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Chinese sanctions against Micron will affect only 1% of its 10% of worldwide sales in China. Micron says it is committed to the Chinese market and plans to invest $600 million there.

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The fight for electing a new Speaker that led to 5 days of voting could lead to month of turmoil in the US House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy made concessions that could lead to more fractiousness among Republicans says this report in the WSJ. A single House Republican can challenge the Speaker under one of the concessions. Other concessions would make it harder to pass legislation. The WSJ Editorial Board says some Republicans who agree more with Democrats than positions taken by the 20 Republican holdouts in voting for Speaker, such as spending on infrastructure and support for Ukraine may actually join Democrats in future voting.  This brings in a new period in which party affiliations will be only one of the factors deciding how members vote, other factors being where they stand in the US support for Eastern Europe against Russian threats, and on issues such as spending on fixing broken American infrastructure .

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Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, says the Obama plan for ratings of colleges in the U.S. will not add much value because much of the information is already available. More important she says is to tackle the bad actors in education leading to high student debt. She says she will cut costs by a couple of hundred million dollars in the next few years, and will keep pushing on costs as there is a natural tendency to revert back. With less state support the UC system is admitting a larger number of students from out of state who pay higher tution.

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NYT's 52 Places shows pictures and text about 52 unique or scenic places all over the world for scrolling and browsing through.

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Spain's 2015 general election leads to the likelihood of a coalition from the centre right or the centre left parties. The conservative Partido Popular lost its parliamentary majority and won 123 seats as the largest party in the new parliament. The centre right have 163 seats, the centre left have 159 seats, leading to an inconclusive result with both sides seeking to form a new coalition government. Years of austerity policies under prime minister Rajoy and high unemployment of about 20% hurt the ruling party, even though the economy has recovered from the worst effects of the housing crisis and is growing at 3%.

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This issue of the Economist magazine looks at Saudi oil price cuts and the future for shale oil in the world's energy mix. In the short run overleveraged companies in the shale oil business in the U.S. will be affected by oil prices below $50 a barrel. The Economist points out that shale oil deposits are extensive in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The upfront costs are as little as $1.5 million for drilling a well. As a result the economics of shale will depend on new advances in technology and efficiency to bring costs down below existing costs averaging of about $57 a barrel, with some producers at costs of $35 a barrel. Because of technology advances anticipated in the field it points to shale oil as a reliable source of low cost oil supplies in the future, keeping oil prices lower than in the past and much less subject to manipulation by cartel pricing or oil price shocks. The lower volatility and lower level of oil prices will be good for the rapidly growing economies in Asia and the developed economies of Europe and the U.S., and for countries in Latin America such as Argentina with large shale deposits....

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Japanese carmakers are still recovering from the loss of sales in China's market after the dispute over the Senkaku islands, and are losing ground to GM, VW and other carmakers in the interior of the country.

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What is the difference between South Korea and the U.S., Europe in the handling of coronavirus? It is tracking and testing.  President Trump and health adviser Dr. Fauci, see South Korea as the successful model to be followed in controlling the coronavirus. What has happened till now it is accepted with shortage of basic medical supplies and equipment, stress on hospital systems, are merely mitigation actions. South Korea was prepared for the coronavirus crisis because of the MERS and other epidemics, and failures resulting in corrective actions. Labs were centralized and better equipped for testing and tracking the infected. One of the key tools is testing. President Trump says the goal is for the U.S. to exceed and far surpass tests per capita in South Korea. Five million tests are planned by the end of April in the U.S. Where the U.S. falls short is in use of multipronged digital tracking using data from people's use of mobile phones, credit card usage, and use of apps designed to separate infected people from others. South Korea is a democracy with a population of 52 million people, about the size of France. People who were student activists in the democratization era in South Korea say the use of digital technology is a need today. We have to adapt in emergency situation they say. Ki Mo-ran, epidemiologist, and adviser to South Korean government says this is a key part lacking in the European and U.S. efforts to control coronavirus. She says in South Korea we know the patient's contacts, where he goes and stays, so we don't have to lock down everybody. Without digital tracking one cannot know which place is contaminated, which place is clean, so that there can be a lockdown of just that area and not the whole country, says Ki Mo-ran. She asks the question- is one person's privacy more important than the lives of a family or other people who are affected. Is it OK to lockdown every child in the country in a home as in Spain for over a month so that particular people's privacy is respected? These are serious questions for western society, are they exceptions or is democracy not just a western idea but equally cherished in Asian societies, people talk about Confucianism in China and the Asian culture forgetting that the biggest democracies are quite large and functioning well in India in addition to South Korea, Taiwan Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Japan, far larger in area and population than China. The French government has chosen the app TraceTogether as the least intrusive one adaptable to France for use there. The U.S. is having Google and Apple develop one of its own. India will be developing one of its own. The NYT raises the question will it be watered down so much in France or in the U.S. and UK to be less effective than the  dire need for an alternative to lockdowns? ...

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This report in the WSJ says the Artemis test launch on Monday  for the Space Launch System developed by Boeing gives the company a new chance to regain credibility in the space field. This rocket is supposed to launch the Orion spacecraft towards the Moon without crew and by 2025 with astronauts in Artemis missions.

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Prime minister Theresa May of Britain announces her plan to spend an additional 20 billion pounds a year on the National Health Service. Over five years the commitment is for an additional 70 billion pounds. By 2023 this will bring the UK to the point where it is spending the same proportion on health care as France. This also fulfills a promise made by the pro Brexit campaign. May says some of this would come from higher taxes, and 9 billion pounds that the UK contributes to the European Union each year would go to pay for the additional funds to the NHS. The 2017 British election with Labor winning 40% of the vote has affirmed the shift in public sentiment to greater commitment of funds for health and education. Poorer communities in Britain that were left behind tended to vote for Brexit, with a large gap widening between London and the rest of the country. Higher commitment to NHS is part of the shift in perception that the needs of health, education and underserved communities are the new priorities. ...

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China's Shanghai stock market declined by 6.9% on the first day of trading Jan. 4, 2016, with trading triggering circuit breakers. The central bank plans to inject $20 billion in short term funds as a signal to investors that it will continue easing.

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President Obama in an interview with Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio says that blue collar men, the white working class, have suffered in the last decade, and Trump is exploiting their fears and anxieties. Yet he made no mention of the large parts of the middle class with low levels of assets, and the extreme inequality discussed by Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen at a Boston Fed conference on inequality in October 2014. Obama addresses the war in Syria and Iraq in a similiar manner by not mentioning the millions of refugees in that region and the million that have created a refugee crisis in Europe. He attributes the problem more to media pursuing ratings than any errors of the administration in this interview with NPR, including some of it directed by pockets in the Republican Party. This ignores the many editorials and op-ed pieces on the subject from both sides of the spectrum, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

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Dow Chemical CEO, Anthony Liveris, is co-chair of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, an effort to bring together federal government, industry, universities and other groups to invest in new technologies that would generate good-quality jobs and increase U.S. competitiveness. He writes this letter in the Wall Street Journal to correct two misperceptions. The first, is that government has no significant role in nurturing an environment that is good for business and manufacturing industry. Because other countries, including China, are now operating like companies, it is important not to let the U.S. be in a disadvantageous position. Government has always been involved in its writing of tax and incentive policies, regulations, trade agreements, and creating a climate of certainty. The second, is that the loss of manufacturing capacity and job losses in the last 10 years are different from the job losses in the 1980's. These are not the low tech and less efficient manufacturing job losses of the 1980's, but job losses as a result of moving advanced manufacturing capacity and research and development centers to outside of the U.S. Of the 8 million jobs lost in the last recession, he says two million manufacturing jobs of higher pay and supporting employment in other sectors were lost. His point: its time to focus on expanding manufacturing in the U.S. because manufacturing is the sector with the highest multiplier effect on other sectors. Public-private partnerships are critical to this effort for increasing technology development and increasing investment. This view is supported by other experts....

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US effort to strike economic deals and business deals that will change the direction of South and Southwest Asia in ways that are the need of the hour. DJT replaces the failures of the Republicans under Reagan, and his 1983 Middle East Envoy Donald Rumsfeld, who knowing about the use of chemical weapons intervened on the Iraqi side with arms support that led to the subsequent wars. Rumsfeld was to lead the US into Afghanistan War in 2001 and into Iraq War in 2003 by his Office of Special Plans intelligence. By contrast DJT wound down these wars and is now setting a new path to peace in the Middle East by showing the economic path that India now leads for South Asia, and South west Asia's Saudis, Qatar, UAE and Pakistan. This is a remarkable change for Republicans and the Nation, which has the support of well meaning Democrats, including Biden.

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A stroke, a tumor, or live disease mean parents are taking care of children. WSJ shows one family in Woodbridge, Virginia coping with a son in the 50's with dementia. The Naitonal Alliance for Caregiving estimate is there are 3.1 million elderly Americans caring for a son or a daughter.

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Saudi Arabia and the UAE are emerging as large arms buyers. Saudi Arabia spent $80 billion on arms purchases in 2014, more than France or Britain, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The Emirates spent $23 billion, triple the amount spent in 2006. Qatar made a $11 billion deal in 2014 for air defense systems and helicopters. It is looking for F-15 fighter jets to replace its fleet of older Mirage jets. Lockheed plans to replace smaller Pentagon sales by increasing global arms sales to 25-30%, according to CEO Marillyn Hewson. It has setup a separate division for foreign military sales.

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Borrowing costs for Italy after the inconclusive elections of Feb. 2013.

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With a straw hat, Japanese hat for a helmet, a young carpenter from Japan covers most of Japan on a small scooter. He is now doing this in Australia. Something like this could only happen after Covid when there is a sense of release from everything that happened and a sense of discovering something new. Ryokei Mifune simply did not want things to get complicated so he says he chose Australia simply because he says he wanted to get out of Japan for an adventure and Australia looked that large. He is setting off from Melbourne to Sidney than up the coast to Cairns, a journey of 2000 miles from the southernmost airport to the easternmost one.

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  Biden this day July 22 told his campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, that he would be “working like hell” to campaign for Harris. “We’re still fighting in this fight together,” said Biden “I’m not going anywhere. And I want you to know … you’ve always had my back. And I promise you, I will always have your back.” O'Malley Dillon will still head the campaign for Harris as she did for Biden. And Julie Chavez Rodriguez whom Biden had as campaign manager will also do the same for Harris. On Monday the staff greeted Kamala Harris and the second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Harris told them: “I have full faith that this team … will be the reason we win in November.”  ...