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The idea here of promoting biodioversity by turning backyard lawns into places of biodiversity. Bringing back natural backyards where biodiversity takes root. A movement to encourage private owners of backyard plots and lawns to corporate campuses to create homegrown national parks. It envisions turning over 40 million acres of lawns in the US to imperiled native plants and trees. The idea is that of a land ethic- we abuse land because we think of it as something we own, not something we share with the rest of humanity just for a while. This way we treat it with the love and respect the land deserves. One way to do this is to design native landscapes as formal gardens so that they do not look so biodiversity plots not look messy. Intentionaly designed elements delineate larger messy wilderness in such biodiversity inclined garden spaces. Do this one small patch of land at a time.

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Chris Buckley of the NYT looks at selected speeches of president Xi of China to military officers during the first 5 years 2012 to 2017 but fails to look at the China Xi Jinping faced in these years. It was a period of change in China when it was not clear which direction China would take after the messy experiment with free markets under a socialist state controlled system led by the CCP. That period from 1990 onwards led to hypergrowth in China that modernized China yet shifted American and European manufacturing to China alienating working class communities in the western countries. It hurt China also through widespread contamination of air and water, and widespread corruption and decline of the CCP. The Bo Xilai demagogic effort to subvert the system from inside happened by 2012 endangering the system itself from the inside while it responded to the pressures created by the experiment with free market from corruption, regional inequality, and other problems. ...

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After hurricane Helene only about 10% of FEMA workers are available for Hurricane Milton headed towards the Tampa Bay Area at 175 miles per hour.

Christopher Flavelle of NYT  points out FEMA desperately needs more funding and staff as it is responding simultaneously to many disasters. The full effects of climate change in more and more natural disasters all across the US have not been taken into account for the added funding and staffing needed. In this situation FEMA is spread thin causing other problems such as attrition and burnout and unfilled positions.

The Government Accountability Office report found in 2023 that 35% of FEMA's positions were unfilled, because of “rising disaster activity during the year, which increased burnout and employee attrition.”

There are also lot of people who are out of work in disaster areas who can be pulled in for disaster work.  

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Kristina Johnson is the new chancellor of the SUNY education system in New York state. About 440,000 students are enrolled in the SUNY system. Johnson is an engineer who studied at Stanford for her masters and doctoral degrees. She headed the engineering school at Duke and set up the new interdisciplinary engineering  center for applied sciences and medicine at Duke in 2007-2009. She is also an inventor with 42 patents, some are being used in technology to take pictures of cancerous cells. In 2009 she was made undersecretary of energy in the Obama administration. SUNY is expanding access to lower income students with Governor Cuomo's Excelsior scheme to fund tution for students whose parents make less than $125,000.

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Greg Ip looks at the Chinese economy its strengths and and many weaknesses including debt and declining foreign investment in 2023, as president Xi visits the US this coming week. With a slowing economy, high youth unemployment and excessive debt, China remains a resilient economy because it has strengths in manufacturing. It would take the US the next decade to build up its manufacturing capabilities after neglecting this important field with mistaken policies for three decades under presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump. President Biden is taking steps for this new manufacturing revival to take place.

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The aid package in August 2022 from US to Ukraine includes much needed air defense systems and radars that would help protect the cities and towns of Ukraine under constant bombardment leading to endless stream of refugees and displaced women and children. This and the damage to buildings and homes is the worst aspect of the war.

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China is moving to shift its economy in a new direction of self-reliance on domestic consumers and local investors. Mr. Xi calls it "domestic circulation." This also means less dependence on imported technologies and inward looking policies. As the pandemic has reduced demand in other countries and as the U.S. and West tighten controls on imports and introduce new restrictions, there is the sense that the entire policy has to shift quickly to dependence on domestic consumers and investors.

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India food supply distribution network involves farmers selling to wholesalers who sell to retailers with about 12.8 million small retailers with shops reaching consumers. Millions of farmers with small plots need workers to harvest their crops. Mechanization of farms is not as widespread as needed, and labour is used instead of forklift trucks in handling of agricultural produce to be loaded onto trucks. And millions of these retailers need workers to pickup the food supplies (wheat, rice, pulse and vegetables). The virus has scared off a lot of laborers needed for this supply system to work from farms to shops. The government is maintaining the basic supplies of wheat, rice and pulses at this time. It has given free rice and wheat where needed and distributed wheat and rice at minimal cost to the public. Yet the system is facing bottlenecks of labor and more needs to be done to maintain smooth flow of supplies. The mechanization of agriculture and distribution is sorely lacking at this time.     ...

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This article by Jose Cordoba points out that Castro's biggest success may have come not in Latin America where many of the guerilla movements failed, but in Africa. In Angola the movement supported by Castro helped end Portuguese rule, and in South Africa Nelson Mandela credits Castro with helping the struggle to end Apartheid. Ironically most of the eulogies to Castro come from Latin America. The effort to end right wing dictatorships may be one of the reasons why Castro is seen positively in Latin America. 

This article points out that in the end in countries such as Venezuela and Cuba the movement he led resulted in development and modernization being stifled, even though this was not its intention. In a world that is rapidly changing Castro's Cuba and Chavez's Venezuela have fallen behind to an amazing degree.

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The Hindustan Times provides this look at the construction of a new 1000 bed hospital in Bandra Kurla complex exhibition area of Mumbai  that will be used for isolation of coronavirus cases. The hospital will be ready in time to tackle an expected further surge in cases in Mumbai by the end of May. The hospital will be equipped to handle another 5000 beds says the Mumbai municipal authority, MMRDA. Several hospitals are being built such as this one to tackle the surge in cases as Mumbai has about 25% of cases in India of coronavirus.

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Cost of living concerns, high housing costs are seeing Liberal party and Justin Trudeau support drop to 28%. The minority coalition government could fall at any time.

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With some aspects of Marie Le Pen's programme possibly violating the French Constitution and some parts of the programme leading to France being forced to leave the European Union, what was not looked at carefully in the first round vote is now happening for the second round. The Le Pen draft law on "immigration, identity and citizenship," is seen by multiple analyses cited by The Guradian, as violating the principles of equality enshrined in the French Constitution. Constitutional experts say this would also violate European law and lead to a progressive or indirect exit from the European Union. Le Pen's proposal to lower the retirement age to 60 was coming under scathing scrutiny, with Jean Tirole, the 2014 Nobel prize winner in Economics saying it would cost 68 billion euros and "permanently impoverish the country." Countries such as Brazil that lowered the retirement age in this manner have found that it seriously affects public finances, leading to the deep economic crisis in Brazil following the commodity price collapse a few years ago. Macron has moved in the opposite direction to raise the retirement age gradually and now with a proposed national consensus, at the cost of losing some support, simply to shore up public finances. So that needed investments in infrastructure and climate change can be made. For this reason it may become evident to undecided voters that Le Pen's proposals have some serious flaws if implemented, weakening the French economy and yet not tackling the deeper problems of younger people. These problems The Guardian says in a separate report are the precarious and low pay jobs, asset based inequality, and rural urban regional differences developing as a result of the offshoring of manufacturing to China, and are common to Britain, France, Germany, and the US. These problems are beginning to be addressed after the lessons learned from the pandemic by western nations.   ...

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PM Modi will meditate for 3 days and nights at the Vivekananda rock in the Indian Ocean on May 30 to June 1, 2024. In 1892 Swami Vivekananda meditated on a rock in the ocean at the tip of India in Kanya Kumari, as he set India on a path to modernization for the next 100 years and beyond. Many Indians including prime minister Modi have Vivekananda's mission for India's modernization as their clear objective, and this is behind the everything the PM does including the vision of Vikshit Bharat, a developed country by 2047 on the 100th anniversary of independence. Gandhiji read all of Vivekananda's writings and his freedom struggle against British rule was based on Vivekananda's ideas for India's regeneration and renewal leading to his book Hind Swaraj in 1905. The Bhagavad Gita was translated by Swami Swarupananda, a disciple of Vivekananda, and formed the basis for Gandhiji in the freedom struggle against the British.  Europe faced colonization on the Iberian peninsula and invasions right up to Budapest and Vienna by the 14th century, India faced the same and this was followed for India and China by the expansion of the British into Asia when China and India failed to grasp early the importance of science and technology and the new ideas that happened in Europe by the 18th and 19th century. Vivekananda wanted to see science and technology and the advances of modernization brought to the people of India a process happening as India modernizes all aspects of its economy. Vivekananda was also the inspiration for Indonesia's freedom struggle by Sukarno against Dutch rule. India and Indonesia today make up the largest population in the world larger than China and Japan combined, with a common culture and heritage and are together modernizing every aspect of the life of people.  ...

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Benny Gantz, head of the National Unity Party visits Washingto and meets VP Kamala Harris. Yoav Gallant, Defense Minister, call for enlistment in army of Ultra-Orthodox which would lead to the fall of the coalition and new elections. Netanyahu popularity is a low and National Unity Party of Gantz is likely to win in new elections. There are serious differences between Gantz and Netanyahu, on post war policy. Under the coalition agreement all three are actively involved in decisionmaking. The US airdrop of humanitarian aid was a sign of US discomfort with Netanyahu and both Gantz and Biden are pushing for a humanitarian aid policy.

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Already vaccination experts at the Baylor College of Medicine cited here say they foresee another wave of the coronavirus in the Southern US because of vaccine skepticism barriers to vaccination, and much of the population not being vaccinated. The percentage of the population in the Carolinas, Georgia, Georgia and Louisiana, that has both doses of vaccine is low. About 50% have had just one dose. In southern states Mississippi and Alabama the vaccination rates are much lower leaving large parts of the population unvaccinated. The widespread presence of the Delta variant in the UK and the R rate being between 1.00 and 1.2 in UK shows that the UK even with higher vaccination rates than the US is still facing a danger of another wave as it reopens.  The ominous aspect of this is that from just over 400,000 the vaccinations per day dropped to 316,000i n the US. This means there will be a period when vaccination drive is stalled while the reopening is fully underway with a new contagious variant twice as contagious as the original coronavirus. This leaves the US at risk of another wave, with the south and western US, younger people who are out more and unvaccinated, more at risk.  ...

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The Paris conference on Ukraine is an effort to help Ukraine's reconstruction with damage to the electricity grid and as the humanitarian situation deteriorates in the winter. The war continues to drag on.

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It was not till 1.39 am in the early hours of the morning of January 7, 2023, that the just elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy swore in all the new members of the 118th House. This ended a week of voting that went into 15 rounds before five Republican member holdouts of 20 rebels voted "present" to make it possible to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new Speaker. A bitter fight led to concessions being made to Freedom Caucus members who wanted to limit spending and cut spending on infrastructure and defense. McCarthy opted for the route of repeated ballots to avoid making concessions on who controls key committees and to limit concessions to ab out 20 rebel members of the Republican Congress. The vast majority of remaining members do not share these views including Democrats who make up about half of the House and many Republican members of Congress.

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France goes to the polls on April 10. Marie Le Pen is shrinking Mr. Macron's lead in the polls. Most of the other candidates other than Mr. Melenchon show less than 10% support from voters including Valerie Pecresse of the Republicans who have failed to arouse much enthusiasm The Republicans and the Socialist party of Mr. Mitterand and Mr. Hollande were defeated in the last presidential election by Mr. Macron. Today the choice is between Le Pen with her inexperience and her policies skeptical of the European Union and Mr. Macron who is more experienced but lacking an effective social policy in addressing the social problems in France raised by the yellow vist protesters. Immigration is an issue in this campaign and Mr. Macron has taken a tougher stand on immigration and cultural issues following several terrorist incidents. There is a general lack of enthusiasm with 25% of the voters not expected to vote, many of them 25-34 years old. With 37% of the voters not decided which way they will vote and some votes cast even if the candidate selected was seen as having some drawbacks, the elections in France are a vivid contrast to the recent election in Germany with the Greens and Social Democrats ending the CDU's four terms leading the government under Merkel. Mr. Macron only campaigned in the last 8 days before the election.   ...

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Even though volatility is high in stock markets, the U.S. stock market has rebounded to levels in August 2019. The level on March 10, 2020 after effects of the coronavirus on the global economy was for the DJIA average in the U.S. to be at the level it was on August 14, 2019, as shown on the graph in the WSJ, in the neighborhood of 25,000. In the last quarter of 2019 there were steep gains in the Dow Jones averages that could not be fully explained, these gains have disappeared. Considering the suddenness of the crisis from the coronavirus in China, and the double whammy of impact on global manufacturing supply chains of first the tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., followed by the coronavirus, the impact on stock markets seen in this overall context is comprehensible. Particularly the sharp gains in the last quarter of 2019 which now appear to be muted. There is also some good news for economies such as China and India, which are large oil importing countries, and the rest of Asia, in the sharp drop in oil prices that helps cushion some of its impact on the global economy. For the U.S. this also happens at a time when the economy is in much stronger shape than at any time in the last ten years. ...

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So far Covax Africa is proving to be a failure. Consider the numbers 1 billion people only 31 million vaccines given. Another wave of the virus is underway with 130% rise in cases in Uganda, increase taking place in DRC, Namibia. About 30% increase in cases for all of Africa this week. The new Delta variant that is twice as contagious as the original virus is widespread in the UK and is an unacceptable risk in Africa and in Europe and the US.


 By comparison India has 1.2 billion people and 230 million people vaccinated with at least one dose.

US has 330 million people and has adminstered 300 million doses. UK and Brazil have each adminstered over 70 million doses.

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With Republicans elected to a majority in both chambers of the state legislature and a Republican governor, Wisconsin is moving ahead with a sweeping plan to fix its budget deficit. Walker promised he would get public workers' compensation in line with other workers. He is now proposing a plan which will go to the legislature for swift approval that will simply go ahead and cut public employees benefits without negotiating. He says he doesn't have anything to negotiate with, because with the growing deficit he has nothing to give. His plan: limit collective bargaining for most state and local government employees to the issue of wages (instead of to many issues such as vacations, health coverage), require government workers to contribute 5.8% of pay to pensions, and have state employees pay at least 12.6% of health care premiums (instead of the 6% most pay today). The plan will save $30 million in the current budget and $300 million in the next budget. Republican leaders are saying the alternative is to lay off some 6000 state workers, and take away Medicaid coverage for thousands of children, which is a much worse alternative....

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 Tom Suozzi is elected to the US House of Representatives from New York for the seat vacated by Rep. Santos. After Suozzi is sworn in Feb. 28 Republicans will have 219 seats to Democrats 213. The majority is so slim that when 3 Republicans opposed the impeachment of Homeland Secretary Mayorkas for immigration issues Speaker Johnson could get the impeachment passed only on the second try and that only by one vote. President Biden has called for a vote immediately in the House on an Ukraine aid bill after it passed in the US Senate 70-29 with 22 Republicans joining Democrats. 

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The sinking of two oil tankers in the waters off Mexico led to Mexico joining the war against Japan in 1942. Mexican president Avila Camacho sent the 201st Fighter Squadron as part of the Mexican Expeditionary Force to train in the U.S. By 1945 this force was taking part in the war in the Philippines. Mexico is the only nation from Latin America after Brazil that fought on the Allied side in the war. Brazil sent forces to Italy. 

India made an amazing contribution of 2.5 million soldiers in the war effort as part of the British effort in the second world war.The largest contribution in the war effort came from Indian troops against Japan in the northeastern part of India with Indian Air Force pilots based in Imphal, Manipur. The Indian Army mostly from Indians with British officers played a key role in repelling a 80,000 large Japanese Army in the northeast and Assam. The Indian Army was also active throughout North Africa and in Italy. 

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Peter Hotex of Baylor Medicine in the US is a pioneer and leader in getting low cost traditional vaccines to billions in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Here Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine Tropical School is interviewed in The Hindu. He talks about how the new mRNA vaccines are "shiny toys" pushed forward in the US in 2020 under innovation drives, and that the vaccines made by traditional methods are just as effective and provide lasting protection. Without vaccinating the entire world population including the billions of people living in Africa, Asia and Latin America, there will be no end in sight for the pandemic, he says, and the best way to do this is through vaccines made by traditional methods, methods used by Bharat Biotech for Covaxin and Biological E for its vaccine. He said mRNA is a brand new technology  and "it will take years to scale it up to make 9 billion doses" of vaccine for poor countries. Baylor has developed the vaccine technology using traditional methods such as yeast fermentation expression technology used for Recombiannt Hepatitis-B vaccine. Its been around for 40 years. Baylor will transfer the technology to Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, all over the world. He says in terms of virus neutralizing anti-body immune responses it is as effective as the mRNA vaccines. Hotez is critical of some pharma companies- "the rest of them want to bicker about patents. we're not going to go down that direction." Baylor is providing its technology for manufacture to companies to fill the need in poor countries, without patent protection or quibbling about legal things such as indemnities, says Hotez. Hotez also thing recombinant protein technologies vaccine with its traditional approach could also overcome vaccine hesitancy, a key factor for unvaccinated in Europe and US which have stuck to mRNA vaccines. The newer technology behind mRNA could make parents hesitate to vaccinate their children with these technologies, and also be a part of the mental attitude of unvaccinated adults having hesitancy.   ...