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London as one of the largest megacities, but a fifth of the land area covered by treesmaking it one of the greenest cities.  And areas like Regents Park where this family moved from Kent, England.

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The US now leads a new 12 nation economic alliance meant to advance the 4 pillars of digital economy, supply chain renewal, defense, and transparency plus good governance. The alliance includes partners Japan, South Korea, with Australia, India and Indonesia and other ASEAN nations. On his first trip to Asia president Biden said at the launch announcement of the US led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity in Tokyo- "The future of the 21st Century economy is going to largely be written in the Indo-Pacific- in our region. We're writing the new rules." Behind this announcement one senses a lot of preparatory work has already been done in discussions with key partners in Japan and South Korea, as well as with India, Indonesia and other ASEAN nations. In terms of population the countries involved may exceed 2 billion people with the largest GDP in the world. With other links such as the US EU Trade and Technology Council the group encompasses most of the industrialized world. Combined with Latin America this would reach about 3 billion people. With Biden setting a new vision for the Free World after another US president Harry Truman did this in the years following the Second World War. ...

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Chernobyl nuclear disaster area in Ukraine as it is today. Cesium's half-life is 30 years and strontium's half-life is 29 years. Scientific estimates show that it takes about 10-13 half-lives, or about 300 years, for the radioactive effects to disappear and for life to return to the area. The contaminated area around the Chernobyl reactor is about 15,000 square miles or about the size of Switzerland. This place gives some idea of what can be expected for the area around the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan. A reporter visits this area.

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The wounds left behind in S. Korea from the 1997 Asian financial crisis when the IMF imposed conditions for $21 billion in loans as part of a $60 billion loan package to prevent a sovereign debt default. The conditionality imposed for loans led to layoffs and economic hardship for the working class. S. Koreans remember the crisis as the "IMF crisis." It also has a particular stigma in S. Korea which the IMF is now trying hard to erase. One laid off employee from an automobile plant describes the period as a hard hitting IMF typhoon. So struck are S. Koreans with the term that it has become synonymous with financial hardship. In the 12 years since the crisis the IMF itself has changed. It is now trying to provide help to countries on better terms and is conscious of the problems of austerity policies. During the 2008 financial crisis Seoul stayed away from the IMF. Seoul is host to the G-20 in 2010 and now has a participatory role in international meetings. The IMF has created a emergency loan facility that could be useful for Asian countries and wants to change the perception of the IMF in Asia....

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NATO Air Drills with active participation of the US and Germany including Japan near Eastern European borders with Russia, are meant to show that the US and allies can move quickly in both the European region and in the area near Taiwan if needed. It follows a drill exercise by Russia with Chinese forces close to Japan in 2022.

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Japan is still very cautious about nuclear power after the meltdowns at Japanese nuclear reactors in Fukushima. A decade after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit the nuclear reactors only 9 reactors are operating compared to 54  earlier. In Germany the final reactor is set to be retired in 2022. From Wales to South Korea and the US planning has stopped after Fukushima.

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Thomas Friedman of the NYT sees a climate change as an area in which Trump has ignored the information of eminent scientists. He sees a weakness of the Trump administration in Trump's putting no importance to briefings by experts from climate change to national security briefings. Friedman sees Russia and hacking as a major issue facing the new Trump administration, including the new hearings in Congress from leading Republicans on the cyberattacks.

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NYT reporters show China is continuing to crack down on what it sees as companies that break the law. This adds to risks of companies operating in China leading to companies not adding to investments in China and looking at options of manufacturing or doing business in other friendly locations such as India and Vietnam for manufacturing. New deals are also being done with South Korea, Japan instead of China as China's surveillance of business grows and risks increase of operating in China.

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US law now supports turning back migrants at the border. Under public health policy Title 42 migrants are denied asylum, a federal appeals court ruling supporting this. It is also now supported by the Biden administration. It is a key tool used by both the Trump and Biden administrations to combat illegal border crossings. It also reduces one more area in which differences were mistakenly created between Republican and Democratic parties, that distracted from focus on much needed infrastructure and other priorities for the American people.

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A country with vast boreal forests, rivers and lakes spread out over the upper half othe North American continent, has seen some of the worst effects of climate change in recent years. An area the size of Georgia 38 million acres has burned in wild fires in Canada. Omimitsu Onishi of NYT looks at the Covitchan River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and how it has changed in this report. Plentiful salmon to the point that you would have to walk over them are a thing of the past.

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NYT provides an extraordinary display of working age population demographic data in graphics for the world and individual countries to 2050. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and African countries are given the opportunity to make progress similar to South Korea, Japan and China over the next 25 years. India with 1.4 billion people and a determined federal government can set the stage for the type of progress that can modernize the country and build a level of infrastructure that compares with the best in Europe, the US and Japan.

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Macroprudential policies of central banks in S. Korea, Indonesia, China, Canada, and other countries, as concerns grow about a housing and credit bubble.