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AP News describes Biden's long association with Irish poets W.B. Yeats and Seamus Haney. In an earlier presidential run in 2008 he said- "I believe with every fibre of my being that we have a chance to make hope and history rhyme." In the 2020 campaign this happened and Biden believes today that this is reflected in the hearts and sentiments of the vast majority of the American people. 

Haney's poem uses these words in a translation of the Greek playwright Sophocles. From Haney's The Cure at Troy:

"History says don't hope On this side of the Grave

But then the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up. And hope and history rhyme." 

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Abdulrazak Gurnah, a native of Zanzibar and Tanzania writing in English wins the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. His prose has inflections of Arabic, Swahili and German. He left Zanzibar at age 18 years after a violent uprising in 1964. In "Admiring Silence" he reflects on the experience of migrant refugees caught betwen two cultures and remaining silent about their true feelings. The prize is given at a time of migrants reaching Europe in large numbers from Africa and the Arab countries of North Africa to Germany.

The chair of the Nobel Committee Anders Olsson says about Gurnah- "He ha consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals."

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The Oxford vaccine is to be combined with a dose of Russia's Sputnik vaccine in a study to determine if this will provide improved results. The idea is to test whether two doses combined of Oxford and Sputnik vaccine can provide better protection than two doses of the same vaccine. Trials will begin by the end of 2020. This is being done under the concept of heterologous prime boost which has been adopted in  vaccination programmes against other diseases.

,Both the Russian and the Oxford vaccine use a modified version of adenovirus, a common cold virus. This is stripped of disease causing genes and given genetic instructions that make the coronavirus cause a spike in the protein when it passes it to the human cells. This then triggers an immune response.

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A chaotic return of school children to school in September 2021 in most of Europe and America, because of a lack of clear statement on the rules to be followed for mask use, social distancing, and testing. Most children are also returning to school without vaccination.  It is also happening at this time in September when the Delta variant is spreading. US president Biden's decision for vaccine mandate for 100 million or two thirds of American workers comes at this time of uncertainty in schools about the future and coronavirus variant. In the US rules are being set school district by school district, at a time when vaccines are not approved for children under 12 years. One leading school administrator in the US says "it's as chaotic as you can get."

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Meticulous preparations in France for the Olympics. This report shows Macron at the Olympics Aquatics Centre built at cost of 188 million euros. The budget in 2012 Olympics in London overspent by 200%, France will do it for about 20% overspend, says the Sports Minister. Macron says "Everything is a cause for vigilance and attention, nothing is a cause for worry or paralysis, that is my and our state of mind." When the Olympics open on July 26 this year it will be on the river Seine, with hundreds of flotilla boats. It is a unique effort as even the housing complex was built so that after the Olympics are over the housing could be reused to serve residents of a poorer neglected suburb of Paris. The river Seine is being cleaned up for swimming

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US president Biden makes these remarks at Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Biden tells this South Carolina audience that the idea of the South fighting for States Rights was presented as the South's cause in fighting the Civil War after the end of that war. This he said was a distortion of the truth as the Civil War was fought to end slavery in these United States once and for all, which for America was "the original sin." Biden says something like this is happening today as the truth is being distorted. Much of this history of slavery began by the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Charleston itself. It is here that Biden began his successful campaign for president in 2020 and was the inspiration for his effort.

 

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Food costs for eating at home have actually come down by half since 1960. Charts on the US Department of Agriculture site (USDA) show US food costs for family budgets at 13% of personal disposable income for eating at home in the Kennedy years the 1960's. This has come down by half to 5.7% in 2024. In that period eating at restaurants and outside has doubled to 5.7% of personal disposable income. When people complain about food inflation this is an important factor, eating outside also leads to less control of intake and right nutrition, consequently leads to poorer health outcomes, and a growing share of health expenditures in America's national budget. It hits both the family budget and the national budget and then comes back to hit health outcomes.

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The pandemic is bringing new hope to smaller towns and rural areas in Europe. For decades the migration from smaller towns to cities led to depopulation and decline. With the pandemic the situation is changing and offers new hope. In rural parts of Galicia, Spain, small towns are seeing some revival with enough children now in schools to keep them running. People from cities are moving to smaller towns and rural areas during the pandemic. The housing transactions in smaller towns and rural areas are up by 15% in Spain in 2020. 

In the small town municipalities in Galicia, Spain, town officials are trying to build a new sense of attachment for younger families, in a long term strategy. This WSJ report looks at this trend in Spain and in Europe.

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The difficulties posed by the absence of Xi Jinping at New Delhi G20 Summit are discussed here in the WSJ. Today September 9 the G20 leaders from 20 nations meet, absent will be Mexico's Obrador, China's Xi, and Russia's Putin. China's premier will attend the meeting. China's Xi met with India's Modi at the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg, last month. China's premier is a close associate of Xi's and his chief of staff for decades, so that any suggestion that Xi is reducing contact with other world leaders in 2023 is incorrect. Xi will meet Biden at the APEC meeting US is hosting San Francisco Nov. 12-18 that will focus on Asia Pacific nations.

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Gen. Milley is being succeeded as chairman Joint Chiefs by Air Force chief C. Q. Brown. General Mark Milley completed a 4 year term as chairman Joint Chiefs at a ceremony attended by president Biden. He told the crowd- "We do not take an oath to an individual, we take an oath to the Constitution, to the idea that is America, and we are willing to die to protect it." Milley is a Bostonian whose father a Navy Corpsman fought in World War II. He was picked by former president Trump just as former Attorney General Barr and former vice president Mike Pence were picked by Trump, yet Pence, Barr and Milley, all had serious differences with Mr. Trump. All defended democracy and the transition from one president to another in January 2021.

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Pokhara airport Nepal cost about $200 million but it does not get international flights from India which make it unsustainable. On the 10th anniversary of China's Belt and Road which has invested $1 trillion in development projects in poor countries of Asia and Africa, NYT's Wakabayashi, Sharma and Fu look at the China project that built a new international airport at Pokhara. CMAC initially submitted a bid for $305 million about twice what it would otherwise cost says this report, which was lowered to $216 million. Nepal signed a 20 year agreement with China. Only Chinese firms would be used in construction. A quarter of the loans at no interest. The rest a loan at 2% interest with repayment starting in 2026 from the Export Import Bank of China. 

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"They are not doing a goddamned thing" about climate change, says Gavin Newsom about large oil companies. "I came here on a car that uses gas. I'm not naive. Nor am I naive about their deceit and delay, and as a consequnce of the delay" in climate change action. As Gavin Newsom begins a second term as governor of California, and sets his sights on the 2028 presidential elections, he makes climate change action a key part of his platform. By 2035 a ban on the sale of gas powered cars. By 2045 no oil drilling in the state, By 2045 a mandate to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. A new law requiring major companies to self disclose their green house gas emissions. Such is the pace he is setting. He just 

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Levelling up is proving to be a false promise of the Conservatives. Where the money is coming from and how much and where it is going answers the question in America for Biden. Fair taxation is key, a strong economy is key for Biden. Fair taxation supports trillions in public investment that in turn generate private investment. In the second quarter of 2023 business investment was up 56% in Biden America, about $1 trillion with more in the pipeline.  The Conservatives fail on both and have no plan for step by step action that fits needs and opportunities in the economy as Biden has. Getting equal share of the fruits of labour to all Britons is never going to happen under trickle down economics of the Trump or Tory kind. That much is clear as daylight.

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Republican Speaker Johnson is setting Saturday April 20, 2024 votes in the US Congress for Ukraine-Israel aid in a weekend vote, as Israel and Ukraine face growing threats. Basically the bill Democrats passed in the Senate gets split up into 3 parts for that $95 billion in aid bill to be voted on individually for each part separately for Ukraine, for Israel, for Taiwan. A fourth bill would be for Ukraine aid as a loan, and a measure leading to national ban on TikTok.

"We're not the world's policeman, but we are going to do the right thing. And I think Congress is going to take an important stand."

"We have improved the process and policy. Every member of Congress gets to vote his conscience."

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John Fetterman Democrat of Pennsylvania has maintained a friendship with Katie Britt, Republican freshman from Alabama, and even turned up in Congress to show Britt's son around the House and Senate buildings. It shows how some senators in the US Congress are taking stances independent of their parties different factions and staying true to their authentic selves about what they see as right. For example Fetterman and Britt are introducing legislation requiring children to be 13 years of age to use social media platforms. Texas Senator Cornyn and other Republicans are at ease talking to John Fetterman. It is the kind of bipartisanship that is emerging in 2024 in the US. Fetterman says he is behind president Biden and is campaigning in 7 states calling Biden "a decent, good guy," and a tough guy.

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The official trailer for Oppenheimer the movie shows the giant ball of fire it shows a grim looking scientist but does not show the the effects of the war on civilians as was shown just 8 months back in May 2023 by premier Kishida of Japan and the organizers of the G7 summit in Hiroshima at the exhibition in Hiroshima. The new exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial was visited by G7 leaders. It shows the human beings that died on that day, the survivors including children, the lives they lived, what they were doing at that moment on August 6, 1945. NHK documentary taking us through each exhibit in a walk through the exhibition was a profoundly moving experience. Yet few in the US may have seen it, and fewer even know it even exists.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi gives his radio broadcast Mann Ki Baat -Conversation from My Mind- for June 2024, returning from the months long general election. The arrival of the monsoon rains gives Modi an opportunity to showcase umbrellas made by small industry in Kerala, on the southeast coastline of India. To showcase Indian products is a regular aspect of the radio show. Here Modi shows that snow peas from Pulwama, Kashmir are now going to London, England. Araku coffee gives employment to 150,000 tribal people in Andhra Pradesh. It is becoming known in Europe. Modi extols the images of hundreds of thousands of people doing yoga near the Nile river and on the Red Sea coastline in Egypt, and Yoga day sessions in Kashmir and in Saudi Arabia. International Yoga Day was an opportunity to do yoga in Srinagar, Kashmir.

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Britain turns to Labour as the lead for Labour party increases to 27 points after Sunak announces the general election will be held on July 4, 2024. What would a Starmer administration look like and how will it meet the expectations of Britain for generational change after the failure of Brexit, and 14 years of austerity policies that failed to invest in Britain and failed to deliver on infrastructure and housing? These are questions not easily answered as Britain's finances are left in a bad state by the Tories for Labour. Starmer is taking the right approach to first get a grasp of the tremendous challenges facing Labour in this situation. It was easy for Boris Johnson and the Tories to make the promises that were never kept and left the British people in the lurch.

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Most of Kennedy's supporters who were Democrat leaning have gone back to the Democratic party and Harris. Only the ones remaining are likely to support Trump. Some of them are vaccine sceptics, the one issue on which Kennedy initially opposed Biden as he was against the vaccination campaign that Biden implemented to get America back on to recovery and on its feet again. The former president Trump also made light of the vaccination campaign and in doing so weakened the response to the Covid pandemic that destroyed 1 million American families. Only the vaccination campaign with full government support and educational effort on the importance of getting vaccinated made it possible for America to recover by 2021.  Hear this America- more lives could have been lost, million more without an effective vaccination campaign.

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The great university of ancient Buddhist India is located at Rajgir, Bihar. Nalanda University was built in 5th century AD and was the largest center of Buddhist learning for all of Asia from India, China, Vietnam to Korea and Japan. It's new campus was opened by PM Modi on June 19, 2024. Near it is the Mahavihara Budhhist temple renovated from ruins at a UNESCO heritage site. Excavations were done in the British period by the 1860's bringing to light the ruins of Nalanda, the wonder that was Buddhist India. Buddha attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar and his last years were spent at Kusinagar in Bihar, all in the vicinity of Nalanda University, a center of ancient learning that is older than all European Universities, and is only now becoming known throughout the world.

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Action taken by president Biden to protect pensions of 10.1 million workers. Biden talks to workers in Philly, about "the most significant investment of pension security for union workers and retirees in over 50 years." Biden signed the Butch Lewis Act protecting pensions of workers on March 20, 2021. A worker's spouse who fought this battle for pension rights over 10 years says Biden restored the dignity of workers, that he walked the walk and talked the talk.

"I would always the remember the speech of John F. Kennedy, when I was a young girl" on the dignity of workers. She was awarded the Citizen medal of Freedom by president Joe Biden for her efforts to protect worker pensions endangered by reckless actions on Wall Street.

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Full transcript of Kamala Harris Interview on MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle on September 25, 2024, the same day when she outlined her Economic Plan for the next 4 years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is where the US steel industry was built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Harris outlined a plan that would help rebuild American industry including the steel industry and other key industries of the future, in Chips and Science, in a partnership of the government with the private sector to compete with China and the European Union. 

She looked back to the ambition and vision of another era and to bring it back today-the Transcontinental Railroad under Lincoln, the Interstate Highway System under Eisenhower, the Space Endeavor under John F. Kennedy.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will lead US negotiating team in US- Japan  talks for Liberation Day Tariffs April 2, 2025 Negotiations.

"Japan remains among America’s closest allies, and I look forward to our upcoming productive engagement regarding tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, currency issues, and government subsidies.” 

DJT says

"Countries from all over the world are talking to us. Tough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese prime minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate. They have treated US very poorly on trade. The don't take our cars but we take MILLIONS of them. It all has to change but especially with CHINA.

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Russia invades Ukraine on multiple fronts, across Belarus, across its western border with Ukraine, on the pre dawn hours of February 24, 2022. Russian foreign minister Lavrov says "tense and detailed discussions" with US and NATO are still taking place. In talks with the US, president Putin of Russia had demanded that Ukraine commit to not joining NATO. The US insisted that this was upto Ukraine and that the territorial integrity of Ukraine had to be respected. Interventions by Macron of France and other leaders failed to bring the two sides closer. The US and Europe with a reluctant Germany looked at sanctions as a deterrent. This proved to be wrong. Mr. Putin has a passionate view of Ukraine and Kviv's historical role in the formation of the Russian state, evident in his televised address only 48 hours before the actual invasion. Ukraine has shifted between Poland and the Baltic states, Germany on one side and Russia on the other in its thousand year old history. The shift away from Bolsheviks and Communists under the Soviet Union after 1990 changed the relationship of Ukraine with its neighbors once again as Ukraine became closer to Poland and the Baltics, and Germany. Germany remains reluctant to revert to the relationship with Russia that led to 2 World Wars. During the leadership of Willy Brandt and successive German SPD leaders, as well as with Konrad Adenauer and CDU leaders, the goal was to build a good relationship with Russia. Merkel of the CDU went as far as accepting dependence on Russia for 40% of its gas supplies, after shifted out of nuclear energy and supporting a new Nordstream undersea pipeline for gas supplies.  The early reaction on DW.com and German television was one of shock as no one really expected that this would lead to a full scale invasion. Scholz of the SPD the new chancellor in 2022 was not active in forging anew consensus allowing NATO's Stoltenberg who is a former Norwegian prime minister 2005-2013 to frame the response of Europe. Norway's role in European security was marginal for most of the twentieth century. Other events had detracted from bringing active German and American participation in coming up with a framework of dialogue to address concerns of both sides and still build a common ground for peace- Afghanistan, the pandemic in its third year, China's deteriorating one sided trade relationship with America that hurt American workers and manufacturing. As a result China and Germany were essentially absent in building the framework for peace. Afghanistan hasty withdrawal made it harder for president Biden to come up with new approaches to build a common framework. President Macron made some faltering efforts on the fringes even as president Putin focused on the US response and its intentions with NATO on European soil, and declared that it was directly US Russia negotiations that needed to work. With this the whole framework of relations since the presidency of Reagan and the relations with Russia and China come to a close. And a new framework needs to be constructed that draws in India already or soon to be the most populous nation in the world, in an effort to build an enduring new framework. The voices of Eastern Europe need to be heard, yet balanced with the voices from India, China, Germany, Russia, and other countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa that are affected by world events. ...

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Zweig, Light and Pleven reflect on the experience of the last 5 years in the stock market. Investors who went through severe anxiety for higher investment allocation in stocks in 2009 now feel the opposite for low investment allocation in stocks. What does one make of this, and what have we learned, is the question posed. One lesson is that investors should be wary of relying too much on predictions. At one point predictions of Goldman Sachs and other bank economists was for the S&P at 1250 at the end of 2012, when it was 1421 in April 2012. The eurozone crisis and the sluggish U.S. job growth, debt overhang, were major factors in their assessment. The eurozone recovered faster than expected and the Iranian nuclear crisis risks were reduced through negotiations. QE 1, QE 2, QE 3 by the U.S. Fed under Bernanke provided support to the market. Banks recovered faster than expected with help from the Fed. Another lesson is that this can happen with higher volatility, 900 point drops occured in May 2010 and there were drops in April 2012 and other dates. Zweig gives April 2011 as a date for the start of a 5 month bear market, citing Oct 4, 2011 as another date with the market dropping 21% from the April 2011 peak. Another lesson is that performance statistics can play tricks, a month or a year can make a big difference. If 2013 is not included the statistics look very different, if 5 years go back to Feb 2009 when there was a 11% decline instead of March 2009 when there was a 9% improvement the numbers change quite a bit. Another lesson is that macroeconomic news played a major part in the story of the stock market in 2009-2014 and continues today, with continuing support and vigilance from the U.S. Fed and the ECB. The bad news from the eurozone throughout 2011 and into 2012, and sluggish job markets in the U.S., took a positive turn in 2013. The U.S economy is improving and the eurozone is returning to growth gradually in 2014. Because of different timing in their recovery P/E ratios are higher in the U.S., than in Europe....