing a power shortage after coal fired plants were asked to cut down the use of coal to meet emissions targets. In early August coal fired plants in India had 13 days of stocks. With coal prices rising India did not buy enough coal to build up inventories. The manufacturing sector suffered a contraction in China for the first time since the pandemic started in 2020. China has instructed state owned energy companies to secure supplies of fossil fuel to prevent winter shortages. This further increased price of coal. Coal from Indonesia went up from $60 a ton in March to $200 a ton in September discouraging imports. The result is that with limited supplies and rising prices of coal India faces a perfect storm and power cutbacks as in China. ...

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Jim Tankersley of the NYT is the author of the book- The Riches of This Land- The Untold, True Story of America's Middle Class. He is NYT's White House Correspondent with a focus on economic policy, and has written for more than a decade on the decline in opportunity for American workers. Here he tells readers why president Biden's plan to invest in human capital as well as the tangible capital of infrastructure building is so badly needed in America today. Human capital is found in education of children and college students, in support to women to get back into the workforce during this pandemic to bring their skills and talent to the workforce. This means financing education pre K through college, and paid leave for caregivers who are mostly women. Also part of the plan is investment in a rapid transition out of this period of dependence on fossil fuels and in the nation's scientific and technological capacity to come up with new solutions.   ...

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Boris Johnson looks back to September of 2020 when he was at the Edward Jenner Institute in Oxford and scientists showed him the first slides of antibodies from the developing Oxford vaccine, and his realization that this was a cause for optimism, for Britain and the world.  Today its manufacture in India, Britain and other parts of the world show the meaning of Global Britain, says Johnson. By engaging with the world, both the world benefits and Britain gains. A larger view is that of protecting the values that originated in Britain and are part of the order in other parts of the world, including the rule of law, representative democracy, habeas corpus, freedom of speech. The new review of Britain in the world today is about how Global Britain engages with the world, with like minded nations, with democracies in Asia and Europe, America, to build a better future for all, and to advance those ideas and beliefs against those who oppose them, says Johnson. ...

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Gary Starkweather, son of a dairy farmer in Lansing, Michigan, invented the laser printer in 1977 with the Xerox 9700.  He did this while working for Xerox Corporation, with his idea that optical technology could be used to provide pulses of laser striking a photosensitive drum, with toner attaching to the spots touched by light, the toner then fusing to the paper. His initial idea was rejected by his bosses at Xerox so he got a transfer to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he worked on developing the first laser printer and then better laser printers. Interesting and useful are his thoughts on productivity and use of technology. His views were that it was not a good thing having people pressured working from the 40 hour week to the sixty hour week. He also disapproved of the pressure for people to stay digitally connected all the time. For him the concern about the future of information technology was- can I still be human in the process. ...

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Olaf Scolz, Germany's Vice Chancellor and Minister of Finance, since 2018. He  wants to counter the myth that individual success is always self-made. As candidate for the Social Democrats he is the leading candidate to succeed Merkel. Scolz believes in genuine "respect." If elected chancellor he will take Germany in a new direction after the Merkel years marked by neglect of infrastructure, increased division among Germans and fragmentation of parties, addressing euro currency issues left behind by her mentor CDU chancellor Helmut Kohl, poor migrant policy that divided German opinion, lack of social mobility for working class Germans, and failing families in childcare, other services.  Biden in the US, Scolz in the European Union, could offer an opportunity for combining the strength of Europe and the US in tackling the problems the world faces today- restructuring supply chains, reducing divisions sown through neglect of families and the working class, climate change, competing with an assertive China using western technology and resources. ...

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Gerald Seib in the WSJ gives 3 reasons for reluctance of president Trump to get involved in wars in the region on behalf of the Saudis- the U.S. is less dependent on Saudi oil with its increased oil production, China, South Korea and Japan depend on Saudi oil making it necessary for these countries to pay for the conflicts not the U.S. Other reasons are the U.S and Mr. Trump's opposition to endless wars that lead to neglecting U.S. priorities such as infrastructure and building its economy.  If the wars cost trillions of dollars the U.S. expects the Saudis or Asian countries to pay the U.S. for the cost of these wars. Japan is the most dependent on Saudi oil and it is playing a constructive role to reduce tensions between Iran and the U.S. Mr. Macron of France is playing a role because the EUropean Union also imports oil and wants to prevent the Iran nuclear deal from being ditched or at least for it to be renegotiated.

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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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US president Biden renews the US commitment to Asia on the second day of Quad meetings in Tokyo. Lessons from Ukraine were uppermost in the thinking of the Quad leaders from the US, Japan, India and Australia as a new framework is envisioned for Asia. That framework is envisioned through an economic framework the IPEF including South East Asia, the Quad as a core nation setup similar to the G-7, and direct ties such as US-India, US-Japan. Latin America is part of the US direct ties to Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Europe is included through the Europe Trade and Technology Council and direct US ties with the European Union, Germany, France and Italy. President Biden is giving the kind of leadership of the Free World that Harry Truman gave following the Berlin Soviet Blockade and the US Airlift of 1948-1949 and the Korean War between 1950-1953 with Soviet and Chinese forces supporting the attack of North Korea against South Kporea similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  ...