1 Guardian article, ‘The global economy is broken. Here's how to fix it’. Massive injections of public money three years ago saved the system without fixing it. A financial crisis was transformed, through bailouts, into a crisis of sovereign debt. That sovereign debt crisis is now leaking back into the financial system. The system is broken, here's how we fix it. Don't tinker with ring-fencing banks. Break them up as the first step to creating an effective local lending
infrastructure. This is not pie in the sky. This is what the German banking system looks like. Its local public savings banks have supported small businesses and ordinary people throughout the
recession, where big banks run away at the first sign of trouble. Don't create new money just to feather-bed bankers and enrich the wealthy. Create new money to create new jobs and new wealth. Use quantitative easing directly to fund the renewal of our infrastructure, to build the new green economy, eradicate fuel poverty, re-skill the unemployed and tackle the climate crisis at the same time.
2 BBC’s ‘Criminal penguin captured on film’. A "criminal" stone-stealing Adelie penguin has been captured on camera by a BBC film crew. The team, filming for the documentary Frozen Planet, spent four months with the penguin colony on Ross Island, Antarctica. The footage they captured shows a male penguin stealing stones from its neighbour's nest. The birds build their stone nests to elevate and protect their eggs from run-off when the Antarctic ice melts. Males
with the best nests are more likely to attract a mate, so, in a colony of half a million penguins, the best stones are highly prized.
3 Khaleej Times reporting, Rents continue to fall in Abu Dhabi. While a number of residential projects have remained delayed at the handover stage in Abu Dhabi, additional housing supply continued to enter the market during the third quarter, with a further 2,800 units delivered,
a trend real estate advisory firm Jones Lang LaSalle expects to continue in the fourth quarter. With the current residential stock of 193,000 units rising to more than 246,000 units by end of 2013, Abu Dhabi’s residential market will continue to be favourable for both buyers and renters.
4 Manu Joseph writing in Khaleej Times on new steps to tackle poverty. India’s battle against poverty is as old as its national identity, and it has achieved reasonable success, especially in the last two decades. Among the stark tokens of absolute poverty that have disappeared are those lumbering human beings with deformities and injuries that made grown men shut their eyes and children remember forever. Fewer children than ever in the history of modern India are dying of malnutrition. More than ever are going to school, and they are wearing shoes, too. Urban Indians complain almost every day that it’s getting harder to find maids and drivers. That’s a good sign.
5 Khaleej Times on the strange ambivalence on Syria. The Arab yearning for democracy that burst forth last spring has not only toppled entrenched autocratic rulers, but also presented democracies with an embarrassing dilemma. Arab Spring has held up a discomforting mirror
especially to developing countries that pride themselves for being democracies. Three major democracies – India, Brazil and South Africa, known as IBSA – by abstaining on a censure-Syria motion last week have yet again shown in practice that they do not side with aspiring democrats in the developing world. The stronger a country becomes the less disposed it may be to support principles it does not need for protection any more – and some of its oppressed citizens may invoke. Exactly one year ago, in his UN General Assembly address, President Barack Obama pointedly appealed to newly democratic countries “don’t stand idly by, don’t be silent.” India, Brazil and South Africa had almost the opposite reaction. With Muammar Gaddafi’s forces about to launch a massacre in Ben Ghazi, the UN Security Council, passed a resolution authorising all necessary measures to protect Libyan civilians. India and Brazil joined authoritarian China and Russia to abstain. South Africa voted for it, only to reverse itself.
6 The Dawn, on poverty in pakistan. In Pakistan’s scenario, where approximately two-thirds of the people live in rural areas, rural poverty is a major destabilising factor. Authoritative studies have documented rising poverty levels with a decreased capacity to acquire and hold land which is the main source of subsistence in the agricultural areas. Nearly 67 per cent of Pakistan’s households are landless. The problem is thrown into sharp relief when compared to the decline in India’s rural poverty levels between 1987 and 2000.
7 Straits Times reporting on more young women taking to binge-drinking. Experts say more young women are now binge-drinking as there is no longer a stigma attached to the act. Many also have the means to support the habit.
8 Straits Times reporting, ‘School of romance’ trains men in dating. Complimenting girls he fancied did not seem to work for project engineer Ganaesh Kumaresan. Once, after meeting a girl for the first time, the 22-year-old praised her lovely smile, then her dress. Her rebuff left him scratching his head in bewilderment. He decided it was time to go back to school - to Aura Dating Academy, which claims to be the first such school in Singapore. This academy offers a year-long course to train men in the art of dating and getting into a relationship. (Has the situation anything to do with girls getting into binge-drinking?)
9 Jaswant Singh writing in Straits Times, on India’s wounded state. The September 7 bomb blast at the entrance to the High Court in New Delhi was a macabre finale to a summer of crisis. Previously, weeks of anti-corruption protests launched by Anna Harare, and supported by the
country's rising middle class, had brought India's government to a virtual standstill. To be sure, a large part of urban 'middle India' has revolted against the tyranny of daily corruption. But will the Harare-led protests deliver real change or merely media hyperbole? Whichever side one takes, the consequences are disturbing: Indian society, the core of Indian nationhood, is now questioning the very legitimacy of the Indian state.
10 Sydney Morning Herald on Test cap for teenager Cummins. Teenager Pat Cummins's meteoric rise to stardom has continued after winning a shock call-up to the Test squad for the tour of South Africa. Should he be handed his baggy green in South Africa, Cummins, who turned 18 in May, will be Australia's second youngest Test debutant, behind only Ian Craig, who debuted aged 17 years and 239 days.
11 Wall Street Journal on Jeff Bezos, titled ‘Birth of a salesman’, which has this interesting info: Last December, word leaked out about another new patent, for a system that enables people who get gifts through Amazon to return them even before they arrive. If Aunt Mildred has a habit of sending unwanted gifts, the patent says, the site will include an option to "convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred." (The patent includes the name of the presumably fictitious relative.) It allows the receiver to track when the well-meaning relative buys a gift for him and to change it to something more desirable before it ships. Gift recipients can also apply other rules such as, "No clothes with wool." The idea is not only to please fussy would-be gift recipients; it also could save Amazon millions of dollars in purchases that don't have to be exchanged. The patent lists Bezos as the inventor.
12 The Economic Times reporting on top firms sitting on Rs 4.7 trillion of cash. It signifies their refusal to invest in uncertain economic period. Corporate groups are either conserving cash or
investing it overseas.
13 Business Line on Indian aviation sector. What goes up must come down. From10 to six, and one or two more to go. Which of India’s remaining airlines will be the first to fold up?
14 Shekhar Gupta writing in Financial Express, on the Officer Raj. With the weakening of the political authority of the UPA2, civil services are enjoying a golden era of unfettered, unquestioned power. They are controlling their ministries, with the political bosses afraid of questioning any bureaucratic input as it would later be seen as a scam by a regulator or anticorruption watchdog, all totally manned by brethren in the same civil service.
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