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Discusses how the trade policies are affecting workers in Puebla, Mexico as a microcosm of what is happening in many countries, Latin America, China, S. Korea. In Mexico it increased wages initially and with global competition wages have dropped. Another article in the database talks about how wages in the auto industry have declined in Mexico even as the auto industry has grown in Mexico.

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Shocking decline in reading in UK- NLT Surveys research of 80,000 young people  in UK shows  of 8-11 years old children girls 36% and boys 26% read actively, 14-16 years girls down to 17% and boys down to 10%. Is a similar pattern evident in the US? This is the root of many of our problems. Reading competes with other activities and screen time leads to a severe loss in reading. Teenage reading is especially fragile. Reading ability and wide knowledge helps build working skills and income generation so that it means more people in this generation are poor than previous generations, a general increase in poverty and lower incomes across neighborhoods and families in the UK and US. This also has correlation with health and mental health so that this means the children and growing young adults are in a fragile group in advanced countries of US and Europe, especially fragile when it comes to knowledge, learning skills, health and incomes. A reverse situation in some Asian advanced countries with a hunger for knowledge means the gap is opening up between the US and Europe and these Asian countries. ...

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Bryan Graham in The Guardian offers this more subdued reaction compared to Jason Gay in The WSJ on the performance of Mikaela Shiffrin of Colorado, at the Winter Olympics. She had the longest gap between a medal at the Olympics in skiing after problems at the Beijing Olympics not coming down half of the time. Shiffrin is shown with her thoughts about the loss of her father (aspects of PTSD following her fall and injury in Killington, Vermont, in 2024) who helped her train with no stress letting her be who she was. After several attempts she comes down to her favored event the slalom and after so many doubting her performance and skill focuses thoughts on the fact that she had all the skills, the tools, now it was just to focus on the period from start to finish and execute with precision. In the end after moving the goalposts forward with more than asecond to spare in her lead she simply cannot believe her eyes, a complete disbelief. It was about simply trying and focusing after building all the skills, and finally just turning up anyway after all the disappointments and  injuries and this does it all, says it all.  ...

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ECB President Trichet calls for the equivalent of "a fiscal federation" for the European Union, a broadening of powers of the European Commission when it comes to fiscal issues. He called for an independent agency housed within the European Commission, with powers to hand out sanctions on countries with poor fiscal management. Such sanction have to come early and could take the form of suspending member's voting rights in financial affairs. Such reforms would have to come through secondary legislation, and not a renegotiation of the EU treaty.

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After much effort and coming second to American Athing Mu, then in 3 way competition, with Mu and Kenya's Mary Moraa, every time coming in second, Keely Hodgkinson is patient and persevering. Till the Olympics in Paris where she comes out ahead of Moraa and takes the gold for Britain in the 800 metres. Andy Bull of The Guardian looks at British runner Keely Hodgkinson.

At the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, Keely shadowed Mu and tried for first only to come short and missing by 8 hundredth of a second. In the Paris Olympics Mu was out with an injury and Keely had to race with Kenya's Mary Moraa who had come out ahead at the 2023 World Athletics in Budapest. In this race Keely runs alone to the finishing line.

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Rolls Royce new CEO Mr. Erginbilgic wants an end to pursuing market share. He is renegotiating $2 billion in contracts that could be unprofitable. It had quality issues with its Trent 1000 engine that powered the Boeing Dreamliner ending in paying billions for fixing the product and compensating aircraft makers. Corruption charges were other problems. The pandemic led to companies parking planes and hurt Rolls Royce as enginemaker.  Rolls Royce made the first jet engines the de Haviland Comet, the world's first jetliner plane. Throughout its history it has faced upheavals at regular intervals-cost overruns leading to bankruptcy and government bailout in 1971, and relisting as a private company under Margaret Thatcher that led to a market share competition with GE in the US and more losses. Erginbilgic is the new CEO and says battling for market share days are over. He wants to cut its debt and achieve investment grade ratings to reduce financial costs. Erginbilgic says he really believes the problems of Rolls Royce come from the approach of increasing market share at any cost. Its defense division offers a ray of hope and a new orientation is taking place. ...

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The UNESCO report on Water scarcity and contaminated water. It creates awareness on World Water Day but comes across as a largely academic exercise, ask any rural woman in India and she knows the significance, question is what should have been done and the resources are there. For action it has to come from nations,, large nations such as India from it's Jal Jeevan Mission, China and Japan transferring the knowhow and technologies to Africa and Latin America and other parts of Asia. The period after a pandemic is also a time to focus efforts on  doing this. How it undermines girls and women and their participation in society is part of the understanding in India, and uppermost in the minds of Indian leaders and technologists, and in the mind of PM Modi. Unfortunately the UNESCO reports fails to even cover right up front in its summary how Jal Jeevan is being done for 1.4 billion people in India to have clean tap water so that people in Africa and Latin America can see that this is possible, if in the Himalayan regions possible in their region it is possible. Just see for yourself in India. ...

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Some useful comments from this discussion of Reti Samadhi by the author, the translator and the interviewer in BBC Sounds. Daisy Rockwell's translation- Reading a translation is like eavesdropping on conversations happening. On the topic of partition and how the book has no heaviness because it comes from the buried memory of the older woman, and her effort to visit the terrain she has gone through a second time. Now with some playfulness as she is trying to come out a different person with a positive frame of mind from having gone through it again differently. Sort of reinventing herself. The experience is universal though the culture and specifics are unique to where it happened.  For India and the regions of US and Europe eavesdropping on India and an Indian author in Hindi with stories to tell, the experience is a universal one of coming back a new person after getting tired of life. As Geetanjali Shree asks is the older woman in the novel tired of life and the past seen as a burden of some sort, or tired of the life she is living now so that reinventing herself is possible. It comes as India itself is looking at buried memories in new ways and nowhere more than today in Uttar Pradesh, where Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a poet and leader, set a new tone in his poetry and in "Kadam Milake Chalna Hoga." For the British, or American reader it is way to look at the language and culture of India in a new way that buries the distance the British kept from the local language and culture during the days of the Empire. Humanity and the stream of consciousness in Reti Samadhi provides a way of doing this. ...

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British establishment Labour's Mandelson and Conservative's Prince Andrew -the Epstein connections in the Epstein files and the political fallout for Labour and the Conservatives. This happens as they approach local elections with the Greens, Liberals, and Reform UK already taking 50% of Labour's 2024 general election voters with disillusionment over results in the first 2 years of Labour. Labour assumed it had the immigration issue under control with some headline grabbing  stories of it taking tough action when it won in 2024. That has not deterred illegal migrant trafficking. Labour soon lost sight of the ball, and did not realize that the cultural issues around excessive tolerance of such migration itself had not been resolved such as ECHR rights which were completely misinformed when written to approve of such illegal migrants rights and ignore the citizens and women of the neighborhoods in which people had lived for generations. After decade and half of Conservative Cameron austerity Labour needed time to wrestle with the issues of levelling facing Britain's north and the Midlands. Instead Labour found itself on the backfoot and Farage was brought out of retirement after issues in towns like Epping and all across England, where migrants were put in hotels as women and locals loudly disapproved. Labour thought under Conservatives  that over 50,000 were in asylum hotels in 2023 and this has come down to 35,000 in 2025 under Labour, as a kind of improvement not realizing that the public mood questioned the whole idea of the migrants in hotels itself, of little tolerance for any illegal migrants in neighborhoods itself. It shows the political processes have great importance and a series of mediocre leaders from Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer and Farage over a period of 4 decades can change the trajectory for nations and region. A similar period for India in 1720-1760 with warring factions and regions inviting British East India Company troops to opposing sides fractured the country and led to losing its grip on itself. Gandhiji describes this for introspection in Hind Swaraj (1905) not taking the easy road most now discredited anticolonial writers after 1950 took in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Where does this leave Britain in 2026? It can only come to grips with it knowing that the quality of education, quality of leadership, honesty and introspection of the kind suggested by Teddy Roosevelt in Applied Idealism in his Autobiography, chapter 5, and in Gandhiji's Hind Swaraj are essential.  ...

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Melania Trump and her documentary "20 Days to History" with Amazon support in production and marketing. Melania says at the premier that she wanted to show what it was like to be in her role, to "show other people what it takes to go from being a private citizen to first lady again." Melania has been underestimated and has shown leadership in mental health issues, on how internet and social media affects children, on housing in disaster relief, and on a range of issues that affect women and children. She also brings originality in her thinking about issues. For someone from Slovenia to come to the US as an immigrant and to be thrust into roles that she never would have anticipated she has shown exceptional composure and ability to learn and absorb from events happening so quickly around her. TR would have recognized her abilities and her softspoken and effective ways to assert herself on issues relating to the social media and how it affects children, one of the key issues facing the US for the next generation. ...

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RIM CEO Thorsten Hein's plans to win over the corporat technology market with the new Blackberry 10 model due to come out Jan 30, 2013.

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S&P 500 up 5% in 2025 by June 27 2025 recovering 20% form lows after tariffs. Scott Bessent had promised agreement in place by July this date will be extended  yet confidence has returned that the agreements will be put in place after German chancellor Merz met with DJT at the White House. With Germany leading the way the biggest of the agreements with EU could be put in place. Additional agreements would come with India and China, and Japan, South Korea.