Latest news with #Janus-faced
The Hindu
24-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Why do the two sides of the moon look different?
The earth's moon is tidally locked: one side always faces the earth and the other side always faces away. So when scientists got their first look of the moon's far side, they were surprised to find it looked very different from the near side. NASA's GRAIL mission recently reported small month-on-month changes in the moon's gravity caused by tides on the earth. When mission scientists processed the data, they found evidence that the moon's interior is not uniform: the near side seemed to be warmer, softer, and slightly molten. The researchers predicted a temperature difference of 100-200° C between the hemispheres. Because warmer rock melts more easily, their models suggested there is still a partly molten layer of rock 800-1,250 km beneath the near side surface. Long ago, this layer could have risen to the surface and erupted to form dark lava plains that dominate the near side. As the interior slowly cooled, the eruptions would have faded 3-4 billion years ago. The moon's far side crust is thicker, so the magma may never have made it to the surface there. The findings join others — like meteorites being shielded by the earth on the near side, an uneven distribution of radioactive materials, and quirks in the moon's ancient formation event — to understand why the earth's closest cosmic companion is also Janus-faced.
Business Times
12-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
DEI may not survive. But shareholder activism will
BUSINESS corporations are, simultaneously, the world's most wonderful organisations and the most terrifying. Wonderful because they produce an unprecedented profusion of life's necessities and luxuries. Terrifying because they are so powerful and relentless. The 18th century British Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow once remarked: 'Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.' How can we bring out the best in these Janus-faced creatures? One answer is to create a responsible managerial cadre through a mixture of education and professional ethics. A second is to use the government to regulate companies, and otherwise to chivy them to do the right thing. A third is to empower all the 'stakeholders' in the capitalist enterprise (workers, suppliers and shareholders) to ensure social balance. Nobody's in charge All these ideas have produced problems. Managerialism suffers from the defect identified by Adam Smith back in 1776 that hired managers will fail to exercise the vigilance in managing other people's money they would accord to their own: 'Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail…in the management of the affairs of such a company.' Government regulation favours insiders over outsiders and, in the hands of strongmen leaders who are so common in today's world, including America, can degenerate into cronyism. And stakeholder capitalism suffers from the problem that when everybody is in charge, nobody is in charge. Which leaves one final form of control: Adam Smith's 'vigilant owners'. The entrepreneurs who forged the great modern corporations such as Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil were almost always paragons of vigilance who planned every move and monitored every penny. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Owner managers were eventually sidelined by their own success: companies grew so big that they needed a cadre of professional managers to run them and so hungry for capital that they had to turn to public markets. By the 1920s, most companies were 'owned' by millions of small investors who were too dispersed and deferential to exercise control. It looked as if the 'vigilance' of owners was gone forever, and managerial 'profusion' had won the day. But then two things happened as a consequence of mass affluence. Vast pools of capital began to accumulate as citizens ventured into the stock market and governments encouraged them to put some of their savings into shares. And institutional investors, particularly mutual funds and pension funds, began to flex their muscles. In The Unseen Revolution (1976), the management guru Peter Drucker described the new phase of capitalism as 'pension fund socialism' but it would have been better described as popular capitalism in which, for the first time ever, regular investors got a chance to act like owners. Some of the most interesting business figures of the 1970s recognised the possibilities of Drucker's 'unseen revolution'. T Boone Pickens and his fellow corporate raiders used these pools of capital to take over (and asset strip) underperforming companies. Warren Buffett turned Berkshire Hathaway into an investment goliath (and thousands of small investors into millionaires) by taking long-term positions in promising companies and helping them to perform better. Michael Jensen argued that managers would become more entrepreneurial if they were given stock in the companies they managed. But perhaps the most ambitious of all these prophets of ownership was Robert Monks, who died in his home state of Maine on Apr 29. Monks saw popular ownership as the key to creating nothing less than a new form of responsible capitalism: a form in which a mass of 'vigilant owners' obliged companies to improve their performance, starting with the way they ran themselves ('corporate governance') and extending to the wider society. Monks' campaign for responsible ownership was initially met with a combination of hostility from corporate managers (who were doing fabulously from the existing regime) and indifference from institutional investors (who believed that their job was to 'shuffle shares' regardless of the fact they were often the biggest shareholders in companies). But the naysayers reckoned without Monks' unique qualities. Monks' ceaseless activity eventually revolutionised the corporate landscape in America and beyond. Once decried as 'parsley on the fish', corporate governance became the main course. Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq now demand that a majority of directors are independent, and directors undergo professional training in business schools (including one that Monks endowed at Cambridge's Judge Business School). The list of CEOs who have fallen foul of their boards includes some of the most powerful people in business such as Philip Purcell of Morgan Stanley, Franklin Raines at Fannie Mae, Michael Eisner at Walt Disney, Hank Greenberg at American International Group. ISS now has more than 4,000 clients and is valued at US$2.3 billion. The shareholder activism revolution has arguably solidified into an orthodoxy in recent years. Institutional investors have taken on the characteristics of the incumbent managers that Monks decried. And routine box-ticking has taken the place of 'vigilant management'. Recent fads Institutional investors have leapt unthinkingly on recent fads such as diversity, equity and inclusion, even going so far as to blacklist investment in armaments. Monks once wrote a book called Watching the Watchers. The watchers that he created need to be watched more carefully lest they themselves turn into interest groups. But the ownership revolution that Monks foresaw is nevertheless here to stay, and rightly so. There is no better way of providing for people's retirements than investments in financial markets. And there is no greater duty for the guardians of the world's capital than to ensure that regular people's savings are properly invested and managed. Adam Smith was right: There is no 'vigilance' like the vigilance of ownership, and the more ownership we have, the better. BLOOMBERG
India Today
11-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Janus-faced China condemns Pahalgam attack but backs ‘friend' Pakistan
China was among the first countries to respond to the de-escalation agreement between India and Pakistan, which seeks to ease heightened military tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. However, Beijing's response appeared ambivalent, an act of delicate diplomatic balancing, as it extended equal support to both Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar, reaffirmed China's support for Pakistan in safeguarding its "sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national independence." He described Pakistan as an 'iron-clad friend'.advertisementAccording to the Chinese Foreign Office, Wang Yi acknowledged Pakistan's "restraint and appreciated its responsible approach under challenging circumstances". The wily Chinese diplomat reaffirmed that as Pakistan's "all-weather strategic cooperative partner and iron-clad friend", Beijing will continue to stand firmly by Islamabad in "upholding its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national independence". Simultaneously, Wang Yi held a phone conversation with India's National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, during which he condemned the terrorist attack in Pahalgam and reiterated China's opposition to all forms of terrorism."Wang Yi expressed China's condemnation of the Pahalgam terrorist attack and its opposition to all forms of terrorism. He noted that, given the current complex and volatile international situation, peace and stability in Asia are hard-won and should be cherished," a statement from his office further stated that it hopes both sides will remain calm, exercise restraint, resolve their differences through dialogue and consultation, and avoid any further supports and looks forward to India and Pakistan achieving a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire through negotiations, which is in the fundamental interests of both countries and the shared aspirations of the international community," the statement view this dual approach as a Janus-faced policy that prioritises its strategic alliance with Pakistan over a consistent stance against terrorism. Janus is a Roman god of duality, who has two reports suggested that the India-Pakistan agreement came after intense diplomatic efforts involving several countries, including China, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. However, New Delhi maintained that the ceasefire understanding was reached through direct negotiations between the two Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, following the ceasefire announcement, expressed deep gratitude to China -- Pakistan's closest ally and largest defence partner -- for its continued support."I want to thank China from the bottom of my heart. I thank the respected President and the people of China who have stood by Pakistan for the past 58 years," he Saturday, India and Pakistan agreed to halt all military actions by land, air, and sea with immediate effect. The decision came after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes that had pushed the two nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of full-scale US President Donald Trump claimed that the truce resulted from American-brokered talks, the Indian government firmly stated that the agreement was the outcome of direct bilateral engagement. Officials added that the understanding was reached after Islamabad agreed to the ceasefire "without preconditions, postconditions, or linkages to other issues".Tensions between the two countries had sharply escalated following precision strikes by Indian armed forces on terror launchpads in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack, which had cross-border InTrending Reel IN THIS STORY#India-China#India-Pakistan#Pakistan
