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Mandela's Health "Steadily Improving" As Icon Turns 95

MAIL & GUARDIAN (South Africa), SKY NEWS (UK)

Worldcrunch

JOHANNESBURG - The world is celebrating a very special Mandela Day on Thursday, as the ailing Apartheid icon spends his 95th birthday in a Pretoria hospital, slowly recovering from a recurring lung infection.

"Madiba Nelson Mandela's nickname remains in hospital in Pretoria but his doctors have confirmed that his health is steadily improving," the office of South African President Jacob Zuma said in a statement.

Every year on July 18, South Africans honor the former president’s 67 years of public service by spending 67 minutes of their time to nation-building and charitable acts.

Celebrations started with school children singing happy birthday to the Nobel Prize winner, and will go on with people “handing out school uniforms, textbooks and stationery, refurbishing classrooms and biking for charity”, the country's daily Mail & Guardian writes.

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma will also take part in the festivities, delivering government housing to poor people in Danville, Pretoria.

Wishing Mandela a happy birthday, Zuma said: "We are proud to call this international icon our own as South Africans and wish him good health."

Events are also organized in the rest of the world: Three weeks after American President Barack Obama visited South Africa and paid tribute to Nelson Mandela’s legacy, New York’s Times Square features a giant portrait of Nelson Mandela painted by Paul Blomkamp.

In a recorded message, British magnate Richard Branson also vowed to give “67 minutes to make the world a better place, one small step at a time,"

In Manila, capital of the Philippines, 50 abandoned street children will get a television studio tour and see performances by local artists, the Globe & Mail reports.

Two days ago Zindzi Mandela, Madiba’s daughter, told Sky News her father was making "remarkable" progress in hospital, raising hope in a country that has been praying for his spiritual leader’s recovery for a month and a half.

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Economy

The World Watches Silicon Valley Bank's Collapse And Braces For 2008 Déjà Vu

The effects of the fall of Silicon Valley Bank show the limits of the tech world, but also the current fragility of the international financial system a generation after the 2008 global financial crisis that was sparked by U.S. bank failures.

New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange on Feb 28, 2022.

Alexandre Counis

-Analysis-

PARIS — Five months after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which continues to shake the crypto world, it's the turn of Silicon Valley Bank, which was at the heart of U.S. start-up financing until it failed on March 10.

It is still too early to know if this new fire will spread or be contained quickly, but lessons can be drawn from the bank's failure, which looks like the consequence of the abrupt transition from the era of free money to the era of rapidly rising interest rates.

The first lesson concerns the world of start-ups.

It is surprising and distressing that this ecosystem, so quick to disrupt the models of the past, should find itself trapped by the simple fact that a traditional bank has become a must-have in Silicon Valley.

This has left the entire venture capital world on edge.

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