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Lee Zeldin at EPA and effort to cleanup PFAS Forever Chemicals 2025. Action taken the EPA under Zeldin to hold companies responsible to do the cleanup. Zeldin in his term at US Congress helped pass legislation to do this.

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The EU has agreed to allow a new Brexit extension, this time till January 31, 2020. According to the paper agreed on by member states the UK can leave on the first day of the month that a deal is ratified if a deal is ratified in parliament before the new extension date. The EU has also put in a declaration attached to the agreement that it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. EU leaders did not have to meet to do this as it was done by a written procedure used by EU council president Donald Tusk.

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A 'Use Up' day to tackle food that gets wasted after going bad in the fridge, adding to the compost and greenhouse methane gas emissions from burning waste. Picking one day a week to create a meal from food that is already in the kitchen or fridge, that reduces waste.

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Germany's national broadcaster DW.com looks into the details of the vaccination drive in countries around the world, including Germany, and finds that there is more to the story than meets the eye in headlines about safety in vaccinations. Many headlines do not tell the whole story carefully. DW revewed reports from Italy, Austria, South Korea, Germany, Spain, the USA, Norway, Belgium and Peru, and found that in most cases health authorites have not found causal links between the vaccination and deaths.  As of March 15 it says 360 million people have been vaccinated in 120 countries, or about 9.25 million a day.  DW.com cites the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) which states: 'there is no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions, which are not listed as side effects with this vaccine. Information available so far indicates that the number of thromboembolic events in vaccinated people is no higher than that seen in the general population." As of March 10, 2021 30 cases of blood clots are recorded for 5 million people vaccinated with Astra Zeneca vaccine in the European Economic Area.  The Paul Ehrlich Institute which is in charge of vaccination in Germany has looked into 113 reported deaths in 46 years to 100 years old patients in Germany. Of these 113 deaths PEI finds that 20 died of the Covid 19 infection as it takes 14 days after the second dose for full protection, and 43 died of pre-existing conditions or other infections. For the patient population it says "they were seriously ill patients with many underlying diseases." PEI says "based on the data we have we assume they died of their underlying disease- in a coincidental time with the vaccination." A virologist at the Technical University of Munich, says that the deaths after vaccination are below the expected number of deaths without the vaccination.  ...

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Recognizing and being aware of the changes in our minds and thinking  with new waves of coronavirus actually helps us deal with it. This report says that fear or anxiety even if it is pushed to the periphery of consciousness produces a whole range of behavioural, emotional and physiological weirdness that most people have experienced themselves or noticed in others since March of 2020. Even if one gets used to the additional load one carries it still can weigh one down. We all have only this much mental energy, so that the effort required to ignore, repress, or shoulder this load of fear or anxiety reduces one's ability to be creative, connected or productive. By dealing with it constructively one can diminish the impact it has on us. This means being aware of it, acknowledging it and managing it in useful ways.  Experts cited here show that fear masquerades as other emotions including sadness, anger, irritation, or even excessive feel good behaviour. It can also be expressed in intolerant behaviours or hypersensitive. On the other side it could even be expressed in aloofness and being distant, or unfriendly. Fear can also show up in ways that reduce our ability to read social and emotional cues leading to improper or inept exchanges. Physiological changes can include muscle tension and fatigue, headaches, heart irregularities, dry mouth, hair loss, skin problems, and gastrointestinal symptoms. These symptoms are unrelated to pathology say health experts and are normal reactions to feeling threatened over a long period. Different people experience anxiety differently, and most people don't even know that this is what is making you feel this way. Instead of having unproductive exchanges with fear going back and forth one can have calmer, more useful exchanges. One should always ask say health experts- "So how are you and your family coping up in these weird times?" Mindfulness and spiritual ways of dealing with this are very useful. People slow down, calm their minds, and ask "what is going on in my head right now? Where in my body am I putting my tension?" Health experts say neurobiology supports this way of tackling it. Other useful ways are to set some predictable routine in your daily life- helps you think you are still in control of the parts of your life you can control. Thinking of others and helping others is a good way of keeping ourselves sane and healthy. Fear and anxiety may also serve some purpose- the negative emotion can be harnessed to do something positive and meaningful in our life, make changes in our lives for the better by helping others in society who are less fortunate or in difficulty. Just being larger than ourselves makes us feel a lot better day after day, till it becomes a part of us. ...

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NYT Writers Who Show Who We Are series- on Wallace Stegner by A.O. Scott, who chronicled the lives in the West. A favorite of  El Paso born Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. We cite O'Connor because of her individualistic nature and her citing of her favorite passage of Stegner, having herself grown up on a ranch on the New Mexico-Arizona border under a great sky, a big empty space. That exposure, Stegner wrote in that passage makes a man or woman realize how small he or she is in the wide empty expanse, the big country also tells him who he or she is.  We show this as Sandra Day O'Connor like Amy Barrett of Indiana reflects the kind of individualism that Stegner celebrated in the wide open prairies or the western states of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and California. And with this convictions of their own women who made their own opinions for the Court based on their understanding of the Nation and the Constitution created by Jefferson, Madison, Washington and others. ...

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Daniel Henninger of the WSJ Editorial Board says even if a Republican is elected president it would be a question of 4 more years of what? The big problem today he says is the small number of legislators in the US House of Representatives, about 20 in the Freedom Caucus, that are opposed to the government operating unless they get their way. The result is that independent Speakers of the Republican controlled House, with Republicans having a slim majority, are unable to get elected, and the Speaker elected is a relative newcomer Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who entered Congress as recently as 2017. The new Speaker has said the legislation passed by a bipartisan group of Senators in the US Senate 70-30 for aid to Ukraine is "dead on arrival." Result an impasse with some saying this is the most ineffective Congress ever. In this situation if a Republican is elected president says Henninger he can do little because a loss of even one legislative branch to Democrats the House or the Senate would leave America where it started- in an impasse for 2024-2028. For this reason he says even though Mr. Trump said he would do great things there was little he could point to in his vision for the future, and little he could do just by signing executive orders that would later be reversed.  ...

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With foreign exchange reserves of $677 billion India is well placed to deal with the effects of the Ukraine conflict. The economy is better placed than European economies, says Governor Shantikanta Das of the Indian central bank, the RBI. The RBI and the Monetary Policy Committee see no risk of stagflation in India, Mr. Das says.

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Experts say wisdom is important for well-being the older you become. About 150,000 people are over 85 years age in New York City. This series in the NYT in Dec. 2015 looks at people in the city, their lives, and their attitudes to life. At this age as other physical abilities decline it is wisdom that makes up for this. By being positive about their aging and adapting to their limitations older people make better lives. Laura Carstensen, director Stanford Center on Longevity, says this period can be better than people think for seniors who have gratitude, forgiveness, calm and appreciation in greater degrees from 50 years to 70 years, continuing into the later years. Anger and stress being replaced by conveying gratitude. The positive attitudes to aging also affect memory and heart disease. One of the people covered Ping Wong, 90 years, plays mah-jongg with friends every day and does everyday activities that make her happy. Jonas Mekas, 93 years, is a filmmaker who continues his working activities- doing an exhibition in Brescia, Italy, publishing an anthology of his writings, and giving a lecture in Berlin on filmmaking. Mekas has an interesting philosophy of life- he says do what you are doing and don't think about it much, it will all end sometime, just do something good for humanity that someone else can pickup from you when you are gone, which is normal. A sense of optimism prevails in these lives. Says Mekas its important to not give up on the idea of paradise....

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Germans are afraid to move in public spaces after dark, especially young women. DW.com confirms this in its investigation in September 2025. It includes discussion with criminologist Susanne Karstedt that is cited here. The area around the main Frankfurt train station is a site for prostitution says this report, and this attracts crime and drug crime. This was unknown during our previous visits to Frankfurt over 15 years ago and is a result of changes in the Merkel years when infrastructure was neglected allowed to deteriorate ,and migrant populations were allowed into the country. It is astonishing for a visitor to see the Frankfurt station in such a dilapidated state as it is the commercial and banking city of Europe and Germany, where the European Central Bank is located. Chancellor Merz says Germans are "afraid to move around in public spaces due to migrants who do not have permanent residence status, do not work, and do not abide by our rules." A recent poll shows only one third of the poll participants think the chancellor is incorrect. Many people want to avoid the label of racism when asked about it,  but still know that public safety is clearly not what it was in the past in the 1980's and 1990's. The chancellor is only stating what he sees- "I don't know whether you have children. If you do, and there are daughters among them, ask your daughters what I might have meant. I suspect you'll get a pretty clear and unambiguous answer. There's nothing I need to retract." "There are a lot of people who say, see, and judge it this way. Once again: Ask your children, ask your daughters, ask your friends and relatives. They will all confirm that this is a problem — once it gets dark, if not before." For a visitor to Frankfurt this is clear to see as plain as daylight and reflects the decline of the Schroeder-Merkel years  similar to the decline in the US over the last two decades under Clinton-Bush and Obama. To see this in Frankfurt and other German cities near urban hubs and train stations is astonishing, sad and very disconcerting. ...

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The Jal Jeevan Mission of Indian prime minister Modi had the goal of bringing clean water by taps in every home. Of 190 million homes in 2023, 116 million homes now have clean tap water. This is 60% of homes in 2023 compared to 17% or 32 million homes when the program was started by prime minister Modi in 2019 just before the pandemic. Jal Jeevan's safe supply of drinking water to 1.2 billion people is closely connected to health of people and diseases, epidemics,  in villages and towns in India. In this way it ensures the health of the rural population in India, a must do of basics for development in India, that had never been tackled from 1947 to 2019. With much of it accomplished during the pandemic itself, and the target date set for 100% completion by 2024- the biggest achievement since independence. To day it is not just supply but how to maintain the supply of good fresh water using education of people in rural areas as part of the effort, and programs for preserving and storing fresh water. Programs are thought out in a broad context to include next generation technologies, water conservation and storage. ...

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As this report in WSJ shows underreporting of coronavirus cases is a serious problem for Africa, and the figures from Africa's CDC, part of the African Union, do not show the magnitude of the problem. It shows that health workers in places from Yaounde in Cameroon to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, to cities in Somalia, are reporting a situation quite different from what the CDC shows, with hotspots emerging in some places with little in the way of resources.

Only 1 million tests have been done and half are in SOuth Africa and Ghana. WIthout the testing it is hard to know how many cases there are. Capetown area in South Africa is emerging as a hotspot and hospitals are expected to be overwhelmed within weeks. Officially Tanzania a country with 56 million has 509 cases and 21 deaths, yet this contrasts with reports from health experts. Cameroon and South Sudan are also possible emerging hotspots in addition to Tanzania says this report in WSJ.

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See Tim Walz's full speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, August 21, 2024 in his video from CBS News. Lyrarc has selected excerpts from Tim Walz's speech above showing what the Trump Republican party plans to do that will gut Social Security and Medicare, and kill the Affordable Care Act, gut efforts to lower exaggerated cost of medical drugs and healthcare. This excerpt shows what Harris will do to build a better life for workers and families and people across all 51 States, in education, childcare, healthcare, cost of living, and housing costs- "We’ve got something better to offer the American people. It starts with our candidate, Kamala Harris. From her first day — as a prosecutor, as a district attorney, as an attorney general, as a United States senator, and then our vice president — she’s fought on the side of the American people. She’s taken on the predators and fraudsters. She’s taken down the transnational gangs. And she’s stood up to powerful corporate interests. She has never hesitated to reach across that aisle if it meant improving your lives. And she’s always done it with energy, with passion and with joy. Folks, we’ve got a chance to make Kamala Harris the next president of the United States. But I think we owe it to the American people to tell them exactly what she’d do as president before we ask them for their votes. So this is the part — clip and save it, and send it to your undecided relatives so they know: If you’re a middle-class family, or trying to get into the middle class, Kamala Harris is going to cut your taxes. If you’re getting squeezed by prescription drug prices, Kamala Harris is going to take on Big Pharma. If you’re hoping to buy a home, Kamala Harris is going to help make it more affordable. And no matter who you are, Kamala Harris is going to stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life that you want to lead, because that’s what we want for ourselves, and it’s what we want for our neighbors."       ...

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A You.Gov poll taken for The Times in the last 5 days says 9 out of 10 Tory voters have decided who they will vote for as ballot papers went out this week. And 60% will vote for Liz Truss who has widened her lead to 34 points over Rishi Sunak. Tory party voters for the leadership by a majority or 53% say Boris Johnson should not have resigned. Only 41% say Boris Johnson should resign. Mr. Johnson supported Liz Truss, as do most of the cabinet.

When asked who can get Tories a majority in the next election Truss at 39% has a 20 percentage point lead over Sunak. From this it appears that if Tories themselves and not the cabinet had decided Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, and Liz Truss takes on the premiers role with the same style and spirit of Brexit that Johnson brought to the role and would consider Mr. Johnson as part of the close advisers.

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Banks in the US are moving away from cryptocurrency and shunning connections with the cryptocurrency business after a regulatory crackdown by the SEC and public warnings about its future. Banks are reevaluating exposure to the crypto sector no matter how small, says this WSJ report. In early 2020 the regulatory agencies were not vigilant enough about this sector which is now seen as highly risky and not for the private sector- digital currencies being the province of central banks just like the US dollar which is issued with the backing of the US government. The Federal Reserve website says about CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency in highlighted language.- "Like existing forms of money the CBDC would enable the general public to make digital payments. As a liability of the Federal Reserve, a CBDC would be the safest digital asset available to the general public, with no associated credit or liquidity risk." It is because the US Congress failed to act and a prevailing culture of laissez faire, failure of regulatory agencies to act quickly that allows this to happen, that the private sector was allowed to dabble in what is clearly the province of central banks. Laissez faire is originally a French word meaning "allow to do" which has been taken to extremes such as letting private sector issue digital currencies in the prevailing culture. The Fed's Lael Brainard, Jay Powell, Treasury's Janet Yellen did not come out saying what the Fed's website now says and highlights that the only safe digital asset is the central bank's digital currency. Compare this with the caution taken from the beginning about crypto sector by India's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the head of the central bank of India the RBI Mr. Shantikanta Das. ...

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The 47 seconds of a UC Davis Law School debate for the election of Attorney General California. The year 2010, Kamala Harris 45 years old had endorsed Obama early in 2008, was becoming well known in the California Democratic party. The debate was with Steve Cooley, a popular Republican District Attorney elected in 2000. Cooley was looking into outlandish salaries for public officials in the City of Bell. The issue of double dipping had been raised in the primary by Cooley's opponent Eastman. Jack Leonard on of three panelists said he would ask the question about double dipping to Cooley, about Cooley taking his taxpayer paid pension to add to his salary as AG of $150,000, that would get him to make $400,000. "Do you plan to double-dip by taking both a pension and your salary as attorney general?” Mr. Leonard asked. “Yes, I do,” Mr. Cooley said outright Leonard glanced at Ms. Harris. She said nothing.    “I earned it.” But Mr. Cooley was not yet done. “I definitely earned whatever pension rights I have, and I will certainly rely upon that to supplement the very low, incredibly low salary that’s paid to the attorney general,” said Cooley. Everyone felt a moment of silence and amazement. And then Harris said "Go for it Steve. You earned it." Harris campaign was about broke with only $750,000 left, just enough to run one ad spot for only 1  week. And Kamala Harris had the courage to do just that. At that moment the campaign was won, a last minute counter ad did not register as Meg Whitman the governor candidate for Republicans  was seeing her campaign go off the rails. ...

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Nate Cohn looks at Biden and support he could draw from young, non-white and "irregular" voters in 2024. Many of them were uncertain even though they were Democrats. Irregular voters are young voters who are disengaged and do not follow events and who are low turnout, mostly from Democratic constituencies who have supported Republicans and Mr. Trump but lack any specific loyalty.

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Impact of Iran War on European economy- Germany's growth 1.3% and 1.7% growth in 2026 and 2027 down to 0.6% and 0.9%.  With inflation at 2.8% and 2.9% from 2.0% and 2.3%. This is the consensus of all forecasts including Ifo Institute and Kiel Institute, which also see prices coming down in the second half, the Iran war impact mostly first half only. Clearly Germany will be able to ride out the Iran crisis and oil at $120 in April 2026. A big part of this is that there is a trillion dollars in investment that Germany's Merz has initiated and this makes a huge difference. France is self sufficient in energy with its reliance on nuclear energy. Germany imports only 6% of its energy from the Hormuz straits which means supplies will be available just that prices will be higher. Germany also can accelerate its renewable energy shift which would pay dividends in the future. Germany also practices conservation of energy better than most countries, similar to Japan, getting the same GNP with lower and lower energy needs. If the US were to do what Germany and Japan have done in energy conservation there would be no need for Hormuz, US could supply Japan with energy. ...