Society & Politics archives: March-April 2005

• 29 April 2005
  

  "Internet-illiterate parents could leave their children on the wrong side of the digital divide, researchers have said. Many parents lack the skills to help their child's internet use, a London School of Economics study has said. It said 85% of parents surveyed wanted stronger laws to clamp down on internet pornography. And one in five said they did not know how to help their children use the web safely, according to the UK Children Go Online report...lack of internet skills among many parents could harm their children's prospects, the report said. Mostly middle class, internet-literate parents raised internet-literate children, it found. Sonia Livingstone, social psychology professor at LSE, said many now relied on the web for information, help with homework and careers guidance, so it mattered more if they were left behind." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 28 April 2005
  

  "Genetic engineering and steroid enhancement could turn Superman-like fantasy figures into reality, American football officials and players warned in a Congressional hearing. The first signs of a massive mighty race might already be appearing in 21st Century American sports, where teams do not face World Anti-Doping Agency standards even though lawmakers are pondering imposing such measures. Concerns about the future of doping were on the minds of several who testified here Wednesday at a House Government Reform committee hearing about steroids in the National Football League. The notion of a super-fast, super-strong man might even be playing out in the NFL, where linemen are more massive and faster than two decades ago, even though NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said his sport has no steroid problem." Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 27 April 2005
  

  "Picking up doughnuts on the way to work recently, George List slid back into the driver's seat and heard a voice from the cup holder suggest an alternate route. The car wasn't talking, exactly. The voice came from a handheld computer nestled in the holder that links his car to 200 other vehicles in the area. Data from all the vehicles -- where they are, how quickly they move -- is being used to create snapshots of area traffic patterns. The system had detected a bottleneck ahead and quickly calculated a faster route. List obeyed the machine. He later saw the traffic jam -- at a distance, from another road. List, director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Studies, co-heads a federally funded project examining a potential high-tech solution to highway congestion. Traffic is tracked through global positioning system (GPS) devices in cars that are connected wirelessly." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 26 April 2005
  

  "Pressured by anti-terror laws, banks will be spending billions of dollars over the next few years on software to counter money laundering. The software will automatically track suspicious financial transactions, but it will also monitor millions of innocuous ones, and may make it harder to cheat on your taxes. Thanks to the stringent requirements of the Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11 to choke the supply of terror funds, and the unambiguous threats of steep fines and even imprisonment of bank directors if their organizations facilitate money laundering, U.S. financial institutions are very enthusiastic about installing anti-money-laundering software...As a consequence of AML surveillance, even citizens with no criminal intent or ties will have to become more efficient law abiders, bank officials said. Small breaches of the law, or just indifference, will no longer go unnoticed." Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 April 2005
  

  "Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows. The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard...In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day. He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana. 'This is a very real and widespread phenomenon,' Wilson said. 'We have found that this obsession with looking at messages, if unchecked, will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 22 April 2005
  

  "China is rapidly becoming a major force in developing new technology, posing a significant economic threat to the United States. Alternately, the authoritarian country faces key hurdles in its quest to transform into an innovator, including its lack of free speech. Both arguments were made here on Thursday at a meeting of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a 12-member panel set up in 2000 to advise the U.S. Congress. A group of Silicon Valley business leaders and academics from around the country gave varied accounts of China's high-technology development and how the United States should respond to maintain its tech leadership. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry expressed doubts that China's rise as a tech powerhouse will carry over to it making its own breakthroughs." Learn more in News.com.

• 21 April 2005
  

  "When Earth Day dawned in 1970, optimistic environmentalists predicted emerging technologies would help reduce the nation's reliance on coal, oil, insecticides and other pollutants. But 35 years later, a big part of the problem appears to be technology itself. Tons of computers, monitors, televisions and other electronic gizmos that contain hazardous chemicals, or 'e-waste,' may be poisoning people and ground water. Activists say the nation's biggest environmental problem may be the smallest devices, and this week they're launching campaigns to increase awareness about recycling cell phones, music players, handheld gaming consoles and other electronics. Frequently, smaller portable gadgets have batteries that are prohibitively expensive to replace. So consumers in affluent countries simply toss them in the trash." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 20 April 2005
  

  "Last month, a committee of the British Parliament recommended allowing couples who conceive through in vitro fertilization to screen their embryos for sex. There are good reasons to take issue with easing the way for couples to choose whether to give birth to boys or girls. But whatever you think about the parliamentary committee's conclusion, from an American perspective the committee's existence and the tone of its report are enviable. The British government is taking on hard questions raised by reproductive technology...The committee gave some weight to sex selection's troubling ramifications, chiefly demographic. Because of the preference for sons in China and India, the ratio of boys to girls has already been thrown off in those countries, in some places by as much as 140 to 100." Learn more about this controversial British committee in Slate.com.

• 19 April 2005
  

  "David M. Levy, a computer scientist who loves technology and gets more than 100 e-mail messages a day, makes a point of unplugging from the Internet one day each week to clear his head. Even so, with all the e-mail messages flooding in, with academic blogs bursting with continuous debate, and with the hectic pace set by an increasingly wired world, Mr. Levy says he cannot help but feel an occasional sense of information overload. And that, he says, is something to stop and think about. Mr. Levy, a professor at the University of Washington's Information School, is one of many scholars trying to raise awareness of the negative impact of communication technologies on people's lives and work. They say the quality of research and teaching at colleges is at risk unless scholars develop strategies for better managing information, and for making time for extensive reading and contemplation." Learn why some professors are wondering if information tech really aids learning, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

• 18 April 2005
  

  "The last time President Pervez Musharraf came to India, in July 2001, he was feted by celebrities and given a red-carpet treatment worthy of a king. Yet the former commando completely failed to win concessions on the disputed territory of Kashmir, or to improve relations between India and Pakistan. This time, the tone of his visit has been much more low-key...Now the rhetoric of 'lasting solutions' has been replaced by less ambitious, but more practical talk of 'softer borders.' Still, for the time being, the most important point seems to be that people are talking, not shooting. The very fact that Pakistan and India are talking at all is in itself almost miraculous. Just 11 days ago, militants attempted to derail the brand-new bus service between Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir by torching an Indian tourist center in Srinagar and lobbing grenades at a bus full of Kashmiri civilians. Both countries immediately condemned the attack." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 15 April 2005
  

  "The arrival of April 15 doesn't mean your tax worries are over. You may owe more than you think. Online purchases from sites like Amazon.com and eBay may seem to arrive tax-free. Strictly speaking, however, purchasers are required to pay their own state's sales tax rate--the concept is called a 'use tax'--and then voluntarily report the amount owed at tax time. Few do. That situation worries state tax agencies, which have long complained about individuals not volunteering how much use tax they owe from mail-order sales. The ballooning popularity of online purchases is making a bad situation worse, state officials believe. (All states with sales taxes have use taxes.) California residents, for instance, enjoy a 7.25 percent sales and use tax. State law is strict: If Californians travel to a state with a 5 percent tax and shop there, the law requires them to cough up the 2.25 percent difference when they return. Online purchases are taxed as well." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 April 2005
  

  "Spring in Washington means the arrival of cherry blossom and, less colourfully, the world’s central bankers and finance ministers, for meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. As the officials gather this weekend, their mood might not match the season. Top of their list of worries is the thought that high oil prices might be pushing the world economy into trouble...Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, recently pointed to the rise in oil prices as an 'unwelcome' risk to global economic growth. In a comment reminiscent of the 1970s, he urged consumers to become 'good energy savers'. His remark is not surprising, given that the economies in Europe are stumbling. Unemployment in the euro area is 8.9%; in Germany, France and Spain it is in double digits. Manufacturing in the single-currency zone has stalled." Learn more in the Economist.

• 13 April 2005
  

  "Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, on Tuesday warned that tensions between China and Japan could derail plans for far-reaching UN reforms to be agreed by September. In a Financial Times interview, Mr Malloch Brown said the hopes of Japan and Germany to become permanent members of the UN Security Council were under threat. The tensions 'are indicative of a core uneasiness about...an enlargement [of the Security Council] that creates an even more entrenched group of big states with no accountability to their regions', he said. Mr Malloch Brown's comments came as Wen Jiabao, China's premier, launched a strident attack on Japan, demanding that Tokyo face up to its history of wartime aggression before seeking a permanent seat at the Security Council...Mr Wen issued his unusually blunt assessment following violent Chinese protests about new Japanese textbooks that critics say obscure a militarist past." Learn more in the Financial Times.

• 12 April 2005
  

  "Greenhouse gases are being bought and sold on the open market by countries concerned about climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to curb global warming, created the market in greenhouse gases to reduce emissions of methane, carbon dioxide and other gasses heating up the planet. The trade has gained steam since the Kyoto treaty entered into effect this February...The Kyoto Protocol, with more than 140 nations on board, aims to use market forces to rein in emissions by creating a market in greenhouse gasses. Under the pact, participating countries may emit a specific quantity of the gasses, and can sell off excess 'credits' for profit. That's attracting a lot of business, brokers say. "I think that even conservatively we have the market doubling from 78 million to 150 million tons [of greenhouse gases] between 2003 and 2004," said Richard Rosenzweig, managing director at Natsource, a New York brokerage firm." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 11 April 2005
  

  "It has revolutionised policing. In 10 years, the England and Wales National DNA Database (NDNAD) - the largest in the world - has matched nearly 600,000 suspects to crimes. This extraordinary success has been possible because police have unprecedented powers to retain samples from suspects, and other countries are following suit. But some experts argue that NDNAD's size and power mean it poses a serious threat to civil liberties. One year on from legislation permitting police in England and Wales to collect and retain DNA samples from those arrested, a New Scientist investigation of the effect this is having on policing has revealed new data on the law's consequences. Launched on 10 April 1995, NDNAD holds DNA profiles from almost 3 million people." Learn more about this controversial British practice and the effect it is having on law enforcement, in the New Scientist.

• 8 April 2005
  

  "Federal efforts to curb offshore Internet gambling were dealt a modest setback Thursday after the World Trade Organization ruled some restrictions violated international trade agreements. A WTO appeals board sided in part with the small island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, home to gambling Web sites that provide local jobs, by upholding portions of an earlier decision from a dispute resolution panel. The WTO's decision now poses a perplexing political problem for the Bush administration, which must try to balance its support for international free trade rules with its desire to defend federal restrictions relating to Internet gambling. Complicating that process are the intricacies of the WTO's complex ruling, which weighed in at 146 pages and spurred both sides to claim victory." Learn more at News.com.

• 7 April 2005
  

  "Most Americans surveyed in a poll say they do not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons. That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal. The only use of an atomic bomb by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II provokes sharply different reactions, depending on the age of those asked. Young adults tend to disapprove, while older Americans tend to approve, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Six in 10 people age 65 and older approve of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II; the same percentage of respondents 18 to 29 disapprove." Learn more at ABC News.

• 6 April 2005
  

  "Online diaries, or weblogs, have grown to become powerful tools for communication in the past few years. Their reach is growing outside of North America and Western Europe. From Tashkent, to Timbuktu, to Tegucigalpa, global blogging is on the rise and now, a group of dedicated bloggers is working to ensure that those global voices are heard. Called Global Voices the group and website grew out of a Harvard conference held last December. It brought together bloggers from places like Iraq, Latvia, Malaysia and China. Ethan Zuckerman is not just the co-editor of Global Voices, he is also a passionate and prolific blogger himself. 'What blogs are doing for the first time is letting people talk about what's going in their own universe, in their own local news, and get it out to a global audience,' he says." Learn more about this blogging group that is changing the face of international news, at the BBC.com.

• 5 April 2005
  

  "In a rural Cambodian village where the homes lack electricity, the nighttime darkness is pierced by the glow from laptops that children bring from school. The students were equipped with notebook computers by a foundation run by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and his wife Elaine. 'When the kids bring them home and open them up, it's the brightest light source in the home,' said Negroponte. 'Parents love it.' Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids. It's a grand idea and a daunting challenge: to create rugged, Internet- and multimedia-capable laptop computers at a cost of $100 apiece. The laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million units and bought by governments, which would distribute them." Learn more in CNN.com.

• 4 April 2005
  

  "The dark blue cover will look the same, but U.S. passports are getting a high-tech makeover this year. Blue-jacketed tourist passports, as well as the maroon-and-black-covered ones used by diplomats and others on government business, are being redesigned and going electronic. The goal is to make it harder to copy or tamper with them, just as currency has been redesigned to fight counterfeiting. Monday is the last day for the public to submit comments on the plan to the State Department. Among those who have complaints are privacy rights activists and some business travelers worried that the new passports will make Americans less safe abroad. What's generating controversy is a computer chip that will be in a passport's back cover. It will contain all the information now printed on the first page of the passport, including name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, passport number and a digitized photo." Learn more in USA Today.

• 1 April 2005
  

  "A week after the Federal Election Commission proposed rules on how the internet should be covered by campaign-finance laws, one thing seems clear: The growing ranks of political bloggers are watching developments closely. 'The real question is where do we go from here,' said Mike Krempasky, co-founder of conservative blog RedState.org. 'There's not a real understanding of how politics and the internet works at the Federal Election Commission.' Krempasky made those comments Thursday at the U.S. Capitol, where a panel of experts gathered to discuss whether political bloggers deserve FEC oversight in light of their often cushy relationships with political campaigns and groups already regulated by the agency. On March 23, the FEC issued revised draft rules outlining which internet communications would be subject to campaign-finance law." Learn more about the ongoing debate over the ways in which the Federal Election Commission might oversee political blogs, in Wired News.

• 31 March 2005
  

  "Business travel groups, security experts and privacy advocates are looking to derail a government plan to insert remotely readable chips in American passports, calling the chips homing devices for high-tech muggers, identity thieves and even terrorists. But the U.S. State Department, which plans to start issuing the new passports to citizens later this year, says its critics are overstating the risks. Officials say that the chips will cut down on passport forgery, improve security and speed up border crossings. The State Department is also adding technical features to prevent the radio-frequency identification devices, or RFID chips, in new passports from being 'skimmed' by unauthorized readers, according to Frank Moss, the deputy assistant secretary for passport services at the State Department." Learn more in Wired News.

• 30 March 2005
  

  "For anybody with doubts about Sino-Indian business links, last week's Holi celebration was an eye-opener. From water guns to balloons to confetti to colored powder, nearly every good involved in the Indian festival of colors had the 'made in China' label - and all came at prices much lower than those made in India. The trend of Chinese goods inundating the Indian festival market was first spotted three years ago; it has only firmed up in the years since...In the past, India and China pursued paths that didn't meet, and they had hardly any significant economic contacts... Positive bilateral economic and trade relations have now replaced the diplomatic chill that dominated the previous decades. This change is reflected most in Sino-Indian trade figures that have grown to more than $1 billion a month compared to $1 billion a year a decade ago." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 29 March 2005
  

  "The International Telecommunication Union is one of the most venerable of bureaucracies. Created in 1865 to facilitate telegraph transmissions, its mandate has expanded to include radio and telephone communications. But the ITU enjoys virtually no influence over the Internet. That remains the province of specialized organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN; the Internet Engineering Task Force; the World Wide Web Consortium; and regional address registries. The ITU, a United Nations agency, would like to change that. 'The whole world is looking for a better solution for Internet governance, unwilling to maintain the current situation,' Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said last year. Though Zhao is far too diplomatic to state it directly, the ITU's increasing interest in the Internet could presage a power struggle between ITU, ICANN, and perhaps even the U.S. government." Learn more in News.com.

• 28 March 2005
  

  "The internet is changing the entertainment business from one that is driven by hits to one that will make most of its money from misses. This is good news for consumers, because it means more choice, and we all like things that will never make the best-seller lists for CDs, books or movies. And although it might sound strange, this 'new economics of abundance' is already the basis of the net's most successful companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Google. Internet start-ups are now asking one another: 'Are you long tail?' The phrase was popularised by Wired magazine's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, who started the ball rolling last year with a series of talks and a long article called The Long Tail. That caught the imagination of the bloggers, who circulated and applied the meme...The long tail is named after the type of power law curve you get when you plot the sales of CDs, computer games and other products, or the popularity of websites, or the frequency of word use in a language." The Guardian examines the language of the new economics of the internet.

• 25 March 2005
  

  "The Challenge Bibendum is the anti-Nascar, a road rally where dozens of cars, two-wheelers, and buses vroom the straightaways like a pack of DustBusters, cough out water vapor instead of sooty exhaust, and corner at peak speeds of 35 mph. Named for the morbidly obese mascot of Michelin, which sponsors the event, Bibendum is the proving ground for alternative-fuel and low-emissions vehicles. For the first five years of its existence, the rally was staged in rich cities with bohemian tendencies - San Francisco, Heidelberg, Paris. But last fall Michelin brought the Bibendum to Shanghai. The booming Chinese auto market, which grew by 76 percent in 2003, is an obvious lure. It's a market still under central control - for the moment, anyway - which means that if Beijing wants to go green, it can go in a huge way. And so in Shanghai, Bibendum lost its utopian vibe. The stakes were simply too big: What will 1.3 billion people drive?" Learn more in Wired.

• 24 March 2005
  

  "Even if per capita income in China grows at only 8% per year - lower than the red-hot pace of 9.5% at which it has grown since 1978 - it will still overtake the current per capita US income in just over 25 years, according to the latest analysis by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI). And if those increased incomes translate into the kind of lifestyle currently enjoyed by most US citizens, Chinese demands will overwhelm what the planet can provide, according to the analysis, 'Learning from China: Why the Western Economic Model Will Not Work for the World'. While geopoliticians worry whether China will integrate itself into the current Western-dominated international system, Lester Brown, EPI's founder, is far more worried about the impact of a wealthy China on the Earth's diminishing resource base. 'If it does not work for China,' he notes, 'it will not work for India, which has an economy growing at 7% per year and a population projected to surpass China's by 2030.'" Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 23 March 2005
  

  "Data released each year at this time by the major oil companies on their prior-year performances rarely generates much interest outside the business world. With oil prices at an all-time high and Big Oil reporting record profits, however, this year has been exceptional. Many media outlets covered the announcement of mammoth profits garnered by ExxonMobil, the US's wealthiest public corporation, and other large firms. Exxon's fourth-quarter earnings, at US$8.42 billion, represented the highest quarterly income ever reported by a US firm. 'This is the most profitable company in the world,' declared Nick Raich, research director of Zacks Investment Research in Chicago. But cheering as the recent announcements may have been for many on Wall Street, they also contained a less auspicious sign. Despite having spent billions of dollars on exploration, the major energy firms are reporting few new discoveries, and so have been digging ever deeper into existing reserves." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 22 March 2005
  

  "When are a few sea-swept, uninhabited rocky islets more than a bunch of rocks? When they involve lucrative fisheries and emotional issues that hark back to the days of the Japanese Empire. The two tiny, rocky islets surrounded by 33 smaller rocks also represent sovereignty and national pride for both Japan and South Korea - though Seoul controls them now and the lucrative fishing in the area. The disputes over the islands - called Tokdo by Koreans and Takeshima by Japanese - threaten the recent rapprochement between the two neighbors and represent a significant political and economic setback. The South Korean public is so incensed that hundreds have poured into the streets to protest and the united front against North Korea's nuclear ambitions is cracking. This marine tinderbox was ignored for years, and it has now blown up, metaphorically and politically speaking, with powerful financial, trade and diplomatic repercussions for both nations." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 21 March 2005
  

  "Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cell phone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens. In this technology-enamored nation, the mobile phone has become so widespread as an entertainment and communication device that reading e-mail, news headlines and weather forecasts -- rather advanced mobile features by global standards -- is routine. Now, Japan's cell phone users are turning pages. Several mobile Web sites offer hundreds of novels -- classics, best sellers and some works written especially for the medium. It takes some getting used to. Only a few lines pop up at a time because the phone screen is about half the size of a business card. But improvements in the quality of liquid-crystal displays and features such as automatic page-flipping, or scrolling, make the endeavor far more enjoyable than you'd imagine." Learn more about these mobile books at CNN.com.

• 18 March 2005
  

  "A plan for wealthy nations to contribute a digital tax to provide hi-tech tools for poor nations has been officially launched in Geneva. The idea is the brainchild of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and Geneva is the first city to sign up. It plans to contribute 1% of the profit companies make on public technology projects to the fund. Dubbed the Digital Solidarity Fund, the digital tax has the backing of France, Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal. The official launch of the fund was opened with a message from Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. 'The Digital Solidarity Fund should be seen as a concrete manifestation of our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. It can help harness the potential of ICTs to empower poor and marginalised people,' he said. The digital divide is acute between the information-rich Western nations and African nations, many of which lack basic infrastructure." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 17 March 2005
  

  "As the bitter debate over computer file sharing heads toward the Supreme Court, the pro-technology camp is growing increasingly anxious. Some technologists warn that if the court decides in favor of the music and recording industries after hearing arguments in the MGM v. Grokster case on March 29, the ruling could also stifle a proliferating set of new Internet-based services that have nothing to do with the sharing of copyrighted music and movies at issue in the court case. Some of those innovations were on display here at the Emerging Technologies Conference, attended by about 750 hardware and software designers. The demonstrations included Flickr, a Canadian service that has made it possible for Web loggers and surfers to easily share and catalog millions of digital photographs." Learn how an impending court decision on file sharing could affect a number of emerging technologies, in the New York Times.

• 16 March 2005
  

  "In the words of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, "China is ahead of us in planning for its energy security - India can no longer be complacent." These words conveyed the sense of urgency that India holds over meeting its energy needs. India is playing catch-up with other major players in the global energy game. This realization has not come a moment too soon, given the advent of rising oil prices, India's unprecedented growth levels, lack of energy-efficient technologies and reliance on energy-heavy industries for its development. Power shortages and blackouts continue to plague India's major cities and undermine the confidence of investors and foreign companies operating in India. These power shortages have been fueled by a combination of burgeoning growth rates, inefficiencies by the state-run power sector and power being stolen or siphoned for votes." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 15 March 2005
  

  "Environment and energy ministers from 20 countries are meeting in the UK to discuss climate change and how to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. As well as representatives from the G8 group of rich nations, ministers from emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are taking part. The two-day brainstorming session, which will take place in London, will not involve binding commitments. Instead, ministers will exchange ideas and discuss new technologies. Britain has made tackling global warming a priority for its presidency of the Group of Eight industrialised nations - and Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that securing US support poses a significant diplomatic challenge. 'There is an attempt to draw the United States in after its refusal to [ratify] Kyoto,' said a Greenpeace spokesman." Learn more in the BBC.com.

• 14 March 2005
  

  "The rich are getting richer while the poor remain poor. If you doubt it, ponder these numbers from the US, a country widely considered meritocratic, where talent and hard work are thought to be enough to propel anyone through the ranks of the rich. In 1979, the top 1% of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20%. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5. If inequality is growing in the US, what does this mean for other countries? Almost certainly more of the same, if you believe physicists who are using new models based on simple physical laws to understand the distribution of wealth. Their studies indicate that inequality in market economies may be very hard to get rid of." Learn more about the emerging field of "econophysics" in the New Scientist.

• 11 March 2005
  

  "ChoicePoint and other companies that amass consumer profiles should be forced by Congress to protect that information from identity theft, the head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday. Existing laws are not strong enough to ensure that data brokers handle Social Security numbers and other sensitive details responsibly, FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras told the Senate Banking Committee. 'I believe there may be additional measures that benefit consumers,' Majoras said. Congress is considering greater regulation of data brokers following a rash of break-ins and other data losses that have heightened concerns about identity theft, a crime that costs consumers and businesses $50 billion annually, according to FTC estimates." Learn more in Wired News.

• 10 March 2005
  

  "They may be telling a different story to money markets, but Asian central banks have been quietly switching their dollar holdings to regional currencies for at least three years, confirm global banking data. In a further, and so far the biggest, setback for the greenback's status as the undisputed reserve currency, Japan on Thursday said it might diversify its holdings, though monetary chiefs later sought to play down the prospect. South Korea rattled currency traders with a similar announcement late last month, followed by a similar backtrack. China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong have already started a sell-off, despite a diplomatic show of solidarity for the greenback that is prudently designed to prevent a crisis of confidence in exchange systems. The likelihood is that much of this outflow will never return to US dollars as economic interdependence within East Asia and the widening shadow cast by China's trading conglomerates are slowly transforming the traditional market structure." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 9 March 2005
  

  "As James Fitzgerald wheeled his tractor-trailer down Interstate 40 near the Nashville International Airport last summer, little did he know that a small black box aboard the truck might later help clear him of homicide charges. His truck collided with a police car, killing an officer who had stopped to assist a disabled vehicle. Police alleged that Fitzgerald was traveling at least 80 mph at the time of the crash, and he was jailed on charges of vehicular homicide and aggravated assault. But the 25-year-old trucker pleaded not guilty, and when his trial begins this summer, the black box will be his star witness. According to Fitzgerald's lawyer, Patrick McNally, data from the device shows that the truck was traveling at the legal limit of 70 mph...Despite these operational benefits, however, critics see a dark side to the use of information about motorists derived from devices such as black boxes." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 March 2005
  

  "They say you can't understand people until you've walked a mile in their shoes. I just walked across Belgrade in a brand-new pair of Nikes. Now I understand something: The citizens of this city are the vanguard of a new phase of capitalism. They're busily subverting conventional multi-national commerce and creating a dark parallel process - call it black globalization. My new shoes look authentic, but they're a scam of ominous sophistication. The insole logo is silk-screened on; my socks erased the Nike swoosh in a single afternoon. The stitching is coarse and sloppy - the pull tab at the heel ripped loose the first time I tried to use it. The sporty soles are slippy, not grippy. The tag proclaims MADE IN KOREA, although the product is almost certainly a fake churned out by a Chinese factory. Adding insult to Nike's injury, the phony barcode denotes a pair of Reeboks." Bruce Sterling of Wired explores the dark side of globalization.

• 7 March 2005
  

  "Each shift, 200 workers, most of them women in smocks and bibs, labor in a factory tucked away in hilly farmland outside this city assembling a single product, one-inch hard drives. As China's emerging industrial centers go, Guiyang is an obscure outpost, bearing little resemblance to the booming factory towns of the east coast. And yet, as much as any other place in China this hard drive assembly may be at the front line of an intense global struggle to dominate high-tech manufacturing...The problem with this ringing success story, according to a better-established rival, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which has factories in China and also supplies miniaturized drives to Apple, is that the Chinese company stole crucial elements of the design." As China undergoes tremendous economic growth, some argue that much of it is fueled by intellectual property theft. Learn more in the New York Times.

• 4 March 2005
  

  "Echoing concerns voiced by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, a top Intel executive warned on Thursday that the United States risks becoming a second-tier technology player because of a declining educational system. 'We have a lousy education system,' Intel Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger said, speaking on a panel of technology leaders at the Intel Developer Forum here. 'We have a weak infrastructure that is decaying.' Gelsinger noted that companies like Intel can adjust by hiring workers in other places but said the consequences for the United States could be devastating. He has noted in the past that the decline in the number of doctorates being awarded is particularly troubling. 'As a global company, this is OK,' he said. 'As a U.S. citizen, I am fearful. I just fear for our long-term competitiveness.'" Learn why a number of tech executives are worried about the U.S. education system, in News.com.

• 3 March 2005
  

  "When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits Pakistan this month to inaugurate the Gwadar deepsea port, China will take a giant leap forward in gaining a strategic foothold in the Persian Gulf region. It will advance what a recent Pentagon report describes as Beijing's 'string of pearls' strategy that aims to project Chinese power overseas and protect China's energy security at home. Gwadar is a fishing village on the Arabian Sea coast in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. Balochistan shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran to the west - Gwadar is just 72 kilometers from the Iranian border. More important is Gwadar's proximity to the Persian Gulf. It is situated near the mouth of this strategic body of water, and about 400km from the Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil supplies." Learn more about this new port and why it makes some of China's neighbors nervous, in the Asia Times.

• 2 March 2005
  

  "A series of security break-ins is kick-starting a political drive to reshape federal laws that dictate how companies protect personal information--and what they have to do if that data leaks out. What began with the leak of tens of thousands of records from data broker ChoicePoint earlier this month was quickly compounded by a series of rapid-fire incidents involving Bank of America, Science Applications International Corp., an online payroll services company and the T-Mobile Sidekick of hotel heiress Paris Hilton. That avalanche of high-profile breaches in the last month has captured the attention of a growing number of U.S. senators, mainly Democrats, who have called for new laws as a response. Sen. Arlen Specter has pledged to convene hearings in his Judiciary committee, often an initial step in the legislative process. An aide to the Pennsylvania Republican said Monday that a hearing is being scheduled and is expected to be held soon. News.com.

• 1 March 2005
  

  "A notable feature of 2004 was the volatility in oil prices - New York light sweet crude prices reached a peak of US$55.67 on October 25, ending the year up 33.6% at $43.45 per barrel. While a number of supply-side and supply-chain factors have contributed to this situation, the most significant long-term factor contributing to rising oil prices is an increase in Asian demand, most notably from China. China's unprecedented growth not only makes it a driver of a long-term increase in energy prices, but also the most vulnerable to rising oil prices...China has initiated numerous policies to cope with its increasing energy needs, including stepping up exploration activities within its own borders, diversifying beyond oil to access other energy resources, such as nuclear power, coal, natural gas and renewable energy resources, promoting energy conservation and encouraging investment into energy-friendly technologies such as hydrogen-powered fuel cells and coal gasification." Learn more in the Asia Times.

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