There are  very few places in the world where you can breathe air clean enough to meet WHO standards . The focus is on a type of air pollution called PM2.5, which is smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, and mostly comes from auto emission and burning of biomass and fossil fuels.  This fine particulate matter is associated with a wide range of heart and lung disorders, plus cancers. In the  study,  scientists examined pollution data from monitoring stations in 6,475 cities in 117 countries and territories.   Only 3.4% got an acceptable grade. 93 cities had PM2.5 concentrations  10 times higher  than WHO standards. Central and South Asia had 46 of the world's most polluted cities. In Africa only one of 65 cities examined met WHO air quality standards. Asia?  Only 4 of 1887 cities. Europe should be okay, right?  Nope.  Only 55 of 1588 cities achieve this. What about the USA? This report  said:  not a pretty picture. 2408...

11March2011 was a pivotal day for Japan.  It is probable that the country won't completely recover for many decades yet to come.  The Great Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear cataclysm might have forever changed the destiny of the nation.  While the tsunami killed most of those who died, the subsequent Fukushima nuclear catastrophe  will cost a TRILLION DOLLARS and take perhaps a half century to clean-up . This is my third nostalgic Tuesday on this subject, and I'm not sure when this series will end, for  I arrived in Tokyo from Bangkok the day after the event , then soon thereafter felt it was too dangerous to stay, so I  escaped to Beijing , which was my posting of last week.  After a couple of days, I thought the radiation problem was not as serious as earlier thought, so I thought I would carefully return by first staying a few days in Seoul. It occurred to me then, and it weighs heavier today, that, while the entire populace of Japan was suffe...

Before getting into nostalgia, who is  new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ? 42-year old Hindu born in Southampton whose parents of Indian descent migrated from East Africa in the 1960s. Went to Oxford, then got an MBA from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar. While at Stanford, met his wife Akshata Murthy, daughter of Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, who founded Infosys. Rishi and Akshata have two children and are an almost billionaire couple, the 222nd richest people in Britain. First British Asian and Hindu to become prime minister. While relatively young, David Cameron in 2010 was only a year older at 43, while the first PM, Robert Walpole in 1721 was 44, William Cavendish in 1756 was 36, Charles Watson-Wentworth was 35, Augustus FitzRoy in 1768 was 33 and William Pitt the Younger ( right ) in 1783 was 24.  Winston Churchill in 1940 was 65, Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was 53 and Tony Blair in 1997 was 43. According to  Time  magazine: He bears none of ...

From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD     Brazil      India      South Africa June     9    1093     4732       1185        246       82 July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120      572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835      130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136      1168       82 Oct     21     1225      6849         571       703       85 ...