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It took this long to do what would be done at the outset years ago- setup teen accounts that are private for Instagram. There is a warning in this that only thoughtful regulatory oversight at the beginning would prevent harm to parents and children. At this point the action does not address what only regulatory oversight by the government based on common sense about the interests of the people in education, mental health and children's education, can provide. This is to do what is done in China and other parts of the world where there are limits in ages, hours of use and what time it is turned off for young people. 

This is happening also when Australia and now Britain is removing social media from children which is the only policy that will make it possible to restore the health and educational level of young people after so much damage has been done.

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The Afghan School in Kabul run by former Taliban officials for girls and boys is one of the best schools in Kabul. Boys and girls attend chemistry classes together. Taliban officials see the schools as a bridge between madrassas and modern schools, and now accept the idea that as long as Islamic ideals are respected girls should go to school like boys. A former Taliban foreign minister- of the government the U.S. ousted under president Bush- now helps his daughter with homework. The changes in neighboring Pakistan where the government of Nawaz Sharif is pushing modern ideas and technological development are likely to push progress in Afghanistan as well- this happens as the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan. The U.S. leaves a region hungry for progress as new governments pushing technological development supported by business emerge in Pakistan and India in 2013-2014. Unfulfilled promises of economic development are at the forefront of people's minds. A transformation as large as the shift from communism in China to state run market economy and the technological and economic transformation that followed is now at its early beginnings in the region. This shift would be from religious strife and socialist structures to a market economy....

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Amazon is tackling the Indian market by addressing the need of rural shoppers in all parts of India- home to nearly 800 million people. Here WSJ shows how this works with a customer in Dhowachal, in the northeastern state of Assam, who had no access to stores except by travelling for hours to the nearest town.  The customer is a teacher who received an Amazon delivery of pairs of jeans, socks, curtains, glasses and other items. Rural shoppers in India spent about $400 billion in 2017. Barclays estimates Amazon had $7 billion in gross merchandise sales volume in India in 2017, about 2% of what it does worldwide. More than 80% of customers in 2018 are from outside India's largest cities.  To do this Amazon has changed its app to work on cheaper smartphones and patchy cellular networks, added hundreds of thousands of Indian language descriptions of products and videos. It has also opened physical Amazon stores to teach people how to order online. Tens of thousands of distributors were added to deliver packages and take cash or digital payment. Amazon is spending $5 billion in India to set up a logistics network and warehouses, including staff and content development for Amazon Prime. In doing this Amazon has learned from China where Alibaba and other online retailers have grown seven fold by reaching rural areas. Amazon could not compete with Alibaba in China. In India Amazon has no strong local competitors like Alibaba. It is learning how to operate in India. The app offer tips on how to order, no email is needed, only a phone number, machine learning translates all descriptions into Hindi. Icons work well. A digital wallet lets customers without bank accounts or cards to pay or get money back. Amazon is investing aggressively using an advertising campaign and discounts to pass Flipkart which WalMart bought for $16 billion in 2018. Amazon is trying new ideas in India's situation where small stores often closet sized sell a limited number of products often going through multiple middlemen resulting in high prices. Amazon is now enlisting these small stores as package depots in its own unique distribution network. The small store gets an 8-10% commission on sales for helping guide shoppers make a purchase. In Amazon's unique "I Have Space" program 20,000 mom and pop stores in remote areas of India offer to take packages and deliver in neighborhoods for a commission. They get a uniform, a bag and a week of training. Many of these store owners know the addresses in their neighborhood having lived there a long time. The entire effort shows Amazon has adapted its delivery effort, logistics and payment systems to Indian conditions in a well planned way. Compare this to the failed effort by Apple in India, with high management turnover and lack of understanding of Indian conditions and pricing, and no real plan to tackle the Indian market.     ...

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Questions raised in this Hindustan Times report about whether India's participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization makes sense now after the pandemic and the new arrangement in global affairs. New supply chains and trade alliances formed after the pandemic are likely to be very different after the pandemic and formed with dominant consideration of each nation's economic interests including manufacturing in the home country.  India joined the SCO to forge ties with the central Asian countries. But this no longer makes sense as India's manufacturing ties with individual nations such as Britain, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S., European Union may make more sense and build on "Made in India" initiatives than older thinking and approaches. Britain after Brexit, Japan and Taiwan after a realignment of trade relations, are keen on expanding business and trade, investment ties with India. India has many opportunities to pursue for mutual economic benefit with these countries. Germany, France and other EU countries, the U.S. are also keen on expanding trade and investment with India to boost their economies after the pandemic. This is a crucial juncture for India to plan for the next 10 years for a changing world in which India becomes a dominant story in manufacturing. Australia's participation in the RCEP may also not be long term under the prevailing climate of trade relations with China. Australia India trade can be expanded with new efforts.  ...

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China's perception of the US as a declining power is a miscalculation, yet it appears to influence Chinese policy in 2010-2011.

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NATO's new guiding document and security concept now includes China for the first time as a shared security challenge. In the past there were concerns about China yet Germany and France continued economic engagement with China as before. The clearly worded statement by Xi Jinping and Putin expressing strong disapproval of a world in which the US and the EU play a prominent leadership role, made just before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, has changed the sentiment in Europe. It is now becoming clear to Germany that the world has changed.Under Merkel Germany expanded trade ties with Russia on energy and with China as a major trading partner. The first steps are now being taken to decouple the trading relationship with China and restructure Germany's trade away from China towards other parts of the world including India, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Mr Scholz pointed to this needed shift during the Trade Fair in Hannover. As part of this shift NATO now sees cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, and South Korea and India essential for meeting the challenge of Russia today and of China over the long term. The NATO document says about China that "its stated ambitions and coercive policies, challenge our interests, security and values." Here are some of the ways the world has changed today. There are new administrations and newly elected leaders in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. The new administrations are led by leaders in Japan and South Korea that are keen on working hand in hand with the US to meet the challenge from China. In the US president Biden seems determined to build up America's strength to meet any challenges China can pose. In Germany the administration is run by the SPD socialists with the Greens and the Free Democrats coalition. The Greens led by Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock have taken a strong position to face up to Russia's invasion in Ukraine, and Mr. Scholz is following step by step and has distanced himself from old SPD and CDU policies of  Angela Merkel of close commercial ties with Russia and China.  Indian prime minster Modi was a close partner at the G7 conference in Munich, Germany. The leaders of Japan and South Korea attended the NATO summit in Madrid and met with president Biden as shown here.   ...

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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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Events before and after the hacking of emails during the U.S. presidential election of 2017 and contacts with Russia of Republican party leaders and campaign officials for the Trump campaign are discussed in this report by the BBC.

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Martin Fackler talks to Yasuhiro Nakasone, former LDP leader and prime minister during the Reagan days. He gives his views on improving the relationship with the U.S., advice to prime minister Yukio Hatoyama on his goal of building a more equal relationship with the U.S., the issues surrounding the U.S. base in Okinawa. He says Hatoyama should have a relaxed conversation with president Obama, over dinner and after dinner. Not one or two hours but much longer and increased contact with much time as possible spent together to increase rapport. He points to a picture of him and Reagan in windbreakers walking through the woods in Camp David as an example of the trust needed to be built in the U.S.-Japan relationship. Nakasone once described Japan as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nakasone does not think the LDP dominance was a good thing and says the DPJ's rise and the LDP voted out of power was good for Japan. His view is that Japan can become more equal by being closer to the U.S. than becoming apart from it. An approach he took by being less deferential than his predecessors at summit meetings, but at the same time working closely with the U.S. Nakasone says Hatoyama is not doing this by showing he values Japan's relationship with China more than its relationship with the U.S. These remarks he describes as not being prudent, and do not reflect the security alliance wih the U.S. and the shared values of a liberal democracy. Okinawa and other problems can be resolved through talking between partners, friendly relations and a relationship built on trust between leaders....

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After the huge crisis the debate about capitalism. What went wrong, and importantly what did not go wrong. Not in the sense of more punditry to place the blame but to ask questions to have a better grasp of the fact and better understanding of the twists and turns of the last decade, the complexities, the frailties, the errors of judgement, and the failings, and the outright falsehoods and ethical breaks. So that the good things are not lost for instance the individual initiative and the bad things are corrected and measures put in place to prevent recurrence and minimize damage. Has the model of anglo-saxon capitalism failed? Actually some specific things failed, deregulation at a time when banks and markets were behaving irresponsibly and without any restraint internal or external, credit ratings agencies failed, financial institutions failed in performing their first line of business which is to finance investment in the economy not in housing and mortgages, and American consumerism failed in that value of saving disappeared and abundance of debt brought American savings to zero, leaving little for investment in the economy and infrastructure except by borrowing from other countries. And living on illusions and not on sound basics the leadership failed thinking that free enterprise and technology and productivity improvements somehow allowed a country or group of countries to live way beyond their means, and a tendency to excess in the popular mood of the country, excesssive consumption, excessive and profligate use of energy which sent trillions of dollars overseas over decades, and excessive expectations of the lower classes for housing and goods beyond their means, all played a part. What did not fail is the freedom to trade, the fall of "barriers to intercourse" between nations, that produced gains on a big scale so that computer and cell phone technology developed in one part of the world quickly spread around the world and the innovations and technology developed in one country spread producing benefits all over the world. It created amood of optimism in developing countries whose incomes rose especially where countries encouraged growth as in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Eastern Europe and pulled hundreds of millons out of poverty. With China, America and Germany in effect shipped technology goods in return for lower value added goods like textiles and shoes, to help China industrialize, and American consumption played a useful part until things reached an extreme and the system was abused by forgetting the basics and allowing excesses and failing to respect ethical responsibilities. Regarding regulation excessive regulation and red tape has proved to be bad as in the license Raj in India which stifled private initiative and new enterprise till it was abandoned in 1990, and no one in India is calling for more regulation. What is bad is to abandon good common sense and to rely on the illusion that no regulation is needed to run a complex financial system like we have today, a laissez fairre libertarian philosophy that was rampant in the Bush administration and in the country's leadership in the Bush years. As a result an underfunded SEC failed to deliver on its basic mission and responsibility, and the lack of a centralized regulatory authority with powers and funding to meet the challenges of modern finance as for instance ineffective derivative regulation under the CFTC, simply aggravated things further. ...

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Apple App Store sales are estimated at $15 billion for 2014, increasing by 50% from 2013. Apple says it has directly or indirectly created one million jobs in the U.S., with two thirds of this in software development by developers to run programs on iPhone, iPad and iPod. The App Store opened in 2008 after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Other jobs created by Apple are the 300,000 working at parts and materials suppliers, or construction workers at Apple facilities. Apple employs directly 66,000 workers in the U.S., with 30,000 of this in retail stores.

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Indian stocks are not immune to what is happening in China and what happens in any stock market bubble, which is that earnings are inflated by what companies earn through investments in the stock market which can be transitory. So the reading of stock price levels is deceiving for as soon as the transitory element disappears or is waning those levels vanish.

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Andrew Hall of trading firm Phibro, which traces its roots to the Phipps Brothers a German scrapmetal and raw materials dealer from 1900, and is now a part of Citigroup. He started making big bets after 2004 that futures in oil prices would instead of the then prevailing 20% discount to current prices be priced higher than current prices because of the rising demand from China and India and shortage of supplies. Once he had locked in on this idea and had researched the facts he got the agreement of the head of Ciigroups trading group to place large bets such as buying a lot of oil futures at the prevailing prices. As oil prices shot up this paid off and Phibro kept 20-30%of the profits. Hall made about $250 million dollars and put $100 million into his art collection of new artists. At a time when speculative buying by investors has pushed up oil prices this is a story of one person who made big bets and thrived.

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IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad interviewed by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. He drives a 15 year old Volvo and tells the interviewer that the Volvo is nearly new, just 15 years old. He says he is proud to encourage employees to see the value of frugal living. IKEA has 90,000 employees, 202 stores in 32 countries. He says IKEA will need the billions of francs the company earns to build the business in Russia and China. All the money the company earns the company will need as a reserve.

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Real estate prices are declining in Australia, with signs of overbuilding. Growing immigration, a commodities boom with higher demand from China, slow construction and foreign investors had pushed home prices higher. This led to a decrease of 2-6% in home prices in Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne, according to RP Data. Home construction in Melbourne increased by 40% since 2006, according to Australia's Bureau of Statistics. Analysts point to an oversupply of homes in Melbourne. Home and apartment prices in Melbourne declined by 3.9% in 2011, according to RP Data-Rismark.

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Nestle's plans to accelerate the sale of poor performing business as consumer preferences shift away from frozen foods and processed foods to fresh foods. It is planning to sell the Davigel frozen food business. Nestle is also going through a period of slowing sales in China. Sales growth of existing business is about 4% a year. The more competitive landscape in the processed food industry, and industry wide focus on efficiency to reduce costs, the rise in the Swiss Franc, make productivity increases critical, says CEO Brabeck-Lemathe.