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After the US and China, three other nations are in the top 6 in the Tokyo Olympics- Britain, Australia and Japan. In Britain one household has 11 gold medals in recent Olympics- the Kenny household, husband and wife. Laura Kenny is a British track and road cyclist who has won 5 gold medals.

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Paul McCartney of the Beatles talks about the times he was asked to write an autobiography. In a new book he writes about how some of the most well known songs he had written came to him in his imagination. The Times shows glimpses of McCartney's song writing skills putting on the words on thoughts in his life and imagination, on his surroundings in London and Liverpool, England. 

Shown here are actual handwritten notes of the lyrics, amazing to see for songs such as Let it Be that are some of the best music singles of all time nd the song Yesterday. Others include Penny Lane.

'Yesterday' and 'Let it Be' come from memories of his mother who died in 1956. The lyrics for 'Yesterday' were written years later in 1965 and for 'Let in Be' in 1969.  

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Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party is tied in the 2019 elections with Benny Gantz's Blue and White Party with 35 seats each in parliament. Netanyahu's right wing party bloc controls 65 seats giving it a majority in the 120 member parliament.

Gantz says "we founded a true alternative rule to Netanyahu." Extreme right wing parties did not get elected to the Knesset. Labour Party and left parties also lost votes in the contest between Gantz and Netanyahu, leaving Gantz without enough seats from his left bloc in parliament.

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The dangers from climate change to the fresh water supply from the entire Tibetan plateau to southern Asia is shown in videos and pictures in DW.com. There is a severe decline in terrestrial water storage which includes above and below ground water. Associate Prof Di Long at Tsinghua University says terrestrial water storage across this region is critical for water availability and highly sensitive to climate change. A team of scientists from Penn State in US, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and University of Texas has found loss of water in Tibetan plateau of 15.8 gigatons per year (15.8 billion tons) in some areas of Tibetan plateau. 

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The Economist magazine looks at how Netanyahu is rallying his conservative base and core supporters on the right wing of Israeli politics to overcome corruption charges and a blue and white coalition led by Benny Gantz, a former head of the Israeli armed forces. Critics say Netanyahu has increased divisions in Israeli society. Netanyahu claims he is the best person to maintain Israel's security and his core supporters prefer the status quo. 

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The amazing story of Katalin Kariko who came to the US from Budapest, Hungary, in 1989 taking a position as research assistant professor at the UPenn Medical School.The work of Katalin Kariko in mRNA vaccine research that led to the discovery of mRNA vaccines was derided at first at Penn leading her work to be shunted to a lab on the outskirts of town and having her pay cut in a demotion, says this WSJ report. It won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2023. Universities are not places where new ideas can get a boost when there is much skepticism and constant pressure for research funding on more conventional lines. Less opportunity for experimentation that can lead to new discoveries that revolutionize science and medicine.  Kariko and others working as research assistant professors were shunned at Penn and referred to as "aliens" because inthe interests of research they took lower paid positions. As it turns out Kariko felt liberated during the period of her being demoted, to work even more patiently on the mRNA molecule, one that was more difficult than the DNA molecule most researchers had focused on. This report in WSJ shows a picture of a Budapest street with a large mural of Kariko. Unfortunately few people in her adopted country know about the work of this remarkable scientist to whom is owed so many millions of people's protection with mRNA vaccines. ...

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Horowitz provides a rare portrait of Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump. This is  useful in understanding Donald Trump because as Trump says frequently many of the traits- self-promotion, aggressive business promotion, taking advantage of political connections to advance the family business, penny pinching for construction sites- are all traits he inherited from his father. His father did not want to go to Manhattan as business was already nice and easy in Brooklyn and other places. The son went into Manhattan and put his name on Towers he built in the city. Fred Trump benefitted from the FHA and depression era programs setup under the New Deal by FDR, and the flow of immigrants and returning veterans, the zoning allowances given by politicians. Without this the business would be nowhere as successful as it was. Making it self-made only upto a point, in the intensity and the individualism displayed. Fred Trump was born in 1905 to German immigrants who spoke mostly German at home. His brother John was into books, and went on to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so the family was certainly aspirational immigrant. Fred was the doer and started his business with his mother at the age of 21, and by 28 had won the mortgage services business of a failing German bank, by 1938 at 33 he had setup property developments in Brooklyn. Federal Housing programs were the key- homeownership was emphasized in the New Deal with F.H.A. 25 year mortgage loans- as affordability was an issue in the Depression era period. Fred Trump keenly used these loan subsidies with price tags so it would be a stretch to say the business simply went up on the intensity and the business skills.  ...

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The deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Jenny Harries, asks people in Britain to limit themselves to what is sensible and not what is possible, to use common sense, so that reopening works. The Housing Secretary, Mr. Jenrick says the room for maneouvre is limited with the reproduction R ratio for Britain at somewhere between 0.7 and 0.9. There is also a lag period for data making it so that the current situation is not known. Germany's after reopening is now estimated by Robert Koch Institute at 1.14 so that there is some shift to be expected as the opening happens, the idea being to limit this to around the 1.0 figure. Britain reopens cautiously and in  in a patchy way with primary schools reopened, and people from different households allowed to meet in groups of six as long as they stay 2 metres apart. Outdoor markets and car showrooms are also reopening. Also stated is the need to be sensitive to geography as areas such as London which were hit early and with severity are now better off than areas in the north of England. ...

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Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny says following the Brexit vote that is seen as a disaster for Northern Ireland-"My first interest is Ireland's interests, the protection of the common travel area, the peace process, the open border." Other issues facing Ireland are economic- British people will find Ireland's exports costlier by 10 percent, and make Ireland costlier for British tourists who make up 41% of all Ireland's tourists. Ireland's effort to build an all island health system is also at risk. As Ireland tackles this economic problem it is also moving to attract new business to relocate in Dublin. Among ordinary people the fears are more basic- no one wants to go back to the old days and the sectarian strife and conflicts. For most people the open borders mean a great deal- an achievement that took a long, long time, and no one can see this being reversed overnight, which is why Northern Ireland voted 58% to remain in the EU. ...

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Joe Nocera of NYT on a bankruptcy like option in which the government loans money but sets tough terms, and has someone with the experience and strength and the governmental powers to set tough terms and insist on them being followed without vacillation by the unions or management. And the Congress passing new legislation under the President's leadership to override the state laws that prevent closure of dealerships. The union benefits and mindset and management mindset would go through the wrenching changes that the GM bureaucracy and the unions need to implement to eliminate the legacy costs, the higher benefits costs so that GM does not pay a penny more than Toyota or Honda to its workers when all costs are added up period. And plants that need to be closed would be closed without long negotiations and job retraining and new industries in energy and infrastructure and technology would create opportunities for these displaced workers by 2010 as part of the stimulus program.

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Jenny Strasbourg of the WSJ provides this much needed report from London about the courageous decision by AstraZeneca and Oxford University to give vaccines away at no profit to the whole world, to billions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Without this brave decision by a British company and a British University the world would be a lot poorer, more variants could have happened, making us realize the great contribution Britain has made and how indispensable it is to the planet. Add to this the effort of Indian companies including Serum Institute that provided the manufacturing facilities and capabilities for making most of the British vaccine. AstraZeneca delivered 2.3 billion doses of the vaccine globally as of mid-December, according to the company. The International Monetary Fund estimates that low and middle income countries received 3.25 billion vaccines as of Dec. 11, About half of this or 1.6 billion doses were Astra Zeneca shots. This is a bigger share than any other vaccine by far and a life saver to the world. AstraZeneca stepped up early in a true to the best ideals in Britain to meet the needs of the world-  aiming to deliver 3 billion doses in 2022 and sell them at no profit as long as the pandemic continues. As the shot does not need cold storage it is ideal for India and other Asia, Africa and Latin America. "We are all very proud throughout the company of the impact we have had," says AstrZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. By far the biggest manufacturing was done at Serum Institute of India which supplied 1.3 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 70 countries. Mr. Modi pushed forward the export of vaccine made in India to the world from the beginning in the same spirit of cooperation and the best ideals that Britain was living upto. Serum Institute can produce as much as 250 million doses of vaccine a month making it possible for India to tackle the vaccination population of 1.3 billion people.   None of this could have happened without Oxford University and AstraZeneca and Indian companies with Mr. Modi's active support living up to the best ideals of Britain and India for the world. "When you add up the benefits to humanity, I think you'll find the vaccine holds up pretty well in terms of the ill health it has prevented, and the deaths it has prevented," says John Bell, a senior Oxford academic who in 2020 guided the University through its vaccine-partnership talks with Astra Zeneca. Because in the real world AstraZeneca shot has held up so well it is also a choice for booster shots. ...

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Acer faces large inventories and a competitive market with declining prices in the PC market. Acer's CEO J.T. Wang expects a loss in 2011, as a result of inventory adjustments, lower demand for notebook PC's, and a slower economy. Second quarter revenues were down 32%, and Acer shows a loss of 6.8 billion New Taiwan dollars ($US 234 million) for the second quarter. Acer has lost sales and market share to competitors. It now comes in fourth after H-P, Dell, Lenovo. The inventory reductions by competitors has created turmoil in PC markets. Another problem Acer faces is on its Ultrabook, a new ultrathin notebook. The Ultrabook to be introduced in September 2011 is to be priced at US$799 to US$1,199. HSBC analyst Jenny Lai is skeptical about the price, and sees a price closer to $700 for the product to make a dent in the market. This will put more pressure on Acer's margins. The Apple iPad and iPhone have reduced the demand for notebooks and created a new dynamic in the market. H-P CEO Apotheker made the decision for H-P to exit the PC and tablet business this week because of the required investment for a continuous stream of new products and low margins....

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Wages remain stagnant, labor participation rate declines, and U-6 at 11.8%, as unemployment rate declines to 5.9% in U.S. labor market.

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According to researchers at AARP and the Economic Policy Institute women over 50 years have a harder time than men of the same age in finding good jobs since the 2008 financial crisis. Older women who were laid off have a very hard time finding employment and steady jobs, as this report by Patricia Cohen in the NYT shows. Age, lack of internet skills, shifting networks, caregiving responsibilities and time off taken to care for children, all have worked against older women over 50 years. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis shows that compared to 2006-2007 before the financial crisis hit when about a quarter of the unemployed for women over 50 years were unemployed over 6 months, by 2012-2013 the jobless women for more than 6 months had gone up to about half of the unemployed women in this age group.

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Van Dam says its not that great being a worker in the U.S. because it is hard for the unemployed resulting from competing with workers in other countries with lower wages, and for those who are unemployed harder because worker collective bargaining is weakened over 3 decades. He cites a 296 page OECD report showing very little government support for unemployed and at risk American workers. It says this has contributed to higher income inequality and larger share of lower income people than almost any other advanced a nation. Only Spain and Greece are shown as having more households earning less than half the median income- showing large numbers of people are poor or close to being poor. In the U.S. an average of 1 in 5 lose their jobs each year, and 23% of workers 15 to 64 are in their job less than a year in 2016. The job churn hurts workers because of firing and layoffs being frequent, more than is healthy for a economy. The U.S. and Mexico are the only two countries not requiring advance notice before firings. And fewer than half of workers find a job within a year in the U.S. Two in three families with a displaced worker fall in poverty for some time. Unemployed workers with typically 26 weeks support get less support than any other country in the study. Only 12% of workers in U.S. are covered by collective bargaining. ...

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Prof. Gorton and Prof. Metrick of the Yale School of Management review 16 scholarly studies and papers on the causes of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis in the current isue of the Journal of Economic Literature. Another article in the same journal reviews 21 books on the subject. Samuelson says the most cited causes- lax regulation and passive regulators, and the policy of home ownership that encourage the packaging and of securitization of mortgages to government sponsored agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac- are only the surface causes. If we are to explain how a whole society seemed to believe in the idea that somehow there was a way to maintain a rising tide continuously, with only small corrections over several decades, by the clever manipulation of monetary and fiscal policies; then one has to look to the hubris of economists who acted as if this was possible and the gullibility of business and a public that desperately wanted to believe as some have put it "that this time it was different," or that shrewd management of economic policy could actually bring about such a panacea. The abiding lesson is economic policies based on a better understanding of how modern industrial economies work are merely useful tools, no more no less, and there is no substitute for a good ethic, wise management and careful thinking on the part of the public, business and government, particularly for the people in leadership positions. ...