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The campaign in German schools "Smart ohne phone" or "Smart without a phone"  for school children in 2025. One student at Dalton High School in Alsdorf, North Rhine Westphalia, Klara Ptak, is cited in this report by  Oliver Pieper in DW.com. Klara 17 years old says- "A total of 51 phones were seized — that's a fairly significant number considering we have 700 students. And you can really see a difference, especially in the younger kids. They used to stand around in a circle staring at their screens, and now they are playing football, badminton, or board games together. It's a dramatic shift." A survey by the Körber Foundation, and pollster Forsa, says that parents of children ages 12 to 18 complain that their children's time spent on social media is out of control and is their leading source of stress. The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is for banning phones upto tenth grade, it wants to keep children under 13 away from the internet for social media completely. It is interesting to note that the younger student are fine with it and adapted quickly seeing the benefits. This shows that a new generation of student can be trained for a different lifestyle. Today in the Washington Post Linda McMahon and RFK Jr. team up on an article saying just this that time spent on screens lifestyles along with nutrition and food fail school children badly, reminding people about the saying in Latin since the 2nd Century by poet Juvenal -"a healthy mind in a healthy body." ( Latin -"mens sana in corpore sano").   ...

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After all the media talk about tariffs inflation- inflation is at 2.4% in May 2025. Tariffs was part of the toolbox of strategies under Lighthizer and Jamieson on getting fair world trade, and not like Congressman Hawley in the 1920's who understood little about the workings of the US economy. This fact the official media such as the WSJ and NYT, Wash Post, BBC need to get it right about the Hawley Tariffs. Hawley was born in rural Oregon in 1864 went to country schools, and was president of Willamette University in Salem, when it's population was 4258. As House Ways and Means Committee chairman he wrote the failed tariffs bill Hoover signed in 1930. DJT's US Trade Representative Lighthizer in 2016 led the successful negotiations with Japan under Reagan, Scott Bessent who leads negotiations on tariffs with China with USTR Jamieson, has a deep understanding and grasp of today's financial markets. Tariffs is one of the tools in the US toolbox to get Japan, China, South Korea to even the playing field for US companies and bring back manufacturing to the US. Without it China would not budge from its unfair advantage and would not negotiate in fairness. This is proven in the way Japan in the 1980s and China today are responding to the US position preparing their economies for not relying on sudden surges in exports putting whole industries and workers in America and Europe out of work and out of jobs. DJT says- "No we are not going to accept that," the EU is catching on and adopting a similar position, China knows that.  The media is irresponsible in presenting tariffs in a negative way, irresponsible to American workers the 10 million put out of work since 2000, and to American families and the Nation.   ...

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China's leading online retailer with its own warehouses and delivery similiar to Amazon is JD.com. It has 118 warehouses in 39 Chinese cities, and 1045 smaller pickup centers in 500 smaller cities. Its online service and infrastructure to support it has been built carefully since 2006. It can now deliver by 3pm the next day and handles 2 million orders per day. The company raised $1.78 billion on the NASDAQ in the U.S. in 2014. Hong Kong venture capital firm invested $10 million in 2006. As it added new systems and software other investors including Tiger Global, Yuri Milner, and the Waltons invested in the firm. JD focusses on low cost and reliable fast delivery using motorbikes for 20,000 couriers for China's congested traffic in cities. It is a unique combination of Amazon, UPS and Wal-Mart in its innovative way of running its retail operation. Liu is the son of a cargo shipowner from Jiangsu province who studied sociology at Renmin University in Beijing, before starting an electronics store in Beijing's high tech zone Zhongguancun. The online retail idea took off when he setup an online store in 2004. He says a lot has changed since the early days when delivery was slow with many customer complaints, and says logistics is important because of user experience. Because JD charges little for delivery margins are thin, and the company has focussed on growing the user base over profitability....

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Hillary Clinton's championing of softer issues such as promoting the use of new safer clean cookstoves by hundreds of millions of women in the developing world. She persuaded top Chinese foreign policy official Dai Bingguo to put the cookstoves on the agenda for this years meeting in Beijing. In September 2010 Clinton helped setup a partnership led by the UN Foundation to give 100 million of these cookstoves to women by 2020. Smoke from poorly ventilated stoves kills about 2 million people each year, with about a quarter of the deaths in China.

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Israel outlined its own proposals for a nuclear agreement on April 6, 2014. Israel's Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, says any deal must include Iran cease all nuclear research and development activity, remove its enriched uranium stockpile from the country, reduce the number of centrifuges to below what was agreed to in the outline that emerged from talks with Iran in April 2015, closing of the underground facility at Fordow that was built clandestinely in the early 2000's. Steinitz said- "The deal has to be made on the assumption that Iran might violate it."

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Sheila Dewan provides analysis of the figures on household debt for the fourth quarter of 2013 put out by the U.S. Federal Reserve. U.S. households added $241 billion in debt in the 4th quarter 2014, increasing by 2.1%. It shows says Dewan, that American households were beginning to spend on homes and consumer purchases such as autos. Certain groups such as students and young people were restrained in spending by high levels of student debt. Debt increases were $152 billion for new morgages, $18 billion for car loans, and $53 billion for student loans up by 5.3%. Total household debt to income ratio went up to 130% by 2007, and has since declined to above 100% at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2013, going up again in the 4th quarter of 2013. Credit card debt showed only a small increase of 1.6% as households focussed in cutting credit card debt with high interest rates. Increases in credit card debt and in mortgage debt were shown to be for people with very high credit scores of above 720 in the Federal Reserve analysis, a sign of the caution exercized by households and banks following the overleveraging in 2008....

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Former Texas Senator Kay Hutchinson, America's new ambassador to NATO, offers this spirited defense of NATO in an NYT op-ed. She points out that when it comes to European defense and need to revitalize NATO there is no difference between president Trump, Rex Tillerson, Gen. Jim Mattis at the Defense Department, and senators of the Republican and Democratic parties. Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State, made a similar statement by visiting a war memorial in Italy recently. Chancellor Merkel has made similar statements in her visit to the Baltic Republics. Behind the revitalization of NATO remains another goal to spread the burden of defense evenly so that the U.S. is not bearing a disproportionate responsibility.  Here Hutchinson reminds readers that if all 29 NATO members met the 2014 defense spending pledge - to spend 2% of GDP on defense and 20% of each defense budget on modernizing capabilities- $100 billion in defense funding would have been created for 2016. Hutchinson says the European Defense Initiative will be funded with $4.8 billion for strengthening defenses in Eastern Europe. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg is taking the lead in ensuring NATO funding goals are met. ...

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Issues about getting the American narrative right in America's museums. The American continent was settled in the 1500's by the Spanish, and in the 1600's and 1700's by the French and the British with the founding fathers coming from the generation of British settlers families in the 1700's. Much of this early period is covered by the classic history of this period by Francis Parkman. This history much of it unknown to most Americans in 2025 starts with Count Frontenac in 1620 and ends with the contest between Montcalm and Wolfe of the French and English Empires, long before the founding fathers of the United States, which contest Parkman says could have gone either way but for some flaw in the French. From this emerged two nations Canada keeping it's French heritage in Quebec and the United States. South Carolina and Georgia formed only a small fragment of this vast continent and its history, starting with the Indian tribes that had first settled this continent going back to 1000. ...

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Queen Elizabeth II gives her address to the British nation and Commonwealth on April 5, 2020, recalling the day in 1940 when she and Princess Margaret addressed the nation from Windsor. Elizabeth was only 14 years age then.

She said "we as children spoke from here at Windsor, to children who had been evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safety."

"Today once again, many feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones. But now, as then, we know deep down, that it is the right thing to do."

The address to Britain comes as deaths pass 5000, and there is a 25% increase in hospitals in the northwest of the country.

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Friends, Context matters here. Helgi library shows Sweden sugar intake per capita was 44 grams in 1994, dropping to 32 grams in 2021. US sugar intake per capita is 126 grams. UK per capita sugar intake is 100 grams or 20 teaspoons. Lowest recommended intake is 11 grams per person or per capita, staying under 36 grams is important. Then one can say that 32 grams of 9 teaspoons a day of sugar is about right not to cause ill effects. Consumed in a  Swedish Fika tradition in a social setting with friends at street cafes is good for mental health, so Swedes are about right at 32 grams per day, don't you think?  And have a message for all of us? 

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Ford has lagged behind other car manufacturers in entering markets in India and China. Ford now plans to increase investments in India. Ford gets 3% of its total sales from India, compared to 10% for Brazil. The goal is to generate one third of its sales from Asia and Africa. As part of this effort Ford plans to build 2 new plants in India. The two plants will be built in Sanand, Gujarat, by 2014, employing 5,000 and with a capacity of 240,000 cars and 270,000 engines. Ford's existing plant is in the south, in Tamil Nadu, with 5000 workers in manufacturing, and 5000 other office employees. Ford cited advantages of Gujarat being the port facilities for exporting cars and the pro-business climate in Gujarat. Toyota which was also slow to enter the Indian market, plans to invest $220 million to double production capacity to 310,000 by 2013.

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The story of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is the story of 2 chikdren of Turkish immigrants to Germany. Sahin the son of a engineer working at a Ford factory in Cologne, and Tureci the daughter of a surgeon working at a hospital in Mainz Germany. Sahin was born in 1965 on the Mediterranean coast in Iskerundun, Turkey and he went to Germany when he was 4 years old, his father being recruited in a new effort to rebuild Germany with foreign labour. Both are motivated by scientific research and the drive to come up with some method to tackle cancer for patients with new research and cures.  Both did their doctoral dissertation on experimental therapies at the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, and both joined the faculty there. Sahin spent years studying the mRNA , genetic instructions that can be delivered to the body to help it defend itself against viruses and other threats. Much of this mRNA research was already at an advanced stage in January 2020 when Sahin heard about the coronavirus in China. At that point he saw the potential of retargeting the mRNA research to tackling the coronavirus. By this time he already had his own company with over 200 million euros invested in it  by investors including Helmut Jeggle, now supervisory board chairman of BioNTech. This report says he sat down one Saturday, January 25, 2020 and working on his computer designed the template for 10 possible coronavirus vaccines, one of which would become BNT162b2, the vaccine now approved in Britain. On the same day he told a surprised Jettle that he would refocus the company on the new virus that had not yet hit Europe. Shain he says cited the Hong Kong flu that claimed 4 million lives. Why Pfizer. Pfizer had already been working with BioNTech on a new flu vaccine based on mRNA technology. A cooperation deal was signed with Pfizer in March for organizing clinical trials, manufacture globally, and distribute the vaccine. BioNTech then acquired a U.S. company and a German pharmaceutical factory in Germany. ...

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Trudeau's agenda for Canada in 2020 includes addressing the widening social gaps in society. Plans include renewed focus on social policy, increasing child care spaces, and improving care for the elderly. Trudeau says the government can take on more debt to help the economy recover and create jobs. A second wave means more help is needed for the economy and people struggling on low incomes. The second wave is here in Canada as cases increased from 5000 a day to 8000 this week from the prior week.

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Two Syrian cities are among the oldest in the world going back to 3000 BC. They are Aleppo and Damascus. This is close to when Varanasi on the Ganges in India was settled. Aleppo is older than Damascus.  The only European city that comes close is Plovdiv, Bulgaria, says this report in The Guardian. Most of the Syrian region is populated by Syrian Sunnis about 75% and there are Christian, 10%, Shia Alawite 11%, and other minorities in Syria.  The Syrian Civil War 2011-2024 destroyed most of the old city of Aleppo. Syria has 110 miles of Mediterranean coastline, mountains along the coastline and and area inland of wheat cultivation along the Euphrates river and the Syrian desert near Iraq in the east, Turkey to the north with Kurds in that area, and Jordan in the south. The Ottoman Turks ruled from 1516 to 1918. In 1920 a French Mandate was setup in Syria till 1943. Following the Second World War Syria was an independent nation and briefly joined Egypt in the UAR United Arab Republic.  ...

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Kyle Wingfield meets up with Robert Mundell, Nobel winner in 1999. What does he have to say now? He thinks the oil prices are on track and would reach $130 by 2020 with 3.5% inflation, starting with $34 a barrel in 1980 doubling to $68 in 2000 and doubling again to $136 in 2020. Today its already at $136 but he thinks it will settle down lower to about $100, so hethinks were not so far off track. On inflation he looks at the price of gold at$850 an ounce , and now its still about the same, with high inflation gold should be at $1500, so he does not see the public thinking high inflation is coming. He was in favor of the Reagan tax cuts and set the groundwork for this and aslo supported the euro. He believes the Bush tax cuts should be kept as it would be disastrous for the world economy. Mundell has always believed that there is a link between economic growth and lower tax rates. He advocates corporate tax rates of 25%. Tax rates went down to 28% under Reagan back up to 40% under Clinton and down to 35% under Bush. Hewould like to see a ceiling on marginal rates of 30%. He would like to see a fixed exchange rate so that there are not these large currency rate swings, the euro should be valued somehwehere between 90 cents to the euro to $1.30. The US has a growing population and better adoption of innovation with a younger population than Europe so he sees the USA as a leader in innovation and growth and the dollar or some new global currency should be formed for a global economy. Just as he supported the euro he supports a currency for Asia. He does not see overvaluing the Chinese currency as doing much good as he sees the Japanese economy hurt by the overvaluing of its currency after a period of Japoan bashing. He is an advisor to China on currency issues....

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The U.S. Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report for 2011 shows Fed purchases of 61% of total net Treasury issuance. Goodman points out that the net issuance of Treasury securities for covering U.S. budget deficits is normally 0.6% to 3.9% of GDP on average for the last six decades since 1950, compared to on average 8.6% of GDP today. A big jump in Fed purchases with a corresponding steep fall in the participation of foreigners and the private sector. Foreign purchases declined from 6% of GDP in 2009 to 1.9% of GDP in 2011. U.S. private sector- mutual funds, banks, corporations and individuals- purchases declined from 6% of GDP in 2009 to 0.9% of GDP in 2011. This helps keep interest rates low and funds U.S. government needs. Lawrence Lindsay pointed out in the WSJ in 2011 that Fed has itself boxed in being forced to keep interest rates low for years. If the government borrowed at a more normal rate of 5.7%, instead of the Fed induced rate of 2.5% today, Lindsay estimated the U.S. government would face an additional $800 billion in interest costs by 2021....

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Russia's economic planners and president Putin underestimated the importance of foreign investment to build its tech sector and diversify the economy away from its dependence on oil and gas commodity exports. The strong balance sheet with only 20% of GDP in government debt and over $300 billion in foreign exchange reserves created a false sense of security. An adventurous foreign policy has resulted in western sanctions and a poor investment climate crippling much needed foreign investment. Capital flight exposed vulnerabilities in the economic situation and cracks were evident in the emerging markets crisis in early 2014. Russian corporations were exposed as they depended on access to financial markets which was reduced with EU and U.S. sanctions. These problems were compounded by Dec. 2015 as OPEC led by Saudi Arabia did not cut back production to offset higher shale oil supplies, leading to the drop in oil prices below $50. Experts see the drop as being a lasting factor and Russia's finance minister sees no rebound of oil prices to $100 as happened after 2008, accepting a long term situation of low oil prices. This increases dependence on oil says Barley. It shows how Russia under Putin had grown complacent about the risks to the economy of not forging ahead with an aggressive plan of diversifying into tech and related sectors. In a competitive global economy the risks of standing still, of complacency, misallocation of resources, poor decisions, and weak political processes, can be disastrous....

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Flipkart, India's largest online retailer, was started by 2 Amazon executives in 2007. Flipkart has 22 million registered users and hosts 3000 merchants selling products ranging from electronics to clothing. Flipkart sales reached $1 billion in the last 12 months. In July 2014 Flipkart raised $1 billion from a group of investors including Tiger Global Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC. This follows the raising of $210 million in May 2014 from a group of investors led by DST Global, a Russian investor. Competitors include Amazon and eBay backed SnapDeal. Funds raised will be used to hire more engineers and improve mobile technologies, as over half of sales are made on mobile phones. India's online retail market is expected to grow 11 fold to $23 billion by 2018, according to Nomura brokerage firm. Flipkart earns money by charging merchants a fee for products sold on its online website.

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Sony is trailing badly in the smartphone business in 2014-2015. Global market share is at about 3.1%. Sales in China have failed to gain with only 0.4% market share, as Xiaomi has made large gains in China in 2014, and with other low cost competitors such as Lenovo. Even in India once considered a promising market Sony smartphone sales market share is at about 3.2%. Market share is about 6.9% in Europe and 14.4% in Japan, according to Counterpoint Research. The mobile division is cutting staff by 2100 from current level of 7000, as mobile becomes Sony's only money losing unit. The head of the mobile division and CEO Hirai are now considering options including selling the unit or joining with third parties. Mr. Totoki, head of the mobile division, says Sony has learned through this experience that creating customer enthusiasm for products involves much more than simply putting together powerful parts.

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Questions raised about the government's committment to serious health care reform. New leaders of China who took power in 2002 and 2003 with concern for the poor, did not put discuss reform till 2006 and during this crisis there isn't the urgency that is needed. Recent documents, says the Economist, that were circulated secretly within the bureaucracy for 3 weeks before being made public, provide no clear target about how much people would be reimbursed for medical treatment. The other concern is that the central government provides only 40% of the 850 billion yuan allocated for additional spending on health care in the years 2009-2011. This is about $125 billion. Burt local governments may not be keen on spending on health care as officials are still judged by how much they can boost employment and GDP growth. Over three years the central government's annual share of the additional spending on health care of 850 billion yuan is 111 billion yuan, according to Caijing, a business magazine.But the 2009 budget on health care is 118 billion yuan, so its not clear that things add up. The central government's additional spending in each of the 3 years is only $16 billion. How this can provide help to the 200 million uninsured, the insured who still pay a large amount for health care, and pay for essential pharmaceuticals on a list prepared by the government, and pay a portion of the expensive diagnostic tests that hospitals like to make money from, is not clear. The whole system will have to be overhauled so that hospitals do not have the incentive to prescribe these expensive tests and pills that cost more. The government says it will be 2020 when 90% of Chinese are covered by agovernment financed health insurance system- 11 years away. This only means that domestic consumption may remain depressed for a decade or so. With export markets collapsing, this leaves China dependent on infrastructure spending for growth for a long time, and lower growth rates with higher unemployment. ...

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Lahart says adjusting for inflation the DJIA average in early March 2013 would be about 12,900 instead of 14,254, much less than it was in Oct 9, 2007 peak. If dividends are reinvested the Dow would be at 16,600. With inflation and dividends taken together the Dow would be around 15,000. Lahart does not cite his source. Browning in a separate piece says the DJIA adjusted for dividends, inflation and taxes, according to Bespoke Investment calculations is still below the 2000 level in 1994 dollars, and provides a different view.

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The US needs good manufacturing jobs for the jobs and income that it brings into communities, and also because of the tax revenues from the companies making products in America that provide the basis for local governments to provide good public services in healthcare, education, and transportation. To say comparitive advantage that helped first Japanese and now Chinese manufacturers is real and how society gains is to deny some basic facts that are self evident from observation that contradict textbook ideas in economics. Comparitive Advantage is a textbook economics concept that says countries are proficient in what they make best and should specialize in that product. But it is a static concept that exists only in textbooks. If Japan in 1960, China in 1980 and India in 2000 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making steel and remained makers of lower end products such as footwear and textiles. If Japan in 1980, China in 2000, and India in 2020 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making semiconductors and remained makers of lower end products such as steel. A senior vice president of US Steel in the late 1960's even told this writer a graduate student at Northwestern in Chicago- as the US can make steel better than India or China let us keep making it for you. He and much of the business faculty at Northwestern also could not understand in 1970 why Airbus was being setup to compete with Boeing who by the concept of comparitive advantage should have had the whole market to itself for commercial aircraft . By this kind of thinking Airbus would not exist today because it did not have the lowest cost or the manufacturing technologies Boeing had through its vast manufacturing operation. America would be still the only one making aircraft in 2023 if textbook concepts ruled the day. By indirect methods such as hidden preferential arrangements, provision of inputs such as land, capital and labor, tax relief, the costs can be represented in a way that shows it is cheaper to manufacture overseas. The lack of a level playing field is what president Biden is correcting by doing what first Japan, then South Korea, then China and now India are doing since the 1960's. By 1974 in four years after its founding in 1970 Airbus came up with its first model the A-300 using advanced technologies. America will regain its leadership in the cost and manufacturing of many products through Biden policy and the efforts of American companies by 2030, and do this in a transformative way that will benefit the world as a whole.  It is an enormous error to say the US does not need good manufacturing jobs, that local governments do not need the tax revenues from manufacturing plants to build services for communities where manufacturing workers live, and the US does not need the manufacturing experience curve that leads to reduced costs. It is this loss of the manufacturing experience curve that is the most vital aspect for understanding the need for the US government to compete effectively with the governments of Asian countries to keep manufacturing healthy and strong at home. Economics experts ignorant of how important this science and engineering principle is fail to grasp this. Related to this is the idea of a virtuous cycle in manufacturing- whoever braves the hard years of moving up the learning and experience curve gets rewarded because once that country has mastered that skill it gets better an better as the technology advances- making it harder and harder to prevent a new monopoly in manufacturing by the country (Japan, China or Taiwan) that had the highest costs and the least advantage ten or 20 years earlier but just persevered through it all with the government's help to gain cost competitiveness. This part does not make it into the economics textbooks which are mostly theory and much of it outdated by the time they are written. Observation is the best teacher and guide as it is in science, to guide policy and action. Obsessive attachment to theory that ignores observation becomes the enemy of progress. Comparitive advantage is one concept that needs to be retired even from the textbooks. Overseas manufacturing then is a piece of the overall picture that fits into what is good for the US. Macroeconomic principles determine microeconomic outcomes as opposed to microeconomic principles with companies out on their own being forced to compete without a level playing field, or handing out technology for special status in a recipient country as some do putting the US at a macroeconomic disadvantage. This is also healthy for the recipient country overseas, as recrimination with loss of manufacturing jobs in the US inevitably leads to the kind of recrimination that does not serve either country well as in the case of China today, and worse still can lead to conflict, even war. After the egregious situation of loss of manufacturing communities across the US leading to destabilizing the social fabric, it is hard to see such thinking prevail about the US not needing manufacturing as a vital part of its social fabric and industrial strength. China, it can be said, would have developed, and developed well over the past two decades without overconcentration of US and EU manufacturing in China. Without aggravating the problems of climate change and contamination of air, land and water, and destabilizing the social fabric in the US hurting workers and communities across the US, if macroeconomic policy was made to manage this process in the US government without it being left entirely to individual companies to decide. Instead China faces today a difficult situation through events such as destabilizing the social fabric in the US (the Trump tariffs), advanced economies in G-7 resistance to sharing of technologies, the damage to its environment from microeconomic locally determined policy at individual companies, and the global effects of climate change from climate unsustainable levels of growth since 2000.  ...

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Petrobras and the discovery 200 miles offfshore of the Tupi field with estimated reserves of 5-8 billion barrels of light crude oil. As Brazil is self sufficient in energy with its own ethanol industry helping substitute ethanol for oil at the pump, it can become a major exporter with this find. However even with Petrobras technology and expertise in offshore drilling its a challenge as the oil is 4.5 miles below the oceans surface, and involves drilling through 7000 feet of water and 17000 feet of sand rock and massive salt layer. Cost could approach $20 billion according to analysts with current inflation in oil drilling rig costs. It involves challenges like building floating liquefied natural gas plants. Gabrielli, the Petrobras CEO thinks Petrobras has the expertise to develop it on its own. If oil majors are given the chance to join in the development the investment terms will be ones that favor Brazil. Gabrielli pointed this out saying that Brazil had already incurred most of the risk in exploration offshore so the oil majors have far less risk and Brazil should invite them only on its own terms if needed. The Tupi field puts Brazil ahead of Canada in oil reserves and in the leagues of China and Nigeria, with new Brazilian reserves at 17.2 billion from the 12.2 billion barrels currently. Brazil has invested in refineries with 2 new refineries coming up in 2010 and 2014 to increase refining capacity by 40%. It is also investing to convert heavy crude oil into diesel and $8.6 billion to reduce sulfur at 11 refineries. The Tupi field will take about 7 years to develop. Similiarly the Kashgan field in the Caspian in Kazakhstan is also in difficult in this case icy and gases filled environment that will take years for a Eni led consortium to develop. When oil does come will the demand situation have changed with new conservation taking hold in the developed world and the cars in developing countries more like the Tata Nano at 54 miles per gallon consuming less gasoline? Even with increase in energy needs of developing countries, improved efficiency and new technology for conservation brought into developing countries could if not significantly reduce, at least moderate demand. To the point where prices drop from $100 a barrel to something more affordable to developing countries....

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After much effort and coming second to American Athing Mu, then in 3 way competition, with Mu and Kenya's Mary Moraa, every time coming in second, Keely Hodgkinson is patient and persevering. Till the Olympics in Paris where she comes out ahead of Moraa and takes the gold for Britain in the 800 metres. Andy Bull of The Guardian looks at British runner Keely Hodgkinson.

At the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, Keely shadowed Mu and tried for first only to come short and missing by 8 hundredth of a second. In the Paris Olympics Mu was out with an injury and Keely had to race with Kenya's Mary Moraa who had come out ahead at the 2023 World Athletics in Budapest. In this race Keely runs alone to the finishing line.

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Apple to ship 25 million iphones made in India to the US for the June quarter 2025, meeting 50% of US demand. This will reduce iphone tariff from 20% for China to 10% for India. Apple will take $900 million in added costs for the tariffs for the June quarter and higher costs for future quarters. Apple made 24.8 billion on $95 billion in sales for the 1st quarter of 2025.  Apple will not get the $20 billion payment it gets from Google for making Google search the default search engine on Safari web browser. This is 25% of Apple profit. A federal judge declared this payment illegal on antitrust grounds. Another federal judge has referred Apple's App policies for criminal contempt investigation. Apple has been late to recognize the dangers of concentrating production in one country. Eight years after the 2016 election won by DJT Apple has not corrected this concentration in one country. Apple has focused on proift alone ignoring the potential for education for it's products such as the iPad. The public perception of Tech companies is that Tech is all about profit alone without regard for the Nation, education, investment in American communities and jobs, and other needs. ...