Six months ago, the world did not expect Bangladesh’s topmost industry to bring in more heartbreak than it did revenue. Since November, Bangladesh has seen at least two major workplace safety-related tragedies. November’s garment factory fire had 112 victims, and the death toll of April’s garment factory collapse had about ten times more victims at 1,127.
Many Canadians are probably on the verge of insanity as a result of the Conservative government’s indefatigable peddling of its economic action plan. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs are apparently on the horizon. Oh, and fiscal belt-tightening.
Canada’s ranking fell from 10th to 20th in a worldwide measure of press freedom completed by Reporters Without Borders last week in light of Friday’s World Press Freedom Day.
On March 17, card-carrying Liberals from across the province will be selecting the new leader of the Parti liberal du Québec (PLQ) and quite possibly the next premiere of Quebec. The Prince Arthur Herald does not see fit to endorse one single candidate. None of the three candidates – Raymond Bachand, Philippe Couillard, and Pierre Moreau – stand out above the others. Each of them has their strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately we feel any one of them would be better for this troubled province than the current PQ government. The PAH would be comfortable with anyone one of them leading Quebec.
After the Fukashima disaster roughly two years ago, media headlines from around the globe suggested that nuclear power was as good as gone. Several governments in Europe and Asia vowed to shut down a substantial amount of domestically located reactors and find alternative, supposedly less-dangerous ways to generate energy.
A year ago, Québec’s student population started the Maple Spring, which led to the election of a new party in power. Jean Charest’s Québec Liberal Party (PLQ) lost against Pauline Marois’s Parti Québecois (PQ). Marois promised to freeze the tuition that Charest wanted to increase by $1,625 over five years. The Maple Spring led to major strikes in many colleges and universities all over the province of Québec.
The European Union’s economy has been suffering since the implementation of the Euro Zone. Some of the greatest European economies fell, leading to the downfall of many others: Greece, Italy, and Spain. In Spain, the economic situation is critical. Since the end of 2011, Spain fell back into recession, with the Gross Domestic Product going down 0,4% in the first and second trimesters of 2012, according to Agence France Presse.
Any hope that the succession of Kim Jong-un, the twenty-something year old dictator of North Korea, would be a change for the better from his father in the Stalinist nation of North Korea have been crushed. When his father, Kim Jong-Il, died in December 2011, there were speculations that his young successor, who had lived and attended school in the West, would have an interest in modernizing and bringing capitalism to the impoverished nation.