Daily News Channel
The use of rubber bullets by South African police against striking public-sector workers in Soweto — erstwhile cauldron of antiapartheid protest — carries a symbolic significance that will send shockwaves through the country. But it also marks a milestone in the slow transition by the ruling African National Congress from being a rebel movement that reflexively backed striking workers to being a government that can’t afford to heed their demands
By the time President Obama sat down with House Republicans on June 1 to talk about the exploding public debt, the economic data had been grim for days: another decline in home values, a new dip in consumer confidence and, just that morning, the lowest manufacturing-sector growth rate in more than a year and a dismal payroll report showing job growth far below expectations. In another era, these sorts of numbers would have led to a predictable chain of events for either a Republican or a Democratic President: rush to the cameras, empathize with those suffering the pain and declare that help is on the way.
It may be hard for Americans to fathom a world in which corporations, instead of merely lamenting the shortage of skilled labor, volunteer to train vast numbers of the non-college-bound.
In the midst of a steaming-hot Malaysian jungle, sweat-stained factory workers bend over their looms, threading copper into bales of cable wire that gets so hot, it must snake through culverts of water before it can be touched. The factory floor is awash in tea-colored light from windows smeared with soot
The earthquake that hit Burma last week wasn’t the deadliest disaster to strike the Southeast Asian nation this month.
Just two weeks ago, Libya’s oil chief boasted to reporters in Tripoli that the country’s huge energy business could ride out the conflict and quickly recover.