Putin celebrates disputed win; China defence budget at $106bn; Unemployment haunts Europe; China growth slows; Grim prospects for newspapers

1 Putin celebrates disputed win (BBC) Vladimir Putin and his supporters are celebrating victory in Russian elections, that will give him a third presidential term after spending the last four years as the country's PM. With more than 99% of the ballots counted, he secured nearly 64% of the vote, election officials say. Mr Putin told supporters in Moscow he had won in an open and honest battle. But opposition groups claim widespread fraud. The independent election watchdog Golos says Mr Putin won just over 50% - far less than the official figure given by the election commission. It says it received numerous reports of "carousel" voting - in which voters cast multiple ballots.

2 China defence budget tops $100bn (Dean Cheng, for Reuters) China has announced that the new defence budget would amount to approximately $106 billion, which equates to an 11.2% increase. This is in sharp contrast to the United States, which, despite a so-called “pivot to Asia,” is busily reducing its defence budget. The increase in China’s defence spending, atop last year’s 12.7% increase, highlights that China’s defence spending is now larger than that of all other Asian nations combined — a sobering statistic when one considers that this includes the world’s third-largest economy (Japan) and North and South Korea, which remain locked in a Cold War-era standoff.

Many look at the US defence budget and decry the fact that it is larger than the next dozen or so states combined. Yet the US is a key enforcer of international norms and safety. It is the American Navy, more than any other, that keeps the world’s sea lanes safe. It is the US Air Force that provides space situational awareness, including conjunction warnings, to all other space-faring nations (including China) and manages the GPS constellation to global benefit — both without charge. In contrast, China’s military budget is spent almost entirely on Chinese interests.

China’s military can focus on contingencies in close proximity to itself, whereas the US military has global responsibilities. Thus, China can asymmetrically commit its resources against only a portion of the US military and, in the event of a crisis, would likely try to defeat the US in detail. What should be of concern is that the Chinese Communist Party appears to be increasingly asserting itself against its neighbours, whether it is expanding its forces opposite Taiwan or making claims of sovereignty over the South and East China Seas.

3 Spectre of unemployment haunts Europe (The Guardian) On Thursday it was announced that the eurozone's unemployment rate had risen to a record high of 10.7% in January. That's 16.9 million people out of work across the 17-nation euro area. Across the 27-member European Union unemployment is also topping 10% for the first time: a jaw-dropping 24.3 million jobless. The sheer size of the continent's growing army of unemployed workers is difficult to comprehend.

Spain holds the EU record, with unemployment at 23.3%, or 5.3 million people – and rising. "This is the terrible cancer of our society," said Rafael Zornoza Boy, the bishop of Cadiz, last week. Yet prime minister Mariano Rajoy's new (and conservative) government's pleas to give Madrid some leeway on spending cuts fell on deaf ears at Friday’s EU summit of fiscal self-flagellists in Brussels. Then there is poor Greece, where EU-imposed cuts have left one in five unemployed and have driven up the suicide rate by 40%. Austerity is, literally, killing Europeans.

The irony is that mass unemployment itself is the biggest barrier to deficit reduction. Basic economics teaches us that the best way to cut borrowing levels is to get people back to work and paying taxes. Or as John Maynard Keynes put it: "Look after unemployment and the budget will look after itself." But Europe's crisis isn't just about economics. Unlike GDP or inflation, unemployment is the only major economic indicator that measures real human beings, rather than growth or prices.

4 China growth target lowest since 2004 (The Guardian) China has cut its growth target to its lowest rate since 2004, the premier, Wen Jiabao announced on Monday, as it seeks to rebalance its economy. The target of 7.5% for 2012 reflects expectations that reduced exports due to the European crisis and a fragile US recovery could dampen growth in the world's second-largest economy.

But by abandoning the longstanding 8% goal the government is also signalling its desire to reshape development. "In setting a slightly lower GDP growth rate, we hope ... to guide people in all sectors to focus their work on accelerating the transformation of the pattern of economic development and making economic development more sustainable and efficient," Wen said. Officials had already hinted at a reduction in the growth target, a largely symbolic figure that has been outpaced by actual growth rates each year. China's economy grew by 9.2% last year, down from 10.3% in 2010.

5 Newspaper conundrum (The New York Times) Last year, researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism persuaded six companies that own 121 newspapers to share private data about the financial performance of many of their papers. And the findings were grim. On average, for every new dollar the newspapers were earning in new digital advertising revenue, they were losing $7 in print advertising revenue. The papers seemed not to be diversifying their revenue streams or coming up with innovative products at a fast enough clip. “Some of those we talked to seem frustrated and even uncertain about how to proceed,” said Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the project, which is part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center. “But we also found signs that, if you can break out of old cultural patterns, there is another way.”

Mr. Rosenstiel said he and the researchers came away thinking that the future of newspapers could be affected quite a bit by business culture. “The papers that are succeeding,” he said in an e-mail, “are those that have pushed harder to change their sales staffs, have pushed digital even at the risk of putting less effort into the old categories that pay the bills, have taken more risks — have fought against the deep ‘inertia’ that many of the executives describe.” The report identifies no shortage of challenges for newspapers on the sales side. Some of the papers it studied have struggled to sell mobile ads, recruit digital advertising sales representatives and profit from so-called daily deals similar to Groupon coupons.

6 20kg plastic in dead giraffe (Dawn) A male giraffe that died in an Indonesian zoo was found to have 20 kilograms of plastic in its stomach, officials said, the latest suspicious animal death at the facility. Kliwon, 30, was born at Surabaya Zoo, the biggest in the country, and was its last remaining giraffe, living alone in its pen for 13 years. It died on Thursday. “We got the autopsy results last night. They found a plastic lump weighing around 20 kilograms and 60 centimetres in diameter in his stomach,” zoo spokesman Anthan Warsito told AFP. The plastic probably came from food wrappers the animal ingested after visitors tossed them into its pen over several years, Warsito said.