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Plans to increase VW production in China by 70% for 2018 and introduce a small budget car designed for the Chinese market at a price range of 6000-8000 euros. A depressed European market with VW sales down 8% in Europe in the first 2 months of 2013, means a vigorous push in China, India, Russia, America and Southeast Asia. The new budget car would be modeled on Renault's Dacia. VW will build 10 plants outside Europe, 7 in China. Additional plants will increase capacity in China to 4 million vehicles from the current 2.3 million in March 2013.

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The inability to convince farmers to trade land for a fair settlement in money, new homes, schools and other benefits and to make this a win-win proposiion between farmers and companies is holding up abut $98 billion in investments in steel plants and other plants. A bill in Parliament would require companies to negotiate directly with farmers and reach a settlement that is good for farmers to resolve what is increasingly a serious problem. It is holding up an industrial revolution and the creation of manufacturing industry in India to provide the kinds of jobs that are needed badly.

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Dvid Attenborough, the naturalist and broadcaster, says he has campaign for years against plastic pollution and no one paid attention. Now he says people are fed up with politics of Brexit and are showing great interest in fighting single use plastic. He says the people in the U.S. are acting even though the president Mr. Trump has taken action for withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement. He sees things can change quickly if there is a new president and policy changes. 

He is heartened by the way people have received the movie Blue Planet 2 and the action politicians and ordinary people are taking. He thanks primary school teachers for all the work they are doing and the enthusiasm shown.

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Aeroflot is listed on the London stock exchange. It is going through a makeover by ordering Boeing and Airbus planes to become profitable, because the older Russian made Tu-154 planes were costly to operate with higher fuel consumption. The Sukhoi Superjets are being built in partnership with Boeing. Kramer says the aircraft industry operates on long timelines so that the lack of local aircraft comparable to Embraer of Brazil and Bombardier of Canada is more a reflection of the situation in the 1990's than of today. Newer aircraft are planned for the next decade for smaller midrange planes. In the meantime Aeroflot is selling all of its Tupolev aircraft and plans to layoff 6000 workers during the transition to profitability. Till 2009 Aeroflot was run by Yeltsin's son-in-law, as were many other companies managed by Yeltsin's inner circle during that period. Following changes made by Putin in 2009, a new CEO was appointed to better manage the transition of the airline into a national and global carrier....

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Australian PM Anthony Albanese sets May 3, 2025 for Australian elections. Labor party is in a tight race with Sutton's Liberal party coalition. Sutton proposes cuts in bureaucracy, and efforts to reduce cost of living pressures in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, cut immigration and replace coal powered plants with small nuclear reactors.

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Nickel cadmium batteries - this year 2008 the European Union is banning the sale of all nickel cadmium batteries. Question is why is the US not banning them. And why are companies like Energizer, Duracell, P&G, Mattel, Toys R Us and Walmart still buying them? Why is Panasonic making them? A toy costs $1.50 less to make using nickel cadmium batteries. Are parents aware of what it does to workers making them? Are plants safe in developing countries especially in corruption prone coercive environments like the one in factories in China? Some of the owners of such factories are in Hong Kong, Hong Kong based companies, are they aware enough of the risks and the ethics of doing is? This story is of an engineer who was exposed to factory conditions in a company GP that was supposed to be a good company to work for, and few knew about the effects of cadmium in the year 1995 when she joined. The Panasonic factory is in Wuxi which is not in some remote part of China. And note this about 10% of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium according to China's own State Environmental Protection Agency, and the metals are entering China's food supply. 12 studies have shown unsafe level of cadmium in fruits and vegetables. Is this a necessary price of industrialization or is it possible to find a way thats better- a challenge for countries like India. Can there be better protection of workers and still have industrialization? Wouldn't it make sense that a motivated well treated work force will perform better in better working conditions. Aren't there costs involved for workers and owners of such plants. Owners also bear costs, bad press, medical payments, workers leave and good workers are hard to find in the wave of bad publicity and health risks, customers in the west refuse to buy the product, the company's brand name is tarnished forever, as would happen for GP in this case. The coercive patterns of using police to suppress publicity for a Hong Kong Company shows owners in Hong Kong have the same disregard for worker rights, even when living in an area that one hears talk about democratic rights. See the link to chemical spills contaminating a river in China also by a Hong Kong based company. ...

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Boeing's manufacturing plant in S. Carolina is critical to the compay's future. That facility incorporates state of the art technology and everything Boeing has learned about making planes.

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As airlines charge for food they are getting more feedback from customers and they are collecting this feedback to learn what customers want and what kinds of food to carry. Delta and Midwest and US Airways are lloking at different food options that are healthier and liked by customers. Delta and Midwest have hired Chefs from restaurants to come up with better nutritional and flavorful dishes that will appeal to customers. Customers who take longer flights or who change planes with very little time to get food in the stopover time are dependent on getting something good from the airline food or staying hungry. These travellers are willing to pay more for better food. The whole shift to having customers pay for food may result in better food choice and menus which are healthier and flavorful. Certain kinds of foods don not hold up in an airplane environment and chefs are experimenting with menus and choices that will be best suited for this. One traveller faulted American for serving a huge cookie thats like a half pound size. It shows how little thinking goes on in airline offices about the food thats served. Already US airlines are falling behind in getting newer planes and some airlines are usoing really old planes that aren't fun to travel in now add the discomfort from badly thought out or not thought out at all food and imagine the onboard experience. see th link to how US airlines are falling behind in getting new planes and the links to all the flight delay especially into New York....

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The Obama Center in Jackson Park, Chicago, is a 20 acre complex opening on June 19, 2026, built by Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The Obamas chose land that was once use for the World Columbian Exposition World Fair. Using public space was controversial, made up for by a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, a basketball court and playgrounds. The most controversial part is the Obamalisk (obelisk type) tower which is as dour as one can get. One of Obama's speeches with letters on the tower top the architect says is not legible, but thats just fine he says, as if it is empty rhetoric. Or as Kennicott says just rhetoric, ornament, did all those words 17 years back really matter or were they merely oratorical good vibes. So much has happened since then that Kennicott rightly looks at the new Obama Tower with skepticism of what Obama ever accomplished. In healthcare the Obamacare plan is now not working or being replaced. Obama continued the wars Bush started, were they really that different.  At every turn from the entry there are questions like this. At the entry itself with the Declaration of Independence there is a display of unequal treatment, questioning the very experiment of Jefferson, Washington, by placing their formative ideas for a new society that had already been born in Britain with the abolition of slavery in 1772 with Somerset vs Stewart. Ben Franklin forming the Abolition of Slavery Society in Pennsylvania as early as 1775 and becoming its president in 1787. None of the founders get any credit for envisioning a different society, than they had to live in, and which even Abe Lincoln struggled with from 1850's till the Emancipation as way to win the Civil War. The entry to the Smithsonian has done the same. Yet it is this same document the Declaration which says "All men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with some inalienable rights, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"  that has inspired  and given new hope to hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians, Africans, and other Asians by 1900 and 1950, the vast majority of people on the planet. Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post asks the questions over and over in this report-  was America sleeping when it should have been alert? Lighthizer and Jamieson says this on this page that 5 million jobs were lost, economic growth was down by 1% to 2% instead of 3% of the period 1960-2000, and $20 trillion in America's wealth transferred overseas by the combination of Bush-Obama in the 2000-2020 period, manufacturing decimated, wages stagnant, America's working class communities destroyed, all the while this high minded rhetoric went on. As Kennicott says the period of rhetoric and oratory is gone, in the past, the presidency merely decades of decadence of America's elites as Marco Rubio says in a new book. ...

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Patti Pope, CEO of Consumers Energy, a Michigan power company serving 7 million consumers, is moving to greener sources for energy. Consumers Energy retired 7 coal fired power plants and is shifting to solar farms, wind farms for energy, smart thermostats and meters, new infrastructure, taking advantage of the lower costs of renewable energy.

It plans to invest $25 billion over the next 10 years, including to add 6 gigawatts of solar power requiring 59 square miles of solar panels in its service area. Included are plans to help customers to produce and manage their own power as more users install solar panels in homes.

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Marcellus Shale natural gas prices are monthly average of $2.80 per million BTU compared to benchmark U.S. prices for natural gas of $3.61 in Nov. 2013. The low prices of natural gas are leading to closing of more coal powered plants in the Pennsylvania, and W. Virgina, where a glut of natural gas is developing with few pipelines in the region. For the U.S. coal lost market share down to 37% in 2012 from about 50% of the electricity generated in the U.S. Over 100 coal burning generators were closed in the U.S. since 2011 because of lower natural gas prices and the federal government's stricter pollution limits for power plants.

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Fairclough describes the experience of Poland inside the EU, but with its own currency, the zloty. Poland's per capita GDP measured by purchasing power was half the EU average in 2006, it is about two thirds in 2011. Growth is expected at 4% for 2011. Poland manufactures goods using lower to medium technological inputs, such as furniture, shoes, and processed foods. The zloty has declined in value by 25% since 2008. This gives Poland a competitive edge in exports. Additonal factors are cited by one manufacturer of furniture, Forte Manufacturing, as helping it remain competitive- ability to close one of five plants, investing in improved machinery to increase productivity, quality and just-in-time deliveries, computer guided machinery, and ability to run his plants on weekends. Central bank governor, Mr. Belka, points to competitiveness as a critical factor for comfort in the eurozone. Limiting budget deficits to 3% of GDP, and the Maastricht criteria isn't all it takes. Also needed is modernizing and improving the economy, and modernizing the banking sector, says Belka. Poland does not have the debt problems of some eurozone countries because of a constitutional limit on government borrowing and deficits. Belka says Poland benefits from having its own monetary policy, ability to adjust interest rates, the zloty able to depreciate against the euro, and not having to share in cost of bailouts. There is considerable opposition in neighboring Slovakia for having to bear the cost of bailouts. Recent surveys show declining support for adopting the euro in Poland- a Sept 2011 poll showed support at 29% compared to 38% in mid-2010, opposition increased from 47% to 53%, in a poll conducted by the Polish Finance Ministry. Risks for Poland are that 75% of the country's banking assets are owned by foreign financial firms, and the potential for a spread of the eurozone slowdown with lower demand. ...

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Problems facing the energy industry in India include lack of coal supplies to use all of the existing electricity generation plants. Lack of investment and modernization in the coal industry is holding back tapping of large coal reserves. India is expected to see a huge surge in energy demand in the next twenty years, with the International Energy Agency saying India will need $1.6 trillion in investment in power generation, transmission and distribution through 2035, and $550 million investment in coal, oil and gas sectors.

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Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai is moving quickly to address higher costs for workers at its manufacturing sites in coastal regions of China. After extensive media coverage of conditions at Foxconn factories, a number of suicides, and Chinese government policy that encouraged higher wages for workers in foriegn owned plants, Foxconn has moved to sharply increase wages at its plants. By the end of 2011 production in cities in the interior of China- Chengdu, Chongqing, and Wuhan, where costs are one third less- will be 25% of production, up from 10% in 2010. By 2012, this will be up to 50% of Foxconn's production, according to Yuanta Securities of Taipei. Hon Hai is lowering dividends to finance the shift. Fourth quarter 2010 earnings of Hon Hai were $742 million, down 26% over the prior year, even though revenues went up by 56% to $33.1 billon- reflecting the higher costs. Hon Hai's stock is down 20% in the past year on the Taipei stock exchange. Other locations being considered by Hon Hai are Brazil, Turkey and Slovakia. Brazil's President Dilma Roussef, said that Foxconn is considering a $12 billion plan for Brazil. Hon Hai is the only manufacturer of Apple iPads and one of two manufacturers of the iPhone....

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Huaneng Power China's largest power utility company announced that electric power generation went up by 40% in the 1st quarter of 2010. Datang International Power said its electric power output was up by 33%. Continual power plant construction has led to China building 80% of the new generating capacity in recent years. Over the next 10 years China plans to spend $150 billion or so to increase capacity nine fold- it already has 21 nuclear plants being built. Much of the nuclear plant building knowhow is being acquired along the way. The Lingao plant in Guangdong which was started in 2005 and will be completed this year, uses 50% local content. In the next unit to be finished in 2011 it will reach 70%, and by 2012 China expects to reach 100%, and gain the ability to export its knowhow.

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The first flight on Mars will happen in April 2021 with the Ingenuity helicopter flying about one storey high for 60 seconds. It is part of the Perseverance mission rover that has already landed on the planet Mars. This video in WSJ shows how the Ingenuity helicopter was developed by NASA using a contractor Aeroenvironment which specializes in unmanned flight vehicles. The development process took 7 years and testing was done at the JPL Labs. JPL Labs has a vacuum space that can be filled with CO2 similar to atmosphere on MARS. 

Engineers doing the work for the helicopter say flight on MARS is challenging because of the thinner air. This will be a first in planetary flight compared to Wright Brothers first 120 second flight.

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Heidi Vogt provides this exceptional account on the U.S. and international efort to build Liberia's healthcare system from scratch. Years of civil war till 2003 and the shortage of funds mean that even basic equipment such as X ray machines and blood testing equipment are lacking in Liberian hospitals. Even with a effort that includes the U.S. Army and Air Force planes, a 25 bed hospital for healthcare workers using tents will take till early November to be operational. Showing that the response is sorely inadequate here in Liberia leading to the spread of Ebola to Europe and the U.S. by December at the current pace. Liberia's head of Ebola control says the international community has failed Liberia with its inadequate response. For the U.S. and Europe an inadequate response creates new dangers as the public has lost confidence in government response.

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One day in 1964 Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose decided that an impossible object could actually exist - a black hole in the galaxy after a planet collapses.Einstein's theory of relativity had predicted that when stars collapse they could form infinitely dense points of matter that no light would be allowed to escape. The formation of black holes supports Einstein's Theory of Relativity says the Nobel Prize Committee. Penrose is 89 and says it is good to get the Nobel Prize when one is good and old. Stephen Hawking a younger physicist passed away and was not included in the prize after supporting Penrose's work. Two astronomers in the U.S. at UCLA, Los Angeles, get a quarter of the prize for their work detecting black holes in the sky and providing evidence of a super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Pennrose says "If you have got grand ambitions its bad to get a Nobel Prize too early, it gets in the way of your science." ...

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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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A sharp drop of over 6 points. 57.9 in March 2025 from 64.7 in Feb. the University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment shows the effects of the uncertainty generated in tackling fentanyl flows by imposing tariffs on CMC countries Canada, Mexico and China. And the result of the uncertainty from reciprocal tariffs imposed to correct the loss of manufacturing in the US as a result of unfair trade by China, EU, Canada and Mexico. Some of this comes from the unfair coverage in the press and internet that these tariffs are economic tariffs to gain advantage when they are designed to correct huge trade imbalances that other countries had no incentive to correct when previous administrations, corporations and America's Ivy League economists- stuck to textbook economics divorced from reality- turned their back on the workers and communities in the Nation whose communities were destroyed with the loss of factories and plants shipped overseas. ...

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The amazing thing about Katherine was that with only a pencil and a slide rule she could calculate the precise trajectories for Apollo 11 to land on the moon in 1969. She could do so much of the math in her head that determined the success of missions to the moon and other planets.  Another amazing thing is that even though the white women worked separate from the white men and the black women worked separately, there was mutual respect. As Katherine puts it NASA was a very professional organization and there was not the time to think what color I was. She said she never had a feeling of inferiority, never, she thought of herself as good as anybody else, and not any better. NASA has its computational facility named after her. She also had a famous line- calling her group of women mathematicians at NASA "computers in skirts." A movie "Hidden Figures" recalls this time and the women at NASA, America's space program agency. ...

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Analysts are predicting problems for Honda's plants in China stemming from wage increases. The wages of 500,000 yen per year for a worker in Honda's Chinese plants are double what is paid for a factory worker in India or 33% higher than in Thailand. For the Guangzhou plant to meet domestic demand it would have to have a 50-50 joint venture with a Chinese company, and this would mean getting government approval. For now that plant will remain an export hub. The entire plant -out of 4 Honda has in China- is committed to exporting the Jazz compact to Europe with production of 50,000 vehicles a year. Honda now owns 65% of the plant.

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Entergy is one of the largest energy companies. Its CEO for nine years, Wayne Leonard, talks to Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal. Its the No.2 generator of nuclear power in the USA, and uses coal for only 7% of its energy. He has made his name in nuclear energy, and here he talks about the government's cap and trade program and nuclear energy. He points to today's technology as far superior to the technology that was used in the Failed Three Mile plant, that put back nuclear energy plants in the USA for decades. He believes that price signals are needed for CO2, and the cap and trade program helps to do this, so he supports the cap and trade program. He admits that self interest colors perception of Entergy, compared to coal using utility producers like Duke Energy and American Electric Power. With coal only 7% in its portfolio of plants, and big in nuclear energy, it stands to gains from a cap and trade program, whereby Congress will set a ceiling on emissions, then allows businesses to sell any of its extra allowances that stand for the right to make emissions. And in doing so creating the largest commodity market, in carbon backed securiites. He and the government agree on the point that the allowances should be auctioned off, rather than given away as the companies with many coal plants believe. And the billions in new revenue from these allowances would be returned to the public. He understands that the view of companies like Duke and AEP, that use coal and would have to increase rates, and face the anger of ratepayers as they pay more for the allowances. He also thinks the bill should be written with a fine pen, so that if Congress mandates 20% of energy come from renewables. That it should specify replacing coal not natural gas as what this replaces, to get rid of the most polluting sources. He points to the real need for looking at things globally, as doing things locally, even to show responsible leadership in the world community, can lead to no progress in the global picture. The reason is that China is going ahead with the rapid construction of conventional coal plants. It has surpassed USA coal capacity, and is on track to double it sometime in the next decade. If the USA closed down every single coal plant, and all the time new coal plants are going up in China and India, then we would have ruined our economy, and it was'nt making much difference globally. And he says, if we just say lets lead and people will follow us, "its silly", because China isn't going to follow us, especially when they have $2 trillion invested in their coal plants, and they still aren't feeding feeding all their people. So how to deal with this? Develop the new technology for carbon capture for existing conventional coal plants, and help the Chinese with retrofit technology to curb emissions in a realistic manner. At this time most current funding is devoted to technology for second generation systems, that are still 10-20 years away....

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A riverside project on the banks of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad gives the city of 10 million a new look. The project is similar to ones on the Thames in London and Seine in Paris bringing new park space and areas for of public space for a rapidly growing city. Guardian Cities is looking at 15 new cities with population growing to exceed 10 million by 2035- from Tehran, Iran, to Luanda, Mozambique, Hyderabad, India, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Surat, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Chengdu, China, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The way this was done was to develop a self financing model. This was the work of architect Bimal Patel who proposed selling 14% of riverfront land of 200 hectares to recover costs. The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation spent 161 million dollars to build new housing for 11,000 displaced families who worked in squatter type housing on the riverbanks as domestic workers, clothes washers. The riverbed had become for decades a dumping ground for city waste. The goals were to provide access for public to the river front and clean up the water with water treatment plants. Bimal Patel calls the project one of three generations as  will take another three years for new water treatment plants. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation bears the cost of about $220 million. The famous Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi lies along this riverfront and it gives this sacred space in India's history, the home of Mahatma Gandhi for many years in the struggle for independence, a healthier, brightened space along the river. ...

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Norman Borlaug who achieved what seems impossible, saving hundreds of millions of lives through disease resistant wheat and rice plants that he developed to double the yield in Mexico, India, Pakistan and other countries.