LyrArc Article Gist
Daniela Hernandez shows in this WSJ video how smaller pieces of plastic, microscopic or micro size fragments of plastic broken up by wind and rubbing against other surfaces, and through degradation, are found in the world's oceans. These microscopic pieces smaller than a strand of hair are hard to pull out compared to plastic bottles. This kind of contamination from the 10 million metric tons estimated to end up in the oceans is harder to detect and harder to remove.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a section of the ocean near Hawaii in the Pacific ocean that is 1.6 million square kilometers large, twice the size of Texas or three times size of France,  and has a concentrated level of plastic. There are patches like this all over the world's oceans. This is also where the microscopic plastic pieces are widely spread out invisible to the human eye but gradually disintegrating into smaller and smaller particles that are consumed by fish and marine life. Over time it has poses serious risks to our environment closer to our beaches and maritime coastline, ending up on rivers and contaminating groundwater. As this is not being monitored the risks of this kind of contamination from the widespread use of plastics is unknown but yet significant. One of the easiest ways to tackle this also helps clean up our ocean beaches and river banks and makes them more attractive- this is to pick up all the plastic we can ourselves through volunteering our time in clean up efforts. Hundreds of thousands of such volunteer efforts can really make a difference in cleaning up our beaches and rivers. Clean up efforts should be supplemented with efforts at monitoring these fragile areas in the ecosystem for illegal handling of plastic and littering of these areas.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Asylum hotel protests and illegal migrants in Britain filing for asylum at 111,000 cases in first 6 months costing $5.4 billion in first half 2025 alone. The Times of London says Starmer is cautious by nature, but strong action is needed going back to the source of the problem that illegal migrants do not belong in any European nation including Britain. The stark truth says Cowley in the Times of London is that having a battalion of British infantry on the coastline of France as it was during the Paris Olympics in France, is needed to keep the boats out of Britain with Britain moving out of the European Convention of Human Rights. That convention was not intended for this situation, just as the British system of justice was not intended for this situation for the people of other countries on other continents illegally migrating over oceans. Just as much as there is no Asian Convention of Human Rights for Europeans migrating over oceans to China, Japan or South Korea now industrialized nations with high standards of living and social protections for health care. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With Mikel Oyarzabal's late goal in the 87th minute Spain wins Euro Cup 2024. Spain is now the only team that wins Euro Cup soccer 4 times, in 1964 then waiting 44 years till 2008, then 2012 and now 2024.

LyrArc Article Gist
Pictures and video from The Times on the historic flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on the planet Mars.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Hindustan Times looks back at one year of lockdowns in India and the progress made. India now has the second largest number of vaccinations in the world at about 45 million and a long way to go.

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's aging rail system, the Deutsche Bahn, will get a makeover with a 86 billion euro inverstment over 10 years. FOr years it has suffered from delays, broken bridges, older trains, and lack of modernization. As the economy slows down infrastructure investment which has suffered from the Tech years, is now back in popularity with the public mood shifting across Europe and the U.S. A current five year plan budgeted just 5.6 billion euros per year and is replaced with a ten year plan with 86 billion euros so that it sends a signal for the economy, but more importantly creates planning security for investments, and makes building sites cheaper to run. As a sign of the times trains running 6 minutes were considered as "on time" in recent years. Merkel's CDU was not pursuing infrastructure investment during the austerity decade 2008-2018. As finances are being cleaned up in Europe and the U.S. and the banking mess clears, the shrinking of banks such as Deutsche Bank as a vivid and educational example, and the mood of the public shifts away from the flashy Tech years, there is a sense of the value in the public mind of the investments in infrastructure that benefit all, that prevailed in the post war years. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
US to take stakes in American companies to help them achieve goals of Make in America with Intel stake the first action. The $8.9 billion Biden intended for Intel to make chips in the US will be handed over to Intel but for a stake in the company of 10%. For years Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China have subsidized their companies in different and some hidden ways. Many times these companies have sustained losses as they built for the long term in volatile market situations. Nvidia now a trillion dollar company was at one time a company struggling to survive saved only by a Japanese corporate investor as shown in a recent WSJ report. The US has taken no such action losing its dominant position in many advanced industries including chips till the Biden and DJT administrations. Yet the media keeps voicing the old ideas of market capitalism as if there is such a thing when state capitalism operates with market capitalism in the Chinese model, and a form of semi state capitalism operates with market capitalism in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan with hidden subsidies by the state to build dominant positions in certain industrial sectors. Even US companies are willing to take such subsidies as when Elon Musk builds car plants in China with state assistance and support, which never comes up in the media even when the Chinese EV makers are learning from the Americans and Tesla is losing market share in China. Theory is for the textbooks and economists,  in business all forms of capitalism work including a mix of state and market, and America has to invent its way back to lead the way in advanced industries.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
India achieves zero poaching of rhinos at Kaziranga National Park in Assam in this story in The Times. A determined effort by the anti-poaching task force. UNESCO has recognized Assam for its working in protecting the species.

LyrArc Article Gist
When countries bid for the soccer World Cup they promised something different says ESPN- prices six times what they were in the last World Cup were nowhere  in the picture. So what happened and why, what is it doing to a national and cultural event all over America, and what is it doing to the the millions of young people and children who would have loved to go to a game once in their childhood. Is it robbing them of something of value, of the essential experience of growing up? DJT says "I would'nt attend it either" so do millions of die hard soccer fans and children all over the US -it risks making soccer "less representative of the communities that give it value" says Dr Feldman of the University of Virginia School of Business. Feldman has studied dynamic pricing and says this is just the wrong way to price tickets for a popular people's sport to have resale markets for the same ticket. ESPN explains all this in simple terms. It shows a graph with a $60 ticket on face value and what it costs in a resale market on June 1 in multiple locations from Miami to Los Angeles.  In previous World Cups there was no resale market so that ticket would cost $60. Now it costs on June 1 as follows- $447 in LA to $960 in Miami, $678 in Dallas, $455 in Philadelphia, $702 in New York, $468 in Boston and $400 in Seattle. Here is another issue that requires DJT to do some jawboning. The AG's of NY and NJ have filed subpoenas for FIFA to show transparency, which is too little, too late, to millions of young people and children who will have cost of living price them out of one of the precious experiences of childhood of watching their favorite players live, just once while growing up. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The issue says the New York Times is whether the financial meltdown was caused by one of these frequent crises of capitalism as bankers would have us believe or was there malfeasance involved. This is its comment on the SEC filing civil charges against Goldman Sachs in the Abacus case in which Goldman helped Paulson put together a batch of bad mortgage securities into a security that it sold to its institutional clients, without disclosing what Paulson had done and without disclosing that Paulson had structured these securities precisely so that he could bet against them. As other financial houses are also involved in dealings of this type, the New York Times editorial says this will mean people at these firms will also not be sleeping well in the coming days and months. This is a story that Gretchen Morgenson and Louis Story of the New York Times wrote about for the first time several months back.

LyrArc Article Gist
Holding tension in any position that does not have dynamic movement is isometric exercise. The British Journal of Sports Medicine has a study with research that shows this isometric exercise done with squatting on the wall (or with a ball against the wall) for support for 2 minutes repeated 4 times with rest periods of two minutes each time for total 4 wall sits, taking 14 minutes, can reduce systolic blood pressure top number by 10 mmHg and diastolic pressure by 5 mmHg. Jamie O'Driscoll the lead author of the study says this is useful for people doing aerobic exercise, and yet could benefit from the use of isometric wall squats. A clinical exercise physiologist at University of Michigan says isometric exercise works because contracting a muscle and holding that position reduces blood flow to that muscle, when you release blood flow increases to muscle tissue. It creates signals that tell blood vessels to relax more and create less resistance to blood flow. To do this wall sit find a wall to lean against and take a couple of steps forward, feet hip width apart and slide your back down the wall and your knees getting to a 90 degree angle gradually. This uses quadriceps, glutes, calves, all leg muscles and abdominal muscles. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Stories of children in New York City overcoming adversity to go to college with the help of the New York Times College Scholarship Fund. Children with poor or sick parents in the city, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, and other countries.

LyrArc Article Gist
Nehru's speech on the first anniversary of Indian Independence reflects the troubles of partition, integrating princely states, the refugees from Pakistan, and the world situation in 1948 with civil war and hyper inflation in China, Berlin blockade by Russia, and the impending invasion of South Korea by June 1949. Nehru talk about the "Kartavya" of the ordinary citizens, the path shown by Gandhi, self-reliance, and courage, discipline, grit needed in hard times. Nehru's Kashmiri Hindi differs from the more western accent to Hindi of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Both are shown on this page in audio broadcasts from the All India Archives and gives one a feel for the times and their relevance to guide India towards Vikshit Bharat 2047.

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's kurzabeit or short work system avoids layoffs in a crisis. The Bundestag parliament in Germany quickly reintroduced it following the coronavirus. It provides subsidy to employers so that wages of upto 2500 euros can be paid to employees. The German parliament changed the requirement that makes it law fro a 30% of workers of a company being impacted by a crisis to 10%. About 2.3 million workers will benefit at a cost of 10 billion euros says this report in The Financial Times. The Federal labor office has a fund of $26 billion to which workers and employers contributed just for this purpose of safety net.  Workers get about 60% of their wages under this scheme while the crisis lasts. The last time it was used during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 1.3 million workers benefited from this scheme to prevent layoffs.  Germany with its strong vocational training system invests in worker training. The logical next step was to preserve this knowledge component of workers and avoid its loss through layoffs due to some crisis that is temporary and beyond the control of the company. Britain is adopting this idea this time with the British Treasury supporting  80% of lost wages upto 2500 pounds a month in the new economic aid package announced by the British government. Spain has a scheme under ERTE for 70% of wages to be paid as safety net. France has set aside 8.5 billion euros aid for assistance to workers in a similar scheme as safety net. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Zeit Online takes a look at German chancellor Angela Merkel's statement made in a beer tent in the Muich suburb of Trudering- "The times in which we can completely rely on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days." Zeit Online says the words "ein Stuck" in German were meant to say a bit or somewhat, but the essence of the statement that the depending on the trans-Atlantic alliance was now over comes right through.

LyrArc Article Gist
Japanese interval slow fast slow walking is shown in this video from NHK Japan. One alternates between slow and fast walking in interval training 5 times in this style of walking that is good for health. This is similiar to rowing iFit rowing programs on a rower or doing this on a rowing boat in lakes or the ocean. And is also used in iFit hiking training.

LyrArc Article Gist
Ukraine's general election in March 2019 comes at a time of very low confidence in government. Only 9% have confidence in the government dropping from the 24% at the time of the 2014 protests. The problem is mainly corruption with the Wold Bank pointing out that politically connected firms control about 20% of the revenue and 25% of the assets. The major candidates Ms Tymoshenko a former president, and Mr. Poroshenko current president have about 18% support. A comedian with a television show in its third year called "Servant of the People" has about 25% support, and is leading in the polls. Lack of political experience was not an issue.The hope raised five years ago have not been realized as Ukraine suffers from crony capitalism and corruption. The war in the east has affected Ukraine's economy. Since 2013 average wages have fallen 20% to $320 a month and gas prices have gone up 8 times during a period of the conflict with Russia. The 2014 protests led to the fall of a Russian backed government, Russia taking over Crimea, and the war in the east with separatist rebels. Mr. Poroshenko's government has failed to move quickly to tackle major problems in the economy. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Steve Bannon, president Trump's former strategist in the first 6 months of his presidency and during the election campaign makes a rupture with Trump after astonishing revelations in a new book. Michael Wolff in his new book, "FIre and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," attributes statements to Mr. Bannon that say the president's son Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman at the time, had acted in a "treasonous" way by meeting with Russians during a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower. According to Mr. Wolff's account in the book Bannon also predicted that the special counsel Mueller investigation would eventually focus on money laundering. This account of the Wolff book is from the New York Times, which released excerpts from the book after the Guardian first put out this story. It quotes from an email from an unnamed White House aide, describing the Trump operations in the White House as the worst possible- that the president refused to read much, not even one page memos, getting up often because he is bored through meetings. And using words that reflected it says Mr. Gary Cohn's view that much of the operation was "stupid," "dumb," or even idiotic. Wolff is a columnist and author not particularly known for meticulous reporting says the New York Times.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Women feel overwhelmed with housework during the pandemic. About 80% of women feel responsible for house work compared to 28% of men, according to a NYU and U Penn study. On average women do one and half times the house chores compared to men. This difference is wider when looking at households where men do very little of the housework. The author of "Fair Play" a book about dividing housework says women are burned out, stressed and full of rage about the way household chores are handled. The pandemic has seen a further deterioration in the amount of time men spend doing household chores, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, creating a situation of tension. As men have worked from home during the pandemic the once invisible labor of women is now in plain sight. For women who have quit their jobs and looking for a way to get back to work there is an additional element of frustration. WSJ looks at ways in which men can make the changes to create a healthier situation at home, and reduce the tension. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The other title of this article in the NYT was "California's fading Political Machines and volatile race for Governor." Gone are the days when Pat Brown was able to put his son Jerry Brown in the race for governor, there are 9 persons running for governor of California in 2026. The current governor Gavin Newsom is said to be promoting his book in Nashville, Tennessee, where many Californians are moving with the inflated cost of housing in the state. Gavin Newsom's grand father gave a $5000 check to Pat Brown in 1943 to run for District Attorney, this report says citing the book. From that time Pat Brown became Attorney General and then governor of California in 1958, defeating Richard Nixon in 1962. In 1962 Pat Brown seemed vulnerable as his signature accomplishment setting up the UC system of college campuses and the water reservoir, tax increases to pay for this, were in their beginning stages and their lasting value not recognized at the time. Nixon from Whittier, California, was a former Vice President and was seen as likely winner. This toughly fought election created the Pat Brown myth and so called machine that helped his son Jerry Brown to two terms as governor 1975 to 1983, and again after serving as Mayor of Oakland and Attorney General to come back to governors race again in 2011 (because term limits came after 2011) and be governor again 2011-2018. Another way of looking at it is that in his last two terms it was also Jerry Brown's careful balancing of the budget and finances of the state, his environmental support, that made him a reliable figure for the public interest not just the political machine backing him.  California to be sure has had popular governors on both sides Reagan won in 1966 as governor of California to succeed Pat Brown. The Kennedys and Pat Brown are matched by the Reagan supporters in the state. In today's situation where China's dominance in industry and manufacturing has affected all parts of deindustrialized America, California is no exception, where much of the middle class has seen their savings eroded, the issues are different and the challenges are different. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
At a glance see on a world map with colors which countries have accomplished the transition to renewable so as not to get caught in the quagmire of the Middle East for oil supplies- most of Europe has done very well, and the laggards- Asia from China and India that are making an effort to Japan which has a poor dismal record. Brazil Uruguay 90% Denmark 80% Canada 66% Germany Spain and Finland 50% UK 46% Italy 42%  France 27%- share of renewables in electricity production (2023). This means much of the world is not dependent on volatile energy supplies from the Middle East. It is only in China, India, Japan, South Korea that dependence is high on Middle East. And in China and India this is the time to focus again on renewables. Most baffling is Japan with only 23% and it is the country that has so much of its supplies flowing through the Persian Gulf volatile oil lane- when Europe has moved on and accomplished the task of avoiding volatile Gulf region.

LyrArc Article Gist
The NYT covers the GAESA tourism enterprise of Cuba (that operates independent of the government of Cuba) that overinvested in Tourism at the expense of agriculture industry and infrastructure during the Obama administration, leading to collapse with Trump's 2014 embargo on Cuba. GAESA controls about 50% of Cuba's economy, run by military and people from Castro's family.  That left 121 hotels built in the boom years of tourism at 30 percent occupancy. The Iberostar high rise hotel is one of these hotels that rises over dilapidated housing in Havana, the Cuban capital. The investment in tourism by the GAESA enterprise that runs about 50% of the Cuban economy is 13 times what is spent on healthcare and education, says the NYT. The Castro family, Raul Castro family, runs this business venture that was started when the Soviet Union as sponsor of Cuba had collapsed by 1991. The NYT says this 'devolved' the ideas and promise of the revolution. "Devolved?" What kind of word to describe a complete loss of faith, and enormous failure with severe hardship for the Cuban people? It means the whole idea of communism or Marxist revolution has been proven false, even as it survives in Mexico and parts of Latin America. One can be against the Batista regime- similarly against corrupt regimes in Latin America or Asia- that ruled Cuba before the Castro Cuban revolution and still look for better choices and alternatives than what Castro came up with as an answer to Cuba's needs. Much of Latin America is suffering from the same problems of dictatorships and turning to Marxist alternatives - particularly the alternative put forward by Castro in Cuba- that has also destroyed the Venezuelan economy with Chavez's turn to Castro's Cuban revolutionary slogans and ideology. That came up with temporary solutions for the poorer sections of society, yet failed badly for all sections of society in the long term. How else can one explain one fourth of Venezuela's population and about the same of Cuba's leaving the country, some of those who left the critical human capital that would form the core of the human input to combine with capital and technology for advancing the economy. If Cuba were like the Dominican Republic or other parts of the Caribbean to depend on tourism for its national income then would it not be better to have friendly relations with the US, the main source of tourism revenue. The Obama administration was only holding up a failed idea by holding out a helping hand to tourism in Cuba knowing full well that a change to a Republican administration would simply lead to heavy investments in tourism at the neglect of infrastructure, public services and the economy, of health and education, to become large economic losses. This is what has happened.  As China and India have proven and are proving there are no magical ways to economic development- the same route that was traveled by the nations of Northern and Western Europe with scientific advances, technological advances, have to be taken, the same route that was traveled by the US in its industrial revolution and building of infrastructure, that same route has to be taken by all nations. It does not have to take a time period of centuries as in Europe. The US accomplished it faster with new technologies and vast human and natural resources over 100 years, Japan in 50 years, China in 30 years. India in 25 years ongoing.There is room for intelligent solutions to problems, for speed and tapping into new technologies, yet the same inputs of land, labour, capital and technology have to be put together for development. For states or regions, cities, within China and India, the same inputs, the same access to foreign investment and new technologies is the only route to rapid development. Long range plans are set in motion, decades of stable efficient, clean governance is put in place, and alliances are built with the nations of Europe and with the US. This road is traversed though hard work as Japan and China have done, and India today is thoroughly engaged in. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Marie Colvin, was killed in Syria in Feb 2012, while reporting for the Sunday Times of London. She was a student at Oyster Bay High School and Yale University, and was remembered by fellow students as passionate and determined and always involved in the issues of the time. Her makeshift media center was destroyed during an assault on the city of Homs by Syrian government forces.

LyrArc Article Gist
This editorial in the Times of India says China's new border law that goes into effect on Jan 1, 2022, aims to tighten control over border areas, with strengthening of border defenses and integration of border populations. It says this means border relations will not be affected by improvements in bilateral relations. China is rejecting the Indian position for border standoffs to be settled through improvements in bilateral relations in other areas. The Times Editorial says that an "aggressive, inflexible, belligerent China" is what India now faces.