1 Koreas face big drought (San Francisco Chronicle) North Korea dispatched soldiers to pour buckets of water on parched fields, and South Korean officials scrambled to save a rare mollusk threatened by the heat as the worst dry spell in a century gripped the Korean peninsula. Parts of North Korea are experiencing the most severe drought since record keeping began nearly 105 years ago, meteorological officials in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Seoul said.
The protracted drought is heightening worries about North Korea's ability to feed its people. Two-thirds of North Korea's 24 million people faced chronic food shortages, the United Nations said earlier this month while asking donors for $198 million in humanitarian aid for the country. Even in South P'yongan and North and South Hwanghae provinces, which are traditionally North Korea's breadbasket, thousands of acres of crops are withering away despite good irrigation systems, local officials said.
Nearly 28,000 South Koreans, including soldiers and local residents, have been mobilized to help water rice paddies and farm fields and more than 13,000 water pumps have been provided to drought-stricken areas, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said. Officials blamed high atmospheric pressure over the Korean peninsula for the drought.
2 More banks face interest rigging probe (BBC) A number of banks are being investigated and could face sanctions after Barclays was fined $450m for trying to manipulate interest rates at which banks lend to each other. Regulators in Europe, the US and Asia have said that investigations into other banks are "ongoing". The UK's Financial Services Authority said the early signs were that Barclays had not been the only firm involved. Other big names believed to be under investigation include Citigroup, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland.
3 Young Indians in death wish (Soutik Biswas on BBC) A study published in the medical journal The Lancet shows that suicide has become the second leading cause of death among India's young adults, after road accidents in men, and childbirth-related complications in women. There were 187,000 deaths from suicides in India in 2010, the study says - this is higher than the official figure of 134,599 suicide deaths from the National Crime Records Bureau. (Researchers attribute this gap to under-reporting or misreporting as friendly or bribe-seeking coroners often sign off suicide deaths as ones caused by accidents to protect the victim's family from police harassment and social stigma.)
If the findings by a team of doctors are to be believed, 40% of the men and 56% of the women who took their lives in 2010 were aged between 15 and 29 years. I asked Dr Vikram Patel, a leading Goa-based psychiatrist and professor at the London School of Hygience and Tropical Medicine, who co-authored the study, about why he thought this was happening. He believes that joblessness for men and post-marriage problems for women trigger off a lot of these suicides. "In women it manifests in depression, in men it becomes a drinking problem," he says.
India is a society steeped in the patriarchal tradition, where most women are still expected to stay at home, and bring up children. But more and more women are stepping out to work and aspiring to be independent and successful. But pressures of family, demands for dowry and domestic harassment - and violence - push many such young, married women over the edge in the country's teeming cities and towns.
"This is what I call the aspirational reality gap," says Dr Patel. "Exposure to global media, education doesn't match up to the realities at home. A touch of anomie worsens matters. Suicide is seen as a potential way out of it." Perhaps not surprising in a society which lives with one foot in tradition, and the other in modernity.
4 Google as gadget maker (The Wall Street Journal) Google stepped up its campaign to become a major player in consumer electronics, topped by a $199 tablet computer that could pressure Amazon while adding yet another challenger to market leader Apple. The company unveiled the tablet at a developer conference alongside other hardware it designed for the first time—a $299 home-entertainment player called Nexus Q and futuristic eyewear dubbed Google Glass that embeds a computer display in a glasses-like device.
For Google, the transition to hardware has become necessary as Apple continues to encroach on the Internet-search giant's territory with major software applications. Earlier this month, Apple touted a number of new software products, including a mapping service that would replace Google Maps as the default system for Apple devices. Like Amazon's Kindle Fire, the Google's tablet boasts a seven-inch screen, a $199 price and is designed to be used with content delivered from the Web—in this case digital books, music and other media available through Google's Play service.
The protracted drought is heightening worries about North Korea's ability to feed its people. Two-thirds of North Korea's 24 million people faced chronic food shortages, the United Nations said earlier this month while asking donors for $198 million in humanitarian aid for the country. Even in South P'yongan and North and South Hwanghae provinces, which are traditionally North Korea's breadbasket, thousands of acres of crops are withering away despite good irrigation systems, local officials said.
Nearly 28,000 South Koreans, including soldiers and local residents, have been mobilized to help water rice paddies and farm fields and more than 13,000 water pumps have been provided to drought-stricken areas, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said. Officials blamed high atmospheric pressure over the Korean peninsula for the drought.
2 More banks face interest rigging probe (BBC) A number of banks are being investigated and could face sanctions after Barclays was fined $450m for trying to manipulate interest rates at which banks lend to each other. Regulators in Europe, the US and Asia have said that investigations into other banks are "ongoing". The UK's Financial Services Authority said the early signs were that Barclays had not been the only firm involved. Other big names believed to be under investigation include Citigroup, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland.
3 Young Indians in death wish (Soutik Biswas on BBC) A study published in the medical journal The Lancet shows that suicide has become the second leading cause of death among India's young adults, after road accidents in men, and childbirth-related complications in women. There were 187,000 deaths from suicides in India in 2010, the study says - this is higher than the official figure of 134,599 suicide deaths from the National Crime Records Bureau. (Researchers attribute this gap to under-reporting or misreporting as friendly or bribe-seeking coroners often sign off suicide deaths as ones caused by accidents to protect the victim's family from police harassment and social stigma.)
If the findings by a team of doctors are to be believed, 40% of the men and 56% of the women who took their lives in 2010 were aged between 15 and 29 years. I asked Dr Vikram Patel, a leading Goa-based psychiatrist and professor at the London School of Hygience and Tropical Medicine, who co-authored the study, about why he thought this was happening. He believes that joblessness for men and post-marriage problems for women trigger off a lot of these suicides. "In women it manifests in depression, in men it becomes a drinking problem," he says.
India is a society steeped in the patriarchal tradition, where most women are still expected to stay at home, and bring up children. But more and more women are stepping out to work and aspiring to be independent and successful. But pressures of family, demands for dowry and domestic harassment - and violence - push many such young, married women over the edge in the country's teeming cities and towns.
"This is what I call the aspirational reality gap," says Dr Patel. "Exposure to global media, education doesn't match up to the realities at home. A touch of anomie worsens matters. Suicide is seen as a potential way out of it." Perhaps not surprising in a society which lives with one foot in tradition, and the other in modernity.
4 Google as gadget maker (The Wall Street Journal) Google stepped up its campaign to become a major player in consumer electronics, topped by a $199 tablet computer that could pressure Amazon while adding yet another challenger to market leader Apple. The company unveiled the tablet at a developer conference alongside other hardware it designed for the first time—a $299 home-entertainment player called Nexus Q and futuristic eyewear dubbed Google Glass that embeds a computer display in a glasses-like device.
For Google, the transition to hardware has become necessary as Apple continues to encroach on the Internet-search giant's territory with major software applications. Earlier this month, Apple touted a number of new software products, including a mapping service that would replace Google Maps as the default system for Apple devices. Like Amazon's Kindle Fire, the Google's tablet boasts a seven-inch screen, a $199 price and is designed to be used with content delivered from the Web—in this case digital books, music and other media available through Google's Play service.
No comments:
Post a Comment