1 Japan economy shrinks 6.8% (BBC) Japan's economy
contracted by an annualised 6.8% in the second quarter of the year, the biggest
fall since 2011 when it was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami. The
official gross domestic product figure though was smaller than the 7.1% drop
economists expected. The shrinkage was largely in response to a government
sales tax, which held back consumer spending.
On a quarterly basis, the economy contracted 1.7% in
the second quarter after a 1.5% rise in the first three months. Private
consumption, which makes up 60% of economic activity, was 5% down on the
previous quarter. The economy grew at an annualised rate of 6.1% in the first
quarter of this year.
Recent retail sales and factory output figures both
indicated a negative impact from the sales tax rise. Marcel Thieliant, Japan
economist at Capital Economics, said a rebound was expected in the coming
months: "The collapse in economic activity last quarter was largely a
result of the higher sales tax, and we still believe that the recovery will
resume in the second half of the year. "Consumers had brought forward
spending ahead of April's increase in the consumption tax."
2 Russia-West tensions hit German economic
confidence (Angela Monaghan in The Guardian) Confidence among German investors
nosedived in August amid tensions between Russia and the west which are
expected to bring Europe's largest economy to a standstill. The ZEW indicator
of economic sentiment plunged more sharply than expected to a 20-month low of
8.6 points from 27.1 points in July. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast
a far smaller fall, to 18.2 points.
The index has fallen for eight consecutive months.
Heightened geopolitical tensions are raising fears that the eurozone's weak
recovery will be snuffed out altogether, and that Germany's economy will
flatline. As Russia's biggest trading partner in the EU, Germany is expected to
be one of the economies hardest hit by Vladimir Putin's dispute with the west
over his treatment of Ukraine, which has triggered sanctions and
countersanctions.
The authors of the report said the decline in
economic sentiment was the result of the geopolitical tensions that have begun
to weigh on Germany's growth. The extent of Germany's woes will be laid bare on
Thursday, when the first official estimate of second-quarter GDP is expected to
show zero growth, following 0.8% growth in the first quarter. Growth in the
eurozone is also expected to slow to 0.1% between April and June, from 0.2% in
the first three months of the year.
3 Resumes that lie (Julie Balise in San Francisco
Chronicle) An impressive resume can open new doors for job-seekers. An
inaccurate one can close them. It looks like some applicants are testing their
luck, with 58 percent of hiring managers in a recent CareerBuilder survey
saying they have caught a resume lie. One-third of respondents say they saw an
increase in resume lies after the recession.
The most common resume lie is embellishing the skill
set, followed by embellishing responsibilities, dates of employment, job title,
academic degree, companies worked for, and accolades and awards. Fifty-one
percent of respondents said they would automatically throw out a resume
containing a lie, 41 percent would base their decision on the type of lie, and
7 percent would overlook a lie if they liked the job candidate.
CareerBuilder also looked at the industries where
the most hiring managers report catching resume lies. Financial services came
out on top, with 73 percent of managers catching a lie. It was followed by
leisure and hospitality, at 71 percent; information technology, at 63 percent;
health care (more than 50 employees), at 63 percent; and retail, at 59 percent.
4 A pianist in Syria’s Yarmuk camp (Rana Moussaoui
in Dawn) In the Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, the notes escape a piano set
in a scene of destruction and the children in Ayham al-Ahmed’s little group
sing of hunger and suffering. The music in the Syrian camp, under siege for a
year and wracked by violence, seems at odd with the brutality that is all
around.
In photos posted on Facebook, the 26-year-old plays
the piano in streets littered with debris, his face growing thinner with each
passing month. Once a thriving neighbourhood home to 150,000 Palestinian
refugees and Syrians, Yarmuk has been reduced to a shell of its former self in
the conflict that began in March 2011.
Under the circumstances, Ahmed’s creation of the
“Youth Troupe of Yarmuk “in 2013 was a rare ray of light. “It was important to
emerge from the despair we were living in,” he says. When he plays, he says, he
feels that “there is once again something good in this life”. Ayham’s father,
62-year-old Ahmed al-Ahmed, is a blind violinist who played with the troupe
until rheumatism exacerbated by malnutrition forced him to quit.
“I want to put a smile on the faces of children,”
says Ayhem al-Ahmed, who named his children’s choir “Buds of Yarmuk”. One song
about those in exile from the camp, called “Brother, we miss you in Yarmuk”,
spread like wildfire on social networks. It describes the story of Syrians who
have been displaced from their homes or become refugees — some nine million
citizens in all.
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