1 AstraZeneca
to cut over 2,000 jobs (Rupert Neate in The Guardian) AstraZeneca is cutting
2,150 jobs in George Osborne’s constituency just five months after the
chancellor helped the drugs group secure a £5m government grant to develop its
Alderley Park research and development centre. The UK's second-biggest
pharmaceutical company said it was closing down the Alderley Park R&D
facility with the loss of 550 jobs there and 150 elsewhere in the UK over the
next three years.
A further 1,600
jobs will be moved from the facility to Cambridge, where Astra is relocating
its headquarters and creating a new $500m (£330m) R&D centre. It is just
over a year since the company announced 7,300 job cuts as part of its last
cost-cutting drive. The new cuts by one of the biggest employers in Osborne's
constituency come just two days before the chancellor delivers a budget aiming
to avoid a triple-dip recession.
2 Reading,
writing and video games (Pamela Paul in The New York Times) The concepts of
work and play have become farcically reversed: schoolwork is meant to be
superfun; play, like homework, is meant to teach. There’s an underlying fear
that if we don’t add interactive elements to lower school curriculums, children
won’t be able to handle fractions or develop scientific hypotheses — concepts
children learned quite well in school before television.
Technology
firms are understandably eager to enter the lucrative school market and acquire
customers at the earliest age. Alarmists warn that schoolchildren won’t excel
in the i-economy if they aren’t steeped in technology. Many schools boast of
their iPad-to-kindergartner ratio on the theory that children should learn
early on how to use a touch pad. Really? Any parent with an iPhone can tell you
how long it takes a small child to master the swipe.
How’s this for
a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in
their free time. Personally, I’d rather my children played on my iPhone while
waiting for the subway to school than do multiplication tables to a beep-driven
soundtrack. Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves.
Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun
but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful
reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.
3 India pledges
to clean Yamuna river – again (Hari Kumar in The New York Times) Confronted
with thousands of angry protesters, the Indian government promised this week to
clean up the filthy Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi. India’s minister
of water resources, Harish Rawat, has promised that the government will have a
blueprint for a river cleanup program and to map out construction of sewage
interception drains within two months.
More than half
of Delhi’s sewage flows untreated into the Yamuna, ruining it for farmers and
wildlife downriver. The 22-kilometer (14-mile) stretch of the river that flows
through Delhi has a dissolved oxygen content, a measure of a river’s health and
ability to support life, of zero in some areas. Aside from its agricultural
importance, the Yamuna is first and foremost considered a holy river for
Hindus, who call it Jamuna-ji, using the honorific.
4 World’s biggest solar panel maker defaults (BBC) China's
Suntech Power Holdings, the world's biggest solar panel maker, has defaulted on
its debt. The firm said it had failed to repay $541m worth of bonds due on 15
March. That triggered cross-default clauses on its other loans as well. The
failure to make payments on the bonds could lead to potential lawsuits against
Suntech. However, the firm said it was in talks with the bondholders and was
unaware of any legal proceedings being initiated.
The firm has
outstanding loans from International Finance Corporation as well as Chinese
domestic lenders. Suntech, which emerged as a leader in China's green energy
sector, has seen its fortunes plummet in recent times. It posted four
consecutive quarters of losses through the first quarter of 2012. The firm has
not released its quarterly earnings since then.
Global solar
panel makers such as Suntech have been hurt by a sharp decline in prices in
recent years. However, US and European panel makers have blamed Chinese firms
for playing a big role in that. They have accused the Chinese companies of
flooding the market and of selling the panels below fair price, a practice
known as "dumping". There have also been allegations that China
provides subsidies to its firm, which helps them keep their costs low and as a
result sell goods at a cheaper prices. However, China has denied these
allegations.
After the recent Nirbhaya case, all unauthorized buses were taken off the roads of Delhi. But have they been replaced by any other alternatives to public transport? No. She has to now start one hour earlier from home and board overcrowded DTC buses. She is the working woman who gets up at 5 am, cooks meals and packs lunch boxes for the entire family before setting off for work. When she gets back home at 8 pm, she is famished, tired. This too is the reality of India. Whatever we do to facilitate them is less. So the criticism about ghettoizing women through a women’s-only bank is unwarranted.
Yet there are many stereotypes that try to put hard-working women at a disadvantage. If you don’t drink and smoke, you aren’t edgy enough. If you wear sarees, you’re old-fashioned. If you’re a mother, you’re not ruthless. If you want to get married, you’re not ambitious. If you’re pretty, you’re not intelligent. If you’re financially secure, you don’t need to be emotionally secure. We want to tell the world that we can be all of these and then some. At a time and place of our choice!
6 India’s recurring nightmare (Khaleej Times) Three months after the Delhi gang-rape case, the Indian public vividly remembers its grisly details. Now, another rape case in India has sparked a furore in media circle, yet again highlighting the economic giant’s struggle with ensuring women’s security and safeguarding their rights.
Last Friday, a Swiss tourist was gang raped in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, as she camped with her husband near a village in Datia district. The 39-year-old victim and her husband had been cycling from the town of Orchha to Agra, to see the Taj Mahal, when they decided to camp for the night in a woodland. But during that time they were attacked by men, who overpowered the victim’s husband by beating him with sticks and subsequently committed the heinous crime. The state police have arrested six people in connection with the rape. Parading the alleged culprits in front of the media, the authorities have promised speedy justice for the couple.
This new case
has further tarnished the country’s image worldwide at a rather sensitive time
for the Indian government. Faced with immense public pressure before the
forthcoming elections, the government is in the midst of negotiating the
contents of anti-rape legislation. But the public’s impatience with poor
enforcement of law — the reason why sexual offences continue unabated in metropolitan
areas — has been clear during the recent protests and demonstrations.
Instead of
squandering all their energy in drafting bills and passing them in the
parliament, Indian leaders need to strengthen law-enforcement institutions.
Because a rule, no matter how well-intentioned, is defunct if its stringent
imposition is absent.
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