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Southwest prepared for jet fuel at $3.30 a gallon by passing on cost increases to passengers. Now it is preparing for jet fuel at $3.50 a gallon, CEO Gary Kelly said in an interview. The acquisition of AirTran in 2011, increased the size of Southwest by 20%, and is expected to generate additional revenue synergies of $400 million to $500 million. It also gives Southwest access to Atlanta and increases the number of cities served from 72 to 94. Kelly sees additional opportunities for growth in the lower 48 U.S. states before looking at markets in overseas destinations close to the U.S. Southwest has an order of 100 bigger and more fuel efficient 737-800s from Boeing. Boeing's Max jets are expected to be delivered in 2017. Other opportunities for growth will be expansion from Dallas Love Field to more destinations beginning in 2014.

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The German city of Ulm will be the location of a new command center for NATO. Another command center will be in Virgina, U.S. NATO is responding in preparation for Russian moves in Ukraine and near borders with Poland and Baltics.

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The Kashmir Valley and the Kashmir region had a multiethnic community of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in the hundreds of years before 1947. It all disappeared after the cabinet meeting of Liaquat Ali Khan on 12th September 1947 when the plan to attack Kashmir using armed Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces was approved. By the end of that year the surprise invasion had split Kashmir into two regions and led to a large scale dispersal of Sikhs, Hindus and other ethnic communities. This BBC report shows how this happened and how it changed a once peaceful region with a multiethnic society. Till the 15th century this region was Hindu and Buddhist with influences of Tibetan Buddhism and a center of creativity for Sanskrit culture and language. It changed with the Afghan and Persian invasions by 1580 and conversion to Islam of some of the Hindu population. By 1700 the Mughal empire decline and Afghan, Durrani dynasties ruled till about 1800 when the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh included Kashmir in the Sikh Empire based in Lahore, Punjab. This lasted under British patronage of the Dogra dynasty of Sikhs till 1947. In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, the population of the princely state of Kashmir was 2,905,578. Of these 2,154,695 were Muslims, 689,073 Hindus, 25,828 Sikhs, and 35,047 Buddhists. The Muslim population was not homogenous and contained many tribes and the Gilgit Baltistan region was Shia Muslim, the Kashmir Valley Sunni Muslim and the mountainous regions had Pathans and many other tribes. This is why the region may have had Sikh and British rule for 150 years with even the Muslim communities existing with many different sub religions and living in amulti racial multi ethnic fabric that was upset by the invasion from the newly created state of Pakistan based in Islamabad using Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces. What changed this was that after Kashmir was split in two by this invasion, China entered the northern border region of Kashmir called Aksai Chin and parts of Ladakh by building roads in 1956-57 and the occupation by China of this region including Tibet thousands of miles from Beijing in a remote region expansion by Communist China. ...

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Turkey's parliament authorizes the government to take steps needed for national security as Islamic State forces approach its borders, attacking the Kurdish town of Kobani. Turkey is reluctant to participate in the coalition against Islamic State until the Obama administration makes clear what its policy is in relation to the bigger problem it sees causing the conflict- the Assad regime's violent suppression in Syria. Turkey wants the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone so that the Assad air force is grounded. Turkey also has to consider the protection of Kurdish towns from the Islamic State because of public opinion in the Kurdish population of Turkey.

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In Brazil's 2018 elections most candidates talk about shoring up crumbling infrastructure, and law and order. Yet no one talks about the budget crisis as there is no money left for doing this.  Shocking as this may sound after years of overspending and a recession, Brazil now uses borrowed money to pay pensions and salaries, and keep schools and hospitals open. Brazil's public spending exceeds revenue by about 7% of annual economic output. Taxes are already 40% of economic output, according to CIA's World Factbook website, making it hard to raise taxes.  This WSJ analysis says you cannot overstate the problem in Brazil as about two thirds of the budget goes to paying old age pensions, payroll of public sector and public healthcare. By 2020 these liablilities will grow to the point there is nothing left for discretionary spending such as roads, infrastructure, new hospitals, police equipment. Trimming pensions and freezing wages are likely options to tackle the problem. Still this leaves Brazil with the prospect of a lost decade.   Neighboring Argentina is experiencing a contracting economy and had to turn to the IMF for assistance.  The decline in GDP comes as a new conservative administration took over promising an improvement in the economy. The peso declined by 18% in 2018 so far leaving Argentina's public and private debt of $166 billion which is 80% denominated in U.S. dollars much harder to pay off. The stronger dollar has hurt Argentina leading to a $50 billion support agreement with the IMF.  Much of Latin America is now in an economic crisis. ...

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From all accounts the lawyers against Musharraf, the opposing factions of Bhutto and Sharif and the Islamist parties alliance distancing itself from Musharraf's campaign against insurgents in the tribal areas and Waziristan, and the army's failure to do much against the militant islamist in the border areas with Afghnaistan present a picture of Pakistan coming apart. The army as a national institution is losing credibility even as the US needs the Pakistani military to continue the fight in the border areas while it is fighting with other Nato forces in Afghaistan's southern provinces. Actually whole areas in the British assigned areas of southern Afghaistan have been given up to militants or provincial leaders with their own forces. In this situation even as the people seem genuninely keen on a new direction their is no unified leadership or organization to hold it together which commands the confidence of large parts of the country and people. And so the US even under pressure to support democracy would simply put its interests in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan before the interests of the people of Pakistan in finding some genuine solution to the problems. that would give Pakistan a chance to set a new longterm direction different from its past. ...

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John Cochrane provides a no-nonsense assessment of what is happening in the euro-zone financial crisis. He says Americans should stop swallowing all that talk about "contagion" from Ireland. He puts it in plain language- there is no bailout of Ireland, this bailout is about bailing out of German and British banks that made risky loan to Irish banks and the Irish government. And he says that European governments if they choose to bailout German or British banks should do so frankly and openly and not by covering it up as a country bailout. If they did this he fears the governments and the German and British banks would face some serious questioning about their risky bets on Irish debt and the Irish property bubble. The German insistence that debt-holders would have to take a haircut, or losses on the face value of their bonds, has been diluted by the French inserting a provision that this would be after 2013 and on a case by case basis. Cochrane sees the vagueness of a case by case threat as the worst combination possible. He says this relies too much on the assessments of IMF and EU officials. The result would be for big financial institutions to bet on a bailout and to lobby these same officials hard. Cochrane's says the big culprit in the problem facing the euro-zone is short term debt. If Europeans won't let governments default, then they must insist on long-term financing of government debt. It is the short term debt of these countries that creates a crisis atmosphere. If investors become pessimistic about long-term debt, bond prices can go down temporarily without causing damage. The way a crisis happens is bad news develops, and governments having financed with short term debt need new money to pay off old debts. The way to handle this refinancing crisis is to have a large forced exchange of maturing short-term debt for long-term debt, and this is what occurs in "restructuring." And this kind of restructuring ocurred with the Brady plan that helped Latin American economies recover from a debt crisis in the late 1980's and early 1990's. This is the only viable solution, as it will be virtually impossible to bail out all euro-zone countries- Portugal, Spain, Italy and so on. For the US this is an eye opener to get its own financial house in order. US government debt is also tilted to short-term debt maturities, with the majority rolled over every year. and the Fed's quantitative easing will tilt this further to shorter term debt. And in the US, many states and local governments are in serious financial trouble....

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Anton Harder in this Wilson Center publication of research uses correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru and his sister Vijaylakshmi Pandit ambassador to the US in 1950, to show that the US made an offer for India to take a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. India had supported two resolutions on June 25, and June 27, first condemning the invasion by North Korea and second the organizing of a UN force of 29 countries to push back the North Korean invasion. Even though the US is not seen as actively engaging with India during that period and seeing through British eyes the colonial policies of encouraging  different powers in South Asia, that may not be true.  Who was India's foreign minister in 1950? Jawaharlal Nehru was both prime minister and foreign minister till 1964, which means there was less discussion of foreign policy than happens today during the Ukraine invasion with Jaishankar a career diplomat with 30 years experience, Rajnath Singh, and Mr. Modi, in talks with president Biden recently, and in further discussions Modi had with EU's Von der Leyen and UK's Boris Johnson, Kishida of Japan. Who was India's defense minister in 1950? Baldev Singh, a Sikh independence struggle leader was Minister of Defense for 1947-52 and tackled partition of Punjab and Kashmir issues. The rest of the years to 1957 when India faced the Chinese invasion of Tibet India's defense minister was also for most of the period Mr. Nehru, except Ayynagar in 1953, and Kailash Katju in 1955 and 1956. The controversial V.K. Krishna Menon was Defense Minister from 1957 to 1962, when Indian defenses were further neglected leading to the Chinese invasion of India in 1962, and his replacement by Yashwantrao Chavan. The purpose of this is to look back at what happened in earlier periods to understand where India stands today- and what choices it makes today. Clearly the US was looking for allies then and now. Nehru saw things from his own reading of history seeing China and India as both suffering from western invasion, not realizing that China's experience under Mao was different- that of Japanese invasion and bombing of China's major cities not just colonization of Hong Kong and other ports for trade under British trade based policies in 1850-1900. Thus a Communist Chinese version of China's defense involved taking over border regions such as Tibet putting China in direct and open opposition to India. Nehru never really grasped what was happening in Tibet and the war China fought against the Nationalists. American general Stilwell loved China deeply and had an understanding of its people as shown in Tuchman's account in her book Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945. Stilwell during that war had a better understanding of China, the strengths and weaknesses of Mao's China and of the Nationalists under Chiang, than Nehru. Some of these errors post 1950's and a concentration of foreign, defense and embassy positions in the person of Mr. Nehru and of Nehru family member such as Mrs. Pandit led to the Indian failure to act on Tibet and see it as see it for what it was -facing a Communist Mao led China that had fought the Japanese invasion as different from Bodhidharma's China of the history books. Bodhidharma's China will outlast Mao's China, yet it is Mao's China that India faces today. This also tells us that India has to think in new ways- as Lincoln said during a period when America was also making its own progress as an industrial nation in the 1860's. "The dogmas of the quiet past are not adequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew, we must act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and we shall save our country." India's values are values of democracy heightened not just by Mohandas Gandhi's ideas with Hind Swaraj written in 1910 just as powerful in 2022, but also by the heights of Ladakh where elections are held in remote regions of the Himalayas. India's values are values that are also shared in the best that America has in its values and culture and in the defense of freedom.    ...

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After public opinion comes out against it, the Obama administration decides to end the NSA's bulk collection of phone data program in March 2014. Under the decision the phone companies will not be required to keep the data for longer than 18 months, as it was determined that older data was not as useful. And the specific phone records can now be obtained ony after permission from a judge with a new kind of court order. The bulk collection of phone data program was justified by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, passed under the Bush administration to tackle terrorist threats following the 9/11 attacks. That program was outside any judical oversight. In 2006 the Bush administration Justice Department had the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorize the program. Under Section 215 the FBI is able to get court orders for records relevant to an investigation and this authority was broadly interpreted as allowing NSA collection of bulk phone data.

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Extreme positions on business related issues taken by politicians in the Republican party. An effort to influence the Republican party's platform through the ouster of moderate Republicans like Jim Bennett of Utah. The impact on the US Congressional elections in 2010. Positions such as the abolition of the Federal Reserve, prohibiting stimulus funding, sealing the borders and doctrinaire positions on the role of government. Education reform, immigration reform, investment in infrastructure building all will be out in this type of platform adopted by some candidates. A Senate candidate from Alaska suggests Social Security is unconstitutional. By appealing to popular discontent with the Obama administration, and anger with the bank bailouts, what is called the Tea party movement has taken shape. It is built around politicians Sarah Palin of Alaska, Jim DeMint, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and other candidates such as Haley in South Carolina who are using it to tap into discontent. It has the support of Fox News, and Dick Armey former Congressman from Texas who heads FreedomWorks, and libertarian billionaire David Koch. Built around seductive principles of small government, the movement has no clear program considering the diverse positions of the different politicians and different extreme positions adopted, including a general hostility to large corporations without differentiating a BP or a Goldman Sachs from a GE. GE's operation of MSNBC puts it in the same category as a Goldman Sachs. The lack of a clear position by the US Chamber of Commerce, because of its opposition to the Obama administration. The movement carries with it risks, as the Republican party's control of the House of Representatives is not ensured. Ideology of a vague kind has become a substitute for good credentials and experience, in the fast-forward effort by activists such as Dick Armey to capture popular discontent. Says Dick Armey, "We live by the creed 'hard work beats Daddy's money,' " raising serious questions about how a statement like this would help the jobless or the economy. ...

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A new poll from YouGov shows the Conservative Party getting 310 seats and Labor Party at 257 seats. Labor would gain 30 seats and Conservatives lose 20 seats under this prediction. Conservatives would fall short of the majority of 326 seats needed. Support for Theresa May is slipping especially after announcing older people would have to take on more burden for care, dubbed the dementia tax by media. A coalition of Labor party with the Scottish National party (SNP) with 50 seats and the Liberal Democrats with 10 seats is now a possibility.

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If John F. Kennedy were writing Profiles of Courage in 2024 he would have James Lankford as one of these Senators who showed courage to take the right stand in the face of opposition from his fellow Republican Congressmen and people in his state and the country who support loyalty to president Trump. Lankford says in this NYT interview that in December 2023 the immigration bill would have passed Congress into law. He has always seen that no one person is the boss. Trump is not the boss even as president. He is a co-equal branch, says Lankford. He sums it up saying- I work for the people of Oklahoma not the president.  Senator Lankford of Oklahoma is interviewed by Lulu Garcia Navarro of the NYT for his role in negotiating a immigration bill with Democrats in Congress and president Biden that would fix asylum policy and close the Border with Mexico. It is a tough bill says Lankford, and the Republicans held onto their position that there would be no citizenship for the immigrants who crossed the border illegally since 2024. If it came up in December 2023 it would have fixed the Border, says Lankford. It came up in February, and by this time the election nominee was Trump who decided not to support it, as it would take away the immigration issue that he hoped to run on against Democrats. It is still alive as Kamala Harris says it is her top priority to get the Lankford immigration bill passed into law. To know Lankford is to know that he ran the largest Baptist youth camp in the Nation at Fall Creek. He believes every person has value and worth and even if he disagreed with them that person has value and worth. His faith, he says, is something important for him, and not something you take off and put on.  The title should be The Men and Women who Solved Immigration for the Nation. This includes Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and Democrat Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Lankford for 22 years a youth Baptist minister from Oklahoma, Sinema immigration attorney from southern Arizona, and Murphy a lawyer from Connecticut. The man who selected Lankford to negotiate the immigration bill on behalf of the Republicans in Congress was Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. For the Democratic party Pat Schumer helped bring Democrats in Congress and president Biden behind a tough bill that reflected the consensus view that something serious had to be done about the US Border for a lasting solution. This opportunity may come again if Kamala Harris wins as she says it will be her top priority to get the Lankford -Sinema Bill passed. ...

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The FBI talked to Steve Job's friends, neighbors, family, former business associates and Jobs in a background investigation in 1991. Jobs was being considered for an appointment in the President George H.W. Bush administration and this was part of the background check. He is described as not having a good start in high school- as his GPA at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California was 2.65. He is said to have used marijuana and LSD in college. This was the period when Jobs was running NeXT, and five years before Apple acquired NeXT and Jobs returned to Apple. The account affirms the description in Walter Isaacson's book of a person who was driven and could have rough edges in his human dealings. The FBI background check account has this to say-"several individuals questioned Job's honesty stating that Mr Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals." In his personal life Jobs is described as neglecting a daughter born out of wedlock with a high school girlfriend....