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Canadian steel and lumber industries get government aid, as talks to end US tariffs are halted over an ad on Reagan misrepresenting him on tariffs by Ontario state.  Canada's steel and lumber industries will get the aid in the form of railway costs cut in half with rail subsidies, and tariffs on US steel imports into Canada to reduce domestic steel costs for other industries. Stellantis shifts car production for a new Jeep from suburban Toronto to Illinois, GM cut a shift at a pickup plant and closed a electric van plant in Ontario. Not all imports to the US from Canada face tariffs. Other products enter the US from Canada under a free trade agreement USMCA that went into effect July 1 2020. Canada is also shifting policy under Carney's Liberals on climate change, as it seeks to reorient its economy to export oil to China and India- a new pipeline is now approved for oil and gas to be shipped across the country from Alberta. Since it's independence with Dominion status in 1867 Canada's economy has struggled with the idea of building a economy separate from the US so that trade between the northeastern Canada and Northeastern US which is next to each other is foregone for trade with distant provinces in the western states such as Alberta and British Columbia. In Brazil Lula's Worker's Party is also slowing efforts on climate change for the economy as it approves oil and gas projects in the Amazon, at the same time as it holds COP30 at Belem port in the Amazon. Even Biden had shown flexibility on the economy to support cost of living measures that are in conflict with climate change action. In DJT's second term climate change action has taken a back seat to cost of living concerns when a large majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck. ...

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Zeit Online shows in this article the continued efforts of the Russian government of president Putin to discredit Chancellor Merkel, following efforts to do this for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election.  During the Ukraine crisis and the settlement accords of 2014 Germany was seen as a partner by Russia, following sanctions, and renewal of these sanctions Russia no longer sees Germany as a partner. This report shows Russian efforts to discredit chancellor Merkel and the use of RT German channel, WikiLeaks reports of Chancellor Merkel and the TTIP agreement, for the same purpose. The refugee crisis following what is happening in Syria with Russian involvement, terrorism, financial crisis aftermath from 2008, are being used  says Zeit Online to support a movement for "order" as the state ideology now put forward from the Russian government. This could be an early indicator for the 2017 German federal elections, says Zeit Online. Merkel has said that she supports continuation of western sanctions on Russia. It is hard to see what Russia has gained in improving its economy and the standard of living of the people from this type of political action. Putin was able to achieve economic goals during 2005-2010 using good Germany- Russian relations as shown in LyrArc. This was the earlier period of Putin's terms in office, with a broad group of advisors, including finance minister Kudrin, who set forward a prudent economic course for Russia including foreign investment. The world and Russia are poorer from the departure from this earlier set of policies which would have enhanced Russia's economic growth. Kudrin was fired in September 2011, and the economic course has gradually drifted away from what is most prudent for the Russian economy and growth, and for the global economy. Nationalism was part of an earlier period before 1950, that led to frequent wars and economic catastrophes. A new course has been set since then, especially by American presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and people in India, China, the developing world, in Europe and in the U.S., would see little to gain from the politics of that earlier period in world relations.  ...

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Mr. Trump gained much confidence in his success playing the star role in Mark Burnett produced show "The Apprentice." He did this from 2004 to 2015. In 2011 he gained more experience on a political show on Fox news by doing a segment on "Fox and Friends." Much of his ability to talk to large crowds comes from this period. His earnings amounted to $427 million, about half a billion dollars. His real estate business was not one of his strengths as he took too  many risks and operating in a volatile market environment in luxury hotels produced large losses. Yet he gained a keen sense of what was popular in the public imagination and how successive administrations of Democrats and Republicans from Clinton to Obama and Bush had missed the devastated American manufacturing from imports and shift of manufacturing to China. This had affected small towns and communities across the American landscape and the success on television gave Mr. Trump the confidence to champion their cause. By 2016 this had gone so far as to enable Mr. Trump to rewrite the focus of the Republican party to take up this cause shifting the party from deficit cutting to spending on infrastructure to rebuild America.  ...

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NYT columnist David Brooks says Biden will be judged in the long run by what he has done to bring the two parts of America together that have drifted apart -one educated, affluent, city based and the other less educated, poorer, living in smaller towns and rural areas. One from the professional classes, and college educated that benefited from the tech boom, the other from working classes that felt the brunt of the shift of jobs to China. Biden is old enough to remember his emotional mentor Franklin Delano Roosevelt who faced a similar split America with farmers in small towns and workers who lost jobs in the Depression on one side and the smaller affluent classes of professional workers, small business owners in the earlier tech boom of the 1920's. Biden's father experienced unemployment and had experiences as a blue collar worker in Pennsylvania after business failures. It is an experience that has shaped Biden's views on America and the need to bring back hope after the pandemic that followed decades of neglect of working class Americans.   ...

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Drugs affecting Montevideo capital of the small country of 3.3 million people in the Rio de la Plata estuary in southern Uruguay. Container traffic has increased by 62% since 2019 Le Monde reports, coupled with Bolivia becoming a new area for drugs, has disturbed the relative tranquillity of this region near Argentina that existed for most of the 20th century. The dire need for a comprehensive solution. Cali, Columbia is now the place for the Biodiversity Climate Change COP29, and this shows how the problem keeps shifting from country to country- that it is beyond the scope of one party, and requires an all party solution in the US, 100% bipartisan, as Mexico was also a place of relative tranquillity for most of the 20th century. The Biden Lankford legislation was a huge path making move with Republican Lankford and Biden-Harris together on one page on the issue. Harris has promised she will get this legislation to her desk again and sign it into law.    ...

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Eastern Oregon that lies on the other side of the Cascade mountains from Portland and western Oregon is mostly rural and feels a world away from Portland. Here farmers have organized a secessionist movement to join the neighboring state of Idaho which is closer to them on cultural issues. The NYT's Across the Country series of articles looks at ways in which America has become different in different states and regions across the country and how local people see what impacts their lives.

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It took Panasonic 6 years to get its Wuxi factory near Shanghai, China, to near net zero carbon dioxide emissions. It was tough say company executives. Panasonic has a job on its hands. It would take 37 such efforts to neutralize the 2.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions of the company's operations. When suppliers are included this is only 2% of the 110 million metric tons associated with Panasonic. To get an idea of how much this is- it is the same as  half of Spain's annual emissions, and five times that of Apple Inc. Zeroing out emissions would take till 2030, or beyond, depending on how much pressure there is from customers, investors and government. It is this pressure from all sources that is making the 100 largest corporate emitters to take notice and take action on climate change. Solar panels are only part of the action, every part of company operations has to be examined and changes made including energy saving so that less energy is needed in the first place.  For companies taking such action this report by WSJ on Panasonic Wuxi is a lesson on how it is done, step by step. ...

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David Leonhardt on the policy errors of the Obama administration in managing the economy. Why he asks did the Obama administration not take the risks it took for "undeserving" recipients in the auto industry to provide significant help to GM and Chrysler and at the same not provide large scale and situation changing help to millions of mortgage holders who were under water? The housing crisis with millons of foreclosures depressing home prices has played a significant part in the lagging economic recovery. He points out that Obama economic advisors had read Rogoff and Reinhart's book "This Time Its Different," about the longer times it takes for a economic recovery after a housing bubble, and still made the mistake of believing economists who suggested that the stimulus by itself would be sufficient and that recovery was underway in 2010. Others in the Democratic party had pointed to the lack of focus on unemployment by the Obama administration. Why were such voices not heard?

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The sense of conflict in China and US relations may not have developed in the shaping of Xi Jinping's thinking till the emergence of Mr. Trump. Jinping comes into the China shaped by Deng and Zemin after the collapse of the purely Communist experiment with modernization without access to western technologies and capital, and the experiment with American help. It is only after the realization that the Communist party had lost its sense of purpose in these years leading to the Bo Xilai episode, and the rhetoric of Mr. Trump against China, that the idea of first friction and then conflict emerged. The initial idea for Jinping before Trump was that this has worked for China- the experiment with the cooperation of the US in modernizing China. Trump's rhetoric and the Republican party's rhetoric about China stealing American jobs and technology after 2015 may have been targeted to win the election but it had an unintended effect after the tariffs of shaping Jinping's thinking about the future for China. Between the Bo Xi Lai episode in 2012 when it appeared he would be attempting to manipulate the Communist party's direction in unknown and unpredictable ways, Bo's trial in 2013 and the anticorruption campaign and the 2015 election campaign of Mr. Trump in the US, there must have been much soul searching in the party that shaped Jinping's thinking about the future for China after all the tumult of the 20th century starting with the Boxer rebellion in 1901. Stability is highly prized in China particularly for modernization. This perspective is important to grasp for world peace to be preserved with different coexisting perspectives about the world based on national as well as shared interests in issues such as climate change. US after its own disastrous experiment with capitalism that led to widening inequality of the kind not seen since Lincoln in the 1850's, the 2009 crisis, and the shift of jobs to China under a purely capitalist idea of how economies should function, had its own national interests in jobs, local manufacturing and Made in the USA. Once this process was underway after 2016 and grasped by president Biden after 2020, and supply chain reconstruction made the goal after covid, the US and China were on divergent economic and political paths.   That rethinking by Xi Jinping is not over as it may still be going on. The war in Ukraine may even convince Jinping and China's No. 2 leader Li Keqiang who studied the US constitution and American urbanization under mentors when he was in college, that Russia's prolongation of the war in Ukraine does not serve the interests of China. That risking relations with the European Union as Russia prolongs the war and finds itself in the complex problems of  a war it started, is not in China's interests in setting its own course for the future. ...

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What is behind the anti-vaccine movement in the US? This NYT report looks at some of its unlikely origins- the anti-vaccine efforts of Robert Kennedy's son, Robert Kennedy Jr.. Mr. Kennedy is planning to run against Mr. Biden for the White House. Kennedy's opposition to vaccine's is traced back to his getting involved in cases as an environmental lawyer. Parents who had intellectually disabled children from other chemicals asked Kennedy to look into vaccines. Around 2010 Thimerosal, a mercury based preservative which been used for many years to prevent bacteria from growing in multiple dose vials of vaccine, was suspected to cause autism.  Already by 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics, federal health agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be removed from childhood vaccines.  Yet it is still used, says this report.  This led to Mr. Kennedy's getting into vaccines in general by the time of the pandemic. He had a book out that was critical of Dr. Faucci, during the pandemic. Mr. Kennedy cautioned about the unintended effects of vaccines. He has another book out called the Wuhan Coverup that looks into the origins of the coronavirus. It refers to research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was funded by the US. Mr. Kennedy believes that more transparency is needed on decisions made in the health care sector, and that critical views need to be aired for the public to be able to decide the right course of action. Vaccination is generally supported by people in America though there is a subsection of people who have concerns about side effects. On issues outside of vaccination there is a sense that America's health sector needs more transparency.     ...

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Matt Dickinson of The times of Lonson gives this story of the youngest winner of the Tour de France, 22 years old,  from a small town 25 miles north of Bogota, Colombia. His dad is a guard for the local cathedral and is his son's motor pacer and mechanic.  Cycling is huge in Colombia. Zipaquira is 2600 metres or 8600 feet up in the Andes mountains. A nearby climb of 23 kilometres is described by Bernal as his "office" and his father rides up ahead with him on this daily training.  In the trials Bernal was 22nd and this never fazed him even though on Stage 13 in Pau he fell behind colleague Geraint Thomas by 1 minute 22 seconds. In the final run in the Alps Julian Alaiphilippe of France who had shaken up the race faltered, Geraint Thomas  also did not keep up. so that Bernal with the Andean training and serious work prevailed with 1 minute 11 seconds to spare to win. Much of his maturity comes from working within a family where the mom and dad live together to keep costs down but have separated. As the elder of two children Bernal gained maturity in having to work with both parents to keep the home together. The first thing he has done with his new earnings is to buy a flat for his mom. Sky team's Brailsford who hired Bernal describes the confidence and maturity he has encountered in Bernal. At 22 years of age he is seen as having a bright future ahead of him. ...

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The Burning Glass Institute Tech Cities rankings are based on Cutting Edge Skill workers in the area and on Momentum rankings. Both are shown here in this WSJ report. Seattle Tacoma ranks at the top in the cutting edge skill workers in the US. Cutting edge skills are related to cloud and serverless computing, machine learning, AI architecture and cybersecurity operations. In midsize cities Pro-Urem Utah and Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor Michigan, Rochester New York, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Seattle has the largest concentration of tech workers about 13% of the US total.

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What was first seen as an advantage, the lack of any leaders of the Hong Kong protests, more of a spontaneous movement, is now a liability. With the effort to shut down the Hong Kong airport public sympathy has decreased for the protests in China, especially as it hurts the tourism and retail sectors. This also happened on the popular Weibo microblogging service with support increasing for Hong Kong police handling of events at the airport.

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Indian foreign minister Jaishankar describes the highly eccentric situation of lack of US India close economic and defense cooperation for over 50 years, when the natural flow of cooperation one would expect between the land of Washington and Lincoln and the land of Vivekananda and Gandhi was interrupted. The current form of cooperation has existed for about 14 years and accelerated after prime minister Modi was elected in 2016. This was a turning point in the US India relationship and in India US economic partnership. After president Trump was elected Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump held a huge public gathering in stadiums at Houston and Ahmedabad, in a way that was never seen before between an Asian country and America. What changed? For one thing India had a great weight lifted from its shoulders with the removal of the erratic Nehru policies of post independence India of forming a non aligned bloc with countries like Egypt and Yugoslavia. These were policies that had no connection to India and its history as the civilization where the East has its roots in Vedanta and Buddhism. It also resulted in alienating the Dwight Eisenhower administration and administrations that followed after John F. Kennedy, as the Cold War intensified and most of Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. India never gauged the effect this had on America after the Berlin crisis in 1948, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and similar uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Britain was no help even with the British Commonwealth, as the British perpetuated the idea that India was too divided to make up one country, having failed to grasp India's ancient civilization and  culture, and having built the Empire in India by using the division in the country. Mohandas Gandhi described this in Hind Swaraj in 1910 and told Indians that it was they who had invited the British into India, with rulers using military garrisons of the British commercial East India Company for help in their internal wars. Americans still unfamiliar with India till after 2000 simply accepted British colonial ideas about India. The new administrations in the US, the Trump and Biden administration, and the Modi administration in India have shaken this up and changed perceptions all around. Biden recently during the Modi visit to Washington DC said India US relations as he sees it would be "the closest on earth." So that today we have an ancient civilization roused to its depths in its youth for modernization, that extends from India to Indonesia all the way to Japan rooted in India's ancient civilization of Vedanta and Buddhism, with a population of about 2 billion people. That faces the US on its Pacific coast, united in its determination to build a new and common future with ideas of parliamentary democracy, participation of the people, and of modernization with science and technology, contributing to the betterment of all peoples. ...

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This WSJ editorial makes an excellent argument of how the wrong conclusions can be drawn from Hamas, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood gaining participation and winning of the elections in Gaza. It calls this a mistake in 2006, which does not affect the liberal democratic openings of the Bush administration in the Arab world. Hamas had an armed militia and rejected the 1993 Oslo records, so the necessary committments which are required for democratic processes to work were not put in place, primarily on the advice of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice who made an exception in this case. The Journal says the mistake was not about free elections, but elections before the proper groundwork had been prepared, which requires that anti-democratic parties cannot be part of a democratic system and elections- a lesson that goes back to 1933. If the Brotherhood in Egypt wants to participate in elections says the Journal, it has to promise to play by democratic rules , and work to establish religious and social pluralism, and honor treaty commitments. And the constitutional system has to setup a system of strong checks and balances that prevent an elected party from subverting the democratic process for future generations whatever its support at any particular time. This is significant as it puts things in the proper context and also clearly establishes a well established point- democracy can only work for democrats. And at the same time preserves what is best about America's heritage and core values in America's stance with the rest of the world, and in this case with the Arab world....

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In the interests of a stable government and for rapid development in the state on an unprecedented scale the position of Chief Minister was given to a smaller party with 51 members in the Assembly of Maharashtra. The BJP party the larger party in the new coalition has 106 members in the State Assembly. Mr. Eknath Shinde was sworn in as Chief minister and Mr. Fadnavis of the BJP was made Deputy chief minister based on the understanding of leaders in the federal government in New Delhi on the best way to move Maharashtra forward as a leader in economic and infrastructure development in India. Maharashtra and the capital city of Bombay once the commercial capital of British India has a difficult history of post independence politics. With Nehru's Congress party giving way to George Fernandes trade unionism after 1967 and after 1986 a movement led by Bal Thackeray that sought to give local Marathi youth jobs preference in Mumbai. Lacking the capital, technology and the industrial expertise for development on an American scale, much of this political arrangement has failed to meet the growing aspirations of the young people of Maharashtra and of India. These reasons motivated the federal government to put more emphasis on the "karya karta" or "good worker" principle itself than on the position of chief minister. Much of the rapid development will take place under the leadership of the most competent IAS Indian civil service officers selected for the largest infrastructure projects and the leaders of Indian industry, making the old conception of chief minister redundant. The focus shifts to who can get things done to meet aspirations for Maharashtra 2030 and how it will compare with Uttar Pradesh 2030, or Tamilnadu 2030. How will Metro rail, Bullet trains and Semiconductor Parks, Logistics networks and Exports in the new supply chain the US and EU is setting up in Asia, how will all this look in the 3 states in 2030? This will become clear in 2023 as development accelerates to what India needs. ...

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This BBC report looks into the culture of overwork that becomes a fast track to burnout. Christina Maslach, professor of psychology at the University of Berkeley, says about this culture- if you take a plant put it in a pot, don't water it, give it lousy soil, and not enough sun, its going to wither away no matter how good it was to begin with. That is how much the workplace environment matters and today most people realize that it has gone in the wrong direction, with subtle messages and wrong signals pushing people into overwork. That is pushed forward by the nature of 24-7 being available with the internet. Only a conscious effort and a knowledge of the false signals in an out of place culture can help one make the right choices, and help life bloom the way it was supposed to be.

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Veering between reckless intervention and doing nothing has led to some of the problems the US faces even today.  Barrack Obama created the hope for Arab Spring at Cairo University in 2009, which he failed to follow up on. Ronald Reagan and his Arab envoy Donald Rumsfeld, Defense minister Weinberger, supported a reckless intervention on the Iraq side against Iran in 1980 after winning the election following the capture of hostages in the American Embassy in Iran. Reagan was reckless in such intervention not understanding what was happening in a religious sectarian and Arab Socialist ideologies war in which US interests were not involved. Le Monde of France recounts how Barrack Obama hesitated to followup on his warnings in 2011 after the Arab Spring. This led to Obama doing nothing in the face of just what he had stated at Cairo University of people "having the ability of speaking their mind and having say in how they are governed," and US intention "we will support them everywhere." Another instance of no action was with a failed state situation and  millions of refugees in Venezuela after a Bolivarist Chavez ideological economic collapse similar in some ways to Arab ideologies Iraq and Syria. US did not follow the Monroe Doctrine on non intervention of foreign European powers on the American continents. Obama's speech and then inaction may be at the root of today's problems of migration and the divisions it has caused. Millions of Syrian refugees left for Greece, Hungary and Germany in 2015-2016. It was followed by Brexit again on migration. And in 2016 migration and the Border in the US election. And again in 2022 and 2024 the Border and migration the big issue in the US election. In a speech at Cairo University in 2009 during a visit to Egypt. Obama said: "I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere." On September 11, 2012 following the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Khadafi and the beginning of civil war in Libya, the Libyan mission in Benghazi was attacked with US ambassador Christopher Stevens killed just 2 months before the US presidential election.  Faced with use of chemical weapons Obama issued a warning to Syrian regime in Damascus- then following the Libyan experience did nothing. Le Monde cites an interview with president Hollande of France in 2015 who expressed his frustration with France willing to act.  Obama underestimated the ISIS in the region says Le Monde, leading to the situation by 2015 of the eastern part of the country linked to the region around Mosul going under ISIS. By 2016 the problem of ISIS was left to next US president DJT to tackle by Obama, a result of the inaction in 2012-2013 on Syria, says Le Monde. And like Angela Merkel in Germany on migration, Barrack Obama simply rationalized his action, with the US and the EU left to tackle the results of these actions.     ...

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Olympic gold prospect for England who had her left side paralyzed from a horse riding accident before her GCSE's. Georgina Brayshaw says she could only use her right arm and smile with half her face. From that event and after her mom had a stroke Georgina persisted and looked for ways to carry on with her life giving it her all. She went on to continue her studies and not lose a year for her GCSE's. Georgina who is part of the 4 woman England team that won the World Championships for Rowing in Lucerne  is now set for the Olympics in Paris. She says she took up the sport of rowing in university as most people said she could not do it. She says what happened to her wasn't good and it wasn't bad, it was just life. And that she was always taught that you just get back on and try again.

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NYT's Landon Thomas gives this exceptional report on how Deutsche Bank changed from a lender to the German auto industry and safe banking practices to enter the derivatives business and other opaque financial products that led to taking on huge risks. Deutsche Bank has agreed on Dec. 22, 2016 to settle with the U.S. Justice Department paying a fine of $7.2 billion for practices relating to faulty mortgage securities. This report says the problems started in 1995 with Deutsche Bank's leadership hiring Edson Mitchell of Merrill Lynch to promote the investment banking business at Deutsche Bank. Mitchell hired two derivatives traders Broeksmit and Anshu Jain. Mr. Mitchell died in plane crash in 2000 when he was 47 years age, Mr. Broeksmit committed suicide in 2014, 58 years in age, Mr. Anshu Jain, 53 years old, is the only surviving person of the three. Under Mr. Jain Deutsche Bank assumed more and more risk, and was involved in complex and opaque financial products leading to the toxic mortgage crisis, and manipulation of the lending rate for London banks.  It also lent $300 million to Donald Trump's businesses. Most of the profits generated from this venture have evaporated, with analysts estimating $15 billion in fines and penalties owed of the $20 billion that these ventures generated. Not counting the serious damage to the bank's reputation in Germany and the U.S. This report points out the role played by the CEO from 2002 to 2012 of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, in encouraging these ventures converting the bank from its original loan as a contintental lender to business to a bank selling opaque financial products for most of its profits. Landon Thomas also describes the events and days leading up to the suicide by Broeksmit, including a visit to a psychiatrist and Broeksmit's facing enormous stress about the investigations underway in Germany and the U.S. looking into the opaque financial products and practices of Deutsche Bank. This is also a cautionary tale about what happened in banking from the late 1990's leading to the collapse in 2008, leading to the problems of today- the need to rescue the economy in 2008-2009 and the low rate world that ensued damaging the savings of ordinary people, the infrastructure that was never built, the parallel crisis of the hollowing out in manufacturing as a false prosperity boomed in banking and finance. In a sense it is also a story of everyday lives that were damaged in the high flying boardrooms of finance in New York, London and Frankfurt. The revolving door between regulators and the banks made it harder to monitor and control banking risk letting this story unfold over decades, damaging the credibility of governments and the established political parties without clear alternatives from outside; as the dominance of Wall Street executives in the new outsider Trump administration shows.  ...

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Hong and Inman describe the deep experience in capital markets that Hong Kong has and Shanghai lacks, which China needs for further development. Even before the handover capital markets in Hong Kong have helped China, and many of China's largest companies have listings in Hong Kong. Hong is also the laboratory for China to make financial innovations for the last three decades, because of capital account controls on the mainland. A bad bank Cinda Asset management Company only recently raised $2.5 billion for buying non-performing loans from Chinese banks. Hong Kong's separate status within China, its Briain based legal system which has credibility in the international community, the rule of law, independent judiciary and independent police are critical to how it developed into an international financial hub for Asia. Any crackdown on protestors would disturb this arrangement. As China has already promised universal suffrage in 2017- which implies free elections not limited by restricted nominations as is now proposed in a change in 2014- and the Basic Law passed before the handover by Britain in 1997 also ensuring this, any retraction is only going back on past promises. A crackdown would create fears about Hong Kong's future autonomy for international financial institutions, and the bad publicity for China would affect Hong Kong and China adversely. ...

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Jens Thurau writes about a holiday trip to Fohr on the Wadden Sea on north German coast from Berlin by rail, on Deutsche Bahn, July 27 2025. Thurau writes about the travails of DB, the sudden announcements that the train is headed in another direction, having to get off and catch a regional train. On the return trip the train making a stop when sheep cause rail delays on the rail line further up, the train canceled an having to take aintercity regional express to Berlin. The employees struggle too as the conductor on the return trip offers vouchers from DB to passengers and his apologies. Many DB employees having to deal with customer complaints are planning to leave.  Next trip Jens plans to drive to Fohr.  DB has suffered for years with lack of investment on the 2800 mile rail network. Thanks to chancellor Merkel who never gave priority to such investment and who Jens says called the internet "uncharted territory" in 2013, the digital part of the German economy and DB, along with infrastructure has also suffered. The Scholz coalition promised but failed to deliver on infrastructure with opposition from FDP finance minister Lindner. Only in 2025 has the new coalition of Merz with SDP has the constitutional provision limiting infrastructure spending of Merkel been removed, and DB put on the way to modernizing German rail connections starting with the Berlin Hamburg line. ...

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Jim Yardley points out the controversial nature of the referendum in Greece on July 5, 2015. It is flawed in 3 respects- it makes no mention of Europe, the details of the agreement are not clear to voters, and the "No" vote is framed in terms of the "Oxi" or "No" vote of 1940 in Greece to Mussolini for annexation of Greece. No sane minded person can confirm that this has anything to do with the annexation of Greece by foreign powers. It had one additional flaw- the government and Tsipras simply went ahead and campaigned for a "No" without talking to its European partners. Landon Thomas Jr shows how the difficult dynamic and confrontation between the eurozone negotiator Dijsselbloem and the Greece negotiator led to the collapse of talks on June 25, 2015, playing right into the paranoia of an inexperienced Greece administration about the EU's intentions. Only over a week later July 7, 2015 the new Britain trained Greece negotiator Tsakalotos from St Pauls School and Oxford was able to change the very tone of negotiations leading to the Third Bailout Program. ...

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France's regional elections show president Macron's party has failed to covert national power into grassroots support. Macron's En Marche party was reduced to just 10% of the vote. Some called it a slap in the face for Macron's party. It was hastily setup during Socialist president Hollande's last year in office in April 2016 by one of his ministers Emmanuel Macron. The National Front of Marie Le Pen on the far right also lost support and won just 19% of the vote. About a third of the vote went to candidates from the former Republican party of president Sarkozy. Xavier Bertrand from the Republican party, which is in the Gaullist tradition, was one of the winners and emerges as a presidential candidate. Only 34% of voters turned out with very young people and people over 35 not turning out to vote. It appears that voters are now disillusioned with the party of Macron and Marie Le Pen that had hoped to win voters from the two traditional parties the Gaullist party and the Socialist party. The socialists did well in western France and have gained at a regional level. The Gaullist party, called Republicans under Sarkozy now looks to gain at the national level. The situation in Germany shows voters shifting back from the far right back to the traditional parties. In the regional election in eastern Germany the AfD far right lost to the CDU recently. Voters are beginning to return to the traditional parties. In Germany this includes a shift to the Greens party that has gained as the voters shift to moderate parties. Macron lost much support and was seen as not sensitive enough to people who had struggled to make a living because of changes in the economy and the urban rural split, social upheaval. He had a popular prime minister during the first wave of the coronavirus  in 2020 who Macron removed as this would create a candidate who might run against him in the national elections. A series of terrorist actions led to a sense of a lack of safety which added to voter unease and the shift to the traditional centre right Republicans.  ...

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How does the National Rural Employment guarantee Scheme compare with what Brazil has done under President Lula with the Bolsas Familias program to help rural people with income below the poverty rate? India its reported is looking at the Brazilian program. There the focus is on cash payments with cards like debit cards issued on each individual's name that only that person can use so that the funds cannot be stolen by corrupt intermediaries with the person receiving it having to make sure that his children are in school and vaccinated. The focus there is on nutrition, education and health care especially of the family unit and in this way it has been a success according to the World bank and other experts.