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Reporting for this highly informative article on wind energy development in Brazil was done with a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Forero gives a detailed account of the setup of about 400 huge wind turbines larger than the size of a Airbus 380 in a windy area of Bahia state by a Brazilian company Renova Energia. It is an area that experts say is nearly perfect for the steady wind needed. Brazil has increased its wind generation capacity to 3% of its energy generation in 3 years since the first auction for companies seeking to build wind farms. By 2021 energy planners in Brazil see this going up to 10% of its energy generating capacity. New limits on the generation of hydropower is shifting the focus to speeding up the development of wind energy by the government of Dilma Roussef. State owned banks provide loans to companies like Renova Energia. New technology from French, Dutch, and Spanish companies with advanced sensors that shift the position of blades to adapt to wind conditions, the size of windmills of over 400 feet, and 1.6 megawatt turbines, make wind energy a realistic option for Brazil's expanding energy needs growing at 5% a year. French energy company Alsthom has a plant outside Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, to manufacture windmill components. This helps meet Brazilian government requirements for a certain percentage of local manufacuring of components....

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The largest US military community of outside the US is Kaiserslautern 73 miles from Frankfurt in Germany. Kaiserslautern is 10 miles from the Ramstein Base which is where the US European Command is located. US president is considering reducing the US military presence in Germany, as it shifts responsibilities for European defence to Europe. Failure of the EU , Germany, Britain, Italy and France to support the US in its Iran effort to get nuclear materials transferred outside to Russia or some other country is leading to a rift in trans-atlantic relations. 

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40 people out of 172 in a database surveyed by Dr. Edwards director of WHO drug monitoring center, had Goehring's desease. What does this mean and should it be made public? These are some of the dilemmas facing medicine and drug companies as more and more databases and their resultant statistics become available to researchers. It also poses a new kind of risk for drug companies as they face increased scrutiny.

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This NYT report on Mohamed Bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, who comes from Abu Dhabi one of the 7 emirates in the Gulf Coastal region, is rare and unusual. It provides stories the prince loves to tell that make a point about how he sees the world. Here he tells them to Robert F. Worth, in the only interview Mohamed bin Zayad has ever given to a journalist from US or Europe. It took a year just to get the interview. The title about a Dark Vision is inappropriate as Mohamed Zayad simply reflects what is a British way of looking at things- valuing the Constitution, keeping religion private even its deeply held beliefs and cultural traditions such as Bedouin's practice, and a general tolerance that characterizes British society and similar societies throughout the history of Europe and Asia that were sitting on shipping lanes and practiced trade for a livelihood. It is also important because the other Mohamed, Mohamed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is seen as someone influenced by the ideas of Mohamed Bin Zayad of Abu Dhabi. President Biden plans a trip to the region in coming months to continue on building a narrative of development for the region. This provide an insight into the coastal regions that include Gujarat across the Gulf in India, that for centuries traded with the Gulf kingdoms. They have a trading mentality and with it comes a tolerance that is also seen in trading nations such as England. This is what brought Britain to India (and China) says Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi went so far as to say that if there was trade on the moon you would find a British shopkeeper was first to setup shop there. Zayed has as a minister in his cabinet, a woman who is minister of Tolerance, Sheikha Lubna al Quasimi.  Zayed is unique for three reasons. He has embedded in his views the spirit of tolerance. As Worth puts it in NYT, Zayed has grasped what is true to the spirit of the Gulf region. The country's location on an ancient shipping lane has bred a type of Islam in the Gulf region, that is open to the world and tolerant.  His father Zayed Nahyan's  tendencies to openness and frank demeanor combine with this tolerance to provide a different kind of leadership. His father had the pluralist instincts that combined traditional Bedouin attitudes with a rare liberal mindedness. He died at age 86 in 2004. Zayed bin Nahyan MBZ's father was selected for these very reasons by the British in 1966 to rule the small Gulf kingdom of Abu Dhabi. In 1966, says this NYT report, the country was mostly illiterate, half of all children died during childbirth and one third of the women during childbirth, there was a complete lack of western medicine. Zayed Nahyan's brother was averse to development making the British select Zayed Nahyan at the request of Abu Dhabhi families. These early years shaped Mohamed Bin Zayed's views of how to see the world. Zayed the son loves to tell stories, and this one in the NYT shows how Mohamed bin Zayed the son and Mohamed bin Nahyan the father share a sense of what it means to be human and support all people's aspirations for a better life. This is the narrative in India and the region of 1.8 billion people that extends from India to Indonesia and Vietnam. This was seen at the G7 when leaders of India and Indonesia were invited to meet with the G7 in Munich, Germany and taken as utterly serious participants in the discussions to shape the Free World. To see the difference- UAE has signed agreements to increase trade with India to $100 billion over 5 years and was thanked by prime minister Modi for treatment of 8 million Indian workers in the Gulf region during the pandemic. Saudis are now stabilizing the Turkish and Egyptian economies with aid and providing some of the funding assistance for Siemens to modernize the entire Egyptian rail system with the latest technology over the next 5 years. Projects of this size that have never been undertaken since 1945. Sometime in the 1980's when Zayed was a young military officer having completed training at the Royal British Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, and educated in Scotland, he went to the grasslands of Tanzania. During his visit to Tanzania he went to several villages to see the Masai tribes. When he returned he sat with his father crosslegged on the floor in traditional Bedouin and Asian style and told him about his travels. His father asked Zayed about all the details- the wildlife, the Masai people and their customs, the extent of poverty in the country. After hearing it all his father asked Zayed what he had done for the people he had encountered. In response Zayed shrugged and answered, the people he met were not Muslims. Zayed still recalls his father's reaction, sudden, forceful and indelible from memory. Zayad says his father took a sudden hold of his arm and spoke to him in a harsh tone and stern demeanor- " We are all God's children."     ...

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Nutrition plays a big part in sleep. More fruits and vegetables, legumes, grains, fish in the diet helps sleep by supplying melatonin. Increases supply of the essential amino acid tryptophan. This includes dairy foods. Tryptophan is a precursor of serotonin which converts into melatonin. This needs to be eaten with high fibre diet as a legume or  grain so it is digested properly. Lower inflammation levels improve sleep quality and plant based foods lower inflammation. High fibre helps as a healthy gut is beneficial for sleep. 

Consistent eating times, separation between day and night so that the biggest calories are taken earlier in the day with a good breakfast in the bright daylight hours, and the night meal taken early a few hours before sleep. This sends signals that the body is winding down to sleep and get the body ready to sleep.

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The Queen of England at age of 95 politely and firmly turned down the Oldie of the Year Award, saying "you are only as old as you feel." Actually Queen Elizabeth is doing all her duties making speeches, hosting leaders as normally as possible. The Queen will host international business investment leaders for a Global Investment Summit. She also told leaders that she was proud of Britain's efforts for climate change, and the moves to a sustainable future.

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Failure to invest in housing and transport leading to this becoming an issue in the 2024 Irish elections. Ireland has a surplus of $25 billion.

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The French Consulate in Montreal says the number of expatriates from France living in  Quebec's Montreal region just crossed 200,000 in 2025. It helps create a vibrant community in Montreal, the leading French speaking city in Canada.

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How Mexico's drug war is creating a situation where a surge of personnel may be needed at the border with the US. President Calderon faces a struggle with criminal drug trafficking gangs that use bribes to weaken the entire police and anti drug efforts of the government. Corruption is rampant in Mexico.

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Kevin Roose explains the unique structure of Open AI which has 4 board members and is structured as a nonprofit with the overriding goal of safety and making AI beneficial to humanity. Ilya Sutskeyer is chief scientist and member of the board. He says Altman's ouster was necessary to protect OpenAI's mission of making Artificial Intelligence beneficial to humanity. Mr. Altman was asked to join a video meeting of the board on Friday 17th November and was immediately fired. Open AI started in 2015 as a nonprofit and in 2019 setup a capped profit subsidiary in which investors returns are capped in relation to the investment. It keeps the nonprofit in charge and able to fire the CEO of the profit subsidiary and keeps the mission as overarching for both subsidiaries. There are three other members who hold no shares in the company and who are bound to a fiduciary duty to "create safe AI that is broadly beneficial to humanity." Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner are the two other members who are members of the Effective Altruism movement who have raised concerns that AI could lead to the extinction of humanity. Adfam D'Angelo is the other member, he is CEO of Quora a question and answer site. ...

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How changes in retail with Wal-Mart and technology with Amazon online sales killed a toy brand. Employees fared poorly as the business took on debt under private equity and was finally liquidated.

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Andy Cuomo benefits from the reputation of Mario Cuomo, the lack of serious opposition, but lacks enthusiastic support from voters. Voters don't feel inspired the way they were with his father Mario Cuomo. With a relatively unknown Republican candidate, Mr. Astorino, Democrat Andy Cuomo expects to win easily.

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The U.S. faces a critical gap in its coronavirus effort - the lack of one centralized source of reliable quality data. What we have today says this report in WSJ, are many disparate sources of information, without any uniform set of rules, different chronologies, and lacking consistency, all feeding into national or global databases run by individuals or private organizations that lack the resources needed. Not  the centralized government source for quality data that is being used in other countries. This is the second of articles in the WSJ on this problem. The first was on the John Hopkins database run by students and a professor lacking the funding or the resources for such a critical task, dependent on disparate and multiple sources of information without any set of rules. Other sources at the University of Washington or run by private institutions face similar problems. The data coming out of these databases is only as good as the data going in, say experts. As a substitute for quality data from a centralized U.S. government source these sources cannot give the decision makers in states the confidence they need, and the federal public health decision makers the confidence they need in their decisions for reopening in stages, says this report in the WSJ. ...