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Rosie Millard takes up French at age 60 at London University. She lives just up the road from Birkbeck College. She comes back to the classroom in evening classes attended by people who work during the day. Here she describes her day at school learning French in a new environment of computers, the cloud, and a classroom of avid learners. Only 135,000 students in Britain took modern languages at GCSE A level with French doing the worst. Millard is bucking the trend. For seniors this is about resilience in aging as this as important as smoking cessation or cutting obesity habits say researchers to maintain a healthy vibrant brain well into the eighties and nineties.

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Websites for vaccination appointments are hard to navigate and can be hard to use for seniors that are not tech savvy. This video in WSJ shows tips to use for getting vaccine appointments. 

Gather information on websites that let you make appointments. Its very important to keep checking and to grab the appointment quickly.

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How homeowners leaning Republican not supporting climate change action, generally not opposed to fossil fuel use in Arizona, turned against utilities setting up plants to use gas for electricity. They did this because of the effects on seniors health of unhealthy air quality, plant location next to their homes, and the flagrant way utilities operated. With its sunny days and weather Arizona is suitably placed to generate more solar energy than the national average, instead it lags behind.

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Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has differences with Mr. Trump. He made this clear in recent years on many issues and has remained silent on the Trump indictment. He is the senior senator from Kentucky.

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SIGTARP agency has prosecuted cases for criminal charges against 107 senior bank officers and most of them have received prison sentences.

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Chief Risk Officers join senior management ranks by joining the senior management committee at banks such as Goldman Sachs. The change is part of the effort to make operations safer and simpler and avoid the huge legal settlements banks have faced in 2012-2014.

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The efforts by the Republican Senator Lankford of Oklahoma with the help of Senator Graham of South Carolina, Senator Tillis of North Carolina, and other Republican senior senators, to get a immigration bill through the US Congress that president Biden supports to close the border with Mexico immediately after its passing, is the subject of this video in the WSJ. It says this is the only solution for the immigration crisis not waiting another 12 months to take action. The problem is the parole and asylum policies of the US which need fixing, says Senator Lindsay Graham, the senior Republican in the Senate. The bill would do just that, yet faces opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana in the House of Representatives who says the bill would be dead on arrival in the House, making it inexplicable.

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The U.S. Congress is now taking a more active position particularly in the Senate which has a Republican majority. Republicans led by Lamar Alexander,  a senior senator since 2003, voted against Mr. Trump's emergency declaration to obtain funding for a border wall.

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Kamala Harris is briefed on the economy after the drop in inflation to less than 3%, by Lael Brainard, Janet Yellen and Gina Raimundo senior economic advisers in the Biden administration. She plans to focus on cost of living action in her economic plan. 

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The Stimson Center looks at the closing of an era of Conservative politics in Japan which ended in 2025 after the death of Shinzo Abe and the 2 year premiership of Kishida. Interview is conducted by the Stimson Center of a senior Japanese political figure with 30 years of experience in the Foreign Service, and the author of the only English language book on Shinzo Abe, reflecting the paucity of research on Japan. Shinzo Abe was premier for a short time in 2005-2006 and for a full term in 2012. He made changes to Japan's SDF, its partnership with India, Australia in the Quad, and his economic policy which increased women's participation in the economy. For the first time in post war Japan there was a new sensde of confidence under Abe and he is missed sorely in Japan today. Yet as this senior Japanese politician says, Japan has changed the way the US and Europe have changed, and nationalist politics are replacing old Conservative politics of the LDP. In a way also how the deindustrialization of US, Europe and Japan has also taken place discrediting that era. Takaichi Sanae is itself a representative of the new era, as she did not hesitate to say Japan would get involved if China attacked Taiwan. Her popularity is at 62% and she has called a snap election, as she came in to replace Shigeru Ishiba in October 2025 and was not directly elected PM. Yet in the long view this is also a misconception because neither the Stimson Center or the interview participants had a keen sense of who Abe really was and Abe's grasp of the history of the Kamakura period of Buddhist Japan and China, India, of the 12th century before the foreign invasions from the north. One of Shinzo Abe's biggest legacies is the relationship that was close to his heart, the relationship with India and prime minister Modi. This week chancellor Merz of the Federal Republic of Germany was at the kite festival with PM Modi in Ahmedabad and at the Sabarmati Ashram of Gandhiji. The same degree of warmth shown by the German leader and Modi reflecting Vivekananda's time in Germany, was seen long time back between Modi and Abe. The bullet train project Mumbai to Ahmedabad and the ones that follow across India are a testimony to the warmth shown by Abe for India, and his knowledge of history from the Buddhist period in India when by the 12th century in Japan in Dogen's time Tenjiku (India) was the sacred homeland of Buddhism. Today India has revived the Buddhist traditions and centers of Buddhism, the universities and research centers for Buddhism from that period in Indian history. Buddhism started in India near Nepal in what is now Bihar state at Sarnath and Kushinagar, and spread through China to Japan and Korea. The whole continent of Asia would reflect Buddhist ideals and ideas without the intervening period of Vedic culture in India and China's Mongolian and Manchurian northern invasions, and the periods of European colonialism. Today Buddhism and The Bhagavad Gita are itself strung like pearls on a string as the Gita itself says, part of the long spiritual traditions of three nations- India, China and Japan, and of the many others Vietnam and Korea. ("All these worlds have their rest in me as many pearls on a string." -Mascaro tr. of Bhagavad Gita, Penguin). As Asian nations and peoples come to their own inner selves, find their inmost self, this is the culture that really pervades all of Asia. ...

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The glass ceiling facing locals for senior management positions at operations of western companies in China, India, Indonesia and other parts of Asia. Western companies are not doing enough to train and develop managerial talent in China, India and other Asian countries.

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All cash purchases of homes by wealthy seniors and by foreign owners in 2013-2014. The thinning out of homes as distressed properties available from foreclosures in 2014. Institutional investors are also buying homes. Black Rock bought 45,000 homes for $8.6 billion in 2012 and 2013, and is retrenching a bit as it reduces purchases to about $30-$40 million a week in 2014. Other buyers from the middle class are still struggling to build up enough savings to buy homes, a reason for the weakness in the housing market.

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"I’m going to make sure that the richest among us, who can afford it, pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations, and I plan on making that fair.” Kamala Harris will finance child care tax credit, aid to small businesses and for first time home buyers, homecare for seniors, and other benefits by everyone paying their fair share and from savings in what Medicare pays out. "When you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about because their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about. Their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses.” For three Reaganite decades America has neglected access to all for child care, education, healthcare, seniors care, the very things that makes America a strong Nation, a Nation where the future belongs, going against the warnings of George Washington in the Draft of the First Inaugural in 1789 that - "I rejoice in the belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth...That mankind will reverse the absurd notion that the many are made for the few." Absurd notion it was in 1789, absurd notion it is now in 2024. ...

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German authorites are looking into the possibility that higher up management knew about the emissions cheating and whether management had permitted it to take place. A search warrant was issued by a judge in Munich in March 2017 that makes it possible for investigators to take documents and other evidence on mobile phones of senior management, including Mr. Muller and Mr. Stadler, two very senior executives who head VW and Audi. Almost 2 years after the story first came to light the investigation continues and the probe deepens into who knew what at the highest levels of management.

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For senior executives of financial firms investing in August 2011- following weeks of extreme volatility in the U.S. stock market- is all about capital preservation. Executives interviewed here have moved all their money to high grade bonds and cash. This is happening even as the advisors of financial firms are telling the public to stay in the stock market for the long term, and even as many middle class investors have seen their savings shrink from the crash of 2008. It is the crash of 2008 that has made the executives interviewed here turn highly cautious.

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This report in Indian Express says the bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad in India remains on track with members of JICC in Japan meeting with senior officers of India's NHSRCL, and chief project managers.

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This exceptional article in the NYT by Emily Feng and Carlos Tejada shows the social changes taking place in China as more women and men decide to postpone marraige. For the first time there are more women than men in master's degrees programs in China. Women in China are now increasingly better educated and prefer to be independent, not dependent on their spouses as in the previous generation. A typical Chinese household has 3.1 people in 2015 compared to 4.43 people in 1982, according to the China National Bureau of Statistics. Fewer children, more people living alone, women living independently, and seniors living alone are some of the reasons.

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With a lack of consensus about raising interest rates at the U.S. Federal Reserve, and inflation much lower than the 2% target rate, senior Fed officials and chairwoman Yellen see little need to raise rates at this time in September 2016.

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Car repair costs surged 28% over the last 3 years from 2021 to 2024. A fender bender can end up costing a lot. Even a rear view miror can end up costing $1200 to $1500 for a 2020 car with the heating element and sensors on these cars. It compares to $200 to $400 on a 2013 car. The average repair cost in 2023 was $4700 for an insurance claim up 7.5%.

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Romney received the vote of 6 out of 10 seniors, and a majority of the over 40 age group. He did poorly with the 18-29 age group. He received only 8% of the black vote, 29% of the Hispanic vote and 25% of the Asian American vote. Republicans did well in the 2010 elections for the House of Representatives showing that a decent support from minorities and a sense of caring for ordinary voters including younger women is part of the winning mix for Republicans. The sharp positions on immigraton taken by Romney hurt him with Hispanics. His work at Bain Capital and perceptions about caring may have hurt him further with minorities and young people, creating a skewed picture in the national contest compared to contests for the House, Senate, and for Governors.