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The opening of bars in tourism destinations of Europe in summer triggering a second wave of the pandemic
09/22/2020
Linked Articles
Tourists in Croatia Help Feed Covid-19 Surge Across Europe
WSJ 09/21/2020
Coronavirus Cases Rise in Europe as Youth Hit Beaches and BarsWSJ 08/02/2020
The U.S. Opioid Crisis during the Pandemic 2020
09/09/2020
Linked Articles
The Opioid Crisis, Already Serious, Has Intensified During Coronavirus Pandemic
WSJ 09/07/2020
Drug Giants Close In on a $50 Billion Settlement of Opioid CasesNYTimes.com 10/16/2019
How the Coronavirus test in the U.S. got delayed for 3 crucial weeks in February letting the pandemic spread quickly
08/21/2020
Three lost weeks in February starting February 9 when the FDA realized its third component of the test to test mutated virus had failed in use by labs but continued to persist in doing this on its own. Private labs of well known medical companies and university teaching hospitals were ready to develop and use their own tests with lightning speed and yet the FDA required its approval stalling that effort. FDA and HHS failure in the crisis led to the quick spread of the virus in Feb- March making any use of test and contact trace for containment ineffective. a crucial window of time was lost!
Linked Articles
FDA’s Authority to Regulate Lab Tests Is Curtailed
WSJ 08/21/2020
What Derailed America’s Covid Testing: Three Lost WeeksWSJ 08/18/2020
What to know about face masks imported from China
08/04/2020
Why FDA has failed in its quality control of face masks imported from China. WSJ analysis shows the unreliability of many of the N95 masks imported from Chinese suppliers. These imported masks follow a Chinese standard K95.
Linked Articles
WSJ News Exclusive | FDA’s Shifting Standards for Chinese Face Masks Fuel Confusion
WSJ 08/03/2020
What to Know About KN95 Face MasksWSJ 08/03/2020
Irresponsible behaviour of young people during the pandemic that led to the surge in July 2020
07/31/2020
Linked Articles
Coronavirus cluster in western France pits youth against authorities preaching caution
France 24 07/30/2020
A Generational War Is Brewing Over CoronavirusWSJ 03/17/2020
The European Recovery Fund for the pandemic with common borrowing for 390 billion euros aid
07/27/2020
Linked Articles
The Inside Story of Europe's Historic Bailout - The Journal. - WSJ Podcasts
WSJ 07/26/2020
United States of Europe? EU recovery plan pools borrowing - The DebateFrance 24 07/21/2020
Twitter's short form of 140 characters, the iphone, and the tech platforms building on the declining cultural and other literacy in America, Europe, other countries
05/28/2020
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's regrets on what he sees as the lack of any depth in the short form that works well on mobile phones. The first smartphones came in 2007 and 2008 iphone and android versions, Twitter started in 2006, both growing at the same time, the story of a tech boom that is paralleled by declining cultural and other literacy in America. It also parallels the decline in sense of what is in the national interest among communities in America and Europe and in other countries, leaving them with fewer defences against the coronavirus pandemic by 2020.
Linked Articles
Opinion | A Presidential Smear
WSJ 05/26/2020
A Founder of Twitter Goes LongNYTimes.com 11/09/2013
How Britain made preparations for H1N1 (2015) following the SARS pandemic (2009), then lost interest ditching the effort with Brexit consuming the nation
05/16/2020
How could this happen? Read more to know why. In 2016 Britain even conducted a rehearsal called Cygnus to fight H2N2.
Linked Articles
What was Exercise Cygnus and what did it find?
The Guardian 05/17/2020
Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disasterThe Times 05/16/2020
What Bill Gates and France had in common in the fight for health preparedness
05/11/2020
France had learned lessons from SARS epidemic and prepared for the H1N1 epidemic at the time that Bill Gates of Microsoft was pushing for greater awareness of public health priorities. Today Gates says this was not enough, that he did not do enough and feels terrible about it. The irresponsible banking practices that caused the financial crises first in the global financial crisis of 2009 and then in the eurozone financial crisis that followed by 2011 led to the ditching of the pandemic preparedness effort in France and Britain. In all of the western world including the U.S. austerity practices were the response without addressing the root causes of financial crises. Investments in public services and infrastructure were neglected leading to a level of unpreparedness that is shocking. Countries in lesser developed countries with more consciousness of the importance of public services and care of the vast majority of people were better protected in the crisis as a result than the more developed countries.
Linked Articles
WSJ 05/11/2020
Pandemic disarmament: Why France was ready for Covid-19 a decade too soonFrance 24 05/17/2020
Assessment of U.S. president Obama's two terms in office 2008-2016 (1) - a declining middle class and a struggling working class
01/13/2016
Linked Articles
The Obama era has damaged liberalism - The Washington Post
Washington Post 01/13/2016
A voice in the wildernessEconomist 01/19/2016
Faces in Changzhi and Chengdu as China closes cement and steel plants to cut large overcapacity in 2015
08/28/2015
The closing of a cement plant in Changzhi and the closing of the Panchenggang steel factory in Chengdu in 2015, are part of an overall effort to closer older, less efficent, higher polluting facilities. The transition means more workers laid off and a period of retraining in other fields, and economic uncertainty in these urban areas.
Linked Articles
China’s Shift Away From Industry Drains Life From a Steel Town
Wall Street Journal 09/08/2015
Zombie Factories Stalk the Sputtering Chinese EconomyNew York Times 08/28/2015
The miscalculations and missteps of Russian president Putin in 2014 leading to a major crisis for the Russian economy in 2015
12/18/2014
A major miscalculation was totally misjudging Merkel and post-war German public opinion about policies that remind people about the period between the two World Wars- this is anathema to Germans who see the European Union as a way to build a new and different Europe. The other miscalculation was on how a foreign adventurous policy in Syria would affect Sunni world opinion, in particular Saudi Arabia. Just as Brezhnev took Russia into Afghanistan where Russia had no vital interest leading to eventual Soviet collapse, Putin risked alienating a key member in OPEC pricing moves and hurting Russia's economic interest. By not listening to Kudrin, the head of Sberbank, and other economic advisers from the first and second terms of the Putin-Medvedev administrations, Putin opened the door to two years of serious missteps, risking the very real accomplishments of the first and second term of creating a stable growing Russian economy with close economic ties to Europe. The only positive outcome of the crisis and low oil prices would be making the shift away from oil dependence, which was talked about but never seriously attempted in the Putin administrations. For this to happen major new investments would have to be made and technology links to the outside strengthened, both hammered by the missteps in 2013-2014. The irony of all this is that Putin gained the support of rural Russians in the countryside in the 2012 presidential elections by promising no return to the economic crisis conditions following earlier ruble collapses. Now by ignoring Kudrin and other wiser counsel from the first and second administrations he does just that.
Linked Articles
Putin’s Year of Defiance and Miscalculation
Wall Street Journal 12/18/2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin Seeks to Reassure on EconomyWall Street Journal 12/18/2014
Changes in American breakfast eating habits affect cereal and orange juice sales in 2012-2015
07/22/2014
Linked Articles
As Cereal Slips, a New Battle Over Breakfast Dollars
Wall Street Journal 07/22/2014
U.S. Orange-Juice Sales Fall to Record LowWall Street Journal 07/22/2014
What Tesla after the pandemic's first wave has in common with VW in 2015 at the time of the diesel emissions crisis
09/10/2020
CEO pay packages shooting into space just before and just after the first wave of the pandemic.
Linked Articles
Elon Musk’s Payday Could Cost Tesla Shareholders Dearly
WSJ 09/10/2020
Volkswagen’s Ex-CEO Is Ordered to Stand Trial Over Emissions ScandalWSJ 09/09/2020
California 2020 Utopia in Dystopia- extremes of wealth, sky high housing prices, wildfires and the pandemic
08/27/2020
Linked Articles
A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America
The Guardian 12/15/2017
Dark days lie ahead in the dystopia of CaliforniaThe Times 11/14/2019
France and Germany - the struggle to get young people to adopt responsible behaviours during the pandemic
08/04/2020
Three police officers hospitalized after a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Berlin and an outbreak in the Quiberon peninsula with 72 cases after beach parties, show the persistent problem in both Germany and France to get young people to adopt responsible behaviors.
Linked Articles
Coronavirus cluster in western France pits youth against authorities preaching caution
France 24 07/30/2020
Germany: 45 officers injured at Berlin rally against coronavirus curbs | DW | 02.08.2020DW.COM 08/02/2020
Macron's role in setting up the nonrepayable $390 billion common funding for the European Recovery Fund
07/31/2020
Macron's effort to persuade Merkel and Germans of the need for common funding for European recovery and his persistence at negotiations with the Dutch and Swedes to secure 390 billion euros of funding aid has earned him increasing popularity in France. It also brings Spain, Italy, Greece and eastern European nations closer together with France and Germany as they fight the pandemic.
Linked Articles
Macron's popularity climbs after signing EU pandemic stimulus, reshuffling gov't
France 24 07/30/2020
Opinion: Extraordinary times call for extraordinary EU measures | DW | 21.07.2020DW.COM 07/21/2020
Boeing and Airbus- undelivered orders during the pandemic in 2020
07/27/2020
Linked Articles
Southwest and American Trim More Flying
WSJ 07/23/2020
At Boeing and Airbus, Finished Airplanes Pile UpWSJ 07/26/2020
Queen Elizabeth's Easter message "we shall return" in 2020 as the pandemic hits Britain
07/23/2020
Linked Articles
Prince Philip hands over military role to Camilla
BBC News 07/22/2020
'We need Easter as much as ever,' says the QueenBBC News 04/11/2020
The success tackling coronavirus in the Indian state of Kerala
05/18/2020
Past experience with pandemics- most recently the Nipah virus in 2018 -helped the Indian state of Kerala set a unique state of preparedness of both the health ministry and the people in control of spread of coronavirus. Hardship is also a great teacher of solidarity- only recently in 2019 Kerala had the worst floods in a century from a cyclone that hit the coast of Kerala in southwestern India. It did not take long for people to take preventive action starting at the end of January when the first cases were being seen in Wuhan, China, led by Health minister Ms. Shailaja. She personally visited a region quarantined in the state to guide the effort.
Linked Articles
The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala's rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19
The Guardian 05/14/2020
Coronavirus lockdown: Is India flattening the COVID-19 curve? | DW | 24.04.2020DW.COM 04/24/2020
French and British preparation for pandemics after SARS and H1N1 and losing interest with Brexit (Britain) eurozone austerity policy (France) by 2019
05/16/2020
Both Britain and France learned and prepared for pandemics all the way to H1N1 in France in 2009, and to the 2016 Cygnus exercize for pandemic in Britain, then lost interest and ditched the efforts. How did this happen, learn why here in extraordinary reports from the Le Mode cited by France 24 and in a report from the Times of London. A must for a dynamic participatory informed mindset needed more than ever today.
Linked Articles
Pandemic disarmament: Why France was ready for Covid-19 a decade too soon
France 24 05/17/2020
Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disasterThe Times 05/16/2020
Speaker Paul Ryan of the U.S. House of Representatives as the presiding officer at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the party program
04/21/2016
Linked Articles
Inside Paul Ryan’s quest to set the Republican agenda - The Washington Post
Washington Post 04/21/2016
Republicans Begin Tangling Over Convention RulesWall Street Journal 04/22/2016
2016 U.S. presidential candidate Jeb Bush's Tax Plan that spells out details, and takes a shot at 4% growth for restoring lost social and economic mobility in the U.S.
09/09/2015
The efforts to wrestle with the deficit in 2011-2012 led to a vigorous debate on changing the tax code, yet political leaders failed to take up new ideas or spell out the details. Jeb Bush, with advisors Martin Feldstein and Kevin Warsh, takes the unconventional approach of putting in the details, and taking up ideas such as the idea of limiting itemized deductions to 2% of adjusted gross income proposed by Feldstein in that debate. On the $2.1 trillion in income held overseas by U.S. companies Bush proposes 8.75% tax paid over 10 years. On business investment he proposes capital investment be allowed to be deducted in full immediately. It is based on the idea that business investment can drive a vigorous recovery, that workers bear 50% of the burden of higer taxes through sluggish wage growth. It levels the playing field for debt and equity capital, removing "carried interest" provision, as a lesson from the excessive leverage taken by financial institutions in the past.
Linked Articles
Wall Street Journal 09/10/2015
Jeb Bush Tax Plan Makes Forays Into PopulismNew York Times 09/09/2015
Ban on election advertising on commercial television and radio in Britain and strict limits of $29.5 million for each party in general elections- contrast with the U.S.
05/02/2015
Britain disproves the popular belief that an ever upward trajectory for election spending is inevitable. The 2010 general election in Britain cost half that of the 1880 general election in 2002 prices, say researchers. In the U.S. spending has increased to the point where candidates may be spending more time fund raising than talking about the issues. The 2016 presidential election in the U.S. is estimated to lead to $10 billion in spending. India, Brazil, and other developing countries face a similar situation.
Linked Articles
Britain’s Campaign Finance Laws Leave Parties With Idle Money
New York Times 05/04/2015
F.E.C. Can’t Curb 2016 Election Abuse, Commission Chief SaysNew York Times 05/02/2015
Vanguard former chief investment officer, "Gus" Sauter, and Yale Prof. Shiller, on the stock market pullback in Fall 2014
10/07/2014
Linked Articles
Wall Street Journal 10/11/2014
Why Market Pullbacks Are InevitableWall Street Journal 10/07/2014
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