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High school students have struggled through online classes in 2020 and 2021 in the US. States have waived standardized exit exams and let students repeat 12th grade as the pandemic has made it difficult for students to learn. The lack of a normal classroom environment has affected many students leading to learning loss. High school students have consistently had low assignment completion rates for the last year.

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This speech by chancellor Merz to the German parliament the Bundestag, marks a major turning point for Germany since reunification in 1990. This is where chancellor Merz took up the task of Germany shouldering responsibilities in the world for its economic role and for it's role in defence of Europe. Hardly 2 months in office the Merz coalition with finance minister Kingbeil and defense minister Pistorius both of the SPD, and foreign minister Wadephul of the CDU, is setting a new direction for Germany, in a historic moment. Merz says Germany needs to be strong and reliable from now on. Huge new investment for the first time since 1990 sets the path to modernization of the Germany economy and German infrastructure, German defense. Not surprisingly Merz comes not from the professional class of politicians but from business as head of German investment fund for Black Rock. He brings a clear headed common sense approach and has the support of the Social Democrats and the Green Party in its investment program to rebuild the German economy. The media focuses on AfD yet it misses the point that fully 57% of voters back Merz and Kingbeil, that the AfD reached its high point at 20.8 percent of vote with the offset of the Left parties at 16 percent of voters and with Merz's policy on stopping all illegal migration. Merz moved quickly to remove the constitutional debt brake set by Merkel and had parliament pass a budget that supports modernization of infrastructure on a big scale. ...

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In this interview with Der Spiegel Bernie Sanders reflects on the 2016 election. He says that the Democratic Party missed the fact that many people in the midwest, south and other parts of the country, were worse off after president Obama left than when he came in in 2008. He also says Hillary Clinton relied too heavily on speechwriters and advisers upto the point of  having three speechwriters say why she was running for president. He finds the cuts proposed to healthcare, in the budget, and action on climate change, immoral. He also points out about the investigations that Mr. Mueller is someone everybody respects and that it would be wrong to offer a biased opinion, that Trump supporters would see this in the way that he is picked on when he just came in. He also believes Trump supporters are like other voters and are likely to look at the results, how better off they are under the Trump administration.

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The Oxford vaccine developed by British scientists could be ready by September. Astra Zeneca has joined with Oxford so that it can produce 100 million vaccine doses by the end of the year. This is because in a sense the vaccine is not new. It uses an existing tech platform where there is a lot of experience. The use of ring vaccination method shortens the process of testing on humans the vaccine to a few months. The core of the virus ChAdox1 already exists in chimpanzees and has a mild effect on humans. This is an adenovirus. It is combined with another virus to produce the covid vaccine for coronavirus. Researchers at Oxford have used ChAdox1 in the past to test vaccines for Ebola and MERS as well as other virus.  Already tests have been conducted on rhesus macaques. The rhesus macaques given the vaccine at a Montana lab did not get coronavirus.The surface protein of coronavirus is simply added to the ChAdox1 so that it is able to attach to host cells and infect them in the human body, and let antibodies develop from this. The purpose is to let the human body develop defense mechanism against this attaching to a human cell.   ...

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In private conversations, Paul Volcker has advised administration officials, that in implementing the Volcker Rule, regulators should follow the practice in money laundering laws. There the government bans a certain behaviour, and then the burden is on the banks to screen for red flags and to ensure compliance. His advice is to ban banks from trading with their own funds if they benefit from any kind of government guarantee. Banks would be required to police their own actions, and the Fed examiners ensuring they are in compliance. The recently passed regulatory reform bill left a lot to the regulators, who have to fill in the blanks. Volcker's concern is that narrow rules would invite gamesmanship from the banks to evade the intent of the law. At one Congressional hearing Volcker suggested a Potter Stewart type of approach- Stewart as Supreme Court Justice said about pornography: "I know it when I see it." For Volcker bankers know what proprietary trading is and is not, and he does not want to let bankers tell anybody anything different. Thw new Financial oversight Stability Council is charged with the task of coming up with a course of action by January 2011, and then writing the rules by October 2011. The fear among a group of 18 senators is that bankers will weaken the Volcker rule protections. A letter pointing this out was sent by the group to the Oversight Council last week....

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The Times offers insights into what sort of man Scholz is and how he went on from mayor of Hamburg to lead Germany as chancellor and head of a coalition government with the Greens and the FDP. Scholz made a pitch in his campaign for "respect" as a way to unify German society, with respect for the less well off and people left behind. Scholz is an avid reader, most recently of Brendan Simms Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, on Germany's and Europe's role in the period since the 15th century and the Reconquista of Spain. He is a lover of jazz, Mahler, the poetry of Mario Vargas Llosa and Heinrich Heine, the novels of Thomas Mann and Gunter Grass. He also loves rowing, which he says can get him out of bed before 7 am in the morning. He once told the Frankfurter Allgemeine - "The greatest mistake in my private life was that it took me until I was 40 to find out I like sport." He is married to Britta Ernst, who is a SPD politician and minister of education in the state of Brandenburg that is next to Berlin. Asked what qualities he prized in a person Scholz has said - "Self-reflection and self-evaluation."   ...

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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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Roger Cohen in the NYT says Macron has missed the public mood in France, the cost of living crisis and the social and economic problems left by the pandemic. FR24 says about two thirds of the French people think this is the wrong time to tackle the pensions issue. The change in the pensions is not an immediate solution as it will be phased in over a period of time stretching to 2030. Many solutions could have been put in place to tackle age discrimination and other problems to make it possible to work productively for longer. Macron needed to address these problems and come up with ways to lessen the burden of the cost of living crisis first before tackling longer term issues. This is a major misstep by Macron, and comes from his lack of experience as one of the youngest persons to become president of France at the age of 39. He was reelected but only with the help of voters who had supported  a socialist candidate Mr. Melenchon. Macron said after that election that he would listen carefully to the voting public that had elected him, even with reservations after the yellow vest protests about his lack of sensitivity for people struggling to make a living. ...

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Jose de Cordoba of the WSJ provides this excellent story on the nature of the migration crisis in the U.S. that is creating political divisions in the U.S. What is causing this surge in migration to the U.S.? Cordoba provides some useful insights to understand the nature of this problem. Nine out of ten migrants in Guatemala which sends most of the migrants from Central America are moving north from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for financial reasons, it points out. Only 10% are because of violence in the region, the rest for financial reasons according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration The jump in apprehension of Guatemalans at the American border shows a surge from 15,000 in 2007 to 236,000 in 9 months of 2019, according to U.S. government data. The surge began in 2008 and jumped in 2014 after U.S. court rulings that first required migrant children to be allowed to join relatives in the U.S. followed by a ruling in 2015 that allowed a parent to join the children and allowed court proceedings to take place that takes years. The result was that smugglers advertised on radio and families sold small plots of land to join relatives in the U.S. who had gone before them. The migration is also specific to certain areas hit by damage to crops, including coffee crop from drought, or certain towns that simply sent more people simply for financial reasons advertised openly.  For 8 hours of work a migrant could make at $12 per hour amount of $96 per day, in Guatemala the daily wage would be about $5.  Overwhelmingly it is financial reasons or economic opportunity that sends migrants north. After it became known that kids could help migration the people in family groups apprehended at the border jumped from about 40,000 in 2015 to 390,000 in fiscal 2019. Smugglers charge $8600 per adult and half that for a child and an adult that can be dropped off at a checkpoint. The efforts of president Trump to close the border to this migration include having Mexico sign an agreement to police its southern border with Guatemala using its newly setup National Guard. As a result the migration has actually surged in 2019 with migrants seeing this as their one last opportunity to join relatives in the U.S. or to migrate to the U.S. The Trump administration tried separating families because of the loophole in the law that allows children to be not deported and parents to join their children. But this created a public outcry and the effort now is to close the loophole in the law. It is also strange that as many migrants are coming from one town Joyabaj  with population 100,000 as from Guatemala City the capital population 2.5 million. In fact the economy has grown by 3.4 % a year in Guatemala and efforts have been made to improve conditions with the help of donor countries in the West for several years, though the drought conditions exist. The situation is similar to that in Europe. If one looks at the violence by gangs in central American region after the end of the guerilla wars and compares it to the wars in Syria and Iraq, one can see how humanitarian concerns preceded what eventually turned out tobe a full blown migration for economic reasons. Initially chancellor Merkel adopted a humanitarian stance but failed to recognize that there was another side to his situation that would attract a wave of economic migrants from places as far apart as North Africa to Afghanistan. Poverty has existed in these regions for many many years before the current migration, with drought and lack of economic opportunity going far back in time. Merkel only recently recognized this problem and the new CDU leader Kambrauer has clearly recognized this. CDU policy shifted in 2018-2019 with curbs on economic migration that has reduced it to a trickle. This process is underway in the U.S. at its border with Mexico and for Mexico with its border with Guatemala. In the short run Europe and the U.S. are paying a price. Not just in the way it has divided each country with a far left and a far right eroding the centrist parties that existed before. In some cases centrist parties that were popular on the right and the left now hve leaders from a far right or a far left faction within the centrist ruling parties. Boris Johnson in Britain, Trump in the U.S., leaders in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Or as in Germany and Spain new far left or far right parties causing the centrist parties to dwindle in influence or as in Germany this combined with a shift to the Green Party in Germany and Liberals Party in Britain as a show of disapproval for how the migration issue has been tackled.  The Economist in a July 2019 issue also points out that the country's own citizens have fared worse with migration. It shows how the Conservative Party's austerity cuts for welfare budgets was popular in Britain as long as eastern European migration at high levels in Britain were allowed starting with the Labour party under Blair. This disproportionately hurt the middle class and the poor after the hit already taken from the faulty banking caused recession. With the drop in migration it is now felt by a majority in Britain that the austerity cuts have just gone too far and a mood is set in to restore many of the cuts and fund public services. Meantime some of the damage has been done and will take a decade to correct as the issues that mangled the centrist parties and led to fragmentation on views of what society should look like have taken place with Brexit and high levels of poverty, income inequality in Britain, lack of investment in infrastructure with overallocation to tech with declining productive benefit for every additional dollar spent. ...

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Britain has fallen way behind under Conservatives Tories misrule. On just about all indicators of the economy the US is ahead of Britain, on cost of living, on investment in infrastructure, on chips and science, on unemployment and on economic growth. The US economic growth was 2% compared to 0.5% for Britain.  Britain under the Tories over the last ten years lost so much ground fighting for Brexit and hurting it's economy. The Tory party is itself torn apart again today by Farage's Reform party, much of it from poor leadership- Cameron, Boris Johnson, Sunak. The result today is that Labour's Starmer says he has a 22 billion pound gap in the Budget that the Tories Conservatives have left him, a hole he says that will lead to Labour cutting winter fuel payment for pensioners this winter.  The US with president Biden is so far ahead of Britain with $1 trillion in investments taking place under the Inflation Reduction Act and $53 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act. Harris plans to build 3 million homes and offer $100 billion to small business to spur growth. There is just no comparison and owes much to president Biden and Harris, and to senior Republicans who supported the administration on the economy. ...

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The Third Biennial Update Report at COP26 Glasgow shows where India stands on renewable energy, solar, forest cover enhancement, and improving carbon intensity in its climate change efforts so far.  For instance a 17 times increase in solar in the last 7 years to 45 gigawatts, with target of 450 gigawatts by 2030. In carbon intensity 24% improvement between 2005-2014. Scientist Bhatt presented the report for India's Environment Ministry saying India represented 17% of the world's population and historically 4% of world carbon emissions, today 5%. Improvements of carbon intensity per unit of GDP planned under Mod's plan for 2030 require 45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030. This suggests the trajectory of China will be avoided where highly polluting parts of industries such as steel and cement were left unregulated and lacking strict supervision leading to rampant pollution in 2000-2021. Mr. Birol, head of the Renewables Energy Agency said on BBC's "Hard Talk" program recently that if you combine all of China's steel and cement factory carbon emissions, that alone would equal the total sum of carbon emissions of the whole European Union today. A quick look at a graph of global carbon emissions trajectories shows three fold increase of China's carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons to 12 billion tons between 2000-2021, the period and the explosion of carbon that is the one activity that singlehandedly created the crisis of climate change today. By comparison US remains at about 6 billion tons of emissions, and EU, US, Britain Japan show flat trajectories. Business, globalization interests, US and European financial interests, and local governments in China that financed this explosion in steel and cement ignored the implications of so much pollution in so short a time through unregulated activities- writing a chapter of failure with most of the world's people left to bear the results of such a failure.  It is this that India plans to correct with a 45% improvement in carbon intensity per unit of GDP by 2030, and nothing could be more important in the government's plan than this. New technologies will be key for this. Modi and India realize how vulnerable India is to floods, drought stricken areas, shortages of water, and climate extremes, and see these plans as critical for healthy growth that benefits all of India's people and regions, It is a long term vision like no other today and sets a new direction for all developing regions of Asia, Latin America and Africa. As India leads the way in new technologies and ambitious programs such as one solar, one world, one grid, these technologies will also break open new paths for the regions of the world that need this most from Brazil to Indonesia.  China too suffers from the impact of so much pollution. Even as early as 2010 reports showed the higher pollution had lowered life expectancy in northern region of China compared to its southern region. Yet the most polluting factories were not removed and only recently is the activity being conducted seriously leading to the shortages of fuel from so much overexpansion in the boom years, and making adjustments done abruptly today more difficult.   ...

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The job losses in October revised to 320,000, for September revised to 403,000, and for November 533,000 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate rising to 6.7%, and including the 420,000 who had been seeking work or working but now left the labor force in November , the unemployment rate is close to 7%.

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Russian president Putin may have exacerbated the very thing he feared- a deepening demographic crisis in Russia. This report in the Financial Times says excess mortality was already one of the highest from the coronavirus- about 1 million compared to official figures of 360,000. During the 1990's Russia had gone through a demographic decline with fewer births after the fall of the Soviet Union and unstable conditions in the economy.  During the pandemic there was outward migration from Russia as a result of people wanting access to vaccines other than the local vaccine, says FT.  In an interview last November Mr. Putin talked about the dangers to Russian statehood and to the economy from a drop in births and falling population. The war has worsened this situation as the FT says about 70,000 highly educated people left the country in March and another 70,000 are expected to leave in April. The response of Europe and the US to the Ukraine invasion with moves that affect the Russian economy could lead to drop in jobs and living standards that lead to a further drop in births, says FT. This may be a more serious way in which Mr. Putin may have neglected to consider Russia's own long term interests in invading its neighbor.   ...

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Tabuchi provides an exceptional account of the difficulties overcome by Rieko Fukushima as she returned from maternity leave to setup the 3-D TV team at Toshiba to commercialize the technology. Her inventive skills, networking and collaboration with other parts of Toshiba, hard work and perseverance paid off when her team solved the problem of being able to view the 3-D television without glasses. The solution was a new algorithm based on Toshiba processer Cell that sent different images to the left and right eyes. Here she describes the astonishment with which her team received the news that a woman was in charge of the team, just returning from maternity leave, and only 39! Was it tough as a woman? Yes, she says! Rieko was exceptional in many ways. Japan's challenge is to get more women with even a fraction of Rieko's talent to make a huge difference in a country where women play a minor role in positions of responsibility and initiative at all levels. It would make a large difference in Japan's prospects in the global economy- about 8.2 million more workers, and an estimated 15% increase in GNP....

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Governor Andrew Cuomo's personal reflections on his father Mario Cuomo, his ex wife Kerry Kennedy, girlfriend Sandra Lee of the Food Network, on politics, gun control, and the extreme left of the Democratic Party. His view of effective politics that has a positive impact on people's lives is that it takes the energy of an Olympic athlete to compete.

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G7 finance ministers meeting leads to setting up joint principles such as ensuring customer deposits are safe, buying bank equity stakes with capital injection, and doing nothing that would harm the interests of other countries in the global economy, but policy actions were left to the individual countries to decide based on the unique circumstances in their country.

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The conservatives are hoping to do what Angela Merkel has done in Germany developing policies that support social protections to undercut the centre-Left parties, and working for ideas that support personal responsibility and fiscal responsibility in public finances. As Britain faces increasing national debt, polls show austerity measures are supported by 60% of the public.

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"Egregiously unsanitary conditions" at Abbott's Sturgis Michigan plant, with leaking roofs and cracks in production equipment that let in bacteria, are described before a House panel, by the head of the Food and Drug Administration in the US. The closing of the plant led to baby food shortages.

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This piece by Kanter in the NYT gives an account of Jean Claude Juncker's background as a political leader in Luxembourg. His father worked in the steel industry and was active in the trade union movement at a time when farming and steel making supported the economy of Luxembourg. In two decades under Juncker Luxembourg was transformed into a banking and insurance center with one of the largest per capita incomes in Europe. As a Brussels insider Juncker, according to British public opinion, is an odd choice to head the EU when it is trying to make its administration more democratic and less distant from the average person in the EU. Britain's prime minister Cameron says Juncker "was never on any ballot." The reason for Juncker's candidacy is that he is supported by the centre right parties in Europe, which also lost support in the recent elections. The Socialist and left parties fared worse in the election, but both centre right and left parties lost votes to third parties and nationalist parties such as the Marie Le Pen's nationalist party in France and the Independent party in Britain. Even chancellor Merkel of Germany initially hesitated to support Juncker, but confirmed him as her choice when German public opinion showed it favored the selection based on the largest party in the European parliament making the choice. This puts Britain and Cameron at odds with Germany, with the Swedes and the Dutch calming their doubts about Juncker and going with Germany. Little is mentioned in the media about the other candidate, an SPD leader from Germany representing the socialist and Left parties. ...

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The economy, wages and cost of living, the failures in infrastructure and at Deutsche Bahn, migration or remigration are issues in Germany. During periods when there are Christmas market attacks in recent years  remigration has emerged as an issue. Migration is no longer the issue in Germany as it was during high levels of migration under Merkel following the wars in Syria and Iraq, unrest in North African countries such as Tunisia with Arab Spring.  The policies of CDU's Merkel tapping into potential migrant labor to meet shortages of manpower in the economy have been reversed by CDU and SPD+ Greens since 2020. Musk wades into this issue only to find Christian Democrats, Free Democrats cautioning him that he lacks understanding of what is happening. Remigration is now essentially accepted by the Social Democrats, and Christian Demcorats, advocated by Wagenknect Left and AfD right parties alike, leaving little room for AfD to grow except from unease.  CDU Merz polls at 30-36% but lacks answers to the Ukraine war. AfD is at about 20%. Wagenkenecht has taken positions opposing immmigration and migrants similar to Socialist parties in Denmark, which means most of the European Union across all parties have reversed position on migration similar to Labor in Britain under Keir Starmer. ...

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A group in the Tory party of prime minister Johnson sees a bigger risk for Britain in allowing 35% content in nonsensitive parts of Britain's 5G network as approved earlier. Tory views have changed since the coronavirus crisis and after the U.S. government decision on May 20 to require a government approval before U.S. companies can sell any semiconductors made abroad with U.S. technology. The use of other alternatives increases the risk for Britain, say Tory MP's. The National Security Council met to reconsider the earlier decision and called for a reassessment.

Britain would be left out of the Five Eyes Club of intelligence sharing with the U.S. if it does not also exclude Huawei from 5G networks. Mr. Trump says the U.S. will not share intelligence with Britain if it continues with the earlier decision.

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When Trump was four he lived in the Jamaica Estates area of Queens in New York. He later shifted to a different part of Queens. In the 1950 census the number of Latinos were so few no count was done of Latinos. 96% of Queens was white then. By the time Trump was 25 one in 13 were Latino, starting the gradual influx which by the 1980's led to a steady decline in whites. About 900,000 whites left New York and today only about 25% of Queens is white. Archie Bunker the famous TV program character who has attitudes typical of lower middle class Eastern European whites was famous in a TV program of the sixties and seventies. Archie Bunker was from this white community in Queens. And Archie Bunker is similar to Trump in his views. It is the sense of lost neighborhoods as immigration increased that has become a source of deep discomfort to this section of the white community.

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In a historic visit Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram). Chinese Buddhist scholar and monk Xuanzang spent time in India, arriving in 627 AD to look for Buddhist manuscripts in Nalanda and other places, returning to China in 643 AD, where he translated these manuscripts deepening China's knowledge of Buddhism. Bodhidharma the son of a Pallava king in southern India left for China in 527 AD bringing Buddhism to China. The Pallava dynasty ruling in southern India at this time had trade, religion and cultural connections with  Fujian province in China. Chinese president Xi was a governor of Fujian province and has a strong interest in history and culture. This follows a visit by Xi to Ahmedabad with its Gujarati culture, and prime minister Modi's visit to Wuhan, China in 2018 to bring the two leaders together in personal relationships. India and China are also increasing cultural contacts and tourist visitors with easy visa arrangements. The idea is that currently a huge gulf in understanding exists between India and China, which contradicts the historically close relationship with the spread of Buddhism from India to China, Japan, and South east Asia. Mamallapuram is now a UNESCO historic site.   ...

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Adam Nossiter of the NYT describes the clearly presidential nature of Macron's appearences during the first month in office. First at the Louvre during the night election results showed him winning easily, and later in appearances at the G 7 summit meeting and at Versailles with the Russian president. This is in sharp contrast to the chatty, "little jokes" and other efforts of president Hollande that left people with the impression that he was not decisive and strong. The French presidency from the time of Charles De Gaulle by its very nature compared to the prime minister's position of England, requires a strong presence and decisive personality. Macron shows every intention of fulfilling that role. Observers have traced this to Macron being a research assistant to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Macron acquired a training at the end of the 1990's from Ricoeur, which emphasized the need for and virtue of a middle ground- that sees even the events of the French revolution in a different light, with the death of the king Louis XVI in 1793 as unnecessary. ...