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This analysis from The Times of London provides critical information on the strategy for successfully tackling the coronavirus following the example of South Korea and progress in Britain.

The random community testing is key to getting an idea of the scale of infections in the community at large. The critical ratio called reproduction ratio tell one if the virus is under control and how lockdowns can be lifted. For Britain this 0.7 estimated by Imperial College. It has a 2 week lag. 1.0 or close to 1.0 is not good. Germany after being at about 0.7 has moved up to 1.0 with 2 week lag in information says the Robert Koch Institute. This means a lot of work ahead, it won't be easy.

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Mouhanad Khorchide, is professor of Islamic pedagogy at the University of Munster in Germany. He is offering an innovative approach to teach a gentler and more tolerant Islam as Germany shifts to the teaching of Islam in primary and secondary schools, alongside teaching of the Christian and Jewish faiths. He is the author of the book published in Arabic and as an e-book in English- "Islam in Mercy." He goes back to the open discourse in the Islam of the eight and ninth centuries for ideas, asking questions and seeing this as part of the discourse in the educational process. He is a Palestinian who studied sociology at the University of Vienna. Germany has 4 million Muslims.

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G-7 nations reach agreement for a global minimum tax of 15% a floor for taxes that the Biden administration finds acceptable. This agreement was reached at a meeting of the Treasury chiefs of the 7 G-7 countries in London on June 5, 2021. The G-7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and US. Next agreement from Russia, China, India and Brazil in the G-20 nations would establish new ground rules for the major economies. The G-20 meeting is in Venice July 9-10. The OECD is steering the international efforts to achieve that goal. For the agreement to be effective a number of small nations that use tax rates of below 15% to attract business have to be part of the new rules. One of these countries is Ireland with a tax rate of 12.5%. For the Biden administration in the US the goal is a significant one as president Biden seeks business to pay its fair share so that long neglected priorities for education, healthcare, infrastructure, post pandemic improvements can be met. France and other nations in the EU face similar needs in the post pandemic environment. By setting a floor the Biden administration is both creating a new cultural concept of fairness in taxation and making it possible to finance the $2 trillion spending programs for these priorities of president Biden. Behind this are important facts that have left the large tech businesses paying little or no tax depriving governments of the very revenues that are needed for infrastructure and services for a modern well run state. The Biden administration seeks to include the tech businesses as well as all businesses in the new tax rules so that a uniform idea of fair taxation applies across the whole economy for the first time in two decades. In this way it makes up for the missed opportunities in the OBC administrations of Obama, Bush, Clinton that have led to loss of faith in the state and institutions in the US. A similar situation prevails in the UK,  France and Germany where previous administrations failed to address this important issue of fair taxation and financing infrastructure and priorities in health, education, and critical needs of the people.   ...

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The astounding fact in this French FR24 report on the Paris Climate Change Agreement and country carbon emissions show that China's emissions accelerated to rise 3 fold in 2015 to about 12 billion tons of carbon emissions from about 4 billion in 2000. US remains at about 6 billion. India is at about 3 billon tons of carbon emissions, about where China was in 2000 when it had about 4 billion tons of carbon emissions. This is shown in the graph on carbon emissions from FR24. The US, European Union graph curves on tons of carbon emissions since 2000 are all flat or declining, India rising slowly from a small base, China's curve is rising straight up from a large enough base at an unbelievable and dangerous rate. What has happened and is it getting worse? China's economy expanded too quickly as globalization was accelerated by banks, and business in the US and Europe, and by the Chinese governments at the local level and the state level. This had negative consequences for US, Europe and China. The too fast growth in China at rates of 10-15% based solely on False GDP indicators that did not take into account damage to the environment and workers was that it hurt manufacturing and working class in US and Europe and contaminated the environment. This was not like growth of Japan in 1960-1980, a smaller country in the way it affected the US and European working classes. Hyper Growth at 10-15% of a large country with 1 billion people compressed over a short period, is cited by Greg Ip in the WSJ as the cause of the negative impact on America.  It hurt China through pollution of rivers and land at an accelerated pace. It hurt China as trade with US and Europe became unsustainable with the loss of manufacturing in the US and Europe leading to a trade war. From these graphs of emissions it now appears that the 3 fold rise in carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons in 2000 to about 12 billion tons in 2015 is the result of unregulated business activity of all those who preferred to push hyper growth in China purely for reasons of profit such as investment banks and corporations in US, Europe, and state or local companies in China.  This has also aggravated inequality in US, Europe and China, and hurt rural populations. Xi Jinping is attempting to correct this in China, Biden is trying to correct this in the US, and Scholz will now attempt to correct this in Germany and the European Union. It is also to be noted that China in 2000-2015 did not have the benefit of the newer technologies that India now has access to, which is why India says it is able to reduce carbon emissions per each unit of GDP by 35% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is this efficiency in producing units of GDP with newer and newer technologies that China lacked in its period of hyper growth 2000-2015 that now looks to have hurt China- with overflow of highly polluting steel mills and other factories which it would prudently and wisely have cut back on. Looking back at this period one sees the wholesale transfer of highly polluting plants in Germany being sold and put up in China, a poor developing country in 2000. Was this a good decision for Germany or for China? In this way the banks and large corporations in the US and Europe who use economic indicators that are limited such as dollar profits, without overall indicators that include negative effect damage to the environment that requires huge investments to correct, problems of trade wars leading to political conflicts, are acting like a person walking blindly in one direction.  With some foresight China and all its trading partners would have done better with slower but more careful Chinese growth of 7-8% that would have better met societal goals in US, Europe and China, avoiding high carbon emissions segments of industries from Day 1. Jinping is doing this in China, and Biden is doing this in the US- cutting out highly polluting factories and segments of industries- but in a climate of mutual distrust, which could have benefitted the world when conducted in a climate of cooperation and trust. The pandemic made the situation even more difficult. Power shortages in factories and blackouts in Chinese cities have led to a reversal of policies on use of coal in China months before the COP26 Glasgow conference and G-20 summit leaving a huge gap. Without the presence of Xi Jinping at COP26 in Glasgow and with Chinese participation uncertain significant progress on climate change is elusive. Estimates by US Renewable Energy Agency is that it would cost $131 trillion to pay for limiting emissions to global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some major share of this cost can be attributed to the increase from about 4 billion tons in 2000 of carbon emissions in China to about 12 billion tons in 2015, increase by 3 times. One can clearly see from this sudden jump in carbon emissions in China that policies of hyper growth with unregulated polluting industries adding to GDP growth figures was bad policy for China, bad policy for US, and Europe, even if it offered temporary profits for individual companies. India has the advantage of learning from this experience and charting its own wiser course as a partner with US, Europe and Japan and by Modi's vigorous efforts in renewable energy. The lesson- look at all indicators of progress, including climate and society, not just economic indicators in profit or dollar terms, take the tough decisions early in regulating polluting companies and industry segments, and bring full and active public participation with transparent access to data on climate damaging activity in real time because climate and the environment we live in free of polluting substances belongs to all the people, belongs to all life on the planet from trees to animals and birds, not companies that can choose to ignore it. ...

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US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will spend Tuesday night August 2 in Taipei, Taiwan. China has threatened severe consequences and Taiwanese forces are on alert. Yet with over $1 trillion in China's exports to US and EU in 2021 the response will have to take this into account as also the US and EU to redesign its supply chains. This is the first trip of a senior US official to Taiwan as Speaker Pelosi comes next to the Vice President to succeed the presidency. The US response to the Russian attack on Ukraine was made in Biden's word as a deterrent to China in its role in the Indo-Pacific region. The Pelosi trip may be a reflection of this policy that seeks to maintain the US position that Indo-Pacific is international waters, that US policy will continue as before undeterred by actions such as the Russian attack on Ukraine with the support of China. And that US will engage fully with allies in the Indo-Pacific- Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. And that is doing this with the cooperation of its allies in the region- Australia, Japan and India. US and EU imports from China are $541 and $522 billion over $1 trillion for 2022. Loss of even a significant portion of these exports from major tensions in the region would have a severe impact on Chinese economic growth. The US and EU are already engage in redesigning the supply chain and would also face problems in a transition similar to the gas rationing in Germany after cutoff of Russian supplies. The trade is too big a factor at this time. ...

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Strange as it may sound the retired coal power stations in Europe were back in operation and highly profitable during the COP26 Glasgow conference. Unknown to speakers at the conference calling stridently for complete coal phaseout instead of rapid phasedown including speakers from the European Union and from Tuvalu (population about 1500) this was happening not just in China but also in Europe. This was dictated by energy economics as coal prices have come down by half and natural gas prices have risen ten fold, and natural gas shortfall in Europe.  This report in the WSJ shows coal and lignite plants making huge profits for electricity companies in Europe. As a result the calls for phaseout were seen as hollow by China and India in the last days of the conference leading to the language change in the final agreement to "phasedown of fossil fuels." Natural gas producing power stations are losing 2.26 euros for every megawatt hour, compared to 57 euros per magawatt hour for coal powered power plants, 4 times as high as the previous highest levels in 2017, as reported in the WSJ. Estimates are for coal power stations to be more than gas rivals till 2023. Germany says WSJ still has highest level of addiction to coal and lignite. It generated 40 gigawatts of electricity from coal and lignite in September and October, the highest for these 2 months since 2018, Poland is doing the same exporting its coal based power to the rest of Europe. In the same way coal power plants that were idled are back producing electricity in Spain, Portugal and in UK home of the COP26 Glasgow conference.   ...

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Xi has chosen upward mobility for the Chinese people in all parts of the country including rural areas, reducing disparities in income, tackling climate change over the very hyper growth that has caused climate change and wreaks havoc in floods and fires across the planet. By the Chinese dream is meant that China would have a fair chance to match the western world with its own culture, language, creativity of its people, and he has chosen to do this in away that respects China's history and struggles with imperialist Britain, and the imperial powers in the modern period since 1500. It only poses a threat to the US if the US does not also invest in its own people, follows misguided military adventures overseas, and does not invest in its own manufacturing and technological potential at home. Historically the imperial powers were Britain, France, Germany, Russia. The US under Woodrow Wilson and under FDR pursued policies that were at odds with the imperial powers and favored a China that could build the potential of its own people far beyond what the imperial powers intended- for India, Turkey, China, Vietnam, and the rest of Asia. At each step of the way to 1948 the US policy remained true to this. Even the Cold War was a struggle against an imperial power- Russia which under the Bolsheviks and even today follows imperial minded policies for Eastern Europe. The Biden administration and the Xi administration in China are really not that far apart in pursuing policies that support people from all parts of their countries, and are resolute in the fight against climate change making growth conform with respecting the earth. ...

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Krugman in the NYT describes the dangers of plutocratic power to American democracy. When exercized by the Murdochs, the Elon Musks, the Harlan Crows of this world. He cites presidents who are Republican and broke up the large oil companies in the 1900's, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) who warned about "a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power." This is happening with the power of the so called Tech companies today and both parties seeking to break  up the Tech companies.  Then there is a Democratic president from this period Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) who followed Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson says- "If there are men in this country who are big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." Theodore Roosevelt fought political machines such as Tammany Hall in New York as well as Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Wilson, a professor from Princeton, continued this tradition by protecting the working class of that time through his New Freedom campaign in 1913.  As a professor Wilson wrote the textbook The State used in colleges of that period, which set forth for the first time the basic idea of the state that we see today- "that forbids child labor, supervises the sanitary condition of factories, limits employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, institutes official tests for the purity or quality of goods sold, that limits the hours of work in certain trades, and by a hundred and one limitations the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to outdo the scrupulous or merciful in trade or industry." Both were progressive Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson under his New Freedom platform for the 1913 election, asserted that it was the task of government "to make those adjustments of life that will put every man in a position to claim his rights as a normal human being." What president Biden is doing today is closest to what Wilson and Roosevelt were trying to achieve, and what Modi is doing today in India is also closest to what Wilson and Roosevelt were trying to achieve. In 1913 Wilson won 42% of the vote, Roosevelt 27% because of a split within the Republican party with Robert Taft. Wilson proposed breakup of oil companies to provide a level playing field for all companies. Similar decisions are being considered by president Biden today for Tech Companies. The future of both the US and India is being decided in these difficult times after a pandemic and in the middle of a European war, and a supply chain overconcentrated in one country in Asia. Wilson's idea "to put every man in a position to claim his rights as a normal human being," is being set forth by president Biden through the word "dignity," by Modi in India as "sab ka vikas, sab ke sath" (development for all, with all). The Greens and SPD's Scholz also set forth this idea as "dignity" for the worker for Germany.   ...

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Is time slipping away for Russia to restore what it sees as its special relationship with Ukraine, as Ukraine finds its own identity through its language and independent Orthodox Christian Church since 2019. This WSJ podcast report is by James Marson who lived in Kiev from 2007 to 2012, and Ryan Knutson, with the Archbishop of St Michael's cathedral in Kiev, and the editor of Elle magazine edition in Ukraine joining in.  To understand Ukraine one has to know that Russian is the language of the cities, which means people in Kiev speak Russian. People in the countryside Ukrainian. This is very unusual for a nation and it shows the condition of the country for centuries where intellectuals in cities dominated cultural and political life distant from the people in the countryside. For centuries Ukraine was dominated alternately by either Poland and Lithuania or Russia other than a period of 200 years around 1250-1400 when the Mongols were dominant. The peasants and countryside suffered greatly as in India and other parts of central Europe in the long history till the modern period in 1900.  Russians see their origins in the Kyivan Rus, a state bringing together the different ethnicities Ukrainian and Russian in the period 1000-1240 under the Byzantine Church in Constantinople. Kyiv, the modern capital of Ukraine called Kiev today being the capital of this state. This is the cultural connection that president Putin and Russians see as one they do not want to see drift away. After the Russian state drove out the Mongols in 1240 the northern provinces and Kiev became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the rest became part of a new Russian state. After 1650 Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire and by 1800 with the partition of Poland was fully made part of the Russian Empire. Russian is now after 1800 the language of the intellectual class in Kiev and the cities, and Ukrainian language persists in the countryside. In 1804 Ukrainian is banned as a language and subject of instruction in schools. The end of the Russian Empire under the Tsars in 1917 ended the ban on the Ukrainian language and a period of respect of the cultures of the different soviet republics including Ukraine ensued. Putin has strong feelings on Kyiv, or modern Kiev, as the place where Russia as a country began. He wrote a 7000 word essay says this report in WSJ in 2010 on this relationship as he sees it.  Yet the period of protests in Kiev since 2010 has resulted in Ukraine building  its own identity as a nation. Magazines in the country are required to use Ukrainian for 50% of their circulation. People in Kiev now use Ukrainian instead of Russian as the sense of national identity is being revived. During 1917-1921 Ukraine fought a war with the Bolsheviks after the Russian Empire collapsed. This history is why Russia is acting now to push for Ukraine not drift completely away. It is also what makes Ukraine different from Poland which has cultural ties to Western Europe. It is why the US or Germany is not willing to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, as it would over Poland. It is also why Russia may not see war as the best option as about one third of Ukrainians say they will fight to defend their country, according to this report. The situation is complex and this is why both sides want to negotiate some way out in which Russia wants the US and NATO respecting its sense of connection with Ukraine in its history with Kyiv as the place Russian state started, and Russia not going further. Russia's tangible proposal is for no to Ukraine joining NATO or the European Union. The US and Germany want something else- the right of Eastern European nations that suffered from Tsarist or Soviet domination or German Hapsburg domination to finally be able to assert their own right of self-determination as democratic countries. This would include Finland. And also Sweden. Ukraine is not another small Eastern European country. Population is 44 million and it is the second largest by area in Europe after Russia.  Russia may also see the move to bring this up at this time as a way to unify the country against what it sees as threat from NATO. As Brendan Simms of Cambridge notes in his recent book -Europe, France went through a period after 1600 when it needed external danger as a way to unify the country, as much as unity of the country to fight external danger. The economic costs after building Nordstream II pipeline are to0 great for both Russia and Germany, and for the US and Russia during the pandemic, which means there is a real need to find a way out for all sides.     ...

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Already Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan are negotiating. India will join South Korea. Britain will follow. Only Canada and China are holding back because of the imbalance in trade heavily in their favor and a failure to see that it is about fairness. In the EU only Germany has a surplus many nations have a deficit, it seeks to start negotiating at the first opportunity. Contrary to what most of the American and British media says Lighhizer and Jamieson have thought this thing through for many years before arriving at the Tariffs advice they gave the US president as his 2 USTR. It is these two not the president acting on his own whim as the media like to show. And Lighthizer has done this before- as Deputy USTR in the 1980 with Japan on the opposite side and come out of it with winning solutions for the US and for the world.

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The U.S. ranked first in an annual survey of executives rating places with favorable prospects for foreign direct investment. The survey by consulting firm A.T. Kearney has questions for executives of 302 large companies, all with sales above $500 million, about how likely they are to invest in countries over 2013-2015. It was done in October and November of 2012. On a scale of 0 to 3, the U.S. scored 2.09, China 2.02, Brazil 1.97, Canada 1.86, India 1.85, followed closely by Australia and Germany at 1.83 and the UK at 1.81. Mexico and Singapore are at No. 9 and 10 with 1.77. The survey shows the U.S., and Mexico gaining, China and India slipping, and English speaking countries UK, Australia and Singapore, as part of the 6 that are English speaking of the top 10 countries. Brazil's hosting of the Olympics and World Cup helped it maintain its position. The emerging market countries performance has slipped further since the survey, including Brazil, and the U.S. has made further gains in investor sentiment. The unrest among young people in Turkey, India, China, and Brazil as seen in street protests and credit financed booms may have further affected investor sentiment. The increase in natural gas production, revival of the midwestern economies, and a recovering housing market have boosted the U.S. economic prospects compared to emerging markets and the eurozone....

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A hydropower dam in the Stiegler Gorge in Tanzania is being built at a cost of $4 billion. With an output of 2.1 gigawatts it will double Tanzania's electricity production. More electricity should result in less felling of trees to burn for charcoal to do cooking. According to UNDP only 10% in rural areas have electricity in Tanzania. At a practical level this means a child cannot have a light bulb at night to create the light in which to read. Darkness descends on villages in rural areas with bita and fragments of light - solar and lamps. German aid for the project was debated in parliament because of the work on the Rufiji river and disruption for the Selous Game Reserve used by tourists. The area for work to be done is 1000 square kilometres and the Game Reserve is covering 50,000 square kilometres so that efforts can be made to meet electricity goals and maintain the Reserve in its new form. President Magufuli is moving forward with the project with Tanzania's pressing needs for electricity. In recent years, Brazil, China and India have also placed these concerns as a priority in developing their hydropower resources. This also reduces the need to burn coal because of its effects on health.   ...

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GM is willing to sell amajority stake in Opel to the German government. Opel employees want to see that happen, as they say GM never understood Opel's potential. The unions favor this with IG Metall saying about 400,000 jobs will be affected in the car and related businesses with an Opel collapse. And directly at Opel in Russelsheim near Frankfurt the plants employ 29,000 German workers. This is now a big issue in Germany. The bailout of German banks is as unpopular in Germany as it is with Americans, with their own bailout of banks and financial institutions. And Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats are seeing polls showing voters shifting allegiance to the Free Democrats, which reflects opinion of people in smaller independent businesses unhappy with the bank bailouts.

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This article gets a 2 red flags for what the report tells one about the German retailer Metro AG has done in India to ensure the proper storage and transport of food supplies from its source to the retail shelf. Its quite an effort and remarkably interesting effort by Metro in a new environment. Does Metro have experience like this before in other countries it operates. Its like making a sea change in the way things were done in a developing country to how its done in Europe.

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One of the good things after the pandemic is that people are going to spend more time in their home countries instead of travelling overseas, says this report in the DW.com. World tourism has grown too quickly and too fast in the last two decades. Places everywhere are becoming extremely congested. I remember visits to Paris, to Notre Dame cathedral and its surroundings, in the eighties and nineties and compare them to two decades later with regret that it has changed for the worse. By 2010 everyplace looked different, transport, hotels, streets were so congested as to make trips less exciting and less fun to do.  The question posed here is whether having 3 million less people travelling around the world is such a bad thing? It says the tourism industry has grown so quickly and so fast that it poses a danger to the environment, to the quiet of neighborhoods and cities, driving a commodities culture. As this writer says it drives locals away from the cities they have lived in for generations, and robs those who stay of the quiet lives they have enjoyed. In fact once the cities experienced so much less pollution during gradual reopening, and streets had less traffic, a lot of people turned to use bicycles. Bicycle lanes were replacing car traffic lanes. A return to calmer living with enjoyment of one's own neighborhoods and cities, and travel within one's own country, is becoming an attractive alternative. People now remember that it was the huge amount of airline traffic that spread the pandemic from cities in Asia to cities in Europe, and cities in America. It also spread quickly through tourist destinations inside Asia and Africa, and Latin America. Even some of the early clusters in Germany, Italy and the U.S. had their origins in the the spread of globalized supply chains in China, Germany, and Italy for automobiles. Auto industry business people traveled to places in or near Wuhan, then to Bavaria, and on to northern Italy in the global supply chain for automobile manufacturing.  As new nations like China and India with billions of people are added to world tourism this changes everything in a way never imagined before. This pandemic gives one a pause to rethink whether it was a good idea in the first place to seek fulfilment by travel outside one's own country, without first exploring it and one's own neighborhoods in a quieter setting. We travel to new places seeking fulfillment. There comes a time when the tourism today has become so big that it is not sustainable, safe or economical anymore. A rethink and new habits make sense.     ...

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US president Biden authorizes $350 million in immediate military assistance to Ukraine. Western leaders now believe that NATO countries are at risk if they do not help stop the invasion, as it now appears that Russia seeks to restore a sphere of influence across Eastern Europe that existed under the Soviet Union. In 1956 Soviet tanks entered Budapest, Hungary. A situation reminiscent of that in Hungary is now taking place in Ukraine in 2022. Earlier the Russian view of Ukraine neutrality was accepted by western leaders- the situation has changed during the last week, as it is now perceived that Russia seeks to change the situation in Eastern Europe. This completely alters western Europe's and America's view of the situation in Ukraine. All this has happened in a matter of days, and in a few weeks. On the Russian side the invasion is not popular with street protests in Moscow and people on the street skeptical about the invasion and its objectives. The view is beginning to emerge that this invasion only breaks the fraternal ties between the Belarus, Ukrainian and Russian peoples that have existed for centuries. In this sense the politics and governments of the present are not relevant as much as the shared history. Ironically it is this shared history that Mr. Putin seemed to want to assert. Yet it ignored the fact that Ukraine also has a shared history with Poland and the Baltic countries and the desire for a different system of government is common to all the people's of the world. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India; UK and Scotland or Ireland; Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Canada, Britain and the US; Hungary, Austria and Germany; all have a shared history yet the people in each country at different periods of history have made their own choices and decided what they would do as independent countries.  ...

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Russian forces in Port Arthur (Dalian, Lushun) like the other European colonial powers in Tientsin took part in the joint operations of Japan, Britain, France, US, and Germany in the invasion of Peking in mid July 1901. Under the Soviet era China was an ally of the Soviet Union yet there was a strong sense of independent action that led to the breakdown of the relationship between Krushchev and Mao in the 1960's. This may be true also today as the European conflict in Ukraine may not be in China's interest of developing its economy and continuing on the path of modernity it adopted throughout the events of the 1930's to the 1990's to today. This report from that period shows the Russian army under Colonel Anisimov and General Stessel rescuing British admiral Seymour's force near Tientsin. The Russian forces under Russian Admiral Hildebrand played a leading role in the battle of the Taku forts that followed in late June 1901. The forces at Tientsin under Admiral Alekseev of about 8000 are mostly Russian. On 19 July 1901, Russia's General Linevich assumes control of the joint Japanese, Russian, British and French forces that conducted the campaign towards Peking.  The American version of the events in China in 1901 is given by Cornell University Prof. David Silbey in his 2010 book- The Boxer Rebellion, The Great Game in China. It shows the depressed condition of China at the time and the struggle to free China of the opium of British traders and conversions by Christian missionaries that undermined Chinese culture and society. The rebellion of 1901 is similar in China's history to the events of 1857 in India with the rebellion against British rule.    ...

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How is the push by Toyota to hybrids making up 50% of its cars- including shift of RAV4 and Camry entirely to hybrid cars- affecting revival of US manufacturing and advanced technologies for electrification of cars? Toyota will invest $14 billion in a battery plant site in North Carolina, at a site located between Greensboro and Raleigh.The plant will make batteries for EV's and hybrids so that Toyota can respond to market demand and regulatory changes. This North Carolina plant will supply factories assembling cars, hybrids, plug ins that travel short distances before switching to gas. Hybrids including plug in hybrids make about 15% of US sales, a sector Toyota dominates. How does it affect tariffs risk? Currently Toyota plays a 15% tariff to import plug-in hybrids. The North Carolina plant will build capacity for batteries to put in 74,000 plug in cars, 45,000 EV's, 600,000 hybrid cars. How will it fight climate change? Toyota has always believed that hybrids with twice the mileage of gas cars are a good way to fight climate change, even when EV's were the rage in the days of the Biden administration. Hybrid Camry at $25,000 and RAV4 at $29,000 give 51 and 41 mpg. This strategy is now turning out to be the right one because of cost of living concerns balancing climate change concerns as priorities. It was alone in this view and took a lot of criticism for this. Now that rare earth metals that are hard to access from China are needed for EV's it is proving doubly right- giving Toyota the opportunity to double down on hybrids and also move into EV's with short range distances using gas after that. Future design of cities that are self sustaining in smaller distances, eliminating long commutes, could make this an interesting option, a style of living being tried out in Nordic countries and in Germany, France. With India and China burning coal and investing in renewables at the same time this was overlooked by the climate change planners in US and EU- the solution being natural gas and renewables including hybrids for the US and EU/ Japan advanced nations.   ...

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China is slowing infrastructure projects after loaning $30 billion to Venezuela. As Venezuela's economy declined under Maduro Venezuela is paying this off with oil exports in what is called a creditor trap. Both Russia and China are intent on trade with the US, Russia to open up business and trade and China to preserve it's trading and business relationship for its exports at a difficult time for it's economy. This tacitly preserves the idea of US direction in a beneficial way for the western hemisphere that was part of the message in 1823 by president Monroe to Congress. In the Mexican War, through Manifest Destiny during the administration of James Polk in 1843 this was still the accepted idea when Ulysses Grant a future president and civil war general on the side of Lincoln fought in that war. This brought slavery free, Spanish feudalism free, democratic processes and modernized economies to California, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, much of the West and the Pacific shoreline. Russia hopes to get the US to accept it's aspirations to be a modern Northern power in Europe. The US DJT Republican administration has shown it's respect for Russia in its zone of influence, with it's main objection to Russia in Ukraine being the massive invasion of a neighboring country. When compared to Mexico it was the US replacing the Spanish who had invaded the Aztec tribes in Mexico setting up feudal regimes, not the US invading a neighboring country. The European Union and Germany now bear the burden of defending Western Europe as a European power. The situation is similar in Asia where China has it's area of influence and India, Japan, Australia as Asian powers sharing zones of influence in Asia with China, so that the US can maintain good relations with China including fair trade that brings back it's manufacturing. The US would continue to support Taiwan as an independent country. This balance can ensure peace in the Americas, Europe and Asia as nations modernize and choose better governance under governments that relate to their history and geography, as opposed to Communist and anti-communist or democratic or anti-democratic, when they meet the aspirations of their people.   ...

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Two of three obese people live in developing countries. About 29% of the global population is obese in 2013, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Between 1980 and 2013, obesity increased by 47% for kids and 27% for adults in the global population. Dr Murray of IHME says no country was the exception. Diet and inactivity are the principal culprits. About 37% of world's men and 38% of women are obese. Obesity increased rapidly first in developed countries, becoming noticeable by 1980 and slowing since 2006, and now is growing fast in developing countries. Germany is a surprise No. 8 on the list. The U.S. No. 1 ranking tells a lot about the misguided priorities of living in the U.S., lack of education on healthy eating and healthy living, and not putting healthy habits at the top of things to do above making more money. An extreme case is South Africa where 42% of women are obese. The most obese countries are by rank - U.S., China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan, Indonesia. Middle Eastern and North African countries have high obesity rates for children. The study is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation....

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This article by the Editorial Board of the WSJ says president Biden should back up in action his words that "the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power." It calls for more front line forces and munitions on NATO territory." Biden has deployed 100 planes and 120 ships through the NATO alliance, and added 12,000 troops to these states to bring the total to 100,000. The Editorial Board of WSJ has this to say of Merkel. After Merkel's statement condemning the invasion in "the strongest terms" and calling it "a turning point in European history" WSJ says, only now does Merkel tell us. WSJ's Editorial Board says that no one did more to make Europe and NATO vulnerable to Russia with her energy policies and failure to spend more on defense. Moreover Merkel helped build the geopolitical situation to the disadvantage of the US, NATO, Europe, and India, in interconnecting the German economy with China's, as can be seen in the logistics of German port city of Hamburg overwhelmingly tied to China's. A lot that Germany has to reflect on as Annalena Baerbock , Habeck, Lindner, and Scholz, and German business, labor, reflect on Germany's vision for the future in the free world, and the lessons of America's Berlin Airlift in 1948. ...

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Policy on China in the second year of the DJT Administration- shift from adversary positions to cooperation. A shift in policy after the meetings with Chinese leaders Xi and Wang Yi at Busan, South Korea in 2025. WSJ Analysis looks at what happened in the first term of DJT, the Biden Administration that followed and in 2025 in US-China relations and how the posture changed, how Xi and his team built rapport with DJT and his team over the tumultuous period in 2025. US turned to Xi in getting Iran to the table for negotiations in Islamabad meetings after the month long effort to take out Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program infrastructure. This was arranged in the early hours of Tuesday April 7th 2026. Throughout the US air campaign in Iran China pursued the policy it had set at Busan of not letting it affect US- China relations and the DJT visit to Beijing believing it sets the basis for the future course of US- China that affects the whole world beyond regions such as the Middle East where little headway has been made in bringing about peace. China US, EU, India, Brazil, Latin America, Africa, Indonesia, make up most of the world's population and China remains focused on ensuring the US and China can through their cooperation maintain peace in the world overall. This is reflected in this statement of China's Foreign Ministry on Busan meeting as the beginning of something new and big for the world- "Over the past seven decades and more, we have been working from generation to generation on the same blueprint to make it a reality. We have no intention to challenge or supplant anyone. Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves, and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world. And that is an important secret to our success. China will further deepen reform across the board, expand opening up, and promote higher-quality economic growth while achieving an appropriate increase in economic output, and advance well-rounded human development and common prosperity for all. This will also expand the space for cooperation between China and the United States." This relates to China's worst fear, worst nightmare - that before it can become a fully developed economy for 1.4 billion people it would find itself in the situation that faces Japan of an aging society and weak growth something Japan faces as a fully developed economy much smaller of 120 million people. Japan per capita GDP is at $36,000 2.5 times China's at $14,000 and about a fifth of Germany's at $64,000, about a seventh of the USA at $92,000. So that if China does not continue along the path of development it has followed since 1990 working with the US and EU it faces the prospect of losing forever the prospect of joining Japan and fall into lower than middle income status when large parts of the interior of China a third of its economy that is rural are still living in poor economy status with per capita GDP of $3500, which is 8% of the GDP per capita of the poorest state heavily rural state of Mississippi in the US. Even Shanghai and Beijing with about $32,000 per capita GDP are only about 58% of the per capita GDP of Louisiana in the bottom one third of US states. Xi Wang Yi, Lifeng are doing what China must do to compete with advanced US and European economies and Japan- continue to work with the US on the development model that has worked the best for China since 1990. It is not about supplanting anyone China is serious when it says here- "Over the past seven decades and more, we have been working from generation to generation on the same blueprint to make it a reality. We have no intention to challenge or supplant anyone. Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves, and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world." ...

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Detail about Tata's $2500 car. What it looks like- a jelly bean small in front, larger in the back for aerodynamics, 30-35 horsepower, with bearings good for 45 mph, top speed 75 mph, trunk in front to hold a briefcase and battery, rear mounted engine with continuous variable transmission, a hollowed out steering wheel shaft, engine designed by Bosch 600 to 660 cubic centimetres 35 hp. Tata CEO, Ratan Tata, says in a interview the car will do far better on emissions than today's low end cars, and that the emissions standards were much easier to meet than the crash and safety tests, because of the lightness of the vehicle. Todays lower emissions standards in developing countries makes it easier by not having to use more expensive technologies. Electronic sourcing and internet auctions are used by Tata to a greater degree, 30-40 % of parts sourced this way compared to 10-15% by other larger carmakers. This helps meet the aggressive cost target. On the safety isssue its interesting to note that most of the people buying this car will be millions of motorcycle families and individuals (typically a couple of people can ride an Indian motorcycle). They may be safer in a light car than on a motorcycle. This has to be seen in the particular context of India. Renault-Nissan used the experience of lowcost car engineering techniques and secrets from its Logan car made in Romania and transferred it to its other models. Tata started with a clean sheet of paper, asked the quesion what they really had to have and was there some other way. It was Ratan Tata's dream to build a car in 1 lakh or 100,000 rupees or about $2500. The project had all out backing and tested Indian engineers ingenuity. The Tata effort will be studied by carmakers from around the world. Bosch does not underestimate the value of this business, as the car will target a market of hundreds of millions of people in India and China and developing countries. Ariba a supplier to Toyota, and BMW a supplier to Tata, helped Tata buy parts through electronic sourcing. China's Cherry Automobile company, another pioneer, had an Austrian firm help it design its engine for its small car. Tata worked with German company Bosch on the engine. And both must have used cutting edge technology but with a different goals and specifications to achieve unique tasks....