Current Affairs: 2011: The year when a lot happened

2011: The year when a lot happened

A look back at the big stories on the BBC News website suggests it's been a tumultuous year, with uprisings across the Arab world, an earthquake in Japan and the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong-il. But can you instantly know if a year is going to go down in history.




BBC

As 2011 staggers to a close, it does feel somehow more momentous than an ordinary year. Regimes have crumbled, despots and demagogues were toppled, cities blazed and capitalism itself started looking a bit rough.

Even the speed of light changed, allegedly. Could this turn out to be a big, historical year to rank alongside 1989 (tanks in Tiananmen Square, dancing on the Berlin Wall), 1968 (tanks in Prague, riots in Paris, the death of Martin Luther King) or 1956 (Hungary, Suez, Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show)?

It's probably fair to say that the top story has to be the Arab Spring, although as a historical event, it's still a work in progress. And there are still arguments as to whether it is best regarded as a single event or a series of discrete revolts; it's fair to ask if a single Tunisian street vendor had not reacted to official harassment, would events have played out in the same way.

And there is always the matter of perspective. If you're not directly affected by events in North Africa or the Middle East, your own big headlines of 2011 might have been the births of the seven billionth child or South Sudan, the earthquakes in Turkey or New Zealand, the elections in Ireland or DR Congo or the deaths of footballer Socrates or singer Amy Winehouse.

But two facts are clear. One is that there are very few big stories that remain purely local. The knock-on effects of the tsunami in Japan forced governments around the world to review their nuclear power policies. Economic woes in a handful of countries affected the whole eurozone and beyond. The "Indignant" protesters in Spain set the agenda - fluid and unfocused as it may have been - for the Occupy movements in New York and London and beyond.

The floods in Thailand engulfed dozens of factories making electronic components, which means your next laptop or phone or games console may well cost more, wherever in the world you buy it. Followers of British politics will be sick of hearing it, but we really are all in this together.

The other change is that the way in which we receive and consume news of these events has become as significant as the events themselves. The first inkling of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden came not from President Obama's solemn press conference, but from one of the al-Qaeda leader's unwitting neighbours in Abbottabad, musing aloud on Twitter about the US helicopter that had suddenly disturbed his evening.

As English cities smouldered after nights of guerrilla consumerism, politicians and pundits debated the logistics of suspending the social media sites with which marauding hoodies had supposedly plotted the riots. And how many people first got the news of Steve Jobs's death via one of his own devices?

But it wasn't just the speed with which the news travelled, or the medium that carried it, that made 2011 stand apart from previous big years.

The news itself, the whole convoluted question of what we should and shouldn't be allowed to know, hogged the headlines for weeks on end. Julian Assange went from crusading hero to arrogant, dangerous weirdo, depending on who was telling the story, but the questions raised by Wikileaks, of the extent to which governments should be entitled to keep secrets from the people who elect them, remain live topics.

The super-injunctions saga in the UK prompted smirks and sniggers - again, many of them echoing around social media sites, which tend to be less nervous about libel laws - but did raise significant questions about whether public figures should be entitled to private lives.

And then the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, which had been rumbling for years, suddenly burst into public view, engulfing several careers, dragging several other newspapers into the argument and alerting us to Hugh Grant's middle name.

There were, as in any year, a number of natural disasters but in terms of death toll no single catastrophe to compare with the Bam earthquake in 2003, the tsunami in 2004 or the Sichuan quake in 2008. That said it's an uncomfortable truth that people in the West have a more intense reaction to such events befalling advanced, developed places such as Japan and New Zealand, compared to the response when they happen elsewhere.

So was 2011 really a big news year, like 1956, 1968 or 1989? Or is it just that each news story that rolls into view is now immediately seized on not just by the news media but by bloggers and Tweeters and Google+-ers who analyse it from every known political and religious and philosophical standpoint, with a good few conspiracy theories thrown in, so everything seems bigger and more complex - and usually far worse - than it might have done otherwise?

And even those who don't see themselves as part of either mainstream or unofficial media have taken the chance to peek behind Oz's curtain, to see how politicians and journalists and bankers and lobbyists have tweaked reality to their own ends.

In the end that - rather than any revolution or riot or earthquake or media scandal - may turn out to be the biggest, most historically significant story of the year.

Finance&Economics: Inditex sales growth slows on warmer weather

Inditex sales growth slows on warmer weather



The Financial Times

Sales growth in the third quarter at Inditex, the owner of the Zara clothes chain, was its second slowest quarter since 2001 in spite of the company achieving its highest ever gross margin.

Against a backdrop of unseasonably hot winter weather across Europe that has slowed sales of coats and jumpers, Inditex, which this year surpassed H&M to become the world’s largest listed clothing retailer by value, said that sales for the third quarter rose annually by 4.8 per cent to €3.5bn.

The Galicia-based outlet’s rapid proliferation of stores continued apace, opening 358 new outlets over the first nine months of the year, or almost 10 new stores every week across 45 separate countries. Its total store count now stands at 5,402 up to the end of October.

This included 79 new stores in China, taking its count to 250 across 42 cities. At the end of the third quarter the company said it had opened its first stores in South Africa, Taiwan and Azerbaijan, and would soon open outlets in Georgia and Peru.

Shares in Inditex, founded and still majority controlled by Amancio Ortega, Spain’s richest man, have hit all-time highs this year in spite of a large sell-off in the general market as the company has continued to show few severe signs of being affected by a sharp drop in consumer spending across Western Europe.

In Madrid, on Wednesday, shares were up more than 3 per cent in early trading at €63.63.

Inditex’s gross margin, a measure closely watched by investors and analysts anxious that rising costs have not shaved its profitability, was the company’s highest on record, increasing 100 basis points to 61.7 per cent compared to the third quarter in the previous year.

The company had previously pledged to investors to hold on to at least half of its gross margin gains from last year. By the third quarter all of its brands, which include Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, and Oysho, had launched online stores in Europe. The company does not yet split out its online sales.

Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation rose 5.8 per cent for the quarter from the year before to €956m, while net profit increased 6.4 per cent to €586m.

Earnings per share rose from €0.88 in the third quarter last year to €0.94.

Current Affairs: Italian black cat becomes a fat cat after inheriting 10 million euros

Italian black cat becomes a fat cat after inheriting 10 million euros

A black cat in Italy has lived up to its reputation for good luck after inheriting 10 million euros (£8.5 million) from his adoptive owner, a widowed heiress.



The Telegraph

Four-year-old Tommaso, who was saved from a hardscrabble existence on the mean streets of Rome, Italy, as a kitten, is now the proud owner of cash, shares and a property empire which includes flats and houses in Rome and Milan and land in Calabria.

Tommaso went from flea-bitten alley cat to "pussy galore" after being rescued by a lonely old lady, named only as Maria Assunta, who was married to a property tycoon but widowed at an early age. The couple had no children.

She became besotted with her pet but as her health began to fail, feared for his future.

So in November 2009 she wrote out a will in which she bequeathed her "entire estate" to the unknowing Tommaso.

She instructed her lawyers to "identify an animal welfare association or group to which to leave the estate and the commitment of looking after Tommaso".

But none of the animal welfare associations matched up to the old lady's exacting standards so she instead decided to leave her fortune to Tommaso through the nurse who had cared for her in her final months, a woman named Stefania.

The will came into force when the heiress died two weeks ago at the age of 94.

"She had become very fond towards the nurse who assisted her," Anna Orecchioni, one of the lawyers, told Il Messaggero newspaper.

"We're convinced that Stefania is the right person to carry out the old lady's wishes. She loves animals just like the woman she devoted herself to right up until the end."

The nurse said she had no inkling that her charge was so rich. "I promised her that I would look after the cat when she was no longer around. She wanted to be sure that Tommaso would be loved and cuddled. But I never imagined that she had this sort of wealth. She was very discreet and quite, I knew very little of her private life. She only told me that she had suffered from loneliness a lot."

Tommaso now lives with his new owner and another cat in a house outside Rome. The address is being kept a secret, out of fears that the newly-enriched moggy will be besieged by fortune hunters and con men.

Current Affairs: Spain tops the European table for number of overqualified workers

Spain tops the European table for number of overqualified workers

Almost one out of three people in jobs that do not match education level



EL PAÍS

Spain is the European Union country with the greatest amount of overqualified workers, meaning those with a college degree or vocational training certificate who hold a job beneath their training level. While the average for the EU of 27 was 19 percent, that figure reached 31 percent in Spain, according to a Eurostat study using 2008 figures.

These numbers refer to the native-born population. For the foreign-born, the over-qualification rate jumped to 58 percent in Spain versus 34 percent for the 27 members of the EU as a whole. The study concludes that "when employed, foreign-born persons often have more difficulties in finding a job corresponding to their level of education." The highest gap between overqualified natives and overqualified foreigners was to be found in Belgium, with rates of five percent and 14 percent respectively.

Over-qualification has been a serious problem in Spain for years, as the schooling level of the general population - especially attendance at higher education centers - has risen much faster than the number of available jobs for highly qualified workers. In a country whose economy has rested mostly on construction and the services sector, notably tourism, the percentage of the Spanish population with higher studies grew from 21 percent to 30 percent in the space of a decade, between 1999 and 2009.

An earlier study using 2006 data already showed Spain as being one of the countries with the largest number of overqualified workers (38 percent) in Europe. That study, however, did not differentiate between native-born and foreign-born workers.

In any case, three long years of economic crisis have elapsed since those figures were collected and analyzed, and there have been dramatic changes in the Spanish unemployment rate, which shot up from 11 percent to over 20 percent (45 percent for young people). In 2009, José García-Montalvo, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University, predicted that over-qualification levels in Spain could rise even more in the midterm, since many people with few or no studies and out of a job might take that opportunity to get a higher degree, thus pushing up overall educational levels in the country. Recent enrollment figures seem to confirm that prediction, as registrations in mid-level vocational courses grew over 15 percent in the last two school years, while college admissions rose around 10 percent.

Meanwhile, there is nothing to suggest a similar rise in available jobs for highly qualified workers.

Over-qualification rates may have already varied greatly for foreign-born workers, since nine out of every 10 people who move out of the country are foreigners, according to Spain's National Statistics Institute. The over-qualification rate for foreign-born workers in Spain was 58 percent in 2008, only surpassed by Greece at 62 percent. In general, the gap between both groups is enormous across the 27 member states. Foreigners were also much more likely to fall into poverty (18 percent for natives and 32 percent for foreigners) or to live in crowded dwellings (three percent versus 12 percent), a reflection of a less favorable socioeconomic situation.

VIDEO: HMS OCEAN´S CREW MIMING TO MARIAH CAREY´S CHRISTMAS SONG

HMS OCEAN´S CREW MIMING TO MARIAH CAREY´S CHRISTMAS SONG



The crew of the Royal Navy warship returning from supporting the UN air mission during the uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi decide to have a bit of fun ! The video on youtube has become a world-wide hit. The worrying thing is that these people are protecting the country !!!

Current Affairs: THEY are the first daughters of Europe's retail royalty

THEY are the first daughters of Europe's retail royalty.




Young heiresses Marta Ortega Perez, of Zara, and Topshop's Chloe Green are both being groomed by their fathers to inherit billion-dollar global fashion empires, potentially propelling them into the ranks of the world's richest women.

The athletic and elegant Marta, 27, started work at her father's company Zara, stocking shelves and folding clothes in the Spanish company's London and Barcelona stores.

Her 72-year-old father Amancio Ortega net worth $31 billion is the richest man in Spain and the seventh richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Marta stands to inherit his fashion giant Inditex's 5221 shops in 80 countries around the world, operating under brand names including Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear and Bershka.

The group has 92,000 employees and a $16,874 million turnover last year.

The company also expanded into Australia for the first time, opening a Zara store in Melbourne this year.

Marta's inheritance also includes a massive luxury real estate portfolio, including commercial office blocks in Miami, New York, Lisbon, London, Moscow, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris; a horse-jumping circuit her father built for her, a stake in a Spanish football team and interests in gas, tourism and banks.

It is a fortune worth 24 times more than Paris Hilton's, according to Vanity Fair.

But unlike Hilton, the university-educated Marta is a mystery to the press.

"Discreet and inaccessible, she doesn't concede interviews," Spanish society magazine Vanitatis said.

"She only has eyes for her family, her boyfriend, horses and the family firm which, perhaps very shortly, will be more hers than ever."

Co-workers at the Zara branch in London's Chelsea, where Marta worked in 2007, recalled a shy girl.

"Sometimes she doesn't even look up from the ground," a former co-worker told Spanish newspaper El Correo.

"One day, when I didn't know who she was, I looked and saw a really expensive Rolex watch on her wrist.

"In Zara, we can all wear the latest fashion items but not a watch like that.

Ortega, the son of a railway worker, made dressing gowns in his living room before opening his first shop in 1975.

He handed the direction of Inditex to his number two, Pablo Isla, 46, when he stepped down as president of Inditex at the start of this year.

Marta, who has worked in the company's offices in Paris and Asia, will be handed control from Isla when she feels ready, industry analysts predicted.

Marta is believed to be working in the company's marketing department and is due to marry show jumper Sergio Alvarez Moya in Spain in February in a Zara-made wedding dress.

"You couldn't say Marta was a pupil who got top marks at school but like her father, she always had a great deal of will and a strong work ethic," a family friend told El Pais.

"She's also a very sensible person and that can make her appear older than she is."

Marta's father is adamant his daughter stays out of the spotlight, telling reporters in 2008: "Who knows what the future holds? What I don't want is the newspapers talking about her. I want the press to leave her alone so she can learn and work and we'll see what she can do in the future."

Finance&Economics: Europe’s Financial Crisis, in Plain English

Europe’s Financial Crisis, in Plain English



The New York Times

Much like our own recent housing crisis, the European financial mess is unfolding in a foreign language. It is the lingua franca of financial obscurity — “sovereign credit spreads” and other terms that most people don’t need, or care, to know.

Yet the bottom line is simple: Europe’s problems are a lot like ours, only worse. Like Wall Street, Germany is where the money is. Italy, like California, has let bad governance squander great natural resources. Greece is like a much older version of Mississippi — forever poor and living a bit too much off its richer neighbors. Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia are like the heartland states that learned the hard way how entwined so-called Main Street is with Wall Street. Now remember that these countries share neither a government nor a language. Nor a realistic bailout plan, either.

Lack of fluency in financialese shouldn’t preclude anyone from understanding what is going on in Europe or what may yet happen. So we’ve answered some of the most pressing questions in a language everyone can comprehend. Though the word for “Lehman” in virtually any language is still “Lehman.”

Q: Will the euro survive?

It’s a dangerous question to ask out loud. Suppose a credible rumor spread throughout Greece that, rather than accept the harsh terms of another bailout package, the government was plotting to revert to the drachma. Fearing the devaluation of their savings, Greeks would move their money somewhere safer, like a German bank. The Greek banking system would then, in all likelihood, implode.

But Greece’s economy is too small for an isolated collapse to cause any significant damage throughout the continent. (Even a collapse confined to Greece, Ireland and Portugal couldn’t take down Europe.) So the concern about a run on the Greek banking system is largely about whether a panic might spread to Spain or — worse — Italy, which could topple Europe’s financial system. Maybe that’s why the treaty that created the euro doesn’t say anything about a country’s abandoning the currency. Or why European leaders scarcely mentioned the possibility (not in public, at least) until this fall, two years into the crisis.

Q: Why is it such a bad thing for a country to abandon the euro?

If a country did pull off a surprise euro exit — and get out before everybody could take their money out of the banks — there would still be a period of economic chaos. Exports and imports would shut down. Lending would collapse, which would send companies into bankruptcy. Ripple effects would be felt throughout Europe.

The problem is thorny enough that the British chief executive of Next, a European retailer, recently offered a £250,000 prize for the person who comes up with the best plan for countries to leave the euro without destroying the European economy. (Have a brilliant idea? Entries are due early next year.)

Q: Wait a minute: If leaving the eurozone would be so awful, why would anyone do it?

It’s not all bad. Leaving the euro would allow a country to ignore demands from the leaders of other European countries. It could simply refuse to pay its debt.

After the short-run pain, weaker European countries could also see a long-term benefit. If Greece or Portugal went back to the drachma or the escudo, the cost of their exports would fall. Because it would be cheaper for foreign travelers to stay in their hotels and eat in their restaurants, their tourism industries would get a bump, too. The alternative is to spend the next decade as poor countries tied to a rich one’s currency.

Q: Why exactly does Angela Merkel always look so woebegone?

For the euro to survive in the long run, Germany — the zone’s biggest economy — will most likely need to vouch for the debt of struggling eurozone members. And it will become more expensive to borrow money if bond investors fear the country is becoming overextended.

The Germans are also wary of the widespread calls for the European Central Bank to buoy Spain and Italy by buying their bonds. If they know the E.C.B. will bail them out, what will be their incentive to act responsibly in the future? Worse, Germans argue, printing money to pay off government debt (which is what the E.C.B. would essentially be doing) is the first step to hyperinflation.

Q: What happens to the European Union if the euro crumbles?

It turns out that a bunch of vastly different countries, each with control over its own budget but all bound to a common currency, is not a sustainable economic model. And that leaves Europe with two main, and painful, options.

Option 1: Keep the euro, and make the eurozone even more integrated. While this doesn’t necessarily require a full-blown United States of Europe, individual countries would probably have to give bureaucrats in Brussels or Frankfurt power over how much money they can spend. The E.C.B. might promise to do whatever is necessary to stop a panic, but poorer eurozone countries would very likely endure years of difficult economic adjustments, including falling wages.

Option 2: Greece and perhaps a few other struggling countries on the periphery leave the euro. A Greek exit alone might give the European dream a hard kick in the teeth, but it wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. It might, in fact, even prod European leaders to act more boldly to defend the rest of the eurozone. But the departure of Italy — the zone’s third-largest economy — would be a different story. Italy is what wonks call a systemically important country, which means that it is so big, and so intertwined with the rest of Europe, that it would take the whole eurozone down with it. Think massive disruptions to European trade, chaos in the financial system and a dose of political and social unrest.

Q: What does this mean for the U.S.?

Fortunately, exports to eurozone countries amount to only about 3 percent of America’s overall economy. The bigger worry, though, is the financial system. U.S. banks say their exposure to Europe is manageable, but when you ask smart people what a financial disaster in Europe would mean for the U.S., their answer usually goes, “Blah, blah, blah, Lehman.” To put a finer point on it: when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in the fall of 2008, it initiated a global financial panic greater than almost anyone predicted, largely because of uncertainty. Nobody knew who owed what to whom. The global financial system froze, with disastrous consequences.

European banks currently hold an extraordinary amount of European debt. And while U.S. banks have been reporting more details about their exposure to European banks, there still is a tremendous sense of uncertainty about who is on the hook, and for what, exactly. If Europe’s biggest banks go down, it could very well cause another Lehman-like crisis in the U.S. The good news: It’s still an “if.”