1 Fears of a triple-dip recession (Josephine Moulds in The Guardian) Hopes the economy is on the road to recovery have been dampened by figures showing retail sales stalled last month and growth in Britain's services sector almost ground to a standstill. Britons shied away from spending on big-ticket and luxury items in October, leading to the weakest sales growth in almost a year, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Meanwhile, expansion in the UK's services sector – which accounts for three-quarters of UK GDP – slowed to a crawl as new business failed to make up for projects completed during the month.
Chancellor George Osborne had seized on news last month that the economy emerged from double-dip recession, growing by 1% in the third quarter of 2012, as evidence that his policies had put Britain "on the right track". But early signs for the fourth quarter now suggest the economy could shrink again, raising the prospect of a triple-dip recession.
Rob Wood, an analyst at Berenberg Bank, said: "With manufacturing output suffering from weak exports and domestic demand, and the service sector flirting with contraction, a fall in GDP in the fourth quarter now looks most likely." The BRC said like-for-like sales fell 0.1% last month, compared with October last year. It was a crushing blow after September's figures, which showed growth of 1.5%, had raised hopes Britons had got used to austerity and were out spending again.
2 'Most important week of 2012' (Stephanie Flanders on BBC)
In the City they've dubbed it "the most important week of the rest of
2012". You can see why. If you were feeling dramatic, you could say that
more than half of global GDP will be "in play", one way or another. America
will - we hope - decide on who will be its president for the next four years;
the Chinese will start the formal handover to its new leaders, and the central
banks of the eurozone and the UK will decide whether they need to do more to
support their fragile economies.
Oh yes, and the Greek parliament will also be voting (probably on Wednesday) on further budget cuts that will determine whether it can get the next 31bn-euro tranche of its European-IMF rescue package. With widespread defections, it looks like the government will pass these measures only with the tiniest of majorities, if at all.
3 Why darker women must be featured in ads (Shazia Mirza in Dawn) It’s a class, power, colonial and self esteem issue. The idea that if you’re white you have money, class, power, a better chance of a better class of husband and therefore, a better life. Traditionally people from lower castes were poorer people who worked in the fields and never married out of their castes, so produced generations of dark skinned children who struggled for progress. As time goes on, and people become better educated, this must change.
Women are destroying their beautiful bodies in an attempt to get lighter skin and tighter parts. Advertising is a huge problem, and in places like India and Pakistan, darker women need to be featured more in ad campaigns and magazines, but the self esteem of a nation must grow. Dark skinned women need to know that they are just as beautiful as light skinned. This extends to all parts of the world; I’ve noticed Beyoncé is turning more Michael Jackson by the day.
As we walked out of a shop we saw an Asian woman with a white face and black hair. My friend pointed her out to me and said, “Now she’s gone too far”. She was like a slightly tanned Father Christmas; it didn’t look right or attractive. Someone tell these women, people in the west are dying to have their tanned skin and they are beautiful just the way they are.
4 India monsoon may fail more often (Straits Times) The Indian monsoon is likely to fail more often in the next 200 years threatening food supplies, unless governments agree how to limit climate change, a study shows. The monsoon rains could collapse about every fifth year between 2150 and 2200 with continued global warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, and related shifts in tropical air flows, it said.
"Monsoon failure becomes much more frequent" as temperatures rise, Dr Anders Levermann, a professor of dynamics of the climate system and one of the authors at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said.
India's monsoon, which lasts from June to September, is vital for India's 1.2 billion people to grow crops such as rice, wheat and corn. India last faced a severe widespread drought in 2009 and had to import sugar, pushing global prices to 30-year highs.
5 Zapiro cartoon in Johannesburg Times on the US
election
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/06/13/zapiro-cartoons
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