National / International News

Floods and landslides have killed at least 19 people and destroyed buildings after heavy rain in North India.

Hundreds of HR managers carefully eye prospective employees who, resumes in hand, crowd the floor at a Shanghai job fair.

Here’s the problem: neither group is interested in each other.

Nicole Li is looking to hire college graduates for her property management company. “We need technicians to fix software problems, but college grads don’t have these skills," says Li, frowning. "We need people for exhibitions who can do presentations in English, but they can’t do that, either.”

Li needs to hire people for 60 high-skilled jobs. She says among the thousands of candidates here today, she’ll be lucky if she finds one.

Tong Huiqin comes to this job fair every Friday. He graduated from the Shanghai Finance University six years ago. Since then, he’s jumped from one job to the next. “It isn’t hard to find a job," says Tong.  "It’s hard to find the right job.”

He’s worked as a supervisor for a bunch of companies, but hasn’t found the right fit. “You could have five hundred graduates and five hundred job openings here, and none of them would match up," he says.

Tong blames Chinese universities. He says they need to do a better job at preparing people for the country’s rapidly changing labor market. Xiong Bingqi is the deputy dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Beijing. “The scale of China’s higher education system has developed so fast that we’re failing to produce college graduates with the right skills for the jobs that are out there,” says Xiong.

For those with means, that’s meant sending your college-age children instead to universities in the U.S., Australia, or Europe. But most young Chinese can’t afford that, so they’re stuck in a Chinese university. And after they graduate -- according to a recent state survey -- their unemployment rate is four times higher than for those who didn’t get past elementary school.

Inside the job fair, young graduates linger in front of a booth for Bao Steel, China’s largest steel manufacturer. A big sign says that people from parts of Sichuan, Henan, Anhui, and Hunan are not allowed to apply. A guy applying for a job says people from those provinces can’t be trusted. It’s sort of like a booth at a New York job fair banning applicants from, say, Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. But this is typical in China, where even state-owned enterprises don’t bother to hide their discrimination.

At a neighboring booth, Jason Zhang is hiring people to work at a chain of nightclubs. He doesn’t care where his job candidates are from. He’s more concerned whether they’re willing to work. “I think today’s graduates are less appealing than people who were born in the '70s and '80s," says Zhang. "They tend to be overly confident and they don’t want to work very hard.”

I turn around and ask 22-year-old Wang Qianmin, who’s about to graduate from Shanghai Normal University with a teaching degree, what she’s looking for at the job fair. "I don’t know," she says with a pout. "Most of the jobs here aren’t really interesting. I’m looking for a company that’ll give me a high salary, money for meals and that’ll pay my rent -- a place where the working hours aren’t too long."

Wang says she wants to be a teacher. Or maybe a wedding planner.

She can’t decide.

Jason Zhang, the recruiter who has years of experience hiring people, rolls his eyes at this type of candidate. "Chinese college graduates these days think they’re really special," he says with a smile. "The problem is -- they’re the only ones who think that."

Zhang says Wang and many others in China’s class of 2013 will go all summer thinking they’ve got lots of options, and will probably end up unemployed.

The Duke of Edinburgh has left hospital, 11 nights after he was admitted for exploratory abdominal surgery.

For this week's Sandwich Monday, we try "The T-Rex Burger," a nine-patty monster that, until this week, had been on the menu of a renegade Canadian Wendy's franchise.

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The cost of policing the Bilderberg conference of political and business leaders will top a million pounds, according to Home Office estimates.

The former intelligence contractor who leaked documents on US surveillance has defended himself in an online chat, the Guardian reports.

A court hears a schoolgirl and her married maths teacher exchanged explicit text messages and had "multiple" sex sessions.

A minute's silence will be held at Royal Ascot in honour of Sir Henry Cecil, following the trainer's death last week.

Among the many culinary treats Italy has given the world is gelato, a frozen dessert with roots in ancient Mesopotamia. Gelato lovers from all over the world are flocking to a university outside Bologna, Italy, to master the art of gelato-making. Here's a free lesson: Don't call it ice cream.

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Among the many culinary treats Italy has given the world is gelato, a frozen dessert with roots in ancient Mesopotamia. Gelato lovers from all over the world are flocking to a university outside Bologna, Italy, to master the art of gelato-making. Here's a free lesson: Don't call it ice cream.

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Health officials in India are investigating reports that top Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan knows he and his wife are expecting a baby boy.

A diplomatic row has broken out over claims that Britain spied on foreign governments attending G20 meetings in London in 2009.

A report into the way crime figures were compiled by Kent Police finds an "institutional bias towards chasing numerical targets for solving crime".

Owen Coyle says he rejected "seven or eight opportunities" before agreeing to become the new manager of Wigan.

Every week, one Marketplace staff member offers their favorite stories from the past week. 

Well, our big special series on consumer culture: Consumed... Obviously. What a cracking effort by the sustainability crew! My favorites: the scam perpetrated on the first colonists of Montana, and the depressing confirmation that people will put their financial futures in serious jeopardy on the off-chance their kid might get a place at an Ivy League college.

Oh yeah, and the cavemen and consumer culture. Who doesn’t love cavemen?

By the way, Consumed didn’t just play out in style on the weekly shows and the web (a paddleboard is NOT WORTH IT, by the way); Check out Adriene Hill’s conversations with Sarah Gardner and Scott Tong on Marketplace Money over the weekend. 

The NSA's surveillance/PRISM story was a story every news organization was struggling with from the moment it broke. There is intense consumer demand for information and explanation on a topic that’s every bit as impenetrable as the most complex of financial products.

But the journalism community appears to have learned a few lessons from the financial crisis: Such as, it’s our job to explain stuff. And a lot of news organizations stepped up early and made a generally good fist of it. We held up our end: Listen to David Gura’s story on Apache Hadoop and his engaging use of a gas station analogy.

But it’s tough to stand out in head-on coverage of a story that everyone is chasing. So we did the smart thing, and went for some different angles. Like Sabri Ben-Achour’s story on what it costs to go on the lam. And Ben Johnson’s penetrating observation on the Marketplace Tech Report that what people really care about isn’t government snooping: It’s having your peers find out where you like to hang out online (eek!). 

I’m always on the lookout for blood-boiling consumer affairs stories. So Mark Garrison’s $38 latte story for the Marketplace Morning Report hit the spot this week. I’m always looking for validation too, so I got a nice thrill from the interview with Martin Keen about the value of standing desks!

Many Marketplace reporters have gotten an assignment out of an editorial meeting and thought, "This has to be the most half-baked, bampot, pure-bred nutter ideas ever conceived!" Krissy Clark got one of those ideas this week. Her job: to explain why bankruptcy is so interesting right now.  But what a great job she did with that story! Bankruptcy IS interesting! She even had tape of someone saying those exact words! And she had tape from Simon Cowell, who’d be great in a Chapter 11 advice group, I reckon.

New reality show, anyone?

Members of the public will be able to contribute their memories to a major exhibition at the V&A museum in London which opens later this month.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg in New York City wants to go greener. As if bicycle-sharing wasn’t enough, the mayor says it’s time to start composting. Take all the half-eaten knishes and General Tso’s chicken and turn them into soil (their original state, if you can believe it).

As Mayor Bloomberg gets ready to unveil a new voluntary program to compost waste, smaller cities with mandatory programs advise the Big Apple to take a gradual approach.

Seattle is composting because citizens demanded it. Five years back, only homeowners had to hire a service to compost. Hans VanDusen, a contract manager with Seattle Public Utilities, recalls that renters in apartment buildings began pushing to compost too.

“Many owners were looking at it as an option, but maybe not moving as expeditiously as their tenants would want,” VanDusen says. “That’s why we stepped in."

In 2010, Seattle passed a law requiring building owners to contract an organic waste service. San Francisco also has mandatory composting laws.

Waste Management Incorporated is a private company that handles organic waste for several cities in the Bay Area. Project manager Rebecca Jewell says composting is easy, when you balance the ratio of protein to carbon.

She explains carbon gives the microbes energy to move, while proteins provide nitrogen to help rebuild structures. “Then you have the right chemistry and you cut down on the wet factor, which is going to attract roaches.”

So New Yorkers: you can take that paper towel -- which provides carbon -- kill the roach and add it all to the compost. That solves two problems.

But there’s a third issue specific to New York. The city is full of sky-high apartment buildings. Jewell says that makes it hard to know which neighbors are guilty of mixing glass with chicken bones.

“You have your hypothesis, but what are you going to do? You’re going to stalk them?,” Jewell asks. “You’re going to put up a camera in the recycling and trash area?”

She says education and patience are key. Seattle and San Francisco do not fine residents who fail to compost. Instead they hand out notices, educational pamphlets in many languages, and liner bags. Composting doesn’t take sticks so much as carrots.

American Airlines plans to increase seating on its 737 and MD-80 jets so it can squeeze more money out of them. The planes aren’t getting any bigger, so that means something has to give. Right now, economy passengers are already packed in tight on all airlines, unless they buy upgrades. American isn’t saying how many seats they’ll add or how they’ll do it. For carriers, seating is a high-stakes game of inches where companies have to balance the competing interests of passengers, profits, and crew, not necessarily in that order.

The website SeatGuru obsessively tracks seating quality from a passenger point of view. Its numbers show that the smallest pitch on these short-haul American jets is 31 inches. (Pitch is the industry term for the distance between rows, that ever shrinking zone where you can unfold your legs, if you’re lucky.)

To add more seats, American would have to squeeze rows a couple inches closer. But only a handful of carriers have dared to try going under 30 inches. Those last couple inches are likely the most precious.

“It’s hard to tell what that inch is worth because it’s gonna vary by market, by time of day,” says Addison Schonland of the aviation consultancy IAG.

Even if airlines can’t pinpoint the value of an inch, they’re very cautious about it taking it away. Hard as it may be to believe sometimes, they’re not trying to torture us. New, thinner seats could enable airlines to preserve legroom while adding seats.

“The slimline seats will probably give you about the same amount of legroom,” says aviation consultant Michael Boyd. “Will it be more comfortable? I don’t think so. But it’s not as if they’re turning airplanes into the 7th Avenue subway.”

There are other potential ways to add seats without losing legroom. Now that food service in coach is dwindling, airlines are creating room for seats by ripping out kitchens.

At 6’5”, aviation consultant George Hamlin’s interest in airline seating is both personal and professional. Flying coach is never fun for him, and he cringes at the idea of more seats coming in, thin ones or not. But the reality is there’s little choice anymore.

“Domestic economy has become pretty much a commodity product,” Hamlin sighs.

Essentially, passengers are out of luck if they find American’s new seating arrangements too tight. Other carriers are just as jammed. Unless they pay to upgrade and grab a few more inches, increasingly the only place to find more legroom is by driving instead.

Kai Ryssdal: In its continuing quest to find out exactly how many human beings, it can cram into the back of a long skinny aluminum tube that flies through the air. American Airlines has some new economy-class seating arrrangements in store for the traveling public. More seats in its 737 and MD-80 jets, to be precise.

American's not saying saying how many seats they'll squeeze in, or how they'll do it. Marketplace's Mark Garrison reports from New York on how much that extra knee-room means to the bottom line.

Mark Garrison: For airlines, seating is literally a game of inches, so let’s pull out the tape measure.

That’s 31 inches, the smallest pitch on one of these short-haul American jets. Pitch is the distance between rows, that ever shrinking zone where you can unfold your legs, maybe. To add seats, airlines have to squeeze rows a couple inches closer.

Hear that tape measure shortening? Now we’re under 30 inches, which only a handful of carriers have dared to try. So just how much is an inch worth? Aviation consultant Addison Schonland:

Addison Schonland: It’s hard to tell what that inch is worth because it’s gonna vary by market, by time of day. It’s very hard to come up with a generic number.

Even if airlines can’t pinpoint the cost of an inch, they’re very cautious about it taking it away. It’s hard to believe, but they’re not trying to torture us. Aviation consultant Michael Boyd says new, thinner seats could let airlines have it both ways.

Michael Boyd: The slimline seats will probably give you about the same amount of legroom. Will it be more comfortable? I don’t think so. But it’s not as if they’re turning airplanes into the 7th Avenue subway.

With food service in coach dwindling, airlines are also making room by ripping out kitchens.

Now let’s stretch the tape out to 6 feet, 5 inches, the height of aviation consultant George Hamlin. Flying coach is never fun for him. But there’s not much choice anymore.

George Hamlin: Domestic economy has become pretty much a commodity product.

So, tough luck if you don’t like the tight seat on American. Other carriers are just as jammed. So if you can’t pay to change the tale of the tape, you may just have to drive. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

Two company directors admit storing more than 5,500 tonnes of waste tyres without a permit at a factory where a fire burned for three weeks.

Edward Snowden, who has taken credit for leaking classified information, said a huge amount of information about Americans is collected under the pretense of investigating foreigners. Snowden made the controversial remarks during a live chat with The Guardian.

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