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NYC's Hudson Gateway Tunnel Project halted from frozen federal funding Jan 2026. It shows the need for the federal government and state governments to work together for building needed infrastructure. That is the only way its gets funded and built.

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Poland's collapsing birth rate at 1.0 compared 1.62 in France another Catholic country, and Spain's 1.1, Germany's 1.3- 2.1 is the replacement rate per woman. This has profound consequences for Poland. The future workforce will be 20% smaller compared to 4% smaller in France in 2 decades. Many schools will close in rural areas which are hit hard. There are more deaths than births in many small towns. At this rate 1.7 million homes will become vacant in 2 decades.This report looks at Warsaw as well as rural areas near Belarus where the war has created much anxiety. The population of Poland will shrink from 36 million to 31 million over three decades if these trends continue. By 2000 the birhtrate dropped from 2.1 to 1.3 and the government introduced payments of 190 euros per child per month and expanded the childcare system. But this has not helped as the rate dropped to 1.03 in 2025. Under the Communist system industries were located in small towns and men stayed there while women moved to cities leading to a mismathch for men and women. The economic boom that doubled per capita income led to less interest in having children. The economy was supported by long hours of work which led to less interest in bearing children for women. Other reasons are a lack of interest in sharing and making the effort, the cost of raising children in a hyper competitive society like South Korea where births are at 0.7. ...

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Pictures and moment by moment account of the final penalty shootout in The Guardian of the big game of the soccer season between PSG and Arsenal, Champions League Final in Budapest, Hungary.  A French soccer team prevails over a British soccer team with fans going in large numbers to Budapest for the game. PSG under Luis Enrique quiet style team play prevails in shootout at Champions League Final over Arsenal. The game 1-1 after a goal in the 7th minute by Germany's Havertz, and and an equalizer in the 65th minute by Dembele on a penalty kick. Hakimi, Mendes, Neve, Dembele, Ruiz, Barcola, Marquinhos and Doue, goalkeeper Marin were pulled together by Spanish coach Luis Enrique into a tightly knit team that played consistently to keep Arsenal to 1-1, with 92% accuracy in passes. Luis Enrique has given PSG a new mentality compared to star centric days when Mbappe, Neymar, Messi played at PSG when team play was secondary.  Luis Enrique says about the game that he"decided a long time ago to stay calm and try to enjoy it because you need luck to win on penalties. I think we were great in terms of the quality of our kicks and also the goalkeeper. It’s amazing [to retain the Champions League]. Maybe today both teams deserved to win, but the way we played the whole season, I think we deserve it. We’ll try to do it again next year. Why not? The match started in the best way for them, scoring after a lucky action. We are used to attacking [against a low block] but they are strong physically, they know how to defend and it was very tough." ...

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insurance rates for oil tankers of 0.25% of ship's value increase to 1-2% in Iran war for Straits of Hormuz, US Development Finance Corporation says it will offer reinsurance to insurers to cap the price shippers pay. There is no shortage of insurers to insure ships for the Straits of Hormuz, Lloyd's of London is open for business. Shipping executives say they are concerned about the safety of the crew members, that it is about more than insurance. About 1000 shipos are waiting outside the Straits of Hormuz to make the journey through the Straits. At its narrowest point it is only 19 miles making it possible to plant mines in that area. The US is taking action and has sunk many Iranian minelayer ships.

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If Americans are holding on to their cars for longer or combining them in new ways with an older 10 year old car and a newer 5 year one, then maintenance becomes the solution. As shown here from the WSJ average time car buyers hold on to their cars is up to 13 years in 2026. Car repairs are a high tech business with special skills training for mechanics needed. Bloomberg philanthropies and Ford launch a $90 million training program for new mechanics. More such programs will be needed to drive down the costs of car repairs to bring down the cost of living.

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Janet Mills, 2 term governor, 78 years, fails to have poll lead over Plattner with local Maine bred identity in the 2026 Democratic primary. It says a lot about the voter attitudes in 2026 which want to steer forward not backwards. Janet Mills ran ads on Plattner but did not get the lead, leading to her withdrawal from the primary. Republican Susan Collins looks hard to dislodge from this seat. Republicans in Louisiana on the heels of the SCOTUS decision against gerrymandered electoral districts want to redraw the electoral districts so that Democrats are left out of the state Congressional delegation entirely.

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JD Vance and the effort to reach the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran using its neighbors Egypt, Pakistan, and Qatar, Turkey in negotiations. Seen from the perspective of Asia- of all the Middle East countries, of Asian countries India, China and Japan, all these countries were involved in different ways to get that memorandum and 90 days of talks on the nuclear and other issues for Iran to access funds to stabilize its economy now in free fall. Each of these countries have prevailed in discussions that were conducted privately but whose result are amply evident, persuading DJT and Vance, Rubio, to take a different approach. And each of these countries have a major stake in ending the state of war that led to the events including the missile attacks and the bombing that also raised the price of oil and gas, fertilizer and restricted supply to the point that each country would suffer. There is now a collective will of all these countries and of countries like Brazil and Africa/Latin America to push for a new path. This is not understood in the media, because this was never before tried by previous administrations, and comes when the world as a whole is seeking a new approach.  ...

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Justin Lahart offers these clues to a puzzle why is the US unemployment rate stable when no one is hiring? The 2025 US economic growth rate shows strong economic growth, the stock market is robust, and the unemployment rate is low, yet this is not reflected in the job market. What accounts for weak hiring? WSJ analysis shows that for US job market 2026- quit rate is too low at 3.2 million  (Dec 2025) instead of 4.5 million (March 2022), hiring is low at 5.3 million. And overall firms are not laying off people which is reflected in unemployment rate at 4.4%. As a result even with strong economic fundamentals the hiring is at low levels and opportunities for new jobs scarce. In previous years more people quit jobs, more people were laid off and some firms continued hiring. There is also uncertainty about tariffs that may be playing a part- companies can wait and see how the tariffs policy works out over the next 6 monthsand delay hiring. Ai may be another factor for some firms as they evaluate its impact on their hiring needs. Research at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute shows that immigration crack down on entry into the US after Biden era surge means less people from overseas to hire and less from the pool of immigrants. A striking piece of this research is that instead of 140,000 jobs needed a month to keep the unemployment rate stable in 2024 the US economy now needs in 2026 after immigration crackdown only 15,000 jobs a month.  ...

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US policy is to end war as soon as nuclear threat is over- DJT on Iran war on March 31 2026. When the US feels Iran 'won't be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we'll leave,' says DJT. US is self sufficient and exports oil to Europe. It doesn't need Iranian oil. DJT makes that clear to allies in Europe who have not taken a stand in the war and limited access to their airbases, saying as Starmer did yesterday that Britain did not want to expand the war. Really, the US does not want to expand the war. DJT's MAGA base does not want this war, and Biden's base does not want this war. US does not need Straits of Hormuz- it is Britain, Italy and EU countries, mainly China, Japan, South Korea that need the Straits of Hormuz. Speaking for the US DJT tells these countries in Europe to get the oil themselves in the Straits. He also tells China to get the oil from the Straits- if they need it and are so complacent as to get 90% of their imports from Hormuz after 40 years of disruptions and wars, as China does. DJT said- "If France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the Hormuz Strait, they'll go right up there, and they'll be able to fend for themselves. What happens with the strait we're not going to have anything to do with, because these countries, China, China will go up and they'll fuel up their beautiful ships... and they'll take care of themselves. There's no reason for us to do it." "The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!" ...

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Axel Springer is owned by Freide Springer (widow of Axel Springer) and Matthias Dopfner sole owners of media properties Bild, Welt, Politico The Telegraph. KKR is the owner of classified ads part of the business. By taking it private at $7.5 billion valuation it offers KKR a private equity company a way to have an offramp from the media business, which had come under scrutiny from investors. For Dopfner it was away to avoid investor pressures as he sought to expand the footprint of Axel Springer to UK and US, other countries.

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Changes at CBS News and CNN News to better reflect news events. CNN is considering an offer from Paramount that improves on an offer from Netflix.  This would change the editorial content of the site. Polarization in one direction supports polarized thinking in the other direction when what is needed is free and honest, fair reporting of people and events. This leads to people constantly exposed to only one side of the story, which makes running a country more difficult, and leads to all sorts of distortions in policy that hurt the public interest and the national interest. It is not only about profit because reporting is how people get news and analysis of events, which determine what policies are taken up by the nation, leading to good or bad results or very good and very bad results.

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"I feel rather a lot of hope that if Andy Burnham does become prime minister, he will bring the human understanding with him that he will have acquired when studying English at Cambridge 35 years ago," says University of Cambridge chancellor Smith. "He may well be our first prime minister to have studied English at university, and that would be a very good thing." A good understanding of Chaucer and Shakespeare is a way to understand human nature, life's uncertainties, the English language from its origins and its development over a thousand years, understanding the history that went with the language, and the religious undertones of society from the days of the Tynsdale Bible, what moved people and how it turned out over many centuries. This is very useful for a British prime minister. The education just supplements all the positive aspects of the person, and helps him grow into a fuller person. This is why you have English majors leading to further education in other fields and in important contributions from science to space, physics to the law and business. It has just become hugely undervalued in the last 4 decades leading to some of the gaps we find in better grasp of economics, politics, physics, science, law, business, that have led to the Nation's relative decline since the 1980's. Hank Paulson, Treasury Secretary, Angelo Giamatti, Baseball Commissioner, Steven Spielberg, movie producer, Clarence Thomas at the US Supreme Court, Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, and Harold Varmus Nobel prize winner in 1989 in medicine for his finding how genes origin in normal healthy cells that transform healthy cells into cancer cells, all had degrees in English. And many brought this passsion for language into other fields by adding degrees in law, medicine, science, other fields. How one can combine English with science is seen in the extraordinary example of the first American woman in space Sally Ride who had a degree in English alongside a degree in physics in 1973 and went on to get a PhD. in physics in 1978 from Stanford University. ...

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When Daniel Henninger of WSJ Editorial Board says in the adjoining article/video that to get anything done with something like the current split Congress a newly elected Republican president would have to operate by executive orders and could get little done, he is referring to the stalled Ukraine aid legislation in the US Congress after passage 70-20 by bipartisan vote in the US Senate. Legislation is stalled in the 2022 newly elected US House of Representatives with a group of Republican Congressmen called the Freedom Caucus seeking to block all legislation if it does not get its way. The now famous line "dead on arrival" line of Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana for legislation passed in the Senate for Ukraine aid. Pew Research looks at the change in the House and explains. It says about 49 members of Congress are part of or aligned to this group. About 71% or 35 of 49 members have less than six years of experience which includes 9 freshmen, compared to 58% or 100 of 173 Congressmen of all other Republican members of Congress. And two thirds of Freedom Caucus are from the South compared to 46% of all other Republicans in Congress. It is striking that only three are from states such as Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania or a mere 6% for Northeast and Midwest.  ...

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CSU faculty organized against OpenAI contract expiring June 2026 at a time when students/faculty worry about loss of critical thinking skills amid 40% unemployment of new graduates. This is the California State University System once a major national institution of education under Governor Edmund Brown Sr in the 1960's that powered the 60's middle class, now torn apart by mistakes in higher education. Imagine Teniente-Matson in an AI created form speaking in many languages not realizing that this has little to do with education, as shown here in the NYT- coming to San Jose State from Texas A&M San Antonio. Both Hispanic student dominated institutions of education that have first generation Hispanics entering college- the promise of this first generation finding opportunities in the US economy. It is already fading for new graduates with high unemployment of 40%. The AI Initiative pushed by Governor Newsom in the state has created confusion or chaos says the NYT. This is the biggest 4 year public higher educational system in the US with 22 campuses, with diversity in California about 50% Hispanic. This is what "great" looked like for America in the 1960's with Eisenhower and JFK. Today with such misplaced initiatives and lack of the same wisdom and dedication to knowledge from that in the 1950's and 60's it is a fraction of its former self. It was marketed at $16.9 million for 500,000 licenses by OpenAI as a way for these first generation Hispanic college students most working class people to move forward. But as every commencement speech and everyone from the president to business leaders can attest it is all about hard work, hard work, hard work, and focus on reading and math, on sound basic skills, with pen and paper not ipads and iphones and AI that this job will be done. AI can never teach someone to persevere, to overcome obstacles, to put in the hard work over and over again to accomplish great things or to develop the curiosity for knowledge, the sense of new discovery  for scientific knowledge and invention that has powered America and Europe for three centuries. ...

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Instead of a jinx much to the contrary the US economy outlook for 2030 in Feb 2026- a surge in investment spending in 2026-2030, new manufacturing investments and lower energy costs, moderating inflation, are likely to propel the US economy ahead to 2030.The effect of tariffs as a policy making tool has been muted because of exemptions, reversal of tariff rates once key objectives were secure for tariffs as a way to get action on foreign policy as with Indian purchases of Russian oil, deals with Japan, South Korea and China, India, UK and the EU. Some sources such as the Philadelphia Fed see price rises reaching 3% in some inflation guages more than the moderate 2.5% in the consumer price index for January 2026. These sources see the hiring slowing down just as layoffs begin to happen in the latter part of the year which is a possibility but less likely. At this point in Feb 2026 there is a tendency not to layoff and to hang onto employees, and hiring has been slow in 2025. January's report of 130,000 jobs added is the first sign of strengthening of the jobs market. Overall a cautious view would be to call it a soft landing after the inflation surge of the covid period. Another way of looking at is is more in line with the strategic direction of the US economy- freeing up the economy with investments in energy,  reducing the key costs of production, tax policy of Bessent's complete one shot depreciation of equipment increasing business investment, tariff policy making the world trading system fairer and now more attuned to US interests, all creating an investment and jobs surge in 2026-2027. There is an added benefit from US efforts to free up the world trading system from the stranglehold placed on it by China with its control over world manufacturing. A dominance and unwise concentration gained from the serious mistakes of the Bush-Clinton period of not putting in safeguards for US factories and jobs (that form the backbone for families in neighborhoods towns and regions across the US), and US business interests growing indifference to the very communities they were based in by outshoring to China destroying whole regions in America. Even where it is criticized or seen as negative there are huge benefits when the US acted. Tariff increase on India is a clear example- it built Indian resilient attitude in June-Feb 2026, and during this period it cut funding Russia's war in Ukraine by sourcing energy from other sources, the US policy led to India and EU+ Germany signing trade agreements to double their effort and double trade and scientific cooperation ( a goal secured for the US as it reduces concentration in China), was followed by US signing its own trade agreement with India within days, and increases world trade of US and EU and Germany in ways that will bring 2.5 billion people into a strong partnership that overshadows anything that happened in China in the Clinton-Bush-Obama years of failure. ...

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As the media in the US and world cover this issue the focus is on the war and Hormuz. In the background a different situation is playing out. US Iran peace talks with Pakistan/ Qatar mediation June 13 2026- different factions in Iran RGC and Foreign Ministry+mediators with different positions  put out conflicting reports throughout May and June. The mediators Pakistan, Turkey and also Qatar/Saudis which also have a keen interest in limiting the damage to their economies, are taking one position working with the Foreign Ministry and elected Iranian president Pezeshkian who won 16 million votes 55% in the 2024 election. Inside Iran the RGC under new leaders is pursuing its own interests that does not put the economy first in conflict with Pezeshkian and public opinion in Iran for putting the economy first.  Pakistan faces grave risks with its large population, the risks to the economy from oil prices at $125 a barrel to its balance of payments crisis. Turkey also faces risks to its economy with high inflation. Saudis and Qatar see their economic prospects as limited and need to cut economic projects as oil revenues decline. In this situation the US goal of getting nuclear material out of the country is now put into a phased process based on conditions for every step of the way by the US negotiators, yet with memorandum of understanding to accomodate a changing situation. This policy may also be now agreed on between China and the US, and to some extent Russia. This can be seen as playing out and media does not talk about it. China openly greets DJT in Beijing and US and China agree to work things out in May 2026. China cuts its oil use by 3 million barrels a day as shown in a WSJ report this week. This is a major step. UAE leaves OPEC and calls for cuts in oil prices. Next Delsy Rodriguez of Venezuela visits New Delhi, India, and meets to set up economic relationships that include large purchases of Iranian oil to replace supplies lost in Hormuz and what India can offer in exchange for these purchases to Venezuela, including infrastructure building support. This points to a Win-Win for the US, China, India, as oil needs are met from places other than Hormuz for major users of energy. China may have realized that its prolific use of oil for 25 years of rapid development may have led to wasteful use of oil- some of that wasteful use can now be cut- 3 million barrels of oil use cut accepting some slower growth for quality growth. Germany and Japan are using less energy per unit of GDP and China will be looking at their model of energy use as an example to follow. This has huge potential for limiting climate change, as without China and India becoming more efficient in energy use, nothing the US could do was going to make a big difference for climate change. This may be one of the unintended benefits of the Hormuz situation in 2026 - ways to cut energy use for climate change action. And ways to move away from Hormuz and Persian Gulf for supplies so that poorer countries and advanced economies have to pay less for oil helping the poorer countries (Pakistan, Turkey) survive and grow, helping middle economic status rapidly modernizing economies  continue rapid growth (China and India), and helping advanced economies with cost of living hurting the majority of their people (US and EU).  With less money Russia, Iran and other countries will face serious constraints for more military expenditures as for the first time alternative supplies (other than Hormuz) and lower oil prices are being brought about in a newly unfolding plan of the US, China, India and other nations, that is not discussed in today's world media headlines. This means when seen objectively there is room for optimism based on the one thing going for the US, China, India, EU, a host of poorer nations in Asia /Africa/ LatinAmerica, the  5 largest development blocs and population blocs today, which is that the US and China can agree on being custodians for peaceful development accepting their responsibilities for guaranteeing this world order- as DJT and Xi Jinping stated in Beijing in May 2026- with the US aim of nuclear free Iran also accepted by China, Russia, India, and large sections of the Iranian population that put the economy first. ...

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Melenchon party sees itself as a place for voters who vote against the National Front which it calls Fascist and does not push for a positive message on it's policies for a future government. This happens as Macron now looks like a lame duck president with little support in France. This adds to uncertainty in French politics.

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BBC looks at France's mayoral elections and the race in Paris between Racida Dati (connected to Sarkozy) and Emmanuel Gregoire deputy to Anne Hidalgo Mayor of Paris. 930 miles of bicycle lanes in Paris have reduced pollution in Paris by 10 years, which helps Gregoire. Dati says Paris "is dirty and unsafe." She points to 10 billion euros in debt for Paris. Dati comes from the conservative side and is a protege of  former president Sarkozy of the Republicain party.