I. ECONOMIST: Female power - Women in the global workforce
The economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years. It is remarkable because of the extent of the change: millions of people who were once dependent on men have taken control of their own economic fates. It is remarkable also because it has produced so little friction: a change that affects the most intimate aspects of people’s identities has been widely welcomed by men as well as women. Dramatic social change seldom takes such a benign form. Yet even benign change can come with a sting in its tail. Social arrangements have not caught up with economic changes. Many children have paid a price for the rise of the two-income household. Many women—and indeed many men—feel that they are caught in an ever-tightening tangle of commitments. If the empowerment of women was one of the great changes of the past 50 years, dealing with its social consequences will be one of the great challenges of the next 50. At the end of her campaign to become America’s first female president in 2008, Hillary Clinton remarked that her 18m votes in the Democratic Party’s primaries represented 18m cracks in the glass ceiling. In the market for jobs rather than votes the ceiling is being cracked every day. Women now make up almost half of American workers (49.9% in October). They run some of the world’s best companies, such as PepsiCo, Archer Daniels Midland and W.L. Gore. They earn almost 60% of university degrees in America and Europe. Progress has not been uniform, of course. In Italy and Japan employment rates for men are more than 20 percentage points higher than those for women. Although Italy’s female employment rate has risen markedly in the past decade, it is still below 50%, and more than 20 percentage points below those of Denmark and Sweden. Women earn substantially less than men on average and are severely under-represented at the top of organisations. The change is dramatic nevertheless. A generation ago working women performed menial jobs and were routinely subjected to casual sexism—as “Mad Men”, a television drama about advertising executives in the early 1960s, demonstrates brilliantly. Today women make up the majority of professional workers in many countries (51% in the United States, for example) and casual sexism is for losers. Even holdouts such as the Mediterranean countries are changing rapidly. In Spain the proportion of young women in the labour force has now reached American levels. The glass is much nearer to being half full than half empty.
Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said Wednesday. "We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio. "We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station. "Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said. The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France. Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts. Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new "space apparatus" designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth safely. "There won't be any nuclear explosions," Perminov said. "Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this." In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space agency NASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated "a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036." "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million," NASA said. RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres (18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 -- closer than some geo-stationary satellites -- and could shift course to hit Earth seven years years after that.
III. SPANISHNEWS: Spain takes up EU Presidency
Spain is due to take up the EU Presidency on January 1 and the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has set four important goals for his country as the day draws nearer. The Spanish PM had reached Cyprus on December 25th as part of a holiday trip. He met Cyprus President Demetris Christofias in Nicosia and was able to draw an outline for the goals during the talks with Christofias. Addressing the reporters after the talks, Zapatero said, “These goals are the financial development and the EU financial future, external relations with the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Latin America, Russia and the inter-Atlantic relations, the broadening of EU citizens’ rights, focusing on equality between the two sexes and the quick implementation of the Lisbon Treaty”. Zapatero also said that he talked about the relations between the two countries and promised full support in the peace talks directed towards the unification of Cyprus. Cyprus had been divided into Greek and Turkish Cypriot areas in 1974 when the Turkish military had intervened as an answer to a coup by Greek army officers. Christofias has assured the Spanish PM that Cyprus is in favor of Turkey’s complete accession to the European Union, but for that to happen, Turkey should not shy away from fulfilling the obligations it has towards Cyprus and the European Union.
IV. RADIOSRBIJA: Kosovo is not condition for Serbia in EU
Serbia will never recognize the independence of Kosovo, and one of the biggest successes of the Serbian state policy in 2009, is that we have received clear assurances from all the major European factors that no one will force Serbia to earn membership in the EU through recognition of the independence of the southern province - Serbian President Boris Tadic stated last night. Stating that some EU states such as Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia are very adamant in their position that they will not recognize the independence of Kosovo at any cost, Tadic said that these days some countries announced that they will review their decision to recognize the secession of the Province after the ICJ in the Hague communicates its stance. Responding to citizens' questions in RTS program, the President stressed that the issue of Kosovo should not be an obstacle in the process of European integration of Serbia considering that those are two separate issues. Tadic also said that in the coming days, he will visit Kosovo in order to show that Serbia will not give up fighting for its southern province and its citizens who live there.
V. VOANEWS: Iranian Cleric Calls Opposition 'Enemies of God'
An Iranian cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei says the country's opposition leaders are "enemies of God" who could be executed according to Islamic law. The statement by Ayatollah Abbas Vaez Tabasi came Tuesday as opposition groups reported the arrests of more activists following Sunday's anti-government protests that left eight people dead. At least 20 high-profile opposition figures or their associates have been detained since Sunday. Among them are the brother-in-law of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and the sister of Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. Dubai TV also says its reporter in Tehran has been missing since Sunday. Opposition Web sites reported new protests and clashes between students and security forces at a university in Tehran Tuesday, as state-run television announced a crackdown on students it accused of being "responsible for seditious acts." State TV broadcast images of pro-government rallies, two days after tens of thousands of people turned the Shi'ite Muslim religious ritual of Ashura into massive anti-government protests. Sunday's violence was the most serious in Iran since protests erupted after the disputed June election that gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.
VI. JAXOBSERVER: Airliner Plot Raises Gitmo Worries
The alleged Christmas Day plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner further complicates President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and send some of the 198 terrorism suspects held there back to their own countries. National security experts and members of Congress are calling on the White House to halt plans to repatriate more detainees after a branch of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the alleged attack attempt. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said in an Internet post Monday that the effort to bring down Northwest Flight 253 was in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes against the group in Yemen. Roughly 90 of the detainees at Guantanamo are from Yemen, where al-Qaeda cells have launched attacks and destabilized the government. The incident Friday means “we have the clearest indication yet that the president’s continual release of Guantanamo Bay detainees presents an unacceptable risk to American lives,” said Kirk Lippold, commander of the USS Cole when it was attacked by al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2000. Yemen “is incapable of containing a growing terrorist insurgency.” The nearly 200 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are “the most dangerous of the terrorists we brought there,” Lippold said. “They are high-level al-Qaeda or Taliban.” When Obama took office in January, he ordered that the prison be closed and that each detainee’s case be reviewed. On Dec. 15, the White House announced plans for the federal government to buy a prison in Thomson, Ill., to house detainees to be tried before military tribunals and those who officials determine cannot be prosecuted or released. The White House has not said whether more detainees are slated to be returned to Yemen. Others say closing Guantanamo could be in jeopardy.
VII. PRAVMIR: Christmas is All about Doing the Unusual
Our friends and peers (others our age) can have a huge influence on our decisions. So often, many of our choices are based on what our friends or peers will think about us because we want to be accepted by them. We avoid doing things that might make us seem unusual or weird to them. Are we wearing the right clothes, listening to the right music, hanging out with the right people? The answers to these questions are heavily influenced by what our friends and peers will say and think of us. However, sometimes the cost of pleasing our friends comes at a very high price. You may have found yourself doing the following things to be accepted and not seem unusual: you may have stopped yourself from befriending someone who’s not cool, because your friends would think you’re weird. You may have starved yourself or are bulimic in order to have the right body image and to be accepted. You may have stopped hanging out with a life-long friend because your new group of friends doesn’t embrace them. You may do drugs or get drunk because it’s the only way to be part of you crew and get attention. You may have changed your personality and your interests and hobbies to fit in with the “in” crowd. You may have been silent about your faith in God because of being ridiculed. You may have laughed at someone because they have no fashion sense. These are just a few examples of the things you may have done so you could be accepted by your friends and not seem unusual or weird to them. The above actions may make our friends happy, but they hurt God. Why? Because God knows that when we do these things, we will not like the person we’ve become. God knows that we won’t feel good about what we’ve done, and we’ll begin to feel empty inside. God doesn’t want you to feel like this. To have the feelings God wants you to have, you need to do those things that you were created by God to do—love God and others. Only then will you truly feel good about yourself and your actions. You also have to be okay with potentially being considered weird or unusual by your “friends” and peers. Believe it or not, the message of Christmas can give us comfort and encouragement to deal with our friends and peers. Christmas is all about God doing something that was considered highly unusual, weird and offensive to many people—He became a human being. This was unusual because God, who created EVERYTHING, who is all powerful, and immortal, freely chose to become mortal, and to experience pain, suffering, love, and everything else humans experience. Jesus’ opponents could not and would not believe that God would do something so unusual and weird. It was not just God becoming a human that was unusual to people, but the things Jesus did while He was on earth, like hanging out with people who weren’t part of the “in” crowd, that caused his opponents to get upset with Him. Our God didn’t let what others thought of Him stop Him from doing what He needed to do, even though it meant that some of His own people would consider Jesus unusual and weird. We too, should not be influenced by our friends just because they might consider us unusual or weird. Don’t be afraid to befriend the person who is not popular; don’t hurt yourself to have a certain body image; return to the personality and interests you had before you changed it to fit in (as long as your personality and interests are pleasing to God☺). Apologize to the person you ridiculed. If someone asks you why you don’t sleep with your boyfriend or girlfriend, tell them that your Church wants you to have that special moment with the one who is willing to spend the rest of their life with you. You may be considered weird or unusual for doing these things, but you’ll feel good about yourself because you’re doing those things that God designed you to do. Keep in mind that when you do those things that are pleasing to God but unusual to your friends, either your friends will learn to accept your decisions or they will not. There’s a possibility that they may not want to be your friends anymore. If that’s the case, then that would be really sad, but, I assure you, there are people your age who will embrace your God-pleasing decisions. May the message of Christmas give you the strength and comfort to do those things that might seem unusual to your friends and peers but perfectly normal to God!