Snowden spoils US-Russia relationship; Australia jobless rate at 4-year high; India's vanishing elephant keepers

1 Snowden hits US-Russia relationship (BBC) The Kremlin says it is "disappointed" the US cancelled bilateral talks in September, after Russia granted asylum to intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign affairs adviser said the move showed the US could not develop ties with Russia on an "equal basis". A White House aide said Mr Snowden's asylum had deepened the pre-existing tension between the two counties. But Mr Obama still plans to attend the G20 economic talks in St Petersburg.

Mr Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, has admitted leaking information about US surveillance programmes to the media. Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday Russia was not to blame over the Snowden affair. "This decision is clearly linked to the situation with former agent of US special services [Edward] Snowden, which hasn't been created by us," he said. "For many years, the Americans have avoided signing an extradition agreement," Mr Ushakov said, "And they have invariably responded negatively to our requests for extradition of people who committed crimes on the territory of Russia, pointing at the absence of such agreement."

The decision to cancel the talks, announced during a trip by the US president to Los Angeles, comes the morning after Mr Obama said he was "disappointed" with Russia's decision to offer Mr Snowden asylum for a year. In addition to Russia's "disappointing decision" to grant Mr Snowden temporary asylum, the White House cited a lack of progress on issues ranging from missile defence to human rights.

Mr Snowden, 30, fled his home in Hawaii, where he worked at a small NSA installation, to Hong Kong, and subsequently to Russia. He faces espionage charges in the US. He spent about a month in a transit area of the Moscow airport as the US pressured other countries to deny him asylum. On 1 August, he left the airport after the Russian government said it would give him asylum there for a year.

2 Australia jobless rate at 4-year high (Glenda Kwek in Sydney Morning Herald) The jobless rate has remained at a four-year high, as the Australian economy lost 10,200 jobs. The unemployment rate was flat at 5.7 per cent. Full time positions drop by 6700 while part-time positions also fell by 3500. The participation rate was 65.1 per cent, 0.2 per cent down from June. The aggregate monthly hours worked lifted from 7.9 million hours to 1648.6 million hours.

The employment-to-population ratio dropped to 61.4 per cent, seasonally adjusted. The unemployment rate is still expected to rise over the next few months despite staying level in July, Moody's Analytics associate economist Katrina Ell said. The federal government forecast  in its mini-budget last week for unemployment to rise to 6.25 per cent this financial year and to remain at the same level next year.

The July data comes two days after one of the forward indicators for employment, ANZ's job advertisements series, found job ads had fallen for the fifth straight month in July. Job ads were 8 per cent lower than at the start of the decline in February. On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank eased the cash rate by 25 basis points, taking it to a historic low of 2.5 per cent, with its board acknowledging the recent rise in the unemployment rate.

3 India’s vanishing elephant keepers (Joanna Sugden in The Wall Street Journal) An elephant idling along with its mahout – Hindi for elephant keeper – is arguably as evocative of India as the Taj Mahal, but pachyderm experts warn that the skill of keeping an elephant properly in captivity is dying out. And that, they say, could lead to more deadly conflict with wild elephants.

There are currently 3,500 captive elephants in zoos, circuses, temples, government forest reserves and under private ownership in India, according to surveys. This equates to about 7,800 mahouts who look after them: Each elephant usually has two mahouts, and three in some cases, according to Surendra Varma, a research scientist at the conservation group, which is part of the Indian Institute of Science.

Studies have found that among the animals’ mahouts, most were aged between 21 and 45 and had often gone into the profession following family tradition. But low wages, the dangers involved in the job, and the poor regard in which the profession is held are deterring mahouts from shepherding their children into the business, Mr. Varma said. Fewer than half of those asked in the survey said their children would become mahouts, a profession in which wages can be as low as 500 rupees ($8) a month.

Ecologists found that more than 90% of mahouts in the study had been attacked or injured by their elephants. Of these, more than half had been attacked more than three times. And almost two-thirds of mahouts had insurance cover, the survey said. “Only in a very few cases can you be considered a hero, otherwise life is miserable as a mahout,” said Mr. Varma, who has been studying elephants for 24 years.