1
Foreigners lose taste for India stocks, bonds (Ashutosh Joshi in The Wall
Street Journal) Foreign investors have pulled $10
billion out of Indian stocks and bonds in the last two months, amid worries
about the country’s slowing growth, a sharp decline in the rupee, and an
improvement in prospects for the US. India’s benchmark S&P BSE Sensex has
fallen 0.6% so far this year, but in dollar terms, it has lost 8.5%, according
to FactSet Research.
“The investment case for India has turned less favorable,”
Goldman Sachs said in a note to
clients earlier this week. The bank said the sharp depreciation in the rupee
has particularly hurt foreign investor sentiment. The local currency rupee has
fallen about 9% against the US dollar between early May and June, and several
steps taken by Indian authorities have not been able to prevent this slide.
2
A million UK workers on zero-hour contracts (Simon Goodley & Phillip Inman
in The Guardian) More than 1 million British
workers could be employed on zero-hour contracts, new figures reveal,
suggesting that British business is deploying the controversial employment
terms far more widely than previously thought.
The figure – derived from a poll
of more than 1,000 employers conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development (CIPD) – prompted renewed calls for the government to launch a
full inquiry into the use of the contracts, after a week in which a string of
organisations – from retail chains to Buckingham Palace – have faced criticism
for hiring staff but offering no guarantee of work and pay each week. Employees
on zero-hours contracts often get no holiday or sick pay and have to ask
permission before seeking additional work elsewhere.
The CIPD found that 38% of
zero-hours contract workers describe themselves as employed full-time,
typically working 30 hours or more a week. One third of voluntary sector
employers use the contracts, and one in four public sector organisations. Last
week, retailer Sports Direct became the focus of controversy on zero-hours when
it emerged that the company employs around 20,000 of its 23,000 staff on the
contracts.
The
retailer's use of the contracts was followed by details of a string of other
companies using the deals, including cinema chain Cineworld and Buckingham
Palace, which uses them for its 350 summer workers. Pub group JD Wetherspoon
has 24,000 of its staff – 80% of its workforce – on the terms.
Workers on zero-hours contracts
are often only told how many hours they will work when weekly or monthly rotas
are worked out, but are expected to be on call for extra work at short notice.
They should be entitled to holiday pay in line with the number of hours they
work, but do not qualify for sick pay. Industries where employers were most
likely to report at least one person on a zero-hours contract were hotels,
catering and leisure (48%), education (35%) and healthcare (27%).
3 UK prince’s first ‘endorsement’
(Danika Kirka in San Francisco Chronicle) It took 45
seconds, but it was enough. Newborn Prince George, carried from the
hospital to the royal car, appeared in a cotton swaddle with the tiny birds on
it. Mums-to-be around the world wanted to know: Who are you wearing? The
answer shows what it is like when a small company gets swept into the maelstrom
of attention that comes from touching the golden hem of the House of Windsor.
Once the
photos of the swaddle hit the Internet, style bloggers and fashion writers
identified the would-be king's new clothes as being from New York-based aden +
anais. Within four hours of George's appearance, the website crashed. The next
day, the site crashed again. In nine days, the company had 7,000 orders — a 600
percent increase in sales on that item. The company never even issued a
press release. Anyone who wanted to know the manufacturer simply had to type
"royal swaddle" into Google, and up it came.
The company
is still digging out from under a pile of orders for the swaddle, part of the
Jungle Jam pack of four that in Britain costs 44.95 pounds ($68). The average
daily visits to its site were off the charts: In Britain, they were up 1,960
percent; in Australia, up 892 percent; in Japan 791 percent and in the US, up
458 percent.
People just
want to be a part of things says Cele Otnes, a professor of marketing at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The British Monarchy in Consumer
Culture." She said the rush to buy whatever the royals wear gives admirers
a chance to participate in a big, happy event. There are no
royal adverts. Nonetheless the royals remain marketing gold.
4 Theatres go hi-tech to face labour
shortage (Janice Heng in Straits Times) Most
moviegoers spare little thought for the existence of the film projectionist.
Now, they might be justified in doing so - for he may not exist at all.
From
projection rooms without projectionists, to automatic gates which check your
tickets, cineplexes are finding high-tech ways to tackle the labour crunch. Dimming
the theatre lights, drawing the curtains back from the screen and starting the
movie can all be done at the touch of a button - or even less. Cathay Cineplex
Cineleisure Orchard's computer system lets all this be scheduled in advance.
5 Why there
are no women-driven sex scandals (Hanna Rosin in The Wall Street Journal) Women in high positions are a relatively new phenomenon. Every
congresswoman surely endures the same strains that drive some of her male
colleagues to have affairs: lots of travel, families far away, heady work that
makes a domestic routine seem distant and boring. But the stakes are much
higher for women, because they are still judged by a different standard.
Today it is still hard to imagine a middle-aged married
woman bouncing back from a full-fledged scandal, though men do it all the time.
When Nikki Haley, now governor of South Carolina, ran for office in 2010, two
men swore publicly they'd had affairs with her. But enough voters decided not
to believe them, which was the only way Gov. Haley could win the race.
Will it always be so? Not if we read the latest signs.
According to the General Social Survey, younger women are cheating on their
spouses almost as much as men: About 20% of men and 15% of women under 35 say
they have ever been unfaithful. Women, like men, now spend late hours at the
office and travel for business; they can text or email themselves into an
intimate corner just as easily as men can.
When the young Krystal Ball ran for Congress in Virginia in
2010, risqué photos appeared showing her dressed as "naughty Santa"
at a Halloween party with her husband. Ms. Ball lost her race but left behind a
manifesto for the next generation. Society, she wrote, "has to accept that
women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public
sphere." One day we may find ourselves ready
to look past their indiscretions too.
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