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General Petraeus's efforts and some success in curbing the insurgency in Iraq and Maliki's efforts to build a strong central government run up against Kurdish desire for a loose federation and differences about how to handle the oil resources in the north. Things could get worse and a conflict occur if Maliki asserts control over the Kurdish areas in the north. The eventual picture after the Americans leave is not clear inspit of Petraeus efforts and a partition of sorts could end up happening between the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis.

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The heart of the American idea is fair competition. US president Biden says "capitalism without competition is not capitalism, it is exploitation," in this transcript and video report in the WSJ. Biden has signed an executive order for government agencies to take action to increase competition in business,

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China's new prime minister Li Keqiang makes his first foreign trip with a trade delegation for talks with Indian representatives and business leaders, showing the importance he places on India. India offers China's companies access to large opportunties in infrastructure development, and China can benefit from India in the area of information technology and pharmaceuticals. Trade is envisioned as expanding from $70 billion in 2012 to $100 billion by 2015, and expanding rapidly as the two economies grow. Economic contacts also would provide an anchor for future relations as China faces difficulties in its relations with Japan, and S. E. Asian countries, and a U.S. wary of China's capabilities. This was pointed out in the joint statement. Li Keqiang also emphasized this in an editorial page article in India's daily newspaper, the Hindu, saying India and China have "to work hand in hand," to promote Asia as "an anchor for world peace." A peaceful India-China trade and economic relationship opens the way for investment and participation in development by China alongside Japan, Germany, France, UK and the U.S. in India, as the next major source for global economic growth. This also serves to defuse Asian tensions as both economies grow, and increased contacts between cities in India and China with the twining of cities program launched in the meetings. India can use China's capabilities in infrastructure development, the two countries share the need for information sharing on lowcost solutions in healthcare, in managing urbanization, and solutions for clean water in rural areas, and use of IT solutions in development, where much remains to be accomplished through cooperation. Some of these themes are the focus of Li Keqiang in his efforts for urbanization in China. ...

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Good advice on how to get good sleep at night and a good nights rest. Set a good sleep routine that is relaxing, avoid work in the bedroom, a shower at night helps, create visual separation between work thoughts and sleep time, keep bedroom cool dark and quiet. Do not look at the clock at night. No food in middle of the night, if you wake up read a relaxing book for a bit, and fall back to sleep again.

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The immense frustration of Republicans supporting Kevin McCarthy as the voting goes to the 15th ballot and the refusal of Matt Goetz of Florida, Ms. Lauren Boebert of Colorado to relent down to the 14th ballot, is shown here in this NYT report. Mr. McCarthy's at one point even stepped up to confront Mr. Gaetz personally by the 14th ballot.  Many indignities and humiliations were suffered in public says the NYT as the votes dragged on into the night. The WSJ Editorial Board and this NYT report show that the concessions made may only lead to more fractious incidents. This includes says the NYT, the possibility of snap votes for Speaker again by disaffected members, that are a remarkable concession made by Mr. McCarthy in the process.

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Kaname Harada, 98 years, was a Japanese fighter pilot during World War II. Here NYT's Martin Fackler provides this exceptional account of Harada's effort to remind each new generation since 1965 of the horrors of war, and why Japan should not forget the lessons of World War II. In 1965 Harada started teaching kindergarden children at a school he opened to help give a new Japanese generation the right values of peace. Since he retired he gives frequent public speeches on the values of peace, and how Japan has benefitted from the post war peacetime period. He reminds listeners about the horrors of war from his own experience shooting down 19 Allied aircraft from his Zero fighter plane, and being close enough to see the horror stricken faces of Americans in the other planes. Even at the age of 98, Harada's voice has vigor though he suffers from throat cancer. His message is that the best way for Japan to protect its children, and its children's children from war, is never to forget. He says the current generation of leaders were born after the war and have no idea what it is....

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England win after equalizing in 90th minute extra time vs Italy UEFA Women Soccer semifinal July 2025. The game did not go to penalty kicks as the added 30 minutes led to a penalty kick by English player Kelly. 

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Immigration declined in the 1920's so that when FDR became president it was easier to build a working class coalition. After 1965 when president Johnson signed into law a bill that allowed family unification it was seen as not adding significantly to legal immigration. Yet in the period after 1965 millions of immigrants entered the US. This writer says the Democrats have forgotten that FDR built the Democratic worker base when immigration was not an issue. Today the rise in immigration has muddled the Democrats efforts to build back the working class coalition of FDR, with loss of support from workers and non college educated people who see migrants crossing the border as a serious problem.

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Egypt's new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, in July 2013, is a professor of Economics who received his doctorate from the University of Paris in 1964. He has taught economics at universities in Egypt, Kuwait, France and the U.S. After 15 years teaching at the University of Alexandria, he worked in development banks in the Middle East for another 15 years, joining the Finance Ministry in 2011. He resigned in protest against military shooting of protesters at the time. Egypt has about $14.9 billion in reserves according to Egypt's central bank, less than the $15 billion needed for three months of imports. Egypt needs to negotiate a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF. Earler negotiations were stymied by the military in 2011, and el-Beblawi will now be negotiating with the head of the Constitutional Court as president, after the ouster of president Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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With China's economy slowing, fewer jobs for college graduates in the cities, what is president Xi- who is visiting San Francisco this week- doing to tackle this problem? Even in Guangdong province with cities like Shenzen, it is very, very, very rural says Brian Spegele in this WSJ discussion. He talks about widespreard rural poverty. From his own experience spending time in the countryside in the impressionable years Xi has put this task to revitalize the rural areas to young people. In Guangdong alone about 300,000 youngsters will be given the opportunity to improve their credentials for future government work by going to the rural areas to bring talent that was drained from the 20 years of free market hypergrowth and urbanization. China is about 40% rural in 2023 and these regions have suffered badly, and Xi's efforts to revitalize come at a time after the pandemic when it makes little sense to continue urbanization as the only solution to problems. ...

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Results in the Saarland election show the AfD party with only 6.2% of the vote. The CDU is well ahead of the Social Democrats. This result shows that the support for the AfD is strongest in the east. With the refugee crisis not as big an issue as it was in 2016, and the larger effort put forward in push back by CDU/CSU and SPD in the western part of Germany, the AfD sees its support declining from the levels it had in 2016.

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The amazing story of 15 million tons of clothing coming to Ghana each week with 40% of this ending up in landfills and in water, polluting ecosystems, because of the poor quality of clothing, is shown in DW.com's Science section. Even a relatively developed country with awareness about ecology faces such a problem today. The good intentions of western consumers are not working, with more rags ending up in landfills causing environmental damage in Africa. A recent report showed this ending up as far away as the Atacama desert in Chile. When this stuff ends up on beaches and in the water it causes damage the way the indiscriminate use of plastics has already done.

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Russia's parliament voted to ratify Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization by a vote of 238 to 208. Opposition was led by the Communist party. The head of the Economic Expert Group in Moscow, Evsey Gurvich, says the new rules are important for Russia as Russia has no rules of the game today, the new rules will enhance competition. President Putin described the change in this way: "We joined the WTO because our economy is highly dependent on the external market in terms of both production and consumption. Excessive protectionism invariably leads to stagnation, low quality and high prices." The result from loss of revenue with lower tariffs is a loss of revenue of $5.7 billion in 2013, and $7.8 billion in 2014, according to Economic Development minister Belousov. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 convinced Putin that Russia had to participate in the decisions about the world economy because of the direct impact this has on Russia.

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Dvid Attenborough, the naturalist and broadcaster, says he has campaign for years against plastic pollution and no one paid attention. Now he says people are fed up with politics of Brexit and are showing great interest in fighting single use plastic. He says the people in the U.S. are acting even though the president Mr. Trump has taken action for withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement. He sees things can change quickly if there is a new president and policy changes. 

He is heartened by the way people have received the movie Blue Planet 2 and the action politicians and ordinary people are taking. He thanks primary school teachers for all the work they are doing and the enthusiasm shown.

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This Guardian Editorial says the whistleblower revelations of Uber tell the story of political class drunk on Silicon Valley's hype of Kool-Aid, and that went along for the ride. Government officials including Mr. Macron are cited as desperate for growth after the 2009 financial crisis and offering a sympathetic year to a huge lobbying effort that was beyond scrutiny of any sort and violated both common sense and decent behaviour. Language such as the phrase violence guarantees success typify a lot of what has happened and trouble us today. And the way it has crept into business behaviour with the public unaware fully of what has happened and what ails economies and society today.

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At 9.36 pm on Wednesday Aug 30 in the night sky one will see a second full moon. This will be larger than the usual moon. This month there are two full moons Aug 1 and Aug 30. This happens as the lunar cycle is of 30 days just shorter than a month.It is called a blue moon because it happens every 3-4 years. The expression once in a blue moon comes from this, but the moon is not blue, just larger and brighter than usual.

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In his Bastille day interview French president Macron says Russia could cutoff all gas supplies to France at any time. He says "we will do without Russian gas completely." France gets about 20% of its total gas imports from Russia. Norway, Qatar, Algeria and the US are adding to gas supplies to France. France expects to have gas reserves filled to "near 100 percent by the autumn." In the event of a protracted war France will continue western sanctions against Russia and help Kviv defend its country, said Macron.

France gets 70% of its energy needs from nuclear energy. France will continue to invest in nuclear energy.

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Ms. Annegret Kramp-Krarrenbauer, elected leader of the CDU party in 2018 with the support of Angela Merkel, will not run for chancellor in next years election and will resign from her position by the end of the year. She will continue as Germany's defense minister. After losses for the CDU in recent elections and the embarrassment of local CDU leaders in Thuringia supporting the far right AfD, AKK as she is known decided to step down. Angela Merkel has decided not to run for chancellor again. Germany is set to chair the EU in the second half of 2020, and Merkel is no longer seen as a leader of influence. The Nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD has gained votes in recent elections following the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, with large numbers of refugees from North Africa and Arab world landing in Greece and Turkey and walking to Hungary, Austria and Germany. Merkel's handling of the crisis with acceptance of a million refugees in 2015-2016 unsettled European and German politics. Why? One way of looking at it is that in the same way that the U.S. took in Chinese imported goods ending in the Trump tariffs war, at some point it just becomes too big to handle. That ended up at $1 billion a day in imports from China when president Trump called it off and accused Obama Democrats, Bush Republicans, of betraying the country. Putting it into perspective Germany with one fourth of the population of the U.S. took in about twice the number of refugees in just one year 2015-2016 that the U.S. took in 10 years 2005-2015. The U.S. took in 675,000 immigrants between 2005-2015. This is as if the U.S. took in something like 20 million immigrants in a short period of 1 year on an equivalent basis- though the cultural impact is even greater in a nation like Germany that is like Japan an historically immigrant averse nation. All this happened too quickly for Germany to handle for its fragile cultural fabric. Much of the initial outpouring of support and positive sentiment came from the sense of having gone through World War II and the refugees in that and the early post war period, the need to return in the same spirit support Germany had received. Over time it eroded support for the Christian Democratic Union and Merkel. That Merkel could have done this is itself a small miracle. Now the rebuilding has to begin. Adenauer's CDU and the socialist SPD party of Willy Brandt now have less than 50% support, only with the Greens Party do they make up 50%. The question now is can the CDU, and the SPD which has fallen to 14% in elections, make it back and what kind of future makeup political parties will have in Germany, how the social fabric can be restored. AKK's achievement is to mend relations between the liberal Merkel wing of the CDU and conservatives from Bavaria (CSU) over immigration.  Candidates for CDU leadership are Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. Laschet premier of North Rhine-Westphalia has Merkel's support. Looking back too much attention was taken up by the euro crisis, and too little was done in the areas of infrastructure, inequality gaps, education, child care, under Merkel's leadership and of the preceding SPD years, much like what happened under Bush and Obama administrations in the U.S. where wars, economic crises led to neglect on issues that affect lives of ordinary working families. ...

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A converted train station sitting on the Seine river in Paris is the site of one of the world's famous museums. It is undergoing a renovation starting in 2025.

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It is important to remember that FDR and Harry Truman won in North Carolina by huge majorities, so did Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, LBJ. In fact going back to Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916. Democrat Josh Stein, Attorney General elected in 2020 and Republican Mark Robinson, the Lt. Governor are very different candidates for governor in North Carolina. Rory Cooper, a Democrat, who won by 4 percentage points is not running after two terms as popular governor because of term limits.  Cooper's focus has been on education, ease of living, infrastructure and clean energy. North Carolina has one of the largest rural populations in the country with one in three being rural with new out of state residents settling in the suburbs. In recent years it has generally voted for a Democrat as governor and Republican for the legislature. Only in  elections since 1980 except in 2008 it has voted Republican for president. In 2024 it is expected to be a swing state. If elected Robinson would be the first black governor of North Carolina, Stein the first Jewish governor.   ...