Recently added articles from The Economist (US):
Ready to roll again; Brazil's recovering economy.
Jun 13, 2009 ... Among the last to fall into recession, Brazil may be among the first to grow out of it "NEVER before in the country's history" is the catchphrase of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that most annoys his opponents. The president, in his selective amnesia, would have voters ...
Some are on their own; Canadians abroad.(Canadians in trouble abroad)
Jun 13, 2009 ... The judges clash with the politicians FOR the past year Abousfian Abdelrazik, who is a citizen both of Canada and of Sudan, his country of origin, has lived in the lobby of Canada's embassy in Khartoum, unable to travel home and too frightened to venture outside. The Sudanese ...
Muck and brass plates; Waste disposal in Colombia.(rights of sanitation workers in Colombia)
Jun 13, 2009 ... Entrepreneurs, not scavengers FOR more than 20 years Carmen Lasso has scrabbled a living of sorts for herself and her eight children by scavenging at a rubbish dump in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city. Her life has brought the occasional pleasant surprise, such as the silver ...
Keeping its head above water; Bangladesh's government.(Bangladesh's popular government)
Jun 13, 2009 ... And still popular, against the odds HUNDREDS of thousands of people in south-western Bangladesh remain homeless after a cyclone which struck in late May, killing at least 200 people. Much of the disaster area is still under water. Some 4.8m people have been affected, and ...
The traffic police; The sex industry in Cambodia.
Jun 13, 2009 ... The wrong side of the street 'Tis a pity, but she won't go away IN EERIE, deserted silence on the outskirts of Phnom Penh sits the Prey Speu detention centre. Barely legible on its grimy walls a few weeks ago were cries for help and whispers of despair from the ...
Heating up or cooling down? America and China talk climate change.
Jun 13, 2009 ... The big two emitters try to stop finger-pointing and save the planet THOUSANDS of officials from all over the world this week neared the end of two weeks of difficult talks in Bonn under the United Nations' climate convention. But they were conscious that even more difficult ...
Fata Fergana; Unrest in Uzbekistan.(bombings and political leadership)
Jun 13, 2009 ... Suspicions that Islamist extremists are regrouping in the valley JUST as Uzbekistan has once again become a transit route for supplies to American and NATO forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, two violent incidents have suggested the country itself may be susceptible to ...
Here comes trouble; The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Jun 13, 2009 ... The regional dimension to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan CENTRAL ASIA'S militant Islamists have been popping up in some unusual places. Pakistani officials say that Uzbek fighters have numbered among those captured and killed in the government's offensive to ...
Images to delight and confound; An exhibition of medieval drawings.
Jun 13, 2009 ... An intriguing show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York may require art history to be rewritten PEOPLE have been drawing since they lived in caves, if not before. But in the Western world, drawing as an art is said to have started with the Renaissance. An exhibition, ...
Crooked path to universal truth; History of science.(Science: A Four Thousand Year History)(Book review)
Jun 13, 2009 ... What did Vermeer's astronomer discover? A CONTROVERSIAL British historian, E.H. Carr, reckoned that his subject was shaped by the very process of studying it. "The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the ...
Riddle wrapped in a mystery; Venezuela's curious coup.
Jun 13, 2009 ... Chavez's joyous return ON APRIL 11th 2002 nearly a million people marched on the presidential palace in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to demand the ousting of Hugo Chavez, the elected president whom they accused of undermining democracy and causing the creeping ...
Puff by puff, inch by inch; Anti-smoking activism.(Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking)(Book review)
Jun 13, 2009 ... "DON'T forget the cigarettes for Tommy," ran one patriotic British ditty during the first world war. American generals told their government they needed "tobacco as much as bullets"; charities sent cigarettes to the front-line. After the war, non-smokers seemed odd. The crime writer, ...
Slaves to some defunct economist; The inefficiency of markets.(The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street)(Book review)
Jun 13, 2009 ... THE financial crisis that has engulfed the world in the past two years is not just, or perhaps even mainly, a tale of greed run riot; it is the result of an idea that failed. That idea, which over the past four decades became the dominant belief among those generally regarded as the ...
The journey of an inquiring mind; Harold Varmus's life as a scientist.(The Art and Politics of Science)(Book review)
Jun 13, 2009 ... He wounded Grendel NEWLY appointed Nobel laureates traditionally give speeches after the banquet held in their honour. In 1989 Harold Varmus, having just received the medicine prize, used his to recall similar Scandinavian revels described in the epic poem "Beowulf", and to ...
Peter's pet; Bagehot.(Bagehot: Peter's pet)(Peter Mandelson on Gordon Brown)(Viewpoint essay)
Jun 13, 2009 ... How, why and with what consequences Lord Mandelson kept the prime minister in his job DURING the general-election campaign of 1997 Peter Mandelson made a public appearance with a bulldog. The dog, whose name was Fitz, supposedly embodied patriotism and resolve: "It is a ...
Booted and suited; The BNP's breakthrough.(British National Party)
Jun 13, 2009 ... Not such a good egg, Griffin Britain is not about to go fascist, but the BNP's success is worrying all the same FAR-RIGHT political parties have often been regarded in Britain as more clownish than chilling--goose-stepping goons who somehow failed to notice that ...
Stoppable force meets immovable object; The survival of Gordon Brown.
Jun 13, 2009 ... Labour's feeble and failed attempt to oust its leader BRITONS fearing for their jobs in the recession must wish for employers as indulgent as the parliamentary Labour Party. Observers assumed its patience with Gordon Brown, who already looked likely to lead it to a mauling at ...
Permanent revolution; Reshaping government.
Jun 13, 2009 ... The cost of Britain's infinitely mutable government departments THE headed notepaper had barely been delivered and the glitches on the website ironed out. Now the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills that was created in 2007 by the newly enthroned prime minister, ...
Justice, of a sort; Suing the Omagh bombers.
Jun 13, 2009 ... Frustrated in the criminal courts, victims' families gain a hearing in civil ones TWENTY-NINE dead; 220 injured; one man tried; no one ever convicted of the crime. Yet on June 8th the families of victims of the 1998 bombing in Omagh finally had the satisfaction of seeing someone ...
Worlds apart; Public and private pensions.
Jun 13, 2009 ... Who will temper the wind to the shorn lamb? Britain's pensions apartheid looks unsustainable COMPANY final-salary schemes were set on the path to extinction earlier this decade following a wave of closures to new recruits. Now BP, one of a handful of big firms that ...