Six In The Morning

Despite changes to one-child policy, Chinese parents say having two kids is too expensive

 

By Le Li, NBC News Producer

BEIJING – Despite China announcing changes to its strict one-child policy, many young parents say they will not choose to have a second child due to the high cost of living in modern-day China.

“Giving birth to a second child is not difficult, but we do not have the energy anymore,” said Wang Tao, a 35-year-old native of Beijing, who is married and has a 5-year-old daughter.

“We lack a safe social net to support a family with two children,” Wang added. “China doesn’t provide a pension or free education,” he said while ticking off a list of things that make having a larger family a financial burden.

Thailand clashes: PM forced to flee as violent demonstrations escalate

Fighting between supporters and opponents of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra turns deadly in Bangkok

Staff and agencies in Bangkok

theguardian.com, Sunday 1 December 2013 05.48 GMT

A Thai government supporter was shot and killed early on Sunday at protests in Bangkok, raising the death toll to two as protesters invaded a police compound and forced the evacuation of the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, to a secret location.

Some reports said anti-government demonstrators had seized control of the broadcaster Thai PBS.

Police backed up by the military were attempting to protect government buildings amid the deadly street clashes between supporters and opponents of Yingluck and her billionaire brother, the ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Locals count toxic cost of Sochi Games: Builders are dumping waste, polluting rivers and cutting off villages ahead of Winter Olympics

Despite Russia’s ‘Zero Waste’, builders continue to dump hazardous material in environmentally sensitive areas

 ALEC LUHN  AKHSHTYR  Sunday 01 December 2013

“These Olympics left us without a road and without water but gave us a quarry and a waste dump,” laments one resident of a village that has been left cut off by Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.

As construction continues at a feverish tilt in the scramble to finish venues for the Sochi Games, so too are reports of dumping waste as authorities round up environmental activists who are revealing the cost of Russia’s Winter Olympics.

In Akhshtyr near Sochi, at the same time Vladimir Putin assures the world that February’s Games will come at no cost to the environment, locals have stopped swimming in the river Mzymta. They claim that pollution from dumps, where construction waste from the Games has been covertly disposed of, means they cannot sell the kurma fruit that grows in the village because it is covered in limestone dust.

 Billions from Beijing: Africans Divided over Chinese Presence

Chinese companies have pumped billions into Africa to secure access to natural resources, boosting countries’ economies along the way. Ordinary citizens aren’t reaping the benefits, though, and have become increasingly wary of the new investors.

 By Bartholomäus Grill in Bagamayo, Tanzania

Everything is as it has always been: decayed rows of houses, weathered doorframes with intricate carvings, potholed dirt roads, fishing boats rotting on the beach and, in the middle of it all, the Boma, a stone fortress built by the former German conquerors in Bagamayo, a sleepy coastal town in Tanzania.

Bagamayo was the capital of the colony of German East Africa from 1888 to 1891, when the administrative seat was moved to Dar es Salaam because the shore in Bagamayo was too shallow for a real seaport. Since then, time seems to have stood still.

The PRI and its most notable critic

McClatchy Foreign Staff

The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a staunch free market advocate, has been one of the most notable critics of the ruling party in Mexico in the past.

After all, it was Vargas Llosa who in 1990 labeled the then-long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party as architect of the “perfect dictatorship.” It was a phrase that lingered for many years in reference to the PRI.

As I note in a story today elsewhere on this website, Vargas Llosa has had a change of opinion. These days, he finds the PRI more democratic and its reform policies “sensible.”

Leading Egyptian activist turns himself in

CAIRO (Reuters)

 Ahmad Maher, a symbol of the popular uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, turned himself in to the authorities on Saturday after an order was issued for his arrest for defying a new law restricting demonstrations.

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The protest law, passed a week ago by the army-backed interim government, has provoked an outcry among rights groups. The army deposed elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi on July 3, following mass protests against his rule, and the country has seen widespread unrest since.

Maher and around 100 supporters made their way to the Abdeen court, chanting: “Down, down with military rule! I’ll write on the prison wall that army rule is shameful and a betrayal!”