1 Apple tops Nasdaq 100 value (San Francisco Chronicle) 16.4%. That's how much market value in the Nasdaq 100 index is represented by just one company: Apple. The iPhone maker's weighting fell 8.2 percentage points at the end of April, when Nasdaq OMX Group rebalanced the index. (The move was designed to bring each company more in line with its market value.) Since then, Apple regained more than half of the lost weight because its stock surged 44%.
2 A US county falls off the financial cliff (The New York Times) One county jail here in Jefferson is so crowded that some inmates sleep on the floor, while the other county jail, a few miles down the road, sits empty. There is no money for the second one anymore. The county roads here need paving, and the tax collector needs help. There is no money for them, either.
There is no money for a lot of things around here, not since Jefferson County, population 658,000, went bankrupt last fall. This is life today in Jefferson County — Bankrupt, USA. For all the talk in Washington about taxes and deficits, here is a place where government finances, and government itself, have simply broken down. The county, which includes the city of Birmingham, is drowning under $4 billion in debt, the legacy of a big sewer project and corrupt financial dealings that sent 17 people to prison.
3 Cultish belief in progress for India elite (The Guardian) In the public discourse produced by the upper and middle classes in India – in newspapers and talk shows, in tweets and television soaps, in the comments that flood websites should anyone dare make a dissenting note – there is an uncomplicated, almost cultish faith in India as a success story. In this version of contemporary India, the material wealth of the upper and middle classes can only keep on increasing. The comfortable will get rich, the rich get richer. As for the poor living on 50 cents a day (perhaps as much as 77% of the entire population, according to one government report), they might see their lot improve. If not, they have only their lack of ability, effort and merit to blame.
Along with the corporations and the media, India's middle and upper classes were particularly eager supporters of Anna Hazare, a former soldier and social reformer. When rallying behind Hazare, elite Indians did not raise questions about inequality, in the way their country lags behind other poor countries in many social indicators. Those supporting the Hazare movement instead focused on government corruption as all that stood between their present wellbeing and future prosperity. If only the corrupt state would step aside in certain areas – obviously not Kashmir, Chhattisgarh or the north-east – the Indian elites could prosper even further.
The Hazare movement has since petered out, but its central idea, of the unique meritoriousness of the middle and upper classes of India, remains. It is an illusion, and it reminds me of the illusion among the middle and upper classes of another society, and that is the US. The lack of jobs in the US, something that earlier affected only those in manufacturing and the service industry, and therefore had an impact mostly on inner city African Americans, poor immigrants and rural whites, has now worked its way into the lives of the middle and upper classes, towards even people with expensive college degrees. In India, the elites shout themselves hoarse about emulating America – in its wealth, its swaggering confidence, its Hummers and parking lots – even as that America ceases to exist. Even in the land of manifest destiny, destiny has run into its limits, and it seems only a matter of time before the same turns out to be true for India's privileged classes.
4 Africa’s religious divide (Dawn) Sudan was bombing South Sudan again last week, only a couple of months after the two countries split apart. Sudan is mostly Muslim, and South Sudan is predominantly Christian, but the quarrel is about oil, not religion. And yet, it is really about religion too, since the two countries would never have split apart along the current border if not for the religious divide. The Ivory Coast was split along the same Muslim-Christian lines for nine years, although the shooting ended last year and there is an attempt under way to sew the country back together under an elected government. But in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country by far, the situation is going from bad to worse, with the Islamist terrorists of Boko Haram murdering people all over the country in the name of imposing sharia law on the entire nation.
“Boko Haram”, loosely translated, means “Western education is forbidden,” and the organisation’s declared aim is to overthrow the government and impose Islamic law on all of Nigeria. In a 40-minute audio message posted on YouTube two weeks ago, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened that his next step would be to carry out a bombing campaign against Nigeria’s secondary schools and universities.
Christianity and Islam have been at war most of the time since Muslim armies conquered half of the then-Christian world, from Syria to Spain, in the 7th and 8th centuries. There was the great Christian counter-attack of the Crusades in the 12th century, the Muslim conquest of Turkey and the Balkans in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the European conquest of almost the entire Muslim world in the 18th-20th centuries. It is a miserable history, and in some places it is likely to continue for some time to come.
5 Sex change ops on the rise (Straits Times) A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics. An eight-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, 'I a boy' and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.
6 India tied up in knots on terror (Deccan Chronicle editorial) It is shocking to watch the antics of a clutch of Opposition leaders, regrettably led by West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, a UPA partner, who have decided to oppose the setting up of a National Counter-Terrorism Centre. Looking at the CMs sheltering behind the principle of federalism to oppose the Centre’s decision to operationalise the NCTC early next month, there cannot be an iota of doubt that the motley group is intent on playing politics at the expense of the national interest. In their eagerness to show the ruling Congress Party down, Ms Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, Nitish Kumar, Raman Singh, Narendra Modi, Naveen Patnaik and N. Chandrababu Naidu — all senior politicians — have chosen to overlook the pressing concerns of India’s security even after the horrific, and humiliating, 26/11 attacks on Mumbai a little over three years ago.
The setting up of the NCTC was conceived 11 years ago. The question gained urgency after the Mumbai attacks. That outrage showed India was just not prepared to tackle global terrorism. Multiple Central organisations showed greater concern for jurisdiction and coordination issues. Real-time intelligence didn’t exist. The NCTC helps clear these cobwebs. International terrorists may rest assured that, going by these developments, Indians will not come together to defeat them. If a terrorist group had to be incapacitated without loss of time, that won’t be possible as state governments would insist that their policemen tag along after due permissions are obtained, and too bad if there’s a Sunday in between. Just imagine if Maharashtra had said “no” to the landing of the NSG after the 26/11 attacks on the ground that federal principles were being violated.
7 Airlines trim flights to India (Mint) Mumbai: At least six global airlines have in February cut flights in India, the world’s ninth-largest aviation market, hit by high cost of operations at local airports and a global economic slowdown that has compelled them to cut costs. In January, Malaysian low-fare carrier AirAsia said it would withdraw services to India from its Kuala Lumpur hub by March-end, citing a steep increase in costs at Delhi and Mumbai airports.
Regi Philip, who runs Cosmos Agencies, a Mumbai-based travel agency, said big airline groups are contemplating to combine flights as the market is deteriorating and fares will go up by 10%. “Several foreign carriers are closing down their marketing offices. To be sure, the loads too are not satisfactory for anybody. Consolidation of flights may give them slight relief in terms of yield,” said Philip. The rise in Delhi airport user fees will lead to an increase in fares and the cost of operations, Air France’s De Man, said in an email last month. “Effectively, Delhi airport is already one of the most expensive airports in Asia and the additional cost to airlines and passengers will run into many millions of dollars,” he said.
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