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US Secretary of Defense says Ukraine's spring counteroffensive will not be affected by the leaks in the classified documents at the US Department of Defense.

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Guidance from the World Health Organization for people to stay mentally healthy during the difficult period of the coronavirus impact. The need to be empathetic and kind.

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Political activism and grassroots efforts- other than street protests - are increasing in eurozone countries facing high unemployment and austerity cuts. The focus is on cleaning up the political system rife with cronyism, corruption and wasteful spending. Brat and Bjork describe one such effort in the town of Torrelodones, Spain, 18 miles from Madrid. Criminal investigations in many Spanish cities have increased public awareness and participation in local government. European Social Survey based in London, reports political activity of this kind in Spain jumped from 27% in 2008 to 39% in 2010. There is an increasing sense that the political elites of the two main parties, the Partido Popular and the Socialists have failed to bring clean government and transparency to Spain. As a result progressives are joining conservatives in an effort to clean up years of wasteful spending, cronyism and corruption in government. The Union for Progress and Democracy, representing an alliance of such groups would win 13% of the vote in a national election, and the ruling conservative Partido Popular would lose half of its support and get only 22.5%, according to independent Spanish polling firm Metroscopia. The new push for transparency is one of the welcome changes at a time of austerity cuts and 27% unemployment in Spain. Many of the perks of public officials such as chaeuffer driven cars and police escorts, contracts for favored few at higher prices, are out in many cities, and accounts made public for scrutiny and change. Transparency International's transparency index shows 33 out of 110 of Spain's biggest cities scoring top grades on the 2012 index, jumping from only one. Following the example of the regional government in Navarra, the central government is drafting the first open-records law. Castilla-La Mancha, the area around Toledo, run by a clean government advocate Maria Dolores de Cospedal from the Partido Popular has taken aggressive steps to clean up the local government and wasteful spending- see the link to Castilla La Mancha. Her long term approach is to clean up government spending and accounts with the idea of preserving spending where it is most needed, in education, healthcare and vital services hit by cuts, an approach being taken in other Spanish cities. ...

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Contact tracing being setup using iphones and android phones with bluetooth technology by Apple and Google. The idea is being studied for adoption by the U.S. government. The problem is that this kind of contact tracing is not as effective as the kind used by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore with information from cellphone carriers. Contact tracing apps would be written by developers for each country and chosen by Apple and Google one for each country. How it works- When a person comes down with symptoms he can upload the information about who he has been close to stored on the phone. This information would then be used to contact the person who was exposed to the person with symptoms but unaware of this. A message would tell that person he was exposed to someone who now has symptoms and to contact public health authorites and take effective steps. When the person with symptoms gets tested if he was positive that would also appear on a exposed person's phone without name or other information.  The normal contact tracing is time intensive requiring many phone calls and using data from cellphone carriers. This is done in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. It is considered to be more effective. The approach of these Asian countries is more thorough and allows effective tracing and isolation, quarantining of persons having coronavirus or having exposure in countries with rampant coronavirus. The U.S. needs to move quickly to adopt the methods used in these Asian countries. The loss of hundreds of thousands of lives should be weighed against privacy concerns and clearly there should be a way to allow one time use of personal information for coronavirus, so that this kind of information is used only in public emergency situations. All three Asian countries are democracies. Putting health care workers at great risk including working pregnant doctors, as in the story in WSJ about a hospital in Maryland, should make it clear that everything including privacy concern should be placed in context, and use of personal information be permitted in a public emergency such as a contagious virus- with information protections removal for the period of the crisis. ...

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Michelle Yeoh, Ocar winner, describes her role in promoting the UN Sustainability Goals, the millions of women who are part of the 2.7 billion people she says lack digital connectivity around the world, and face barriers to information and resources in all spheres of their lives. She wants to put the spotlight on the women who are on the frontlines of crisis- who are rebuilding their communities, taking care of children and older people, and putting food on the table. Yeoh says she is 60 and she know what perseverance means, but nothing compares to what these women are doing today.

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The WSJ shows options to travel to Europe from the US for under $200 one way on new budget airlines set up by Iceland (Play airline), Norway (Norse Atlantic Airways), Britain (Condor Airlines), France (French Bee), Italy (Neos). Add in bags and meals and it could run to about $400 one way as you pay for everything else extra. One would travel to that country to locations such as Reykjavik, Oslo, London, Paris, Milan, and connect to other parts of Europe. Flights are from New York, Los Angles, San Francisco, Miami. With fares for Delta, United, and other carriers up significantly this offers another option.

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From Kansas to Southern Spain, pictures from The Guardian show the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the night skies looking out into The Milky Way in December 2020. At the time of the pandemic understanding how small our world is on this planet as light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second and it takes 2 seconds to reach earth from the moon, thousands of years for light to reach earth from distant stars of which scientists say there are 200 billion. A British scientist and astronomer says there are 200 billion in a new book "The History of the Universe in 21 Stars."

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A vote to call witnesses, including former National Security Advisor Mr. Bolton, by Democrats fails in the Senate 51 votes against to 49 votes in favor, with only 2 Republican Senators voting in favor. The impeachment trial of president Trump now goes forward to a vote almost certain to acquit Mr. Trump of all charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice. A key vote was cast in favor by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander who said Mr. Trump had acted inappropriately on Ukraine but this clearly was not treason, and not a high crime and misdemeanors, the bar set in the Constitution for impeachment.

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U.S. gasoline demand is at about 8.6-9.2 million barrels a day down from the 9.6 -10 million barrels a day before mid March. It fell to 5 million barrels a day in April when prices were briefly at zero before recovering with the oil deal negotiated by president Trump. The lack of school reopenings, offices still closed and the surge in the pandemic in July and August has led to drop in the outlook for oil demand. Oil prices are now in the low $40's per barrel. Yet the overall recovery is strong considering that it is only 6 months into the pandemic.

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The dangers from climate change to the fresh water supply from the entire Tibetan plateau to southern Asia is shown in videos and pictures in DW.com. There is a severe decline in terrestrial water storage which includes above and below ground water. Associate Prof Di Long at Tsinghua University says terrestrial water storage across this region is critical for water availability and highly sensitive to climate change. A team of scientists from Penn State in US, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and University of Texas has found loss of water in Tibetan plateau of 15.8 gigatons per year (15.8 billion tons) in some areas of Tibetan plateau. 

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Gina Raimondo, US Commerce Secretary, visits Beijing to help restore key aspects of the US China trade and business relationship. Her visit follows visits by Anthony Blinken and Janet Yellen that helped rebuild the relationship after the pandemic and the rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration had weakened ties. The balloon incident and the visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan further strained relationship with China. This is changing as China increases engagement following the pandemic and president Xi is expected to visit the US for an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC meeting in November at which president Biden will meet Xi.

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Rosalynn Carter is the most politically active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She actively participated in Jimmy Carter's political campaigns first for governor of Georgia, then for the US presidency as a Democrat in 1976. Both come from a small peanut farming town of Plains, Georgia. Carter served in the Navy and went to Annapolis for naval training. After leaving the presidency the Carters wer active in humanitarian efforts to tackle disease in Africa and in other efforts including Habitat for Humanity building homes for lower income Americans. No president has served in this way for this long as Jimmy Carter.

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Scientists worry that microplastics are linked to growing rates of cancer, heart disease, and other diseases. One study says people inhale or ingest 74,000 to 124,000 microplastic particles per year through breathing, eating and drinking. The plastic particles are everywhere around us. Of 10,000 chemicals used in making plastic a fourth of these are toxic. Consider in 1950 2 million metric tons of plastic were made, now 400 million metric tons. Of 8 billion tons produced only 10% recycled so the rest are in oceans, landfills, and around us. Ingested or inhaled they cause inflammation in our bodies that lead to cancer or other diseases.

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Job cuts may be in the future for Opel plants following the acquisition by PSA Peugeot. CEO Tavares is known for making efficiency gains and this may be the only way forward at Opel as PSA makes changes to the way the company is being run.

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Sri Lanka's state owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation has $700 million in debt that it cannot repay resulting in fuel shortages as it cannot finance imports of oil. Depending on Indian financial help for fuel that after $4 billion in aid is not sustainable, says Wickremasinghe, who is finance minister and prime minister.

Deep rooted errors in management of the economy now need to be corrected and this will require increase in income taxes, cutting public expenditure and breaking down loss making state monopolies, are needed. Wickremasinghe says "if the government misses this opportunity this would be a crime."

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By 2024 Dholera Special Investment Region airport and the expressway linking Ahmedabad to Dholera will be operational, says India's Union Minister Piyush Goyal. Developed from scratch on vast stretches of land in the Gulf of Khambat 100 kilometres from Ahmedabad it is expected to be India's best manufacturing zone,  comparable or better than any manufacturing zone in China. It is part of the industrial effort to build world class manufacturing zones in India that fit in with the shift of manufacturing from China as part of the redesign of world supply chains to avoid overconcentration in any one part of the world.

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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says Germany will not be blackmailed. She rejected the idea that Russia is expanding its attacks on Ukraine in response to supply of longer range artillery from the US and Germany saying this was just "new propaganda from the Russian side."

Baerbock also said Germany needs to avoid a situation of being dependent on an aggressor for gas supply. Germany is now "very intensively" looking at its dependencies on China, said Baerbock. This is going to be  for "a sovereign European strategy of independence in critical infrastructure."

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General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US says "I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it is at least measured in years." He added that the US and others states supporting Ukraine will be "involved in this for quite some time." His advice was that the US should create permanent bases but don't permanently station forces, so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases. He said the Baltic States, Poland and Romania would be willing to pay for such bases.

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Nine LNG terminals many of them on the Gulf Coast are put on hold by the Biden administration in an effort to balance the needs of tackling climate change and the need for natural gas supplies to reduce the cost of winter heating. The supplies to European Union will not be affected, as these supplies vital to the EU after the halt of supplies from Russia will be handled on an exception basis. This also meets the growing concern of young people who see expanding fossil fuel investment as an issue at a time of dangers of climate change that were visible in 2023.

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Rafael Nadal makes a remarkable comeback to beat Medvedev after losing the first two sets in the 2022 Australian Open tennis tournament. The match lasted 5 hours till 1 am the next day. Nadal says "Being honest one month and a half ago, I did not know if I will be back on the tour plying tennis again... you don't know how much I fought to be here." Nadal is one of the of the most resilient players in sports having comeback from difficult situations repeatedly, as he gives his all down to the last point regardless of the score. 

 

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China's Make in China campaign is supported by helping domestic brands. Just as BYD overtakes VW as the largest selling domestic brand and leading EV maker, China is pushing domestic mobile phones. Here WSJ reports banning of the use of Apple phones by people serving in the government. China is urging government agencies and state enterprise employees to use Chinese brands of computers, mobile phones and computer software to ensure sensitive data can be protected. Apple gets 19% of revenues from China and dominates the highend smart phones market in China. This may not be sustained under Make In China campaign.

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President Biden sets out the new role of America in the Asia Pacific region at the APEC CEO Summit. Key points from hours of discussion Biden had with Xi Jinping during his visit to the US- 

"Let me be clear. America does not seek conflict with China." And that "America is not decoupling with China. It is de-risking and diversifying from China." For his part Jinping has said- "There are a thousand reasons for us to want good relations with the US." This may be the biggest achievement of both leaders.

 

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A constitutional review by Gordon Brown, a former Labor prime minister, would abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a upper chamber of parliament that has responsibilities for protecting the constitution. It would be changed into an assembly of regions and nations, and be able to refer the government to the supreme court. At the heart of it is a statement of the rights of people to healthcare, education and social protection. It also looks at promoting devolution of government to local levels and regions in a country that is dominated in its politics and government by the capital city of London.

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China's efforts to rescue the housing industry and construction industry will be limited as the government is now concerned not to set off another bubble like that in the past. Assistance will be limited to unsold apartments which local governments can now buy to use for affordable housing, and $42 billion is provided for a central government fund to buy apartments that are unsold. This will reduce excessive inventory and the government will stop at that point no wanting to create new bubbles. Attention is now focused on increasing manufacturing of electric vehicles for export and other manufacturing in solar, renewable energy.

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Global imbalances in savings had alot to do with the current economic crisis, says Prof. Richard Portes of the London Business School, and president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. See graph that shows net cross border flows doubled from 1997 the year ogf the Asian financial crisis to 2008. By 2008 these cross border flows from Asia to the West reached 3% of global GDP. This says Portes was what was ultimately the cause of the crisis, as it enabled bankers to be reckless and mortgage lenders to be reckless with all the extra money in the American banking system.