1 US economy shrank in Q1 (BBC) The US economy
shrank 0.7% in the first three months of 2015, compared to the same period last
year. The Bureau of Economic Analysis significantly revised down its earlier economic
growth estimate of 0.2%. The US economy last contracted in the first quarter of
2014, when it shrank by 2.1%.
As was the case last year, a harsh winter may have
been partly to blame for falling goods and services production in the US. The
strong US dollar has pushed up imports and lowered exports. At current dollar
prices, GDP slipped further from 0.1% growth to a 0.9% contraction.
The revision in GDP prompted investors to shift to
traditionally safer assets, such as bonds. This is why yields on US Treasuries
have fallen as their price has risen. "From a policy perspective, the
first quarter lull is already history; it's the extent of the rebound that will
be critical in determining the timing of the Fed's first move on interest
rates," says Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit. "Survey
evidence is already pointing to a second quarter pick-up," he added.
2 Iraq in free fall (Fareed Zakaria in Khaleej
Times) US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter did misspeak last week with remarks
that caused a firestorm in both Washington and Baghdad. He explained Daesh’s
takeover of Ramadi by saying, “Iraqi forces showed no will to fight.” He just
forgot to complete the sentence by adding the words, “for Iraq.”
The Kurds fight ferociously for Kurdistan. The Shias
have been fighting doggedly for their people. Daesh are killing and dying for
their cause. But nobody is willing to fight for Iraq. The problem really is not
that Iraq’s army has collapsed. It’s that Iraq has collapsed.
Daesh is, at heart, an insurgency against the
governments of Iraq and Syria. And no insurgency can thrive without some
support from the local population. It gets that support from the disgruntled
Sunni populations of both countries, who feel that they are being persecuted by
the Shia and Alawite governments.
The vast majority of Sunnis oppose Daesh and flee
every place it seizes. But they cannot find towns where they can resettle. The
ethnic cleansing of Iraq — with Shias moving to Shia areas, and Kurds and
Sunnis doing the same — began with the civil war in 2006 but has accelerated
dramatically. Even Baghdad, which was a diverse and mixed city, has been
segregated into sectarian ethnic enclaves and become mostly Shia.
Iraq today no longer exists. In 2008, 80 percent of
those polled said they were “Iraqi above all.” Today that number is 40 percent.
The Kurds have taken every opportunity to further enhance their already
considerable autonomy. Twelve years after Saddam Hussein’s fall, the Kurds and
the Baghdad government still cannot agree on a deal to share oil revenues.
The sectarian divide is being exacerbated from the
outside. Iran supports the Baghdad government and Shia militias. Others support
the Sunni militant groups in both Iraq and Syria and have declined to support
the Baghdad government, even in its struggle against Daesh. Washington can
provide aid, training, arms, air power — even troops. But it cannot hold
together a nation that is falling apart.
3 Digital industry isn’t a boys’ club (Donna Sepala
in The Guardian) As a woman working in digital, I am part of the 30%. According
to Digital Marketing Institute research that is, which found that while women
are 11% more “digitally proficient” than men, they account for just 30% of the
digital marketing workforce in the UK.
The digital industry attracts a lot of criticism
when it comes to equality. The media is always willing to shout about high
profile cases of sexism. These cases are indeed deplorable. However, anything
tech and digitally focused tends to be pigeonholed as being a “boys’ club”,
when in my experience it has been anything but.
Today, as the director of a UK digital agency, I
understand the blood, sweat and tears that our team puts into their work, the
outcome of which is judged solely on merit. If a client doesn’t like our ideas,
we go back to the drawing board and come up with something until it’s right.
Such is agency life. Ideas are gender free.
As a very young industry, digital, especially
digital creative, has managed to forge itself from a blank canvas. It doesn’t
face deeply ingrained and historical gender inequality like other more
established career paths. I believe this gives talented women and men equal
opportunity to shine. Nobody looks at a beautifully created website and wonders
about the gender of the person who built it. They just enjoy the design and
experience.
While I do believe that the industry as a whole
doesn’t discriminate, I also understand that women may need reassurance that
they will not be judged on the basis of their gender. I am also aware that
despite being an exciting, dynamic and diverse industry, there is still that
lingering whiff of male stigma associated with a certain aspect of digital:
programming. Ironic really, as the very first computer programmer, Ada
Lovelace, was a woman.
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