The Past Is Never Dead
William Faulkner
(Requiem for a Nun)
The government recently announced a decision to import 6,000 metric tons of Basmati rice from Pakistan under the provisions of the Pakistan-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement.
Responding to a question from the press, Mass Media Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella offered his explanation.
“O
ur “Paddy Farmers” were not getting a high price for their crops. The
idea is to import Basmati rice for those who seek it which in turn will “reduce the competition for local rice variants. “
Almost immediately, a quipster on some social media which I don’t recall ( I am not savvy with the stuff and rely on my granddaughters to follow these gems) responded:
The future of our workforce is at a crossroads. More than 22 million people have lost jobs or have been furloughed during the pandemic. Millions of them will need to be “re-skilled” because their jobs have significantly changed or were eliminated entirely.
This need is especially urgent for service workers, who have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. New jobs created during the COVID-19 pandemic will require data science, artificial intelligence, analytics, cybersecurity and leadership skills given the new methods companies have implemented to survive this once-in-a-lifetime economic shift.
Millions of people will need to be simultaneously retrained. Think about that for a moment. The scale of such an undertaking may be beyond anything our generation has seen, perhaps even larger than the re-training of millions of servicemen and women returning to the workforce after World War II.
Economy, finance, and budgets
The City University of New York faces a financial crisis comparable with the one that rocked it in the 1990s. Now, as then, the catalyst is a massive shortfall in state and city budgets. Combined, the governments of New York State and New York City, other local governments, and transportation authorities project a $59 billion shortfall into 2022 one of the deepest budget holes in the country. CUNY’s only salvation is to reduce its dependence on state funding, just as the nation’s most successful public universities started doing long ago. But how to do that amid a pandemic is a major challenge.
Who will control Cuba s digital revolution? | Opinion - South Florida Sun Sentinel sun-sentinel.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sun-sentinel.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.