THE costliest place in the world to get high is Japan, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s annual World Drug Report.

The street price of a gram of cannabis weed was $58.30 in 2005, over twice as much as in the next most expensive nation, Australia. Americans pay nearly twice as much as Canadians.

Similar disparities occur in Europe. Although the Netherlands is the only Western country where cannabis can be bought legally, punters pay more there than in Germany or France. Prices are cheapest in developing countries, where enforcement is less strict.

Taken from Economist.com (dated 12 September 2007)

Jul 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Marco Polo, shown here arriving from India at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, was a forerunner to today’s global traders.

Mr Chanda organises his argument around what he takes to be the four groups that have done most to bring about this interconnectedness: traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors. Though the motives of these groups—to profit, convert, learn or conquer—have usually been selfish, the overall effect of their actions has been to draw us all closer together.

Read the rest of the article here>>>

Al Jazeera News • August 13, 2007

By Afif Sarhan in Baghdad

When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to feed her children.

A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities for women had decreased since the US invasion.

“I think of my children, only my children; without money we starve in the streets.”

She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.

Within weeks of her husband’s death, a doctor diagnosed her children with malnutrition.

Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the oldest profession: “In the beginning these were the worst days in my life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn’t have another option … my children were starving.”

She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest market to find someone who would pay her for sex.

She said: “I’m a nice-looking woman and it wasn’t difficult to find a client……………”

Continue with the full story here>>>

TODAY-Weekend • July 14, 2007

Tiffany Tan
tiffany@mediacorp.com.sg

Twenty-five-year-old John Pritzlaff is among hundreds of Americans who responded to The Blasphemy Challenge — daring atheists to upload into YouTube “a short message damning yourself to Hell” in exchange for a DVD.

The challenge, launched by a United States-based atheist group known as the Rational Response Squad last year, targets teenagers to renounce religion.

In the US, some atheists are becoming increasingly visible and outspoken about their beliefs: That faith in God is irrational, that it should be replaced by pure scientific reasoning and that religion is a destructive force. They are making their views heard not only via blogs, TV interviews or public debates, but also with the help of books that have penetrated bestseller lists.

Two of the hottest books in the category are The God Delusion by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by journalist Christopher Hitchens.

Read the full story here>>>

ANY measure of freedom may be open to criticism, and combining three separate measures—religious, political and civil—may seem more arbitrary yet. But the efforts of the Religious Centre for Freedom, using rankings from other sources, provide some intriguing comparisons.

It is no shock that the likes of North Korea and Iran are intolerant of all sorts of freedoms, while America is just as easy-going over religion as it is concerning political freedoms. But look at India, Indonesia and some European countries: tolerance of civil and political rights is not matched by quite the same freedom to worship.

Taken from Economist.com (Dated 11 July 2007)

Feb 28th 2007 | NEW YORK
Taken from Economist.com

Turmoil in the markets has many causes 

AMERICA boasts the world’s biggest and most liquid stockmarkets, and it has long been a cliché that when it sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. But as other markets mature and capital moves more fluidly across the globe, the risk of infection spreading the other way grows.

A graphic illustration came on Tuesday February 27th, when shares dipped around the world after China’s stockmarket suffered its biggest drop in a decade (before rebounding somewhat on Wednesday). America saw its steepest points fall since the markets reopened after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001—and the end of its longest run without a 2% daily drop since the 1950s.

Read full story here>>>

“There are approximately 6.5 billion people in the world speaking thousands of languages, but fewer than 20 languages facilitate most of the communication in the world. Being able to speak English or Mandarin allows communication with approximately a quarter of the world’s inhabitants, and the top 10 languages- including Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and French- allow conversations to flow among nearly 60% of the people in the world.

The flip side of this is the dramatic decrease of the number of languages spoken and the number of languages in danger of extinction. There are more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world (Papua New Guinea alone has 820 languages in use), with more than 90% having fewer than 100,000 speakers.

But even that statistic fails to capture the threat to linguistic diversity. Linguists estimate that more than half of all languages will disappear by the end of the 21st century. So take some time and learn Kawesqar before it is too late.” 

* Excerpt taken from Motley Fool Global Gains– Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2007

“The most correct answer for how many countries there are in the world is 193– 192 members of the United Nations, plus non-member Vatican City. There are, of course, some controversies: Guantemala claims Belize doesn’t exist, Taiwan and China have their arguments, as do the Greek and Turkish sections of Cyprus.

Of these countries, 118 have some form of stock market. Few are threats to supplant the NYSE anytime soon. Many are quite small: The Royal Security of Bhutan lists 15 companies, and the International Brunei Exchange lists none at the moment.

But all combined, all these international stock exchanges are larger than the three major exchanges in the United States, having 5 times the number of companies, and a total market cap at $23 billion, which exceeds that of the American-listed companies. That excludes ADRs, of course. That would be double counting.

In case you’re wondering, Peru has the best-performing stock market since 2001, gaining an average of 42% per year.”

* Excerpt taken from Motley Fool Global Gains– Volume 1, Issue 1, December 2006