The internet has become too important for governments to ignore
GOVERNMENTS are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. But China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The OpenNet Initiative, an advocacy group, lists more than a dozen countries that block internet content for political, social and security reasons. They do not need especially clever technology: governments go increasingly after dominant online firms because they are easy to get hold of. In April Google published the numbers of requests it had received from official agencies to remove content or provide information about users. For more on how governments and companies are erecting borders in cyberspace see article.
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Galloping inflation in American college fees
FOR decades, college fees have risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes most other kinds look modest by comparison. Students may not be getting a good deal in return (see story). ...
China now has more warships than America, according to the IISS
THE International Institute for Strategic Studies (better known as the IISS), reckons China now has more warships than America, which long possessed the biggest fleet. As it can be hard to distinguish a warship from other boats, the IISS uses its own definition of what counts and what does not. This striking trend is yet another manifestation of the rise of China. But it also reflect the cost of warships and other weapons built by America (see article). Philip Pugh, author of “The Cost of Seapower”, a 1986 study of shipbuilding costs since the end of the Napoleonic wars, argues that the industrial revolution made the problem more acute: the rapid pace of technological change set off a race to build bigger, more powerful, more heavily armed and better-protected battleships. At some point, as unit prices rise, one of two things must happen: countries must either scale back their ambition, or seek game-changing technology, as they did when the battleship gave way to the submarine and aircraft-carrier.
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The best-selling political memoirs in Britain
TONY BLAIR, Britain's former prime minister, published his memoirs on Wednesday September 1st. The few people who have already read them cover to cover report that, in addition to the familiar stuff about how awful his relationship with Gordon Brown was, Mr Blair admits to being manipulative and to having a developed sense of his own destiny. The book is likely to sell well, though it seems that British book buyers are rather more interested in American politicians than in their own. Three of the four bestselling political memoirs in Britain (since barcodes made such things easier to count) are by Americans. The Brit who separates the Clintons near the top, comedian John O'Farrell, was never really a politician: he stood for election once (in Maidenhead) and then made some rather archaic puns about the experience.
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How America's opinion of the Iraq war has changed
OVER seven years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, America's direct military involvement is now coming to an end. President Barack Obama will set out his new policy in a speech from the Oval Office on Monday August 31st. American public opinion on the war has changed enormously during that time. When George Bush prematurely declared an end to major combat operations in May 2003 most Americans were behind the war, with only a quarter saying it was a mistake according to Gallup polling data. But the public's mood turned when allegations of torture by US soldiers came to light in early 2004. The bloody terror campaign by Sunni militia groups, which began in earnest in 2006 and killed Iraqis by the thousands and American troops by the hundreds, also had a profound effect on opinion.
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China's traffic jam was inevitable
CHINA tends to do everything a bit bigger than the rest of the world, including traffic jams. One snarl up this month along a highway leading into Beijing was at one point over 100km long and left traffic gridlocked for eleven days until it mysteriously vanished on Thursday August 26th. Roadworks and booming demand for coal and other goods sent thousands of lorries heading for China's capital. Beijing is set to spend 80 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) on transport infrastructure in 2010—but it may not be enough. In recent years rising vehicle ownership has outpaced the growth of China's express highway system by a distance. China's new motoring class may have to get used to spending many more hours behind the wheel than they might otherwise intend.
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Who has most freedom to travel?
THE ability to visit a foreign country without the cost and hassle of obtaining a visa is a welcome bonus for any traveller. It is also a barometer of a country's international alliances and relations. A report released on August 25th by Henley & Partners, a consultancy, shows that Britons have the fewest visa restrictions of the 190-odd countries (and territories) for which data are available. British citizens can enjoy a three-day stay for business or pleasure to 166 destinations without needing a visa. Generally, citizens of rich countries and trade-based economies have more freedom to travel than those of countries suffering from war or repression. Compare, for instance, the restrictions on South Korea with North Korea and Hong Kong with those on China.
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Where has all the plastic gone?
THE amount of plastic thrown away by Americans increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that as more plastic is produced and discarded, this will affect oceanic pollution. But a study of the north Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas looked at despite a steady rise in the amount discarded. Kara Law and her colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry that resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water is still insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk; trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.
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Bankruptcies rise in America
BANKRUPTCY filings rose 20% in the year to June 30th compared with the previous 12-month period, according to statistics released on August 17th by the Administrative Office of the US Courts. This takes quarterly filings to their highest point since tougher bankruptcy laws were introduced at the end of 2005. That change brought a spike of bankruptcies, as companies and individuals rushed to declare themselves broke under the more lenient old regime. The data suggest that an older trend is reasserting itself. This is could be more bad news for America—or it could just mean that creative destruction is alive and well.
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Asia overtakes Europe, in beer terms
CHINA;S remarkable growth is as apparent in beer consumption as it is in more formal economic indicators. In the space of a couple of decades the country has gone from barely touching a drop to become the world;s biggest beer market, a considerable distance ahead of America. And beer drinking in China is growing fast, by nearly 10% a year according to Credit Suisse;s World Map of Beer. This might seem like good news for the four big firms that dominate global brewing. Between them ABI, SABMiller, Carlsberg and Heineken have nearly half the world market. But unlike America and other hugely profitable mature markets where beer drinking has levelled off or is in decline, China;s drinkers provide slender profits. Still it remains a market with huge potential, though foreign brewers must now be rather tired of hearing that.
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China's economy overtakes Japan's in real terms
CHINA has become the world's second biggest economy according to data released on Monday August 16th. Japan's economy fell behind China's at market exchange rates in the second quarter (it has been number three in PPP terms for some time). These numbers are not strictly comparable: Japan's data have been seasonally adjusted while those for China have not. Quibbles aside, Japan will surely be eclipsed soon, if it has not been already. Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.
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The jobless recovery, long prophesied, is here
FEARS that the recovery of America's economy after the financial crisis would fail to spur an increase in employment are being realised. In July, 52,000 fewer people were employed on non-farm payrolls than in July 2009, the month in which it is estimated the American economy climbed out of recession. Comparing the latest recession with previous ones is unflattering. The American economy has seen downturns this severe and recoveries this jobless, but never one on top of the other.
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Shadow economies have grown since the financial crisis began
A NEW estimate of the size of shadow economies around the world sheds light on a worrying trend. Friedrich Schneider, of Linz University in Austria, reckons that, for the first time in a decade, transactions taking place outside the taxable and observable realm of the official economy captured by GDP numbers are increasing. Shadow economy does not mean ill-gotten gains here, but legal economic activity that is not taxed. Mr Schneider attributes this reversal to the financial crisis, which seems to be pushing more people in OECD and EU countries to avoid the extra burden of taxation by resorting to informal transactions. The shadow economy, in other words, can act as a cushion when times are tough.
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The world's biggest broadband providers
THE ten largest broadband service providers in the world gained over 23m subscribers in the year to the end of March. Together they have 191m subscribers, or almost 40% of the world’s 492m broadband customers, according to TeleGeography, a research firm. The lion's share is taken by China Telecom and China Unicom, which together account for a fifth of all global broadband subcribers. Both companies gained around 9m more subscribers over the past year, equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon.
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In which European countries are people least likely to attend religious services?
THE proportion of people who regularly attend religious services has declined steadily throughout Europe in recent years. But habits vary widely across countries. According to the latest European Social Survey conducted in 2008 and 2009, over 60% of Czechs say they never attend religious services, with the exception of “special occasions” such as marriages and christenings. France, Britain and Belgium are also secular nations, with over half of respondents never going to services. The most regular attenders among the 28 countries polled are in Cyprus and Greece, where only 2.4% and 4.9% respectively say they do not go to church.
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How long can corporate America’s profit rebound continue?
THE quarterly results season that is drawing to a close has revealed that corporate profits are back within a whisker of the all-time highs achieved before the downturn in late 2008. American profits are already back to 11% of GDP. Corporate America is reaping the rewards from cutting costs, especially in capital investment and labour, through an unpleasant mix of redundancies, reduced hours and lower pay. The great squeeze cannot go on forever, of course, but it shows no sign of slackening. Figures released on Friday August 6th show the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.5% in July, but non-farm payroll employment fell by 131,000, some 65,000 more than expected. The great decoupling of profits from jobs could last for a long time.
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Who produces most diamonds?
AMID much media interest, Naomi Campbell, a model, gave evidence on Thursday August 5th at the special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Charles Taylor, the former dictator of Liberia, who is on trial for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone, is accused of giving Ms Campbell a “blood diamond” in 1997. Ms Campbell admitted receiving a gift of “dirty looking stones”. Since 2000, the governments of over 75 countries have signed up to the Kimberley Process, which certifies that diamonds produced for foreign markets have not helped to fund violence. The Process has its critics, who point out that diamonds from the huge Marange mine in Zimbabwe have just been cleared for sale, despite much evidence of government-sponsored violence there.
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The cost of breakfast rises
SEVERE drought and wildfires in Russia, the world’s fourth largest wheat producer, have destroyed a fifth of the country’s crop and sent prices soaring. Since the end of June wheat prices have more than doubled. On Wednesday August 4th, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization cut its forecast for 2010 global wheat production by 5m tonnes, to 651m tonnes. Kazakhstan and Ukraine, both big wheat producers, have also been hit with dry weather. In Canada the problem is the reverse: unusually wet weather has prevented seeding and destroyed crops. But wheat is not alone. The price of orange juice has also risen recently, probably thanks to bets placed on the likelihood of tropical storms. Coffee prices, which hit a 13-year high, are a result of poor harvests. Taken together, the raw ingredients for breakfast in much of the rich world have increased in price by 25% since the beginning of June.
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Stolen cars which are most costly to insurers
AMERICA'S car thieves show clear preferences in the vehicles they steal. Size, speed and luxury are all important factors when it comes to selecting a target. But the country's car thieves are, at least, patriotic. If America's carmaking giants have struggled in recent years to build vehicles that match the public taste, they are keeping car thieves happy. Only two of the top ten stolen cars in America (measured in terms of cash paid out by insurers) come from a foreign manufacturer. America's car criminals are more suspicious of Japanese or European models and are reluctant to be seen in smaller cars. A reluctance to nick Toyota Priuses shows they have little regard for the environment either.
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An international convention banning cluster bombs comes into force
ON AUGUST 1st the UN's Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning the manufacture, use and stockpiling of cluster munitions came into force. The UN estimates that 98% of victims of cluster munitions, explosive weapons that scatter bomblets across a wide area, are civilians. The convention has been signed by 107 governments and ratified by 37. Of the 87 countries which have had stockpiles of cluster weapons at some point, 38 are signatories. But many producers and stockpilers of cluster bombs (including China, Russia and the United States) decided not to sign the convention.
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