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Over 100 women scientists are part of the Chandrayan moon missions of Indian space agency ISRO. Many are leader of project teams and head key parts of the scientific efforts of ISRO. Prime minister Modi says the moon mission shows the strength of women or 'nari shakti' and the potential of the younger generation of women for careers in science and technology. About 25% of the 16,000 employees of ISRO space agency are women, and Modi says "they will inspire women for generations to come." Women make up 43% of graduates in STEM scientific fields, yet when it comes to being part of scientific institutes or universities this drops to 14%, an imbalance that prime minister Modi and ISRO women seek to address. DW.com looks at the work of women in the moon, mars and solar missions including Ritu Karidhal, Nidhi Porwal, Reema Ghosh, Kalpana Kalahasti. Kalahasti is deputy project director and has overseen the satellite imaging that will be done from Chandrayan 3. Reema Ghosh worked on the "Pragyan" rover that is now exploring the moon's surface. ...

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Discussions at the cabinet level and with prime minister Johnson now include the possible use of annual covid jabs, the importance of getting the vaccine out before a new mutant strain of the virus that is hard to deal with a year from now. An annual covid jab could deal with new mutant strains of the virus. 

Prime minister Johnson is also having to deal with the issue of letting people in from overseas. If Britain's vaccination drive succeeds it will be all the more important to protect Britain from new mutant strains arriving with people coming from overseas. This will require strict control of people coming from other countries including Europe. The question of closing the borders to to reduce risks is now a serious one.

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The new airport terminal building in Surat, India is inaugurated by the prime minister. The PM in his remarks recalls a time when the airport looked no better than a bus station. The new airport terminal will also be part of an international terminal for flights overseas.

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Under a deal made between Partido Popular of prime minister Mariano Rajoy and the Ciudadanos party in Spain, the ruling party agreed to back measures to tackle corruption and ensure an independent judiciary. Public officials being investigated for corruption will be suspended from office. Selection will be done by members of the judiciary for 12 of the 20 board members previously elected by parliament that appoints judges and prosecutors. Wage subsidies are introduced for low income families and cuts in public spending for health and education are restored under the agreement,  which includes a program of 150 measures. The combined vote of the two parties get it to 169- 137 for the Partido Popular and 32 for Ciudadanos- and with the aid of a Canary Islands party to 170. The Ciudadanos party will not participate in the Partido Popular government but will vote in its favor. This is still short of the 176 votes needed in the 350 seat parliament. Rajoy could have a second term only if the Socialist party allows some members to abstain. As this is uncertain Spain faces the prospect of an election in December 2016. ...

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BJP led by prime minister Narendra Modi wins a huge majority of 325 seats out of 405 in India's largest state Uttar Pradesh for the state assembly elections. The national opposition party Congress wins only 7 seats in what was once the main source of Congress support during the period of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. This will enable the BJP to push forward with the modernization program for infrastructure and roads, and other development. Opposition in the upper house Rajya Sabha and lack of support from states will not be a major hurdle in development now that BJP has won in states such as Orissa, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarkhand in recent state elections after its win in the 2014 national parliamentary election. This also gives credibility to the government's other efforts such as demonetisation to fight corruption in real estate and other areas. India's GDP is a fraction of China's and it is smaller than that of countries such as Indonesia, because of the poor administration and lack of development in India's 2 largest states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the northern Hindi speaking region. To double the GDP from its current level will require doubling the GDP of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Bihar's state government is run by a former BJP leader, who has also pushed for improving standards of living and economic growth.  ...

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Prime minister Johnson of Britain blames his coronavirus on being overweight. He can now be seen playing tennis at Winfield House, the residence of the American Ambassador. He can also be seen in the Queen's Lambeth Gardens taking a run. Both have been offered to him for use after the prime minister ran into someone at St. James Park. Boris Johnson now says as  word of advice to many middle aged people "Don't be a fatty in your fifties." Take up exercize he says to a generation of men that have just become lazy when it comes to exercize. Other things to be stronger with the virus are healthy eating habits, lots of ancient grains, lentils, fruits and vegetables. Add  yoga, meditation, call it mindfulness if you like, it works, and it is never too late. 

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A look at the need for serious attention to personal health, including the risks of obesity and poor health habits that are second biggest risk factor for deaths from coronavirus. Boris Johnson, Britain's prime minister has taken up new health habits, exercize and changed lifestyle, after going through a life changing experience. 

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Housing and migration are major issues in the Dutch election. Omtzight is an intellectual who heads the New Social Contract Party that has economic policies to help working families and also wants to see curbs on migration. It ends a period of 14 years in which Mark Rutte a moderate was prime minister, 

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Japan's new LDP prime minister, Shinzo Abe, supports targeting the yen at around 90 yen to the dollar to support Japanese exporters. He sees this happening through monetary easing by Japan's central bank. At a rate of 85 yen to the dollar or above Japanese exporters would be in a position to become profitable and pay taxes. Abe says central banks around the world, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, are printing money to support their economies and increase exports. Switzerland and S. Korea pursued policies to keep their currencies from becoming too strong to support their exporters. China has managed its exchange rate to maintain export competitiveness. Exchange rate intervention has not been effective for Japan, and the focus now is on monetary policy and setting a 2% inflation rate target.

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Japan says Russian planes intruded into Japanese airspace for over 1 minute on February 7, 2013, over the island of Rishiri, near Hokkaido. F-2 aircraft from Japan's Self Defense Forces responded to the intrusion. The intrusion comes at the time of the Northern Territories Day when Japan's government reiterates its determination to press for return of the Northern Territories from Russia. Japan did not sign a peace agreement with Russia at the end of World War II after Russia refused to leave the islands. The islands are known as the four Kuril islands in Russia. Policy experts at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies say the Russian intrusion was an attempt to test Japan after an incident where Chinese radar locked in on Japanese naval ships in the East China Sea. The effects on public opinion are likely to create support for prime minister Abe's effort to increase the budget for Japan's Self-Defense Forces.

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Michael Barnier leads the negotiating team for the EU as it begins negotiations with Britain on Brexit. He is a former foreign minister of France and former EU commissioner, giving him the necessary skills and experience. Yet as he meets with the Affairs of the European Committee in the German parliament, even Barnier is not clear how the negotiations will be conducted. Only that the issues relating to disentangling the closely interwoven economies of the EU and Britain relate to nationals of the EU and Britain in each others region, the common 20,000 legally binding regulations, and the price tag for Britain to pay of 60 billion euros. The leading German in the negotiating team is Gunther Oettinger, a former EU budget commissioner, and he tells Der Spiegel that the bill may be even higher than that number. The figure will be arrived at by taking into account the obligations of Britain and applying this to assets. The obligations include the money owed to the EU budget, share of medium term budget planning to 2020, share of pension payments to EU civil servants. The British take a different view and do not understand why they have to pay this amount when they are exiting. The British want to see their future relationship on trade and access to the EU markets discussed early, but the EU position is just the opposite, first exit negotiations to be completed by September 2018, then other discussions on trade. March 29, 2019 is the date set for Britain to be no longer a member of the EU. Yet even the sequence of issues has not been set and the sides could not be further apart than they are now. Each side looking at its situation domestically with elections in the EU in 2017, and May facing the added challenge of Scotland threatening to leave the UK. ...

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Wild fires rage in the northern suburbs of Athens, Greece, with the extreme heat. Heat and drought have turned the country into a powder keg, says prime minister Mitsotakis. Wildfires are also affecting Turkey.

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Britain staged a rehearsal for a pandemic called Cygnus in 2016. Till that time the preparations for a pandemic that started years earlier during the SARS crisis were conducted vigorously. Yet the by this time Britain was becoming immersed in the Brexit struggles in the ruling Conservative Party. Prime minister Cameron resigned on July 13, 2016  and was replaced by Theresa May. From that time on the struggles with pro Brexit factions led by Boris Johnson consumed the COnservative Party and sucked the life out of the pandemic planning that Britain had conducted for years before. The recommendations to correct deficiencies from the pandemic rehearsal exercize were ignored. The second failure happened as the crisis approached. Again the Brexit date of January 31 intervened and the months long struggle to get Brexit had taken so much energy and tired out most of the British public including new prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party Boris Johnson. Johnson did not attend the first Cobra meeting of the highest level ministers and military, convened on January 25, 2020, as reported in the Times. Such meeting are convened only for a national threat. Only 5 weeks later on March 2 did the prime minister attend a Cobra meeting. During this time the situation was grave in Italy with rising cases and infections. The entire process was conducted during this time by the Health minister Mr. Hancock who had assured the public that the situation was under control. Britain now has the highest number of infections in Europe exceeding that in Italy- at 240,000 on May 15, 2020. The prime minister and his adviser Mr. Cummings, were also infected by the virus, and Mr. Johnson spent time in ICU before recovering. Queen Elizabeth addressed the nation on Easter day, the first such address since 1940, to boost Briain's spirits. Never had Britain been less prepared as in 2020 when earlier preparations were ditched for austerity plans and events such as Brexit fatigue conspired to strip the nation of the crucial 5-6 weeks of preparation since the first January 25 Cobra meeting of the highest people in government.  Never had such preparation even for 6 weeks been more crucial than in February and March as the infectivity ratio was determined by infectious disease specialists at the best British universities and scientific institutions to be between 2.6 and 3.4 compared to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 which was somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0. This means every one person infects another 3 persons, compared to about 1 person in a regular flu season. This reproduction ratio and the nature of coronavirus remain a threat today as Britain, Europe, the U.S. and the world reopens.  As reported in the Times the infectivity ratio was also the reason for the mindset that refused to believe that the virus was real because at 3.0 infectivity the only way to tackle it was a "lockdown," and this was itself an "apocalypse" scenario for many in the pro-Brexit Conservative party that won the election, which badly wanted to get back to economic activity after Brexit. ...

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Showing how short lived and misdirected were the efforts to use election wins to make the presidency all powerful under Gotabaya Rajapaksa, prime minister Wickremasinghe proposed an amendment to restore the powers of parliament in a parliamentary democracy. Sri Lanka stumbled badly into economic mismanagement with debt pileup and no action till it was too late without the checks and balances inherent in a parliamentary democracy. Prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned and with protests calling for the president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign, Mr. Wickremasinghe a four time former prime minister was brought back to lead the country out of the crisis. Mr. Wickremasinghe returned with an agreement with the president to restore the powers of parliament which were established since the independence of the country in 1948. Mr. Wickremasinghe has support of the western lending agencies and governments in US and Europe as he and an independent central bank governor Nandalal Weerasinghe with many years of experience working with the IMF seek a way out of the economic crisis. A level of transparency that was present in the early years after independence is being restored as the public suffers from energy shortages and 40% inflation. The foreign exchange reserves of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) were exhausted to the point that the country lacked the funds to let oil tankers in Colombo harbor unload oil and be paid for oil supplies. As a lack of oversight is being corrected Ceylonese are beginning to realize the costs of a unneeded war, wild swings in sentiment for and against parties, deconstructing parliamentary democracy and its checks and balances, corruption and economic mismanagement. ...

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For National Governance Day the Library of Congress has recordings of the poetry and talks given by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in an audio page. These recordings were made by Vajpayee himself at his prime minister's residence in Delhi in 2001 and are in his own voice. As poet, philosopher, foreign minister, Leader of the Opposition and prime minister in India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee embodied the vision of the generation that started with Mohandas Gandhi in the 1920's through Govind Vallabh Pant and Lal Bahadur Shastri in the Hindi speaking heartland. A vision that is the basis of the sab ka vikas, sab ka viswas, sab ka prayas development drive of today based on good governance.  Ao phira se diya jalaem- come let us light the candle again, the sun dims, come let us light the candle again-  is one of the classics from Vajpayee as India looks to 2025 and ahead for National Governance Years. Jita jagata rashtrapurusha is a poem on national unity, more spirited than even the national anthem itself. ...

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LDP leader Shinzo Abe is elected prime minister of Japan. The Liberal Democratic Party gains a two thirds majority in parliament with its election partner the New Komeito party. The LDP party gained 294 seats and New Komeito 31 seats. The Democratic Party of Japan gained 57 seats. The election was more of a "no" vote for the Democratic Party of Japan which was seen to have provided three years of weak government and mishandling of the situation during the tsunami and earthquake. Abe comes from a new postwar generation of prime ministers- he was elected prime minister once before in 2006.

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The Washington Post's Lally Weymouth interviews prime minister Enrico Letta of Italy. Letta makes it clear that he sees his mission as restoring confidence in Italy by putting a younger generation in charge in Italy. He describes the Italy he sees as breaking free from the old ways, breaking free from the geriatric Italy where the professors are old, the politicians are old, and where the old ways prevail. Letta is pro-European and sees his major priorities as keeping the credibility of financial markets and economic growth.

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This Yomiuri discusses the approach of the labor unions Rengo and the business organization Keidanren to the efforts to revive Japan's economy under prime minister Abe. Abe has encouraged Japanese companies to increase wages so that consumption spending can be supported. One measure proposed by the Abe administration is to reduce taxes for companies which increase wages. The government is also taking action so that the temp workers -the one third of the labor force working under temporary contracts at lower wages- can be converted to regular full time status with higher salaries.

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Finance Minister Sitharaman says India's economic image and its macroeconomic fundamentals are not affected by the withdrawal of the Adani FPO. In the last 2 days alone she said, foreign exchange reserves had increased by $8 billion. She said Securities and Exchange Board of India has the authority and ability to see to it that "markets are regulated in prime condition."

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Matteo Renzi's effort to push electoral reforms that would give the elected party or coalition a stronger mandate to govern than the current system, which has made Italy less governable. Stronger government action is needed to pull Italy out of the economic slump, with 12% unemployment and production down in December 2013, say business and industry leaders. Confindustria, Italy's major business association, expressed its sentiment: "We are worried that time is passing and nothing is happening." Renzi and prime minister Letta are from the same Democratic Party. Renzi was recently elected party leader. He has expressed doubts about the pace of change under the Letta administration.

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Osipova and Castle provide details about the personal life of Theresa May, the new British prime minister. May was only 25 when her father died in a car crash and her mother died soon after from multiple sclerosis. This has made her come closer to her husband Philip whom she met at Oxford, where they bonded over a love of cricket and debates at the university. She was interested in Tory politics from a young age, but has her own style of hard work and dislikes the chumocracy in British Conservative Party politics that prevailed under David Cameron. Unlike Cameron who was brash and confident to the point of making bold moves such as the decision to call a referendum as election year politics and did not consider carefully the impact of the austerity programs on Britain's working class; May is thoughtful and has been critical of the long period of deficit cutting austerity under Cameron and Osborne. She loves cooking and has a library of over 100 cookbooks, loves clothes and is carefully dressed for each event. Her matter of fact way to get on with it also has to do with her response to diabetes, with 4 injections a day her thought is "to just deal with it." She and her husband worked in investment banking, before her election as MP from Maidenhead, a constituency near London, on the third attempt. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph she has described the woman she is often compared to, Angela Merkel of Germany, as someone who doesn't get enough appreciaton. For May Merkel has actually achieved something significant by "steering Germany through a difficult time," and with her negotiation abilities during the eurozone crisis proved her resourcefulness, "hats off to her," says May. ...

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Koichi Hamada, a former professor of economcs at Yale University, is one of prime minister Abe's advisors for the policy called Abenomics. He says the increase in the consumption tax was never part of Abenomics. It was the legacy of the previous Democratic Party of Japan's policies and of prime minister Noda, who pushed for it in the last 2 years of his administration. Nikkei polls in 2011 showed 53% of the public opposed to the doubling of the consumption tax to 10% by 2015 proposed by Noda and passed in 2012. Ichiro Ozawa's group of legislators left the DPJ over this issue. The real force behind the push to double the tax was the Finance Ministry, which warned the Abe government that not increasing the tax would make Japan look fiscally irresponsible. The Finance Ministry appears to have lost sense of the timing and fiscal hawks in the LDP party had gone along with it. The deteriorating global economy in the third quarter has hurt Japanese exports, and the lack of wage increases coupled with the increase in the consumption tax to 8% from 5% made Japanese feel poorer, leading to conditions that exacerbated the situation. Recognizing this Yamamoto says Abe has called the snap election in Dec. 2014, after postponing the second increase in the consumption tax to 10% in 2015 which the Noda legislation set to the future date of 2017. He says Abe had to have the guts to take on the Finance Ministry for Abenomics to work....

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Junichiro Koizumi's decision to support his son for the seat he held in Yokosuka, a naval port an hour from Tokyo. Fackler points out an astounding fact about second generation and third generation leaders in Japanese politics that make it an insider's terrritory. Second generation politicians in parliament make up an unusually large part of the legislature. About 40% of LDP party members of parliament are descendents of prior lawmakers. Of 7 prime ministers, only one was not a son or grandson of a former lawmaker. Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda were grandson and son of former prime ministers. Even the Democratic Party of Japan has its share of second generation members of parliament of about 20%. In this fascinating account of Japanese politics Fackler talks to Mr. Yokokume, a DPJ candidate running against the younger Koizumi, at his campaign offices. With a small fraction of the financing received by the younger Koizumi and voters at the train station telling him this is Koizumi country, Yokokume is worried that politics is for too long closed to outsiders in Japanese politics. Public opinion in Japan describes this in negative terms as depriving Japan of the fresh blood and new ideas from newcomers to politics to renew Japanese government....

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US and Iran accept Pakistan's mediation of the war with a 2 week ceasefire and opening of Straits of Hormuz- April 7 2026. The mediation by prime minister Sharif of Pakistan gave both sides in the war a way to back down. Both sides agreed to talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. As a partner of Pakistan, China may also have a role in setting up a settlement as China and Japan have the most to lose from the Straits of Hormuz being closed, oil prices rocketing up to $115 and higher, and even a prolonged shutdown of Hormuz Straits. Both China and Japan get 90% of their imports from Hormuz Straits. Oil prices drop to the $100 level from $115 after the announcement of talks in Islamabad. This is not a long term settlement. After the two weeks US president meets president Xi of China in Beijing shortly afterwards on May 14-15. It is likely that preparations for that trip will involve China and Pakistan working together to get the US and Iran to agree to an extension of the ceasefire. One outcome of this war is as Le Monde has noted- the unreliability of Hormuz supplies and shift to imports from US and Venezuela and other parts of the world for fossil fuels. And with this a renewed effort to reduce the fossil fuels needed by accelerating renewable energy supplies in Europe, India and China. More attention will also be focused on reducing the proliferation of nuclear weapons by all major powers. Removing US involvement in NATO may also turn out to be positive in some ways to bring Russia and US as nuclear powers to better working relationships, and reduce the nuclear arms race and weapons race. For Europe it means meeting needs of Ukraine and improving military capabilities. The overall result may be positive for all countries. The Middle East region will be seen as one in which no powers should get involved in and the Middle East will also find it has squandered its valuable oil dividend in five decades of wars and mismanagement and fall behind the rest of Asia and Europe, the US in economic progress and development. ...

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Ethiopia has about 1.1 million internally displaced people, with only Syria and DRC Congo having more displaced people from conflict. The country of 110 million people has about 80 ethnic groups spread out over 9 provinces with regional nationalism. Drought, corruption, and regional nationalism are major problems.  The Tigray region is showing some unrest as reported in The Times. This comes after peace with Eritrea was made by president Abiy Ahmed for which he was given the Nobel Peace Prize. Many of the changes made by Mr. Ahmed after becoming prime minister in 2019 are being done in solo fashion say critics without being institutionalized or consultative, say critics. As a result the situation in Ethiopia where the EPRDF coalition has ruled since 1991 is still precarious. Under Ahmed EPRDF is making efforts at reform and elections for next year.