LyrArc Article Gist
Even today mask use can vary widely in the U.S. as seen in this map from the NYT. After repeated surge across the U.S. from the northeast to the south and west mask use has increased in the U.S. Texas has made it mandatory and president Trump wore a mask at Walter Reed Army hospital. Ypu.gov and other surveys show mask use as high as 80%, not universal as health agencies want to see, higher than Canada, Finland or Denmark.

Other factors such as gatherings at beaches, restaurant and bars, and earlier sport stadiums gatherings are additional factors for a surge. Young people's cooperation has lagged behind accounting for about 50% of cases in some southern states recently being among young people.

LyrArc Article Gist
This report in the WSJ shows even chancellor Merkel, Mr. Roller her economic advisor, ignored reports that went back ten years about wrongdoing at Wirecard. Chancellor Merkel supported Wirecard's acquisition of a Chinese company that itself was in trouble in talks with Chinese leaders in September 2019. AllScore the Chinese company had at the time been fined for misappropriation of funds by the central bank of China at the time, as reported by the WSJ. The German Finance ministry had provided documents showing that Wirecard was being investigated before the meetings to Mr. Roller. The Finance minister Olaf-Scholz's ministry oversees BaFin but little was done by BaFin even after the Financial Times in January 2019 reported financial irregularities at the company.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Economist magazine says the difficult process of Brexit is now being put by Theresa May into the hands of the pro-Brexit ministers, Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson. Just staffing the Department for Exiting the EU under Davis, and the Department for International Trade under Liam Fox is taking a lot of time. And the differences between Fox and Davis also figure into the time it will take to invoke Article 50. It says the points put forward by Brexiters that Britain could revert to WTO rules do not work so well in practice, and it takes years to negotiate new trade agreements with other countries. It sees many problems, and says it is no wonder that Theresa May has told the Brexiter ministers to come up with answers as they are the ones who have sold this idea to the country.

LyrArc Article Gist
Michael Atherton calls Jasprit Bumrah "absolutely fantastic" for his bowling in the First Cricket Test vs Australia at Perth 2024. After being bowled out for 150 rus in the first innings India went on to score over 500 runs in the second innings to beat Australia by 295 runs. The turnaround was amazing.

LyrArc Article Gist
Years of conflict between two quarreling camps led to Yoon declaring martial law on December 2 2024 which was opposed by the ruling party and the opposition party in parliament leading to it being withdrawn within 24 hours. A tense situation prevailed outside parliament as it met to vote against martial law powers of the president.

LyrArc Article Gist
A pilot project in Germany aims to provide bomb shelters for 1 million people in 2026. The war in Ukraine has brought back memories of the hochbunkers of World War II and the bombing over Hamburg and other Geman cities. Subways are among the public spaces being considered, including basements of private homes.

LyrArc Article Gist
Shinzo Abe talks about China and Japan being similiar to competing powers Britain and Germany towards the end of the 19th century at a meeting in Davos.

LyrArc Article Gist
The failure of three layers of quality checks Boeing are shown here in the WSJ video after failure events on airline flights. Two CEO's step down. What is the real problem? It is that the company is run by executives trained in finance and accounting and have too little of a background in the workplace where the manufacturing and assembly components is taking place or grasp of what it takes to turn out quality products by workers on the line. The basic approach is flawed because it is not quality checks that build in quality into a product but the workers on the assembly line who have to be trained and the investment made in quality processes to turn out a quality product. This has long been a focus in the earlier days of America's industrial revolution till the focus shifted to finance in the US and the focus on manufacturing shifted to Asia, to Japan, China and now India. It will take a complete shift in America's company leadership to hands on CEO's who are with and understand the workers on America's assembly lines, who can live some days and nights with workers on the production line to see and feel the problems first hand. This will take a decade, and for America as Jake Sullivan said at Brookings for president Biden and his team- this is a fight we must, and we will achieve. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Op-ed contributor Reno writes about the cultural decline of the middle class and its lost sense of participation in the nation's politics. He describes the effects of social decline with use of drugs, children born outside of marraige, and children raised by grandparents. Political elites on the right and left see the white middle class as not being part of a multicultural and globalized future, which they hope to run, leading to its alienation and support for candidates such as Trump and Sanders, says Reno.

LyrArc Article Gist
The strange story of how computer whiz kids figured out a way to get trains running again in Poland after being rebuilt, when pieces of software instructions buried deep inside tons of code had the trains stall in some situations.

LyrArc Article Gist
Syria Druze and Bedouin sectarian violence on border with Israel 2025. This part of Syria offers a buffer area for Israel, with Syria moving to being a state with different autonomous regions and not a centralized state to maintain peace.

LyrArc Article Gist
How a resurgence of violence by Muslim Kashmiris plays out in a new atmosphere of India-Pakistan rapprochement and the political uncertainty in Pakistan with the transition to democratically elected government there still being tested. The efforts this time were relative to the violence of a decade previously rather innocuous, efforts to break a blockade of a key highway by Hindu nationalists that blocked shipping out Kashmiri apple harvest to the outside world. The Hindus were reacting to Muslim Kashmiris protesting a grant of 98 acres by the government (later rescinded) to Hindu pilgrims visiting a religious site Amarnath in the Kashmir Himalayas.

LyrArc Article Gist
Veterans of the Iraq conflict see a decade of efforts in Iraq being undone in 2014 with increasing sectarian conflict and the spillover from the war in Syria.

LyrArc Article Gist
The St Petersburg Circle and German-Russian relations. The role of Schroeder, former German chancellor. Note that the SDP and the Christian Democrats split posts for Angela Merkel to head the government. Shows how the international geopolitical scene is evolving in new directions and affecting oil policies of key oil producers, as well as how the European auto producers are working with Eastern Europe and Russia for manufacturing. It shows a more confident Russia as a center for R&D for Western companies like Boeing.

LyrArc Article Gist
Will reminds readers about what King wrote in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," about being labeled an extremist, the same words that he sees Democrats saying about Ryan's plans as being extreme for Medicare and Social Security, now that he is Romney's running mate in the U.S. presidential race. "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction...Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need for creative extremists." Will's point is that Ryan is unfairly being labeled an extremist for coming up with creative solutions because "ending Medicare as we know it" will happen though the laws of arithmetic for the U.S. deficit with runaway health care spending and uncontrollable medical care price inflation. This would produce more drastic results than through the kinds of creative changes that Ryan is proposing. Will's other point is that the entitlement spending increases cannot be solved by simply raising taxes on the rich especially at a time when costs are out of control. This is especially true because the U.S. economy depends on private sector confidence and investment for growth, and even more so now that the stimulus has had limited results and served its purpose in crisis management. Ryan has also modified some of his ideas in discussions with other voices in his party, a process which will continue to evolve with the infusion of ideas from Dave Camp, Romney, and others in his party....

LyrArc Article Gist
The South Korean government of president Moon takes steps to reduce the impact of escalating rhetoric between president Trump and North Korea. South Korea's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong has long discussions with Gen. McMaster his U.S. counterpart. A presidential statement in South Korea stated that "the U.S. and South Korea reaffirmed their promise that they will coordinate with each other closely and transparently," following these discussions. The opinion in South Korea is that the South Korean concerns about a conflict are being ignored by president Trump.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Obama Center in Jackson Park, Chicago, is a 20 acre complex opening on June 19, 2026, built by Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The Obamas chose land that was once use for the World Columbian Exposition World Fair. Using public space was controversial, made up for by a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, a basketball court and playgrounds. The most controversial part is the Obamalisk (obelisk type) tower which is as dour as one can get. One of Obama's speeches with letters on the tower top the architect says is not legible, but thats just fine he says, as if it is empty rhetoric. Or as Kennicott says just rhetoric, ornament, did all those words 17 years back really matter or were they merely oratorical good vibes. So much has happened since then that Kennicott rightly looks at the new Obama Tower with skepticism of what Obama ever accomplished. In healthcare the Obamacare plan is now not working or being replaced. Obama continued the wars Bush started, were they really that different.  At every turn from the entry there are questions like this. At the entry itself with the Declaration of Independence there is a display of unequal treatment, questioning the very experiment of Jefferson, Washington, by placing their formative ideas for a new society that had already been born in Britain with the abolition of slavery in 1772 with Somerset vs Stewart. Ben Franklin forming the Abolition of Slavery Society in Pennsylvania as early as 1775 and becoming its president in 1787. None of the founders get any credit for envisioning a different society, than they had to live in, and which even Abe Lincoln struggled with from 1850's till the Emancipation as way to win the Civil War. The entry to the Smithsonian has done the same. Yet it is this same document the Declaration which says "All men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with some inalienable rights, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"  that has inspired  and given new hope to hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians, Africans, and other Asians by 1900 and 1950, the vast majority of people on the planet. Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post asks the questions over and over in this report-  was America sleeping when it should have been alert? Lighthizer and Jamieson says this on this page that 5 million jobs were lost, economic growth was down by 1% to 2% instead of 3% of the period 1960-2000, and $20 trillion in America's wealth transferred overseas by the combination of Bush-Obama in the 2000-2020 period, manufacturing decimated, wages stagnant, America's working class communities destroyed, all the while this high minded rhetoric went on. As Kennicott says the period of rhetoric and oratory is gone, in the past, the presidency merely decades of decadence of America's elites as Marco Rubio says in a new book. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Violation of international law or tacit approval of drug states and suppression of the election results in Venezuela- position taken by Oxford's Dill and Germany's Steinmeier is itself controversial. Merz's is realistic. For those concerned about international law is it restricted to any particular period? Then the British policy in China supported by the other powers Japan, Russia, Germany and France to suppress the Boxer rebellion in 1901 and expand Treaty ports that forced opium on China in the period 1850 to the 1930's was not just a egregious violation, horrendous violation of basic human rights on a scale unimaginable in modern times. Much of the prosperity of the Netherlands and Britain, France was achieved through such policy in Asia. Yet Oxford's Dill and Steinmeier have chosen not to look at European history and the Empires of Europe in Asia and Africa for 300 years since 1700. By comparison Venezuelan action comes after the great patience of well meaning people, and the silence of elites in the US and Europe about massive migration encouraged by the regime in Venezuela of one third of its population about 9 million people to neighboring countries including the US, and suppression of free elections, complete mismanagement leading to 150% inflation destroying its economy.  It was not only these elites in the US and Europe that were responsible through their silence, but also the Bush and Obama wars in the Middle East which sapped the resources of the United States. Why is this happening when the Venezuelan people are the main benificiaries of the action taken by the US president to send in its military. All oil sales revenue will no longer go to a corrupt "drugs" state but be used to directly help the Venezuelan people achieve a better standard of living, bring down inflation  and invest in modernization, in these unusual circumstance a program run by Bessent at US Treasury. Those who dislike the unconventional but well meaning style of the US president and his occasional poor choice of words, find every opportunity for criticism even ignoring facts and common sense. Under Chavez and Maduro the Venezuelan economy was simply mismanaged to the point of being destroyed and an affluent country reduced to poverty and inflation so bad that one third or 9 milllion people left for neighboring countries. On this Dill at Oxford and Steinmeier have only this to say- it is somebody's else's problem. we will remain silent. Similarly on introducing nuclear weapons in the Middle East -where most nation states have intermittent wars and economic mismanagement for the last 50 years the artificial states from the Ottoman Empire of Syria and Iraq, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan every state impoverished by war and economic mismanagement - Dill at Oxford and Steinmeier in Germany also have only this to say- it is somebody else's problem not ours, we will remain silent. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
 JD Vance as key negotiator of the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran announced June 17 2026 in France at the G-7 Summit in Les Bains, France. Vice President Vance says-about why everything not being put in writing. “There’s a lot of discussion, the MOU, the gentlemen’s agreements, the final deal—words don’t matter, ladies and gentlemen, we’re about verification.” As with the detailed previous agreements the words have little meaning if the intention is to build a nuclear weapon while all the time saying it was for peaceful purposes.  Vance does not mention that in the next 10 years the worst hit from Hormuz are the poor countries Pakistan, India, Arab World in North Africa including Egypt, and even a developing country when it comes to per capita incomes way lower than Europe like China. There will be all these countries backing the US as high oil prices mean economic catastrophe for these countries. This is really what the president DJT means by he did this to prevent economic catastrophe. China has sustained the Iranian economy through this period and China has clearly stated that it expects denuclearization, expects Iran to reverse policy to make a nuclear weapon- as it is the crux of the memorandum's intent. Without it the US would not enter any agreement and there would be no war. Opening up Hormuz is critical for these countries including China to continue their industrial modernization. Vance says- “We have all of the cards." “If the Iranians want the benefit of the bargain they have to give us the things that are necessary to get those benefits.”  There is in Iran itself three groups, one the people, second the elected government of Pezeshkian elected in 2014 to reduce the cost of living and improve living standards, and third the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The entire Arab World, the entire Asiatic Muslim world represented by Pakistan and neighbors find this Memorandum as a lifeline, a step away from the brink of economic catastrophe, which is not shown in the media, all these countries pushing for their very life to get the US to give a chance to two of the three parts of the Iranian people and government (who will ultimately decide Iran's long term course as a part of West Asia as a regional economic development and modernization zone). There are huge stakes here for West Asia and East Asia in this Memorandum of basically intent on the part of the US (consistent with its history and purpose as Nation), and this remains the key guarantor for this opportunity for Iranian people and people of West and East Asia in their progress to modernization and economic progress similar to the path taken by Europe and the US after many struggles of their own (not to mention the Civil War that made the US and two World Wars that made the European Union).    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
By offering the prospect of higher returns in a low return environment venture capital firms are raising new funds at the highest rate in 15 years in 2016. Venture Capital firms have raised about $13 billion in the first quarter of 2016 from pension funds, endowment funds, and other sources, with about 50% of the funds going to about 7% of the total number of firms, according to Venture Source- including $2 billion to Accel Partners, other firms are Andreeson, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins. The returns for ten years from venture capital are about 11% compared to 6.8% for S&P 500 index, according to Cambridge Associates. Usually the fund capital raising lags behind market downturns. Much of the returns for some of the startups are not reflected in cash inflows with returns being large on paper, and startup financing has increased for firms, resulting in capital shortages and more fund raising in the industry.

LyrArc Article Gist
In 2025 about $75,000 is considered income yearly for 2 adults and 2 children as the bottom rung of the middle class in America. About half the 70 million children in America, 35 million children are in conditions that involve need for food assistance and other aid, where the sense of income security, healthy food security, that was seen in the 1950's to 1990's the post war industrialization period is now missing in the closing days of the deindustrialization period of America in 2020-2025. WSJ's Dan Frosch provides this report from Binghamton, Broom county in upstate New York. At one time this area was part of the industrialization age in post war America. IBM offices were located here in Endicott. These office buildings of IBM are now being demolished. Instead of industry the economy depends on the University of Binghamton and the university attracts out of state students who bring in new investments in housing. Lower income yet middle class families face higher divorce rates with more single mothers struggling on incomes where they are on the border line for food assistance, and as wages creep up lose food and other aid. At income levels of $39,000 these families struggle to feed children. The poverty rate which declined during covid assistance period was already up in 2023 as government aid phased out under Biden and is now up further. A quarter of children in a once proud industrial region of America in upstate New York near Syracuse, now face poverty conditions. Life is a constant struggle to pay the rent, falling behind on utility or other bills and not having enough for food and other basic needs even at $39,000 year because of the inflation and cost of living having jumped in the last 5 years.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Credit Suisse research of loans at 3,550 nonfinancial services companies in India with total borrowing of $385 billion as of March 31, 2011, shows 30% had net debt more than six times current earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This is an increase of 50% in 5 years. Goldman Sachs estimates gross nonperforming loans including restructured debt will climb up to 6% of total loans in the next financial year. This is an increase from the 5% in March 2011. The Reserve Bank of India's stress test report of Dec. 2011 forecasts 5.8% of non-performing assets in a worst case scenario. This is twice the current level. This is largely a result of Indian banks increasing lending after the 2008 global financial crisis, with the worst affected and leveraged sectors being private airlines, construction companies, utilities and real estate developers. At the same time prudent regulation has ensured a capital to risk-weighted assets ratio according to RBI of 13.5% at the end of March 2011. This compares with the same ratio at 14.5% as of March 2010. Additional risks come from declining economic growth. Industrial output in October 2011 was down 5.1% from the prior year. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist of the Romney campaign points to the Romney campaign's success in getting a majority of votes of people making over $50,000, a majority of white voters under 30 by a 7 point margin, winning the votes of a majority of America's middle class, and falling short of a win of the Electoral College by 320,000 votes. He says Obama turned Democratic party weaknesses of being too liberal and too dependent on minorities into advantages. The Pew Research Center and other expert opinion cited as the principal reaon for the defeat, Romneys failure to empathize with voters. He appeared callous in his image with Hispanic voters with his self-deportation stand, and similiarly his position on the auto bailout was shown as callous in a barrage of political ads by the Obama campaign in the midwestern states, the remark about the 47% dependent on government help simply reinforced this notion of being insensitive to concerns of the less affluent. The candidate never succeeded in shaking off impressions in the minds of voters of being a private equity executive who could not empathize with weaker sections of the community, which were reinforced by heavy negative advertising in the 2012 election. Stevens says nothing about the short sightedness of a callous immigration policy of self-deportation adopted by a former governor of Massachusetts, in the face of Census statistics showing more children of minorities, especially Hispanics, born each year than children of any other demographic group in the U.S. The changing demographics may have made a crucial difference in many states....

LyrArc Article Gist
Only refugees from war zones are eligible for asylum in Germany. People coming from the Balkan countries looking for better job opportunities are being sent back home in September 2015.