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Showing posts from April, 2013

Ghost Marriage

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Ritual ghost marriages, which is believed to date back to the 17th century BC, is a custom in which parents find "spouses" for their unmarried, deceased children so that they can have a family in the afterlife. The tradition is rare in contemporary China, but they are still practised in rural parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones. Chinese media have reported cases of brokers murdering women and selling their bodies. In 2006, a man from northern Hebei province murdered six women and sold them as "ghost brides."     Tradition In Chinese tradition, a ghost marriage (Chinese: 冥婚; pinyin: mínghūn; literally "spirit marriage") is a marriage in which one or both parties are deceased. Other forms of ghost marriage are practiced worldwide, from Sudan, to India, to France since 1959. The origins of Chinese ghost marriage are largel

Financial Hell

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( A bailout is a colloquial pejorative term for giving a loan to a company or country which faces serious financial difficulty or bankruptcy. It may also be used to allow a failing entity to fail gracefully without spreading contagion. The term is maritime in origin being the act of removing water from a sinking vessel using a smaller bucket )     The Cyprus bail-out The good news for the eurozone was that the markets reacted well to the bailout deal for Cyprus. The bad news was that the rally lasted barely until lunchtime. By then investors were running scared at the prospect that the terms imposed on one of the single currency's smaller members would be the template for rescue packages for bigger countries. It is  not a fudge, but it is still a failure. The euro zone’s bail-out of Cyprus, which was sealed in the early hours of Saturday (16.03.2013), did get the bill for creditor countries down from €17 billion to €10 billion, as had been rumoured. But the way it did so