Brazil: Child Labor Drops; 704,000 Children Still Working
Child labor in Brazil decreased 23.5 percent from 2009 to 2011, but nearly 704,000 children between the ages of five and 13 are still working, according to data released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Based on the 2011 National Household Sample (PNAD) Survey, the entity notes that of the number of working children, 615,000 are between the ages of 10 and 13 years and 497,000 are boys.
Nearly 63 percent of child labor is registered in the countryside. IBGE researcher Cimar Azeredo attributes this situation to the fact that supervision is higher in urban areas that in the countryside.
Brazilian laws prohibit children under 13 years old from working.
Statistics also reveal that the 704,000 children working represent 2.5 percent of Brazil’s population in that age group, while nearly 53.4 percent receives no remuneration for their work.
Distrust in Media Hits New High in U.S.
More Americans distrust the news media than ever before, the U.S. polling agency Gallup reported Friday.
According to the survey, 60 percent of Americans say they have “little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”
The decline in trust is driven largely by Americans who identify themselves as Republican or independent voters. The study finds that only 26 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of independents trust the news media.
Democrats are notably more trustful at 58 percent.
However, when comparing the results from the previous presidential election year in 2008, Gallup found the largest drop in trust (10 percent) was among independent voters.
“Independents are sharply more negative compared with 2008, suggesting the group that is most closely divided between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is quite dissatisfied with its ability to get fair and accurate news coverage of this election,” according to Gallup’s Lymari Morales.
British Government Borrowing Hits New High in August
British public sector’s net borrowing reached 14.41 billion pounds (23.4 billion U.S. dollars) in August, compared with 14.36 billion pounds in the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement on Friday.
The figure, excluding financial sector interventions such as the government’s preferred measure, was the highest for any August since records began in January 1993.
“The public sector current budget deficit amounted to 13.2 billion pounds last month, higher than the 12.8 billion pounds in August of last year,” said the ONS.
ONS data showed that public sector net debt was 1.03 trillion pounds at the end of August, equivalent to 66.1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). However, widened budget deficits have raised concern that the government could miss its deficit target for the year.
Britain’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has set the government’s borrowing target for the 2012/2013 financial year, which began in April, at 120 billion pounds. Economists said that target now looked unattainable.
British public sector consists of four sub-sectors, namely central government, local government, non-finanical public corporations and financial public corporations.
Via PL