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Baxter State, Park Adirondacks Park and other State Parks in the US. Adirondacks Park in upstate New York is huge 6 million acres with 3.4 million acres of private land and 100 small towns, 2.6 million acres of public land, 3000 lakes and 46 peaks over 4000 feet. It was set up as "forever wild" by the state constitution in 1892. Nearby is Maine's highest peak Mount Katahdin at 5300 feet in Maine Baxter State Park.

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500 modern Vande Bharat trains at a cost of about $6.5 billion are expected to be part of India's Budget for 2023. This is part of the effort to modernize India's rail system used by tens of millions of people under a modernized system of mobility.

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In this report in TOI, Vijay Gokhale, former foreign secretary, points out the big shift taking place in how Germany like the US is paying attention to its mistake of overconcentrating its supply base and investments in one country, China. This type of overinvestment in one country does not make sense for a country for its supply chain, until one accepts that China succeeded to a great extent in building next generation infrastructure, logistics, and ease of manufacturing in China. India is only now learning this lesson- and Modi's experience in Gujarat stemming from studying China's evolution as an industrial nation. Lessons that are now being applied all over India to do, to build the kind of next generation infrastructure and logistics that would make it attractive to make in India and invest in India for Germany and the US. Gokhale describes the intense discussions that are taking place in the inner circles of all three parties, Merkel's CDU out of power questioning Merkel's policies of building so much concentration of business in China, the SPD questioning why it went along, and the Greens knowing that India is their natural partner and the one partner that thinks and acts most like the Greens Baerbock and Habeck. Baerbock is critical of the sale of a stake in Hamburg port to China. No other German leader is like Baerbock, who feels really at home in India in a way that few German leaders have during her recent visit. There is so much change in the Biden administration and in the three major parties thinking about China and how the future of the western nations rests squarely on India's shoulders and its young aspiring population of 1.2 billion, that even India under Modi's leadership for technological change and infrastructure has not kept pace with these changes. This is why Gokhale calls it tectonic. ...

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India's WPI, the Wholesale Price Index, is up 1.3% in March 2023, the lowest in 29 months. This is likely to continue for the next 3 months and remain below 1%.

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Bernanke sees a more difficutl time ahead in 2008 but he also with Paulson at Treasury thinks the economy will hold up positively with lower growth.

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Andhra Pradesh on India's southeast coastline with 25 parliament seats and Bihar in India's north and east with 40 parliament seats and long history of being part of the BJP led National Democratic Alliance are now key to a five year term for prime minister Modi in India. Modi's BJP party won 240 seats out of 543 in parliament.  Chandrababu Naidu of Telegu Desam Party won 135 seats in the state Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh (NDA), all but 18 seats. It wins 22 of 25 seats in India's parliament (NDA). It also shows the wide swings in Indian elections that no party is safe. Telgu Desam Party (NDA)  won on the platform of a double engine government at state and federal levels to create jobs and modernize its rural agricultural economy. In the last 2019 election the Opposition YSRCP party won almost all the seats in the state assembly and in 2024 lost almost all the seats. In 1995 Telegu Desam Party joined Atal Bihari Vajpayee's BJP to form a government and during elections that followed for Vajpayee's 5 year term (1999-2004) he was part of the NDA. He has served three terms as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, two terms before Telengana was formed and one term after Telengana split off from Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh is centered around the Vizag region on India's south eastern coastline and the cities of Vijayawada and Guntur with a 1000 kilometer coastline on Bay of Bengal. ...

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US vice president Kamala Harris's grandfather was in the Indian Civil Service and was sent to Zambia as an adviser to president Kenneth Kaunda to help with settlement of refugees fleeing Southern Rhodesia during apartheid. She revisits Lusaka and the place where she lived.

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Between 2016 and 2019 Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado had 40% increase in visitors. It has only 4 toilets in at Longs Peak 14,000 feet high, a frequently visited spot by hikers, each miles apart. The park is itself 265,000 acres and with Denali, Alaska, Mt. Rainier, Washington state, one of the top frequently visited park areas in America. Some of the worst work in the world is getting the waste in these older abandoned toilets which don't work anymore out of there as this can breed some of the bacteria that could harm people, animals and vegetation.  TecToilet at $4000 a piece has provided a temporary solution being used at some parks. This is to separate the urine from the waste which proves to be a breeding ground for bacteria, and sent the waste separately to a deposit container, which is taken out by helicopter. This solution is very costly. The parks not well funded and having faced cutbacks from a bad staffing situation to begin with end up being behind on needed facilities and maintenance. The 3 decade waste of capital led by Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and cheered by official media, has to take responsibility for this deplorable and absolutely crazy situation in America. More people are visiting national parks and national forests, and open backcountry in the mountains, especially after the pandemic, yet the jewels of America have to justify essential funding?  India is tackling the situation of toilets in a big way for sanitation in the country after centuries of neglect. Millions of toilets are being built at low cost. What is needed is for Indian engineers to come up with a design for India's own national parks, including the parks in the Himalayan regions, which have the same problems facing the national parks of America for toilet waste. Other countries in Europe need to be researched for solutions that may already exist and new designs made at lower cost in India that can tackle the decontamination and disposal of the waste on site without the cost of helicopters taking it out.      ...

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Changes in the venture capital industry in 2013 to smaller funds with fewer partners, and focussed on fewer areas. Investors are turning down request for funds from venture capital firms because of poor returns. Other than a couple of brand name firms the venture capital firms have not produced high returns. Ignition Partners is reducing the size of its fund to $150 million from the $400 million raised in 2007. When compared with the return on the stock market the returns produced by the venture capital industry do not look attractive. U.S. venture capital funds produced returns of 6.1% for the last ten years ending September 2012, according to Cambridge Associates LLC. Compare this with Nasdaq Composite Index 10.3% increase and the Dow Jones Indusrial Average 8.6% increase during this period, and one sees why investors are becoming more discerning, moving away from the venture capital firms. The old approach of venture capital firms was based on hit and miss by putting many companies in a basket and hoping for a big hit. Over time the value added to the startup companies by venture firms has declined. There are fewer companies which have the potential for big hits and much of the technological landscape for the internet and software revolution has been filled, leading to one or two big hits such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Large developments for new technological innovation are coming from established companies such as Google and Apple, because of the huge software developments compressed into shorter periods and the investments required....

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Zhang Juwei of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences believes that the overall fertility rate is at most 1.6. A recent report by CASS says the figure of 1.8 used by the government is an overestimation. CASS says its data shows the fertility rate for migrant workers is about 1.14, much lower than people think. The policy for one-child only was introduced 30 years ago, when the fertility rate was close to 3, having fallen to that level from close to 6 in 1960. Does the policy serve China well in the future as China's population ages and there are more older people for younger workers to support, is a question raised by critics in the Chinese media. China's government family planning officials say it applies to 40% of the people, considering the two child policy operating in some areas of the country.

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Susie Dent on Vocabulary in decline in UK ( and the US) as screen time takes time from learning new words. “There is a huge perception that screen time is having a negative impact on vocabulary, and I think that’s because it is taking away from reading time. The digital lives of our children are taking a greater and greater role and reading certainly is in decline." Dent cites a 2023 Oxford University Press report that 40% of children had fallen behind in vocabulary development. She says there is areal danger that vocabulary development is suffering for children and that this impacts learning for children.

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Internships in 2026 -63%of interns hired at companies convert to full time jobs at the same company. Companies prefer to hire full time people they already know and have trained.