1. Mark Buchanan asks Is Economics a Science or a Religion?
2. Poverty has moved to the suburbs
I don't think this should be seen as necessarily a bad thing. A few decades ago, the idea was to "warehouse" the poor in large urban complexes. There has been an intentional effort at dispersal through various means including creating mixed-income neighborhoods.
3. Crime has plummeted in the rich world, even amid the recession.
4. 5 Charts That Perfectly Capture The Incredible Rise Of China
5. How (and why) Africa should solve its own problems
Africa cannot rely on outside people to come and feed our poor or treat our sick, says African businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim. The key is good governance, in both the public and private sectors.
6. World Bank: Africa held back by land ownership confusion
Africa's economic growth is being held back by confusion over who owns vast swathes of agricultural land, according to a World Bank report.
7. Deforestation in Africa's Congo Basin rainforest slows
Tree loss in one of the world's largest rainforests has slowed, a study suggests.
Satellite images of Africa's Congo Basin reveal that deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000.
Researchers believe this is partly because of a focus on mining and oil rather than commercial agriculture, where swathes of forest are cleared. ...
8. Brazil's Evangelicals A Growing Force In Prayer, Politics
... Recent polls show that evangelical Christianity is the fastest-growing sect in Brazil. According to the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of the Brazilian population identifies as evangelical Christian — up from 5 percent in 1970. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, most of them switched from Roman Catholicism.
These days, only about 62 percent of people in Brazil say they are Catholic. In absolute numbers, however, this still makes Brazil the country with the most Catholics in the world. ...
9. For Developing World, a Streamlined Facebook
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple "feature phones" that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.
Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly one out of eight of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.
Many of those users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. ...
10. The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring (I don't agree with a couple of points but I think his thesis is spot on.)
11. Big Racial Divide over Zimmerman Verdict
12. The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War
Family-run Publix is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, and they might be the formula for fending off Bentonville's retail behemoth. ...
... When a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. Instead, an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do. At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most large supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot. Even Publix's president, Todd Jones, who started out as a bagger 33 years ago, stoops down to pick up specks of trash on the store floor.
"We believe that there are three ways to differentiate: service, quality and price," Jones says. "You've got to be good at two of them, and the best at one. We make service our number one, then quality and then price."...
... Publix, the seventh-largest private company in the U.S. ($27.5 billion in sales) and one of the least understood thanks to decades of media reticence, is also the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company's largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation; it's pegged at $26.90 now, up nearly 20% already this year.) How rich can employees get? According to Publix, a store manager who has worked at the company for 20 years and earns between $100,000 and $130,000 likely has $300,000 in stock and has received another $30,000 in dividends. ...
13. Grocery shopping online: Can it replace trips to the store?
The website mySupermarket.com compares the prices of groceries online and works to reduce shipping costs. But a limited selection means grocery store runs aren't a things of the past just yet.
14. 25 Everyday Things Made Obsolete This Century. What would you add to the list?
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