Smart Reads July 1, 2013

♦ In Egypt, at least nine people were killed in protests bigger than those seen during the country’s 2011 uprising. More than a million people demanded that president Mohamed Morsi step down.
♦ Poor public health services are fuelling Brazilian protesters’ sense of anger – the problem is so accute that Dilma Rousseff promised to import thousands of doctors from abroad to staff struggling hospitals.
♦ Syrians are stockpiling goods, ripping up old market rules and switching away from dollar-priced imports, in an effort to combat the threat of a tumbling currency.
♦ The New Yorker looks at how Beny Steinmetz wrested control of the iron ore buried inside the mountains of Guinea. The FT reported last year on the government’s investigation into how Beny Steinmetz Group Resources secured the rights to the half of Simandou that had earlier that year been stripped from Rio Tinto.
♦ Infighting among Afghanistan’s Karzai clan is dominating the political life of Kandahar.
♦ Jeffrey Sachs vowed in 2005 to attack the root causes of poverty by establishing model villages across Africa. However, he is increasingly having to defend himself against a growing number of critics who say that methodological errors have rendered his project worthless.
♦ Sharp new limits have been imposed on fishing cod, haddock and flounder in Massachussets because of dwindling supplies, so restaurants are offerings tasty alternatives, one of which is attractively called the Blood Cockle.