1 Oil falls to six-year low (BBC) The price of Brent
crude oil has fallen further below $50 to a six-year low. The price of a barrel
of the North Sea benchmark dropped by 5.5% to $47.36, its lowest level since
early 2009. US crude oil was also at its lowest level since that time, down by
5% to $45.90 a barrel.
The cost of petrol in the UK is being cut in
response to the recent falls, with one Birmingham garage selling petrol at 99p
a litre. Meanwhile, a leading investment house drastically cut its three-month
forecast for Brent crude from $80 a barrel to $42.
Goldman Sachs said the price would stay close to $40
for most of the first half of this year, at which price the firm said
investment in the US shale gas industry would be held up. The oil price has now
fallen by more than half since June, when the price stood at $110 per barrel.
Production from North American shale companies has
increased the supply of oil and gas, helping to depress prices. Also
undermining the price of oil are slowing global economic demand and a rising
dollar against a range of other currencies. The latter can flatter the oil
price, which nonetheless can remain the same price in a local currency that
buys fewer dollars.
2 In UK, milk turns cheaper than water (Jennifer
Rankin in The Guardian) More than 1,000 farmers are not to be paid for their
milk, after the UK’s largest dairy company announced it was delaying payments
because of a crash in prices.
First Milk, a co-operative owned by British farmers,
said 2014 had been a “year of volatility that has never been seen before” in
the global dairy industry. It will delay payments to farmers by two weeks and
all subsequent payments by a fortnight.
Milk prices around the world have fallen by more
than 50% over the past 12 months, as good weather has helped many farmers
deliver a surplus, while producers in the US and New Zealand have been ramping
up production. But demand from China has been lower than expected, while a
Russian import ban has led to a glut of cheese and yogurts on the market.
In the UK, the big supermarkets have started a price
war, which has led to the price of a four-pint carton of milk tumbling from
around £1.39 to £1 in Tesco and Sainsbury’s. Asda is selling a four-pint carton
for just 89p, the cheapest of the big four supermarkets.
Farmers are leaving the industry in droves. At the
end of 2014, the number of dairy farmers had dipped below 10,000 for the first
time, a 50% fall in since 2002. NFU president Meurig Raymond warned that dairy
farmers were “haemorrhaging money” and called for supermarkets to do more to
back British suppliers. “We have seen
the product devalued – liquid milk in particular is now cheaper than water ...
There are very few dairy farmers making any money, most are haemorrhaging money
at this present time, particularly those at 20p a litre,” he said.
3 Charlie Hebdo: When satire meets globalization (San
Francisco Chronicle) These are dark days for those who want to believe that the
pen is mightier than the sword. The attack on French satirical newspaper
Charlie Hebdo has caused grief and soul-searching around the world, and exposed
the risks humorists can run — only intensified in an era of instant global
communications where starkly opposed ideologies can collide.
Today, societies in countries like France are more
diverse than ever before. Once overwhelmingly Catholic, France is a now an
officially secular country with 5 million Muslims, about 7.5 percent of the
population. There's less consensus on what is taboo and where the boundaries of
taste and offense lie.
And now that words and images move around the world
at the click of a mouse, there more chance for provocative humor to collide
with rigid ideas, whether Islamic fundamentalism or North Korean communism.
When comedian Seth Rogen and his collaborators chose
the imagined assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who presides
over one of the world's most isolated countries, as the plot of slacker comedy
"The Interview," the distant leader took offense. North Korea
condemned the movie as an "unpardonable mockery of our sovereignty and
dignity of our supreme leader."
In the book "Globalization and Insecurity in
the Twenty-first Century," London School of Economics professor
Christopher Coker said "The Satanic Verses" controversy was both
caused by globalization and an illustration of its limits. The world is an
ever-smaller place, but the gaps that divide us are wide.
The tension exploded into violence again in 2004
with the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic angered
by the documentarist's depiction of Islam. More violence erupted after a Danish
newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad — including one which showed the
prophet with a bomb-shaped turban — in 2005. There were threats to the
cartoonists, and fiery protests in Muslim countries in which dozens were killed.
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