Mugabe’s party

Mugabe celebrates 85th birthday with huge party | U.S. | Reuters
Party organizers say dozens of cattle, goats and sheep will be slaughtered at the bash in a small farming town near his home village, which is estimated to have cost $150,000.
“This kind of celebration, amid so much suffering by so many, is obscene and a [...]

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Death great for business

Reality TV’s Tragedy – The Daily Beast
In the last six months, Goody’s illness has been relentlessly televised and photographed, every detail of her demise sold to the highest bidder and slapped with the tag ‘Exclusive!’—the profits said to be set aside in a trust for her two young boys, Bobby, 5, and Freddy, 4. As [...]

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Parry on the future of newspapers

FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Choice for local newspapers: evolve or die
Having had a ringside seat for more than a decade, I have three predictions for the local newspaper industry in the UK by 2014: total local advertising income will be less than it is today; many local daily titles will have been converted [...]

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Spanish recession

FT.com / Comment / Analysis – Spain’s recession: After the fiesta
African residents and street hawkers demonstrated twice last week in the Madrid district of Lavapiés against alleged racism and police raids; it subsequently emerged that police in the capital had been given weekly quotas for arresting illegal immigrants.
FT.com / Comment / Analysis – Spain’s recession: [...]

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Bernstein on Benedict XVI

Holy Moly, He’s Done It Again – The Daily Beast
Indeed, Benedict is increasingly pictured in the press and among detractors as an ultra-right-wing pope who would set the Catholic Church back decades, even undoing the reforms of Vatican II, not to mention the work within the Church of his great predecessor, John Paul II.

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A new gated Internet

Do We Need a New Internet? – NYTimes.com
What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. [...]

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Muenchau on lack of coordination in EU

FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Munchau – Narrow-minded leadership hurts Europe
The European economy is now heading towards a depression, with German gross domestic product falling at an annualised rate of almost 9 per cent. The early misjudgment of the crisis resulted in stimulus packages with two defects. They were initially too small but, more importantly, [...]

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Amorim: Eliminate Tariffs on Ethanol

FT.com / Global Economy – Acrimony dashes Doha hopes
“If the US wanted to do something positive for the environment, eliminate tariffs on ethanol,” Mr Amorim said angrily, as Brazil has long campaigned against US restrictions on imports of Brazilian ethanol.
The session ended with Mr Lamy insisting he did not have any jurisdiction to force the [...]

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Bolsa Familia is not straightforward vote-buying

Brazil’s Bolsa Família scheme | Happy families | The Economist
Bolsa Família is sometimes equated with straightforward vote-buying. That is unfair. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s name is strongly associated with the scheme—even among some people in Alagoas who are unaware that he is Brazil’s president. But their gratitude does not extend to support for his [...]

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Is the Catholic Church 3,000 years old?

Indulgences Return, and Heaven Moves a Step Closer for Catholics – NYTimes.com
The return of indulgences began with Pope John Paul II, who authorized bishops to offer them in 2000 as part of the celebration of the church’s third millennium.

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