In-ger-lund / Cymru Male - 21 Years Old | Here's a round up of stories I've read today.
Egypt 'suffering worst economic crisis since 1930s'.
Former finance minister and economist say Egypt is in dire predicament as foreign investment and tourism collapse.
Quote: Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt has experienced a drastic fall in both foreign investment and tourism revenues, followed by a 60% drop in foreign exchange reserves, a 3% drop in growth, and a rapid devaluation of the Egyptian pound. All this has led to mushrooming food prices, ballooning unemployment and a shortage of fuel and cooking gas causing Egypt's worst crisis, said Amin, "without fear of making a mistake, since the 30s".
"Nobody cares about the poor now," Amin said. During comparable crises in the late 1960s, the mid-70s and the late 80s, Amin and Radwan argued that Egypt's poorest were variously shielded from absolute hardship either by state subsidies, overseas aid, comparatively low unemployment, or by remittances from expatriates in the Gulf states. But now one in four young Egyptians is unemployed, household remittances are low, and there is a shortage of subsidised goods.
"You are talking about nearly half of the population being in a state of poverty," said Radwan, a development economist. "Either in absolute poverty or near-poor, meaning that with any [economic] shock, like with inflation, they will fall under the poverty line." Currently, 25.2% of Egyptians are below the poverty line, with 23.7% hovering just above it, according to figures supplied by the Egyptian government.
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EU-led conference agrees aid lifeline, but Europeans insist Mali must fulfil pledges to carry out democratic and social reforms.
Quote: The European commission and the 27 member states have pledged to provide 1.35bn for Mali next year, one-third of the international commitment. The pledges included 50,000 from Greece and 18m from Spain, two troubled eurozone countries that have themselves turned to Brussels for financial aid.
European leaders made clear at the Brussels meeting that the aid comes as part of broader efforts to stabilise a west African region that has endured repeated food crises, political instability and armed conflicts. A portion of the EU donations will be used for UN humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, and assistance to carry out elections, scheduled for 28 July one of the key conditions of the aid.
The French president, Franηois Hollande, welcomed the financial commitments but said it was up to leaders in the former French colony to follow through with its commitments. "We need transparency and good governance," Hollande said.
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Murong Xuecun, who has had his accounts deleted, explains how bloggers compare being silenced on the internet to being put to death.
Quote: On 9 May, I posted the following message on Sina Weibo:
"The account you have been managing for years can be deleted in a second. Then you try to plot its reincarnation by writing every word from scratch. The house you have been building all your life can be bulldozed in a moment. Then you try to rise from its rubble by picking up every piece of brick and tile.
"This is my Chinese dream: harbour no illusion about the evil powers, and understand that their evil will only grow.
"Be not depressed or desperate, however: start from zero, from minus, from rubble, and grow with resilience."
These words are the reflection of my true feelings. Not long ago, scholar Zhang Xuezhong, Xiao Xuehui, Song Shinan and lawyer Si Weijiang all saw their Weibo accounts deleted. They each had large numbers of followers, who spread their words to an even wider audience. But all of a sudden their names have disappeared. Nobody knows why, or who ordered it, but we all know that a new round of a censorship campaign has commenced. As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm: the scariest thing of all is not being silenced or being sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next. There is no procedure, no standard, and not a single explanation. It's as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded. Not knowing where the mines are buried, you don't know when you will be blasted to pieces.
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City in Honduras has a murder rate of 173 per 100,000 residents, reportedly the highest in the world outside a war zone.
Quote: "Satan himself lives here in San Pedro," says one nervous mortician who asks to be identified only as Lucas. "People here kill people like they're nothing more than chickens."
Last year, an average of 20 people were murdered every day in Honduras, a country of just 8 million inhabitants, according to the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (NAUH). That's a murder rate of 85.5 per 100,000 residents, compared with 56 in Venezuela, 4.78 in the US and 1.2 in the UK.
In San Pedro Sula, the rate is 173, reportedly the highest in the world outside a war zone. The city is the country's manufacturing and commercial hub. Dozens of maquiladoras export assembly plants churn out New Balance T-shirts and Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts for markets abroad. It should be a bustling place, but there is little movement on the streets and the air is tense. At newsstands, headlines cry out details of the previous day's grisly crimes. Few cars have number plates; most have black-tinted windows.
The same mix of factors has helped make Latin America the world's deadliest region. Although it is home to just 8% of the world's population, UN figures show that it accounts for 42% of all homicides worldwide. According to the Mexican thinktank Citizen Council on Public Safety and Criminal Justice, all but one of the 20 cities with the highest homicide rates in the world are in Latin America. The exception is New Orleans.
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A dozen children in nursery section of La Rochefoucault school witness man in his 60s shoot himself in head.
Quote: A man in his 60s has walked into the nursery section of a Paris school and shot himself dead with a sawn-off shotgun in front of a dozen children, police say.
The shooting happened just before midday on Thursday in the school hall as children were leaving for a lunch break.
The man, who shot himself in the head, was not connected with the private Catholic school but lived in the neighbourhood, French media reported. His name has not yet been released and police are working to establish a motive. He did not make any spoken or written statement before shooting himself.
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Storm could bring life-threatening conditions to about 8.2 million people in Bangladesh, Burma and north-east India.
Venezuela hopes to wipe out toilet paper shortage by importing 50m rolls.
Minister blames shortage on 'excessive demand caused by media campaign generated to disrupt the country'.
Quote: One supermarket visited by the Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread.
"I've been looking for it for two weeks," said Cristina Ramos. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in line."
Economists say Venezuela's shortages stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government's controls on foreign currency.
"State-controlled prices prices that are set below market-clearing price always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union," said Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University.
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Big post there. Sorry it's all so grim. |
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