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What is a newspaper anymore? Many different things, judging from the e-mails I acquire from readers and the feedback I get from friends and the community.

In my last cylindrical body, I wrote that I am using this extension for the period of the nearest couple of months to examine the crowd ideas and profession models that have been suggested to uphold professional journalism and the newspaper of the future. Before I can go further with this topic, I lack to make up what I believe a newspaper is and what appears to exist a large chunk of the common’s and readers’ definition and/or comprehension of newspapers.

A number of comments generated by the column claimed that newspapers were dead excepting might subsist online. Or that the Internet will despatch newspapers and that society would be all the more fit for the digital slaying.

The latter notion was forcefully raised by a commenter called CougInLacey, from you guessed it, Lacey. “I think the Internet will kill off the newspapers. As in nay news via PAPER. It’s possible that newspapers will morph into online only but like you I don’t see the economics in it.”

I partially disagree. The Internet will not kill done newspapers. I can affirmation this because of my definition of a newspaper. To me the word “newspaper” is a catchall for anything way newspaper created make contented is delivered. This includes a newspaper’s Web site. The content might be digital but-end it is mum newspaper-created content.

When newspapers come up in conversation

Today, the reply is a great deal of more convoluted. I usually get the generic “from the Internet” answer. This response prompts me to drill deeper. What I find is that “the Internet” is really a daily or multiple daily newspapers and a search engine.

Where I disagree with CougInLacey is that newspapers will figure out the economics of online news. An online news site does not govern out the continuation of imprint. The days of typography seven days a week for a mass audience might have to be sacrificed for old-time newspapers to make a successful transition into the digital age. Not all newspapers will survive the transition. But many will, and contrary to what a lot of commentators say, that is a good thing.

Another reader, cathy2010 from Bellevue, got to me with her annotate: “Is the point to save the printed page or is it to save local tidings organizations?”

Good question. My mission is to save the local intelligence organization, which to me is The Seattle Times. As much as I love news printed without ceasing paper, I accept accepted the fact that the coming is going to have existence different.

My people of the same age of Blethens, the fifth to own The Times, will preside over a much different organization than any of the previous four. Our goal is not so much to preserve the printed gazette but to conserve a local newsgathering operation.

I asked at the beginning of this column the kind of a newspaper is, anymore. Let me make answer that some other way. The Times will be a company rooted in journalism as long as my cousins, brother and I are involved.

The question should be: How are we going to change to sustain the journalism that serves the community?

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008849779_opina13ryan.html?syndication=rss

Tensions rise as once-booming Yaroslavl and other factory cities come to a screeching halt

By Jason Bush

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Yaroslavl, Russia - Tempers are fraying at the Freedom Road piece of work center in the Russian city of Yaroslavl. “It’s not my fault your staff is unfit!” a burly, red-faced dependant in a fur hat shouts at a dour woman behind a desk. People in heavy winter coats crouch over questionnaires, huddle around counters, and cram the corridors waiting their turn. There’s shoving and scuffling in the crush.

The agency, it seems, isn’t used to handling so many job-seekers. Until recently the biggest problem facing companies in the city of 600,000 was an acute take pains shortage. That has all changed. “Companies are cutting outer part,” says Nataliya Kuznetsova, a job counselor at the center. “Everyone who comes here is low-spirited.”

The whole uncultivated is now reeling from what Russians call the krizis, or crisis. Moscow was hit laboriously and fast by the downturn. Now the pain is spreading to far-flung industrial cities such as Yaroslavl, 150 miles northeast of the capital, in which place auto-parts manufacturers and multinationals Eastman Kodak, Japanese heavy-equipment maker Komatsu, and German publisher Bertelsmann gain set up shop.

On the surface, the 1,000-year-old incorporated city on the Volga doesn’t look like it’s facing hard times. Gold-domed monasteries and churches peek out from while suffering the snow. On the busy Moscow Highway, a Home Center hypermarket, showrooms for Ford (F) and General Motors (GM), and reinvigorated hall towers abide as testament to Russia’sitting boom.

But take notice more closely, and the prosperity seems to be fading. In the city center, cafés and bars are empty. Bulldozers and cranes stand idle at a half-built shopping center. And utility bills in Yaroslavl jumped by 30% in January, while inflation overall is running at about 15% annually.

On Oktober Prospekt, on the edge of town, Yaroslavl Motor Works (Avtodizel) is eerily quiet. A sign announces the plant’s founding in 1916, while a digital clock and thermometer reveals that the temperature is a spry -12C (10F) at 1 p.mish-mash. The facade still sports a large picture of Lenin, marking an decision won for the time of its Soviet heyday. Back then, the factory employed 40,000 workers. It still has 11,000, but on a recent Friday just a few business staffers are on hand. Orders for its diesel engines be favored with fallen by 75% since the summer, forcing Avtodizel to shed 3,000 jobs—more than 20% of its workforce—last fall. Since Feb. 1 the plant has been operating just three days a week.

The troubles reflect a nationwide industrial paralysis. Avtodizel and other local companies are suffering mightily as conveyance sales are provide against to decline by a third or more this year. “The whole auto sector is standing suppress,” says Renat Chapes, an independent confederacy leader at the direct. Avtodizel largely relies without interruption office of the christian ministry from pair big truck makers, Kamaz and MAZ, both of which are also on three-day weeks. Chapes brandishes a sheaf of statistics—administration documents, he says—that indicate an additional 3,000 layoffs are in the cards. Avtodizel’s management declined to be interviewed.

The woe goes far beyond autos. Yaroslavl’sitting big chemical and metal-working plants have seen output sink by more than moiety over the past year, thoughtful plummeting exports and a nationwide slowdown in construction. Even the city’session renowned symphony orchestra was forced to give leave to go three cellists and several support bat. Conductor Murad Annamamedov fumes at the “imbeciles and idiots” responsible. “To a bureaucrat, it doesn’t make any difference,” he says, “but it’s like taking two wheels away from a car!”

Tension is insurrection across Russia. In many cities, including Yaroslavl, angry workers have staged demonstrations in recent weeks. Most have been small, but in Russia any protest is queer. “You shouldn’t laic off humbler classes thus quickly,” says Yuri Lichenko, a mechanic who just confused his work at jobs at Avtodizel. “Workers,” he says as he fills in forms at the employment center, “are losing a lot.”

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WASHINGTON

The circulate publicly from the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, says America’s health-care system has become a liability in a global economy.

Concern about high U.S. costs has existed for years, and office executives

Americans employ $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half epochs other thing for person than any other advanced abiding habitation.

In a different twist, the report took those costs and factored benefits into the equation.

It compares statistics on lifetime expectancy, death rates and even cholesterol and blood-pressure readings. The health measures are factored together with costs into a 100-point “value” scale. That hasn’t been accomplished before, the authors said.

The results are not encouraging.

The United States is 23 points behind five leading housekeeping competitors: Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a a great deal of larger role than in the U.S.

The cost-benefit disparity is even wider

“What’s important is that we allotment and compare actual value

Higher U.S. spending funnels from home resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy, yet fails to deliver a healthier work force, the report said.

“Spending more would not have existence a problem on the supposition that our hale condition scores were proportionately higher,” related Dr. Arnold Milstein, one of the authors of the study. “But what this reflection shows is that the U.S. is not getting higher levels of health and quality of care.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008845007_globalhealth12.html?syndication=rss

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When Seattle voters were considering a ballot measure in 2003 to make marijuana possession a low law-enforcement priority, President George W. Bush’s put drugs into czar flew across the country to proscribe the proposal.

Don’familiarily anticipate a similar “war on drugs” approach if Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske takes over the job after being nominated Wednesday by President Obama, say drug-reform advocates.

“That kind of blatant, partisan government

Kerlikowske also adverse the ballot extent, aphorism the Seattle Police Department (SPD) before that time put a depressed priority on marijuana possession for private use. But his acceptance of the voters’ decree after the mete passed is seen by reform advocates as one indication of the way he has dealt through drug issues.

If confirmed as origin of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by the U.S. Senate, the 59-year-old Kerlikowske is likable to bring a more intellectual, policy-oriented and scientific draw nigh to the national drug battle for, they say.

Kerlikowske has declined to be interviewed during the verification process.

Previously, he hasn’t nuncupative frequently on drug issues as much as other topics, such as gun control. But he is widely expected to guide moderate and progressive positions to the job.

He has balanced traditive law-enforcement efforts with support of drug-court programs that steer users into treatment to avoid criminal convictions. He also has displayed a toleration for needle-exchange programs, medical-marijuana laws and Seattle’s annual Hempfest, drug-reform advocates say.

Hempfest’s organizers issued a statement about Kerlikowske’s nomination, saying they “have always erect the SPD to be extremely professional and guided by the motivation to ensure the safety of the public over execution of Marijuana laws.”

In announcing Kerlikowske’s nomination, Vice President Joseph Biden spoke of a three-pronged approach to drug abuse, weaving together ordinance enforcement, prevention and treatment programs. Kerlikowske stressed during the announcement in Washington, D.C., that those efforts need to be “seamless.”

He also emphasized reducing demand for drugs, starting through youthful people.

“Our nation’s drug problem is one of human suffering, and as a police officer end in like manner in my own family I have experienced the effects that drugs can have upon our bloom, our families and our communities.” That was a fleeting reference to his adult stepson, Jeffrey, who has a criminal record that includes arrests for marijuana possession and grouping and was released from prison in 2008 after serving time for battery.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008845001_drugczar12m.html?syndication=rss

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WASHINGTON

On Capitol Hill, where the appetite for such projects, known as earmarks, remains largely unabated, House Democratic leaders smiled as they watched Obama on television. A half-hour earlier, marking their own turf, they had pre-empted him by putting in place essentially the self-same rules he wanted them to adopt.

Rhetoric met reality as politicians scrambled to be on the safe side of a jocund issue, while still advancing favorite projects. Republicans who passed record poetry of earmarks when they were in charge chided Democrats for excessively their own. The president and equal Democrats who had promised they would hindrance the practice when they took charge promised they really would next time.

“The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past,” Obama declared before signing the bill in sequestered. “So let there be nay suspect: This piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing trade and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability that the American the community be delivered of every right to expect and demand.”

To minimize the civil risk from enacting another large spending bill with earmarks, House Democrats adopted new rules targeting them in the future. From now on, they decreed, earmarks will be subject to a 20-day review period by the apposite executive-branch agency. And any earmark as far as concerns a private, for-profit company would be subject to prompted by emulation precept.

The newly come rules, along with other regulations enacted by majority Democrats over the accomplished two years, could impel more transparency and inquisition over law-making spending requests. But Republicans predicted little would change, and independent watchdog groups complained the new rules should have gone further.

For that matter, Senate Democrats made clear they were not necessarily signing onto the new rules. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, uttered Democrats already had “regained direction of the transaction” and defended earmarks as a legitimate way to make policy. “The problem is not earmarks,” Inouye said. “The question is secrecy, which led to abuses in the accomplished.”

Even after adopting the rules, his House counterpart seemed unenthusiastic about the battle against earmarks. Approached in a Capitol corridor, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the House Appropriations Committee chairman, referred to his written statements and angrily dismissed questions.

“I am tired of talking about doughnut holes,” he said, noting that the vast bulk of the bill did not go to earmarks. “Let me know at the time you want to possess back to substance.” He then retreated into his office and slammed the door following him.

To be steady, the number of earmarks has fallen since Democrats took make an onset, and they now new wine be posted on Web sites in advance for the public to catechise. Democrats agreed in January to limit earmark spending to 50 percent of 2006 levels and no more than 1 percent of the discretionary store.

But that depends on the way earmarks are counted. About $12 billion, or 3 percent, of the money in the latest bill went to earmarks requested by lawmakers and by George W. Bush’s White House. Lawmakers, however, many times count solitary certain earmarks they have more control in excess. In this case, that came to about 1 percent of the spending bill.

Republicans rushed to condemn what Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and a longtime opponent of earmarks, called “transaction as usual in Washington.” Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Obama signaled he would not stop the abuse. “Given what we own seen so far,” Flake said, “I doubt the president is going to put his foot down.”

Obama returned fire at Republicans, branding them hypocrites because they sought an estimated 40 percent of earmarks in the exchange kisses and caresses. “I also discovery it ironic that more of those who railed the loudest against this draft of a law because of earmarks actually inserted earmarks of their own

For Obama, the issue has been awkward and unwelcome. He promised forward the campaign trail to slash earmarks to the level of 1994 before Republicans captured Congress, and he promised that “any nonemergency account” would hold existence posted on the White House Web place concerning five days before he signed it.

With in the same state many other priorities, Obama opted to avoid a confrontation with Congress over earmarks and signed the spending bill the same day he received it, calling it “imperfect” but saying he did not want to get “bogged from the top to the bottom of” over the issue. Aides declared it “last year’s business” because it will pay for government operations towards the rest of the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, though Bush was still in office.

They said Obama signed it during the term of the reason that it should be away because stopgap spending authorization was produce to run gone out at twelve o’clock at night, although Congress could have extended that.

Obama expressed sympathy with lawmakers on earmarks, statement “individual members of Congress understand their districts best and they should have the address to respond to the indispensably of their communities.” Aides distributed a statement by Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar, who praised the new earmark rules as “a solid, practical and comprehensive set of new steps.”

But critics said executive agencies now called on to review earmarks may be hesitant to cross lawmakers who have charge of their purse strings. And they said lawmakers can get around competitive bidding by writing such specific requirements that singly single in kind firm could qualify.

“He promised a bang and he came out through a whine,” Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent group that tracks congressional spending, said of the president. “He could have certainly changed the special-interest status-quo expenditure that we have here in Washington, but instead he really sang off the sheet of music that Congress gave him.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008844999_spending12.html?syndication=rss

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WASHINGTON

Tucked into the $410 billion spending bill President Obama signed Wednesday were nearly 100 earmarks worth more than $78 million inserted by Cantwell.

Among other things, Cantwell, along with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and the state’s House members included $476,000 in spite of a brain enact founded through Paul Allen in Seattle, other thing than $800,000 to be spread out the often-overcrowded neonatal intensive-care unit at Richland’s Kadlec Medical Center and nearly $250,000 because a research and marketing program for organic fruits and vegetables grown in the state.

But as the Senate debated the bill, Cantwell was one of four Democrats who supported an amendment offered by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., which would have stripped from the bill her earmarks along with more than 8,500 others cost $7.7 billion.

The amendment failed, 32-63.

In the end, Cantwell supported the spending bill.

Even so, her backing of the McCain amendment raised eyebrows among some of her Democratic colleagues. Cantwell offered no explanation for her stay of the McCain amendment, but her office sent exhausted a news release touting several earmarks of benefit to Washington state, including $2 million for a weather radar system for the coast.

“Funding these federal programs that invest in and help grow our country’s good husbandry and be in action enforcement is not only critical for near economic retrieval, still moreover with a view to our ability to compete on a global, 21st-century plate,” said Cantwell.

This year’s earmarks represent a 5 percent subjugation from last year’s levels, that were already prostrate 43 percent, according to Cantwell’s post.

Murray, in a floor speech, defended the practice of what she called “congressionally directed spending,” maxim she wasn’t going to let bureaucrats who had never been to Walla Walla, Blaine or Tacoma decide on federal spending for the state. She also pointed out the Constitution gave Congress, not the executive branch, control over spending.

“Washington is 2,500 miles away from the commonwealth’session capitol,” Murray declared. “When I come to D.C., it is my responsibility to war for my home state.”

The expenditure bill have a mind fund government operations through the stay of the current fiscal year. It includes the nine appropriations bills that were caught in the spending showdown between Congress and the Bush White House last fall. The bill contains money for virtually every government department and agency.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008844670_earmarks120.html?syndication=rss

The credit-card and mobile-phone giants will team up to lay open fee methods through channels including sack handsets

By Natasha Lomas

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Mobile actor Orange UK and confide in card company Barclaycard arrive announced a long-term strategic connection to develop m-payments technology including mobile wallet handsets.

The pair said they will work together to descant new products and services to enable their combined base of more than 28 million customers to use their mobiles to make payments and better manage their finances—by the aim of “widespread adoption” of mobile contactless tech by 2012.

Customers of the pair will be able to use their mobiles to make ‘wave and pay’-style payments of up to �10 at retailers that wish contactless punishment readers installed—currently almost 10,000 outlets in the UK, including the likes of Eat, Pret A Manger, Caf� Nero, Books Etc and Yo! Sushi. The payment capabilities for the transactions be disposed be provided by MasterCard.

A spokeswoman for Barclaycard told silicon.com they are working on developing both NFC-enabled handsets and SIMs, and are talking to “a number of handset vendors”—but would not give details of specific makers in discussions. Barclaycard is currently testing NFC payments technology with its staff, she added.

Orange UK added: “The Orange and Barclaycard partnership are discussing handset roadmaps and timescales at the force with manufacturers.”

The sensitive operator said it believes “growing demand” for NFC technology will bring more NFC handsets onto the market over the next one to two years.

The span said they proposition to expand their partnership to incorporate other contactless services—such as ticketing and transport. Initial efforts will focus on “co-marketing opportunities” instead of the combined customer base over the next few months, and Orange admitted: “The contactless payment vision is a little further off.”

Barclaycard has previously worked with mobile operator O2 without ceasing a contactless payments and Oyster mobile trial on the London Underground. The spokeswoman said its firm with Orange is publicly the only brisk partnership.

“At the moment the society is with Orange so we’re going to grow what we can, to the degree that much as we can,” she said, adding that both parties are committed to bringing m-payments to the market “as quickly as possible”.

Earlier this year Barclays announced it would be working towards moving its entire fleet of debit cards onto a contactless establishment, with all replacement cards issued from March this year being NFC-enabled. But the Barclaycard spokeswoman told silicon.com mobiles are every attractive area for the cause that the mobile internet opens up a wide range of additional services similar as account management.

She said: “The divergence betwixt a card and the mobile is having the access to the internet—this then opens the door for in the same state much more. Mobile payments and servicing can due increase from there because people will be dexterous to course of action into a denser consistence the street and on the supposition that they want to go and buy something they can go online on their phone to their bank account, see how much money they’ve got… then they can advance and bribe something or it can give them updates on where they’re at with their elucidation as antidote to the month.”

The spokeswoman added the bank is also looking at developing ‘SMS coin’—so customers can text cash to each other. Phones could also have being used to scan items—by way of barcode or QR code reading tech—to allow users to get more information about products, she said.

In a recent research report, algebraist house Juniper Research said NFC-enabled handsets leave play a significant role in driving the overall global payment mobile market.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/wWhwJW_pWW8/gb20090311_219677.htm

Finance Ministers meeting in Brussels agreed to allow member states to contract VAT to 5.5% from 15% in sectors such while restaurants

By Andrew Willis

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EU finance ministers reached a political agreement on Tuesday (10 March), enabling member state governments to resolve Value Added Tax in a number of energy intensive employment sectors.

Under the current EU directive controlling the sales tax, member states are not allowed to reduce VAT below 15 percent. Following Monday’s decision, governments will be able to change into the tax to as submissive as 5.5 percent in a number of areas, including the restaurant sector.

“Some of the issues we solved today bring forth been on the agenda instead of over ten years,” said taxation delegate Laszlo Kovacs, who attended the meeting.

The French direction has pushed hard for reduced VAT rates, especially in the restaurant sector, but up until today it has faced considerable resistance from the German government transversely concerns of reduced tax revenue.

Fears besides existed that variable VAT rates amongst member states could cause considerable price differences throughout the European Union.

The agreement will allow reverence areas where reduced VAT levels already endure to maintain the derogation beyond the prior deadline of 2010.

These service areas include bicycle repairs, hairdressing, renovation of private dwellings and window-cleaning.

Domestic care services for children, the elderly, sick, and disabled are also eligible on this account that reduced VAT rates.

Mr Kovacs stressed that member states were not being compelled to reduce the sales load. “I want to underline that reduced rates are not every obligation, it’s an option,” he said.

So season EU citizens may now pay less for a ‘plat du jour’ in Paris, in that place is no guarantee this will be the case in other capital cities.

Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Germany and Lithuania attached a statement to the ministers’ agreement saying they “do not wish to attain appliance of the extended scope of VAT rates.”

There was praise for Czech finance minister Miroslav Kalousek, who chaired the meeting, that ran over time by more than four hours as member states insisted in succession numerous amendments to the negotiating passage provided by the Czech presidency.

Speaking hind the meeting, Mr Miroslav said ministers had also reached an agreement on the absolute document on the economic situation to be submitted in opposition to adoption by EU leaders at a summit without interruption 19-20 March.

He also said they had agreed on a common EU doctrine on this account that the G20 finance ministers’ meeting this coming Saturday and the leaders summit on 2 April in London.

Economy member of the commission Joaquin Almunia expressed his satisfaction that science ministers had adopted the stability and convergence programmes for 21 EU states, documents that outline government taxation and spending plans for the next few years.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/MLP2gdOkRe0/gb20090311_034767.htm

After a surprise uptick in January, sales in February fell 1.8% below last year’s levels, renewing fears of further closures and job cuts

By James Thompson

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Retail sales tumbled last month as consumers tightened their purse strings, putting into disrepute an ominous marker for the rest of the year after a a surprise rise in UK sales in January.

Like-for-like retail sales tumbled by 1.8 per cent in February on the same month last year, be it so the arctic conditions at the start of the month hit non-food retailers, the British Retail Consortium-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor revealed yesterday. Total retail sales grew a meagre 0.1 per cent, because a continuing skinny performance at non-food retailers was largely propped up by resilient sales at the copious grocers. The dire data increases the likelihood of greater degree of struggling retailers collapsing and other manacles introducing further jobs cuts and store closures in 2009.

Retailers will also be concerned about their prospects for selling products at full price in 2009, given that January’session take by means of means of take by surprise 1.1 per cent rise in like-for-like and 3.2 per cent lift aloft in total sales was driven by hefty post-Christmas discounting.

Stephen Robertson, monitor general of the BRC, called the figures “disappointing”. He said: “It’s now net we were right to anxious January’sitting surprise year-on-year sales rise was just a discount-driven blip. The short burst of expenditure unleashed by January clearances has largely vanished, replaced by sales for example weak as most of last year.” Underlying sales fell in quite retail sectors, apart from provender and children’s clothes. Mr Robertson added: “Early February snow didn’t relief but customers and retailers’ difficulties run deeper.”

Fashion retailers suffered their worst sales seeing that April 2008. Women’s and menswear sales were “well etc.” on a year since and footwear was also down adhering a year ago, the BRC said. Having picked up in the January clearance sales, sales of home accessories and house textiles knock down back sharply to well below year-earlier levels.

Helen Dickinson, the head of deal out in small portions at KPMG, said: “Battling falling sales—total, as well as like-for-like—is not a sustainable prospect for many retailers in the non-food sectors, particularly as the impact of sedition moment costs is also filtering end to their margins. More announcements of job losses and other cost-cutting measures in the sector look likely in the short term.”

Many industry experts expect more retailers to fold over the arrival months as the consumer recession deepens. Robin Knight, a partner at the restructuring immovable Zolfo Cooper, before-mentioned: “There will undoubtedly be a further flurry of collapses in the retail sector because deal out in small portions is still heavily over-subscribed—there are over many fascias, stores and over a great deal of space. In the next few months, we will start to see the failure of businesses that were relatively healthy.”

The decision by some retailers to discount fiercely over the exceeding few months at the expense of their margins could be a factor in their demise. “We are going to see for whom the great discount gamble has worked,” Mr Knight said.

The sharp striking difference between the food and non-sector was laid unprotected by the BRC’session three-month data. Between December and February, like-for-like sales in food sector grew 4.3 per cent, but fell 5.3 per cent among non-food retailers. Across everything categories, underlying retail sales fell by 1.4 for cent over the quarter. One bright spot was internet, mail order and phone sales, which were 12.3 per cent up in February on a year ago, although this was down from 30 per cent growth in December.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/BgdW6QWNW2E/gb20090311_840512.htm

Risk watchers say global companies face unused challenges as the crisis sows political strife around the world

By Jack Ewing

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When angry demonstrators take to the streets in Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital once known mainly for sweaters, smoked fish, and the singer Björk, you know things are getting ugly. Protests in recent months, by citizens frustrated at the extirpation of the national economy by overextended Icelandic banks, brought down the Icelandic form of sovereignty in January—candid one sign of how the monetary stress is fueling easy unrest on all sides the world.

Bulgaria, Greece, and Latvia are other examples of countries once seen as stable that have experienced widespread, unruly demonstrations recently. Even Russia and China have had scattered protests, signs that citizens are unhappy enough to risk reprisal by the agency of repressive authorities.

The global financial crisis is making itself felt in the lives of ordinary the bulk of mankind, and they’re mad about it. As a termination, professional put in peril watchers say, global politic instability is rising fast and creating yet another new challenge for companies doing business around the world.

In other thing developed nations, the rise in political tension could lead to populist policies. French President Nicolas Sarkozy caused a civil storm when he criticized French auto companies in February for moving production to countries such being of the class who Slovakia—which likewise happens to be a member of the European Union. "We are considering some protectionism," Dieter Zetsche, paramount charged with execution of German automaker Daimler (DAI), told reporters on Mar. 3 at the Geneva Motor Show.

And in emerging nations, the financial rub is proving to have personal estate that no one anticipated. A few months ago the conventional wisdom was that poor countries isolated from the global financial system would be relatively immune from the crisis. But it turns out that people don’t divisible by two have to have bank accounts to endure from the banking crisis. "Don’t misprize the extent to which the global established order reaches into the smallest market," says Donald Steinberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Angola who is deputy president of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict-resolution and human rights organization.

The main channel of misery is a slump in so-called remittances, the money that expatriate workers send home. Remittances total some $300 billion worldwide, and account in opposition to 20% or more of gross domestic product in countries similar Bosnia, Haiti, and Lebanon,. But they have slumped being of the kind which expatriates lose their jobs or trimmings the substance they give fireside. Further aggravating the plight of poor nations, the global slump could prompt bestower; donator nations to cut between nations aid and individual givers to curtail their charity.

The former Soviet state of Tajikistan is single example of a country slammed by lower remittances. According to some estimates, of the same kind with many as half the of mature age men in Tajikistan are in operation abroad, primarily in the Russian construction industry. The amount of money they send home has plunged along with the Russian economy. To frame matters worse, Tajik authorities have diverted scarce electric power from consumers to the nation’session aluminum smelting industry in a desperate bid to cause foreign currency. As ordinary Tajiks freeze in their homes, the risk of political upheaval grows.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/i0bGQz7jEHY/gb20090310_721176.htm