Compact news 14/11/2012

Our first feature about what's going on in the world. Of course, we can't report as often as any other information show would but we're giving you an insight in our view of the world's current affairs.

COIMBRA
Last Friday (09/11) here in Coimbra the Reitor of UC, João Gabriel Silva, called all workers and students for a meeting in Teatro Gil Vicente. He explained that in 2013 the government plans to provide Portuguese universities 37% less than in 2011, in line with the austerity measures and cuts that are being negotiated with the European Comission, the European Central Bank and the IMF: these 3 institutions are the famous “troika” we hear about on the news all the time. In the meeting, the Reitor read a declaration by the Conference of Reitores of Portuguese universities. In fact, all universities in Portugal organized a meeting like this one at the same time, showing that they are together in the fight against these huge cuts.
This Friday the Conference of Reitores will meet in Sala dos Capelos, here in the UC. Once again to say “Chega” (“enough”).

PORTUGAL
Today, Wednesday 14th, the entire Country is on a general strike. All main public services stopped, from trains, to buses, airports, and the university itself! This was a claim for basic social rights that Portuguese people deserve and are being progressively reformed. Other European countries, like Spain, Greece and Italy are also on strike, making it an transnational protest. 
And this wave of demonstrations against austerity measures and the financial crisis didn’t start today, as we all know. For example, when the German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Lisbon last Monday, there were thousands of protesters on the streets showing their discontent with the situation. A similar scenario was also seen when the Italian Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Elsa Fornero met with the German Minister of Labour...

BBC
The giant of world news, the BBC (as you know, it’s a British public corporation) has been through some seriously difficult moments… Last Saturday (10/11) its General-Director, George Entwistle, resigned himself after the Corporation made several mistakes with pedophilia cases in the news. One of their late main presenters had been accused of severe cases of pedophilia and instead of reporting about this in a documentary, they falsely accused another (innocent) person in another feature.
Now the British people are asking themselves: do we really need a public corporation that does this kind of bad service for the news since it costs to the citizens 230M pounds per year?