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Basic Cell Phone Acronyms You Need to Know : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech

2007-05-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

Confused by the alphabet soup of cell phone acronyms? I don't blame you. Here's a cheat sheet that'll help you navigate the waters while your shopping for your next phone—or trying to get the most out of the handset you've got.

Most of the confusion arises when it comes to the various types of cell phone networks. For example, when I ask my aunts and uncles which networks their phones work on, they'll usually tell me their carrier instead of whether they're using GSM or CDMA—and frankly, before I started writing about cell phones for a living, I didn't know the difference, either. So first, let's start with a quick overview of the two main standard for cell networks:

Confused by the alphabet soup of cell phone acronyms? I don't blame you. Here's a cheat sheet that'll help you navigate the waters while your shopping for your next phone—or trying to get the most out of the handset you've got.

Most of the confusion arises when it comes to the various types of cell phone networks. For example, when I ask my aunts and uncles which networks their phones work on, they'll usually tell me their carrier instead of whether they're using GSM or CDMA—and frankly, before I started writing about cell phones for a living, I didn't know the difference, either. So first, let's start with a quick overview of the two main standard for cell networks:

GSM: Short for Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM is the most widespread standard for cell phones networks in the world. If you're a jetsetter who likes keeping in touch during your far-flung travels, you should go with a GSM-enabled phone, and here in the U.S., AT&T and T-Mobile are both GSM carriers. Besides the technical differences between CDMA and GSM networks (I'll spare you the details), the main distinction of a GSM phone is that it comes with a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card—a little plastic chip that, as its name implies, identifies your phone on the GSM network. If you take the SIM card out of your GSM phone and put it into another GSM handset, you'll be able to place and receive calls on the second phone using your own cell phone number. GSM phones are also capable of handling six-way conference calls.
CDMA: Short for Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA networks are much more prevalent in the U.S. than they are abroad, and while CDMA boasts many of the same features as GSM networks (including caller ID, call waiting, and text messaging), there are some key differences—namely, CDMA phones don't use SIM cards. Instead, your phone's identity and number are programmed into the handset by your carrier, and you can't easily switch numbers on CDMA phones as you can with SIM-equipped GSM phones. Also, CDMA phones can only handle three-way conference calls, versus six-way calls on GSM networks. Major CDMA carriers in the U.S. include Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and regional operator Alltel.

OK, so you've got your two main flavors of networks, but now I'm going to stir another variable into the mix: 3G. Here's the deal: GSM and CDMA are both considered second-generation, or 2G, networks (the first generation being AMPS, an analog network used mainly back in the 1980s). Unlike the old voice-only AMPS networks, digital GSM and CDMA networks can handle both voice and data calls, which means you can send text messages, surf the Web and get caller ID info. But data flows slowly over GSM and CDMA—think dial-up, only slower. Streaming video and music? Forget it.

That's where 3G, or third-generation networks, come in. These so-called 3G systems allow data to flow at speeds you'd expect from a home DSL modem or better—and at those speeds, you get features like streaming video and full-track music downloads. The main types of 3G networks include:

EV-DO: An add-on for CDMA networks, EV-DO (or Evolution-Data Optimized) delivers data speeds between 144Kbps to 2Mbps to CDMA cell phones, perfect for streaming video and music. Sprint offers EV-DO access through its Power Vision phones (which are typically a little pricier than standard models); on Verizon Wireless, look for the "V Cast" label.
UMTS and HSDPA: Both UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) are upgrades to GSM networks, and like EV-DO, they provide DSL and cable-like data speed. The only difference between UMTS and HSDPA (besides the technical nitty-gritty, of course) is that HSDPA is even faster than UMTS; for that reason, HSDPA networks are often called 3.5G rather than just 3G. In the U.S., only AT&T offers UMTS and HSDPA networks. (T-Mobile is busy working on its own HSDPA network, which should begin going online by the end of the year.)

Somewhere between 3G and 2G lies, naturally enough, 2.5G networks, which give you data speeds that are slightly faster than dial-up—no good for streaming video, but fine for messaging or mobile Web browsing. These networks include:

1xRTT: A variant of the CDMA standard, 1xRTT (or "1 times Radio Transmission Technology") gives you data speeds between 30Kbps and 90Kbps, a bit better than your typical 56Kbps dial-up modem. Most of the non-3G phones on Sprint and Verizon have 1xRTT capabilities.
GPRS and EDGE: The 2.5G flavors of GSM networks, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) also give you data in the 30Kbps to 90Kbps range, with EDGE running slightly faster than GPRS. Again, most of the non-3G phones on AT&T offer either GPRS or EDGE, while T-Mobile—which has yet to launch a 3G network—only does GPRS and EDGE.

Whew! That's a lot of terminology, I know—and believe it or not, I've barely scratched the surface. I'll tackle more wireless acronyms in future posts; in the meantime, if you're curious about the technical details of the various cell networks, I'd suggest combing through Wikipedia, or check out Phonescoop's exhaustive glossary.

Basic Cell Phone Acronyms You Need to Know : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech

Iran’s Centrifuges - New York Times

2007-05-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

For a U.N.-baiting, diplomacy-bashing crowd, the Bush administration has shown unexpected patience in trying to persuade the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear misbehavior. And for a foot-dragging, conflict-averse crowd, the Security Council has moved with alacrity in imposing two sets of sanctions on Iran just since December.

Unfortunately, Iran is still playing to type.

Iran’s Centrifuges
For a U.N.-baiting, diplomacy-bashing crowd, the Bush administration has shown unexpected patience in trying to persuade the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear misbehavior. And for a foot-dragging, conflict-averse crowd, the Security Council has moved with alacrity in imposing two sets of sanctions on Iran just since December.

Unfortunately, Iran is still playing to type.

Nine months after the Council ordered Tehran to suspend enriching uranium, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran’s scientists are close to mastering the process that would allow them to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon.

Some diplomats have begun arguing that now that the “point of no return” has passed, the Security Council should drop its insistence that Iran halt all enrichment — and the sanctions attached to that demand — and focus on trying to contain the size of the enrichment program and ensuring that inspectors can monitor the effort. That may well be where this will all end up. But it is far too soon to make that sort of concession, especially since Iran has a proven record of pocketing concessions and pushing its program ahead.

Given the urgency and ambition of Iran’s nuclear program, what is needed is a more urgent and ambitious international response. Let us be clear, this is not a call for more White House saber rattling and certainly not for military planning. There is no military solution. But unless Iran’s leaders are offered far more attractive rewards — yes, we’re talking about a grand bargain — and threatened with far more painful punishments — yes, that could mean another spike in world oil prices — there is no chance of changing their behavior.

That means that President Bush is going to have to put a lot more on the table, including a clear offer of full diplomatic relations and security guarantees should Iran agree to verifiably contain its nuclear ambitions. And it also means that the Europeans, Russians and Chinese are going to have to take a lot more off the table, cutting back diplomatic and trade relations if Tehran continues to push its nuclear program ahead.

It is hard to decide which is making Tehran more cocky these days: its scientists’ technical successes or America’s disastrous failure in Iraq. But its recent talk of rationing gasoline — now delayed — shows a clear and present vulnerability.

Until now, both Mr. Bush and his diplomatic partners have managed to sidestep any really tough choices when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program. The lesson of the new I.A.E.A. report is that the time for sidestepping has run out. What is needed is a frank and public discussion about the cost of Iran getting a nuclear weapon and what the world is willing to give and take away to try to prevent that.

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2007-05-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Blogger Help : How can I create expandable post summaries?

Striking a new realism - International Herald Tribune

2007-05-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON:
Neither the Democratic takeover of Congress nor the beginning of the presidential campaign has yet started a meaningful foreign policy debate in the United States. In fact, setting aside Iraq, neither presidential candidates, Congress, nor the media have shown much interest in a serious conversation about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. And a majority of legislators and opinion leaders act as if Iraq were an isolated mistake resulting from the peculiar incompetence of the Bush administration rather than a logical consequence of the country's flawed post-Cold War foreign policy approach.
The problem is not new. When the United States became the only superpower, quite a few in the foreign policy elite could not withstand the temptation of triumphalism and a sense of unlimited possibilities. Near unanimity emerged between liberal interventionist Democrats and neoconservative Republicans, who together were able to dominate discourse on world affairs.
The American media's propensity to cover international relations through the prism of domestic politics helped to create the false sense of "Washington consensus." Those who have roles in previous administrations, connections to the current one, or a good chance to join the next one, enjoy the best access to op-ed pages and television.
The trouble is that while many of these people have impeccable academic credentials, few are analysts first and foremost. Many are members of a government-in-exile aspiring to return to power or work in businesses that depend on political connections. Such individuals naturally and understandably tend to be very careful to avoid defying the conventional wisdom; they are especially careful to avoid saying anything that could make them vulnerable to criticism.
Thus, in 2007, America has not yet had a serious debate about its role in the world in the 21st century. This is quite a contrast to the vigorous discussion of America's global mission at the end of World War II, which included lively exchanges on confronting the Soviet challenge, rebuilding Europe, moving Japan away from militarism, and creating a new structure of international organizations and regional alliances.
Today, beyond acknowledging that the United States is the only superpower with a unique mission and responsibilities, there is little assessment of the profound difference between America trying to play a global hegemon pressing mankind to take the direction it wants and, conversely, acting as a leader who genuinely strives to develop consensus positions reflecting not only its priorities, but also the interests and preferences of others.
While the choice is clearly not black and white, there is a choice. But do not expect to see much outside foreign policy journals.
Considerable evidence, for example, suggests that more even-handed U.S. management of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is essential to marginalize Islamic extremists. Yet presidential candidates are reluctant to offend Israel's supporters, and most members of Congress - from both parties - are running away from this explosive issue.
The conversation on Iran also has not gone beyond clichés like "no option should be off the table" and "dialogue might be a good idea." Most politicians, with the notable exceptions of Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, fail even to acknowledge that the U.S. policy of regime change gives Tehran less incentive to accommodate American preferences.
There is also little public dialogue on the rise of China. On this the Bush administration is more pragmatic than many Democrats in Congress, who engage in populist, protectionist posturing. But no American leader is asking how the U.S. insistence on overwhelming military predominance - as important as it is - will affect China's views of its security requirements.
Finally, while there is bipartisan frustration with Russia's undemocratic trends at home and growing assertiveness abroad, most see a need to obtain its cooperation on matters like nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and support of Western positions in the UN Security Council. But many in the American political class still find it offensive to suggest that Washington may occasionally have to accommodate the Kremlin to secure this help.
For almost 20 years, it has been fashionable in the United States to assume that America could guide the world toward market democracy, that this would advance U.S. interests and the wishes of mankind alike, and that it would be cheap. A whole generation of politicians, opinion-makers and specialists has been brought up to believe that foreign policy realism is unnecessary and even immoral.
But this self-serving naïveté increasingly clashes with the pragmatic requirements of protecting U.S. security and enhancing American influence. Behind the facade of artificial consensus, more and more people in both parties are raising questions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. The question is whether their voices will become sufficiently loud and powerful before a new international crisis strikes.
Dimitri K. Simes, the president of The Nixon Center, is publisher of The National Interest. This article was adapted from an essay that appeared in that publication.
Striking a new realism - International Herald Tribune

The Jakarta Post - 'E Pluribus Ika', or the power of diversity in Indonesian society

2007-05-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

'E Pluribus Ika', or the power of diversity in Indonesian society

Robert Pringle, Alexandria, Virginia

Many Americans coming to Indonesia, whether for business or pleasure, are nervous about Islam. On the one hand they hear that Indonesia's tropicalized Islam is warm and friendly, not like the harsh desert variety. On the other hand they read about bombings and communal violence in places like Poso, wherever that might be.

The situation is complicated by the fact that most of us lack even stereotypical understanding of Indonesia, of the kind that we have for India and China, for example. Indonesia was never mentioned in our high school world history courses and we are not sure where it begins or end on the map. Do there really have to be so many islands?

A sampling of easily available punditry doesn't help much. We learn that Indonesia is still largely poor and uneducated, that it has been prone to dictatorship and Years of Living Dangerously, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and too many plane crashes, and that its capital goes completely under water periodically. No wonder all those "tribes" and religions don't get along.

The better informed among us may know that Indonesia's new, blissfully unguided democracy has been doing quite well, and that the current president and his running mate seem to be quite a capable pair, rather more so than the leadership we are experiencing at home.

But we are in a "Yes, But" frame of mind. Tell us that country X is doing well, and we are likely to reply "Yes, But what have they done for us lately?" and then produce a new list of worries: Corruption, unreformed judiciary, environmental disasters, and so on.

And so, regarding Islam in Indonesia, we are not satisfied that the fever chart of regional conflict has trended downwards since it peaked about five years ago, not least due to the major achievement of peace in Aceh. The same goes for the consistent inability of the Islamist parties -- those who would try to replace Indonesia's multicultural model with an Islamic State -- to win more than a small minority in every national election since 1955. (We have no idea of exactly what an Islamic State might be, partly because its advocates don't agree on that issue, but we assume it would mean oppression of women, cutting off thieves' hands, and worse.)

We dismiss the election results with the "Yes, but" notion that since the Islamist parties (with the Prosperous Justice Party or PKS in the lead) can't win openly on Islamist platforms, they must be plotting behind the scenes to "Arabize" Indonesia without daring to say so out loud. Locally they are already at work, taking advantage of Indonesia's decentralized democracy to enact sharia-inspired regulations in somewhere between five to ten percent of all cities and districts.

Fear of creeping "Arabization" tinged with paranoia is shared by quite a few foreigners who know the country relatively well, and also by some Indonesians. It reminds me of the way we Americans used to feel about the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) before it was eliminated in 1966 (granted that given its mass base on Java, the PKI probably had a more numerous following than the Islamists do today). Many foreigners fear that outward signs of religious observance -- the growing use of headscarves, the proliferation of prayer rooms in public places, and so on -- are signs of Wahabi-style fundamentalism, the intellectual underpinning of terrorism.

Think of Indonesian society as a huge tapestry, with many colors and patterns but also with quite a few loose threads. You can grab any one of them and pull, and you may not be sure exactly how much of the thread will break off in your hands, but you know that the entire fabric is not going to unravel.

It is a curious fact that Americans, of all people, have a hard time understanding Indonesian diversity despite our own relevant national experience. Obviously our diversities differ somewhat. Except for newly arrived immigrants, ours is a fairly well liquefied melting pot, whereas Indonesia's is still more gado-gado in consistency. Our national mottos, Bhinekka Tunggal Ika and E Pluribus Unum, mean the same thing.

I am told by John MacDougall, an American anthropologist currently working on a study of Darul Islam, that Bhinekka Tunggal Ika comes from am ancient Indian epic that assumes an inherent tension between "unity" and "diversity."

Indonesians I interviewed emphasize that when Islam arrived, it encountered many highly varied cultures. Numerous blendings of local and imported religious practice were the result. Now people everywhere like to think that their variant "is Islam," I was told.

But they also know that in other regions, people have their own ideas about how Islam should be practiced beyond the five basic pillars of the faith. And they realize, having grown up in gado-gado land, that they cannot impose their religious beliefs on others. More importantly, the vast majority doesn't want to.

Pick any province in Indonesia and you can find rich examples of deeply- rooted diversity, now in full flower under a truly democratic national regime. One of my favorites is West Sumatra, home of one of the few matrilineal Muslim societies in the world. As elsewhere, Islam settled here on a vibrant structure of Hindu and animist tradition.

West Sumatra has produced a astonishingly varied stream of national leaders over the years -- middle-of-the road first Vice President Mohammed Hatta, Islamist politician and prime minister Mohammed Natsir, Communist leader Tan Malaka, and many more. In addition to fostering local pride, this experience has accustomed the Minang people to acute intellectual diversity.

Visit the Padang museum and you will see, among other things, a guide to the gorgeous customary houses with their horned roofs, stylistically similar to bronze-age forms found elsewhere in Indonesia. You will also see a reverent display of the ancient and equally stunning pagoda-style mosques reflecting Hindu heritage.

When I visited Padang in February the city was just recovering from a comical episode which ensued when members of the city legislature tried to ban women from the streets during hours of darkness. The idea was quickly abandoned because Minang women, none of them shrinking violets, run all the markets and need to be at work before dawn.

While West Sumatra's diversity is particularly striking it illustrates themes common to the whole country: The long contest between traditional and modern Islam which, just like a shadow play, no one ever definitively wins; the interplay between ancient and less ancient cultural waves, and strong local identity combined with a sense of nationhood which, however imperfectly, embraces both Bhineka Tunggal Ika.

At the moment decentralized democracy, still very much a work in progress, is encouraging fledgling politicians to stretch their wings and play ethnic politics, sometimes with dangerous as well as amusing results. (We are quite familiar with this syndrome in the U.S.) In the long run, and no doubt after much more tinkering, democracy will give Indonesia's diversity the political breathing space it must have to survive.

The better that foreigners understand the depth and tenacity of Indonesia's diversity, the less they will be inclined to fear that the country is likely to succumb to ideological or religious regimentation.

The writer is a retired diplomat and historian, currently writing a short book on Islam in Indonesia sponsored by the United States -- Indonesia Society. He can be reached at rpringle9@comcast.net.

The Jakarta Post - 'E Pluribus Ika', or the power of diversity in Indonesian society

Venezuelan bluster? | Economist.com

2007-05-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

May 8th 2007
From The Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

Hugo Chávez threatens to seize banks and a steel-maker

It should come as no surprise that Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, is again threatening private companies with takeover by the state. Emboldened by his landslide December 2006 re-election, he has moved to put additional sectors of the economy under state control. This is line with his goal of implementing his vision of socialism by increasing state authority over key parts of the economy. It is also designed to enhance his own already formidable power.

Just one month after his re-election, Mr Chávez shocked the market by declaring the energy and telecommunications sectors to be “strategic” and therefore subject to nationalisation. Within weeks of the announcement, the government had acquired controlling stakes in both CANTV (Venezuela's largest telecoms company, privatised in the early 1990s) and Electricidad de Caracas (EDC, a private electricity company), buying out US companies in both cases.

Most recently, in early May, he fulfilled a promise to a seize majority equity share and operational control of four heavy-oil joint ventures in the Orinoco oil basin. These were previously controlled by six foreign companies: US-based ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, along with the UK’s BP, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total.

Threats to banks

Facing no significant opposition—indeed opposition political parties remain weak and Mr Chávez’s approval ratings are high—he has now laid his eyes on a foreign-controlled steel maker, Siderúrgica del Orinoco (Sidor), and the banking industry. In the case of Sidor, Mr Chávez has ordered the company to cease exports until it has met the needs of the domestic market, and has threatened to nationalise the company if it resists. Sidor is controlled by the Argentina-based Techint Group.

Mr Chávez has long tried to strong-arm financial institutions in the country, dictating, for example, that a share of their loan portfolios should go to priority sectors such as agriculture, small business and tourism. Now he wants banks to agree to lend to domestic industries at low interest rates. He has warned them that he could take them over, too, if they don’t comply.

It may be difficult for banks to protest or resist, especially since they have registered strong profit growth—up 33% in 2006—thanks to booming domestic credit demand amid fast-paced economic expansion (averaging more than 12% in the last three years). Even short of nationalisation, the government is said to be contemplating other reforms to the sector, which might include a cap on bank profits (with the excess going to social development projects), and further direct control over the setting of interest rates and the allocation of credit.

Free hand

Should the president decide to take such steps against Sidor or the banks, this would be facilitated by special decree powers that the National Assembly granted him in January. For a period of 18 months thereafter, Mr Chávez is empowered to issue decrees in 11 key areas without having to seek legislative approval. In any case, there is little risk that he would not get lawmakers’ authorisation, as the National Assembly is completely controlled by Chávez loyalists (the opposition boycotted the last legislative elections, leaving it with no presence in the body). The decree powers, therefore, serve only to give Mr Chávez the ability to move quicker.

Nationalisation of Sidor or the banks is not likely to be imminent, however. For one, Sidor is controlled by an Argentinian company, and Mr Chávez retains good relations with Argentina’s president, Néstor Kirchner. Moreover, the government already has much to absorb with the takeover of the phone and electricity companies, as well as operational control of the Orinoco oil ventures. It must reimburse the foreign companies for their seized assets as well as take over their debt obligations. The cost of this could be as much as US$10bn for the oil companies alone, according to some estimates.

Money to burn?

With a windfall in oil export income in recent years—oil brought in nearly US$59bn in 2006—and bulging foreign reserves, the Chávez administration has funds to spare. However, when combined with its other spending obligations, especially costly social programmes and subsidies, this will put further pressure on an already widening budget deficit. The deficit was equivalent to 1.8% of GDP in 2006, and the Economist Intelligence Unit projects it will grow to 4.9% of GDP this year. (The true fiscal picture is worse, because some spending is channelled off-budget via the state-owned oil company and the national development fund.) GDP growth itself is slowing—to 5.8% this year and 3.2% in 2008, according to our forecasts.

The radicalisation of policy under Mr Chávez, combined with signs of growing strains on the economy—evidenced not only in the deterioration of public finances and slowing growth but also persistent double-digit inflation, the highest rate in Latin America—are generating more fears among investors. The Caracas stock exchange index has been declining in recent days. Private direct investment has also declining for several years, and this trend is apt to be exacerbated since January. Foreign direct investment was negative last year. The reduction in investment will further lower GDP growth over the medium term.

In addition, the premium paid for the dollar on the black market has been climbing, with the bolívar weakening to around Bs3,950:US$1 (compared with a fixed official rate of Bs2,150:US$1), near to the low point in January of around Bs4,000:US$1. This will increase pressure on the government to devalue the official rate, although it will be reluctant to do so, given an annual inflation rate nearing 20%.

Political risks rise

Despite these negative trends, there are few obstacles to the government’s current policy mix—given its complete control of the legislature and significant influence over weak and politicised institutions. However, the government determination to radicalise its economic programme has the potential to destabilise the political environment, by provoking renewed objections from the opposition political class and also some discontent among more moderate or pragmatic members of the broad pro-Chávez coalition. With no presence in the legislature and little confidence in the impartiality of institutions, the opposition will express its discontent with the direction of economic policy via public demonstrations, keeping the risk of unrest high.

A deteriorating security environment will heighten tensions further, while a lack of checks and balances will raise the risk of heightened corruption and mismanagement, particularly in the context of the current huge expansion in public investment programmes. These risks do not present a challenge to Mr Chávez as yet, but could do so in the medium term. In particular, failure to deliver on issues such as crime, corruption, housing and inflation will eventually erode support for the government.

Venezuelan bluster? | Economist.com

France Under New Leadership - New York Times

2007-05-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

he French (like many Americans) have grown increasingly tired of their cranky and ineffective president, Jacques Chirac. With Nicolas Sarkozy they’ve certainly gotten a very different sort of leader. A graduate of a non-elite university, and the son of a Hungarian immigrant, he won this week’s election promising sweeping change to voters impatient with their country’s long economic and diplomatic decline. But to succeed, Mr. Sarkozy will need to keep his own impatience, and his destructive penchant for divisive rhetoric, under firm control.

Mr. Sarkozy hopes to strengthen ties with Washington while pursuing a more active role in Europe. A France that is neither reflexively anti-American nor in automatic lock step with Washington would be good for both sides of the Atlantic. To start, more active Franco-American military cooperation in Afghanistan and diplomatic coordination on Sudan could make a big difference.

Then there is the vexed issue of agricultural protection, and the vexing clout of French farmers. Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Bush are both avowed free-traders. A joint push to lower agricultural barriers could revive international trade talks and give African countries, including those with close ties to Paris, a fairer chance at development.

For most voters, the compelling issues were domestic, especially the challenge of invigorating an economy weighed down by decades of slow growth, high unemployment and suburban decay. Mr. Sarkozy’s call for tax cuts, smaller government, longer working hours and tougher labor policies won out over his Socialist rival’s contention that she could administer the needed economic jolts while preserving the security and comfort of the social status quo.

Mr. Sarkozy’s ability to carry out those changes will depend on how well his right-wing allies fare in next month’s parliamentary election and his ability to rally a wider political coalition for what will be painful and dislocating changes. Mr. Sarkozy will especially have to overcome the distrust of young urban immigrants, whom he has demeaned with insulting stereotypes and frightened with simplistic law-and-order prescriptions.

If Mr. Sarkozy means what he now says about being “president of all the French,” he needs to recognize that there are many equally legitimate ways of being French. And that the problems of poverty and unemployment require much broader solutions than simple law and order.

France Under New Leadership - New York Times

Tackling climate change | A bargain | Economist.com

2007-05-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

What it would cost to tackle climate change—about 0.1% of world GDP, a year

AFP

Get article background

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up under the auspices of the United Nations to establish a consensus on global warming and what to do about it, has now completed its fourth assessment report. The first two parts, published earlier this year, about the science and the impacts of climate change, were designed to spread gloom. Change was happening, they said; it was mankind’s fault; and it was going to be damaging. The third part, released on Friday May 4th in Bangkok, is about mitigating climate change, and is designed to spread hope. Just as mankind caused the problem, it says, so mankind can stop it—and at a reasonable cost.

In some areas of economic activity, emissions could be cut with no cost to consumers or taxpayers. The heating and lighting systems of many buildings, for instance, are startlingly inefficient. Improving this would cut both emissions and bills. Economists are troubled by this, for it implies that people and businesses are not maximising their economic self-interest; yet the low take-up of energy-efficient lightbulbs suggests this is indeed the case. Governments are therefore beginning to tighten regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings, and to talk about, for instance, banning incandescent lightbulbs. The IPCC reckons that such measures could cut 30% of projected emissions from this sector at no extra cost.

Transport is trickier, because car ownership is rocketing and the demand for fuel is fairly inelastic. If people want to drive they are going to drive, unless governments jack up petrol prices to levels that are politically unacceptable. So for emissions to fall in the transport sector, new technologies, such as more efficient biofuels or electric cars, are needed. Given a big R&D effort in this sector, there is a good chance that those will be forthcoming.

Similarly, in power generation, there is scope for cutting emissions. The cost of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has been falling. Nuclear generating technology has improved. Carbon capture and storage, which involves taking the carbon dioxide (or C02) out of power station flue gases and injecting it back into the earth, is also a possibility, though that technology is at an early stage.

Technological solutions to climate change, then, are available. But most of those on offer in the power and transport sectors cost more than fossil-fuel generated energy. Fortunately, economics comes to the rescue. Burning fossil fuels imposes a cost to society that is not reflected in their price. Economics says that it should be; and if it were, the price of using fossil fuels would rise in relation to the price of using renewable energy.

Unfortunately, the social cost of carbon is hard to calculate. Plenty of economists have tried, with unconvincing results. It requires estimating the impact of climate change on economic growth, which involves too many unknowns. So the IPCC report starts from the other end. Rather than trying to work out the social cost of carbon, and letting it feed through to reduce greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, it starts from a manageable greenhouse-gas concentration and works backwards to a carbon price. Conveniently, it says the “social cost of carbon is at least comparable to, and possibly higher than carbon prices for even the most stringent scenarios assessed by the IPCC”.

And what is the right price? The report says that to stabilise greenhouse-gas concentrations at 550 parts per million (a level most scientists think safeish) would require a price of $20-50 per tonne of carbon by 2020-30. That is along the lines of the carbon price established the European Emissions-Trading Scheme, which varied between $6 and $40 in 2005-06. It has not bankrupted the European economy so far. The IPCC’s economic models reckon, on average, that if the world adopted such a price the global economy would be 1.3% smaller than it otherwise would have been by 2050; or, put another way, global economic growth would be 0.1% a year lower than it otherwise would have been.

The world would barely notice such figures; so one might think that climate change can be easily sorted. The problem, of course, is that the numbers work only if they are applied globally. If a few countries—even a few big countries—adopt a carbon price, it will make little difference. All the world’s big emitters need to do it. Which brings the world straight back to the problem that sank Kyoto. No country alone can make a difference, and it is in every country’s interest to ensure that everybody else bears the burden. As the IPCC report convincingly argues, the technology and the economics of this problem are easily soluble. It is the politics that is so difficult.

Tackling climate change | A bargain | Economist.com

France's election | The final countdown | Economist.com

2007-05-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

The final countdown

May 3rd 2007 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

A gripping election campaign draws to an end in France

AFP

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THIS weekend’s presidential election has captured the imagination of the French like nothing else for years. On Wednesday May 2nd, a huge 20m-plus people tuned in to a two-and-a-half-hour television debate between the Socialists’ Ségolène Royal and the Gaullists’ Nicolas Sarkozy—nearly as many as watched the 2006 World Cup final. Campaign rallies have drawn tens of thousands. Turnout in the first round of voting was at its highest since 1974. The burden of expectation about the start of a new era, after 12 stagnant years of Jacques Chirac, is almost worryingly high.

Both contenders have spent decades in politics, but there is a sense of novelty about this election. Neither has stood for the presidency before. Ms Royal is the first woman to reach the second round. Mr Sarkozy is the first candidate to stand whose father was not French (he fled communist Hungary after the war). Both have borrowed policies across the ideological divide. Both promise, in different ways, to make swift reforms to modernise France.

But it is the contest for the centre ground, not policy differences, that has dominated the final two weeks of the campaign. This is particularly necessary for Ms Royal, who trailed Mr Sarkozy in the first round, picking up 26% to his 31%. To secure a second-round majority, she needs a big share of the nearly 7m voters (18.6%) who backed François Bayrou, the centrist candidate. She ruled out any deal with him before the first round. Now she has been courting his voters unapologetically.

Having earlier refused to endorse either candidate, Mr Bayrou said on May 3rd that he would definitely not vote for Mr Sarkozy. He had already implicitly backed Ms Royal, taking part in a television debate with her. They disagreed over her economic policy—too state-centred, he said—but agreed about the need to strengthen democratic accountability. Ms Royal said that she would not rule out naming him her prime minister.

Ms Royal faces tricky manoeuvres. She is courting centrist voters and Socialist moderates, such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He could be her prime minister, she said; that may have surprised Mr Bayrou. Yet she also needs to make sure hard-left voters turn out. She even commissioned a report on globalisation and food security from José Bové, an anti-globalisation campaigner once jailed for trashing a McDonald's restaurant.

The one element that unites this improbable collection of bedfellows is hostility to Mr Sarkozy. In a particularly scathing attack, Mr Bayrou denounced his “temperament” and “taste for intimidation and threats”. Ms Royal has called him “dangerous” and contrasts her programme of “reform with calm and serenity” with his “path of brutality”.

Mr Sarkozy probably has the electoral arithmetic on his side, although the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen called on his supporters to abstain, costing him some of the far-right’s 10.4%. He has a reputation for competence that Ms Royal lacks. Early in the campaign, she made a series of foreign-policy gaffes. More recently, she has changed her mind with baffling speed about an amnesty for illegal immigrants and a proposed new work contract for the young. Mr Sarkozy, by contrast, has kept a remarkably steady line, repeating his relentless call for more work, less tax, and respect for the law. If anything he has stepped up his right-wing message, attacking the “laxist” heritage of the student revolt of May 1968.

The debate largely confirmed those differences. Ms Royal dealt in generalities: “My tax will be at the level necessary for social justice,” she declared when challenged on pension reform. Mr Sarkozy sounded more the technocrat, sticking to his policy briefs. The evening’s big surprise was that Mr Sarkozy managed to keep his cool. Ms Royal, on the other hand, put in a feisty performance that erupted into downright testiness. On the subject of school places for disabled children, she accused Mr Sarkozy of “lying” and of “political immorality”. Mustering all his gravitas, and with a hint of irony, Mr Sarkozy replied: “To be president of the republic, you have to be calm.”

It is unclear whether the debate will help Ms Royal win over waverers. Having gained between 51% and 54% in every poll since the first round, Mr Sarkozy remains the favourite.

France's election | The final countdown | Economist.com

France's presidential election | Sarkozy steps ahead | Economist.com

2007-04-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Nicolas Sarkozy takes a lead over his rival, Ségolène Royal, as the two reach the final round of France's presidential election

AFP

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THE French took a step closer to choosing their next president by voting Nicolas Sarkozy, on the right, and Ségolène Royal, on the left, into the second-round presidential run-off. According to early estimates of the first-round vote, held on Sunday April 22nd, Mr Sarkozy topped the poll, with just over 31%, securing a fair lead over Ms Royal, on 26%.

The vote, declared Mr Sarkozy, in a speech to supporters in Paris shortly after the estimates were announced, was “a victory for democracy”. Voter turn-out, at 85%, was the highest in a presidential election for decades. In blazing sunshine across the country, voters turned out en masse, forming queues at many polling stations and giving resounding support to the mainstream candidates—at the expense of the fringes. The two finalists now go forward to a head-to-head run-off vote on May 6th.

The biggest first-round surprise was the gap that Mr Sarkozy and Ms Royal managed to open up between them and the other 10 candidates. Only two of these stood a real chance of making it through to the second round: François Bayrou, the centrist, and the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen. In the end, Mr Bayrou, who had enjoyed a surprise surge in the polls during the campaign, achieved 18.5%—a massive jump from the 6.8% he secured in the 2002 election, but not enough to win him the second-round place and a chance to remake French politics at the centre that he had hoped for.

As for Mr Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, whose campaign message was a mix of crude xenophobia and anti-establishment populism, his 10.5% was for him an outright disappointment. Not only was it well below the 16.8% he achieved in 2002, when he evicted the Socialist candidate to win a place in the run-off. It was also his lowest score since 1974. At the age of 78, this was in all likelihood his last presidential election.

Mr Le Pen's feeble result was in many ways a validation of Mr Sarkozy's first-round strategy of chasing far-right voters with a hard line on immigration and crime. “It is not Mr Le Pen that I'm interested in,” Mr Sarkozy repeatedly said during the campaign, “but his voters.” They rewarded him with a first-round score for a centre-right candidate that has not been seen in France since 1974, when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing achieved 33% (and went on to win the presidency). It is all the more striking given the fact that Mr Sarkozy faced both a strong centrist, and far-right rival, this time round. He picked up voters not only from the far-right, but from the far-left too: in contrast to 2002, none of the eight other candidates scored 5%.

As the two remaining candidates begin an intense two-week campaign, ahead of the run-off, there are two big challenges. The first is how each will manage to appeal to the centre, after a first-round campaign in which they have both concentrated on consolidating their political bases. On the left, Ms Royal devised a high-spending programme and dressed it in old-fashioned, anti-market rhetoric. She will now need to convince voters in the centre, as well as fellow Socialist Party members from the social-democratic wing who had urged her to team up with Mr Bayrou, that she can speak to them too.

On the right, Mr Sarkozy's task will be to restyle himself as a reassuring, unifying figure after a campaign in which he has been accused of trying to divide the French with tough law-and-order and immigration policies. In each case, the question will be how to make this shift credibly. If the centrist Mr Bayrou decides to endorse one of the two candidates, this could help.

The second challenge is the head-on confrontation over ideas that did not take place during the first-round campaign. Because of the number of candidates, and strict rules governing equal access to the airwaves, the French have not had the chance to compare two competing visions of how to reform the country; there was no debate held ahead of the first round. Now, one is now planned between Mr Sarkozy and Ms Royal on May 2nd. Mr Sarkozy may be feeling the more confident. Four polls taken late on Sunday tipped Mr Sarkozy for victory on May 6th, giving him between 52% and 54% of the vote.

France's presidential election | Sarkozy steps ahead | Economist.com

What about the guns? - Yahoo! News

2007-04-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Thu Apr 19, 8:22 AM ET

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckelis a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.

Today: The Virginia Tech shootings and the gun-control debate.

Cal: The definition of tragedy ("a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event") does not even come close to describing the horror the families of the dead and wounded at Virginia Tech must be experiencing. I have spoken at this school and can tell you this is a great university. No parent expects to send his or her child to college and have them return in a coffin. I know we agree in extending our heartfelt sympathy to the families and to the university.

Bob: Of course. As a father, I can only imagine that these parents believed as I did until recent years that a child is safe while in school. Friday marks the eighth anniversary of the murders of 12 students at Columbine High School in Colorado by classmates using high-powered guns. In October, the country witnessed the slaughter of Amish schoolgirls in Pennsylvania, again with a gun. How much of this can our children absorb without forever living in fear?

Cal: Though one lost innocent is too much, we can be thankful that this is, indeed, a rare occurrence. Regrettably, we have seen several high-profile attacks, as you mention, but one can't account for evil.

Bob: But one can account for weapons used to perpetrate evil. I'll agree there is very little we can do about lunacy, but there is plenty we can do about controlling guns, which are almost always the weapon of choice for these maniacs.

Cal: If "gun control" - which usually means more laws to keep criminals from getting their hands on guns - could be shown to prevent a mass murder such as the ones in Blacksburg or Columbine, that might make sense. But people bent on law-breaking will not be deterred by more laws. Do you really think more laws would deter a person who is willing to methodically kill dozens of innocent people? Washington, D.C., has some of the strongest gun laws in the country accompanied by one of the highest murder rates.

Bob: No doubt, there are thousands of illegal handguns in Washington, but I bet most of them come from just across the Potomac River in Virginia, where handguns are easy to buy. Cal, it appears that Cho Seung Hui, the student who did this horrific deed, bought these guns within Virginia's laws. Last month, he purchased a Glock 9mm pistol in Roanoke. The gun shop owner said Cho was "a nice, clean-cut college kid." Serial killer Ted Bundy looked like a nice guy, too. So you're still saying the current laws are good enough?

Cal: Nice try, Bob. Are you saying that whenever a law is broken, there is a need for a new law? Laws are put in place to provide the template for acceptable behavior. No law or additional restriction can redirect a deranged mind. By the way, I noticed that Australia's prime minister criticized the United States for our lax gun laws. Perhaps he should try a little self-reflection first. In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buy-back program and confiscated more than 640,000 firearms. The next year, homicides increased 3.2% and armed robberies shot up 44%. Maybe if just one person - a professor or student - had been armed, the shooter would have been stopped sooner.

Bob: That's just what we need - more students with guns. Did you know that the gun-happy Virginia Legislature, with the encouragement of their NRA (National Rifle Association) pals, has never made it illegal to take guns onto college campuses? Then again, our gun culture makes it nearly impossible to get any real change. I mean, the day of the killings, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino felt the need to defend guns. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," she said. Unbelievable.

Cal: Funny you should mention the Virginia Legislature. Just over a year ago, a bill to allow for legal concealed weapons to be carried on Virginia college campuses died in committee. At the time, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker applauded the move, saying, "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." I wonder what he'd say today.

Bob: More weapons would merely increase the chances that simple disputes would be settled with bullets instead of words.

Cal: A cultural point needs to be made here. Crime is portrayed on TV with bloody scenes and graphic depiction of bullets destroying flesh. Video games, including a Columbine-themed one, desensitize kids. Violence consumes much of rap music. Young people learn that life is cheap. Attempting to impose more restraints through tougher laws will do little about the constraints we used to advocate on the human heart. You can't expect moral behavior when the culture won't teach right and wrong.

Bob: If only it was about just right and wrong. I still say it's about guns. The guns used in the killings were semiautomatic pistols, which let the shooter do the most amount of damage in the shortest amount of time - in this case, just a minute or two. The Glock's magazine held 15 rounds, which would have been illegal under the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban that expired under a Republican Congress in 2004, thanks largely to the NRA lobby. Yet the NRA still defends every imaginable weapon. The NRA's national convention in St. Louis just wrapped up on Sunday, less than 24 hours before the bloodbath in Blacksburg. Convention-goers were even given tips on how to conceal handguns. How quaint. Perhaps if the NRA leadership is available this week, they should go to Virginia Tech and explain to the parents of the dead and wounded why these weapons are so necessary.

Cal: You're regurgitating the flawed argument of the anti-gun lobby: It's the guns, not the people. I am not a fundamentalist on this, Bob. I agree that before people buy guns there should be an effective background check, with no guns sold to convicted felons, juveniles and people with records of drug and alcohol abuse. We have many such laws in place, but criminals will get guns if they want them. And I want the right to own a gun to defend myself and my family should law enforcement not be able to get to my home, or assist me when I am out in public. That is why we have a Second Amendment to allow me to do that.

Bob: The Second Amendment itself is debatable. But my position is the same as it was before this tragic week: I support a ban on all privately held handguns, period. In fact, I believe the manufacturing of handguns for private use should be outlawed.

Cal: I'm not going anywhere near that position.

Bob: I know that, and I know what I want is a non-starter politically. But how's this for common ground: Let's start with stricter gun-control laws in your home state of Virginia, with the first including a ban on any guns on college campuses. Then can we agree that the assault-weapons ban be re-enacted in Congress - a ban that President Bush has said he will sign - within 30 days. These types of guns serve absolutely no purpose. Most sportsmen don't want or need them, but criminals love them. And I know we can agree that our prayers are with all who suffered in Blacksburg this horrible week. What do you say?

Cal: As for the gun ban on campuses, I can't accept that. Again, lives could have been saved if one student had been armed to take out the killer. As for the assault-weapons ban, life went on for the 10 years that the ban was in place, so I'm not averse to reauthorizing it. But we shouldn't be lulled into thinking that this ban, or any gun ban, will be a deterrent to an evil mind. And of course my prayers are with the Virginia Tech community that had this evil unleashed upon them.

Bob: After what they've seen, they'll need prayers.

What about the guns? - Yahoo! News

The problem that is Wolfowitz - International Herald Tribune

2007-04-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

By H.D.S. Greenway
The Boston Globe

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

'Paul Wolfowitz is often mentioned as the most brilliant person in government. . . . He is the intellectual force behind a whole new way of looking at U.S. foreign policy. But for all of that [he] should be fired."

I wrote those words in July 2003. It was clear by then that the Iraq mission had not been accomplished in the previous May, as the president had said, and that we were in for a long, hard war made worse by Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld's "fatal combination of hubris and incompetence."

I could have added corruption. For we soon learned the extent of the wholesale corruption of the intelligence gathering process to promote the war, generated in the Pentagon and from Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

Generals who said that invading Iraq would cost more in money and troops than the Pentagon hoped were swept aside, and advice from anyone who actually knew anything about Iraq was willfully ignored.

As I write these words, Wolfowitz is still head of the World Bank, the job President George W. Bush chose for him in 2005 as a reward for failure at the Pentagon. But the time for him to be fired has again arrived.

Instead of the grand corruption of cooking the Iraq intelligence books, Wolfowitz has been caught in the squalid little impropriety of using his influence to get his World Bank girlfriend a job at the State Department, at a salary that exceeds that of the secretary of state herself. It is all the more ironic in that Wolfowitz made stamping out corruption a World Bank crusade.

The real problem with Wolfowitz, however, is that he is a compulsive idealist who cannot see that the price of his ideals may be too high to pay, or that they may do more harm than good.

No one is arguing that Wolfowitz's ideals are wrong. It would be very nice if Iraq were to become a democracy like the United States. It would be even nicer if this could transform the entire Middle East in our image. However, the occupation of Iraq will lead to neither.

It would also be a good thing if world corruption could be weeded out, root and branch, and it would be foolish to deny that the World Bank needed some shaking up.

However, just as a wiser man might have seen that going to war in Iraq was unjustified, unless weapons of mass destruction could be found, Wolfowitz might have seen that his usual practice of riding roughshod over colleagues and board members might be counterproductive to his goals at the World Bank.

A wiser man might have seen that suspending loans to such countries as India and Kenya because there was corruption to be found there, without consulting his own board, might be counterproductive to the ultimate mission of reducing poverty.

A wiser man might have seen that suspending aid to Uzbekistan after it ousted American troops might be seen as an American power play unbecoming to an international aid organization.

The same traits that marked his Pentagon job followed him into the bank - the arrogance, the hubris, and the neoconservative doctrine of going it alone and imposing America's way.

A wiser man might see that ignoring World Bank experts, board members and staff to push through your own agenda, relying on henchmen you had brought over from the Pentagon, might not be the best way to go about getting the bank's work done.

The astonishing thing is that he would be given another chance to practice his zealotry at the World Bank, especially after being the architect of a losing war strategy at the Pentagon.

If character is destiny, one sees a direct link between Wolfowitz's twin failures at the Pentagon and at the World Bank. One sees the danger of idealists who are so sure of their own abilities and truths that they are blind to the damage they do.

Wolfowitz could no more resist forcing his will and methods on the World Bank than Lenin could have kept his hands off corrupt old Russia.

So even if his goals are right, his methods are so deeply flawed and his presidency so badly damaged that it is unlikely that he can remain effective. As the Financial Times said, if Wolfowitz stays, the campaign for good governance will be seen as "not a believable struggle, but blatant hypocrisy."

Let his report card show "doesn't play well with others." But then, that will be the epitaph of the Bush administration.

H. D. S. Greenway's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.

The problem that is Wolfowitz - International Herald Tribune

Ruth Marcus - Missing The Exit Signs - washingtonpost.com

2007-04-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, April 18, 2007; A23

The central question in the debate over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is one that no one seems to be asking: What is best for the institutions they head?

If self-preservation trumps institutional concerns for the two officials, that's not terribly surprising. No one wants to be publicly frog-marched out of a job, his reputation shredded in headlines.

None of us, as the poet Robert Burns explained, is particularly good at spying the louse on our own bonnet; few have the gift "to see oursels as ithers see us." Gonzales remains clueless about the damning implications of his own cluelessness, Wolfowitz defiantly oblivious to the untenable "do as I say, not as I do" nature of his own acknowledged mistake.

What's most disturbing is the apparent inability of the institutions involved to protect themselves, and the unwillingness, at least so far, of those with the power to do so to face that task.

The Imus trajectory offers a telling contrast. Certainly, Don Imus's words were horrible. But that is not the only reason why he is gone and Gonzales and Wolfowitz are not.

In the Imus case, the force of the free market worked with brutal efficiency. When advertisers bailed on the networks, the networks dumped Imus. There was a built-in institutional capacity for self-preservation.

Not so in the case of Gonzales and the Justice Department. Gonzales's fate has little to do with the best interests of the department, more to do with the best interests of George W. Bush. It hinges on whether the president decides that it's more of a political liability to lose Gonzales than to keep him, and on how much pressure the president feels from members of his party (who may or may not have the interests of Justice in mind) to dispense with loyalty to his longtime friend.

Why should Gonzales go? Let me count the ways. He has lost the confidence of lawmakers -- at least any who've been paying attention to his shifting stories and aren't reflexively supportive of an administration official. He's created turmoil and undercut morale in U.S. attorneys' offices across the country. He's shown himself to be a grossly negligent manager.

He has overseen the politicization of a fine department, stocking it to a far greater extent than his predecessors did with minimally qualified but ideologically pure minions. He has demonstrated neither an adept understanding of the critical issues that confront an attorney general in an age of terrorism nor the necessary (and promised) independence from a president he has spent his career enabling.

The U.S. attorneys mess is a symptom, not an aberration. The Justice Department deserves better than an attorney general who has to spend weeks closeted with aides to help him remember what he didn't know about what was happening on his watch.

The Wolfowitz situation is murkier, and in the end the bureaucratically inert bank may rouse itself to fire him. For a supposedly smart man, Wolfowitz behaved in an extraordinarily stupid way when he personally dictated the details of his girlfriend's generous pay and promotion package. Yes, the board of directors' ethics committee told Wolfowitz to deal with the matter and have Shaha Riza transferred out of the bank, but he handled it in a way guaranteed to make matters worse.

There's no doubt that much of the venom directed at him has little to do with how much his girlfriend was paid and a lot to do with his previous role, as deputy defense secretary in the Bush administration, as an architect of the war in Iraq. Layered on top of that is resentment over Wolfowitz's highhanded ways once he arrived at the World Bank and disagreement over his policy priorities.

So the question is not whether Wolfowitz did something wrong -- he acknowledges as much -- but whether it is so serious as to require his resignation. The argument that he must go because he's lost the confidence of the bank's staff and many shareholder countries doesn't carry much weight. These folks never wanted Wolfowitz in the job, so they'll leap at any chance to declare themselves hopelessly (unless he leaves) demoralized.

The more compelling argument for Wolfowitz's departure is the degree to which his blunder involves the same issue -- corruption and good governance -- that he has made the focus of his tenure. Equally important, this episode erupts as Wolfowitz is trying to raise billions to replenish the bank's lending fund, from the very donor governments that are most unhappy with him. It's hard to see how it's in the bank's interest -- no less that of the impoverished countries it is supposed to help -- for him to remain.

Ruth Marcus - Missing The Exit Signs - washingtonpost.com

Yahoo and Google | Boo-hoo | Economist.com

2007-04-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

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ANOTHER month, another string of victories for Google, the world’s emerging internet superpower. On Tuesday April 17th, in the latest sign that Google has the upper hand over all its rivals, Yahoo! disappointed analysts with its first quarter results: profits were down by 11% to $142m. Google’s share of web searches keeps going up. It now executes more than 64% of all searches, according to Hitwise, a market-research firm. Yahoo!, its main rival, appears stuck at about 21%, and distantly third, Microsoft’s MSN continues its decline, to below 10%. With both the most popular search engine and the most efficient system for placing sponsored text advertisements, Google dominates the lucrative and fast-growing market for so-called “paid search” advertising (where advertisers pay only for actual mouse clicks).

Google’s grip is tightening elsewhere. Last week it said it would pay $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, the web’s largest broker between online publishers and advertisers for “branded” or “display” advertisements (paying for views rather than clicks). This segment is growing as fast as paid search. Google also struck a deal with Clear Channel Communications, America’s largest radio broadcaster, to sell airtime on 675 radio stations to advertisers in Google’s network. Earlier this month Google said it will place advertisements with EchoStar, a satellite-TV operator, and also with traditional newspapers. Google is thus launching an all-out attack on the entire advertising market.

In the process, Google is bashing Yahoo!. It, along with Microsoft and Time Warner, owner of AOL, had also bid for DoubleClick and failed. Terry Semel, Yahoo!’s boss, has suffered a string of strategic defeats, having been outbid by Google for a stake in AOL and for YouTube, the leader in online video. Moreover, Mr Semel had recently been trying to defend against Google in display advertising, while hoping to attack it in paid search. Traditionally, Yahoo! has placed text advertisements on its search pages based only on how much an advertiser bids for a given search term (or “keyword”, such as “mountain bikes”); Google takes other variables into consideration and so makes its advertisements more relevant to web searchers, thus earning more revenues.

In February Yahoo! launched a new advertising algorithm, called Panama, that is meant to close this technical gap, but there is scepticism that it can make much difference. Advertising systems do not ride on their algorithm alone but also on their network of advertisers and publishers. Google’s network, in paid search, is now so large that advertisers cannot afford to abandon it. So Panama may only prevent Yahoo! from falling further behind.

Mr Semel’s other defence is to use the growing fear of Google among “old-media” companies to engineer various alliances to contain the enemy. In March Yahoo!, along with MSN and AOL, signed on to a new partnership with NBC and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which intend to form a joint venture in online video to counter Google’s YouTube. Last week Yahoo! expanded an advertising alliance with Viacom, which is currently suing YouTube. And this week, Yahoo! announced a deal with a consortium of newspaper publishers to run their content on Yahoo!’s websites, and to place advertisements on the sites of the newspapers.

For MSN the picture is even bleaker. Online advertising is still a minuscule part of overall revenues but is still crucial to Microsoft’s growth strategy. So far Microsoft is failing. Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, estimates that Google will make operating profits of more than $5 billion this year, which will grow by 36% for the next three years and Yahoo! will make $3 billion and grow by 20%. Microsoft’s online businesses will make losses of $2 billion, and more in the next two years. Microsoft’s nightmare scenario, however, is that Google will at some point disrupt its core business of selling shrink-wrapped software. Google recently said that it would add presentation software to the word processing and spreadsheets that it already offers free online.

Google may face a downside to its expansion, as Henry Blodget of Cherry Hill Research, points out. Placing advertisements on its own search pages gives Google profit margins of about 60%; placing advertisements on other web pages, such as blogs, yields margins between 10% and 20%. As Google expands into new segments, such as broadcast, its margins will probably keep declining, especially as new media partners are likely to give Google only “left-over” inventory. So Google is far from becoming a monopolist but it is, for the moment, far ahead of its peers.

Yahoo and Google | Boo-hoo | Economist.com

Beautiful Beta: Adding a second sidebar to your Blog - part 2

2007-04-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

If you guys want to learn how to hack your blog, visit this for one of the tips
Beautiful Beta: Adding a second sidebar to your Blog - part 2

A massacre in Virginia | Murder at school | Economist.com

2007-04-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

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ON MONDAY April 16th, a gunman killed perhaps as many as 32 people at Virginia Tech university, in Blacksburg, Virginia. In the way of the modern world, somebody with a mobile-phone camera was nearby to capture it. The shaky, grainy recording shows little, but the audio is telling. One high pitched shot after another rings out, erratically but quickly. Witnesses initially described an Asian-looking gunman of university age, who carried at least one, perhaps two, semi-automatic pistols, with lots of ammunition. At the end of the rampage he was dead, perhaps by his own hand.

This is the deadliest university shooting in American history. In 1999 two outcast high-school students killed 13 others and themselves at their school in Columbine, Colorado, setting off an anguished national debate about bullying in school, violence on television and other such topics. In the hitherto most famous university-based murder spree, Charles Whitman killed 16 people, mostly shot sniper-style from the top of a tower at the University of Texas, in 1966. He had a brain tumour that may have affected his behaviour.

No one knows yet what led the young man to slaughter so many at the quiet university in this sleepy western Virginian city this week. But there are sure to be recriminations about how the day was handled. At around 7.15 in the morning, someone entered a student dormitory and shot several people, killing at least one. Police rushed to the scene, and other students woke to the sounds of gunshots, sirens and police milling around.

Most of the carnage came two hours later, in a different building filled with classrooms. The police will want to know where the killer went in the intervening two hours. Parents and students will want to know why, with the gunman still at large, the university did not cancel classes. The university was only “locked down”—with students forced to stay in their classrooms and dormitories—after the second round of killings. Students sat, some reading the news wirelessly on their laptop computers and instant-messaging with loved ones, until shortly after noon.

And as is always the case after such a tragedy in America, many will point their fingers at the country’s lax gun laws. The laws vary from state to state, and in southern states like Virginia, they tend to be the least strict of all. In that state, no license or training is required to buy a handgun, and buyers can avoid background checks by shopping at gun-shows. An investigation of course will follow. But, at the least, some will question Americans’ comfort with the easy availability of deadly weapons.

Similar atrocities have happened in countries with much stricter laws—at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 and in Erfurt, in Germany, in 2002. But such events, elsewhere, lead to the laws being tightened even further. Inevitably individuals set on committing violence find some way to act, but with such effective tools as automatic pistols available to do so quickly and efficiently, the toll may be higher. In a country already jumpy about terrorism, it is a sobering reminder of the nearness of death.

A massacre in Virginia | Murder at school | Economist.com

The coming week | The week ahead | Economist.com

2007-04-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

A terrorist trial and various elections in the news this week

AFP

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• AFRICA'S most populous country holds a presidential election on April 21st, with the incumbent, Olusegun Obasanjo, scheduled to bow out from high office. It is a tense time in Nigeria, an oil-rich but troubled west African nation with some 140m people. The election has been marred by claims that the poll is being rigged in favour of Mr Obasanjo's preferred successor, Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern state governor. A popular opposition candidate, the vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, has in effect been blocked from running through legal manoeuvres. Amid fears of violence and chaos, customers have started withdrawing money from banks.

• THIS week the trial of José Padilla, an American accused of being part of a conspiracy to support al-Qaeda from inside America, is expected to begin. Mr Padilla was detained five years ago and was first accused of planning to use a “dirty bomb”; George Bush has already called him a “bad guy” and an “enemy combatant”. His detention without trial generated a great deal of controversy, with the Supreme Court asked to rule whether an American could be held for so long. The court avoided giving a ruling after a criminal trial date was finally set for Mr Padilla.

• THE first round of voting to elect a new president takes place in France. The two favourites to go through to the subsequent run-off face a tough final week of campaigning. Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, and Ségolène Royal of the leftist Socialist Party lead the polls but snapping at their heals with a late but faltering surge is François Bayrou, a centrist. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the far right, along with a host of other candidates may sway the outcome. The final week of campaigning could prove tricky for the gaffe-prone Ms Royal while Mr Sarkozy must hope that his tough-cop image persuades voters not to shift their allegiances to either Mr Bayrou or Mr Le Pen.

• BHUTAN is different. All citizens of the isolated and landlocked Himalayan kingdom are required to wear national costume and smoking is banned. Satellite television arrived only a few years ago, the national sport is archery and the reigning monarch once declared that “Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product”. Democracy is a new arrival too. The gradual shift from absolute monarchy to the constitutional kind is set to progress with parliamentary elections in 2008. Next week, to familiarise both voters and officialdom with the alien procedures of a democratic poll, the country will hold a mock election.

Industrialising the moon | Pie in the sky | Economist.com

2007-04-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

Russian boasts for lunar industrialisation fall short of reality

AFP

THE moon appears to warp the minds of some men. In folklore unlucky souls are said to transform into werewolves under its influence. But the malign sway of the Earth’s satellite is evident beyond the realm of fantasy. Despite putting men on the moon in 1969 America seems hell-bent on re-enacting the space race, this time pitting its efforts against those of the Chinese. Now a Russian company claims it could develop a system to exploit the moon’s natural resources and potentially relocate harmful industries there. This is lunacy.

Russia certainly has great prowess in space. In its former guise as the centre of power in the Soviet Union it launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. In a spectacular follow up, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space in 1961. Another triumph came in 1968 when the Russians sent a spaceship to orbit the moon with turtles aboard, returning it and its living cargo safely to Earth. An unmanned Russian spacecraft also landed on the moon ahead of the first manned landing by the Americans. Even after Neil Armstrong took his one small step, Russia has proved its superiority in keeping people in space stations orbiting the Earth. The Russian Soyuz rocket is a mainstay of satellite launches and would be used to rescue astronauts should any accident befall the International Space Station.

Nikolai Sevastianov, head of RKK Energia, the spacecraft manufacturer that helped achieve these Russian successes, this week boasted that his rockets could be used to industrialise the moon. So why were his remarks greeted with such scepticism? Mr Sevastianov told a news agency, “It is time to think about the industrial development of the moon. We are sometimes criticised for making such suggestions too early. But it is time to do this given the limits to natural reserves on Earth and the pace of civilisation’s progress. Nor can we dismiss the idea of outsourcing harmful industries into space.”

One reason for the cynicism is that the idea is absurd. A United Nations treaty passed in 1967 bans potentially harmful interference with the Earth’s original satellite and requires international consultation before proceeding with any activity that could disrupt the peaceful exploration of space, including the moon. A second problem is that landing on the moon has proved beyond the budget of any state other than America and of any private company to date. Russian rockets are perfectly capable of orbiting the Earth’s original satellite—as was proved 40 years ago—but landing involves a lot more capability and expense than is at present feasible. Moreover the proposals for “industrialisation” are woefully short on detail. Mr Sevastianov's claim is all to do with getting more money for his company.

In fact one of the best hopes for investment comes from space tourism. On Saturday April 7th, the fifth such holidaymaker entered space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. Charles Simonyi, an American software developer, paid $25m for his ten-day sojourn at the International Space Station. The next holiday destination is the moon. Space Adventures, the tour operator that organised the first five packages, is offering two tickets to orbit the moon for $100m each. Launch would be aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. But the Soyuz system was designed in the 1960s and has been on the verge of retirement for many years. Unfortunately for Mr Sevastianov the Russian authorities have postponed indefinitely the development of a successor, despite RKK Energia having gone to the considerable expense of developing some new designs.

Hence the fuss. The new designs, which have been stuck at the concept stage for many years, were not put together with the purpose of a lunar landing in mind. Nevertheless, they could be modified for that purpose. Hence Mr Sevastianov’s exaggerated claims that a Russian company could help to industrialise the moon, if only the investment were forthcoming. It is unlikely to succeed. Like companies offering trips to that other inaccessible and stateless wilderness, Antarctica, Mr Sevastianov would be better off concentrating on tourism.

Industrialising the moon | Pie in the sky | Economist.com

ETimor candidate demands vote recount

2007-04-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

ETimor candidate demands vote recount

East Timor presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta demanded a vote recount Thursday despite making it to the second round, saying thousands of voters may have been harassed and threatened.

His remarks came amid growing questions about the conduct of the violence-torn nation's vote on Monday, the first presidential poll since the country won independence in 2002.

Although the bloodshed feared on voting day did not occur, doubts about the election have heightened fears that one of the world's newest nations could see a resurgence of political turmoil and violence.

"There has to be an investigation," said Ramos-Horta, the current prime minister, who qualified for the run-off against Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres of the ruling Fretilin party.

He said more than 150,000 of 520,000 registered voters had not voted, despite a massive turn-out marked by hours-long queues and shortages of ballot papers, and called for the United Nations to hold an inquiry.

"Were they intimidated or simply did not show up?" said Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel peace prize in 1996 for his role in the campaign that eventually won independence from Indonesia.

"I ask the UN for an explanation," he said. "I think there should be another count."

An Indonesian human rights group said it had received reports that the ruling Fretilin, the most powerful political force in this country of one million people, had gone door-to-door to intimidate voters.

Ramos-Horta founded Fretilin as a resistance movement against Indonesia, which occupied the country in 1974 after former colonial power Portugal withdrew.

But he left in 1988, and Fretilin has since transformed from underground movement to mainstream political party -- and one repeatedly accused of using intimidation tactics against its opponents.

Rights group Yayasan HAK said it had received reports that Fretilin had harassed voters and even beaten up a priest and a journalist.

"They noted the identity numbers of people and said if you don't choose Fretilin, your number will show on the computer," said the group's spokesman, Jose Luis de Oliveira.

"Even if that's not true, people are afraid," he said. A Fretilin spokesman said the party did not encourage its supporters to use violence.

Meanwhile the election commission rejected a formal protest with similar claims filed Wednesday by five of the six candidates who did not make it into the May 8 run-off election.

"We have no legal basis to accept that," said commission spokesman Martinho Gusmao.

International observers have generally praised the conduct of the polls, but Yayasan HAK's de Oliveira said they did not have a proper understanding of the situation in the country.

"They cannot see or feel what's happening," he said.

A Timor analyst with the International Crisis Group, Sophia Cason, said election monitors had said they found discrepancies between local tallies and the national election figures as well as ballot boxes uncounted.

"That's what some of the observers from the parties are worried about -- that the figures just aren't adding up," she said. "So there seems to be some sort of discrepancy in some of the figures."

Final first-round results are due on Sunday.

Foreign peacekeepers have been on the streets of East Timor, formally known as Timor-Leste, for nearly a year after gang violence left 37 people dead and sent 150,000 fleeing their homes in April and May 2006.

ETimor candidate demands vote recount

France's presidential race | Watch your backs | Economist.com

2007-04-11T06:43:00.000-07:00

Watch your backs

Apr 10th 2007
From Economist.com

The favourites for France’s presidency face a tough campaign

AFP

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THE centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the left Socialist Party are France’s biggest by some way and their presidential candidates are well known. The UMP’s Nicolas Sarkozy has made much of his toughness on law and order, while the Socialists’ Ségolène Royal has promised to expand the welfare state and to encourage more public participation in politics. But as official campaigning gets underway this week, neither front-runner can rest assured of doing well enough in the first round of voting, on Sunday April 22nd, to make it to the run-off two weeks later.

The field is unusually crowded this time, at least at the front. A dozen candidates have qualified for the presidential ballot and the surge of François Bayrou, a centrist, has given the smaller parties added hope of influencing the outcome. Mr Bayrou’s rise has stalled for now, but he remains solidly in third place with some 18% of the support, according to a recent poll by LH2. The same poll gave Mr Sarkozy a lead of sorts, with 28% to Ms Royal’s 24%. Nobody has much margin for error.

Ms Royal, in particular, is on a tightrope. To her left are three Trotskyite candidates, a communist, and a well-known anti-globalisation activist, José Bové. Many socialist voters groaned when Ms Royal dared to state the obvious by saying that profits were necessary for a healthy economy. Nor were they pleased when she suggested that French homes should fly the national flag on Bastille Day. She is also prone to making gaffes on the campaign trail, especially on foreign affairs. One dismayed socialist told Le Monde that she had considered starting a petition to tame Ms Royal: “we’re voting for you, but shut up.” Socialist discipline may save her, however. The left remains traumatised by the 2002 election, in which the lacklustre Socialist candidate was beaten to a place in the second round by the far-right’s Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Mr Sarkozy also has his right eye on Mr Le Pen. Pollsters give Mr Le Pen 15%, but as many potential supporters are embarrassed to say they will vote for him, his real popularity may be higher than the polls suggest. Thuggish though he is, his anti-immigrant message appeals to some voters. Mr Sarkozy has tried to become a more palatable hard-man. He is popular for his hard stance on crime and hooliganism—acutely sensitive topics in France since an outburst of rioting in late 2005. Mr Sarkozy, who was then interior minister, risked accusations of flirting with the far right. Two words he used then—racaille (“scum” or “rabble”, used to describe the rioters), and “Kärcher” (the make of a high-pressure hose he said he would like to use to clean the streets)—have become permanently associated with him.

With the race tightening, sparks have begun to fly on a wide range of issues. Mr Sarkozy told a philosophy magazine recently that paedophilia and suicidal tendencies were probably genetic traits, provoking sharp criticism from Ms Royal and Mr Bayrou. But Mr Sarkozy got a fillip when Mr Le Pen denounced him as “the candidate who came from immigration”—a reminder of Mr Sarkozy’s Hungarian-Jewish origins. The other candidates denounced Mr Le Pen, and voters were reminded of Mr Sarkozy’s self-propelled ascent through France’s static political class.

There are two more wild cards in the election. One is voter registration, which is at a record high, with 2.9m more eligible to vote this year than at the last election in 2002. One explanation is the heightened interest of young French from immigrant backgrounds who plan to oppose Mr Sarkozy, though the lack of an incumbent may also have encouraged new voters to come forward. The second is the unusually high number of undecided voters—42% according to one poll. With France in an anxious mood about its economy, social model and place in the world, the possibility of surprises in the first round remains very much alive.

France's presidential race | Watch your backs | Economist.com

Timor-Leste | Happy ever after? | Economist.com

2007-04-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Happy ever after?

Apr 9th 2007 | DILI
From Economist.com

Timor-Leste’s presidential election may not resolve the country’s conflicts

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“PEOPLE feel that they are sick of waiting, waiting for something good,” observed Xanana Gusmão, the president of Timor-Leste, a few days before his people voted, on Monday April 9th, to choose his successor. Few would disagree. Five years after the former East Timor won its independence, following a bloody separation from Indonesia and a period under the United Nations’ control, things still look gloomy.

Since last May, when the country’s security forces collapsed, a contingent of foreign police and soldiers, led by Australia, has barely kept the peace between rival political factions and street gangs. Tens of thousands of people, driven from their homes by the fighting, are living in tents in refugee camps. Dysfunctional government has kept poverty, child malnutrition and unemployment high, despite the money that has started rolling in from oilfields off the country’s shores.

Having suffered so much in the fight for self-rule, the Timorese seemed determined to exercise their right to vote, lining up outside the polling-stations before dawn on Monday. The UN mission seemed just as determined to prevent any trouble, flooding the entire country with peacekeepers and election observers. When the UN’s chief in Timor-Leste, Atul Khare, arrived by helicopter to inspect voting in Mahaquidan, a remote and drizzle-soaked mountain village, he found an orderly queue of around 100 locals, shepherded by policemen sent from Lisbon and Singapore.

There were only small outbreaks of violence in the run-up to the polling day, most of them quelled rapidly by the peacekeepers. However, the presidential campaign has only widened the country’s most damaging split—that between Mr Gusmão, the former leader of the armed resistance to Indonesian rule, and Fretilin, the former rebel movement’s political wing. Mr Gusmão accuses Fretilin of corruption and mismanagement. In turn, Fretilin’s leader, Mari Alkatiri, who resigned as prime minister after last May’s violence, claims that it was whipped up by Mr Gusmão’s supporters.

Timor-Leste’s presidency is influential but largely ceremonial. So Mr Gusmão is not seeking re-election. Instead he wants to swap jobs with his ally, José Ramos-Horta, who took over as prime minister when Mr Alkatiri quit. Throughout the campaign Mr Ramos-Horta—formerly the independence movement’s chief spokesman—has been seen as the favourite. His main rivals are Fretilin’s Francisco Guterres (also known as “Lu-Olo”) and Fernando Araujo (“Lasama”) of the smaller Democratic Party. Early results on Monday night seemed to confirm this but, if no candidate gets more than 50% of votes, it will go to a second round next month.

Shortly after the new president is known, a date should be set for parliamentary elections. In these, Mr Gusmão will seek the prime ministership, under the banner of his new party, the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction. Fretilin, which currently has about two-thirds of parliamentary seats, is furious that Mr Gusmão has chosen a name so provocatively similar to that of the National Council of Timorese Resistance—the alliance of parties, led by Fretilin, that campaigned against Indonesian rule in the late 1990s.

Both Mr Ramos-Horta and Mr Guterres are projecting themselves as healers and uniters. They and the other presidential candidates have signed a code of conduct promising to respect the outcome of Easter Monday’s election, or at least to challenge it only through the courts. But a substantial risk remains that the losers will take their grievances to the streets, testing the peacekeepers' capacity.

The underlying causes of Timor-Leste’s conflicts are many and complex. Mr Alkatiri’s sacking of almost half the army, for going on strike, triggered last year’s violence. But the strike had its roots in a simmering regional dispute between junior soldiers from the country’s west and their commanders, who are mostly from the east. The UN has been accused of laying the foundations for this conflict by mishandling the integration of former rebel fighters and pro-Indonesian forces into the army and police after independence. But underlying all of this are even older clan disputes, dating back to Timor-Leste's days as a Portuguese colony.

There were hopes, at independence, that the UN’s intensive, and expensive, efforts at nation-building would have reasonable chances in such a small and relatively homogeneous place as Timor-Leste. Alas, so far it is proving little easier than in, say, Afghanistan or Congo.

Timor-Leste | Happy ever after? | Economist.com

Climate change | All washed up | Economist.com

2007-04-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

All washed up

Apr 6th 2007
From Economist.com

As the evidence of global warming proliferates, so do the nasty consequences

AFP

WE WERE right, all along. That is the thrust of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body set up to pronounce authoritatively on the science of global warming. In 2001 it predicted that global warming would lead to many ills, including greater numbers of extinctions, growing shortages of water, higher incidence of tropical diseases, and lower yields from agriculture, fishing and forestry in some places. Now the scientists who write the reports say they have much stronger evidence that such calamities are indeed occurring—faster, in many cases, than they originally thought.

The previous IPCC report, in February, examined the evidence that the globe was actually warming. It called the trend “unequivocal”, and expressed “very high confidence” that it was largely man-made. The new report assesses the likely impact of global warming. It was released on April 6th, after a week of negotiations between scientists and governments over the wording. Representatives of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and America in partiuclar were said to have tried to water down the report, prompting a last-ditch all-night haggle.

The resulting document predicts the same sorts of consequences as its predecessor did in 2001, but with much greater confidence and precision, says Camille Parmesan, a professor at the University of Texas who vetted part of it. By her count, the chapter on current impacts alone rests on a review of over 1,000 academic studies, most of them already published—compared with about 100 last time around.

In a paper published in 2003, Professor Parmesan concluded that half of all species were already altering their behaviour or shifting their range in response to global warming. Others have found that some 26% of coral reefs have already died as a result of warming waters, and that the remainder will probably disappear if average water temperatures rise by another degree—along with the fisheries and tourism they sustain. In a synthesis of such studies, the report concluded that 30% of species face an increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise by 2ºC (3.6ºF).

This sort of finding suggests that the effects of global warming will be “non-linear”, says Paul Epstein, a Harvard University professor who has reviewed the entire report. For one thing, most projections of the impact derive from estimates of changes in average temperature. But many of the ill effects hinge on changes in the minimum temperature, which has been rising twice as fast. This trend is particularly strong near the poles, where the climate is changing fastest. Winters no longer get cold enough in many places to kill off different pests and diseases. So noxious species of ants and bees are marching northwards across America, ticks carrying Lyme disease are proliferating in Scandinavia and tropical highlands around the world are witnessing an invasion of mosquitoes carrying malaria, dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis. “The winter is the most wonderful thing that was ever invented for public health,” Dr Epstein says, “and we're losing it.”

Multiple factors will amplify the effects of global warming on agriculture and forestry. Warmer and drier conditions in many places will reduce yields. Meanwhile, pests such as tree-killing beetles and crop-killing fungi will both increase their range and breed more rapidly. And an increasing incidence of extreme weather, be it floods or droughts, will both damage crops directly and nurture species that prey on them. The poor, especially in tropical climes, will be hardest hit by all this, since they have little means of adapting to such changes.

The report is supposed only to inform policymaking, not to direct it. But the point of the frightening statistics about impending water shortages, epidemics and crop failures, says one of the authors, is to jolt politicians into preparing for the coming afflictions. In other words, the report intends to end the debate between those who think mankind's main effort should be trying to reverse climate change and those who would prefer to concentrate on adapting to its effects. Both strategies, it implies, are urgently needed.

Climate change | All washed up | Economist.com

Christian beliefs | Questions of faith | Economist.com

2007-04-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

Christian beliefs

Questions of faith

Apr 7th 2007 | SHREWSBURY
From Economist.com

Christians are divided about evolution and the creation

AFP

EASTER Sunday is an exuberant moment in the calendar of St Chad’s, the church where a doctor called Robert Darwin, sceptical about religion but conscious of convention, had his son Charles baptised in 1809. This year, as every year since the cylindrical building was constructed in 1790, worshippers at the main Anglican church in this old English town will give a lusty rendering of some familiar Easter hymns; and many will stroll down the nearby river bank where young Charles Darwin took “delight in fishing for newts”.

Mark Thomas, the vicar, easily reconciles his faith with local pride in a man who convinced many people that the Bible could not be literally true. As co-organiser of an annual Darwin festival, featuring lectures on religion and science, he cites Saint Paul’s adage that the “letter kills, but the spirit gives life” as a warning against literalism.

And in other English places linked with Darwin, there is often more emphasis on the scientist’s emollient personality than on arguments which raged over his work. In Cambridge, where Darwin studied theology, a play has just been staged that recounts the warm correspondence between Darwin and Asa Gray, an American botanist who shared his friend’s scientific interests but had conventional views on religion. The play is a spinoff from a project to publish 14,000 letters received or sent by Darwin, and to post some on the internet. As the play shows, Darwin’s scepticism in religious matters gradually deepened, yet his feelings for his friend were unaffected.

Among the 2 billion Christians celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ this weekend (this is a year when the moveable calendars of western and Orthodox Christians coincide) such cheerful negotiation of difference is often impossible. Arguments over how to interpret the Bible—and how to read the story of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis—continue to cause controversy both between Christian communities and within them.

Mr Thomas’s ultimate boss—Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world’s 80m Anglicans—has dismissed literal readings of Genesis as a “category mistake”. Cerebral Christians like the archbishop endorse the view that instead of treating the Genesis account of the world’s creation in six days as a historical text, it should be read in the sophisticated way that Jewish commentators read it 2,000 years ago. In other words, the “days” of creation are not chronological periods but elements in a vision of the relationship between God, man and the physical world: a vision also implicit in the architecture of the ancient Jewish temple, as Margaret Barker, a Methodist Hebrew scholar, has argued.

But in the fast-growing varieties of Christianity—in the overlapping worlds of evangelicalism, fundamentalism and Pentecostalism—many prefer their faith simple, not sophisticated. As Samuel Rodovalho, an activist in Brazil’s Pentecostalist movement, puts it: “We are sure that the story in Genesis is true, and we are not very interested in scientific theories which say otherwise.”

Somewhere in between these stark convictions and the intellectual subtleties of Mr Thomas's Anglicanism, some intensive discussions about creation and evolution are in progress in the upper ranks of the Roman Catholic church, to which over 1 billion people (with varying intensity) adhere. While Catholic teaching regards a simple faith in the truth of Genesis as permissible, most Catholic scientists would agree with the late Pope John Paul II in saying that fresh evidence makes evolution “more than a hypothesis”. But Pope Benedict XVI has given hints that he wants to reaffirm certain other elements in his predecessor’s teaching—including the idea that signs of a deity are discernible in nature.

Benedict XVI has emphasised the Catholic view that human reason can discern the “divine reason” which formed the world. Ultimately this argument could complicate his hopes of reconciliation with the world’s 140m or so Orthodox Christians—whose medieval forebears clashed with Rome by insisting that communion with God differs from contemplation of the physical world. But in the short term, Vatican-watchers are keenly awaiting the publication of some minutes from an informal, but important seminar on creation and evolution that the pope convened last August.

Meanwhile none of these discussions will prevent the profusion of Christians in Darwin’s home town from celebrating Easter with gusto. In a grassy field opposite one of England’s best-known garden centres, Father Stephen Maxfield has turned a medieval church into an Orthodox parish. In a message to parishioners, he reflects on the instructions he has seen on a packet of sweet-pea seeds, saying, "the purpose of all plants is to reproduce.” “In a sense that must be true,” Father Stephen muses, “but it doesn’t account for the strangeness and wonder of plants, the beauty of their flowers and foliage, the properties of their seeds…Surely there is more to it?” Whatever has changed in Shrewsbury in 200 years, the townspeople retain their curiosity over matters physical and metaphysical.

Christian beliefs | Questions of faith | Economist.com:

Kosovo | What price independence? | Economist.com

2007-04-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

What price independence?

Apr 3rd 2007
From Economist.com

The UN is considering the tricky issue of Kosovo's future

AFP

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EIGHT years ago NATO planes were bombing Serbia. They were at the beginning of a 78-day campaign, which concluded with Serbian forces being driven out of Kosovo, its southern province. For much of that period diplomats from the big countries involved were in constant contact in a frantic attempt to end the war. With Russia's help, the bombing was brought to an end by a resolution at the UN Security Council. On Tuesday April 3rd the Security Council will discuss a plan for Kosovo's independence. Russia's involvement means that the session is not expected to be easy.

There are still no good solutions to the thorny problem of Kosovo, only less bad ones. As far as most western countries are concerned a workable plan for the future of the province is now on the table. Russia however rejects this settlement, which proposes independence. Kosovo was (and technically remains) a province of Serbia. The overwhelming majority of its 2m people are ethnic Albanians who want nothing less than independence. Serbia’s leaders do not accept this.

Ever since the end of the Kosovo war, the territory has been under the jurisdiction of the UN. Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president asked by the UN to come up with a solution for Kosovo, delivered his plans to the Security Council on March 26th. In his accompanying report, Mr Ahtisaari did some plain speaking. He says that Serbs and Albanians have “diametrically opposed positions” and that “no amount of additional talks, whatever the format, will overcome this impasse.” His conclusion is that, “the only viable option for Kosovo is independence, to be supervised for an initial period by the international community.”

Kosovo is now under the jurisdiction of the UN, so a new Security Council resolution is needed to change this. If the Security Council accepts Mr Ahtisaari’s plan then not only will NATO’s current peacekeeping force stay there, but a large EU mission will help to supervise the police and judiciary. And the position of a powerful international governor general will be created, with the ability to sack local officials and strike down laws inconsistent with the Ahtisaari settlement.

Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's caretaker prime minister, hopes Russia will veto this “plan to dismember Serbia.” Independence, he gives warning, “would be an act of violence against the law.” Russian officials meanwhile insist that more talks are necessary. They see Kosovo’s independence as a precedent under international law, something that the Americans, British and others reject.

Across the former Soviet Union there are several “frozen conflicts” bearing some similarities to Kosovo. One is in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan; another is in Transdniestria, a breakaway part of Moldova. Perhaps Russian officials believe that it is possible to keep Kosovo frozen too and thus avoid hard decisions. The problem is that Kosovo is near boiling point and could explode at any moment.

Western diplomats warn that if Russia blocks Kosovo's independence at the UN, violence is certain to breakout. Also, without a Security Council resolution Kosovo's Albanians are likely to declare independence anyway. This could result in an almighty mess with some countries, perhaps including America, recognising the new state but with many others, including EU countries, not doing so.

Mr Ahtisaari has told sceptics within the EU (Spain, Slovakia and Greece) that European unity is more important than their doubts. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has thrown his weight behind the plan, as has the head of NATO. Western diplomats are worried that Russia will block a new resolution and spark a another conflagration in the Balkans. But Russia may not want to pick a fight against both America and the EU.

No doubt some secret, bilateral diplomacy is underway, with senior American diplomats asking Russia what it wants in exchange for supporting a new UN resolution. If there is a new resolution we may not know until the history books are written what price Russia extracted in exchange for its support.

Kosovo | What price independence? | Economist.com

Yemen's politics | Economist.com

2007-04-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Yemen's politics

Apr 3rd 2007
From The Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

A new corruption-busting prime minister is appointed

Ali Mohammed Mujawer, the newly appointed prime minister of Yemen, won a reputation as an effective opponent of corruption in his previous post as electricity minister. His clean-up efforts are reported to have included cutting off the power supply to a regional office of the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) for failing to pay its electricity bills for the past five years. The choice of Mr Mujawer reflects the concern of the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to convince international donors of the government's serious intent to press ahead with economic reforms and to combat waste and corruption. It also entails a division of labour between the roles of economic management, party politics--which will be the preserve of the outgoing prime minister, Abdelqader Ba Jammal--and security, which falls under Mr Saleh's remit.

Payback

Last November, following Mr Saleh's re-election, the government received pledges of US$4.7bn in aid over four years at a donor conference in London. One reason for the donors' munificence was the assurances from the government that procedures were being put in place to guarantee that aid would be effectively monitored and that funds would not disappear into the bureaucracy and informal economy, as has happened with previous such initiatives. The lion's share of the aid pledges came in the form of grants from Gulf Arab states, which not only have cash to spare as a result of the long oil boom but also have a vital interest in staving off economic collapse in their poor and populous Arabian neighbour. One of the least developed countries in the world—electricity coverage is only 30%, and 64% of the population do not have access to safe drinking water—Yemen is in dire need of external financial support.

Mr Mujawar, a French-trained economist, is expected to promote a number of younger technocrats to his cabinet. Donors will be watching closely to see what post (if any) is given to Abdel Karim al-Arhabi, who, as planning and international co-operation minister in the previous government, played a critical role in the success of the London conference.

The prime minister will take over stewardship of a five-year plan (2006-10), which aims to achieve average real GDP growth of over 7%, primarily through boosting capital expenditure and trimming current outlays. In order to achieve this, the government must make concerted efforts to eliminate subsidies, reduce the wage bill and contain defence outlays. However, it clearly still has a long way to go. According to the 2007 budget, the amount allotted solely to the oil products subsidy is greater than the total capital projects budget, despite the government's pledge in its five-year plan to cease all subsidies by 2010.

The Ministry of Finance has kept to its pledge not to include the London donor funds in its budgetary accounts. Its promise to keep the aid monies outside its Treasury accounts helped to assuage concerns among foreign donors that their contributions might not be directed into capital projects as intended, but instead be used to postpone much-need fiscal reform, or, more seriously, be lost to corruption. This has, however, caused the government to come in for sustained criticism from the parliamentary opposition, which has accused it of failing to tackle seriously the country's high poverty levels. It will be up to Mr Mujawar to address these concerns.

Huthi rebellion

In announcing the new appointment, Mr Saleh made clear that he wished the outgoing prime minister, Mr Ba Jammal, to focus on his job as secretary-general of the GPC, with parliamentary elections on the horizon in 2008 or 2009. Of more immediate concern for the country's political leaders is the continuing rebellion in the north-western Saada province by radical members of the Zaydi sect, a branch of Shia Islam that is prevalent in this part of the Arabian peninsula. The revolt started in September 2004 when members of a Shia sub-sect led by Hussein Badr al-Din al-Huthi, the Believing Youth, began to sow dissent in protest against the government's co-operation with the US in its "war on terror". After sporadic clashes and a series of short-lived truces, heavy fighting between government forces and the Huthis broke out in January 2007, as Mr Saleh announced his intention of eradicating the group after it had killed several soldiers in a surprise raid on their military base. The anti-Huthi campaign has continued over the past two months, with heavy casualties reported on both sides, as well as among the civilian population.

Iranian role?

The government claims that the Huthis have benefited from external support, but has stopped short of making any specific accusations. The combination of Shia militancy and a strong anti-US stance suggests that the Huthis might see Iran as potential ally. The Yemeni foreign minister, Abu Bakr Abdullah al-Qirbi, said, after a recent visit to Tehran, that there was no evidence that the Iranian government was backing the Huthi rebels, but he added that the rebels had received support from "Shia religious circles", according to Al-Waset, a local weekly newspaper.

There have also been reports that Yemeni security forces recently shot down a pilotless reconnaissance drone with Iranian markings in the Hadhramaut area of south Yemen. However, the government has made no statement on the affair.