'); document.write('

The Economist: Full print edition
Full print edition

'); document.write('

Climate-change assessment: Must try harder
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A call to reform the IPCCIF THIS week’s report into the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by a council of national academies of science were the sort of report children take home from school, its main themes would be expressed as “could do better” and “needs to show workings”. Stern parents might read it as calling for a Gradgrind-like clampdown; more indulgent ones as an inducement for the little darlings to try a little harder. At a meeting in Busan, South Korea, this October, the parents in question—the representatives of the IPCC’s member governments—will decide which sort they want to be. Read in detail, the report suggests that if they want credible climate assessments, a firm hand will be required. ... '); document.write('
Mont Liggins
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Graham “Mont” Liggins, investigator of the mysteries of birth and breath, died on August 24th, aged 84HE FORGOT about the sheep. He had meant to dump it in the incinerator on the way home from work. It was still in the car boot, and starting to smell. When he remembered, and forced it down the incinerator chute, it was already bloating, and the gassy innards instantly caught fire. The force of the explosion sent ash 200 feet into the air over Auckland. Graham Liggins (grinning, above) was trying to find out what triggered labour. As a New Zealander, he had naturally turned to sheep. But his pursuit led to some of the most important discoveries in obstetrics, and the saving of hundreds of thousands of tiny, struggling lives. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Putting your money where your mouse is
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Crowdfunding: Artists, musicians and writers are using the internet to aggregate lots of small donations to fund their workWIKIPEDIA, a giant online encyclopedia compiled by volunteers, is the product of the aggregation of lots of people’s spare time. An example of “crowdsourcing”, it demonstrates that on the internet, as in the real world, many hands make light work. Can the same approach be applied to money as well as time? That is the idea behind “crowdfunding”, in which lots of small contributions are aggregated online to support artistic or creative ventures.As crowdfunding has matured from a series of one-off efforts into something reproducible, the money has followed. Millions of dollars, in increments as small as $5, have poured into efforts that connect artists, musicians, writers and others with people willing to fund their projects. Venture capitalists have also shown an interest by investing in start-ups that facilitate crowdfunding. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: An online medic
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Emergency medicine: Field medicine, for soldiers and civilians alike, gets smarter as medical monitoring technology improvesHALF way through a flight from Mumbai to London, a male passenger complained of a swollen right hand and an inability to bend his fingers. The flight attendants were uncertain about what to do and hooked the passenger up to a small device which took and transmitted vital signs, including his pulse, blood pressure and a picture of his hand, to a ground-based medical team.As the passenger’s condition worsened, the device was also used to transmit an electrocardiographic (ECG) trace. The resulting information was used to rule out heart problems, and the passenger was stabilised and monitored with the assistance of a doctor on the flight. The decision was made to continue the journey rather than divert to the nearest airport. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Powering up
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Jet engines: A nifty new engine design promises to improve combustion efficiency, thus cutting fuel consumption and reducing emissionsIN A world worried about global warming, improving the cleanliness and efficiency of jet engines is a priority for airlines and aircraft manufacturers. It is not just altruism: greener engines also use less fuel, and so cut costs. Incremental improvements over the years have made a difference. Modern jets burn only half as much fuel per unit of thrust as their 1960s counterparts. But some people think it is time for a radical redesign. One of those people is David Lior, the boss of a small Israeli firm called R-Jet Engineering.Jet engines rely on Isaac Newton’s third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When a jet is running, a compressor at the front draws in air and compresses it (see illustration). This air is guided and diffused by static blades to allow for easier ignition when it is mixed with fuel and ignited in a combustion chamber. The reaction comes in the form of rapidly expanding hot gases, which blast out of the rear of the jet and thus drive the aircraft forward. As they do so, they pass through another set of static blades which direct and accelerate the hot gases to turn a turbine. The turbine is connected by a shaft to the compressor at the front, thus turning it and keeping the whole process running. ... '); document.write('
Inside story: Hot rocks and high hopes
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Geothermal power: Deriving energy from subterranean heat is no longer limited to volcanic regions. By drilling deep wells into the ground, it can be made to work almost anywhere. Just watch out for the earthquakesOVER the course of the next ten years a company called Geodynamics, based in Queensland, Australia, is planning to drill as many as 90 wells, each 4,500-5,000 metres deep, in the Cooper Basin, a desert region in South Australia with large energy reserves. But the company is not drilling for oil or gas. It is looking for an energy source that is far cleaner and more abundant than any fossil fuel: heat emanating from hot rocks deep beneath the Earth’s surface, a promising emerging form of geothermal energy.Conventional geothermal power exploits naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water, close to the Earth’s surface, to generate electricity. (Heat from the water is used to boil a fluid and drive a steam turbine connected to a generator.) Because such conditions are rare, the majority of today’s geothermal power plants are located in rift zones or volcanically active parts of the world. In Iceland, around one-quarter of the country’s electricity is produced by geothermal power stations; at the Svartsengi power station, the naturally occurring hot water also flows into a lagoon, which is a popular (and photogenic) bathing spot. ... '); document.write('
Energy in the developing world: Power to the people
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Technology and development: A growing number of initiatives are promoting bottom-up ways to deliver energy to the world’s poorAROUND 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world’s population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive: the United Nations estimates that an average of $35 billion-40 billion a year needs to be invested until 2030 so everyone on the planet can cook, heat and light their premises, and have energy for productive uses such as schooling. On current trends, however, the number of “energy poor” people will barely budge, and 16% of the world’s population will still have no electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.But why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The technology in question, from solar panels to low-energy light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is rapidly falling in price. Local, bottom-up systems may be more sustainable and produce fewer carbon emissions than centralised schemes. In the rich world, in fact, the trend is towards a more flexible system of distributed, sustainable power sources. The developing world has an opportunity to leapfrog the centralised model, just as it leapfrogged fixed-line telecoms and went straight to mobile phones. ... '); document.write('
Brain scan: The virtual curmudgeon
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of virtual-reality technology, has more recently become an outspoken critic of online social mediaFROM “Wikinomics” to “Cognitive Surplus” to “Crowdsourcing”, there is no shortage of books lauding the “Web 2.0” era and celebrating the online collaboration, interaction and sharing that it makes possible. Today anyone can publish a blog or put a video on YouTube, and thousands of online volunteers can collectively produce an operating system like Linux or an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Isn’t that great?No, says Jaron Lanier, a technologist, musician and polymath who is best known for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality. His book, “You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto”, published earlier this year, is a provocative attack on many of the internet’s sacred cows. Mr Lanier lays into the Web 2.0 culture, arguing that what passes for creativity today is really just endlessly rehashed content and that the “fake friendship” of social networks “is just bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers”. For Mr Lanier there is no wisdom of crowds, only a cruel mob. “Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless,” he writes, “but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.” ... '); document.write('
Rewiring nerves: How to rewire the nervous system
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Biomedicine: Doctors are rerouting nerves to give patients more natural control of prosthetic arms and bring paralysed limbs back to lifeIT IS known as “phantom limb syndrome” or “phantom pain”. But this strange phenomenon feels all too real to the people it affects, and can be agonisingly painful. Amputees and people who have become paralysed may still “feel” a missing limb or a part of their body, even though it is no longer connected to their nervous system. Yet such sensations offer confirmation that even when a limb has been severed or cut off from the nervous system, the nerves that once serviced it remain alive and well. Doctors are now finding ways to put these nerves to good use, by rewiring them to control prosthetic limbs or reanimate paralysed limbs.Moreover, rewiring the nervous system should allow amputees to gain a sense of “embodiment” of a prosthetic. That is, by controlling and sensing the prosthetic using the same neural pathways and parts of the brain that once governed the real limb, the prosthetic can be made to feel and act like a genuine extension of the user’s body. And by stimulating the nerves in the legs or arms of paralysed patients—nerves that have been cut off from the central nervous system—it is possible to create co-ordinated movement of great subtlety. For example, the hands of paralysed patients have been stimulated to enable them to grasp and turn door knobs. And with careful control and co-ordination of the muscle groups in their legs, patients can even rise from their wheelchairs and take steps. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Correct me if I\'m wrong...
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Software: A new approach to speech recognition gives users the chance to fix misunderstandings without having to repeat themselvesTHERE is often something sweet, intimate even, about couples who finish each other’s sentences. But it can also be a source of irritation, especially when they get it wrong. A similar irritation (minus the sweetness) is often felt by users of speech-recognition software, which still manages to garble and twist even the most clearly spoken words. Might the solution lie in a more intimate relationship between the user and the software?Modern speech-recognition programs do not merely try to identify individual words as they are spoken; rather, they attempt to match whole chunks of speech with statistical models of phrases and sentences. The rationale is that by knowing statistical rules of thumb for the way in which words are usually put together—an abstract probabilistic approximation of grammar, if you will—it is possible to narrow the search when attempting to identify individual words. For example, a noun-phrase will typically consist of a noun preceded by a modifier, such as an article and possibly also an adjective. So if part of a speech pattern sounds like “ball”, the odds of it actually being “ball” will increase if the utterances preceding it sound like “the” and “bouncy”. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Fast-track testing
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Magnetic levitation: The same technology used to make trains go fast can help identify unwanted substances in food and waterTO MOST people magnetic levitation (maglev) connotes high-speed passenger trains. It is what enables the Shanghai Transrapid to glide over the tracks at speeds of as much as 430kph (267mph). But the same technology has recently found a much more pedestrian use in testing food and water.One way to identify a substance without resorting to fiddly chemical methods is to determine its density. This will not provide a precise composition but it can give a decent approximation. The purity of minerals is often assessed in this way, as are things like the amount of fat in milk or salt in water. (The less fat there is in milk, the more dense it is; the less salt there is in water, the less dense it is.) ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Schr�dinger\'s cat and mouse
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Computing: Quantum cryptography is unbreakable in theory. But like any security system, in practice it is only as safe as its weakest linkIT SOUNDS foolproof. One of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics is that measuring a physical system always disturbs it. If the system in question is a message written as a series of digital bits encoded in the polarisation of light, this means that intercepting and reading the message can no longer be done surreptitiously. The receiver should be able to detect an eavesdropper and take appropriate countermeasures.To a hacker, though, the word “foolproof” is a challenge. And to prove the point, two groups of academic spies have now shown that whatever the theory says, practical attempts to hide messages this way can still be vulnerable. ... '); document.write('
Offer to readers
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Buy a PDF of this complete quarterly, including all graphics, for saving or one-click printing.The Economist can supply standard or customised reprints of special reports. For more information and to place an order online, please visit the Rights and Syndication website. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: A suit that can sing and hear
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Materials: Optical fibres made of piezoelectric materials can turn sound into subtle electrical signals, and vice versa“GUITAR HERO”, a hugely popular video game, has done wonders to transform the flamboyant strumming of closet air guitarists into at least some approximation of music. But soon even the feigned exertions of fantasy rock stars may become unnecessary because researchers in America have developed an acoustic fibre, like a guitar string, capable of electrically plucking itself.Electrical signals make the fibre vibrate to produce a sound (although rather quietly, so you must listen to it closely). But the process can also be reversed, which is potentially more useful. When acoustic waves cause the fibre to vibrate, it produces a corresponding electrical signal that can be detected. This means the fibres can also work much like a microphone. In short, the fibres can both sing and hear. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Memory upgrade
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Software: A novel approach to generating images of suspects uses a range of tricks to achieve a dramatic improvement in accuracyTHE human brain is hard-wired to recognise faces. Babies learn to identify their parents’ faces within hours of being born, and even in old age people can remember what their childhood friends looked like. But remembering faces is not the same as being able to describe them. This is particularly apparent when witnesses are asked by the police to create a composite picture of a suspect. Even when the result is thought to be a good likeness by the witness, that does not mean that other people will also be able to recognise the face and thus identify the suspect.Indeed, even when working from a fresh memory, the composite pictures people produce are, on average, recognisable to others only 20% of the time. And this percentage dwindles further if the witness is working from a memory more than a few days old. The problem is that face recognition is a holistic process: people are good at recognising faces as a whole, but struggle to identify or describe individual facial features, such as a person’s eyes, nose or mouth. ... '); document.write('
Mining social networks: Untangling the social web
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Software: From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly usefulTELECOMS operators naturally prize mobile-phone subscribers who spend a lot, but some thriftier customers, it turns out, are actually more valuable. Known as “influencers”, these subscribers frequently persuade their friends, family and colleagues to follow them when they switch to a rival operator. The trick, then, is to identify such trendsetting subscribers and keep them on board with special discounts and promotions. People at the top of the office or social pecking order often receive quick callbacks, do not worry about calling other people late at night and tend to get more calls at times when social events are most often organised, such as Friday afternoons. Influential customers also reveal their clout by making long calls, while the calls they receive are generally short.Companies can spot these influencers, and work out all sorts of other things about their customers, by crunching vast quantities of calling data with sophisticated “network analysis” software. Instead of looking at the call records of a single customer at a time, it looks at customers within the context of their social network. The ability to retain customers is particularly important in hyper-competitive markets, such as India. Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile operator, which handles over 3 billion calls a day, has greatly reduced customer defections by deploying the software, says Amrita Gangotra, the firm’s director for information technology. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Ruses to cut printing costs
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Office technology: All kinds of technological tricks are being used to reduce the cost and environmental impact of office printersTHE dream of the paperless office has been around for years, but it has remained just that, despite the rise of e-mail and the web. True, paper consumption in American offices peaked in 2001, but since then it has declined only slightly from its high of around 150 pounds (68kg) of paper per worker per year. In Europe, meanwhile, each worker prints an average of 31 pages a day, seven of which were not even wanted, according to recent research by Lexmark, a printer manufacturer.The cost of all that paper, toner and ink quickly adds up. Which is why, earlier this year, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay adopted a novel strategy to save money on print supplies: it changed its fonts. Programs like Microsoft Outlook default to Arial, but a thinner-lined typeface such as Century Gothic requires less toner or ink to form its characters. A study in 2009 showed that switching to Century Gothic could save businesses as much as $80 per printer per year. The university predicts that this year it will reduce its $100,000 print-supplies bill by around 10% by making this simple change. ... '); document.write('
Monitor: Gently does it
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Motoring: Spies on the dashboard can teach people to drive more economically—and tick them off if they fail to do soSOME people always take things to extremes. For those trying to save fuel there is hypermiling, in which the really dedicated try to use less than 4.5 litres/100km (ie, travel more than 80 miles on a gallon) in a car that under normal use might do only half as well. Apart from driving very slowly and trying not to use the brakes (which dissipates energy), hypermilers employ other tricks, such as wiring the fuel injectors up to lights mounted on the dashboard so they can see whether or not they are squirting fuel into the cylinders. Although this is all too much trouble for most motorists, the hypermilers do have a point: driving technique plays a big part in how much fuel a car consumes. Now various devices are being used to help teach more moderate ways of driving economically.Not surprisingly, companies that operate fleets of cars and trucks are among the first users of fuel-saving “eco-assist” systems. The most popular of these are global-positioning system (GPS) units that use live traffic information and other data, such as weather and past trends, to plot not the fastest but the most economical route to a destination at a particular time. According to iSuppli, a Californian research firm, fewer than 1% of new cars have such “eco-routing” systems fitted, but it expects that by 2020 a third will. ... '); document.write('
Business this week
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Ben Bernanke told economists and central bankers at a meeting in Jackson Hole that the Federal Reserve would resume “unconventional measures” if the economy deteriorated again. The chairman of America’s central bank said the economic recovery was weaker than had been expected, but that deflation was not a significant risk. See articlePurchasing-managers’ indices showed that manufacturing growth in August had accelerated in America and China. The American PMI grew faster than expected, offering a positive note amid worries about the state of the economic recovery. In China, the increase in manufacturing growth came as reassurance that an expected slowdown in economic activity would be smooth and gradual. ... '); document.write('
Politics this week
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The first direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in 20 months began in Washington. Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas began talks urged on by President Barack Obama along with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan and Tony Blair for the “Quartet”. See articleIn the run up to the talks, four Israeli settlers were shot dead and two injured in two separate incidents in the West Bank. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks. ... '); document.write('
KAL\'s cartoon
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write(' '); document.write('
Markets
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write(' '); document.write('
Global foreign-exchange market
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('According to the latest survey of foreign-exchange markets from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), trading in currencies surged by 20% in April this year from April 2007, when the last such survey was conducted. This marks a significant slowdown from the 72% growth seen between 2004 and 2007. Foreign-exchange swaps accounted for 44% of transactions in April this year, down from 52% three years earlier. Inter-bank trading accounted for only 39% of foreign-exchange transactions this year, down from 63% in 1998. For the first time this year, the BIS found that non-bank institutions like hedge funds and pension funds accounted for over half the transactions on the spot market. ... '); document.write('
Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write(' '); document.write('
Manufacturing activity
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Surveys of purchasing managers by Markit, a research firm, suggest that manufacturing expanded at a faster pace in August than a year earlier in most countries. A year ago, 11 countries had purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs) below 50, indicating that manufacturing industries there were still contracting. Now, contraction is apparent in only three of the 25 countries for which August data are available. After dipping into contractionary terrain in July, China’s August PMI of 51.9 once again signalled growth, though Chinese manufacturing has clearly slowed from a year earlier. In America, the Institute of Supply Management’s index for August pointed to growth for the 13th month in a row. ... '); document.write('
The Economist commodity-price index
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write(' '); document.write('
Output, prices and jobs
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write(' '); document.write('
Overview
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('America’s GDP growth in the three months to the end of June was revised down sharply to an annualised quarter-on-quarter rate of 1.6% from the previous estimate of 2.4%. In the three months to the end of March, GDP had risen at an annualised rate of 3.7% from the previous quarter.An early estimate put euro-area inflation at 1.6% in August 2010, a tenth of a percentage point lower than in July. The region’s unemployment rate remained at 10% in July, unchanged from a month earlier. ... '); document.write('
Middle East peace talks: Back to the table
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Israel’s prime minister sounds upbeat, even if no one else doesYET another bout of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations was launched this week amid a splurge of pious public talk tempered by sceptical punditry. Not much new in that, it seems, though it is almost two years since the previous direct talks took place (and ran aground).Nothing new, either, in two ghastly shootings on the West Bank in the days before the talks. The first left four Israeli civilians dead, two of them the parents of six children and another a pregnant woman. Hamas proudly took the “credit” as a means of exposing, it said, the collusion between the Palestinian Authority and the occupying forces of Israel. The following day two more Israelis were wounded. ... '); document.write('
Maids in the Middle East: Little better than slavery
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Domestic workers in the Middle East have a horrible timeAS a maid working in Saudi Arabia, Lahanda Purage Ariyawathie suffered at the hands of her Saudi employer and his wife, who skewered her body with at least 24 nails and needles (pictured). Her case was unusually brutal, but the abuse of domestic workers in the Middle East is all too common. Huge numbers of migrant domestic workers, mostly from Asia and Africa, are employed throughout the region. Some 1.5m work in Saudi Arabia, 660,000 in Kuwait and 200,000 in Lebanon. Many work very long hours and receive little food, no time off and pay that is a fraction of any minimum wage, if it materialises at all. Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based group, says at least one domestic worker died every week in Lebanon between January 2007 and August 2008. Almost half were suicides and many were as a result of falling from high buildings, often while trying to escape their employers. Mistreatment is so widespread that the Philippines, Ethiopia and Nepal no longer let their citizens go to Lebanon to work as maids, though such bans have had little effect. ... '); document.write('
Rwanda\'s meddling in Congo: Revisiting the killing fields
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A leaked UN report looks very bad for Rwanda’s governmentIN 1996 Rwandan troops descended on the Chimanga refugee camp in east Congo, to which their compatriots had fled to avoid genocide at home. The soldiers gathered the refugees together with promises of meat to fortify themselves for a promised return to Rwanda. “At a given moment,” says the draft of a new report from the United Nations, “a whistle sounded and the soldiers positioned all around the camp opened fire on the refugees. According to different sources, between 500 and 800 refugees were killed in this way.”In the 16 years since his rebel forces halted the Rwandan genocide, the country’s president, Paul Kagame, has earned a reputation for steering his country firmly towards stability, economic growth and a measure of reconciliation. Lately, that reputation has come under attack. Before a landslide election victory in August Mr Kagame found himself under heavy fire for the mysterious murders, oppression and censorship that marred the run-up to the polls. Grim-faced and impatient of critics, Mr Kagame weathered the storm. ... '); document.write('
South African politics: With friends like these
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('President Jacob Zuma is badly bruised by weeks of crippling strikes THE public-sector strikes that have paralysed hospitals, schools and other essential services across the country since August 18th have damaged South Africa’s image abroad. They have also undermined relations between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), part of the ruling tripartite alliance, together with the communists. On September 1st Cosatu rejected the latest pay offer from the government, so as The Economist went to press the strikes seemed destined to continue, and even intensify. President Jacob Zuma, who ordered both sides back to the negotiating table on August 30th in a last-ditch attempt to end the strike, has emerged weakened from the fray. Cosatu, with a membership of 2m, has been feeling increasingly aggrieved since Mr Zuma took over as president 16 months ago. Having helped elevate him to power, the country’s biggest union federation thought that he was their man. Cosatu had expected to play an important role in the new administration. Instead, it has repeatedly found its policies ignored. In June relations reached near breaking-point when the ANC threatened to bring disciplinary proceedings against Cosatu’s leader, Zwelinzima Vavi, for having accused the government of failing to take action against corrupt ministers. ... '); document.write('
The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise itTHE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Even though all this sounded Utopian when it was preached, it reflected online reality pretty accurately. The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier. For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. Anyone was able to create a website or an online shop, which could be reached from anywhere in the world using a simple piece of software called a browser, without asking anyone else for permission. The control of information, opinion and commerce by governments—or big companies, for that matter—indeed appeared to be a thing of the past. “You have no sovereignty where we gather,” Mr Barlow wrote. ... '); document.write('
Game conservation in Africa: Horns, claws and the bottom line
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Governments have mostly failed to protect Africa’s wildlife. But other models— involving hunters, rich conservationists and local farmers—are showing promiseONLY eight specimens of the northern white rhino are left alive on the planet, and they are all in captivity. The handful that remained in the wild in Congo have not been seen in years; they are almost certainly dead. A final effort to save the sub-species earlier this year saw four northern whites shipped from a zoo in the Czech Republic to the Ol Pejeta conservancy on the Laikipia reserve in Kenya. The senses of these rhinos had been dulled by the cold concrete of Slav zoo life. In Africa, by contrast, they found themselves under open skies, with wild browse, the trees filled with weaver birds, the red soil interrupted with termite mounds and the land sweeping away to the icy peak of Mount Kenya. In such an environment the hearing of the rhinos soon sharpened and their agility returned. “They became wild again,” says Berry White, a rhino expert who oversaw the move. ... '); document.write('
Ife sculpture: Magnificent mysteries
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Ancient West African treasures embark on a journey round AmericaAFTER acclaim in Spain and Britain, “Dynasty and Divinity”, the first big exhibition devoted to sculpture from the Kingdom of Ife (in present-day Nigeria), begins an 18-month tour of America in Houston on September 19th. The show, which consists of works in stone, terracotta and metal made between the 9th and 15th centuries, is a revelation and a treat. Art from dramatically different cultures is often hard to connect with, but these sculptures are naturalistic and remarkably accessible. Whether the subject is an animal, a person or a mythical creature, each image is well observed and has tremendous presence. More than 100 works are on view. All are loans from Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Some have left Africa for the first time. Text and photo murals on the walls instruct visitors about the kingdom, an unbroken monarchy for more than 800 years. Today Ife is a city of 600,000 people. Its present ruler or Ooni is Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II; now aged 80, he studied in Britain, became a businessman and is enjoyably wealthy. ... '); document.write('
Social history: Home comforts
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Bill Bryson\'s book about his houseAt Home: A Short History of Private Life. By Bill Bryson. Doubleday; 512 pages; $28.95 and GBP20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukTHE fruits of Bill Bryson’s fluent and amusing writing have been fame and fortune, so he now lives in one of the most desirable dwellings in the world: an old rectory in an English country village. The social and technological history of this lovely old house is the theme of his latest book, published earlier this year in Britain and coming out in America next month. ... '); document.write('
Climate change: The ways of a warmer world
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Books about how people can and will adapt to climate change need not be Panglossian—as these two showClimatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future. By Matthew Kahn. Basic Books; 288 pages; $26.95 and GBP16.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukTurned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up. By Marek Kohn. Faber & Faber; 368 pages; GBP14.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk ... '); document.write('
Myanmar\'s Than Shwe: A tyrant nobody knows
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A biography of Myanmar\'s dictatorThan Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant. By Benedict Rogers. Silkworm Books; 256 pages; $30. Buy from Amazon.com“PERFECTION, of a kind, was what he was after” wrote W.H. Auden in his “Epitaph on a Tyrant”. Perhaps it is this ambition that moves Than Shwe, the “senior general” in the junta which has run Myanmar into the ground. It may explain an inexplicable folly: building Naypyidaw (“Seat of Kings”), a grand new capital in a remote malaria-ridden area 320km (200 miles) from Yangon, Myanmar’s main city and former capital. ... '); document.write('
New thriller: Oily conspiracies
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A new thriller about oil and financeThe Garden of Betrayal. By Lee Vance. Knopf; 320 pages; $24.95. Corvus; GBP14.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukSINCE oil lubricates almost every geopolitical machination, triggering wars, coups and uprisings, it is a bit curious that there are so few thrillers written about the stuff. “The Garden of Betrayal” is a welcome addition to a tiny subgenre. ... '); document.write('
Walking in Africa: In the steps of the master
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('An adventure-laden expedition to Sierra Leone and LiberiaChasing the Devil: The Search for Africa’s Fighting Spirit. By Tim Butcher. Chatto & Windus; 325 pages; GBP18.99. Buy from Amazon.co.ukIN HIS bestselling book about the Congo, “Blood River”, Tim Butcher, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, followed the route of Henry Stanley, an explorer with a reputation for colourful exaggeration, “a cocky chancer”. One place that Mr Butcher conspicuously failed to visit during his hectic dash through “the most daunting, backward country on Earth” was the leper colony that inspired Graham Greene’s 1960 novel, “A Burnt-Out Case”. Now he has made good this omission by trekking in the novelist’s footsteps through another neglected region of Africa, an expedition that resulted in Greene’s “Journey Without Maps”. For Mr Butcher it meant a 350-mile (560km) walk into the forests of Sierra Leone (“the poorest country on Earth”) and Liberia (“one of the world’s most failed and scarred states”). ... '); document.write('
Correction: King George II
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('In \"Sham country, but not sham bard\" (July 31st) we wrote that the kilt was banned by King George IV’s grandfather. We were a generation wrong: George II, who did the banning, was George IV’s great-grandfather. This has been corrected online. ... '); document.write('
Letters: On industrial policy, Lexington, Australian elections, Club Med, legalising drugs, Jews and Muslims, punks
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('SIR – Recent interest in industrial policy (“Picking winners, saving losers”, August 7th) has turned the discussion to how and when to do it better, rather than simply how to do it less. The distinction between leading and following the market is useful. Public investment in new industries where private investors have shown little interest (“leading”) is obviously riskier than where the private sector has already had some success (“following”). Leading can be made less risky by studying products being made in economies with incomes two- or three-times higher to see what domestically-based firms might be able to upgrade to or diversify into. However, public assistance must be given against performance indicators, which may relate to export success, or product quality, or prices moving towards international levels. Failure to specify performance conditions has been the bane of industrial policy from India to New Zealand. And as for how to improve success—it is worth bearing in mind the dictum attributed to Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, “If you want to be more successful, increase your failure rate.” ... '); document.write('
The internet: The web\'s new walls
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('How the threats to the internet’s openness can be avertedWHEN George W. Bush referred to “rumours on the, uh, internets” during the 2004 presidential campaign, he was derided for his cluelessness—and “internets” became a shorthand for a lack of understanding of the online world. But what looked like ignorance then looks like prescience now. As divergent forces tug at the internet, it is in danger of losing its universality and splintering into separate digital domains.The internet is as much a trade pact as an invention. A network of networks, it has grown at an astonishing rate over the past 15 years because the bigger it got, the more it made sense for other networks to connect to it. Its open standards made such interconnections cheap and easy, dissolving boundaries between existing academic, corporate and consumer networks (remember CompuServe and AOL?). Just as a free-trade agreement between countries increases the size of the market and boosts gains from trade, so the internet led to greater gains from the exchange of data and allowed innovation to flourish. But now the internet is so large and so widely used that countries, companies and network operators want to wall bits of it off, or make parts of it work in a different way, to promote their own political or commercial interests (see article). ... '); document.write('
Global economic policy: Monetary illusions
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Central bankers are not magicians. Don’t count on them to conjure up remedies if the rich economies flagOVER the past few years the reputations of the rich world’s central bankers have fluctuated wildly. When the financial crisis struck, they were blamed for allowing the housing and credit bubbles to build, and for failing to foresee the bust. Later they were lionised for preventing a new Depression with bold actions to support the financial system. Now a third stage is at hand, one of dangerously outsized expectations. With most governments unable, or unwilling, to offer more fiscal stimulus, central banks are left solely responsible for propping up the flagging recovery. The phenomenon is most obvious in America. Its economy has weakened, yet the default path for fiscal policy is a hefty tightening as the Obama stimulus wanes, the states slash spending to balance their budgets and the Bush tax cuts expire. With any discussion of remedies by politicians drowned out by partisan positioning before the mid-term elections in November, disproportionate hope is pinned on Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve. Hence the attention paid to his recent speech at Jackson Hole, which laid out, with great confidence, what further steps the Fed could take. ... '); document.write('
Japan: Self-destruction
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Japan’s ruling party should cast its most famous member, Ichiro Ozawa, into the wildernessNOT for nothing is Ichiro Ozawa known as “The Destroyer”. Over a career spent scheming in the back rooms of Japanese politics, he has made and broken alliances, toppled governments and, with laconic disdain, treated transparency and other democratic norms as so many Western pretences. Yet his latest ploy is one of his darkest. In challenging Naoto Kan, the prime minister, as leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), he threatens to bring down Japan’s third government in 12 months. Worse, he may destroy what remains of the trust that voters put in the DPJ when it ended 55 years of one-party rule last year. For the good of Japanese democracy, not to mention its own future, the DPJ must reject Mr Ozawa and all that he stands for.If the challenger does pull off a victory in the vote on September 14th—and he may—he would take over the DPJ a mere three months after he had been forced to step down as secretary-general under the cloud of a political-funding scandal. He would also replace Mr Kan as prime minister—or, if he preferred to stay in the shadows, install a puppet leader in his place. That would be a disaster, even by the sorry standards of recent Japanese politics, in which four prime ministers have come and gone in the past four years. ... '); document.write('
Pakistan\'s cricket scandal: Crossing the boundary
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The responsibility for Pakistan’s cricketing scandal lies ultimately with the country’s eliteNOT much unites Pakistanis more than cricket. The national game inspires widespread devotion and the national team justified pride. Led by wristy batsmen, like Javed Miandad, and blood-curdling fast bowlers, like Imran Khan, Pakistan has often excelled at the world’s most popular sport after football. Its side has tended to beat India’s, despite its more modest population. In a country suffering devastation from flooding, and long divided by ethnicity, region, religion and sect, which often seems to have little to boast of, or even reason for being, cricket should be a boon.But Pakistan’s cricketers are advertising much that is wrong with their country. In-fighting (including with cricket bats), drug-taking, feigned injury, allegations of players being coerced into Islamic fundamentalism and other scandals have plagued the national side. But the most egregious involves match-fixing, to which Pakistani cricketers, allegedly including several of today’s crop, seem especially prone. ... '); document.write('
South Africa\'s politics: Zuma\'s two bad calls
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Seeking to buy off allies and cracking down on dissent: bad signs in South AfricaWHEN he became president of South Africa just over a year ago, Jacob Zuma promised to quench South Africans’ thirst for renewal. After the aloof and idiosyncratic Thabo Mbeki, here was a big-hearted, charismatic “man of the people” who would unite a fractious country and help it make itself felt in the world. Sure enough, Mr Zuma was at his beguiling best during the football World Cup, a festival that passed off even better than most had dared hope.Yet even at the time of his election, it was not clear what Mr Zuma stood for. At home, in front of African National Congress audiences, he sounded like a nationalist and socialist. Abroad, he sounded like a free-market liberal. He never properly explained what he believed in. Pessimists suggested it was getting power and holding on to it. ... '); document.write('
The Iraq war: Mission truncated
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A stance that helped Barack Obama and the Democrats to victory has become a near-irrelevanceWHEN he ran for president, few subjects distinguished Barack Obama more than his views on the war in Iraq. He had opposed it from the start, so he constantly reminded the electorate, unlike his main rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. He was determined to withdraw the majority of American troops from the country within 16 months of coming to office, unlike his Republican opponent, John McCain, who had spoken of American troops being in Iraq for 100 years. All this formed a big part of Mr Obama’s appeal to voters, who were sick of the conflict and dismayed by George Bush’s handling of it. So when Mr Obama declared the fulfilment of his pledge (a little over three months late) and the “end of our combat mission in Iraq” in an address from the Oval Office on August 31st, it should have been a triumphant moment for the president and a cathartic one for the American public. Instead, the speech was a sombre affair, and the popular reaction muted. In part Mr Obama was simply determined to avoid the mistakes of Mr Bush, who was endlessly lampooned for hopping gleefully out of a fighter jet dressed in a flightsuit in front of a banner reading “Mission Accomplished”, just as Iraq began to sink into a bloody insurgency. As Mr Obama was quick to concede, Iraqi politics are a muddle and “extremists will continue to set off bombs”. ... '); document.write('
The salmonella outbreak: Un oeuf is enough
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Unsafe eggs are the latest food scareAMERICANS are known as hearty eaters, so a string of recent food-safety scares has shaken them to their rather wide cores. The country has already endured the economic and gastronomic damage inflicted by recent recalls of unsafe spinach, peanut butter, beef and peppers. Now insult has been added to injury. The latest scare involves eggs. Officials confirm that from May to July nearly 2,000 people have been sickened by salmonella traced back to tainted eggs. As this is several times the baseline rate of affliction, it has forced the recall of over 500m eggs. That is not a deadly blow, as the country produces over 6 billion eggs each month, but more recalls may be coming. ... '); document.write('
The Bush tax cuts: A slight reprieve?
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Extending the cuts for a while may turn out to be prudent policyHOW dramatically the pendulum of fear has swung in the past year—from worries about the fragile recovery, to panic about the level of the national debt, and back to anxiety about growth again. Swinging along with it has been the fate of George Bush’s tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year. Democratic Party leaders had hoped to make political capital, just before the mid-term elections in November, from the extension of the cuts for households earning less than $250,000 ($200,000 for single earners). At the same time, they hoped to paint the Republicans as hypocrites for moaning about the deficit while fighting to keep low taxes for the very rich. But these hopes, like the recovery, have withered away.The tax cuts, which were supposed to last for only ten years, had their genesis in the 2000 presidential campaign, when both Mr Bush and Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, proposed to return a portion of the then budget surplus to voters. As the economy tipped into recession in 2001, stimulus became the rationale for the cuts, and for the 2003 law that phased them in more rapidly than originally planned. By then, reduced tax revenues were contributing to a steady increase in the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of the cuts over the ten years to 2011 at $1.7 trillion. ... '); document.write('
Ohio\'s 1st congressional district: In black and white
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Democrats must energise their base if they are to win in NovemberSTEVE DRIEHAUS is ready to speak to old folk at a community centre in Cincinnati’s western suburbs, but their game of bingo is not quite finished and the Democratic congressman has to wait. A woman sidles over to warn that it’s a tough crowd. She is right. Some in the audience are vexed at the $26 billion package of aid for teaching and other jobs that Mr Driehaus and his colleagues in the House recently passed. “It’s another union bail-out!” yells one lady. Mr Driehaus’s suggestion that some of the blame for America’s economic ills lies with the Bush administration does not go down well, either. This is Ohio’s 1st congressional district. Covering most of Cincinnati and surrounding Hamilton County, it is a diverse political barometer with a Democratic urban core and suburbs full of Republicans and independents. George Bush carried the district in 2004; Barack Obama won it in 2008, by 11 points. Mr Driehaus was elected that year, defeating Steve Chabot, a Republican who had held the seat for 14 years and who now wants it back. ... '); document.write('
Savannah\'s port: A man, a plan, a canal
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Why digging in Panama is bringing out the shovels on America’s east coastSOMETIMES what is absent is more important than what is present. So it is with Savannah’s port, the fourth-busiest container port in America and one of its fastest-growing, where what is absent is the sea. Its busier rivals—Los Angeles, Long Beach and New York/New Jersey—sit on saltwater bays; Savannah’s port is almost 20 miles (32km) inland on the Savannah River, far from the city’s charming Victorian centre, in the distinctly unlovely suburb of Garden City.Yet it is precisely that remote site that has allowed Savannah to grow as swiftly as it has: land is cheap and available. Home Depot, IKEA, Target and Wal-Mart all have distribution centres of more than 1m square feet (100,000 square metres) in the Savannah area to handle cargo coming through the port, which sits at a nexus of interstate highways and railway lines that provide quick access to the south-east and Midwest. During fiscal 2009 another 1.5m square feet of warehouse space came on-stream in the region; a further 20m square feet are planned. Georgia’s ports (of which Savannah is the largest) are a big economic engine for the state, responsible in 2009 for 8.6% of Georgia’s total production income ($61.7 billion), 6.7% of its employment (295,443 jobs) and $6.1 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue. ... '); document.write('
Atlantic City: A struggling city by the sea
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('New Jersey’s governor has a plan to help America’s playgroundFOR centuries Atlantic City has been a holiday spot. The Lenni-Lenape Indians spent their summer months there, though they called it “Absegami”. In 1850 Jonathan Pitney, a local doctor, saw the then undeveloped island as a “city by the sea”, a health resort where people could escape the dirty towns. Within a few years a train full of Atlantic City’s first spa guests arrived. A century and a half later that city by the sea boasts 11 casinos and the famous Boardwalk; but its fortunes have declined of late. People think of it as unsafe and unclean. Its jobless rate, at 12%, is higher than the national rate of 9.5%. A reported 24% of its housing units are empty. The city’s poverty rate is slightly higher than it was in 1978, when the first casino opened.Gambling, long considered recession-resistant, was one of the first industries to be affected by the latest recession. It may also, according to Moody’s, a ratings agency, be one of the last to recover. On August 18th the Casino Control Commission announced that Atlantic City’s casinos had reported a 23% decline in operating profits during the second quarter of 2010. Net revenues were down by 7%. ... '); document.write('
Lexington: The charge of the Brat Pack
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A moderate force takes shape inside the Republican PartyTHE Weekly Standard, the parish magazine of American conservatives, is not merely a wry observer of the political scene. From time to time it plays a direct part in Republican politics. In 2007 a clutch of its senior editors, visiting Alaska for a luxury cruise and lecture tour, were entertained by Sarah Palin in her governor’s mansion. They came away mightily impressed. On returning to Washington Fred Barnes wrote a gushing article about her. Bill Kristol later started to push her name as a possible running mate for John McCain. You might say that the rest is history, except that Ms Palin’s history in politics is far from over.Later that year the Standard indulged in another round of Republican talent-spotting when it ran a cover story about three promising Republicans in the House of Representatives whom it called the “young guns”. The three men thus flattered—Eric Cantor from Virginia, Paul Ryan from Wisconsin and Kevin McCarthy from California—liked and adopted the moniker. They have since turned the Young Guns into a bigger, formal group, working with the National Republican Congressional Committee to pick talented congressional candidates. ... '); document.write('
Energy in Brazil: Ethanol\'s mid-life crisis
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The sugar industry produces food, fuel and environmental benefits. How fast it grows may depend on an argument about how it should be regulatedIT IS what passes for a winter’s day in upstate Sao Paulo. The sun is blazing from a blue sky feathered lightly with cirrus cloud. In a large, sloping field overlooking the city of Piracicaba, a mechanical harvester chomps through a stand of three-metre-high sugar cane, fat and juicy from months of sunshine. The harvester slices the cane into 20cm chunks and regurgitates them into a 30-tonne trailer moving alongside that will lug them a few kilometres to the Costa Pinto mill (pictured). There the cane is weighed, washed, tipped onto a conveyor belt, crushed and then, depending on market conditions, crystallised into sugar or distilled into ethanol. The woody residue—the bagaco—is burned in two high-pressure boilers that, according to the flickering needle in the control room, are supplying around 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity to the local grid—enough to power half of Piracicaba.Sugar has been grown in Brazil for 500 years, and the country is by far the world’s biggest exporter of it. But sugar now also forms the nucleus of a new agro-industrial and renewable-energy complex. Biofuels, mainly derived from sugar, are Brazil’s most important source of energy after oil. For a unit of energy, the production and use of sugar-based ethanol generates only two-fifths of the carbon emissions of petrol, and half those of corn-based ethanol, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. And bioplastics made from sugar cane are poised to move from the laboratory to the corner store, with the launch of soft-drink bottles. ... '); document.write('
Mexico\'s ruling party: The new old guard
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('How ten years in power have changed the former opposition leadersSKULKING around Morelia after dark, a 17-year-old Agustin Torres would wait until midnight before sticking up posters for the National Action Party (PAN). Any earlier, and he risked being photographed by authorities monitoring subversives in the western city. “I wanted to be against the system, so I joined the PAN,” says Mr Torres, now 33 and a congressman.These days, the PAN is part of the system. After 61 years in opposition, it wrested the presidency from the hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2000 and held it in 2006. Its strengths reflect its legacy as the protagonist of Mexico’s transition to multi-party democracy. Unlike the big-tent PRI, the conservative PAN knows what it stands for. “Whereas the PRI is driven by power, the PAN tends to be driven by ideology,” says Luis Rubio, the head of CIDAC, a think-tank. And unlike the fractious Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), its leftist counterpart, the PAN runs a slick operation. It even boasts an international reach, winning 57% of the expatriate vote in 2006. ... '); document.write('
Banyan: Afloat on a Chinese tide
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('China’s economic rise has brought the rest of emerging Asia huge benefits. But the region still needs the WestWITH markets still on edge after the worst financial crisis in decades, and fears of renewed recession stalking the West, this week seemed a poignant moment for China’s People’s Daily to detect a “golden age of development”, for Asia at least. Yet developing Asia, led by China itself, is booming. China’s GDP barrelled along in the first half of the year, growing by 11.1% compared with a year earlier. The newly industrialised little tigers—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—as well as most of South-East Asia seem to have fully recovered from the downturn. Even Thailand, mired in political turmoil, grew by 9.1% in the second quarter.The dream is that this gilded future is now insulated from rich-world downturns: that China—now having, after all, officially overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy—can drive growth for the whole region. One day, maybe. Not yet. ... '); document.write('
China and North Korea: Greetings, comrades
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('What lies behind the Dear Leader’s latest trip to China?NORTH KOREA’S leader, Kim Jong Il, must have been on an urgent mission when he boarded his bulletproof train and headed to China for the second time in less than four months on August 26th. With America’s former president Jimmy Carter in town, devastating floods in the north and a rare conclave of his ruling party only days away, Mr Kim had much to keep him at home. But buttering up China appears to be a new priority. Both China and North Korea, as is their wont, kept quiet about the visit until after Mr Kim’s return on August 30th. By then Mr Carter had left with an American, Aijalon Gomes, who had been serving eight years’ hard labour for entering the country illegally in January. Mr Gomes’s release was a rare gesture of conciliation to America after months of heightened tension caused by the sinking in March of a South Korean naval vessel. ... '); document.write('
Football and Korean reunification: Dreaming of 2022
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The South waves sticks and dangles footballs at the NorthSOUTH KOREANS are unsure precisely how best to respond to the uncertain changes in the regime to the North. A hardline approach to its neighbour has been the official stance ever since the Cheonan, a Southern military corvette, was torpedoed in March. Sanctions, a diplomatic freeze and military exercises with the Americans all suggest that the authorities in Seoul are in no mood to back down.Yet this week, the South Korean Red Cross said that it would send emergency aid, mostly food and medicine, worth $8.4m to help the North cope with floods. This would be the first aid to flow north since May, but the South’s government insists it is merely a temporary humanitarian measure. ... '); document.write('
India\'s disappointing government: Much less than promised
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The economy is powering on, but the Congress-led coalition is squandering an opportunity to improve IndiaTHE weightlifting auditorium has a leaky roof. The athletes’ village has no kitchen. Stagnant monsoon water, abuzz with dengue-carrying mosquitoes, collects at most of the stadiums being hurriedly built for the Delhi Commonwealth games, which are due to begin on October 3rd. The security arrangements, in terrorism-stricken India, are shot to pieces because of 24-hour processions of workmen at most venues. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, reiterates the official line that these will be the “best games ever”. That may depend on how you define “best”.This shambles, for which corruption, feuding ministries, sapping bureaucracy and shoddy workmanship are all to blame, does not matter to many Indians. Athletics is not cricket. And few know much about their country’s image abroad. Yet it is depressing, not least because it mirrors how large parts of India are run. ... '); document.write('
Nalanda university: Ivory pagodas
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('An ancient pan-Asian university might yet open againNALANDA is an unlovely place in the poorest state in India. Yet, as in much of Bihar, a prosaic present belies a poetic past. It is the site of one of the first great universities which, half a millennium before the founding of Oxford, flourished with some 10,000 students and monks from all over Asia. Mango groves and lotus pools circled its halls, and an 8th-century inscription touted its “row of pagodas the spires of which touched the clouds.”If some scholars and diplomats have their way, a new generation of students will be enrolled. A bill has just snaked through India’s parliament calling for Nalanda’s revival, at a likely cost of several hundred million dollars. The Nalanda Mentor Group, led by Amartya Sen, an economics Nobel laureate, has overseen the project since it was first proposed in 2006. The Bihar state government has agreed to provide 500 acres for a new campus and India’s Planning Commission has proffered 1 billion rupees (some $21m) to get the project started. A chancellor has also been appointed. ... '); document.write('
Vietnam\'s economy: Plus one country
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Cheap labour will not yield gains for ever. But what comes next is unclearON THE edge of Hanoi brick-walled factories lie abandoned, weeds sprouting in their ruins. Surprisingly, this is a sign of progress. The land is slated for new housing; the state-owned textile firm that operated there is moving to an industrial park, where it can better meet booming demand for Vietnamese garments. Exports of textiles and garments rose by 17% in the first seven months this year, to $5.8 billion, suggesting that investors still favour Vietnam as a base for cheap manufacturing. Its advantages have been amplified by recent labour unrest and rising costs in southern China’s factories. In Hanoi there is renewed talk of “China Plus One” as a strategy for multinationals keen to spread their bets. Vietnam could gain handsomely, thanks to its labour which is cheaper than China’s and its neighbours’ (see chart). Even after a pay rise, the monthly wage for a textile worker starts at $84, says Nguyen Tung Van, head of the Communist Party-run textile workers’ union, from his office in the abandoned compound. The industry employs around 1.7m people. Makers of footwear, furniture and more also gain from supplies of cheap labour. ... '); document.write('
Parliamentary polls in Afghanistan : Bloody democracy
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Elections this month should not be quite as awful as last year’s presidential oneTHE presidential poll in Afghanistan is still the stuff of nightmares for the technicians, diplomats and officials who had the misfortune to be involved in it. They shudder at the orgy of Taliban violence unleashed across the country on voting day, August 20th 2009, the most violent day in recent years. Voters stayed away from many polling stations, leaving corrupt supporters of the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, to stuff ballot boxes with perhaps 1m votes. And during the months of ballot auditing and recounts that followed, the business of government ground to a halt.Relations between Afghanistan’s Western backers and Mr Karzai also sank to a wretched low after the West dared to point out the extraordinary level of electoral fraud. “God, it was just terrible,” says one shaken foreign election expert. “It just can’t happen again.” ... '); document.write('
Technology and protest: A town crier in the global village
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A cross-border fraternity that strives to be seen, heard and heeded NEARLY four years ago, a web-based political movement set itself the modest task of “closing the gap between the world we have and world most people everywhere want”. Calling their group Avaaz, which means “voice” in several languages, the founders aimed to reproduce globally some of the success which their progenitors—like America’s Moveon.org, and Australia’s Getup!—had enjoyed in national political arenas. By its own lights, the movement, using 14 languages and engaged in a mind-boggling list of causes, has had some spectacular successes. Within the next few months, membership will top 6m. The number of individual actions taken (from bombarding a politician with a well-aimed message, or funding a poster campaign, to helping provide satellite phones to Burmese monks) is estimated at over 23m. Among the recent developments Avaaz claims to have influenced are a new anti-corruption law in Brazil; a move by Britain to create a marine-conservation zone in the Indian Ocean; and the spiking of a proposal to allow more hunting of whales. ... '); document.write('
E-communication and society: A cyber-house divided
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups—and in both realms, peacemaking is an uphill struggleIN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever”. At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes. But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black. That led to her sad conclusion: in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world—separation by class and race. ... '); document.write('
Charlemagne: Long live the Karlings
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The emperor Charlemagne is the wrong father-figure for EuropeBEYOND the octagon of Aachen cathedral lies the golden shrine of St Mary, holding ancient relics that are displayed every seven years: the cloak of the Virgin, the swaddling clothes of the infant Jesus, the loincloth of the Saviour on the Cross and the cloth that held the severed head of John the Baptist. Such wonders made Aachen one of the great pilgrimage sites of medieval Europe. In these more sceptical times, it is the other golden casket here that commands the visitor’s attention: the one bearing the remains of Charlemagne.The Frankish warrior-king, crowned as heir of the Roman emperors by Pope Leo III in 800, is still revered locally as a saint. More importantly, he is the icon of Europe’s newer, secular faith: political and economic integration. Since 1950 Aachen has bestowed a yearly Charlemagne prize on the figure deemed to have done most to promote European unity. The winners are mostly a predictable cast of grandees. In 2002 the prize was awarded not to a person but to the euro. And in 2004 the judges conferred the prize on Pope John Paul II; a reversal, perhaps, of Leo’s coronation of Charlemagne. ... '); document.write('
Europe\'s Roma: Hard travelling
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Scapegoated abroad and the victims of prejudice at home, eastern Europe’s Roma are the problem no politician wants to solveSLOVAKIA is in shock; France in uproar. The cause of both nations’ turmoil is the Roma (gypsies), or, rather, what is being done to them. This week a gunman in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, killed seven people and injured 14, before shooting himself dead. Six of the victims were a Roma family, killed inside their apartment; they appear to have been deliberately targeted.In France the expulsion of hundreds of Roma immigrants, whom Nicolas Sarkozy’s government says were in the country illegally, has galvanised opposition from the pope, French churches, a UN committee and even several ministers in Mr Sarkozy’s own government. Yet further tough legislation is promised. ... '); document.write('
The French opposition: Maybe he Strauss-Kahn\'t
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('What looks obvious to outsiders is not clear to France’s SocialistsFRANCE’S opposition Socialist Party should be building up for its best crack at the French presidency in over a decade. The incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is unpopular. Polls find that a majority of the French want the left to return to power. And, in Dominique Strauss-Kahn (pictured), the boss of the IMF in Washington, DC, the Socialists have a potential candidate with a real chance of victory in 2012. One new poll finds that, if a presidential election were to take place today, Mr Strauss-Kahn would beat Mr Sarkozy in a second-round run-off by a crushing 59% to 41%.If only it were that simple. After its summer conference at the Atlantic resort of La Rochelle last weekend, where delegates discussed socialism over platters of fruits de mer, the party is certainly feeling upbeat. It put on a show of unity, with rival grandees posing together for the cameras in studious harmony. Yet Mr Strauss-Kahn, the party’s best potential candidate, may not get the nomination. ... '); document.write('
Germany\'s energy policy: Nuclear power? Um, maybe
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Angela Merkel agonises over a planned phase-out of Germany’s nuclear capacityWHEN Angela Merkel cares about an issue she does not give a speech. Instead, she hits the road. Lately Germany’s chancellor has travelled to a wind park in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a nuclear reactor in Lower Saxony, and an energy-generating house in Hesse. Aiming to draw attention to Germany’s dilemmas in deciding how much and what sort of power to produce and consume in the coming decades, Mrs Merkel will bundle her answers into a comprehensive “energy concept”, to be unveiled at the end of September. This is like coming up with a menu that pleases both carnivores and herbivores. Much of the debate revolves around whether to scrap a plan devised by an earlier government to cease nuclear-power generation by 2022. The decision will affect Mrs Merkel’s political standing and the public finances, as well as Germany’s energy future. With roughly a quarter of generation capacity due to reach retirement age by 2020, decisions made now will shape the energy profile of Europe’s biggest economy for years. There is “a window of opportunity for good changes or for messing up the situation for the next 50 years,” says Olav Hohmeyer, an economist at the University of Flensburg. ... '); document.write('
Correction: Czechoslovakia
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Last week’s story on drug use in the former Czechoslovakia incorrectly conflated the velvet revolution and the velvet divorce. The country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, not 1989. Our apologies for the error, which has been corrected online. ... '); document.write('
Catholics in Britain: The fruits of adversity
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Bolstered by immigration and challenged by the economic downturn, the church is playing an ever more active role TO SEE two faces of Catholic Britain, you need only walk a short way from Parliament. The train and bus stations of Victoria, where many migrants arrive to seek their fortunes, are even closer. First there is the squat red brick of Westminster cathedral, home of England’s Catholic hierarchy; its Byzantine mosaics, glinting in candlelight, are a splendid setting for one of the country’s finest choirs. Round the corner things are more down-to-earth at a hostel and day-centre for the homeless (the largest in London, it is claimed) set up by a religious order, the Daughters of Charity. Among the duties of the priests and nuns who work at The Passage is liaison with police, hospitals—and undertakers, in the fairly common event that homeless people, often young, succumb to addiction or despair. ... '); document.write('
State schools and selection: The religious and the rational
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Excellent schools tend to choose their pupils. Is there another way?PARENTS seeking the best education for their offspring often look to ancient institutions. Small wonder that schools run by either the Catholic church or the Church of England are often high on their list. Almost a quarter of all children in the state system attend a religious school, most of them Anglican- or Catholic-run primary schools.In his drive to give parents more choice in educating their children, Tony Blair raised the profile of church schools by encouraging existing ones to expand and new ones to set up shop. The former prime minister was also keen on incorporating other religions into the state system. The first state-funded Muslim and Sikh schools opened soon after he took power, and the first Hindu school in 2008. ... '); document.write('
The Cambridge cluster: University challenge
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The town’s high-tech industry is weathering recession wellNEITHER the drab modernity of the suburbs nor the beautiful buildings in the centre hint that Cambridge is at the heart of one of Britain’s biggest clusters of high-tech businesses. But on the outskirts of the city, just off a busy dual carriageway, is the collection of low-rise, landscape-gardened buildings that make up the Cambridge Science Park.The resemblance to the architecture of Silicon Valley is striking, and deliberate: the high-tech industry that has grown up around Cambridge is known as “Silicon Fen”. Built on the solid scientific research provided by Cambridge University—currently ranked fifth in the world by Shanghai Jiaotang University, which compiles an international league table—it features firms in sectors such as electronics, computing, software, scientific instruments and pharmaceuticals. The number of jobs in research and development is around five times the British average. ... '); document.write('
Bagehot : Lessons from 35,000 feet
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Tony Blair’s rather odd memoirs contain important truths for his successorsJUST who does Tony Blair think he is? In a revealing quirk of the English language, to ask the question is to level an accusation at the same time. The former prime minister has always been hard to pigeon-hole, by class or political tribe. He is the Oxford-educated barrister with unabashedly bourgeois tastes who led the Labour Party to three victories over Conservative rivals of humbler upbringing. The social liberal and self-proclaimed “progressive” who forged close bonds with George Bush (recently declaring the Texan an “idealist” of “genuine integrity”). The devout Christian who led his country into four wars.Along with the invasion of Iraq, those shape-shifting qualities may go some way towards explaining the real loathing Mr Blair inspires in many British hearts. At least in his home country, three years out of office have done little to dim the dislike. The publication of his memoirs on September 1st was presented by much of the press as a trial to be endured. Even the announcement that he would give all the proceeds (amounting to millions of pounds) to a charity for wounded soldiers was greeted with eye-rolling, and talk of blood money. ... '); document.write('
Billingsgate fish market: Economies of scale
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('An ancient market in need of an overhaulTHE City of London Corporation fears draconian financial reforms that might drive banks and brokers elsewhere. It has fewer qualms, however, about overhauling another market in its fief: that for wet fish.Billingsgate, controlled by the City since 1327, lies a stone’s throw from the towers of Canary Wharf. Yet unlike those computer-driven establishments, the trading floor at Billingsgate is populated by boxes of glistening fish: eels, mackerel, salmon and exotics such as swordfish, octopus and barracuda. Merchants serve their customers while licensed porters, wearing special badges, manhandle the fish and lug them around on trolleys. ... '); document.write('
Voting reform: The new mapmakers
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The first battle of the new parliament is already well under wayUNTIL it was abolished by the Reform Act of 1832, the “rotten borough” of Old Sarum elected two MPs with fewer than a dozen registered voters. If you believe Labour bigwigs, those days are back. The government proposes to redraw constituencies to make them much more equal in terms of voter population, and to shrink the House of Commons from 650 to 600 members. To create constituencies with around 75,000 voters, bits would be chopped off giant seats such as the Isle of Wight (which has more than 100,000 voters now), while sparsely peopled rural seats in places like Wales would be merged. A handful of (mostly Liberal Democrat) constituencies in the Scottish Highlands would be exempted.In order to have new boundaries ready for the next general election, the government would scrap the formal public inquiries that have dragged out previous boundary reviews for years. In response Labour frontbenchers talk of the “worst kind of gerrymandering” and of abuses to rival rotten boroughs. ... '); document.write('
Mackerel wars: Overfished and over there
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Scotland’s fishermen are up in arms as rivals commandeer a valuable catch SCOTTISH skippers are not the cheeriest lot at the best of times. Now the escalating row over mackerel is adding to their dourness. This summer first Iceland and then the Faroe Islands unilaterally jacked up the amount of the fish they intend to let their fishermen catch. This will endanger stocks, complain Scottish fishermen, who land three-quarters of Britain’s mackerel quota and earned GBP135m from it in 2009. Rich in trendily nutritious substances such as Omega 3 fatty acids, the Atlantic mackerel is big business. Every year the fish migrate northwards to summer feeding grounds around the northern coasts of Britain and Ireland and off southern Norway. These migrations are when fishermen lie in wait. Recently, however, the shoals have been foraging further north, to Iceland and the Faroes. Warmer temperatures are the most plausible explanation. ... '); document.write('
Schumpeter: Declining by degree
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?FIFTY years ago, in the glorious age of three-martini lunches and all-smoking offices, America’s car companies were universally admired. Everybody wanted to know the secrets of their success. How did they churn out dazzling new models every year? How did they manage so many people so successfully (General Motors was then the biggest private-sector employer in the world)? And how did they keep their customers so happy? Today the world is equally in awe of American universities. They dominate global rankings: on the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s list of the world’s best universities, 17 of the top 20 are American, and 35 of the top 50. They employ 70% of living Nobel prizewinners in science and economics and produce a disproportionate share of the world’s most-cited articles in academic journals. Everyone wants to know their secret recipe. ... '); document.write('
Fake drugs: Poison pills
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Counterfeit drugs used to be a problem for poor countries. Now they threaten the rich world, tooDRUG smugglers can expect harsh penalties nearly everywhere—if the drugs in question are heroin or cocaine. Those who smuggle counterfeit medicines, by contrast, have often faced lax enforcement and light punishment. Some governments deem drug-counterfeiting a trivial offence, little more than a common irritant. After all, whose spam filter does not groan with ads for suspiciously cheap “Viagra”? This could be changing, however. The pharmaceutical industry has persuaded several governments to stiffen regulations against fake drugs and to conduct more aggressive raids (see chart). Companies are also devising novel technologies to outfox the criminals. Even the Catholic church is joining the cause, issuing a stern statement in August that it is in “the best interest of all concerned that smuggling of counterfeit drugs be fought against”. ... '); document.write('
Intellectual-property battles: Patent lather
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Paul Allen has rekindled a controversy over patent trollsDEEP-FRIED beer may sound scrumptious, but is it patentable? Mark Zable, an inventive Texan, thinks it is. To protect his novel production process, which involves encasing the alcohol in batter and dunking it in a fryer, he recently applied for a patent. He wants to profit if others exploit his beery brainwave. Without patents to protect their creations, inventors would have little incentive to invent. But some Americans fret that patent protection has grown too strong. The system breeds so many lawsuits, they worry, that it throttles the innovation it is supposed to promote. ... '); document.write('
Mobile internet in emerging markets: The next billion geeks
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countriesBUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on. Only 81m Indians (7% of the population) regularly use the internet. But brutal price wars mean that 507m own mobile phones. Calls cost as little as $0.006 per minute. Indian operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications sign up 20m new subscribers a month. ... '); document.write('
Online television: Hogging the remote
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Old-media firms are firmly in control of internet videoLIKE stallholders in a busy market, technology companies hawked their online-video services this week. In Berlin, Sony announced it would begin selling films over the internet to Europeans. In San Francisco, Apple unveiled a smaller, cheaper Apple TV, a set-top box designed to play videos. It also said some television shows would be available a la carte for 99 cents. YouTube, a video-streaming website owned by Google, is trying to cut deals with studios that would allow it to rent newly released films. Amazon too is reportedly trying to build a subscription service. But while technology companies are making all the noise, old-media firms are quietly steering the market.The main reason for all the activity is the abrupt appearance in shops of televisions that can plug into the internet, either through cables or wirelessly. NPD, a research firm, reckons that 12% of all the flat-screen televisions sold in America in the first seven months of this year were “connected”. That share is likely to soar. Technology firms spy an opportunity to bypass old-fashioned distributors and bring online video directly to the living room. ... '); document.write('
Petrobras: Over a barrel
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Brazil\'s oil giant may be paying too much to pump the stuffFOUR years ago Brazil struck oil—up to 350km (220 miles) offshore and buried under deep water and thick layers of rock, sand and corrosive salt. In places, the oil fields are 7km below the surface, so getting the black stuff out was always going to be hard. Now it looks like finding the funding will be tricky too.On September 1st, two months later than planned, Brazil’s government made public the price it will demand for an estimated 5 billion barrels, mostly in the Franco field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Petrobras, the national oil company that was partially privatised in 1997 (Brazil’s government still owns 40% and a majority of voting rights), will have to pay $8.51 a barrel. Analysts frown that $6 would be more reasonable. Oil is $74 a barrel, on the surface, but is worth much less underground. ... '); document.write('
Car-sharing: Wheels when you need them
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Renting cars by the hour is becoming big businessCAR clubs, whose members pay an annual fee and then rent a car by the hour on a pay-as-you-go basis, are moving from a fringe fad for greens to a big global business. Carmakers have no choice but to pay attention: one rental car can take the place of 15 owned vehicles. Car-sharing started in Europe and spread to America in the late 1990s, when the first venture opened in Portland, Oregon, a traditional hangout of tree-huggers. For years it was organised by small co-operatives, often supported by local government. It still has a green tinge. One in five new cars added to club fleets is electric; such cars are good for short-range, urban use. But sharing is no longer small. ... '); document.write('
Burger King: Whopper to go
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Will Burger King be gobbled up by private equity?SHARES in Burger King (BK) soared on September 1st on reports that the fast-food company was talking to several private-equity firms interested in buying it. How much beef was behind these stories was unclear. But lately the company famous for the slogan “Have It Your Way” has certainly not been having it its own way. There may be arguments about whether BK or McDonald’s serves the best fries, but there is no doubt which is more popular with stockmarket investors: the maker of the Big Mac has supersized its lead in the past two years.Recession has favoured McDonald’s over BK, whose share price has fallen by half since the economy was flame-grilled in the summer of 2008. Shares in McDonald’s have risen, reaching an all-time high in August. Same-store sales at BK have fallen for five successive quarters. ... '); document.write('
A minimum wage for Hong Kong: So much for red in tooth and claw
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('An enclave of unbridled capitalism thinks againIT HAS been mooted since 1932, but Hong Kong has never had a minimum wage. It soon will, however. In July a law was passed. And on August 30th, after endless meetings, an official commission agreed to recommend what the minimum hourly wage should be. That figure was not disclosed, but leaks suggest it will be HK$28-29 ($3.60-3.70).That is halfway between what labour groups demanded and what business groups reluctantly suggested. It will please no one: the territory’s largest labour organisations vowed to fight for at least HK$33, plus annual increases. Prices are rising and wage grumbles are rife. Bus workers briefly went on strike in August. ... '); document.write('
Correction: Accounting rules
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Our story on shocking new accounting rules (“You gonna buy that?” August 21st) contained a shocking error. We should have said that the obligation to pay for a leased item will go in the liabilities column, not the debit column. Sorry. ... '); document.write('
Economics focus: War footing
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Monetary and fiscal stimulus make a potent, if uneasy, combinationTHE Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is the big event of the year for central bankers. But defining monetary policy is far harder than it used to be. In recent years central bankers have lurched ever closer to the realm of fiscal policy, mainly by buying government debt with freshly printed money. They can justify such “quantitative easing” (QE) on monetary grounds since they have already lowered short-term interest rates to, or close to, zero. But they also worry it is a slippery slope from QE to monetising government deficits and thence, inevitably, to inflation. When Phillip Swagel, then an official with the US Treasury, was asked why he attended the conference in 2008, he shrugged: “Fiscal policy, monetary policy—what’s the difference?”For central bankers this is an unsettling thought. Their mistrust of fiscal policy was nicely captured in a paper presented at this year’s Jackson Hole conference by Eric Leeper of Indiana University*. As central bankers have become more independent, they have increasingly based their policies on rigorous economic analysis. By contrast fiscal policy is deeply politicised, with haphazard methods and few, if any, defined goals. ... '); document.write('
The world economy: The odd decouple
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Theories about why some rich-world economies are doing better than America’s don’t stand upAMERICA is used to making the economic weather. It has the world’s largest economy, its most influential central bank and it issues the main global reserve currency. In recent months, however, some rich-world economies (notably Germany’s) have basked in the sunshine even as the clouds gathered over America. On August 27th America’s second-quarter GDP growth was revised down to an annualised 1.6%. That looked moribund compared with the 9% rate confirmed in Germany a few days earlier. America’s jobless rate was 9.5% in July (figures for August were released on September 3rd, after The Economist went to press). But in Germany the unemployment rate is lower even than before the downturn. Other rich countries, including Britain and Australia, have enjoyed sprightlier recent GDP growth and lower unemployment than America. ... '); document.write('
Rare earths: Digging in
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('China restricts exports of some obscure but important commoditiesBEHIND the rise of resource-poor countries like Japan, South Korea and China into industrial giants has been the readiness of other countries to sell them critical commodities, albeit sometimes at excruciating cost. An unfolding collision around a group of elements known as “rare earths” is seen by some as a test of China’s willingness to reciprocate. Rare earths have become increasingly important in manufacturing sophisticated products including flat-screen monitors, electric-car batteries, wind turbines and aerospace alloys. Over the summer prices for cerium (used in glass), lanthanum (petrol refining), yttrium (displays) and a bunch of other –iums have zoomed upward (see chart) as China, which accounts for almost all of the world’s production, squeezes supply. In July it announced the latest in a series of annual export reductions, this time by 40% to precisely 30,258 tonnes. That is 15,000-20,000 tonnes less than consumption by non-Chinese producers, says Judith Chegwidden of Roskill Information Services, a consultancy. ... '); document.write('
Private equity: Candover and out
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('A once-revered buy-out firm is going under. Who’s next?FOR years people have been predicting the demise of private equity. Now they have a proper tombstone to point at. On August 31st Candover, once one of Britain’s leading private-equity firms, announced that it would unwind its assets and return money to shareholders and investors. The 30-year-old firm is the biggest buy-out victim of the crisis so far.Bad investments during the boom helped undo Candover. Several companies in its portfolio have struggled under their debts over the past two years, including Ferretti, a luxury-yacht maker. In June Candover relinquished control of Gala Coral, a gambling company, to creditors. It has had to write down several other investments. ... '); document.write('
Carbon markets: The smoking greenhouse gun
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('An alluring trade in “supergreenhouse” gas emissions is coming under scrutinyONE of the curiosities of carbon markets is that they do not just trade in carbon. Other greenhouse gases can be given a value, too—sometimes a very high one. Claims that these prices promote scammery are now prompting some searching questions. The gas at the centre of the controversy is HFC-23, a greenhouse gas which, on a weight-for-weight basis, is 14,800 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. HFC-23 is produced as a by-product of the manufacture of HCFC-22, an ozone-destroying refrigerant. HCFC-22 is banned in developed countries, but developing countries can keep making it until 2030. ... '); document.write('
Sovereign debt: Wiggle room
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('The IMF offers indebted governments some reassuranceONE consequence of the deepest recession since the Depression has been the biggest peacetime build-up of public debt the rich world has ever seen. Some reckon that the debt position of many rich countries is now unsustainable. It is a measure of just how nervous people have become about the mountain of debt that the IMF—not usually known for taking doveish views—concluded in two papers released on September 1st that there is too much pessimism about public finances.The IMF argues that despite historically high debt-to-GDP ratios, many countries still have room for fiscal manoeuvre. Typically, the debate on the point at which a country’s debt burden spirals out of control has tried to identify a single debt-to-GDP threshold, above which things are no longer sustainable. The fund’s economists argue that a universal debt limit does not make sense. ... '); document.write('
Buttonwood: Divvying up returns
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Investors should pay more attention to dividendsDIVIDENDS do not get the respect they deserve. Over the long run they provide the bulk of equity investors’ returns. Work by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of the London Business School* found that over the period from 1900 to 2005, the real return from global equities averaged 5%. The mean dividend yield over that period was 4.5%.Despite this, stockmarkets devote a lot more time to forecasting and analysing profits than they do to thinking about payouts. Profits can be easily manipulated and come in a bewildering variety of forms (operating, reported, post-tax, pre-exceptional, etc). Dividends are (mostly) paid in cash and so are hard to fake. ... '); document.write('
Finance after the crisis: Deutsche Bank: A tamer casino
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Germany’s biggest bank is trying to make investment banking boring. The latest in our series of profiles of financial institutions after the crisisJOSEF ACKERMANN, the head of Deutsche Bank, combines a silky manner with blunt words. When the German government set up a bail-out fund to stabilise the country’s banking system, he said he would be “ashamed” to use it. When Europe and the IMF bailed out Greece, Mr Ackermann said he doubted it would pay back the loans. And when regulators and economists say that big banks should be broken up, with “casino” investment banks split off from “utility” retail banks, Mr Ackermann retorts that “smaller banks will not make us safer.”Mr Ackermann speaks with the authority of a man who steered his bank through the crisis more deftly than most. Deutsche did not escape unscathed. In 2008, a year in which it had confidently forecast a record profit of more than €8 billion ($11.7 billion), it posted a net loss of almost €4 billion because of a huge hit to its investment bank (see chart). Yet it emerged from the crisis as the leading member of an exclusive club of large banks—others include Barclays and Credit Suisse—that did not have to take direct injections of public funds (although all, of course, benefited from a wide range of other government props to the system). ... '); document.write('
The nature of the universe: Ye cannae change the laws of physics
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Or can you?RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen atoms. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist. Why alpha takes on the precise value it does, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia presents evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to scrutiny they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. Instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, Goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it. ... '); document.write('
Emerging infections: No good deed goes unpunished
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Smallpox has gone, but monkeypox is now rearing its ugly headONE of the greatest public-health victories of the last century was the eradication of smallpox. After the disease was pronounced extinct, in 1980, people stopped using the smallpox vaccine. That seemed the ultimate symbol of technology’s triumph over a medieval scourge.Alas, it turns out that the end of vaccination has unleashed new demons. Researchers have long suspected that smallpox vaccine also provides protection against diseases such as monkeypox and cowpox, and three decades ago a committee of experts weighed up whether ending vaccination for smallpox might allow one of those diseases to spread in humans. They decided this was unlikely. Now, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests they may have been wrong. A team led by Anne Rimoin of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted surveys of people living in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They found a dramatic surge in monkeypox—a disease which, though not as bad as smallpox, kills up to 10% of those it infects. ... '); document.write('
Mental stimulation and dementia: Brain gain
'); document.write('published on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:46:15 GMT
'); document.write('Stimulating the brain delays, but does not prevent, dementiaAS THE baby-boomer generation contemplates the prospect of the Zimmer frame there has never been more interest in delaying the process of ageing. One consequence has been a dramatic rise in the popularity of brain-training games. But how effective really is a daily dose of cryptic crossword?Robert Wilson, a neuropsychologist at Rush University in Chicago, and his colleagues decided to find out, by following a group of people without dementia. Participants were asked to rate how frequently they engaged in cognitively stimulating activities. The researchers were looking for such things as reading newspapers, books and magazines, playing challenging games like chess, listening to the radio and watching television, and visiting museums. ... '); document.write('
New theatre: Scottish tragedy as burlesque
'); document.write('published on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:50:43 GMT
'); document.write('“Caledonia”, at the Edinburgh festival, does less than justice to its subject THE foolhardy attempt by the Scots to establish a foreign colony of their own at Darien on the isthmus of Panama in the 1690s has all the ingredients for a perfect drama. It reveals greed, ambition, ignorance, folly, suffering and forbearance, all washed with an essential nobility of spirit. The venture would have circumvented attempts by the English king, William of Orange, to stop the Scots from playing their part in international trade. A new and exciting entity, a joint-stock company created by act of Parliament and financed by public subscription, would oversee the project. The Company of Scotland caught the national mood. No longer simply a business speculation, it became a patriotic crusade. ... '); document.write('
Philanthropy: Do-gooders in 1790s London
'); document.write('published on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:50:43 GMT
'); document.write('A bid to end slaveryThe Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s Circle Transformed Britain. By Stephen Tomkins. Lion Hudson; 272 pages; $16.95 and GBP10.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukTHE group called the “Clapham Sect” is best known now for its contribution, under William Wilberforce’s leadership, to the campaigns for the abolition of the British slave trade and, ultimately, of slavery itself. It was a collection of evangelical, philanthropic families, spread across three generations, many of whom settled during the 1790s in Clapham, then a prosperous village just outside London. The name itself, given later, was a mild dig at their religious clannishness. A contemporary, the Rev Sydney Smith, had been sharper, calling them the “Clapham Church”. ... '); document.write('