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but what would in normal times be a boon for the region may not help as much now, experts say.

Before the crisis, actions such as the European Central Bank rate cuts two weeks ago would have had a twofold effect in reviving the economy: Banks would have passed the lower rate on to their clients, while foreign-exchange markets would have marked the currency down, giving exporters better chances to sell their products abroad.

In today's polarized euro zone, it isn't that simple. For one thing, tThere is no certainty that euro-zone banks will pass on the cut in borrowing costs.

Sixty-four percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day, 14 percent have HIV, 40 percent don’t have access to clean drinking water. Almost 90 percent of women in rural areas cannot read or write. Name a category—schools, health care, environment—and I’ll give you statistics that will depress the shit out of you.

For more than 150 years, the only reason to come to Kitwe—to Zambia, really—was the copper.

Most of the buildings in Kitwe, the roads, the health clinics, the schools, were built by the national mining company

In most cases, mining tar sands involves drilling two horizontal wells, one above the other, into the bitumen layer; injecting massive gouts of high-pressure steam and solvents into the top well, liquefying the bitumen; sucking up the melted bitumen as it drips into the sand around the lower well; and then refining the bitumen into “synthetic crude oil.”

Economists sometimes describe a fuel in terms of its energy return on energy invested (EROEI), a measure of how much energy must be used up to acquire, process, and deliver the fuel in a useful form. OPEC oil, for example, is typically estimated to have an EROEI of 12 to 18, which means that 12 to 18 barrels of oil are produced at the wellhead for every barrel of oil consumed during their production. In this calculation, tar sands look awful: they have an EROEI of 4 to 7. (Steaming out the bitumen also requires a lot of water. Environmentalists ask, with some justification, where it all is going to come from.)

To obtain shale gas, companies first dig wells that reach down thousands of feet. Then, with the absurd agility of anime characters, the drills wriggle sideways to bore thousands of feet more through methane-bearing shale. Once in place, the well injects high-pressure water into the stone, creating hairline cracks. The water is mixed with chemicals and “proppant,” particles of sand or ceramic that help keep the cracks open once they have formed. Gas trapped between layers of shale seeps past the proppant and rises through the well to be collected.

He said that while the eurozone works for some countries, it was obvious that others were unable to keep up. "There is a basic question: what is the right size for a single monetary policy?" In a clear reference to Greece, Portugal and Cyprus, he said the crisis had exposed countries with weaker productivity and higher labour costs.

Blanchard said the powers acquired by central banks created a "democratic deficit" that could eventually lead to social unrest. The situation in Europe was a cause for concern, especially when central banks were put in a position of making crucial decisions that affected millions of people's lives, he said.

More than 70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals.

Agribusiness groups disagree and say the main problem is overuse of antibiotic treatments for people. Bugs rarely migrate from animals to people, and even when they do, the risk they pose to human health is negligible, the industry contends.

He is comparing the genetic sequences of E. coli germs resistant to multiple antibiotics found in the meat samples to the ones that have caused urinary tract infections in people (mostly women).

Adjustment is the key to ending the eurozone crisis. The optimists are saying that this process of regaining competitiveness is now taking place.

This judgment is profoundly wrong.

In other words, the eurozone is adjusting at the expense of the rest of the world.

“It’s sad to note that the state of education is worse now than it was 20 years ago,

“How is it that a segment of our youth cannot realize their legitimate aspirations at professional, physical and social levels?”

They say that their education has left them ill-equipped for the workplace.

Finland's Problem Is The Same As Greece's; Neither Should Be In The Euro As Krugman Says

France Says It Will Ban Uber’s Low-Cost Service in New Year

this aircraft, which can hold more than 500 passengers. The plane dwarfs every commercial jet in the skies.

Its two full-length decks total 6,000 square feet, 50 percent more than the original jumbo jet, the Boeing 747.

The A380 was also Airbus’s answer to a problematic trend: More and more passengers meant more flights and increasingly congested tarmacs. Airbus figured that the future of air travel belonged to big planes flying between major hubs.

Nobel economists say policy blunders pushing Europe into depression

IMF’s Olivier Blanchard says global recovery is still ‘weak’

“There is a strong case to be made for more public investment, for demand-side reasons in the short term, and supply-side reasons in the longer run,” says Mr Blanchard. The US and Germany are prime examples, Mr Blanchard said, of countries where there is a backlog of high-return infrastructure projects. He added that their governments should make the most of record-low borrowing costs and reap the large macroeconomic benefits that come from increasing demand.

Ireland’s Government Says It Will Curb a Tax Strategy That Faced U.S. Scrutiny

Senate Report Says Caterpillar Used Swiss Subsidiary to Reduce Taxes

Dismantle the euro, says Nobel-winning economist who once backed currency union

“The euro should either be dismantled in an orderly way or the leading members should do the necessary as fast as possible to make it growth and employment-friendly,. “We will get nowhere plodding along with the current line of ad hoc decision-making and inconsistent debt-relief policies.

France wants to slow down consideration of the proposed transatlantic free-trade zone encompassing about 40 percent of the world’s trade. Germany and Britain are in favor of the plan and want to move fast.

But supporters also fear that trade talks will bog down or collapse over parochial concerns, and must be streamlined to succeed.