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This report in The Times shows that small polling errors can swing the election either way into large wins for Republicans or Democrats. A polling error of just 3 points is all it takes for a big win on either side in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

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Data from India in a large study shown in Science magazine show useful findings. Only a small number of people cause the wide spread of the coronavirus. This study covers the two southern states of Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh with total population of 128 million. Contact tracers in the 2 states reached about 3 million contacts for the 435,000 coronavirus cases. Researchers analyzed data from 85000 of these cases where enough data was available with 600,000 contacts. Some interesting findings are- About 5300 children infected 2500 contacts among other school age children showing children in schools can spread the virus. About 5% of the people account for 80% of the infections detected by contact tracing. 71% of the people did not seem to have transferred the virus to someone else. Median hospital stay is only 5 days much less than in the U.S. The number of deaths in India is much smaller than the U.S. less than 100,000. 5.2 million people out of 6.2 million people have recovered.       ...

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Lockdowns implemented in Madrid lead to protests from poorer neighborhoods such as Puente de Vallecas. Instead of lockdown of the whole city of Madrid the city government has imposed a selective lockdown of areas with high infection rates. There are also differences between the regional and federal governments.

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How global travel and ultra cheap flights in Europe have seeded this pandemic is the subject of this report in NYT. The Austrian resort here is one of many such ski resorts. An earlier report showed how 21 million tourists visiting beach resorts in Croatia on the Adriatic are spreading the coronavirus in a second wave in Europe in September. From Europe it is a short step to the U.S. and other countries. See in Links.

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More than one in four houses in Australia have solar panels on the rooftops. In Queensland and New South Wales half of homes have solar panels. This includes Sydney. This is more than most places, including California, Germany, U.S. Britain, France. In California less than 10% of utilities customers have solar panels in their homes. Rooftop solar provides 5% of its electricity in Australia, compared to 1% in the U.S. 

Much of this is because of states offering incentives and it saves money for homeowners. Australian conservatives see this as a way to promote their rugged individualism.

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Born 1904, he joined the Indian Independence Movement in 1926. Union Home minister, and then prime minister to succeed Jawaharlal Nehru in 1965, Lal Bahadur Shastri was the first Indian prime minister to take up the cause of Indian agriculture. It was under his leadership and with the kind help of U.S. president Lyndon Johnson that the Green Revolution was launched in India after periodic famines in northern India for many centuries of its history. 

As Transport Minister he introduced new rules for woman drivers and conductors in public buses and trains.

This story in The Hindu says he had to swim across the Ganges river with the books tied to his head to attend school. Shastri was known for his exceptional humility in public life. 

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One of the lessons of the pandemic is to take society back to basic priorities such as wellness, wellbeing, lifestyles that promote wellness, eating right and exercizing. During the last three decades obesity has emerged as a problem in the U.S. and Europe and in all parts of the world. It is simply harder to fight the virus carrying on so much extra weight. Much needs to be done in school with education on food in children's books and in classrooms.

Eating more fruits and vegetables, ancient and healthy grains is a must do for all. To do this the supply chain of locally produced healthy foods has to function well , and more acreage has to be devoted to get the supplies we need.

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The show Apprentice" on television gave Mr. Trump his first first boost in front of a large audience and the television shows generated $427 million in cash earnings. Trump was more successful on television with his personality and drive than in the real estate business he inherited from his father. Much of his ability to draw the attention of large crowds with short sentences and knowledge of issues that he wants to convey comes from these years on television.

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Pictures of Sheikh Sabah of Kuwait in peacekeeping roles as a diplomat for the Gulf region including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states. He passed away at the age of 91. The pictures include one with British prime minister Alec Douglas of Britain in 1964 three years after gaining independence from Britain in 1961. With the renewed effort for peace in the Gulf region his role is better appreciated not only as an ally of the U.S. but also as a diplomat keeping good relations for the Gulf states and neighbors. He was foreign minister since the sixties and ruler since 2006. He was one of an older group of leaders in the region who operated with a slow ruling style but sought consensus. During the divisions in the Gulf Cooperation Council with Qatar splitting from the rest in 2016, Sabah was active in keeping the Gulf states together. When he was born in 1929 oil had not been discovered in Kuwait and the area the size of New Jersey was run by his father as part of a dynasty that ruled for 3 centuries. Kuwait has 6% of the world's oil reserves. ...

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The daily commute has has defined the start of the day and the end of the day clearly in a way that is not happening with working from home during the coronavirus. Microsoft Teams manager Ms. Janardhan is looking at ways of modifying its Teams package of workplace collaboration tools so that users can better demarcate these two parts of the day. The virtual commute feature is a way to focus on wellness as a priority. It puts more attention on how people feel and think in different parts of the day and even includes a 10 minute meditation session option for the end of the day. The program now asks people how they are feeling and if they are feeling overwhelmed the virtual commute assistant will ask if they want to block time off in their calendars to focus on destressing activities or stuff they enjoy doing, even just taking a break. Marking the start and the end of the day has become more difficult for many while working from home. Half of the chat volume on Teams happens between 5pm and midnight in the last 6 months up 48% from months before the pandemic. More and more companies are finding that organizational resilience depends on employee wellbeing when working from home during the coronavirus which brings up new stresses that people never faced before. ...

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NTT Japan's largest telecommunications company plans to pay a 41% premium on shares of the part of Docomo that it does not own. NTT owns 66% of shares of Docomo. The $40 billion deal is designed to speed up decision making and compete in world markets. New prime minister Yoshihide Suga is pushing for lowering of high mobile phone service prices. Japanese government owns one third of NTT. This move will enable NTT Docomo to act on this important step of lowering prices as Japan reorganizes its business sector so that it can compete effectively with China and the U.S.

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The new prime minister of Japan Yoshihide Suga is critical of the three phone carriers forming an oligopoly and keeping prices for mobile phone service in Japan very high. Another criticism is that Japan has failed to compete in phone technologies by staying out of world markets that would improve its competitive spirit. Japan has failed to keep up with China and other countries in mobile technologies. 

As part of the first step to change this and make NTT competitive by entering world markets, NTT is paying a 41% premium on the part of NTT Docomo that it does not own in a $40 billion deal. NTT chief Sawada sees this as a way to speed up decision making, as he sees a crisis in Japan's struggle to compete with China and the U.S. in world markets.

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A Brooklyn, New York resident who created his own job during the pandemic. A neighbor gave him a used bike she was getting rid of. He sold it online for $400. This gave him an idea- he now pulls bikes from garages and barns all over the U.S. and restores them to new. Because of the virus related manufacturing slowdowns for bicycles, and people preferring bikes to trains demand has jumped. U.S. bicycle sales at $2.6 billion up 81% and use of city bicycles up 141% in New York city for Citibike- with single trip pass buyer at 516,000. Mr. Van Scyvoc a 33 year old Brooklyn resident collects bikes around Cleveland where his father a retired firefighter lives and takes them by pickup truck to a bike stand he has at Fort Green park in Brooklyn. There he sells bikes bought for $80 to $250 for $300 to 500. First he has to have them washed clean and then serviced in Brooklyn by an IT engineer who now repairs bikes.

 

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Mr. Trump gained much confidence in his success playing the star role in Mark Burnett produced show "The Apprentice." He did this from 2004 to 2015. In 2011 he gained more experience on a political show on Fox news by doing a segment on "Fox and Friends." Much of his ability to talk to large crowds comes from this period. His earnings amounted to $427 million, about half a billion dollars. His real estate business was not one of his strengths as he took too  many risks and operating in a volatile market environment in luxury hotels produced large losses. Yet he gained a keen sense of what was popular in the public imagination and how successive administrations of Democrats and Republicans from Clinton to Obama and Bush had missed the devastated American manufacturing from imports and shift of manufacturing to China. This had affected small towns and communities across the American landscape and the success on television gave Mr. Trump the confidence to champion their cause. By 2016 this had gone so far as to enable Mr. Trump to rewrite the focus of the Republican party to take up this cause shifting the party from deficit cutting to spending on infrastructure to rebuild America.  ...

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The debate in France about the need for a new policy to boost manufacturing at home. The planned closure of a Bridgestone factory in Bethune in northern France in 2021 provides another example of the effect on local communities with closing of plants. The French government has pledged to relocate more production back to France. About 15 billion euros of a 100 billion euros package to fight the effects of the pandemic on the economy will go to relocate sectors and boost local manufacturing and jobs.

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The additional 50 kilometres of bicycle lanes are leading to a surge of people on bicycles in the French capital.

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Situations in school reopening where students take virtual classes in classrooms where teachers are exposed to coronavirus. Many schools are having teachers work remotely in these situations.

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This report in the WSJ shows how Amy Barrett, the new Supreme Court nominee, has managed to combine parenting with her career as a Notre Dame professor and judge on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A lot of help from her husband, a flexible workplace, living in a smaller town South Bend, Indiana, and a willingness to go with nonconformity, make it possible. She is up at 4 or 5 am to exercize. Blending different worlds is part of this. She can go from work to run an activity for the children. She also views raising children as the activity that has the "greatest impact on the world," so that her career is seen in a bigger context of life.

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This NYT report says Mr. Trump paid not much  in taxes in 10 of the prior 15 years because of losses sustained by many of the projects in the hotel business.