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France's parliamentary election shows the Macron centre right coalition at estimated 234 seats, the Republicains most likely to join Macron's government at 75 seats. The NUPES coalition on the left calling for an increase in the minimum wage at 141 seats and the Far right National Rally at 90 seats. Macron's coalition will have to form a working majority with the coalition of left parties and the Republicains and shift its policies as Macron depended on votes from Lu Melenchon supporters to win the presidential election two months earlier.

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On his first day Jan 18, 2023, Josh Shapiro, Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, signed an executive order that eliminated the requirement of a college degree for 92% of jobs in the state government, 62,000 jobs. Utah and Maryland made similar changes last year with Republican Governors. The Editorial Board of NYT says- for far too long, too many Americans see  society and economy as unfairly skewed to serve the needs of well connected elites, and people with a college education, looking down and excluding the rest.

 

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Mail in ballots in the vote for the US Senate in Nevada will pay a crucial role for Democrats to control the Senate. Some reports say Democrats who are running at about 61% in mail in ballots could make it through if they get 55% to give Ms. Cortez Masto the Democrat a seat in the Senate. With Arizona leaning Democrat this would give the Democrats control of the Senate even before the runoff election in the third undecided state of Georgia in December. So close has been the struggle for the US Senate.

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Finland makes the decision to join NATO on May 12, 2022. NATO's land. border will increase from 1215 kilometres or 745 miles to 2600 kilometres. Sweden is expected to join NATO in a paradigm shift as it has been neutral for 200 years. Once Finland joins Sweden would be alone in the Baltic if it did not join NATO. Both Finland and Sweden have integrated their defenses and built up defenses at a time when other European states had not invested in the military. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has welcomed FInland and Sweden joining NATO.

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Unions represent 10.1% of wage and salary workers in the US in 2022, down from 10.3% in 2021. Unions added 273,000 workers in 2022, increasing by 1.9% to 14.3 million. Only a small fraction of workers in the private sector are unionized, 6% of 120 million workers or 7.2 million workers. In the public sector 7.1 million or 33% of 21 million workers are represented by unions. Unions won the ability to represent workers in 1041 of 1363 elections held in 2022. In Jan 2023 workers at Microsoft voted to form a union.

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Asia's longest bidirectional tunnel is between Ganderbal district in Kashmir and Kargil district of Ladakh in India's Himalayan region at a height of 11,500 feet for 14.2 kilometres. Indian Express shows pictures of work on the tunnel which will cut time across the mountains from 3 hours to 20 minutes and connects Leh in Ladakh with Srinagar in J&K providing all weather connectivity. It will be completed months ahead of completion date of 2026. As part of the project 19 tunnels are being constructed at a cost of $3.5 billion.

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A look back at the Merkel 16 years in Germany and the European Union, the compromises to keep the Social Democrats out and her party the CDU in power, the failures in preserving social mobility in German society, immigration that led to divisions in German society, and climate change where she took some faltering steps. Only in the end did Merkel put all her convictions behind Scholz and the effort to bring trillions of euros of aid to Germany and the European Union devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. This may be her singular achievement.

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With roads blocked and subways closed after the heaviest snowstorm in 50 years, Madrid healthcare workers walked long distances to work. Many healthcare workers, nurses, medical residents  walked 10 to 20 kilometres to get to work at hospitals.  In Spain the virus has claimed 51,000 lives and cases are at over 2 million. One nurse took 2 hours 28 minutes to walk to work, saying as he crossed fallen trees and 40 centimetres of snow that he decided if he got there it was ok and if he did not he would turn back.

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Trust in government in the US was highest under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and LBJ, right upto the escalation of the Vietnam War and remained above 70 percent. It changed in the seventies and hit new lows ever since to the 40% level since the 1980's through the Reagan, Bush, Clinton administrations. The 2009 financial crisis caused by banks led to a drop to 16%. It dropped to 20% under Obama and Trump administrations. By 2023 it remains at about 20%. Graphs in Pew Research show how it has changed over time.

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The WSJ looks at Republican voters from the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. It finds that about 20% of Republican voters will not vote for the former president Mr.Trump. It also finds that about 65% of voters who are Independent did not support Mr. Trump in the 2 primaries. Mr. Biden is seen as losing about 10% of Democratic voters. A look at 2020 shows former president Trump has lost support among Independents and skeptical Republicans by 2024 stemming from disapproval of the uncertainty and chaotic nature of the presidential years 2016-2020.

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About 41% of Americans have no money invested in the stock market. Frugal savers are now paying off home mortgages and using the savings to reduce debt.  As interest rates rise saving at banks with CD's has the prospect of becoming a viable option, which was taken away by the policies of central banks during financial crises of such as in 2009 of cutting interest rates to zero. The US returns to the more normal environment for savings growth and interest income that prevailed during the period after the 1950's.

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The wisdom of trying hard but not too hard. Productivity declines when trying too hard. It helps for the mind to get rest and come back to the task refreshed, which means push yourself but only so much and continue to work at it steadily. There is no such thing as achieving 100%, it could mean the goals set were not ambitious enough or that the goals were too hard acting as a demotivating influence. Also minutae or stuff that is not that important can creep into that extra 15% to get to 100%. 

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The Burning Glass Institute Tech Cities rankings are based on Cutting Edge Skill workers in the area and on Momentum rankings. Both are shown here in this WSJ report. Seattle Tacoma ranks at the top in the cutting edge skill workers in the US. Cutting edge skills are related to cloud and serverless computing, machine learning, AI architecture and cybersecurity operations. In midsize cities Pro-Urem Utah and Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor Michigan, Rochester New York, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Seattle has the largest concentration of tech workers about 13% of the US total.

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Burning of stubble from the rice harvest to clear land for the next year's cultivation in the Punjab creates 25% of the pollution over New Delhi. Automobile pollution adds more pollutants. This toxic mix of pollutants is trapped by the cooler air during the winter over much of northern India. At one point the pollution index reached 643 in New Delhi, by comparison it was hard to breather with an index of 116 from the wildfires in Canada's northern region that sent smoke all the way into Washington D.C. 

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Annette Bening  age 65 and Jodie Foster age 60 show up as real athletes in the film "Nyad," which shows Diana Nyad's 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida in 2013 at age 64. Jodie Foster and Annette Bening say about their role- they were frustrated by so few roles for mature women in Hollywood, so that she wanted to shatter age images in people's heads. Bening trained every day for 1 year under US Olympian Rada Owen. It meant spending 4 to 8 hours in the water.

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Serum Institute in India's vaccine developed with Oxford University is a leading one of the 6 candidates in India for coronavirus vaccine. It is expected to be ready by September. ICMR also has a vaccine that could be ready by India's Independence Day of August 15. One of the vaccines is for the elderly. Serum Institute has the advantage of being one of the leading manufacturers of vaccines in the world. India makes 60% of the world's vaccines giving it much experience in manufacturing that is needed today.

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Harris-Walz campaign in Arizona and Nevada August 10, 2024. Harris gains the support of the Culinary Workers union with 60,000 members. 

League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac), the oldest Latino civil rights group, which usually stays neutral stepped in to endorse the Democratic ticket.

“The politics of hate-mongering and scapegoating Latinos and immigrants must be stopped,” said Domingo Garcia, chairman of Lulac Adelante Pac, in a statement.

“Latinos understand how much is at stake in this election, for not only our community but our democracy.”

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Patrick Barta's exceptional reporing on Manek Chowk, a busy industrial and commercial centre of Ahmedabad. Manek Chowk, the public market in Ahmedabad, India, where street vendors find jobs in the informal economy. The informal economy provides most of the jobs in countries like India and Brazil. They could be street vendors, rickshaw drivers, workers doing textile stitching work and being paid by the piece, and so on. Ahmedabad has 55,000 richshaw drivers, 70,000 street vendors, 70,000 construction workers, and 45,000 rovish trash collectors and recyclers. Most of the city's once prominent textile mills have vanished or are rotting. If Ahmedabad makes it through this difficult period with job losses in India, its because of a thriving local informal economy. It may not provide what a regular job provides, but it helps people feed their families and they are happy to make it through the tough times. And even in the better times the jobs just do not exist in the proportion necessary in countries like India and Brazil. Consider this. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of formal jobs in India stayed flat at about 35 million, while informal jobs grew 17% to 423 million, according to the Indian government. These are the most recent years for which information is available. Economists say the creation of formal jobs may have picked up after 2005, but not by much. The situation is like this all over much of Africa, Asia and Latin America. And as companies layoff formal workers in favor of cheaper employees part-time and without benefits, the importance of the informal economy grows. In Ahmedabad the rights of these people are protected in the case of women by the Self Employed Women's Association of India, which numbers 1 million people across India....

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The CUET, Common University Entrance Test will provide a uniform test for all parts of the country. It is now required for all 45 Central Universities to admit undergraduate students. The computer based test offered in July each year will be conducted by the National Testing Agency based on the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus for Class 12. It will replace institution specific exams.

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In an unbelievable result Germany loses to North Macedonia 2-1 and fall into third place in their group in European Cup Qualifiers. Coach Joachim Loew ends a 15 year stint for Germany in 2021. Christiano Renaldo of Portugal scores a goal with the ball going past the finishing line, which is not allowed because of a lack of VAR goalline technology at the stadium, in a game against Serbia. 

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For the first time we hear of "period poverty" in advanced European countries. Scotland charities say there is "period poverty" in Britain as the pandemic hurts incomes across Scotland. Women and girls not having money to buy sanitary products needed during menstruation. The Scottish parliament passes a Period Products Bill to ensure all women have free sanitary products, the legislation costing about 10 million pounds.

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Aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls Royce says two thirds of its engines remain idle. Its cash burn for 2020 is 4.2 billion pounds. Rolls Royce supplies engines for the 787 Boeing Dreamliner and Airbus 350 aircraft. Its sales are normally 15 billion pounds. CEO Warren East says the company is going through its "darkest hour" and will not be seeing the beginning of the end till the middle of 2021.

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Prime minister Netanyahu of Israel says he will call snap elections if secular and religious parties in his centre right alliance do not come together to form a new government. Likud lacks the 61 seats for a majority in parliament resulting in negotiations with other religious and secular parties that back Netanyahu. Mr. Lieberman one of the secular party leaders says the ultra orthodox must serve in the military with other Israelis.

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Germany's chancellor gives her support to French president Macron's call for agreement before the summer holidays on a 750 billion euro rescue package. Merkel told 27 leaders of EU countries Europe faces "very, very difficult times" and even said that she was not sure the gravity of the situation was truly understood. The value of the economies of some states could drop by 10% in 2020.

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Japan's GDP fell by 7.8% in the second quarter of 2020 compared with previous quarter. By comparison for U.S. economy GDP was down 9.5% for that quarter. In Japan the increase in the national sales tax from 8% to 10% in October 2019 had already caused a contraction in the economy. It is uncertain how much the second wave of the pandemic will affect the economic recovery.