Friday, March 30, 2012

BBC News - Where are you on the global pay scale?

BBC News - Where are you on the global pay scale?: "Do you earn more or less than the world's average wage? Type in your monthly salary and we'll give you the answer.

The average wage, calculated by the International Labour Organization, is published here for the first time. It's a rough figure based on data from 72 countries, omitting some of the world's poorest nations. All figures are adjusted to reflect varying living costs, and as Ruth Alexander of BBC radio's More or Less programme underlines, it's all about wage earners, not the self-employed or people on benefits."

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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Africa’s Steady Steps Toward Democracy - NYTimes.com

Africa’s Steady Steps Toward Democracy - NYTimes.com: "DAKAR, Senegal — After 50 years of independence, the path to democracy does not follow an obvious, straight line in this region, just as it did not in the West — the model for most citizens here — where it was centuries in the making."

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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Senegal's Election: African Democracy 1, Big Men 0 | Global Spin | TIME.com

Senegal's Election: African Democracy 1, Big Men 0 | Global Spin | TIME.com: "Senegal’s ejection of 85-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade at the polls Sunday is a resounding victory for African democracy.  The loss ended his attempts to cling to power for a third term and establish a dynastic succession.  According to the Senegalese press agency, Wade telephoned his rival, 50-year-old former Prime Minister Macky Sall, Sunday evening to concede defeat. Official results are expected later this week.  ”We have shown to the world that our democracy is mature,” a victorious Sall told supporters. “I will be the president of all the Senegalese.” Wade’s campaign seemed to agree the election had reinvigorated Senegalese democracy. “It is the whole country that has just won,” Amadou Sall, a spokesman for Wade, told Reuters. “This is a big moment for democracy and President Abdoulaye Wade has respected the voice of the people.”"

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Why Don't Young Americans Buy Cars? - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic

Why Don't Young Americans Buy Cars? - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic: "Kids these days. They don't get married. They don't buy homes. And, much to the dismay of the world's auto makers, they apparently don't feel a deep and abiding urge to own a car.

This week, the New York Times pulled back  the curtain on General Motors' recent, slightly bewildered efforts to connect with the Millennials -- that giant generational cohort born in the 1980s and 1990s whose growing consumer power is reshaping the way corporate America markets its wares. Unfortunately for car companies, today's teens and twenty-somethings don't seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They're not even particularly keen on driving.

The Times notes that less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998. The fraction of 20-to-24-year-olds with a license has also dropped . And according to CNW research , adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. "

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Monday, March 26, 2012

President Concedes Race in Senegal - NYTimes.com

President Concedes Race in Senegal - NYTimes.com: "DAKAR, Senegal — The elderly president of this West African nation conceded defeat after elections here on Sunday, a rare example of a prompt and peaceful political turnover in a region tormented by coups and leaders who refuse to give up power."

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Friday, March 23, 2012

George Zimmerman Unprotected By Self-Defense Law in Trayvon Martin Killing, Florida Lawmakers Say

George Zimmerman Unprotected By Self-Defense Law in Trayvon Martin Killing, Florida Lawmakers Say: "Gun rights advocates also question the decision not to charge Zimmerman.

"I don't see why he hasn't been arrested," said Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry, a gun rights group.

Zimmerman had no right to follow and confront Martin in the first place, Caranna noted.

"Being the neighborhood watch guy doesn't give you carte blanche to stop and question every guy you see walking down the street," Caranna said."

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The White Savior Industrial Complex - Teju Cole - International - The Atlantic

The White Savior Industrial Complex - Teju Cole - International - The Atlantic: "How, for example, could a well-meaning American "help" a place like Uganda today? It begins, I believe, with some humility with regards to the people in those places. It begins with some respect for the agency of the people of Uganda in their own lives. A great deal of work had been done, and continues to be done, by Ugandans to improve their own country, and ignorant comments (I've seen many) about how "we have to save them because they can't save themselves" can't change that fact."

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Soldiers Declare Coup in Mali - NYTimes.com

Soldiers Declare Coup in Mali - NYTimes.com: "Apart from the rebellion in the north, Mali has acknowledged in the past that several hundred fighters from Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb have found sanctuary in its desert reaches, although most are believed to be Mauritanians and Algerians.

In recent years, the Qaeda affiliate has left a trail of violence across Mauritania, Niger, Algeria and Mali, taking aim at tourists, expatriate workers, local residents and security forces. Hostages taken in the porous border regions have been executed or ransomed."

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Renegade soldiers declare power seizure in Mali - CNN.com

Renegade soldiers declare power seizure in Mali - CNN.com: "The growing Tuareg insurgency is raising concerns in Washington, which sees the small nation as an important ally against AQIM, the sub-Saharan al Qaeda group.
Conflict in the region has forced the United Nations to appeal for $35.6 million to address the growing humanitarian crisis as throngs of Malians flee into neighboring countries."

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Mali soldiers claim to have overthrown government - latimes.com

Mali soldiers claim to have overthrown government - latimes.com: "REPORTING FROM KANO, NIGERIA -- After fighting in Bamako, Mali's capital, a group of Malian soldiers calling themselves the National Committee for the Establishment of Democracy appeared on state television early Thursday claiming to have ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure for "incompetence."

The coup came just a month before the country was due for elections, when Toure was to stand down. The trigger appeared to be anger in the military over the government's inability to handle a rebellion by a Tuareg militia in the north of the country.

A spokesman for the soldiers, Lt. Amadou Konare, appeared on state television and informed the country that the government and other institutions of power had been dissolved.

The fate of the president was not known, and several government ministers were arrested, according to news agency reports."

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Why George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, hasn’t been prosecuted. - Slate Magazine

Why George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, hasn’t been prosecuted. - Slate Magazine: "How did we get to a place where Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, which seems barely plausible, could prevent his arrest? The answer starts with the “Stand Your Ground” law that Florida passed in 2005. The idea was to give people who think they are being threatened the right to use force: They can protect themselves without first trying to retreat. The history behind that controversial idea is actually about gender, not race. It involves the intersection between the fight against domestic violence and the agenda of the National Rifle Association."

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Slavery's last stronghold - CNN.com

Slavery's last stronghold - CNN.com: "Moulkheir Mint Yarba returned from a day of tending her master’s goats out on the Sahara Desert to find something unimaginable: Her baby girl, barely old enough to crawl, had been left outdoors to die.
The usually stoic mother — whose jet-black eyes and cardboard hands carry decades of sadness — wept when she saw her child’s lifeless face, eyes open and covered in ants, resting in the orange sands of the Mauritanian desert. The master who raped Moulkheir to produce the child wanted to punish his slave. He told her she would work faster without the child on her back."

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What “Rape Sonograms” Are Really About | The Feminist Wire

What “Rape Sonograms” Are Really About | The Feminist Wire: "Of the states that have introduced personhood bills 77% had anti-miscegenation laws on their books as late as 1948-1967.  Of the 16 states that never repealed their anti-misegenation laws,  but rather had them overturned by Loving vs. Virginia, more than half have introduced personhood bills.

These statistics are not a coincidence. Racism, sexism, homophobia – they go hand in hand and the people oppressed by them experience them in intersecting ways. Worldwide,  women’s human rights are complicated by these intersections.

Like these two Virginia bills, anti-misegenation laws were really not about “morality” or “decency”, but about social order. They’re not about “personhood” but “humanity.”  Sex, controlling other people’s private lives, dictating what they do with their bodies and controlling their “place” in society."

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Soraya Chemaly: 10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the U.S. Is Nuts

Soraya Chemaly: 10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the U.S. Is Nuts: "I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce."

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Sunday, March 18, 2012

Middle-Class Welfare State Is Invisible by Design: Ezra Klein - Bloomberg

Middle-Class Welfare State Is Invisible by Design: Ezra Klein - Bloomberg: "The more a government social program benefits wealthier Americans, the less obtrusive it is. We design policies for the poor in ways that make it hard to escape the knowledge that the government is providing help. But richer Americans rely on programs that are “submerged.” The Tax Policy Center  estimates that eliminating all individual-income tax expenditures would raise levies on the bottom 20 percent by $931. For the top 1 percent, the tax increase would be almost $280,000. (Notably, both President Barack Obama  and Mitt Romney  have talked about cutting back on tax expenditures for the wealthy, but neither has provided details.) Even so, many middle class and wealthy beneficiaries have no idea that they’re receiving any government assistance at all."

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BBC News - Guinea-Bissau due to hold presidential election

BBC News - Guinea-Bissau due to hold presidential election: "Voters in Guinea-Bissau go to the polls shortly to elect a new president to replace Malam Bacai Sanha, who died in January following a long illness.

Nine candidates are running for office, but analysts say only four have a fighting chance.

The West African country has been plagued by army mutinies and coups over the past 10 years.

No elected president has completed his mandate since multi-party politics was introduced in 1994."

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Friday, March 16, 2012

Texas Loses Entire Women's Health Program Over Planned Parenthood Law

Texas Loses Entire Women's Health Program Over Planned Parenthood Law: "Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO), wrote Texas health officials a letter on Thursday explaining that the state broke federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against qualified family planning providers and thus would be losing the entire program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to 130,000 low-income women each year.

"We very much regret the state's decision to implement this rule, which will prevent women enrolled in the program from receiving services from the trusted health care providers they have chosen and relied upon for their care," she wrote. "In light of Texas' actions, CMS is not in a position to extend or renew the current [Medicaid contract].""

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BBC News - Syria and Libya: Two paths to freedom

BBC News - Syria and Libya: Two paths to freedom:

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Thursday, March 15, 2012

'Oklahoma, what have you done?' - CNN.com

'Oklahoma, what have you done?' - CNN.com: "State legislators made this decision Tuesday, voting 36-12 in the Senate and 84-12 in the House to override Gov. Brad Henry's veto of this law. (The Legislature also overrode the governor's veto of a second egregious law, HB 2780, which forces women to view an ultrasound before having an abortion.)
Oklahoma, what have you done?
Under this new law, a doctor may withhold information, mislead or even blatantly lie to a pregnant woman and her partner about the health of their baby if the doctor so much as thinks that fetal test results would cause a woman to consider abortion.
As expected, the anti-abortion movement is claiming victory. But this bill isn't "anti-abortion." It is devastating because it is anti-motherhood and anti-medicine."

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Senate judiciary committee endorses controversial contraceptive bill | ASU News | The State Press | Arizona State University

Senate judiciary committee endorses controversial contraceptive bill | ASU News | The State Press | Arizona State University: "Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the  Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”"

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Friday, March 9, 2012

BBC News - Oxfam warns of West Africa drought 'catastrophe'

BBC News - Oxfam warns of West Africa drought 'catastrophe': "Urgent action is needed to stop drought in West Africa's Sahel region turning into a humanitarian disaster affecting 13 million people, Oxfam says.

The charity says the international community waited too long to respond to famine in East Africa last year.

Oxfam has launched a £23m ($36m) emergency appeal to help reach more than a million of the most vulnerable."

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Consensual Rape in Francafrique Currency Markets | Think Africa Press

Consensual Rape in Francafrique Currency Markets | Think Africa Press: "Devaluation will release funds and extend a lifeline to the French Treasury, which may be called upon to bail out French banks exposed to the european debt crisis.

However, it will have a devastating effect on Africa. The last time there was such a devaluation most of French Africa suffered badly (except for the Presidents and their friends). Devaluation is useful if you have things to export which are made relatively cheaper. However, for most of francophone Africa the goods they have for export are raw materials and petroleum. Much of their manufactured goods, their services, their invisibles come from or through France. |Large amounts of food is imported from outside Africa and is growing daily in price as is transport. "

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Solving War Crimes With Wristbands: The Arrogance of 'Kony 2012' - Kate Cronin-Furman & Amanda Taub - International - The Atlantic

Solving War Crimes With Wristbands: The Arrogance of 'Kony 2012' - Kate Cronin-Furman & Amanda Taub - International - The Atlantic: "This awareness-based approach to atrocity strikes many people as worthwhile. As Samantha Power laid out in brutal detail in her book A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the United States has repeatedly failed to intervene to stop genocide and crimes against humanity because of our leaders' belief that public opinion would not support such a decision. In theory, awareness campaigns should remedy that problem. In reality, they have not -and may have even exacerbated it.

The problem is that these campaigns mobilize generalized concern -- a demand to do something. That isn't enough to counterbalance the costs of interventions, because Americans' heartlessness or apathy was never the biggest problem. Taking tough action against groups, like the LRA, that are willing to commit mass atrocities will inevitably turn messy. Soldiers will be killed, sometimes horribly. (Think Somalia.)"

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Meet The iPad 13: Imagining The iPad, Decades From Now

Meet The iPad 13: Imagining The iPad, Decades From Now: "If there’s one industry that chews up and spits out the hot new thing even more regularly than Hollywood, it’s Silicon Valley. Apple’s sleek, svelte new iPad, announced Wednesday, will soon resemble the Palm Treo of yesteryear -- clunky, maddeningly slow and impossibly out of fashion -- next to the thirteenth-generation iPad 13 or thirtieth-generation iPad 30, devices that futurists and researchers say could be immersive, personable, wearable and blazing fast."

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

BBC News - Syria's deputy oil minister announces resignation

BBC News - Syria's deputy oil minister announces resignation: "Syria's deputy oil minister has announced his resignation, saying he is joining the anti-government revolt.

Abdo Hussameddin announced his defection in a video posted on YouTube.

He is the highest ranking civilian to abandon President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising erupted a year ago."

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Diversify Your Dreams - Daniel Gulati - Harvard Business Review

Diversify Your Dreams - Daniel Gulati - Harvard Business Review: "If you're smart, well-intentioned, and under 35, you're particularly at risk. After analyzing our survey of over 500 business school students, this much is clear: You're a generation of idealists. Free from the traditional shackles of perceived prestige and financial compensation, you rate intellectual challenge as the most important reason for choosing a job. Not content with mere intellectual idealism, you also demand geographical optimization. You travel from country to country (an average of 4.6 times within 10 years of graduation), with 92% of your peers agreeing that more gender, professional, functional, sexual orientation, racial (and you-name-it) diversity is better. You're cross-pollinating industries, with 84% agreeing that it's essential for business leaders to understand the public and nonprofit sectors. And you're aggressive connectors — members of an average of 2.4 social networks. In short, you're feeling the unrelenting pressure to optimize amongst the vast array of choices available to you, and you won't stop debating, traveling, pollinating, and connecting until you hit on your "one thing." You've been told all your life not to compromise, and you're doing what you're told."

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Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France - The Washington Post

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France - The Washington Post: "In other cases, there is more time for loved ones to consider costs, but little emotional space to do so — no one wants to think there was something more they could have done to save their parent or child. It is not like buying a television, where you can easily comparison shop and walk out of the store, and even forgo the purchase if it’s too expensive. And imagine what you would pay for a television if the salesmen at Best Buy knew that you couldn’t leave without making a purchase."

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Monday, March 5, 2012

Why Spoiled Babies Grow Up to Be Smarter, Kinder Kids | Healthland | TIME.com

Why Spoiled Babies Grow Up to Be Smarter, Kinder Kids | Healthland | TIME.com: "All three studies suggested the same thing: children who are shown more affection early in life reap big benefits. Researchers found that kids who were held more by their parents, whose cries received quick responses in infancy and who were disciplined without corporal punishment were more empathic — that is, they were better able to understand the minds of others — later in life.

Although there were some differences between American and Chinese practices, “we found mostly parallels,” Narvaez notes."

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Sunday, March 4, 2012

BBC News - Russia election: Vladimir Putin seeks third term

BBC News - Russia election: Vladimir Putin seeks third term: "Mr Putin was head of state from 2000 to 2008, but barred by the constitution from standing for a third consecutive term. He faces four challengers.

Poll officials say turnout is higher than for the last election in 2008.

But opponents have reported widespread violations, with many people voting more than once.

The League of Voters volunteer observer group said it had recorded 3,000 violations in total."

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BBC News - Brazzaville munitions dump blast 'kills scores'

BBC News - Brazzaville munitions dump blast 'kills scores': "At least 150 people are reported to have been killed following huge explosions at an arms dump in Congo's capital Brazzaville.

The force of the blasts was felt several miles away in the city of Kinshasa, across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

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When States Abuse Women - NYTimes.com

When States Abuse Women - NYTimes.com: "“The state of Texas is waging war on women and their families,” Dr. Boyd added. “The new law is demeaning and disrespectful to the women of Texas, and insulting to the doctors and nurses who care for them.”

That law is part of a war over women’s health being fought around the country — and in much of the country, women are losing. State by state, legislatures are creating new obstacles to abortions and are treating women in ways that are patronizing and humiliating."

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Friday, March 2, 2012

BBC News - Foreign NGO workers reach Cyprus after leaving Egypt

BBC News - Foreign NGO workers reach Cyprus after leaving Egypt: "Seventeen foreign democracy activists, including Americans, at the centre of a row between Egypt and the US, have left Cairo after a travel ban was lifted.

On Thursday a US military plane flew them from Cairo to Cyprus. It is unclear how long they will stay there.

The activists - who worked at non-governmental organisations - were on trial for allegedly receiving illegal foreign funding and stirring up unrest.

The ongoing case has led to a major row, risking $1.3bn (£813m) in US aid."

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