1 China trade surplus at new record (BBC) China's
monthly trade surplus hit a record $60.6bn in February, as exports grew and
imports slid back. Exports were up 48.3% year on year to $169.2bn, and imports
dropped by a fifth to $108.6bn, said the country's General Administration of
Customs. The growth in exports was well ahead of analyst expectations.
China's economy grew by 7.4% in 2014, its weakest
for almost a quarter of a century, and recent indicators show signs the slowdown
is continuing. Customs officials put the surge in exports down to a flurry of
activities by companies to get orders processed before the Chinese New Year,
which fell in the middle of February this year.
The surplus figure stood at $8.9bn in the same
period last year. For the first two months of the year, China's trade surplus
has totalled $120.7bn, following the $60bn surplus in January. Premier Li
Keqiang on Thursday announced a lowered growth target of "approximately
7%" for this year, and cut the trade growth target for 2015 to
"around 6%".
2 Apple watch to trigger wearable tech market
(Trevor Tan in Straits Times) Apple is expected to unveil the final launch
details on Tuesday about its highly anticipated Apple Watch. Smart watches have
been predicted by experts to be the next big thing, and the leader of this new
group of wearable devices is expected to be Apple.
Research firm Business Insider expects the global
wearable tech market to explode over the next five years, hitting 148 million
units shipped from the current 33 million units. The smart watch will form the
bulk of the wearables sold, accounting for six in 10 of total wearable devices
sold. Business Insider expects this share to expand to 70 per cent by 2019. The
Apple Watch is expected to kickstart the growth of the overall smartwatch
sales.
The Apple Watch lets users receive notifications
while doubling up as a fitness tracker with its built-in pedometer,
accelerometer and heart rate sensors. It is also known that the price starts
from $349 and that there are three versions of it – the Apple Watch with its
stainless steel chassis, the Apple WatchSport with its anodised aluminium case
and the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition.
There is also talk that Apple might launch a new
MacBook Air with retina display. With many PC laptops featuring ultra-high
resolutions, such as 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, the paltry resolution of 1,440 x 900
pixels of the 13-inch MacBook Air is seriously looking very dated.
3 A better world, run by women (Melvin Konner in The
Wall Street Journal) Hillary Clinton seems to be preparing to run for
president, and the former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina may yet enter the
race on the Republican side. Whoever wins the White House in 2016, today it
seems easily possible that within the next decade, the US will follow Britain,
Germany, Brazil, Argentina, India, Israel, Thailand, Norway and dozens of other
countries in electing a woman to our most powerful office.
Can we predict the consequences? Yes, we can—and the
news is good. Research has found that women are superior to men in most ways
that will count in the future, and it isn’t just a matter of culture or
upbringing—although both play their roles. It is also biology and the aspects
of thought and feeling shaped by biology.
All wars are boyish. People point to Margaret
Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir as evidence that women, too, can be
warlike. But these women were perched atop all-male hierarchies confronting
other hypermasculine political pyramids, and they were masculinized as they
fought their way to the top. But that’s not all. Sex scandals, financial
corruption and violence are all overwhelmingly male.
The great transformation of the past two
centuries—the slow but relentless decline of male supremacy—can be attributed
in part to the rise of Enlightenment ideas generally. The liberation of women
has advanced alongside the gradual emancipation of serfs, slaves, working
people and minorities of every sort. But the most important factor has been
technology, which has made men’s physical strength and martial prowess
increasingly obsolete.
Perhaps it is time for us to consider returning to
the hunter-gatherer rules that prevailed for 90% of human history: women and
men working at their jobs, sharing, talking, listening and tending children.
Men didn’t strongly dominate because they couldn’t; women’s voices were always
there, speaking truth to male power every night around the fire. There was
violence, and it was mainly male, but it was mostly random, accident more than
ideology.
Women won’t make a perfect world, but it will be
less flawed than the one that men have made and ruled these thousands of years.
My grandson, I think, will be happy in the new world. It will be better for him
because women will contribute so much more to running it.
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