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The NYT's Sanger and Gordon give readers glimpses of what happened inside the negotiating rooms at the hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the outlines of the nuclear agreement with Iran were laid out. Wendy Sherman led the American negotiating team, and Javad Zarif led the Iranian side.

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Timothy Egan vists the west coast of Ireland, near Dingle, where David Lean filmed "Ryan's Daughter," and sees abandoned half-finished houses. One in eight houses in Ireland sits empty he says, as the excesses of the boom years now are there for all to see.

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David Brooks on the ground in Wardak province of Afghanistan, points to the efforts to restore the indigenous government and community structures that will be so important to restoring to Afghanistan what was lost in years of war, and which has left a vacuum in which the insurgents flourish.

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As Britain goes to general elections in May 2015, one of the issues in the election will be new referendum on membership in the European Union promised by prime minister David Cameron. Cameron has said he will negotiate a better deal for Britain in the EU and hold a referendum by 2017. The last referendum was in 1975, in which two thirds of voters supported membership in the EU. British disapproval of the EU has increased with immigration from newer EU members since the 2008 financial crisis, and increasing unemployment. Some recent polls show 42% voting to stay in the EU, and 39% opting out, suggesting a close vote. Negotiations for better terms mean treaty change, which would be opposed by France. Germany's Merkel also opposes changes on the immigration rules that do not allow free movement of labor. Other EU leaders see Cameron's moves on the EU being an effort to counter the UK Independence Party's push for EU exit, as the UKIP could draw Conservative right wing voters in the 2015 general election. ...

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Britain's National Health Service IT initiative failed because of a top down emphasis and focus on procurement. The project was started by Labor in 2002 and budgeted for 12 billion pounds. Lohr talks with Dr. David Brailer, and Dr. David Blumenthal, who headed the program for health IT in the Bush and Obama administrations, and with Richard Alvarez of Canada Health Infoway, which is the nonprofit corporation setup for conversion to electronic health records in Canada. Dr Brailer says the program in the UK was forced top down on doctors and nurses, and seen as a procurement program, ignoring the human aspects related to doctor preferences. Dr. Blumenthal empasized the need for collaborative effort all the way with doctors and nurses in a program of this kind. The confrontation that resulted from the lack of participation by health care professionals led to failure. Britain's new Cameron government ended the program.

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General David Jones former NATO commander as National Security Adviser, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense, Susan Rice at the United Nations and Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona as secretary of Homeland Security. That is the new foreign affairs team for President Obama.

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WSJ shows how the daughter of David Rockefeller Neva Goodwin and her daughter Kaiser have led the fight against Exxon for not making the change to renewable energy from fossil fuels in time to avert climate change disasters now common worldwide. One of the major problems of the last 50 years since the Reagan administration in 1980 involve oil wealth in the Middle East used to finance wars and US involvement in these wars in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Yemen. It haunts us to this day with conflict in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. This has its origins with John D. Rockefeller  who started the oil company Standard Oil in the 1870's in Cleveland, Ohio, now called Exxon in the US and Esso overseas. A bigger problem has emerged in recent years that remained unnoticed till about 2006 when David Rockefeller, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, met with the head of Exxon for lunch to ask why Exxon was not doing more to invest in green energy and increase awareness of the damage to the environment by fossil fuels. This was the beginning of the dawning realization of the signs of climate change so prevalent 20 years later today in wildfires, drought, extreme heat and fast floods worldwide.   Today's Exxon is a descendent of the companies John D. Rockefeller (Library of Congress site) created by the 1880's to refine oil which he turned into a monopoly by deals with railroad companies to reduce cost of product. In 1888 he created the Anglo American Oil Company later called Esso which is a phonetic rendition of S and O in Standard Oil, which in 1972 was changed to Exxon. Many of the crises of this century have their origins in the activities of Esso and British oil companies in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and the wars that wasted trillions of dollars in American resources through the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama have their origins in the activities of oil companies, and the governments of these countries using oil financed wealth for wars that involved the US. Huge mistakes that combined with neglect of manufacturing the lifeblood of any economy have led to the gradual decline of the US, being reversed for the first time with the decisive and complete shift made by president Biden so that investments of trillions of dollars can be made to revive the strength of the US economy and the wellbeing of its people. ...

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David Luhnow and Jose de Cordoba interview Luis Videgaray, close economic advisor for Mexico's leading presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto. Elections will be held in July, 2012. Videgaray answers question about the policy agenda if Nieto is elected, covering changes in the oil industry, education, social security, the fight against organized crime.

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British prime minister David Cameron tells the House of Commons- after it is revealed that Barclays management set artificially low LIBOR rates- "We need to take action right across the board." CEO Diamond resigns. This was designed to avert regulator scrutiny of Barclays in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

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The talks for a peace settlement with the Taliban hosted in London in Feb. 2013 by Britain's prime minister, David Cameron. The talks were between Cameron, Pakistan's president Asif Zardari, and Afghanistan president Karzai. The effort is designed to prevent a civil war after the NATO and U.S. withdrawal in 2013-2014.

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Rising home prices are leading to higher property taxes in Colorado. A surge of new people coming to Colorado has meant higher property taxes of much as 40% for those already living in the state. David Chen talked to residents in the state and found a retiree, a former X-Ray technician retired for 20 years, facing a 20% rise in property taxes in Littleton, Colorado, and having to sell some of her stuff to meet the higher cost. For retirees in Colorado and across the Rocky mountain states- where people have moved to from California and the Northeast  paying higher prices for homes- living on Social Security checks is particularly hard these days. In Montana property taxes went up by 40-50% in some counties in 2023. Democrat Governor Polis says just because your home price goes up by 40% does't mean you have 40% more cash to pay taxes, your income may be up 10-12%. For retirees on Social Security checks alone it is only the inflation coverage in those checks. The situation is also true for Arizona and Utah with many newcomers and the trend for hybrid work adding to it. ...

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This is the story of Jackie Robinson who ended segregation in American baseball in 1947. This was a turning point for the US during the Truman administration as the first moves to end segregation were beginning that would be heard during the Kennedy administration. Jerry Brewer describes the Robinson of the 1950's as he became a baseball icon and gave new hope to a new generation of Americans in the post war period. His son David says baseball was Jackie Robinson's way of creating opportunity in America and he did this in a relaxed way, holding back emotions, and keeping his smile against adversity. His wife Rachel 104 years is interviewed in this story and shows the same resilient spirit throughout her life. Brewer writes that Jackie Robinson's is a struggle that goes on, that nostalgia makes understanding difficult obscuring the struggles that got us to this point, and creating an idea that the bad stuff was handled long ago and is no longer there, that problems are exaggerated and society has advanced. Progress he writes is neither adequate or permanent, every generation has to learn and educate itself and share this with fellow citizens in its midst. ...

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Pat McFadden is Minister for Inter-Governmental Relations. He says Keir Starmer wants to see migration numbers fall after it was shown that net migration to Britain was 906,000 in 2023. The number of migrants crossing the Channel is reported to reach 20,000 since Keir Starmer became prime minister on July 5, 2024, a period of 5 months. This shows Labour under Starmer is serious about migration and appalled at Conservative administrations not walking the talk. Caps placed under David Cameron to cap at tens of thousands were not followed. "Targets haven’t worked very well. We’ve got things we were saying about this in terms of getting net migration down. I don’t say targets don’t work in any circumstance but numerical targets on migration have not had a happy history in recent years." “But we do want legal migration to come down, we do want to train more of our own workers, we do want to get more people off welfare and into work.” The ebbs and flows of the economy and Britain's needs, culture and integration, always legal migration- this is policy for Britain under Keir Starmer and Labour. ...

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David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he is quite worried about the steadily declining participation of men 16-64 in the labor force from 85% in the decade after World War II to less than 65% today. This is a blow to the men, their families , government revenues and the economy.

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Stewart says regulators let Barclays off lightly. Prof. John Cofee of Columbia University Law School, an expert on the subject, says the regulators were toothless in the LIBOR case. In fact under the settlement Bob Diamond was allowed to continue as CEO. He resigned only after UK prime minister David Cameron called for him to accept responsibility and resign.

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Theresa May becomes the only candidate for leadership of the Conservative Party after Ms Leadsom withdraws from the race. No leadership vote will no take place with Conservative Party members and no early general election is planned. May is expected to become prime minister of Britain by July 12, replacing David Cameron. Her theme is for "one Britain" and to do away with the rising inequality and gap between London and the rest of the country, which was part of the anxiety of voters who voted 52% for Brexit on issues of immigration burden on social and health services, national sovereignty, and a sense of ordinary people being neglected by elites in both parties. May will invoke Article 50 to leave the European Union and begin a 2 year period of negotiations only after she has developed a clear negotiating strategy. Kenneth Clarke, a Conservative Party cabinet minister called May a "bloody difficult woman," but this did not affect May, who said Mr Juncker of the EU was the one who would find this out in negotiations.  What is significant for Britain is May's moderate position coupled with a clear goal for removing some of the causes of the inequity in British society, which is needed for Britain to remain united. She called on companies like Amazon, Google and others to pay their fair share of taxes, and made clear her intent to strengthen the mechanisms for controlling executive pay. Also part of this strategy will be a more effective immigration control policy, which she did not implement vigorously as Home Secretary in the Cameron government, partly because of constraints set by EU membership. May made clear her agenda going forward by saying: "There is a growing divide between a more prosperous older generation and a struggling younger generation. And there is a gaping chasm between wealthy London and the rest of the country."  Changes May is supporting are to make executive pay rules to become binding not just advisory, and for employees and consumers to gain seats on company boards.  ...

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Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price will be leaving Bank of America. David Darnell and Tom Montag were appointed co-chief operating officers of Bank of America. Bank of America stock declined by 50% by September 2011. Montag will oversee the bank's banking and marketing activities including Merrill Lynch. Darnell will run the consumer business including wealth management and home loans.

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David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Morningstar Investment Management, William Reichenstein, Powers Professor at Baylor University, Guyton at Cornerstone Wealth Advisors in Minneapolis, and Hebeler, former head of Boeing Aerospace (who does dissemination of free sound financial planning at www.analyzenow.com), provide a better understanding of the issues involved in making good retirement planning decisions and the thinking needed to avoid errors.

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David Wessel, looks at the economic forecasts, and figures comparing this downturn to others in the 20th century, and looks at what experts like Eichengreen at Berkeley are saying. He puts the odds based on this information and comes up with 75% chance that this will be of the kind that produces a lost decade, a recovery that takes many years.

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David Brooks says there is great value in policies of moderation especially at a time time like this. It is necessary to combine ideas from the left and the right that make sense to arrive at a moderate position that advances the interests of society. There is no one right answer, and this requires listening to others and a willingness to be open to new ideas. A particular situation at a particular time may require an adjustment. Moderation strives for wisdom that will give good results- requiring listening and humility. It means bringing together different views, adapting to the circumstances, and coming up with solutions that will stand the test of time.

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To really understand American history from its founding with the Mayflower voyage read the two volumes of Francis Parkman of the period between 1600-1756 that is rarely read and understood about how the American Indians and the French, the British, lived and built new settlements on the American continent. It is told in a very readable and authentic way by the greatest history and story book teller of this period. Library of America published Francis Parkman's France and England in North America. The Washington Post said that a thousand years from now, if their are still Americans here, Parkman will be their Homer. Too much of the American story told by only one person and PBS documentaries. One can learn about it simply by reading about it through different books, asking one's own questions,  and coming up with one's own understanding of American history which would be more authentic. This would include excellent biographies written by authors such as David McCullough whose range and vision combined with other authors including Barbara Tuchman for the 19th century, and many British authors such as Roger Knight covering the Napoleonic period offer a better picture of European and American history intermingled, a better perspective than the monopoly business venture that history becomes with these PBS documentaries by one person.           ...

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The resignation of Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, from his positions at the company on Jan. 17, 2012. Yahoo hired a new CEO, Scott Thompson, from eBay's Pay Pal unit n 2011. Yang started Yahoo with David Filo. They setup "David & Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," a list of favorite websites, as computer science students at Stanford in 1995. What followed was a trajectory similiar to the one observed today for Facebook- by 1999 the company was valued at $120 billion in the dot com bubble. A decade later Google, a newcomer with a search algorithm, replaced Yahoo as the most widely used search engine. Yahoo and its peer site AOL from the 1990's never recovered from the technological change in the internet with broadband and a new generation of search engines. Yang holds a 3.8% stake in Yahoo. Yahoo has a 40% stake in Ali Baba, which was formed when Yahoo turned over its Chinese operations to Ali Baba in exchange for a large stake in operations. Yahoo is planning to sell its stake in Ali Baba....

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WSJ report on how the much awaited debate went with Harris in words and body language defining Trump, and the moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis doing something that had not happened before by correcting misstatement of facts on the spot. Misstatement of facts in a society that bases itself on science and scientific observation may be the defining feature of this lost decade, when little was done by the educated reporters and the journalism community about it- till now. Yet this is only the beginning in a long road back for America.

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It costs about 8 million pounds for maintenance of St Paul's Cathedral. St Paul's Cathedral income declined by 90% as the pandemic led to fewer visitors and ticket sales. The government provides 3.3 million pounds from its culture recovery fund. Because this is not enough for maintenance, much less the 15 million pounds needed for the repair of the 17th century lead roof, one of England's best known cathedrals had to dip into and nearly exhaust its reserve funds. If this is the condition of St Paul's one can imagine what decades of misallocation of capital have done in the rest of the country. St Paul's Cathedral remained a defiant symbol of British resistance in the Second World War during the Battle of Britain.  The dean of the cathedral Very Rev. David Ison says "if we don't have the resources to pay for heating and lighting we may have to close our doors." Imagine closing England's most famous cathedral and symbol of its spirit for lack of funds. Notre Dame Cathedral by contrast in Paris is being renovated with $100 million euros donated by two French businessmen and $700 million pledged so far to rebuilding and renovation of Notre Dame. ...

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David Kellerman, the CFO of Freddie Mac, committed suicide by hanging himself. He leaves a five year old daughter Grace, and his wife. He was 41, and had joined Freddie Mac 16 years earlier. The news shocked the neighborhood in northern Virginia where he lives. He had lost a noticeable amount of weight under the stress, and federal regulators were conducting an investigation into Freddie's accounting practices.