Pressure on Europe to reconsider cuts; China is 'biggest PC market'; Emerging India's ugly underside

1 Pressure on Europe to reconsider cuts (Andrew Higgins in The New York Times) Unemployment has surpassed Great Depression-era levels in Southern Europe. Recession is drifting to the once resilient economies of the north. Even some onetime hawks on government spending say they cannot cut any more. After years of insisting that the primary cure for Europe’s malaise is to slash spending, the champions of austerity, most notably Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, find themselves under intensified pressure to back off unpopular remedies and find some way to restore faltering growth to the world’s largest economic bloc.

On Friday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain, who once promoted aggressive budget cuts, became the latest leader to reject European Union targets for reducing deficits. That is one of several developments — a recent court ruling against job cuts in Portugal; a new, austerity-averse prime-minister-in-waiting in Italy; and mounting doubts among ordinary Europeans and even the International Monetary Fund — that have forced senior officials in Brussels to acknowledge that a move away from what critics see as a fixation on debt and deficits toward more growth-friendly policies is necessary. 

Europe is not about to throw open the spending spigots in the 27 nations of the European Union, even as the bloc teeters on the edge of a new regionwide recession. But officials are clearly shifting toward what Leonardo Domenici, an Italian member of the European Parliament, described as “austerity with a human face.” 

European Union officials insist that their economic policy has never been as dogmatic or narrowly focused on spending cuts as critics claim, and say they have long since moved beyond just austerity. But unable to speak plainly in any of the union’s 23 official languages, they have had trouble explaining their efforts in a manner that ordinary people can understand. 

2 China is ‘biggest PC market’ (BBC) China has overtaken the US as the world's biggest market for personal computers, according to a market data report. Research by the consultants IHS said PC shipments to the country rose to 69 million units in 2012. The US was the largest market up until 2011, last year it had orders for 66 million units. China is also the world's biggest internet market with more than 500 million users. Laptops are the fastest rising sector in developed markets and have overtaken PCs, but in China the sale of desktops and laptops is evenly split.

Peter Lin, senior analyst for computer platforms at IHS, said: "The equal share of shipments for desktop [PCs] and notebooks [lightweight laptops] in China is unusual, since consumers in most regions today tend to prefer more agile mobile PCs, rather than the bulky, stationary desktops. 

"The relatively large percentage of desktop PC shipments in China is due to huge demand in the country's rural areas, which account for a major segment of the country's 1.34 billion citizens. "These consumers tend to prefer the desktop." The Chinese government is investing heavily in computer infrastructure, and plans to spend around 40 trillion yuan ($6.4trn) building rural infrastructure in the next 10 years.

3 Emerging India’s ugly underside (Jason Burke in The Guardian) It is a very discreet neighbourhood. Here high walls mask lawns and villas and guards stand before polished steel gates. Chauffeur-driven imported SUVs and local tradesmen in battered delivery vehicles constitute the only traffic on the leafy, palm-lined lanes.

One morning late last month, the calm of Chatarpur, on the southern fringe of the Indian capital, was broken by three gunshots at one of the largest and most secure homes – that belonging to Deepak Bhardwaj, an aspirant politician and wealthy businessman. Hours later, Neeraj Kumar, Delhi's police commissioner, told reporters how two attackers had gained entry by pretending to have come "for booking the place for a marriage".

The "farmhouses", as the far from rustic mansions in this once rural zone are known, are popular venues for society weddings. Bhardwaj's 30-acre estate, including halls and lawns, was specially constructed to cater for the trade. "They went inside and started talking to Bhardwaj before shooting him twice at point-blank range," Kumar said. As the investigation progressed, it became clear, at least according to the police, that the story of the killing of Bhardwaj had everything that fascinates – and some would say characterises – the emerging modern India: family, jealousy, power, a rags-to-riches story, a "godman" or religious leader on the make, political ambitions and guns.

According to the Indian Express newspaper, Bhardwaj was born, son of a poor carpenter, in a small village in Haryana, a state adjacent to Delhi. When a new airport was built for the capital, he made his first fortune. Judiciously reinvested, particularly in properties snared in India's labyrinthine court processes, the millions began to stack up.

Raju, 62, a knife-sharpener who makes the rounds of the farmhouses on a battered bicycle, said he remembered the area as nothing more than fields and farms when he was young. He did not regret the change though. "Yes, there was space to run around and jungle and all that but we people were very, very poor and there were no jobs, no hope, nothing," he said. "And there were lots of snakes. Life today is much better."