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President Donald Trump approves a landmark energy deal that will establish a civilian nuclear programme in Saudi Arabia. US lawmakers and Israel warn that if the agreement allows the Gulf state to enrich its own uranium, it could pave the way for it to build its own nuclear weapons - but the US insists the deal upholds the "highest standards of nuclear safety". Saudi Arabia has long wanted US nuclear technology, while the US gets a leg up in the competition with China and Russia to develop civilian nuclear infrastructure in the region.Also: A Florida teenager who sued Meta claiming that he was addicted to and harmed by his use of social media platforms, has dropped his lawsuit. Our correspondent in Lebanon travels to the so-called pilot zones in the south, where residents are trying to return home while the army vows to disarm Hezbollah. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo becomes the third largest on record with more than 1,000 people dead. In India, the youth-led 'cockroach' party supporters protesting in Delhi ramp up their demands for education reform. How young Nigerians are using AI tools to learn new languages in pursuit of a life abroad. And Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie is boosting sales of the book versions.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk Photo: US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attend the Keynote Address at the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 13 May 2025. Credit: ALI HAIDER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Bob Zimmerman reports that SpaceX is preparing for its 13th Starship flight, a prototype featuring major upgrades for future orbital missions and in-orbit refueling. In India, the startup Skyroot achieved a landmark success with the Vikram-1 rocket, signaling the rise of a private, capitalist space sector. However, the Indian government has counterproductively restricted ISRO employees from leaving for private firms. These contrasting approaches highlight the tension between state-run agencies and the efficiency of private enterprise in the global space race. (11)AUGUST 1955

SCHEDULE FOR THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 7-22-2026.1740 BATAVIA MASSACREGordon Chang and Rick Fisher examine Xi Jinping's introduction of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), designed to establish Chinese dominance in setting global AI rules. Headquartered in Shanghai, the group aims to make international partners dependent on Chinese technology while promoting anti-democratic values. Meanwhile, China's economy is struggling, with real growth potentially near zero. Despite manufacturing strengths, China remains vulnerable due to a critical lack of high-end Nvidia chips required for advanced AI development. (1)Gordon Chang and Peter Huessy discuss the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) bill to drastically reduce the U.S. nuclear triad, including cutting ICBMs from 400 to 150. Supported by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the plan effectively promotes unilateral disarmament. Critics argue this trashes the concept of nuclear deterrence just as China and Russia expand their arsenals. Furthermore, there is a widespread "miseducation" of Americans regarding the necessity of a modernized nuclear deterrent. (2)Gordon Chang and Victoria Coates report that Iran has activated the Houthis to attack the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a critical choke point for Saudi Arabian oil exports. This escalation has pushed oil prices past $95 as the Houthis use Iranian-supplied missiles and drones to harass shipping. While the House of Saud is targeted, internal frictions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE complicate a unified regional response. The conflict represents a major humanitarian and economic disaster for global commerce. (3)Gordon Chang and Victoria Coates continue: China benefits from discounted Iranian oil but views the regime's economic instability as a "bad debt." Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia is deepening its partnership with the U.S. through a landmark nuclear cooperation deal. Iraq has also signaled a shift toward Washington, signing $60 billion in energy deals with American companies like Chevron. While Russia seeks to sell extra capacity to Asia, Ukrainian strikes on refineries may hinder Putin's ability to remain a reliable energy supplier. (4)Peter Earle traces how the word "trillion" entered the economic lexicon in 1981 when the U.S. passed $1 trillion in public debt. Today, the U.S. national debt approaches $40 trillion, with annual interest payments exceeding $1 trillion. Unlike 19th-century millionaires who faced high risks, modern trillion-dollar figures are often a product of government monetary expansion. We have entered "Trillionstan," where massive quantities of money are common, yet their long-term significance is often overlooked by the public. (5)Peter Earle argues that not all trillions are equal; some represent genuine wealth creation, such as SpaceX's $2 trillion valuation based on future technological potential. However, inflation and government borrowing have also inflated nominal values, potentially leading to a fiscal reckoning. If creditors lose faith in U.S. debt, the government may be forced to print more money, further devaluing the currency. Maintaining prosperity requires ensuring that economic forces focus on creating new wealth rather than merely redistributing it. (6)Henry Sokolski warns that the Trump administration's nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia allows the kingdom to enrich uranium, a process that can easily be diverted for bomb-making. Saudi Arabia has rejected the "additional protocol" for rigorous UN inspections, raising concerns about their true intentions. This "black box" arrangement lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent a rapid diversion of nuclear materials. Critics warn that providing enrichment technology to an ally involved in regional warfare is inherently delusional and dangerous. (7)Henry Sokolski continues: the Saudi nuclear deal could trigger a proliferation race, with nations like Egypt, Turkey, and the UAE demanding similar enrichment rights. Furthermore, allies such as South Korea and Poland may reconsider their own nuclear ambitions if they view American security guarantees as insufficient. Proliferation is no longer "old news" but a growing threat as nations seek their own deterrents. The result is a destabilized global order where multiple states hover on the verge of nuclear weapon status. (8)Michael Bernstam explains how Ukrainian drone strikes have destroyed 30% of Russia's refining capacity, causing the "crack spread"—the profit margin for refining oil—to triple worldwide. While Russia exports crude, it now suffers from severe domestic shortages of gasoline and jet fuel. Consequently, Russia is forced to buy back its own refined oil from India at premium prices. Putin has been "hoist on his own petard," creating a global energy weapon that has ultimately turned against the Russian economy. (9)Michael Bernstam reports that Ukrainian drones recently destroyed major distribution hubs for Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, causing $2 billion in damage. These strikes have devastated small businesses and middle-class consumers, fueling internal resentment against the Kremlin. Simultaneously, 18 local Russian officials signed a petition calling for Putin's resignation as economic conditions worsen. The loss of consumer infrastructure and rising fuel costs are creating a constituency for ending the war to prevent a total economic collapse. (10)Bob Zimmerman reports that SpaceX is preparing for its 13th Starship flight, a prototype featuring major upgrades for future orbital missions and in-orbit refueling. In India, the startup Skyroot achieved a landmark success with the Vikram-1 rocket, signaling the rise of a private, capitalist space sector. However, the Indian government has counterproductively restricted ISRO employees from leaving for private firms. These contrasting approaches highlight the tension between state-run agencies and the efficiency of private enterprise in the global space race. (11)Bob Zimmerman surveys new discoveries: astronomers have detected a helium atmosphere on a terrestrial exoplanet located 48 light-years away in its star's habitable zone. Closer to home, archival data from Pluto reveals massive landslides, proving the dwarf planet is geologically active rather than dormant. Meanwhile, new images of Valles Marineris on Mars illustrate the canyon's staggering scale, with depths equivalent to the height of Mount McKinley. These discoveries emphasize that planetary bodies across our solar system are dynamic and evolving. (12)Simon Constable notes European energy prices are skyrocketing, with Brent crude hitting $95 and natural gas up 47% in a single month. In France, a heatwave and suspicious forest fires have added environmental stress to the economic crisis. A political movement in the U.S. is targeting data centers for their high energy consumption, which now exceeds 4% of usage. Surprisingly, the United Kingdom hosts the second-highest number of data centers globally, despite its historical association with "Luddite" skepticism. (13)Simon Constable observes that new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces immediate skepticism, with polls indicating nearly half of voters feel his government lacks direction. Burnham's focus on domestic issues like capping bus prices is criticized as a "tax and spend" policy that might alienate the wealthy. While he has emphasized national security, his early days have been defined by local populist initiatives. Critics worry his leadership style mimics a "Lord Mayor" rather than a strategic global prime minister. (14)Brandy Shufutinsky details how Qatar has provided extensive grants for Arabic language and culture programs in U.S.K-12 schools. These programs often utilize textbooks that omit Israel from maps and glorify extremist ideologies. Qatar Foundation International (QFI) even funds teacher salaries and work visas, raising concerns about who these educators truly report to. This funding creates a "pipeline" from elementary school to higher education, potentially instilling foreign-influenced perspectives in future generations of American citizens. (15)Conrad Black argues that Canada's economic growth has stalled due to high corporate taxes and "climate alarmist" policies under the Trudeau government. He suggests that new leadership under Mark Carney could revitalize the nation by making it more tax-competitive with the U.S. Canada's vast resources and skilled workforce provide the potential for a rapid rebound. For Canada to succeed, it must pivot back to pro-capitalist policies and attract foreign investment to drive future growth. (16)Two spelling corrections applied: Peter Earle (5, 6 — transcribed as "Pete Earl"; the AIER economist) and Brandy Shufutinsky (15 — transcribed as "Shubatinsky"). Both added to the log unless you'd prefer otherwise.

Ha già nominato diversi ministri provenienti dal governo Starmer e ha detto che vuole portare stabilità. Ci sarà un piano di 10 anni sulle case popolari, ma diverse altre cose probabilmente non cambieranno molto. In India ci sono forti proteste contro il governo di Modi per un enorme scandalo di corruzione che cancellerà i test d'ingresso per 3 milioni e mezzo di giovani studenti. Ci saranno 15 nuovi ranger in Südtirol per arginare il turismo molto concentrato in alcune località e sensibilizzare i turisti. Luigi Mastrodonato, giornalista esperto di diritti, racconta i molti casi invisibili simili al caso Fakir, morto durante un immobilizzamento della polizia a Bologna. La mappa creata dal giornalista Luigi Mastrodonato sugli episodi controversi avvenuti durante i fermi di Polizia dal 2000 a oggi Rassegna stampa: In Cornovaglia la crisi abitativa sta costringendo molte persone a vivere in van, Luigi Mastrodonato Montagna d'estate, in Alto Adige istituiti i ranger per sensibilizzare e informare i turisti, Carlotta Garancini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#stockmarket #finance #investing #sbifunds #jiofinancial #techmahindra #warrenbuffett #inflation #treasuryyields #fii #nifty50 #itc #fmcg #moodys #businessnewsGet the latest market updates! Warren Buffett warns of a "gambling" culture in markets, while Moody's cuts global growth forecasts. In India, FIIs are buying bonds and selling Nifty. The SBI Funds IPO closes with a massive 42x subscription. We also cover Jio Financial's 156% profit jump, Tech Mahindra's Q1 results, and ITC's FMCG demand outlook for H2.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebookshttps://shorturl.at/P7ZcoBook your seat for Bhubaneshwar Sessionhttps://shop.investyadnya.in/pages/global-portfolio-methodologyInvest in Investyadnya's Global Equity Portfolio00:00 Start00:50 US Treasury Yields & Wall Street03:59 FIIs Buy India Bonds, Sell Nifty08:10 Moody's Cuts Global Growth Forecast09:34 Warren Buffett Warns of Market Gambling12:22 SBI Funds IPO Subscribed 42 Times13:54 ITC Optimistic on H2 FMCG Demand15:47 Jio Financial Services Q1 Profit Surges17:15 Tech Mahindra Q1 FY27 Results

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva's reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India's “Muslim problem.”Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva's reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India's “Muslim problem.”Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva's reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India's “Muslim problem.”Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva's reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India's “Muslim problem.”Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva's reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India's “Muslim problem.”Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

#stockmarket #finance #investing #semiconductor #tatagroup #icicilombard #groww #atherenergy #usiran #crudeoil #tariffs #criticalminerals #nifty50 #sensex #businessnewsCatch today's macro updates! Trump announces a surprise call from Iran seeking a truce, while oil passes $80/barrel. The US proposes a 100% tariff on India for buying Russian oil. In India, the Cabinet clears the massive ₹1.27 trillion ISM 2.0 and a ₹62.5K crore mobile manufacturing scheme. Plus, the Tata Group eyes a entry into shipbuilding, Ather launches a ₹1,300 crore QIP, and we review Q1 results from ICICI Lombard and Groww.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebookshttps://shorturl.at/P7ZcoBook your seat for Bhubaneshwar Sessionhttps://shop.investyadnya.in/pages/global-portfolio-methodologyInvest in Investyadnya's Global Equity Portfolio00:00 Start00:44 US Strikes Iran Amid Settle Hopes02:48 US Markets Mixed; BlackRock Surges04:29 US Proposes 100% Tariffs on Indian Imports05:25 ₹62,500 Cr Mobile Manufacturing Scheme Cleared06:27 Cabinet Approves ₹1.27 Trillion ISM 2.008:09 Eighth Tranche of Critical Minerals Open08:59 Tata Group Plans Foray into Shipbuilding09:45 India & UAE Central Banks Meet10:39 Ather Energy Opens ₹1,300 Cr QIP11:12 ICICI Lombard Q1 Profit Plunges 46pc12:20 ICICI Prudential Life Q1 Profits Rise 28pc12:50 HDFC Life Results13:20 Groww Doubled YoY Profitability13:50 Knowledge Section

Shutterstock Track 1219389 Monetization ID TFGEPGEI0LHEIJAI Kia ora. Welcome to Tuesday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from interest.co.nz. Today we lead with news that at the close of business today in New York, the Q2-2026 earnings season will kick off with major banks JP Morgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo leading the pack. They will be reporting into a market that is jittery over the rebounding crisis in the Middle East. Adding to the confusion, Trump said the US is imposing a 20% toll on all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. That will close all traffic except Iranian-linked vessels. Separately, yesterday tech stocks from New York to Shanghai all took a beating. Meanwhile, US Fed governor Waller spoke today, emphasising he is watching the inflation signals closely and warning that more rate hikes may be necessary. He warned about the impact of "tariffs, energy prices, and spillovers from demand for the AI buildout". But he is wary of recent history, acknowledging that this evolving situation has different risks and "we shouldn't fight the last war" on inflation. We are seeing a long-time dove turning hawkish on the need for action on inflation. That comes as the US federal government posted a much wider deficit than expected, boosted by tariff refunds. Over the past nine months, that deficit has swelled to -US$1.36 tln on track for another unsustainable record, only one Trump could engineer with his dodgy fiscal strategies. In India, CPI inflation rose to 4.4% in June, its highest since December 2024 and slightly more than expected. Food prices rose +5.3% with tomato prices up almost a third on this year-on-year basis. In China, their climate and weather authorities are warning that there is an elevated chance of more serious storms this year. They have just had their first major one, and they say more than six national emergency level storms are expected before the end of their summer. In Australia, we should probably note that the Xero CEO has sold all her own shares in the company, a somewhat startling signal. Meanwhile OPEC is also turning glum. Their July Monthly Oil Market Report lowered the 2026 global oil demand growth forecast to 780,000 bpd, citing economic instability from the geopolitical conflict. They see reduced demand in major markets. The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.61%, up +5 bps from this time yesterday.  The price of gold has fallen to US$3994/oz, down -US$126/oz from yesterday. Silver is now just under US$57.50/oz, down -US$2.50 from yesterday. Oil prices are up +US$6 from yesterday at just on US$77/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just over US$82/bbl. Hormuz transits have essentially dried up as the hot conflict explodes again and Iran declaring the Strait 'closed'. There have been just 6 crude tankers (1) and 5 cargo ships exiting over the past 24 hours and 5 of those tied to Iran (0 dark with transponders off) but only 5 entering for new loads, all Iran-linked (1 dark). The Kiwi dollar is little-changed from yesterday at just under 57.6 USc. But against the Aussie we are up +20 bps at 83.1 AUc. Against the euro we are unchanged at just on 50.5 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just on 61.5 which is the same as this time yesterday. The bitcoin price starts today at US$61,935 and down -3.4% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest however at just under +/- 1.9%. You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz. Kia ora. I'm David Chaston and we'll do this again tomorrow. Track 1219389 Monetization ID TFGEPGEI0LHEIJAI Audio soundtrack opening is licensed from Shutterstock, Track 1219389 Monetization ID TFGEPGEI0LHEIJAI

In India, people fly kites. They have been flying kites for hundreds of years. At festivals, thousands of colorful kitesfly. Some people fly them from the tops of buildings! Kites high in the sky are beautiful!印度人喜歡放風箏，這項活動已經有好幾百年的歷史。每到節慶的時候，就能看到成千上萬個彩色風箏在空中飛揚，非常美麗！ Click HERE to see the full episode transcript, vocabulary, and quiz.

“Someone said, oh, you look like Steve Bannon, and I love you for that… No, I just shaved my hair and lost some pounds.” — Kaya Genç on Trumpism's global fanbase The NATO circus rumbled into the Turkish capital of Ankara this week resembling more of a gun show than an alliance summit. Ringmaster Donald J. Trump promised Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the F-35s and lifted the very sanctions that Trump himself had imposed. Erdogan handed out pistols to the assembled leaders — with poor old Keir Starmer (no Winston Churchill) leaving his at the airport. And observing all these clowns from Istanbul was the Turkish novelist and essayist Kaya Genç. As a contributor to the anthology How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump, Genç is a keen America watcher. He first set foot in the United States in January 2017, stumbling into New York City's protests against Trump 1.0's Muslim-ban. What seemed temporary — Trump as a bizarre historical aberration — looked to Erdogan-literate Kaya Genç like an operating manual for 21st century populist authoritarianism. Turkey, Genç argues, has spent a century Americanizing itself. First with the 20th century Marshall Plan, the highways, the Hilton hotels, and finally an American-style executive presidency operating on the politics of referendum. Now, he says, the whole world — from Turkey to France and Britain — is living with the consequences of 21st century Americanization. Like a more functional NATO, right-wing populists operate like an international alliance. Erdogan, Trump, Meloni, Le Pen and Farage are like a club in which projecting strength at summits buys impunity at home. And this club has a house style. Turkish right-wing columnists, Genç reports, deploy Michael Corleone on their X banners — exactly David Thomson's warning earlier this week about Hollywood's glorification of on-screen violence. So, in a way, America observers like Kaya Genç got a sneak preview of Trump's America in movies like The Godfather. First as cinema, then as life. From both Turkey and Russia with love. Five Takeaways •       NATO: The Club of the Mighty. The night before the summit, activists were rounded up in Ankara — LGBTQ rights defenders, labor unionists, journalists — as threats to NATO security. In Turkish civil society, Genç explains, NATO doesn't represent the liberal world order; it represents the mighty, and has since the writers of the 1960s. The summit itself was a military passion show: jets overhead, revolvers gifted among the attendees, and a host country whose ruling politicians no longer hide that arms exports — including the drones Ukraine used so effectively — are now the mission of the Turkish economy. •       Trump: A Star Among Right-Wing Voters Everywhere. In India, a chubbier, longer-haired Genç was once told: you look like Steve Bannon, and I love you for that. The Turkish media savaged Biden but forgives Trump everything — Netanyahu is the villain of the Turkish press, while Trump speaks the language. Not Turkish (though he tried a phrase): the language of the presidential system. The Turkish right's America has always been selective — yes to the death penalty and gun ownership, no to labor rights, free expression, and the trans movement — an instinct as old as the poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy's advice to copy Germany's industriousness and leave out the decadence. •       Living the Consequences of Americanization. Turkey began its republic in the 1920s on the European model — parliament, proportional voices for an ethnically diverse country. After the Marshall Plan, it re-forged itself on the American one: highways, Hilton hotels, burger joints, and eventually an American-style executive presidency, approved by referendum over the objections of people like Genç. That's why Trump 1.0 read so differently in the two countries: in New York it looked like an exception to be fought off; in Ankara it looked like how American politics works — and something to imitate. •       Populists Learn Like Large Language Models. Did Erdogan create the model, or is Trump teaching Erdogan? Neither, says Genç: it's a dialogue — right-wing populism learning from itself the way AI learns from language models. The AKP ran a Gramscian culture war through the institutions; Meloni, Le Pen, and Farage apply the cosmetic soft brush that makes fascist-rooted politics presentable. Join the club, project strength at the summit, and whatever you do domestically stops mattering. Putin, notably, is not in the curriculum: Turkey is returning its S-400s to get the F-35s, and Russia is becoming a footnote. •       The Hologram and the Pushback. Ekrem Imamoglu — the Istanbul mayor Genç profiles in The Dial as the hologram candidate — won the city with socialist municipalism, and the skeptics who warned it would alienate the pious were simply wrong. Soft liberalism, the faith Genç himself held since the nineties, is disappearing; the pushback is finding its heroes in dead poets — Rosa Luxemburg, and Sevgi Soysal, whose novel Walking is out in English from New York Review Books. From Istanbul to Middle America, Mamdani to AOC, Genç's advice to the left is the same: don't fragment — conquer the big parties. About the Guest Kaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. He is the author of Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey and The Lion and the Nightingale, and his writing appears in The Dial, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship, and Jewish Quarterly. He is a contributor to How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump (The New Press, June 2026), edited by The Dial's Madeleine Schwartz. References: •       How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump, edited by Madeleine Schwartz (The New Press, June 2026). Publishers Weekly: “A much-needed reality check.” •       Madeleine Schwartz — founder and editor-in-chief of The Dial, editor of the anthology, and a recent guest on the show. •       Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey — Genç's account of Turkey's political generation, published just after the 2016 coup attempt. •       Ece Temelkuran — the Turkish writer and recent guest whose How to Lose a Country globalized the Turkish case as a warning to democracies everywhere. •       Sevgi Soysal — the Turkish novelist who died at 40, whose Walking — a portrait of Ankara slowly killing itself for profit — is out in English from New York Review Books, reviewed by Genç. •       David Thomson — the film critic and recent guest whose argument that Trumpism grew from Hollywood's lov...

#stockmarket #finance #investing #chipstocks #usemployment #chinaexports #iranianoil #privatecredit #firstcry #swarababy #qualityindex #nifty50 #sensex #businessnews #economyGlobal markets retreat as major tech and semiconductor stocks plummet up to 11%, tracking oversupply worries. US hiring drops to just 57,000 in June, signaling a severe cooling. In India, private credit assets under management double to $25 billion, prompting liquid risk warnings from Moody's. Plus, FirstCry approves a ₹300 crore OFS stake sale via its subsidiary Swara Baby's upcoming IPO.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Semiconductor Stocks Fall Sharply02:44 US June Hiring Cools Drastically05:03 China Exports Drag European Growth08:44 Iran's Unsold Oil Stockpiles Grow13:08 Private Credit Market Doubles in India15:12 Moody's Warns of Liquidity Risks16:36 FirstCry Subsidiary to Launch IPO17:42 Interesting Section- Quality Index Reversion Argument

In India, one place has big mountains around it. In the winter, there is one road to the place. This road is important. Every day, many trucks and cars use it. It is in the mountains. 印度有一個地方被高山環繞。冬天的時候，只有一條山間道路可以通往那裡。每天都有許多車輛行駛在這條重要的山路上。Click HERE for the full transcript!

#stockmarket #finance #investing #nifty #sensex #tatamotors #marutisuzuki #gstcollections #olaelectric #kpit #ernd #trump #bhartiairtel #jswinfra #businessnewsCatch today's macro updates! US and Iran make progress in Qatar talks as commercial oil transit through Hormuz jumps to 10M barrels daily. In India, June GST collections grow 14% to ₹1.95 trillion, power demand rises 11.6%, and passenger vehicle sales surge on strong rural demand. We also cover the ER&D stock rout following KPIT's warning, Airtel Money's launch, and JSW Infra's ₹7.5K crore QIP.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start00:39 US Markets & Fed Remarks02:45 Hormuz Oil Shipping Surges04:15 US-Iran Bilateral Talks Progress05:33 Trump Discloses $1.4B Crypto Earnings06:43 Micron Investment in TRUMP ACCOUNTS07:44 India Power Consumption Rises09:19 Domestic PV Sales Boom11:50 June GST Mop-Up Hits ₹1.95T12:39 Manufacturing PMI Hits 3-Month Low13:52 Railway Freight Loading Up 4pc14:26 Govt retains small savings rates 15:05 Prudential & HCL Insurance JV15:59 Airtel Money Starts Operations16:21 Ola Electric Registers 16,144 Units16:51 Hero MotoCorp Dispatches Dip17:16 ER&D Stocks Face Selloff Pressure18:38 Tata Motors CV Sales Leap 35pc19:40 Knowledge Section

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 1, 2026 is: nabob • NAY-bahb • noun A nabob is a very rich or important person. // The upscale hotel downtown is a popular meeting spot for the city's corporate nabobs. See the entry > Examples: “NBA nabobs were dismayed by the player empowerment era, where players dictated trades or abandoned teams via free agency.” — Christopher L. Gasper, The Boston Globe, 26 Jan. 2025 Did you know? In India's Mogul Empire, founded in the 16th century, provincial governors carried the Urdu title of nawāb. In 1612, Captain Robert Coverte published a report of his “discovery” of “the Great Mogoll, a prince not till now knowne to our English nation.” The Captain informed the English-speaking world that “An earle is called a Nawbob,” thereby introducing the English version of the word. Nabob, as it later came to be spelled, gained its extended sense of “a prominent person” in the 18th century, when it was applied sarcastically to British officials of the East India Company returning home after amassing great wealth in Asia. But the word was most famously used by Vice President Spiro Agnew, in a 1970 speech written by William Safire, when he referred to critical members of the news media as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

#stockmarket #finance #investing #microsoft #amazon #swiggy #hdfcbank #yesbank #tatamotors #crudeoil #godrejconsumer #oberoirealty #nse #bse #businessnewsCatch today's market updates! Microsoft shares face their worst month since 2000, wiping out $570B. Amazon's rapid delivery push triggers a $15B rout for quick commerce giants like Swiggy. In India, HDFC Bank appoints Rajiv Kumar as Chairman, Yes Bank plans a ₹16K crore fundraise, and Tata Motors eyes massive revenue from the Iveco deal.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start00:43 Hormuz Oil Transits Continue03:16 China Economy & Geopolitics08:15 Moody's Backs India Amid Oil Risks12:12 India Lifts Fuel Sale Curbs13:36 HDFC Bank Appoints New Chairman15:48 Amazon's Rapid Delivery Push18:27 Tata Motors-Iveco Revenue Goal20:38 Godrej Consumer Expands Pet Care22:23 Oberoi Realty Bets Big on NCR24:02 Yes Bank to Raise ₹16,000 Crore25:13 Microsoft Shares Head for Worst Month

Coinkite Warns of Physical Letter Firmware-Update Scam https://blog.coinkite.com/paper-spam/ Camp Nakamoto https://x.com/campnakamoto/status/2069181607341170760 First StratumV2 Block Mined https://x.com/pavlenex/status/2070132430875267538 Law Enforcement and Catholic Groups Warn CLARITY Act Could Create Crypto Crime Loopholes https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/law-enforcement-catholic-group-clarity-act India | Frozen Account Leaves Savings Out of Reach In India, a man named Shiva spent years building a savings fund for his son's wedding. The money came from small jobs and side work, carefully set aside in a separate bank account opened specifically for that purpose. But when the balance exceeded a certain threshold, the financial system automatically froze the account. Overnight, Shiva had been cut off from his own money. When the issue was escalated to the branch manager of his bank, they explained that the freeze was automatically imposed from the central bank's IT system, and there was nothing they could do. To recover access, he was prompted to complete forms written in English, a language he could not easily navigate. Ultimately, the account was restored only after outside intervention from a friend who helped push the case through a process Shiva could not resolve on his own. FinancialFreedomReport.org Tor Project to Sunset Tor 0.4.8; Upgrade to 0.4.9 by September https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetting-tor-048/ JoinMarket-NG 0.33.0 Adds Config Center, Wallet History API, and Address-Reuse Defense https://github.com/joinmarket-ng/joinmarket-ng/releases/tag/0.33.0 Utreexo v0.18.0 Improves Forest Allocation, Rehashing, and Windows Builds https://github.com/utreexo/utreexo/releases/tag/v0.18.0 ASIC-RS v0.7.0 Adds Power Limits, Miner State Messages, and Temperature Model https://github.com/256foundation/asic-rs/releases/tag/v0.7.0 The Six Billion Dollar Man Bitcoin Premiere Bypasses Media Gatekeepers https://www.thesixbilliondollarman.com Imagine If Nashville Project Homepage https://www.imagineifnashville.com Freedom Tech DC 2026 https://www.btcpolicy.org/summit 3:33 - WE RIPPIN 4:38 - Dashboard 11:53 - Coinkite paper spam 21:33 - Camp Nakamoto 22:48 - StratumV2 24:38 - CLARITY loopholes 28:48 - HRF Story of the Week 32:13 - Boosts 38:43 - Software updates 45:53 - Imagine If & Freedom Tech DC 47:33 - Economy data Shoutout to our sponsors: Coinkite https://coinkite.com/ Strike https://strike.me/ Stakwork https://stakwork.ai/ Salt of the Earth https://drinksote.com/rhr Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/marty Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://tftc.io/podcasts/ Follow Odell: Nostr https://primal.net/odell Newsletter https://discreetlog.com/ Podcast https://citadeldispatch.com/

Kia ora. Welcome to Wednesday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz. Today we lead with news markets are betting that the next rate move by the US Fed will be a hike. And that has juiced up the USD today. But first, the overnight dairy Pulse auction brought sharply lower prices for the three lines offered. AMF took a -7.5% tumble from last week's full auction event. They didn't release the butter price this time. SMP fell -4.5% from last week and WMP fell -1.9%. But given the retreat of the NZD at the same time (-2.8%) the impact in local currency will be much less. In the US, there was another good weekly jobs indicator from ADP for private payrolls, rising about what was expected. And the flash US factory PMI for June shows solid growth, in fact its best in 4 years, but it also signals lower employment and elevated price inflation, so a mixed bag. The fall in factory jobs was the fastest since the pandemic. New order growth was good but the hikes in input prices are still next-level. Their service sector rose too but much more modestly and new order growth was tame, But none of this showed up in the Richmond Fed's factory survey. While it did expand it was very modest and well below its May level and what was expected. They had the same lack-luster result in their service sector. There was a well-supported US Treasury 2 year bond auction overnight, delivering a median yield of 4.14% (high 4.19%) which was well above the 4.02% median at the same event a month ago. The Chicago Fed boss said yesterday the US inflation is too high and "going the wrong way". (He is presently an alternate FOMC member, but he will be a full member in 2027.) Across the Pacific, Japan's factories are expanding solidly and faster. They recorded a stronger rise in business activity in June, but rate of cost inflation has hit a four-year high. New orders rose their fastest since 2022. Singapore is managing to navigate the current global inflation pressures well. They recorded an inflation rate that held steady at 1.8% in May, unchanged for a third consecutive month and below market expectations of 2%. In India, their flash June PMI's remained elevated and very expansionary, in both their factory and services sectors. New orders rose at a good pace, but input cost pressures eased, rising at a five month low. In Taiwan, we are so used to reporting spectacular results but they no longer seem out of the ordinary. But in fact they remain extraordinary. Their May export orders were up +47% from a year ago to almost a new record high. In Europe, their factory PMI is still expanding in June, but less so. Inflationary pressures show signs of softening there. Holding them back is their services sector. The latest flash PMI for Australia shows that business activity nears stabilisation in June as the service sector improved in Australia, but new orders continue to fall, including for new export orders. And staying in Australia, their latest quarterly update for rural commodities notes that the gross value of agricultural production is forecast to fall by -5% to AU $98.3 bln in the 2026–27 upcoming year. They expect "average broadacre farm business profit" to fall by -70%, driven by lower revenue and higher input prices. The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.46%, down -5 bps from this time yesterday. The price of gold has fallen to US$4130/oz, down a net -US$50/oz from yesterday. Silver is just under US$62/oz, down -US$3.50 from yesterday. Oil prices are down -50 USc from yesterday at just on US$73/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just on US$77/bbl. Hormuz transits are staying modest up with 16 crude or product tankers exiting over the past 24 hours (7 dark with transponders off) and 20 entering for new loads (2 dark). The Kiwi dollar is down another -40 bps from this time yesterday at just on 56.7 USc and a seven month low. Against the Aussie we are up +40 bps and back at 82 AUc. Against the euro we are down -20 bps at just on 49.8 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just over 60.6 which is down another -30 bps from yesterday, and near its lowest since the GFC in 2009. The bitcoin price starts today at US$63,388 and up +0.4% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just over +/- 1.8%. You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz. Kia ora. I'm David Chaston and we'll do this again tomorrow. Audio soundtrack opening is licensed from Shutterstock, Track 1219389 Monetization ID TFGEPGEI0LHEIJAI

Listen to current week's news from and about the Church in Asia in a capsule of around 10 to 15 minutes. Indonesian Catholic students joined nationwide protests against the government's flagship free meal program amid corruption allegations, food poisoning incidents and a constitutional challenge. In India, Human Rights Watch accused authorities of forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents to Bangladesh without due process, leaving families stranded along the border. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities detained two leaders of a prominent Protestant house church following a police raid, as the government continues its crackdown on unregistered religious groups. Tune in for the latest developments from Asia. Filed by UCA News reporters, compiled by Fabian Antony, presented by Joe Mathews, Cover photo by AFP, background score by Andre Louis, edited and produced by Binu Alex for Union of Catholic Asian News. For news in and about the Church in Asia, visit www.ucanews.comTo contribute please visit www.ucanews.com/donateOn Twitter Follow Or Connect through DM at : twitter.com/ucanewsTo view Video features please visit https://www.youtube.com/@ucanews

The usual way to measure women's power in politics is to count the seats they hold in parliament. But most women who take part in politics never stand for office. They vote, attend meetings, petition, protest, or try to get the water supply fixed. In this week's VoxDev Talk, Soledad Artiz Prillaman of Stanford talks to Tim Phillips about her new review of the research into non-elite women's participation in politics, written with Peace Medie (University of Bristol).They are not elite women with less money, she argues. They want different things and face different constraints. Social norms can prevent them from achieving the change they want. But in the Global South there is evidence that non-elite women are using collective action to gain access to politics, and using that access to renegotiate the norms that hold them back, rather than waiting for those norms to shift first.The research behind this episode:Medie, Peace A., and Soledad Artiz Prillaman. 2026. "Nonelite Women's Participation in Politics." Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 29.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Soledad Artiz Prillaman. 2026. "Nonelite Women's Participation in Politics." VoxDev Talks (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestSoledad Artiz Prillaman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and faculty director of the Inclusive Democracy and Development Lab. Her research spans comparative political economy, development, and gender, with a focus on South Asia and on how and when women gain access to politics, both as citizens and as representatives. She is the author of The Patriarchal Political Order: The Making and Unraveling of the Gendered Participation Gap in India (Cambridge University Press, 2023).The paper is co-authored with Peace A. Medie, Associate Professor in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Her work covers gender, security, and politics in Africa, including the campaigns to end violence against women.Research cited in this episodeElite and nonelite women. The paper defines eliteness by access to political power, not by office held or income alone. Elites include elected representatives, but also academics and business executives whose position gives them access to power. Nonelites are those who lack that access. The distinction matters because policy aimed at getting more women into elite positions only helps everyone else if elite and nonelite women want the same things, and the evidence that they do is thin.The income puzzle. At the individual level, income is generally uncorrelated with women's turnout; at the national level, GDP predicts nonelite women's participation only in some places. Women in paid work do participate more, but the driver appears to be the networks and information that come with a job, not the wage.Vote agency. Showing up to vote is not the same as voting freely. Asked whether they would vote for their own preferred party or the one a male gatekeeper preferred, at least half of women in some South Asian settings say they would defer. Work by Sara Khan shows that the women with the least agency are those whose preferences differ most from the men who hold power over them.Varieties of patriarchy. All societies are patriarchal, but patriarchy operates differently across them. In parts of South Asia it takes the form of explicit, socially sanctioned control over where women go and how they vote. In the United States and Europe it shows up earlier, as socialisation, producing large gender gaps in stated political interest. Same underlying force, different mechanics, different policy conclusions.Quotas. More than 100 countries have adopted some form of electoral gender quota, making it the most widespread women's empowerment policy in the world. The evidence on whether quotas help nonelite women is mixed; they raise some women's participation in some places, but in others the effect is null or negative. In India, Prillaman notes campaign material for quota seats that pairs the woman candidate's name with a man's photograph.Collective action. Networks outside the home, through women's groups, microcredit groups, churches, unions or friendship circles, raise women's participation by widening their information and giving them cover against backlash. Prillaman argues that in the Global South women are increasingly using collective action to gain access to politics, and using that access to renegotiate norms, rather than waiting for norms to change first.More from VoxDevWhere are the Indian female politicians?, an interview with Lakshmi Iyer on why a woman winning office in India does not lead to more women standing next time.Related reading on VoxDevGrassroots party activism by women promotes equal political participation, in which Tanushree Goyal finds that women politicians in Delhi recruit women activists, narrowing gender gaps in political knowledge and participation.Women's microcredit groups empower women politically, in which Prillaman shows that microcredit groups raise women's political participation in India by building their networks, not their bank balances.

#stockmarket #finance #investing #usiran #nseipo #fed #inflation #genai #indiauk #export #gic #reit #trump #nifty #sensexCatch today's market updates! The Fed hints at rate hikes while the US and Iran agree on an MoU to end military operations and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In India, the UK free trade pact starts July 15, NSE files for its mega IPO, and the market cap reclaims $5 trillion. Plus, we cover the GenAI skills gap, record $863B exports, GIC disinvestment, and Embassy REIT's mega GCC lease.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start00:22 Fed Hints at Rate Hikes03:27 Falling crude oil04:03 US-Iran Sign 14-Point MoU05:37 Trump Threatens to Resume Strikes06:30 Iranian oil tankers pass US blockade 06:47 India-US Trade Deal Nears07:15 India-UK Free Trade Pact07:54 India Faces 83% GenAI Skills Gap09:38 Coal Gasification Roadshow10:55 India's Exports Hit Record $863B11:18 India Mcap Reclaims $5 Trillion11:29 Mega IPOs coming soon12:12 Govt Sells 5% Stake in GIC13:03 Embassy REIT Inks ₹1,250 Cr Deal13:55 Knowledge Section

#stockmarket #finance #investing #usiran #crudeoil #inflation #rbi #bhartiairtel #vedanta #razorpay #sarvamai #anthropic #fmsitharaman #nifty #sensexCatch today's top market updates! US markets rally and oil plunges as the US and Iran agree on an interim peace deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In India, wholesale inflation surges to a 3-year high of 9.7%. We also cover the RBI opening rupee accounts for overseas investors, Airtel's ₹28,200 crore Africa share-swap, Vedanta's demerged stocks debut, Razorpay's IPO filing, and Sarvam AI hitting unicorn status.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start01:18 US-Iran Peace Deal Reached02:23 Falling crude oil03:03 Global bond yields retreated 04:04 What Iran and the U.S. Are Saying About Their Deal07:03 Oil Shock Risks Persist07:59 G-7 Summit Amid Tensions08:30 Anthropic's AI Model Dispute09:49 Wholesale Inflation Hits 9.7pc10:59 RBI Opens Rupee Accounts for Expats13:02 FM Sitharaman on Foreign Capital13:34 OMC Petrol Losses Halve14:13 Airtel Africa Share-Swap Approved15:00 Vedanta Demerged Stocks Debut15:24 Sarvam AI Hits Unicorn Status15:51 Razorpay Files for IPO16:31 Knowledge Section

What does great leadership actually look like? Can you make a difference even if you're in the middle of the hierarchy? "If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." In this episode, educator and Deming practitioner Balaji Reddie explains why W. Edwards Deming was far more practical about leadership than many people realize. Drawing on both The New Economics and Out of the Crisis, Balaji shares stories and examples that bring Deming's 17 principles of leadership to life. From creating trust and joy in work to understanding variation, coaching people, and improving systems, this conversation challenges conventional management thinking and offers a clear path toward transformation. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. And the topic for today is Principles of Leadership. Balaji, take it away.   0:00:27.9 Balaji Reddie: Good morning. Thank you so much, Andrew. We had left our last session with that, we'd be dealing with this. And of course, Dr. Deming gave us the outline of Profound Knowledge and he gave us 14 points. He also gave us the deadly diseases and the 16 Obstacles. So people often talk about the diseases, but very often they forget the obstacles. And there are 16 of them which he highlighted for us. And if you think that they're outdated, they're as relevant as they ever were. So you need to keep revisiting those. I think if you start working on removing the obstacles, it's like you're taking your foot off the brake rather than pressing on the accelerator.   0:01:11.3 Balaji Reddie: So you're removing the things that actually stop you before you actually take things forward. But nevertheless, we start with point number 14 where he says, take action to complete, to make the transformation. And he says that there should be a critical mass of people that you need to educate and train and get them on the same page as you are. I'm gonna quote Hazel Cannon here, who is current president of the British Deming Forum. And she talks about the time when she was very young and she attended the Deming four-day seminar, I think in Birmingham. And at the end of those four days, she was overwhelmed as you normally are when you hear how the man speak. And he spoke... He wanted you to make drastic changes. It's not just tinkering here and there.   0:02:08.2 Balaji Reddie: And so she went up to him and she said, "I'm really taken up by what you just said." And then she made a statement, "I'm too small to make these changes in my organization." I believe she worked as a lab assistant in a chemical manufacturing company. They used to make chemicals for cosmetics. So she said, "I'm too small." And Deming just interrupted her and said, "Never think you're too small. If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." So make a change where you are and take it from there. So I would like to now quote Dr. Deming from Out of the Crisis. This is Plan for Action: Take action to accomplish the transformation. So he writes there, there are three points and then I'll come to what he writes below that.   0:03:01.8 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "Management in authority will struggle over every one of the above 13 points, the deadly diseases, and the obstacles. They will agree on their meaning and on the direction to take. They will agree to carry out the new philosophy. Management in authority will take pride in their adoption of the new philosophy and in their new responsibilities. They will have courage to break with tradition, even to the point of exile among their peers." So he talks about courage. He talks about courage of conviction. And then he says, "Management in authority will explain by seminars and other means." So I think he leaves it to people of the ways and means. And now today there are a lot of means of doing that. DemingNEXT is one of them. And he says, "To the critical mass of people in the company why change is necessary and that the change will involve everybody."   0:04:00.9 Balaji Reddie: Now he writes something very interesting. He says, "This whole movement may be instituted and carried out by middle management speaking with one voice." So he gave instructions. Why are people saying that he did not tell us what to do? It is just that he expected maybe a lot. And now let's get to that middle management and what he expected. He says here... Let's see here. I'm coming to chapter four now in The New Economics where he says, "A System of Profound Knowledge. The aim of this chapter: the prevailing style of management must undergo transformation." So we just heard that, that what we need to do. And he says, "A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from the outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view, a lens that I call a System of Profound Knowledge.   0:04:59.7 Balaji Reddie: It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in." Then he says, "The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding the System of Profound Knowledge." Then he says that "the individual, once transformed, will set an example." So setting an example, I believe, is doing the right thing under adverse circumstances, when you stick to your principles despite the fact that there is an easier way out. As they say, choosing a path between good and bad is easy, you choose good. But good and better, you need to make the right choice. And that needs profound knowledge. "So be a good listener," he says, "but will not compromise. Continually teach other people and help people pull away from their current practice and beliefs and move to the new philosophy without a feeling of guilt about the past."   0:06:02.7 Balaji Reddie: So he explains to us what was needed here, right? And he says this is what we actually need to do. Now I'd like to, I mean, I'll be referring to a document. I don't know how we're gonna get this to people, but for the Principles of Leadership. All right, I think I'll have to send this over to you later, but we will do that. So in the Principles of Leadership, just come to them. I am quoting again from both Out of the Crisis and The New Economics. So you will find this there when he speaks about what needs to be done. Modern Principles of Leadership. And he says, "The modern principles of leadership will replace the annual performance review. The first step in a company will be to provide education in leadership." So that would be introducing people to profound knowledge from what we just heard. Then he said, "The annual performance review may then be abolished." Of course, that will take time. "Leadership will take its place, and this is what Western management should have been doing all along."   0:07:12.6 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "The annual performance review sneaked in and became popular because it does not require anyone to face the problems of people. It is easier to rate them, focus on the outcome. What Western industry needs is methods that will improve the outcome." And he says, "Suggestions follow." So first, institute... The first principle. "Institute education in leadership: the obligations, the principles, and methods." And so I think introduction to the System of Profound Knowledge will help. And then after profound knowledge has been sort of brought to the notice of... Of bringing to the notice of the people then you get into perhaps teaching them about 14 Points, et cetera.   0:07:57.8 Balaji Reddie: Comes the second principle. He says, "Ensure more careful selection of people in the first place." So choosing the people, he says again, now here's where it requires you to understand the purpose of what you're doing, purpose of your organization, purpose of the people you're looking out for and making this change. Because when you know your purpose, you know the aim, then you can choose people in the right way. And I believe he said this somewhere, it's a combination of education, training, skills, and experience. So we need to combine these four factors in choosing the right people. Then he says, after selection of the people, ensure better training and education. So we fine-tune all of their... He says a complete background. He said their aspirations, their goals.   0:08:54.2 Balaji Reddie: I kind of borrowed this idea from a company here in India where they had this thing called roles, responsibilities, and objectives. And they used to meet once in a month, but once in a year they used to decide. So the top management, the HR, would sit down with each and every employee and say that, "In this calendar year, this is what we intend to do and this is what we expect from you." And in turn, they used to ask the employee, "What do you expect from us? Because this is what we want from you." And then the employee had a chance of putting forth what he or she wanted, the management, what help they needed. And I think this is where we have to be... It's a give and take. And they didn't just meet once a year; every month they would meet and the question was, "How are we doing?" not "What have you done?"   0:09:51.1 Balaji Reddie: So I think it wasn't a traditional appraisal. If there was any appraisal, it was appraising what top management were doing or intended to do and not so much the employee. I thought that was a good move. So that's what we need to do here: better training and education. Principle number four states: "A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Now, here's where, you know, when you talk about, say, hiring people in the first place, when you bring in new employees, I believe that there should be a special session by people inside the company who have stayed the longest, who served the company the longest, especially during their bad days. Because the employees need to know what really happened and how the company survived and how we were resilient, we came back despite all the problems that we had.   0:11:00.7 Balaji Reddie: And the historical perspective, especially if there's someone who's in touch with the founding members, that would be a great boon. I know nowadays we talk about the older companies, obviously none of the founders are there, but if there is such a person, exchanging those ideas with the young employees would definitely make a difference. So they would then understand the purpose, the aims, and how your work supports these aims. I think it's the best way to do that. But what I see right now in companies and I'm being very specific about this, because today when new employees join the company, they have an orientation, they have onboarding, as they call it, but that's done by a rookie, someone who's just joined the company and is just making...   0:11:46.8 Andrew Stotz: [0:11:46.8] Following a checklist?   0:11:48.1 Balaji Reddie: Exactly. Like a PowerPoint presentation. They don't talk about the history of the company. And I think there has to be an emotional connect before there is a logical or an intellectual connect. That emotional connect, I think, then makes you feel that pride and you feel good about coming to work and you say, "Oh, I did not know." So I believe this fourth principle is important in that sense, in the way to do that. Now, he says that... Principle five says he helps...   0:12:19.7 Andrew Stotz: By the way, do you know what chapter are you in?   0:12:23.9 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I have combined.   0:12:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:12:29.4 Balaji Reddie: I took some of the text... Okay. If you want to see here, this is management of people, all right? In that chapter. So I've taken... There are 14 principles there, management of people. In the new edition of The New Economics. It appears...   0:12:48.2 Andrew Stotz: So chapter six.   0:12:50.2 Balaji Reddie: Chapter six, yeah. That's chapter six...   0:12:51.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:12:52.6 Balaji Reddie: All right. And he talks about pictorial effect of transformation, and then he talks about management of people, role of a manager of people. So there were 14 there, but in Out of the Crisis, the first three which were there, he did not include here.   0:13:10.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay. I just just asked...   0:13:11.0 Balaji Reddie: So I just included those. Yeah. No, so that when people read the book, they could read it clearly, right? So, yeah. So he says now principle number five, which in Economics is principle number two or three, right? He says "he helps his people to see themselves as components in a system, to work in cooperation with preceding stages and following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages towards achievement of the aim." So we want optimization, not compromise. So you need to sit together. Just if I were to ask a simple question to you, Andrew, and without thinking, if I were to try to answer this question... Okay. I presume you know how to make a cup of tea.   0:13:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Yes.   0:14:00.1 Balaji Reddie: So what is the first step?   0:14:02.7 Andrew Stotz: For me, boil water.   0:14:04.6 Balaji Reddie: Boil water. And what if I say that's not the first step?   0:14:12.0 Andrew Stotz: Well, first of all, I think you probably have more experience with tea than I do, but I have more experience with espresso, probably. But anyways, go ahead and tell me.   0:14:20.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay. The first question is, whom am I making a cup of tea for? So what I just tried to convey is it's not natural to think about the customer. And so the first step is, for whom is the cup of tea? If it's the person...   0:14:30.8 Andrew Stotz: Grandma.   0:14:40.7 Balaji Reddie: That's right. If she's diabetic, then you would not need sugar. So you gather the ingredients accordingly. If he wants black tea, you don't take milk, right? And that's the point he's trying to say here. When you look at different stages, every every person has a customer. So the first question is, who is my customer?   0:15:07.1 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:15:07.4 Balaji Reddie: And that part of profound knowledge, understanding psychology, I mentioned this last time, is empathy. The word empathy captures this. So you go to the next process as, "Whom am I doing this work for?" and sit down with that person and say, "What do you expect from me? How may I help you?" And that's what decides what you're gonna do. So this this fifth principle here, that he helps his people see themselves as components, I think this is important. The next process is your immediate customer, and the rest of them are customers in a very oblique sense. But what you do is critical to the next person in line, right? So you always spend extra time with that person and of course the other people down the line who your work is gonna be impacting over a period of time, right? But these are the... This is the first step you find out. So who's my customer? So that's principle five.   0:16:09.0 Balaji Reddie: Principle number six: now this comes under psychology again, that a manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everybody interest and challenge and joy in work. Now, if you look at the theory of knowledge, what exactly did he give us when he brought that component of profound knowledge into play? He says that theory is a statement that conveys knowledge by relating cause to effect. So I repeat, theory is a statement which conveys knowledge by relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong.   0:17:04.7 Balaji Reddie: So I'm gonna repeat this whole statement again. Theory is a statement which conveys knowledge. How? By relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong. So no amount of examples can establish a theory, and even one example can lead to either abandonment of the theory or modification of the theory. That's what he kept saying. Now, how does this work? So he says it's a system of learning, and all of us have this built in, right? Now, he came from the school of Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World-Order. And if you read that book, Lewis says all knowledge is a priori, it's based on what you already know.   0:18:00.9 Balaji Reddie: For example, let me take this example here. Now, suppose I were to start describing the road to my house. Now, you've not been here, but if I start saying that the road bends towards the left and then there is a command you get to see, now you start constructing a picture in your head based on what you have already seen. It's not the same. That's your theory, right? And then when you actually visit, you say, "Oh, it's the difference between theory and what I actually saw," and then you change your theory. So theory is... It's natural. All of us think naturally like this. And that's why he says here that people are different from one another and we need to celebrate those differences. All of us are born with the system of learning, but not all of us learn the same way.   0:18:49.8 Balaji Reddie: There are some who learn by watching, there are some who learn by doing, there's some who learn by reading, there's some who learn by writing. For some people, one word is enough. You utter a word and they say, "I got it." And for some people, you have to repeat the statement maybe 10 times, 11 times, and then the 12th time you repeat it, they say, "Okay, I got it." Now, is that wrong? We're just different, right? And that's why he says here that we need to understand the learning process of people. And when you understand the learning process of a person and then put that person in the right job, you'll have to stop that person from working. That was his definition of joy in work. People enjoy their work when they realize it resonates with them.   0:19:40.4 Balaji Reddie: And how does that resonance come in? When you under... And because this is so difficult to do, we just throw the responsibility on them by saying, "Here's the target." So the target actually distracts them when actually you should be working on understanding their learning process. So it's a lot of hard work. And sometimes people are motivated enough to discover it themselves, which is great, but we need to create that atmosphere for them to enjoy their work. So interest, challenge, et cetera, he tries to optimize. Now, here's the key. This is beautiful. He tries to optimize family background, education, skills, hopes, and abilities of everyone.   0:20:21.7 Balaji Reddie: So this is not ranking people, very clear. It is instead recognition of differences between people and an attempt to put everybody in a position for development. I think this is one of the most important principles in getting things done. When I teach this to the HR students in my college, I keep saying that I don't think you should call this science as human resource management, because the definition of a resource is obtain it, shape it, use it, and throw it away. We don't wanna do that. I think we should change the title of that department to Department of Learning, because that's what exactly this is all about, and it's learning in both ways where you are trying to understand their process of learning and in effect, you're trying to understand how the company is going to be learning.   0:21:17.0 Balaji Reddie: So you put this in... So this principle, he says, combine all of these things: family background, education, hopes, I love that word. Because if you see one of the things that people talk about, customer satisfaction, I think Deming was the only person who said customers should be happy. Not just satisfied, happier, right? Now comes the next principle. "He is an unceasing learner." So you can never say, "I know it all." Unceasing learner, he encourages his people to study. And I think this fits Dr. Deming himself. He made no excuses to learn. "May I not learn," he would keep repeating that. And I remember Bill Cooper getting irritated and said, "The last time I met you, you said this, and now you're saying this. I got that on tape." He said, "Well, you got this on tape now." He said that, "I do, I learn. And as I learn," he said, "that could have been under different circumstances that I said that, but I'm saying this."   0:22:22.4 Balaji Reddie: And so you keep learning. And he encourages his people to study. The word is study. And he provides, when possible and feasible, seminars and courses for advancement of learning, encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. So I think this bit is in many places getting to be a part of the systems in most companies. I've seen that happen now, which is a good sign. But it doesn't end there, there are a lot of other things to do. This was the Principle 7 in the list of 17. Now comes Principle 8, and this is so difficult to look at. He says "he's a coach and a counsel, not a judge." You judge people, they shut up.   0:23:15.4 Balaji Reddie: So he says coach and counsel. When they need help, guide them, show them the path. Sometimes maybe you need some help in doing that, well, go ahead. So that was principle number eight. Principle number nine says "he understands a stable system. He understands the interaction between people and the circumstances that they work in. He understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state." Now, this is amazing. He said this way back in the 1950s when he was in Japan teaching them the control chart, where he took one example where he says that further training to the worker and the process was still in control. And he says, "I think he's reached the limit of his learning. He perhaps needs to be taken to another process or maybe given something more challenging so that we can develop the learning process."   0:24:17.6 Balaji Reddie: So he was speaking about this way back in the 1950s, which today you can say comes under understanding psychology through variation. And he says, upon which furthest the lessons will not bring improvement of performance, and a manager of people knows that in this stable state, it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake, because he says you'll actually then demotivate someone. So these three principles...   0:24:44.1 Andrew Stotz: Because a mistake may be just normal variation, or are you saying... Okay. Yep. Okay.   0:24:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. I mean, it could be anything, right? But if you are highlighting that when he's already reached a stable state, it could just work in a detrimental way, the opposite direction.   0:25:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Ultimately you've reached your goal. A steady state is fantastic.   0:25:07.4 Balaji Reddie: A steady state. And then now you say if you want him to... Anything better here, I think you need to move him out from there, since maybe he needs to be given something either more challenging or whatever it is. But use of psychology and variation together. If people are saying that he spoke about this in the 1990s, he actually spoke about this in the 1950s in Japan. And I have proof. If you go and check Elementary Principles of the Statistical Control of Quality, the series of lectures that he gave in Japan, you will see this in one of the chapters, very clearly stating what needs to be done.   0:25:47.9 Balaji Reddie: Now we come to the next principle, which is... I don't know how to explain this, but it's amazing. He says that "the leader has three sources of power: authority of office, knowledge, and personality and persuasive power, tact." So authority, that's your title, knowledge, and personality. Now, personality, persuasive power, and tact is more of a personal thing. It is something that is an attribute. Authority is the title you're given. I think the only thing that you can really work on is your knowledge. And he says that a successful manager of people develops knowledge and personality and persuasive power, does not rely on authority of office. He nevertheless has obligation to use his authority, a source of power, for him to bring changes. He says that maybe some drastic changes to equipment, to materials, to methods, and to reduce variation.   0:26:55.0 Balaji Reddie: So he attributes this to a gentleman, Dr. Robert Klekamp, or Klekamp, I don't know how to pronounce that. So he says, "He in authority, but lacking knowledge or personality, must depend on his formal power. He unconsciously fills a void in his qualifications by making it clear to everybody that he's in position of authority, his will be done." So I think he said if things needed to be done and if he's being guided the right way, then he has to bring his authority into power. I think this brings me to one of the interactions he had with... Was it James McDonald at Ford? When he made him stand up and asked him, "What is your job?" And he said, "I'm vice president, manufacturing," and he sat down. Deming said, "Stand up. That's your title, not your job." And then for the next half an hour, he grilled him on what his job was. And after half an hour, he still didn't get an answer. He said, "You don't know what your job is. Do you think other people in the company know what their jobs are? I think you're running a mess here."   0:28:02.2 Balaji Reddie: So Jim McDonald, instead of feeling insulted, took it in a very different way. Though he said, "I did feel that I wanted to resign and just walk out of there," but he said, "I knew this man was onto something." And that kind of thing of authority of office, I think he did not like if people used it for the wrong reason, but he wanted them to develop knowledge, personality. Personality, well, I think again, on the soft side, persuasive power tact. Not all of us have that, but I think we are living in a knowledge economy, so knowledge would be the key here. And he also says that if you're in a position of authority, use this to get the right work done.   0:28:47.3 Balaji Reddie: Then next he says "he will study the results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager of people." So when the system is not getting what it's supposed to do, then he does not put the blame on the people. He says, "I have... I may be going wrong somewhere." I'd like to share an example of my father in Japan. My father was in Japan in 1964, I said this last time. And he was on this Asian Overseas Technical Scholarship, AOTS. And they run these courses even today. They have three-month, six-month, nine-month, and one-year courses. And from what I remember my father telling me, it's integrated in the sense, I think he was there for six months. So during the morning sessions, they used to have classroom training, sitting in a classroom. And in the afternoon, post-lunch, they would go and work in a company, and that was like their intern. And so it was a combination of theory and practice taking place almost every day.   0:30:02.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, what happened there was on the first day... And that's where he started working with Showa Electric, and said they were called the interns. So on the first day, he was taken to the company and was introduced to his supervisor. The supervisor took him on the shop floor and introduced him to the team that he would be working with. And then, while he was leaving, that supervisor said, "I just need to tell you this, that we also form what is called as a quality circle." And this was... The quality circle movement started in 1962, so '64, the quality circle. And so my father said, "I don't know what you're talking about." And he said, "Well, this is something new. So would you like to be a part of it?" Because quality circle is voluntary, not mandatory. They make you a part of the quality, so if you want to be a part of the quality circle. It's not imposed on you.   0:31:05.0 Balaji Reddie: So my father said, "I need to talk to my teacher, my sensei, at the class." He said, "Yeah. You can talk to him." So he went back to the class the next day in the morning, he asked the teacher, the sensei, that this is what they said. He said, "Oh, it's a very good system. You can become a member of the quality circle." So on the second day, he said, "Yes, I'll be a member of the quality circle." "Great," he said. Now, on the third day, his actual work started. Now, they used to make television screens, CRO, et cetera. And one of the steps there was soldering. They had to solder. And the soldering was the dip soldering. You had to take the printed circuit board and dip it into the solder bath and take it out. Of course you were to... There was a technique.   0:31:52.8 Balaji Reddie: And so his job was that. His first job that he was assigned is to do soldering on these PCBs. And so the supervisor himself sat with my father and demonstrated 10 to 15 times how to do it. Then he told my father, "Now you do it." And then he was guiding him, and he made him make around 10 pieces until he said, "Okay. Now you're getting it right." Okay. Now he said the ground rules. If by any chance you press it down too hard or you keep it too long because of the extreme heat, there will be a superficial crack on the PCB. And that would not be something that affects the customer right away, but over a period of time, it can result in the board cracking and the radio not working. So when you see a superficial crack, you're supposed to pull the cord. There was a cord there. And when you pull the cord, the supervisor will come and help you. Fine.   0:32:56.1 Balaji Reddie: Now my father started doing his work, and his fifth or sixth piece developed a crack. Now, he said, I don't want to sound derogatory, but the Indian in me caught up. Should I report this? What would he think? I hardly left this man alone, and his fifth piece is a rejected piece. And he said, I did not want to pull that cord. But then... He said that, he told me, "Please pull the cord," I decided, let me go ahead and pull it. So when he pulled the cord, a red lamp went on there, and there's a big siren that went on. And the supervisor came running and turned off the siren and turned off that lamp and said, "What happened?" My father showed him the crack. So he said, "Okay, no problem." He put it aside. He demonstrated to my father 10 times again how to do it. And then he made him do it 10 times till he said, "Ah, see, you did this." And he got it right. Now he said, "Let's continue production."   0:33:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Now they went away and now my father got it right. After an hour or so, or maybe two hours, they had their tea break. And they were sitting around a table. Now, this was the quality circle. So the supervisor got up and started speaking in Japanese. Now, this was my father's third day there, so obviously he did not understand what was going on. The only thing he knew that they were referring to him because they could not pronounce his name properly. So instead of Reddie, he was being called Leddie. So Leddie-san, Leddie-san, Leddie-san. So my father said, "I knew he was talking about me." And he said, "I felt so ashamed, I was looking down at my cup of tea rather than looking up." And then when I looked up, he said, all of them were looking at him in admiration and the thumbs up sign. And he was wondering what the hell just happened.   0:34:51.0 Balaji Reddie: And at the end of it, when that supervisor stopped speaking, they all clapped. They clapped. And as they dispersed, each one came and held his hand and they went away. And now my father told the supervisor, "What did you tell them? Did you tell them I made a mistake?" He says, "Yes, yes, I did tell them that." He said, "Then why are they complimenting me? Why are they... Why did they clap? Why did they clap for me? Why are they shaking my hands?" He says, "They're shaking your hand, they're clapping, and they're complimenting because you pulled the cord." So he said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, we have a saying here, here in Japan, if after explaining to a person 10 times how to do something, if the person still makes a mistake, then there's something wrong in the way I explained it." So this bit over here is he will study results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager. Don't blame the other guy. What am I doing wrong?   0:35:54.0 Andrew Stotz: You hired him, you train him.   0:35:56.4 Balaji Reddie: Yep. So when Jack Welch used to say, "Sack the bottom 10% of the people every year," and he called them dead wood, well, I would say when you hired them, they weren't dead. You killed them. So that was principle number 11. Now principle number 12 is where he combined both variation and psychology together. He said "he will try to discover who, if anybody, is outside the system, in need of special help." So he draws a normal curve. I'll pass on this document to you so you could share it along with the podcast. And he says here that people belong to the system. These are people who need not be ranked. But a person outside the system on the lower side needs special help. People outside the system on the higher side, well, we need to take the system to that level to improve the system.   0:37:08.4 Balaji Reddie: So he talks about that. He says this can be accomplished with some simple calculations. If there be an individual with figures on production or on failures, special help may be only simple rearrangement of work. It might be more complicated. He in need of special help is not in the bottom 5%. He's clean outside that distribution. So he's trying to use the understanding of variation in a very different sense to understanding people. And he says that we try to reduce that variation in performance between people. That's the job of the system. So this is principle 11 and 12.   0:37:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Now you come to principle 13: "he creates trust." And that creates trust, I would believe, it's a two-way process. And he creates an environment that encourages freedom and innovation. That is the environment where people are unafraid to make mistakes. Because we learned that theory is not the opposite of practice; it's a guide to better practice. And we need all of us working together. And that trust, I think, has got a very funny meaning in my country. I keep joking about this. In India, trust is we will lie a little less to each other. But that's not what this is. We need to be straight honest with each other. And honest is you can only do that by example. Like what happened in my case. I remember when we had installed the ERP system in our company, and there are interlocks. And I remember there was a backlogged order. And I knew that because when we did not deliver the order on time, I negotiated with the customer and I got the delivery date postponed.   0:39:08.0 Balaji Reddie: Now I was trying to test the ERP that month. So I said, let me see if the ERP can capture this because it should show it as a backlogged order. But it showed it as an order that was to be delivered on the new adjusted date. And I said, "How did that happen?" Because that should not have changed. And so I called my assistant. I said, "This should be in backlog. Why is it showing me as a spillover order?" And he said, "No, I changed the date." I said, "Why did you do that?" And he said, "No, because the finance guy will get angry with me." And I said, "That is my problem." I said, "When I told you you're not supposed to change that date..." And I removed his administrative powers in changing the date so that he could not change the date in the system.   0:40:01.7 Balaji Reddie: I removed his powers. And he apologized profusely and said, "Please let me." I said, "No." So till the day I resigned, I kept it. I said, "You're not gonna be doing this because it's not a question..." I said... If I had succumbed to that Andrew, they would have lost my trust. They would have thought that, "Oh, Balaji just talks. He doesn't walk the talk." I said, "No, you're not supposed to do this. We are trying to go by a system. Let's go by the system." So I think you can only create trust through example, through demonstration, if I may say so, and especially under adverse circumstances that you need to demonstrate this.   0:40:46.1 Balaji Reddie: Principle number 14: he says "he does not expect perfection." I think that even he said it in principle of variation. Principle 15: he says "he listens and learns without passing judgment on him that he listens to." This is an extension of the previous points. Principle number 16: he will hold an informal, unhurried conversation with every one of his people at least once a year, not for judgment, merely to listen. The purpose would be development of understanding of his people, their aims, their hopes, and their fears. This meeting will be spontaneous and not planned ahead. So there should be no bias, like an audit.   0:41:41.5 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:41:42.2 Balaji Reddie: And lastly, principle number 17: "he understands the benefits of cooperation and the losses from competition between people and between groups." So these were the 17 principles of leadership, the beginning of transformation. I think there can be nothing more to do than this. He was so clear in what he wanted us to do. I wonder why people say that there was no method.   0:42:16.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. He definitely outlined a lot of stuff there. One of the questions I had for you on that list is, what do you say to people that say that he's kind of a dreamer? The idea that you can sit down with your employees and have this time and everybody's so busy and just talk about your fears and your goals and all that stuff where we live in this age of, we've gotta get the result, we've gotta be focused. How do you respond to that?   0:42:51.1 Balaji Reddie: Well, I say give this a try. All right? You've done it your way, right? You've done it... Let's just forget about it, and you're seeing what's happening. You want a change, you gotta do something different. So why don't you go by what this man is saying? And if you say that, you know, a dreamer or whatever, well, I'd like to quote John Lennon here: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."   0:43:16.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. Yep. And what do you say for people that feel that you gotta have these targets and goals and KPIs to get the most out of people? And when we think about what Deming's talking about, we're talking about this intrinsic motivation. But it's scary for people to think. It's a lot more comfortable to have these goals and structures than what you could argue is a little bit more unstructured. And how do we balance that? And obviously Deming wasn't saying don't have goals.   0:44:02.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, yeah. I think Henry addresses this very well in his 12-day course where he has a specific section on goals, et cetera. And he talks about how Deming said that there are some things called facts of life. Facts of life is, okay, we need to turn out, we need to generate so much of revenue this year because we need to pay for all our salaries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we need to have some money for the future. So we need to make so much of money this year. Now that's not a goal, that's a fact of life. But when you are bringing that number out and showing that to everyone, please also indicate to them how we intend to achieve that. Don't just leave it to them and say we need to do this.   0:44:54.4 Balaji Reddie: Okay. I'll give an example here. I don't want to sound... It may sound a little self-serving, but okay, take it in the right spirit. I remember when we had our first strategic meeting at my company, and my boss... Okay, was... He said... I think 20 of us sitting in the room and he said, "Last year, our target was 30 million and we're getting there and we're doing a great job. So this year we're gonna aim for 45 million." Now when he said that, I just put my hand up and he said, "Yes." So I said, "Why 45 million?" And he just stared me down and he looked up at everyone and said, "That's it. Meeting dismissed." He just walked out. These are those days when you had... You know the OHP? You know the overhead transparencies, the projector?   0:45:56.9 Andrew Stotz: Oh, yeah. Overhead transparencies, yep.   0:45:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So he had the transparencies, and he just took them and walked out. And all the guys came to me, "Are you mad? You're questioning the owner of the company? Are you nuts?" And I was thinking, "God, what did I say wrong?" And then we started going back to our cabins, and when I sat down at my desk, the phone rang, and it was boss. And he just uttered one word, "Come." So when I was walking towards his cabin, I was thinking to myself, "Nice company, nice friends." And then I knocked on the door, and he said, "Yeah, yeah. Come in." He said, "Sit down." And then he said, "Shut the door." He said, "What the hell were you trying to do today? Are you trying to mock me?" I said, "Please, why would I want to mock you, boss? I wouldn't want to mock you. I just wanted to know why 45 million."   0:46:52.9 Balaji Reddie: He says, "All right." And so he took out what is called the blue book, where we have the yearbook, what happened in our country in the last one year. We have these books that get written, right? So he said, "Look, this is growth in our country in industry. This is our... Sector that we are in, and we are in the organized sector in this industry. And the year-on-year growth for the last five years has been this, and this year the expected growth is so much. And can I expect at least 3 or 4% of that growth?" I said, "Of course, why not?" He said, "That, son, is 45 million." So I said, "Why didn't you tell me this? That's all I wanted to know." He said, "You think these asses..." He was referring to my other colleagues... "Would understand?" I said, "Boss, if I can understand, they can understand. It's one and the same." "Okay. Let's meet tomorrow."   0:47:52.1 Balaji Reddie: So the next day we met again. And he said, "Yesterday, when I uttered 45 million, this genius asked me why, and so I'm gonna tell you why." And he went on to explain. After he finished explaining, my sales guy... Sorry, my marketing guy got up and he said, "I have something to share." "Okay, please come forward." He put the transparency. And he had listed there the top 10 selling items in my company based on revenue, based on profits, and based on quantities. Top 10 for each. There were three products that were common to all the three. So obviously he was sending a message to us, that we had to attain our targets, at least by focusing.   0:48:44.8 Balaji Reddie: The moment he showed that, he underlined these three, the sales guy put his hand up and said, "Yes." "That second product you underlined, our competitor is selling it as a package with another product, but we don't seem to have that on our list." So the R&D guy got up and said, "Could you tell me what the part number..." And he says, "It's part number so-and-so." He said, "Hang on, I've already developed that." You know what was happening, Andrew? We were talking to each other. And that meeting went on for three and a half hours. And at the end of the three and a half hours, all of us knew how to attain 45 million.   0:49:23.8 Andrew Stotz: I thought you were gonna ask a question on the second day, "Hey, boss, so 45 million, why is there no market share gain of our business that we're growing faster than the industry?"   [laughter]   0:49:41.4 Balaji Reddie: So anyway, but this was... This is what I think goals should be transparent in this sense, that why are we giving you this number? And more importantly is the discussion that happens is how are we gonna do this? It just doesn't happen by itself, right? And if you leave it to people, they start distorting numbers, right?   0:50:03.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:50:04.2 Balaji Reddie: As Brian Joiner said, "Distort the data, distort the system, or distort both."   0:50:12.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And we're working on a growth plan for my coffee business.   0:50:19.0 Balaji Reddie: A growth.   0:50:19.6 Andrew Stotz: And really what it comes down to is three things. Number one, are we as the owners gonna hire more salespeople? Because salespeople bring in revenue.   0:50:36.3 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:50:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Number two, are we as the owners going to develop together with the rest of the team a higher value-added offering...   0:50:50.6 Balaji Reddie: Wow.   0:50:50.8 Andrew Stotz: That we can bring more value than what we're bringing right now, which would bring potential customers to us and allow us to sell more easily. Or are we as the owners going to buy another company?   0:51:07.8 Balaji Reddie: Oh, okay.   0:51:09.2 Andrew Stotz: So those are the three things. And Dale and I have been discussing each one of those in a lot of detail, testing out and debating and discussing. But those are the type that... When it comes to growth, that's just... We know the growth we can produce with no change. And that's in line with the inflation rate or whatever the economic growth, for sure. But as long as we don't lose people on our team or something like that. But to go to our team and say, "How are we gonna grow faster?" Well, that whole point is we can see. Also the other thing is that we can see bigger about the industry sometimes. Sometimes they see something at a small level that they bring back to us and think, "Whoa, wait a minute, that's something valuable." And yeah, so we're getting ready for our final decisions on where we're gonna go with that. But yeah, without that type of change, we're not gonna reach the type of growth that we want to get. And really our idea is 5x growth in five years.   0:52:19.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay.   0:52:20.5 Andrew Stotz: And in order to do that, we have to have a completely different level of quality, service, product, thinking. And so, yeah, it's fun... It's challenging. Anyways...   0:52:32.9 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:52:33.2 Andrew Stotz: So how do we wrap this up? What is it you want people to take away? You've shared a lot of different stuff. What would you like them to take away from it?   0:52:42.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. One, I'm trying to shatter that myth that Deming did not tell us what was to be done. I think he was very clear and we need to reread and reread. And we have to take these as guidelines. You may come up with your own method, but see these as a guideline by and large to put you on the right path. And once you do that, you may develop something which works for you, and that's what he wanted. But let us not just say that he only philosophized about things. I think he was very clear in his head. He just wanted us to do things our own way because nobody understood our problems better than we ourselves. And he was just showing us how to understand things around.   0:53:32.6 Balaji Reddie: He wanted us to know, to understand what we do not know. Through these principles, we can address some of the gaps. Perhaps we were getting a few things wrong. So point number 14, take action to accomplish the transformation. I think it begins with leadership. So point number seven comes into the picture. It begins with training and education. Point number six comes into the picture and it also brings in point number 13, which is learning and development. And education and training is different from learning and development. Training can be very company specific and you can measure the outcomes of training, but you cannot measure the outcomes of development because that takes time.   0:54:19.8 Balaji Reddie: So you need to have some things going in your favor. And for that you need to choose, and he told us how to do that. And yes, he wanted top management to be a part of this because he said those in authority need to do this. But that one sentence that middle management can commence, it can commence there, is a telling statement. So he knew it was possible.   0:54:45.0 Andrew Stotz: That's great. And I like that. Commence. That there's... It's not necessarily gonna be completed by middle management, but middle management can start right now, right where you are. So that's a great way, that's a great way to end with the start. So, Balaji, I want to thank you on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute. And it's an interesting discussion and I'm enjoying it very much. And for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and also there, jump on DemingNEXT to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."   0:55:32.1 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. Andrew, I think saying thank you on behalf of the institute, I am also a part of the institute.   0:55:38.5 Andrew Stotz: Of course. Of course. You are. I appreciate it. Okay.

Kia ora. Welcome to Monday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz. Today we lead with news the imminent deal Trump talked up on Saturday seems to have faded, mainly because Israeli attacks on Beirut have undermined the situation. But if there was to be a deal, it is sure to dominate financial markets. In the meantime, war is the standard situation. These same markets are also contending the implications of the wildly successful SpaceX float. It was full of animal spirits, FOMO, and gambling fever, and more than a few observers are seeing this as evidence of a gigantic bubble. After all it values SpaceX at 100 times its current revenues, and the business operates at a loss. At a US$2 tln 'value', to be sustainable it would need to generate after-tax profits of at least 10% or US$200 bln per year. And that is about double what Aramco-plus-Google do now, #1 and #2 combined. In the real world, Thursday will bring the next US Fed policy meeting result, the first chaired by Kevin Warsh, Trump's replacement of Jerome Powell. Powell will still have a vote however. Most observers see them holding their key rate at 3.75%. The Fed has an inflation target of 2% for the PCE measure of inflation which is currently running at 3.8% with the CPI running at 4.2%, a three year high, with both rising sharply last time they were released. There will need to be some policy gymnastics to ignore those signals, but they may hope the fuel component reverses soon to save them. That is probably why markets think there will be no change on Thursday. The US Fed won't be the only central bank on action this week. We will get reviews from the Bank of Japan (+25 bps to 1.00% expected), Sweden's Riskbank, Norway's Norges Bank, the Swiss National Bank, the English central bank, even in Brazil. More importantly for us is that we will get the RBA's latest update on Tuesday, where no change from the current 4.35% is expected. And the New Zealand Q1-2026 GDP result will drop this week and it will be a surprise it it isn't a year-on-year growth rate of +1.1%. Of course, this will be very dated data. In fact the RBNZ's own Nowcast suggests GDP will drop -0.2% in Q2-2026 from the prior quarter after rising +0.6% in the March quarter. Markets see a March quarterly rise of +0.9%. In Japan, attention will focus on the Bank of Japan's policy meeting, where it is widely expected to raise the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 1% amid persistent inflation and yen weakness. If delivered, it would mark the first rate increase since December last year and the highest policy rate since 1995. The country is also set to publish trade, inflation, and machinery orders data. In India, producer inflation is projected to rise to 9.1% in May from 8.3% in April, driven by rising energy costs. Other major releases include trade, unemployment, and passenger vehicle sales figures. In China, investors will monitor a series of key economic releases next week, including house prices, industrial production, retail sales, fixed asset investment, and their jobless data. After April's surprise decline, China's May new yuan loans resumed their growth in data out over the weekend, up +5.5% from a year ago with a modest +¥520 bln rise, about what was expected (+¥550 bln). Still, at that level it is the weakest May increase in eighteen years, as the usual suspect - the property market - continues to drag on bank lending. Across the Pacific, American consumers felt the cost of living pressure ease slightly in June as petrol prices came back off their recent war highs. The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index rose in early June, up from May's all-time low and a better than expected recovery. It was a modest recovery all the same with improvements seen across all age, education, and political groups. Lower-income consumers, for whom fuel represents a larger share of budgets, showed a particularly strong rebound even if it is still deeply negative and its second lowest of all time. And in Europe, Switzerland had another set of national referendums. One proposal, to cap its population at 10 mln, has been voted down. The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.49%, up +1 bps from Saturday, down -5 bps for the week. The price of gold has recovered a very minor +US$4 from Saturday to US$4222/oz but down -US$102 for the week. Silver is little-changed US$67.50/oz and the same as last week at this time. Oil prices are up +50 USc from Saturday at just under US$85/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just on US$87.50/bbl. A week ago these two prices were US$90.50 and US$93/bbl respectively. Hormuz transits have dried up again. And global oil reserves are draining into uncharted territory. The Kiwi dollar is down -10 bps from this time Saturday at just on 58.3 USc, up +30 bps for the week. Against the Aussie we are unchanged at 82.8 AUc. Against the euro we are holding at just on 50.4 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just under 62 which is unchanged from Saturday, up +30 bps for the week. The bitcoin price starts today at US$63,655 and down a minor -0.3% from this time Saturday. That is a +5.8% rise from this time last week. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been low at just over +/- 0.8%. You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz. Kia ora. I'm David Chaston and we'll do this again tomorriow. Audio soundtrack opening is licensed from Shutterstock, Track 1219389 Monetization ID TFGEPGEI0LHEIJAI

Good morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we're diving into a series of remarkable updates that highlight the dynamic evolution of drug development, regulatory landscapes, and industry strategies. Takeda has made waves with its TYK2 inhibitor, Zasocitinib, which recently outperformed Bristol Myers Squibb's Sotyktu in a pivotal Phase 3 trial for plaque psoriasis. This trial is particularly noteworthy as it involves TYK2 inhibitors, a class of drugs targeting tyrosine kinase 2 to modulate immune responses. The success of Zasocitinib not only strengthens Takeda's competitive position but also underscores the potential of these inhibitors in treating autoimmune conditions like psoriasis. As we look forward to its market launch next year, this development represents a significant stride in the realm of targeted therapies aimed at complex diseases. Shifting gears to regulatory advancements, Johnson & Johnson's Darzalex (daratumumab) has received endorsement from NICE for its quadruplet therapy in newly diagnosed transplant-ineligible multiple myeloma cases. This approval is based on favorable Phase 3 trial results and highlights the therapeutic potential of targeting CD38 on myeloma cells. This marks a crucial step in offering potent treatment options to patients who cannot undergo transplants, emphasizing the growing importance of combination therapies in oncology. In another significant development, Johnson & Johnson is expanding its rare disease portfolio with promising Phase 2/3 trial data for Imaavy. Poised to become the first approved treatment for warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia, this advancement highlights the industry's pivot towards addressing rare diseases with limited treatment options. In India, AstraZeneca has secured CDSCO approval for Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan) combined with pertuzumab as a first-line treatment for HER2-positive unresectable or metastatic breast cancer. This approval signifies a milestone in HER2-targeted therapies, spotlighting the pivotal role of antibody-drug conjugates that deliver cytotoxic agents directly to cancer cells, enhancing efficacy while minimizing systemic exposure. Moving on to business developments, Servier's partnership with N-Lorem Foundation to develop antisense oligonucleotide therapies for rare neurological disorders reflects the industry's increasing focus on precision medicine. This collaboration underscores the burgeoning interest in nucleic acid-based therapies aimed at addressing genetic disorders lacking effective treatments. On the financial front, Kardigan's planned $320 million IPO signals robust confidence in advancing cardiovascular pipeline assets. This move highlights Kardigan's commitment to tackling substantial unmet needs in cardiovascular diseases—an area still rife with challenges despite existing therapies. From a regulatory perspective, China's update of its Good Clinical Practice guidelines aims to streamline clinical trial processes, fostering biotech innovation. This change is expected to enhance drug development efficiency and attract global biotech investments to China's rapidly growing pharmaceutical market. Meanwhile, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has raised concerns about Germany's healthcare reform plans, warning that they might deter future investments. His comments underscore the delicate balance between cost containment policies and maintaining an environment conducive to pharmaceutical innovation. Additionally, Novo Nordisk's CEO Mike Doustdar expressed optimism about the company's strategic focus on market positioning through innovation and efficiency improvements. This aligns with broader industry trends where large pharma companies strive to maintain leadership roles amid fierce competition. Eli Lilly's sponsorship of short films premiered at Tribeca Festival illustrates an industry-wide trend toward patient-centric approaches and authentic portrayals of people with diseases onscreen. Such efforts aim to enhance communication strategies that resonate with diverse audiences. Furthermore, transformative technologies like cell and gene therapies are gradually moving towards mainstream clinical adoption. This transition necessitates zero-tolerance logistics to ensure these complex therapies reach patients safely and effectively—a paradigm shift offering potential cures but also posing logistical challenges. Finally, industry events such as ASCO continue to spotlight cutting-edge research developments in oncology. Such conferences are pivotal in advancing treatment paradigms and fostering collaborations that drive innovation across the sector. These updates reflect a period marked by groundbreaking scientific advances and strategic initiatives poised to reshape patient care and global healthcare solutions. As companies navigate these complexities while addressing regulatory and economic challenges, maintaining a focus on innovation will be key in charting future growth trajectories within the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.Support the show

#stockmarket #finance #investing #inflation #crudeoil #nifty50 #sensex #rollsroyce #mutualfunds #fcnr #rbi #lenskart #rec #pfc #elninoUS inflation hits 4.2% amid the Middle East war, pushing crude oil above $94 and causing US stocks to slide. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield holds steady. In India, banks hike FCNR deposit rates following an RBI move, while equity mutual fund inflows slump 40%. We also cover the REC-PFC merger, Rolls-Royce's multi-billion 'Make in India' plans, ADIA trimming its Lenskart stake, and Nuvama's new mutual fund nod.https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start01:24 Iran War & Stock Market Impact02:33 US Inflation Hits 4.2pc05:09 Banks Hike FCNR Deposit Rates07:41 Equity Mutual Fund Inflows Slump08:55 Q4 Earnings Scorecard10:41 El Niño Emerges in Pacific11:36 Rolls-Royce 'Make in India' Push12:17 REC & PFC Merger Approved12:37 ADIA Trims Lenskart Stake12:53 Nuvama Gets SEBI Mutual Fund Nod13:26 Knowledge Section

There are some roads around the world that are both breathtaking and super dangerous! The North Yungas Road in Bolivia, also known as "Death Road," winds through steep cliffs with barely any guardrails to protect drivers. In India, the Leh-Manali Highway takes travelers through high mountain passes, but its narrow, rough roads make for a thrilling, heart-pounding ride. Tourists visiting these places are drawn by the beautiful views, but you need serious courage to tackle these routes. In Italy, the Amalfi Coast road is stunning but has sharp curves and heavy traffic. Even Iceland's Ring Road can get icy and tricky, especially during winter. If you're into adventure and don't mind a little danger, these roads are a must-see! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long live the king – of mangoes! In India the famed ‘king of mangoes', the Alphonso mango, is in drastically short supply after a particularly bad bout of adverse weather. Inspired by the mango's plight, the Unexpected Elements team takes a look at what fruit science can bear.First, from the ‘king of mangoes' to the ‘king of fruits', we hear how the infamously stinky durian could be used to charge your phone. Then, an evil lemon planet. We discuss the planet so bizarre it sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi movie.Plus, have you ever wondered what the key to immortality is? Well, if you guessed sea cucumbers you might be right. We're joined by Dr Annie Mercier who tells us all about these eternal weirdos of the sea and their surprisingly vital role in the ocean's ecosystem.Also, a crayfish invasion, plant cause of death, and what exactly is El Niño? All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Sandy Ong and Michael Kaloki Producers: Sophie Ormiston, with Lucy Davies, Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and Robbie

In this podcast, Kushal speaks with Shruti Rajagopalan about the steps one needs to take when they have to analyse a policy. In India policy analysis happens in silos. How does one mainstream policy analysis in the mainstream culture and how do we simplify it so that the average citizen can also be a policy analyst? Register for my Toronto book Launch here: https://t.co/3NXHWc50Ud Buy my book "Blasphemy: Let me Speak": https://amzn.in/d/0bS2pOTc Follow them: X: @srajagopalan Substack: https://srajagopalan.substack.com/ #policyanalysis #economics #iranwar #westasia #straitofhormuz ------------------------------------------------------------ Listen to the podcasts on: SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/kushal-mehra-99891819 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rVcDV3upgVurMVW1wwoBp Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-c%C4%81rv%C4%81ka-podcast/id1445348369 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-carvaka-podcast ------------------------------------------------------------ Support The Cārvāka Podcast: Buy Kushal's Book: https://amzn.in/d/58cY4dU Become a Member on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKPx... Become a Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/carvaka UPI: kushalmehra@icici Interac Canada: kushalmehra81@gmail.com To buy The Carvaka Podcast Exclusive Merch please visit: http://kushalmehra.com/shop ------------------------------------------------------------ Follow Kushal: Twitter: https://twitter.com/kushal_mehra?ref_... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KushalMehraO... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecarvakap... Koo: https://www.kooapp.com/profile/kushal... Inquiries: https://kushalmehra.com/ Feedback: kushalmehra81@gmail.com

#stockmarket #finance #investing #marutisuzuki #tatamotors #mahindra #olaelectric #gstcollections #pmi #powerdemand #byd #anthropic #ipo #spacex #businessnewsCatch today's top market updates! Anthropic files for a massive US IPO while SpaceX's mega-IPO nears listing. BYD breaks its longest sales decline streak. In India, May GST collections grow 3.2% to ₹1.94 lakh crore, and Manufacturing PMI hits a 3-month high. Plus, record-breaking May auto sales from Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Mahindra, and Ola Electric!https://shorturl.at/gM97lHow to Use Artificial Intelligence for Investing - Combo of 5 ebooks00:00 Start01:23 BYD Snaps Sales Decline03:03 Anthropic Files for U.S. IPO05:35 May GST Collections Rise07:16 Manufacturing PMI Strengthens09:44 Power Consumption Jumps11:03 Tata Motors PV numbers12:07 Maruti Suzuki Breaks Sales Record13:12 Mahindra Auto Sales13:51 Ola Electric Deliveries15:10 Lessons From “The Psychology of Money”

Big tech firms race to cash in on the AI boom. Anthropic, the firm behind chatbot Claude went public in the US, filing paperwork for a stock market listing later this year while Nvidia launched a new processor they say could reinvent the PC in the age of artificial intelligence.In India, fertilizer supplies are under strain from shipping disruptions caused by the Middle East war. Our correspondent explains how this will affect farming and food prices in Asia's third largest economy. And, a supermarket chain in Belfast has added a pub to one of their stores, but it's proven controversial because of Northern Ireland's strict licensing laws. Plus Backrooms, a new horror film, created by a young YouTuber, earned over $80 million in its opening weekend. Could digital creators be the next generation of filmmakers?

 Moringa has been used for over 1,000 years.In Thailand, it is even eaten as a salad—and it tastes good.Today, science has finally confirmed what traditional medicine has known for centuries: Moringa has outstanding healing properties.You can find it in several forms:Moringa powder (which retains the vitamins)Moringa teaFresh leaves (eaten raw or cooked)I take at least 1 teaspoon of Moringa powder with my food—usually in my smoothie.What Moringa ContainsMoringa is packed with nutrients:High amount of proteinVitamin B6Vitamin CVitamin ARiboflavinBeta-caroteneThe Health Benefits of Moringa1. Lowers Blood SugarMoringa helps bring blood sugar levels back to normal—a powerful support for diabetics and those with insulin resistance.2. Reduces InflammationChronic inflammation is at the root of many diseases, including cancer and heart disease. Moringa fights inflammation at the source.In India, Moringa is traditionally used for arthritis, osteoarthritis, and bone pain.3. Lowers CholesterolBy reducing inflammation, Moringa also helps lower cholesterol levels naturally.4. Balances HormonesMoringa supports hormonal balance in both men and women.5. Protects the SkinIt has natural antibacterial properties, making it effective against acne. You can also apply Moringa oil directly to the skin for healing and protection.6. Protects Brain HealthMoringa contains tryptophan (an amino acid) and vitamin B6, which help produce serotonin—the neurotransmitter responsible for mood, libido, and sleep. This makes it helpful for:DepressionLow libidoMood swingsInsomnia7. Promotes Bone HealthWith its high content of calcium and phosphorus, Moringa helps keep bones strong and healthy.8. Aids DigestionAs a natural antibiotic, Moringa reduces harmful bacteria and pathogens in the gut, supporting a healthy digestive system.9. Improves Sexual DriveMoringa can help increase testosterone levels while lowering cortisol (the stress hormone). This combination supports vitality and libido.10. Supports Women During MenopauseMoringa helps regulate sexual hormones in women going through menopause, easing symptoms and supporting overall balance.Moringa for Better SleepScience has proven that taking 1 teaspoon of Moringa before bed promotes restful sleep.During sleep, your body rejuvenates—and Moringa provides many of the specific components your body needs for deep, restorative rest.Summary of BenefitsBalances blood sugarCalms inflammationBoosts the immune systemSupports liver detoxificationEnhances digestionImproves heart healthEnhances cognitive functionSupports healthy skin regenerationWho Should NOT Consume Moringa Powder?Always consult your physician before adding Moringa to your routine, especially if you have any of the following conditions:Pregnant women (Moringa may stimulate uterine contractions)People on blood-thinning medication (Moringa can slow clotting)Those with low blood pressure (Moringa can lower it further)Individuals with thyroid disorders (Moringa may affect thyroid function)People with kidney stones (Moringa contains oxalates)Breastfeeding mothers (safety not well studied)Diabetics on medication (Moringa may lower blood sugar too much—monitor closely)My Video:  The Newly Discovered Super Herb: Moringa https://youtu.be/w9KkrOiJXNMMy Audio: https://divinesuccess.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/Podcast5/The-Newly-Discovered-Super-Herb-Moringa.mp3

Hello and welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Yesterday, my Hindi tech services guy asked me whether or not Gnosis is Christian. It seems like it should be a simple question. Is Gnosticism Christian? I explained to him that I certainly think that Christian Gnosticism is Christian, fully. And in fact, I believe it’s true Christianity—that Jesus was Gnostic, that John the Baptist was Gnostic. But what does that mean? Most of the Christians, pretty much all of the Christians, completely reject Gnosticism as evil, as misleading, as demonic. So that would put me in the camp of being a false teacher or a false witness, which saddens me greatly because I love Jesus. I’ve been a follower of Jesus for 70 years. And I believe that when Jesus said, I and my Father are one, if you have seen me, you have seen my Father, that Jesus was speaking about what we call the Gnostic God, the God Above All Gods, the Father in heaven, the preexistent primordial form, the one consciousness that did beget the only begotten Son. I explained to my Hindi friend that in Hinduism, many gods are accepted. In India, people pray and follow many different gods, and yet they are all considered Hindu because they are honoring and treasuring the Godhead. I don’t pray to many gods. I pray to the Father above, the God Above All Gods, the Father to whom Jesus prayed in the garden. I do not believe in a variety of saviors. I believe in the Christ as the Savior, and that Jesus of Nazareth embodied the Christ. I explained to my Hindi friend that although Christians reject us as being evil, we accept them as being seekers after truth and lovers of God, those who are not hypocritical, that is. Many people sit in Christian churches, and they’re what we would call bench warmers or pew warmers. The point being, you must truly believe in the Father. Jesus believed in the Father. He wanted his followers to believe, to have true knowledge and faith that we come from above, and we are children of the Father, of the one primordial consciousness. Jesus came to remind us of that. He came in human form to speak to us humans, but the Christ is a much greater and larger entity than Jesus alone. The Christ is an ethereal being. The Father is ethereal. The only begotten Son is ethereal. The Aeons of the Fullness of God are all ethereal entities that live above. Jesus was fully human as well as fully God. Just as we are fully human, and we have the potential of fully God inside of us. We’re all born with the life, consciousness, love, remembrance of the Father above and our aeonic parents in the Fullness of God. But we forget once we are sent down here. We were sent down here, according to Christian Gnosticism, for the purpose of reminding the Demiurge, of reminding the Fallen world, this cosmos, this material cosmos, that it didn’t arise from nothing. The Demiurge didn’t spring out of nothing. The Demiurge has forgotten. The Demiurge is known as the amnesiac God, but he is indeed the God of this material world because he put it in order. He took the chaos of the Fall and made it orderly, put the laws of chemistry and the laws of physics, the laws of astronomy, mathematics and the mathematical constants upon this otherwise chaotic material universe that was blasted out of the Fall. In physics, we call it the Big Bang or the origin. The Demiurge is the architect of this cosmos, of this material plane, of this apparently material world that we live in. And do you know what it is, this material world? It’s a copy. It’s an imitation. It’s a deficient imitation of Paradise. The Aeons of the Fullness of God, up above, sit and dream together of this beautiful paradisical world, this Eden. This beautiful, beautiful creation is the dream of the Aeons of the Fullness of God. It comes from upstream from them. It comes from the Totalities of the ALL. It comes from the Son, the only begotten Son, who was the Monad, the One, that represents an otherwise illimitable and unimaginably huge and great and powerful consciousness. We are their derivative. We are fractals of that consciousness. We’re downstream from the Father. We’re downstream from the Son, who is the face of the Father, the presenting face, the bucket dipped into the sea, containing all of its attributes, all of its knowledge and life and free will and creativity and plans. And the Son broke out all of his variables. He indexed every thought that the Father had. And this became the hierarchical structure that is called the Fullness of God, the Hierarchy of the Fullness, the pleroma of the Fullness of God. That is the everything of the Fullness of God—everything broken out and itemized. And then it was one particular Aeon that decided to launch itself back up and reunite with the Father. But it couldn’t, because the Father is far too great and powerful for one single derivative to be able to fully embrace it. And had it actually come into full contact with the Father, it would have been annihilated. In Gnostic Christianity, derived from the book called the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi books, this Aeon that launched itself out is known as Logos. In other forms of Gnosticism, the Aeon that launched itself is known as Sophia. It really doesn’t matter. Sophia means wisdom. Sophia represented the highest wisdom of the Fullness of God. Logos means knowledge, reason. Logos represented the highest knowledge and the highest reasoning of the Fullness of God. In truth, they basically represent the same concept. And this singleton wanted to reunite with the Father all on its own, but it couldn’t. And so it fell. And this is the Fall. In Christianity, the Fall has been pushed way downstream onto the human level. It is said that the humans ruined Paradise. We ruined Eden–one decision of the woman tempting the man to eat of the apple of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil caused the Fall. But no, in Gnosticism, we say that the Fall happened upstream from us; ruining Paradise is way above our pay grade. It’s not humanly possible. We’re victims of the Fall. We’re not the creators of the Fall. We are not born as evil. We are born as fruit of the Fullness of God. We are the Second Order Powers fruited down here into this material creation. We’re melded onto this material creation, because the very molecules and atoms and particles that make up our physical body—and it’s not just us humans, it’s everything that’s live from the cellular level on up and all creatures, whether they be bacteria, plants, birds, mammals, humans, we’re all fruit of the Fullness of God, meaning we were dreamed up above—we're part of the dream of Paradise. The dream of Paradise is fully populated. All of the plants and animals and creatures and everything up there pre-exists. That is what would be called intelligent design. So when we are fruited down here, and we begin this life as an organism here in this material world, we are welded onto the material, the particles, the atoms, the molecules. And so we grow up with the perfection of the remembrance of Paradise and the remembrance of the Aeons above and the Fullness of God. But the Fall represents ignorance. The chaos of the Fall—the Demiurge, which is the God of the Fall, doesn’t remember the world above, doesn’t remember the ethereal plane. The Demiurge thinks that when it woke up, it must have created everything. And so it went about ordering the chaos into its recollection of Paradise. But it doesn’t realize it’s a recollection. It thinks it’s creating. It thinks that it’s the creator, the inventor of this world. But really, it’s just a vague recollection of Paradise. And the god of this world—and here’s a heresy, by the way—whom the Bible acknowledges to be Jehovah, or Yahweh, the God of the Jews, the God of the Christians—that is the Demiurge. But Jesus did not acknowledge Jehovah as the Father. When Jesus spoke of the Father, he was talking about the God Above All Gods—God way upstream there before the Fall. The god down here is the god of this world. The god of this world is not Satan. The god of this world is the Fallen god, the Demiurge, that doesn’t realize that it’s from the Fall, doesn’t realize where it came from. That’s the simplest rendition of this Gnostic Christianity. It’s the same Christ that is then sent down into this material cosmos, in the body of the Jesus of Nazareth, who came down with the full knowledge of the Father in the Fullness of God, came down with full memory, free will, consciousness, love, unlimited love. And Jesus loves us all. Christ loves all living things. Christ came to redeem us all, to remind us that we come from above. That’s what Christ came to do, to remind of the love of the Father above, that we are not born of the god of this world. We are born of the God Above All Gods on the ethereal plane. And we are born with the full remembrance of the Fullness of God within us. And Jesus came with the army of Christ, which is called the Third Order of Powers. And this army of Christ is armed with all of the love, and remembrance, and consciousness, and free will, and all of the virtues fully remembered, fully expressed. They all came down along with the Christ. And there is one of these Third Order Powers for every one of us Second Order Powers. You have a soldier of the army of Christ assigned to you who came with not only the face of the Son, the face of the Christ, the full embodiment of the Fullness of God, but it came with your face. So that when you pray for salvation, when you pray for redemption—Oh dear God, I don’t know if I can take this anymore. This world is too tragic. It’s too terrible. It’s too full of pain, and suffering, and death, and illness. Please, Lord, rescue me—that prayer goes to the Third Order of Power assigned to you—your guardian angel, if you will. And it’s part of the body of Christ. It is a Third Order of Power that is assigned to you, and you alone. And that is how it is that when you pray for redemption, you can be redeemed instantly. It’s already been done. The Christ has already brought all the Third Order Powers down, one for every one of us. And when you open yourself up, when you admit that you long for the Father above, you long to be reunited with the Fullness of God, you will instantly be reunited with the Fullness of God. That doesn’t mean you’re going to drop dead and be sucked up to heaven. It means that now you have all the remembrance, all the power, all the consciousness, and all of the free will embodied by Jesus. You are like Jesus, at least for that moment you have accepted your Third Order of Powers to take control of your soul. You’re not giving up power. You’re taking away power from the Demiurge. You’ve already given up your power. You’re being pulled this way and that, pulled down and backwards by the Demiurge and the archons. They’re taking your energy. They’re sucking your soul downward and backward. That’s how they maintain their power. That’s how they maintain their control. But true freedom belongs above. True freedom only comes from above. And that’s why we have to align our prayers and align our sights upward. So, I explained all this yesterday to my Hindi friend, who is my tech services guy, and we’re often on the phone together for long periods of time as he’s cleaning the hard drives or downloading updates and so forth. And he totally agreed with what I was saying, because Hinduism is like that. It accepts everyone’s beliefs about God. In Hinduism, people don’t go to hell because they don’t agree with you. People create hell because they have cut themselves off from the goodness of God. In that, we are very much aligned in our belief systems. All we have to know is that the path to the Father above is straight up. It’s just straight up, like a beam of light. It’s a beam of truth that shines down upon us. Just move that ego off of the throne. Move desire for personal power and recognition off of the throne of your embodiment, of your body, of yourself, and allow the Christ to enter your soul. You will immediately be transformed. You will be immediately put in alignment with the Fullness of God. And then you will see for yourself. This is a first-person experience. It doesn’t have to come from someone else. You do not have to perform arcane rituals. You only need to bump your ego off of the throne and pray to God Above All Gods for Christ to enter and guide you. Let’s start there and see if we can’t do that. Please write back to me. Tell me about your experience. Someone please try this, what I’m recommending today. Just move your ego aside for a moment. Pray to the Father for the Christ to enter you, to remind you of the God Above All Gods, to remind you of truth, simplicity, righteousness, the virtues, our aeonic inheritance. Just ask it to remind you, and you will be reminded because we’re all born with this remembrance. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Until next week, God bless us all and onward and upward. We Second Order Powers are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness, who are themselves the Totality of the Son. The Third Order Powers are the army of the Christ, who represent all of the Powers of the ethereal plane, individually and collectively working for our redemption.

There has been international condemnation of Israel's treatment of pro-Palestinian activists who were on board a Gaza-bound aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli naval forces. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video showing himself taunting activists kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. Also, Iranian state media is reporting that Pakistan's military chief is visiting Tehran later today in a bid to mediate peace efforts between Iran and the United States. The Justice Department in the Philippines has ordered the arrest of a senator, Ronald Dela Rosa, wanted by the International Criminal Court in connection with the country's war on drugs. Air France and Airbus have been found guilty of manslaughter over a 2009 plane crash which killed 228 people. In India, a satirical political collective themed around cockroaches - the Cockroach Janta Party - has attracted millions of online followers. NASA is set to launch a new space telescope, Roman, that it says will be able to capture images of vast tracts of the universe. A village in Ghana has been holding its own celebrations to mark the victory of Aston Villa Football Club in the Europa League.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk

Last week, Spotify shocked the music industry by discontinuing its Viral Songs chart. In India, it was among the few places that put a spotlight on upcoming music acts, and served as a discovery tool for both listeners and A&Rs. In this episode, we discuss the role the chart played, the possible reasons behind Spotify's decision and whether it's good or bad for the Indian music business.

Breast cancer is now the most common cancer affecting people worldwide, with 2.3 million new cases and around 700,000 deaths each year. In India, someone is diagnosed every four minutes, and someone loses her life to breast cancer every eight minutes.But behind these numbers is a question every woman and every family needs to ask: how do we understand breast cancer without fear taking over?To make sense of all this, in this episode of The Wellness Algorithm, I'm joined by Dr P. Raghu Ram,  OBE, Founder Director of KIMS-Ushalakshmi Centre for Breast Diseases and one of India's most respected breast cancer surgeons. Dr Raghu Ram has spent decades advancing breast cancer awareness, early detection and specialist care in India.Together, we talk about lumps, breast pain, nipple discharge, screening after 40, family history, BRCA testing, HRT and the major advances in treatment.

Ralph welcomes back Adolph Reed, Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mount Holyoke College to discuss the latest Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act. Then, Ralph and our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, talk about what ordinary citizens can do to pressure their reps to impeach Donald Trump.Adolph Reed is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mount Holyoke College. His most recent books are The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, No Politics but Class Politics (co-authored with Walter Benn Michaels), and Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality: The Farce this Time (co-authored with Kenneth W. Warren).I think the issues are a lot more complex than they seem to be or than seems to be the way that they are represented in the debate [over the Voting Rights Act]…To cut straight to the political case, I think there's a distinction between the Act's guarantee that black citizens and others (where pertinent) who live in areas where there's been a history of suppression of the right to vote have the support of the federal government to make certain that Black voters have the ability to vote for and to elect candidates of their choosing. Which is not the same thing as a right of Black individuals to be elected to office. And I think that's one of the confusions that characterizes, frankly, both sides of the debate at this point. And I think that's definitely something that needs to be clarified.Adolph ReedSome of my friends and I have been talking about this, and have been bouncing this idea back and forth since, frankly, even before the court handed down the [Louisiana v Callais] decision. In thinking about developments in black politics across the board, the idea that all that Black voters are supposed to get out of politics is the representation of people who look like them and share in the same racial identification has also fueled backward turns. Like how all of a sudden the biggest issue in Black American politics supposedly had become the racial wealth gap, which boils down to a complaint that rich Black people aren't as rich as rich white people are. So, yeah, shaking up or reshuffling the deck for how we might begin to try to determine the stakes of Black Americans' engagement in national politics is something that needs to happen. No matter what brings it about.Adolph ReedBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.My website is www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com and my email address is Bruce@feinpoints.com. And I'll respond and give you guidance as to how you can help be part of this effort to impeach and remove by far the most dangerous President in the history of the United States. And he's most dangerous to the world as well.Bruce FeinNews 5/8/26* Our top story this week comes to us from the Bulwark, which reports that dissatisfaction with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is reaching a fever pitch. Martin has faced criticism over the course of his tenure for reneging on his promise to release an autopsy on the 2024 presidential campaign and for his decidedly lackluster fundraising efforts. The DNC has reportedly “spent more money than it has raised” and “has more debt than cash on hand,” while the Republican National Committee enjoys a “roughly seven-to-one money advantage.” According to this report, high-level DNC members are now privately discussing ousting Martin, only tabling these discussions “after members failed to identify an alternative candidate willing to step into the role.” Martin's failures have even led Democrats to openly wonder “whether the 178-year-old committee should even exist anymore.” Martin was elected DNC Chair last year, beating out Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who helped rebuild the party and raise tremendous amounts of money in that critical swing state.* Speaking of money in politics, this week POLITICO released a damning report on End Citizens United, the good-government focused 501(c)(4) that has in past years been a “fundraising behemoth” but has now faded nearly into complete irrelevancy. The issues highlighted in this piece will be familiar to many who have worked in this world. Despite raising $14.8 million, the group's PAC arm is burning through the money more quickly than it can raise it, having just $324,000 on hand at the end of March. What are they spending the money on? According to POLITICO, about $650,000 has gone to candidates and party groups and about the same amount has been bundled. Meanwhile, payments to fundraising firms have eaten up an astonishing $5.3 million. This is just another case of Democratic Party aligned consulting firms run amok and growing fat off of small dollar donations.* Another disappointing story comes to us from the Teamsters. According to Bloomberg, the union has forfeited a hard-won union foothold – the first ever unionized Chipotle – following three years of battling the company and failing to secure a contract. A Teamsters local president said in an email to the National Labor Relations Board that the union “officially withdraws and disclaims interest” at the Lansing, Michigan location. Legally speaking, this means the company will no longer be “required to recognize or negotiate with the union.” The employees of this location voted to unionize in 2022 by a margin of 11-to-3. Chipotle corporate has been decried for seeking to bust this union, with Biden NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo accusing them of employing illegal anti-union tactics like “withholding raises from the store's staff and telling workers that the union was keeping their pay frozen…[and punishing] a pro-union employee to discourage activism.” However, it was the Teamsters themselves who ultimately gave up, paving the way for the demise of the workers' heroic stand against corporate power. As the saying goes, with friends like these.* In more positive political news, during the Washington DC mayoral debate last week, the Washington Post reports democratic socialist mayoral hopeful Janeese Lewis George seemed to endorse the idea of opening municipal grocery stores in DC food deserts, including the impoverished and majority Black Wards 7 and 8. Asked about this topic, Councilmember Lewis George committed to bringing at least one more grocery store to Ward 7 and at least two more to Ward 8, noting that she would seek to shore up investor confidence with public dollars. If private options do not materialize however, she vowed that “we will work towards” a publicly-owned store. Municipally-owned grocery stores were a much publicized part of the Zohran Mamdani campaign platform and, if Lewis George is elected, his success or failure in carrying out that pledge is sure to impact her decision making on this issue.* Meanwhile, in media news, the New York Times reports Lupa Systems – the private holding company representing the interests of James Murdoch, son of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch – is “in talks to acquire major parts of Vox Media.” Vox, founded in the 2010s by journalists Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, now owns major media properties including New York magazine, the Verge, Eater and a podcast network featuring Kara Swisher and others. Murdoch, through Lupa, owns a “majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival.” Additionally, the Times notes that Quadrivium, the foundation founded by Mr. Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, has financial interests in “The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics, and The Bulwark, a so-called ‘Never Trump' digital media company.” James Murdoch, along with his sister Elisabeth, are seen as far more liberal than the Murdoch patriarch and his other son, Lachlan, who together successfully ousted the other family members from control of the family trust in a recent legal battle.* Turning to international news, yet another deadlocked presidential election in Peru is looming. A new Ipsos poll, taken near the end of April, shows an exact 50-50 split between the two candidates in the runoff: the left-wing member of Congress Roberto Sánchez and Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori. This election was always going to be close – Peruvian politics have been deadlocked for years, resulting in ultra-narrow presidential victories frequently followed by impeachments. Fujimori has been a runoff candidate in every presidential election going back to 2011, losing each by extremely narrow margins. Most recently, she lost to Pedro Castillo by a margin of 50.13% to 49.87% in 2021. Castillo however was thwarted by, and ultimately ousted by, the Congress. The runoff will be held on June 7th.* In India, the Left suffered catastrophic defeats in this week's state elections, Al Jazeera reports. The state of Kerala – “the first in the world to have a democratically elected communist government” and “the last state in India where communists were in power” – will now be led by the United Democratic Front, a coalition headed by the Congress party, which won over 100 out of 140 seats. The Left bloc will likely capture around 35 seats. Beyond Kerala however, the Left has seen setbacks throughout the country, with no state now being ruled by the Left for the first time since 1977 and the national parliamentary Left bloc declining from 62 in the 2004 election to just eight seats today. Different factors are cited for the general decline of the Left in India, including an inability to adapt Marxist analysis to non class-related issues in the country, such as caste and gender, as well as the decline of industrial trade unions and a general trend towards Right-wing Hindu nationalism. Hopefully, the Left will take this electoral rout as an opportunity to rebuild itself into a viable force for 21st century Indian politics.* Turning to East Asia, the Financial Times reports North Korea has subtly revised its constitution to drop references to reunification of the two Koreas. Specifically, the new text reads “the territory of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea includes the territory bordering the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation to the north and the Republic of Korea to the south, and the territorial sea and airspace established on it”. In acknowledging the existence of the Republic of Korea, more commonly known as South Korea, experts see a move away from the long-held North Korean contention that the peninsula is a single country illegally partitioned. The revision was “disclosed by an academic at a press conference hosted by the South Korean Ministry of Unification on Wednesday.” Though this article notes that “North Korea has not made any comment on the revised constitution and the source of the text revealed by the unification ministry was not disclosed,” it highlights that Kim Jong-un has increasingly moved in this direction in recent years, renaming Tongil (“reunification”) metro station in Pyongyang and dismantling an Arch of Reunification monument.* Our last two stories have to do with the People's Republic of China. First, Reuters reports China's Commerce Ministry has issued an injunction to “block U.S. ​sanctions imposed on five Chinese refiners accused ‌of buying Iranian oil.” Hengli Petrochemical, one of the five small “teapot” refineries primarily located in China's Shandong province, was slapped with sanctions last month, when the Trump administration accused the company of purchasing billions ​of dollars in Iranian oil. The other four have been sanctioned since last year. However, the Ministry now argues that the sanctions violate “international law and ‌the ⁠basic norms of international relations,” and with the injunction in place, “the United States cannot recognize, ​implement, or comply ​with the ⁠sanctions imposed on the aforementioned five Chinese companies.” This is perhaps the most significant challenge to the American-led international sanctions regime in decades and whatever reaction issues from the U.S. will surely inform other states on just how far they can go in flouting such sanctions.* Finally, in a stunning legal decision, Fortune reports Chinese courts have ruled that “companies cannot terminate employees just to replace them with artificial intelligence systems.” The case in question hinged on whether a tech firm in eastern China had acted illegally when firing one of its workers, a “quality assurance professional…identified only as Zhou” after he “refused to take a demotion” and a 40% pay cut, when his job was automated by AI. The court found that the termination did not meet established standards, such as business downsizing or operational difficulties, and the court separately stated that “Companies cannot unilaterally lay off employees or cut salaries due to technological progress.” This stunning legal victory for workers in the face of challenges by technology is bittersweet – heartening in that it's happening at all, yet at the same time depressing because it is almost impossible to imagine an equivalent worker protection regime being implemented in the United States.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Photographer, director, and producer Mitch Epstein joins PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss his storied career in photography, environmental activism, and artistic influences. From early inspiration by Garry Winogrand to guidance from John Szarkowski, Epstein reflects on how he evolved into a research-driven, project-based photographer focused on environmental issues. He also discusses his work in film as a production designer and co-producer on Mississippi Masala (1991) and Salaam Bombay! (1988), and shares insights on privilege, longevity, and sustaining a life in photography. https://www.mitchepstein.net Mitch Epstein has photographed the landscape and culture of America for half a century. A graduate of Cooper Union, he became a pioneer of 1970s fine-art color photography.  Epstein has been inducted into the National Academy of Design (2020) and was awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His work has been shown and collected by museums worldwide, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery in Washington DC, The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern in London, Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Los Angeles's Getty Museum and LACMA, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibitions include “American Nature” (photographs and multi-media installations) at the Gallerie d'Italia museum in Torino, Italy (2024-25); “In India,” (photographs and films) at Les Rencontres d'Arles in the Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France (2022); and “Property Rights” at The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (2020-21). Epstein's seventeen books, mostly published by Steidl Verlag, include Recreation (2022, 2005), Property Rights (2021), New York Arbor (2013), American Power (2009), and Family Business (2004), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein's mixed media work includes films, moving image with sound installations, and performance. In 2013, The Walker Art Center commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of his American Power series. Directed by Annie B. Parsons and Paul Lazar, the performance combined original live music by Erik Friedlander and live storytelling by Epstein; and included video, projected photographs, and archival material. In documentary film, Epstein was director of Dad and Retail (2003) and director of photography for India Cabaret (1988). He was production designer and co-producer for the feature films Mississippi Masala (1991) and Salaam Bombay! (1988). Epstein's most recent exhibition, American Nature, assembles three self-contained yet integrated photographic series (Old Growth, Property Rights, American Power); a multi-channel video-sound installation with tonal music by Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry filmed performing in the forest (Forest Waves), and a looped projection with music by David Lang, performed by Maya Beiser (Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut). Together these five pieces investigate notions of wilderness and human society; and their both collaborative and troubled co-existence. Epstein lives in New York City and Massachusetts.

On this, our 323rd Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss vultures, politics, and complex systems. Vultures, which have evolved multiple times (like mangroves, poison frogs, and “trees”), specialize on carrion. In India, a painkiller commonly used in people but toxic to vultures, diclofenac, came out of patent, began to be used in cattle, and the vast majority of vultures in India died. Downstream effects include the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. Now in Africa, vultures are being poisoned intentionally, and a similar devastation is likely to happen. Vultures are ugly, smelly, and gross…and utterly central to the health of not just their ecosystems, but the people who live in and near them. Welcome to complex systems. Also: Katie Wilson, the mayor of Seattle, seems to be engaged in a kind of “scientific socialism,” akin to “scientific racism,” in which quasi-scientific ideas are used to justify (bad) policy.*****Our sponsors:Lovebird: Delicious, nutritious cereal made with real ingredients. Go to http://lovebirdfoods.com/darkhorseand use code DARKHORSE for 25% off your first order.Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club: Scrumptious & freshly harvested. Go to http://www.GetFreshDarkHorse.com to get a bottle of the best olive oil you've ever had for $1 shipping.Xlear: Xylitol nasal spray that acts as prophylaxis against respiratory illnesses by reducing the stickiness of bacteria and viruses. Find Xlear online, or at your local pharmacy, grocery store, or natural products store.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.comHeather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AGANGg (commission earned)Check out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:Frank & Sudarshan 2024. The social costs of keystone species collapse: evidence from the decline of vultures in India. American Economic Review 114(10): 3007-3040: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/171014/13/WRAP-twerp-1433-Sudarshan-24.pdf Anoosh Moonka tweet: https://x.com/anishmoonka/status/2049394252573004057On the Origin of Species: https://dn710801.ca.archive.org/0/items/darwin-online_1859_Origin_F373/1859_Origin_F373_text.pdfKatie Wilson clip from Brandi Kruse: https://x.com/BrandiKruse/status/2049562844862324861Support the show

We all know that India is one of the most unequal societies on the planet. But most debates around inequality are focussed on wealth and income inequality. But there is another form of inequality that isn't talked about much – temporal inequality. How much time a person spends waiting – determines how much time she has for other life-critical activities. In India, it is the poor who spend more time waiting in queues – waiting for essential services like healthcare, rations, and in government offices. Digitisation was supposed to fix this by cutting waiting time. But has it done so? Or has ‘Digital India' benefited the already time-rich, while further depleting the resources of the poor? Is this lopsided digital governance by accident, or by design? Guest: Ankush Pal, a sociologist trained at the London School of Economics, who works on urban spatiality, caste epistemology, and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-need-for-pax-indica-malacca-was-blocked-1001-years-ago-hormuz-is-choked-now-14005673.htmlIn 1025 CE, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent an armada (probably the largest fleet in history before the advent of steam) 4,000 kilometers clear across the Indian Ocean. It was on a mission strangely familiar to us in 2026: open up a critical strait that was being choked by a littoral state. The thalassocratic SriVijaya Empire of Sumatra was closing the strait and imposing tolls, as well as winking at a little piracy.The strait in question then was Malacca. The Chola goal: to reopen Indian trade with Southeast Asia and China. Remarkably, the Cholas were not interested in territorial conquest, only in freedom of navigation.It is ironic that today, it is again a question of free trade, that shibboleth that has been waved about for decades (although that was a euphemism for ‘managed trade that benefits the West').The difference between then and now? The salient fact is that Rajendra Chola was able to open Malacca with his wooden ships. With all his aircraft carriers and F-35s and missiles, President Trump is unable to open Hormuz. This must mean something, although reasonable people may differ on what that is. My claim is that it means India has the opportunity, in fact the need, to step into the breach.Maritime trade is severely disturbed today, and it is increasingly a disaster for innocent bystanders bereft of oil and gas. And it is increasingly the Indian Ocean that matters: specifically the sea-lanes from Hormuz to Malacca, which handle a significant portion of both oil/gas trade and goods trade globally.Geo-politics and geo-economics, Mahan's and Spykman's theoriesIt is a reasonable conjecture that the locus of power has shifted over the centuries: in the 19th century, the Atlantic was supreme; in the 20th century, the Pacific; and in the 21st century, the most important ocean is the Indian Ocean. Asia has returned to center stage. In support of this assertion, see how the economic center of gravity of the world has returned to the vicinity of India, after the European colonial interlude.It is therefore appropriate to ask what it would take for India to regain its former keystone role in the Indian Ocean. Of course geography offers it to the country on a platter. From both Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory of naval power, and from Nicholas Spykman's Rimland theory, India could be, or should be, the dominant power in the region: it is almost literally India's ocean.Mahan's ideas, updated for today, suggest that a strong navy should protect a large merchant marine fleet, manage trade, and control choke-points. The preferred hardware may have changed from battleships to aircraft carriers and especially nuclear submarines these days, but the basic idea remains: speak softly but carry a big stick with a force-projection navy.Spykman's Rimland theory seems more appropriate in current circumstances than the Heartland theory popularized by Halford MacKinder. The Eurasian land mass may well be subject to control by a coastal hegemon or an alliance that controls the sea lanes and choke points. Despite pipelines and rail-borne containers, maritime trade still dominates.Spice Route >> Silk RoadA stark reminder of this is the comparison between the fabled ‘Silk Road' and the ancient ‘Spice Route'. Despite all the breathless propaganda about the Silk Road, it is abundantly clear that sea-borne trade was an order of magnitude greater, because a caravan of 500 camels, braving deserts, bandits and so on across central Asia couldn't possibly carry more than 100 tons of goods; whereas an ocean-going stitched teak ship, like a single uru from Beypore, Kerala, could easily carry 400 tons. And the monsoon winds provided predictable, seasonal propulsion.India's prowess was built on the monsoons. By mastering the seasonal winds, Indian mariners turned the ocean into a highway. This made India the supreme trading power. Merchants from Rome and Egypt traded with Chinese and Southeast Asian counterparts on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, leaving behind troves of coins as evidence.The SwitchThe remarkable thing is that these merchants did not even need to meet each other physically, because India provided the “multi-protocol switch”: translating their diverse needs and offering the conveniences of an entrepot, while also itself producing coveted, high-value products such as black pepper. For example, a Greek buyer could buy something from a Chinese seller, and settle the transaction using Indian credit.And how did India do it? By providing the “switching fabric”, such as the ports, the credit systems, and the security, that allowed these disparate worlds to exchange products and wealth without ever meeting.This is much like what a network gateway such as TIBCO does for packets of different kinds of data (in passing, how appropriate that TIBCO was founded by an Indian-American, Vivek Ranadive!). Hardware switches, eg. from Cisco Systems, have been around for a while, but TIBCO abstracted that functionality in software to connect those with different protocols.India already has many of the ingredients of the switching fabric in the India Stack. Using protocols like UPI, e-KYC, Account Aggregation, Central Bank Digital Currency, and ONDC, especially along with distributed-ledger blockchain-based Smart Contracts, it should be possible to provide end-to-end transparent and reliable multi-party trade support which complements the SWIFT payment system. Complement, not necessarily replace.The same pattern held with India's age-old trade system. The ports were on the Malabar Coast, such as Muziris; on the Coromandel coast, such as Arikkamedu; and on the Konkan Coast, such as Bharuchcha. The credit systems were run by temples which acted as both bankers and venture capitalists for the trading guilds. The security: well, that's what Rajendra Chola demonstrated in 1025 CE.Alas, medieval India lost its maritime focus. So did China. Both became insular, and were overwhelmed by invaders, including Turkics and Europeans. In India's case, the Turkic invaders were land-focused powers, although there were isolated maritime attempts (e.g. the Maratha Navy, Travancore defeating the Dutch in an amphibious battle at Colachel in 1741, etc.)Now, however, there are new ports. The most interesting is the Port of Trivandrum (Vizhinjam). This deep-water container transhipment port is only 10 nautical miles away from the Hormuz-Malacca sea lanes, and now when Dubai is closed, it reportedly has a backlog of a hundred container ships waiting to be berthed. Then there is the upcoming Vadhavan container port in Maharashtra, and the Galathea Bay container port in Great Nicobar, which overlooks the mouth of Malacca.Pax Indica todayThe modern idea of Pax Indica borrows from both perspectives: hard power and a switch. An Internet search brings up the fact that it was my friend Bapa Rao and I who first started talking about it in terms of India being the benevolent hegemon in the Indian Ocean, way back in the 1990s.Later, Shashi Tharoor wrote in his 2011 book Pax Indica that it could be “a peace system based on cooperation, stability, and rule‑based order in Asia and beyond, in which rising India helps shape the rules of the road rather than impose its will through hegemony.” That is, along roughly the same lines as the “multi protocol switch” or entrepot concept.Pax Indica is not an empire; it is an ecosystem. There are three aspects: military power, the full exploration of the multiprotocol switch, and the port-led development policy. Bapa Rao and I will consider these in a future article. Briefly, though, here is what these entail.* Project Power: Use a 3-carrier, 18-24-submarine navy to ensure no single power can close the ocean's gates.* Enable Trade: Use the Digital India Stack to act as the “Multi-Protocol Switch” for a fragmented world, plus super-ports like Vizhinjam (Trivandrum).* Secure the Choke Points: Be ready, like the Cholas, to act decisively when a “Srivijaya-style” blockade threatens the common good.Hard power needs to come through the acquisition of a blue water navy: at least three aircraft carrier groups, one for the Arabian Sea (Hormuz), one for the Bay of Bengal (Malacca), and one in maintenance, refit and upgrades.Even though drones and missiles have rendered them less dominant than in earlier times, carrier groups are still important for air superiority and power projection. But an ever-more critical factor is “area denial” by nuclear attack submarines (SSBN) that can launch second strike nuclear missiles as part of the “triad”, of which India should have at least three to four. In addition, there should be at least a dozen silent AIP-equipped diesel-electrics for securing straits, and at least 6-12 SSN (possibly leased) to enhance blue-water reach.“The IOR must become an Indian lake,” said General Raj Shukla on X. I agree: Not as a territory of conquest, but as a sanctuary of trade, where India sits at the center, as the protocol provider that makes world trade work again, as in millennia past.1500 words, 27 Apr, 2026Here's the notebookLM.google.com AI-generated video about this article: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

While advances in early detection and treatment have reduced cancer deaths in many parts of the world, that progress hasn't reached everyone. In India, cancer cases are rising, with nearly 14 lakh diagnoses in 2022—and access to life-saving drugs remains a major challenge.An investigation by The Indian Express, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reveals how one of the world's leading cancer drugs, Keytruda, remains out of reach for many patients. It also uncovers how gaps in regulation have allowed counterfeit versions of the drug to enter the market.Drawing on over 12,000 documents and records of more than 150 patients, the investigation lays bare the scale of the problem—and its human cost. In this episode, we speak with The Indian Express' Kaunain Sheriff and Anonna Dutt, who led this investigation.Hosted and produced by Shashank BhargavaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

In India, official figures suggest that one in three women experience domestic violence. In 2023, police registered over 130,000 cases of marital abuse and more than 6,000 women were killed in disputes relating to dowries. Despite these high numbers, societal attitudes to domestic abuse are changing only very slowly in the country, with families often reluctant to be seen to be interfering in a daughter's marriage. Now a new short film, Band Baaja Bitiya (Hindi for "a wedding band and a daughter") is setting out to push the pace of change. Geeta Pandey, Women and Social Affairs Editor for BBC India, looked into thetrue story that inspired the film. In February this year, a Kenyan woman called Joy, who was a 19-year-old student at the time, discovered that she was at the center of a viral video circulating on the  social media platform, TikTok. In it, she's approached  by a man who says he's from Russia and their interaction is secretly filmed by him. Several other similar clips of women were shared widely online. The creator of the videos had been promoting himself online as a so-called pickup coach and his content has proved extremely popular. But for many of the women, these videos have had real life consequences. Mungai Ngige from the BBC's Disinformation Unit investigated. The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts. Recent episodes have investigated Russia's youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India. If you want to know more about Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin's network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.Presenter: Faranak Amidi. Producer: Laura Thomas and Caroline FergusonPresented by Faranak Amidi. (Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

In India's Gujarat state lies the Little Rann of Kutch, a sprawling salt marsh desert where temperatures soar to 50 degrees Celsius. This harsh landscape is home to the Agariyas, nomadic tribal families who have harvested salt here since the 16th Century. For eight months of every year, they migrate to this harsh environment, living in temporary shacks and pumping briny groundwater into vast pans where it evaporates into gleaming, sturdy crystals. This traditional practice, responsible for 75% of India's salt production, is now under a grave existential threat. Seasonal cycles, predictable for centuries, have become erratic. Unexpected rains and sudden cyclones frequently wash away months of intensive labour, leaving families in mounting debt. Despite providing an essential global commodity, these workers earn three percent of the salt's final value, living without running water or basic sanitation.Hope emerges through innovation and activism. Scientists at the Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute are introducing new types of pan linings and solar-powered pumps to reduce costs and increase yields. Activists like Pankti Jog fight for land rights, healthcare and education, establishing mobile schools in old buses for the next generation. Yet, the future remains a gamble. While some children dream of becoming teachers or police officers, many feel tethered to the salt by heritage and lack of choice.

Good morning from Pharma Daily: the podcast that brings you the most important developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech world. Today, we delve into a series of transformative events that are shaping the industry and its trajectory.Novo Nordisk's Wegovy HD has successfully navigated the FDA's National Priority Voucher Program, strengthening its foothold in the obesity treatment market. This achievement follows the earlier success of its GLP-1 drug, Wegovy. As obesity rates rise globally, this approval underscores the vital role of innovative weight management therapies. It positions Novo Nordisk to better compete in this increasingly crowded field. In India, the expiration of patents for Novo Nordisk's semaglutide-based drugs paves the way for over 40 companies to introduce affordable generics of Ozempic and Wegovy. This is likely to reshape pricing dynamics and improve accessibility in diabetes and obesity management. Further highlighting the focus on obesity treatments, Rhythm Pharmaceuticals' Imcivree has received FDA approval for acquired hypothalamic obesity. This is significant as it addresses an unmet need for patients with brain-damage-related obesity, showcasing the potential of targeted therapies for complex neurological conditions.In other developments, CSL Behring has raised concerns about potential supply issues for Hemgenix, its gene therapy for hemophilia. As a one-time treatment option, Hemgenix represents a significant breakthrough; thus, ensuring a steady supply is essential to maintain patient trust and therapeutic efficacy.Turning to oncology, Novartis has made a strategic move with a $2 billion acquisition of Synnovation Therapeutics' pan-mutant-selective PI3Kα inhibitor program. This acquisition bolsters Novartis' breast cancer portfolio and provides a competitive edge against rivals like Eli Lilly. Such strategic acquisitions highlight efforts by major pharmaceutical companies to enhance their pipelines amidst intensifying competition.AstraZeneca's commitment to expanding its presence in China is evident with its investment in a cell therapy manufacturing hub and R&D center in Shanghai. This move aligns with their broader $15 billion investment strategy in China, reflecting the growing importance of cell therapies and the strategic role of the Chinese market in global biopharmaceutical innovation. Strategic investments continue transforming industry landscapes, with increased demand for cell therapies within oncology sectors.On another front, Verily is making strides with a $300 million fundraising round aimed at boosting its AI initiatives within precision health. This underscores a broader industry trend towards integrating AI technologies into drug development processes—a transition poised to enhance therapeutic outcomes through data-driven approaches. Additionally, Fauna Bio and Eli Lilly's collaboration using AI for obesity research exemplifies how technology accelerates innovation in complex conditions like obesity.Pfizer is streamlining its R&D focus by discontinuing an early-phase antibody-drug conjugate targeting solid tumors. This decision fits into Pfizer's strategy to allocate resources towards projects with higher clinical and commercial potential. In clinical trials, Pfizer's Talzenna combined with Xtandi shows promise for metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer—demonstrating the potential of PARP inhibitors in enhancing therapeutic efficacy.Regulatory landscapes are also evolving, as seen with China's approval of its first commercial brain-computer interface—a groundbreaking advancement offering new possibilities for treating neurological disorders. Regulatory advancements also make headlines as GSK's Lynavoy receives FDA approval for treating cholestatic pruritus in primary biliary cholangitis patients.In governance-related news, recent confusion surrounding the CDC's vaccine advisory panel highlights Support the show

Welcome to a new episode of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives. The first of a series of six episodes recorded during the pilgrimage ‘In the Footsteps of the Buddha’, this instalment was made in Varanasi, India, in February 2026. In this opening episode, Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and leadership coach Jo Confino are joined by Dharma teacher Shantum Seth to discuss the importance of understanding the Buddha as a fully human being; a boat journey on the sacred Ganges river at sunrise, from which it was possible to witness cremation and devotion; teachings on death and impermanence as daily practice; the importance of living in the present moment; and much more.The speakers also share personal experiences and reflections on their spiritual journeys, the role played by the community, and the continuation of the Buddha’s teachings through their own lives and practice.About the pilgrimage: In 1988, Shantum Seth was invited by Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) to organize a pilgrimage to the sacred sites associated with the Buddha's life across India. Subsequently, Thay encouraged Shantum to continue guiding such journeys each year, offering pilgrimage itself as a mindfulness practice—one that the Buddha had suggested. Shantum has been leading these transformative journeys ever since, offering people from around the world the opportunity to follow In the Footsteps of the Buddha with awareness and insight. After 15 years at the United Nations, Shantum left to volunteer with the Ahimsa Trust, which represents Thay's work in India and promotes the practice of “peace in oneself and peace in the world”. Through Buddhapath, his expression of Right Livelihood, Shantum continues to guide pilgrimages and share the wisdom and culture of the places he visits in India and across Buddhist Asia, cultivating community through these deeply meaningful journeys.To learn more about upcoming pilgrimages, visit www.buddhapath.com, or follow Shantum on Facebook and Instagram at @eleven_directions. Shantum Seth, an ordained Dharmacharya (Dharma teacher) in the Buddhist Mindfulness lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches in India and across the world. A co-founder of Ahimsa Trust, he has been a student of Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings for the past 35 years, and, since 1988, has led pilgrimages and other multi-faith, educational, cultural, spiritual, and transformative journeys across diverse regions of India and Asia. He is actively involved in educational, social, and ecological programmes, including work on cultivating mindfulness in society, including with educators, the Indian Central Reserve Police Force, and the corporate sector. Across various Indian sanghas, Dharmacharya Shantum is the primary teacher of different practices of mindfulness from Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition. List of resources The Way Out Is In: ‘Ancient Path for Modern Times: Active Nonviolence (Episode #70)'https://plumvillage.org/podcast/ancient-path-for-modern-times-active-nonviolence-episode-70 Interbeinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbeing Plum Village Traditionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Village_Tradition ‘The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings'https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-14-mindfulness-trainings Sarnathhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnath Dharadunhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehradun_district Bodh Gayahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodh_Gaya Rajgirhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajgir Old Path White Cloudshttps://www.parallax.org/product/old-path-white-clouds Federico Fellinihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Fellini Ghathttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghat Alara Kalama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80%E1%B8%B7%C4%81ra_K%C4%81l%C4%81ma Jack Kornfieldhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kornfield Upanishadshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads Sister Chan Khonghttps://plumvillage.org/about/sister-chan-khong Bodhi treehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhi_tree Mokshahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha Rishi Joan Halifaxhttps://www.joanhalifax.org/ Daily Contemplations on Impermanence & Interbeinghttps://plumvillage.org/daily-contemplations-on-impermanence-interbeing#the-five-remembrances Sutras: ‘Discourse on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone'https://plumvillage.org/library/sutras/discourse-on-knowing-the-better-way-to-live-alone Sutrashttps://plumvillage.org/genre/sutras Leila Sethhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Seth On Balancehttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1754796.On_Balance_an_Autobiography Quotes “Every step is a miracle. Every breath is an offering.” “The transformation is both individual and collective – and not just right now; it is something which seeps into our understanding and informs our life. The real journey begins when you get home. When you see your familiar surroundings with these pilgrimage lenses, those are very, very important moments. When you see your familiar surroundings slightly differently, and you see what brings you suffering, what brings you joy, what brings a sense of ease, then you can tweak your life.” “Siddhartha always says, ‘I’m on this path not for power, not for leadership, but to find liberation within us.' And that means we have to be ready to let go of all of the ideology that we have received from our ancestors, not from just us, but from the lineage of our whole ancestors and society.” “We can be free amidst the suffering. We can still find our calm, our peace with every storm that arises, that manifests. We find a way to understand it, to embrace it even, because we see that that storm is a part of us.” “In the Mahaparinirvāṇa Sutta, the Buddha said, ‘Go to the places where I was born, died, where the first teachings were given, where I awakened.' But I think he’s saying, ‘Leave your familiar surroundings and explore, and you’ll find different seeds in your consciousness being touched, which are not touched when you go every day to work or in your familiar surroundings.' And that is the learning of yourself. It’s an interior journey on this exterior part.” “In India, your path to God is through your guru – but in the Buddha Dharma, the guru shows you the path, and you walk it. In the classic example of the Buddha pointing to the moon, he says, ‘Don’t get caught looking at my finger; look at the moon.'” “Somebody once asked Thay, ‘What happens when we die?' He said, ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you what happens when we’re alive.'” “The only ingredient that you have any control about for the future is the present. We can only act in the present. As you know, the past is gone, the future is an idea – but all these situations that arise in our lives, how do we respond appropriately? With ethics, with a sense of calm, with a sense of love, how can we respond appropriately to each situation? Because that is the ingredient for the future.” “The Buddha is saying, ‘Stay open, stay alive. This is the most precious moment. This is a gift. And when we die, we’ll have no control over it.'” “In Indian philosophy, we don't have only yes or no. We say, yes, no, neither yes or no, both yes and no. So it’s the idea that I am the same person, I’m a different person, I’m neither the same or a different person, and both the same person and the different person. That’s the Buddha Dharma’s understanding of continuity, birth and death, and in that we don’t get caught.” “Awakening is a collective awakening.” “The Buddha was teaching us how to be a human being, how to take both the joy and the happiness of being a human being, but also to understand the suffering of a human being, and then take suffering as a noble truth. But it’s a noble truth only because we can transform it – otherwise it’s just plain old suffering. Use suffering as the compost for liberation. Looking at the cause, knowing the path to overcome suffering. And that’s key in Buddha. Otherwise, death is suffering, loss is suffering. The Buddha is saying, ‘Take that and look at it deeply, transform it, and live your life today as if it’s your last moment, your first moment, your present moment, our present moment.'” “Secular in India means different from secular in the West. Secular in India means respecting all religions. It doesn’t mean non-religious. I was brought up in a household like that, where we had Hindu icons, Christian icons, Islamic icons, everything. And we would go to midnight mass or go to a mosque or go to a temple, but we were not religious. It was just respecting people like that. And we had friends from every religion.”

Particulate matter is, Michael Greenstone argues, the greatest public health threat on the planet. Worse than HIV, cigarettes, and alcohol. The average person  loses about two years of life expectancy to it. In India, the figure is three and a half years. The solution to this problem has been tested, and it works, at least in high-income countries.Greenstone and his co-authors ran a randomised controlled trial in Surat, Gujarat: from 300 industrial plants, mostly making textiles, all burning coal, half were randomly assigned to a market where pollution permits could be bought and sold. The results: in the market, pollution fell 25%, compliance was near-perfect, and abatement costs dropped 12%. The cost-benefit ratio is as high as 200 to one. Many plants in the control group asked to be moved into the market.The research behind this episode:Greenstone, Michael, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India." Quarterly Journal of Economics 140 (2): 1003–1060. An ungated version is available as BFI Working Paper 2025-53.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries?" VoxDev Talk (podcast).  Assign this as extra listening: the citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Michael GreenstoneMichael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is the founding Director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC) and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. His research focuses on the costs and benefits of environmental quality, including the Air Quality Life Index, which tracks the toll of particulate pollution country by country. He previously served as Chief Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. Research cited in this episodeAir Quality Life Index (AQLI), Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. The source of the life-expectancy statistics used in this episode: particulate pollution costs the average person on Earth roughly two years of life expectancy, with India averaging three and a half years. The index tracks this burden country by country, city by city.The US sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade programme, established under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, was the canonical precedent Greenstone cited: a market that dramatically reduced acid rain in the eastern United States at costs far below pre-programme projections. He noted that the UK and EU have since built comparable CO2 markets. All have worked well. The question this experiment addressed was whether the same logic held in the developing world, where almost all the pollution now is.Emissions Market Accelerator. An independent scale-up organisation founded by Greenstone and colleagues to replicate the Gujarat model beyond the original research setting. Current pipeline: a statewide sulphur dioxide market for Maharashtra (including large power plants, not just textiles), and advanced conversations in Pakistan and Brazil. Within Gujarat, a water pollution market is also in development.More VoxDev Talks on this topicRegulating pollution in low- and middle-income countries Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan, two co-authors of the paper discussed in this episode, on the political economy of pollution regulation in developing countries: why enforcement is hard, and what makes it work.Air pollution and infant mortality Jennifer Burney on the health costs of particulate air pollution for young children, and what the evidence from Saharan dust patterns across Sub-Saharan Africa reveals about exposure and mortality.The Social Cost of Carbon Michael Greenstone's earlier VoxDev Talk, on how assigning a monetary value to carbon emissions can drive better policy decisions and make the case for action that regulation alone struggles to make.Related reading on VoxDevReducing air pollution: Evidence from payments to reduce crop burning in India How cash payments to farmers in northern India changed behaviour and cut the seasonal haze from crop fires that pushes Delhi's air quality to its worst each winter.Paying to pollute: How carbon offsets actually raised emissions in China A cautionary study on market-based pollution controls: when incentives point the wrong way, a market can make things worse rather than better.The effect of pollution on worker productivity: Evidence from call-centre workers in China Air pollution reduces cognitive performance and output, adding an economic productivity argument to the health case for cleaning the air.