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The federal government set up the National Capital Civil Services Authority for administering the national capital of New Delhi, India, similar to the way other capitals in the world Ottawa, Canberra, Berlin and Washington D.C are run. This was done by ordinance and will be followed up with legislation in parliament.

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A Focaldata poll that shows 63% of the British public now believes in 2023 that Brexit created more problems than it solved. Only 21% believe it solved more problems than it created. Years of austerity policies, Brexit, the cost of living crisis, have created new challenges for Labour to tackle.

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Olaf Scholz of Germany has to balance the need for continuing trade with China with the effort to diversify its supply chain and increase manufacturing in Germany as he visits China. Germany is entering a new phase in its trade relations in Asia, one very different from the Merkel era.

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A thin Republican majority in the single digits, many elected with an investigative mood, and 3 newcomers from New York who are moderates to be targeted at the outset by Democrats will make the House ungovernable says this analysis in the NYT of the US Congress midterms of 2022. 

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The work done by millions of BJP party workers during the pandemic in India is the subject of this story on its foundation day approaching 50 years. Under Modi the vision of Vivekananda and Gandhi has found a new place in the BJP says one of its workers Anil Baluni.

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With the completion of the 22 kms Mumbai Trans harbor Link and the Navi Mumbai Airport, Mumbai gets a second new airport and connectivity by 2024 that will meet the growing needs in the city. TOI gives a look at the $1.7 billion project that is being handled by Adani Airports.

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China's new approach to keep strict control over who goes in and out of affected areas in and near Wuhan where the coronavirus originated. This covers several cities and is being expanded as it spreads to limit how much it affects other parts of China and the world.

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A WSJ poll taken on Dec 3-7 of 1500 voters shows popularity of De Santis and Biden tied at 43%, Trump at 36% for all voters. Between Trump and De Santis the popularity of each is at 52% for De Santis vs 38% for Trump, among likely primary voters.

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Ten walking trips in places such as the Camino Francais on the way to Santiago de Compostela, the Welsh countryside, the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico, coast to coast in northern England, in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy, are shown here by Neil King in the WSJ.

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Infrastructure, airports and energy supplies are being set up in an area the size of Singapore in Dholera, Gujarat, 100 kilometres from Ahmedabad, near the Gulf of Khambat.  It is entirely a greenfield site.There prime minister Modi hopes to set up new semiconductor factories for Make in India in chipmaking.

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The WSJ looks at the UAW's wage demands for 8% a year over 4 years, a shorter work week, defined benefit pensions, and equal status for new workers. The auto companies are seeking the flexibility they need to price cars at levels that are competitive with overseas competition. 

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Barmer, Rajasthan hits 48 degrees centigrade. The heat wave affects election turnout in Rajasthan state of India and in other parts of India.Delhi sees temperatures of 45 degrees centigrade. Floods in Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul, heat wave in India, a new set of challenges from climate change in 2024.

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Revamping enclosed malls that are no longer needed is not working. Two projects of Brookfield Partners are failing. Needs are different today from what they were in the 1950's and there is a need to build using entirely new designs on the land occupied by the enclosed malls. 

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Athens has changed a lot since the economic crisis and it has a lot to offer in history, culture and in Mediterranean sights and food, says Tony Perrottet in WSJ. He looks at facets of the city including new subway connections and Greeks returning to setup cafes and other shops.

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Hotels in New York City can cost a fortune- $1100 a night in December near Christmas, $300 in September, $150 lower in January. Here dawn Gilbertson shares a small condo with an Airbnb host for $155 in December in Brooklyn about an hour subway+walk  to Manhattan.

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This video shows Dr. Birx explaining the three Phases for reopening the U.S. economy. Each state's governor would decide when a state thinks it is safe to move to the first phase. States which have not been affected much and fewer cases in the western part of the U.S. such as Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa could open earlier. Texas could start in May. California would have to do more testing before it starts Phase 1. New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts, would come later because of the severity of the crisis. Each phase criteria are carefully set out and parameters set down for social distancing rules to be followed, number of people, locations, how offices open, how stores open, how hospitals open. Germany and the U.S. have set out detailed guidelines and phases. A state in the U.S. could even move back in phases if data shows it is doing badly. Hotspots would continue to be tracked and resources shifted from the federal government quickly to these new hotspots now that medical supplies, medical personnel and other shortages such as testing are being aggressively addressed. ...

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Israeli leader Yair Lapid says "we need a government where right, left and centre work together as a way of life." The result is that Lapid's party is putting together a coalition of the right, left and centre- parties of Bennett, Labor, Gantz, and Lapid getting together to form a new government with sharing of ministries. Bennett would be the prime minister for 2 years followed by Lapid under this new arrangement. The whole arrangement is a result of no one  party or group of parties gaining a majority in repeated elections. Under the last arrangement Benny Gantz and Netanyahu shared power with Netanyahu going first as prime minister.  The new arrangement is designed as an effort to give Israel a chance to have anyone other than Netanyahu as prime minister, so intense is the desire for changes- almost as if Israel needed it "as it needs air to breathe," the way Lapid puts it. Lapid says the goal was not compromise which was tried in the past, the goal now was a government of change. ...

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Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is appointed the new chief of India's central bank in August 2013.

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The new J.D. Powers Quality Survey put out in Feb 2013 showed the Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln and Dodge Ram brands performing at the top level in number of problems reported by owners of 3 year old vehicles. Land Rover, Jeep and VW brands did poorly. Most of the Chrysler Dodge cars performed poorly. The redesign of vehicles initiated by Fiat Chrysler CEO Marchionne does not show up in this study. The redesigned Jeep and other vehicles will show in next years study. The study also showed buyers of economy vehicles were likely to switch easily when buying another car. New models are showing fewer problems and are more dependable compared to previous years, with the average number of problems declining from 170 per 100 vehicles in 2009, to 132 in 2011, and 126 in 2012.

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The Guardian sends its reporters along with UN special envoy on poverty Australian Prof. Alston as he spends two weeks in the world's richest country looking at poverty in urban areas.  They look at some of the 55,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, homelessness exacerbated by the tech boom in California that has sent housing costs skyrocketing. LA saw homeless people increase by 25% in 2017. The safety net is not being reinforced as the Trump administration cuts many social safety net programs. Next they visit the Tenderloin district in San Francisco where homeless people can be found at St Boniface Church sleeping in the pews. As the Guardian points out the cuts to social programs disproportionately hurt people of color who make up 39% of the homeless in the U.S. This report looks at the incongruity between the tax cuts that are likely to hurt poor whites who supported the Trump administration, as well as hurt the social protections that are part of today's democracies across the western world. This is most evident when one looks at the European Union. They were put in there in Europe for a reason- fairness is good for all classes, and most of all it protects democracies. Authoritarian regimes arise out of social dislocation from wars, or from lack of social protections and ineptitude of elites. Which is why a Lincoln or a Theodore Roosevelt from the Republican party supported fairness and social protections as much as FDR and Truman from the Democratic Party. The view expressed in this report in the Guardian is that the U.S. may have moved in the wrong direction under the Reagan and Clinton administrations creating the "me first" culture that prevails in the U.S. today. ...

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Ben Rooney of the Wall Street Journal interviews Mike Lynch of Autonomy. He tells Rooney that the main reason he sold his company to H-P was that H-P had no legacy database business, and this made it possible for H-P to take a new look at how to make data human friendly and to do new things with data that haven't been done before. He describes this as the 85% of what data is about that none of the legacy database companies have shown interest in doing. H-P's size means that it can bring more resources to this effort. He calls this an alignment of values that was the main attraction of H-P to Autonomy. The canny Lynch also says H-P's price, an 80% premium over the share price, was not a blow-out or over-paying by H-P. The London listed technology firms are about 25% undervalued. The acquisition by H-P of Vertica, an advanced database company, also converged in the same direction, says Lynch. And the potential for H-P is to use these resources as a major advatage in developing new products. On the UK technology scene, Lynch says the access to high quality graduates from Cambridge, Imperial, Herriot Watt, and Warwick is an advantage. He worries more about problems lower down with standards of math failing in high schools. ...