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Former U.S. Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, started a nonprofit civics education group, iCivics, in 2009. iCivics has 19 free online games with lesson plans for middle school students to learn about how the branches of government of the U.S. work, and the Constitution. About 3.2 million students used these online games in 2016, according to iCivics. Justice O'Connor now considers this her most important legacy. She says civics has to be taught to each generation, that it is not inherited. In one of the games Supreme Decision, a justice has to cast the deciding vote in a case. Another online game is Win the White House, and it teaches students about what a candidate has to go through in an election, a political platform, what a liberal or conservative is, selecting a vice presidential candidate to broaden his appeal, and making compromises in his positions where necessary. Justice O'Connor started iCivics after she realized schools were not teaching student how to engage in the political and other processes of governance. Filament Games, a learning games company in Madison, Wisconsin, designed the games for iCivics. O'Connor came across educational interactive online games after retiring from the Supreme Court in 2006, and this has become a passion for her, to teach young people how to become engaged in the process of governance at an early age....

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The Economist points out that AI and Deep Learning have flaws in that they replicate how the human brain works in what importance is given to what piece of information in the form of bits of code imitating information neurons. The problem is that once this process is underway and it gets progressively more complex it is hard to track and understand what is happening withing this code, as to why a particular decision is reached. Making this process transparent is therefore critical to wider use of AI.

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How a weak dollar is affecting countries in the Persian Gulf such as the Emirates and Quatar as inflation approaches 12% and South Asian workers seeing the value of their remittances home diminish as th rupee strengthens against the dollar. Saudi inflation is smaller at 5% and the Saudis intend to keep the dollar peg for their currency. Kuwait has shifted to a peg based on a basket of currencies. The Gilf Cooperation Council is expected to meet soon and this will be an important topic.

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Professors Cole and Ohanian of the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA, provide a new interpretation of FDR's economic policies during the period 1932-1934 and the period 1937-1941, based on their research. This suggests conclusions different from that of Obama advisor, Christina Romer, and Fed chairman, Bernanke about that period. Changes in economic policies under the Roosevelt administration that helped bring wages in line with productivity, reduced strikes, and gradual elimination of the undistributed profits tax, improved incentives for business investment during 1938-1939. Cole and Ohanian, say that by 1941, before the U.S. entered the war, close to half of the increase in nonmilitary hours worked in the U.S. between 1939 and the peak of the war, had already been achieved. And this was primarily the result of the changes in FDR's policies in 1938. They say a similiar opportunity is presented by the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction, by lowering the corporate income tax through simplification of the tax code and reducing or eliminating most tax expenditures. Improving the incentives for business to hire and invest through this and other steps is likely to do more for the economy than the steps tried so far since 2009....

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Harris Primary Academy in southeast London is a primary school that shows how reopening can be done safely. The primary school's head teacher Mr. French says nothing was left to chance and the logistics detail were handled carefully. The children practice social distancing with games and "helicopter arms."  

Parents and teachers feel comfortable in the carefully set environment. Children have all they need at their tables which are set a distance apart and stay in "bubbles" of ten children. Not all children are back but for the parents who felt it was right to start their children at school it has been a good experience, and one that can be emulated in other places.

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Britain lifts the lockdown quickly after the Business Secretary and the Finance Minister warn of possible loss of 3 million jobsin the hospitality sector if it remains closed over the summer. Much of the job gains in the U.S. in April came from surprise additions of jobs in the hospitality sector.

Britain will now relax planning controls to allow pubs, restuarants and cafes to open outside areas for business. Outdoor weddings will now be permitted, with indoor weddings of upto 10 people allowed by early July. Places of worship, churches, open June 15, as do non-essential shops. 

The R rate has risen slightly yet it remains between 0.7 and 0.9. 

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This NYT report by Patrick Kingsley shows how the hopes for peace with Kurds in Turkey under the Erdogan government have faded. By 2015 peace talks faltered with Kurdish separatist groups. Kingsley's report shows towns such as Sirnak and Cizre in the southeastern part of Turkey are now ghost towns after government troops and tanks moved in. This means that Turkey not only has about 3 million refugees from Syria and Iraq fleeing the war there, but also large numbers of refugees in Kurdish areas inside Turkey. Added to this are the tensions between the party of prime minister Erdogan and the opposition, following a crackdown and as the referendum for granting new powers to the presidency under Mr. Erdogan approaches.

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On over 50,000 square feet of space this MIT Museum on scientific endeavours in different fields of inquiry brings together scientific projects and artifacts from MIT's past. It poses many fascinating questions to the visitor says WSJ. It is moved to a new 3 storey space within MIT's campus. Here we come across the realization that accidental situations can lead to new discoveries, that it is all about asking questions as education is about exploration. Four major galleries include Essential MIT, Gene Cultures, AI: Mind the Gap and MIT Collects.

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Zardari is asking for $100 billion when Pakistan has in its central bank enough foreign currency reserves for 2 months of imports of oil and food. He also wants to defeat the Taliban and militants and find those responsible for the death of Benazir Bhutto. This interview with Bret Stephens who gives an account of it and his own comments, ends with some remarks by Zardari about wanting to defeat the militant elements that killed Mrs Bhutto in a manner where "not letting them get away with it" referring to those responsible, is something he wishes to do before his own life ends. It suggests that this war is likely to take a new turn as the military in Pakistan takes on the militants and Taliban and as General Petraeus looks for a way to reverse Taliban gains in southern Afghanistan and other parts of the country.

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France and Algeria see improving relations as a necessity and Macron visits Algeria on the 60th anniversary of its independence. About half a million civilians and soldiers died in the Algerian civil war that ended in 1962, 400,000 Algerians. Algerian estimates are higher. It was a trauma for France and for Algeria. De Gaulle pushed through Algerian independence against fierce opposition by 1962 using a referendum, with many assasination attempts on his life. Macron called for "looking back at the past with humility," to look back at the history long before the arrival of the French, and archives from both nations will be put together for an objective account of what happened. Macron has said that Algerians simply focused their hatred on French occupation since 1830 and Turkey whitewashed its own occupation of Algeria before 1830. The Ottoman Turks set up the Regency of Algiers in 1525 after defeating Spanish-Moroccan armies and Turks controlled the region till the French took over in 1830.  Macron says Algeria's identity as a separate nation was set only after French rule. ...

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The US central bank's, the Fed's head Jerome Powell, says about the US economy in the beginning of October 2024- "Overall, the economy is in solid shape; we intend to use our tools to keep it there.”  Overall the Fed's governors on its board have a relatively favorable economic outlook- “this is not a committee that feels like it’s in a hurry to cut rates quickly,” says Powell. The Fed has the same idea of common sense for the economy, common sense for what works to reduce cost of living and increase investments in the US manufacturing and industry, that the Biden administration and Harris have adopted. The thrust of the Fed's policy says Powell is focused on bringing interest rates down to a level that neither spurs nor slows economic activity. Each action is based on observation of data and taken with the goal of the wellbeing of the People of the US, and Nation as a whole.   ...

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Both presidents Biden in 2024 and Carter in 1980 faced high inflation that reduced their popularity, under Biden over 9% and under Carter 13%. Cost of living became a major issue as wage increases did not keep pace with inflation. WSJ attributes the inflation under Carter to policies of Richard Nixon and failure of the Fed under Miller and Volcker to control inflation. It attributes the inflation under Biden to Covid spending and on top of that the Spending under the Inflation Reduction Act and other bills passed to rebuild infrastructure. Biden and Fed's Powell did bring inflation down in 2024, and it had also to do with supply bottlenecks, opportunistic behaviour by retailers in 2022-2023.  A significant weakness for Biden was the Border and failure to act quickly under Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas, against whom the Republicans started impeachment proceedings. Added to this was the continued flow of fentanyl destroying American lives. Another weakness was the unease of parents with policies on transgender. On foreign policy the Obama policy of funding Iran under the nuclear negotiated agreement increased risks for Israel and emboldened Iran. ...

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China's domestic debt has surged to levels that precede a crisis, to 216% of GDP and heading for 271% by 2017 according to Fitch Ratings. As a result president Jinping has taken over control of economic policy and controlling debt, especially local government debt, is now a top priority for 2014. Jinping will head the "leading group" for overall top down reforms, reflecting the new urgency. Local government debt went up 67% from 10.7 trillion yuan to 17.9 trillion yuan ($2.95 trillion) in just 3 years from 2010 to 2013, according to the National Audit Office. About half of this debt is due by the end of 2014, according to Standard Chartered Bank economist Stephen Green. Another risk is that shadow banking with interest rates of 10% are now about 11% of new lending. The option adopted by the government to use central government funds and regulation to restrict lending could make local governments turn increasingly to the shadow bank lenders (trust companies, and informal lenders) making things worse. The other option of tackling it aggressively by letting some companies default has the risk of other lenders raising rates on loans and bonds. This makes solutions tricky and prone to problems of increasing severity. ...

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David Leonhardt talks to Raghuram Rajan, Mr Obama, and other experts on how the government should act after the stress test results are announced. Has the government toned down the results of the stress tests, and is it paying too much deference to Wall Street. Leonhardt put this question to Obama, why he asked his advisers were key figures of Mr Rubin's inner circle, Mr Geithner and Mr Summers, who like Rubin are inclined to have too much deference to Wall Street. Obama's answer was that he had other advisers outside of Summers and Geithner. Which wasn not convincing for Leonhardt considering the key positions Geithner and Summers hold. Rajan of the University of Chicago who anticipated the crisis, was not too reticent to criticize Greenspan policies and was in turn criticized for that by Summers, told Leonhardt that certain things may be presented as holy cows not to be touched for fear of something bad happening, but until you find out you cannot be sure. This applies to the bank rescue plans. Should the creditors of banks be asked to take haircuts or swap debt for equity. This may be necessary as there just isn't enough money in TARP - $130 billion left in TARP funds versus the $1 trillion that the IMF thinks American banks may need for solvency in the next 2 years- to do the bank rescue operations. Should the administration consider this a holy cow as Wall Street is suggesting, or come to its own conclusions independently of what Wall Street is saying. Wall Street has to look at it from its vantage point out of sheer necessity, not from what is the best option for someone in the administration's position, considering all the facts without any preconceived ideas or notions....

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Faiola points to public opinion in Ireland that shows the recovery in Ireland looks better on paper than it really is. Opinion polls show a large gap between the views of the government and of people in Ireland. EU estimates of growth in GDP of about 1% is inflated by profits of multinational companies such as eBay, Facebook and Google, a large part of which is repatriated. The multinational companies employ only 7% of the workforce. In reality consumer spending, retail sales and bank lending have suffered, and unemployment is at 14%. The feeling in Ireland is that the austerity cuts alone- spending cuts, higher sales and property taxes- with no effort to support growth, will leave the country in this situation for many years. A ruling by Ireland's attorney general that a referendum is required for approval of the new EU agreement on fiscal discipline, means that a referendum wll be held in June 2012. In 2001 and 2008 Ireland rejected EU treaties, only to obtain concessions and approve the treaty in second referendums. This time the referendum is expected to be seen as a vote on the three year agreement reached by Ireland with the EU, the IMF, and ECB in 2010, as its banks were on the verge of collapse in a property bubble. That agreement imposed strict austerity measures. Under the treaty terms only 12 of 17 EU countries have to ratify the treaty. The Socialist candidate in upcoming French presidential elections, Mr. Hollande, has called for renegotiation of the fiscal treaty to include measures to promote growth. For young people in particular, immigration- to Australia, New Zealand, Canada- is looking like an attractive option. For new graduates jobs are scarce, and cuts in university subsidies mean additional out of pocket costs of over $8000 a year with no student loan options....

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Jennifer Hassan reminds readers of the significance of the date June 8, election day in Britain. On this day 104 years earlier Emily Wilding Davison lost her life running in front of the king's horse in the Epsom Derby, a desperate act to gain support for women's right to vote. In response women voted in large numbers leading to a turnout above 69%. 200 women were elected to parliament. Preet Kaur Gill, a Sikh woman became the first Sikh woman in parliament, representing the Labor Party in parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston.

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The message is clear from Paris - anybody can do AI at the profligate overspending and cost of people like OpenAI, and Microsoft. After DeepSeek in China proved it can be done at a tenth of the cost, there is the tremendous potential of the largest pool of young engineers and scientists in India to do it for a fraction of the cost in China.This is why this Action Summit in Paris is being done by sharing the cost keeping at  13 million euros, and having India under PM Modi as co sponsor with France's Macron. Modi called it and extension of similar efforts working with France on solar and renewable energy. Here is how the French did it- the Ministries each pitched in. The Economy ministry 3 million euros to attract foreign investors, the Foreign Ministry 2 million euros to welcome world leaders Vance and Modi, the armed forces 1.5 million euros, the Culture Ministry 1 million euros and staff to coordinate the summit. The buildings used were familiar ones- the Summit at the Grand Palais build for the Pais Exposition of 1900, the Institut Polytechnique for science themed events, and the Bibiliotheque Nationale France for the cultural weekend Feb 8-9. ...

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Experts say there is no Mediterranean diet anymore. The World Health Organization says this historic way of eating healthy is on its way out. In Italy, Spain and Greece fruit, vegetables, fish and olive oil are being replaced by sweets, fizzy drinks, colas, and junk food. Now more than 40% of nine year olds in Italy, Spain and Greece are obese or overweight. Protests against the spread of fast food outlets in Italy have failed over two decades. Now cities such as Florence, Venice and Verons are banning the opening of new fast food outlets. A diet developed over millenia has fallen as marketing of fast food expanded. Olive oil lost its foothold in the sixties and seventies as it was replaced by seed oil and margarine. A leading expert says she is optimistic the situation can be reversed in the next generation. For this to happen there has to be a change from the proliferation of fast food courts such as this one near Madrid airport of 138 shops and dozens of food outlets.  ...

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A wide ranging interveiw by New York Times reporters Archibold, Cave and Malkin, with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon. Calderon tells the reporters that Mexico had to be cleaned up and it was upto him to do it. A Pew Research poll shows that only 45% of respondents say Mexico has made progress in the fight against drug cartels, yet 83% support the use of the military against the drug cartels. Calderon's six year term ends in 2012 and the opposition PRI candidate leads in the polls. Calderon is limited to the six year term by term limits. PRI candidate Nieto has a program that is not very different from Calderon's to fight drug gangs. Calderon says he should have taken on the task of buillding up the state and local police forces more aggressively from the very beginning, now that it is clear that corruption and lack of training have diminished their capacity to provide safety. Calderon points to the success in creating jobs, expanding health care, building trustworthy police and judicial institutions, and social programs to fight roots of crime, as achievements of his administration....

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Huaxi, Jiangsu province, a few hours car ride northwest of Shanghai, is a village of 2000 residents. It has built a 74 story skyscraper, with a concert hall and a revolving restaurant. The village residents have joint ownership through Jiangsu Huaxi Corporation with the companies 2009 report claiming it has investments in businesses that return 50 billion renminbi or $7.7 billion in income. About 25,000 workers, mostly migrant workers, are said to be employed by the village. These workers work and live in an area outside the village. The whole story appears to be more that a bit bizarre. There is no other information on where this money is coming from and who is managing it. If anything this kind of story suggests how inflated and bizarre the property market in China has become. Even the word bubble may be understating what is happening. A massive misallocation of capital is taking place with the lack of transparency and corruption making this possible, which will very likely affect long term development....

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So far the Italian government has already recovered $15 billion for 2011 in its fight against tax evasion. The fight includes an advertising campaign depicting tax evasion as anti-social activity and vigorous enforcement by tax officials and the financial police. Italy has already banned cash transactions to reduce possibilities for evading taxes. This problem is severe in Italy because the underground economy is about 17.5% of GDP. An estimated $150 billion is lost to the Italian treasury from tax evasion. As a result Italy has a chronic budget deficit problem and is not able to make necessary investments in improving competitiveness to keep up with other countries. This may be one of the lasting achievements of the new administration of Mario Monti, along with its efforts to change the way the public thinks about other issues including labor laws that place large burdens on small companies in hiring practices. Italians sense the need to change the way they think about taxes because this is one way to reduce the burden of austerity measures- higher tax revenues could enable lowering taxes. It would also enable investing in improving competitiveness that would the economy grow and provide the jobs to reduce the high unemployment rate among young workers. One of the lasting positive aspects of the eurozone crisis is the change in the way the people and society think about many issues....

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Simon Johnson reminds readers that in October 2008, Johnson, Peter Boone, and James Kwak, suggested that some European countries had given taxpayer-backed pledges to banks that had liabilities larger than their own gross domestic products. Their proposal included creation of a European Stability Fund with at least 2 trillion euros of credit lines guaranteed by all member nations, as well as Switzerland, Sweden, and the U.K., to buy time dealing with underlying insolvency in Ireland and other countries. Simon Johnson, is former chief economist of the IMF. He says the euro-zone only belatedly acted on this advice and the politicians never took responsibility for what they allowed to happen. The runaway financial globalization he says, was allowed to happen by US Treasury officials, but European banks were seriously involved in similar behaviour. These banks became too large relative to their economies, captured their regulators and acted recklessly. Europe's leaders haven't fully faced up to this and keep telling their voters that the problem is entirely because of US banks irresponsible behaviour. Ireland was the extreme example of this. And Johnson provides readers with the names of two books on the subject. David Lynch has "When the Luck of the Irish Ran Out," Fintan O'Toole has "Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Killed the Celtic Tiger." Both laying out the intermingling of politicians, bankers and real-estate developers that resulted in the reckless growth and collapse of Ireland. In his own account in Atlantic magazine, May 2009, Johnson compared the US economc boom-bust-bailout cycle to what happened to Argentina, Russia and Indonesia. These were emerging middle class countries with crony capitalism, unsustainable debt and other problems. Johnson says, don't think these problems are limited to emerging markets. Its a global or general occurrence in which powerful people get together to build an economic model that brings growth based on debt. Under public pressure the German government keeps saying there must be burden sharing, that creditors must take losses also. Johnson says Angela Merkel and her colleagues have not thought through what signal this sends to the markets- which is to tell people to get out of Irish banks now. And the big German banks are telling the government they face big losses if Ireland or other European countries default. If the ECB can't pay, and the German taxpayer won't pay, Johnson asks, does the IMF have the resources to tackle Spain? If China offers to recapitalize the IMF with some of its $2.6 trillon in reserves, and becomes the largest shareholder, would the IMF headquarters be moved to Beijing as the Articles of Agreement require for the largest shareholder. ...

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GM CEO Wagoner was asked to resign by the Obama admninistration. The news was given Wagoner by Steven Rattner, who heads the auto industry task force setup by President Obama, at Rattner's office at Treasury. Mr Henderson, GM's Chief Operating Officer will fill in for Wagoner. When Wagoner assumed office in 2000 GM's stock price was $70, now it is $3.62, and GM capitalization is $2.21 billion in March 2009. Since 2004 GM has not earned aprofit, and has logged $82 billion in losses. Right upto the end the board of directors and lead directors backed Wagoner, even when the company was short of cash in the waning days of the Bush administration, and public opinion was very critical of the way management and unions had driven the company into the ground, all through this they held on, showing how hard it is to get an entrenched board and management doing things the wrong way. Now the Obama administration has taken years of festering issues in the auto industry and at auto companies head on. Not only Wagoner, the task force is working with GM to replace a majority of its directors. Kent Kresa a longtime director is to serve as chairman of GM. The President in a speech today on the auto industry said that he was rejecting the plans for restructuring provided by both GM and Chrysler. He is giving GM 60 days to come up with a new plan. The government would provide suffficient working capital for the next 60 days, during which time a revamped board and top management would have to come up with new restructuring plan. Obama made it clear that an expedited government sponsored bankruptcy was a clear option. And officials said that the inordinate amounts of debt at both GM and Chrysler have to be scrubbed, and bankruptcy would be "quick rinse" to rid the companies of much of their debt and contractual obligations. And the government would stand behind the warranties of both companies. For Chrysler the government is giving 30 daysto come up with a new plan, and time to reach an agreement for Fiat to work to revive Chrysler. And Obama reassured the public that FIat would have to repay the government before it could take money from the new Fiat run Chrysler out of the country. If Fiat and Chrysler reach an agreement and only then would the government step in with $6 billion in loans. If not Chrysler would be allowed to collapse....

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White House counselor Steve Ricchetti says with the pace and activity and hours at the White House, Biden is outworking people around him. The special counsel Robert Hur's report on Biden's retention of classified documents has part of it on the president not remembering the date his son Beau Biden had died in 2015. The president was furious that special counsel Hur had raised that question, saying it was none of his damn business. The special counsel's report also says Biden had kept a memo in 2013 that he had handwritten and sent to then president Obama outlining his opposition to the surge of troops in Afghanistan. It was something Biden had kept with him as he understood the flaws of the Bush-Obama policies in Afghanistan. Where Republicans and some Democrats have seen a hasty withdrawal  from Afghanistan under Biden the nation sees the need to rededicate its resources to building a strong economy that meets the needs and aspirations of the American people. Even the British Empire in India for 200 years had wisely stayed away from Afghanistan for 200 years. It is the wisdom and experience, the ability to work with colleagues in Congress in the way Lyndon Johnson was able to do to pass his Great Society and Medicare initiatives, that benefits the nation, something that comes with age. It is this wisdom, composure and determination that has created the strongest American economy not seen in decades and a path to an even stronger economy in the future. ...