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S. Jaishankar, Indian Foreign Minister speaks at the University of Delhi on his chapter in the new book Modi@20 Dreams meet Delivery. He also discusses the war in Ukraine, the Indian view on people and shortages created by the war of energy and food, and India's approach to Pakistan and China.

 

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After a long drought Spain is hit by a heat wave. There are no rains in April leaving a large agricultural region south of Valencia and other parts of Spain without water. There is a sense that the current concept of water use by building more reservoirs has to be completely redone as rivers run dry.

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Republicans have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives 222 to 212 for Democrats. This means Republicans can only lose 4 members of their party in a vote when all members vote. Kevin McCarthy was not elected Speaker of the House after 4 days of voting as 20 Republicans oppose his nomination.

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Nadhim Zahawi is Conservative party chair appointed by Mr. Sunak. He was finance minister. This report in The Guardian looks at the penalty imposed and tax settlement with Zahawi that was made by His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Britain's tax agency, as part of the settlement practices with wealthy individuals.

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Indian prime minister Modi calls for saturation level coverage of schemes including GatiShakti, Har Ghar Jal, Svamitva, Direct Benefit Transfer, and others. Also given emphasis in his statement to 18 chief ministers was the importance of sports and sports facilities  for young people, and continually improving the environment for business in the states.

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Gwyneth Paltrow shows a great deal of dignity in the way she handled a lawsuit about a skiing accident in Utah with her 2 children. The jury stated that she was not at fault. Paltrow only asked for $1 in damages and told the man who made the accusation that she wished him well.

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Online 1 year certificates of deposit have annual percentage yield of 4.75% in 2023 compared to less than 1% in 2022. This is a significant improvement for what the average American gets on his savings accounts. For two decades low interest rates on savings accounts hurt average Americans whose savings did not grow through interest accumulation.

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US president Joe Biden says he will allocate $80 billion additional funding to the IRS in the US so that it can get $700 billion owed by the wealthiest in the US. This is part of his "American Families Plan,' increased funding of health, education, improving upward mobility, and opportunity for the American people.

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Boris Johnson looks ahead to a vision of Britain ten years from now as it did in the depths of the second world war, as Britain faces a second wave of the pandemic with doubling of cases to 14,000 new infections daily in 11 days. His speech was made to the Conservative Party conference.

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Klopp in this video in The Guardian says Manchester City is the best team in the world and Haaland the best striker. To close Haaland down would mean other opportunities would be created for Manchester City with its other world class players, says Klopp as his team Liverpool faces Manchester City this week.

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The new Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has visited India as a backpacker in his younger days and led a parliamentary delegation to India. He is committed to deepen economic, strategic, and people to people links between India and Australia. Albanese is also committed to fighting climate change and moving aggressively on renewable energy.

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Sam Bankman-Fried head of the cryptocurrency firm FTX is charged with fraud and arrested in the Bahamas, for what US federal prosecutors called a scheme to defraud crytocurrency customers and his hedge fund's lenders. The indictment was made by the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York.

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Deschamps was captain of the French team that won the World Cup in 1998, and coach for the French team that won the World Cup 4 years ago. The 54 year old Didier Deschamps was made the coach of the national team in 2012. FR24 looks at his style and experience coaching the national team. 

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Modi recalls the words of Jawaharlal Nehru in parliament "at the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps India awakes to life and freedom," an emotional moment for him and all 1400 million Indians in the world. India moves to a new parliament building where flag hoisting took place yesterday.

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The last major oil company controlled by a family is Amerada Hess. Leon Hess drove a green colored truck to deliver fuel in New Jersey about 100 years ago and his son runs the company. This ownership and the name is now history with the sale of the company for $53 billion to Chevron.

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The biography of Lula da Silva on the Brazil government site gov.br 2025. It shows Lula as one of 8 children from deep in rural Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil. His mother brought the family to the outskirts of Sao Paulo Guaruja 60 kilometres away on a 13 day trip in an old pickup truck to leave the poor conditions in rural Brazil in 1952. By 1956 the had moved to Sao Paulo in the iparanga neighborhood. He worked at ascrew factory before joining a trade school Brazil's National School for Industrial Learning, studying to become a mechanical lathe worker, making him a metallurgist in 3 years. He then joined Industrial Villares, a large metallurgical company, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, ABC region of Sao Paulo.  This started his career as trade unionist in 1969 elected to the Board, 1972 elected First Secretary, and 1975 elected president of the Union of Workers of Sao Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, representing 100,000 workers. This was aperiod when the military dicatorship was beginning the proces of redemocratization of Brazil. Lula led strikes in 1980, formed the CUT Central Unica de Trabajodores in 1982, ran for Governor of Sao Paulo that year and in 1983 was elected to the Constituent Assembly. The Workers Party was founded on Feb. 10, 1980 during this period of redemocratization. Lular ran for elections as president losing to Cardozo twice in 1994, 1998 and wiining at ae 57 years in 2002.     ...

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Jac Welch gives Obama an A for leadership. Mind you he says he doesn't agree with all the President's policies. He is talking about leadership. He scores Obama in four areas, Vision and Team Building, Speed and Authenticity, and he finds him at an A in all areas and gets an A in authenticity with alittle help from Michelle with her warmth and personality. There are 2 more traits on which the test is still going on he says, that of resilience and the wherewithal to champion unpopular causes.

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Meditation HRV and the parasympathetic nervous system. Meditation helps calm the system and build resilience. Health conditions, fatigue, worry, illness, exercise, travel, and also cold, political disruption, deadlines, perception of loss of some sort, annoyances, disruptions,  accidents, other events cause the heart rate variations and the two systems to react in different ways, the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system calms us down and meditation is one of the effective ways to get this process to work smoothly.

 

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Messi uncertain if he will play for the World Cup in the US in 2026. It is 20 years since he played at the age of 18. The aging Messi says some days he feels good, on other days not so good, and it depends on his physical condition if he will play. He recalls with affection the chance to play in Argentina and score goals in the game against Venezuela 3-0 before retiring. He was thankful for the chance to play for Barcelona fans.

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Professor Yann LeCunn of the Sorbonne University, France, is a pioneer in the field of AI.  He is now focusing his work on Advanced Artificial Intelligence AAI, saying that the large language models which are being developed in a surge of data center spending of $400 billion in 2025 alone are not the way AI will develop in the future. AAI is based on visual learning similar to how an infant learns, and not by consuming large amounts of data as under large language models.

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Downtown San Diego Towers owned by Irvine Company go for 50% of purchase price when office vacancy is at 35%. After buying 93000 acres of coastal Orange County in 1977 and building office towers in San Diego, David Bren now 93 years, is offloading most of his investments in San Diego at half the price paid for it. This and the quality of life and homelessness in the downtown area of San Diego is depressing prospects for the city which is now dependent on the biotech sector.

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Going against the odds through hard work, and patient persistent effort tackling problems along the way, brings Ben Ainslie and his sailboat Britannia the first win in the Prada Cup sailing competition. 

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In this interview with Gerald Seib of the WSJ, U.S. president Obama responds to criticism within his party as he pushes for the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade agreement with Japan and other countries in Latin America and Asia. European nations and India have joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank setup by China, creating pressure for the U.S. to respond to China's influence in the region. The interview shows president Obama taking the criticism from inside the Democratic party personally about his lack of concern for middle class and working class families during his six and half years in office.

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Alissa Rubin of NYT covers a visit by Emmanuel Macron, French presidnetial candidate, to a village in the mountains on the Spanish border where his grand parents lived and where he visited often as a child, and where he learned to cycle, ski and appreciate the outdoors. Macron was born and raised in Amiens, near Paris. His parents are both doctors. He attended a parochial school run by Jesuits, and at age 15 met a teacher of French and drama, Brigitte Trogneux, with whom he fell in love and later married in 2007.

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Heizo Takenaka, head of the supervising agency for banks in Japan under prime minister Koizumi, took strong action to get banks to disclose the full extent of bad loans. This was needed to repair the banking system as piecemeal efforts had failed from 1996 to 2002. Takenaka says he realized that the economy could not recover with stimulus efforts until the banking system was cleared of bad debt and functioned normally to lend to business and consumers. He tells the NYT's Tabuchi that he stood firm and told the banks he was not ready for negotiation even when the banks called him absurd. He describes his experience with the banks, and says he cannot understand why the U.S. is not taking firm action with the banks.