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Reliance Jio makes the highest bid and takes most of the 5G spectrum in India with a bid for $11.4 billion or over half of the 5G spectrum. The government had eased the size of investment by firms by allowing 20 equal instalments in payment and other measures. This prepares India and Jio to build the 5G network in India as it had done earlier for the 4G network and become the dominant low cost provider in the world. The experience gained in building 4G gives Jio the advantage in building the new 5G network in India on its own.

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France was exceptionally well prepared says France 24, citing a report in Le Monde, for the SARS crisis in 2002 and the H1N1 influenza in 2009. A billion masks were stockpiled by 2009. Following the H1N1 influenza not appearing in any significant way the media, political parties and the public shifted their attention away from public health crises preparation. For H1N1 the government spent 1 billion dollars some of it going to pharmaceutical labs. The eurozone financial crisis that followed the global financial crisis shifted policy to austerity measures. The entire preparation effort for influenza type health crises was abandoned as too costly.  The same pattern repeated in Britain which was also well prepared before 2010. Austerity budgets after 2010 had little room for public health investment.  One could say a similar pattern was seen in the U.S. Today the worst hit countries are U.S., Britain, France and other European countries. France which had 1 billion masks in 2009 to tackle a possible H1N1 epidemic finds itself with 150 million masks in March 2020 and scrambling to find masks. Some masks which were usable were even destroyed as expired, ministers and experts who had built up the prevention effort in 2009 were even demoted and forgotten, as was much of the preparation in these years. It wasn't just medical supplies pubic awareness had practically disappeared. In the U.S., in Europe, the same situation of a lack of public awareness so that experts, government, and the public could work together quickly, was clear to see. In countries such as Taiwan the preparation led to speedy response at all levels, making contact tracing, isolation of clusters effective. In the U.S. and Europe this early, early, period was lost leading to makeup mitigation measures and the growing sense of a loss of control over the virus. ...

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The key role played by National Institutes of Health scientists in the development of the Moderna covid vaccine was not accepted in the application for patents by Moderna, leading to a dispute with the NIH. Moderna has now dropped the patent application saying it is a distraction on work for tackling the Omicron variant. That patent application had not listed scientists of NIH who worked on the invention.

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Protection from hospitalization for Omicron variants can drop to 57% from 81% after 6 months from second dose, and can be pushed back up to 90% using booster shots for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to a large CDC study in the US. For Delta variant period last year the vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization was 90% from about two weeks after dose two till 6 months, dropping to 81% after 6 months, and up to 94% after a booster shot. For Omicron variant the currently vaccine effectiveness for same periods is 81%, 57%, and 90%.

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China's parliament meets this week for opening sessions. Premier Li Qiang tells parliament that China will set a 5% growth target. Facing deflation, implosion of the property sector, and declining manufacturing will make it difficult to achieve this target. 

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India is now the largest market for Rail Europe after the US, and India surpasses both China and Japan in 2024. Indian travelers are shown here in this report by DW.com as very keen on traveling to Europe and using rail to see different countries. Rail Europe CEO Bjorn Bender expects 40 million travelers coming to Europe from India in coming years. This flow of travelers from India has increased Rail Europe's global revenue by 60% by 2023.

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German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock says a few rich fossil fuel states and emitters have "ripped" off the countries most affected by climate change.

Baerbock said of the COP29 talks at Baku, Azerbaijan-

"As the EU, we strongly oppose abandoning the path set in Dubai. What we need now is a coalition across continents for the climate."

"We are in the midst of a geopolitical power play by a few fossil fuel states."

"We Europeans will not allow the most vulnerable states in the world, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by some of the new [rich fossil-fuel] emitters."

 

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With the decline of its hardware business making iPhones Apple is looking at other fields. It is launching cheap online TV subscriptions in streaming wars in competition with Netflix and others. Apple is launching a new TV streaming service Apple TV+ in 100 countries for 4.99 British pounds a month undercutting Netflix's price of 5.99 pounds. The new service will be started November 1, 2019. Disney plans a streaming service for 7 pounds a month starting November 12. This service is alongside iPhone 11 launch and anew iPad, a new iWatch. Buy any new Apple device and you get a 1 year streaming service free.  Sales of iPhones fell 14% in the April to June 2019 quarter to 39 million units. Samsung's business is growing by 4% to 75 million units and Huawei by 16% to 58 million units. Apple sees the need to increases its services business with a target of $50 billion in 2020. Apple sees itself more as a media and cloud services company as it makes this change. In markets such as India Apple's growth is limited by its failure to lower prices on new iPhones. In China it faces strong competition from Huawei. The trade tensions are increasing the strength of Chinese brands in the Chinese market. The market in U.S. and Europe is saturated after years of expansion. New iPhone models are costly and bring peripheral advantages such as more and better cameras and features such as screens that are not breakable- for the iPhone 11- not dimensions that are critical for making a costly purchase. After years of growth tech companies such as Apple, Google, Alibaba, Amazon are reaching a point where incremental growth is not what it used to be and most of the rapid growth behind them. Trade tensions are also limiting the outlook in the Chinese market, and pricing remains a major factor in the Indian market. Western markets are saturated. There are fewer and fewer substantial new ideas from these tech companies. ...

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This report in the WSJ points to Democrats having won consistently 18 states plus District of Columbia adding upto 242 Electoral College votes in every election since 1992. Democrats need 28 more to cross the needed 270 votes. Republicans consistently having 13 states with 102 electoral College votes. Demographic changes in recent years have shifted to where Hillary Clinton may not need to devote resources to Colorado and Virginia because of a more favorable position there.  Carrying Pennsylvania with these 2 states would put Clinton over the 270 required. Vice Presidential candidate for Clinton, Senator Keane is from Virginia and is popular in the state.  Pennsylvania has a long history favoring Democrats. North Carolina has also seen demographic changes favoring Democrats. The Clinton campaign is focussing ads on these states as well as the swing states of Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as Georgia, Arizona and Utah which are becoming competitive for Democrats. By keeping up the effort in Georgia, Arizona and Utah, Clinton hopes to make Trump divert resources there. Other two swing states are Ohio and Florida, but this WSJ report says Clinton has to win only one of the four swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina to go over 270 and Trump needs all four. Of the 20 media markets Clinton or her super PACs have focussed their ads on 16 are in these 4 states. The Clinton campaign is looking at several alternative routes to 270 Electoral College votes, which gives it more flexibility to plan the campaign.  ...

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The pandemic came to young German people at a time when the trend was for less opportunity, more inequality. These trends are now aggravated and the loss of opportunities, and the loss of hope is even worse now in 2021. Job searches are being conducted while experiencing intense social isolation, boredom and lack of physical acitivity. The job competition is described here as horrendously competitive, a few roles and so many job seekers jostling to get them as companies have been hammered during the pandemic. 

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Workmen are busy installing many miles of bicycle lanes in Paris and its suburbs, as French people shift to more frequent use of bicycles to get to work and to go outside.

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India is joining Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, Russia, and many other countries in calling for an investigation by the World Health Organization into how the coronavirus crisis escalated into a pandemic with millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths and how adequate the response of the WHO has been.