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Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winning economist points out an astonishing fact about the 2016 U.S. presidential election- U.S. television networks nightly news devoted only 32 minutes in 2016 to all policy issues combined. And these networks devoted 100 minutes to Clinton emails. He calls this "disgraceful."  For weeks at a time in September and October the main television networks lacked the integrity and courage to ask questions and persist on the major questions facing the country of the economy, correcting income distribution that has been skewed away from the middle and working class, infrastructure rebuilding, education and healthcare, and what the policy proposals of each candidate would do for the country. Krugman does not mention this but the media devoted hardly any time to the economic plan devised by Trump that respected economists and economic analysis showed would increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion, and lead to a short term temporary increase in growth followed by a sharp decline. The worst thing that could happen to middle and working class families struggling to recover from the blow to their finances from the last recession.  The cyber hacking of a U.S. presidential election by a foreign power never received the unanimous rejection that it deserved from the television networks, not just Fox News as Krugman points out, but by all the networks. The future landscape of the media needs assessment to bring in new ideas and new entrants to bring constructive improvements, and for older media organizations to rebuild after the loss of confidence among young people. Only about a quarter of young people in the U.S. have confidence in the large media organizations news coverage according to surveys done recently. There are other pressures coming from the tech world that make it imperative to do this. Many experts point to the destructive effect of social media in spreading rumors or information disguised as facts, which are spread instantly by Twitter and Facebook, without any obligation to check the facts. This is also dangerous with a public that is now divided between better educated and less educated along political lines, older more settled in their views people, and younger people quicker in looking for the facts and checking things out before believing them. ...

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China's goal of creating 10 million new jobs each year.

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Serious concern about lower consumer spending in the U.K that would reduce growth and reduce government tax receipts. The unemployment rate has remained at 7.6% for 22 months. Wage levels are not keeping up with inflation of about 4.5%. The increase in the sales tax from 17.5% to 20% has added three quarters of one percent to the inflation rate, according to the National Statistics Office. VocaLink says annual wage growth in the three months through May 2011 was 1.8%, much lower than the inflation rate. Deep spending cuts are going into effect in 2011-2012, and about 300,000 jobs would be lost in the public sector with spending cuts by 2015. The IMF has reduced its estimate for growth in the U.K. to 1.5% from 1.7%. At the same time the Bank of England is under pressure to increase the interest rate of 0.5% (which is a record low), to control inflation. Britain under prime minister Cameron plans to cut government spending from 47% of GDP to 40% of GDP over six years. This will take 6 years of spending cuts, something even a previous prime minister Margaret Thatcher was not able to do. The government's Office of Budget Responsibility predicts a drop in the deficit from 11% of GDP to 7.9% by March 2012. Yet a lot depends on government tax receipts which in turn depend on economic growth. Britain showed a large deficit of 10 billion pounds in April 2011, and the situation is fraught with a high degree of uncertainty....

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Putin response to BBC's Steve Rosenberg: plans for war on Europe idea is nonsense, in Q&A with Russian audience, December 20 2025.

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Mitchell Starc's bowling proves deadly for England in the Ashes Cricket Test Series 2025.

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How to have many interests, add nature walks and hikes to maintain health balance and avoid burnout from work.

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Chuck Searcy, 79 years, was in the Vietnam War at Khe Sanh in 1968 as an intelligence officer. In 1992 he first sees unexploded ordnance- from US bombing in Vietnam. He has over many years cleared an unbelievable amount of these dangerous devices. 8 million tons of ordnance was dropped near Khe Sanh near the Ho Chi Minh trail from 1965 to 1975. About 100,000 people have died or sustained injuries. Hang Nam and Searcy founded Project Renew in 2001- since then almost a million tons of these explosive devices have been removed and children taught to stay away safely. Norwegian's People's Aid is also doing the project to cut injuries to zero. It operates 180 deminers.

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With imported farm laborers not allowed into Britain during the pandemic local people volunteered for the job of berry picking during strawberry season. A professional cricket player for a team in New Zealand whose season was interrupted says its hard work but he enjoyed it. He picked 565 pounds of strawberries in about 6 hours. He says he is proud of his effort, and he thinks he did something worthwhile plus in the outdoors.

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H20 chip approved for China not taken up by China- 15% of sales were to go to US government. China has asked its corporations not to buy this chip.

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Mexican president Nieto's poll numbers are at all time low of 24%, according to Reforma newspaper. He took office in late 2012 and has been hurt by human rights scandal of the murder of 43 students in the state of Guerrero, corruption issues, and failure to improve the economy. The invitation to Trump to visit Mexico left even people close to the president surprised, and was criticized widely inside Mexico. It is not clear what Trump or Nieto gained from the trip. As Trump continued his talk about building a wall on the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for the estimated $23 billion it would cost. He did this in a speech to supporters in Pheonix on the same day he met Nieto, showing the use of teleprompters and prepared script was not his way of campaigning. Just as the message to black people that Democrats take them for granted cannot resonate without the basic message delivered with compassion and understanding- such as done by the presidents Bush and Reagan- so also the message to Hispanic people is suffering from the same lack of empathy. Recent polls show only 3% of blacks support Trump. McCain and Romney gained only 4-6% in the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. The message of the wall is also baffling as an election strategy. A Gallup poll in July 2016 shows only 15% of Americans opposing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and only 24% of Republicans. There is another problem in the strategy. The rhetoric about walls and mass deportations, and the Trump temperament combined with handling of nuclear weapons is not winning college educated women in the suburbs with polls showing Trump lagging behind Clinton by about 20 points or 4 million voters with this group. It is hard to undo the damage done by this kind of rhetoric used in the primary elections as it gains distrust of voters. It would require a bad economy with illegal immigrants taking local jobs, and handling of immigration seen as weak, for such a message to gain some national traction. Both are absent for the most part with a steadily improving economy since 2012, lower unemployment, a tough enforcement policy on deportatons under Obama that exceeded that under Geoge W. Bush, and the talk of a wall comes with illegal immigration having declined steeply since the 2008 financial crisis. The real culprit appears to be elsewhere, the triple hit taken from hollowing out of the manufacturing economy that hurt the Conservatives in Canada, the insecurity created for older whites from the job losses and hits to net worth from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the increasing loss of access to health care and educational opportunities with high  costs. About 62 million households or the bottom half of the distribution in the U.S. have a net worth of about $10,000, a quarter of this group having zero net worth, according to the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen at an Inequality Conference in Oct 2014. Problems no wall is going to solve, problems that built up over 2 decades, problems that will take a generation to fix.  It shows the tech miracle of the last 2 decades as a mirage for quality of life of the middle and working class. Tech as a tool to a goal, not a goal in itself, is the better way forward. ...

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The average APR on a two week checking account overdraft is 1067% more than double the rate on a payday loan that charges 391%. Does that make the 391% a good rate and does that make the 1067% rate to make sense. What do markets mean in this context? They mean a crushing burden on those least able to pay.

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India's Russian oil imports Indian OMC's (oil marketing companies) say Russian discount for oil was about $8.50 per barrel in FY24, and dropped to $3-5 in 2025 with at present in August 2025 it being $1. CLSA/Citic Securities research report uses an average of $4 per barrel to get the $2.5 billion gain for India per year in 2025. Note that Russian oil is of inferior quality and the CIF landing cost used by Indian companies is much higher because of long supply routes insurance costs compared to Saudi oil. India could shift to buying from Saudis and UAE in 2026, and reports suggest India is already making this shift as Jamnagar and other refineries in India shift to non Russian sources. India's gains from Russian oil imports estimated at $2.5 billion lower than the $10-25 billion figures says a CLSA/Citic Securities research report. In 2025 Indian oil imports are at present 36% or 1.8 million barrels a day from Russia of 5.4 mbd total oil imports. Saudis provide 14%, Iraq 20%, UAE 9%, USA 4%. One alternative for India would be to shift much of it's oil imports to the Saudis, UAE and US to shift to the situation before the Ukraine war and Russian discounts for it's large population.   ...

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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. ...