1 China growth outlook hazy (Khaleej Times) China’s
factory activity unexpectedly fell to a five-month low in October as firms
fought slowing orders and rising costs in the cooling economy, reinforcing
views that the country’s growth outlook is hazy at best. The official
Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) eased to 50.8 in October from September’s
51.1, the National Bureau of Statistics said, but above the 50-point level that
separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
Underscoring the challenges facing the world’s
second-largest economy, the PMI showed foreign and domestic demand slipped to
five- and six-month lows, respectively, with overseas orders shrinking slightly
on a monthly basis.
It has been a tough year for China’s economy. Growth
fell to 7.3 per cent in the third quarter, its lowest level since the 2008-09
global financial crisis, as the housing market sagged and domestic demand and
investment flagged. The cooldown, expected to be China’s worst in 24 years this
year according to a Reuters poll, came despite a flurry of government support
measures.
But the raft of measures — which were issued over a
space of a few months — have failed to sustain momentum in the economy,
prompting authorities to take one of their most drastic policy actions this
year by cutting mortgage rates in September.
2 Murder capitals of the world (John Vidal in The
Guardian) The Honduran city of San Pedro Sula is officially the most violent in
the world outside the Middle East and warzones, with more than 1,200 killings
in a year, according to statistics for 2011 and 2012. Its murder rate of 169
per 100,000 people far surpasses anything in North America or much larger
cities such as Johannesburg, Lagos or São Paulo. London, by contrast, has just
1.3 murders per 100,000 people.
Research by security and development groups suggests
that the violence plaguing San Pedro Sula and many other Latin American and
African cities may be linked not just to the drug trade, extortion and illegal
migration, but to the breakneck speed at which urban areas have grown in the
last 20 years. The faster cities grow, the more likely it is that the civic
authorities will lose control and armed gangs will take over urban
organisation, says Robert Muggah, research director at the Igarapé Institute in
Brazil.
Simon Reid-Henry, of the Peace Research Institute in
Oslo, said: “Today’s wars are more likely to be civil wars and conflict is
increasingly likely to be urban. Criminal violence and armed conflict are
increasingly hard to distinguish from one another in different parts of the
world.” The latest UN data shows that many cities may be as dangerous as war
zones. While nearly 60,000 people die in wars every year, an estimated 480,000
are killed, mostly by guns, in cities.
More than half the world now lives in cities
compared with about 5% a century ago, and UN experts expect more than 70% of
the world’s population to be living in urban areas within 30 years. The fastest
transition to cities is now occurring in Asia, where the number of city
dwellers is expected to double by 2030, according to the UN Population Fund.
3 How Google, Yahoo blend art and engineering (Wendy
Lee in San Francisco Chronicle) An important lesson learned by Yahoo’s CEO
Marissa Mayer happened in the early hours of Halloween when she was working at
Google. It was 15 years ago, and Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin asked Mayer to
put a new logo for Google on its homepage. Replacing the o’s in Google were two
smiling pumpkins. At first, Mayer hesitated. She pointed out the pumpkins were
just made out of clip art and were pixelated, but Brin insisted the logo go up.
The art would show “we’re people and we’re excited
for Halloween,” Brin told her. The unique logo ended up being a success, with
Google users commenting online that they were excited to see the artwork. It
humanized the site and showed the “flair of personality” from its employees,
Mayer said. “It was an important lesson for me,” she said.
Mayer said at Yahoo, she tries to let that element
of humanity and emotional connection come through in its products. “Yahoo is
about personalization, how we can take sports, news, finance and mail and make
it feel like it’s tailored to you, customized to you,” Mayer said.
Mayer said art and engineering were a part of her
life at a young age. Her mother, an art teacher, taught her about art history
and her father is an engineer. She said the two topics “are not all that
different.” “Engineering that isn’t beautiful has its drawbacks, and art that
isn’t engineered is also less interesting,” Mayer said.
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