1 Shock, as US economy grows just 0.2% (The
Guardian) The disappointing US GDP data has sent markets tumbling. The weakness
in the US economy, if sustained, poses problems for global growth. That has hit
the dollar, and by extension pushed the euro higher which has undermined
European markets.
The export heavy Dax has been hit particularly hard,
while the FTSE 100 has closed below 7000 for the first time in nearly two
weeks. There were also the usual uncertainties surrounding the continuing
attempts to avoid Greece defaulting and the forthcoming UK election.
Pending home sales - contracts to buy previously
owned US homes - rose to their highest level since June 2013 in March, the
third monthly rise in a row. The National Association of Realtors said its
sales index rose 1.1% to 108.6 last month, compared to forecast of a1% gain.
The association’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said more buyers than usual had
entered the spring market.
Earlier, official figures showed German inflation
picked up to 0.3% in April, the second month of price growth after deflation in
January and February. And Belgium also exited deflation. Looks like the
European Central Bank’s policy is working. It launched a £60bn a month quantitative
easing programme in March to fight deflation.
2 A 100-year gap in education between nations
(Rebecca Winthrop on BBC) When it comes to education the differences between
the developed and developing worlds remain stark. There has been a convergence
in the number of pupils enrolling in primary school, with many more young
children in developing countries now having access to school.
But when it comes to average levels of attainment -
how much children have learnt and how long they have spent in school - there
remains a massive gap. When it's shown as an average number of years in school
and levels of achievement, the developing world is about 100 years behind developed
countries. These poorer countries still have average levels of education in the
21st Century that were achieved in many western countries by the early decades
of the 20th Century.
If we continue with the current approaches to global
education, this century-wide gap will continue into the future. There are stark
overall differences between the average levels of education between the
developing and developed countries - a comparison which uses the UN definition
of "developed" as Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.
The idea that all young people, not just those in
the elite, should have an opportunity to be educated had spread across Europe
and North America by the middle of the 19th Century. It was only a century
later, spurred on by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that mass
schooling spread across the developing world. It meant that there was a
100-year gap there from the outset.
The education levels of the adult workforce, often
measured by average numbers of years of school, is in the developed countries
double that of their developing country peers. In developed countries, adults
have an average of 12 years of school, compared with 6.5 years of school for
those in developing countries.
The 100-year gap is also evident in the learning
levels between students in developed and developing countries. At the current
rate of progress, it will take well over 100 years for students in developing
countries to catch up to the learning levels of today's developed country
students.
The real question is what can be done to close the
gap? Can some of the evolutionary steps be skipped to make more rapid progress?
Or is there a technological way for education systems to "leapfrog" a
few stages forward? Can we envision a world where it does not take developing
countries 50 or another 100 years to catch up?
3 Nepal will rise again (Pranaya SJB Rana in Dawn/The
Kathmandu Post) Nepal slept uneasy on Saturday night, away from homes and
buildings and under open skies. Throughout the night, the fitful sleep of those
who survived Saturday’s catastrophic 7.8 earthquake was disturbed constantly by
the earth rocking to and fro.
The Sunday morning sun rose on a nation devastated,
its centuries-old history turned into rubble and its people scared into huddled
masses. Out on the main streets, it was locals who were conspicuously doing
what needed to be done. Security agencies initially were caught just as
unprepared as locals; only, it looked as if locals recovered faster.
Of course, all this is not to downplay all the great
work that the police and the Army have done. They too braved much risk to
undertake rescue efforts. What was evident on Saturday and much of Sunday was
Nepal’s, and especially Kathmandu’s, lack of preparedness for a disaster that
so many had warned about for so long.
But what also became evident was just how resilient
and resourceful Nepalis are. Besides the material support that locals provide
to each other, there is the emotional and psychological element, especially
when there is little reliable information and all that one can hear are doomsayers
predicting bigger quakes with every hour that passes. In the face of
uncertainty and fear, an ear to talk to and a shoulder to lean on can be as valuable
as any material relief.
Some markers of our heritage are now gone forever
and whatever reconstruction that will take place in the months and years to
come will doubtful equal the grandeur of the old. There are countless lessons
here for us all, if only we are willing to learn. A city is only as resilient
as its people and no matter what we lose, as long as we have the people, we
will rebuild and we will recover.
Many of the thousands of deaths were perhaps
preventable, had building codes been enforced and retrofitting conducted on a
war footing. It is not as if we didn’t have enough warning; we just lived as if
we were invulnerable. But those of us who have survived, must and will soldier
on, if only in memory of all that we have lost.
