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The oldest person to sail around the world alone, non-stop and unassisted is a British woman. She is 77 years old. She comes from Lymington, Hampshire in England. Jeanne Socrates ended her 320 days voyage in Victoria, Canada. This is also the second time she has done it. In 2013 she was the oldest woman to make the circumnavigation of the world. Her boat is 38 feet long called Nereida. The mainsail and backupsail sustained damage, and solar panels were lost overboard.  The wind gods she said were not with her and she had two cyclones off Hawaii to avoid, and one in the Indian Ocean to avoid. She wasted time with that. She has received a lot of support, which she says comes from people realizing and appreciating the way she persevered and overcame so many problems on the way around in different oceans, showing it can be done. Shortly after retiring she and her husband took up sailing. After her husband died in 2003 she continued sailing. She took up the daunting effort to learn all about the systems on the Nereida and dealing with a whole range of problems. Her first attempt at nonstop sailing around the world was in 2009, when rigging problems led to giving it up. Another effort four years later in 2012 also failed. She persisted and in 2013 made the successful attempt. Jeanne Socrates has overcome a number of setbacks in her career. In 2017  before she made her current effort she fell off her boat, breaking her neck and ribs as she prepared. She recovered from that fall. A look at her website shows how she has persevered over many, many years, making repeated attempts, following  up with more effort after the last one failed. That she also brings a cheerful positive attitude throughout and enjoys nature, birds, and meeting people on land during her trips from Sweden to Mauritius, to Mexico, is clear from looking at the many photographs on her website.   ...

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The Blinken Wang Yi meeting at the G-2- in Indonesia is the first high level meeting between US and China since March when the Ukraine war started. In the press briefing after the meeting Blinken said "more than four months into this brutal invasion the PRC stands by Russia." He pointed to Beijing support of Russia at the United Nations, dissemination of Russian talking points through Chinese state media and joint military exercizes with Moscow. One aspect of the relations that is beyond the control or good intentions of the two countries top diplomats is the tit for tat response that began with the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump may have seen this as a way to talk to the voter base fed up with two decades of one sided trade with China with manufacturing shipped out to China and local communities of families and workers in regions across the US losing jobs and in decline. Much of this shift was done by US companies during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations over two decades. The strident tone adopted by Trump was met by tit for tat responses in Chinese media till the pandemic when it assumed a new aspect of Chinese origins of the coronavirus. The result is that Sinophobia in the US is met by a response in Chinese media and in the thinking of the Chinese leadership under Jinping that now sees the relationship as having already shifted during the pandemic. The paradox in this is that the US in its effort to get other countries on its side is only beginning to make an effort of get America's own companies and large business investors on its side. Most American companies are still continuing trade and business with China as before.  The same situation exists with the shift of manufacturing from Japan and the European Union to China, with the loss of jobs and decline of local communities that depended on manufacturing. Japanese and European companies are acting in ways that are similar to American companies. Having managed the shift of manufacturing from European Union and Japan to China these companies have done little to change this business situation in 2022 carrying on as before. This is the paradox of the current situation that business both in the US and EU, and Japan is not on the side of their governments, even as their governments attitude to China, particularly now after the pandemic and the Ukraine war has shifted drastically. Alongside this is the popular opinion that has shifted gradually over the last 10 years in the US and EU, first in these very local communities that lost manufacturing to China, and then across broader sections of the public, and now across whole regions of America, Britain, the EU and Japan. This shift in popular opinion has little interest in the way business conducts business overseas or governments conduct diplomacy in nuanced statements. As a result neither the governments of the US, EU and Japan or the business of the US, EU and Japan are in control of this shifting situation that has its momentum and pace operating quite independently of governments and business. And public opinion across America, Europe, Japan, and also in India is moving in an entirely new direction.     ...

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This commentary in the WSJ says it is essential that the U.S. get back manufacturing of all technological goods back to the U.S. or its allies. The dangers of depending on China or other countries not clearly allied with the U.S. is quite clear especially after the pandemic. The U.S. and European supply chains need to be completely remade, restructured, to avoid dependence on China or countries that are not allies. This is what supply chain renewal is about. Yet initiatives alone with hundreds of billions of dollars price tag re not the answer to the problem. What is needed are specific targeted actions such government direct assistance to key sectors to ensure U.S. technological advantages in worldwide competition. Giving a hole range of incentives and direct financial support to industries making everything from electronic and computer components to high tech parts that go to defense and civilian production.   The U.S educational component in this puzzle is university students in all high tech courses which should be kept for U.S. citizens or from key allied nations at American universities. The manufacturing base would mean securing incentives and aid to manufacturing industries, component by component, part by part, to secure American leadership and distinct advantage.  Job losses have to be reversed and industries relocated back to the U.S. And only in cases where it is advantageous to manufacture overseas to relocate in allied countries India, Japan or South Korea. U.S. labor has to be brought into the picture as a key participant in the national interest and given an important role. R& D efforts have to be developed component by component, technological part by part, and technology by technology, so that a systematic plan can be followed to secure American leadership for the rest of this century, is what experts including this one say is required today. ...

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Rick Rieder of Black Rock and David Kelly of  JP Morgan Chase and others sense that the US is entering a phase they call "the satellite economic phase in which there are no crash landings and takeoffs but steady orbiting in space. Less boom and bust and more steady growth for years is the new economy Biden is creating with huge investments in infrastructure and manufacturing and worker skills training that upgrade the workforce. Investments in health and education are part of this. This makes the US economy more resilient with government working both as a partner and agencies of the government that regulate and provide the rules for fairness and level playing field acting to prevent the booms and busts of the past such as the 2009 financial crisis and other crises. With China, EU, India, Japan+South Korea and the US, all 5 of the largest economies aligned to maintain steady growth for their people the prospect of war acting to reduce growth potential will also be managed in a setting that is needed following the pandemic. This will make both the Middle East and the Eastern European recurring crises to be toned down and a shift made to growth in these regions from the war ravaged periods of reckless behaviour of nation actors. This is a view now emerging among key people in the US economy such as Rieder Black Rock and Kelly JP Morgan. Both says the ways of understanding this and the terminology "soft landing" or "cylical, midcycle" are now outdated and no longer apply. Says Reider-“But one point to keep in mind is that satellites don’t land and maybe that is a better analogy for a modern advanced economy” like the United States.  ...

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The Brazilian Real drops to 2.9836 to the U.S. dollar in March 2015. The year to date March 2015 decline for the Real is 10.9%. Increase in interest rates will depress growth even further.

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Kraft reaches an agreement to acquire Cadbury at 830 British pence per share in a meeting between Ms. Rosenfeld, Kraft CEO, and Cadbury CEO, Mr. Carr. This is about 50% premium over the price of Cadbury shares in Sept, 2009. Cadbury CEO Carr was opposed to the merger of the two companies and stated he saw "no strategic, operational, managerial or financial reason" for the two companies to merge. Cadbury described the Kraft management as one that had unattractive categories and which "under-delivers." In the end Carr was pushed into the deal because hedge funds had acquired about 30% of Cadbury shares in hopes of making gains, creating the danger that Cadbury could end up with a lower offer. The acrimony is likely to make a merger of the two companies difficult and costly. Kraft coveted Cadbury for its penetration of emerging markets, but lacks the experience and talent in this area of its own to carry out a smooth merger of vastly different companies with different focus.

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Cost overruns on the dams approaching 96%, and the debt burden especially for smaller economies.

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This WSJ Investigation shows Facebook is aware of the acute flaws in its product, that the product is riddled with flaws that only Facebook fully understands. Yet it says the company has not acted in a way that correct these flaws. Some of the flaws of how this app affects teenage girls was a subject of one part of this report. In other parts it looked at how the Facebook app in social media use could increase the level of division in society, and affect the achievement of public interest goals, as users make use of the app and apps like Facebook such as Twitter to increase discord. This is becoming an issue as public interest goals are now seen as critical for recovery. Vaccination for coronavirus in US and Europe, national infrastructure development in India and developing nations, effects of social media on women's health, are critical areas in which social media may have failed to deliver constructive results, and actually gone the other way to make things worse for all. This may also be why leaders of large nations including Mr. Biden, and leaders in India and Europe, have lost patience with social media. ...

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Citigroup's CEO Pandit sees growth in its Asian and Latin American businesses in 2012-2013. He cited growing investment in infrastructure and the needs of middle class customers in these countries.

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The current number of American soldiers in Afghanistan of 32,000 in May 2014 will be reduced to about 9,800 after 2014, which would be cut to about 5000 in 2015, an leave only a small force of specially trained forces to protect the embassy and for additional security. Residual forces will include trainers and Special Operations forces to keep a check on Quaeda loyalists in remote parts of Afghanistan and in the mountains. The drones have accomplished much of the work done in earlier phases of the war by ground troops. The Afghan war has also been all about Pakistan. The completion of a full term in office of a democratically elected government for the first time, and the election of the Sharif government, including the participation of tribal and other Muslim extremists in elections, have been the hidden face of the war changing its face in other ways. The beginning of a focus on development in Pakistan and India, and the election of a new government in Aghanistan, the peace talks with the Taliban, are other parts of the shift to winding down America's presence coming from changes in the region itself- by changing the very nature of the conflict itself and isolating the most extremist elements....

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Candidates for Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, India's central bank, as current Governor Venugoppal Reddy's term expires September 5, 2008. The focus is clearly on inflation as new elections are expected next year.

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The Kashmir Valley and the Kashmir region had a multiethnic community of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in the hundreds of years before 1947. It all disappeared after the cabinet meeting of Liaquat Ali Khan on 12th September 1947 when the plan to attack Kashmir using armed Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces was approved. By the end of that year the surprise invasion had split Kashmir into two regions and led to a large scale dispersal of Sikhs, Hindus and other ethnic communities. This BBC report shows how this happened and how it changed a once peaceful region with a multiethnic society. Till the 15th century this region was Hindu and Buddhist with influences of Tibetan Buddhism and a center of creativity for Sanskrit culture and language. It changed with the Afghan and Persian invasions by 1580 and conversion to Islam of some of the Hindu population. By 1700 the Mughal empire decline and Afghan, Durrani dynasties ruled till about 1800 when the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh included Kashmir in the Sikh Empire based in Lahore, Punjab. This lasted under British patronage of the Dogra dynasty of Sikhs till 1947. In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, the population of the princely state of Kashmir was 2,905,578. Of these 2,154,695 were Muslims, 689,073 Hindus, 25,828 Sikhs, and 35,047 Buddhists. The Muslim population was not homogenous and contained many tribes and the Gilgit Baltistan region was Shia Muslim, the Kashmir Valley Sunni Muslim and the mountainous regions had Pathans and many other tribes. This is why the region may have had Sikh and British rule for 150 years with even the Muslim communities existing with many different sub religions and living in amulti racial multi ethnic fabric that was upset by the invasion from the newly created state of Pakistan based in Islamabad using Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces. What changed this was that after Kashmir was split in two by this invasion, China entered the northern border region of Kashmir called Aksai Chin and parts of Ladakh by building roads in 1956-57 and the occupation by China of this region including Tibet thousands of miles from Beijing in a remote region expansion by Communist China. ...

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The US economy expected to grow 1.5% in 2008 down 0.3% from estimate in October 2007 World Economic Outlook after taking into account a recent update in the model that lowered all forecasts 2005-2008 by half a point. Of this about 0.2 or 0.3% may be the impact of the stimulus package which is included in the estimate. Is this a bit on the high side? Its expectation of growth suggests it does not expect a recession or that it will periodically revise its estimate downward based on new information and the extent of consumption, housing and investment deterioration it sees unfolding in the months ahead. For the European economy it has taken its earlier estimate of 2.1% down to 1.6%. This suggests that it sees the US crisis having an impact in Europe. China's rate of growth will be 10% down 1.4% from 2008 and the Middle East growth about 6% unchanged from 2007, Latin American growth 4.3% down from 5.4% in 2007. This suggests global growth outside USA will remain healthy. However its not clear what would happen if the idea of a recession in the US becomes likely with new information in coming months, and if this is introduced into the model how much would growth in China and the Middle East and India come down in that event. This is the kind of scenario that should also be available from the IMF to know the downside and whether the global growth would sustain till the US recovers from the housing and credit crises in years beyond 2009, given that it would take some time for the excesses there to correct themselves....

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As the old rules are being rewritten or changed there is considerable ambiguity about the new nuclear rules for India and Pakistan, says The Times. This happens as Mr. Trump is distracted by the international problems such as North Korea and Venezuela and the Mueller probe into Trump and the election of 2016, and as UK prime minister May is distracted by Brexit. 

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The partition of Iraq would have lead to increased ethnic conflicts and civil war which is what all sides in Iraq recognized. Sunch partitions lead to ethnic cleansing and even more hostilities. As Senor says here the partition would have involved expelling Iraqis from their home on a large scale. A bigger wave than the refugee situation before this from ethnic strife as it would now be official. Compare this to the partition of India. Once its official a huge wave of expelling begins and an official kind of ethnic cleansing occurs as hotilities increase and each of these partitioned areas starts to get outside help from neighboring countries and an arms race in the area begins and new fears are aroused. No question things were bad but it its to the credit of all the Iraqi parties and leaders that they had the good sense to act in the right way. As Senor asks what do you do with Kirkuk which is majority Kurdish but has a large Sunni population. Its also to the credit of Bush advisors and General Petraeus that they continued to persevere when things looked very dim. A further inflammation in Iraq would not affect people in Des Moines or Biden's Delaware so when things get really nasty its easy for an expert or politician in the USA or Europe to take some policy action and then leave leaving that region in Asia or Africa to bear the consequences....