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Indian PM Modi at G-7 Talks in Kananaskis Alberta, Canada June 15-17, 2025. Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand will meet Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar at the talks with Canadian prime minister Carney. Who is Anita Anand? It is said about her grandfather V.A. Sundaram that he passionately fought the British Empire but had a strong interest in English culture and literature. He sent his children to British Universities while helping build with his mentor Mandan Mohan Malaviya, the Banaras Hindu University, and working with Gandhiji for Indian Independence during the Round Table Conference of 1931 in London. Sundaram's son immigrated to Nova Scotia, and his granddaughter is now the Foreign Minister of Canada after having held posts of head of the Treasury Board, Internal Trade, Defense, Procurement during Covid, and is Member of Parliament from Oakville, Ontario. There are 2 million Canadians of Indian descent in Canada, and some like Geeta Anand have connections to the India's and Gandhiji's struggle for Independence against the British Empire. India today with Britain leads the British Commonwealth of Nations.  ...

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Greg Ip of WSJ points out that DJT's tariffs are not fully understood. DJT did not use tariffs in the way he is doing now in his first term. Today Congress understands that it is a negotiating tactic when the US is at a disadvantage with other nations using non tariff and hidden barriers. Mostly all countries except China will accept the tariffs and it generates $240 billion a year to finance US resurgence. In the past US spent years of negotiating to get agreements with recalcitrant countries like Japan or China or the EU. The US just doesn't have that kind of time when it has lost its manufacturing, its shipbuilding, its shipping and ports. The average tariff under Biden was 3%. It now is about 13.4%. DJT strategy is to simply hit all imports with a 10-15% tariff across the board as price for access to the US market and for its defense and military protection- this means EU, Japan, South Korea,Taiwan, India cannot retaliate.  ...

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Swiss dairy farmers cutting cheese production by 5-10% to tackle temporary US tariff rate of 39%.  Gruyere and Emmentaler cheese to US make up 13% of Swiss cheese exports. Swiss dairy farmers are looking for markets in Asia and waiting for trade negotiations to bring tariffs down so that they can bounce back. The cow is sacred in Swiss Alpine country because of its role in cheese and mil chocolate production for overseas markets. Switzerland's cheese exports are $830 million in 2024 compared to about $7 billion for Germany, $6 billion for Netherlands, $5 billion for Italy and $4 billion for France, and $2.5 billion for the US. Overall Switzerland is a small exporter for a country the size of Virginia. Much of the extra milk production from a bumper harvest in 2025 can be converted into baby milk powder  and exported to China and India. In trade negotiations the Swiss became complacent even condescending and took the US market for granted. This will now change as the Swiss now have time for some soul searching on how best to negotiate a deal that respects the interests of both nations. ...

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In a effort to improve nutrition for the urban poor in India, the Indira Canteens formed in 2017 have already made substantial progress in Bengaluru (Bangalore). The canteens backed by the state offer subsidized meals, breakfast costing 5 Indian rupees or 7 U.S. cents, lunch and dinner costing 10 rupees or 14 U.S. cents. About 65 million Indians live in urban slums, a highly marginalized group, many migrants from nearby villages who now live in slums that are often near neighborhoods of the affluent and upper middle class. In addition to low income groups, rickshaw cab drivers, and laborers, this program has benefited school and college students who also use the canteens. More than 170 canteens have been set up in Bengaluru in a hub and spoke model with canteens located near colleges and hospitals and supplied from central kitchens nearby. An app gives the menu, nearby locations and takes feedback. It costs the state 16 million euros from a state budget of 26.4 billion euros, and is an imitation of a similar project Amma Canteens in neighboring Tamilnadu state. It reaches 250,000 people a day in Bengaluru. ...

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Gill and Jaiswal get India to 257 for 4 wickets past PM's 11 Australia's 240 all out in a 1 day cricket match in Canberra.

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Cem Ozdemir, Baden-Wurttemberg State Premier, with roots in Turkey born in Stuttgart area (parents came to Germany in the 1960's). Cem Ozdemir is exceptional in his popularity in an affluent German state. The 2026 state election campaign was run with focus on Ozdemir, and he did well in his debate with the CDU leader in the state. He led his party to over 30% of the vote. A third of working class voters gave the AfD their vote and it made it to 19% of the vote. The CDU came in second with a half percentage point below the Greens at 29.5%. Ozdemir was pre school educator and has a degree in psychology before he joined the Greens party. Under Chancellor Schroeder he was domestic spokesperson, and under Chancellor Scholz in 2024 he was Agriculture Minister.

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US Forest Service agency plans to relocate it to Utah from Washington DC. The idea is to relocate to the communities it serves by placing 15 state directors to regions NFS serves. Salt Lake City's family focused life, its international airport and its lower cost of living are seen as attractive for recruitment. Utah is also one of the mountain states where large forests are located in the western US. Tom Schultz, head of the Forest Service says -"This is about building a Forest Service that is nimble, efficient, effective and closer to the forests and communities it serves." A network of centers of US Forest Service will also be used to redistribute personnel to regions and states- including ones at Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, Montana, Wisconsin and California.

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1.2 million people left Paris just before the lockdown to places in the countryside from Brittany to Normandy. What happened to these people and the Paris they left behind? There are positive developments- for the first time many have experienced the quiet of the countryside and being close to nature in a way they never did before, realizing now how precious this is. Some families have decided to make a new beginning leaving Paris and starting a new life in another part of the country. This means less stress for the family trying to get their children to the right schools, less stress at work with the new rules on how work will be organized, and a chance to be closer to nature and away from the bustle of the city. Others are returning but aware of how they were perceived. Parisians who stayed say this Paris under lockdown is "everything we need." The city was quiet with an unusual calm, a peaceful environment and neighborhoods that were never like this before. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris is looking for ways to keep some of what was gained such as more cycling and a better lifestyle. She is putting in new bike lanes as quickly as possible for as many kilometres as can be done. Hidalgo vows to keep the city from being overcrowded with cars after reopening May 11. A journalist who was going around this quiet calm Paris says Paris has never been more pleasant than it is now. Who could have imagined that there is something to be learned from adamantine difficulties, from stumbles such as this one. Paris and France were stuck in a problem that they had prepared well for in 2002 with SARS and 2009 with H1N1, having afterwards abandoned the public health precautions during austerity policies and misplaced priorities.      ...

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Has the world missed opportunities for progress in renewables? The 2022 Global Renewable Report by REN21 international policy network answers this question. The renewables accounted for 20% of world's energy use in 2011. In 2021 it advanced only 8 percentage points to 28% over 10 years. This is important because use of coal, oil and gas increased by 4% and carbon emissions by 6% in 2021 with the end of lockdowns from the pandemic and increased energy consumption, according to International Energy Agency.

Something is wrong also in the capital going into subsidies to reduce prices of oil and gas which are $18 trillion for 2018 to 2020, $5.9 trillion in 2020 alone. Compare this with the $366 billion invested in renewables in 2021 and one can see the huge dimensions of the problem facing the world, this planet Earth that we live in.

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The US Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland file the second lawsuit against Google seeking the breakup of Google. It is joined by 8 states in this lawsuit including the states of New York and California. The lawsuit seeks the divestiture of Double Click and other acquisitions that helped Google establish its monopoly in online advertising. It covers the ad brokering business that makes up 12% of Google revenues. 

In filing the lawsuit Attorney General Merrick Garland said:

"For 15 years Google has pursued a course of anticompetitive conduct that has allowed it to halt the rise of rival technologies, manipulate auction mechanics, insulate itself from competition, and forced advertisers and publishers to use its tools.

Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct that has severely weakened if not destroyed competition in the ad-tech industry." 

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India experienced heat waves in March 2022, with the affected areas including Gujarat, Uttarkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh. The IMD, Indian Meteorological Department declared India's first heat wave on March 11, and several heat waves since then.  IMD declares a heat wave when temperatures reach 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit at low elevation. A heat wave is also considered to be taking place when temperatures are 4.5 degrees above normal, with 6.4 degrees called "severe." Senior climate scientists at IMD say heat waves in India are now more frequent and severe with unusual weather conditions in 2022.

2021 and 2022 reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn that South Asia  faces conditions for heat waves and humidity related heat stress in coming decades. Marine heat waves are also more frequent.

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A country smaller than the US state of Connecticut will host the first World Cup Soccer games in the Arab world from November 21 to December 18. England will play US , the day after Thanksgiving.

Group A  Netherlands with Qatar, Ecuador, Senegal

Group B   England with Iran, US, Wales or Scotland/Ukraine

Group C.  Argentina with Saudi, Mexico, Poland

Group D   France with Peru, Australia/United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Tunisia

Group E  Spain, Germany, Japan with Costa Rica or New Zealand

Group F  Belgium with Canada, Morocco, Croatia

Group G.  Brazil with Serbia, Switzerland, Cameroon

Group H   Portugal with Ghana, Uruguay, South Korea 

Defending champion France has it better in its group. 

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Russia is expected to earn nearly $321 billion from energy exports in 2022, up more than a third from 2021. This more than anything else is supporting the currency. It also means Europe will continue to buy Russian oil and gas through 2022. The rest of the reason experts say for the resilience of the rouble is  that Russia has put in place capital controls and raised interest rates to 20%. This they say is an artificial boost and the rouble is likely to weaken in the long term. 

The steps take to keep the value of the rouble and also the damage to the trading and economic relationship Russia had with the world after invasion will reduce growth in Russia. Growth of 2.8% in 2022 will turn into 10-15% contraction in the economy in 2022. 

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The new tiered system of tighter restrictions passed in the British parliament 291 to 78 with 51 Tory rebels voting against and 10 Tories abstaining. Labour abstained from the vote getting it to pass. Tory rebels are voting with their constituents in Tory seats in parliament that have lower rate from coronavirus and see the restrictions hurting the lives of people in their areas. The prime minister had to make a special plea to them to get it passed including promising to review in granular detail these areas which needed lifting restrictions because of low infection rates.

Other steps the government is taking are to seek emergency approval of vaccines with the first approval done for Pfizer vaccine. This means Britain will be the first country to start vaccinations in 24-48 hours- December 3 or December 4.

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Nineteen year old Belgian Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo roundtrip around the world. Her parents are avid pilots and she learned to fly at the age of 14. She took off in a microlight plane Shark Aero on Aug 18 and landed after 52,000 kilometres of flying in Flanders on Jan. 20. She went through UK, Greenland, Americas, Siberia, Southeast Asia, India, Saudi Arabia and Europe. In that journey she went through freezing temperatures over Siberia, smog in India and wildfires over the US northwest.

She plans to study electrical engineering and would like to see more girls taking interest in science and engineering, and in flying planes.

Her approach was bold and straightforward. It was a trip that she thought was- impossible, expensive, complicated, dangerous, a logistical nightmare, so she never thought about it twice. 

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Americans in retirement are able to rebuild their savings with interest on money market funds of over 5%. This is the result of 5% percentage points of consecutive rate increases by Jay Powell's Fed. In addition about $121 billion went to savers as they faced $151 billion in higher interest rate costs on mortgages and loans. The result with a strong labor market and lower inflation of about 3% is an economy that is resilient and can provide the 5 or 7 plus  years of growth needed for America to meet the challenges it faces with its allies in the EU, Asia and Latin America, Africa- to tackle climate change, to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure, to invest in education and healthcare, to improve worker incomes, and build its manufacturing at home into a strong thriving sector for good paying worker incomes.

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A government shutdown looms in the U.S. as talks over DACA and immigration collapse between Republicans and Democrats, following a derogatory comment about Haitian immigrants by the president. Earlier talks led to a proposal by Senators Durbin and Graham which offered legalization to Dreamers -children of people illegally entering the country- a 10-12 year path to citizenship, their parents offered 1-3 year renewable work permits, and $1.6 billion in funding for a wall or border fence on the Mexican border. President Trump rejected that proposal.

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Travelers landing at Schipol airport in Amsterdam book their flights at the airport to fly right back to the U.S. after president Trump announces a ban on flights from 26 European countries. President Trump did not wait to coordinate with other European countries. Only Britain and Ireland flights are allowed at this time. The ban restricts European travelers from 26 countries for 30 days beginning March 13 at 11.59 pm. U.S. citizens coming from these 26 countries will be required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in the U.S.

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The euro approaches parity with the U.S. dollar by November 2016, with the surge in the dollar following the U.S. presidential election of 2016. The euro closed at $1.058 on Nov 17, 2016. It was down 4% following the election. The euro was down in early 2015. This time it is chiefly down against the dollar. This time both monetary and fiscal policy is expected to diverge with the EU, and inflation expectations are up in the U.S. Analysts expect parity to be reached in 2017. 

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The new cabinet of prime minister Valls in France includes Segolene Royal as Ecology minister. Michel Sapin, labor minister in the outgoing cabinet, becomes finance minister. Sapin was finance minister under the Mitterand government in the 1990's. A critic of austerity policies Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, continues in this position with a wider role. After losing badly in local elections in March 2014, president Hollande has asked the new cabinet to combine planned tax cuts for businesses with efforts to increase spending power of households. Finance Minister Sapin faces the task of convincing the EU and Germany that France should have more leeway in plans for deficit reduction to boost its economy and especially reduce unemployment. Unemployment is at a high of 11%. Sapin is seasoned in the ways of operating in EU circles. In his role as finance minister in the Mitterand administration he pushed for the passing of the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty that laid the baiss for the euro currency....

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The example of airline restructuring after September 11, 2001, as a guide for the Detroit automakers rescue package.

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Baidu's acquisition of mobile app company 91 Wireless for $1.7 billion.