Pension planning A new approach to an old-age problem IT IS a brave new world of personal responsibility. Private-sector companies have been abandoning their commitment to defined-benefit (DB) pension schemes, in which employees receive an income based on their final salary. The cost of the promise has been too great. But the replacement of DB [...]
Archive for November, 2009
The retiree’s autopilot
Posted in Economy and business, Living, tagged Pension planning on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
A heated debate
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Climate change Why political orthodoxy must not silence scientific argument “WHAT is truth?” That was Pontius Pilate’s answer to Jesus’s assertion that “Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” It sounds suspiciously like the modern argument over climate change. A majority of the world’s climate scientists have convinced themselves, and also a lot [...]
The jobless scary movie
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
For a political horror show, fast-forward to the summer of 2010: The unemployment rate is stubbornly high, hovering between 9.3 and 9.7 percent. Companies are wary about hiring more workers because the economy remains soft. Small businesses, which normally power a recovery, are caught in a credit squeeze. In this scenario, the jobs outlook will [...]
Honduras’s democratic solution
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Honduras on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Why the Obama administration is right to support Sunday’s election A BREACH has opened among those countries that have sought to resolve the political crisis in the Central American nation of Honduras. One group is focused on restoring democracy to the country, through support for a national election scheduled for Sunday. A second faction places [...]
Solitary disgrace
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, tagged Solitary confinement on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Prisons should abolish long-term solitary confinement. MANY ARE KEPT in their cells for at least 23 hours a day with minimal contact with other people, including guards. Food is delivered through a slit in the door, and most are prohibited from attending classes or counseling sessions with other inmates. They are not, by and large, [...]
Get real on Afghanistan
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Afghanistan on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The selection of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for President Obama’s announcement of his new Afghanistan war strategy is media manipulation worthy of Michael Deaver, the legendary image protector of Ronald Reagan. What better setting than an audience of military cadets to project Obama as the reluctant warrior and commander in chief who, [...]
Racial pawns in the battle for same-sex marriage
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, Politics, tagged Same-sex marriage on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Julian Bond Their refrain was as familiar to me as dining hall food, and equally as offensive. All too often, white liberal classmates at the University of Virginia would ask, “Shouldn’t blacks, more than any other group, support gay rights?” I never understood my classmates’ need to align the historical struggles of blacks with those [...]
Diplomacy 101
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Israel, Palestine on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
We were thrilled when President Obama decided to plunge fully into the Middle East peace effort. He appointed a skilled special envoy, George Mitchell, and demanded that Israel freeze settlements, Palestinians crack down on anti-Israel violence and Arab leaders demonstrate their readiness to reach out to Israel. Nine months later, the president’s promising peace initiative [...]
The Daily Grind
Posted in Living on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
In New York City, where the unemployment rate remains at 10.3 percent, the jobless have started leaning hard on coffee shops and bookstores to get out of their tiny one-bedrooms and away from their annoying roommates. In these harsh, career-vanishing times, the members of this laptop brigade do everything they can to re-create the office [...]
Scientists unearth ‘supercroc’ that dined on dinosaurs
Posted in Natural sciences on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Palaentologists uncover five new crocodile species in Sahara Professor Paul Sereno with ‘supercroc’ A graveyard of ancient crocodiles has revealed that the world was once home to a veritable menagerie of crocs of various sizes, shapes and fearsome forms. They ranged from a dog-like crocodile to a supercroc that was so big it dined on [...]
Animal Pictures
Posted in Animals, Photo galleries on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Three month old hyena Kai with mum Ngozi from the Denver Zoo. A trio of male Australian big-bellied seahorses vie for the attention of a female seahorse at Living Coasts, Torquay, Devon. In a move that gives hope to overweight men everywhere, the female seahorse picks the male with the biggest belly. A hungry praying [...]
Silent witness in the Sinai
Posted in Living, tagged Sinai, Travel on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Join a strange safari in the desert hunting, not rare animals, but an equally endangered prize – absolute silence A morning walk in the emptiness of the Sinai. Several times each night I wake up. My first thought is usually that I am getting too old to sleep out, even in a proper sleeping bag [...]
Who Fears a Free Mikhail Khodorkovsky?
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Mikhail Khodorkovsky arriving at his trial in Moscow with his ever-present entourage of prison guards Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once his country’s richest man, has resided in “gulag lite,” as he calls the Russian penal system under Vladimir Putin, for six years. Since the spring, on most working days he is roused at 6:45 in the morning, [...]
Today in History – November 27
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 27 on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Friday, Nov. 27, the 331st day of 2009. There are 34 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Nov. 27, 1909, author, poet and critic James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tenn. On this date In 1701, astronomer Anders Celsius, inventor of the Celsius temperature scale, was born in Uppsala, [...]
Ayatollahs in the backyard
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Economy and business, Politics, tagged Brazil, Iran on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Iran and Latin America President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Brazil this week vindicates Iran’s strategy of cosying up with Latin America HOW should you deal with elected leaders who view their domestic opponents as agents of foreign powers and occasionally muse about invading their neighbours? Brazil has some experience of this question after ten years of [...]
Mail-strom
Posted in Energy and Environment on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Climate change Leaked e-mails do not show climate scientists at their best IS GLOBAL warming a trick? That is what some saw in a huge batch of e-mails and documents taken from the servers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, in England, and put up anonymously on the web. [...]
Standing still but still standing
Posted in Economy and business, tagged Dubai on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Dubai’s debt Dubai seeks a reprieve on its debts ONE of the biggest events in the Muslim calendar, Eid al-Adha, which begins this weekend, is supposed to be a festival of sacrifice. On November 25th investors in Dubai were given an early chance to get into the spirit of things. The emirate’s government asked creditors [...]
Disquiet on the eastern front
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Eastern Europe, Nato on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
America, NATO and eastern Europe Can a distracted America remain a bulwark for eastern Europe? A missile to avoid DAMAGE control is never as good as damage prevention. Despite repeated reassurances, the countries of eastern Europe are worried about security. Their biggest concern is NATO, where officials are meant to be drafting contingency plans to [...]
Front line against the Taliban
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Pakistan, Talibans on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Pakistan’s crises Fighting this hydra-headed enemy is only the most obvious of the many deep problems afflicting Pakistan ABDUL MALIK’S anti-aircraft gun, stationed on the flat roof of his house in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), still points towards the Taliban. Just 20km (12 miles) south of Peshawar, NWFP’s teeming capital, the militants have launched [...]
See you in court
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law, Politics, tagged Kosovo, Serbia on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Kosovo and Serbia An international court case creates tremors in the Balkans and beyond KOSOVO is a tiny place. But on December 1st, when hearings begin at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice on the legality of its 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, people from Catalonia to Tibet will be paying it close [...]
The decider
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Afghanistan on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The making of the president’s foreign policy The long delay over Afghanistan suggests that Barack Obama seems determined to conduct foreign policy in person IT IS the hardest call he has so far had to make, and he has taken his time doing it. On November 24th, after the ninth in a protracted series of [...]
The quiet American
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Barack Obama’s foreign policy Is Barack Obama’s diplomacy subtle and strategic, or weak and naive? The world is about to find out AT LAST Barack Obama seems to be starting to make up his mind. After months of agonising, he is apparently close to announcing that he will after all send a decent number of [...]
Alone, and right, on Honduras
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Honduras on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The United States finds itself pretty much alone in supporting elections to be held this Sunday in embattled Honduras. It’s enough to make you wonder whether, following the unilateral misadventures under George W. Bush, we might once again be on the wrong side of history. With the exception of Panama, almost everyone else in the [...]
Journalism’s slow, sad death
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Media on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Like the nearby Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newseum — Washington’s museum dedicated to journalism — displays dinosaurs. On a long wall near the entrance, the front pages of newspapers from around the country are electronically posted each morning — the artifacts of a declining industry. Inside, the high-tech exhibits are nostalgic for [...]
Kill the bills. Do health reform right.
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) holds a copy of health-care legislation. The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding [...]
Iranians in Exile
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Human rights, tagged Iran on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
There is a Persian saying that goes, “Your coming is in your hands, but your leaving is in the hands of God.” Shortly before I left Iran on June 24, there was a late-night knock at the door of my hotel room. Alright, I thought, this is it. By then I was one of the [...]
The Other Education
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Like many of you, I went to elementary school, high school and college. I took such and such classes, earned such and such grades, and amassed such and such degrees. But on the night of Feb. 2, 1975, I turned on WMMR in Philadelphia and became mesmerized by a concert the radio station was broadcasting. [...]
Taxing the Speculators
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on November 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation? Yes, say top British officials, who oversee the City of London, one of the world’s two great banking centers. Other European governments agree — and they’re right. Unfortunately, United States officials — especially Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — are dead set against the proposal. Let’s hope [...]
Today in History – November 26
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 26 on November 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Thursday, Nov. 26, the 330th day of 2009. There are 35 days left in the year. This is Thanksgiving Day. Today’s Highlight in History Nov. 26, 1789, was a day of thanksgiving set aside by President George Washington to observe the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. On this date In [...]
They Died, and Lived to Tell All About It
Posted in Health, tagged Cheating Death on November 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Electric circuits will break your heart every time. Take my cellphone (please): it went out in the rain a few weeks ago and then lay neglected in a sopping wet coat pocket overnight. The next morning, it was dead. Nothing revived it, not the usual prayers and imprecations nor the overnight immersion in rice recommended [...]
