LyrArc Article Gist
Kristine Tompkins donates 1 million acres, the Chilean government donates 9 million acres, together this is being used to create 5 national parks and expand 3 in Chile. Since 1994 she and Mr. Tompkins a founder of North Face, who made $150 million from selling his apparel company Espirit, have accumulated land in Argentina and Chile as part of a passion for conservation. Tompkins died in a kayaking accident and Ms. Tompkins has decided to give it all away in national parks. Their story is part of a new documentary "Wild Life," by Chin and Vasarhelyi.

LyrArc Article Gist
Kemal Kilicdaroglu is the leader of the Republican PHP party of Kemal Ataturk, who built modern Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He was a civil servant for 30 years and headed the social security administration. Kilicdaroglu campaigns in a modest way with videos made in his kitchen in a big contrast to Mr. Erdogan. Since losing the election for Istanbul in 2009 and 2014 he has lost 2 presidential elections to Mr. Erdogan during the period of economic growth in Turkey. He now heads an alliance of 6 parties that includes popular mayors of Istanbul and Ankara. With inflation at over 50%, Turkey seen as stalling strengthening of NATO by blocking Sweden's membership, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the earthquake leaving over 50,000 people dead in Turkey and the government seen as having allowed substandard construction in Turkey, there is a sense that Turkey is ready for a new government. Kilicdaroglu says he will restore the parliamentary system, and restore independence of the judiciary, central bank and foreign ministry if he wins.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
David French in the NYT describes a moral center that is avoiding extremes on college campuses. French quotes from W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming that was written in the period after the First World War during the Russian Civil War, when things appeared to be in disarray. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold... The best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity." The United States is built on a series of ideas from the Declaration of Independence, ideas that were revisited and relived at important times such as the Civil War with Lincoln and the Great Depression with FDR. It is that moral center that French speaks of when he cites Yeats and talks about it being challenged from extreme views on the right and the left in politics and in society.

LyrArc Article Gist
Poland's ruling party, the Justice Party, faces elections in 2024. The influx of grain from Ukraine has lowered prices for farmers in Poland, and this affects the largely rural base of the Justice Party. As a result the government has acted to stop Ukrainian grain from entering the country, and also bans the shipment of grain through Poland to other EU countries. The UN sponsored Black Sea ports agreement that allows Ukraine to ship from Odessa and other ports is also coming up for renewal.

LyrArc Article Gist
The 90,000 tons of steel and the technological improvements to handle cyclone winds in the Bay of Mumbai, the proximity to the Tarapur nuclear station, and the oil pipelines in the sea, are all part of the engineering that went into building the MTHL bridge in Mumbai. 16 of the 22 kilometres are over the sea. The bridge is built to last 100 years.

LyrArc Article Gist
Of the $2 billion it cost to build the new 22 kms Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL) bridge between the island city and the mainland at Navi Mumbai, 85% is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency. This is one of the many infrastructural improvements including the Metro being undertaken in Mumbai today that will completely transform the city.

LyrArc Article Gist
Online 1 year certificates of deposit have annual percentage yield of 4.75% in 2023 compared to less than 1% in 2022. This is a significant improvement for what the average American gets on his savings accounts. For two decades low interest rates on savings accounts hurt average Americans whose savings did not grow through interest accumulation.

LyrArc Article Gist
Ezra Klein of the NYT looks at proposed US, EU and Chinese regulatory framework for AI. He points out the problems with the EU- too specific, US- too broad, and China's - state oriented. Klein gives specific points that need to be considered carefully including setting up the regulatory agency like the FDA to strictly regulate AI systems and companies.

LyrArc Article Gist
The European Space Agency's Juice is not alone in exploring the moons around Jupiter by 2031. One year before the Juice reaches the moons around Jupiter, NASA's Europa Clipper Mission will reach Jupiter- in April 2030. That missions launches in October 2024 and follows a Mars-Earth Gravity Assist trajectory. It will make 50 flybys over Europa, one of the moons around Jupiter, some as close as 15 miles. With its massive solar arrays this will be the largest spacecraft developed by NASA for a planetary mission. 

Europa shows evidence of an ocean of liquid water below its icy crust. This is one of the places considered to be the most promising for habitable environments in our solar system.

LyrArc Article Gist
The US launched its probe Maven to Mars last year. The European Space Agency just launched its mission Juice to Jupiter that will go on for 8 years. Juice will reach Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, in July 2031. The mission will search for possible life on Jupiter's moons.

LyrArc Article Gist
California says Arizona should cut back on its use of water. Arizona says it needs water for Pheonix and Tucson. About 80% of the water goes into agricultural use where there are ways to make it more efficient. The Interior Department suggests each state cut back use by the same percentage. Aridification in the region has caused concern about the levels of water in Lake Mead which is fed through the Hoover Dam by the Colorado river.

LyrArc Article Gist
India is a frugal innovator producing satellites for space at a fraction of the cost. NASA sent Maven, a probe to Mars for $671 million, it cost India $74 million to send an orbiter to Mars. Yet India as one of the few space exploring nations has only 3% of the market. Invest India, India's investment promotion agency says this will increase to 10% by 2030. In March India's NewIndia state owned space agency sent three dozen space satellites for OneWeb into space after launches by Russia were stopped. In 2023 the US is the largest by far in the space sector economy. China and Russia are also in this space.

LyrArc Article Gist
PM Narendra Modi addressed a World Bank organized "Making it Personal: How behavioural change can tackle climate change" conference. Modi called it part of democratising the battle against climate change. "Simple acts in daily lives are powerful, there will be a very positive impact on the environment. The people of India have done a lot in this matter in the last few years." "People driven efforts improved the sex ratio in many parts of India. It was the people who led a massive cleanliness drive. Be it rivers, beaches or roads, they are ensuring public places are free of litter. And it was the people who made the switch to LED bulbs a success. Nearly 370 million LED bulbs have been sold in India. This helps in avoiding 39 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year." The Mission Life Modi introduced with the Secretary General of the United Nations has achieved much in India- "The farmers of India ensured the coverage of nearly seven hundred thousand hectares of farmland by micro-irrigation. Fulfilling the mantra of 'Per Drop More Crop', this has saved a huge amount of water. Under Mission Life our efforts are spread across many domains such as: Making local bodies environment-friendly, saving water, saving energy, reducing waste, and e-waste, adopting healthy lifestyles, adoption of natural farming, promotion of millets." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Meg Gentle, who helped build the first LNG terminal for Cherniere Inc. in the Gulf Coast of the US for export of natural gas extracted in the US, is now switching to work in green hydrogen production. The first facility goes up in Texas by 202 7after an experimental project in Chile. WSJ shows many former fossil fuel executives are taking this route to green hydrogen. Gentle says the nascent green hydrogen industry is similar to the beginnings of natural gas. She says there are all the same elements in both. And that the new companies can go from one plant to create a new transformation just like that done for LNG. A chief technology officer of Airbus, a head of GE Europe and China, and an Italian from Eni Enel are also working at green hydrogen companies. What has turned an historically uneconomic business into a possibly profitable business are subsidies from president Biden put in place for clean energy. These subsidies now cover 60% of the cost of green hydrogen, says the WSJ. Green hydrogen requires permiting, infrastructure, financing, customer agreements, similar to the fossil fuel industry. Many are joining for the challenge as green hydrogen when converted into a liquid for transport can't carry as much energy as fossil fuels. About 120 startups raised $2.6 billion in 2022, a 50% jump from 2021. The GE executive says no one has done this on scale making the opportunity enormous. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says the Interior Department needs to take up authority it has for contract approval on use of water by individual entities in the states of California and Arizona. The department can look at how efficiently water is being use to give approval. He suggests this approach as the states of California and Arizona are nowhere near agreement on use of water from the Colorado river. Babbitt says there is risk of deadpool where the water in Lake Mead drops to levels that make water to stop running from the lake downstream to Arizona and California.

LyrArc Article Gist
This NYT report looks at the gradual breakdown in Silicon Valley of the "fake it till you make it" culture. A vast misallocation of resources by startups and other business, a waste of hundreds of billions of dollars needed for investment in rebuilding the American economy and manufacturing.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Mission LIFE launched by pm Modi in Gujarat in 2021 has achieved significant results-

"Under Mission Life our efforts are spread across many domains such as: Making local bodies environment-friendly, saving water, saving energy, reducing waste, and e-waste, adopting healthy lifestyles, adoption of natural farming, promotion of millets." 

"These efforts will save over 22 billion units of energy, save nine trillion litres of water, reduce waste by 375 million tons, recycle almost one million tons of e-waste, and generate around 170 million dollars of additional cost saving by 2030," he said.

"Further, it will help us reduce the wastage of 15 billion tons of food," Mr. Modi said, noting that the global primary crop production in 2020, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, was about nine billion tons.