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Russian rights activist Navalny wins over a quarter of the votes in Moscow's mayoral election. The search for pluralistic democratic system in Russia and a truly functioning multi party democratic system continues.

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A open conversation with the NYT's Baker, Schmidt and Haberman by president Trump in mid July 2017. This conversation of the president with the NYT is remarkable for its frankness about people close to the president during the election campaign, particularly Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Sessions was the only leading Senator in Congress who supported Mr. Trump from the beginning. Southern states came out heavily for Mr. Trump as part of the traditional Republican base. Trump says of Sessions that had he known Sessions was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation he would not have appointed Sessions as the new Attorney General. About Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein Trump says he should never have appointed Mueller as Special Counsel. The president also says Mueller should stay only with information related to Russia and not stray from that to delve into Trump's finances. During the election efforts were made to get Mr. Trump to disclose more about his finances as a real estate businessman- most of these efforts failed and not much is known about president Trump's finances. The president says he never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, yet he left open this possiblility, according to the NYT, as the president feels it has affected the first 6 months of the Trump presidency. This interview with president Trump was published on July 20, 2017, the day after an editorial in the WSJ by the Editorial Board of the Journal on July 19, 2017, calling for transparency from president Trump on the Russia investigation. This was an exceptional and powerful editorial by its editorial board telling president Trump that he must tell everything he knows now or face the risk of losing public confidence, and risk his presidency. It said that president Trump was wrong to think that his larger than life personality and social media role could insulate him from the effects of this lack of transparency. ...

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Interview with German Greens party politician, Jurgen Trittin, who could be finance minister in a Greens supported government. Trittin says his views are similiar to that of the IMF which is calling for debt relief for Greece. If elected in a Greens-SDP coalition, Trittin says, he would end the policy of purely cutting state expenditures.

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An account of how the Burmese military works to maintain control of the country for the last 45 years since 1962 when it took over the government. How it has maintained itself in power by separating the military from the rest of the Burmese people, by hiring young people training them in the military's mission to rule the country and rotating divisions across the country to prevent any relationships forming between the Burmese people and the soldiers. This is one of the few accounts of the way the Burmese military functions. But there is a lot more behind it as Burma has had a violent past after independence from Britain and violent attempts to seize power. But most of the world outside knows so little or cares little about it because of its isolation from the rest of the world. The violence against the Buddhist monasteries raises this violence to a new level and China's rulers being Communist may have no idea what they are getting into. By alienating the country and its people completely with violence against monks and monasteries is it possible China, the Burmese military's main supporter, may lose the affections of the Burmese people for generations. And China's may lose respect across Asia and the world when it has so little at stake except the illinformed view of geopolitical players that controlling regions around the world confers strength when the global economy and so many other things are important in today's world. ...

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The designers finally get their say to bring a new vehicle to the market which is something quite different. Sales tends to be conservative and in this case the concept vehicle for the Flex was first shown at the 2005 International Auto Show in Detroit. Usually this is where so many people take different shots at it that by the time engineering, sales and production have modified it does'nt look the same. This is on situation in which the concept vehicle made it all the way to a production model at the New York Auto Show in 2007. The designers were able to sell it as a new kind of crossover idea to seat a family and draw customers who were dumping their large SUV's fpr other vehicles. As some designers see it a mix of the Mini Cooper and a Ford 1940's classic "Woody". Its one of the bold moves by Ford. Mulally after he took the CEo position at Ford supported the idea and its due to be in showrooms in summer 2008. See the link to the article on how much difficulty Ford (and GM) are having getting people to come to the showrooms and how Ford has had to resort to novel and extreme ways of getting people to test drive Ford cars and talk about them. What better way to do this than to come up with something new in design and let the product do the talking. ...

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This BBC report of Queen Elizabeth since 1953 when she took on the leadership of an impoverished nation that was no longer an Empire, shows how she has responded to one change after another till the coronavirus. She has appeared almost as a rock of ages for Britain in the midst of upheavals.  Here are some of her own words of these periods of change. "The traditional values etched across our history equip us well for this age of change." On the Commonwealth of Nations an entirely new conception in 1950's. "To that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life." Warning of triumphalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, aware of the pitfalls of capitalism and socialism now more obvious than ever in 2022- "We, who claim to be of the free world, should examine what we really mean by freedom, and how we can ensure that, once in place, it is there to stay." On other happenings standing back from the fray, trying to filter out the "ephemeral from the enduring." "Distance can lend an extra dimension to judgement, giving it a leavening of moderation and compassion - even of wisdom - that is sometimes lacking in the reactions of those task it is in life to offer instant opinions." For Elizabeth, in the midst of all the changes what truly mattered was "the regular worthy rhythm of life."   ...

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Yun Hua writes about perceptions of ordinary Chinese about the Cultural Revolution period in Communist China under Mao.

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Global austerity measures could lead to a weaker and slower recovery in the absence of other policy actions to tackle the deficits in the medium term.

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China's limited monetary and fiscal options in 2012, with the housing bubble limiting the option of increasing construction spending to spur growth, and inflation limiting monetary policy. The central bank's decision to reduce the reserve requirement by 0.5% is not expected to do much for economic growth, as there is enough money to lend. The problem is that there is not enough demand for loans in the current environment.

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's inspector general points to significant flaws in reporting of equipment problems at U.S. nuclear plants. There is ambiguity in the reporting requirements, with one section Part 21 of the reporting law requiring reporting defects that can cause a loss of safety functions, and another section requiring reporting only the actual loss of safety functions. As a result 28% of the nuclear plants are not reporting safety defects in equipmment unless this leads to an actual breakdown. This represents an unacceptable level of risk for nuclear plant operations, and the inspector general calls for increasing the margin of safety. In fact the NRC is aware of these lapses in reporting since 2009. NRC has identified 24 such instances between Dec 2009 and Sept 2010, and yet no penalties have been assessed or corrective action taken to make the law clear about the reporting requirements. The lack of a good reporting system complicates things further, because early indentification of defects and defect resolution for equipment problems is critical to effective quality assurance for nuclear operators. Safety defect spotted at one plant could come up in other plants. For this reason the Inspector General's report calls this "a substantial safety hazard."...

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The Obama administration's Small Business Jobs Act of Sept 2010 set aside $30 billion to stimulate lending to small business. Only 7% of 7700 U.S. lenders have signed up for the program so far. The deadline to sign up to participate has been extended from March 31 to May 16, 2011, by the Treasury Department. Banks have been hesitant to sign up for various reasons: banks say they see a stigma to taking these loans, and need additional staff to handle the extra paperwork. Banks say there isn't enough demand for loans from small business, or that there is enough capital already to handle larger better collateralized borrowers with the others considered too risky anyway.

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Krugman points to the mounting toll of joblessness in America in 2011. He calls the joblessness- six million Americans out of work for more than 6 months and four million jobless for more than one year- America's overriding problem. More than the deficits which he sees as a problem beyond the immediate next couple of years, and the dollar which he says has seen drops larger than the current one during the Bush and Reagan administrations and which presents an opportunity to increase exports. He says the scare stories may distract from the major problem unemployment presents for Americans.