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The NYT's Scott Shane talks to residents of Baltimore and the neighborhoods where a community center and CVS store were set ablaze. Baltimore has suffered from economic decline as the city's major employer Bethlehem Steel closed its plant, and fewer industry jobs remained to sustain poorer neighborhoods. Incarceration, drug use, crime, all have taken a toll as more residents left the city for the suburbs. Unlike Detroit which has the auto industry, and dilapidated buildings are gradually being replaced with newer structures, Baltimore has only one large employer, John Hopkins University and its medical complex. Economist Basu says the loss is felt more deeply because efforts were being made to give new life to poorer neighborhoods, and because the rest of the country will now have a different impression of the city reducing outside investment.

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The nuclear deal reached in the 2013 Geneva negotiations between Iran and the EU, U.S., Russia, France, Germany, UK and China, a diplomatic bloc named the P5+1. Iran gets sanctions relief that would bring in an additional $6-7 billion dollars. In return Iran agrees to increased International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the heavy water reactor in Arak, to not start the facility or lead it with nuclear fuel. Earlier France had pushed for a complete dismantling of that reactor. Iran will cap its uranium enrichment to levels needed only for fuel in a reactor, of 3.5%-5%, and maintain its total low enriched nuclear fuel at the current level of about 6 tons for the six month period in which further negotiations will take place. As the EU representative put it, this provides the time and space to reach a serious deal. It does not ship out and destroy the estimated 19,000 centrifuge machines in Iran to produce nuclear fuel. A sticking point was Iran's insistence that it has a right to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which Iran says is part of the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty....

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Robert Pape of the University of Chicago political science department points out the facts that show an increase in suicide bombings and roadside bomb attacks witrh asharp escalation as the foreign troop presence increased. He quotes Gen McChrystal's own report, " the increase in firepower and force protection have severely damaged the International Security Assistance Force's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people." In this respect he says McChrystal's request is not bold enough because with further escalation on the ground even more troops than he has requested would be required. THe numbers he gives are- neglibible roadside bombings after 2001, then as US and foreign troops increased 782 in 2005,1,739 in 2006, 2000 in 2007 and 3200 in 2008, all focussed on western targets not Afghan forces. He says the approach of buying support is used by the Taliban, and the US needs to allocate more resources and money to this effort. The switch would be gradual to fewer ground troops as they are seen as foreign occupiers, and America would maintain its military presece but differently avoiding the large forces that would only increase resistance to foreign occupation as its perceived in Afghanistan....

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The large majority of vaccine disinformation has been traced to just 12 persons, according to a report cited by the White House. This report is from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They have a combined following of 59 million on social media with Facebook being the largest. Of 812,000 Facebook posts looked at by CCDH 65% came from these 12 persons.

On Facebook alone 73% of all anti-vaccine content comes from these 12 persons. These 12 include a religious zealot, a wellness blogger, some physicians who have taken on pseudoscience, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Only 3 have been removed from one platform of the 12 persons. US president Biden is critical of the role of social media in this pandemic.

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In 2017 Facebook noticed a drop in user engagement- fewer comments, fewer posts, and less sharing. To address this Facebook made a change in its algorithm, which is a bunch of mathematical equations which determine what you see in the newsfeed. The result says this WSJ Facebook Investigation was to make Facebook an angrier place, a place where divisive comments were being posted, and sensational or exaggerated comments were being shared. This increased the level of divisiveness in the US during the early period of the Trump administration. As America looks back on this time- the issues related to migration across its southern border that are still alive today and on which there is now a consensus across Democrats and Republicans on returning migrants. The issues related to the urban-rural divide that many presidents preceding Trump and Biden had chosen to ignore, and which the Tech community showed little interest in. The divide also across educational lines with college educated splitting away from people lacking college education just as costs of college had soared. All these issues were out in the open and instead of having an educated debate these algorithms never intended for solving social problems actually made them worse.  It is now in the interest of both Republicans and Democrats to take a hard look at what went wrong and restore the civility and dialogue that marked American experience across all ages and income groups, and remove the overstated influence of such algorithm based apps. The WSJ Facebook Investigation is a way to restore the traditional media's true place in the national dialogue and push back against the insidious and dangerous influence of algorithm based news feeds such as this one.  Outrage Algortihms may be good for a few people and a few in tech  business in California and in capital markets in New York, yet they are bad for America and the American people as a whole, bad for the vast landscape of America and the vast majority of the American people. Mindless infatuation with pictures of young adults leads to a mindless and dangerous result in mental health, bad effects on women, illusions about what is right living, and increasing divisiveness in America.  ...

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The 3000 delegates at the annual China party Congress and premier Li Keqiang showed support for President Jinping as the Congress makes changes to the constitution. The constitution was amended to include a reference to Mr. Xi's political theory, that the Communist Party would lead the country as it implements socialism with Chinese characteristics, creating a new anti-corruption commission that has party oversight of all public servants. As Mr. Jinping, 64 years,  begins his second five year term, to ensure continuity and stability the clause in the constitution that limits a president to 2 five year terms was removed. Wang Chen is the Congress vice chairman and he led the anti-corruption campaign in China that firmed up popular support for Jinping in China. Wang Chen explained that the term limit changes were designed to bring presidential tenures more in line with Mr. Xi's other positions as Party chief and military commission chairman, positions with more power and no formal term limits.  The process is part of government restructuring that puts the Communist Party more in charge of decision-making.   There was some instability under the administration before Jinping and growing corruption had undermined confidence in the Party, just as China's economy was slowing, with a bubble in real estate, high debt to GDP and need to pursue a soft landing for the economy. The present effort say some delegates including the president of Haier Appliance, is an effort that stable economic policies can be pursued to ensure China's future as its society ages, and the need to complete modernization in parts of the country that have not seen the gains seen in the coastal regions. And that corruption does not undermine the party's credibility to lead this change. The huge economic problems China faces, bigger now from a public interest perspective of pensions, social security in the Chinese context for an aging society, bringing the rapid development of the coastal regions to the interior of the country, housing, the high debt to GDP ratio, and need to ensure good economic growth to provide a stable economic foundation, may have led to a sense that a stable political foundation was needed to ensure this takes place. Political stability was affected during the previous Hu Jintao administration with the Bo Xilai episode when the party unity was affected as "some  party cadres and leaders were giddy and feverish on the waves of the market economy" as Jinping put it at Central Party School in 2013. Mr. Jinping grew up amid such tensions as his father a senior party leader went out of favor first with Mao and then with Deng after the Tiananmen protests. This instability in the country that affected economic progress is part of the experience of older Chinese leaders and affected their perception of events from memories of this period. Some of the media coverage on this topic can be misleading, as it is important not to forget that China suffered for 2 centuries in the nineteenth and the twentieth century -with British invasion in the nineteenth century and Japanese invasion in the twenty first century followed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution before finally finding a way out of poverty and backwardness in the final decade of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty first century.  ...

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Ms. Irurita, founder of Made for Spain, custom trip planner, describes the Asturias region in northern Spain as one of the less discovered areas with wonderful beaches and the Picos de Europa mountain range, good food and mountain cheeses, with lower prices.

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Malas and Parkinson describe the effect of scenes of Syrian refugees on television being welcomed in Germany on displaced people in Syria and Iraq. Many young men are now willing to take risks and make their way to Europe. A similiar situation is taking place for the 800,000 people in refugee camps in northern Nigeria after attacks by the Boko Haram militant group.

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H-P sales and profits continue to decline in its core printer and PC businesses. Sales in the printer group were down 5% in the third quarter 2012. Sales in the PC business in the third quarter 2012 declined 14% over the prior year quarter. Sales in the services business declined 6%. Add to this the large charge for $8.8 billion for Autonomy Inc. and investor response was "no mas" for H-P shares. CEO Meg Whitman promised to focus on the core businesses and not let the Autonomy business become a distraction, as Autonomy represents less than 1% of the H-P sales.