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This report in The Financial Times citing official data, says one third of farmers in three provinces, Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang lack the needed agricultural inputs. Authorites sealed off villages to fight the pandemic. The three provinces produce 20% of China's foodgrains. This is the result of strict Covid policies followed in China to control covid surge. 

According to Jilin government one third of farmers lack sufficient fertilizer three weeks before planting begins. This could affect China's efforts for self sufficiency in foodgrains.

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There is a great loss of learning for children that may never be recovered following the pandemic. Data released recently show that for many years now two thirds of 4th graders are not able to read at the proficiency levels of the National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP test. This is a period when America has not invested in its children, has not invested in its people. Much of $346 billion going to venture firms in 2021 was wasted. Returns of negative 7% in 3rd quarter 2022 for venture firms.

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NYT provides an extraordinary display of working age population demographic data in graphics for the world and individual countries to 2050. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and African countries are given the opportunity to make progress similar to South Korea, Japan and China over the next 25 years. India with 1.4 billion people and a determined federal government can set the stage for the type of progress that can modernize the country and build a level of infrastructure that compares with the best in Europe, the US and Japan.

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Clements provides an exceptionally useful reasoning for the average investor to give an important role to high dividend paying stocks in retirement planning. This applies to today's low interest environment with stock market volatility. The higher dividends help reduce the need to sell stocks in a volatile stock market and limit this to occasional selling. Using estimates from Yale Prof. Shiller's website for past 100 years data diversified U.S. stocks with high dividends pay about 4.4% in annual dividends outpacing the inflation average of 3.2%, and 5.6% appreciation in value of the stock each year. This helps preserve retirement capital. As many high dividend large cap stocks are also value stocks there is an additional value effect in holding these stocks.

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The London Stock Exchange will buy $2.8 billion of Microsoft products over the next 10 years including its Azure cloud service. Microsoft will in turn take a 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange. In this way the tech and financial companies will come together. It brings one having a growing batch of financial data together with another company that has cloud computing and financial software. 

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Carlos Slim's America Movil has expanded quickly throughout Latin America in the last decade. It now has 225 million customers. It offers innovative solutions in a region where credit cards are not as widespread and incomes are lower. Prepaid cards let customers of America Movil use its service in large numbers. It started with 10 million customers in Mexico, about ten years ago. A new strategy is to expand data streaming and internet services in the same way, by offering low cost prepaid cards that let people in Brazil use the service for 2 weeks, and similar pricing elsewhere in Latin America. America Movil has 60 million internet customers at this time. The target is to get 400 million people online using mobile phone devices iin the Latin American region.

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Multiplan helps health insurers make billions says this report in NYT.

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This WSJ editorial in September 2014 says many of president Obama's statements and decisions on Obama healthcare legislation and implementation, Syria, NSA and privacy, the Middle East, Russia, showed poor judgement. It refers to a piece by Peter Baker in NYT where it is said that Obama mocked how people see him as too professorial, diffident, in a sarcastic statement. The problem says WSJ is that president Obama has poor judgement. Being academically credentialed and quick grasp of subject matter is not the same as having the ability to discern things, instinct and grasp of the essence of the matter. George Bush senior had a long resume and was academically credentialed. By comparison Truman had a short resume and was not academically credentialed or quick with data and analysis. He had something more essential and important- a discerning mind and grasp of the larger picture, as well as listening abilities for exceptional advisors such as General Marshall and Acheson he gathered around him....

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The unemployment rate rose to 9.8% in November 2010, according to the Labor Department.

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FDA questions quality of life improvement claims for drugs known as ESA's or erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, which are the drugs Epogen and Aranesp of Amgen and procrit by J&J.

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The coronavirus variant surge has led to burnout for frontline medical workers in the US. It has been calamitous for the mental health of public health workers in the US. These are the data analysts, policy advisors and other workers in public health departments. Many have quit their job as reported here in The Guardian. A CDC survey of 26,000 public health workers in the US shows about half have problems of mental health. Public health workers have to face problems with elected officials as well as public resentment on issues such as vaccination.