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Safety checks at Norfolk Southern are the subject of this report in the WSJ. The derailment of a freight train leading to spill of toxic chemicals in Ohio on Feb 3, 2023, led to concern about the safety practices at American railroads in the efforts to cut costs. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened a probe into the safety culture and practices of Norfolk Southern. One practice called PSR or precison scheduled railroading has been used by railroads in America to cut costs. This means fewer employees, longer freight trains as long as 3 miles, and fewer locomotives. The result is that employees count went down from 159,000 in 2011 to 115,000 in 2021 a drop of 28% even when freight dropped by 11%. This increased profits resulting in higher dividends and stock buybacks, with a heavier workload and less time off  even for sick days until a threatened strike. President Biden intervened to set a new pay and work deal and an element of fairness for workers. ...

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In a policy unchanged since 1950's women in China retire at age 50 and men at age 60 years. China is aging faster than the US and it's population that is over 60 years is 20% of the population. Over the 5 years to 2025 about 40 million people will retire, about the size of the population of Canada. There will be 36 million fewer people in the working age population ages 16-59 to support them. Chinese migrant workers and families work longer hours than white collar workers making it difficult to raise the retirement age to European levels in a short time. The government's approach is to get public support by creating awareness about the problem and change the retirement age gradually over a longer period. The first step will be bringing the retirement age of women to the level of men. The 10 year gap in retirement age of men and women is not found in any advanced economy.

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PM Modi describes situation of Indian Rail from Himalayas to Ceylon after 1947. The budget is now six times that in 2014. Action was taken to include Rail India under government of India's budget so that the government could directly invest in modernization of Indian Rail as top priority. Parts of northeast were not included in Indian Rail. Today the entire country is integrated in a modern network for the 21st century with Vande Bharat high speed trains. It opens possibilities of setting up these rail networks in other parts of Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe with new technology trains at a fraction of the cost. This was the vision of John F. Kennedy in his New Frontier of the vast potential of India when he told the US Senate on March 25, 1958- "India today represents as great a hope, as commanding a challenge as Western Europe did in 1947- and our people are still, I am confident equal to the effort."   ...

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Although the Russian economy has weathered the Ukraine war with 3.6% growth estimated by Rossstat and 3% by IMF in 2023, this comes with the economy dependent on heavy military spending. Military spending on defense budget increases to $119 billion in 2024, and increase of an astounding 90% from 2021. It has boosted wages in construction and aided certain industrial regions near Moscow and St Petersburg, and boosted manufacturing with more products made at home. The oil and gas revenues decreased by 23% in 2023 over 2022. After 2 years of war and particularly after contraction in 2022 the Russian economy is recovering and has surprised most forecasters. The problem with military industrial complex growth is that it leads to uneven growth with negect of some areas. In Russia the reduced access to western advanced technology is compensated by increase in technological capacity of countries such as China. A bigger problem is the loss of human resources during the war in Ukraine, and Russians who left the country seeking better lives in other countries.  ...

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This report in The Times shows how Africa is tackling malaria by using modern methods such as drones. Drones are used in Ghana to send medicine to remote parts of the country. The rollout of the world's first malaria vaccine is taking place in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya. The Glaxo developed vaccine requires 4 doses over 18 months. Gavi is a partnership that brings UNICEF and WHO in partnership with private companies to  buy vaccines in bulk and distribute them where it is not affordable. Gavi supported 66 million vaccines in 2018 for children, yet about 20 million children in Nigeria, Congo and other parts of Africa lacked routine immunizations in 2018. UPS and health service workers are joining in the effort for administering this vaccine correctly.  Software that tracks the taking of the vaccines by children is essential for success and this is being implemented with Ghanian authorites. This report shows how it is done in Dateng, Ghana, a town of 800 people 3 hour drive from Accra.  ...

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The entire area from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of the US in Pacific is now being covered as the Indo-Pacific region with the US, India, Australia and other nations committed to keeping the international rule of law and freedom of navigation.German Air Force takes part in a joint military exercize of 17 countries for Indo-Pacific in Darwin, Australia. The focus was on rapid deployment. The German Bundeswehr transfer of fighter jets and supply planes in mid-August Rapid Pacific 2022 was done within 24 hours for 6 Eurojets fighter jets, four transport aircraft, and 3 air to air fueling tankers, with 100 tons of material. The exercize from Aug 19 to September 8 was for 2500 personnel and 100 aircraft from all over the world called Pitch Black in Australia's Northern Territory. Next year Gemany plans to have its army participate in Australian exercize. An entire fleet unit is being set for German navy to return to the Pacific waters.  ...

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This NHK documentary looks at the idea of "Cheap Japan" as wages and prices have stagnated for over three decades. Where the US has grown by 58% for wages over that period Japan has declined by 12%. Japanese companies wages offered even in Thailand and Malaysia, and for low wage products in factories of Vietnam and Bangladesh are cheap and uncompetitive. A Japanese apparel brand is shown looking for factories in Bangladesh that can make shirts at $1.65 to be sold in Japan at $6. Japan's wages and prices are now falling behind developing countries and a Japanese economist calls it "declining Japan." Foreign investment is key to reviving growth by attracting new talent, changing business thinking and style of managing that is more open to new ideas and expansion. It may be of interest to note that Chinese companies in Japan may be focused on electronics and advanced technologies than American private equity in Japan focused on hotels and health care simply to boost profits. ...

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At the New Year's eve service on National Day of Prayer January 1, 1942 president Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill worshipped together at Christchurch Episcopal in Alexandria, Virginia. The Reverend Wells said on this day 82 years ago. The idea that we could not prevail with military strength alone but with deep humility depend on God's help was one of the great strengths of Franklin Roosevelt. That it says much to the present, to the divisions of the present and lack of humility cannot be overstated.

"Our president has appointed this first day of 1942 as a Day of Prayer, for asking forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, power for the present task of achieving victory... but spiritually we are in bad shape. We must have a deep spiritual unity that will make us ready to sacrifice our material possessions and even life itself for the moral principles for which this war is being fought." 

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Suggestions are not to take Fridays off but instead take Mondays off and sometimes break the week with Wednesday off. Fridays off are seen as a drawback because one is seen cramming five days work into four that week. Here a Unilever manager manages her 15 days off and another week that she gets after 18 years service to somehow add the weekends to get 9 days off for a break using 5 vacation days. Taking vacations for less than a week are seen as not productive for reducing stress at work and for getting better sleep. Procrastinating vacations to when work gets slower is not recommended as the answer for many is work never gets slower and you could end up overworking. Planning ahead lets this Unilever manager plan trips that act as rejuvenating experiences up and down the Eastern seaboard after getting her vacation life in order following some misssteps. She shows how with 20 days she could create 50 days vacation during the year adding in public holidays.

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Indian Navy has expanded to 140 warships and technology modernization with domestically produced ships. About another half of that 140 will be added and produced inside India in the next few years. This effort to build the Indian Navy comes with the need to ensure freedom of the seas for open navigation. Much of the world's trade happens for raw materials and manufactured goods through the shipping lanes including the seas in the Indian Ocean and adjoining region. Indian Navy is showing the results of this effort as it protects the oceans in its region in 2024 in the interest of all nations. The US is supporting India's effort with flow of new technologies. The French are also supporting India's efforts and president Macron is in India this week. He will attend the Republic Day celebration as a special guest in New Delhi on Jan 26, after an unprecedented road show in an open SUV in Jaipur today with prime minister Modi.

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Maine's shift from heating oil to heat pumps. Maine is the state with the largest use of heating oil in winter, 50% of homes use heating oil. It was because utilities found it hard to set up transmission pipelines in a sparsely populated state that this happened. Now heat pumps which have no carbon emissions and take heat from outside and transfer it to the inside of homes are effective in the coldest weather and far, far better for Maine than heating oil. About 100,000 homes have heat pumps installed in recent years, and another 175,000 will have heat pumps installed by 2027.  State rebates cut the cost of $12000 for heat pumps to half that and there is another $2000 tax rebate. Users like the even distribution of heat and had problems with the cold parts of the house when using heating oil. Some rave about it. If all homes in America use heat pumps it would be like taking 32 million cars off the road, according to one estimate.

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Tories White Paper on "leveling up" by Michael Gove is out and gets a scathing review from Karl Holbrook of the Northern Echo. 

Holbrook says you can't spend 15 million pounds in one of the wealthiest areas of the country, Javid's constituency Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, and nothing in Knowsley, one of the poorest in the North of England , and call it "leveling up." He says he has little hope that the Tories will get much done without the funding to back it up. And he says one cannot plaster this up with 12 new slogans masquerading as missions in a White Paper as Michael Gove has done and expect people in England to buy it. Labor under Tony Blair and his "Middle Way" - let the huge inequalities between the north of England and the south develop under its watch- more muddled than middle in any way one looks at it today. He says this northerner has had enough of waiting.  

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To president Joe Biden the Democrats instincts of FDR and Truman, with the focus on building better lives for workers and families, comes naturally. Biden takes the Democratic Party back to what it was in the 1930's to the 1960's. Just today the Labor Department showed 336,000 jobs added and the unemployment rate steady at 3.8% for 2 years, 32 months of jobs growth. Brooks offers a clue on how this is happening- president Biden has aggressively directed American capital and resources to where it is needed most, in counties red or blue where economic growth has suffered in the past. Yet 57% of people polled cited by Brooks say the economy is in poor shape. There are another 14 months to go and the economy will get even stronger with the capital allocation and Biden economic policies of Build Better and America First. Workers and families will see real and tangible improvements in their lives in 2024.

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With China's economy slowing, fewer jobs for college graduates in the cities, what is president Xi- who is visiting San Francisco this week- doing to tackle this problem? Even in Guangdong province with cities like Shenzen, it is very, very, very rural says Brian Spegele in this WSJ discussion. He talks about widespreard rural poverty. From his own experience spending time in the countryside in the impressionable years Xi has put this task to revitalize the rural areas to young people. In Guangdong alone about 300,000 youngsters will be given the opportunity to improve their credentials for future government work by going to the rural areas to bring talent that was drained from the 20 years of free market hypergrowth and urbanization. China is about 40% rural in 2023 and these regions have suffered badly, and Xi's efforts to revitalize come at a time after the pandemic when it makes little sense to continue urbanization as the only solution to problems. ...

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Car buying has changed permanently in 5 ways, says this report in WSJ. There are fewer cars made and fewer cars on manufacturer's and dealer's lots, cars are more expensive these days. Car sales have dropped from 17 million before the pandemic to 13 million and up only to 15 million in 2023 as more cars were made. Carmakers have learned to make money by selling fewer cars concentrating on the pricier cars and reducing cars available in the lower end of price range. Used car prices are up on average to $30,000. New car prices have surged to an average of $47,000 in 2022 and 46,000 in 2023.  New car loans are up from average $562 to $733. The share of leased light vehicles has dropped from 30% to 20% of cars sold and carmakers are offering fewer lease deals as demand is easily fulfilled. With fewer leased cars coming in the dealers have to actually go out and buy them. 

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The DW.com's Christoph Strack says its a good sign that chancellor Merkel of Germany is opening up and showing emotions. She was decisive in the way she presented herself and what she has learned in the past 12 months since the refugee crisis erupted in summer 2015. She expressed her sense that she had "an absolutely sure feeling" that Germany will emerge out of all this better "than when we went into it." The remarks at Konrad-Adenauer-Haus for thirteen minutes were unusual and open in sharing how she felt. She said she is "fully committed" to making sure that the situation of 2015 never happens again. Don't count Merkel out, says Strack, she is down but not out, because she is going through the weaknesses in her policy, weakness in communication, and reflecting on her mistakes. And she has shown defiance and resolve, as she prepares for 2017, and its for everything she believes in.

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Google has come out firmly on the side of parents struggling to deal with schooling at home for children, with social distancing during the pandemic, as it supports working from home all the way till summer of 2021. For 200,000 full time and contract Google employees is sure to offer some relief.  Sundar Pichai the Alphabet CEO made the decision after a debate in Google Leads a small group of executives at the company.  Mr. Pichai told staff " I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months."  He was especially concerned about parents trying to tackle schooling of children. The surge of the pandemic in California where Google is located is likely to have convinced Google executives that this was the right step, with no vaccine in sight, and the possibility of a second wave after this one. Remote work has also proved to be effective in the software industry, creating this option. ...

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Coronavirus testing is being ramped up in the U.S. as the Food and Drug Administration new regulations allow commercial labs to manufacture and distribute  coronavirus tests. Now many players can now acquire and conduct tests including state and local governments, hospitals, universities, and private companies. so that tracking nationwide distribution is still difficult. Deborah Brx the response coordinator of the White House task force on coronavirus says U.S. has completed 220,000 tests in last 8 days.  In New York the scaled up efforts in a region with over half the coronavirus cases in the U.S., 13,000 were tested on Monday, March 23. Some hospitals in New York such as Mount Sinai expect to do double or triple the tests a day in a scaling up effort by March 30. In Los Angeles a city councilman negotiated with a South Korean company for delivery of 100,000 tests a week, having already secured 20,000 new tests. Additionally swabs and protective equipment are also needed to conduct tests and labs need to process results with speed. ...

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A heat wave over northern India with New Delhi recording temperatures never seen of over 50 degrees centigrade happens just as voters go to the polling places in May 2024. Results will be announced June 5 for parliament's 543 seats. Turnout is considered to be resilient in the face of the heat wave with only 20% of the voting seats having lower numbers of voters than 2019. The drop in voting was slight of 1.5 percentage points overall from 67.2% to 65.6%. The last phase starts June 1, and 485 seats have voting completed.This vote is all about development and delivery of infrastructure, jobs, and modernization, improving governance and rapidly developing the country held back for about six decades after independence during which Japan recovered from the war, and China rapidly modernized its economy, and India only setting the beginnings of recovery in the administration since 2014, with prime minister Modi setting the goal of a modernized country by 2047 or Vikshit Bharat. ...

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In this economy there is wide divergence in the US for upper income people earning well on assets they own at 5%+ for extra income and the lower middle classes wage earners that are struggling even with low unemployment and inflation at 3%. WSJ looks at these two divergent parts of the US economy and what can be done. Inflation could be worse with higher Trump tariffs on imports, says WSJ. The situation is a difficult one for families struggling even with higher incomes, as this one in Michigan in the WSJ, that finds it necessary to take money out of savings with prices higher but not reflected in inflation statistics of 3%. One example is higher housing and apartment rental costs with 25% of families having to spend over 50% of their income on home rental leaving little for food and expenses. President Biden has called for limiting price increases on home and apartment rentals to 5%, and Harris has proposed aid for families spending more than 30% of household income on housing costs. Strong action is needed. ...

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"It's an immense pleaure, a dream come true, a lot of emotions" says Mbappe of his joining Real Madrid on July 1, 2024 after 7 years at PSG. Kylian Mbappe will captain the French team at Euro 24. He was the all time lead scorer for PSG with 256 goals, scored 44 goals in 48  games this season winning the French League- yet after faltering in the Champions League games with Dortmund he was not satisfied with his performance. It shows the constant stress players and coaches in soccer face. After differences with PSG president Nasser Al-Khalaifi when he did not agree to a 1 year extension he transfers to Real Madrid. He says some people made him feel unhappy and someone who is happy has more chances of playing well. Mbappe posted on X in February that he would not play another season at PSG, the club left him out of a preseason tour of Japan.

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WHite children born in 1992 fared worse in income levels than white children born in 1978. The reverse is true for black children- the income gap narrowing for black children born after 1992 and widening for white children born after 1992. In this unusual twist lies some of the angst about social divisions in America in 2024 where income mobility is a major issue. The Biden administration has achieved a lot with bipartisan legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, cancelling student loan debt or reducing it, creating 16 million jobs, bringing supply chain disruption inflation down from 9% to 3%, and yet more action is needed. Inflation in housing that for 25% of apartment renters takes 50% of household income is a challenge. Biden proposed a 5% cap on rent raises, Harris proposed capping rent payment at 30% of household income and  government aid for amounts above 30%. By contrast Trump program promises little to help with housing costs, and economic policy is limited to tax cuts heavily skewed to wealthier households. ...

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The CDU has the nost popularity at 34% yet Merz himself. a private equity executive with Black Rock Germany, is not personally popular with the German public. His popularity is at about 25%. Boris Pistorius, the Defene Minister in the Scholz SPD and Greens government is the most popular politician in Germany today. Elections are only 4 months away in February 2025, a short time but also a long time with all the changes going on today. In the past CDU and SPD have worked together. Past CDU approaches may not work as Germany badly needs to invest in its economy as the US has done under president Biden. The experience of Britain shows that simply making deals and counting on free trade deals doesn't work, and cuts to public services to budgets including on basic services including water and transportation, climate, do not work either. Are their good leaders and policies that fit the times is a question that will be persistent for many nations.

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Cheap fixed rate mortgages make up two thirds of home mortgages in the US. Most are at 4% or lower interest rate. A new 30 year home mortgage in 2024 would be about 7%. About 660,000 job offers that required moving and selling the home were turned down. This means fewer homes left for people to buy leading to higher home prices. The additional equity people have in their home on average is $119,000 over 4 years and this means consumer spending is resilient in the face of higher interest rates and keeps inflation at 3%. How does this affect the economy? Fewer homes on the market means there is a loss to the economy of 3% to 5% of output, according to NAHB. The smaller supply of homes means there is less home inventory to search from- instead of 62% in more normal times affordability for someone with a $100,000 in income is now 37% of the listings. This is not expected to change in the next 2 years.

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Drugs affecting Montevideo capital of the small country of 3.3 million people in the Rio de la Plata estuary in southern Uruguay. Container traffic has increased by 62% since 2019 Le Monde reports, coupled with Bolivia becoming a new area for drugs, has disturbed the relative tranquillity of this region near Argentina that existed for most of the 20th century. The dire need for a comprehensive solution. Cali, Columbia is now the place for the Biodiversity Climate Change COP29, and this shows how the problem keeps shifting from country to country- that it is beyond the scope of one party, and requires an all party solution in the US, 100% bipartisan, as Mexico was also a place of relative tranquillity for most of the 20th century. The Biden Lankford legislation was a huge path making move with Republican Lankford and Biden-Harris together on one page on the issue. Harris has promised she will get this legislation to her desk again and sign it into law.    ...