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One day in 1964 Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose decided that an impossible object could actually exist - a black hole in the galaxy after a planet collapses.Einstein's theory of relativity had predicted that when stars collapse they could form infinitely dense points of matter that no light would be allowed to escape. The formation of black holes supports Einstein's Theory of Relativity says the Nobel Prize Committee. Penrose is 89 and says it is good to get the Nobel Prize when one is good and old. Stephen Hawking a younger physicist passed away and was not included in the prize after supporting Penrose's work. Two astronomers in the U.S. at UCLA, Los Angeles, get a quarter of the prize for their work detecting black holes in the sky and providing evidence of a super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Pennrose says "If you have got grand ambitions its bad to get a Nobel Prize too early, it gets in the way of your science." ...

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Germany's chancellor gives her support to French president Macron's call for agreement before the summer holidays on a 750 billion euro rescue package. Merkel told 27 leaders of EU countries Europe faces "very, very difficult times" and even said that she was not sure the gravity of the situation was truly understood. The value of the economies of some states could drop by 10% in 2020.

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Jasprit Bumrah's careful bowling, Axar Patel taking great catches, and batting of Samson, Ishan and Abhishek, take India to a 96 run win over New Zealand at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Samson was super consistent in his batting hitting 89 runs twice and hitting a similar score against England, all in the last 3 crucial games India played. For this he ends up Player of the T20 World Cup and Bumrah the Player of the Final aginst New Zealand. New Zealand's batter Allen could not find his form in the Final and the duo of Siffert and Allen that beat South Africa by setting up an opening century partnership failed to find any traction on the pitch at Ahmedabad and were out early. 

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China made a prolific use of oil during its rapid economic growth phase. China is adapting to  3 million missing barrels of oil from Hormuz by drawing down reserves, cutting use of crude oil converted into plastics, and other measures. This is an opportunity for China to reduce the amount of oil it consumes by copying the example of more efficient use of oil per unit of GDP that is seen in the last decade in Germany and Japan. This would be better for China and for the world economy as it adapts to the uncertainty and wars of the last 3 decades of the Middle East. The US could also take the example of Germany and Japan in more efficient use of oil for the same degree of growth.

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Constantly looking for knowledge and looking to learn is the important thing in delaying and cutting onset of dementia. Travel, going to museums, reading new books, exploring new fields, learning a language, staying socially active, trying out a new sport or activity, talking to people young and old, are all way to enrich one's life and this also reduces cognitive impairment. The idea of cognitive reserve means that ove a lifetime these activities taken up when we are of young age stay with us for a lifetime and cumulatively improve our cognitive faculties as we grow older compensating for any loss over time.

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U.S. senior Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, are getting ready to launch a wide ranging probe of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election through cyber attacks. The probe is not limited to DNC hacking and the concern is not just that any one candidate was targeted but for the integrity of the American election process. Even though it is not mentioned in this report in the Washington Post by Demirjian, Senators and Congressmen from the Republican Party in charge of key committees of oversight on foreign policy and defense now see it as their responsibility to prevent an enlargement of cyberattacks as Germany and France face elections. Mr. Trump has said in an interview with Time magazine that Russia was not responsible for cyber attacks, that it "could have been China, it could have been some guy in New Jersey." Senator McCain is readying a probe into cyber attacks into U.S. weapons systems, and U.S. military, as the issue widens in its scope and significance for the West and for the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia. Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.) will be working closely with McCain, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, on this particular issue and Senator Mitch McConnell has been apprised of the discussions, according to this report in WP. Senator Graham said- "They'll keep doing more here until they pay a price." Graham will hold a series of investigative hearings in 2017 about Russian meddling and "misadventures throughout the world."  This will include new legislation.  Graham told CNN on Dec. 7, 2016 in strong language- "I am going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia. I think they are one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our election, and I want Putin personally to pay the price." During the debates Governor Pence of Indiana, the Vice President elect took a strong position on Russia, and the Vice President's positions on foreign policy and defense are similar to that of the Republican leaders in Congress.  It is hard to remember a time in the post war period when there was such a distinct difference in foreign policy and defense as it relates to Russia between a Republican president and both a Republican Congress and almost all Republican governors. Senator Corker from Tennessee, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is on the short list to be Secretary of State. A related story in the WSJ shows the selection of military leaders for key intelligence, defense and homeland security, and Gen. Petraeus considered for foreign policy, as diverging from historical practice of keeping civilian oversight preeminent in the U.S.. Rep. Peter King, an early supporter of Trump, who is on committees for intelligence and counterterrorism told MSNBC, that he is confident that Trump will not be "taken in by Putin." The U.S. Republican dominated Congress has taken a strong position on Russian interference in Syria and Ukraine. In the House of Representatives Republican Rep. Devin Nunes from California and Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas are leading efforts on cyber and intelligence as heads of their committees. ...

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Optimism from the Washington Post Editorial Board now that Homan is in charge and law enforcement cooperation between state local and federal takes place. Homan was  briefly bypassed in the team set up by Kristi Noem, Secretary of DHS, and  as a result Border Patrol agents began their own sweeps that were not in accordance with DHS and ICE methods of operation. This was shown in the WSJ reports of the last few days creating unnecessary confrontations with protestors, increasing numbers of agents as a result, and both risking the lives of law enforcement and of protestors. Republican senators in Congress defended the rights of Americans to protest. Local and state cooperation with federal law enforcement was key to maintaining order and peace in neighborhoods, ensuring everyone's safety. This is now taking place with Homan meeting Attorney General Ellison, and state governor Walz. Homan said “certain improvements could and should be made” and that the government had not “carried this mission out perfectly.” Washington Post says Homan acted like a professional when asked about Pretti. “I’m going to tell you to let the investigation play out and see where it goes." The Post says handing over criminal immigrants sgould not be controversial, as Kristi Noem says migrants with criminal records were released onto the streets from jails by local officials. There is a lot of soul searching that needs to happen on the part of all, with less reckless behaviour that only aggravates the work of law enforcement and reduces the safety of streets and neighborhoods, and worse is not in accordance with America's tradition of treating people fairly as long as they are acting with decency. ...

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Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party leaders, says he will root out antisemitsm, bigotry and racism from the party. He made a plea for unity and said he was determined to tackle any cases of discrimination. He told a Scottish Labour conference- "The only thing that can hold us back is if we turn our fire on each other rather than on the Tory government and the wealthy establishment interests they represent." For Labour to return to poser at Westminster it had to remain united.

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Guardian's Essay on the War and how it has undone Iran pushed it back by decades with internal suppression of dissent, the diversion of vital resources that could be used for building the economy and standards of living, failing to build a sovereign investment fund like Norway and other countries setting aside money for a rainy day. Much of the young educated voters and business in markets is in the cities in Asia and this class has to be integrated into development to create advanced developed nations instead of a small class of people controlling the nation's resources under an ideological or religious sectarian leadership. It failed in Spain in the Franco years, and now in Venezuela and Iran, Pakistan, because it does not grasp what happened in Asia- in China, in India, in South Korea where even under communist (China), military (South Korea), the integration of the students, middle class business, all sectors of society, leads to all sections of society building advanced societies improving education, healthcare, and modernization infrastructure, joining Europe and the US to build the future of science and technology. ...

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Retired General Keith Kellogg was in National Security roles in the DJT first term. He is the new DJT envoy to Ukraine and Russia with the goal of negotiating a settlement between Russia and Ukraine. He was chief of staff of the National Security Council in DJT's first term. And also the National Security Advser to vice President Mike Pence. The 80 year old veteran co-authored a paper for America First think tank which says- "The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement."  "Future American military aid, however, will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia."  This comes as Zelensky's popularity in Ukraine has dipped to 16% and Ukraine's people do not want him to run again for president. This is intended to draw Ukraine into peace talks as prolonging the war would lead to enormous losses for Ukraine's cities and the people of Ukraine, Kellogg told the Voice of America at the Republican Convention in 2024, and peace talks would end the war with Russia. ...

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A Berlin based think tank, German Institute for Economic Research, says Germany could end its dependence on energy imports by winter of 2022. That is much sooner than mid-2024 as Economy Minister Habeck has stated.The issue has serious urgency as the war continues in April in Ukraine entering a new and more dangerous phase in the east. And every day oil and gas imports by European Union gives Russia $16 million for coal, $434 million for natural gas, and $489 million for oil, a total of close to $1 billion every day.  With new missile attacks on civilian buildings this is one way for European Union to shoulder some of the burden that it has not done so far. DIW think tank says this could be done with decreased industry and household consumption that could generate about 18-26% savings of the demand for Russian natural gas, suggesting that households turn down thermostats and use less warm water, and industry turn to alternative fuels such as coal and biomass. Another saving is from increased supplies from Norway and the Netherlands of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Increased supplies from Norway alone says DIW could cover 20% of current annual imports of gas from Russia. Instead of waiting to build new infrastructure, the new LNG terminals on the coast which face long construction times and eventually falling demand for natural gas which make them financially untenable, the best approach is to use existing infrastructure in LNG terminals in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to increase volume in EU pipelines. Such action would cover 25% of demand for Russian natural gas. Other action is get more efficient use of the European pipeline system to increase German gas imports from Algeria, Libya and other North African nations vis southern EU nations. ...

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Much of the debate in Germany today is around the topic of reunification, was it good or bad for Germany, and why there is an issue of a separate identity in the East. Most East Germans feel they live in a separate country with a separate identity. This issue has social cultural and political consequences, says the Economist.    The CDU is increasingly facing questions about how it has turned out for East Germany. It is losing votes to the AfD in Saxony, Thuringia, and other places in the east. The migration crisis in 2015-2016 created new fault lines. When the Integration minister in a government in Saxony, which includes east German city of Leipzig, talked to people in her state why Germany was helping refugees, she was told to first integrate East Germans.  East Germans do not like resources being wasted on refugees when they feel left out themselves in their own country. After reunification of Germany by chancellor Kohl in 1990 about 8500 companies in the east were privatised or liquidated leading to a loss of jobs in old industries such as mining. Many of these older people ended up in odd jobs and then on Hartz IV, skimpy unemployment benefits. At unification 1 million people moved to the west from the east, predominantly younger people and predominantly women.  Over time one fourth of the population in the east 18-30 years moved to the west, two thirds of them women. Rural areas especially hit hard, with tax revenues slumping, shops and schools closed. Some estimates are that 80% of east Germans were out of work at one point. The humiliation their parents felt is only now being discussed as children in the east talk to their parents about what happened and the hardships their parents suffered 25 years ago. Was unification done the right way is a topic for discussion today. Today the east is much older than the west. Since 1990 over 60's increased by 1.1 million even as the overall population dropped by 2.2 million. In future some districts in the east will have 4 funerals for every birth say forecasters. So what could have been done differently in 1990 so that East Germans did not end up feeling like a "colonized people" by a biased western exploitative culture that portrayed them as culturally inferior and with very little that the west could learn from. Today it is said that the government agency Treuhand that handled closure of businesses could have moved slowly. The 1:1 transfer of west german currency for east german currency was to make east german companies uncompetitive overnight, and should have mitigating plans to tackle the problems of keeping these businesses in operation to keep local jobs. A new constitution and economic plans could have been written, a transition period for such a constitution and economic plan be put in place, so that changes could be studied and plans made to reduce the negative effects.  Culturally there was something the east did better. It had a culture of social solidarity that could have provided lessons for the west.  The good aspects in the east such as respect for women and encouraging them to work outside the home, free child care, the welfare state protecting vulnerable groups, could have lessons for the west to emulate and adopt practices. This would have given easterners a sense of self-respect as in some ways the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as the country was called in the east, had aspects that the west could learn from. For this to happen west Germans need to change their views- half of them see the reunification as a success, two thirds of east Germans see it as a failure culturally, and socially, and wrought with the economic impact of sudden shift in population and business, and loss of most productive young people to the west. ...

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Olympic gold prospect for England who had her left side paralyzed from a horse riding accident before her GCSE's. Georgina Brayshaw says she could only use her right arm and smile with half her face. From that event and after her mom had a stroke Georgina persisted and looked for ways to carry on with her life giving it her all. She went on to continue her studies and not lose a year for her GCSE's. Georgina who is part of the 4 woman England team that won the World Championships for Rowing in Lucerne  is now set for the Olympics in Paris. She says she took up the sport of rowing in university as most people said she could not do it. She says what happened to her wasn't good and it wasn't bad, it was just life. And that she was always taught that you just get back on and try again.

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OPLAN is the German defense plan draft by Lt. Gen. Andre Bodeman which was started after chancellor Schulz's Zeitenwende "epochal change" speech in 2022. After that speech Schulz created a plan for $100 billion euros for defense of Germany.The intent is to prepare to defend Europe in case of clash with Russia. It goes back to a different era the Cold War of the 1960's. To improve infrastructure Gemany now plans to spend 166 billion euros, of which 100 billion euros go to railways, to update essential infrastructure. The new Merz of CDU government with SPD's Pistorius as Defense Minister is a relatively strong coalition government which plans to spend 500 billion euros for defense and upgrade the Bundeswehr for military readiness.

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Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson and his negotiating team meet EU president Ursula Leyen for dinner in Brussels on December 8, 2020, to get over fundamental differences for a Brexit deal. This report in The Guardian describes the details of that dinner meeting.  Boris Johnson told parliament that the European Union was asking Britain to be the only country in the world not to have sovereign control over its own fishing waters. He said the EU was also asking that if the EU were to pass a new law that Britain does not comply with they would have the right to  automatically punish Britain or retaliate. On the issue of environmental and other laws that relate to the EU and Britain they are both at the same level today. The EU is worried that in future competition between Britain and the EU in trade and business Britain could relax environmental or other laws to gain an unfair advantage. Boris Johnson and his Conservative party back benchers insist that Britain should have sole right to make its own laws. France's Macron introduced the idea of automatic retaliation as a way to get Britain to keep a level playing field. Both sides see this as a negotiating tactic, hence the dinner meeting as a way to let top negotiators including the leaders to set an informal tone to the final stage of tough negotiating. Merkel made her own remarks to the German parliament saying she was willing to let the negotiations collapse if Britain rejected the EU approach. Merkel stated that if Britain insisted on certain conditions EU could not accept she was willing to let Britain leave without an exit agreement. This way if something went wrong Merkel would not take the blame.   ...

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Patrick Healy of the NYT says Super Tuesday in 2020 changed the way Senator Joe Biden of Delaware was seen by the country. With wins in 9 states he was seen differently and unified the Democratic party behind him, galvanizing support across the country. The 2023 State of the Union Speech offered another opportunity and Biden seized it talking about Medicare, Social Security, infrastructure and bipartisan work with Senators in Congress for 2 climate laws and the Inflation Reduction Act, cutting pharmaceutical costs in the face of corporate opposition and lobbying in Congress. So feisty was that speech that one has to go back to president Kennedy's first Inaugural in 1961 to see that kind of direct call to all those looking for the nation's future in the face of seemingly intractable challenges of the new Cold War, and of the lack of imagination, candor about problems and lack of action. The State of the Union in 2024 offers that kind of opportunity again and there is little doubt that president Biden will seize it to appeal to his countrymen again. ...

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Three things to know about American EV's - 300,000 leased cars on market in 2026,  EV's cost comparable to hybrids,  28% jump in sales 2025 to 2026 and 6.2% increase in wholesale price. Even without incentives for EV's more manufacturers are putting EV's into the market. This reviewer says the EV Batteries are quite good overall and hold 92% of the charge overall and there are ways to get the condition of the batteries for the leased car that is available. He also says for the amount of driving most people do around the city one EV charge is sufficient. If one does a lot of travel driving to other places hybrids and gasoline cars are the typical choice.

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India protests actions by Canada's Trudeau for his support of separatists in Canada. India is a nation of many communities and languages and it does not approve of efforts to separate parts of the country in the way the US has done from the period of the Civi War and Lincoln, and as seen today in Spain, or in the efforts to reintegrate East Germany into West Germany after the cold War. Trudeau belongs to Quebec, a French Canadian province that is part of majority English Canada. Canada's very existence as a federation depends on this nonacceptance of separation of Quebec. It was not long ago that General De Gaulle used the language Vive La Quebec on a visit to Canada leading to protest all over the world and Canadian provinces respecting the integrity of Canada. Mr. Trudeau is president of Canada for that very reason that he and his father Pierre before him respect the idea of Canada as an independent sovereign nation, something he fails to do for political advantage to stay in power with a coalition because of diminished support for his Liberals party.  ...

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Democrats continue to believe they lost in 2024 because they did not attack DJT enough. This fails to cite issues such as cost of living- surge in the third year of the Biden administration with 20% increase in prices and Biden failing to take notice and address this quickly. A wave of illegal immigration- the failure of Mayorkas, himself a Cuban immigrant in 1960, put in charge of Homeland Security and ICE, and Harris who was an attorney helping indigents in inner city San Francisco, to grasp the fears of border states and southern states. The failure to understand that the border was open and inviting waves of illegal immigrants, some with questionable backgrounds. This issue created a sense of unease in the fabric of society and American people. Other issues simply showed how Harris could not relate to the conservative people and average people in the country in the cultural aspect such as transgender, rural America. Biden pulling out suddenly, loss of rural vote- failure of Democrats since Obama to pay attention to rural voters, Harris not appealing to the white male vote in the US, are other factors that hurt Democrats. DJT gained with the shooting incident in Pennsylvania in which he survived, and the perception raised during a garbage truck and DJT photo that the Democrats derided, seen by the public as looking down on working class people. Democrats never really grasped how the political system had gone in reverse- the Republicans had put cultural aspect first and conservative now meant working class voters and white voters in rural areas/small towns, big cities, ( the Archie Bunker type of an earlier era who was now a Democrat, not the college educated and Ivy league Harvard type that had taken over the Democratic party). This continues to this day with some paradox as the business class and the billionaire class sit alongside the working class person in the Republican party DJT created. DJT did this in 2016 by pulling together workers hurt by Bush and Obama's policies favoring the educated classes and affluent, ignoring rural areas and farmers, and committing US to wars in the Middle East that squandered the Nations' resources and human lives. This was aggravated in the Biden/Harris/Mayorkas years by letting in migrants across the border by the millions that created a great deal of unease in the working classes. In this way labor unions or their rank and file left the Democratic party- a problem that plagues Democrats to this day, that Biden tried but failed to fix. The border issues had become complex by the latter part of the Biden administration because of the complete collapse of Venezuelan economy and the drug cartels in Mexico smuggling people and drugs across the border, for which the Biden administration or Harris had no answer.  It was the failure of administrations to continue the Monroe Doctrine in the form given by FDR as "Good Neigbor Policy," and JFK as the Alliance for Progress, allowing drug cartels and foreign European powers to intervene in the western hemisphere, desorying good governance in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and other nations in Latin America. By the second year of the DJT administration Venezuela, and the border were brought under control, and the situation in Mexico put in a new direction. ...

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Clint Eastwood talks about stuff in politics, real people, in a way that is humorous, and is asked about his various roles in movies he has made that show relations between countries and races. He recalls the time playing golf with the president and another real estate billionaire, when both told him within earshot of the other that all the real estate deals that the other was making would go bad. This he says was funny. In all this he was always the lone guy, as in the movies. This guy is 89 and he has still got stuff for some interesting movies, and he has ideas about the country and what it needs.  Mr Eastwood was mayor of a little town in coastal California in 1986 for 2 years. And yes he did not like all the regulation in the state. He tells about his removing one in the city that banned the public sale of ice cream, besides drinking a lot of tea and chatting with everyday folks. Most have forgotten and others simply from a new generation. The 2008 movie Gran Torino is one in which a Korean War veteran faces up to immigrants from Laos in an inner Detroit suburb. And what happens? Eastwood says people liked this one that grossed $270 million because it showed how someone with views at one extreme could learn more and shift to the other extreme just from seeing and talking to different people who you have not encountered before. Eastwood portrayed the American male when it was a kind of manliness unabashed. The thing about Eastwood is  that he he is sensitive to all that this meant in an intelligent thoughtful way that takes us by surprise. Some of these characters he played did not have the niceties, abrupt he calls it or that gruffness of masculineness, even a bit dumb. Talking about relations between countries and of race Eastwood had some ideas to make the Japanese language "Letters from Iwo Jima" - to give the view of what it was like for a Japanese soldier sent out from the islands to Iwo Jima. The famous battle was one he did from the American point of view in "Flags of Our Fathers." About that Japanese soldier he is sent out and told that he wasn't ever coming back. It won Japan's equivalent of an Academy Award. The interview in the WSJ with Varadarajan closes with Eastwood feeling  for the genteel ways, not calling names out loud, of an older time, without the masculinity that he himself portrayed, or only appeared to be that way when in reality he was intelligent and sensitive to other people and their ways. Perhaps that former mayor of New York, says Eastwood, offering his own idea of a switch back to older genteel ways for the country.   ...

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US president Biden gives a rousing and vigorous speech drawing a picture of his vision for the country and contrasting that with the chaos, prejudice and lack of action on key issues facing America of his predecessor. On defending democracy, on Ukraine and Europe, on the economy and jobs, on preschool and education, on pharmaceutical cost reduction, on fair taxes and cutting the deficit while investing in manufacturing and new jobs, on all these issues he drew a sharp contrast with the predecessor and former president. He also drew on the tradition of America for democracy and called on America to move forward in line with its values and decency and diversity, not go backwards in the way of his predecessor. He said it was not about being young or old as he was considered too young when he was the youngest senator of the US at 29 years of age, and now people talk of me being old. It was of not being old in the way that the oldest emotions are of hate and resentment reminding people of his predecessor's sharp language about other people and cultures. ...

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Arsene Wenger was 47 in 1996 when reports said he had resigned in the very first year that he took up the coaching role at Arsenal. The media was skeptical about this Frenchman and outsider with a persistent question "Arsene Who?" On that day after returning to London from a visit to the south of France to meet a friend Annie, Wenger decided to immediately go out and meet reporters outside Arsenal offices. He told the media  that the reports were totally unfounded, the rumors of photos of him in preposterous situations false. Time passed and still more lies were published, says Wenger.Then suddenly the British media including Sky News responded with apologies to Wenger for the rumors.  At no time says Wenger in his new book, "My Life in Red and White," did he lose his conviction that the British could be counted on to be fair. He says that he had to stand up to the brutality of the moment. That only in this way could he keep up his optimism and values and not let this destabilize the club. ...

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This piece in the Hindusthan Times reminds us that it is not failure or success that determine our future and the quality of our life, but the way we respond. It takes the lines from Rudyard Kipling about both being impostors- "if you can meet triumph and disaster,  and treat both impostors just the same..." Experts say the important thing in both success and failure is to understand what one did wrong, and take corrective action. Some go as far as to say failure is an event, and it ended yesterday. This is the way athletes and other people who overcome challenges that we read about have approached a failure or disaster. Some overcome physical handicaps with such grit that we find our failure to be tiny by comparison. Take for instance an athlete with burns on his feet from a fire, who is told he can never walk again, and he comes back to win an Olympics gold medal in running. This is a true story from the 1936 Olympics of Glenn Cunningham who won the 1500 metres gold medal. ...

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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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About 12 million Chinese viewers on Weibo look at new VP pick Tim Walz hoping for better relations with the US, reports BBC. Walz was teaching English and American history at Foshan No. 1 High School as part of a Harvard University volunteer program. Walz says it is one of the best things he has ever done, and gives him a unique insight into China and the Chinese people. Tim Walz was fresh out of college when he joined the Harvard volunteer program to teach in China in 1989. One Weibo user reflected the sentiment on Weibo- Walz's "unique background gives him a real perspective on China", and he could "promote cultural exchanges between China and the United States at a time when... relations are extremely difficult". China was different back then somewhat where India was in 2014, a largely agricultural economy beginning its transformation into an industrialized nation like the US, Germany or Britain. Walz told a local newspaper inthe US when he returned-  there are "no limits" on what the Chinese could accomplish "if they had proper leadership". "They are such kind, generous, capable people," Walz said. Walz encouraged cultural contacts and educational trips after he returned. With his knowledge of China it could improve relations with Chinese people that were affected by the pandemic. The pandemic reduced educational and cultural contacts. ...