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One of Boeing's major customers airline Norwegian Air has subsidiaries in Denmark and Sweden that have gone bankrupt. Boeing has 92 undelivered orders for 737 Maxs and 2 787 Dreamliner aircraft waiting to be taken to Scandinavia. Additional 219 orders from leasing companies for aircraft were cancelled. In addition airlines such as Emirates are renegotiating price of 787 aircraft orders. Boring's commercial aircraft division is using up $4 billion a month just to keep production and suppliers running. It has used up half of a $14 billion credit line and has $15 billion in cash.The 737 Max crashes and failures cost an additional $18.7 billion in costs. 2019 ended with $27 billion in debt. Boeing has few options- the Trump administration is likely to support a government guarantee because Boeing is one of America's best companies and makes up 1% of U.S. GDP. Boeing assembly lines for models 747, 767, and 777 are going into full production on April 21. 787 line will open April 23 and run at full capacity by April 26. ...

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The deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Jenny Harries, asks people in Britain to limit themselves to what is sensible and not what is possible, to use common sense, so that reopening works. The Housing Secretary, Mr. Jenrick says the room for maneouvre is limited with the reproduction R ratio for Britain at somewhere between 0.7 and 0.9. There is also a lag period for data making it so that the current situation is not known. Germany's after reopening is now estimated by Robert Koch Institute at 1.14 so that there is some shift to be expected as the opening happens, the idea being to limit this to around the 1.0 figure. Britain reopens cautiously and in  in a patchy way with primary schools reopened, and people from different households allowed to meet in groups of six as long as they stay 2 metres apart. Outdoor markets and car showrooms are also reopening. Also stated is the need to be sensitive to geography as areas such as London which were hit early and with severity are now better off than areas in the north of England. ...

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With China's economy contracting China is now reviving the sidewalk trade with hawker stalls, food trucks, and other types of sidewalk retailers. Chinese premier Li Keqiang says small entrepreneurs at the micro level are as important as larger business to keep unemployment low. Li says these small traders are as important "as vital to China as bigger and more high end businesses." He is now promoting these smaller business enterprises and individual business owners saying "we will support you," and praising food stalls for their contributions in the past before China industrialized to "human culinary culture."  Only when the economy took off and large companies emerged were these small businesses forgotten. This reverses the Communist party's instructions to close street vendors. Li says that in Chengdu, population 14 million, 100,000 jobs were created in a few weeks by allowing 36,000 street vendors back on the streets.  In fact the informal economy plays a big role in India and other countries in Asia and Latin America, Africa. ...

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Most questions about the vaccines from Oxford, Pfizer and Moderna are answered in this Q&A in The Times.  The Oxford vaccine is the only vaccine that is being provided at cost to the public at a cost of 4 pounds, Pfizer using German technology at 15 pounds and Moderna from Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 28 pounds. The Oxford vaccine can be stored in a fridge, the others use mRNA technology of messenger RNA which requires ultra low temperature storage. Astra Zeneca could have handled the trials and methodology for results in a better way. As the two trials one that produced results of 62% and the other results of 90% cannot be combined to give results of 70% but are two distinct and separate trials. However too much emphasis has been placed on the vaccine, as other prevention measures remain important for 2021. Other vaccines are being developed in Britain with new technology and in India by ICMR which are in trials stage and about which not enough is known. The Russian and Chinese vaccines have not released detailed data limiting their use around the world. ...

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Women feel overwhelmed with housework during the pandemic. About 80% of women feel responsible for house work compared to 28% of men, according to a NYU and U Penn study. On average women do one and half times the house chores compared to men. This difference is wider when looking at households where men do very little of the housework. The author of "Fair Play" a book about dividing housework says women are burned out, stressed and full of rage about the way household chores are handled. The pandemic has seen a further deterioration in the amount of time men spend doing household chores, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, creating a situation of tension. As men have worked from home during the pandemic the once invisible labor of women is now in plain sight. For women who have quit their jobs and looking for a way to get back to work there is an additional element of frustration. WSJ looks at ways in which men can make the changes to create a healthier situation at home, and reduce the tension. ...

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Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia's leader for less than 2 years, is a courageous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, says the Guardian. He has accomplished much in a short time with the peace arrangements with Eritrea, ending a 20 year old war, and opening up dialogue and discussion in the country by lifting bans on opposition groups. Half of the cabinet is female, and the head of the election commission an exiled dissident.  Yet the Guardian is cautiously optimistic because the change is sudden and dramatic, it needs to be consolidated for the long term. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front appointed him as leader to make these changes. What the Nobel Prize COmmittee has done is to recognize the hope that this brings to Africa, torn as it has been by recurring wars and ethnic conflicts for  way too long after the scars of colonialism. Can the positive changes in Asia provide new inspiration to Africa that this can be overcome and modernization, improvement in the lives of people happen as everyone each on his own account takes personal responsibility.   ...

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The president of the European Parliament and head of the socialist bloc in the parliament, Martin Schulz, is now headed for a comeback after losing the election to Merkel and the CDU. He will be the new Foreign Minister of Germany in a coalition agreement between the CDU of Merkel and the SPD party. After losing the election- even though polls showed him at 50% support in Feb. 2017- Schulz ruled out another coalition with Merkel's CDU which appeared to drain the SPD of energy and identity.  With the need to avoid fresh elections Schulz agreed to Merkel's overtures. He has a passion for football, and it played a part in his turning to alcoholism and missing out on graduating from high school. Yet he rebounded, running a bookstore with his sister- books were an elixir for Schulz- and becoming mayor of a small town Wurselen near Aachen in western Germany. His start in European politics came with a win for European parliament seat in 1994, rising to be president.   ...

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This piece in the Hindusthan Times reminds us that it is not failure or success that determine our future and the quality of our life, but the way we respond. It takes the lines from Rudyard Kipling about both being impostors- "if you can meet triumph and disaster,  and treat both impostors just the same..." Experts say the important thing in both success and failure is to understand what one did wrong, and take corrective action. Some go as far as to say failure is an event, and it ended yesterday. This is the way athletes and other people who overcome challenges that we read about have approached a failure or disaster. Some overcome physical handicaps with such grit that we find our failure to be tiny by comparison. Take for instance an athlete with burns on his feet from a fire, who is told he can never walk again, and he comes back to win an Olympics gold medal in running. This is a true story from the 1936 Olympics of Glenn Cunningham who won the 1500 metres gold medal. ...

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South Korea with 2069 hours year has the longest working hours of any developed country, according to the OECD,  and only Mexico exceeds this of all countries. In an effort to increase productivity and boost a dropping birthrate the National Assembly in South Korea reduced the maximum number of working hours from 68 hours a week to 52 hours- starting July 2018 and  initially for large companies. In Japan there is actually a word for working to death called "karoshi." The period of rapid industrialization in the fifties and sixties was a period of long working hours for most Japanese men. Today the working hours have dropped to average of 1713 a year. Africa shows the greatest number of countries in which one third of the labor force works more than 48 hours per week. Asia is the region with the longest working hours with 30% of the countries with thresholds of 60 hours or more.The U.S. is one of the countries where there is no limit- most other developed countries in Europe consider work-life balance important and have maximum limits without sacrificing productivity. ...

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India's broadband prices have dropped to the point where they are the lowest in the world. A UK comparison site shows 1 gigabyte of mobile data  costs $0.26 in India compare to $12.37 in the U.S. and $6.66 in the UK, and globally about $8.53.  Reliance Jio the company which dropped prices starting in 2016, says it is using voice and data on a spectrum known only for data use. Reliance Jio is using only one fifth of its capacity. and says is it is making more revenue per user than competitors. Competitors including Airtel and Vodafone have lowered prices reducing margins of as high as 30 percent to being barely profitable. Reliance Jio gives away its 4G feature phone JioPhone against refundable security deposit of $21, with plans of $1 a month. The handset supports Wifi and WhatsApp. India ha 1.17 mobile subscriptions, 55% in urban areas. Most broadband use now comes from Jio. Mobile data consumption has jumped in India in 2 years to more than 10GB per user per month, which is close to that in the U.S.    ...

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The story of how Jurgen Klopp took Liverpool to the Champions League and Premier League titles in 2020. For all the illusion that the titles were a procession Liverpool started out with problematic losses to Dortmund, Seville, Napoli. It was the hard work and rigorous practice, self discipline, and renewal, the always focussing on the next step and how to do better regardless of how things look- this has helped Klopp get the team to where it is in world soccer. Continuous improvement setting your own bar of what it is to be to do the work right. In a small town overlooking Lake Geneva soccer practice takes place every day at 7 am, 11 am, 5 pm, in preseason. No distractions, no commercial obligations. Only the coach, players, and staff. Steudtner, German surfer invited by Klopp helped the team cool down in training by focussing underwater on happier places, taking a lot of the stress off the minds of the players. Hold for 30, 40, 60 seconds. Soon everyone could do it. The aim to cool down each player's mindset. A form of meditation. ...

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Germany's furlough scheme is called Kurzarbeit. About 10.1 million workers are signed up for the scheme with about 5.6 million actually using it because they are working shorter hours than normal. Under the scheme about 60% of workers earnings are normally replaced with government aid with contributions from companies. For the pandemic the German government increased benefits to cover 70%-80% of lost earnings if a worker has lost over 50% of working hours. It cost about 9 billion euros and payments are made by the German Employment Agency. This scheme is being extended from the initial 12 month period to 24 months. A similar scheme in Britain that ends in October covered 80% of earnings for workers lost earnings up to 2500 pounds a month, at a cost of 35 million pounds up to August for 9.5 million employees at the peak. The British scheme is not being renewed. The U.S. has its own program of payments and unemployment insurance, yet unemployment is higher in the U.S. In Germany it was 6.3% in July, a moderate increase.  ...

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The 2008 bailouts helped the very banks and financial institutions that caused the financial crisis through the issuance of bad mortgages. The stock market and economy recovered leaving workers behind who did not benefit and were hurt financially, causing a deep resentment among Americans that led to protest movements. This resulted in the the remaking of both political parties, with Mr. Trump remaking the Republican party, and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren remaking the Democratic Party, in a sharp shift to protect American workers and American business. A lot has changed since then.The legislation passed in Congress for a $2 trillion aid package is driven by a desire to protect working families first. Companies that get loans are expected to avoid layoffs. The focus is entirely on preserving jobs in American industry and small business. A separate allocation is made for unemployment insurance and direct payment to households so that the safety net is secured. This may not prove enough, so that there is a vigilant attitude in Congress to ensure that workers and working families needs are met in the coming year and years. ...

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The injection of billions of gallons of salt water from shale oil producers in Texas into the ground contaminating ground water. Salt water and other kinds of waste water are byproducts of shale oil production at the rate of 6 wastewater gallons for 1 gallon of shale oil produced. This is becoming a huge problem in west Texas and the Permian Basin. When huge quantities of such water is injected back into the ground it comes back out of the ground in other areas and contaminates groundwater. About half of the US production of oil comes from the Permian Basin. Geologists at the UT Austin say that the pressure in the injection reservoirs in west Texas is now at 0,7 per square foot- at 0.5 per square foot the pressure is enou to have the salty toxic water seep back up to the surface of the ground. This is keeping water management personnel up at night and raising questions about the environmental damage in red hot shale oil production that taxpayers will be in the hook to pay years from now through clearing up the environmental damage. WSJ call it a big mess.  (This is a story not chosen by Apple News as it chose instead a story one on family financial firms in capital markets in WSJ, that is not readily seen on the internet once it is archived, one that Chevron and oil companies prefer not to be discussed, that was selected by Lyrarc.com and Movement for the Renewal of America to keep readers informed to make wise decisions.) Limited and temporary dependence on fossil fuels is both necessary to cut cost of living for people living paycheck to paycheck , yet one should know there are costs with any decision of this kind, and environmental damage is a concern that is postponed only with costs, cost that are passed on to children of this generation and should not be ignored. ...

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US naval blockade of Iran in Arabian Sea starts April 13 2026. US destroyed Iran's larger ships 158 of them, yet Iran also has a fleet of smaller attack boats which it plans to use in Hormuz. These are harder to detect and can be hidden in coves along the Iranian coast and used against ships. The US with its naval blockade is now prepared to do what it has done also in Venezuela, stop and interdict fast drug boats on the Venezuelan side in the Atlantic ocean. By blockading Venezuela in the ocean US is using its strengths, and stopping drug boats its ability to pinpoint traffic on the ocean. Similar capabilities are well suited to Arabian Sea and Red Sea on the open oceans and away from narrow Hormuz playing to US strengths and capabilities. Aircraft carriers and destroyers and the US Air Force is in a position to do what it does best control open seas like the British did in their heyday of the Royal Navy for most of 1750-1920. This avoids options of Hormuz itself with its narrow 15 mile gap of water between Oman and Iran too close to mountainous terrain on either side, and of the Kharg Island option which would require special forces to be backed up with more ground forces. This is the most viable option and the interlude of couple of weeks has given the president an opportunity to make a better choice for positioning the US forces where the US has its strongest points. What is lacking is the individual powers of Britain and France whose leaders Starmer and Macron have popularity below 20%. Yet the US is better off making good choices and not having these nations alongside. The posturing by European nations is limited to France and UK, as Germany and Italy are in sync with the US position. Much of the media operates as if the goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to the Middle East is not important for long term peace for nations such as China and India with about 3 billion people and the billions of people of Asia, Latin America and Africa. For the first time in 400 years since 1600 as Asian civilizations began a long decline China and India have emerged in 2000-2030 into the kind of modern economies and societies that exist in Europe and the US. The last thing they need is the risk of destroying the Modern World with nuclear proliferation when it took centuries to get to the right opportunity after 1950 to modernize China and India. Xi's and Modi's generation are the first to experience modernization in Asia after Japan's experience. ...

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Kamala Harris is profoundly influenced by the Gandhian ideal of public service coming from the influence of her mother Shyamala and her mother's father P. V. Gopalan, who was a leading civil servant in the transition to independence under Gandhi in India in the late 1940's. P.V. Gopalan was 31 years old during the Quit India Movement launched by Mohandas Gandhi in 1942. In this sense what even Martin Luther King Jr experienced about Gandhiji from a distance came to her directly in ways that may be inscrutable even to Kamala herself.  Robert Draper looks at Kamala Harris at different points of her childhood, university education and work as District Attorney for Alameda County, California, and Attorney General of California. He describes her as a daughter of highly educated yet stoic parents and one with a reverence for law and order, methodical and diligent, a caring and compassionate person to the people in the communities she lived in. As one who would experience disrespect as a woman of color many times she chose not to complain but to do something about it in bringing about a better life for all Americans. Not only did she do this, Kamala Harris also was always striving to do better for the people she served, putting all her energies into that task, always keeping in mind "We the People." ...

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Licht looked for ways to revive a network that is losing viewers as streaming and rapid changes in how television is delivered are leading to a decline in cable television.

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A trip to Tugela Falls in the Drakensburg mountains from Johannesburg, South Africa. It ranks with Angel Falls, Venezuela, as the two highest waterfalls in the world.

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Seven million households moved during this pandemic in the US, half a million more than in 2019. Many people moved out of cities to the suburbs or to distant locations.

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Boris Johnson takes a 7 mile bike trip. Exercize boosts the immunity system. After recovering from the coronavirus Boris Johnson has adopted an exercize routine that includes cycling and walking.

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NYT looks at the new Director for Centers for Disease Control or CDC in the US, Dr. Walensky. The CDC is seen as a wobbly bureaucracy during the pandemic.

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The Indian women's hockey team loses to Britain in the bronze medal match at the Olympics in Tokyo 4-3 after a valiant effort and showing great skill.

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NHS in Britain plans to begin vaccinating children 12 to 15 years in a couple of weeks. School reopenings have caused concern about the health of children during coronavirus.

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A British elite that is indifferent to everything around it, even the chaos around it, is how this picture of the Brexit leader, Mr. Moog, is seen in Britain. 

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A low pressure approach to strength training is best. Starting small and building up from this with a variety of strength training routine can pay rich dividends in healthy living.