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What better way to sit back and relax this October fall season with an American pasttime. BBC Sports tells you everything you want to know about New York Yankees LA Dodgers baseball including videos. Did you know that- Not since 1981 have the New York Yankees met the LA Dodgers in the World Series baseball. That the Brooklyn Dodgers played the New York Yankees before 1981 in cross city rivalry 7 times. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers when the team moved to the opposite coast in 1957. Gerrit Cole of Yankees is Cy Young Award pitcher of the year and the Dodgers pitching staff including Flaherty who dominated the NY Mets have 33 scoreless post season innings. Yankees all star Aaron Judge has equalled he batting record of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. Japan's Shohei Ohtani of the LA Dodgers holds the 50-50 record of 50 home runs and 50 runs batted in record in American baseball. Yankke hitters Giancarlo Stanton, Juan Soto and Anthony Rizzo are pitted against LA Dodgers  hitter Mookie Betts, Teoscar Fernandez and Freddie Freeman. In Game 1 Giancarlo and Freddie hit home runs with Freddie hitting a walkoff Grand Slam. Schedules of all games are shown here starting in LA, going to NY and ending in LA. ...

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A Pew Research Center poll in September 2016 finds 81 percent of Indians have a favorable opinion of Narendra Modi in 2016, compared to 87 percent in 2015. Even among supporters of the opposition Indian National Congress a majority say they have a favorable opinion of Mr. Modi. The author of the poll, Bruce Stokes, says the opinion of frustration of the Indian elites and media about the Modi administration is not reflected in public opinion. Recently the Modi government passed legislation for a national Goods and Services Tax replacing overlapping state and federal taxes that are seen as holding up growth.  Issues the Indian public ranks high are corruption, unemployment and terrorism.

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Of 161 million people employed in 2024 about 40-50 million in vulnerable groups living from paycheck to paycheck and without savings to support them in a medical emergency is a real problem in the US economy. It is why even as unemployment looks good at 4% and inflation down to 3% there is a lot of angst for Americans for cost of living. Fifteen million baby boomers who will turn 65 years for retirement between now 2024 and 2030 face a situation where they have less than 250,000 in savings. Many who were born between 1945 and 1962 called baby boomers are in this group with diminished savings. In the prime of their careers they were hit by the 2009 financial crisis caused by bank speculation risk taking. They also were hit by the pandemic in the peak years of income growth. Other such vulnerable groups are young people with high student who are being helped by president Biden. There are also the low income groups that have been hit by medical costs and a family emergency that were pushed into poverty. Other groups in the millions are the people at the low income levels who are working paycheck to paycheck because of housing costs. About one fourth or 25% of apartment renters are people whose households budget shows 50% or more going to housing costs which have increased 20% in the last 2-3 years, which includes the pandemic years 2022 and 2023. President Biden seeks to limit apartment rent price increases to 5% and Kamala Harris has proposed help for families for the portion above 30% of household income going to rent. The jump in cost of living from automobiles, automobile repair and housing, cost of groceries have affected other groups with large credit card debt. This is a result of the supply chain concentration in China which comes from American business overconcentrating production in China and previous administrations doing little about this. Biden's answer is to bring jobs and manufacturing knowhow and investment back to America. During the pandemic some people resisted getting vaccinated and lost their jobs, a million people lost their lives, others took early retirement seeing the stress ful lives during the pandemic, others including women quit to take care of children. This has reduced the labor supply to business leading to tight supply higher prices.The result is that there are about 5 such vulnerable groups each with about 5-10 million people for a total of about 40-50 million people at risk. For these people the cost of living presents huge challenges, including childcare. It includes young people and retirees, single women and families on low income hourly wages that have not kept up with inflation.  ...

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Judge Carl Barbier's ruling on Jan. 14, 2015 against BP which increases its exposure to a maximum penalty of $13.7 billion under the Clean Air Act. Judge Barbier's decision was that BP was liable for 3.19 million barrels of crude that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. Judge Barbier's ruling said that BP acted recklessly in the events leading to the rig explosion an oil spill, giving the company exposure to the maximum penalty of $4300 per barrel. BP asked for a smaller penalty of $3000 per barrel.

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India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said at an Atlantic Council event in Washington D.C. that estimates have been made of what the British took out of India over two centuries and this has come to $45 trillion in today's value. India suffered humiliation for two centuries from 1756 to 1947 with British rule. The country was "bled" and this was first documented by a member of parliament Dadabhai Naoroji in 1901 in London in his book explaining the causes of India's deep poverty in his book with the title- Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. For the first time detailed financial figures were put together on what Britain took out of India and India's Mohandas Gandhi says this was how he learned about how much India suffered economically under British rule with the neglect of agriculture, the peasants and landless laborers making up the vast population of India. Taxation was burdensome on a poor population during most of the period. Railways and mass communication only helped keep the vast region together under British rule and most of the budget went into security and policing for the Empire. Investment in industry or agriculture was neglected for most of the nineteenth century and half of the twentieth. Strangely the first Indian edition of Naoroji's book was only in 1962 with most Indians unaware of what had happened and where this was first documented. Even Cambridge educated Nehru looked at the railways and mass communication as British contributions to india when in actual fact this was of a strategic security aspect for the British in a vast region, and little was done to improve the standard of living of the people in the villages who worked in subsistence agriculture. Gandhi's task was to increase awareness at the grassroots level of the condition of the country. Something he never hesitated to do even writing to the Viceroy who was in charge directly showing how the budget in the 1920's was entirely lacking in any funds for India's development. This letter can be seen today in the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, the museum for Gandhi in his home state of Gujarat. One of the lesser known facts about the independence struggle is that Gandhi wrote a little book in 1910 with title "Hind Swaraj" on a steamship making its way back to South Africa from Britain where Gandhi led a deputation for rights of Indian coolie laborers in South Africa. I picked up this book at the original home of Gandhi and his parents in Porbandar, India, recently. In this book "Hind Swaraj" written in 1910 we find astonishingly all the details of the planned struggle for independence that were to happen over the next 20 years. In 1930 with a new edition Gandhi wrote that he had followed this unchanged for 20 years and would change nothing except one line in the book. The book in 1910 was promptly banned by the government of Bombay, yet Indian editions appeared soon afterward. It is written in question and answer format with Gandhi himself posing the questions which he answers, some challenging his view of India, Britain, Indians and the British. He did not blame the British, and called for Indians to take responsibility for letting the British rule in India happen and what was the best way out.  ...

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Apple launches the iPad Mini at a price of $329 against rival tablet devices, Kindle Fire HD at $199 and Google Nexus 7 at $249. The iPad Mini has a 7.9 inch screen measured diagonally compared to 9.7 inches for the iPad. It weighs about half the original iPad. The screen resolution is lower and the processor less powerful. The Mini iPad is designed to fit comfortably in one hand. Apple executive Schiller says the iPd Mini has two thirds more space than the Google Nexus 7 for surfing the web when turned on its side. The price is designed to maintain Apple's large profit margins and share price.

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Highest economic growth since the Second World War predicted for Britain in 2021, says the Bank of England.

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PM Modi attends the 125th anniversary of Founders day of the Scindia School of Gwalior which was founded in 1897 at the turn of the century when India was going through an awakening. Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh played a part in the War of Independence in 1857. More recently it was the home of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the large Hindi speaking region at the heart of India. India's Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel is Jyotiraditya Scindia whose royal family founded the school during the British Empire.

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Trump rally for 100 Days in Warren, Michigan, at a community college gymnasium, April 29, 2025. DJT also visits Selfridge Air Force Base and says it will get 15 new F-16 jets to replace old jets.  DJT says we're "getting woke lunacy and transgender ideology the hell out of our government." Border crossings of 8400 in February 2025 and 7200 in March 2025 are the lowest since the 1960's, one of the lowest ever, compared to 140,000 in March 2024 under Biden. DJT says he is protecting the middle class and Main Street. The millions of jobs lost to China, DJT says he is bringing them back. He talks about creating manufacturing jobs and restoring the industrial base of America that was lost in the last 30 years.  Trump lists the cost of everything from eggs to gasoline at the pump. He says there are three states where gas at the pump is below $2.00 a gallon. He cites the 345,000 jobs created in 100 days and the lowering of inflation.   ...

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A fight in the U.S. Congress with an unusual alliance between the Obama administration, the Judiciary Committee, and Speaker Boehner up against Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell ends with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which requires court approval for government to look at collected bulk data in phone calls. Republican Rand Paul fought hard against both factions to end the bulk surveillance altogether. The Act was passed in the House earlier. It cleared the Senate June 2nd 2015 with 67 in favor and 32 opposed.

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Out of the rubble of failed policies, lack of far sighted leadership, and the failure of Middle Eastern elites and leaders, must arise the right way forward.

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Pope Francis calls on the Catholic communities to respond to the needs of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants making their way to Europe, saying on September 5, 2015- "Every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe, take in one family." The Vatican will take in 2 families of refugees.

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Six cities have rejected the Olympics, with Calgary in Canada being the last one. The problem with hosting the Olympics is how much it costs. Cost overruns are common. 20141 Sochi WInter Olympics estimated budget was $10 billion, in the end it cost $51 billion. 

Brazil is the latest example of the problem. With huge needs in sanitation, epidemic prevention, infrastructure and public services, the country did badly by spending money on new soccer stadiums in the northeast which were not used after the World Cup soccer championship, and in the summer Olympics. 

Learning from these lessons voters in Calgary, Canada, rejected hosting  the Winter Olympics. Voters or local councils in Innsbruck, Austria, Rome, Italy, Bern, Switzerland, Hamburg, Germany, Oslo and Stockholm have rejected the idea of hosting the Olympics. Other problems are the environmental impact with deforestation to create Olympic sites.

 

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US Senator Bernie Sanders and Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers make the case for a 32 hour week.  No that's not right Sanders and Fain are calling for hours and wages that make for a healthy life after making significant contributions using technologies and higher productivity during a normal week more like 35 to 40 hours instead of 50-60 hours a reality today.  Even with this productive work effort they say workers have not benefitted as most of the gains have gone to the top with top managers and CEO's making hundreds of times more in compensation. In this years negotiations the UAW made long hours at work and its effect on worker health an issue. A 40 hour work week was established in 1940 under the Fair Labour Standards Act passed under president Franklin Roosevelt. Sanders and Fain point out that 28.5 million workers even today work over 60 hours a week and more than half of full time employees work more than 40 hours a week. It comes as a surprise that according to the authors US workers logged 204 hours a year more than employees in Japan, and 470 more hours than German workers. Sanders and Fain point out that today adjusted for inflation the average worker in America makes about $50 less a week than 50 years ago in 1974. There is definitely a need to consider the health of workers as the highest priority and wages that make it possible to raise families and educate children in decent living conditions. France and Denmark have a 35 and 37 hour work week. ...

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Spain's budget deficit as a percentage of GDP comes in at 6.7% for 2012, according to government figures. This means Spain is making significant progress in bringing down its deficit to reduce borrowing rates. This gives the government more flexibility with austerity measures at a time of rising unemployment estimated at 26%.

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A warmer than expected winter and lower inflation is helping European stocks in Jan 2023, says this report in the WSJ. European indexes are also not weighed down by the decline in tech stocks as in the US. Germany's DAX and France's CAC have risen by 16% compared to 6.9% in the US for last 3 months.