Chinese shares rise in volatile trade
8 January 2016
Chinese shares have risen on the first day of trade since the lifting of a “circuit breaker” mechanism, which had been introduced to prevent sharp falls.
The Shanghai Composite opened more than 2% higher, then quickly turned negative, before rallying again to close 2% higher at 3,186.41.
Regulators stepped in after big losses in the mainland markets had led trade to be suspended twice this week.
The falls in China have affected markets around the world.
On Thursday, markets in Europe and the US recorded steep losses after trading in China’s stock markets closed within the first 30 minutes, making it China’s shortest trading day on record.
Regulators step in
After a volatile trading session, China’s stock markets closed higher as investor confidence grew on the new measures introduced by authorities.
Regulators suspended the “circuit breaker” rule late on Thursday. Analysts said it was creating more panic selling instead of calming sentiment.
Bang bang bang! The K-pop songs being blasted into North Korea
In response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test, South Korea is broadcasting propaganda across the border – including its favourite pop hits
South Korea is trying to get under the skin of its arch-rival with border broadcasts that feature not only criticism of North Korea’s nuclear program, troubled economy and human rights abuses, but also a unique homegrown weapon: K-pop.
“We have selected a diverse range of the most recent popular hits to make it interesting,” a defence ministry official said in a briefing for local reporters.
Here is a guide to the propaganda playlist Seoul began blasting across the border on Friday in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test earlier this week:
Lee Ae-rain, 100 Years of Life
A fusion of Korean traditional and popular music, its chorus is lifted from the most famous of all Korean folk songs, Arirang, which is popular on both sides of the border.
Lee’s song tells of someone being visited every decade by the “death angel” but refusing to be taken because they still have too much to live for: “If, at age 80, the death angel comes to take me away/ Please tell him, I am still too useful to go right now.”
Romans suffered from body parasites just as much as Vikings, study finds
Despite reputation for hygiene, it seems the likes of intestinal worms and skin lice increased during Roman occupation
Steve Connor Science Editor
They gave us soap, hot baths and communal toilets. But when it comes to asking what the Romans did for us, it seems their fixation on personal hygiene did nothing to protect us from body parasites.
A study of the middens, latrines and burial grounds of ancient Britain has found evidence to suggest that parasites such as intestinal worms and skin lice actually increased during the Roman occupation compared to the preceding age of the great unwashed.
Archaeologists scoured the earth for signs of an improvement in personal hygiene after the Latin invaders established themselves as conquerors in AD43. But all they found in the discarded Roman combs and textiles, the latrines and fossilised faeces or “coprolites”, were more and more parasites, from the whipworm and roundworms of the gut, to the hair lice and fleas of the head.
‘Mein Kampf’ hits German bookstores for first time since WWII
New copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” will hit bookstores in Germany Friday for the first time since World War II, unsettling Jewish community leaders as the copyright of the anti-Semitic manifesto expires.
The southern German state of Bavaria was handed the copyright of the book in 1945, when the Allies gave it control of the main Nazi publishing house following Hitler’s defeat.
For 70 years, it refused to allow the inflammatory tract to be republished out of respect for victims of the Nazis and to prevent incitement of hatred.
But “Mein Kampf” — which means “My Struggle” — fell into the public domain on January 1.
Copies of an annotated version running to 2,000 pages prepared by German researchers were to go on sale Friday, with the authors arguing that their version would serve to demystify the notorious rant, which in any case can be found just a few clicks away on the Internet.
IS technicians work with driverless cars and missiles, footage reveals
THE centre is in the group’s Syrian stronghold, Raqqa, where technicians from around the world have been plotting to wreak chaos outside the borders of the caliphate declared by the militant Islamic State (IS) group, according to the group’s own fighters and members of the Syrian opposition who seized the film from an IS member in Turkey.
The footage, obtained by Sky News, sheds light on a research and development arm of the organisation that has long been the subject of speculation, but has not previously been confirmed.
It also confirms accounts from IS members, as well as the fears of European intelligence agencies, that the group is working to step up attacks in Europe following the coordinated bombing and shooting rampage that killed more than 130 people in Paris in November.
Jay and Nii Quartey found music, then their calling – helping street children
JayNii Streetwise Foundation is an orphanage, primary school, and arts center that thrives in a struggling neighborhood of Accra, Ghana’s capital city.
ACCRA, GHANA — On a recent Friday afternoon, the ocean in front of Accra’s iconic Jamestown lighthouse heaves and coughs up another wad of trash onto the grimy beach. The new offering quickly mingles with the old – plastic bottles and hunks of plastic foam, candy wrappers and sea-battered pieces of glass – forming a layer of trash so thick that in places it is impossible to see there is sand underneath.
But halfway up the beach, the informal trash dump abruptly ends. There’s a chain-link fence and then beyond it, sand soft and clean enough to sink your bare feet into. Which is exactly what a small group of children are busy doing, chasing a soccer ball across the small open beach, giddy with the energy of the coming weekend.
This oddly placed oasis is the JayNii Streetwise Foundation, an orphanage, primary school, and arts center in the center of Jamestown, a neighborhood of Accra, Ghana’s capital city.