LyrArc Article Gist
1.1 million EVs were sold in US in 2024, compared to 1.4 million hybrids. Hybrids have made a comeback as sales of electric cars are slowing in US in 2024. Constraints being lack of enough charging stations, price of electric cars still high, driving range limited before recharge. Hybrid car sales are surging helping Toyota after a too cautious entry into EV's. Now the Biden administration is looking at the targets and how to make the transition smoother. Toyota is pushing back on strict environmental rules that expect 67% of cars to be electric by 2032.  The 2021 executive order by president Biden was for 50% target by 2030 and this included hybrids.  The gradual shift would make it less costly for the public to replace the cars and help first time buyers wanting to try it out do this with hybrids as an option. As a quick guide 12000 pounds of carbon dioxide for global warming are given out by gasoline only cars, half or 6000 pounds by hybrids like Toyota's, and half again 3000 pounds of carbon dioxide by all electric like BYD China's or Tesla/GM/VW. The actual numbers are confirmed by Dept of Energy 2022, and MIT 2019 studies- 2727 pounds all electric, 6898 pounds hybrid, and 12594 pounds all gasoline. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
There is serious lack of depth in leadership in the Tory party today. Names proposed in The Guardian for Tory leaders after the July 4 election should Rishi Sunak have to resign are clearly short of what Britain needs in leadership. It depends on which Tory MP can hold on to his seat. Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Kim Badennoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Penny Mordaunt, all lack what is needed to lead the Conservatives on July 5, 2024. This has been true all through the last two decades.  David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss who preceded Sunak for most of the last decade were also lacking in leadership. The decade wasted with Nigel Farage and David Cameron, Boris Johnson trying to get Britain out of the European Union has hurt Britain. Today most Britons want to go back to a Britain that is growing as part of the EU and Europe. 

LyrArc Article Gist
With a win in the Kingswood byelection, a Tory stronghold, Britain's Labor party is now seeing a real shift of voter sentiment for a large majority in parliament in the coming general election. Britain entered a recession in Feb 2024 and the Conservatives have no solutions for the economy after many years in power, and 4 prime ministers in a constant change of leadership. Britain also lacks the resources that make it possible to have the kind of investment and scale of investment in the US that president Biden has launched.

LyrArc Article Gist
Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot ask if Johnson's Conservative party can deliver for Britain, can deliver for women, can deliver for climate change, can deliver for health, education and infrastructure, can deliver for workers dignity, can deliver for families and children, by looking at one of its leaders. He looks at the polished image of Rishi Sunak after his Stanford days. This Guardian report says Treasury insiders see this Tory leader with respect rather than warmth, with some saying that the smooth veneer or polished tech-bro image is hard to penetrate. In a separate piece Ian Jack looks at Jacob Rees-Mogg in The Guardian in January 2022. This comes as Johnson's leadership is challenged because of Christmas partying at a time when the Queen was alone in Westminster Abbey mourning for Prince Philip to follow Covid-19 protocol. What kind of leadership Britain needs for the future after the pandemic is the question put forward by these writers in The Guardian. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Guardian gives this story of Khamanei's rule in Iran after 1989. He was made president in 1981 in a landslide win at that time just 2 years after the revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah of Iran's monarchial regime. Khamanei comes from a the family of a modest cleric in the town of Mashaad who was immersed in the anticolonial writings coming out of Arab North Africa's liberation movements. His policy towards Israel and the US, difficult relations with Arab countries in the neighborhood, and pursuit of nuclear weapons technologies, led Iran to become isolated and face sanctions that hurt its economy and its oil industry for three decades. It created its own version of governing and in setting up proxy militias but this resulted in huge investments diverted from the economy of Iran, neglect of its oil industry and production under western sanctions, that led to economy collapsing and student protests every decade. This expanded in 2025 to broad sections of the population calling for a new direction. Protests were suppressed leading to a disconnect with the people by 2026. To truly understand Iran one has to step back to the 1900's ( as one must also do to understand China or India), as Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty at the time. The first Majlis parliament was set up in Iran in 1906 -with the help of "good" Britishers like the British agent in Rajkot who helped send Gandhi to London to study law- wished to see a constitutional setup similar to Britain and limit the powers of the monarchy so that reforms in agriculture and in the civil service could be made. It lasted until 1908. At the time other Britishers in the British Empire both in India and in London sought to maintain British influence and keep out Russian influence. It was not a coincidence that the Majlis lasted only till 1908. That year in 1908 the first discovery of oil in West Asia was made in Khozestan province by George Reynolds, with investor backing of William D'Arcy. The following year 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company( later Anglo Iranian Oil Company and later British Petroleum) was formed. The oil concession was given by the Shah from Qajar dynasty. From that time on Iran became the scene of oil company interests, monarchial interests first under Qajar dynaasty and then under Pahlavis dynasty (which set itself up like Napoleon II in France from humble origins, after 1925 to replace the Qajar dynasty), and the emerging middle class lawyer and civil service, agricultural landowners class, all competing for power and influence in a Asian region with Shihite Islamic embedded in the fabric of the society. Power swung to different groups from 1925 onwards for 5 decades to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi temporary replacement monarchy that worked with British oil interests. West Asia became a meeting point for anticolonial writings emerging from Arab North Africa and other places that took the form of and led to a socialist style anticolonial Baathist influnce that overthrew a monarchy in Baghdad Iraq in the "Free Officers" coup of June 14, 1958 led by Karim Kassem. Out of that Pan Arabic Iraqi mood emerged S. Hussein who with weapons systems imported from the US and Europe initiated the war with Iran in 1980. The Iranian counterrevolutionary movement to Iraq began from that time with the leadership of Khomeni and Khameni from 1981. This is what one has seen swing back and forth in the West Asian region for about 5 decades to 2026, the regional Arab states mostly Sunni monarchies ranged against Iran with its Shiite and also modernizing population. US oil interests in Arab monarchies of the West Asian region from the time of FDR's meeting with Saudi's Faisal in the WWII period clashed with Iranian public interests competing with oil interests (US and British) allied to monarchial interests, and the emergence of Shiite Islamic authority in Iran in these clashes. Iranian public interests that started out with the Majlis and parliaments set up by the "good Britishers" never got a chance in Iran just as the modernizing effort of Sun Yat Sen in China in the 1900's never got a chance in the middle of the surviving monarchy in China by 1910, and the Japanese colonial interests in China from that time competing with the Nationalists Koumintang and the Communist Chinese workers movements emerging in the 1930's, all competing for influence during the Chinese civil war and in its aftermath the emergence of Mao and the CCP of China. This is the situation we in the world face today. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
2014 Xi visits Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram as is shown in this picture in BBC News and is curious how the weaving is done by hand taking a try at it with prime minister Modi, both sitting on the floor Asian style. In 2020 China advances its troops in a part of Ladakh leading to a clash with Indian forces. What happened? India's resilience in the face of the pandemic and the bright future for its economy, greater integration with the American and European Union economies in its draft plan to 2030. A sense in China's leadership that India's modernization would follow in the same way that China's and South Korea's have followed Japan's modernization. A sense also that better relations with the US and the European Union would require better relations with India, as an indispensable condition. A sense also that the issue of Taiwan was a bigger issue and a core interest for China than the border disputes in the remote regions of the Himalayas. It just did not make sense to have a conflict with India in the priorities of China to 2030 or 2040. That India needed to be seen not through the lens of the British but as an ancient nation that had similarities with China and Japan from its Buddhist roots. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
NYT's Landon Thomas gives this exceptional report on how Deutsche Bank changed from a lender to the German auto industry and safe banking practices to enter the derivatives business and other opaque financial products that led to taking on huge risks. Deutsche Bank has agreed on Dec. 22, 2016 to settle with the U.S. Justice Department paying a fine of $7.2 billion for practices relating to faulty mortgage securities. This report says the problems started in 1995 with Deutsche Bank's leadership hiring Edson Mitchell of Merrill Lynch to promote the investment banking business at Deutsche Bank. Mitchell hired two derivatives traders Broeksmit and Anshu Jain. Mr. Mitchell died in plane crash in 2000 when he was 47 years age, Mr. Broeksmit committed suicide in 2014, 58 years in age, Mr. Anshu Jain, 53 years old, is the only surviving person of the three. Under Mr. Jain Deutsche Bank assumed more and more risk, and was involved in complex and opaque financial products leading to the toxic mortgage crisis, and manipulation of the lending rate for London banks.  It also lent $300 million to Donald Trump's businesses. Most of the profits generated from this venture have evaporated, with analysts estimating $15 billion in fines and penalties owed of the $20 billion that these ventures generated. Not counting the serious damage to the bank's reputation in Germany and the U.S. This report points out the role played by the CEO from 2002 to 2012 of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, in encouraging these ventures converting the bank from its original loan as a contintental lender to business to a bank selling opaque financial products for most of its profits. Landon Thomas also describes the events and days leading up to the suicide by Broeksmit, including a visit to a psychiatrist and Broeksmit's facing enormous stress about the investigations underway in Germany and the U.S. looking into the opaque financial products and practices of Deutsche Bank. This is also a cautionary tale about what happened in banking from the late 1990's leading to the collapse in 2008, leading to the problems of today- the need to rescue the economy in 2008-2009 and the low rate world that ensued damaging the savings of ordinary people, the infrastructure that was never built, the parallel crisis of the hollowing out in manufacturing as a false prosperity boomed in banking and finance. In a sense it is also a story of everyday lives that were damaged in the high flying boardrooms of finance in New York, London and Frankfurt. The revolving door between regulators and the banks made it harder to monitor and control banking risk letting this story unfold over decades, damaging the credibility of governments and the established political parties without clear alternatives from outside; as the dominance of Wall Street executives in the new outsider Trump administration shows.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Manufacturing could be the bright spot for the U.S. in 2021 and the years ahead. The pandemic has hurt industrial production in the U.S. in 2020. This brings manufacturing in the U.S. to a new low. This report in the WSJ says there is hope today because negative trends are about to be reversed. During three decades since the eighties three trends hurt the U.S.- lack of sustained capital investment, noncompetitive labor costs, degrading infrastructure.  To make the reversal of these trends and raise American manufacturing to what it was after World War II attention is being paid to these negative trends. The response- a quick recovery from the recession,  localization of supply chains, technological advancements to close the gap with competitors. By market capitalization on S&P 500 the U.S. manufacturing industrial sector was 15% in 2000, in 2020 it is 9%. Hope today lies in the determination to reverse the trends in this sector and regain leadership. Even in the aerospace sector the determination and legacy of American manufacturing is strong. Recently the WSJ ran a story on how David Farr, the CEO of industrial company Emerson Electric, which makes automation equipment for factories and aerospace parts based in Ferguson, Missouri, managed his company through the pandemic so that it was posed to return quickly to full production. Against all the hurdles he would not give up and fought hard in each battle with suppliers, governments and the pandemic.This bodes well for American manufacturing coming back on quickly even in tough markets such as aerospace and automation. Other factors WSJ mentions are quick reversal in hit to earnings, robust demand. Consumables have sprung back up fastest, but automobiles are also holding up in demand. This leads us to the localization of supply chains. Companies realize the risks of tensions in the South China Sea and technology theft today in a way that they did not before and this is changing the mood resulting in plans to move production onshore. Warnings from the Trump administration played a role with new tariffs on Chinese imports. Shipping products halfway around the world no longer makes sense, especially in losing control of supplies. Emerson depended on production off shore in China and other countries and panic from the pandemic set in quickly that everything would come to a halt as supplies stopped coming and Emerson could do nothing. The economics WSJ points out are also different today with labor cost inflation in China and labor cost deflation in the U.S. which improves U.S. competitiveness. To make U.S. labor cost competitive with China says Scott Davis in WSJ, one has to make the same quantity of product with half the employees, and this is now possible with automation technologies in 2020. The result is that even at this low point in manufacturing one can see the future is bright for the USA as it moves rapidly to rebuild the strength in manufacturing it had for most of the twentieth century. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
"Progressive" is a misused word, people are just interested in the words "decent," "fairness," and "Christian" from the color of the heart.  It is just how Republicans see the contest for the US Senate  that reveals their sense of priorities for the Nation.The main concerns of Republicans, old traditional Republicans shown here in this WSJ Editorial are that somehow gains on the US Supreme Court could be reversed with retirement of Alito and Thomas in their seventies, and fears of the same policies that set up Medicare and Social Security- following the changes of the Industrial Revolution and dismal factory conditions and wages at the turn of the century- under Republican Teddy Roosevelt  (the incipient changes), Woodrow Wilson an academic from Princeton, and Franklin Roosevelt. A new version of old Tory politics still exists in the US. It is these industrial conditions rewritten with work safety laws, workmen's compensation, first 54 in 1918 after the Triangle Factory Fire,  then 40 hour week, unemployment insurance, worker union rights for fair negotiations on wages, that made the US a strong manufacturing nation and Industrial power, creating the synergies for worker contributions combining with technologies, managerial skills for a decent standard of living that surpassed all other nations. It is this achievement that was put at risk in the 21st century by shipping factories overseas and thoughtlessly sending the technologies with it, which happened under a series of administrations since the 1980's Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Trump. Done thoughtlessly and recklessly. And the wars that started with president Reagan in Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan that diverted the two trillion dollars that would have rebuilt America's aging infrastructure. Biden was the first president to have a clear focus on the changes needed to rebuild infrastructure and manufacturing, technologies and science, and rural America, in a concerted push that has made gains that surpass any that exist in Europe or China. Restoring the US economy to No. 1. Harris in her own way offers the pieces of the puzzle to reverse the pandemic induced cost of living increases that complement the work of president Biden in 2024, continuing the work of rebuilding infrastructure and manufacturing for leadership in the world.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
King Salman appoints Mohamed bin Nayef, 55 years-old, as the deputy crown prince in Jan. 2015. The crown prince is Muqrin Abdulaziz, 69 years-old. Mohamed Bin Nayef is the son of the Interior Minister, who worked under his father from 1999 till he became the new Interior minister in 2012. Nayef has pursued an aggressive program to remove Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. By taking action against all dissent inside Saudi Arabia Nayef has also jailed human rights activists, including the flogging of a blogger critical of the government. The defense minister Prince Mohamed bin Salman, is a son of King Salman. King Salman was defense minister till he succeeded his half-brother Abdullah. Ali al-Naimi continues as Oil minister, a position he has held for decades. Saudi Arabia established a panel in 2006 to work with future kings after King Salman to appoint an heir to the throne. Even with the appointment of Nayef, a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdulaziz ibn Saud, as deputy crown prince, the leadership of the country remains within a small number of princes of the royal family. Under the Obama administration the relations between U.S. and Saudi Arabia have become strained with president Obama's failure to intervene in Syria. The Saudi have pursued their own policies since then, in first Bahrain and then Egypt the Saudis supported the monarchy and the military respectively to maintain power in the face of the Arab Spring. The danger is that Saudi policies may be contrary to the U.S. position supporting freely elected governments and basic rights, particularly when it comes to suppression of all dissent including peaceful dissent and normal criticism of government, and yet with the rise of Islamic State the U.S. puts itself inadvertently behind these very policies. The Saudis would say this has happened because U.S. president Obama failed to support the effort for freedom in Syria and a transition in Libya and Iraq (with the added complication of Maliki's sectarian policies), creating a war torn neighborhood in which the Saudis had to act on their own. These are the hidden costs of the policy of the U.S. president for the U.S. and for the Middle East- more sectarianism with Shiites and Sunnis openly in conflict, reversal of hard won gains in Iraq, reversal of the Arab Spring except in Tunisia, war torn Libya and Iraq- with a withdrawal that never truly happened because it required a firmly guided transition period of support in the region with lower cost and involvement of an extended period leaving no room for reversal of gains. It leaves both the Saudis and the U.S. in a more precarious position than a decade ago....

LyrArc Article Gist
The widespread popularity in Japan of former Osaka governor, and current Mayor, Toru Hashimoto, at a time when each of the two major political parties have no more than 20% support. His effort is to shake up the staus quo, saying what is needed is "creative destruction, to dismathle everything and start from scratch." Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's standing, as was the case for previous prime ministers, is low in opinion polls. Hashimoto has pushed through spending cuts in Osaka by reducing the salaries of overpaid bus drivers and other workers. He brings fresh ideas but critics say he would centralize decisionmaking if elected, and the party is too focussed on one leader's views and personality.

LyrArc Article Gist
Shinzo Abe is determined to avoid the mistakes made during his last term as prime minister 2006-2007, which lasted only 10 months and ended with defeat in the upper house elections. The LDP is aware that it won by a landslide because of the splintered opposition. The LDP won only 40% of the vote in the electoral districts in Japan. His focus will be on the economy, on tackling deflation, on central bank policy and efforts to support exporters with a weaker yen, and this time he will be cautious about sounding too nationalistic. Abe told a news conference: "I once fell to rock bottom and was hit with a storm of criticism. Now, I want to prove it's possible to start over again." During 2006-2007 Abe followed a popular LDP leader, Junichiro Koizumi, and hope that he represented a new post war generation of leaders. One approach he might take is to stay close to the U.S. on policies. The early stumble in this respect hurt DPJ's prime minister Yuko Hatoyama after differences with the U.S. shortened his term in office....

LyrArc Article Gist
Junichiro Koizumi's decision to support his son for the seat he held in Yokosuka, a naval port an hour from Tokyo. Fackler points out an astounding fact about second generation and third generation leaders in Japanese politics that make it an insider's terrritory. Second generation politicians in parliament make up an unusually large part of the legislature. About 40% of LDP party members of parliament are descendents of prior lawmakers. Of 7 prime ministers, only one was not a son or grandson of a former lawmaker. Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda were grandson and son of former prime ministers. Even the Democratic Party of Japan has its share of second generation members of parliament of about 20%. In this fascinating account of Japanese politics Fackler talks to Mr. Yokokume, a DPJ candidate running against the younger Koizumi, at his campaign offices. With a small fraction of the financing received by the younger Koizumi and voters at the train station telling him this is Koizumi country, Yokokume is worried that politics is for too long closed to outsiders in Japanese politics. Public opinion in Japan describes this in negative terms as depriving Japan of the fresh blood and new ideas from newcomers to politics to renew Japanese government....

LyrArc Article Gist
Unstable politics and government in Japan as three prime ministers from the DPJ party are followed by Shinzo Abe of the LDP party.

LyrArc Article Gist
Shinzo Abe and the LDP won a landslide victory in Japan's Dec. 2012 elections. Shinzo Abe was the first prime minister of Japan born during the post war period when he became prime minister in 2006. He is less influenced by the legacy of the pre-war period and war period. Abe is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, Commerce and Industry minister during the war, and prime minister when Japan signed the security treaty with the U.S. in 1960. His father was foreign minister, making him one of the rare politicians with a deep family history in Japan's government. Their views also influenced his own. Kishi is committed to changing Article 9 in Japan's constitution which limits the role of the military, and renounces the right to wage war. His 2006 book "Toward a Beautiful Nation," describes some of his views.

LyrArc Article Gist
Michael Fathers reviews two detailed accounts of Mao's Great Leap Forward. From 1958-62 Mao launched an effort to industrialize China in its effort to surpass Krushchev's effort to surpass the U.S. and western nations in one decade. Yang Jingsheng's account in the book 'Tombstone,' is a result of decades of research to find what happened during this period. He lost his own father to starvation during this period when all Chinese agriculture was forced into communes with communal living and communal kitchens. The result were disastrous as agricultural production suffered badly leading to famines and loss of an estimated 45 million lives. The policy was continued even as the result showed a looming disaster by 1959. It was only by 1962 that Mao was forced to accept the failure of the program. As an editor of Xinhua news agency, Jingsheng had access to accounts of waht happened in provincial documents and archives. The other book reviewed is 'The Great Famine' by Frank Dikotter which provides an illuminating account of what happened in these years. Dikotter says the final responsibility rested with Mao for calling for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine and for continuing the policy of force and coercion leading to starvation- he quotes Mao who said: "It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." The truth about this period was hidden by propaganda and the mistake accounts of westerners who visited China including Francois Mitterand till the 1990's. Jasper Becker, a former correspondent in China for the Guardian, gave one of the first accounts of what had happened in "Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine" (1996). What shocked readers was the extent of the dead, the violence, and the fear of speaking out even after 30 years. The fear of speaking out is evidenced in the pen name Mo Yan of the Nobel prize winner in Literature for 2012 which means do not speak out in Chinese because his parents were from a more affluent farming family in the village. Mo Yan uses animal and fairy tale characters and Chinese history in his novels and stories including his effort to describe the behaviour of arrogant local officials. The chronology of this period also tells a story. China's Communists took control in 1949, the famine and violent repression to establish the commune system occured in 1958-1962 only 8 years later, and the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao in 1966 and was to last a decade till his death in 1979- a period which saw a new effort of upending of China's countryside to establish communism....

LyrArc Article Gist
The LDP's landslide victory in the Dec. 2012 elections is not seen as a mandate for Shinzo Abe, the new LDP prime minister. Abe acknowledged this when he said: "We recognize that this was not a restoration of confidence in the Liberal Democratic Party, but a rejection of three years of incompetent rule by the Democratic Party." The LDP won 294 seats compared to the 308 seats won in the landslide win by the Democratic Party of Japan three years ago. Abe campaigned on a stronger stance in Japan's disputes with China. Yet he is committed to maintaining relations with China, a key trading partner. On China Abe says: "Our goal is to stop China from making these challenges, but we do not intend to allow an overall worsening in relations." Osaka Mayor Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Party was expected to do well but his campaign lost momentum after joining with Shintaro Ishihara, a nationalist politician. The Tomorrow Party which campaigned on the nuclear issue and anti-nuclear sentiment petered out after voters sensed the impact of electrical shortages and prices. The LDP is pro-nuclear and plans to reverse some of the anti-nuclear steps taken by the DPJ. The Democratic Party of Japan gained only 57 seats, and the former DPJ prime minister during the earthquake and tsunami, Naoto Kan, lost his parliamentary seat. Just as the PRI, a party that held a long monopoly of power was returned to power in Mexico in 2012, the LDP is returning to power, but very dependent on voters aspirations for good governance and its performance in office....

LyrArc Article Gist
As Dr Harsh Vardhan, India's representative and Health Minister, takes on responsibilities as the Chairman of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization this can be said about this critical juncture.The WHO is going through soul searching and a reevaluation of how it has implemented the vision of its founders during the closing years of a world torn apart  by war in 1945, and actual founding in 1946.  At the UN conference in San Francisco in 1945, Dr. Szeming Sze of China, Dr. Geraldo da Paula Souza of Brazil and Karl Ewang of Norway, were keen to set up an international organization for cooperation on health. The Indian representative was Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar, a member of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet, who chaired the committee on economic and social problems. He was the president of the Economic and Social Council which called for an international health conference in Feb. 1946. It was at that conference on 19 June 1946 that the World Health Conference came into being. A native of Madras he then returned to Mysore as chief minister. The vision at the time for international cooperation on problems such as smallpox which killed 2 million people each year were quite different from the fast moving epidemics with international travel in 2020. Today 4.4 billion passengers traveled by air in 2018, according to International Travel Association, 100 times compared to less than 40 million in 1950, and about 10 times the 400 million when Nixon's visit opened up China in 1972. The world we live in is different and the World Health Organization needs to be redesigned for the 21st century. The entire process of how the WHO operates has to be rethought. Immediate steps include- 1. The appointment by Executive Board should be reinstated as this is more representative of the world population and the major centres of advanced public health, including the major countries. Throughout its life the WHO made appointments through the Executive Board not by election. The election in 2019 by 200 countries was actually not representative of the world population as it gave India, Brazil and other early founders at the 1945-46 conferences only 1 vote each with population of 1.2 billion and 210 million, the same as tiny countries Barbados population 385,000 and Laos 7 million. 2. Reassessment of the entire process in which nations are requested to give permission of teams from major countries in Europe, North America and Asia, major population centres, so that the 6-7 week delay between the U.S. request to China for a special team to go to Wuhan on January 6, 2020 and the permission granted Feb 16, a costly delay of 7 weeks which added millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths. In a super fast moving pandemic with international sports stadiums and 4 billion air passengers spreading it like wild fire around the world, there is little room for error, every day counts. Never should this happen again, as Dr. Sze Szeming China's representative said once in 1945 we must learn from mistakes, as mistakes were made in the years before World War II that were costly for China, India, North and South America, Other Asia, Africa, large population centres. 3. As was the effort then in 1946 and the early years, the effort to keep the staffing positions of leadership in the World Health Organization should be kept far from politics. Very experienced and capable people are needed from major countries with long records of public health experience and committed to the huge task, as was the vision of the founders.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Yun Hua writes about perceptions of ordinary Chinese about the Cultural Revolution period in Communist China under Mao.

LyrArc Article Gist
Shigeru Ishiba was reappointed LDP party secretary-general in Japan. Ishiba served three terms as defence minister, is popular with the rank and file and the public. He has a good grasp of security issues. He will be the No. 2 person in the cabinet after prime minister Shinzo Abe. Ishiba was the first LDP official to give a specific trading range for the yen by publicly calling for a range of 85 to 90 yen to the dollar. The yen closed at about 85 yen to the dollar on Dec. 25, 2012. Two women join Ishiba and Abe in the leadership positions. Seiko Noda is now chairwoman of the party general council. And six term parliamentarian Sanae Takaichi is policy chief for the LDP.

LyrArc Article Gist
The U.S. House of Representatives votes 285-144 to suspend the debt ceiling till Feb. 7, 2014. The deal forged in the Senate by Democrat Reid and Republican McConnell passed in th Senate by 81-18. The U.S. stock markets closed with the DJIA at 15374, up 1.6% compared to Sept 30 when the government shutdown began. The Republicans opposing the passage outnumbered those supporting it 144 to 87 in the House of Representatives. Because this was a repeat of similiar failure to reach agreement and last minute deals in 2012 and 2011 the equity markets appear to have taken the conflict between the two parties in stride.