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This report in the NYT shows that Mr. Trump thought his forceful personality and going for the big deal would work where a quarter century of diplomacy had failed- to get North Korea to completely give up its nuclear materials and facilities in exchange for complete lifting of sanctions.  The meeting at a French era colonial building in Hanoi was the result of Mr. Trump's sense that he had developed a special relationship with Kim Jong-Un, the North Korean leader, so that he could suggest a grand bargain to Kim. Meanwhile North Korean negotiators had put forward plans for lifting of the most recent Trump sanctions that were affecting the economy and ordinary people severely in exchange for closing down of the Yongbyon nuclear complex but kept details vague. When Mr. Trump met Kim at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi he gave Kim a detailed list of the nuclear facilities including one that developed uranium near Pyongyang for complete denuclearization, the U.S. goal.  The North Koreans were simply not ready to give up all facilities at once as they said the trust had to be built up before such a move. This report shows the nature of the wild swings from the early efforts to tighten sanctions and take strong action against North Korea., to the meetings in Singapore and Hanoi. At the time Mr. Tillerson at the State Department had suggested after a visit to Beijing that there were 2 or 3 avenues open, which Mr. Trump rejected and instead fired Mr. Tillerson. Mr. Pompeo who replaced Mr. Tillerson at State Department formerly headed the CIA and had detailed knowledge of the North's nuclear program including facilities hidden in tunnels all over North Korea. He and Mr. Bolton the National Security Adviser did not favor having the meetings first in Singapore and then in Hanoi. After the South Korean president's efforts to increase friendship with the North Koreans and his visit to Pyongyang he passed on an offer for Mr. Trump to meet Kim Jong-Un which Mr. Trump in a complete turnaround immediately accepted. This led to meetings in Singapore and then Hanoi with Kim against the advice of Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo. At this point North Korea has suspended further tests but continues its nuclear development. The U.S. has suspended military exercises with South Korea.  ...

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The Biden administration is pushing ahead with a new supply chain at a virtual two day meeting of 17 countries. In addition to the US and the European Union trade and economy ministers of Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, Indonesia, will attend. It is an effort to build an alternative to the existing supply chain because of its dangerous dependence on China and Russia.

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The US, China, Japan, India and South Korea will release oil from their strategic petroleum oil reserves to dampen the steep rise in oil prices. The Biden administration will release 50 million barrels of oil from US reserves onto world markets. This is about half of the 100 million barrels of oil of daily world consumption. The effect on oil prices is muted because the move was expected.

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Alluvial soil near a mountain range, dry soil that does not soak up water, led to the quick flash flooding in Libya from climate change induced sudden rainfall that dumped 15 inches of rain on September 10, 2023, in area around Derna, Libya. Normal rain is about one tenth of an inch during the month of September. Dams burst sweeping Derna and its residents into the sea.

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45 million acres burned, large parts of the Canadian forest from the Northwest territories to British Columbia, area four times the size of California making up 10% of the world's forest devastated by wildfires. This is Canada in 2023 with unimaginable smoke and evacuations. David Wallace looks at the situation in this part of Canada, just north of the US and stretching to the Arctic Circle.

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Robert Lighthizer, was deputy trade representative for the Reagan administration. He says, trade is one area in which the establishment has simply got it wrong. In this area there is little difference between George Bush, Bill Clinton, Obama and Republican politicians. It is one area, he says, where the feeling that elites are thwarting the will of the voters resonates most. He says the talk about America's decline, and the idea that the 21st century belongs to China, leaves voters unconvinced that our trade policy is working for America. For voters who are unconvinced, it makes sense to have a nationalist trade policy that takes on foreign abuses and fights for American interests. He cites 2 statistics that worry these voters. One is the huge trade imbalances that require the USA to sell hundreds of billions of dollars in assets each year. The value of foreign investments in the USA exceeds the value of American investments abroad by $2.74 trillion, and China by itself has $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, mostly in dollars. The other fact is that while the trade deficit for the last decade was about $4.3 trillion for the last decade, America also lost 5.6 millon jobs. And its becoming increasingly clear that as with managed currencies such as the Chinese yuan, and other trade practices, the rest of the world is stacking the free-trade deck against us. ...

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Brazil's large oil find in the Tupi field in the deep waters of the Atlantic ocean. It will take several years to develop and could produce half a million barrels a day. Brazil has shown exceptional ability in deepwater exploration and drilling and has expertise in this area.

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Jonathan Cheng of the WSJ reports from Seoul that the sense of alarm at the escalating rhetoric between the U.S. president and North Korea seen elsewhere is missing in the South Korean capital. A city of 10 million only 45 minutes from the border with North Korea is within artillery range from the North. There is a sense that North Korea would not attack the South because of long ties of culture and ethnicity. The new government of Mr. Moon was elected with its plan to improve relations with North Korea that had deteriorated under the previous government of Mrs. Park. An effort is made by Rex Tillerson, the U.S. Secretary of State to tamp down tensions from the rhetoric. South Korean officials say recent experience shows the Trump administration is capable of making sound policy even with Mr. Trump's tendency to tweet strong comments. The South Korean government urged the media to present the situation without aggravating tensions. In fact the popular online news portal Naver in South Korea did not show the escalation in its top ten trending topics. An earlier report in the NYT shows the use of underground bomb shelters in drills is ignored by many South Koreans. ...

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Desolate 46 acre collection of two main islets and other specks of land with only one year long resident an octopus fisherman, 7 hours away from the Korean coatline, called Dokdo or solitary place, are the focus of contnetion between S.Korea and Japan, both claiming the specks of land and arousing much controversy since 2005 when the issue flared up.

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Kenzaburo Oe in his writings reflected the anti-nuclear Japan of post World War II. That period also saw the emergence of China as a major economy. China's activity in the South China Sea, North Korea's ballistic missile program, created the situation where Japanese Defense Forces are now seen very differently as part of the US, India, Australia Quad alliance to ensure peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

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What happened with the Allied strategy of area bombing of Hamburg with 4 British raids a day, in 1943 when victory was far from assured, is shown by a historian of UK German relations. Most of the city destroyed, a million homeless.  King Charles's visit to Hamburg does a lot for reflection on this part of history, at this time of war in Europe.

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The remoteness of Tasmania can be felt even from Australia. It was and is still densely forested, and made a home for the worst offenders from British slums sent to this penal colony. The capital Hobart is now a tourist location for Americans and Europeans, and for seeing the wildlife in this area, and scenery that is from a far flung an unique island off the coast of Australia.

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Food help in the Greater Manchester Area in the UK through The Bread and Butter Thing with families paying 7.50 pounds for 3 packs of healthy high quality surplus food that costs 35 pounds at grocery stores. There are fears that the cost of living crisis with inflation up could overwhelm families where heating alone in winter takes up a fifth of the budget for families and 25% for single parents.

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South Korea is the leading country for 5G services with 4.5 million users by the end of 2019. Except for streaming content seamlessly and downloading files the additional jump in speed has not made much difference. Smartphone users do not see a big change from the 4G service.

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China faces the problem of an ageing population as births decline and their are fewer young people to support senior citizens. The shift to a two child limit after the policy limiting children to one per couple has not accomplished the goal of restoring the birth rate. The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the president Xi Jinping have taken the decision to allow three children per family.  This comes at a time when the old policy meant a fine of 10 times the disposable income for having a third child. The law was not enforced in all regions but acted to deter larger families. Yet there is a cultural effect of decades of having smaller families that will not be easily overcome with a change in the law. In Latin America smaller families are the result of decades of cultural change towards smaller families. Young people are increasingly aware of the cost of raising and educating an additional child, and the effect on the standard of living. Experts say it is too costly to raise another child  and housing is not cheap in China.  This discussion with 3 billion comments over Weibo in the discussion of this policy in China last week, misses a more obvious point from the graph shown in this report in The Guardian. That graph shows the curve for the birth rate in 2019 dropping faster in South Korea and Japan than in China, so that in 2019 the birth rate in Japan and South Korea was lower than in China. This shows that even without a one child policy the birth rate in Chia would be closer to that of South Korea after industrialization progressed and society experienced profound cultural and economic change. Japan today has the lowest birth rate in Asia. The Latin American experience also confirms this shift to small families. ...

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South Korea has imposed an inheritance tax on the heirs of Samsung conglomerate of 7.8 billion pounds. This was in response to public dissatisfaction with Samsung about its involvement in a corruption scandal. That corruption scandal sent the head of Samsung, founder Lee Kun-hee's son to prison.

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The WSJ offers this profile of a son of German immigrants who accumulated timber lands in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Pacific Northwest of the US. George Weyerhaeuser's company made the diapers for store brands across America. He says he was shocked at seeing the land when the timber was taken and the area cleared and started the practice of reforestation now a major goal set by COP26 in Glasgow.

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The loss of his table tennis racket when a photographer accidentally stepped on it meant that China's table tennis champion had to use his backup racket. Wang threw his racket into the photographers area after winning not realizing what he was doing. Because table tennis is all about margins, such a precise sport, the loss of even 1% can affect performance. Wong lost to a Swedish player in the game that followed.

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Ramachandra Guha comments on the selection of Institutions of Excellence by the Government of India- ten private and ten public institutions- that can be turned into world class leaders in the education field. He says IIT Madras would be a better choice than IIT Delhi, IITMumbai and Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore are considered good choices. The choice on the list of Jio Institute is seen as strange because it is has no students and no campus and still at the concept stage. KREA is a better choice for an education project at an early stage, says Guha.

Institutions not on the list that deserve attention are Ashoka for the best social science departments, Jindal for infrastructure, Azimji Premji for research on policy issues, and Ahmedabad University for innovative trans-disciplinary approach.

 

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A writer for the NYT describes his fascination with King's Cross London train station and the neighborhood of the same name. Here you find an area which has gone through decay of typical industrial neighborhoods and revival in recent years. St Pancras International station is here with the Eurostar trains and one of the most modern railway terminals in Europe. 

You will find places such as St Pancras Old Church, a place of Christian worship since the 4th century. And Old Drops Yard which is a space once used for transporting coal during the Industrial Revolution now converted into shops and modernized. 

Booklovers will find the British Library, with ancient documents such as the third century Diamond Sutra in Chinese and millions of books. And one of the popular things to do in the area is to walk along the Regents Canal which was built during the period when Britain led the Industrial Revolution.

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Britain has opted to take the approach of South Korea and Taiwan, where the app developed for contact tracing adopts a centralized approach sending information to a central server.  The Google Apple app is taking a decentralized approach where the information on who has the virus and who they came into contact with is not sent to a central server. Asian countries with success in lifting lockdowns have adopted a centralized approach as this has given proven results in allowing the rest of society to function smoothly without lockdown, by isolating a few people who have or have come into contact with people with virus. In a crisis of this magnitude with the huge risks involved democracies such as South Korea and Taiwan, other Asian countries, and now Britain, see less risk in relying on the centralized approach, because it works more effectively to accomplish the task of limiting spread and letting society function without lockdown.

 

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Japan's Asteroid mission is a success with the flawless landing of the capsule carrying part of the asteroid's surface rocks. It landed in a open area about 280 miles north of Adelaide in western Australia. This report describes the details of locating the capsule in the Australian wilderness.