1 Online threat to high street (The Guardian) Four out of 10 shops will have to shut in the next five years as consumers turn their backs on traditional stores in favour of online shopping, according to a report which casts more doubt on the future of the beleaguered British high street. A report from Deloitte highlights how the boundaries between physical and virtual space are becoming blurred with thousands of shops likely to face closure in coming years. To remain competitive, retailers may have to reduce their property portfolios by 30–40% in the next five years and adapt what remains to meet the changing demands of consumers, Deloitte said. The growing trend in the US for large warehouse-style retail outlets to have free in-store Wi-Fi to help customers shop online is expected to spread around the world.
The days of rapid expansion, hypermarkets and warehouse-style stores seem to be over, with even Tesco indicating it would not open any more of its huge Extra stores. Music and film retailers have seen the most dramatic shift, with more than half of CDs and DVDs now sold online, excluding downloads, according to retail consultancy Verdict Research. Many retailers are in trouble: HMV plans 60 store closures while others such as Zavvi and Borders have gone bust.
2 European woes hit Metro profits (BBC) German retail giant Metro has reported a sharp fall in profits, as European shoppers cut back spending in the midst of the economic crisis. Net profits fell 26% to $833m in 2011. No improvement was expected this year, Metro said. Metro had earlier hoped to sell its department store chain, Galeria-Kaufhof, but adverse market conditions made it suspend that plan in January. "We hoped that we would see improvement in 2011, which did not happen," chief executive Olaf Koch, who took over at the start of the year, said. "Things got much worse." Mr Koch also warned of further cost cutting under his leadership.
3 The death of funerals (Johannesburg Times) When does a family mourn the death of a loved one? There is little or no respect shown to those who are grieving. Even before the bereaved family has returned to its cars, the "mourners" have left the cemetery so that they will be first in line for their meal. The result is that the older generation, who still afford the bereaved the dignity of allowing them to bury their loved ones in solemnity, are the last ones to return to the family home where the food is being served. The young and strong, who spend the entire funeral leaning on their fancy cars or in the shade of trees, eat first, before the men and women who sang to comfort the bereaved.
Gone are the days when mourners wore dark colours to funerals, when hearses were black, when coffins were modest, when mourners came back to a small serving of samp, gravy and meat, and when we treated those in mourning with dignity and we served them instead of expecting to be served by them.
4 Job seekers asked for Facebook passwords (San Francisco Chronicle) In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social-networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around. "It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it "an egregious privacy violation."
Questions have been raised about the legality of the practice. Since the rise of social networking, it has become common for managers to review publicly available Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and other sites to learn more about job candidates. But many users, especially on Facebook, have their profiles set to private, making them available only to selected people or certain networks. Companies that don't ask for passwords have taken other steps - such as asking applicants to friend human resource managers or to log in to a company computer during an interview.
5 Africa’s next menace (Khaleej Times) Since emerging as Africa’s first narco-state in the mid 2000s, Guinea Bissau’s slide toward instability has been swift and precipitous. The homicide rate has spiked by 25% and is now nearly three times the global average. Cocaine traffickers, mostly from South America, first visited this sleepy West African country almost a decade ago. Narco-corruption quickly penetrated the highest levels of power, including the office of former President Joao Bernardo Vieira, who was assassinated in March 2009. Leading military officers have since been designated “drug kingpins” by the US government. As a result of such corruption, the narcotics trade flourished and may now surpass the entire value of the national economy.
Were Guinea Bissau an isolated case, these events would be sad but strategically insignificant. Unfortunately, the country may be but Africa’s first narco-state. In recent years, traffic in heroin, amphetamines and cocaine has expanded dramatically across Africa, growing into a roughly $6 billion to $7 billion illicit industry on the continent, according to conservative estimates.
6 Yangon’s version of liberalism (Matthew F Smith in Khaleej Times) International optimism toward Myanmar is at a fever pitch. The government is allowing the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run in parliamentary by-elections in less than two weeks, hundreds of former political prisoners now walk the streets, and media censorship has been relaxed. Governments and policy makers around the world are rightly impressed. But how far has the Burmese government really progressed on human rights?
In the remote, rugged mountains of the northern Kachin State, the Burmese Army has been engaged in a brutal war with the Kachin Independence Army, KIA, since last June, breaking a 17-year ceasefire agreement. In its renewed military operations against the KIA — Myanmar’s second-largest armed rebel group, which has existed for 51 years — the army has attacked ethnic Kachin civilians and villages, pillaged properties, and committed severe abuses. I have traveled twice to the conflict areas, spending more than six weeks interviewing more than 100 people. Burmese soldiers have raped Kachin women, tortured civilians, used forced labour on the front lines, and opened fire on villagers with small arms and mortars, causing tens of thousands to flee.
7 Shoebox flats a hit (Straits Times) About one in seven homes sold by developers in Singapore last year was a shoebox apartment, signalling that the trend of shrinking homes is here to stay. These units - they are up to 500 sq ft in size - tend to cost under $1 million, a factor that has made them a big component of the local market. Buyers snapped up a record 2,037 new ones last year.
8 Singapore world’s 5th biggest arms importer (Straits Times) Singapore has emerged as the world's fifth-biggest weapons importer in the last five years, says the latest report of a Swedish security and military think-tank. With its imports accounting for 4% of the world's total spend on arms imports, Singapore trails only four countries - India (10%), South Korea (6%), and Pakistan and China (tied at 5%). Defence specialists said they were not surprised by Singapore's ranking as it has, in the last few years, acquired 110 Leopard main battle tanks, 24 F-15SG fighter jets, 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System trucks and six S-70B Sikorsky Seahawk naval helicopters - all big-ticket items.
9 No silver bullets for Chinese realty (The Wall Street Journal) Despite five months in a row of falling housing prices and other ominous signs in China’s property sector, the country’s real estate practitioners have nevertheless managed to maintain a surprising level of optimism. But considering how many Chinese investors and developers failed to anticipate the extent of the current slowdown in the domestic property market, Tsinghua University economist Patrick Chovanec said the time has come to dispel a couple myths about certain silver bullet solutions for the sector.
Myth No. 1: If only Beijing would loosen its grip on the reins, the horses would start galloping again. “I’m skeptical. There’s a changed psychology among buyers,” said Mr. Chovanec. He argues that investors used to take on stretched mortgages to buy homes as a counter to inflation, assuming that the property would retain value better than holding cash, but they are now hesitant because of declining prices. Myth 2: Affordable housing to the rescue. China is in the midst of an ambitious program to build 36 million subsidized apartments by the end of 2015, and construction started on more than 10 million units last year. While that sounds good, Mr. Chovanec argues there might not enough money to finance all of the planned affordable housing.
10 Growing up with sparrows (B Kolappan inThe Hindu) No bird fascinates me more than a house sparrow. There was no dearth of sparrows in my village — near Kanyakumari — which was sandwiched between three lakes and paddy fields on one side and coconut groves and paddy fields on the other. The birds thrived as there was constant supply of grasshoppers, dragonflies and other insects, besides plenty of grains. As a boy I had kept sparrow chicks as pets, but they never survived beyond a few days. The maximum they lived was a week.
There was a well in every house and the sparrows would nest in the crevices in the outer ring of the well wall. The bird would normally build its nest a couple of feet below the surface. We would poke our hands into the holes and feel the nest inside. The cry of the parents, as we would emerge out of the well with the chicks in our pockets, continue to haunt me even today. Sometimes we would wait for the birds to enter the well and rush towards it with a blanket and cover the mouth of the well. The poor birds thus would become an easy prey and we would keep both the parents and the chicks as pets. Unmindful of the tragedy, we would start our hunt again.
In Chennai, I have been living in a house with typical Madras roofing, an ideal place for sparrows to nest. When I arrived here seventeen years ago, there were a lot of them. But soon there was a slump in their population, the culprit being a cat who could pounce on a vulnerable chick now and then. Until a few months ago, there was only one pair living in a nest under the air-conditioner. I placed a box in the gap between the bathroom wall and corrugated roof. The birds quickly adopted it as their home. Today there are seven birds including two fledglings that have their mouths open when the parents bring food. It is my way of atoning for the death of so many sparrows I’ve caused as a child.
No comments:
Post a Comment