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Bangladesh elections after student protests and departure of PM Hasina- 900,000 unemployed and 700,000 university graduates entering labor pool annually. Not much has changed for the economy since Hasina's ouster in student protests which were also about job opportunities in addition to other grievances. Bangladesh now finds itself alone in the region as it struggles to address unemployment and lack of capital investment. Imports of capital machinery dropped by 25% in 2025 slowing industrial growth. 

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Talarico beat Crockett in Texas Democrat primary and Senator Cornyn at 42% edges out Attorney General Paxton in Texas Republican primary.  DJT likely to endorse Cornyn and calls for Republicans to avoid ads and infighting. $131 million spent on this Texas primary, $99 million for Republicans. Democrats are unlikely to win in Texas, but the infighting is of concern to the president because of the margin  for control in the US Senate.

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Three BBC correspondents on China's 2026 National People's Congress - effort to invest in childcare and elder care services to increase consumer spending. To continue in solar, robotics, AI, EV's, and exports as before. The problems of industrial overcapacity and pushing subsidized product into the US or EU that cause trade tensions and tariffs will continue.  New 301 investigations by US Trade Representative are taking place and will complete by mid-July. Germany's chancellor was in Beijing making a similar point about industrial overcapacity and German business is now facing the same threats to their business that the US has gone through. The one other way for China to grow is to increase consumer spending- hence the effort to help young people with childcare costs and retired people with elder care. The payments to seniors is low says the BBC's McDonnell who says the increase in payment to rural and non-working urban residents of $3 per month is miniscule. No details given for housing support to newly married couples. On one aspect relevant to the Iran war-China is increasing its efforts on renewable energy to reduce imports from volatile Middle East. ...

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How did Steve Smith go from that Jofra Archer short ball bouncer to sitting out the next Test match for rest, and then go on to score 211 at Old Trafford on September 5, 2019. Australia were able to score 497 for eight wickets in the first innings. In the second innings he scored a needed fast 82 runs. Bouncing back quickly shows Steve Smith's character and courage. In his own words- "A bit of the past came up, if you know what I mean, from a few years ago. That was the first thing I thought about. The I thought "I'm actually OK here." I was a bit sad, but I was alright mentally the rest of that afternoon.  "No, I'm really not going to change anything. There is a  bit of talk that he has got the wood over me, but he has'nt got me out. He hit me on the head on a wicklet that was a bit up and down at Lord's. All the other bowlers have had more success with me, I dare say. I've faced them a bit more, but they've got me out a lot more, so yeah, pretty comfortable about that." About a heavier barrage of short balls and bouncers in the next match he thought "If you bowl it up there then you can't nick me off, or hit me on the pad, or hit the stumps," he shrugged. About the Dukes ball, its and interesting ploy, so we'll see what happens." Steve Smith went on to play like he always does moving about to take the ball in his own way, building up 600 runs in Test series three times, 671 in this Ashes series.     ...

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This opinion in The Guardian points out the difficulty that Lula da Silva faces in governing after a narrow margin of victory of about 1.8 percentage points in the presidential election in Brazil. It is a very different country than the one in which he was first elected in 2003. The right wing parties gained 249 seats compared to 141 seats for the Lula PT party in the lower house of parliament. This means Lula will have a harder time governing, needing centrist party support, and tackling the large fiscal deficit of 8% of GDP.

In the elections for the governors of states Bolsonaro won in 14 of 27 states including the large state of Sao Paulo. Lula owed his victory to large margins in the 10 relatively poor northeastern states where incomes are below $400 a month including Bahia. Where incomes are over $400 as in Sao Paulo the vote was in Bolsonaro's favor.

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Andrea Martin-Lof has designed about 1200 homes in Stockholm. He is designing apartments in Sweden's tallest building in Gothenburg, the 73 story Karlatornet, under construction. Interestingly he is designer for low income housing as well as for the elite. He loves diving into archives and looking into the history of buildings. This makes it possible for him to appreciate the old with the new, combining and bringing in a dialogue with the past into his contemporary designs. He can be original and capable of reimagining. He built a summer house in the Stockholm archipelago entirely of plywood and marble. Another of his innovations is in working downstairs from his office, which gives him proximity to get ready for a meeting or go down for a quiet lunch.  During architecture school he reveals in his new book that he was diagnosed for brain cancer. After the tumor was removed he learned to work differently listening rather than telling, appreciating gut instinct and curiosity. ...

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Of these letters mostly all commend the remarkable efforts of Joe Biden. One by Stanley Saulny stands out. He commends president Biden for his remarkable stamina during the Air Force Academy graduation. He says saluting 921 times and shaking hands 921 times as Biden did that day could not be done without considerable arm and shoulder pain, yet Biden did no complain or boast of his feat, as he wanted to do this for every graduating student. Mr Saunlny is a physician and graduated years ago from the same Air Force Academy where he attended this event as father of a graduating student. He tripped and the media distorted reality as there was a sandbag placed in a trippable way that could not be seen.  

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Only occasional use of Melatonin for a few weeks is suggested. Other ways to go to sleep and reducing anxiety work better say health experts. Chamomile tea, exercise earlier in the day, outdoor activities, regular sleep hours and turning off bright lights, yoga, can be better ways to get a good nights sleep.

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Who is Nandalal Weerasinghe? This report in The Daily News gives some idea about the man chosen to help Sri Lanka negotiate a deal with the IMF.  Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe was an alternate executive director at the International Monetary Fund before being appointed deputy governor of the Ceylon Central Bank in 2012. Before this he managed several macroeconomic departments at the central bank and was assistant governor of the central bank from 2007 to 2009, He has spent the large part of his career in economic positions at the Central Bank of Ceylon after getting his PhD in economics from the Australian National University. Weerasinghe is the leading expert in macroeconomics from Sri Lanka who has IMF experience. He says "things will get worse before they get better." He retired early from the central bank with a change in government in 2019. He was reappointed as Sri Lanka faced a debt crisis in March 2022 following the two year long pandemic, and the Ukraine war in 2022 that was bad for emerging market economies. Weerasinghe says about the crisis facing Sri Lanka- Recent decisons followed Modern Monetary Theory. This has dire consequences. In recent times the savings brought about by the low tax and interest rate regime passed savings on to the corporate sector and took away spending power from savers and pensioners. Surging inflation made things even worse for the lower income middle class and older parts of society. Years of accumulated debt have brought Ceylon to this point. In Ceylon one is seeing the effects of savings being passed on to the corporate sector in an economy dependent on tourism and remittances from overseas workers, both hit by the two year long pandemic. This is part of  a trend that has hurt emerging market economies from Argentina and Pakistan which also turned to the IMF to Turkey.  In other countries in the European Union savings also passed on to the corporate sector with low tax and low interest rate regime. With high inflation resulting in the cost of living crisis seen today in France and Germany. This type of policy that Weerasinghe calls 'Modern Monetary Theory' is not healthy for the European Union and the US, as these policies led to the neglect of much needed and vital investments in infrastructure, health and education. Only now are these effects being corrected by new administrations of Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, with Biden's 2 trillion plan for workers and families, and a similar plan from chancellor Scholz. With this come needed investments to tackle climate change, all of which was neglected before. India has taken a different approach. By following good governance, managing vaccination effectively during the pandemic, social emphasis for food, water, electricity, cooking gas, medicine for the vast population of 1.2 billion, and a Master plan for building Made in India manufacturing,  India has avoided such crises and maintained strong economic growth. In this sense it is a model for South Asian, South East Asian, African, and Latin American emerging market economies that face a difficult situation today. Good governance is critical.   ...

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Writing your own narrative when it comes to failures at work is suggested by experts. In the second of a series of Podcasts on How we Work the WSJ looks at failures at work and how they are processed in people's minds. Failures can be seen as experiences that teach, lessons that can be learned from failures so that one can do better next time. In this podcast WSJ gives an interview with Minh Lee, author of Pachinko. The first line of the book is "History has failed us. It doesn't matter." Asked to explain she says the way history is written it simply has winners and losers, but for ordinary people this does not matter as they go on with their lives and try to make the best of things. She also talks about recognition and how important it is. Minh says leaning into ones competence is an easy way to become impervious to failures. It is only when one goes out of one's competence does one experience what is called failure but is really an effort, one effort in a series of efforts, an effort that teaches one lessons that one can apply in the next effort which puts one in a position to gain better results. It is a process of continuous improvement in which one is readily trying new things. Now compare this with one leaning into one's competence and not experiencing what is called failure, yet at the same time not having tried anything new and exciting or feeling the thrill of adventure. Just to take Minh Lee's line one step further. Civilizations fail. How? When a people or society is losing its sense of adventure and severely censors and restricts trying new things you have the absence of a Renaissance. The Renaissance in Europe put it way ahead of Asia, with observation and experimenting above theory and textbooks, and set it up for the Industrial Revolution which started in England. By this time civilizations that never adventured on the seas, never adventured out of their little line of known competence, the civilizations on the Ganges in India and the Yangste in China failed and collapsed. So there are larger lessons to be learned and this also tells us that a lot more is at stake than one's own individual so called failures and so called successes at Work, and in the adventure of life. One ignores so called failure in first efforts because this is what the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution has taught us to keep trying new things till they work, and to patiently work through these efforts which may take some time, as all good work is arduous and filled with endeavours. In the oceanic adventures of Spain and Britain that discovered  America and Australia there were were difficult voyages that set the path open to those that followed. Captain Cook discovered Australia in his ship "Endeavour" in this way, opening the way to the settlement of a continent. He led the scientific mission for the British Navy on a voyage that lasted 3 years 1770 to 1773 when he returned to Dover from Botany Bay on the Australian mainland.   ...

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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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Whitacre is basically blunt about his mission from the Obama adminstration when he attends meetings at the Tech Center in Warren or at the Westin Detroit Airport hotel and the San Antonio club: get GM growing again, he wants to see market share north of 20%. The Obama administration, Bloom and others are clear about the government wanting to get its $50 billion for the USA and $9 billion for Canada back as early as possible. He has told GM's Henderson he will be replaced it things don't change fast enough, and he wants product out faster, 2 year development times for new cars instead of three years today. The same message has been passed on to middle and upper middle managers in diagonal meetings. And what are readers commenting on this- and readers views matter a lot because GM has a wrong perception out there that hurts sales- a third of twelve readers said they cannot understand why young people are not moved up to run the company especially from design and engineering, one mentions Whitacre's age 70 years. A third just don't think much will change, and one says he will buy aFord. And a third says Whitacre is the guy who can shake things up and he should. ...

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Iran War and rescue of pilot of downed F15-E in mountainous terrain in southern Iran April 4 2026. CSAR or Search and Rescue Missions become a critical part of the war. The pilot was a colonel trained for the mission and spent 24 hours in mountainous terrain which was monitored by US forces, after intelligence located him in a mountain crevice. For this to be possible unlike in the Vietnam War and Korean War other nations are not involved as in the earlier Cold War.  The US under DJT as president has shifted to respecting Russia as a Northern European power that it can talk with (meetings with Putin in Alaska 2025) and China as a trade partner (planned meeting in Beijing in April 2026) that it can talk with unlike with previous administrations of Biden, Obama and Bush where China had afree hand in economic matters and global trade and Russia was shut out of the world economic system by elites who ran the government in the US at that time. Russia seeks reintegration in the world political and economic systems, and China seeks acceptance as an economic power which the US respects, both points in which the US has offered to accept. US has also repeated the line to China that it was not going to do the job of keeping Hormuz open for China and Japan to get 90% of oil imports, and in oding so risk losing its soldier's lives, while China and Japan can quietly watch doing nothing to help free navigation of international waters. Note that the narrowest strip of water of 13 miles separates Oman from Iran so that a part of these waters are on the Omani side and not on the Iranian side making free use of that Omani part under international law possible- in which sense Iranian hostile activity closing the Omani side also is a violation of free navigation. This is not pointed out by Iran or Japan or even Britain who are benefitting from US action and remaining silent or being ambivalent or accusing US of being interventionist even when everyone knows MAGA base rejected Bush in the Republican party and the elites and embraced DJT for great part because they want nothing to do with interventionist adventures in the Middle East for certain. US is getting a bum rap from European allies and from China, India, Japan and the media inside the US and in those countries as if the US seeks oil from the Middle East. It was Britain where a lot of the posturing goes on about non intervention that started this oil based intervention since 1900 in Iran itself, and in artificial states of Iraq, Syria, that it created out of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in World War 1. Sykes and Picot were the US and French diplomats who set that up. US under DJT has accomplished self sufficiency in oil and US has no need for anything from the Middle East, no desire to even get involved, and MAGA well grasps that fact and wants to keep it that way. Only nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles with long range to hit US and EU are reason for US action, which is reason enough for EU, China, Russia to set their own goals so that non proliferation in dangerous areas is prevented. So that the people of China, Russia, India, Europe and the rest of the world can enjoy the fruits of their own labors after a century of severe hardships and struggles which the American people if not their elites respect, and the fruits of peaceful cooperation which the American people extend to the World, and to China, Russia and India. ...

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What is the right retirement age for health is an important question. Dana Smith points out that the number 65 that started with the system of social security started in US  by Bismarck in Germany in 1889 and Social Security in the US in 1935 by president Franklin Roosevelt has no basis on the grounds of health of the population and longevity. Since that time people live much longer to about 74 years and for 45% of the people in the US who are in the knowledge based work the ability to work continues past 65 or 67 years.  For the remaining people who are in professions involving physical work such as construction or in the restaurant industry the situation is quite different, requiring a category based retirement age that takes this into account. For these people health outcomes would deteriorate if they continued to work in stressful work for longer. Another factor to be considered is to ask what this means as a national goal. Would a nation aspire to give its citizens an opportunity to travel, broaden their minds and engage in other activities they would like to do which they could not do while working full time. In this situation these years after retirement could give people a chance to live happier lives. It is not to be taken lightly as the current protests in France show. Age discrimination in France also plays a part as there may be fewer years of work opportunity if employers stay away from people over 50 years or discriminate against women. With childcare and care for elderly, part time jobs, women work longer for smaller pensions than men, leading to a sense of unfairness. French protests show that the outcomes need to be weighed carefully from a health and national goal standpoint and the retirement age set accordingly with flexibility for harder work.  Following the pandemic years and the cost of living crisis the protests in France show the need to develop a national consensus on the issue of retirement age, and rules plus culture change in industry that ban age discrimination for workers. Special provisions for women and people in construction so that the system is seen as fair to all parts of the workforce. ...

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Queen Elizabeth was more comfortable with Labour prime ministers than Conservatives. This included Harold Wilson of Labour. The Queen had a prickly relationship with Margaret Thatcher. King Charles  has strong views on social issues such as housing and migration, and on climate change. Charles 75 years and Keir Starmer 61 years are shown here to have similar views on social issues in Britain. If Starmer wins the election they will meet weekly, and have much in common. The royal historian says there is a meeting of minds in terms of the social issues at stake, the plight of the people of Britain. The national anthem was played at the beginning of the Labour Conference in 2022. Sir Keir Starmer was made Queen's Counsel in 2004 and was knighted in 2014 for his services in public prosecutions. 

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Mr. Macron told television viewers of a national debate with Le Pen that "she wants to take France out of the European Union, she just doesn't say it." The debate showed the clear differences between Macron and Le Pen on the European Union, on Russia and the invasion of Ukraine, on Le Pen's ties with Russia that Macron noted  during the debate. Le Pen brought up the raising of the pension age to 65 which Macron says would be done very gradually over 10 years, and Macron responded by saying this was to be able to increase pension payments and increase investments in the economy.

A snap poll by polling firm Elabe showed that for viewers of the debate the candidate they found most convincing was Macron at 59% and Le Pen at 39%.

 

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The bill to bring girls marriageable age to 21, in parity with the boys marriageable age of 21 that exists today, was introduced in the Indian parliament by Smriti Irani. This is seen as a crucial bill to amend the Prohibition of Child Marraige Act 2006. Child marraige was a sign of the weakness in Indian society and practices that were being reformed in the nineteenth century/ twentieth century beginning with Ram Mohan Roy's efforts in 1800. Roy was the first Indian to put forward ideas for modernization that were later put forward effectively by Swami Vivekananda, putting Indian religious thought back on its original foundations of the Upanishads including the Bhagavad Gita, free of the deterioration over the centuries since the Middle ages. And in doing so extend even the ideas of the French and Indian Revolutions to the idea of women's rights. The efforts of Gandhi and the framers of the Indian constitution, begun under Roy and then Vivekananda during the British period, have inspired renewed efforts under Mr. Modi to build a strong nation under a framework of these values- values of the French and American Revolutions and the values that support gender equality. In real life this means, as Mr. Modi has reminded the public, that young girls can now use these crucial years to continue their education and pursue their dreams for a better life in the same way as young boys can. It is as if Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers in America in 1776, would have said- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is this pursuit of happiness, pursuit of one's own dreams to be a scientist, educator, civil servant, to be active in law or medicine, or science, the humanities, the same for boys or girls, that is now being put forward in the New India of the 21st century. In India this has happened not with the stroke of a pen through the tumult of a revolution but with deep roots through the efforts of Roy, Vivekananda, Gandhi and the framers of the Indian Constitution, and now with the tireless efforts of today's leaders. ...

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This essay from the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center which puts focus on preventive medicine looks at the food we eat in a different way. In order to have a real conversation on food it says ignore the latest fads on nutrition on keto, paleo or other diets, and think about how our ancestors ate in a healthy way that both prevented disease and provided the right nutrition. It was mostly plants as meat was not freely and easily available. So much so that the consumption of meat and animal protein may have gone up by as much as 90% today. Processed foods did not exist, and unprocessed plant foods were there in abundance. They were not called low fat low carb or vegan then. It is during the beginning of the 19th and in the 20th century that the production and marketing of shelf stable, nutrient poor, high calorie, high sugar and salt processed foods replaced the normal way our ancestors had their food leading to the public health crisis of today, both in health quality, outcomes and cost.  It says replace meat and where appropriate dairy healthier plant based beans, lentils, whole grains, and vegetables, fruits so that animal protein gets back to the levels of the centuries before the 20th century shift to processed foods. It says use common sense beans including soyabeans and lentil beans replace meat wherever possible and oats with berries and nuts replace eggs. Vegetable and garbanzo beans salad replaces cheese and yogurt reducing the cheese or yogurt to very moderate levels. Focus on wholesome food and eat like our ancestors did and exercize then everything else will fall into place. ...