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A Chinese diplomatic envoy goes to France, Germany and Russia to discuss ways to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The US also looks for ways to bring a settlement to the war. Avril Haines, US Intelligence head, tells Congress she does not see Russia making concessions as it sees an advantage in a war of attrition in Ukraine. Ukraine gets continued support to use a counteroffensive to make some gains in the Kherson and other regions that could give it and Russia a chance to come to the negotiating table.

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Marking the sixth straight month of declines the US consumer price index rose by 6.5% over a year earlier in Dec. 2023. This is down from 7.1% in November and 9.1% in June. The US central bank chairman Jay Powell is resolutely pursuing anti inflation policy. Retail sales, manufacturing output and home sales declined in November. Exports and imports also declined. Prices fell for products such as autos and computers. Job and wage growth slowed. Tackling service inflation is the next challenge for the US Fed and Jay Powell says the WSJ.

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Images of 5 galaxies in the constellation Pegasus will be shown by president Biden at a White House event today July 11. The pictures are from the $10 billion James Webb telescope now 1 million miles from earth and looking back at distant galaxies from the beginning of time. The Pegasus constellation is a mind boggling distance away- 290 million light- years away.

NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency have together developed the Webb telescope, that is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope that was there before.

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If only there was a way to keep the streets in big cities such as Paris, New York, and Mumbai quieter after the coronavirus. This report looks at ways in which cities changed during the coronavirus with less noise pollution. Bicycle lanes are becoming popular and some cities have converted car lanes into bicycle lanes. In many cities on a walk through parks one could hear bird songs. The audio clips in this NYT report and with SONYC's project provide a glimpse of how life changed on streets during the coronavirus.

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 Members of Congress in the US are worried about skewed priorities. They prefer not to fund Amazon's space exploration projects and prefer to fund projects essential for national security and technological progress such as semiconductor production. Amazon and its head, Mr. Bezos, are facing antitrust legislation in the American Congress. Even a Representative in Congress from Seattle district, home to Amazon, says Jeff Bezos doe not need a "handout," if he wants to explore space fine he can do it one his own money not federal dollars needed for America's priorities. 

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Trust in government in the US was highest under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and LBJ, right upto the escalation of the Vietnam War and remained above 70 percent. It changed in the seventies and hit new lows ever since to the 40% level since the 1980's through the Reagan, Bush, Clinton administrations. The 2009 financial crisis caused by banks led to a drop to 16%. It dropped to 20% under Obama and Trump administrations. By 2023 it remains at about 20%. Graphs in Pew Research show how it has changed over time.

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This Guardian report gives a discussion with Austin based Dr. Attia of Early Medical and ways to ensure healthspan- adopting healthy patterns of living including food and exercize, sleep, that start at an early age. The approach is that prevention should be the best way to tackle health issues that can develop later in life and the time for that is early, right now. Most of it is well established based on exercizing well, and weight exercize routine for strengthening muscle. It could just as easily include yoga or pilates, and sports. Nutrition plays an equally important part.

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P&G reports higher sales revenue by 6%  for the fourth quarter of 2021. Pricing on average for P&G cleaning and consumer products rose by 3% in the fourth quarter 2021. Soaring prices for raw materials. labor and transportation with supply chain difficulties were offset with the 3% increase in the last quarter of 2021. Yet volume increased by 3% as more cleaning products were used during the pandemic. P&G finance chief Schulten says the buyers are focused on clean home and health and hygiene categories during the pandemic.

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Republicans new strategy break the budget bills in half some budget parts expiring before the others- extend budgeting for some government agencies through early January and some through early February. This is what new Speaker Mike Johnson has done and what a more vocal group the ultra conservative Freedom Caucus in the Republican controlled Congress seeks. Democrat senators and some Republican senators oppose this kind of bifurcation of the budget and setting different dates. Chuck Schumer says the "hard right proposals, hard right slashing cuts have zero support among Democrats."

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President Biden introduces a new format for the US China discussions on international coordination for economic policies of the two nations. It puts the dialogue between the two presidents and the ministries under them with clear goals for the US and for the Chinese side their own goals. It replaces the US China Strategic Economic Dialogue setup by Treasury Secretary Paulsen (Goldman Sachs) under the younger Bush which Mr. Trump rejected and which was seen as a failure for both sides creating the very hypergrowth in China pushed by business interests on both sides that hurt both nations. 

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Wang and Dong reporting from Beijing and Hong Kong show how Chinese government media is presenting Xi as a friend of the United States. He stayed on an Iowa farm in his younger days. He is also shown in a picture in the NYT riding a bicycle with his 6 year old daughter on the back of the bicycle from his days in Fujian province in the 1980's (Xinhua). In that NYT report yesterday by Chris Buckley Xi says "We have a thousand reasons for good relations with the US."

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Russian emigration and moving people to the warfront has led to shortages in the labor force. This is creating serious problems for its economy. The number of employees under 35 years dropped by more than 1.3 million to the lowest level since the 1990's according to one estimate. Hundreds of thousands of young people left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Sustaining the war requires huge manpower losses because it is on Ukrainian territory. This acts as a considerable constraint to increasing production in factories says the governor of the central bank, Elvira Nabiullina.

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The US Supreme Court throws out a lawsuit that said the Biden administration unlawfully pressured social media platforms to remove content seen as disinformation. The ruling said the two states Louisiana and Missouri and five parties had no rights to bring their claims before a judge. Earlier lower courts had ruled against the government . The claims by the two states were shown through emails written by government officials to Facebook asking why it had not removed disinformation that said Covid vaccines were harmful. This issue of the usefulness of vaccines for Covid was a major issue in 2022.

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A new test for Prostate Cancer, a test with high accuracy being developed in Britain- in it are proteins shed by prostate tumors in urine are tested.  This test is planned with testing of 200,000 people in Britain with funding of 42 million pounds. It has 0.92 accuracy compared to 0.62-0.75 for the conventional PSA Test. This test tests a different set of proteins. PSA Test is known to have false positives and is not accurate. This will revolutionize the testing for prostate cancer, one of the main cancers affecting men.

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China's Xi Jinping meets leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, a northeastern coastal city near Beijing. He will meet Putin and Indian prime minister Modi. This is Modi's first visit to China in 7 years. A parade in Beijing will mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II with attendance of Putin with Xi. On May 9 2025 Xi attended the parade in Moscow on the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II. 

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The uncertain returns from AI is not good for retirees whose funds are invested in AI funded by corporate bonds. With enormous needs for capital how about $3 trillion for Ai investment to 2028 , says WSJ, only $1.5 trillion can come from cash flows and $1.5 trillion has to come from elsewhere such as corporate bonds and annuities retirees purchase. This lowers credit ratings of these instruments as AI returns are uncertain. This is not a good situation for retirees in the US.

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Compared to 2008 Hillary Clinton is now very clear that she will stand up for woman's issues openly- "it is about no ceilings, no limits, for any of us." About playing the women's card she says "deal me in." One of the paradoxes of this election season is that white women registered voters 35 to 64 years of age have shown less enthusiasm for Hillary, around 34-36 percent in polls such as the NBC-WSJ poll. Interestingly the figure climbs to 66 percent for ages 18-34, and to 56 percent for ages over 64, for all women. Experts attribute this to the fact that women over 35 are facing fewer barriers than the women over 64 who remember the hard won battles for women's rights when it was hard for women to get a credit card or run for office, or be promoted in business. Traditional career choices were being teachers or nurses. A lot has changed in the last 20 years, and this has left some women who are no longer facing such barriers turning to other issues to choose their candidate such as happened in their enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders. Overall for all women registered voters  Hillary gets 52 percent support, Trump 37 percent, according to a July 2016 NBC/WSJ poll.   ...

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Hundreds of thousands of American children are missing after the pandemic. Many are not accounted even when increase in home schooling and private schooling is considered. The Associated Press, Stanford University Big Local News Project and Prof. Dee of Stanford show in their study that 240,000 students in 21 states absence from school could not be explained. In 2023 missing students have become more of a budgeting problem to secure federal and state funds. The actual number of missing students is much higher as this study found that public school enrollment inthe US has fallen in the 2 school years 2019-2020, 2021-2022 by 710,000. Much remains to be done to locate these students so that they are not forgotten. Voice of America ran this story on its Learning English site. The WSJ has an editorial on these missing children today.

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Daniel Henninger says in the WSJ that the debt ceiling will be raised, and Republicans should not be pitting program against program. He says the narrative though should be framed around the trillions being spent by the Biden administration on climate change action, US manufacturing and technology in chips, with interest on debt at over $400 billion a year. Yet this does not take into account that for two decades there has been an overcrowding of US government initiated capital investment for essential needs by massive Tech industry misallocation of funds even as productivity of this capital invested by tech was dropping, with much wasted capital. Today because these essential needs in infrastructure and for manufacturing and technology were starved for so long of capital the productivity of capital in these areas is high and will have ripple effects to help rebuild America.

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The French under Macron commit to build a new aircraft carrier to come into service in 2038. This will be nuclear powered like the Charles De Gaulle, France's current aircraft carrier. U.S. carriers are also nuclear powered to reduce port stops for fuel. 

French and U.S. ships use American suppliers for some of the flight systems on carriers so that French aircraft and American aircraft can operate off of each others ships. For France it preserves "strategic autonomy" a policy France has pursued since Mr. De Gaulle. It also means tighter U.S. French cooperation with France being America's key ally in Europe. France has plans to increase defense spending by 4.5% and spends over 2% of GDP on defense like the U.S. 

India, Britain, China and Russia are the only other countries with aircraft carriers.

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Infrastructure spending under president Duterte of the Philippines has increased from 4% of GDP to about 6-7%. Many new projects are started as part of the $177 billion building program. This includes the Clark City project to house 1.2 million people and government offices to move congestion out of Manila. Duterte's plans include cutting traffic down by one third on the artery along the sea that takes 2 million people into Manila from the outskirts every day.

Duterte has continued infrastructure projects planned by his predecessor, and 69% of Filipinos support this infrastructure building program. Conservative spending under his predecessor gives Mr. Duterte more room for increasing spending. Indonesia at 72nd rank and Philippines at 96th rank have fallen behind in infrastructure development in a World Economic Forum recent survey of 141 countries.  

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Distorted priorities from the last 2 decades and lack of investment allocation for healthcare are hurting states in the U.S at a critical time. With 16 million cases of coronavirus and 300,000 deaths in December, including over 3000 deaths a day by December 12, the situation is dire. Yet states lack the billions needed to conduct the vaccination program to pay for the trucks, get the refrigeration and storage, pay the nurses and the medical personnel, outreach costs, and other costs for a massive vaccination program. Some estimates are that states need about $9 billion for the vaccination programs. New York alone needs $1 billion. For years billions of dollars were wasted in distorted priorities that benefited certain groups at the expense of society as a whole. The very large companies that benefited paid little or no taxes. 

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This report in The Times shows 2 charts. One with how much of the population has been vaccinated with Israel and the UAE at about 33%, UK at 12% US at 7%, and EU countries far behind. The second chart shows how much of the western world's vaccine supplies have been purchased by US, UK, and EU. 

European Union appears to be lagging behind in arranging purchases of vaccine supplies, with UK and US ahead. The shortages in Europe of vaccine, and limited supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine to the EU, is resulting in a nasty argument with the UK. At one point the EU planned to limit vaccine exports from the Pfizer Belgian plant to the UK, including closing off the Northern Ireland border.  That move came under criticism from EU's Michael Barnier.

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This DW.com report on Lebaon describes the launch of ration card program to help Lebanese families caught in poverty with the economic collapse there. Families will receive $126  per month  for one year in $556 million economic package to benefit 700,000 families. The funding backing for this project is needed from the World Bank. This report says about half of the people in Lebanon now live in poverty in one of the Middle East's once affluent regions. Since the economic crisis in 2019 DW.com says poverty levels have increased by 80%, local currency lost 90% of its value, and foreign exchange reserves decreased by $15 billion. 

Lebanon is a clear example of how mismanagement of the economy and political conflicts can ruin a country's prospects, with the sudden economic collapse bringing poverty and severe distress.

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Mr. Boris Johnson resigns as member of parliament on June 8, 2023, with criticism of the Rishi Sunak Tory government. The Guardian shows the years in office 2019- 2022 of the man who took Britain out of the European Union, and his years in office during the pandemic. From 2016 to 2018 he was Foreign Secretary.  He was preceded by David Cameron of the Conservatives who setup a coalition government in 2010 with austerity policies till 2016, much of whose latter years as prime minister were overshadowed by Mr. Johnson leading the Brexit faction in the party and as Mayor of London. In 2023 with Britain under a cost of living crisis and in financial stress after the austerity years, this period looks like a lost decade for Britain- with the failure of its leaders under the Tories.