Why global protests are here to stay; Dell goes private; Citizen journalist takes on Chinese officialdom; China tries to tackle income divide

1 Why global protests are here to stay (Paul Mason in The Guardian) Two years on from the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the new Egyptian president is from the Muslim Brotherhood; on the streets of Cairo, the same kind of people who died in droves in 2011 are still getting killed. On the streets of Athens, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn is staging anti-migrant progroms. In Russia, Pussy Riot are in jail and the leaders of the democracy movement facing criminal indictments. The war in Syria is killing 200 people a day.

It's an easy step from all this to the conclusion that 2011, the year it all kicked off, was a flash in the pan. But wrong. Something real and important was unleashed in 2011, and it has not yet gone away. I am confident enough now to call it a revolution. Some of its processes conform to the templates laid down in the revolutionary wave that swept Europe in 1848, but many do not: above all, the relationship between the physical and the mental, the political and the cultural, seem inverted.

There is a change in consciousness, the intuition that something big is possible; that a great change in the world's priorities is within people's grasp. The impervious nature of official politics – its inability to swerve even slightly towards the critique of capitalism intuitively felt by millions of people – has deepened the sense of alienation and mistrust.

But the changes in ideas, behaviour and expectations are running far ahead of changes in the physical world. If we take 1848–51 as a template, the crucial moments of reaction lie ahead: coups, crackdowns, intelligence-led disruption of the activists and hackers. But there is still one powerful factor militating against a return to stability of the kind achieved after 1848: the economy. Even if the Eurozone remains stabilised, and America avoids a political crisis over its budget, the developed world faces years of Japan-style stagnation.

2 Dell goes private (BBC) Michael Dell has said he will buy back the world's number three PC-maker that he founded and that carries his name. Along with technology investor Silver Lake, and with financial backing from Microsoft, he will offer to buy the firm for $24.4bn. The move will take Dell off the Nasdaq stock exchange after 25 years.

Mr Dell hopes to turn the tide for a firm that has struggled to compete with cheap Asian rivals and the boom in smartphones and tablet computers. Dell's success over the last 29 years has made its founder one of the richest men in America. The chief executive and chairman already owns about 14% of the firm. He and fellow senior executives will retain their existing stakes.

The buy-out of the remaining shares will be carried out by a consortium made up of Mr Dell himself, his own investment fund, and Silver Lake. It will be financed by loans from four banks, and by a $2bn loan from Microsoft. Analysts said the move would give Mr Dell greater flexibility in turning the company around, by dispensing with the need to deliver strong results every quarter to shareholders on the stock market.

3 Citizen journalist takes on Chinese officialdom (Andrew Jacobs in The New York Times) A former migrant worker with a high school education, Zhu Ruifeng, a professed citizen journalist whose freelance campaign against graft has earned him pop-star acclaim and sent a chill through Chinese officialdom, has become an overnight celebrity in China in the two months since he posted online secretly recorded video of an 18-year-old woman having sex with a memorably unattractive 57-year-old official from the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. The official lost his job. Mr. Zhu gained a million or so new microblog followers. 

Not surprisingly, Mr. Zhu, 43, has made a few enemies within the government. Late last month, five men showed up at his apartment with state security ID cards. As they thundered from the other side of his locked front door, Mr. Zhu dialed foreign journalists, texted his lawyers and sent out an electronic S O S to the multitudes. The agents left only after he promised to appear for questioning the following morning. 

The next day, he emerged from the station house like a triumphant prizefighter, telling waiting supporters how he had verbally outflanked interrogators during seven hours of questioning. “I dared them to throw me in jail and then watch how many human rights and journalism awards I win,” he crowed. “In the end, they turned white with fear.” 

Because he has no state-issued journalist’s credentials, Mr. Zhu occupies a tenuous gray zone, which partly explains his penchant for surrounding himself with reporters and supporters — people he hopes might decrease the likelihood of his disappearing into the black hole of the state’s security apparatus. “Here on Chinese soil, it’s almost impossible for citizen journalists like him to survive long term,” said Zhan Jiang, a media scholar at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

4 China tries to tackle income divide (The Wall Street Journal) China has unveiled sweeping policy guidelines to narrow the growing gap between rich and poor, vowing to turn over more of the profits of state-owned companies to pay for ambitious welfare programs and to take other steps to root out corruption and provide for the needy.

In a policy statement filled with populist rhetoric about the need for greater equality, China's State Council, or cabinet, pledged to boost the social safety net and then took aim at the nation's powerful state corporations, effectively warning them they would have to shoulder some of that extra cost.
"Narrowing the income gap is essential for ensuring social justice and social harmony," the State Council said in a statement posted on the central government website on Tuesday. "We need to raise income levels of the poor and adjust taxes on the excessively wealthy," it said.

In its most specific step, the State Council's new guidelines call for state companies to hand over an additional 5% or so of their profits to the government by 2015. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Chinese central state-owned enterprises earned more than one trillion yuan, or $160 billion, in net profits in 2011, but only 82.3 billion yuan was paid out in dividends.

In hard economy, it's brutal for the older; Glum forecast for Jap tech giants; Rutted road ahead for Rahul Gandhi; Facebook turns nine

1 In hard economy, it’s brutal for the older (Katherine Rampell in The New York Times) In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10% below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company. Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. The job market has been especially unkind to older workers. Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. 

2 Glum forecasts for Jap tech giants (BBC) Japanese electronic giants Sharp and Panasonic both stuck to their dismal forecasts for massive full-year losses, even as results for the latest quarter were boosted by the weak yen. Panasonic reported a $666m net profit for the October-December period, compared with a 197.6bn yen loss a year ago. Sharp’s net loss shrank to 36.7bn yen, from 173.6bn yen a year earlier. Sharp expects a 450bn-yen annual loss; Panasonic a 765bn-yen full-year loss.

Sharp has announced thousands of job cuts as it seeks to turn around the business, and the company insisted that the corporate overhaul would save it from going under. It said its troubles "will not cast a material uncertainty about Sharp's ability to continue as a going concern". Panasonic, meanwhile, has been hit by strong competition from rivals, including US manufacturer Apple and South Korea's Samsung. Sales in the last quarter fell 8% on the year to 1.8 trillion yen.

3 Rutted road ahead for Rahul Gandhi (Nilofar Suhrawardy in Khaleej Times) India’s regional parties have succeeded in decreasing chances of national parties heading a single party government at the centre. Thus, the prospects of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi forming a government without having to fall back on support from allies may be viewed as non-existent in near future. It may be recalled, during their previous electoral campaigns, both his mother Sonia Gandhi and Rahul have given impression of banking largely on only Congress and not on reaching strategic agreements with regional allies.

Equally noteworthy is the fact that Congress has not succeeded in enhancing the importance of its regional leaders. However hard Sonia and Rahul try, it is practically impossible for them to campaign actively in all parliamentary constituencies by frequently visiting them and addressing rallies there repeatedly. Even if they address a different constituency every day, they will not be able to frequently visit each of the 500-plus parliamentary constituencies in a year’s time.

While Sonia may assure everyone that Rahul has gained a firm foothold in the Congress and the latter has every right to promote Rahul Gandhi on a national level. Yet, his popular appeal may remain confined to overpowering photos on hoardings and larger-than-life posters, till supporters in regional localities are also mobilised to promote his party’s agenda. Rahul’s rise as a national leader won’t be possible till the party sweeps the 2014 elections, and ensures support of its allies. Sonia and Rahul need to plan their electoral strategy if the latter has to lead national politics in the future.

4 Facebook is nine (The Times of India) Social networking website Facebook has turned nine-year-old. Facebook was started on February 4, 2004 in a dorm of Harvard University by Mark Zuckerburg with the help of his four friends Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. The world's biggest social media site called thefacebook.com in its initial days, and was later renamed to just Facebook.

Facebook, which began as Zuckerberg's hobby projects, was initially a college network. Facebook's expansion to other colleges and universities started in March 2004. Within months, the social network became a huge success. In October 2007, software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. Search gaint Google too is said to have offered partnership deal to Facebook. The deal was, however, rejected by Facebook. The latter went public in May 2012 and was valued at over $100 billion after IPO.

Recently, Facebook co-founder and CEO Zuckerburg announced a new feature called Graph Search, a tool that utilises social data to help compile results for users. The company also rolled out features like Facebook Cards and voice calling on iPhone in North America to attract users. Users are steadily becoming more active on the mobile edition of the website than the desktop version.

Despite tremendous growth, Facebook has been mired in controversies over privacy concerns, underage members, hacking attacks etc. Zuckerburg has been dragged into lawsuits over stealing the idea for Facebook from his seniors at Harvard - Cameron Winklewoss, Tyler Winklewoss and Divya Narendra. Co-founder Eduardo Saverin also filed a lawsuit against Zuckerburg for pushing him out of the company. Both the cases were settled out of court.

Dow at 14,000; US jobs crisis hasn't gone away; Heavy loss for Deutsche Bank; In New Delhi, 95% women feel unsafe; Polish is now England's second language

1 Dow at 14,000: First time since 2007 (San Francisco Chronicle) The Dow closed above 14,000 on Friday for the first time in more than five years. It was just a number on a board, but it was enough to raise the hopes of some investors and cause others concern about an overheated market. And it brought reminders of a different era, back before the financial crisis rocked the world economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average, a stock market index that is traditionally considered a benchmark for how the entire market is faring, had been rising fairly steadily for about a month. On Friday, strong auto sales and optimism about US job growth pushed it over the mark. The Dow is now just 155 points away from its record close. "There's a newfound enthusiasm for the equity market," said Jim Russell, regional investment director at US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

But market watchers were divided over what the Dow milestone — or even what a potential new all-time high — really means. To some, it's an important booster to hearts and minds, making investors feel optimistic and thus more willing to bet on the market. To others, though, Dow 14,000 is nothing but a number, a sign more of how traders feel than of the economy. And it's not even the best number on the board, some traders say. Professional investors usually pay more heed to the Standard & Poor's main index, which tracks 500 companies compared to the Dow's 30. The Dow garners attention, they say, because it's more familiar to the general public.

2 The US jobs crisis hasn’t gone away (Heidi Moore in The Guardian) In the real economy, we still have a significant number of unemployed people – and more importantly, we have a core group of long-term unemployed people, who become more unemployable the longer they are out of work. There are another 2.4 million people who are "marginally attached", meaning they were "not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey."

If you add those marginally attached workers – those able-bodied, willing to work and unable to find jobs – to the number of unemployed, it gets closer to 15 million people out of work. That's a crisis. And even while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rises to new highs – it hit 14,000 just today – big companies are still making layoffs. This week alone, mass layoffs of more than 50 people and up to 1,000 were announced at Time Inc, Disney, BAE Systems, Harman International, Viking Range, Amgen and Boston Scientific.

What makes it a crisis is that we don't seem to have any ideas on how to employ the unemployed. There are few, if any, ideas coming out of Washington. Corporate America, which still considers itself reeling from the recession, seems disinclined to pitch in – except for a few outliers like Starbucks' "Create Jobs for USA" program. No major retraining programs have cropped up (even if the unemployed, with their pained finances, could afford them).

3 Heavy loss for Deutsche Bank (BBC) Deutsche Bank has reported a surprise loss of 2.2bn euros ($2.9bn) for the fourth quarter of 2012. It came after Germany's biggest bank chose to set aside 1bn euros to cover potential litigation costs and to write off 1.9bn euros in dud investments. The write-offs are the result of a restructuring that involves the hiving off of many non-essential businesses.The bank may face lawsuits related to the manipulation of Libor, as well as other recent scandals.

Anshu Jain - the Indian investment banking head who took over last year as joint chief executive with the German Juergen Fitschen - said that there had been informal discussions at Davos last week between Deutsche and other banks implicated in the Libor scandal over a possible industry-wide settlement of civil lawsuits against them. So far, Barclays and UBS have reached settlements with regulators over the manipulation of Libor - a benchmark interest rate used to calculate payments under trillions of dollars of contracts - and many other banks, including Deutsche and RBS, are expected to follow.

4 In New Delhi, 95% women feel unsafe (Johannesburg Times) Only 5% of women feel safe in public places in New Delhi, a women’s rights organization in the Indian capital said, citing a recent survey. The city recently witnessed unprecedented protests over the gang rape and killing of a 23-year student on a bus in December, with demonstrators demanding measures to make New Delhi safer for women.

The International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) study interviewed 2,000 women and 1,000 men aged 16 to 49 between October and November. Half of the women respondents felt public places, including streets, markets, parks and bus-stops were unsafe "all the time," day or night, ICRW Asia regional director Ravi Verma said. "The sense of fear among women might have gone up post the gang rape incident," Verma said. Nine out of 10 women interviewed had experienced some kind of sexual harassment or violence, including lewd comments, obscene gestures, uninvited touching, flashing, and sexual assault.

The survey also found that 51 percent of the men reported having perpetrated sexual harassment and violence against women, Verma said. The survey report, which was submitted to the United Nations and to national ministries, found that although 78% of respondents reported having witnessed sexual violence, only 15% said they had intervened.

5 Polish is now England’s second language (The Guardian) Polish is now the main language spoken in England and Wales after English and Welsh, according to 2011 census data released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The language-speaking figures recorded for the first time from a survey of 56.1 million residents of England and Wales show 546,000 speak Polish. It is now the second main language in England. There are still slightly more Welsh speakers in Wales at 562,000.

The next biggest main languages are the south Asian languages of Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati, followed by Arabic, French, Chinese and Portuguese. The statisticians said they recorded over 100 different languages and 49 main languages with more than 15,000 users. English was the biggest of that group and Swedish the smallest.

Some of the languages are in a tiny minority. For example, there was only one person in Barnet who spoke Caribbean creole and one person in Bexley. Fifty-eight people speak Scottish Gaelic, 33 speak Manx Gaelic and 629 speak Romany. Ealing in west London is the nation’s hotspot for Polish speaking, the town of Slough for Punjabi/Urdu, the city of Leicester for Gujarati, Kensington in central London for French and Manchester for Cantonese and Mandarin. One million households have no residents with English as a main language, although most had some proficiency in English, the ONS said. Only 138,000 people could not speak English at all.