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To get an idea of Indian potential growth rate one can see the potential of states like Bihar and Maharashtra. Bihar state in India is where the potential for economic development is huge and growth rate of 22% for 2025-2026. Imagine a state with 130 million people in India with about 17% urbanization compared to 37% for India. Most of the development concentrated in the capital city of Patna. Other cities being Gaya near Bodh Gaya, home of the world's most important ancient Buddhist sites where Lord Buddha spent most of his life, and Bhagalpur.  The new plan is to accelerate urbanization in Bihar. After Pataliputra and Kankarbagh 11 new satellite cities are to be set up under an new plan for Bihar. Housing Minister Nitin Nabin of Bihar state says- “The new townships will include nine divisional headquarters cities, Sonepur and Sitamarhi (Sitapuram). The initiative will reduce population pressure on major cities, ensuring better basic infrastructure and scope for further expansion. Special emphasis will be laid on roads, traffic management, drainage, waste disposal, green parks, and residential areas. The nine divisional headquarters were Patna, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Gaya, Darbhanga, Munger, Saran, Saharsa and Purnia. Committees will be formed to monitor the townships’ overall development." ...

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The costs of fraud in medical care from spurious Medicare claims to kickbacks for unecessary services is estimated at $125 to 175 billion. Costs of unnecessary care from overuse to unnecessary lab tests are between $250-325 billion. The amount wasted for on treatment for preventable conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. is $25-50 billion. This number is much higher when all the complications from obesity are figured in. These amounts alone add up to $500 billion. Add to it the problems and the costs of medical errors leading to bad drug reactions or other misdiagnosed procedures which cost an estimated $75-100 billion and the the total is upto $600 billion. These amounts are not going to be tackled by computerization of medical records. The whole manner and ways in which medicine is practiced today and the manner in which the public takes care of its health would have to change for an impact to be made in these numbers.

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Former president Lula da Silva of Brazil is sentenced to 10 years in prison on corruption charges. The charges are that Mr da Silva and his wife were illegally given about $1.1 million in improvements from a construction company for a beachfront apartment. The construction company was able to get lucrative contracts from the state oil company Petrobras. Many of Brazil's politicians are under investigation. The former speaker of the Brazil parliament, Eduardo Cunha, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for money laundering and corruption. The current president Mr. Temer is also under investigation. A culture where such activity was accepted had developed, and this effort started with a small investigation called "Operation Car Wash" in a smaller Brazilian city named Curitiba. Young lawyers determined to set a higher standard and fight Brazil corruption pursued the case that led upto the higher echelons of Brazilian government, the construction industry, and the state oil company Petrobras. ...

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The unravleing of Borders bookstores chain in the US, after Borders management failed to anticipate and build on the new trend to electronic books and made a series of mistakes. Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early Feb. 2011. Its online strategies simply failed to come up with answers to the cultural trend to online shopping for books and buying e-book readers. A serious bad decision from which Borders never recovered was to transfer its internet operations to Amazon Inc. in 2001. Amazon quickly built up customer relationships with millions of customers. Other decisions followed which put Borders in an untenable position. Borders increased its debt from $159 million in 2001, to $554 million for the fiscal year ended Feb 2, 2008, using the money for overseas expansion and share buybacks, which did little to address the looming internet problem. By contrast Barnes and Noble took the opposite strategy of paying down all of its $667 million in debt. Borders has modest beginnings starting in 1971, when Tom and Louis Borders, started a small used bookstore. By the 1990's bookstores with tens of thousands of books in one location were changing the bookselling landscape, as smaller bookstores were closing. Borders was able to ride this wave. When the next wave hit in 2010 with the internet, Borders was unable to respond and went into permanent decline. A costly trip through bankruptcy court means Borders will have to close one third of its 674 Borders and Waldenbooks stores, and cut a large part of the 19,500 staff. This will mean customers shifting to Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Mike Shazin, CEO of Idea Logical Co, a New York consulting firm, says he expects 50% of bricks and mortar bookstores to go away in 5 years, and 90% to go away in 10 years. ...

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The Message to Congress by president James Polk on May 11, 1846 set forth the situation of the Texas Republic setup by settlers under Gen. Sam Houston in 1836 under military threat from Mexican forces. Polk set the task for its defense by the United States against Mexican military forces that were legacies of the Spanish colonial Empire in North America. James Polk said- "In communicating to Congress a succinct statement of the injuries which we had suffered from Mexico, and which have been accumulating during a period of more than twenty years, every expression that could tend to inflame the people of Mexico or defeat or delay a pacific result was carefully avoided. An envoy of the United States repaired to Mexico with full powers to adjust every existing difference. But though present on the Mexican soil by agreement between the two Governments, invested with full powers, and bearing evidence of the most friendly dispositions, his mission has been unavailing." "Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought proper to unite its destinies with our own she (Mexico) has affected to believe that we have severed her rightful territory, and in official proclamations and manifestoes has repeatedly threatened to make war upon us for the purpose of reconquering Texas. In the meantime we have tried every effort at reconciliation. The cup of forbearance had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del Norte. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war."   ...

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Biomass carbon removal at $100 per ton is being developed by Graphyte. The price for direct carbon removal from the air using huge fan like devices is $675 per ton. The price has to come down to about $100 per ton for it to become widely used. Graphyte is doing its first project near two timber milling and one rice milling operation in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas. American Airlines is purchasing credits from Graphyte. Graphyte can produce 150 pallets of blocks of biomass a day by July 2024 for carbon reduction of 50,000 tons per day. American Airlines is producing 35 million metric tons of direct emissions a year.

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Foreign capital in India's nuclear sector-100 Gigawatt target at $226 billion cost by 2047. An important component of plan to be carbon neutral by 2070. Changes in legislation passed to get US and French companies into the Indian nuclear sector.

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Interesting and quite useful from a sociological and psychological point of view, that people believe what they want to believe. Even today writes Slackman, the Arabs and Muslims from Dubai malls to people one meets in a park in Algiers, cafes in Riyadh, and in shops and places all over Cairo, say the USA organized 9/11 so that they could attack 2 Muslim states, Iraq and Afghanistan. If we changed it a bit and said Rumsfeld and Cheney got the perfect excuse to attack Afghanistan's Taliban government from 9/11. It created the kind of fears in the US public about terrorists, individual, or state sponsored terrorism like Iraq's against the Marsh Shiites after the Kuwait war (which was a personal affront to both Rumsfeld and Cheney as they let it happen right under their eyes), then one can extend that to say Rumsfeld and Cheney felt they now had the opportunity to get Saddam out. So once you have the US even for good moral reason eager to intervene, this eagerness may not require too much of a stretch to be seen as the US administration engineering this atmosphere by organizing 9/11, or by letting it happen. This is true for an Arab public that feels humiliated and sees a loss of respect from all the setbacks they have suffered, including in Egypt where a President has maintained himself in power for thirty long years and has American support. And most of these people haven't left their surroundings, so they haven't seen the world outside. What they beleieve is only what is possible from what they can see possible from their immediate surroundings. From a -sociological and psychological perspective this is certainly possible and even realistic. When Friedman in the New York Times says its shameless that the 2 Republican candidates can speak of being change agents when Republicans have been in power for 8 years, and still the Republican faithful and some independents believe this, they have not lost their wits but may see this in terms of their gut feel and in terms of their own personal experiences and surroundings. Even when Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal sees little hope from either candidate when it comes to lobbyists influencing them and proof of this from lobbyists for Fannie and Freddie as their senior advisors. Then its still possible for Republican faithful, however weird it may appear to an informed observer,to see McCain and Palin as agents of change. Same is true for Obama. ...

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Investigations underway into the Red Fort Metro station bomb blast in New Delhi by a car stopped at a red light. It involves three young medical personnel from Kashmir at Al-Falah University in Faridabad near the capital, according to the probe, with connections going back to training in Turkey.

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Lt. Heather Penney at Andrews Air Force Base on the day of 9/11. She was on a runway at the airbase ready to fly an F-16 fighter plane with orders to bring down United airlines Flight 93.

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Hotels in New York City can cost a fortune- $1100 a night in December near Christmas, $300 in September, $150 lower in January. Here dawn Gilbertson shares a small condo with an Airbnb host for $155 in December in Brooklyn about an hour subway+walk  to Manhattan.

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China's COSCO taking an ownership stake in Hamburg port was opposed by the Greens and Free Democrats parties in the three party coalition government with the SPD in Germany. Scholz of the SPD went ahead over their opposition saying this will preserve jobs in Hamburg port. In the compromise reached the ownership is capped at 24.99% so that no foreign country owns a majority stake. At one point Germany's cyber security agency BSI classified the Hamburg port as critical infrastructure.

China is Germany's largest trading partner  for 7 years with trade reaching a record $320 billion.

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Germany's Economic Affairs Ministry and Economy Minister Habeck have called for blocking of the sale of a Dortmund chip production company Elmos to Sweden based Silex, a unit of Sai Microelectronics of China, for 85 million euros. There is now significant debate within the German ministries about the degree of dependence on China. Habeck's move seeks to prohibit the acquisition of Germany technology companies by Chinese competitors on grounds of protecting public order and security.

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Dw.com takes a look at the most costly World Cup Soccer of all time in Qatar.

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A path forward set for peaceful cooperation and competition by Joe Biden as he meets Xi Jinping again after his many meetings with Xi during the early years of the Obama administration. The meetings take place at the G20 meeting in Indonesia and mark a return to normalcy following the volatile rhetoric of the Trump administration. During the conflict in Ukraine both leaders express their intention to cooperate fully and seek peaceful solutions to world problems. A positive note emerges then from the G20 in Indonesia- a welcome relief after the disaster to global health from the pandemic.

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Reliance Jio makes the highest bid and takes most of the 5G spectrum in India with a bid for $11.4 billion or over half of the 5G spectrum. The government had eased the size of investment by firms by allowing 20 equal instalments in payment and other measures. This prepares India and Jio to build the 5G network in India as it had done earlier for the 4G network and become the dominant low cost provider in the world. The experience gained in building 4G gives Jio the advantage in building the new 5G network in India on its own.

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DW.com talks to Ben Hodges, the former commanding general US Army Europe, about the document leaks from the Department of Defense and the situation in the war in Ukraine. About the leaks Hodges says the Russians already knew this. He says this is the calm before the storm as Ukraine prepares its own offensive in the Donbas and in Crimea.