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A look at countries in Europe shows different strategies for tackling coronavirus Delta variant as schools reopen in September 2021. Italy requires all teachers to carry a covid digital certificate that shows vaccination or PCR test results. France, Germany and Spain do not require vaccination for teachers to go to schools, and rely mostly on social distancing and mask requirements in schools. Britain not only does not require vaccination digital certificate, but also has not made masks and social distancing mandatory. Health experts say there are serious risks in this approach with mass return to schools and offices after August 2021, and the fall weather with more time indoors. This could lead to a surge in coronavirus as in the US where the reopening of schools and Delta variant has led to surge particularly in states such as Texas, Florida, California. In UK 65% of total population is now fully vaccinated, in Italy 62%. Teachers in Italy fully support the new rules. In Lombardy region with Milan as the capital, only 300 out of 300,000 workers returned to schools without the green pass, according to regional officials. Britain remains an outlier says this report in the WSJ, taking more risks than is proper at this time, and simply hoping for the best. Not the best strategy in this situation.   ...

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Biden is going back to the coalition of support both north and south and younger and older white voters of  the Democratic party and Republicans under Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower that prevailed for most of the last 100 years except for the period after Reagan which included Clinton and Obama in the Republican style policies just as TR and Eisenhower followed Democrat type policy. It is the broad centre of the Nation. Nate Cohn shows that this is what is happening and Biden holds firm in the support he is getting from white and older white voters. It also will give the Nation opportunity to take a breather from all the culture wars whipped up for no purpose as it is about US leadership in the world and a better life for its people with new infrastructure and science/manufacturing leadership. This also means Biden has strong support in his near home state Pennsylvania, in Michigan and in Wisconsin in addition to growing support in a broad section. of southern states which was the situation for Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy/LBJ. Many forget LBJ was from Texas and Sam Houston was one of the heroes in Kennedy's Profiles of Courage with his support for the Nation. ...

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Three events September 29 Sunday to October 5 Saturday described as "week from hell" for the Biden White House in this report. President Biden can feel a huge sigh of relief for having overcome in each event. The hurricane Helene devastating a swath of western North Carolina, parts of rural Georgia, and western Florida. The president was working round the clock for relief efforts and visiting the flooded regions. Then there was the large missile strike by Iran over Israel following its bombing of Lebanon. This was averted using US missile defense. And in the middle of all this there was the International Longshoreman's Union 45,000 members announcing a strike that  closed all ports on the East Coast from Maine to Texas. President Biden supported the dockworkers efforts to have shipping ports owners in Asia and Europe to share huge profits with dockworkers.  All the time the hard work at the White House and agencies for relief efforts paid off. Republican governors in North Carolina and Georgia praised the relief efforts. And Zient, Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary Brainard at NEC, were on the phone with port owners overseas at 5.30 am Thursday to setup a stopgap agreement till Jan 15 for settlement. The process and hard work paid off.   ...

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This video shows Dr. Birx explaining the three Phases for reopening the U.S. economy. Each state's governor would decide when a state thinks it is safe to move to the first phase. States which have not been affected much and fewer cases in the western part of the U.S. such as Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa could open earlier. Texas could start in May. California would have to do more testing before it starts Phase 1. New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts, would come later because of the severity of the crisis. Each phase criteria are carefully set out and parameters set down for social distancing rules to be followed, number of people, locations, how offices open, how stores open, how hospitals open. Germany and the U.S. have set out detailed guidelines and phases. A state in the U.S. could even move back in phases if data shows it is doing badly. Hotspots would continue to be tracked and resources shifted from the federal government quickly to these new hotspots now that medical supplies, medical personnel and other shortages such as testing are being aggressively addressed. ...

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Penney's sales fell by 20% in its fiscal first quarter for 2012. Penney is going through a transformation from a promotional retailer to one that focuses on everyday value and presentation, under Ron Johnson, former Apple executive for retail stores. As part of the restructuring Penney will reduce staff by 15% at its Plano, Texas headquarters. Penney showed a loss of $163 million for the quarter, including restructuring costs.

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With 18% of GDP and 22% of wages coming from the insurance and financial sector, New York state is vulnerable to the downturn and its effects will trickle to all parts of the northeast region. And the pull of this sector which had GDP growth of 4.4% in 2007, for the second largest state in the USA after California and Texas, will be absent as the country faces a severe downturn.

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The FDA has handled the importation of masks from China badly says this report in WSJ. During the shortage FDA let 3500 Chinese manufacturers selling products of wide variations in quality to send masks to the U.S. Millions of these N95 masks are now available imported from China but their reliability is uncertain. The FDA even has the same manufacturers on approved and revoked approval lists creating more confusion. The FDA gave then revoked approval for products that failed quality standards.  The WSJ found that some of the companies given approval early were just weeks old and had not completed quality review by FDA. The WSJ reports that more than 60% of foreign made masks nearly all Chinese made failed basic U.S. government quality tests that reviewed 22 brands according to regulatory data. About one fifths of the makers were just weeks old and others made claims that were simply not correct. The FDA acted in a crisis situation so bad actors could take advantage of the situation say experts.  What happens now. The states of California,Washington and Texas are now checking their supplies of N95 masks to see if all the makers are on authorized lists and not revoked. Many doctors and hospitals are going through much anxiety because of the safety of their N95 masks in close contact situations in eyecare, dental care and other care, is now uncertain. ...

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France's high speed train network SNCF and its new trains TGV m are the focus of French Connections series in FR24. It is a great success for France as it connects 230 cities across France and decentralizes the country making remote areas reachable in hours. 770 kms Paris Marseille is covered in 3 hours. It has transported about 3 billion passengers since its founding in 1981 under Francois Mitterand. 122 million people traveled on TGV trains in 2023, and this is increasing by 20% a year. The trains travel at 350 kilometers an hour and are capable of over 500 kms per hour. For countries like India this is very useful to know as the first bullet trains based on Japanese technology are being built for route Bombay- Ahmedabad- Jaipur- Delhi. It shows that if it worked so well in France it can work well in the US or India. In India it could transport many times the 122 million in France and connect remote regions exceeding 1000 kms. Madras Srinagar is 3000 kms or 1900 miles. Imagine this being done in 7 hours at 400 kms per hour. It would really decentralize India. Same for the US for Austin Texas to Boston Massachusetts 1600 miles in 7 hours. It would better integrate communities in the US that are far apart socially.   ...

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The State Budget Crisis Task Force is co-chaired by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor of New York. The Report of the Task Force says rising pension expenses and healthcare costs for public sector employees and Medicaid costs are severely reducing the ability of states in the U.S. to fund essential infrastructure improvements, education for low income students and other services. The report said there were six major threats to the fiscal situation of states- including Medicaid spending, underfunding of retirement, "budgetary gimmicks" to address the short term needs, and uncertain tax revenues. Ravitch told a news conderence: "It will be a hell of a lot more expensive to deal with theses problems in five or ten years than to deal with them now." The report focussed on California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia and Texas. It was funded by the foundation of Blackstone Group co-founder Peter Peterson, and George Soros's Open Society Foundation....

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Jeb Bush opens his election campaign in Florida where he was two term governor, and addresses the crowd in Spanish. Jeb Bush met Columba Garnica de Gallo, a Mexican girl when he studied in a foreign exchange program in Leon, Mexico in 1970, when he was 17 and she was 16. Jeb Bush was assisting in the building of a school in a small village outside Leon, as part of a program at Andover called Man and Society. They were married in 1974 in Austin, Texas. Jeb Bush received his BA in Latin American Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His earlier schooling was at Andover, Massachusetts. He is the only candidate with deep personal and educational connections to Latin America coming from the traditional political elite. Columba's personal story as the daughter of a migrant worker who left the family when she was three, and her championing of causes related to women and domestic violence add a different aspect to the Bush story, seen as a privileged family. This makes Jeb Bush unique in the Republican Party- unlike Marc Rubio and other candidates of Cuban ancestry from the Miami area- with deep roots on both sides of the American story, and spanning generations from Columbus, Ohio to small towns in Texas and Mexico. Rubio's parents immigrated from Cuba in 1956 under the Batista regime later overthrown by Fidel Castro. The election campaign gives Jeb Bush an opportunity to create a consensus on issues relating to minorities, immigration and the struggling middle class. In a Republican debate in 1980, Reagan said "Rather than put up a fence (between Mexico and the U.S.) why don't we work out a recognition of our mutual problems." To which George Bush Sr. said: "They are good... strong people. Part of my family is Mexican." It is an opportunity to build connections to Latinos in the U.S., and rebuild the Republican party's connections to Hispanic Americans, closing the gap with the Democratic Party. This will be good for the country to move forward....

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Remote learning has not fared well during the pandemic in the U.S. as seen by teachers, administrators and students. It may surprise one to know that 20-25% of the homes of students in most southern states in the U.S. including Texas, the west including California, New York in the east, and Illinois in the midwest do not have a relaible internet connection.  Remote learning was used with the idea that young people are tech savy. Not so say experts because being a digital learner is not the same as being a digital consumer. The self discipline of digital learning is not the same as what goes into games and other stuff on the internet for young people. Teachers say they cannot be sensitive to students the way they are in a live class and detect when some students are falling behind. Many students did not turn up online, and homework was not done regularly. As a result preliminary research shows the 50 million students in this experiment in the U.S. will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% gain in reading compared to a typical school year and less than 50% for math (NWEA, Oregon). ...

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A 2011 survey by Universum shows technology firms such as Google, Apple and Facebook as the most preferred choice of university graduates during campus recruiting. Financial firms lag far behind, with J.P. Morgan Chase ranking 41st in that list. At Harvard Business School only 17% of the class went into investment banking and finance. Students from the University of Texas at Austin to Yale, say they want to build something tangible or follow their dream project.

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Reactions of Republican state governors in the U.S. to president Obama's executive order on immigration. Presidential candidate Governor Jindal of Louisiana says about deportation efforts for illegal immigrants- "we will deal with people here illegally compassionately and fairly," while at the same time calling for greater security at the borders. Governor Kasich of Ohio asked about citizenship for undocumented immigrants- "I'm open to it, I will tell you that." Governors in Texas, Kansas and Wisconsin oppose the executive order.

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BB&T Capital Markets analysts say Bed Bath &Beyond prices are 6.5% lower than Amazon. When the 20% coupon is added this can reach 25%. The 5-10-% in sales tax created a gap in Amazon pricing vs. brick and mortar retailers. Now that sales taxes are collected on internet sales in states such as Florida, Texas, New Jersey and California this narrows the pricing gap. Best Buy is offering guarantees to match Amazon prices in their stores.

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Oil prices drop below $38 by mid-December 2015, as the Saudis continue to push prices down further by continuing production increases. No change is planned for 2016 and analysts expect low oil prices into 2016. At $38 a barrel it becomes uneconomical for most shale oil producers to operate in the U.S. About 50,000 jobs are lost in Texas and 250,000 jobs worldwide. This is a boost for large oil importers such as India, Japan, and Europe. China also stands to benefit from low oil prices. Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran and Russia have the most to lose from an extended period of low oil prices. Politics in the Middle East also may play a part in decisions as the Saudis oppose intervention in Syria and Iraq by Russia and Iran. Rising shale oil production in the U.S. could also be one of the additional targets of Saudi policy. One consequence is that OPEC is divided with the Saudis going their own way.

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As Cruz leads in Iowa and other states putting Trump in second place, Hamburger provides an exceptional look inside the Cruz campaign. Cruz's campaign manager says rules of the past no longer apply, in a changing voter environment pushing out establishment candidates and with the digital media tools now available. Data analysis and use of methods such as "psychographic targeting" to tailor appeals to voters based on what appeals to them using Facebook data on likes are being used by the Cruz campaign. Cambridge Analytica, a firm financed by hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, a Cruz supporter, has built an effective data gathering operation of potential Cruz supporters among evangelicals. This has helped the Cruz campaign recruit pastors in Iowa, and in the U.S. for the Cruz campaign. It also helps in micro efforts such as home calls made by supporters, and in "geofencing" or sending emails and messages to a particular building or physical location such as a gathering of the National Rifle Association, or Republican Jewish Coalition. A mobile app "Cruz Crew" is another aspect of the digital effort to organize efforts of supporters and volunteers....

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Obesity in the US is as high as about 40% in West Virginia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. It is lowest about 25% in Colorado, Vermont and Hawaii. About 22 states have obesity rate over 35%. Compare this with China which is seeing obesity increase from about 15% in 2023 to 20% in 2034. Real competition between the two countries starts with areas like health care coming out of the pandemic when looking at the true interest of both peoples instead of geopolitics creating a huge distraction from problems of health, climate change and education. Meat intake has tripled in China and a return to more vegetable and fruits and ancient grains is something that is needed badly, also helping tackle climate change. The states in the South and midwestern US have higher rates of obesity followed by northeast and western states. This includes in the South Kentucky, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas. In Midwest it includes Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Kansas. It is useful to note that this is in Voice of America news which is aimed at an overseas audience and this kind of information is not seen widely in US media. Robust food programs ae needed especially for people living in poverty. Health consciousness needs to be emphasized in all aspects of life and worklife, workspaces, living locations and transportation options all need to be devised around this. Bussel of the Robert Woods Foundation says even ten years back no state had over 35% of the population being obese. Clearly headed in the wrong direction with all the discussion in media run by billionaires on everything but what most affects the quality and ease of living of ordinary people. ...

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The support of 10 Republican senators now makes it possible to pass a legislation that covers the basics of controlling use of assault weapons in the US. This includes raising the minimum age for use from 18 years to 21 years. Senators Cornyn of Texas and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina are some of the Republican senators supporting this legislation. It also has the backing of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is the Minority Republican Leader in the Senate. A broader ban on all assault weapons does not have much support from Republicans.  For years a spate of shooting each year in schools and other places would lead to cries of outrage from Democrats and sympathy from Republicans and yet nothing got done to control the use of assault weapons. Now a more prudent approach is taking the place of a call for a complete ban. Small incremental steps are now seen as OK. President Biden also sees this as the right approach to move in the right direction till more agreement or a breakthrough can be achieved. This is not just on gun control but also on a number of social issues. This may also reduce the tensions in American society that were exacerbated with no controls on behaviour of social media companies. Corrective incremental steps may create the right environment where useful dialogue and discussion absent today can be brought back for making larger decisions in the interest of the American people in the future.  ...

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Meg Gentle, who helped build the first LNG terminal for Cherniere Inc. in the Gulf Coast of the US for export of natural gas extracted in the US, is now switching to work in green hydrogen production. The first facility goes up in Texas by 202 7after an experimental project in Chile. WSJ shows many former fossil fuel executives are taking this route to green hydrogen. Gentle says the nascent green hydrogen industry is similar to the beginnings of natural gas. She says there are all the same elements in both. And that the new companies can go from one plant to create a new transformation just like that done for LNG. A chief technology officer of Airbus, a head of GE Europe and China, and an Italian from Eni Enel are also working at green hydrogen companies. What has turned an historically uneconomic business into a possibly profitable business are subsidies from president Biden put in place for clean energy. These subsidies now cover 60% of the cost of green hydrogen, says the WSJ. Green hydrogen requires permiting, infrastructure, financing, customer agreements, similar to the fossil fuel industry. Many are joining for the challenge as green hydrogen when converted into a liquid for transport can't carry as much energy as fossil fuels. About 120 startups raised $2.6 billion in 2022, a 50% jump from 2021. The GE executive says no one has done this on scale making the opportunity enormous. ...

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Research shows that some countries will benefit more than others through climate change action for net zero emissions by 2050. India, Argentina, Britain and European Union, Japan and South Korea will be able to reduce imports of fossil fuels and invest in infrastructure, renewable energy, and create jobs in new sectors. Countries that depend on fossil fuel exports Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, will see much of their coal, oil and natural gas assets, left in the ground. The US and Canadian shale oil producers will also be affected, along with Chinese producers but with a broadly diversified economy the US and China will continue to grow. This paper with lead author from University of Exeter, in Nature, shows $11 trillion in stranded fossil fuel assets left in the ground by 2036 for major oil producing countries under the most probable scenario.  This means the transition will have to be carefully handled as some states such as Texas, Alberta will be hit hard in North America. The paper also shows that countries that are major oil and gas exporters such as Russia and Saudi Arabia will not be pioneers or push aggressively for climate change in the way the European Union, Britain, and India are doing at COP26 because of this problem of stranded fossil fuel assets left in the ground. China and the US have strong renewable energy sectors and will join the EU, Britain and India. ...

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Gerard Baker in The Times of London looks at California as some kind of dystopia, a malfunctioning place with rolling blackouts from PG&E the electricity company, drought and water shortages, housing costs soaring making it affordable only to the few at the top, and high taxes. He cites an expert from Chapman University who compares it to some sort of medieval feudal place run by nobility at the top, the investors, lawyers and people in entertainment, with the academy and the media as a kind of clerisy who propagate the ideas that this nobility supports, a small middle and the rest as serfs or minimum wage workers in logistics, retail and farms. Median costs of housing are about $613,000, and the affordability index of people who can afford housing is 32% compared to 56% in the country. Hispanic immigrants now prefer Texas, though with a loss of 6 million people in the last decade and gain of five million, it sees increase in population with high birthrates from the existing population to about 40 million. Half the population of homeless in the U.S. are now in California though it has only one eighth the population of the country. High housing costs and high cost of living hurt people at the low end, the lower middle and the retired the most. With low wages at the bottom and extremes of wealth, homeless, housing zone restrictions, drought and rolling electricity blackouts, this is not what the future should look like.  ...

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Karl Rove says he was in his 20's working in the Reagan election campaign in Texas which was declared a close contest by the New York Times polls. Gallup in October showed Carter ahead Oct 13 by 4 points, and by Oct 27 by 8 points. He expresses skepticism about current polls because of 91 national polls in the last 30 days (including Gallup and Rasmussen) Obama was at or above what he calls the critical or magic number of 50% in only 20 polls.

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A 850 megawatt solar project, the largest in the US outside of Las Vegas runs into opposition from environmentalists concerned about the effect on views and on tortoises other endangered species. The planned project on top of Mormon Mesa would put over 1 million solar panels 10 to 20 feet tall in the Nevada desert. Across the US 800 utility scale solar projects are under contract for generation of 70,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 11 million homes, for more than Texas. Over half of this solar capacity is going into the southwestern US, with its sunshine and open land. For the first time the ardent advocates of renewable energy such as the Sierra Club are now opposing such projects. Solar made up one tenth of one percent of US energy in 2010, in 2020 it made up 4.5%. It is growing very rapidly because costs are going way down. Even before government subsidies solar is now below the cost of natural gas. Projects near Martha's Vineyard on the Massachusetts coast took 12 years to get sate and federal approval for wind energy. These battles are similar to ones being fought in Europe. The US is better positioned for solar because of vast desert spaces in the American southwest. President Joe Biden plans to use this advantage of solar and wind to get to 100% renewable energy by 2035. ...

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How the Australian Central Bank raised rates starting in May 2002, with the key lending rate at 5.5 % in July 2005, compared to 3.25 % in the USA. The idea was to control the housing bubble which has scaled back, with the Australian economy growing at 2% and this growth coming mostly from the commodities demand in global markets. Meanwhile the US central bank under Greenspan is holding onto the view that its hard to tell when a bubble is occurring, and it would hurt a healthy economy to raise rates to cool developing bubbles. Australia's central bank holds onto the other view that it is wiser to act now before the bubble gets out of hand. Governor MacFarlane of the Australian central bank said in aspeech in early 2003 that a "scaling back" of household borrowing and property development would be in "the longer term interest of the Australian economy." And the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, instituted a 2.25% tax on the sale of investment properties. This move discouraged speculators who bought and "flipped" properties for quick profits. By early 2004 a glut of downtown apartment units emerged in Melbourne, and the bubble began to scale back. During the height of the boom consumer spending was growing by more than 6% ayear, in 2005 this has slowed to 3.5% a year. Because of commodity demand, Australia was able to see growth at 2%, and still avoid the longterm effects of a bubble in housing markets by scaling them back. Patrick Barta closes with a reference to Texas in the 1980's and early 1990's, and Southeast Asia in 1997, when housing prices and the economy went down in tandem hitting employment in the oil and banking industries in Texas. In the case of Asia hitting the economies of some Asian countries with the fall of their currencies. He refers to the overstretched US consumer with load of debt, and the possibility of housing and the economy going down in tandem in the USA, similiar to what happened in Texas and Southeast Asia....

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Texas is rapidly changing state with an influx of 150,000 people from other states and unemployment at 7.1% well below the national average. Dallas is headquarters of many companies including Southwest Airlines. But it ranks poorly in education with close to half of Latinos in Houston failing to graduate from high school. Immigration is also changing the state with making up the largest ethnic group by 2015. Today the Anglo and liberal area in the south is different from the mostly Hispanic El Paso area in the western part of the state.