European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann said policy makers are already discussing ways to withdraw some of the emergency cash they injected into the banking system to fight the sovereign debt crisis.
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Zellipah Githui’s route to the research offices of Monsanto Co., where she was hired in early 2006, was not the typical one.
Growing up in a remote rural village in Kenya, Githui’s family members were (and are) subsistence farmers. But her parents urged their 17 children to pursue an education, and that eventually led Githui to Missouri, where she earned her MBA. Githui soon landed a job at the world’s largest biotechnology company, where she now coordinates field sampling at sites across the country.
After 14 years in the U.S., Githui recently decided to look homeward, where she has started a nonprofit group to help rural women farmers in Kenya — the people, she says, who are at the heart of her country’s food production. Last year, the organization helped 16 women farmers learn better growing practices via a Kenyan agronomist, using better fertilizers and hybrid seeds. The results were promising. Now in it’s second full year, the organization is growing.
How did you come up with the idea for your project?
I struggled with how I can help my community in a way that they can be independent and can do it for themselves. I thought about a school for orphans, or a primary school. But I woke up one morning in September 2010, and I just had the idea to do something with farming…. In Kenya, mainly the women do the farming, by virtue of the fact that there’s not much employment, and historically, not much education. In Kenya land is inherited, but it’s to the men, and the plots are getting small. So a farm we used to grow food on, we can’t anymore. The land is tired, so to speak. But we come from a productive area; we know it can be productive.
How did you start?
I went to an educated woman – a friend of the family. I knew she was a good fit, a go-getter. I said: let’s get a group together…. I said: You guys do this every day, you have the experience. You provide me a piece of land and labor, I’ll take care of the rest – the seed, the fertilizer, the manure.
How did the first year go?
They planted maize, planted bananas payday loans no faxing. Some did potatoes, some did tomatoes. The corn was very good, until the reproductive stage, when the rains failed. So there was not much harvest. It went to the cows, so they had a good season. But more importantly was the change – the ‘Ah’ that this can happen on their own farm. The farmers who weren’t part of the group, they saw the obvious changes. They learned proper planting, proper inputs. They were guided by the agronomist I hired. They learned to grow one crop at a time – they normally practice inter-cropping… They’re seeing big, big differences.
How do you fund the project?
The agronomists give them the guidance – how much seed, fertilizers, spraying they need. They give me a dollar figure, in Kenyan shillings, and I send it to them…. When I started, I had no model. I just said: I can do this, I’m going to do this. I sell jewelry at craft fairs; I’ve had garage sales.
What’s the next step?
The goal was to start small, but I want it to get bigger, too…. Right now we have a good problem: People want this. So how can I keep doing this? The next step is to find the resources. I would like this to keep growing, and changing the lives of people in my area. Personally, it’s been a very fulfilling journey, knowing where I’ve come from and where I am. It’s been very fulfilling to give back.
ZELLIPAH GITHUI
Title: Metabolite Analysis Platform Logistical Coordinator, Monsanto Co., Founder Project Gold Finger/The Rural Women Development Initiative of Kenya.
Education: Bachelor’s degrees from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and Pittsburg (CQ) State University. MBA from Southwest Missouri State University.
Home: Florrisant
Family: Nine-year old son, 16 brothers and sisters
As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.
Greek political leaders were meeting Wednesday to hammer out an agreement on austerity reforms as the nation scrambles to avoid a default.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and the leaders of Greece’s governing coalition are debating a draft of reforms aimed at cutting public spending, including layoffs, minimum wage reductions and pension reforms.
Greece needs to finalize the austerity program soon to pave the way for a second bailout of €130 billion from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. Without these funds, Greece could miss a €14.5 billion bond redemption in March.
If the leaders can agree to the austerity measures, Papademos is expected to call a cabinet meeting, followed by a largely symbolic vote in the Greek parliament. The whole process could take several days to finalize.
The negotiations were postponed twice this week amid political wrangling and protests by Greek labor unions. But the pressure to reach a deal was on after finance ministers from the 17 nations that use the euro announced plans to hold an impromptu meeting Thursday.
The finance ministers will discuss the situation in Greece, according to a spokesman for Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker.
"The president has decided it is the right time," for the ministers to meet, the spokesman said. "Discussion is needed now."
What’s next for Europe?
Greece, which owes some €330 billion, has come close to default before.
The nation has struggled to follow through on austerity measures and economic reforms that were a condition of its 2010 bailout package. But the Greek economy has been in recession for years and many analysts warn that additional austerity could make the situation worse.
Papademos announced Sunday that party leaders had agreed on the "main elements" of the program, including a plan to reduce public spending by 1 no fax cash loans.5% of gross domestic output this year.
On Monday, Papademos and Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos met with officials from the EU, IMF and ECB, collectively known as the troika.
In a statement issued after the meeting, Venizelos said the Greek people face a "dramatic and acute dilemma."
The austerity reforms under discussion will have "very high social costs," he said. But if negotiations fail, that would bankrupt the country and lead to "even greater sacrifices," he warned.
"The finalization of the new loan agreement and receipt of money is vital for the salvation of Greece," said Venizeols.
Meanwhile, Greece appears close to a deal with its creditors in the private sector to write down a portion of the nation’s debt.
My Big Fat Greek speculative rally
The agreement, which would result in significant losses for bondholders, is intended to help reduce Greece’s debts to 120% of GDP by 2020, from about 160% currently.
The worsening Greek economy has raised calls for the nation’s creditors in the "official sector" to provide some relief.
The European Central Bank, which holds an estimated €30 billion to €45 billion of Greek debt, is under pressure to forego profits on those bonds, as are individual euro area central banks.
The ECB is reportedly considering a plan to swap its Greek bonds, which the bank bought at a discount, for securities issued by the European Financial Stability Facility. The ECB would reportedly not suffer a loss on the transaction, but the move could help save Greece €11 billion.
– CNN’s Elinda Labropoulou contributed reporting from Athens.
They line up at soup kitchens by the thousands. Individual debt is rising, savings are eroding and many young people have simply given up, staying home without studying or even looking for a job.
They are Italy’s invisible poor, unseen by tourists, ignored by the country’s fat-cat politicians and living in a reality that’s a far cry from former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s description of an affluent country where “the restaurants are full.”
Or in the words of Francesa Zuccari, who runs a soup kitchen in Rome: “There is another city out there where people can’t get to the end of the month.”
This is the Italy facing Mario Monti, the economics professor tapped to form an interim technocratic government after Berlusconi was forced to resign last weekend. International markets and the European Community decided the 75-year-old media mogul lacked the political clout to enact needed reforms to head off a debt crisis and get the economy moving.
On Tuesday, Monti won support from Italy’s two largest parties, but the question remains whether politicians will back his expected painful reform measures at the risk of social peace.
On the one hand, Italy’s elite manufacturers are girding for an increase in luxury exports and some wealthy Italians are looking to move their money into the real-estate markets in New York, Miami and Paris.
On the other, the state statistics institute ISTAT says 8 million Italians, almost 14 percent of the population, are living in “relative poverty.”
While tourists may not see the poor as they visit Tuscany’s rolling hills, Venice’s waterways or the Amalfi coast’s picturesque villages, they are increasingly visible on Italian city streets.
Many Italians have begun taking their money out of banks, fearing reports that measures to help fight the sovereign debt crisis might include deductions from bank accounts, as was done in the 1990s.
“They are putting it under the mattress, or even inside empty wine jugs in the cellars. We are a country of farmers,” said Elio Lannutti, president of consumer protection group Adusbef.
An American service organization in Rome asked its members to spend their Thanksgiving holiday next week making food packages for the poor. Zuccari said demand for food parcels had risen 20 percent in the last few years, with well-dressed Italians now joining immigrants in line.
Caritas, the Roman Catholic church’s charity arm, says growing numbers of families can’t meet a surprise expense of euro700 ($947) without turning to borrowing.
“What is really dramatic is the geographic division,” said Caritas’ Walter Nanni, pointing to figures that Italy’s south remains severely impoverished.
While only 18 percent of families in the Alpine province of Trento could not meet such an unexpected payment for medical expenses or car repairs, the figure rises to 48 percent in Sicily.
“The (south) shows in a particular manner growing signs of economic and social vulnerability,” Monsignor Mariano Crociata, secretary-general of the Italian Bishops Conference, said in an October report on poverty.
To be sure, Italy isn’t as bad off as Greece or Portugal, which are both in recession, struggling with high unemployment as they are being bailed out by international lenders.
But Italy’s prospects aren’t great either, particularly given its brain drain and policies that have pushed Italy’s underutilized youth even further to the margins.
A gerontocracy dominates Italy’s key professional posts, making workers even well into their 40s still considered up-and-coming. In the highest political circles, Monti is 68, Berlusconi is 75 and the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, is 86.
Many younger Italians in fields like medicine, science and technology leave for countries that have more professional opportunities and mobility.
And the prospects for those who have not left are eroding fast. The Bank of Italy this month reported that nearly one in four Italians under 30 _ a total of 2.2 million people _ neither study nor work.
The great majority of the Italian NEET’s _ short for “Not in Education, Employment or Training” _ live at home with at least one parent, and a full 25 percent are living in a family where no one is working, the bank said.
A university degree does little to alleviate their plight: A full 20 percent of college graduates are without a job.
Lawyers in Italy must do a two-year apprenticeship before taking the bar exam, and most firms take advantage of the requirement to get free labor out of the trainees. Among the measures being discussed to confront the debt crisis would be a requirement that internships are paid.
“At least with Monti there is some hope since he is not a politician subject to pressure from the lobbies,” said Francesco Bureca, who graduated from an elite school but can’t land a job.
But hardline leftists expect no improvement for Italy’s poor, even from the new government.
“The Monti government is born from a mandate of Confindustria (a powerful business lobby) and the banks,” said Marco Ferrando, leader of the tiny Communist Workers Party.
He called for new protests. Italy’s last major economic protest this fall ended in a bloody riot on the streets of Rome.
____
Barry reported from Milan.
Yemeni government forces and allied tribesmen killed 10 militants in attacks around the country Sunday, security officials said, as a visiting United Nations envoy met with embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh to push for a solution to the country’s political crisis.
Security has collapsed across the Arab world’s poorest nation during the nine-month popular uprising seeking to oust Saleh, who has been in power for 30 years.
Pro-Saleh forces regularly engage in deadly clashes with armed tribesmen and military defectors who support the protesters in Yemen’s largest cities, and al-Qaida-linked militants have taken control of entire towns in the country’s restive south.
Two of Sunday’s clashes took place near Zinjibar, the largest town overrun by al-Qaida-linked militants in Yemen’s southern Abyan province, now partially recaptured by the army. In one clash, tribesmen allied with government forces exchanged fire with militants at a checkpoint, killing three, including two Somali citizens, an official said. In the other, the army shelled a militant position, killing five, including two Saudi citizens.
Months of violence have forced more than 100,000 residents of Zinjibar to flee to neighboring provinces, where some have sought refuge in schools.
In the Arhab region, north of the capital Sanaa, Yemeni forces shelled positions held by armed anti-government tribesmen, killing two, another security official said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
Months of international diplomacy has failed to resolve the crisis. Saleh has refused numerous times to follow through on a U.S.-backed proposal crafted by Yemen’s powerful Gulf Arab neighbors, under which he would transfer power to his vice president in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
In Sanaa, U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar met Saleh Sunday to push for a transfer of power.
The U.N. said Benomar’s weeklong visit to Yemen was intended to encourage the Gulf-backed proposal, which the Security Council has endorsed.
A spokesman for the Yemen Observatory for Human Rights, Al-Galil Waddah, told The Associated Press that about 400 people have been killed in protests that began in February. He estimated that the number of fighters and civilians killed in clashes in the south and Arhab region could be much higher.
Saleh’s critics accuse him of allowing the militants to take over cities in the south to support his argument that without him, al-Qaida would take control of the country.
“Saleh has used war and chaos to suppress the protests. He is trying to say that his presence is the only way for Yemen’s stability and so he allowed al-Qaida and fighters to run free in southern Yemen,” Waddah said.
He said the group’s office in Sanaa was taken over by security forces in mid-September and continues to be used as a rest house by soldiers, who also confiscated the group’s computers and files.
In those files, he said, the group documented dozens of cases of political prisoners alleging abuse at the hands of security forces in Sanaa and the country’s second largest city, Taiz.
Some of the prisoners are missing, while others who were released said they were beaten and threatened with rape. The abuse, according to Waddah, took place in government facilities as well as abandoned residential buildings.
Taiz, a hotbed of the opposition to Saleh, has been particularly violent recently, with government troops regularly clashing with soldiers who have defected to side with the protesters.
Stocks are edging higher after the government reported a decline in the number of people seeking unemployment benefits and as JPMorgan Chase announced strong earnings.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. rose 4 percent after the bank reported that higher investment banking fees raised its net income beyond analyst expectations.
The Labor Department reported applications for unemployment benefits fell to a three-month low last week, a sign that companies are laying off fewer workers. At 405,000, the figure is still above the 375,000 that signals healthy job growth.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up 3 points, or 0.2 percent, at 1,320 in early trading Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 8, or 0.1 percent, at 12,500. The Nasdaq composite is up 6, or 0.2 percent, at 2,802.
Target may be known for its cheap-chic apparel, but workers at one New York store say the company is just plain cheap.
Target says it pays its workers competitively. But late Friday night, about 250 workers at a Target store in Long Island were to vote on whether to join the country’s largest retail union. This is the first union vote Target has faced in two decades, and if workers vote “yes,” the store will be the first of the company’s 1,700 locations to bring in organized labor.
The vote could have a ripple effect in the U.S. retail industry as the economy recovers from the worst recession since the 1930s no fax payday loans. At a time when jobs are scarce, the retail industry is expected to be one of the strongest sectors for job growth during this decade. But the hours and pay for jobs selling clothes, computers and other goods have been declining in recent years. At the same time, the industry has faced decreasing union membership, which can limit workers’ ability to fight for better wages.
Chris Tilly, who directs the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, says a win for the union
Greenpeace says 18 of its members have climbed a 53,000-ton oil rig in the Arctic waters off Greenland to protest deepwater drilling by a Scottish oil company there.
The activists are demanding Cairn Energy release a plan for how to manage a potential oil spill.
The environmental group says activists approached the Leiv Eiriksson rig by five inflatable speedboats and climbed the rig early Saturday before making their way to the drill manager’s office. It says an oil response plan has not been published.
Greenpeace claims an oil spill in the area would be almost impossible to clean up because of the remoteness and the freezing temperatures.
Drilling started this week, and two Greenpeace activists have already been arrested for trying to prevent it.
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