LyrArc Article Gist
Manon Ragonnet-Cronin, MRC Fellow at Imperial College, London, looks at how scientists today have tackled the challenge from coronavirus and its many variants, using scientific tools in real time.

LyrArc Article Gist
Steven Press of the Stanford History Department says "buying Greenland is not a new idea."  Actually Denmark sold hubs in India to the British Empire, offered Greenland for sale to US in 1900's,  and US president Harry Truman offered $100 million in 1946 for Greenland because of it's strategic value in the Cold War. Then why are the EU countries sounding indignation. Denmark was a colonial power in India in the 19th century. Denmark was explored in its widest extent by Robert Peary in the 1880's who proved it was an island by reaching it's northernmost side. Peary advocated for Greenland to be part of the US and the Commanders in Chief all agreed in 1946 the island "was completely worthless to Denmark," yet was vital to the United States, to protect its eastern seaboard. DJT is hardly the first to say this even though the Europeans want to excoriate hime for doing so. In fact it was Secretary of State William Seward in 1867 who looked at acquiring Greenland, when he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire. Alaska is a lot ,a lot better for natives compared to it being under Russia, and this would be true for Greenland than being under Denmark. Denmark's claim was not even accepted till 1921 with Norway disputing it.  Denmark had not explored the northern part of the country when Robert Peary reached it for the US Navy and claimed it for the US inthe 1880's. It can be said that for these reasons Denmark has little reason to be in Greenland except as a colonial power. Its claims are from 1814 Treaty of Kiel with Prussia. Denmark can hardly protect Greenland's vast shoreline with 6 dogsleds, and security less than the New York Police Department, from Russian and Chinese submarines and ships in the Arctic. The native Inuit population of Greenland has little in common with Denmark as a colonial power. About 60,000 Inuit origin native residents, in the whole island, most of them would fit into one or several American bases, Okinawa alone has 80,000 people. Who would have per capita incomes many times what they are today with better living conditions and standards of health and education, security and air transport under the US.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
David Barboza of NYT describes the hidden subsidies China gives to Foxconn for its plant in Zhengzhou, in a poor region of China. The factory there makes about half a million iPhones a day. These subsidies include incentive packages, infrastructure building, local government help of about $1.5 billion. As a result Apple has high margins. For a 32 gigabyte iPhone 7 that costs $400 to make, the retail price is about $649 in the U.S.  The hidden subsidies is why Apple can maintain dominance as profits are reinvested. And the result is that with only 12% of the smartphone market Apple can take in 90% of the profit, according to Strategy Analytics. Barboza looks back at Apple before co-founder Steve Jobs left in 1985 as focussing on manufacturing at plants in Colorado and California. By 2001 with iPod sales soaring the move to China under Cook, who previously worked for Compaq, was underway. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the move to China for manufacturing accelerated. The reason: only China offered the kind of subsidies, the speed of approval and building of infrastructure facilities, the local government support, the hundreds of thousands of workers, and the best tooling engineers, to produce in huge volumes with speed, and maintaining quality levels. Earlier plants including one in Colorado Springs that this Lyrarc editor was invited to visit just prior to Jobs rejoining Apple had many quality problems, so much so that Apple had a large part of the manufactured personal computers set aside for rework. The quality levels were dismal, defects were unbelievably high. This is the Apple manufacturing process and plant that Jobs must have seen when he returned, and which he hired Cook to fix. Not only were costs higher in the U.S., (subsidies in China came later) when Jobs looked at the manufacturing quality and the inability to get the quality he needed from American workers and engineers at that time in the 1990's, only then did he turn to China- and the more he saw what was possible to accomplish there he sensed an unusual opportunity to finally put the ghosts of memories from competition with Microsoft at rest, and to surpass everything that had been done in Silicon Valley. The result one of the most ingenious and large manufacturing networks in the world, huge profits for an American company, except for one thing- it would not do much for American workers. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
German chancellor Merkel says after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, after disagreements over NSA spying activities- "Mutual interest will be the motor for finding common solutions step-by-step. We talk about such questions of NSA openly even when there are differences." In the first address to parliament as head of the new CDU-SPD coalition, Merkel said mass collection of phone data by NSA only led to mutual mistrust and in fact diminished rather than increased security. Germans are even more sensitive than the U.S. about such spying after traumatic experience under Gestapo and Stasi secret police during 1931-2090.

LyrArc Article Gist
Bloomberg Associates is a firm created by Mayor Bloomberg to help cities all over the world improve city living from Louisville, Kentucky to Mexico City. The focus is on cities using the expertise and experience gained in running New York City, and replicating some of the success in New York elsewhere. Public health, economic development and environment sustainability remain at the forefront. Other ideas include making more room for pedestrian plazas in busy areas, calorie counts in fast-food chains, curbing smoking, a customer-service hotline for city residents. This includes projects such as turning blighted or neglected neighborhoods into attractive public spaces and making subway friendly residential neighborhoods. In places such as New Orleans the Mayor's staff has already produced changes in the crime rate with innovative programs and financing from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Their will be no fees for sharing this expertise and knowledge. Joining the new firm are most of Mayor Bloomberg's top staff, including Amanda Burden, director of city planning. George Fertitta will run the firm....

LyrArc Article Gist
James McIntyre's book about Gordon Brown, (title is Power with a Purpose) who like Jimmy Carter, was more respected in retirement for doing good work humbly and not getting into a revenue generating speaker's circuit or consulting, or boards of directors of companies. McIntyre looks at his career, the involvement of Mandelson as Business Secretary, the failures of Mandelson and Blair in New Labour, and Gordon Brown's failure to revive the Labour Party. The Times says Gordon Brown has grown in stature since leaving No. 10 Downing Street. Under Blair, Brown was No.2 and headed the British Treasury as finance minister. He only became prime minister at the end of his career during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. He started the effort to redefine Labour Party after Margaret Thatcher defeated the Labour candidate from Plymouth Mr. Foot and swept out socialist Labour and the trade unions. Then followed privatization and changes in the British economy which were followed by Reagan in the US by 1980. Through this period Brown and Blair tried to create the concept of New Labour which won in landslides as Britain switched back to Labour as the alternative. As the Blair magic withered Brown was left tackling the 2009 financial crisis but failed to define what Labour was- his Business secretary was Peter Mandelson who unlike Brown was in Labour but in for his own purpose and had a cynical attitude to politics as a way to retire in some privileged business position on boards of directors. The result is well known Cameron and the conservatives who were even less qualified than an earlier generation of Conservative politicians, their decision to call the Brexit referendum, the verdict of yes on Brexit leading to Cameron's replacement by Boris Johnson, and Britain having 4 prime ministers in a span of five years as discredited austerity drive was replaced by Keir Starmer's Labour. This project with McSweeney as Starmer's campaign manager cleared Labour of socialist outlook Corbyn supporters, won in a landslide in 2024, only to fail to define the purpose for which Labour stood for and Starmer's ratings dropping to new lows of 18% support as Reform UK's Farage took up the issue of migrants and the culture that enabled migrants to enter the UK. Britain has been let down by two generations of less competent, poorly qualified for public service politicians over three decades since the 1990's- through Blair/Brown, Cameron, Boris Johnson and left struggling with Keir Starmer. Sixty years after decolonization of an Empire in the 1960's, Britain has not gained in purpose and strength, only drifting along as new powers emerge in Asia and the world changes. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
President Biden gets his $1.9 trillion aid package through the U.S. Congress with 220 votes for and 211 against. All Democrats except one voted in favor and all Republicans voted against. Earlier the $15 minimum wage was dropped from the bill to get it through the Senate. Also kept were income criteria to prevent the $1400 check to individuals in households going to the most affluent income earners. The Senate vote was close - 50 to 49 in a party line vote. The Biden aid package comes on top of earlier aid under president Trump in 2020. This aid is likely to provide enough stimulus to the US economy to restore growth to levels that were there before the pandemic hit.

LyrArc Article Gist
The US has 124,000 charging stations for electric vehicles. The Biden administration wants to see that go up to 500,000 by 2030. For this to happen $7.5 billion is already going to states under the $1 trillion infrastructure bill of 2021. The Biden $369 Climate bill that passed the Senate last week will give companies that build each charging station 30% tax credit for maximum of $100,000, up from $30,000 earlier, to build one charging station. It costs about $100,000 to tear up pavement and build a conduit for a charging station.

Supply chain issues will linger for 2022 and 2023 with shortage of chips after which it will move much faster says this report in WSJ. For EV's to go mainstream charging stations are a priority.

LyrArc Article Gist
Katsuya Okada is elected leader of the Democratic Party of Japan in Jan 2015. He is from a prominent business family. His brother is CEO of Aeon, a supermarket chain in Japan, which was founded in 1758. Okada says he supports Abenomics, saying: "I have no intention of completely rejecting Abenomics. On the contrary, there are many areas where I'd like to tell him, 'Go for it. Step up the pace.' " Policies he backs are deregulation to improve productivity, and Abe's policies to increase worker wages. He also supports being better prepared for regional conflicts, and said the DPJ would study Abe plans for legislation to strengthen the role of Japan's defense forces. Okada's comments reflects the changing sentiment in Japan about Abenomics since Abe's win in the snap election, and winning credibility for his economic policies.