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Left party Syriza did better than the government parties in the EU elections. A new parliamentary election would have to be called if prime minister Samaras cannot find the 180 votes needed to elect a new president in Feb. 2014. Syriza is calling for writeoff of some of the massive 318.6 billion euros of debt owed, 85% of it to France, Germany and other foreign governments and IMF. To offset Syriza's popularity Samaras is likely to use the improved confidence of investors in Greece to raise funds on capital markets, and access funds from a Stability Fund. By exiting the IMF program early and not taking 12 billion euros of IMF funds due for 2015-2016, Samaras can take independent steps to revive the Greek economy and reduce the burden of cuts. Greece will run a primary budget surplus before interest payments in 2014, as it did in 2013. GDP is down about 25% and unemployment is at 26%. Anger in the early years reflected in Athens riots, is now replaced with anguish and despair among ordinary Greeks and some public suicides. The current debt repayments is for debt to be repaid to IMF in 10 years and the EU loans in 32 years, with 10 years of interest payments at 1.5%. Even then the debt is already at 178% of GDP, way above the initial target of 124% of GDP set by IMF-EU for 2020. As a backup strategy German officials including Asmussen and Schauble, and ECB's Draghi are meeting with Mr. Tsipras of Syriza to ensure a smooth transition if this becomes necessary, without the uncertainty in financial markets created by earlier Greece elections....

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Bill Spindle of the WSJ describes the Iranian Quds military organization led by Suleimani that operates alongside the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon as Iran intervenes in regional conflicts across borders. Using the militia and Quds Iran is supporting the Assad regime in Syria, and fighting Islamic State in Iraq. Quds has also supported Shiites in Yemen. The problem with the interventions may be that they may have created new problems from which Iran has gained little. The intervention on the side of the Assad regime created an opening for Sunnis supporting Islami State insurgency in both Syria and Iraq, creating another problem for Iran, and weakening the Shiite led government in Baghdad with the loss of Mosul Iraq's second largest city. The cost is in tens of billions of dollars for the intervention at a time when the Iranian economy is suffering from tighter sanctions because of an expanding nuclear development effort. Suleimani is head of the Quds military force, and Alaeddin Bouroujerdi is head of the foreign policy and national security committee in Iran's parliament, who says Iran is now a powerful force in the region. But at a heavy price and complicating the effort of Sunnis and Shiites to live side by side for centuries in the Middle East. There are no serious benefits for the Iranian people suffering from severe shortages at home, a devaluing currency, cost to subsidize other countries, getting into and exacerbating military conflicts. Prime minister Rouhani says- "Until when should our economy subsidize our policies? Lets have our foreign policy subsidize our economy, and see what happens." ...

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Smaller companies are being squeezed by rapidly escalating costs as costs are going up as fast as oil prices, and face tighter emissions rules in Alberta's oil sands projects. Some projects now cost 2 to 3 times the original projections and there is a severe labor shortage. Even the big players will find it difficult and expensive. To meet the stringent emissions rules, as Prime Minister Harper signs on to new international greenhouse emissions targets, Shell may have to use a technology that captures CO2 from the plants that process the oil sands and store the gas underground. This costs $120 a ton, and would cost Shell upwards of $2 billion a year just to capture and store the CO2, for the 15-20 million tons of CO2 that would be emitted when it increases production to 770,000 barrels a day. The cleanup from oil sands processing is costly because processing is very pollution intensive. Production of one barrel from these oil sands is 3 times more polluting than producing conventional oil. Synenco Energy, which had a project in partnership with China's Sinopec for mining and processing the oil sands called Northern Lights for $10.8 billion, called off the project last year because of all these hurdles, slashed its work force, and decided it may sell the company. Currently 1.1 million barrels a day come from the Alberta oil sands. 2020 output was expected to rise to 4.3 million barrels a day. But now this looks too optimistic. CAPP forecests 3.8 million barrels a day, but even this may be on the high side. ...

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Prime minister Modi says India is achieving its aggressive climate change goals and has set the goal of 450 gigawatts from renewable energy by 2030. Solar energy will play a key role. A new Green Hydrogen Mission will be set up for a quantum leap in hydrogen. 

Indian railways will be a zero carbon emitter by 2030. Indian Railways is moving forward to achieve 100% electrification. CNG, PNG networks will span the whole country. 

He said India imports 1.2 trillion rupees of fossil fuels. Renewable energy will reduce this import bill and release resources for other vital investments for India's rapid modernization goals.

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India replaced a patchwork of 15 state and federal taxes with a unified single Goods and Services Tax to ease the hurdles for businesses to operate nationwide across state boundaries. This is a major a accomplishment for the Modi government as it is expected to increase economic growth by between 0.5% to 2%, according to experts. This removes the obstacles to growth and doing business when companies had to comply with a maze of different tax policies by individual states. Ironically the GST was introduced by the Congress party government in 2011, but opposed by opposition parties then and the Congress party in opposition now in the upper house, Rajya Sabha. By winning the support of smaller parties the Modi government was able to reduce the influence of the Congress party and get the constitutional amendment passed for the single GST tax system replacing the old patchwork taxes. The amendment has to be approved by the majority of state legislatures in India and by the president. Parliament must pass legislation to setup the new tax system, and state legislature pass their legislation. Issues at what rate to set up the GST remain to be solved, with the need to avoid sparking inflation and thereby hurting slow job growth with millions of young people entering the job market each year. ...

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Information from cables by former US amassador Eric Edelman, about Mr Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey, and 8 Swiss bank accounts. In a cable from 2004, Edelman reports claims that have not been proved about Erdogan's period as Mayor of Istanbul and of having directly benefited from the privatization of state oil refinery compay Tupras. The cables are from the Wikileaks on US diplomacy. Other cables from February 2002 cite Erdogan's close friends and brother as beneficiaries in an Iranian natural-gas pipeline deal.

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British Prime minister Gordon Brown meets bankers from Merrill, Lehman and Chase JP Morgan, Thain, Fuld and Dimon to discuss issues relating to credit recovery, disclosure, valuation, and injecting funds into the market and passing on benefits to mortgage holders and urge banks to bring transparency and disclosure so that writeoffs from offbalance sheet activity can be taken quickly and openly. He is for coordinated international action and the British government is talking with the Bank of England on steps to calm the credit markets.

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This editorial opinion in BBC News points to a Russian miscalculation on how its involvement in the U.S. elections would be seen in the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congress voted for stronger sanctions on Russia with only 5 members in the Senate and the House of Representatives voting against sanctions- an overwhelming vote in favor of sanctions. This means future policy on Russia will be determined by the U.S. Congress, and with bipartisan support for such policies. President Trump reluctantly signed the bill, saying it took away from executive authority. Russia had hoped its efforts in favor of Trump would lead to an easing of sanctions, not grasping the role of Republicans in Congress who see interference in the democratic process in the U.S. in the same way as Democrats.

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The full text of the letter is given here. In this letter the U.S. sets out some important facts about events that happened during the coronavirus crisis during the crucial 4 month period from December 2019 to March 2020. Every week lost in this time due to reasons of a lack of transparency, openness meant hundreds of thousands of people more infected and tens of thousands of deaths worldwide. There are questions of transparency, of openness and this raises questions about the manner in which the World Health Assembly operates with hundreds of small countries in Africa and Asia having votes equal to that of the U.S., India, Brazil, Mexico with votes taken of over 200 countries. The entire election process can now be seen as questionable, when over a billion people in one country alone such as India or hundreds of millions in Brazil and Mexico would have to bear the consequences of poor decisions made by small countries that can be swayed in one direction or another based on political bias and other considerations that have nothing to do with global health.  At the conclusion of the letter by the U.S. to the current WHO shaped by a controversial election in 2017 the following is stated about the standards set by Gro Harlem Brundtland and which helped the world prevent the SARS crisis which originated in China in 2003 from spreading to the large countries of the world India, Brazil, Mexico, and other such countries in Asia and Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. European Union. "In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director-General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China. She also did not hesitate to criticize China for endangering global health by attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual playbook of arresting whistleblowers and censoring media. Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example." Even this does not come to grips with the flawed way in which the election of WHO head is done. It can no longer be relied on when there is the danger that lack of transparency can emerge in the WHO leadership itself because of a flawed process. It risks endangering the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions in countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, as well as in the relatively small countries of Africa and Latin America where even basic water supplies are at risk but which could tilt elections at the World Health Assembly. Consider that a cyclone just hit the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh on May 20 just as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading. That this region of 1.5 billion people had just 2 votes out of over 200 cast at the World Health Assembly in 2017 shocking. And even these votes cast based on old geopolitical considerations not how good the candidate is, and how good the country he is coming from is in terms of its record  on public health. The irony here is that private foundations in the advanced countries in the U.S. and Europe some of whom are major donors to WHO did not think that more experienced candidates in their own countries with a better record of public health such as in France or Germany are better qualified, in a flawed NGO support mentality left from the Clinton years. Basically the people in these large countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico were disenfranchised, when the austerity policies were consuming the European Union, and the U.S. had just elected a new administration itself groping for ways to reverse years of neglect of public services and infrastructure priorities. They would trust good leaders no matter where they come from, who have a record of transparency, leadership, and all the values we cherish together no matter where we come from. ...

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An independent parliamentary panel in Japan described the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster as a "profoundly man-made disaster." It was sharply critical of TEPCO, the company running the plant, and the Japanese government's response. The investigation chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa said in the report: "What must be admitted- very painfully- is that this was a disaster 'Made in Japan,' its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to 'sticking with the program'; our groupism; and our insularity." This comes as a report by TEPCO shifted public attention to "a tsunami beyond our imagination," creating a large credibility gap with the Japanese people, because the public is skeptical about TEPCO's attention to safety during the period leading to the accident. The parliamentary report calls attention to safety factors that were ignored so that companies would be required to take further steps including costly modifications of plant equipment. A critical flaw was the lack of a independent safety agency that could enforce safety measures that TEPCO might be reluctant to make because of cost considerations. Astonishing as this may sound, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in Japan is part of the same government ministry that promotes nuclear power, creating a sort of "nuclear bloc," which before the accident connected the safety agency to the bloc. Because of this the panel report says, NISA did not require TEPCO to prepare for a full station blackout- the loss of main and backup power- because the "probability was small." Other factors that need to be addressed are the breakdown in communication and cooperation between the people operating the plant and the people responsible for Japan's nuclear safety. The prime minister's office waited too long before declaring a state of emergency. To come up with the conclusions the panel made 1000 intervews and conducted 900 hours of hearings. The questions left behind by the nuclear accident in Japan are whether Japan should continue with the same level of dependence on nuclear power, whether it should shift out of nuclear power on a gradual basis as Germany is doing ironically after the Fukushima accident while Japan is reactivating its nuclear plants to meet energy needs. If Japan continues with a smaller reliance on nuclear power what changes have to take place for an effective safety agency completely outside the "nuclear bloc," and the series of other changes that have to take place in the nuclear power industry's handling of safety. Public opposition continues to focus on this because of distrust of the nuclear power industry after the accident....

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After a general debacle the Congress party gains ony 44 seats in India's parliament, the lowest since independence in 1947. The BJP party under Modi gains 282 seats and sweeps the north, centre and west of the country, and parts of the south and east. Younger voters in overwhelming numbers voted against inept governance and corruption under the Congress led government of Manmohan Singh and party leader Sonia Gandhi.

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A look at Israel at 70 by the Economist magazine shows a country that has combined early achievements of socialist governments such as free health care system and good education system with the addition of 1 million immigrants from the collapsing Soviet Union, to build a highly trained technically skilled workforce and international companies.  It says the Israeli Arabs are still poor and unable to integrate. With ultra Orthodox Jews they make up 30% of the population, and many of them who do not work. Infrastructure has suffered from lack of investment and public transport is in poor condition. About 4.5 million Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza remain a continuous source of tension with no settlement in sight. The shift of the capital to Jerusalem is recognized by the U.S. Trump administration, a win for Israel, but leaving the divisive politics of Mr. Netanyahu in place. So that with the growing economy, there are social problems and political division which need to be addressed as much as the economy. A problem left for another administration, another leader from possibly a revived Labor party and another day. ...

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The appointment of a idealistic reformer and civic campaigner against government corruption to the post of Finance Minister by Yukio Hatoyama shows the desire of Hatoyama to bring control over the country's bureaucratic structures.