1 The San Francisco Chronicle on gold slipping 15% from its all-time high. The price of an ounce of gold has dropped 15% from its record high of $1,921.15 on Sept. 6. The shiny metal might be entering a bear market after a decade long winning streak, according to economist Dennis Gartman, who correctly predicted the commodities slump in 2008. Gartman said gold might fall as low as $1,475, making the decline more than 20%, the common definition of a bear market. He sold the last of his gold Monday.
2 The New York Times on the reverse gender gap. As the year ends, much of the talk around women has moved from empowerment and global gender gaps to the trend of young single women out-earning men and the rise of female breadwinners. For starters, young women today are moving quickly to close the pay gap, or in some cases have closed it already. They are marrying later and later, or not marrying at all. They no longer need husbands to have children, or want no children (40% of births in the US each year are now to single women). Women are ahead of men in education (last year, 55% of US college graduates were female). The emergence of this cohort of high-earning young women and the increasing number of female breadwinners are transforming gender relationships, upending patterns of matchmaking, marriage and motherhood, creating a new conflict between the sexes, redefining the word “breadwinner” and inspiring tracts on the leveling of men’s roles. It is being called the reverse gender gap. A cause to rejoice? Only future years will tell.
3 New York Times on a Chinese village in revolt over inequity. A long-running dispute between farmers and local officials in southern China exploded into open rebellion this week after villagers chased away government leaders, set up roadblocks and began arming themselves with homemade weapons, residents said. The conflict in Wukan, a coastal settlement of 20,000 people near the country’s industrial heartland in Guangdong Province, escalated after residents learned that one of the representatives they had selected to negotiate with the local Communist Party had died in police custody. The authorities say a heart attack killed the 42-year-old man, but relatives say his body bore signs of torture.
Spasms of social turmoil in China have become increasingly common, a reflection of the widening income gap and deepening unhappiness with official corruption and an unresponsive legal system. But the clashes in Wukan, which first erupted in September, are unusual for their longevity — and for the brazenness of the villagers as they call attention to their frustrations. Despite the government’s best efforts to control social media outlets, such frustrations have only grown as millions of Chinese gain access to unofficial sources of information and use new tools to organize protests. Last year, there were as many as 180,000 outbursts of what sociologists describe as “mass incidents”: strikes, sit-ins, rallies and violent clashes that have mushroomed alongside China’s breakneck economic expansion. Government figures from the mid-1990s put the number of such episodes at fewer than 10,000.
4 The BBC on child beggar rescue in Bangalore. Police in the southern Indian city of Bangalore have busted a child begging ring and rescued 292 children. More than 100 of the rescued children are infants, below the age of three. Police said many children were drugged with cough syrup. Nine people have been arrested and police say they are looking for the "kingpin" of the racket. "We started identifying child beggars about three months ago, as we felt there was a spurt in their numbers. We counted more than 1,000 child beggars in the city," a police officer said. The rescue operation was conducted throughout Bangalore's streets. Most of the children are believed to be children of migrant labourers coming into the city for work. The police say they believe the children were abducted and were being forced to beg by suspected traffickers. Campaigners say more than 60,000 children go missing every year in India and many of them end up as child labour, beggars or in brothels.
5 The BBC on US forces leaving Iraq. The US flag is to be lowered in Baghdad, formally marking the end of US military operations in Iraq after nearly nine years of war. Most of the 5,500 remaining soldiers have now left Iraq, with security in the hands of the Iraqi authorities. President Barack Obama, who came to office pledging to bring troops home, said the US left behind a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq". Some 4,500 US soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war. It has cost the US some $1tr.
Republicans have criticised the pullout citing concerns over Iraq's stability, but most Americans support the move. Some 1.5 million Americans have served in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. In addition to those who died, nearly 30,000 have been wounded. Troop numbers peaked at around 170,000 during the height of the so-called surge strategy in 2007, but as of this week only about 5,500 remained. Many of them have already left for bases in Kuwait prior to flying home. A small contingent of some 200 soldiers will remain in Iraq as advisers, while some 15,000 US personnel are now based at the US embassy in Baghdad - by far the world's largest.
6 BBC report on Thomas Cook being done in by global unrests. Thomas Cook has said it will close 200 UK branches over the next two years as part of its UK business turnaround plan - 125 more than previously announced. News of the closures came as the travel firm reported a £398m ($616m) loss for the year to the end of September. The world's oldest travel agency has been looking to cut its debts to restore the confidence of investors. In November, it secured £200m of new financing, just days after seeing its shares plunge 75% in one day. Its lenders, including Barclays, HSBC, RBS and UniCredit, agreed to provide the new facility until 30 April 2013.
Thomas Cook has blamed the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia and floods in Thailand, all key holiday destinations for the company, for hitting sales. "This has been a very challenging year for the group, despite which we still delivered an underlying operating profit of over £300m," said chief executive Sam Weihagen. Business has also been further hurt by news of the company's financial troubles. Rival TUI has run adverts under its Thomson brand claiming: "Another holiday company may be experiencing turbulence, but we are in really great shape". Thomas Cook’s shares have shed more than 90% of their value since March.
7 The Guardian reporting on huge executive pay increases in the US. Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounce-back comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation. America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.
8 The Guardian’s inspiring report about the return of Botswana’s Bushmen. Five years ago, on Dec 13, 2006, Botswana’s high court ruled that the government’s eviction of the Bushmen from their ancestral lands in the Kalahari had been illegal. It was one of the most hopeful stories to come out of Africa in decades. It began in stark tragedy, in the central Kalahari game reserve, ceded in perpetuity to the Bushmen by the British and then by the first government of independent Botswana. Five thousand Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen lived there. (‘Bushmen’ is the name they mostly prefer.)
In February 2002, the Botswanan army raided the reserve. The soldiers charged into small desert villages and ordered people, at gunpoint, to get into the trucks that were drawn up outside. They were driven to camps outside their ancestral lands. Another group of soldiers made sure that they couldn’t go back to their villages: in Gugama, for example, they smashed the well and sealed it with concrete. There is something peculiarly repellent about blocking off the water supply in a desert. And when the president of the country called the Bushmen “primitive stone-age creatures” who were to be swept into the dustbin of history, it seemed like an offence against our common humanity.
By an unfortunate geological chance, the central Kalahari game reserve lies right in the middle of the world’s richest diamond-producing area. The diamond deposit at Gope, in the centre of the reserve, is valued at $3.3bn. The ethnic cleansing of the Kalahari was a horror story, and in many countries that is how it would have remained. But Botswana is not a dictatorship; it’s a stable, wealthy country with a free press and judiciary. Nevertheless, in a decision in January this year the Botswanan appeals court found that the Bushmen did indeed have the right to use the well, and to sink new ones. The court said that the government’s conduct towards the Bushmen had been ‘degrading’.
9 The Straits Times Lady Gaga dominating the music scene in 2011. Lady Gaga towered over other female musicians in 2011, heading a list of top earning women with an estimated US$90 million in income, according to a Forbes.com survey. The singer and performance artist made more than double her nearest rival - country/pop artist Taylor Swift - thanks to multiple endorsement deals and an estimated $1.3 million nightly gross ticket sales from her concert tour.
10 The Straits Times on sextortion. Six years ago, when university student Jane broke up with her boyfriend, he threatened to make public explicit photos and videos of her unless she got back together with him. While Jane's former boyfriend ended his threats after two months, her situation is one that appears increasingly common, say counsellors and legal experts. Counsellors said they started noticing women calling its helpline with such complaints about three years ago.
11 Anurag Behar writing in Mint about India drowning in rubbish. Standing in the exquisite Garhwal, if you move your eyes off the picture-perfect mountains and streams, and to the place you are standing, you will find rubbish. The Nilgiris, the Aravalis…it’s all the same. On the scorched plains of Gulbarga or of anywhere else, in this generally scorched nation, you will find the same heaps of rubbish. Rubbish is the common denominator of all landscapes in India.
It’s the plastic that has done it. The polyethylene (and similar material) bags are the primary culprits. The only way to handle plastic waste is to have civic systems to handle it. These are completely absent or woefully inadequate across the country. The plastic sets up another problem: it also does not let even organic waste decompose naturally. India’s high growth rate is generating an ocean of rubbish, for which we are doing nothing. This is the most visible of the many challenges posed by changing consumption patterns and urbanization.
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