Thursday, October 13, 2011

Joe's News Picks -- October 13, 2011

1 San Francisco Chronicle on sex toy gone wrong. This may be one sexual encounter April Bonjour will never forget. She’s suing sex toy maker Pipedream Products after her vibrator made her bleed so much that she had to be rushed to the hospital. Bonjour and her boyfriend were enjoying a little hanky-panky. Then Bonjour felt what she described as an “intense, sharp pain in my vagina.” Her boo quickly removed the toy, which was covered in blood, Bonjour said. “I thought, very briefly, that I had started my period but as the bleeding continued getting heavier and heavier I knew it was not my period”. Bonjour started to get faint and her boyfriend called 911. Her son woke up. “My son was terrified at the sight of me. He thought I was dying (quite frankly so did I). Once we got to the hospital I had lost so much blood, I was given several pints of blood.”

2 Guardian on Wall Street Journal’s circulation spike. One of Rupert Murdoch’s most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at NewsCorp’s flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.

3 Guardian on England bowler Graeme Swann. England have become the best international cricket team in the world. "I don't want to say it's due to me being back in the team, I honestly don't, but stats don't lie," he says, laughing. "I never believed in stats, I never bought into them until I got to No1 in the world. They definitely do count now."

4 Johannesburg Times reporting that eight million South Africans are out of work and its going to get worse. South Africa will shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the current global economic decline. In his state of the nation address in January, President Jacob Zuma pronounced 2011 the "year of jobs", but economists warn that employment will, in fact, be scarce as companies will be forced to delay decisions to hire more people. (Surprising it is not news in other countries when eight million go jobless in SA.)

4 Dawn’s story on drainage crisis in the Indus basin. The recent floods in Sindh have triggered a debate in the media about the role of the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) in exacerbating the disaster in the south-eastern districts of the province. Much has been said about how the LBOD, meant for the drainage of excessive irrigation water from Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas districts into the Arabian Sea, has turned out to be a recurring cause of flood disaster since the 1999 cyclone in lower Sindh. The debate focusing on the LBOD issue draws attention towards the much larger issue of `drainage crisis` engineered by international aid through man-made structural interventions in irrigation and drainage in the Indus basin — the only river basin of the country. The Indus basin is one of the largest basins in Asia. It extends over four countries including China, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Around 56 per cent of the Indus basin lies in Pakistan.

5 Straits Times reporting Japan’s elderly may have to wait till 70 to collect pensions. The health ministry is considering raising the age at which people can start receiving corporate employee pension benefits to 68, and possibly as high as 70, according to three plans it submitted to the health minister's advisory body. Under the current schedule on the corporate employees' pension system, the ministry will raise the pensionable age to 65 from the current 60 in several stages. The gradual transition is to be completed by fiscal 2025 for men and by fiscal 2030 for women.

6 CP Surendran writing in The Economic Times, ‘Advertisement for the self’ about LK Advani’s yatra. People know first hand that corruption is not part of the system as much as the system is part of corruption. They live in it and die in it. They live off it. And a good number die of it. They give bribes and accept bribes.

7 The Hindu for its Page 1 headline, ‘Goons attack Prashant Bhushan’ and for giving credit to Times Now in its Page 1 photo caption. (A larger story on Times Now in the inside pages sounded a bit naïve.)

8 The Hindu carrying Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai’s three propositions to restore government’s credibility. (1) Governance is at its lowest ebb, (2) too much is at stake for too many people, (3) the earlier we accept the need to promote change and innovation the earlier we would have established efficacy of the police service and thereby the credibility of government. (I used to interact with Rai in Thiruvananthapuram when he headed the Kerala Financial Corporation. Good to see him blossom as a good writer, too, who puts his views across so succinctly, and, of course, being a forceful CAG.)

9 Preethi Mehra writing in Business Line that in art, as in commerce, China has emerged the world leader.

10 A tongue-in-cheek column in Business Line, ‘Sonium Sharanam Gachami’ pointing out that every Indian PM had at least one barker. Nehru had TTK and VK Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi had her whole party barking on her behalf, Rajiv had KK Tiwari, and Manmohan has Digvijay Singh. (Bow wow to that.)

11 Business Line story, Next frontier for colas, which features a shopkeeper, Kanti Jogaiah a tribal youth who started soft drink sales by buying the first refrigerator of Boddugudem village of Bhadrachalam division.

12 FE on how age is creating a rift between the younger Maruti staff at Manesar and the older staff at Gurgaon. Manesar staff say, “Whenever we talk to them for support they tell us that either they have to get their daughter married or they need to finance their children’s education and therefore can’t go on strike”.

13 Financial Express story pointing out that strikes are mostly at MNC auto companies like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai and Honda and not so much in Indian companies like Bajaj Auto or Tata Motors.

14 Thomas Friedman’s column in Deccan Chronicle, ‘The Great Disruption or the Big Shift? (The line I found most striking -- People are drowning in housing debt or tuition debt.)

15 Mint’s Quick Edit that it’s shameful that ministers like Salman Khurshid are more concerned about the liberty of businessmen accused of corruption and less about bringing them to book.
16 Mint sending reporters across the nation to investigate and chronicle the depth of the issues that make India one of the earth’s most unequal nations.

17 Mint pointing out that it has been the rupee that has come to Infosys’ rescue.

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