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This editorial in the Economist says Scots should get fiscal autonomy, and manage their own affairs including setting minimum wage, and tax rates. It says England should not subsidize Scotland as it currently does, and this will lead to Scotland bearing additional cost of about 8 billion pounds. It reminds readers that only about 50% of Scottish voters voted for the Scottish National party in the 2015 general election, and once Scotland has to balance its own books voters would have a chance to rethink the level to which they want a welfare state. As in Quebec the nationalist party may not have the same voter support when it has to tackle the difficult tasks involved in self government. This also means Scots would not be voting on how to manage affairs in England, leading to a federation for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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Ford gains market share in California, as Toyota and Honda's share of the market declines. Ford's market share is up 2 percentage points on the east and west coasts compared to 5 years ago, according to R.L. Polk data. The Ford Fusion sales for the first half of 2013 are up 18% over the prior year and exceed 300,000. Growth in the coastal U.S. markets comes from the 2013 Fusion, the C-Max, hybrids, and the redesigned Escape. Cars and crossovers are especially important in coastal markets. In the past Ford depended mostly on SUV sales in the midwestern markets with imports dominant in coastal markets. This is now changing with models like the Fusion and hyrids introduced by Ford. With it the image of Ford is also changing, as buyers in California are among the most affluent and culturally influential in setting trends.

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Chancellor Merkel's now widely quoted words were made in Munich on May 27, 2017, after a NATO summit meeting in Brussels and a Group of 7 meeting in Italy, in which she was disconcerted by U.S. president Trump's positions on NATO, Russia, climate change, and trade. These words "the times in which we could rely fully on others - they are somewhat over." Merkel added "This is what I experienced in the last few days." After the election of Emmanuel Macron in France, Merkel expressed great relief at the outcome of the French election with Macron winning about two thirds of the vote, setting the stage for the election in Germany after several months of difficult watching and waiting. Now there is new confidence in Germany shaping its own future, with France and the rest of the European Union without Britain. Merkel says she "experienced this" meaning that she had undergone a transformation in these few months, and visibly in the last few days. She was also sending a message to Germans and people of the European Union - "we have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans." This also complements tactically to form the approach of Germany and France at the leadership of the EU, as French president Macron said at the end of the Group of 7 conference that multilateralism was intact, and the U.S. and EU shared many common goals.   ...

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How the shorter workweek is being tried at places such as Microsoft Japan, Toyota Gothenburg, Australian software company Icelab, and South Korean e-commerce company Woowa Brothers, with good results. Results include better collaboration, setting priorities effectively, and mutual respect for time. Workers get time to think, gain new perspectives, gather new ideas, and recover from weekly pressures. This WSJ reporter looked at over one hundred companies and found that if  done right it can improve company profitability and productivity. In a 4 week trial Microsoft Japan improved productivity by 40%. Alex Pang shows how this is being done in a new book - "Shorter: Work Better, Smarter and Less- Here's How." One way the shorter workweek works is by making everyone think what was not working during hectic work weeks without desired results, more work just adding to pressure and not producing results. For instance meetings had to be shorter and confined to certain hours only. Distractions had to be cut down effectively. Even soft music could help people concentrate. Building a new culture also helps bring people closer and find ways to work more effectively than in the past. The reinvigoration and ability to recover from pressures works wonders say experts and brings a new level of concentration, motivation and effectiveness. It is interesting to note that some of the pioneering effort in this area is coming from Japan and South Korea where long hours were tried and people began to realize that this approach to better results had serious drawbacks, and there had to be better ways.    ...

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How the Australian Central Bank raised rates starting in May 2002, with the key lending rate at 5.5 % in July 2005, compared to 3.25 % in the USA. The idea was to control the housing bubble which has scaled back, with the Australian economy growing at 2% and this growth coming mostly from the commodities demand in global markets. Meanwhile the US central bank under Greenspan is holding onto the view that its hard to tell when a bubble is occurring, and it would hurt a healthy economy to raise rates to cool developing bubbles. Australia's central bank holds onto the other view that it is wiser to act now before the bubble gets out of hand. Governor MacFarlane of the Australian central bank said in aspeech in early 2003 that a "scaling back" of household borrowing and property development would be in "the longer term interest of the Australian economy." And the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, instituted a 2.25% tax on the sale of investment properties. This move discouraged speculators who bought and "flipped" properties for quick profits. By early 2004 a glut of downtown apartment units emerged in Melbourne, and the bubble began to scale back. During the height of the boom consumer spending was growing by more than 6% ayear, in 2005 this has slowed to 3.5% a year. Because of commodity demand, Australia was able to see growth at 2%, and still avoid the longterm effects of a bubble in housing markets by scaling them back. Patrick Barta closes with a reference to Texas in the 1980's and early 1990's, and Southeast Asia in 1997, when housing prices and the economy went down in tandem hitting employment in the oil and banking industries in Texas. In the case of Asia hitting the economies of some Asian countries with the fall of their currencies. He refers to the overstretched US consumer with load of debt, and the possibility of housing and the economy going down in tandem in the USA, similiar to what happened in Texas and Southeast Asia....

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Just the idea that Starbucks was planning to open 1600 stores this year tells you that something was going to give at this breakneck rate of expansion. There's just no way training of employees let alone finding enthusiastic employees interested in giving first time and repeat customers a real warm friendly and exciting experience of the Italian expresso cafes that Schultz visited in the eighties, the sense of community and place to gather setting and the atmosphere. This is an awfully difficult thing to replicate. Starbucks has over 10,000 locations in the USA and at that point existing stores could take sales from other Starbucks stores and the experience deteriorate in some Starbucks to the point that Dunkin Donuts became a competitor of Starbucks suggesting that Starbucks was quickly losing its upscale appeal and cache, the special effect of its logo and its brand name. See the link to this article on McDonalds expansion into Starbucks type coffee and baristas concept. This may be the biggest dilution of a brand name in a long time. Reading his autobiography one senses a passion that brought a Brooklyn kid counting himself fortunate to get a college education, a kid who quickly grasped the opportunity in the way Italians drank their cafesitas and coffee in community setting cafes, and at the same time the feeling that could this New Yorker somehow Americanize or massmarket this concept to the point of making it like fastfood, or so afficionados passionate about coffee appeared to fear in his early encounters with them. Well now its happened, and Starbucks is being talked about in relation to McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts. Schultz makes an honest assessment though in saying that he was part of the team that made the decisions and let this happen, and let the bureaucracy that he is now trying to cut grow around him, and made the decisions that cheapened the Starbucks experience over time like drive throughs and so on. The Howard Schultz story of a Brooklyn American kid making good is reminiscent of the story of Dhirubhai Ambani, of a Saurashtan Indian making good in the polyester manufacturing business but making errors in the breakneck expansion....

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This objective look at the situation of Black Americans comes from a American -Jamaican. Educated in the West Indies and in Britain, Patterson is able to bring another perspective to look what has happened and what is the way forward. Here he is interviewed by the Harvard Gazette. Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard. A separate Saturday Essay by Orlando Patterson appears in the Wall Street Journal on June 6, 2020. Patterson points out that the big problem is de-ghettoization is not happening. Progress is not about integration first, it is about successful de-ghettoization taking place first, says Patterson.  And here he faults white liberals for not putting their money where their mouth is. For this to happen black families have to be able to move into suburbs. Strict zoning laws and limits to building moderately priced housing in some of the most liberal parts of the country keep out families wanting to move to the suburbs.  It is the social contact even side by side in suburbs with a leap in quality of housing and neighborhoods, schools, that can change people's own perceptions of themselves and their interactions with the communities around them. A lot of whites Patterson says have liberal views but when it comes down to making the concessions needed to make black lives better they are not willing to do that.   Patterson offers his own experience in Britain walking down a street in Cambridge. He lived on Trowbridge Street. He enjoyed walking through the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. And while walking he observed the easy interaction of black kids and white kids, and realized how different this was from the 1960's and 1970's. Having this sort of interaction comes from a more integrated setting, so that people grow up not having that awkwardness or lacking social contact.      ...

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BBC News provides a look at the first proposals of the Boris Johnson minority government to the European Union. This includes replacing the Irish backstop. The Irish backstop is a way set up by the EU and the previous UK government of prime minister May in negotiated agreement to prevent a hard border in Ireland. It means Britain would remain in the customs union with the EU after December 2022 if no agreement for withdrawal is reached by then. Conservative Party hard liners oppose it because they say it leaves the UK indefinitely in the customs union. The EU insists on this to protect the interests of a member state Ireland. The moderates in May's Conservative government agreed to it to keep the peace accord in Ireland. Boris Johnson wants to get rid of it, and his proposals include customs checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland which removes the free flowing border between the two Irelands, a major achievement of the Irish peace accords.  Which is why the negotiations could end up going nowhere, with each side presenting the other as the side that wouldn't negotiate terms of withdrawal. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party, and the Labor Party except for its leader Corbyn's neutral stance, oppose leaving the European Union. And parliament opposes leaving without a negotiated agreement pitting Boris Johnson against parliament and the opposition.  Another referendum or a general election would settle the issue with Boris Johnson thinking he can flip former safe Labor seats in working class areas in the north of England to win the election. Labor party's McDonnell says he has miscalculated and Labor party is buying time to organize an effective election campaign to get back the working class vote lost under Blair with his confusing Third Way that lost workers on the way.   ...

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The commodities boom allowed Brazil under president Lula to commit to heavy state spending, subisidies, protection of favored sectors with large tariffs, that led to inefficiency and high debt. The policies continued under president Rousseff. Corruption scandals in the latter part of the Lula administration led to more populist policies for the Workers Party to stay in power, says Porter. Compared to Mexico and Chile, Brazil and Argentina under presidents Lula and Kirchner moved in the direction to closing up their economies to trade and foreign investment that would make corporate sectors more competitive and less dependent on the state for subsidies and favors. Mexico's economy other than the automobile sector is struggling, as mismanagement also plays a part as with the handling of Pemex and huge capital injections needed. Mindfulness and thoughtfulness is needed in setting policy direction, aware of the risks free of illusions about rosy scenarios, knowing that ideology plays less of a part than exercizing good judgement....

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Michael Gerson was there in June 2005, with then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and nine Egyptian opposition figures, including presidential candidate Ayman Nour, in a shabby Cairo conference room. Rice was in that room to call on President Mubarak to allow free elections. Nour was skeptical about the result. The Mubarak legacy was to undermine all legitimate opposition to thirty years of rule. Gerson makes a remarkable statement when he says that the universal desire for self-government is rooted in the natural human resentment of humiliation. A 26 year old fruit vendor in Tunisia is humiliated and set himself on fire in protest, setting off protests against servility, oppression and silence. He calls the lack of faith in American ideals a pervasive failure of foreign policy elites. Someday he says, Americans are likely to say the same for China, with the complete absence of a policy for anticipating a democratic transition.

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India's central bank chief, Rajan, favors a lower inflation target of 4%, with fluctuations of 2% up or down. Lower inflation is critical for India to achieve higher growth rates. The World Bank lowered the rate of growth in the global economy but kept the rate of growth of 6.4% for India unchanged. Rajan also favors creating a more formal system for setting rates, with a committee like the Open Market Committee in the U.S. deliberating over the different factors for such a decision. Rajan was a professor at the University of Chicago, and chief economist at the IMF, before joining the central bank. Central bank policies have helped stabilize India's currency, the rupee. The lower cost of oil for India with an oil import bill of $100 billion is a big boost for economic growth. For the global economy this comes at a time when China's growth rate is slowing to below 7%.

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A study by the Pew Research center shows minorities are the ones hardest hit in the millions of foreclosures taking place in the US. Counties with black or Latino majorites and the New York region are hit severely. What appeared to be a boon five years ago as black home ownership rose sharply after decades of discriminatory lending and zoning practices, has now turned into a curse with families losing homes to foreclosure, neighborhoods seeing increasing crime and declining house values, and renters being evicted. Lenders like Mozilo's Countrywide and other similiar lenders simply used the idea of home ownership as a flag to get political support for a wild west in lending practices, which allowed predatory lending to take place in the deregulatory atmosphere of the time. See the link to the impact on minorities. Nowhere has it been shown more pointedly that prudence and character in leaders in all areas is the essential conditon for progress, making free enterprise a necessary condition but subject to this essential condition, than in the way the housing and foreclosure crisis is hitting the American and the world economy in so many ways. This is evident in neighborhoods like this one on 145th st. in Jamaica, Queens, whaere black households making more than $68,000 a year are five times as likely to hold high interest subprime mortgages as whites of similiar incomes. Defaults occur three times as often in minority census tracts as mostly white ones. And 85% of the worst hit neighborhoods have majority of black and Latino homeowners. Which may also explain why there is not agroundswell of support for serious government foreclosure prevention measures like bankruptcy legislation and other legislation such as that suggested by Martin Feldstein and others for homeowners nearly or already under water, when faced with fierce lobbying by the banks and financial institutions. Consumer advocates say years ago many banks drew red lines around black neighborhoods and refused to lend, then as deregulation became the rage five years ago, these banks under unscruplous leaders targeted these neighborhoods for subprime lending. A dozen banks and lending companioes that made big profits from subprime loans accounted for half the loans given to the New York region'sblack middle -income borrowers in 2005 and 2006, a case of reverse redlining that the N.A.A.C.P. says in its lawsuit against these lenders. Housing and Urban Development Sec. Shaun Donovan, in aspeech to New York University said that 33% of the subprime mortgages given out in New York City in 2007, went to borrowers with credit scoresthat should have qualitifed them for conventional prevailing-rate loans. For anyone taking out a $350,000 mortgage, says the NYT, a difference of three percentage points - a typical spread between conventional and subprime loans- tacks on $272,000 in additional interest over the life of a 30 year loan. ...

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Kerala state of 35 million people who speak the language Malayalam, is one of the rare places today that has only 4 deaths from coronavirus, 524 cases confirmed and no community transmission. Here the Guardian looks at the reasons why. The Health minister KK Shailaja started very early on January 23, with a meeting of her rapid response team when the virus was still in China.  She setup a control room and instructed Kerala's 14 districts to do this on Jan. 24. When the first case arrived on Jan. 27 on a plane from Wuhan, Kerala had already adopted the WHO  protocol of test, trace, isolate and support. These passengers were checked for temperature, tested and quarantined. With some at a nearby hospital and others in home isolation. This is all the more amazing considering that Kerala is a state in southern India on the west coast that has a large number of people living and working overseas. Many are in the Gulf countries and the arrival of these refugees could have triggered a second outbreak. This was prevented by careful testing, and contact tracing of clusters.  When one group was evasive and concealed information from an airport surveillance team -arriving from Venice, Italy,  in late Feb- a case was detected back to them.  Contact tracers tracked down all of the hundreds whom they had been in contact with and quarantined them.  By 23 March all flights to 4 Kerala airports from overseas were stopped, including Cochin and Trivandrum. On March 25 India went into lockdown.  Some of the achievements in Kerala include quarantining 170,000 people early. with strict surveillance, which is now down to 21,000. Accomodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers from other states, before returning them on charter trains to their home areas. A big reason for the success is the high literacy rate in the state. A big emphasis on education and healthcare is a part of the Kerala model. Shailaja is a secondary school teacher, and Health minister. From the days since independence of India in 1947 the state has a strong socialist tradition of taking care of the basics- health, education and public services. It also generates a part of its GDP with income from workers who are overseas.  Another reason for the success in dealing with coronavirus is experience. The state had a virus epidemic called Nipah in 2018 which has become the story for a movie called Virus in Malayalam. There is decentralized public health system in the state and people value their health care facilities, understand and trust the health care authorites. There are hospitals at every level of administration and 10 medical colleges. But trust and education, experience tackling the virus before, are key. Kerala is showing that poor countries can deal effectively with the virus, and create a better life by adopting the right model of creating good societies that value education, healthcare services, better economic structures and distribution of wealth, and  a degree of trust and responsibility found in a state that values public spiritedness. ...

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Station from Christopher Beanland published in the UK shows unique rail stations from all over the world. They tell a lot about the place, modernistic art in Shibuya, Tokyo, curvy modernistic in white purple in Chengdu Metro, China, to the classical European facade in Helsinki and Prague, and mix in St Pancras of the industrial age, glitzy orange in Los Angeles Union station, and reviving the 1930's Soviet era in Ivanov northeast of Moscow.  This includes rail stations of Helsinki, Prague for architectural significance from the period after 1900. St Pancras in London which was saved from demolition and was restored mixing the modern with the historical setting. As it says in the Times the upper levels are quiet and pianos are playing at the lower levels with a gateway to Belgium and France. The Ivanova station 150 miles northeast of Moscow is restored to 1930's style along with hammer and sickle murals and design of that period with wooden benches rehabilitated. The glitzy Union station in Los Angeles is all orange looking ceilings that have a flower sculpted design. Next there is Shibuya station in Tokyo with huge mural modernistic paintings. ...

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This You Tube video in The Indian Express shows Indian leaders Modi, Sitharaman, president Murmu, vice president Dhankar, Chandrabbu Naidu and party leaders paying homage to the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee who led the formation of the first non Congress coalition government in 1996 followed by one in 1998 and 2000-2006. Music played on this occasion were favorites of Mahatma Gandhi- Vaishna Vajana thene re kayiye- he who we call a true Vaishnava- the qualities of a true Vaishnawa. This is the classic of the 30's and 40's that won independence for India by bringing forward a new generation of leaders that would bring India forward in the 20th century. These hopes rested on the shoulders of Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru yet fell by the wayside after the early 1960's with China's invasion in 1962, India faltered with socialist ideologies and the License Raj, stymying the energies of the people, corrupt political life leading to stagnation. By late Atal Bihari Vajpayee offered an alternative and hope following the models set by Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel in word and deeds with the first non Congress governments setting the stage for Modi in 2014. ...

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A new study shows that physical activity is essential to maintain weight loss for obese people. About 80 minutes a day of moderate activity like walking and 35 minutes of vigorous activity led to keeping away the pounds lost. 

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Treasury facilitates the setting up of a new $100 billion fund to buy troubled assets so that they do nothave to be sold at distress prices, and in this way bring some stability to the market and bring buyers back to the market for commercial paper of all types. The companies setting up this fund would earn fees for their efforts. secretary Paulson is behind this effort and so are Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and bank of America.

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The former CEO of GE (General Electric) says why he is skeptical about the decline in the unemployment rate to 7.8% as shown by the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He says the economy has to have grown at breakneck speed for unemployent to drop from 8.3% to 7.8% in 2 months. The dozen companies he is working with are seeing third quarter 2012 results worse than the second quarter. The labor force participation rate declined to 63.5%, the lowest since Sept 1981- fewer people looking for work accounts for the drop from 8.3% in July to 8.1% in August 2012. Other numbers that look implausible are the BLS figures of federal state and local governments adding 602,000 workers to their payrolls in Aug and Sept 2012, the largest 2 month increase in 20 years. And the BLS figure of overall 873,000 workers being added in Sept. 2012, the largest one month increase since 1983. All this he calls implausible. Part of the problem is the way the data is collected because someone who for example says he got a job baby sitting for from anywhere in the range of 1 to 34 hours is a parttime worker, so that working 1-2 hours would be counted as employed parttime in the BLS methodology....

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Wang Huning, who has shaped the policies of three Chinese presidents, was a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, before beng selected by president Jiang Zemin in 1995 to join the Communist Party of China's Central Policy Research office. The Policy Research Office provides research and guidance on foreign and domestic policy to China's leadership body, the Politburo. Huning was dean of the law school at Fudan, and head of its international politics department. He studied French at a foreign languages school during the Cultural Revolution upheavals in China, before going to Fudan University in 1978. Xi Jinping, the current president, was sent like many other Chinese leaders to work on a farm in the countryside during that period. In that same year 1978, Li Keqiang, the current prime minister moved to Peking University, after taking the first university entrance exams in 1977 following the Cultural Revolution. Li studied western constitutional law, later focussing on urbanization for his postgraduate work. Huning studied in the U.S. in 1989 and is familiar with the American system, western concepts of government and economy. His specialization at the international politics department was in comparitive politics- the systems of government of different countries- and he is seen by experts as having been a key influence in defining China's path making move to build a market economy under public ownership, seeing it possible for the two to work together. In 1991 Huning published "America Against America," critiquing the American political system and pointing out that in American democracy major economic decision making powers still rested mainly in private consortiums, with this acting as a constraint on political democracy. These ideas gradually evolved into ways to manage China in a world with alternative systems and political history. For Huning the question facing China was one of of finding its own workable model based on its history and experience, and need to manage the transition to a modern economy in a stable environment. Huning is now part of the Politburo and a candidate for a seat on the Standing Committe in 2017. At 57, he is expected to be part of the leadership for the next decade, having helped three presidents shape domestic and foreign policy, setting the direction for China's transition to a modernized economy and a political system that accomodates the needs of a new generation....

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This columnist opinion in Le Monde reflects the view in Europe that the US is in retreat, and in some quarters such as NYT that the new US foreign policy that sets the Monroe Doctrine as key aspect of foreign policy is a retreat- US setting the rules in the Western Hemisphere around democracy and governance. It says the US has set aside the ambition first proclaimed in 1945 and revived in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. US administrations under Clinton and Bush took this posture after 1991 of dominant position but it did not reflect reality. US like Russia was dragged into many remote conflicts that had little to do with the standard of living, and economic advancement of the US. The US has a dilapidated infrastructure, broken healthcare system, and operates in a world trading system that has deindustrialized the nation and shipped out jobs and factories for 20 years, and worse is exposed to drug and people trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela. The Monroe Doctrine 1823 asserted the US right to keep European colonial powers out of America, and it was possible only because the British also supported it in the 19th century till the US built up its Navy under TR and FDR. With Russia recognized as a European power the US is able to get its support for the US to tackle the situation in the Western hemisphere presented by drug and people trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela. Tariffs are intended to get a new world trading system with new rules. Infrastructure building is underway on a scale that will far surpass China by 2030. This is not a retreat but an advancement for the Nation and the American people after three decades of failed policy. It lets the European powers Germany, France and Britain deal with Russia's requirement that NATO withdraw from its borders and recognition of Russia as a Northern European power. European history has shown that since 1700 that when faced with a majority of nations in Europe any dominant power in Europe is forced to negotiate a peaceful resolution of conflict because of it's limited resources to carry on a conflict. This should lead to a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, that allows rebuilding, and also gives the US an opportunity to rebuild its economy and standard of living for the American people. This will be a win-win for both the Russians and the Western Europeans, and both Latin America and the US, China and the US, India/Japan/Brazil and the US. ...

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Very little is known about executives in AI who were till 2018 unknowns. Murati is from Albania, went to high school in British Columbia and on to a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering at Thayer School of Dartmouth in 2012. She worked at Tesla and a startup on augmented reality before joining OpenAI in 2018, according to Wikipedia. Much controversy was generated in 2024 with ouster of Sam Altman and reinstatement generating concern how AI is being used for profit by individuals without a role for government and leaders of major world nations and setting rules and guidance. The world of AI pioneers is fragmented with different views and it is not clear if the US, Europe, India, China or other countries can delegate such important technologies to a few individuals with little experience. The recent AI conference chaired by Macron of France and Modi of India was intended to bring leadership of major countries in advanced technology to take the lead in managing AI instead of leaving the field to unknown individual players.  ...

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The personality based governance under Carlos Ghosn is seen as a problem now that Mr. Ghosn is in a jail cell in Tokyo and under investigation by Japanese prosecutors. Mr. Ghosn faces charges that he under reported his deferred pay over a five year period to 2011.  The Economist magazine points out the other problems that might have led to to the authorites being informed about the failure of Nissan to make the internal audits. This relates to the activities  of Mr. Ghosn to arrange a possible takeover by Renault through a merger. Nissan owns only 15% non voting stake in Renault, and Renault by comparison owns a 43.4% ownership in Nissan. The French government has a 15% stake in Renault and efforts were made by Mr. Macron, as Economy minister, to secure double voting rights for long term shareholders such as the French government. This leaves the Japanese government and Nissan reluctant to see the move to Renault's takeover. The French government left with suspicions on the reasons for Mr. Ghosn's removal now less likely to cede control over the joint venture. The jet setting high flying ways of executives such as Mr. Ghosn with the company's identity being defined by their activities are also coming under much criticism. The CEO of Chrysler Mr. Marchionne was gravely ill at 66 following a decade of deal making, with chain smoking, leading to a severe illness. Renault under Ghosn rescued Nissan in 1999, Fiat under Marchionne rescued Chrysler in 2009 with U.S. government help. The Economist magazine points out the Nissan alliance with Renault is now tarnished by another high flying executive.   ...

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Eri Machii, founded AfriMedico, a nonprofit organization designed to deliver medicine to remote regions in countries in Africa. She worked in Niger under a Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers program after two years working as a pharmacist. There she learned about the dangers in Africa in remote villages where travel and delivery expenses were high and infrastructure lacking. She devised a method of Okigusuri for Africa where as in traditional Japan medicines were left in a kit in villages and people paid only for what they used. Payment is done by cell phone using the M-Pesa money transfer system. Maichii learned about okigusiri as a system used in Japan throughout its history in places where infrastructure was lacking, lack of universal health insurance, and large families living together. She found that this was true for distant villages in countries like Tanzania where she implemented the system under AfriMedico. 20 volunteers helped found the organization and Tanzania pharmacist network helped guide them in setting it up. Large amounts of medicine taken at one time reduce the cost of transport. Use of the system of medikits in urban areas helped subsidize the village use. This is a system that has great potential for medicine delivery in many parts of Africa and Asia that have the same problem of access to basic medicine kits- so that treatment can be done earlier in the process for quicker less costly recovery, improving general health conditions. One can think of Indonesia, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West and East African countries as having potential for wider use of this system. As people pay for only the medicines used using cell phones the system has wide applicability from cost and access point if supported by private and governmental agencies in these countries.   ...