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The Economist: News analysis and views

March 10, 2010
8:38
Snoopy sniffs an opportunity
» ‎ The Economist: News analysis and views

AIG reluctantly hands its crown as America’s global life insurer to MetLife
ANOTHER week, another opportunity for AIG’s rivals to expand at the American insurer’s expense. Days after sealing a $35.5 billion deal for its Asian life-insurance operations with Britain’s Prudential, the firm, which is being dismembered to recoup bail-out costs, agreed on March 8th to sell another crown jewel, Alico. The acquisition propels New York-based MetLife, which is paying $15.5 billion, into the industry’s global elite. Though it is the biggest life insurer in America, where its Snoopy logo is ubiquitous, it has been tentative abroad. Alico will give it a presence in 64 countries, up from 17 now, taking its non-American revenue from 15% of the total to 40%.
The biggest leap will be in Japan, the world’s second-largest life market, in which Alico is a top-tier competitor. But MetLife’s boss, Robert Henrikson (who took over in 2006 from Robert Benmosche, now AIG’s chief executive), also has his eye on the faster-growing markets in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America that make up almost a quarter of Alico’s business. Another attraction is its distribution network: 60,000 agents, brokers and other local middlemen. ...
March 09, 2010
14:38
Accusations fly
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Did protectionism force EADS to scrap a $35 billion bid to supply the American air force?
THE announcement on Monday March 8th that Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS were pulling out of a bid for a $35 billion contract to build air-refuelling tankers for the United States Air Force was no surprise. Northrop had said that it would not contest the terms of the latest contract proposal, even though it thought they had been drawn up to favour the rival Boeing bid. The British and German governments, along with the European Commission, expressed concern at what they see as the Pentagon rejecting open competition in order to bolster Boeing. Lord Mandelson, the British business secretary, said it was “very disappointing” that the Ameircan-European bidders felt the procurement process was so biased against them that it was not even worth making a bid.
The outcome is a blow to EADS, which on Tuesday announced a loss for 2009 caused by the need to post a €1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) charge because of cost over-runs on another military project, the A400M military troop carrier, and further charges caused by delays to its A380 super-jumbo passenger aircraft. ...
12:31
Trading down
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Industry’s move from the rich to the poor world is confusing the carbon accounts
ON MARCH 4th The Economist ran a story about the challenges facing scientists who are trying to find out which greenhouse gases come from where. On March 8th a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Steve Davis and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s campus at Stanford University brought to the fore a further problem in trying to figure out who emits what—one that turns not on how carbon flows through the atmosphere and biosphere, but on how it flows through the world economy. Who should be held responsible for the greenhouse-gas emissions involved in making, say, a flat-screen television? The country where the television is made? Or the country where it ends up being used?
Looking at the carbon emissions associated with a country’s consumption, rather than its production, does not change the general outline of what is going on in the world: rich people still emit more carbon dioxide than poor people do. But it does heighten the contrast. Rich countries which import manufactured goods from poorer ones end up with even higher emissions; poor countries that export a lot of manufactured goods with lower ones. Using figures from 2004, the most up to date that have the sort of industry-specific data they need, Dr Davis and Dr Caldeira reveal the striking scale of this effect. They find that roughly a quarter of the world’s emissions end up being consumed somewhere other than where they are produced. For a few small and reasonably post-industrial countries, such as Switzerland, the emissions associated with total consumption (emissions produced in Switzerland minus those associated with goods produced there and subsequently exported plus those associated with goods imported) are more than twice the emissions actually produced on Swiss territory. ...
11:25
Wominnovation
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Some innovations help women more than others
TWO recent innovations have garnered a lot of attention for the way they empower women. One is microcredit, a system of lending to very poor people, the majority of whom are female microentrepreneurs who are thus helped to climb out of poverty. The other is the mobile phone, which among other things has led to the emergence of an army of “telephone ladies” in countries such as Bangladesh, who earn a decent living by buying a phone and renting it out to other villagers.
That said, some innovations have been harmful to women, especially in the developing world. As the cover story of the latest issue of The Economist points out, at least 100m female lives have been lost in recent decades due to “gendercide” in countries such as China, where the number of live male births recorded enormously exceeds the number of live female births. One factor in this has been new technology that allows parents to determine their embryo’s sex early in a pregnancy—and thus to abort females in countries where male offspring are valued more highly. Other innovations also bring more benefits to men than women. For example, women are estimated to be only 25% of internet users in Africa, 22% in Asia, 38% in Latin America and just 6% in the Middle East. ...
10:37
Picking a fight
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Brazil fires another salvo in its dispute with America over cotton subsidies
HOW serious is the decision by Brazil’s government, announced on Tuesday March 8th, to raise duties on a number of American-made imports? The increases are sizeable for goods such as cosmetics (tariffs will double, to 36%) and many household wares (tariffs will also double, to 40%). And the timing is significant: the news came as America's commerce secretary, Gary Locke, was due to arrive in Brasilia to promote an export-promotion initiative in America's 10th-largest export market.
Yet the decision is not entirely surprising, as it relates to a long-running trade dispute. Asked about the dispute at a press conference last week Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said “I feel like I have walked into a movie that has been going on for years”. Brazil complained to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) nearly eight years ago about America's counter-cyclical subsidies to its cotton growers, which are designed to cushion them against fluctuations in the cotton price, and a programme guaranteeing loans for international buyers of American cotton. ...
10:08
Tying the knot
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Where America's gay couples enjoy legal equality
GAY couples in Washington, DC, have been enthusiastically lining up for marriage licences since March 3rd, when a state court overturned an attempt to ban same-sex weddings. The first ceremonies are set to take place on Tuesday March 9th. The District of Columbia joins five states where gay men and women have equal marriage rights. There may be many more nuptials to come: Washington, DC, is home to a higher concentration of same-sex couples than anywhere else in America. Newlyweds will also have their relationship recognised in neighbouring Maryland, after an advisory ruling last month. But prospective couples may want to set a date quickly. California struck down its gay-marriage law in a ballot in 2008, just six months after it was passed.
...
March 08, 2010
16:55
Deadly reprisals
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Sectarian violence kills hundreds in Nigeria
THE number plates in Nigeria’s Plateau State declare it to be the “Home of Peace and Tourism”. This has seemed ever more optimistic in recent years, as the state capital, Jos, has been battered by brutal violence, with fresh attacks over the weekend reportedly leaving hundreds dead.
In the early hours of the morning of Sunday March 7th gangs attacked villages near Jos, according to the Red Cross. Houses were razed and many women and children killed. Locals say the gang members belonged to the mainly Muslim Fulani tribe while the villages were populated by the mostly Christian Berom group. The death toll is hard to verify, with estimates ranging from 200 to 500. ...
9:35
Oscar Victor Yankee
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American dominance of the Oscars is declining
AMERICANS did well at the Academy Awards on Sunday March 7th. Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for best director and Sandra Bullock got a statuette as best actress (she had received the less-coveted “Razzie” award as worst actress the night before). But American dominance, though still evident, appears to be waning. In the past decade six of the ten best-director Oscars went to Americans and five of the best-actress Oscars, a decline from the 1970s-90s when Americans won almost everything. This recent bout of globalisation resembles the awards' earliest years. Between 1930 and 1969, only half of the 40 winning directors, and only 55% of the actresses, were American-born.
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7:22
Defiant Iraqis
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Counting begins after Iraq's modestly hopeful general election
DESPITE a wave of violent attacks, millions of voters took part on Sunday March 7th in the second full parliamentary election in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. In a country slowly emerging from years of bloody fighting, voters faced a choice between a Shia-dominated government and a non-sectarian one. Neither option offers an obvious path to full peace and prosperity.
Much of the effect of the election depends on the horse-trading and coalition building that is to follow. But the election result will give an indication of who is to lead the oil-rich nation. The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, should do well in the main Shia population centres of Baghdad and Basra. His rivals from the Iraqi National Alliance, comprising a number of Shia religious parties, expect to win most of their votes along the lower stretches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Shia heartland. Non-sectarian alliances are expected to do well in Baghdad and Anbar province, once one of the most restive parts of the country. ...
March 07, 2010
12:25
The week ahead
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Renewed diplomatic efforts over Iran's nuclear activities
• AFTER Iran announced that its long-delayed Bushehr civilian nuclear plant will be operational within a few months, American diplomats will renew efforts to obtain further sanctions against the Islamic republic over its suspected efforts to build a nuclear bomb. Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, has been trying to persuade members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, which has been helping to build the Bushehr plant since 1995, to accept to a new round of sanctions against Iran. The country's government refused to agree to a compromise plan for its uranium to be enriched in Russia.
• AMERICA’S vice-president, Joe Biden, tries again to untangle the knot that is Middle Eastern politics. He travels to the region on Monday March 8th and will meet the leaders of Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Jordan in an attempt to encourage the resumption of peace talks. George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s envoy, is adding his weight to efforts reopen negotiations. A recent row over historical holy sites has not helped to warm relations, as Israeli archaeologists in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital, are intent on uncovering evidence of Jewish ties that could be used to undermine the Arab presence there. ...
March 05, 2010
15:00
This week's top stories [05 March 2010]
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10:36
The end of the show?
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Tumbling corporate-tax rates
CORPORATE-TAX rates in OECD countries have fallen remorselessly over the past 30 years. A survey by Robert Carroll of American University in Washington, DC, found that the top rate in OECD countries (excluding America) had dropped from 51% in the early 1980s to 32% by 2009. Competition among countries to attract business and with it bring employment was fierce in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ireland reduced its corporate-tax rate to just 12.5% and chose not to raise it last year during an emergency budget. Such differentials may not last long. High-tax European governments have complained in the past about competition from countries such as Ireland and the current economic crisis may lead to more calls for co-ordination of tax policies.
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9:36
Past imperfect, present tense
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Congress reconsiders America’s official position on the Armenian genocide
TWO questions faced an American congressional panel on Thursday March 5th as it considered the mass killings of Armenians during and after the first world war by forces of the Ottoman Empire. First, was it genocide? The historical debate is as hot, and unsettled, as ever. Armenians continue to insist that it was the first genocide of the twentieth century, while Turks call the killings merely part of the chaos of the break-up of empire.
But the second question on the minds of congressmen in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives was more urgent. What is more important, fidelity to history or concern for the present? The vote took place as warming relations between Turkey and Armenia have cooled again and those between Turkey and America are under increasing strain over Iran, Israel and other affairs in the region. Turkish diplomats and politicians gave warning before the vote that the consequences would be felt across the range of issues of shared concern to the two countries. In the end the panel narrowly decided against pragmatism and chose to set straight the historical records. A resolution recognising the killings as genocide was sent to the House by a vote of 23 to 22. ...
8:17
Cloudy with a chance of rain
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Few companies are ready to accept cloud computing
THE hype surrounding “cloud computing” has become deafening of late. Your correspondent suspects the evangelists, promoters and others hoping to cash in on the computing-services-in-the-sky movement are getting nervous about the way corporate customers, big and small, have not exactly rushed to embrace the new data-processing paradigm.
Perhaps that is because they have heard it all before. A couple of years ago, the fashionable term for it was “software as a service”. Before that, it was part and parcel of “grid computing”. Sure, each of the previous approaches brought a somewhat different set of technologies to bear, but the objective was broadly the same: to make it possible to buy data processing and storage from a service provider like electricity. Being flexible, extensible and virtual, customers would use as much or as little of the utility as they needed—and pay only for what they consumed. Despite the promise of cheaper processing, though, the vast majority of information-technology departments have continued to buy and maintain their own servers, data-storage units and network gear—preferring to keep their data on the premises rather than have it processed elsewhere. ...
7:43
Flowering friendliness?
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China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, offers some gestures of conciliation
AT THE opening of the annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, could not resist a bit of boasting. China’s economy, he said, in a two-hour speech, had been the first in the world to make a turnaround. With an implied sneer at the West’s continuing malaise, he spoke of socialism’s “advantages”: quick decision-making, effective organisation and an ability to “concentrate resources to accomplish large undertakings”.
Yet despite China’s swagger at having achieved 8.7% GDP growth last year (under the “firm leadership” of the Communists, Mr Wen reminded the nearly 3,000 party-picked delegates in the Great Hall of the People), its government has used the launch of the ten-day NPC session to make an unusual gesture of conciliation. The budget submitted to the legislature calls for the lowest rate of growth in defence spending since 1988, a period in which almost every budget has called for double-digit increases. This year it proposes a mere 7.5%, quite a plunge from last year’s growth of 17.8%. ...
March 04, 2010
7:29
Struggles, suffering and Skype
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Eastern Europeans should strive to present a more modern face to visitors
IMAGINE that you are attending a conference (call it Agenda 2010) in the capital city (call it Klow) of a generic ex-communist country (call it Ruritania). The discussion will be mostly about the present and the future. After a night-owl session on “the impact of the economic crisis on regional security”, you will stagger to a red-eye breakfast on “Engaging Russia: how, when and where?” But the cultural programme in the afternoon is resolutely backward-looking. An excursion to admire the beautiful historic buildings includes a chance to goggle at the horrible Stalinist ones. A mandatory stop is something on the lines of “The Museum of Ruritanian Struggles and Suffering”, which shows the country’s heroic and horrible past from the dawn of recorded history to NATO membership, via occupation, obliteration and a lot of historical myths.
...
6:52
The die is cast
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Barack Obama unveils his final strategy for pushing health reform in America
“EVERYTHING there is to say about health care has been said and just about everyone has said it…now is the time to make a decision.” So declared President Barack Obama on March 3rd to an audience of doctors and nurses gathered at the White House. After a year of dithering, he is now leaping into action.
His speech contained no policy surprises, but is worth noting for three reasons. First, he instructed congressional Democrats to embrace several Republican proposals—for example, modest measures to reform malpractice laws and fight insurance fraud—that were put forward during last week’s bipartisan summit on reform. Second, he made it clear that he now wants Democrats to forge ahead with whatever procedural manoeuvres are necessary to pass his health bill. And finally, he declared that he wanted to see “an up-or-down vote” in the “next few weeks”. ...
6:30
Now comes the pain
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Greece’s new austerity measures may prove to be enough—if they are fully implemented
GEORGE PAPACONSTANTINOU, the overworked Greek finance minister, likens the effort to steer Greece away from economic disaster to “changing the course of the Titanic.” Until this week it looked as if the country was headed for an iceberg labelled default. Two austerity packages had failed to convince Greece’s European partners—or the financial markets—that measures to cut the budget deficit this year from 12.7% of GDP to 8.7% would work.
Critics in Brussels said that Greece’s Socialist government was relying too heavily on pledges to cut tax evasion and soak the rich, rather than slash spending, especially on public-sector pay and pensions. The markets pushed spreads on Greek bonds over their German equivalents to record highs. Greece’s ten-year bonds were offering mouth-watering yields of some 6%, twice the German level. ...
March 03, 2010
13:56
Paying up
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Under pressure, GM is now putting up half the money needed to rescue Opel
THE mood at this week’s Geneva motor show, if not exactly upbeat, was in contrast to the fear that gripped the event last year. Europe’s car market is expected to fall in volume terms by around 10% in 2010 as the scrappage schemes that helped underpin demand for smaller cars last year are withdrawn. But slowly returning sales of larger, more profitable vehicles should underpin revenues. Moreover, the action carmakers have taken to strengthen their balance sheets is working: most are expecting to generate cash this year. The big exception is Opel/Vauxhall, the European unit of General Motors.
On Tuesday March 2nd, the first day of the show, GM staged a surprise by announcing it was tripling to €1.9 billion ($2.6 billion) in loans and equity the contribution it was ready to make to its original €3.3 billion plan for restructuring Opel. It was an admission both of how fragile Opel remains and how cross with the German government still is with GM. ...
12:02
How China bucked the trend
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What really happened in 2009
ONE of the common assumptions about the art market in 2009 was that the stunning success of the three-day Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Berge sale in Paris—the highest grossing single-owner sale ever—would allow France to reclaim its position as the third-biggest art market in the world after America and Britain. It didn’t.
Clare McAndrew, a Dublin-based analyst of art-market statistics and the founder of Arts Economics, was the first to prove categorically that France’s century-long pre-eminence in the art world had been usurped by China. That was in 2007, and many presumed it was no more than a blip. But Ms McAndrew’s most recent report, the latest in a series commissioned by The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) and published to coincide with the start of TEFAF’s Maastricht art fair on March 12th, proves categorically that China’s art market is getting bigger all the time. ...
11:26
Well drilled
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Offshore oil platforms operate at ever-greater depths
BP, A big British oil company, announced a round of efficiency measures and cost cuts on Tuesday March 2nd aimed at increasing annual profits by $3 billion over the next few of years. But BP and the world's other big oil companies face similar problems when it comes to boosting profits. Few big new oil fields that are easy to reach and cheap to exploit have been discovered in recent years. This has driven firms to seek oil ever deeper below the sea. In 1947, Kerr-McGee built the world’s first offshore oil well that was completely out of sight of land, drilling 4.6 metres into the seabed off the coast of Louisiana. This year Shell's 22,000-tonne Perdido rig is set to begin operation. Standing nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower, it is chained to the seabed 2.4km metres below and is capable of extracting oil at a maximum depth of 2.9km.
...
9:07
The other Brown
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A late, and philosophical, return to American political campaigning for Jerry Brown
THE dark, floppy hair has gone, and the face is a little rounder, but otherwise Jerry Brown, at 71, looks much as he did when he slept on a futon on the floor of his office and squired Linda Ronstadt round town. He was California’s Democratic governor then, from 1975 to 1983, and on Tuesday March 2nd he officially announced that he hopes to be governor again.
Apart from a spell studying Buddhism in the east—no surprise to anyone—Mr Brown has not disappeared in the interim from California politics. He has been mayor of Oakland and is now the state’s attorney-general. He has a Jesuit education, a prodigious intellect, a fine pedigree (his father, Pat Brown, was one of the state’s best governors) and a protean political identity that allows him to become almost any sort of candidate, as needed. “Action and contemplation joined together” he said in full Zen mode last June, “is what I would call the highest path that we can follow.” ...
March 02, 2010
13:41
First, do no harm
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The best way to make hospitals green is to keep people out of them
IN JANUARY the National Health Service (NHS) in England calculated its carbon footprint as the equivalent of 21m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year—just short of the amount emitted by the Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, western Europe’s largest. Unlike the power station’s emissions, though, those of the health service have been increasing: they have grown by half since 1990. Other countries fare no better. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that America’s health-care industry accounts for 8% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. In Germany, a study by the Viamedica Foundation showed that a hospital’s energy expenditure per bed was roughly the same as that of three newly built homes.
The past few years have seen efforts to make things greener. The King Edward Memorial hospital in Mumbai, for example, was recently remodelled with solar heaters and rainwater-collection units. Many hospitals are switching from standard light-bulbs to compact fluorescent or LED lights. The Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas, was the first hospital to be certified “platinum” under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards of the United States’ Green Building Council—the highest designation there is. ...
11:54
Dragging up the past
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The arrest of a Bosnian war leader threatens to reopen deep wounds in the Balkans
THE timing could not have been more inauspicious. Radovan Karadzic who had escaped arrest for alleged war crimes for so long had just begun his testimony at the UN’s war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday March 1st. The Serbian struggle during the Bosnian war of 1992-95, including the bloody siege of Sarajevo, had been “holy and just” he claimed. At about the same moment British police arrested, at the request of the Serbian government, a wartime Bosnian-Muslim (Bosniak) leader, Ejup Ganic. He was intercepted at London’s Heathrow airport.
As the Bosnian war erupted in April 1992, Ejup Ganic was a member of the country’s collective presidency. Bosnia had declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia and the Serbian siege of Sarajevo had begun. On the hills around the city Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, ordered his men to fire indiscriminately into Sarajevo. Unlike Mr Karadzic, he still evades arrest and is believed to be hiding in Serbia. Yugoslav army soldiers still within Sarajevo were besieged. They then captured Bosnia’s president, Alija Izetbegovic, and his daughter. ...
11:39
Football crazy
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Europe's most valuable football fans
EUROPE'S most sucessful football club off the pitch, measured by revenues for the 2008-09 season, is Real Madrid. The Spanish side raked in just over €400m ($560m), according to a report by Deloitte. But the club that takes the most from its fans directly is Chelsea, also currently top of England's Premier League. By comparing matchday revenues to average gates it seems that English sides do a bit more nicely from their devoted followers than continental teams. This reflects not only the relatively high cost of tickets but also the large number of pricey corporate boxes at English grounds.
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11:28
Recovery in progress
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World trade is on the mend, but the strength of the rebound remains uncertain
IS THE glass half empty or half full for world trade? Figures released on March 1st by the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), which maintains a close watch on global trade volumes, point to renewed vigour at the end of 2009. Trade volumes rose by 6%, quarter-on-quarter, in the final three months of the year.
But these figures also underline just how severely trade was affected by the global recession. The CPB reckons that volumes shrank by a staggering 13.2% during 2009. They have fallen in only two other years since 1961, when comprehensive data begin. But those declines—by 1.9% in 1975 and 0.9% in 1982—pale in comparison with last year’s huge drop. ...
11:03
Up to a point, Mr Paulson
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Hank Paulson on journalists’ role in the crash
“THOSE people who know me well know I’m pretty direct,” Hank Paulson told a room full of journalists in New York on March 1st, as he analysed the performance of news organisations during the economic crisis. The former treasury secretary, addressing a meeting of the Committee of Concerned Journalists (your columnist was on the discussion panel), was certainly direct in highlighting several examples of failures by the media, though he also handed out plenty of praise for, as he put it, professionals doing a tough job in difficult circumstances.
The first failure, he said, was a tendency to run inaccurate or half-baked stories because of the pressure to deliver scoops. One example of these “premature stories with unexpected consequences” was a report in December 2008 that the government was planning to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide low-cost mortgages to reduce foreclosures. According to Mr Paulson, this misrepresented as policy an idea that was still being considered as one option among many and was quickly rejected. “I can think of no industry more competitive than the press,” he said—and as a former investment banker he should recognise competition when he sees it. ...
March 01, 2010
9:12
In need of repair
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Chile counts the cost of a devastating earthquake and makes plans for recovery
RELIEF was the initial reaction in Chile to what seemed relatively limited damage given the scale of the earthquake that shook the centre and south of the country in the early hours of Saturday February 27th. That picture has been replaced gradually by dismay as the full extent of the cost begins to emerge. By Sunday evening, the number of confirmed deaths had reached over 700 and is still likely to rise, according to President Michelle Bachelet. This is still a low toll, however, for a quake of 8.8magnitude, one of the largest in the world since 1900.
Felt throughout almost all the country, the quake hit most strongly in six central regions, from the capital, Santiago, and the nearby port of Valparaiso in central Chile to the city of Temuco in the Araucania region of the south. These parts of the country are home to about 60% of Chile's 17m inhabitants and account for around 70% its GDP. An estimated 1.5m homes are thought to have been damaged and around a third may have to be demolished. ...
February 28, 2010
7:11
Destruction in Chile
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A huge earthquake hits Chile but it has fared far better than poverty-stricken Haiti
JUST six weeks after an earthquake killed over 200,000 people in Haiti, another huge tremor has shaken Latin America. Early in the morning on Saturday February 27th, a massive 8.8-magnitude quake—the fifth-largest recorded since 1900—rocked the Pacific coast of central Chile. Lasting for nearly 90 seconds, it knocked out electricity, water, and telephone services in a wide stretch of the country, and damaged the Santiago airport terminal, some 325 kilometres from the epicentre. The resulting tsunami prompted evacuations as far away as Japan, although the waves inflicted little damage outside Chile and the warnings were later cancelled.
At least 76 aftershocks followed. Michelle Bachelet, the country’s president, said it would take three days to produce the first reliable evaluations of the quake’s impact, but she estimated that 1.5m homes were damaged and 2m people were affected by the disaster. Government officials have already confirmed over 700 deaths. ...
5:52
The week ahead
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An election in deeply divided Iraq
• IRAQIS finally go to the polls on Sunday March 7th to vote in their long-delayed national elections. But with many candidates barred from standing because of former ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath party, sectarian rivalries have once more come to the fore. It is far from certain that any single group will win enough votes to form a government, prompting fears that relations between Sunnis and Shias will deteriorate even further and threaten the country's fragile recovery.
• A VOTE by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday March 4th threatens to sour relations between America and Turkey. The congressional committee will consider whether to label the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians by Turkish forces in 1915 as a genocide. Previous similar resolutions never made it to a vote in the House of Representatives for fear of damaging relations with an important ally in the Middle East. But a House vote is more likely this time after Barack Obama’s election pledge to recognise the episode as genocide. ...
February 27, 2010
7:25
Third time, unlucky
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The courts block Alvaro Uribe from seeking a third term as Colombia's president
COLOMBIA'S Constitutional Court, by blocking President Alvaro Uribe from seeking the presidency ever again, resolved the two-time leader’s quandary over whether to try to stay in power or leave with his legacy intact. The country had been on tenterhooks for months while it awaited the approaching decision of the court which finally made its ruling late on Friday February 26th.
By a vote of 7 to 2 the court concluded that a referendum that would have sought to allow Mr Uribe to run for a third term in elections in May was unconstitutional. The court ruled that the measure was fraught with irregularities and “substantial violations to democratic principles.” With the court resolving what Mr Uribe had called his “dilemma of the soul” over whether to run again, the popular president said after the ruling that he would work for Colombia “from any trench” for the rest of his life. ...
February 26, 2010
15:00
This week's top stories [26 February 2010]
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