1 China exports fall for third month (BBC) Exports
in the world's second largest economy, China, fell for a third consecutive
month in May, highlighting slowing demand in the country. Exports fell 2.5%
from a year ago in dollar denominated terms, and 2.8% in yuan denominated
figures.
Imports tumbled 17.6% in dollar terms, while
yuan-denominated imports plunged 18.1% - falling for the seventh month. Zhu
Haibin, economist at JP Morgan said Monday's data show that the economy will
struggle to meet the government's trade growth target even with the export
rise.
Domestic demand in China continues to be weak
despite stimulus measures by the government and central bank to boost growth. The
central bank has lowered interest rates just last month, which was the third
time in six months to spur lending and economic activity. The drop in imports
led China's trade surplus of $59.5bn in May, up nearly 75% from April.
2 Stunning setback for Turkey’s Erdogan (Fox News) In
a stunning rebuke of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ambitions to expand his
powers, Turkish voters stripped his party of its simple majority in parliament,
preliminary election results showed. With 99.9 percent of the vote counted, Erdogan's
ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP, had the support of around 41
percent of voters. According to projections, that would give it some 258 seats
— 18 below the minimum needed to keep its majority.
The unexpected setback for AKP likely puts an end,
for the time being, to Erdogan's hopes of passing constitutional changes that
would have greatly boosted the powers of his office. Instead, he faces
struggles to retain his pre-eminent place in Turkish politics without the
obvious levers to steer the government through his party in parliament.
The result is also a bitter blow to Prime Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu, whose political prospects are uncertain after leading his
party to such a disappointing result. AKP will now have to seek a coalition
partner to stay in power, with the nationalist MHP the most likely candidate.
In an indication of how precipitously Erdogan's
fortunes have fallen, he had begun the campaign asking voters for 400 of the
total 550 seats in the Grand National Assembly, a massive majority well above
the 330 seats needed to call for a national referendum to change the constitution.
The biggest setback for AKP came with the rise of
the main pro-Kurdish party, HDP, which for the first time easily cleared the
threshold of ten percent for representation as a party in the parliament. The
preliminary results put its tally at almost 13 percent. The main secular
opposition Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, got about 25 percent of the vote,
while MHP got just above 16 percent.
Erdogan has been Turkey's dominant politician since
his party swept into power in 2002 — becoming prime minister in 2003 and
leading his party to two overwhelming parliamentary election victories. In a
gamble last year, he decided to run for president, banking that his party could
later bolster his powers.
3 Logistics isn’t all about trucks and warehouses
(Kate Lester in The Guardian) I have spent 20 years in the logistics industry.
While my industry remains undeniably male dominated, this fact, and the
implications it might have for me as a businesswoman, are not issues I’ve ever
given much thought to. They certainly had no bearing on the decisions I made
when I started my business, or those that I make now.
To really succeed in logistics you don’t need to be
a transport expert. Effectively applying client-centric principles and then
scaling your operation is where real success lies. My choice of career was
entirely opportunistic: at 20-years-old I found myself working for a courier
firm and quickly realised I could do a better job of running it than the people
in charge.
When I say logistics what image comes into your
head? Trucks? A giant warehouse? Delivery drivers, shipping containers and
stacks of brown boxes? It doesn’t get more stereotypically masculine than that.
Of course my work relates to all of those things, but it’s not what we’re
about. Couriers are actually customer service companies. Positive
relationships, mutual trust… it’s starting to sound more feminine, isn’t it?
Historically, logistics has had an image problem.
Not one of gender dominance, rather of reliability. We see ourselves as
business enablers. The logistics services we provide help other organisations
to grow, and the more they grow the more we grown in turn. It’s all about shared
success. This is an inherently positive principle, one that’s at the core of
service sectors such as ours, and one that I think other industries could learn
from.
These days I’m seeing more and more women running
logistics companies, which is obviously great. My daughter is in her early
twenties, by the time she has a daughter that age I don’t think we’ll be
talking about male domination in the same terms anymore. And I hope that the
logistics industry will be viewed in an entirely different way too.
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