Coronavirus News (194)

Did China miscalculate the rise of India? Beijing has been preoccupied with tensions with Washington, but a deadly brawl on the Himalayan border last month raised the possibility of wars on two fronts Decades of talks have failed to bridge trust deficits and misperceptions, observers say

US PANDEMIC ADVISOR SAYS THE COUNTRY NEEDS TO SHUT DOWN AGAIN "THE US RESPONSE HAS BEEN EXTRAORDINARILY DISAPPOINTING AND WRONGHEADED. WHENEVER THERE'S BEEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO DO THE RIGHT THING, WE SEEM TO HAVE DONE THE WRONG THING"

Kazakhstan health ministry rejects Chinese claim of ‘unknown, deadlier pneumonia’ Ministry says Chinese embassy misunderstood official count, which includes unspecified cases WHO says it not aware of new emerging disease circulating in the Central Asian nation

US-China competition in Indo-Pacific a ‘marathon, not a sprint’, acting assistant secretary of defence says Head of Washington’s regional strategy David Helvey calls on ‘like-minded partners’ to defend international order Conflict ‘not inevitable’ but countries cannot sit ‘idly by’ while Beijing bends and disregards rules

After border clash with India, has China made a strategic miscalculation? China seems to have decided it can bear the cost of its territorial assertion at the disputed border and has warned India against strategic miscalculation However, the current gain might cloud the big picture for Beijing in the long term

Google Loon Is Now Beaming WiFi Down to Earth From Giant Balloons  Four years ago, three big tech companies had plans in the works to beam internet down to Earth from the sky, and each scenario sounded wilder than the next. SpaceX requested permission to launch 4,425 satellites into orbit to create a global internet hotspot. Facebook wanted to use solar-powered drones and laser-based tech to shoot wifi to antennas. And Google’s Loon was building giant balloons to house solar-powered electronics that would transmit connectivity down from the stratosphere. As incredible as it all sounds, two of these schemes have started to come to fruition. Loon balloons made their (non-emergency) debut in Kenya this week, with 35 balloons transmitting a 4G signal to 31,000 square miles of central and western Kenya. And SpaceX is in the process of signing up beta testers for its internet-via-satellite, with over 500 satellites currently in orbit. Facebook, however, stopped work on its internet drones in mid-2018. 

Why We Need Mass Automation to Pandemic-Proof the Supply Chain the global supply chain, works so well that it’s effectively invisible most of the time. .........  The pandemic has thrown a floodlight on the inner workings of this modern wonder—and it’s exposed massive vulnerabilities. .......  While there are some notable instances of advanced automation, the overwhelming majority of work is still manual, resembling a sort of human-powered bucket brigade, with people wandering around warehouses or standing alongside conveyor belts. Each package of diapers or bottle of detergent ordered by an online customer might be touched dozens of times by warehouse workers before finding its way into a box delivered to a home. .............  To make the global supply chain more resilient to shocks like Covid-19, we must look to technology. ............  the Global Supply Chain: The Massive ‘Matter Router’ ...........   today’s companies, big and small, are looking to automation, robotics, and AI to meet the pandemic head on. These technologies are crucial to scaling the infrastructure that will fulfill most of the world’s e-commerce and food distribution needs. ........... You can think of this new infrastructure as a rapidly evolving “matter router” that will employ increasingly complex robotic systems to move products more freely and efficiently. ..........  The good news? We can accomplish this with technologies we have today.

Worst economic drop on record through June - we need cash relief now. #EmergencyMoneyforthePeople #WeAreTheEconomy https://t.co/TlUcb9bjmq

— Andrew Yang🧢🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) July 30, 2020

US economy posts its worst drop on record  The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record ..........  wiping out five years of economic gains in just a few months. ........ Between January and March, GDP declined by an annualized rate of 5%.  

Coronavirus News (193)

‘That’s Ridiculous.’ How America’s Coronavirus Response Looks Abroad. From lockdowns to testing, we showed people around the world the facts and figures on how the U.S. has handled the pandemic. ......... The United States leads the world in Covid-19 deaths, nearing 150,000 lost lives. The unemployment figures brought on by the pandemic are mind-boggling. The Trump administration’s slow and haphazard response has been widely criticized. ..............  Many advanced economies, from Germany to Singapore, directly supplemented salaries to save jobs. Other nations with fewer resources started mass testing at the first sign of an outbreak. Many countries mandated universal lockdowns — and successfully flattened the curve. In some parts of Europe, you could be fined for straying too far from your home. And Vietnam, a nation of 95 million people, has not seen a single Covid-19 death.    

 

China and America Are Heading Toward Divorce For 40 years the two countries had an unconscious economic coupling. .......   They know that as long as you’re president, America will be in turmoil. For Xi, that means we’re a less formidable economic rival, and for Vlad, that means we’re a less attractive democratic model for his people. They also both know that as long as you’re president the U.S. will never be able to galvanize a global coalition of allies against them, which is what China fears most on trade, human rights and Covid-19 and Russia on Ukraine and Syria. .........  “If Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China, because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances.” ........ after 40 years of being one couple, two systems, because China badly overreached and America badly underperformed. .........  the U.S.-China partnership forged between 1979 and 2019 delivered a lot of prosperity to a lot of people and a lot of relative peace to the world — and, baby, we will miss it when it’s gone. ............  as Trump himself put it in a tweet last week, the U.S. has the option “of a complete decoupling from China.” ..........  China has become more aggressive in projecting its power into the South China Sea .......  it is imposing a new national security law to curtail longstanding freedoms in Hong Kong; it’s stepped up its bullying of Taiwan, taken a very aggressive approach toward India and intensified its internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang .........  it takes about 22 hours on Amtrak to go from New York to Chicago, while it takes 4.5 hours to take the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai, slightly farther apart ...........  It’s that we have reduced investments in the true sources of our strength — infrastructure, education, government-funded scientific research, immigration and the right rules to incentivize productive investment and prevent excessive risk-taking. And we have stopped leveraging our greatest advantage over China — that we have allies who share our values and China only has customers who fear its wrath. .............   “I don’t know if the Chinese are taking America seriously anymore. They are happy to just let us keep damaging ourselves. ........ China respects one thing only: leverage. Today, we have too little and China has too much.

The Death of Engagement The policy of "engagement" has defined U.S.-China relations for almost a half century. It didn't have to end this way. ........  In 1967, as race riots spread across the United States and as the Vietnam War raged on, an astounding 70 percent of Americans agreed on one thing: the greatest threat to U.S. security was the People’s Republic of China. At the time, China was in the throes of one of the most violent, anti-democratic upheavals of the century, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and Americans feared that the contagion of Mao’s “people’s war” would spread from Indochina around the world.  So, it was surprising when, against this backdrop, then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon issued a call for amity in the pages of Foreign Affairs. 

Churchill The Failure: The Paradoxical Truth About The Best And Worst Leaders  Churchill, in his own words, “hated” Indians, describing them as “a beastly people with a beastly religion.” .........  He alienated the Conservative leadership and marginalized himself so far on the extreme right that he was accused of attempting to become “an English Mussolini.” ....... Churchill’s attitude towards India did not change when he became Prime Minister. He presided over – and actively prevented any efforts to alleviate – the catastrophic 1943 Bengal famine, which killed 3 million Indians. When Churchill’s India Secretary and childhood friend Leo Amery asked him to do something, Churchill laughed about the prospect of shrinking a population that bred “like rabbits.” A horrorstruck Amery wrote that when it came to India, there wasn’t “much difference between [Churchill’s] outlook and Hitler’s.” ....... only Churchill would have kept fighting in May 1940. In the right circumstances, there is no one you’d rather be led by than Winston Churchill. In the wrong ones, you’d rather have anyone else.   

Coronavirus-Linked Hunger Tied To 10,000 Child Deaths Each Month The side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing hungry communities around the world over the edge.