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Jack Healy, who the NYT says writes about the rapidly changing politics and climate of the American southwest, provides this report from the border town of Nogales, Arizona, on the border with Mexico. In this desolate isolated border region America's future is being decided- Biden being the only Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 to take Arizona and by just 10,000 votes. There near Nogales the border wall Trump built ends abruptly at the Kelly ranch in a picture shown in this report. Rural Santa Cruz County is except for migrants a solitary and quiet place along the border. Mr. Kelly moved here in 2002 and runs more of a hobby ranch unlike the bigger cattle ranches in the area. Migrants make their way through this part of the border and the Kelly ranch. In the most recent episode a migrant is shot and Mr. Kelly reports the shooting to police. Healy looks at the lives of the rancher and the migrant to give a snapshot picture of what life is really like on the border. And the different sides of the story seen from the rancher's and migrant's situation.  A border area where in a vast dry mesquite region ranchers on the Arizona side live alongside Mexico with people facing high unemployment where people are looking for work and choose to take the risks of crossing the border illegally. Crossings that are made at points on the border wall that end in canyons and riverbeds where migrants and their smugglers make their way. It affects the lives of the ranchers and the migrants in many ways. Ranchers who are in isolated areas- the Kelley ranch is 170 acres- feel isolated and vulnerable as they see a threat in the network of smugglers sending migrants across the border. This is also where the future of America is being decided. After the overconcentration of manufacturing in China, there is the border with Mexico, two regions that have little to do with each other but determine politics and emotions in the US about workers, about migrants and about borders. By understanding both sides of the story president Biden became the first president since Harry Truman to win Arizona in the presidential election of 2021. He won it by just 10,000 votes with a recount showing about 360 more votes. Without Arizona and Georgia both won by Harry Truman in 1948 Biden could not have begun the process of tackling the major issues facing America in 2021. Keeping uppermost workers and families, keeping uppermost the people of America as Truman had done in 1948.     ...

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Most of the US wind energy comes from Texas, Iowa, Kansas in the central region of the country. Wind makes up about 10% of energy in the US and 7% in the world. Solar adds another 5%. There is a long way to go. Nordic countries such as Denmark have made significant advances.

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Juan Carlos of Spain in his memoir in 2025- says about moving away from Spain to the UAE that it was to "help his son, and so that journalists cannot find me." The king remains popular with the Partido Popular and its support in the Madrid region, less popular in other parts of Spain, in the fractious nature of Spanish politics. There is a sharp contrast to how he was perceived in the years of transition to the EU in 1981 and the decade after that and today. The problems of the British royal family and Charles are seen in the perceptions of the Spanish royal family, the only two major monarchies in Europe.

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During the election campaign Obama talked about sending at least 2 more combat brigades to Afghanistan. The Defense Department is already planning to send 20,000 additional troops in response to a request of General David McKiernan, top commander in Afghanistan,including 4 combat brigades and an aviation brigade with helicopters, increasing the American troop levels to 58,000, with an additional 30,000 NATO troops already there from other countries. The timeline for this is 12-18 months but with the escalating insurgent attacks in Afghanistan this will probably be done more quickly. Obama and some Democrats talked about Afghanistan as somehow being the good war and he vowed to defeat the Taliban and militants in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is a different place and most military experts are suggesting that a good strategy will be needed, for example winning over the tribals and some of the militants, and not trying to win militarily. However with the deteriorating situation there the only way to win over tribals and militants may be to get the situation to where the NATO and US forces are in a strong situation. The two big handicaps in this are first history, where the terrain and rural distribution of the people make it difficult to exercize any control over the vast region of mountains and deserts. So throughout history no one has controlled this region and there is no history of centralized government, with different tribes controlling their regions. The other is the problem created by the corruption and lack of any popular support for the Karzai government, which is made worse by the involvement of its officials in the opium trade with opium growing booming in the southern part of Afghanistan. How does the US and NATO create an effective Afghan army and police under a state that does not enjoy any popular support. And yet the strategy that Gates. Petraeus and McKiernan are pursuing involves preparing the Afghan army and police for the task of controlling the vast mountainous region against a rural insurgency that knows its way in the mountains enjoys rural support because of the independent spirit of the Afghan people who find it easy to see the NATO forces as white foreigners in their country. The Afghan army is small for such a vast mountainous region, only 70,000 in a nation of 32 million people, and the police forces of 80,000 mostly corrupt and ineffectual. The present plan is to build the Afgan army to 134,000 still small for such a large region. The other problems stem from the Pushtun population in Pakistan that supports the rural insurgency in Afghanistan and the support of tribal people in the border areas of Pakistan. The picture tells the story, a small number of NATO soldiers in a remote ridge in Afghanistan. And the problems actually are across the whole of the far northern region of what was once British India, of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the Pakistan government is quite fragile, having an army that operates as a power center of its own with little accountability to the central government. And years of war during the previous military government of Pakistan under Zia Ul Haq, in which Zia with the support of the Reagan administration supported another rural insurgency in Afghanistan that drove the soviets out of Afghanistan, and the subsequent sponsorship of the Taliban movement by the Pakistan military in Afghanistan, has created a situation in Pakistan where militants now operate freely and with impunity in Pakistan itself, disregarding both the Pakistan military and the Pakistan elected government's power structures....

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DW.com says Greenland has some of the largest mineral deposits in world. Greenland is an island in the Arctic region that was first extensively explored by US Admiral Perry in the 1890's. In 1867 it was a planned American acquistion of Seward with the Alaska Purchase. Harry Truman planned acquisition of Greenland in 1947 after the War. The Nazis had planned to use it in the War.  Yet the BBC, Wash Post, NYT, and other media simply ignore this and take what Denmark has to say and present Denmark's view as something thought up at the White House. Clearly Denmark was a colonial power and acquired this territory totally averse to the interests of local population of tribes in the period since 1800. It acquired it in negotiations with colonial powers including Britain, Sweden, and Norway through the Treaty of Kiel in 1800 during the Napoleonic Wars. There is no legal basis for Denmark's colonization of Greenland. Germany and Britain understand this for whom the main interest lies in US being able to protect the eastern seaboard of the US from hostile nations who would also be hostile to Europe. Denmark's role in this is zero and it is totally useless for Denmark. It has less than the size of the NYC police department in Greenland and the population of Greenland would easily fit into a baseball stadium in the US. The US Navy with Adm. Perry discovered the North of Greenland from the southern part by dog sleds for the first time in the 1890's. It is hundreds of times the size of Denmark and covers the eastern seaboard of the US essential to US security since its founding- it is of no value to Denmark as Truman's Commanders in Chief pointed out in 1947, when after Seward in 1867 US moved to acquire it. Climate change and loss of 140 billion tons of ice over decades means it is becoming a navigable waterway- and poses risks for the security of the US requiring the US to take action in the interests of both the US and Europe, on which Denmark has ineptly chosen to misrepresent or obscure the facts as the facts can easily be researched. ...

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In a show of solidarity with Ukraine Scholz, Macron and Draghi, leaders of the German, French and Italian governments go by train to Irpin and Kviv. The US promises an additional $1 billion in aid this week. The Ukraine war is now mostly fought in the east in the Donbas region and near the town of Severodonetsk where Ukrainian forces face artillery barrages from the Russians and have taken heavy casualties. The longer range rockets needed to counter the Russian advance have not yet reached Ukraine from the US.

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Lashkar aPakistan terrorist group which recruits members has 150,000 members in Pakistan and is drawing increasing support, has connections to Pakistan's Intelligence Agency ISI at different levels on a clandestine level, and is capable of another attack. The ISI leadership for its part has not abandoned its goal for freeing Kashmir but simply shelved it for now. Says the Times report by Lyddia Polgreen and Souad Mekhennet, with interviews and classified information from ISI officials and operatives, the capabilities of Lashkar are intact, only "a thin distance" separates the Lashkar from the ISI bridged by military and former intelligence service members, and another attack is possible. The cooperation between the the Indian and Pakistani intelligence and police even now is zero according to this report. This has grim consequences for the American troops in the Afghanistan region and the Pakistan troops fighting the war in the border regions, and for economic development in South Asia. For the first time the consequences of past failed policies in the region are threatening the vital interests of the American and South Asian people, as wars and conflict now seriously threaten much needed infrastructure and economic development in South Asia and economic renewal in North America. And serious solutions and problem solving is sorely needed on the North American side and the South Asian side. The vital interests and future of about 400 million people in North America and 1400 million people in South Asia would otherwise be held hostage to the volatile emotions of 8 million people in Pakistani and Indian parts of Kashmir, in a remote region of the world. ...

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The Blinken Wang Yi meeting at the G-2- in Indonesia is the first high level meeting between US and China since March when the Ukraine war started. In the press briefing after the meeting Blinken said "more than four months into this brutal invasion the PRC stands by Russia." He pointed to Beijing support of Russia at the United Nations, dissemination of Russian talking points through Chinese state media and joint military exercizes with Moscow. One aspect of the relations that is beyond the control or good intentions of the two countries top diplomats is the tit for tat response that began with the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump may have seen this as a way to talk to the voter base fed up with two decades of one sided trade with China with manufacturing shipped out to China and local communities of families and workers in regions across the US losing jobs and in decline. Much of this shift was done by US companies during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations over two decades. The strident tone adopted by Trump was met by tit for tat responses in Chinese media till the pandemic when it assumed a new aspect of Chinese origins of the coronavirus. The result is that Sinophobia in the US is met by a response in Chinese media and in the thinking of the Chinese leadership under Jinping that now sees the relationship as having already shifted during the pandemic. The paradox in this is that the US in its effort to get other countries on its side is only beginning to make an effort of get America's own companies and large business investors on its side. Most American companies are still continuing trade and business with China as before.  The same situation exists with the shift of manufacturing from Japan and the European Union to China, with the loss of jobs and decline of local communities that depended on manufacturing. Japanese and European companies are acting in ways that are similar to American companies. Having managed the shift of manufacturing from European Union and Japan to China these companies have done little to change this business situation in 2022 carrying on as before. This is the paradox of the current situation that business both in the US and EU, and Japan is not on the side of their governments, even as their governments attitude to China, particularly now after the pandemic and the Ukraine war has shifted drastically. Alongside this is the popular opinion that has shifted gradually over the last 10 years in the US and EU, first in these very local communities that lost manufacturing to China, and then across broader sections of the public, and now across whole regions of America, Britain, the EU and Japan. This shift in popular opinion has little interest in the way business conducts business overseas or governments conduct diplomacy in nuanced statements. As a result neither the governments of the US, EU and Japan or the business of the US, EU and Japan are in control of this shifting situation that has its momentum and pace operating quite independently of governments and business. And public opinion across America, Europe, Japan, and also in India is moving in an entirely new direction.     ...

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The new Charlapalli Rail Terminal for the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad was opened by PM Modi on Jan. 6 2025. It will connect to the Outer Ring Road and accelerate the development of the region. It has 9 platforms, lifts, escalators, solar powered operations and will handle 20 long distance trains, reducing congestion on other terminals.

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The Biden Xi meeting was a momentous event, of great importance and significance setting the tone for next 3 decades of US- China relations. Here is how China's Xinhua agency covered it. Xi's speech emphasized the world and the US and China's need to work on climate change, inclusiveness for benefits to reach all parts of the people. Biden's efforts to support the labor movement are part of the US efforts in this direction, Xi's to bring the benefits to the regions of China and rural parts left behind in three decades of development. Openness and innovation Xi emphasized, on which the US is working to say openness but as China does to support its own solar and EV industries, and for innovation to protect its own technologies. In this way the US is saying we will work with you but without the illusions of the past in which free market thinking was an hindrance and support its own new technologies and industries as China is doing, and protecting its technologies from being transferred. ...

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Critics of the Obama administration's so-called "light footprint strategy" for the Middle East say it is more about keeping distance from problems in that region. This is a reaction to the extensive involvement of the U.S. in two wars in that region and intuitively makes sense, as well as being in line with American public opinion to focus on problems at home. The shift or pivot to Asia of president Obama also comes in that context. The problem with this approach is that this ignores the fact that most of the momentum and effort for the freedom struggles throughout the Middle East from Tunisia first, then Libya, Egypt, and now Syria, comes from within. The lead role is now being taken by France and Britain, with German public opinion also lined up in support. The U.S. in forfeiting its role as a facilitator with strategies such as "no-fly-zones" is losing the opportunity to gain the goodwill in the Middle East with cost that is negligible in comparison to the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, and comes after the huge U.S. effort to remove one dictator in Iraq. A minor followup effort is all that is required from an administration that pushed for the "surge" in Afghanistan. When history is written the investment of the Obama administration in Afghanistan may show little results, if what is considered by the media and experts as an unpopular and undemocratic government of Karzai falls in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. There is little doubt in public opinion in the U.S. and worldwide that the movement for freedom and democracy in the Middle East and democratically elected governments will become a lasting facet of the new Middle East. It also provides huge opportunties for trade and investment as is shown by the gains made by Turkey in just 2 years. This is why the Obama adminstration policies in the Middle East show a lack of grasp of the facts showing the Middle East as opportunity more than threat for the next decade, especially in its overreaction to the Bush era policies. This happens as there is a demographic explosion of young people in the Middle East. An administration that was keen to sense the demographic changes in North America, has failed to grasp this fact and why the struggle in the Middle East flashes daily on television screens young people carrying on the struggle. A pivot to Asia means a pivot to the Far East more than Asia because India is part of the South Asian-Middle Eastern region, which presents another paradox because as China is slowing the entire South Asian-Middle Eastern region of Asia is where future growth is expected to accelerate in the next decade. ...

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American singer Linda Ronstadt looks back to her roots in the Rio Sonora region of Mexico in this AARP excerpt about her years growing up in that region before her father moved to Tucson, Arizona. Her album Canciones de mi Padre, is the best selling non English music album in the US of all time. Her book is called- Feels Like Home- Song for the Sonoran Borderlands. It looks at the emotional and physical links between the US southwest and Mexico and the hold that this region has on the popular imagination. She says that wherever she has lived, wherever she has travelled, her soul is always winging it down the road, to the land south of the border. A stretch of desert she calls her foothold to the world. Today millions of Mexican Americans share this heritage and this kind of genetic memory. When the Spanish landed in the 1500's there was no border. The land and its physical aspects have not changed through waves of immigration- this story in the AARP magazine shows the agaves in the backdrop of the Huachuca mountains. Apple Music has Ronstadt's album and The Arbolitas, a song of the trees, etched in the Sonoran sunlight.  ...

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Indian foreiign minister S Jaishankar meets with his counterpart Wang Yi in Dushnabe, Uzbekistan, to restore peace in border region of Ladakh after the violent clash in 2020. Jaishankar tells China not to view ties with India through "the lens of a third country." China agrees. Jaishankar was actively involved in setting up cultural and other Sino-Indian contacts in Chinese cities when he was Indian ambassador to China. Jaishankar also tells China that India China relations set the tone for peace in Asia. China says it agrees with this idea. India's strong response to China's border infrastructure building and its moving forces close to the border line of control, has led to China reconsidering its policy following deteriorating relations with Australia, US and UK. China now sees that it has little to gain with worsening India relations and border issues or clashes, when the US and UK, Australia, are moving forces into the Indo-Pacific region and in the seas around Taiwan. ...

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A study of the economies of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. by the Brookings Institution suggests that states in the South may be facing a harder time recovering from high unemployment than the northeast and midwestern states. Of the ten states with the highest unemployment six are in the West and the South, including Nevada, California, and S. Carolina. Unemployment in S. Carolina is 11.1%. A researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, says the better performance of the South in earlier years was driven by development and in-migration. This has abruptly ended. A Brookings Fellow, Howard Wial, suggests the possibility of California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida being depressed for a long time, while states in the Great Lakes region see a rebound. States and regions that are dependent on education, healthcare and energy, are doing better than others. In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh region with its emphasis on education and healthcare is doing better than Philadelphia. In New York, Buffalo and Rochester in the upstate region are doing better than the New York City metropolitan area. Areas around Akron and Youngstown in the rustbelt part of Ohio are recovering better than Tucson and Colorado Springs....

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This very exceptional report from the city of Recife in Brazil's northeastern state of Pernambuco, comes from WSJ reporters Johnson and Jelmayer. It is about the physicians Vanessa van der Linden Mota, and Ana van der Linden Mota, her mother, who first alerted health authorites in Pernambuco about the cases of encephaly and the links to the mosquito Zika Virus in Recife, Brazil. From 147 recorded encephaly cases, and babies born with shrunken skulls or calcified brain structure in 2014 in Brazil, the cases reported jumped to 4,180 suspected cases. Estimates of cases by 2020 for such cases run up to 50,000 to 100,000 if the problem is not tackled. The family of the van der lindens come from Dutch-German immigrants settled in northeastern Brazil, a less developed region of the country. The family is unique with five doctors including neuro pediatricians Ana and Vanessa working in public hospitals in Recife , and father Helio a neuro surgeon. The entire state of Pernambuco has a total of 15 neuropediatricians, according to this report. The Ebola Virus emerged in countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia which suffered from war and neglect of health infrastructure. Here in Pernambuco state, as reporters Johnson and Jelmayer point out, the problem stems from neglect in public health infrastructure, especially sanitation and drinking water for shantytown dwellers and vast majority of poor residents in a city of 3.5 million, typical of developing countries in Latin America and South Asia, where development in some parts of the country have lagged far behind, and where needed public health infrastructure investments have not been made. Lack of dependable drinking water means collecting water in containers that are susceptible to breeding mosquitoes, such as the mosquitoes carrying the Zika Virus. A public debate on the lack of attention by socialist and worker's party led governments to this type of infrastructure and transportation services was already underway in Brazil leading to widespread protests in 2013. A $226 million investment in a soccer stadium in Recife, and similar investments in other smaller cities in the northeast were made under the Worker's Party government. Large investments for the Olympics now come as the economy contracted in 2015, and Brazil is hurt by another boom-bust cycle with the slowdown in China- with fiscal austerity policies, a loss of a third in the value of its currency, and the popularity rating of the newly elected government from the Worker's Party in single digits....

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The Klamath river flows for 250 miles from the Cascade mountains in Oregon through California to the Pacific ocean. The Washington Post gives this look at this part of the Pacific Northwest where dams built during the period 1900-1960 for electrification which interrupted the natural flow of the river are now being removed. This is a part of restoring the ecology of this region and reducing the long term effects of climate change. More than 2000 dams have been removed since 1912, with half of these removals coming in the last 10 years. Over the years dams like these on the Klamath are no longer useful as cheaper sources of electricity exist and do not serve for flood control. For many this is a way to restore the balance to the ecology of the region.

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Extreme mismanagement of the economy led to the situation of currency notes of 100 trillion in Zimbabwe being issued by the central bank of this African country, unbelievable as it may sound. The situation has deteriorated over two decades. Before independence this country was called Southern Rhodesia run by a small community of white British settlers from the nineteenth century. After a independence war by a liberation front organization this country entered a new phase in which the mismanagement of the country's economy became a serious problem for all communities, in a nation of 15 million people which could attract tourists with diverse African habitats and Victoria Falls. It is an example of how the hopes of a generation  that experienced independence in 1980 in these parts of British East Africa have been waylaid by autocratic leaders and mismanagement. This region includes Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya. 

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Efforts to build air defense systems for Guam, American base 1300 miles east of the Philippines. China has stockpiled missiles that could reach Guam, says this report in the WSJ. There are 150,000 American civilians in Guam, which is an island the size of Chicago. As Guam is entirely American the US can operate from Guam in a manner that it cannot do from Okinawa or other bases in the Pacific, or in South Korea. About 50,000 Americans are based at Okinawa, Japan. US has 22,000 military personnel on Guam island. Guam played a critical role in the early days of the Pacific War with Japan and after it was retaken from the Japanese.

This is becoming important as the US faces the prospect of being able to help protect Taiwan's independence, and protect free navigation on seas in the Indo-Pacific region that extends from Africa to India and Australia and to western US.

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Spain's prime minister agrees to use of Catalan, Galician and Basque languages in parliament in return for support of JxCat pro Catalan party to form a future government. Spain's parliament voted 178 in favor and 169 against for use of these languages. About 9 million people in the region around Barcelona speak Catalan, 2 million in Galicia in the northwest speak Galician, and three quarter million speak Basque in the north. These languages were banned since the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of General Franco. Pedro Sanchez's government is also seeking approval of these languages as official in the EU joining 24 official languages. For Spain this marks the beginning of a new period in which the Partido Popular whose leader Mr. Feijoo is from Galicia as was a former prime minister Mariano Rajoy from PP, and the governing Socialist Party, both approve the making of these languages official. 

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Only about a third of the people in southeast Asia are fully vaccinated compared to 58% in the US. With growing inequality and a slowdown in production the supply chain in this region is hit hard. The region includes Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. This region's growth rate is cut from 4.4% in April to 2.5% for 2021 by the World Bank. Manila based Asian Development Bank forecast is for 3.1% growth as coronavirus outbreaks lead to major lockdowns. This happened in Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia. It has also worsened the global supply chain disruptions from clothes to cars and commodities.

As supply chains are restructured, and western countries increase manufacturing at home to avoid higher shipping costs, uncertainty of far flung supply chains, production is likely to decline.

World Bank sees 24 million more people below the poverty line in Asia this year than projected earlier.

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The WP's Adam Taylor gives readers glimpses of Ukraine's and Crimea's history. The Crimea was at various times part of the Greek and Roman Empires as Taurica, the Mongols, the Khanate since 1400, and part of the Russian Empire since 1783. About 60% of the population is Russian in the Crimea, 12% Tartars. Under the Soviet Union it was first the Crimean Autonomous Socialist Republic till 1945 and then Crimean Oblast, an administrative region of Russia. It was made part of Ukraine by Russian premier Krushchev in 1954, Krushchev himself being a Russian who came up through the Ukrainian Communist party. In Dec. 1991 a referendum was held in Ukraine, 54% of Crimean voters favored independence from Russia. Crimea remained part of Ukraine with autonomy including its own constitution, and legislature. A 1997 treaty allowed Russia to base its Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea.

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Iranian missiles and drones flying low and close to the ground avoided detection by Saudi and American air defense systems. The missiles and drones hit Saudi oil facilities stopping about half of the Saudi oil production. Iranian cruise missile technology was used for the attack, according to U.S. officials. The attack also showed how vulnerable the oil supplies from this region are to disruption. The U.S. is not dependent on Saudis for oil as it has increased its production from shale. China, Japan, South Korea and India are dependent on Saudi oil supplies. Yet the U.S. is shouldering a greater burden for ensuring reliable supplies to Asian countries, something the Trump administration sees it should be compensated for. Tougher sanctions on Iranian oil hurt its economy, resulting in actions taken by Iran to disrupt Saudi oil supplies. The Saudi intervention in Yemen is another source of tensions in the region. The Trump administration says it is not interested in endless wars in the region, yet its tougher oil sanctions on Iran are pulling it into the conflict in unpredictable ways. China, India, and other countries had sought sanctions waivers to import Iranian oil, and see the sanctions as hurting oil supplies. India with limited supplies of its own was affected by the oil sanctions. ...

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The difficulties of unwinding war stimulus that has increased jobs and wages in poorer regions of Russia, and the problems with unwinding a war economy, are discussed here by experts from Russia, the US and Germany. Other aspects include what to do with hundreds of thousands of new recruited soldiers who would be unemployed during a period when the economy's growth has slowed and wage growth is slowing. In 2024 new recruits were given 1 years bonus and were being attracted in large numbers. JD Vance mentioned this to the new Pope in discussions, and this report says even Putin does not know how best to unwind this war economy. Vance told Pope Leo XIV -“I’m not sure that Vladimir Putin himself has a strategy for how to unwind the war.” This is the view also from an expert at the Free University of Berlin, as rapidly demobilizing a large army poses its own problems. Russia could export the arms from new arms factories and keep people employed. This option is difficult as many African countries buy on credit and Asian other buyers may seek the latest technologies, others face financial difficulties or like India are diversifying and shifting to local manufacturing. ...

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Bipin Rawat says the best approach to security for India is one of dissuasive deterrance. For the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean region a multilateral presence with the U.S. Australia, and Japan is seen as the most effective way to maintain open seas.

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This BBC report looks back at the Solomon Islands which were part of the Guadalcanal campaign in World War II and the importance of the Pacific. In 1943 a Japanese destroyer sank an American ship under John Kennedy in these Pacific ocean waters. About  80 years later his daughter Caroline Kennedy, ambassador to Australia in the Biden administration, takes a trip to this Pacific region and islands of Samoa and Tonga, with Wendy Sherman. China is seen as planning a base in the Solomon Islands which is on the southern sea route near Australia.