UK set for low growth for two years; GE quits TV business; Thomson Reuters shedding 2,500 jobs; Mobile phone sales fall; One Billion Rising and the male insecurity

1 UK set for low growth for two years (Phillip Inman in The Guardian) Britain will suffer low growth and a squeeze on average incomes for at least another two years, the Bank of England warned, signalling that the economy will remain weak until the next election. The Bank's governor, Sir Mervyn King, put the institution on a collision course with the Treasury after he blamed the government for pushing inflation above its 2% target for the fourth consecutive year and warned that growth in the economy would not gain momentum until 2015.

King accused the chancellor, George Osborne, of scoring "an own goal" following steep rises in university tuition fees and hikes in energy bills linked to green subsidies, which pushed up inflation by at least one percentage point. Treasury sources said it was unfair of the governor to blame the government when it had made every effort to limit price rises in key areas, including freezing fuel duty and council tax.

King made his comments as he delivered the bank's quarterly inflation report, which predicted inflation would remain above the central bank's 2% target until at least the end of 2015, peaking at 3.2% in the second half of this year, from 2.7% currently. With wage rises regularly averaging less than 2%, household incomes are likely to remain under pressure. The economy will regain the size it last achieved in 2007 as growth is not expected to get above 1% this year.

2 GE quits TV business (Scott Mayerowitz in San Francisco Chronicle) General Electric is saying goodbye to 30 Rock — the building and the TV business born there. It's another step in GE's efforts to focus on less glamorous — but theoretically more profitable — ventures such as manufacturing medical imaging equipment, airplane engines and electrical generators.

The Fairfield, Conn., company announced that it is selling its 49% stake in NBCUniversal to Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable TV operator, for $16.7 billion. Comcast had bought a majority stake in the television and movie company in January 2011 and was expected to buy out GE's remaining stake over the next several years. General Electric will use the money to accelerate its share repurchase program to approximately $10 billion in 2013.

GE is giving up its stake in one of America's best-known brands. The sale includes the NBC broadcast network. GE's capital unit will also sell the floors NBCUniversal occupies in the iconic 30 Rockefeller Center building in New York. GE's history with NBC goes back to 1919, when it co-founded the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA. The company pioneered commercial radio broadcasting. In 1926, RCA launched a television arm: the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC. Within two years, it had started the first regularly scheduled US television programming in Schenectady, NY, then the site of GE headquarters.

3 Thomson Reuters shedding 2,500 jobs (The New York Times) News and financial information company Thomson Reuters has said it is cutting 2,500 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce, this year as it tries to reduce costs and turn around its largest division. CEO Jim Smith told analysts that the company is eliminating the positions from its "Financial and Risk" division, which rents out trading terminals to the financial industry. It accounts for just over half of Thomson Reuters' revenue.

"These are not easy decisions, but our cost structure has to meet our customer's requirements," Smith said. Thomson Reuters has about 60,000 employees. The company said it posted a profit of $372 million for the fourth quarter after a large loss in the same period a year earlier, capping what Smith called "a watershed year" in the company's turnaround. 

The New York-based company earned $372 million, or 45 cents per share, in the October to December period. That's up from a loss of $2.6 billion, or $3.11 per share, in the same period a year ago, when it took a $3 billion charge related to the declining value of its financial services business, which accounts for more than half of its revenue. 

4 Mobile phone sales fall (BBC) Global sales of mobile phones fell in 2012 compared with the previous year, according to a report from research company Gartner. It said 1.75 billion handsets had been bought, marking a 1.7% decline. Analysts at the firm suggested "tough economic conditions" had been partly responsible for the drop.

Gartner's data suggests weakening demand for feature phones - lower-end devices with limited functionality - led to the drop. It said that in the final three months of the year, 264.4 million such devices had been sold - 19.3% fewer than over the same period in 2011. Although smartphones had seen a 38.3% year-on-year gain over the fourth quarter, they had still remained in the minority with 207.7 million units sold, the study said.

The firm added that Apple and Samsung had dominated the smartphone market, with a combined 52% share in the October-to-December quarter. "There is no manufacturer that can firmly lay claim to the number three spot," said the company's principal research analyst Anshul Gupta.

5 One billion rising and the male insecurity (Subeida Mustafa in Dawn) Moved by the oft-quoted figure that one woman in three worldwide — that is one billion — is subjected to some form of violence in her lifetime, Eve Ensler has in effect declared enough is enough. It is time for women to rise to proclaim their aversion to violence. Hence the campaign for One Billion Rising (OBR).

These are the women whose problem Ensler wants to bring into the public consciousness. She wants governments to know that “ending violence against women is as important as ending poverty, or AIDS or global warming”. A large number of men consider it to be their “privilege” to exercise control over the female members of their family by using force. To change this mindset public consciousness has to be created. In that respect, local initiatives rooted in our own culture prove to be more effective and are easier to advance.

A new book Sex and World Peace by Valerie Hudson, an American professor, provides some food for thought. According to it, if a country focuses on reducing its rates of violence against girls and women it also lowers its own propensity for engaging in military conflict. The author finds a close relationship between rape, domestic violence and all social issues on one side and the so-called manly national security issues on the other.

As war is a manifestation of a state’s sense of insecurity vis-à-vis the “other” — the enemy — violence against women is the manifestation of a man’s insecurity vis-à-vis the “other”, that is the woman. Basically it is this perception of gender equation that calls for a change.