1 Corn use for ethanol goes up 280% (San Francisco Chronicle) Ethanol refiners have increased their consumption of corn 280% since 2005. The fuel additive took more than 40% of the total US crop last year, pushing up corn prices and topping the amount used as animal feed, according to the Agriculture Department. Cattle and chicken producers cut back their output as profit margins narrowed, though the pressure may ease in coming years after a tax credit for ethanol producers expired on Dec. 31
2 In Egypt, power still hinges on men (The New York Times) At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.” But when her father, a religious conservative, saw electric prod marks on her body, they revived memories of his own detention and torture under President Hosni Mubarak’s government. “History is repeating itself,” he told her, and together they vowed to file a court case against the military rulers, to claim “my rights,” as Ms. Ibrahim later recalled. That case has proved successful so far. For the first time last month, an administrative court challenged the authority of the military council and banned such “tests.” But nearly a year after Mr Mubarak’s ouster, Ms. Ibrahim’s story in many ways illustrates the paradoxical position of women in the new Egypt. Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government’s repression.
3 How TV newscasts are changing in the era of fragmented media (The New York Times) There was a time when each of the Big Three nightly newscasts on American television tended to open with the same story — the latest campaign speech, a new government study or perhaps a big snowstorm. That time is gone. Influenced by cable and the Internet, the nightly newscasts are shaking up conventions that stretch back 50 years, seeking to distinguish themselves by picking different stories and placing them in different orders. “The three evening newscasts have become more different from one another than at any time I can remember,” said Bill Wheatley, who worked at NBC News for 30 years and now teaches at Columbia. The differences provide a stark illustration of the state of the news media — much more fragmented than ever, but also arguably more creative. Viewers these days “make their own choices,” said Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News. “They pick what matters most to them, and we are trying to be adaptive and responsive to those sweeping changes.”
4 Europe’s future in doubt, warns Fiat boss (The Guardian) Europe is "playing with fire" and its future is in doubt if it doesn't "get serious," the boss of the Italian car giant Fiat has warned, as ratings agency Fitch put Italy on notice of a credit downgrade. Sergio Marchionne, chief of Fiat and Chrysler, said the European debt crisis was likely to flatten his business for the next two years. Marchionne said: "One of the things we need to realise is that the world is fundamentally interconnected. We have ended up being accountable to a lot of people who financed our public debt.
Europe is being called to task to solve a number of issues. If we don't acquire the confidence of the financial markets, the future of Europe is doubtful." His strongly worded warning to Europe's politicians came as Fitch said Italy could see its A+ rating cut by the end of the month. Italy has seen its borrowing costs rise to eye-watering levels as confidence in the future of the single currency has been rocked. Yields on 10-year Italian bonds, which determine the interest rate Rome has to pay to borrow, stood at 7.14%. A rate of 7% is widely viewed as unsustainable and was the point at which Portugal, Greece and the Irish Republic were forced to seek a bailout.
5 Skyscrapers and financial crises (The Guardian) There is an "unhealthy correlation" between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent financial crashes, according to Barclays Capital. Examples include the Empire State building, built as the Great Depression was underway, and the current world's tallest, the Burj Khalifa, built just before Dubai almost went bust. China is currently the biggest builder of skyscrapers, the bank said. India also has 14 skyscrapers under construction.
The world's first skyscraper, the Equitable Life building in New York, was completed in 1873 and coincided with a five-year recession. It was demolished in 1912. Other examples include Chicago's Willis Tower (which was formerly known as the Sears Tower) in 1974, just as there was an oil shock and the US dollar's peg to gold was abandoned. And Malaysia's Petronas Towers in 1997, which coincided with the Asian financial crisis.
The findings might be a concern for Londoners, who are currently seeing the construction of what will be Western Europe's tallest building, the Shard. Investors should be most concerned about China, which is currently building 53% of all the tall buildings in the world, the bank said. In India, billionaire Mukesh Ambani built his own skyscraper in Mumbai - a 27-storey residence believed to be the world's most expensive home. "Today India has only two of the world's 276 skyscrapers over 240m in height, yet over the next five years it intends to complete 14 new skyscrapers," according to Barclays Capital.
6 Virtual shopping agent is round the corner (Gregory Roekens, Wunderman's UK chief technology officer, to BBC) I think 2012 will bring more "screenless" interfaces, like Apple's Siri. I want an interface where when I'm driving I can buy shopping by just speaking. Speech recognition has become amazingly good. It's an added interface that will be another tool for users.
What consumers will do in the future is empower a virtual assistant to do your weekly shopping for you, because it will know what you eat, your favourite stuff, what you're allergic to and so on. In the future we will empower our technology to make purchase decisions on our behalf. The question is, as marketers, who do you target, who do you communicate with? Is it the consumer? Or the automated agent?
7 Ten 100-year predictions that came true (BBC) In 1900, an American civil engineer, John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. How did he do? Here are 10 that he got right: 1. Digital colour photography 2. The rising height of Americans. "Americans will be taller by from one to two inches." 3. Mobile phones 4. Pre-prepared meals 5. Slowing population growth 6. Hothouse vegetables. “Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer”, said Watkins, “with electric wires under the soil and large gardens under glass.” 7. Television 8. Tanks "Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of today." 9. Bigger fruit. "Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren." 10. The Acela Express. "Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains 150 miles per hour."
And four he didn’t get right: 1. No more C, X or Q. "There will be no C, X or Q in our everyday alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary." 2. Everybody will walk 10 miles a day 3. No more cars in large cities 4. No mosquitoes or flies.
8 The Kodak moment passes (Mint) Reports indicate that the Eastman Kodak Company may file for bankruptcy soon. The company’s slow decline can be traced back to the 1980s when the company’s stranglehold on the US photographic film market came under attack from “upstarts” like Fujifilm. That gentle decline accelerated into a headlong tumble over a cliff when the company failed to respond to the emergence of cheap, mass-market digital cameras. Instead, it clung to hope that the vastly more profitable film market would sustain. It did not.
What did Kodak do wrong? Essentially, not a lot. This cliche will become more popular in the days to come, but Kodak truly was the Apple-like technology disruptor of its day. The company owns hundreds of technology patents and, ironically, even invented the digital camera in 1975. It was also a famously generous employer, paying employees well and rewarding with generous pensions. But while being good to people and fantastic with patents and technology, it made one grave error: Kodak assumed that it was strong enough to cope, if not determine, the speed at which the mass market adopted disruptions.
Companies that find themselves on pedestals today will do well to pay heed. It isn’t simply enough to invent, innovate or generate thousands of patents. The ability to invent must go hand in hand with an eye on the market. Or decline will be swift, and it is getting swifter. Kodak took 175 years to rise, peak and decline. MySpace took five.
9 No ‘kolaveri’ for corruption in India (Khaleej Times) Everyone has a studied opinion on Anna Hazare’s failure to stay the distance. There is a large school that is of the opinion Hazare turned smug and arrogant with the heady elixir of power and morphed from catalyst to cowboy. The biggest segment of the public that did not turn up for the next round of fasting pressure wasn’t just bored with it all, they just came to the conclusion that corruption was so deeply ingrained in the system that getting hyper about it was pointless…no Lokpal Bill was going to shoo it away. No great things are achieved without great effort and no one wanted to heave themselves to making it. One factor was the unspoken apathy of the public that could stir itself up to celebrate happy, silly verse like Kolaveri di with 40 million hits but unable to churn up anywhere near enough kolaveri to combat the blight that has eroded the body public for sixty odd years. Future imperfect triumphs.
There has to be a collective will to achieve an end. It wasn’t there. It is very clear that the Hazare chariot caught fire and lost a wheel because there was no Indian Spring and the winter of discontent simply sapped the will. Hazare got lost in the wilderness and no one wanted to rescue him. The Indian people failed to rise to the occasion, seeking salvation either in bad mouthing Hazare, ridiculing him or opting cynically to gild corruption as a long term resident in the nation. The public was happy to pass the buck and blame different factors, everything but themselves. After all, what can we do? The answer to that is simple. We can talk, we can write letters of moaning empathy, even wail about our own sloth in fighting the curse of corruption so far as no sacrifice is demanded of us. That is just it. Hazare lost because his army deserted him, a billion possible soldiers prematurely decided this was not their fight, that they had places to go, work to do, bills to pay, a life to run, and if a bit of that payment was under the table, so be it.
10 India PM says malnourishment a national shame (Times of India) Calling malnourishment "a national shame", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India cannot hope for a healthy future with 42% of children aged below five years being underweight. Releasing the Hungama survey that measured the nutrition status of more than one hundred thousand children and 74,000 mothers, Singh said, "What concerns me and what must concern all enlightened citizens is that 42% of our children are still underweight. This is an unacceptably high occurrence." There are nearly 160m children in India below six years. According to Singh, the health of the economy and society lies in the health of "this generation". (India is pitching itself to be a super power by 2020 .)
11 Trouble at the crease (Ramesh Thakur in Times of India) The disparity between China's and India's organisational abilities in the last Olympic and Commonwealth Games respectively is, if anything, exceeded by the disparity in their respective athletes' international performances. Probity and integrity. Discipline and training. Perseverance and application. Transparency in selection. Rewards based on results, not entitlement and cronyism. Strategic guidance based on a vision for the future. Just to list these attributes is enough to show the connection between sporting and governance performance. Indeed, the Board of Control for Cricket in India embodies most of the failings of governance in India in general, where money and power corrupt separately and corrupt completely when they intersect.
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