Michael Kevane

Alpha Blondy was also in Ouagadougou meeting with the President.  Opération coup de poing banned in the new constitution?

Le président burkinabè Roch Marc Christian Kaboré a installé jeudi à Ouagadougou les membres d’une Commission constitutionnelle qui doivent produire dans les “60 jours” prochains une nouvelle Constitution pour le passage du pays à la Vè République. Cette nouvelle constitution vise à mettre fin à la IVe République que l’on identifie au régime du président Blaise Compaoré, balayé le 31 octobre 2014 par une insurrection populaire après 27 ans de règne. La Constitution de la IVe République actuellement en vigueur a été adoptée le 2 juin 1991. Elle avait permis de mettre fin à une décennie de régimes d’exception dans ce petit pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest abonné aux coups d’Etat. Composée de 92 membres, la Commission constitutionnelle comprend des représentants du chef de l’Etat, des partis politiques, de la société civile, des forces de défense et de sécurité, du monde rural et économique ainsi que des juristes et des défenseurs de l’environnement.

Source: Burkina: début des travaux pour une nouvelle Constitution et une Ve République | Slate Afrique

Very similar to ATT’s disappearance after the Mali coup d’état.  Hard to even get a handle on how an important public personality can suddenly turn everything off.  Is he reading a French translation of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now?

Plus les charges s’accumulent, plus Yacouba Isaac Zida se fait discret à Ottawa (Canada), où il vit avec sa famille depuis janvier. À lire aussi Burkina : le président Roch Kaboré somme Isaac Zida de revenir au pays Burkina : le président Roch Kaboré somme Isaac Zida de revenir au pays Burkina : Zida fait la sourde oreille et reste à Ottawa Soupçonné de corruption lorsqu’il dirigeait la transition, l’ex-Premier ministre promu général est désormais visé par une procédure disciplinaire pour « désertion en temps de paix et refus d’obéissance ». Il est aussi sous la menace d’un mandat d’arrêt international de la justice burkinabè, qui souhaite l’entendre sur son rôle durant la répression de l’insurrection populaire des 30 et 31 octobre 2014 – Zida était alors le chef des opérations du régiment de sécurité présidentielle. Refusant de répondre à ses différentes convocations, il a coupé les ponts avec ses anciens collaborateurs et avec les ministres dont il était proche. Seuls quelques intimes – des évangéliques, comme lui – distillent de ses nouvelles au compte-gouttes : il va « bien », est « serein » et attend « que la justice se fasse ». En revanche, ils refusent de se prononcer sur son éventuel retour à Ouaga.

Source: Burkina : Yacouba Isaac Zida se fait discret – JeuneAfrique.com

Thanks Andrew Passet for the link!

A 2010 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences compared the microbiots of children living in rural Burkina Faso in West Africa to the microbiots of urban, city-dwelling children in Italy. The African children ate a high-fibre diet of vegetables, grains and legumes, with no processed foods, whereas the diet of the European children was full of sugars, animal fats and refined grains. The gut microbes of the children from Burkina Faso were very different from — and much more diverse than — those of the Italian kids.We wouldn’t want to say that children in Burkina Faso have a healthier lifestyle than Italian children. They are more likely to suffer severe infections and malnutrition, and they have a lower life expectancy than children born in Western Europe. But they also have a decreased risk of suffering from the immune diseases that are epidemic in the Western world.In an ideal world, children would harbour a rich and diverse community of microbes without the threat of severe infectious diseases, but our current practices only address half of this equation. Given how well bacteria respond to diet, eating a variety of foods is perhaps the best way to increase microbial diversity, and there’s no better time to do this than during the first few years of life.As a practical matter, this means that we shouldn’t feed a baby only rice cereal for weeks until the package is finished. We should offer a variety of grains, including oats, rice, barley and quinoa. It’s also important to offer whole grains instead of refined ones. The Western diet is extremely low in fibre, and refined grains contain very little of it.Protein-rich legumes, such as lentils, beans and peas, have an abundance of fibre and can be easily mashed for babies. Also try non-traditional starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes, parsnips or cassava (tapioca) rather than just sticking to low-fibre veggies such as potatoes. For older children, add fermented foods, such as yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut and other pickled vegetables.

Source: Get your children good and dirty

I kept waiting for the call, but someone must have told them my expertise was rural libraries in Burkina Faso, not really the skill-set needed?

The White House said it had chosen seven experts in finance and the law to supervise Puerto Rico’s fiscal affairs in the coming months under a law enacted this summer intended to help the island restructure its $72 billion debt. Four of the supervisory board members are Republicans and three are Democrats, chosen from lists provided to the White House by the party leaders of both houses of Congress. And four of the members are Puerto Ricans, which is three more than required under the new debt-restructuring law. The Republicans named to the board are:

Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. José B. Carrión III, president of Hub International, an insurance brokerage in Puerto Rico. Carlos M. García, founder and chief executive of BayBoston Managers, a private equity firm. David A. Skeel Jr., a University of Pennsylvania law professor with expertise in bankruptcy. The Democrats are: Arthur J. Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the New York University School of Law and a former chief judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. José Ramon González, president and chief executive of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. Ana J. Matosantos, president of Matosantos Consulting and a former director of the California Department of Finance.

In addition, the governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla, will hold a position on the board. He is not seeking a second term as governor, so whoever is elected to succeed him in November will take his seat on the board.

Source: Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Affairs Will Be Overseen by 7 Experts in Finance and Law – The New York Times

They are good meetings…. but still.  From 8am-2pm working with Dounko, our FAVL director here in Burkina, covering all the issues, planning, and budgeting.  Then 3pm-5pm excellent meeting with our partner team at Catholic Relief Services over in Gounghin.  Great to meet Myriam Dems and Abdoulaye Barry, and get feedback from the project director Neda Sobhani.  The meeting just flew by.  Then back to Zogona, for dinner and conversation with Alain Sissao.  New Korean restaurant.  Pricey but good.

“We’ve shown that over time, evolution favors strategies to help those who are at least as successful as themselves.” In their study, the team used computer modelling to run hundreds of thousands of simulations, or ‘donation games’, to unravel the complexities of decision-making strategies for simplified humans and to establish why certain types of behaviour among individuals begins to strengthen over time. In each round of the donation game, two simulated players were randomly selected from the population. The first player then made a decision on whether or not they wanted to donate to the other player, based on how they judged their reputation. If the player chose to donate, they incurred a cost and the receiver was given a benefit. Each player’s reputation was then updated in light of their action, and another game was initiated. Compared to other species, including our closest relatives, chimpanzees, the brain takes up much more body weight in human beings. Humans also have the largest cerebral cortex of all mammals, relative to the size of their brains. This area houses the cerebral hemispheres, which are responsible for higher functions like memory, communication and thinking. The research team propose that making relative judgements through helping others has been influential for human survival, and that the complexity of constantly assessing individuals has been a sufficiently difficult task to promote the expansion of the brain over many generations of human reproduction. Professor Robin Dunbar, who previously proposed the social brain hypothesis, said: “According to the social brain hypothesis, the disproportionately large brain size in humans exists as a consequence of humans evolving in large and complex social groups.

Source: Large human brain evolved as a result of ‘sizing each other up’ — ScienceDaily

Bernanke covers practically every topic covered in my summer Macroeconomics class.  Great summary discussion!  Thanks Vic Chia for the pointer.

Estimates of potential output growth (y*) have declined primarily for two reasons.  First, potential growth depends importantly on the pace of growth of productivity (output per hour). Unfortunately, productivity growth has repeatedly disappointed expectations during this recovery. For example, in 2009, leading scholars were predicting productivity growth in the coming years of about 2 percent per annum; in fact, growth in output per hour worked has recently been closer to half a percent per year. It’s possible that productivity may recover, of course, but if it doesn’t, then potential growth rates in the future will be lower than had been expected earlier.Second, although Fed forecasters have been too optimistic about output growth in recent years, they have also been, interestingly, too pessimistic about unemployment, which has fallen faster than expected despite the slow rise in GDP.

Source: BERNANKE: Pay attention to the data, not the Fed – Business Insider

The short-term impact [of Brexit], however, has been largely negative. In the weeks since the vote, the pound has fallen sharply, and stocks in a number of sectors, including banking and construction, have been under pressure. Several real estate funds suspended withdrawals as investors tried to pull out their cash, fearing a slowdown in the British property market. Surveys in recent weeks also indicated that consumer confidence, services output and purchasing-manager sentiment had plummeted. The International Monetary Fund has cut its growth forecast for Britain’s economy, which had been one of the region’s strongest since the financial crisis. “There is a clear case for stimulus, and stimulus now, in order to be there when the economy really needs it — to have an effect when the economy really needs it,” Mark J. Carney, the bank’s governor, said at a news conference on Thursday. The central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to lower its benchmark interest rate to 0.25 percent, the lowest level in the bank’s 322 years. The rate had been at 0.5 percent since March 2009. Mr. Carney also signaled on Thursday that the committee could cut rates further this year, but he ruled out the possibility of negative interest rates.

Source: Bank of England Cuts Interest Rate to Historic Low, Citing Economic Pressures – The New York Times