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Bay area officials in California in the San Francisco region are now asking residents to wear masks indoors and in crowded outdoor settings. One of the major problems in this pandemic in the US is the lack of consistent messaging. A consistent messaging would keep masks as an extra precaution knowing the risk from new variants.

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Wages in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are rising following an increase in wages in China. Malaysia's government announced a minimum wage for the first time. China increased its minimum wage by 8.6% to 1260 yuan ($199) in January 2012. Shenzen region minimum wage was raised 14% to 1500 yuan, and Tianjin region's by 13% to 1310 yuan, according to Xinhua news agency. Rise in minimum wage has ranged from 40% in Thailand to 20% in Indonesia. The new minimum wage proposed by Malaysia's government is about 900 ringgit ($264-$297). In Thailand the new minimum wage is set at 300 baht ($9.78) a day, an increase of about 40%.

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The first Japanese American to reside permanently in America Kanaye Nagasawa was a samurai from 1864 Edo era isolationist Japan. He left Japan in secrecy at 19 as part of a group on a secret mission to learn science and technology from the West. He eventually settled in Sonoma county, California, and set up the wine industry in the region. BBC series Rediscovered America tell his story and the story of the Japanese Americans in the US.

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Viktor Orban of Hungary drops his veto and Ukraine gets the green light for EU Membership. This is a result of weeks of effort by France's Macron, Germany's Scholz to reach this goal. It is an historic day for Ukraine which is making little progress in the war and faces a difficult winter. DW of Germany covers this crucial period for Ukraine as it needs 50 billion euros of aid from the EU to get through the next year. The US has already given about $111 billion of aid and the EU is now stepping up to meet financial commitments to defend its own region.

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This astounding story in WSJ by Jiyoung Sohn in Seoul and Yang Jie from Tokyo, shows how South Korea stopped the illegal transfer to China of entire  computer chip factory setup information of Samsung by a South Korean engineer in Singapore. This shows president Biden has accomplished what no other president has been able to do in the last 40 years. Biden brought Japan and South Korea together reminding them that their differences over wartime occupation can be overcome, leading to the US, Japan and South Korea forming  close cooperation in 2023. After all it was the US that helped setup the democratic framework in the two Asian neighbors after 1945. This story shows how the problem of South Korean and Japanese technologies illegally transferred is being tackled by both countries in 2023. This is part of overall cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region that includes India and Australia, for an open Indo-Pacific region based on the rule of law. ...

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It is not a Mystery as rural America has indeed been neglected under previous administrations. Krugman tries but misses catching the point. How the rural economy has changed in the last two decades and how it has been neglected is evident from many sources and reports which offers a window into the efforts to better understand and tackle the problems of rural America. A major problem is technological change which has reduced economic opportunities in rural areas. Another problem is that the earlier governments have not planned to invest in rural areas in a way that would restore dignity and work to communities, and better prepare for changes by taking actions that make the rural areas more resilient and create new opportunities to replace the old. Too much attention has gone to technological changes and companies in urban areas and too little to the real needs of rural America and revitalizing the regions as part of overall development. Compare this with Kennedy's exhortation in the South, in places like Arkansas in 1961-1963 with investment in that largely rural state saying that an investment there was as important for New York or California as it was part of investing in America- this is where he said "a rising tide lifts all boats" for the first time. ...

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This picture essay in The Guardian shows the 700,000 additional people displaced inside Afghanistan in 2021 in addition to the 2.9 million displaced people by 2020. The British stayed out of Afghanistan except for brief forays from concern about Russia entering close to British India. Not much happened till Zahir Shah, the King of Afghanistan was seen as not doing much for a famine that struck the country in 1972. Drought struck much of the country in 1972 leading to the deaths of over 100,000 people from starvation. The King had ruled since 1933. And for a brief period his cousin and brother-in-law Daud Khan had actually run the administration between 1953 to 1963, before being dismissed with a new constitution adopted not allowing the royal family to rule the country without consulting parliament. The poor handling of famine relief led to the fall of the government appointed by King Zahir Shah in 1972. In 1973 Daud Khan violates this constitution and assumes control of the country. British India was in 1972 the India of the Nehru period, with his daughter Indira Gandhi the democratically elected prime minister. India fought a brief war with Pakistan in 1971 that set up the new nation of Bangladesh from territory of East Bengal. India preoccupied with Bangladesh refugees did not do what the British had done to keep outside powers out of Afghanistan and maintain a stable monarchy. Daoud Khan's repression of Communist party leaders led to Communist party military factions in the army taking over the country in 1978. The Afghan military led by officers in the army's Communist factions had little support in the traditional Islamic nature of the countryside for their land reforms. Leading to a rebellion and entry of Soviet troops under a friendship treaty signed in 1978 with Soviets under Leonid Brezhnev. It is this disrupting of the stability of the Afghan monarchy or the entry of Soviets or Americans or any other foreign influence that was carefully prevented in British India by Britain's India policy, which resulted in a period of peace and stability in that region. The events of 1974 with the fall of the monarchy, and the entry of Russia in 1978 broke two of the main rules the British had observed from 1750- a stable monarchy and no outside influence in Afghanistan. A policy the British also followed for Tibet. When China entered Tibet in 1950 Nehru was too preoccupied with the millions of refugees from Pakistan and failed to prepare in the years 1947-50 for following British policy on Tibet by preparing or anticipating the entry of foreign powers. The entry of China into Tibet in October 1950 led to the Sino India border war of 1962, and led to the current situation of India facing a Chinese army all along the border of Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Nepal and all the way in the Himalayas to Kashmir. The result has been billions of dollars spent by the US every week starving domestic priorities, as president Biden observed this week, and a burial place for empires. Ten years for Russia, and twenty for the US with the same result. It has left the whole region poorer and in humanitarian crisis for 50 years, and created crises for Russia, Pakistan, India, and the US. ...

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The 8000 mile Pacific Light underwater sea cable for internet goes from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. After review by the U.S. Justice Department the conduit connecting to Taiwan and Philippines will be used. leaving the internet link to Hong Kong offline. The U.S. is wary of connection to Hong Kong, and its use as a data hub, after the long public protests in Hong Kong. Perception earlier was of Hong Kong as a separate region from China, with its own distinct identity. This is now changing following the protests.

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Betsy McKay reporting from Harper, Liberia, gives this exceptional report on the shattered health system of Liberia and how the country is coping following the Ebola Virus epidemic. The dilapidated poor state of health facilities in Liberia, and in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea, have made these areas especially vulnerable to the spread of Ebola Virus. With pictures and details about the lives of ordinary people McKay brings to life one of the poorest regions in the world, racked by years of war and neglect, showing people struggling to find their way with minimal health care. Tabeh Freeman, a professor of public health at William S. Tubman University in Harper, Liberia, says Liberia cannot cope if another epidemic takes place, with such a poorly equiped and broken health system. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone estimate the need is for about $1.47 billion in the next 30 months to build and equip a new health system. The World Bank and other donors have come up with $1 billion for Ebola recovery. A particularly urgent problem is to see that adequate funding goes to build the infrastructure for the health system and to train people to provide health services....

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Kimura Naoko, designer from Aomori, Japan, draws cabbage with cabbage, that is crayons made of cabbage, in this NHK series Zero Waste Life video.  Kimura uses vegetables, fruits and flowers to make crayons of each that is labeled according to the ingredient, like "apple" or "cabbage." With the help of a crayon craftsman she invented this new type of crayon by trial and error using rice bran as the base instead of wax and oil. It is popular with Japanese parents and adults. Most of the raw materials are from her local region of Aomori and are discards or remainders.

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A report from central Yokohama in The Times on Typhoon Hagibis. Yokohama was not hit badly, as the storm shifted its direction to the Tokyo region. This report shows how Japan prepared for a typhoon that was expected to be the worst in 60 years.

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Russia is raising taxes on the rich, high earners and companies to keep military spending at levels not seen since the height of the Cold War of 6% of GDP. This is part of effort to keep the economy growing and standards of living stable as it pursues a long term policy of trying to push its borders further to the west in the Ukraine region and confront what it sees as unwarranted NATO expansion to its borders. Russia also with China's support is conducting its policy to show that it is undeterred by Sweden and Finland joining NATO or the early setbacks in its Ukraine war effort. This happens as China is moving to less strident positions in its relations with the EU and the US and working for some level of working relations on trade and economy with EU and the US as its economy slows down.

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The India-Pakistan-Afghanistan issues are still framed in the old way in terms of communalism, cold war then and the war on terrorism now. These policies were a legacy of the colonial policies of an earlier empire designed to preserve foreign rule, with a policy of perpetuating divisions between communties on religious and other lines. Modernization, the spread of mass communications that makes possible the reduction of prejudice and division by assimilating different values and beliefs into acommon aspiration for progress and better living standards, and the spread of education, commerce, and technological progress, create the conditions that should put this behind us. Put behind us communalism, and the political and military structures of communal states. Pakistan needs to be transformed from a communal state with a military structure designed to preserve that state - resulting in conflicts with its neighbors- into a state that represents a community and a religion, but in all other ways seeks peaceful coexistence and economic integration with the rest of South Asia. A good example of this is Mexico with its own culture, language and religion (Spanish Catholicism), and Canada with its own bilingual French-English heritage and British political structures and allegiances, both arriving at an arrangement of peaceful coexistence and economic integration with the USA with its different political structures and culture and sporadic conflicts with Canada and Mexico. This has promoted the peaceful development of the North American region. The US involvement in the region can then be seen as a misguided effort that continued framing the region's differences in the old British way or in a cold war stereotyping, first with John Foster Dulles in the India-Pakistan conflicts, and then with Reagan in the Afghan anti-Soviet war. This has worked to exacerbate the conditions that led to slow progress in the drive for economic development, infrastructure building and modernization in all of South Asia. Just as in Europe, as in North America, the processes of economic development work best when a policy of inclusiveness and integration of different communities and people is followed. ...

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The new generation of Communist party leaders that takes over from Hu Jintao and Wen Biao. Chongqing region's party chief, Bo Xilai is one of the leaders expected to be part of the senior communist leadership, along with Li Keqiang as prime minister and Xi Jinping as president. Xi and Bo are sons of communist party veterans from the Long March. Chongqing was the main base of the Communist party in the 1930's and 1940's, as Mao and the communists fought the Nationalists and then the Japanese. Bo has suppressed the influence of Mafia elements in the region, and is campaigning for a place on the Politburo's Standing Committee with a call for a return to Maoist values of "conscientiousness." Chongqing's state companies are supporting a project launched by Bo in 2010 to build 800,0000 subsidized apartments in 3 years, with an investment of $18.5 billion. This comes as income and wealth gaps in the country are widening and housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for ordinary wage earners....

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A look back through Lyrarc at how rainforest deforestation was taking place in 2007 and amazing UN pictures of maps of Borneo island for 2000, 2005, 2020 showing how deforestation was taking out most of Borneo's rainforest by 2020. This is a call to action from Lyrarc after the pledge of Brazil, Russia, China, India, US, Indonesia to stop deforestation at the COP26 Glasgow.  This report from Surabaya, Indonesia, by Tom Wright, in the July 3, 2007, Wall Street Journal WSJ shows how this was extensive deforestation of one of the few remaining rainforests on the planet earth was taking place and is a must read for everyone. The links show work by a British ecologist journalist who fought hard to prevent continued deforestation in Sarawak, Malaysia, where she grew up as a child when her father was a colonial period police officer in that region. She could see the disappearing canopy in the rainforest and her protests were carried out from the outside.  ...

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DW.com looks at what it means for first Finland, and then Sweden joining NATO. For Finland the invasion of Ukraine where people speak Russian and have close cultural ties comes as a reminder of past history. Under the treaties that ended the war with Napoleon in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, Finland was given to Russia and Norway wrested from Denmark was given to Sweden. Jens Stoltenberg now head of NATO is a former prime minister of Norway. Russia invaded Finland in 1940, and Germany invaded Norway during that war. As a result there are historical reasons why 62% of Finns support joining NATO.  What this means for NATO- This means NATO's border with Russia will double from 1300 to 2600 kilometres. Finland would be different alone compared to being part of the NATO alliance. For NATO this means 280,000 Finns in its army if mobilized under Finland's compulsory military service would be added to defending the border. Finland already is training with US equipment and training since 2015 and is in a joint defense plan with NATO. Sweden's situation is quite different. It has benefitted from neutrality and never been occupied by any power in the 500 years of European wars for balance of power in the region. In the last 200 years Sweden has acted as a neutral state and stayed out of 2 world wars and other conflicts. For Sweden to join NATO it has to change this historical neutrality and has to be convinced that the invasion of Ukraine and the immense destruction in Ukraine with over 4 million refugees mostly women and children is an event that has changed everything. If Sweden were to join NATO not much could be expected for ground forces as Sweden has a small army. Sweden also has no land border with Russia. Sweden is on the Baltic Sea which is also a border for Russia. Sweden does bring 100 modern fighter aircraft and 8 modern submarines that would secure the Baltic Sea.  If one or both countries were to join NATO this would happen by June and both countries would join NATO immediately after 30 NATO member countries approve this.  ...

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The Trump administration has pulled together $18 billion of the funding for the border wall, the fencing that will replace inadequate exiting barriers along 885 mile stretch on the U.S.- Mexico border. This includes the current budget proposal for $2 billion in funding request. The remainder was collected by shifting funds from the military. During the initial request to Congress it was given only $1.325 billion. President Trump made up the difference by declaring a state of emergency in February 2019, allowing funds for military construction projects to be shifted to the border wall funding- $6.7 billion in 2019 and $7.2 billion in 2020. A lot of the construction will happen in 2021, assuming Mr. Trump wins a second term. The Trump administration hopes to have built or under construction 450 miles in 2020. Much of it is concentrated on federally owned land, across vast regions of Texas, because of no legal obstacles from private landowners unwilling to give up land. ...

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Hiking and long walks as a way to break up the endless monotony of work and improve fitness, reducing stress and anxiety. A breath of fresh air and views of the countryside. the clarity of mind that comes with it. Putting everything aside and heading out on a long long walk. Pick a route that suits your ability and don't let anything hold you back. Hiking is great. There are many routes in every region of the world, explore and head out.

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Following the Nuclear Security Summit in March 2016, U.S. president Obama says world leaders had expressed concern about Mr. Trump's comments in private conversations with him. Obama said- "even those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand that the president of the United States needs to know what's going on around the world." Obama said that comments by Mr. Trump showed a person "who doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally. Mr. Trump said in a NYT interview that "Now, wouldn't you in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?" Trump has defended these comments in a televised townhall meeting held by CNN in Milwaukee. Obama was critical of these comments as upsetting the situation in Asia where the U.S. has made great sacrifices in World War II, and today "underwrites the peace and prosperity of that region." Adding that "you don't mess with that."...

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Andrew Lownie's book provides glimpses into the lives of the Mountbattens, Edwina and Dickie. Mountbatten was the head of the British government in India in 1946 as negotiations were started with Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah for independent India. The Cabinet Mission (including Cripps) plan of 1946 was  to setup a federation in India with provinces in A, B, and C categories. A being the Central Provinces, United Provinces, Bombay, Madras and other parts of what is now India, B being the Punjab, Sind and what is now Pakistan, and C being the region of Bengal, what is now Bangladesh and West Bengal.This was rejected by Nehru, Sardar Patel, and the Indian National Congress, leading to  Jinnah's call for action, a civil war, and the partition of India 9 months before the plan date of June 1948, in chaotic circumstances, in a hurried manner. The legacy of that two year period is with us today in the upheavals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, drawing the U.S. and western nations also into endless wars. The period 1939-1941 is covered when Edwina's rather aimless life upto that point changed completely with service to war wounded and for the Red Cross. She also visited the U.S. in 1941 when Mountbatten was given command of an aircraft carrier at Norfolk, Virginia, visiting 28 states. Edwina made up for he aimless years by relentlessly pushing herself to be an equal to her husband in the war effort. This has given the couple their fascinating character. It was also a period of great change as the Labour party under Clement Atlee winning a post war election made the decision to end the British Empire in India. The war had depleted British wealth and Britain lacked the resources to continue the Empire in India. The job of managing the transition went to Mountbatten, a naval officer in the Royal Navy, coming in the tumultuous years of 1946-48 with the quick partition of India under Mountbatten in 1947. Mountbatten stayed after independence in August 1947 as the first Governor General of India.  Edwina and Dickie Mountbatten struck a friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru, and this review in The Hindu shows Jawaharlal, Edwina, Dickie and their daughter Pamela having tea at the residence in Shimla, 1946. Nehru's rejection of the Cabinet Mission plan leading to the appointment of Mountbatten as Viceroy was partly based on his idea that priorities for India post independence was modernizing the economy and reducing poverty. Seven decades later the priorities are still the same, following the experience of Japan, South Korea and China at modernizing the economies in east Asia requiring a greatly accelerated effort.    ...

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Tensions on the India China border as India builds roads and infrastructure in the mountainous Himalayan area close to the border in Ladakh to match the Chinese buildup of roads in the region over the last decade. India has also built up its troop presence in the region to match China's troop presence along the border in Ladakh.

India has supported a call from Australia for an investigation into the early origins of the coronavirus. The call was supported by many countries around the world and by the U.S., Japan and France. The 350,000 deaths from coronavirus and the 5.5 millions confirmed cases, the economic damage, most of them in western nations in North America and Europe, have  led to growing tensions between China and the rest of the world. 

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Kevin Maurer looks back at 15 years of covering Afghanistan since 2004, and asks was it worth it.  The conflict has cost 145,000 lives for the U.S. period of the war alone. Not counting the war in which the Russians were involved in the decade before the U.S. involvement. In fact the Russian involvement in Afghanistan was costly enough to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union and bring Gorbachev to power to unwind the war and make the changes that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.  2400 U.S. servicemen dead and 20,000 Americans wounded. The cost to the U.S. is $737 billion for this war, according to a report in 2018 from Brown University's Costs of War Project. Just as the Soviet Union showed the damage from this war the U.S. has seen the cost of this war and foreign entanglement in another war that started accidentally with international interventions in the Iran-Iraq region as a cost that was borne with consequences. This includes the neglect of infrastructure and the damage to the middle class prosperity built up in the 1950's and 1960's after the Second World War. The U.S. got into this war with 9/11 attacks on New York City. By 2010 what began as a war fought by a few Special Operations teams turned into a war with troop levels reaching 100,000. Presidents Bush and Obama both failed to end the war by winning it. In 2014 finally combat operations stopped and American troops mainly conducted anti-terrorism operations and trained Afghan forces. In recent years the war has gradually disappeared from the national discussion in the U.S. and is barely talked about. President Trump wants to end the war even if it means talking to the Taliban and negotiations directly with the Taliban are ongoing.  One result of this war is the aversion to costly international entanglements and the highly unpopular nature of the conflicts. There are serious costs of the conflict in terms of neglected domestic priorities including infrastructure, loss of U.S. technological edge in key industries, and the competition from China, an the investments in health, education, services that were not made, the increase in inequalities and the diminishing of the middle class. The global financial crisis of 2008, the result of faulty banking, added an economic dimension through the loss of middle class savings in the U.S., worsening the financial situation of the middle class in the U.S.    ...

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The trade agreement with Australia starts a process of taking India's exports far beyond the current figure of $400 billion and creating the jobs that come with it. It will double bilateral trade over 5 years to take it to $50 billion. This also shows the wisdom of India not joining the Comprehensive Economic Partnership pushed by president Obama.

The natural ties within the English speaking peoples and the common historical ties within the Commonwealth of Nations that include Australia, Canada, Britain, the Gulf Nations, and South East Asia provide a natural trade and economic region for India.  Next planned are trade agreements with Canada and Britain, and an effort to bring all the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council into and Economic Partnership with India, An agreement was also signed with the United Arab Emirates. Very important is a trade agreement with Germany and the European Union for close economic integration with Europe.

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The introduction of the new currency the Real was the first step along with inflation targeting cutting spending and keeping strict control of money growth that brought runaway inflation down to 22% annually by 1995. The transparency, announcing the plan for the Real months ahead and calming expectations were reasons for the success of the Real. Life was entirely unpredictable when inflation had reached 2000% in 1993.

It was Henrique Cardoso of centre right party that introduced the Real currency and took the steps to finally control inflation. He was president for 2 terms 1994-1998 and was from Rio de Janeiro state. Most of the politics of Brazil before this was from politicians from three states Minas Gerais milk producing region, Rio Grande de Sul, and the state of Sao Paulo with coffee plantations in the south east of the country. 

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Ethnic minorites are not easily persuaded that modernizing and investment can be traded for limits on cultural autonomy and on the religion, language and culture of the region. This is the situation in Xingiang and Tibet. What is not realized is that Mao's army took control of Tibet and Xingiang in 1949, which have not historically formed part of China, and the immigration adds another level of conflict because of the fear that the ethnic cultures are threatened. The Uighur revolt shows that the tradeoff of modernization for limits on religion, culture, language and participation in governance does not work in the ethnic regions of China, says the Economist. See the link in the NYT on Mr. Wang, a protege of President Hu Jintao, who himself was at one time in charge of Tibet. Because of this China risks getting more entrenched with continuing policies that may not work out.