Dow at 15,000, Nikkei tops 14,000; Bill Gates sees a shift to PC tablets; The three deadliest words in the world; Cheap food plan may cost India dear

1 Dow at 15,000, Nikkei tops 14,000 (BBC) The Dow Jones index closed above 15,000 for the first time as strong German factory data pushed US and European share markets higher. Other world markets also gained, with Germany's Dax hitting a fresh record, rising 70 points to 8,182. Hopes of further central bank action to boost growth also lifted sentiment. London's FTSE 100 was up 0.6% and France's Cac 40 rose 0.4%.

Earlier, Japan's Nikkei 225 index went above 14,000 for the first time since mid-2008 as government efforts to weaken the yen boosted exporters. US markets have been on a winning streak recently, lifted by good economics data. Most recently, Friday's labour market data showed that 165,000 jobs were created in the US in April, some 20,000 more than expected.

Japanese markets have jumped recently after its central bank unveiled aggressive moves, including doubling the money supply, to spur growth. The European Central Bank cut key interest rates to an all-time low of 0.50%. That decision came down after Japanese markets had already closed.

2 Bill gates sees a shift to PC tablets (Charles Arthur in The Guardian) Users of iPad and Android tablets might not have noticed, but a lot of them are "frustrated" because they "can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have [Microsoft] Office there". At least according to Bill Gates, who years ago said of the iPad: "there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'"

But with total iPad sales since April 2010 already past 141m, and total tablet sales according to IDC at 253m – of which fewer than 2m are the Surface RT or Surface Pro – one might wonder whether he's right.

Gates said Windows 8 is part of a blurring of the distinction between the PC and the tablet. But he also thinks that many users of iPads – and, by extension, Android tablets – are frustrated because "they can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have Office there". That, he implies, means it's only a matter of time before Surface and other PC-tablet hybrids grab that market.

3 The three deadliest words in the world (Clementine Ford in Sydney Morning Herald) In 1985, Mary Anne Warren coined the term gendercide to refer to the ritual eradication of women and girls throughout the world. More recently, the heartbreaking film It’s a Girl documents the effects of this practice on the numbers of girls and women in China and India. It makes for difficult viewing, particularly when confronted with the kinds of survivors who have internalised their worthlessness to a point where they see the infanticide of girl children as a reasonable solution to the burden of giving birth to girls.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 200 million women and girls are missing in the world today as a result of being born into societies in which they have no value. The latest figures from China show that in some parts of the country there are as many as 130 boys for every 100 girls. In that same period, it's estimated between 3 million to 6 million girls were aborted in India, despite the fact that sex determination tests have been outlawed there as a response to such a trend. 

And before you make the mistake of thinking this is due to poverty, think again - the wealthiest classes in both China and India are just as likely if not more so to dispense of their girl children because of the cultural honour of having boys. By 2020, it's estimated that China will have around 30-40 million more men than women. Known as the ‘bare branches syndrome', it describes a phenomenon in which significant proportions of the population will be unable to "bear fruit". 

To put this problem into a very tiny nutshell, the ritual gendercide of women and girls throughout the world has even more ramifications than the moral implications of devaluing humans according to biological sex. It is real, it's happening and it's a devastating insight into the logical endpoint of patriarchal codes that position women as property and resources rather than human beings.

4 Cheap food plan may cost India dearly (Anant Vijay Kala & Mukesh Jagota in The Wall Street Journal) With just three days left in India’s Parliament budget session, time appears to be running out for lawmakers to vote on a proposal to massively scale up India’s food subsidy program. That may be just as well, since economists say the financial implications still aren’t clear. 

Some economists say the program – which intends to make cheap foodgrains available to about two-thirds of the country’s population — could cost the exchequer more than double annually than what the government has projected. The government has estimated that it will need to budget 1.2 trillion rupees (a little over $22 billion) each year to fund all food subsidies, including the new ones added under the proposed program. India’s existing food benefits program costs about 950 billion rupees ($17.5 billion), most of which covers the cost of providing highly-subsidized grains to about one-fourth of the population, those who fall below the poverty line.

The 1.2-trillion figure might be a rather large underestimate, according to the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, a body that is part of the Ministry of Agriculture. It advises the government on pricing policy related to farm commodities. “The stated expenditure of Rs 1.2 trillion rupees annually…is merely the tip of the iceberg,” it said in a report.

Under the proposed bill, India plans to expand the coverage of highly-subsidized food grains to 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population, which could cover as many as 800 million of India’s 1.2 billion population.