RISING HEAT WAVES!!!

From The Economist - July 27th 2019

Greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to the rising frequency of heatwaves

Extreme weather

Climate blame game

Extreme heat is ruinous to productivity, particularly if you are a criminal. Several American police forces posted messages to their social-media accounts last weekend declaring a moratorium on crime. "It is just too hot to be outside committing crimes," wrote the Park Forest Police Department in Illinois, on its Facebook page. In some cases, it seems to have worked. "We have had zero customers stay the night at our ‘hotel’, so we appreciate all of the criminals adhering to the heat advisory," tweeted the Maiden Police in Massachusetts on Sunday.

The messages came as scorching temperatures swept across America, placing more than 100m people under excessive-heat warnings. Temperatures hovered either side of 40°C on the east coast. On July 18th Mitch Petrus, a well-known retired player of American football, died of heatstroke after working outdoors all day. At least five other deaths have been reported.

Europeans have also been sweating, for the second time this summer. A month ago, warm air from the Sahara contributed to making it the continent's hottest June on record. At the top of Morit Blanc, western Europe's highest mountain, instruments recorded 7°C (the normal June temperature would be below freezing). At Gallargues-le-Montueux near Nimes, in France, temperatures peaked at 45.9°C. The previous record anywhere in that country was 1.8°C lower. Linked to these temperatures, in Alaska and Portugal, forest fires are raging.

If your hunch is that this kind of extreme weather is more common today than it was once-upon-a-time, you are correct. 

When, in 2003, tens of thousands of people in Europe died prematurely as a result of a two-week heatwave, it was deemed to be a once-in-1,000-years event. Twelve years later, a study led by Nikolaos Christidis of the Hadley Centre, the climate-research division of Britain's Met Office, found that heatwaves of this severity had become once-in-100-years events, and would be commonplace by the 2040s.

The question on many people's minds is whether these changes, and specific events like this week's temperatures in America and Europe, are caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. For years, the semi-official line was that no single weather event could be blamed on climate change, only trends. That began to change in 2004, with the publication of the first "attribution" study. This focused on the European heatwave of 2003, when average summer temperatures broke through a threshold until then unbreached in 150 years of records. By comparing simulations of a world with and without green house-gas emissions, Peter Stott at the Met Office and his colleagues found that climate change had made the record-breaking heatwave at least twice as likely as it would otherwise have been.

Since then, research of this sort, intended to study how climate change is already promoting extreme weather, has grown rapidly. A recent, extended drought in California has been linked to greenhouse-gas emissions, as was the extreme heat southern Europe experienced during the summer of 2017. That event was made at least ten times more likely by climate change according to work published later that year by World Weather Attribution, a collaboration between experts in these sorts of analyses.

Shortening odds

Attribution work does not concern itself only with heat. Floods, storms and cold spells also carry a climatic fingerprint. 

When Hurricane Harvey hit America in August 2017, it stalled over Texas, delivering huge quantities of rain, which caused heavy flooding and more than 80 deaths. On that occasion, World Weather Attribution found that climate change was responsible for intensifying precipitation levels by between 8% and 19%. Since 2012, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has published an annual compendium of attribution studies. Roughly 70% of events scrutinized show some influence from climate change.

One challenge has been to do the analyses faster. Findings connected with the heatwave of 2003 took a year to appear, by which time public interest had mostly moved on. The goal today is to offer a verdict on the influence of climate change on particular meteorological events more or less as they are happening. Here, the Met Office has been leading the way, with its Dutch, French and German counterparts close behind. But many other places do not have the capacity to carry out the onerous computer-modelling required. As a result, a European Union project planned to start before November will seek to provide contemporaneous weather-attribution analyses for the continent.

An inadvertent early test of how this could work took place last month, when many of Europe's attribution scientists gathered at a statistical-climatology meeting in Toulouse, just as the June heatwave hit. Within days they published their conclusions. Accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had made the event at least five times more likely than would otherwise have been the case.

Such statements help show that the danger posed by climate change is clear and present, not just something for future generations to worry about. Heatwaves, for example, sometimes kill by the thousand— and can cause more casualties than other meteorological extremes, such as floods and hurricanes. But attribution also provides useful guidance to policymakers.

For instance, information about how much more likely an event is today than it was 50 or 100 years ago can assist decisions about building and adapting infrastructure. If what were thought of as once-in-a-millennium heatwaves now come once a century and will soon become so frequent as to be normal, then public-health systems need to be designed to cope with an influx of people suffering from heat stress. Likewise, if big floods are more frequent, water-handling systems need to be expanded and flood defences raised. Insurance and reinsurance companies are paying particular attention, because these calculations help them reassess risk levels.

Conversely, some people blamed climate change for a drought in south-eastern Brazil in 2014 and 2015, in which water levels in reservoirs around Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro fell to between 3% and 5% of capacity. But a study published in 2015 by Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University found no sign that greenhouse-gas emissions had raised the risk of drought. Dr Otto concluded instead that a quadrupling of Sao Paulo's population since 1960 had put pressure on scarce water supplies.

Attribution science is also playing a role in courtrooms and human-rights hearings. A study published in 2015 showed that climate change contributed to the high wind speeds of super typhoon Haiyan, which blew through the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,000 people. Those stronger winds created a much bigger storm surge. The matter was raised during hearings held by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights last year, which sought to explore the question of whether fossil-fuel companies could be held responsible.

Clear, present and lethal?

Others have sought to pin companies down more specifically. In one widely reported lawsuit, Saul Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian farmer, is suing RWE, a German energy firm, for contributing to the melting of a mountain glacier that threatens to sweep away his village. Mr Luciano Lliuya's counsel, Roda Verheyen, has said that the case "was mostly made possible by the advancement of...attribution science". Lindene Patton, a lawyer with the Earth and Water Law Group, a firm specializing in environmental law, has written that "the science of event attribution may become a driver of litigation, as it shifts understanding of what weather is expected and, relevantly for law, foreseeable."

To a layman, however good attribution science has become, trying to use it to link an event in the Peruvian Andes to a particular firm in Germany looks a bit of a stretch. But whether or not Mr Luciano Lliuya wins his case, the fact it is even being heard is a straw in the wind—and a sign that global warming can change metaphorical weather patterns as well as real ones. ■

KEY TO HEALTH AND WEIGHT CONTROL

The science behind time-restricted eating

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

• August 09, 2019

 

Research overwhelmingly supports the notion that ditching the three square meals a day approach in favor of time-restricted feeding — a form of intermittent fasting — can do wonders for your health. Research by Satchidananda Panda, Ph.D., suggests 90% of people eat for more than 12 hours a day, and over time this habit will wreak havoc on your metabolism and limit your ability to metabolize fat as a primary fuel. 

When you eat throughout the day and never skip a meal your body adapts to burning sugar as its primary fuel, resulting in the downregulation of enzymes that utilize and burn stored fat.1,2

As a result, you become progressively more insulin resistant and start gaining weight. Efforts to lose weight also become ineffective for this very reason, since to lose body fat, your body must first be able to actually burn fat. 

Many biological repair and rejuvenation processes also take place while you're fasting, and this is another reason why all-day grazing triggers diseases while fasting prevents them.

What is time-restricted eating (TRE)?

Time-restricted eating is just what it sounds like. It's a form of intermittent fasting where you eat all of your meals for the day within a restricted window of time, ranging from two to eight hours. That means you're avoiding food (fasting) for 16 to 22 consecutive hours. Eating within a four- to six-hour window is likely close to metabolic ideal for most. As noted in the paper "A Time to Fast," published in the November 2018 issue of Science:3

"Adjustment of meal size and frequency have emerged as powerful tools to ameliorate and postpone the onset of disease and delay aging, whereas periods of fasting, with or without energy intake, can have profound health benefits.

The underlying physiological processes involve periodic shifts of metabolic fuel sources, promotion of repair mechanisms, and the optimization of energy utilization for cellular and organismal health …

In general, both prolonged reduction in daily caloric intake and periodic fasting cycles have the power to delay the onset of disease and increase longevity."

Fat-burning capacity is required for weight loss

As just mentioned, to shed body fat, your body must have the ability to burn fat for fuel. While it may seem like this ability should be inherent in everyone, all the time (since we know fat can be used as fuel), metabolic dysfunction triggered by an inappropriate diet and feeding schedule can prevent this. In a nutshell, to be an efficient fat-burner, you need to:

• Eat a diet with a higher fat-to-sugar ratio (i.e., more healthy fats and less net carbohydrates), and 
• Restrict the timing of your meals so that you're fasting for a greater number of hours than you're eating.

This will (over time) teach your body to burn fat for fuel again, rather than relying on fast-burning carbs, and in addition to burning dietary fats, your body will also start accessing and burning stored body fat.

While either of these strategies alone (fasting or eating a ketogenic diet) will shift your body from carb-burning to fat-burning, doing them together will yield the fastest results. To learn more about this, see "Why Intermittent Fasting Is More Effective Combined With Ketogenic Diet."

How time-restricted feeding promotes weight loss 

So, what's the evidence that time-restricted eating actually promotes weight loss? Aside from a number of animal studies,4 consider the following research,5 published in the July 2019 issue of Obesity. 

This study was founded on the premise that by eating earlier in the daytime, you properly align with the natural fluctuations in the circadian rhythm that regulates your metabolism. As a result, weight loss is enhanced. 

The question it sought to answer was whether this benefit is mediated through increased energy expenditure or simply lower energy intake. To find out, 11 overweight participants first adhered to an early time-restricted eating schedule, eating all meals between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. for four days. 

For the next four days, they ate all meals between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. They were also required to maintain a regular sleep schedule throughout. On the last day of each trial, energy expenditure and substrate oxidation levels were measured. 

Results revealed meal-timing primarily facilitates weight loss by reducing appetite and increasing fat oxidation. Energy expenditure remained unaffected. As explained by lead author Courtney Peterson, Ph.D., associate professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham:6

"We think the longer daily fast gives people's bodies more time each day to dip into their fat reserves and burn fat. The body is typically maximally efficient at burning fat when people fast for at least 12-24 hours at a time." 

Overall, eating all meals earlier in the day, between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., resulted in greater metabolic flexibility, lower ghrelin (known as the hunger hormone) levels, reduced hunger and increased sense of fullness, and this is thought to drive the weight loss.

TRE improves weight loss in obese adults 

Another study7 published in the Nutrition and Healthy Aging journal in 2018, examined how TRE — without counting calories — affects weight in obese adults. Here, they used an eight-hour restricted eating window. 

Twenty-three overweight adults were instructed to eat however much food they wanted between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for 12 weeks. For the remainder of the day and night, they were only allowed water. Weight loss and metabolic parameters were compared to the historical records of a group of matched controls.

At the end of 12 weeks, body weight decreased by an average of 2.6% and energy intake decreased by 341 calories per day compared to controls. Systolic blood pressure also decreased by an average of 7 mm Hg. 

According to the authors, their findings "suggest that 8-hour time restricted feeding produces mild caloric restriction and weight loss, without calorie counting. It may also offer clinical benefits by reducing blood pressure."

How restricted feeding affects fat and muscle in fit adults

Overweight individuals are not the only ones who stand to benefit from time-restricted feeding, as evidenced by a 2016 study8 in the Journal of Translational Medicine, which evaluated the effects of TRE on basal metabolism, strength, body composition, inflammation levels and cardiovascular risk factors in fit men. As explained by the authors:9

"Thirty-four resistance-trained males were randomly assigned to time-restricted feeding (TRF) or normal diet group (ND). TRF subjects consumed 100% of their energy needs in an 8-h period of time each day, with their caloric intake divided into three meals consumed at 1 p.m., 4 p.m., and 8 p.m. 

The remaining 16 h per 24-h period made up the fasting period. Subjects in the ND group consumed 100% of their energy needs divided into three meals consumed at 8 a.m., 1 p.m., and 8 p.m. Groups were matched for kilocalories consumed and macronutrient distribution."

Strength training consisted of a split routine with three weekly sessions on nonconsecutive days for eight weeks. All participants had engaged in continuous resistance training for at least five years before the study.10

Compared to controls, at the end of the eight-week study, the treatment group experienced a decrease in fat mass while maintaining muscle mass and maximal strength.11

Interestingly, while blood glucose and insulin decreased significantly, as expected, so did testosterone and insulin-like growth factor 1, two anabolic hormones.12 Unfortunately, no hypothesis is presented for these findings. 

They also found that, aside from a reduction in triglycerides, the time-restricted feeding protocol did "not confirm previous research suggesting a positive effect of [intermittent fasting] on blood lipid profiles."

The researchers address this in the discussion section of the study, postulating that this may be related to the fact that all of the subjects were "normolipemic athletes," meaning their blood lipid profiles were normal to start with. Despite that, the authors conclude: 

"Our results suggest that an intermittent fasting program in which all calories are consumed in an 8-h window each day, in conjunction with resistance training, could improve some health-related biomarkers, decrease fat mass, and maintain muscle mass in resistance-trained males."

A similar study13 published in the European Journal of Sport Science found that men who performed resistance training for eight weeks while eating all meals within four hours on non-workout days (four days a week) lowered their calorie intake while still increasing strength and muscular endurance. 

The many health benefits of intermittent fasting

A large and growing body of medical research supports the use of time-restricted feeding (intermittent fasting), showing it has a wide range of biological benefits. Aside from facilitating fat loss while protecting and even promoting muscle strength, studies show various forms of fasting,14including a variety of intermittent fasting protocols and time-restricted feeding, can: 

Promote insulin sensitivity,15,16 which is crucial for your health as insulin resistance or poor insulin sensitivity contributes to nearly all chronic diseases

Improve leptin sensitivity17

Improve blood sugar management by increasing insulin-mediated glucose uptake rates18

Lower triglyceride levels19,20

Increase human growth hormone production (HGH) — Commonly referred to as "the fitness hormone," HGH plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism.  Research21,22 shows fasting can raise HGH by as much as 1,300% in women and 2,000% in men. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from intermittent fasting

Suppress inflammation and reduce oxidative damage

Promote multisystem regeneration23 by upregulating autophagy and mitophagy,24 natural cleansing processes necessary for optimal cellular renewal and function, and promoting regeneration of stem cells25

Prevent or reverse Type 2 diabetes, as well as slow its progression

Improve immune function by regenerating damaged stem cells26,27

Lower blood pressure28,29

Reduce your risk of heart disease30

Boost mitochondrial energy efficiency and biogenesis31

Reduce your risk of cancer, in part by optimizing autophagy32

Increase longevity33,34,35 — There are a number of mechanisms contributing to this effect. Normalizing insulin sensitivity is a major one, but fasting also inhibits the mTOR pathway,36 which plays an important part in driving the aging process

Regenerate the pancreas37 and improve pancreatic function

Improve cognitive function and protect against neurological diseases (such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease38 and Parkinson's disease,39,40) thanks to the production of ketone bodies41(byproducts of fatty acid breakdown, which are a healthy and preferred fuel for your brain) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor42 (BDNF, which activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health). Animal research43 also shows intermittent fasting increases neurons resistance to excitotoxic stress.

Eliminate sugar cravings as your body adapts to burning fat instead of sugar

TRE is beneficial for most

Contrary to longer fasts and calorie restriction, TRE is a strategy that can work for most people. Remember, you're not actually limiting or counting calories — you can (theoretically) eat whatever you want in any amount — you're simply restricting the time in which you eat all this food, although you will get better results by eating healthy nonprocessed foods and not consuming excessive carbs.

Weakness and lethargy, which are signs of undernourishment, should not occur. It's a practice that should make you feel good and actually reduce your hunger over time.

Your hunger and craving for sugar will slowly dissipate as your body starts burning fat as its primary fuel. Once your body has successfully shifted into fat burning mode, it will be easier for you to fast for as long as 22 hours and still feel satiated. I typically fast for at least 18 hours a day and sometimes as much as 22 hours.

While time-restricted feeding and intermittent fasting will in theory work regardless of your diet, I do not recommend it if you're eating a preponderance of processed foods. The quality of your diet is particularly important if you're looking for more than mere weight loss. 

It's critical to avoid refined carbohydrates, sugar/fructose...... Focus your diet on vegetable carbohydrates, healthy protein in moderate amounts, and healthy fats such as butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil and raw nut.

GERMANY.... AfD..... THE PAST RISES AGAIN!

From The Economist - July 20th - 26th - 2019

Germany's AfD

Too far

DRESDEN

The Alternative for Germany's strength in east Germany is hurting it in the west

It is an ordinary Monday evening in Dresden. Around 1,000 people have gathered, under gunmetal skies and German flags, for the fortnightly demonstration organized by Pegida ("Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident"). It is a peculiar blend of the convivial and the hateful. The crowd laughs and cheers as speakers rail against immigrants, politicians and the media. Later they march through the city centre, swapping insults with balaclava-clad counter-protesters. There are arrests for violence and Holocaust denial. Your correspondent's attempts to interview participants are foiled by a ponytailed protester screaming "Lii-genpresse!" ("Lying press"), a slur with Nazi overtones revived by Pegida.

Far-right politics has long found a home in Saxony, the east German state of which Dresden is the capital. The NPD, a neo-Nazi outfit, had seats in Saxony's parliament from 2004 to 2014. But in a state election on September 1st the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party, has a chance of coming first. It will also do well in two other eastern elections: in Brandenburg, on the same day, and Thuringia, in October. It polls much better in the states of the old East Germany than in the (far larger) West. But that difference has become a source of division inside the party.

In the past five years the AfD has transformed itself from a tweedy set of Euro-sceptics worried about euro-zone bail-outs into a populist-xenophobic outfit in the vein of Austria's Freedom Party or the National Rally in France. It has proved a successful strategy. The party has won seats in all 16 state parliaments and, amid dismay over Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, took third place in the general election of 2017, earning 13% of the vote and 94 seats. Yet this success has always rested on an uneasy coalition of disillusioned conservatives, nationalist populists and radicals on the fringes of democracy. Hostility to Mrs Merkel has helped unite these tribes. But they are a fractious lot.

In Germany's east the AfD has acquired a distinctive voice as it puts down local roots. Where radical groups like Pegida and the AfD once sought to prove their mutual independence, now east German AfD stars such as Bjdrn Hocke, the party's leader in Thuringia, make inflammatory speeches at Pegida demos. Pegida's marches are much smaller than at their peak of 2015, when the group could draw up to 30,000 protesters. But the hard core that remains is more coherent, uniting strands of the radical right, explains Johannes Filous, co-founder of Strassengezwitscher, a journalistic group that monitors Saxony's far right. Many demonstrators in Dresden now proudly wave the AfD flag.

Right turn

Mr Hocke, a race-baiting extremist in the charismatic strongman mould, sits at the heart of the Flugel ("Wing"), an ultra-right grouping inside the AfD whose influence far outstrips its support, thought to comprise perhaps one-third of party members. Disciplined and hierarchical, it is dominant in east Germany; it is also gaining strength in the west. That has occasioned drama in several AfD state associations. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, earlier this month most of the party leadership quit in protest at the growing influence of the Flugel, which has left those loyal to Mr Hocke in charge. On July 10th over 100 AfD officials wrote an open letter vowing that they would strive to protect the party from the cult of personality surrounding Mr Hocke.

Tellingly, none of the AfD's national leaders was among them. The leadership "needs to keep both wings together, and that gives the advantage to the radicals," says Werner Patzelt, a political scientist in Dresden. But should Mr Hocke become the voice of the party, conservative AfD voters in the west may be scared off. One party figure has said the aid may lose ten votes in the west for each one it gains in the east. Paradoxically, success for the AfD in the autumn elections could intensify the party's problems by vindicating the eastern ultras. Some internal differences are "difficult to reconcile," acknowledges Tino Chrupalla, an aid mp from eastern Saxony. All this comes at an awkward time for the party which is sagging in national polls.

It has also been stung by suggestions that its rhetoric encourages violence. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the   CDU’s leader, has said that anyone in her party who is considering working with the AfD should "close their eyes and imagine Walter Lubcke", a reference to a cdu politician who was murdered recently, allegedly by a neo-Nazi fanatic.

But the AfD's success in the east creates a real problem for mainstream parties who must form governments from a fragmented vote. In Saxony the AfD and the CDU both poll around 25%. Michael Kretschmer, the state's premier and CDU leader, rules out a coalition with the aid after the election. But others in his party seem less sure. In neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt, where the CDU leads a fractious three-way coalition, some party figures want to open the debate. At municipal level there are signs of informal CDU-AfD co-operation. And even in Saxony, a minority CDU government open to working with all parties, including the AfD, may ultimately look more attractive than the unwieldy three- or four-party coalition that may be the only alternative.

In the long term, the prospects for such deals may depend on the AfD itself. And in the east the party is making itself harder to work with. It has started to foster a nascent "Ossi" nationalism, hinting that easterners' experience of dictatorship renders them cannier than west Germans, corrupted as westerners are by Merkel, migrants and the Lugenpresse—and, perhaps, well placed to bring about the necessary revolution. At the Pegida event a speaker attacks the domestic intelligence agency that has declared the Flugel a target for .surveillance, triggering cries of "Stasi!" from the crowd. An east Berlin branch of the AfD recently circulated a meme depicting west Germany as an Islamic caliphate, with the national flag reserved for the east.

Needless to say, the audience for this sort of thing in western Germany is limited. Hoping for a showdown, some of the AfD's less radical politicians want the easterners to put themselves up for election to the party's executive board, which is dominated by westerners, later this year. Mr Hocke has vowed that the board will change, but may not stand himself. That makes him a coward, snorts one of his internal opponents. But it is increasingly clear who has the upper hand. ■

GERMANY  WILL  PLAY  A  VITAL  ROLE  IN  THE  VERY  END-TIME  BIBLE  PROPHECY;  LEADING  UP  TO  AND  DURING  THE  LAST  42  MONTHS  OF  THIS  AGE,  AND  THE  RETURN  OF  CHRIST  JESUS  TO  RULE  THE  EARTH,  DURING  AS  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  CALLS  IT  “THE  AGE  TO  COME”  OR  “THE  WORLD  TO  COME”.

ALL  BIBLE  PROPHECY;  ALL  THE  PROPHETIC  BOOKS  OF  THE  BIBLE,  ARE  EXPOUNDED  FOR  YOU  ON  MY  WEBSITE,  UNDER  “PROPHECY”  SECTION .

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USA.... BETTER IMMIGRATION POLICIES

The Economist - July 20th 2019

Immigration and America

While you were tweeting

Amid the outrage over the president's race-baiting, his administration rewrote asylum law

It is a familiar pattern. The president says something outrageous—this time Donald Trump told four black and brown-skinned Democratic congresswomen, all of whom are us citizens and three of whom were born in America, to "go back" where they came from. His supporters, who have come to accept what many of them previously found unconscionable, stay silent. His opponents, rightly appalled, lament what has happened to their country. At the same time the Trump administration makes a big policy change that attracts far less attention—in this case, an edicrthat directly affects tens of thousands of people a year and overturns half a century of precedent.

Last year 120,000 people claimed asylum, the majority of them at the south-western border. On July 15th the White House announced that claims will no longer be considered unless applicants can prove that they sought asylum in one of the countries they passed through on their way to America, and were rejected. There will be legal challenges to the new rule, because America is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and because the change may contravene America's own Refugee Act of 1980. But in the meantime anyone who passes through Guatemala or Mexico on the way to the southern border without first seeking refuge there may be turned away.

There is no kind way to enforce immigration law, which by its very existence must squash the dreams of some who wish to migrate. Plenty of asylum-seekers at America's southern border are not fleeing persecution but crime and poverty. However, this is the wrong way to go about things, for reasons of principle and also of pragmatism.

First, principle. The idea that a refugee should be protected, regardless of which countries he might have traipsed through beforehand, is worth defending. It is already dying in Australia and Europe. The European Union outsources much of its asylum policy to Turkey and Lybia, for example, or to member states on its fringes; thousands of people languish in crowded camps in Greece. But for America to abandon this norm sends an even more disturbing signal. The land of the free has a proud history of resettling refugees from far-off places, rehousing many more than any other country.

Second, pragmatism. Mr Trump has already used threats on trade to persuade Mexico to host more asylum applicants on its side of the border while they await news of their claims. Unable to build his oft-promised wall, his administration has tried to deter migrants by other means, including separating children from their parents at the border. Migration numbers are volatile, and tend to decline in the hot summer months, but so far none of these things has cut the numbers enough for Mr Trump. Clamping down even harder will not alter the incentives to leave El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where most asylum-seekers come from, in search of a better life. It simply makes it more likely that migrants will rely on traffickers rather than the legal system to cross into America.

There is a better way. 

The first step would be to increase the number of judges, to clear the backlog of immigration cases. There are currently not far off a million cases pending; the waiting time to hear them can be as long as three years. Many asylum-seekers disappear into the grey labour market as they wait for their cases to be adjudicated, joining the ranks of America's 10.5m unlawful migrants; the Department of Justice says almost half do not show up for court hearings. 

The next step would be to allow the immigration and citizenship service to decide asylum applications at the border. 

Finally, the federal government could provide more aid to improve conditions in Central America. When Mexico's economy improved and the fertility rate fell, the number of Mexicans migrating north slowed to a trickle. A different president, with a more expansive view of American greatness, would enforce rules and change incentives, not abrogate rights.

………………..

USA.... RIDING HIGH....BUT HOW LONG?

From The Economist - July 13th - 19th — 2019

Riding high

America's expansion wiH soon be the longest on record. What could bring it to an end?

Around the world investors, businesses and central bankers are grappling with a startling fact: at the end of July America's economy will have been growing for 121 months, the longest run since records began in 1854, according to the NBER, a research body. History suggests there will be a recession soon. And plenty of people are gloomy. Bond markets have been sounding the alarm, as long-term interest rates sink below short-term ones, often a harbinger of a downturn. Manufacturing firms are wary; indices of business confidence are tumbling. Yet equity investors are still buoyant. The stockmarket is going gangbusters, rising by 19% so far this year. And in June America's economy created a whopping 224,000 new jobs, more than twice as many as needed to keep up with the growth of the workforce. The result is a puzzle that matters a great deal. America's economy accounts for a quarter of global output, so if it stumbles the world will, too. But if it proves able to extend the cycle a lot longer, it may be time to rewrite the rules for how all rich economies behave.

The conflicting signals reflect an unusually sluggish and stretched expansion. Some of that is to be expected after the worst financial crisis in 80 years, but as our briefing explains, it is also owing to deeper changes in America's $21trn economy. Growth is slow but more stable as activity has shifted to services and intangible assets. Thanks to new regulations and the recent memory of the bust, there are few signs of wild mortgage lending, over-investment or reckless financial firms. Inflation is remarkably subdued. These forces mean that a placid expansion can continue well beyond historical norms, but also suggest that the way it will eventually end will be different. Recessions used to be triggered by housing bubbles, price surges or industrial busts. Now you should worry about globally interconnected firms, a financial system addicted to cheap money and a political system that is toying with extreme policies because living standards are not rising fast enough.

Average GDP growth during this expansion has been a mere 2.3%, much lower than the 3.6% that was seen in America's three previous expansions. That reflects some deep malaises. The workforce is ageing. Big firms hoard profits and invest less. Productivity growth has been slow. Robert Gordon, an economist, worries that America's genius for innovation is flagging. Emojis and bitcoins are no substitute for breakthroughs such as jet engines or the internet.

That is the bad news. The good news is that the economy may be less volatile. A third of America's 20th-century recessions were caused by industrial slumps or oil-price shocks, according to Goldman Sachs. Today manufacturing is just 11% of GDP and each dollar of output requires a quarter less energy than in 1999. Services have become even more vital, at 70% of output. Instead of fickle factories and Florida condos, investment has shifted to intellectual property, which now accounts for more than a quarter of the total. After the searing experience of 2008, the value of the housing stock is 143% of GDP, well below the peak of 188%. Banks are rammed full of capital.

Most remarkable of all is very low inflation, which has aver-

aged 1.6% over the course of the expansion. In many past downturns the jobs market overheated, causing inflation and leading the Federal Reserve to hit the brakes. Today the dynamics are different. The unemployment rate has fallen to 3.7%, close to the lowest in half a century, but wage growth is only a tepid 3% - Workers have less bargaining power in a globalized economy. The Fed's credibility helps, too—most people believe that it can keep long-run inflation at about 2%. Given that racing prices are less of a worry and that it lacks the ammunition to deal with a serious downturn, the Fed is being more active at signalling that it will ease policy when growth dips. This week the Fed signalled it would soon nudge rates down from today's 2.25-2.5%, to keep growth going.

All this supports the idea that the familiar triggers for recession are still absent and that the moderately good times can roll on for years yet. The trouble with this logic is that, just as the economy has changed, so have the risks. Inevitably it is hard to identify exactly what might go wrong, but three new kinds of problems loom large.

First, America's glossy corporate champions have unfamiliar vulnerabilities. Although fewer make physical goods, most rely on global production chains that are being shaken by the trade war (see our special report). This is depressing investment and could yet produce a shock—imagine if Apple was cut off from its factories in China. Tech firms, meanwhile, now account for a third of all investment by listed firms, including intellectual property. Other businesses outsource their need for it services to a few giants. One of them, Alphabet, spent $45bn in the past year, five times more than Ford. But 85% of its sales come from advertising, which has been cyclical in the past. It and other tech firms also face a regulatory storm.

The second risk is financial. Although house prices and the banks have been tamed, total private debts remain high by historical standards, at 250% of GDP. An edifice of asset prices and borrowing rests on the assumption of permanently low and stable interest rates, making it more fragile than it looks. If rates rise there will be distress among some firms, and trouble in debt markets—there was a sell-off in late 2018. If, by contrast, the Fed has to cut rates to near zero for a prolonged period to sustain growth, it could weaken the banks, as Europe has found.

A recession made in Washington?

The last danger is politics. As the economy has trodden a narrow path, the boundaries of economic policy have been blown wide apart, partly out of frustration at a decade of sluggish wages. President Donald Trump has tried to gin up growth, by cutting taxes and attacking the Fed. Most Democrats are keen to let rip on government spending. More extreme policies hover in the wings. On the left, modern monetary theory (a kind of money printing) and massive state intervention are popular. One of Mr Trump's new nominees to the Fed board supports a gold standard. The greatest threat to America's long and placid expansion is that a new era of wild policy may be just beginning. ■

USA ....BORDER AND IMMIGRATION

From The Economist - July 6th - 12th —- 2019

Immigration detention

In the land of the free

WASHINGTON, DC

The distressing scenes at the southern border are a result of circumstances beyond the White House's control, of deliberate policy and of plain incompetence

It is always the best of times and the worst of times in America for President Donald Trump. Various things have simultaneously never been worse, owing to Democratic meddling, but also never been better, thanks to his own intervention. "Our country has a hole, nobody sees anything like it, but we've stopped them," he said at a raucous rally in Orlando, Florida, to launch his re-election campaign on June 18th. "Thanks to Democrat policies, schoolchildren across the .country are being threatened by the vicious gang MS-13 that ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] , by the way, is taking out of the country and dropping them back home by the thousands." Another problem solved.

Meanwhile in the real world American border police apprehended 132,887 migrants in May, the most recent month for which data has been officially released. That is the highest recorded number in 13 years, and a ninefold increase from May 2017, when border arrests were at the lowest levels in nearly 50 years. Preliminary data collected by the us Customs and Border Protection agency and released by the Mexican government suggests that arrests declined by 30% in June to 95,000.

That decline might be owing to a deal cut with the Mexican government after Mr Trump threatened to impose tariffs unless the migration surge subsided. It might be owing to the heat, since fewer cross the desert in summer. Yet this is still more than double the number of people detained the previous June. An unusually large share of recent arrivals are children. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank, more than half of those arriving at the border are coming as families, and 9% are unaccompanied children.

This all presents a problem for American authorities. After they are apprehended, migrants are processed in facilities run by the Customs and Border Patrol. They are not supposed to stay there for longer than three days. Adults and children who arrived with their parents or guardians are then dispatched to facilities run by ice until a hearing can be held. Unaccompanied children are supposed to be cared for by a separate agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

At least that is how it is meant to work. In fact just 424 judges nationwide hear these cases. There are 892,517 cases outstanding, says TRAC, a research outfit at Syracuse University, and hundreds of thousands more are pending. This logjam creates a problem across the country. Hearing dates in New York City, an especially overburdened court system, are being set for August 2023. The backlog of cases and the unexpected migration surge has filled both ICE and HHS facilities to overflowing.

Immigration detention centres were built to handle single adult men, not to house families and children. Partly because of this the Border Patrol is not releasing detainees to these longer-term facilities. A doctor visiting detained children reported that they had not been given , toothpaste or soap and were being kept in freezing rooms where the lights were kept on for 24 hours. She visited facilities in the Texas towns of Clint and McAllen encountered babies who were sick and losing weight and described the conditions as comparable to "torture facilities".

The Border Patrol has insisted that reports of deplorable conditions for migrants were exaggerated. That was then contradicted by another report from the Department of Homeland Security's inspector-general. It found detainees were being kept in overcrowded conditions for much longer than three days. Many children had been held longer than a week; most of their facilities visited by government inspected did not give children showers and little access to fresh clothing. They were not fed hot food. Some adults were being held in standing-room-only conditions for as long as a week. Detainees had started to clog their toilets with blankets so they could at least leave their confinement while the pipes were unblocked. They pressed notes to the windows as the inspectors passed by, including one on a piece of cardboard, saying "HELP 40 DAY HERE".

Congress has had to scramble to respond. By June 26th both the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-led House had agreed to the figure requested by immigration agencies—$4.6bn for emergency humanitarian spending. But they differed on how it ought to be spent. The House version of the funding bill had more restrictions aimed at preventing the administration from using the money to round up more migrants. After moderate Democrats revolted, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, had to concede defeat and pass the Senate bill over the howls of the party's Hispanic caucus. Then a delegation from the caucus managed to tour two of the customs and border facilities. They described sordid conditions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, says she encountered women sobbing "out of fear of being punished, out of sickness, out of desperation, lack of sleep, trauma, despair". The Hispanic caucus described the border-funding bill as "a betrayal of our American values".

Embarrassing as this was for Ms Pelosi, the emergency funding is a temporary reprieve for a recurring problem.

Mr Trump's administration has tried various methods to quell the influx. First, the short-lived practice of deterring family migration by separating children from their parents; now other tactics designed to scare off potential migrants and the strong-arming of the Mexican government into detaining many more central Americans on their way to the United States.

At the same time, prospective challengers vying to be the Democratic presidential nominee are adopting ever-leftier ideas. Several Democratic contenders have recently embraced de-criminalising border crossing, a position held by Julian Castro, a former federal housing secretary and primary candidate. Cory Booker, a senator from New Jersey, says he would like to "virtually eliminate" immigrant detention and wrote that America must guarantee hormone therapy for detained transgender migrants who seek asylum.

As Mr Trump's election showed, sympathy for migrants at the southern border ebbs and flows, but there is always demand for draconian border enforcement. Democrats need to tread carefully. ■