LyrArc Article Gist
DJT and Putin talk for 1 hour on February 12, 2025, on the phone and agree to hold talks to end the Ukraine War. He also talks to Zelensky of Ukraine following the talk with Putin. In this video DJT says he feels that Putin wants to end the war, Zelensky wants to end the war, and he wants to end the war. The talks will be continued on the phone, at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, and by visits of the two leaders to the US and to Russia. DJT says he agrees with Defense Secretary Hegseth that the war settlement will not include Ukraine joining as a member of NATO. The Munich Security Conference is Feb 14-16, 2025.

LyrArc Article Gist
A fight in the U.S. Congress with an unusual alliance between the Obama administration, the Judiciary Committee, and Speaker Boehner up against Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell ends with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which requires court approval for government to look at collected bulk data in phone calls. Republican Rand Paul fought hard against both factions to end the bulk surveillance altogether. The Act was passed in the House earlier. It cleared the Senate June 2nd 2015 with 67 in favor and 32 opposed.

LyrArc Article Gist
How trying too hard can mess up your style is shown for bowler Mohammad Siraj. After the failure in the New Zealand series Siraj talks to his old bowling coach on the phone. Bharat Arun tells Siraj he is trying too hard and this is leading to errors. Go back to your original stye. He tells Siraj this will take discipline first concentrate on one wicket, try bowling yorkers to get the wrist behind the ball the original movement. It worked says Siraj in Perth and Canberra. The ball that went to Steve Smith that he edged into for a catch by Pant was one that was Siraj bowling a yorker. Bumrah said trust the process, wickets will come don't fret too much about it. And if you do come to me. 

LyrArc Article Gist
India's largest IPO for the government owned phone company BSNL for $10 billion .

LyrArc Article Gist
Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia Corp.'s cellphone business for $7 billion in August 2013. This is less than the $8.5 billion Microsoft paid to acquire Skype. A major European corporation goes for less than a company that did not even exist a few years earlier. It shows how quickly a strategic misstep or failure to anticipate a new competitor or technology can upend the marketplace. Nokia failed to anticipate or move quickly to develop products in mobile smartphones. Strategic missteps included relying on its own technology for smartphone development as the market moves first to the iPhone and then the Android based smartphones from Samsung, and other manufacturers. Microsoft also failed to anticipate or prepare for smartphone development. There is a one-two punch because after losing to Apple and Samsung in the highend smartphone market, Nokia is hit by lowpriced Android based smartphones from Chinese competitors such as Lenovo, HTC and others. The entire marketplace Nokia had known for a generation has shifted before its eyes....

LyrArc Article Gist
For decades without the leadership needed and the collaboration of the entire tech sector and health systems the goal of getting a patients record on the computer or on a phone app anywhere in the US across all health systems was out of America's grasp. This was happening even in countries such as Indonesia and India which were vastly improving health outcomes through their apps of patient health records available across the entire country. The US finally is making that effort which should help not only treat patients but give patients better control of their food, alternative ideas on what to eat and for exercise, other ways to improve their health. CMS Medical Records Interoperability Framework brings together 21 networks to align to it, 60 companies to work collaboratively, and 30 companies to try and improve patient health outcomes and their health in general. Australia, Indonesia and countries in Europe have done this, says Health Secretary Robert Kennedy. It is time the US did so also. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Senators in the US Congress, Rubio and Schumer, have asked the US government to look into Apple's plans to work with Chinese semiconductor company YMTC. As a result the Commerce Department has placed export restrictions on YMTC. This NYT report looks at the two decade long rise of China and of Apple after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and shifted manufacturing to China. When Jobs returned to Apple he found major quality issues at Apple's manufacturing facilities, a demoralized workforce, and financial losses, with CEO Michael Spindler running the company into the ground. Jobs had to start with afresh model for Apple and decided to shift manufacturing to China under the engineering leadership of Tim Cook. Alabama native Cook went to Auburn University for his engineering degree and Duke for his business degree. Cook joined Jobs in 1998 at Apple and for ten years till 2007 the two cut costs, shifted to contract manufacturers and rebuilt Apple with new products, iPod, iPad and the iphone. By not manufacturing Apple avoided quality control issues, and the costs of maintaining inventory. It was Tim Cook who ran operations worldwide, and he gradually built up the manufacturing relationships in China with Foxconn, which makes most of Apple's products in sprawling Chinese factories that employ 20 years later about 3 million Chinese workers. Foxconn was chosen by Apple in 2000 to manufacture the Apple Mac laptop. Before that it was a parts supplier to Apple. Increasingly Apple relied on Foxconn to make its new products including the iPhone. Both companies growth relied on the manufacturing of Foxconn to the point where Apple was dependent on Foxconn and had intertwined its operations with Foxconn in China. Today the whole relationship is being called into question after two decades in which American workers suffered the effects of the outshoring of manufacturing jobs. It should be noted that though Mr. Trump raised the issue of manufacturing exclusively in China with Apple, the Trump administration did little to change the practices of the company that pioneered this type of massive manufacturing role for China. That surrendered the entire supply chain to foreign suppliers in the interest of cutting costs and maintaining huge profit margins, with which it financed an array of new products and reached $1 trillion in sales from $10 billion, hundredfold increase over 2 decades. American workers and families for the first time in American history got very little from this Cook-Jobs project. American infrastructure in communities that would have been supported by American factories including the services and infrastructure in communities financed through local taxes, a practice throughout the Industrial Revolution in the US, was sharply disrupted over 2 decades. It caused a rupture in social relations and increased inequality in the US, and defunded infrastructure that comes with manufacturing.  It is the task of the Biden administration to now correct what Mr. Trump simply talked about but never induced or required Apple to do- lead the resurgence of American manufacturing, and make its major investments in the US, invest in its workers and families, invest in America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Facin competition from RIM's Blackberry, Apple's IPhone, Smamsung and LG, Nokia has seen its market share in the USA take asteep dive from 35% in 2002 March to 10% in 2008, and 7% in June 2009. Nokia say experts made adecade of mistakes. It failed to design new phones , failed to anticipate consumer tastes in America, like flip phones and touch screens, and failed to accomodate the CDMA format using instead the European GSM standard.

LyrArc Article Gist
Following the Dallas police officer shootings Bruni of the NYT says U.S. president Obama has not set race relations back 50 years as some of his detractors say. Instead the conversation on race relations has become more heated with technology providing instant images on iPhones, and the loss of black lives, says Bruni.  Obama has tried unsuccessfully to have his voice heard for moderation on all sides.

LyrArc Article Gist
Benny Gantz, a former Israeli army chief of staff, failed to take advantage of the situation Mr. Netanyahu finds himself in with corruption charges from the Attorney General and a sense that it was time for Israel to move on beyond the Netanyahu years. In a close election contest Mr. Gantz needs to put forward his own message which he is only now beginning to do. He says Mr. Netanyahu's office leaked news of a hack of his mobile phone by Iran which went on the Israeli television network. Mr. Gantz's view of the election is that a clean campaign would resonate with voters after the rough and tumble politics of the Netanyahu years.

LyrArc Article Gist
U.S. airline stocks surged in 2014. Energy stocks crashed in the 4th quarter of 2014 losing over 30% of their value as oil inventories surged. Russia and Greece were the worst performing countries with losses over 30% for funds in these countries. India stock funds returns exceeded 30%. High yield bonds performed badly, with higher returns on investment grade assets. Apple continued growth following the introduction of the iPhone 6, with the stock value growing by 38% in 2014.

LyrArc Article Gist
The failure of Nintendo's new handheld 3DS video game device to win market acceptance. Sales dropped to 710,000 in the last 3 months from 3.6 million the prior quarter. Nintendo has now made a big price cut from $250 to $170. The entire videogame industy is going through a transformation where a closed platform like Nintendo's is facing obsolescence. Today any device with a screen and an internet connection can work for videogaming. Companies such as Zynga have Facebook games such as "Farmville" and "Cityville." Mobile and social games are $1 or $5 and often free when they have advertising within the games. They can be readily acccessed instantly by downloading, Contrast that with Nintendo games for 3DS which can sell for $30 to $40. Nintendo has sold over 87 million Wiis and 147 million DS devices. But the sales are dropping precipitiously. Wii sales dropped to 1.56 million in the most recent quarter compared to 3.04 million in the prior year, and DS sales fell to 1.44 million from 3.15 million, according to Nintendo. As a whole game sales in retail stores including hardware and software are declining down to $995 million in June 2011 from $1.111 billion for the same month prior year, according to NPD Group. Microsoft continues to see an increase in its Xbox gaming business- with a 30% increase in sales to $1.49 billion for the last quarter for the division with the Xbox business. One reason is that this is a group of hard core gaming customers who prefer shooting and sports games including the use of a camera device called Kinect where body movements are used by players. In that manner this business is insulated from the overall trend where game developers are shifting to new technologies and developemnts such as Facebook and iPhone. Electronic Arts is focussing on the fast growth for popular games on the iPad....

LyrArc Article Gist
Samsung increases its share of the global smartphone market to 33% for the first quarter of 2013, and Apple's share drops from 23% to 18%, according to Strategy Analytics. Samsung is targeting the low end of the smartphone market. Samsung's manufacturing capabilities give it an advantage in responding to market demand.

LyrArc Article Gist
David Cameron's standing with the British public is hurt by the phone hacking scandal and his close ties with News International's Coulson and Rebecca Brooks. This has boosted the standing of Labor party leader Ed Miliband. Miliband said in an intervew with the Observer newspaper: "I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20% of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News. I think it's unhealthy because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organization." Miliband has called for the breakup of Rupert Murdoch's media holdings, saying News Corporation "has too much power over British public life." He told the Observer he would work to get a cross-party agreement on new rules governing media ownership that would reduce market share of News Corporation.

LyrArc Article Gist
Tech is not going to fix this, say software experts from tech companies. Google and Apple's efforts in coming up with an app have fizzled out, says this report in thee WSJ. Has the U.S. lost precious time in waiting for an app by tech companies to be developed, instead of doing what India and Britain have done. India introduced its own app Aarogya Setu app from the Indian government. Britain had the National Health Service develop its app. India acted quickly. Is an app needed or essential? Germany decided that contact tracing based on Asian country experience was mainly about human contact tracers with skills to make the phone calls. All they needed was a centralized database on a computer and a phone. Germany set up teams at offices in each district in Germany and quickly plodded ahead even if all the offices were not fully staffed. In fact a third of the offices needed more people and resources. Yet the speed of action is something like 80 to 90% of the contact tracing effort when the team has the skill set to call. This is because clusters of infections do not wait - they spread. There is simply no time to waste. The German effort has produced the best results so far of any country of this size- Germany has 85 million people. The reproduction ratio is at 1.13 and Germany remains vigilant. It is the first country to reopen in Europe, and is methodically doing the right actions, much that the world can and should learn from. Contact tracing teams worked round the clock in the early days, they are still hard at work today, using their human skills to talk to people and find out who they were in contact with, calling the contacts in turn, at each step working to isolate where needed with followup calls from the state health departments. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A Hank Aaron phone call in 1967 to Dusty Baker's mother gets Dusty Baker to join the Atlanta Braves when Baker prayed that he did not have to go to the Deep, deep South. Dusty Baker, 72 years, is now the manager of the Houston Astros in the finals of American World Series baseball between the Astros and the Atlanta Braves. Dusty Baker says it was the best thing that happened to him because he met Hank Aaron, who broke Babe Ruth's record in 1974 with 715 homers. 

This started a long friendship with Hank Aaron. Of Hank Aaron Dusty Baker says- "He really taught me discipline. This guy was the most disciplined guy, most hard working guy, most concentration guy I ever met."

LyrArc Article Gist
"Turnoff your phone for a bit. I take time early in the day for reflection, for when hard things come."

Melinda Gates likes the following poets, who are also Colbert's favorites. Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue who brings ancient wisdom to modern day lives, imagination as the path of the Spirit.

She reads David White, Pablo Neruda, Mia

One verse of poetry she likes says- when you come back to yourself, something Melinda Gates has done, when you do this see the flowers that were in your earlier years. This is all about having self care, self compassion and self acceptance, that are key to healthy living. As the Buddha says- only by taking care of yourself can you take care of others.