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It might not all make sense that the Pakistan/China mediated ceasefire conditions (including US and Israeli condition of no nuclear weapons development and ballistic missile development) are really not known even in the media today, only known to the Iranian government and the US government. In these conditions Iran's government gets to show that it had achieved its goals, even with enormous reconstruction costs of the damage done during the war. DJT had pointed to a sort of regime change in Iran after most of the earlier leadership has been removed, and new leaders in place who are keen on setting up conditions for their own administration replacing the old one.  Over the period 2027-2030 the prospect is real that China, India and Japan may shift their oil supplies sources to other regions, increase conservation per unit of GDP, and increase supplies of renewable energy, steps already taken by Germany over the last decade. Most media looks only what happens today and in 2026. This may be the last of the Middle East Wars before Europe and the US, and India, China, Japan shift away from the Middle East to get supplies of fossil fuels, and it may bring new renewables technologies that reduce the dependence on fossil fuels to the point of making a true transition to renewable energy. It may also be the last of the Middle East Wars in the sense that people of European nations and the US insist on no involvement in MIddle East as a sort of quagmire for squandering American, European and Asian vital resources of people and capital, ample example being given over the last 40 years. Considering the costs of the war and the moral cost of destroying infrastructure such as power plants that hurt the local population more than the regime in power, China, Japan, the US, and EU, India may find it is easier to race each other in coming up with alternative supplies and shifting to renewable energy faster than planned, making Middle Eastern oil supplies  and volatility in prices redundant, which would be a good thing after the hugely negative and costly experience of the last 50 years of dependence.     ...

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Senator Chuck Schumer in the US Congress after the passage of the US Debt Ceiling Agreement on June 1, 2023. It is a historic day when president Biden helped preserve most of what has been accomplished by the Inflation Reduction Act and other spending programs for US workers and families, for US infrastructure, and world leadership in science and technology.

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The need to extend the life of products as this DW.com report points out. It says the world is drowning in rubbish. The concept of a circular economy is to follow nature as a model and ensure that all material be recycled and reused. Five billion tons of plastic have been thrown away since 1950- doing things the wrong way.

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The 79 year old Dr Fauci has been through one virus crisis after another since 1980, and has the experience rarely found in so great a crisis. He is a reassuring face and a hero of these times as president Trump relies on his advice and that of Dr Birx, on how to win the war against the coronavirus.

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March 2022 was the hottest month in India for 122 years since records began. It was also extremely dry. Scientists say such a heat wave with temperatures reaching 50 degrees centigrade in April and May in India, "would have been extraordinarily rare without the climate crisis." They say it has a 1% chance even with current global warming.

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A Delaware judge rescinds a compensation agreement for Elon Musk saysing he is too close to directors on the Board. The compensation $55.8 billion, a number that is a reflection of how how deep the swing has been from the FDR.Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy period to the Reagan/Clinton/Obama era when the United Auto Workers are just coming out of wages close to the poverty line in 2024 and Tesla workers encouraged by the UAW agreement are pushing for better wages in Europe. The hidden truth is that just as there was a consensus in the country, and from Republicans and Democrats in one direction there has been a consensus in the completely opposite direction, this time flawed and dangerous by not giving workers the benefits of their hard work and long hours during the pandemic and after. As public awareness increases a new consensus and culture is emerging supported by the words and message of Abe Lincoln and going back to George Washington's warnings about extremes and lack of fairness. ...

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Biden looks set to having DJT at the White House and attending his Inauguration. He has accomplished much says Pat Schumer, Minority Leader in the US Senate. He also believe it or not looks quite healthy and active, and likely to look like that a few short years hence in 2027-2028. It gives Biden who did in one term for Covid response and vaccines, infrastructure investment and rebuilding America, withdrawal from foreign wars, what has never been done before in just 4 years, an opportunity to enjoy life after 40 years of public service. And by letting DJT tackle issues of Border and fentanyl flows from Mexico and China in the first 2 years, of unfair trade that have not been resolved for decades, so that America can benefit from the the best of both parties resources and strengths. Contrary to what so called "smart heads" say the two party system is working by engaging people in an ongoing vigorous debate and bringing fresh faces into public service. 

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Merkel tells Hungarian news portal Partizan that the Baltic States and Poland made efforts to reduce efforts for dialogue with Russia, and that this dialogue and meetings were also made difficult during the Covid pandemic. Merkel did not address other issues of EU and US relations with Russia over the decade when Russia was not integrated into European structures as a Northern European power. Britain and Netherlands also supported Poland and the Baltic States in efforts to keep NATO as a force and counterweight to Russia in Europe, something Merkel did not cover. Merkel appears to have been selective in covering only this issue in EU-Russian relations and not the larger issues that Merkel never addressed of ending the Cold War structure of NATO that Britain, Netherlands and Poland had favored. The result is that without German or US leadership the Cold War structure of NATO favored by Britain, Netherlands and Poland has been expanded to include Sweden and  Finland, and without a clear resolution of the Ukraine issue created a new situation. This situation is the return of the Cold War in another form with Russia and China, losing the opportunities presented to both sides to use trade and improvements in standards of living to create a durable peace for economic development and addressing the problems that have led to deindustrialization of US and European Union countries. ...

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The Bishop of York presents the Church's position that it needs time to pause and reflect- as people within the church can read the Christian scripture differently and understand tradition and lived human experience to arrive at different conclusions. That there are more differences than the Church of England was ready to admit. After three years of experimentation the Church of England is stopping the "Living in Love and Faith" program in a vote 252 votes to 132 votes. The General Synod of Bishops conclusion is that consensus cannot be reached. In the words of Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York- “This is not where I want us to be and not where we hoped we would be three years ago … I know that many of you are feeling angry and disappointed. There is a lot of pain and that pain cuts across so called ‘party lines’ or theological convictions held.” But, “knowing how divided we are on these issues, we haven’t been able to find further ways forward that honour the consciences of those who, faithfully led by their conscientious reading of scripture and their understanding of tradition and of lived human experience, arrive at different conclusions”. The bishops and the synod, he says are “more deeply divided than I think we knew – or admitted."   ...

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This editorial in the New York Times says the 'comfort women' agreement is a positive step, and that it was done with pressure from the Obama administration so that Japan and South Korea can do more to tackle North Korean nuclear weapons development. However as Soble and Choe Sang-Hun in the NYT point out in their report from South Korea, the primary goal of the agreement which should have been to generate goodwill has not been reached. Instead it has brought more attention to focus on this unfortunate event from the war, even to South Korean prime minister Lee's father's association as an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army.

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The large majority of vaccine disinformation has been traced to just 12 persons, according to a report cited by the White House. This report is from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They have a combined following of 59 million on social media with Facebook being the largest. Of 812,000 Facebook posts looked at by CCDH 65% came from these 12 persons.

On Facebook alone 73% of all anti-vaccine content comes from these 12 persons. These 12 include a religious zealot, a wellness blogger, some physicians who have taken on pseudoscience, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Only 3 have been removed from one platform of the 12 persons. US president Biden is critical of the role of social media in this pandemic.

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The Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho has been shaking up soccer for along time now. He is still shaking up soccer today as he puts Tottenham at the top of the Premier League, after knocking out Manchester City and drawing with Chelsea.

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Four million small businesses may go out of business. The stimulus money helped business owners get through the first wave of the pandemic. This has been lacking during the second wave which could have a serious effect on small businesses. 

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The government of Pedro Sanchez has announced additional $10 billion in cost of living aid to take the total to $45 billion. It comes through reduced VAT and $200 one off payments to households making less than 27,000 euros a year. The government has been able to bring inflation down to 6.8%, lowest in the European Union, though food inflation is higher.

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The Chinese government looks with disfavor on the long work hours, the 80 hour weeks, that were once seen as away to success. China's courts and Labor ministry detailed 10 court decisions that mandated employers respect national work laws, with workers not being forced to work overtime. National laws require a 44 hour work week which has not been enforced till now.

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Nikki Haley calls TikTok "a dangerous social media asset" in a Republican debate for presidential hopefuls. Strangely the debate also had in a commercial break an ad for TikTok. Social media has been shown to have an harmful affect on the mental health of children. Use of social media also affects the reading ability and concentration of children and young people. 

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This WSJ report points out that upto this point the US volatility index in 2024 has been very low. The drop in the US stock market on August 5, started with the effects of monetary tightening in Japan and its effect on the market in the US. Because of this the underlying situation in the US, the underlying low volatility has not changed.

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The hidden costs of pollution are shown by the Forever Pollution Project in France. Le Monde and partners estimate the cost at euros 12 billion a year for cleaning up PFAS, with the smallest particles TFA widely present in water to be treated. The cost of cleanup in the US for PFAS must be vastly higher in the US and has not been estimated.

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Germany's Interior Ministry and the Federal Press Office in the Chancellery are taking the lead for setting up the Center for Defense Against Disinformation, says DW.com citing Der Spiegel. Steffen Seibert heads the press office in the chancellery. Fines of 500,000 euros have been proposed for fake stories on Facebook.

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Jeremy Carl is the nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (including UN) in Feb. 2026. He is a research fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His BA is from Yale where he was president of the student union, and his Masters is from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  From 2004-2005 he was a visiting fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India.This article says he has been critical of Jewish attitudes yet he comes from a Jewish family and is now a member of the Presbyterian church. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the first term of DJT. His recent book is on the theme of how the culture and attitude of America was culture an attitude of vast majority of the population from 1600 till 1965 for about 400 years. The Immigration laws of 1965 under JFK/Johnson, he says were not intended to change this, yet a change and relaxation of tight immigration policy has led to the situation similar to what Eisenhower faced in 1954 that led to Operation Wetback- as Mexican immigration surged in the war years by the early 1950's. For 150 years before 1965 the US only opened up for Europeans immigrating to the US. The changes since 1965 coincided with deindustrializationn of the US and the failure of the governing class to do anything about the steady shipping out the nation's manufacturing sector to China. Which is why there is so much anxiety about America's position in the world and a sense of a culture that is being lost- of Robert Frost's poetry set in New Hampshire, of Shakespeare's plays and morals for Western civilization, of the values of Emerson and Thoreau that guided Gandhiji and other Asian leaders. ...

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Edward Johnson and daughter Abby Johnson- Fidelity Investments succession turmoil and Abby Johnson emerging as CEO is covered in a new book- House of Fidelity by Justin Baer, Deputy Markets Editor WSJ. CEO Edward Johnson (Ned) failed to come up with a succession plan and executives under him were planning to sell the company to Chase or another bank. Ned had talked to Chase's Dimon in 2005 and said he was not interested in selling the company founded by his father. Yet this is what executives under Ned, Reynolds had in mind, who did not have confidence in Abby Johnson's leadership. Fidelity Investments has recovered from poor performance in that period and manages the pension plans of employers in the US, being the largest in this business. In 2026 Fidelity manages life savings of 20% of American adults and 50% of these customers signed up in last 5 years, says WSJ. After a period in her performance in the mutual funds business which was not great Abby was listed for demotion by executives under her father, who would sent her to run the philanthropy part of the business. It shows how awoman now 64 years struggled through this period and took the bold step of defying her father through control of 41% of the stock of the company to gain control of the company- a step that led to her father relenting and letting Abby run the company. It is a tale of how in such situations even the most favored can be put at a disadvantage by perceptions - in this case by Reynolds of Abby's leadership and ability- and need to act swiftly and decisively after impressions have been formed that lead to an outcome that doesn't need to occur. Her father Ned even though he in his younger period was a good stock picker, failed in two ways. By not planning a clear succession and lacking confidence in his daughter to overcome temporary obstacles. ...

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New efforts to control air pollution over New Delhi and the persistent haze that hangs over the city in winter months by controlling the burning of stubble in Haryana state. Red zones have been identified and farmers getting the equipment they need.

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Hillary Clinton is diagnosed by her physician as having pneumonia on September 11, 2016. Her physician Lisa Bardack, says she "has been experiencing a cough related to allergies." She was put on antibiotics  when the cough was diagnosed as pneumonia, and told to rest and modify her schedule for a few days.

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Krugman points out the gains on three fronts evident from the Census Bureau report of 5.2% gain in median income of households in the U.S. He says the first is the growth in incomes of ordinary working class and middle class families, second the large decline in the poverty rate, and third the further rise in insurance coverage in 2015 for people without health insurance. He points to the steady efforts of the Obama administration to improve lives of ordinary families as working based on the Census report though results have taken time, and could have been better. The Stimulus, says Krugman could have been larger following the blow of the 2009 financial crisis and increased unemployment at the time. Janet Yellen at the inequality conference of the Boston Fed in 2014 pointed out the problems of 62 million households having net worth of about $10,000, and why this was running against the American idea of a better life for all Americans. In that sense the Census report is a movement in the right direction but a lot remains to be done.   ...

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The opening of bars and restaurants risks restarting the coronavirus epidemic in South Korea again after a 29 year old man visited 5 clubs and later tested positive. Contact tracing identified the man but similar cases in the Itaewon neighborhood have led to the conclusion that about one third of 5000 people believed to be involved in bars have not been traced. Over 50 cases have been traced to this one person alone. 

It is now believed that the entire South Korean efort could unravel with the mistakes of a few people. Now president Moon says "its not over till its over," and that it will be a long time before the coronavirus is ended completely. He warned a new wave of infections could happen anytime anywhere.