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India's exports for December 2021 are at about $38 billion according to the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. In the first 9 months the exports were at $301 billion and on target for $400 billion for the current fiscal year. For 2023-24 the target is $500 billion in exports. By 2027 exports target is $1 trillion. For India this means nothing short of foreign trade being completely reimagined under Atman Nirbhar Bharat and Make in India. South East Asia is a new target for exports as new supply chains are being constructed.

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Airport Hotels Grand Hyatt SFO $462 a night 2025 -owned by cities San Francisco and Grand Hyatt Dallas Dallas- Fort Worth owned by city of Dallas FW. It was $364 at Grand Hyatt SFO last fall 2024 with 84% occupancy. WSJ looks at the splurge by wealthy tourists and business people when a Hilton is close by for $116. Westin Denver Airport at $337 a night also city owned.

The author uses the Westin Airport when the Spark by Hilton is $116 nearby. It shows how prices are driven up by some splurge spenders.

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NHS workers are exhausted in the second wave of the pandemic in January 2021, with wards overflowing.

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Twitter has grown since its founding in 2006, to emerge as a social media platform by 2012. Its growth is during the same period that the smartphone made its entry- the iphone in 2006 and the android phone in 2008. The short form of 140 characters works well on a mobile smartphone. It was much easier to type in the 140 characters into a smartphone than into earlier phones. Its adaptability to the smartphone and the spread of smartphones everywhere gave it tens of millions of users.  Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter tries to develop a longer form through a startup Medium and does not himself believe that the short form provides a medium for thoughtful expression. By 2016 it forms the basis of president Trump's campaign against both the establishment in the Republican and Democratic parties.  By the time of the Joe Scarborough fact check of president Trump's comments on Twitter in May 2020 so much has become muddled up that the WSJ editorial while calling the comments nasty, says the fact check itself has bias. Mr. Trump says conservative voices in the Republican party are silenced.  By institutionalizing the short form the tech platforms and tech companies have built their own structures on the decline in cultural and other literacy in America, Europe and in other countries.   ...

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Daniel Henninger of the WSJ Editorial Board says even if a Republican is elected president it would be a question of 4 more years of what? The big problem today he says is the small number of legislators in the US House of Representatives, about 20 in the Freedom Caucus, that are opposed to the government operating unless they get their way. The result is that independent Speakers of the Republican controlled House, with Republicans having a slim majority, are unable to get elected, and the Speaker elected is a relative newcomer Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who entered Congress as recently as 2017. The new Speaker has said the legislation passed by a bipartisan group of Senators in the US Senate 70-30 for aid to Ukraine is "dead on arrival." Result an impasse with some saying this is the most ineffective Congress ever. In this situation if a Republican is elected president says Henninger he can do little because a loss of even one legislative branch to Democrats the House or the Senate would leave America where it started- in an impasse for 2024-2028. For this reason he says even though Mr. Trump said he would do great things there was little he could point to in his vision for the future, and little he could do just by signing executive orders that would later be reversed.  ...

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Juliet Small on ECHR how it got to this in 2025 where it ignores the right of governments to protect their own ctiizens. Of law turned upside down by lawyers in Strasbourg in 50's and 60's and after to where the legal class appears to have messed it up so much and left it to politics to clean up this mess in Europe.

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Britain's Keely Hodgkinson, 800 metres gold medalist at Paris, talks about the pressure building up, her experience after an injury, the slump and her recovery in 2025. After a difficult period and an injury while going to London for her MBE, she says she is chilling, and has gained something from the experience to let go off the pressure and just be herself.

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Federal Reserve inflation policy changes August 2025 to get a handle on everyday costs people face not the statistics the Fed uses which shows 2%-3% when housing, childcare, groceries, automobiles and repair, heating bills are on the rise. On a rise to the point where average households are barely able to make ends meet and raising a family is so difficult in the US in these conditions.

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Trade deal with India for $190 billion two way trade to double to $500 billion still on in November 2025. DJT says India has cut purchases of Russian energy and Russian oil trades at a large discount from Brent crude. The discount is $20 compared to $13 before Indian and Chinese refiners cut their purchases of Russian crude showing that US strategy was the right one.

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Only 22% of 12th graders are proficient in NAEP Test Math in 2024. UC San Diego's freshman class math deficiency is shown in this report with many freshman having 4th grade math skills. This report says the problem is compounded by not having standardized tests for the freshman class because grades are often inflated. This problem is likely present across many US universities and colleges.

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DJT defuses the situation after weeks of wrangling with Petro of Colombia. This follows US blockade of Venezuela and reaction in Brazil, colombia and Mexico. US president DJT talks to Gustavo Petro of Colombia, January 7 2026, and invites him to talks at the White House. Petro is nearing the end of his term and Marco Rubio says the US seeks good relations with Colombia.

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US 15 year security guarantee or 30 years discussed in 20 Point Peace Plan at Ukraine US DJT meeting December 29, 2025. Ukraine says US has proposed 15 years, Ukraine wants 30 years. The war has lasted 15 years. A free economic zone in Donetsk region proposed by the US. Talks simultaneously with Ukraine and Russia with a referendum in Ukraine to get agreement to the deal.

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The January 6 panel of the US Congress issues its report on the events of January 6 2020, and the effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election in November 2019 that elected Joe Biden.

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The US consumer price index went up at the fastest rate since 1990. The Labor Department says consumer price index was up 6.2% in October 2021. This is the fifth month it is up by over 5%.

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A playwright and novelist who says there is a silent voice speaking in his work, one that readers say radiates peace and spirituality. Jon Fosse of Bergen, Norway, wins the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Finland joins other Nordic countries such as Denmark in reducing immigration with a new coalition government in June 2023. It brings the Finns party together with Christian Democrats, National Coalition and the Swedish People's Party.

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A one page resolution takes the place of the Republican party platform for 2020 in the U.S. It says "the party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda."

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Susie Wiles 11 Vanity Fair Interviews December 2026- " the conspiracy theorist is JD Vance the "absolute right wing zealot" is Russell Vought and "the odd, odd duck" is Elon Musk. The president DJT is someone like Susie's dad Pat Summerall a legendary sportcaster. Susie she thinks she "knows big personalities" because of her experience with her father. What happens? Susie says she warned the president from everything that includes announcement of the tariffs that early in the Spring just after being elected when there were diagreements within the administration, just wait a bit she suggested, but that has not happened with decision after decision, including retribution for so called enemies. Susie says she doesn't blame the president from knowing how he weas treated. "Not me."

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Susie Wiles 11 Vanity Fair Interviews December 2026- " the conspiracy theorist is JD Vance the "absolute right wing zealot" is Russell Vought and "the odd, odd duck" is Elon Musk. The president DJT is someone like Susie's dad Pat Summerall a legendary sportcaster. Susie she thinks she "knows big personalities" because of her experience with her father. What happens? Susie says she warned the president from everything that includes announcement of the tariffs that early in the Spring just after being elected when there were diagreements within the administration, just wait a bit she suggested, but that has not happened with decision after decision, including retribution for so called enemies. Susie says she doesn't blame the president from knowing how he weas treated. "Not me."

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Jenny Strasbourg of the WSJ provides this much needed report from London about the courageous decision by AstraZeneca and Oxford University to give vaccines away at no profit to the whole world, to billions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Without this brave decision by a British company and a British University the world would be a lot poorer, more variants could have happened, making us realize the great contribution Britain has made and how indispensable it is to the planet. Add to this the effort of Indian companies including Serum Institute that provided the manufacturing facilities and capabilities for making most of the British vaccine. AstraZeneca delivered 2.3 billion doses of the vaccine globally as of mid-December, according to the company. The International Monetary Fund estimates that low and middle income countries received 3.25 billion vaccines as of Dec. 11, About half of this or 1.6 billion doses were Astra Zeneca shots. This is a bigger share than any other vaccine by far and a life saver to the world. AstraZeneca stepped up early in a true to the best ideals in Britain to meet the needs of the world-  aiming to deliver 3 billion doses in 2022 and sell them at no profit as long as the pandemic continues. As the shot does not need cold storage it is ideal for India and other Asia, Africa and Latin America. "We are all very proud throughout the company of the impact we have had," says AstrZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. By far the biggest manufacturing was done at Serum Institute of India which supplied 1.3 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 70 countries. Mr. Modi pushed forward the export of vaccine made in India to the world from the beginning in the same spirit of cooperation and the best ideals that Britain was living upto. Serum Institute can produce as much as 250 million doses of vaccine a month making it possible for India to tackle the vaccination population of 1.3 billion people.   None of this could have happened without Oxford University and AstraZeneca and Indian companies with Mr. Modi's active support living up to the best ideals of Britain and India for the world. "When you add up the benefits to humanity, I think you'll find the vaccine holds up pretty well in terms of the ill health it has prevented, and the deaths it has prevented," says John Bell, a senior Oxford academic who in 2020 guided the University through its vaccine-partnership talks with Astra Zeneca. Because in the real world AstraZeneca shot has held up so well it is also a choice for booster shots. ...

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The number of countries visa free entry is the wrong way to give passport rankings as learning from other countries and cultures, learning about their scientific advances and manner of thinking is key to the huge changes that happened in Asia- in first Japan by 1900, South Korea and Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, by 1960's, China by 1990's and India by 2010- as the people of these countries interacted with Europe and the US. Interaction with Europe and the US is key for Asian nations.  This happened even earlier as Americans by 1880's interacted with Europe through ship voyages across the Atlantic in 7 days. This brought knowledge of scientific advances and ways of thinking from Europe to the US accelerating pace of industrialization in the agricultural economy in the US in the 19th century.  In 2025 the visa free access for US and EU to some of the advanced Asian nations, Japan and China is key to bringing back knowledge of scientific and other advances to the US and EU.  India and China should be compared. At Munich and other German EU airports China has the kind of visa free and fast track entry that does not exist either for the US or India. The writer experienced this on a recent visit in 2025 with a US passport denied entry to the fast track lane reserved for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other travelers. India's bureaucracy, and US's lethargy, and the sheer lack of serious effort comparable to China and Japan in getting fast easy access to EU is to blame , particularly for the travelers who are most likely to gain from such interactions, the educated middle class and business people of India and the US. One could go so far as to say that one of the keys to China's advances is its ties to Germany and Hamburg and entry ports in Netherlands to the EU. EU is the source of technologies and of scientific knowledge freely available to China 1990-2025. For this to happen advanced logistics and ship- port building had to take place. India must do the same and much faster than anything that happened before 2025 at a pace as fast as China's if it is to reach it's potential in the world economy alongside the US and EU. ...

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A Travel editor drives through the American landscapes and describes what it looks like with pictures in 2021.

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From Kansas to Southern Spain, pictures from The Guardian show the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the night skies looking out into The Milky Way in December 2020. At the time of the pandemic understanding how small our world is on this planet as light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second and it takes 2 seconds to reach earth from the moon, thousands of years for light to reach earth from distant stars of which scientists say there are 200 billion. A British scientist and astronomer says there are 200 billion in a new book "The History of the Universe in 21 Stars."

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The aggressive effort of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to increase interest rates to dampen inflation will have an effect on Asian currencies and trade. The Japanese yen lost 14% of its value and the Korean won 8%, Chinese yuan 5% since the beginning of 2022. This is a result of the widening gap between interest rates in the US and Japan where the interest rates have not been increased due to mild inflation.  Asian trade is done in US dollars and exports to the US are invoiced in dollars. Citigroup says about three quarters of trade in Asia-Pacific is invoiced in dollars. Weaker currencies would translate into higher effective prices for imported commodities - energy and food. This pushes up domestic inflation and hurts manufacturing.   Add to this a shift in the US demand from goods into services in 2022 and there is weaker external demand for the economies of Asia. This will exacerbate the slowdown in Asian economies. Many countries such as South Korea and Thailand have increased their external borrowing in dollars. Debt service ratio was 21% in South Korea and 14.5% in Thailand, according to Bank for International Settlements. Years of low rates allowed governments in Asia to borrow more without incurring high interest bills. Now that situation is changing quickly and will result in difficulties for South Korea and Thailand says this report in WSJ. In the last 10 years Asian economies excluding China increased debt to GDP ratios by 15 percentage points, according to Gavekal. The result might not be debt crises as in Sri Lanka but painful slowdowns in economy with combination of loss in external demand from the US and higher inflation, higher interest bills. ...

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US unemployment rate was at about 3.7% for the third quarter 2022 and 263,000 jobs were added in November according to the Labor Department. Other estimates show that these numbers could be overstated by 500,000 for the year and likely to be revised. There is a shortage of labour after the pandemic and the labor participation rate is lower than before the pandemic. The Fed chairman Jay Powell discussed the strong labor market and his plan to attack inflation with rising housing, food, energy costs coupled with wage increases using Fed policy of raising interest rates. Rates could go up to 4.5% with another 0.75 % increase in December 2022.  Powell said in response to questions at the Brookings Institution last week that he was feeling his way through this inflation episode that was very different from previous bouts of inflation having started with supply chain issues that stemmed from the pandemic. It then became widespread with fears that it could get entrenched if a sharp stand is not taken by the Fed. Powell also says that he is acutely aware that he wanted to pause and see the effects of interest rate increases so that there is no overreaching that would hurt the lower income groups. He emphasized that lack of aggressive action by the Fed could let inflation go on for 4 or 5 years hurting these lower income groups the most because the wage increases would be more than wiped out by inflation. Finding the right balance is important to Powell as he looks to manage the risks on both sides of this issue- to hit inflation hard without hurting the lower income groups of society. ...